of action. [Sidenote: Mr. James Moore’s Narrative.] “_The French_,” said sir John Moore, “_will find the Spaniards troublesome subjects, but in the first instance they will have little more than a march to subdue the country_.” [Sidenote: Letter to Lord Liverpool, Jan. 31, 1810. MSS.] “_The defeat and dispersion of the Spanish armies will be_,” said lord Wellington, “_the probable consequence of any action in which either imprudence, necessity, or even expediency, may lead them to engage. The armies may be lost, the authorities dispersed, but the war of Partisans will probably continue._” [Sidenote: Appendix, No. II. Section 3.] And when the edge of the sword was, in 1810, as in 1808, descending on the unguarded front of Andalusia, lord Wellington, on the first indication of Joseph’s march, designed to make a movement similar in principle to that executed by sir John Moore on Sahagun, that is, by an irruption into Castile, to threaten the enemy’s rear, in such sort that he should be obliged to return from Andalusia or suffer his forces in Castile to be beaten. Nor was he at first deterred from this project, by the knowledge, that fresh troops were entering Spain. The Junta, indeed, assured him that only eight thousand men had reinforced the French; but, although circumstances led him to doubt this assertion, he was not without hopes to effect his purpose before the reinforcements, whatever they might be, could come into line. He had even matured his plan, as far as regarded the direction of the march, when other considerations obliged him to relinquish it, and these shall be here examined, because French and Spanish writers then, and since, have accused him of looking on with indifference, if not with satisfaction, at the ruin of the Central Junta’s operation, as if it only depended upon him to render them successful. Why he refused to join in the Spanish projects has been already explained. He abandoned his own,-- 1º. Because the five thousand men promised from England had not arrived, and his hospitals being full, he could not, including Hill’s division, bring more than twenty thousand British soldiers into the field. Hill’s division, however, could not be moved without leaving the rear of the army exposed to the French in the south,--a danger, which success in Castile, by recalling the latter from Andalusia, would only increase. [Sidenote: Lord Wellington’s Correspondence. MSS.]