With respect to the attack, sixty-five thousand French veterans had no reason to believe that fifty thousand mixed and inexperienced troops, distributed on a mountain more than eight miles long, were impregnably posted. It would have been no overweening presumption in the French general to expect, that three corps well disposed, supported by a numerous artillery, and led on the first day, (as Ney desired,) might carry some part of the position, and it is an error, also, to suppose that guns could not have been used: the light division were constantly within range, and thirty pieces of artillery employed on that point would have wonderfully aided the attack by the sixth corps. But when a general in chief remains ten miles from a field of battle, gives his adversary two days to settle in a position, makes his attacks without connection, and without artillery, and brings forward no reserves, success is impossible even with the valiant soldiers Massena commanded. 6º. “_An army should always be in condition to fight._” “_A general should never abandon one line of communication without establishing another._” “_Flank marches within reach of an enemy are rash and injudicious._” These maxims of the greatest of all generals have been illustrated by many examples; Senef, Kollin, Rosbach, the valley of the Brenta, Salamanca, attest their value. Now, Massena violated all three, by his march to Boyalva, and some peculiar circumstances, or desperate crisis of affairs should be shewn, to warrant such a departure from general principles. Sir Joshua Reynolds, treating of another art says, “_genius begins where rules end_.” But here genius was dormant, and rules disregarded. Massena was not driven to a desperate game. The conquest of Oporto was open to him, or a march by Viseu upon the Vouga, which, though demanding time, was safe; while in that by Boyalva, he threw his whole army into a single and narrow defile, within ten miles of an enemy in position; and that also (as I have been informed by an officer of marshal Ney’s staff) with much disorder: the baggage and commissariat, the wounded and sick, the artillery, cavalry, and infantry, mixed together; discord raging amongst the generals, confusion amongst the soldiers, and in the night season when every difficulty is doubled. His “_army was not, then, in a condition to fight_.” He was making “_a flank march within reach of an enemy in position_,” and he was “_abandoning his line of communication without having established another_.”