Marshal Victor, on hearing of the disastrous termination of Soult’s operations, fell back on Almaraz and Torremocha; so that Sir A. Wellesley, who had commenced his southward march through Traz-oz-Montes, resolved to halt at Abrantes, and to commence a thorough reorganization of his army, [Sidenote: Wellington Despatches and Supplementary Despatches.] now sadly undisciplined. The correspondence of Sir Arthur at this time reveals what one is apt to forget in reflecting on the glories of the Peninsular campaigns. The military genius of the Duke of Wellington and the courage of English soldiers are too often considered to have been the only necessary causes of success; but a study of the appeals made by him at Abrantes to officers and men,--of the strict orders, on even the smallest matters, which he found it necessary to issue,--and of the letters to ministers and friends, in which he never failed to tell the truth about the army, however unpalatable,--reveals another most necessary element in the success which attended him in all his operations. As the first thought in his own mind always was _duty_, so the first and last thing which he held before his troops, as that without which they would be worse than useless, was _discipline_. The arguments he used have a value for all time, and a special value for England at a time when she possesses an armed force of Volunteers, who might possibly consider that drill, instead of discipline, is the chief end of a soldier’s life; but whose discipline, on the other hand, if thorough, would be nobler than that of regular troops, in being more self-imposed, and less dependent on a penal code. As for the Duke of Wellington’s remarks on the discipline of the Spanish troops, they apply in a singularly exact way to the [Sidenote: To Lord Castlereagh, dated 25 Aug. 1809.] armies of Spain in the anarchy of 1873. “In Spain,” he wrote, “the business of an army is little understood. They are really children in the art of war; and I cannot say that they do anything as it ought to be done, with the exception of running away and assembling again in a state of nature.... The Government have attempted to govern the kingdom in a state of revolution by an adherence to old rules and systems, and with the aid of what is called _enthusiasm_; and this last is, in fact, no aid to accomplish anything, and is only an excuse for the irregularity with which everything is done, and for the want of discipline and subordination of the armies. People are very apt to believe that enthusiasm carried the French through their Revolution, and was the parent of those exertions which have nearly conquered the world; but if the subject is nicely examined, it will be found that enthusiasm was the _name_ only, but that _force_ was the instrument which brought forward those great resources, under the system of _terror_, which first stopped the Allies.” In his correspondence with Marshal Beresford, who