Such were the commanders, the armies, the rulers, upon whose exertions the British cabinet relied for the security of sir John Moore’s troops, during their double march from Lisbon and Coruña. It was in such a state of affairs that the English ministers, anticipating the speedy and complete destruction of the French forces in Spain, were sounding the trumpet for an immediate invasion of France! Of France, defended by a million of veteran soldiers, and governed by the mightiest genius of two thousand years! As if the vast military power of that warlike nation had suddenly become extinct; as if Baylen were a second Zama, and Hannibal flying to Adrumetum instead of passing the Iberus! But Napoleon, with an execution more rapid than other men’s thoughts, was already at Vittoria, and his hovering eagles cast a gloomy shadow over Spain. BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. [Sidenote: S. Journal of the king’s operations, MS.] After the opening of the legislative sessions, the emperor quitted Paris, and repaired to Bayonne. He arrived there on the 3d of November. It was his intention that the presumption of the Spanish generals should be encouraged by a strict defensive system until the moment, when the blow he was prepared to strike, could fall with the greatest effect. The precipitate attack at Zornosa displeased him, and he was also dissatisfied with the subsequent measures of the king. He thought that the safety of Mouton’s division would be compromised between the armies of Blake and the conde de Belvedere. To prevent any accident, he judged it necessary that Bessieres should advance with the whole of the second corps to Burgos; that marshal Victor should march by Amurio to Valmaceda; and that marshal Le-Febre should immediately renew his attack on that position, from the side of Bilbao. These dispositions were executed, and thus at the very moment when Blake was leading his harassed and starving troops back to Bilbao, two corps, amounting to fifty thousand men, were in full march to meet him, and a third had already turned his right flank, and was on his rear. [Sidenote: Captain Carrol’s Corresp^{ce}.] [Sidenote: General Leith’s Corresp^{ce}.]