The 23d, Romana gave notice that the French were in motion on the side of Madrid. The night of the 23d the troops were in march towards Carrion, when Romana’s intelligence was confirmed by the general’s spies; all their reports agreed that the whole French army was in movement to crush the English. The fourth corps had been halted at Talavera, the third at Vittoria, the eighth was closing up to reinforce the second, and the emperor in person was marching towards the Guadarama; the principal objects of sir John Moore’s advance were thus attained. The siege of Zaragoza was delayed, the southern provinces were allowed to breathe, and it now remained for him to prove, by a timely retreat, that this offensive operation, although hazardous, was not the result of improvident rashness, nor weakness of mind, but the hardy enterprise of a great commander acting under peculiar circumstances: as a military measure, his judgment condemned it; as a political one, he thought it of doubtful advantage, because Spain was really passive, but he was willing to give the Spaniards an opportunity of making one more struggle for independence. That was done. If they could not, or would not profit of the occasion, if their hearts were faint or their hands feeble, the shame and the loss were their own; the British general had done enough, enough for honour, enough for utility, more than enough for prudence; but the madness of the times required it. His army was already on the verge of destruction, the enemy’s force was hourly increasing in his front; the first symptoms of a retreat would bring it headlong on; and in the meantime the emperor threatened the line of communications with Gallicia, and by the rapidity of his march left no time for consideration. After the first burst, by which he swept the northern provinces, and planted his standards on the banks of the Tagus, that monarch had put all the resources of his subtle genius into activity, endeavouring to soften the public mind, and by engrafting benefits on the terror his victories had created, to gain over the people; but, at the same time, he was gathering in his extended wings, and preparing for a new flight, which would have carried him over the southern kingdoms of the Peninsula, and given him the rocks of Lisbon as a resting-place for his eagles. Madrid was tranquil; Toledo, notwithstanding her heroic promises, never shut her gates; one division of the first corps occupied that town, another was in Ocaña, and the light cavalry scoured the whole of La Mancha, even to the borders of Andalusia. The fourth corps, and Milhaud’s and Lasalle’s horsemen, were at Talavera preparing to march to Badajos, and sixty thousand men, with one hundred and fifty guns and fifteen days’ provisions in carts, were reviewed at the gates of Madrid upon the 19th. Three days afterwards they were in full march to intercept the line of sir John Moore’s retreat.