[Sidenote: Appendix, No. I. Section 1.] These political affairs impeded the action of the armies, but the intrinsic strength of the latter was truly formidable; for, reckoning the king’s French guards, the force in the Peninsula was not less than _three hundred and seventy thousand men, and eighty thousand horses_. Of these, forty-eight thousand men were in hospital, four thousand prisoners, and twenty-nine thousand detached; leaving nearly two hundred and eighty thousand fighting men actually under arms, ready either for battle or siege: and moreover, a fresh reserve, eighteen thousand strong, was in march to enter Spain. In May, this prodigious force had been re-organized; and in July was thus distributed:-- _Governments or Armies in the 2d Line._ Total Strength. 1. Catalonia Seventh corps Duke of Tarento 55,647 2. Aragon Third corps Gen. Suchet 33,007 { Detachments and } 3. Navarre { a division of the } Gen. Reille 21,887 { Imperial Guards } 4. Biscay Detachments Gen. Caffarelli 6,570 5. Old Castile, { Divisions of the } comprising Burgos, { Imperial Guards } Gen. Dorsenne 10,303 Aranda, and Soria { and Cavalry } 6. Valladolid, &c. Detachments Gen. Kellerman 6,474 7. Asturias One division Gen. Bonet 9,898 ------- Total for the governments 143,786 ------- _Armies in the 1st Line._ _Army of the South_, composed of the first, fourth, and fifth corps, under the command of Soult 72,769 _Army of the Centre_, composed of the Royal Guards, two divisions of infantry, and two of cavalry, under the personal command of the king 24,187 _Army of Portugal_, composed of a reserve of cavalry and the second, sixth, and eighth corps, under the command of Massena 86,896 The ninth corps, commanded by general Drouet, distributed, by divisions, along the great line of communication from Vittoria to Valladolid 23,815 A division under general Serras, employed as a moveable column to protect the rear of the army of Portugal 10,605 ------- 218,272 -------