9º. The direction in which Reding marched was good, but it should have been followed by the whole army. The heights of Argonilla would have screened the march of Castaños, and a few troops with some heavy guns left in front of the bridge of Andujar, would have sufficed to occupy Dupont’s attention. If the latter general had attacked Castaños upon the morning of the 16th, when Vedel’s division arrived from Baylen, the fourteen thousand men thus united by accident would easily have overthrown the two Spanish divisions in front of Andujar; and Reding, if he had lost an hour in retreating to Jaen, might have been taken in flank by the victorious troops, and in front by Gobert, and so destroyed. Instead of availing himself of this opening, the French general sent Vedel back to Baylen, and followed himself the day after; being encountered by Reding, he vainly hoped that the divisions (which with so much pains he had dispersed) would reunite to relieve him from his desperate situation; it is difficult to say why those divisions did not arrive during the battle, and more difficult to assign to each person a just portion of censure where all were to blame. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 6.] 10º. In the action Dupont clung tenaciously to the miserable system of dividing his forces; his only chance of safety was to force Reding before Castaños could arrive upon the Tiedras; it was therefore a wretched misapplication of rules to have a reserve watching that torrent, and to fight a formal battle with a first and second line and half a dozen puny columns of attack. An energetic officer would have formed his troops in a dense mass and broken at once through the opposing force upon the weakest point; there are few armies so good, that such an assault would not open a passage through them; seven thousand infantry with cavalry and artillery is a powerful column of attack, and the Spanish line could not have withstood it for a moment. The battle should have been one of half an hour; Dupont, by his ridiculous evolutions, made it one of ten hours, and yet so badly did the patriots fight, that in all that time not a single prisoner or gun fell into their hands, and the fact of Reding’s entering at all into a convention, proves his fears for the final result. It is truly astonishing that Dupont, who, from his rank, must have been well acquainted with Napoleon’s Italian campaigns, should have caught so little of the spirit of his master. And then the inexplicable capitulation of Vedel after his retreat was actually effected! Vedel, who might have given battle and disputed the victory by himself without any great imprudence! Joseph called Dupont’s capitulation a “_defection_;” perhaps he was right.