Joseph, escorted by his French guards, in number between five and six thousand, entered Madrid in state the 23d of January. He was, however, a king without revenues, and he would have been without even the semblance of authority, if he had not been likewise nominated the emperor’s lieutenant in Spain, by virtue of which title he was empowered to move the French army at his will. This power was one extremely unacceptable to the marshals, and he would have found it difficult to enforce it, even though he had restrained the exercise to the limits prescribed by his brother. But disdaining to separate the general from the monarch, he conveyed his orders to the French army, through his Spanish ministers, and the army in its turn disdained and resisted the assumed authority of men, who, despised for their want of military knowledge, were also suspected as favouring interests essentially differing from those of the troops. The iron grasp that had compressed the pride and the ambitious jealousy of the marshals being thus relaxed, the passions that had ruined the patriots began to work among their enemies, producing indeed less fatal effects, because their scope was more circumscribed, but sufficiently pernicious to stop the course of conquest. The French army, no longer a compact body, terrible alike from its massive strength, and its flexible activity, became a collection of independent bands, each formidable in itself, but, from the disunion of the generals, slow to combine for any great object; and plainly discovering, by irregularities and insubordination, that they knew when a warrior, and when a voluptuous monarch was at their head; but these evils were only felt at a later period; and the distribution of the troops, when Napoleon quitted Valladolid, still bore the impress of his genius. The first corps was quartered in La Mancha. The second corps was destined to invade Portugal. The third and fifth corps carried on the siege of Zaragoza. The fourth corps remained in the valley of the Tagus. The sixth corps, wanting its third division, was appointed to hold Gallicia. The seventh corps continued always in Catalonia. The imperial guards, directed on Vittoria, contributed to the security of the great communication with France until Zaragoza should fall, and were yet ready to march when wanted for the Austrian war. General Dessolles, with the third division of the sixth corps, returned to Madrid. General Bonnet, with the fifth division of the second corps, remained in the Montagna St. Andero. General Lapisse, with the second division of the first corps, was sent to Salamanca, where he was joined by Maupetit’s brigade of cavalry, which had crossed the Sierra de Bejar. The reserve of heavy cavalry being broken up, was distributed, by divisions, in the following order:--