The fleet in Cadiz harbour might have been at sea in the beginning of February. In a week it might have been at Vigo, with money and succours of all kinds for the insurgents in Gallicia; after which, by skilful operations along the coast from Vigo to St. Sebastian, it might have occupied an enormous French force on that line of country. But instead of a fleet, the junta sent colonel Barios, an obscure person, to steal through by-ways, and to take the command of men who were not in want of leaders. In the same manner, the fleet in Carthagena might have been employed on the Catalonian and French coasts; but, far from using their means, which were really enormous, with energy and judgement, the junta carried on the war by encouraging virulent publications against the French, and confined their real exertions to the assembling of the unfortunate peasants in masses, to starve for a while, and then to be cut to pieces by their more experienced opponents. The system of false reports, also, was persevered in without any relaxation: the French were beaten on all points; the marshals were slain or taken; their soldiers were deserting, or flying in terror at the sight of a Spaniard; Joseph had plundered and abandoned Madrid; and Zaragoza had not fallen. Castro, the envoy to the Portuguese regency, so late as April, anxiously endeavoured to persuade that government and the English general, that Zaragoza had never been subdued, and that the story of its fall was a French falsehood. In June, official letters were written to marshal Beresford, from the neighbourhood of Lugo, dated the very day upon which Soult’s army relieved that town, not to give intelligence of the event, but to announce the utter defeat of that marshal, and the capture of Lugo itself; the amount of the killed and wounded, and the prisoners taken, being very exactly stated; and this, with such an appearance of truth, as to deceive Beresford, notwithstanding his previous experience of the people he had to deal with.