Sir John Moore’s resolution to retreat upon Portugal created a great sensation at Madrid and at Aranjuez. The junta feared, and with reason, that such a palpable proof of the state to which their negligence and incapacity had reduced the country would endanger their authority, and perhaps their lives; and although they were on the point of flying to Badajos themselves, they were anxious that others should rush headlong into danger. Morla, and those who, like him, were prepared to abandon the cause of their country, felt mortified at losing an opportunity of commemorating their defection by a signal act of perfidy. The English plenipotentiary was surprised and indignant that a general of experience and reputation should think for himself, and decide upon a military operation without a reference to his opinion. Mr. Frere, although a person of some scholastic attainments, greatly overrated his own talent for public affairs. He was ill qualified for the duties of his situation, which at this moment required temper, sagacity, and judgment. He had come out to Spain impressed with false notions of what was passing in that country, and clinging tenaciously to the pictures of his imagination, he resented the intrusion of reason, and petulantly spurned at facts. The defeat of the conde de Belvedere at Gamonal, a defeat that broke the centre of the Spanish line, uncovered the flank and rear of Castaños’s army, opened a way to Madrid, and rendered the concentration of the British divisions unsafe, if not impossible; he curiously called the “unlucky affair of the 10th at Burgos.” After the battle of Tudela he estimated the whole French army on the side of Burgos and Valladolid at eleven thousand men, when they were above one hundred thousand; and yet, with information so absurdly defective, he was prompt to interfere with, and eager to control, the military combinations of the general, although they were founded upon the true and acknowledged principles of the art of war. [Sidenote: Moore’s Papers. Mr. Stuart’s Correspondence.] [Sidenote: Moore’s Papers. Frere’s Correspondence.]