During this short, but important campaign, the armies on both sides acted in violation of that maxim which condemns “_double external lines of operation_,” but the results vindicated the soundness of the rule. Nothing permanent or great, nothing proportionate to the number of the troops, the vastness of the combinations, or the reputation of the commanders, was achieved; yet, neither sir Arthur Wellesley nor the duke of Dalmatia can be justly censured, seeing that the last was controlled by the king, and the first by circumstances of a peculiar nature. The French marshal was thwarted by superior authority; and the English general, commanding an auxiliary force, was obliged to regulate his movements, not by his own military views, but by the actual state of the Spaniards’ operations, and with reference to the politics and temper of that people. La Mancha was the true line by which to act against Madrid, but the British army was on the frontier of Portugal. The junta refused Cadiz as a place of arms; and without Cadiz, or some other fortified sea-port, neither prudence, nor his instructions, would permit sir Arthur to hazard a great operation on that side. Hence he adopted, not what was most fitting, in a military sense, but what was least objectionable among the few plans that could be concerted at all with the Spanish generals and government. Now, the latter being resolved to act with strong armies, both in Estremadura and La Mancha, the English general had but to remain on a miserable defensive system in Portugal, or to unite with Cuesta in the valley of the Tagus. His territorial line of operations was therefore a matter of necessity, and any fair criticism must be founded on the management of his masses after it was chosen. That he did not greatly err in his conception of the campaign, is to be inferred from the fact, that Napoleon, Soult, Victor, and Jourdan, simultaneously expected him upon the very line he followed. He was thwarted by Cuesta at every step, Venegas failed to aid him, and the fatal error relative to Soult’s forces, under which he laboured throughout, vitiated all his operations; yet he shook the intrusive monarch roughly, in the midst of fifty thousand men. Let the project be judged, not by what did happen, but by what would have happened, if Cuesta had been active, and if Venegas had performed his part loyally. The junction of the British and Spanish forces was made at Naval Moral, on the 22d of July. The duke of Belluno, with twenty-one thousand men, was then in position behind the Alberche, the fourth corps near Madrilejos in La Mancha, and Joseph at Madrid, where general Foy had just arrived, to concert Soult’s movement upon Plasencia.