In such enterprises as those of the two Minas and the other guerrilla chiefs, the Timours, the Babers, and Khouli Khans of Eastern history, were trained; but neither men nor officers were likely to be formed in them for the operations of regular war. The restraints, the subordination, the principle of obedience which the soldier is compelled to learn, of the necessity of which his understanding is convinced, and to which, if his disposition be good, he conforms at last morally as well as mechanically, these in no slight degree counteract the demoralizing tendencies of a military life, and compensate for its heart-hardening ones. The good soldier becomes a good citizen when his occupation is over; but the guerrillas were never likely to forego the wild and lawless course in which they were engaged; and, therefore, essential as their services now were, thoughtful men looked with the gloomiest forebodings to what must be the consequence of their multiplication, whenever this dreadful struggle should be ended; they anticipated the ♦SEM. PATR. NO. 82, P. 338.♦ utter ruin of Spain. The course of events, however, was not to be controlled; circumstances had produced this irregular force, and there was now no possibility of defending the country without it. Lord Wellington had felt how hopeless it was to act in concert with a Spanish army, wherein good intentions were frustrated by obstinate counsels, and courage rendered unavailing by insubordination; but he felt at this time of what importance it was to have a nation in his favour, and how materially the movements of the enemy were impeded and their difficulties increased by the guerrilla parties who acted along their whole line, from the Pyrenees to the frontiers of Beira. Massena’s situation became every day more trying; the French in Spain were so little able to feed his army, that he was obliged to have his biscuit from France, when it had to be escorted 800 miles through a hostile country! It was as difficult for him to send dispatches as to receive supplies; and the first intelligence which Buonaparte obtained of his situation after he advanced to the lines of Torres Vedras, was brought from London, by persons employed in smuggling guineas to the continent. CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CORTES. PLAN WHICH THE JUNTA HAD ADOPTED ALTERED BY THE REGENCY. FIRST PROCEEDINGS OF THE CORTES. NEW REGENCY. ♦1810.♦