Don Thomas Morla, after a vain attempt to involve lord Collingwood and sir Hew Dalrymple in the disgraceful transaction, formally defended the conduct of the junta in breaking the capitulation; his reasoning was worthy of the man who so soon afterwards betrayed his own country with the same indifference to honour that he displayed on this occasion. OBSERVATIONS. [Sidenote: Return of the French army. Appendix.] 1º. The gross amount of Dupont’s corps when it first entered Spain was about twenty-four thousand men, with three thousand five hundred horses; of these twenty-one thousand were fit for duty. It was afterwards strengthened by a provisionary regiment of cuirassiers, a marine battalion of the guard, and the two Swiss regiments of Preux and Reding. It could not therefore have been less than twenty-four thousand fighting men when Dupont arrived in Andalusia, and as the whole of Vedel’s, and the greatest part of Gobert’s division, had joined before the capitulation, and that eighteen thousand men laid down their arms at Baylen, Dupont must have lost by wounds, desertion, and deaths in hospital or the field, above four thousand men. 2º. The order which directed this corps upon Cadiz was despatched from Bayonne before the Spanish insurrection broke out; it was therefore strange that Dupont should have persevered in his march when he found affairs in such a different state from that contemplated by Napoleon at the time the instructions for this expedition were framed. If the emperor considered it necessary to reinforce the division which marched under Dupont’s own command, with a detachment from the army in Portugal before the insurrection broke out, it was evident that he never could have intended that that general should blindly follow the letter of his orders, when a great and unexpected resistance was opposed to him, and that the detachment of Portugal was unable to effect a junction. The march to Cordoba was therefore an error, and it was a great error, because Dupont confesses in his memoir that he advanced under the conviction that his force was too weak to obtain success, and, consequently, having no object, his operations could only lead to a waste of lives. 3º. At Cordoba, Dupont remained in a state of torpor for ten days; this was the second error of a series which led to his ruin: he should either have followed up his victory and attacked Seville in the first moment of consternation, or he should have retired to Andujar while he might do so without the appearance of being compelled to it. If he had followed the first plan, the city would inevitably have fallen before him, and thus time would have been gained for the arrival of the 2d and 3d division of his corps. [Sidenote: Dupont’s Journal of Operations.]