The depôts, governments, garrisons, posts of correspondence, prisoners, and “_battalions of march_,” composed of stragglers, absorbed about twenty-five thousand men. The remainder were under arms, with their regiments; and, consequently, more than two hundred and forty thousand men were in the field: while the great line of communication with France was (and the military reader will do well to mark this, the key-stone of Napoleon’s system) protected by above fifty thousand men, whose positions were strengthened by three fortresses and sixty-four posts of correspondence, each more or less fortified. Having thus shewn to the reader the military state of the French, I shall now proceed with the narrative of their operations; following, as in the first volume, a local rather than a chronological arrangement of events. OPERATIONS IN ESTREMADURA AND LA MANCHA. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. 2, sections 2 and 3.] [Sidenote: Ibid.] The defeat of Galluzzo has been incidentally touched upon before. The duke of Dantzic having observed that the Spanish general, with six thousand raw levies, pretended to defend a line of forty miles, made a feint of crossing the Tagus, at Arzobispo, and then suddenly descending to Almaraz, forced a passage over that bridge, on the 24th of December, killed and wounded many Spaniards, and captured four guns: and so complete was the dispersion, that for a long time after, not a man was to be found in arms throughout Estremadura. The French cavalry were at first placed on the tracks of the fugitives; but intelligence of sir John Moore’s advance to Sahagun being received, the pursuit ceased at Merida, and the fourth corps, which had left eight hundred and thirty men in garrison at Segovia, took post between Talavera and Placentia. The duke of Dantzic was then recalled to France, and general Sebastiani succeeded to the command of the fourth corps. It was at this period that the first corps (of which the division of Lapisse only had followed the emperor to Astorga) moved against Toledo, and that town was occupied without opposition. The French outposts were then pushed towards Cuença on the one side, and towards the Sierra Morena on the other. Meanwhile, the central junta, changing its first design, retired to Seville, instead of Badajos; and being continually urged, both by Mr. Stuart and Mr. Frere, to make some effort to lighten the pressure on the English army, ordered Palafox and the duke of Infantado to advance; the one from Zaragoza towards Tudela, the other from Cuença towards Madrid. The marquis of Palacios, who had been removed from Catalonia, and was now at the head of five or six thousand levies in the Sierra Morena, was also directed to advance into La Mancha; and Galluzzo, deprived of his command, was constituted a prisoner, along with Cuesta, Castaños, and a number of other culpable or unfortunate officers, who, vainly demanding a judgement on their cases, were dragged from place to place by the government.