He did not assist the invasion of Portugal, he did not maintain Estremadura, he did not take Seville, nor even prevent Cuesta from twice renewing the offensive; yet he remained in an unhealthy situation until he lost more men, by sickness, than would have furnished three such battles as Medellin. Two months so unprofitably wasted by a general, at the head of thirty thousand good troops, can scarcely be cited. The duke of Belluno’s reputation has been too hardly earned to attribute this inactivity to want of talent. That he was averse to aid the operations of marshal Soult is evident, and, most happily for Portugal, it was so; but, whether this aversion arose from personal jealousy, from indisposition to obey the king, or from a mistaken view of affairs, I have no means of judging. CUESTA. Cuesta’s peculiar unfitness for the lead of an army has been remarked more than once. It remains to show that his proceedings, on this occasion, continued to justify those remarks. 1º.--To defend a river, on a long line, is generally hopeless, and especially when the defenders have not the means of passing freely, in several places, to the opposite bank. Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Gustavus, Turenne, Napoleon, Wellington, and hundreds of others have shown how the passage of rivers may be won. Umenes, who prevented Antigonus from passing the Coprates, is, perhaps, the only example of a general baffling the efforts of a skilful and enterprising enemy in such an attempt. 2º.--The defence of rivers having always proved fruitless, it follows that no general should calculate upon success, and that he should exert the greatest energy, activity, and vigilance to avoid a heavy disaster; that all his lines of retreat should be kept free and open, and be concentric; and that to bring his magazines and depôts close up to the army, in such a situation, is rashness itself. Now Cuesta was inactive, and, disregarding the maxim which forbids the establishment of magazines in the first line of defence, brought up the whole of his to Deleyton and Truxillo. His combinations were ill-arranged; he abandoned Mirabete without an effort, his depôts fell into the hands of the enemy, and his retreat was confused and eccentric, inasmuch as part of his army retired into the Guadalupe, while others went to Merida, and he himself to Medellin.