Thirty or forty thousand British troops occupying an entrenched camp in front of that town, supported by a powerful fleet, and having reserve magazines and dépôts in Sicily and the Spanish islands, might have been so wielded as to give ample occupation to a hundred and fifty thousand enemies. Under the protection of such an army, the Spanish levies might have been organised and instructed, and as the actual numbers assembled could have been at all times easily masked, increased, or diminished, and the fleet ready to co-operate, the south of France (from whence all the provisions of the enemy must have been drawn) would have been exposed to descents, and have sustained all the inconvenience of actual hostilities. The Spanish provinces of Valencia, Murcia, and even Andalusia, being thus covered, the war would have been drawn to a head, and concentrated about Catalonia, the most warlike, rugged, and sterile portion of Spain. But Duhesme’s success having put an end to this danger, the affairs of Barcelona sunk into comparative insignificance. Nevertheless, the emperor kept a jealous watch upon that quarter, the corps employed there was increased to twenty-two thousand men, the general commanding it corresponded directly with Napoleon, and Barcelona was made the centre of a system complete in itself, and distinct from that which held the other corps, rolling round Madrid as their point of attraction. The capital of Spain is situated in a sort of basin, formed by a semicircular range of mountains, which under the different denominations of the Sierra de Guadarama, the Carpentanos, and the Sierra de Guadalaxara, sweep in one unbroken chain from east to west, touching the Tagus at either end of an arch, of which that river is the chord. All direct communications between Madrid and France, or between the former and the northern provinces of Spain, must necessarily pass over one or other of those Sierras, which are separated from the great range of the Pyrenees by the valley of the Ebro, and from the Biscayan and Asturian mountains by the valley of the Duero. The four principal roads which lead from France directly upon Madrid are, first, the royal causeway, which passing the frontier at Irun runs under St. Sebastian, and then through a wild and mountainous country (full of dangerous defiles) to the Ebro, crosses that river by a stone bridge at Miranda, and leads upon Burgos, from which town it turns short to the left, is carried over the Duero at Aranda, and soon after encountering the Carpentanos and the Sierra de Guadalaxara, penetrates them by the strong pass of the Somosierra, and descends upon the capital. Vittoria stands in a plain about half way between St. Sebastian and Burgos.