In England, the retreat from Burgos produced anger and fear; for the public had been taught to believe the French weak and dispirited, and the reverses were unexpected. Lord Wellesley justly attributed them to the imbecile, selfish policy of Mr. Perceval and his colleagues, which he characterized as having “_nothing regular but confusion_.” Lord Wellington alone supported the contest, for the Portuguese and Spanish Governments had become absolutely hostile to him, and were striving to make the people of those countries hostile also. However, in 1813, the aspect of the war, not in the Peninsula only but all over the civilized world, was changed by the failure of Napoleon’s gigantic expedition to Russia, and the English General, morally strengthened by this great event, and seeing time ripe for a decisive blow, successfully exerted all his mental vigour to overbear the folly and vices of the governments he had to deal with. He renovated discipline, repressed the intrigues of the Portuguese Regency, and, going to Cadiz, obtained of the Spanish Cortes paramount military authority, with its assent to a general combination all over the Peninsula. The three nations gave him two hundred thousand men; the Anglo-Portuguese army furnishing seventy thousand, with ninety pieces of artillery, and sixteen thousand Anglo-Sicilians were at Alicant. His flanks rested on the Biscay and Mediterranean seas, on each of which floated British fleets; now effective auxiliaries, because the French lines of retreat being close to and parallel with the coast on both sides of Spain, every port abandoned by them, furnished a storehouse to the allies, and the navy became a moveable base of operations.