The operation against Italy was less unfortunate rather than more ably conducted, and it was equally abortive. What with slow preparations, the voyage, and the taking of the petty islands of Ischia and Procida, thirteen weeks were wasted; and yet, during that period, Murat, conscious of his inability to resist, was only restrained from abandoning Naples by the firmness of his queen, and the energy of Sallicetti, the minister of police. We have seen that it was the wish of the ministers to have the troops in Sicily employed in the south of Spain, but, yielding to the representations of sir John Stuart, they permitted him to make this display of military foolery: yet it is not with the bad or good success of these expeditions that this history has to deal, but with that palpable and direful ministerial incapacity which suffered two men, notoriously unfitted for war, to waste and dissipate the military strength of England on secondary objects, while a renowned commander, placed at the most important point, was left without an adequate force. For the first time since the commencement of the Peninsula war, sixty thousand Spanish troops, well armed and clothed, were collected in a mass, and in the right place, communicating with a British force. For the first time since Napoleon swayed the destiny of France, the principal army of that country had met with an important check: the great conqueror’s fortune seemed to waver, and the moment had arrived when the British government was called to display all its wisdom and energy. The duke of York had performed his duty; he had placed above ninety thousand superb soldiers, all disposable for offensive operations, in the hands of the ministers; but the latter knew not their value, and, instead of concentrating them upon one, scattered them upon many points. Sir Arthur Wellesley might have had above eighty thousand British troops on the frontiers of Portugal, and he was a general capable of wielding them. He was forced to commence a campaign, upon which the fate of the Peninsula, a quick triumph or a long-protracted agony of twelve millions of people depended, with only twenty-two thousand; while sixty thousand fighting men, and ships numerous enough to darken all the coasts of Spain, were waiting, in Sicily and England, for orders which were to doom them, one part to scorn, and the other to an inglorious and miserable fate. Shall the deliverance of the Peninsula, then, be attributed to the firmness and long-sighted policy of ministers who gave these glaring proofs of improvidence, or shall the glory of that great exploit lighten round the head of him who so manfully maintained the fierce struggle, even under the burden of their folly? BOOK IX. CHAPTER I. CAMPAIGN OF TALAVERA.