The army of Estremadura might, therefore, have been safely reduced to fifteen thousand men, provided the army of La Mancha had been increased to forty or fifty thousand: and it would appear that, with a very little energy, the junta could have provided a larger force. It is true that they would have been beaten just the same: but that is an argument against fighting great battles, which was, certainly, the worst possible plan for the Spaniards to pursue. 3º.--The third great error was the inertness of Valencia and Murcia, or rather their hostility: for they were upon the verge of civil war with the supreme junta. Those provinces, so rich and populous, had been unmolested for eight months; they had suffered nothing from Moncey’s irruption; and they had received large succours from the English government. Valencia had written her pretensions to patriotism in the bloody characters of assassination; but, were it not for the force under Llamas which, after the defeat of Tudela, helped to defend Zaragoza, Valencia and Murcia might have been swallowed up by the ocean without any sensible effect upon the general cause. Those countries were, however, admirably situated to serve as a support to Aragon, Catalonia, Andalusia, and La Mancha, and they could, at this time, have paralyzed a large French force, by marching an army to San Clemente. [Sidenote: Parl. Papers, 1810.] It was the dread of their doing so that made the king restrain Sebastiani from pursuing his victory at Ciudad Real; and, assuredly, the Valencians should have moved; for, it is not so much in their numbers as in the variety of their lines of operation that a whole people find their advantage in opposing regular armies. This, the observation of that profound and original writer, general Lloyd, was confirmed by the practice of Napoleon, in Spain. FRENCH OPERATIONS. 1º.--To get possession of Seville and Cadiz was certainly as great an object to Napoleon as to seize Lisbon: but the truth of the maxim quoted above regulated the emperor’s proceedings. If Victor had been directed at once upon Andalusia, the Portuguese and Valencians could have carried their lines of operations directly upon his flanks and rear. If Badajos and Lisbon had been the objects of his march, the Andalusians could have fallen on his left flank and cut his communications. But all such dangers were avoided by the march of Soult and Lapisse; their direction was not only concentric, but a regular prolongation of the great line of communication with France. Ney protected the rear of one; Bessieres the rear of the other; and those two marshals, at the same time, separated and cut off the Asturias from the rest of Spain; thus, all that was formidable was confined to the south of the Tagus.