The retreat of the king was undoubtedly hasty and ill-considered; whether as a military or political measure it was unwise. Bessieres, with seventeen thousand victorious troops and forty pieces of artillery, paralized the northern provinces, the Spanish army of Andalusia was too distant from that of Valencia to concert a combined movement, and if they had formed a junction their united force could not have exceeded forty thousand fighting men, ill provided, and commanded by jealous independent chiefs. Now the king, without weakening Bessieres’s corps too much, could have collected twenty thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and eighty pieces of artillery, and the battle of Rio Seco shows what such an army could have effected. Every motive of prudence and of honour called for some daring action to wipe off the ignominy of Baylen. Let it be conceded that Joseph could not have maintained himself in Madrid; the line of the Duero was the true position for the French army. Taking Aranda as a centre, and occupying the Somosierra, Segovia, Valladolid, Palencia, Burgos, and Soria on the circumference; two ordinary marches would have carried the king to the succour of any part of his position, and the northern provinces would thus have been separated from the southern; for Blake durst not have made a flank march to the Guadarama, Castaños durst not have remained in the basin of Madrid, and the siege of Zaragoza might have been continued, because from Aranda to Zaragoza the distance is not greater than from Valencia or from Madrid, and from Soria it is only three marches; hence the king could have succoured Verdier in time if the Valencians attacked him, and it was impossible for Castaños to have arrived at Zaragoza under a month; now by taking up the line of the Ebro, Napoleon’s plan of separating the provinces, and confining each to its own exertions, was frustrated, and Joseph virtually resigned the throne; for however doubtful the prudence of opposing the French might have been considered before the retreat, it became imperative upon all Spaniards to aid the energy of the multitude, when that energy was proved to be efficient. In this manner Napoleon’s first effort against Spain was frustrated; not that he had miscalculated either the difficulties of his task, or the means to overcome them; for although Bessieres was the only general who perfectly succeeded in his operations, the plan of the emperor was so well combined, that it required the destruction of a whole army to shake it at all, and even when the king, by committing the great faults of abandoning Madrid and raising the siege of Zaragoza, had given the utmost force to Dupont’s catastrophe; the political position only of the French was weakened, their military hold of the country was scarcely loosened, and the Spaniards were unable to follow up their victory.