4º. It may be objected that ten thousand men durst not penetrate so far into a hostile country; but at Alcolea, Dupont boasts of having defeated forty thousand men without any loss to himself; from such armies then he had nothing to fear, and the very fact of his having pushed his small force between the multitudes that he defeated upon the 7th, proves that he despised them. “He retired from Cordoba,” he says in his memoir, “because to fight a battle when victory can be of no use is against all discretion;” but to make no use of a victory when it is gained comes to the same thing; and he should never have moved from Andujar unless with the determination of taking Seville. 5º. Those errors were, however, redeemable; the position behind the Guadalquivir, the checks given to the patriots at Jaen after the arrival of Vedel at Carolina upon the 27th, and above all the opportune junction of Gobert at the moment when Castaños and Reding appeared in front of the French line, proved that it was not fortune but common sense that deserted Dupont on this occasion, for the Spanish forces being divided and extended from Andujar to Mengibar were exposed to be beaten in detail; but their adversary was indulgent to them, and amidst the mass of errors committed upon both sides, this false disposition appeared like an act of wisdom, and being successful was stamped accordingly. 6º. At Mengibar a variety of roads branch off leading to Jaen, to Linhares, to Baylen and other places. From Andujar, a road nearly parallel to the Guadalquivir runs to the ferry of Mengibar and forms the base of a triangle, of which Baylen may be taken as the apex. From this latter town to the ferry is about six miles, from the ferry to Andujar is about eighteen, from the latter to Baylen the distance may be sixteen miles. Fifteen miles above Baylen the town of Carolina, situated in the gorge of the Sierra Morena, was the point of communication with La Mancha, and the line of retreat for the French in the event of a defeat, hence Baylen, not Andujar, was the pivot of operations. [Sidenote: Dupont’s Journal. MS.]