To oppose him were great armies on the French side, yet all in confusion. Napoleon had drawn off thousands of the old soldiers and experienced officers, to give stability to the new levies with which he was striving to restore his failing fortunes; to compensate for the weakness thus occasioned, he directed the king to concentrate on the northern line of invasion and act, not as the monarch of a subdued country but as the general of an army in the field, having to contend with an equal power. This view demanded promptness and vigour to clear the communications of insurgents, judgment to adopt suitable positions, and one imperious command over all the generals. Thus governed the French soldiers were numerous enough to hope for victory against greater numbers than Wellington could employ against them; for though reduced by drafts, and the secondary war of the Spaniards after the retreat of Burgos, to two hundred and thirty thousand men, of which seventy-eight thousand were on the southern line of invasion and thirty thousand in hospital, a hundred and twenty thousand men with a hundred guns, including a reserve at Bayonne, were on the northern line of invasion. This was a great power, of one nation, one spirit, one discipline, and the emperor with comprehensive genius had explained how it was to be made available. Joseph could not comprehend the spirit of the great master’s instructions, and was unwilling to obey. Quarrelling with his subordinates, he would be still a king, lost time, made false movements, and at the opening of the campaign, instead of being concentrated on the right point and under one head, his troops were scattered over all the north of Spain, under generals who agreed in nothing but opposition to his military command. Such was the state of affairs when Wellington, forming two masses, gave one of forty thousand fighting men to General Graham, with orders to penetrate through the Portuguese province of Tras os Montes to the Esla river, in Spain, thus turning that line of the Duero which Marmont had the year before made an iron barrier. With the other mass, thirty thousand, he designed to force the Tormes, pass the Duero, unite with Graham, augment his army to ninety thousand, by calling down the Gallicians under Castaños, and then ranging the whole on a new front march all abreast upon the scattered French and drive them refluent to the Pyrenees. A grand design and grandly executed. For strong of heart and strong of hand his veterans marched to the encounter, the glories of twelve victories playing about their bayonets, and he their leader, so proudly confident, that in crossing the stream which marks the frontier of Spain, he rose in his stirrups, and waving his hand cried out _Adieu Portugal!_