The line of resistance may, therefore, be said to have extended from the Sierra Morena to Coruña--weak from its length; weaker, that the allied corps, being separated by mountains, by rivers, and by vast tracts of country, and having different bases of operation, such as Lisbon, Seville, and Ciudad Rodrigo, could not act in concert, except offensively; and with how little effect in that way the campaign of Talavera had proved. But the French were concentrated in a narrow space, and, having only Madrid to cover, were advantageously situated for offensive or defensive movements. The allied forces were, for the most part, imperfectly organized, and would not, altogether, have amounted to ninety thousand fighting men. The French were above one hundred thousand, dangerous from their discipline and experience, more dangerous that they held a central position, and that their numbers were unknown to their opponents; and, moreover, having, in four days, gained one general and two minor battles, their courage was high and eager. [Sidenote: See Calvo Garray and Lord Wellesley’s Correspondence, Parl. Papers, 1810.] At this period, by the acknowledgement of the Spaniards themselves, the fate of the country depended entirely upon the British troops, and, doubtless, the latter were soldiers of no ordinary stamp; but there is a limit to human power, in war as well as in other matters. Sir Arthur Wellesley was at the head of some seventeen thousand men, of all arms, and about five thousand were somewhere between Lisbon and Alcantara: but the whole French army could, in two days, have been concentrated in the valley of the Tagus. Soult, alone, of all the associated generals, appears to have viewed this crisis with the eye of a great commander. Had he been permitted to follow up the attack at Arzobispo, on the 8th of August, what could the seventeen thousand starving British troops, encumbered with the terror-stricken Spaniards, have effected against the seventy thousand French that would have stormed their positions on three sides at once? The hardy, enduring English infantry might, indeed, have held their ground in one battle, but could they have fought a second? Would not a movement of the first corps by Guadalupe, would not famine alone, have forced the ten or twelve thousand men remaining (if, indeed, so many were left) to abandon the banks of the Tagus, to abandon, also, their parcs of ammunition and their wounded men, and to retreat towards Portugal; and to retreat, also, with little hope, harassed, as they would have been, by six thousand horsemen, for Soult had eighteen regiments of cavalry? [Sidenote: Parl. Pap. 1810.]