These expeditions from Coruña naturally encreased the audacity of the inland partidas, who could only become really dangerous, by having a sea-port where they could receive supplies and reinforcements, or embarking save themselves in extremity, and change the theatre of operations. To prevent this, the emperor employed considerable numbers of men in the military governments touching on the Bay of Biscay, and directed, as we have seen, the corps d’armée, in their progress towards Portugal, to scour all the disturbed countries to the right and left. The ninth corps was thus employed during the months of August and September, but when it passed onward, the partidas resumed their activity. Mina, Longa, Campillo, and Amor, frequently united about Villar Caya and Espinosa in numbers sufficient to attack large French detachments with success; and to aid them, general Walker repeatedly recommended the taking possession of Santona with a corps of British troops. That town, having the best winter harbour along the coast, and being built on a mountain promontory joined to the main by a narrow sandy neck, could have been made very strong; it would have cut off Bonet’s communication with France by sea, have given the British squadron a secure post from whence to vex the French coasts; and it offered a point of connexion with the partidas of the Rioja, Biscay, and Navarre. [Sidenote: Letter to Lord Liverpool. 7th May, 1811. MSS.] Lord Liverpool, swayed by these considerations, desired to employ a corps of four thousand men to secure it; but, having first demanded lord Wellington’s opinion, the latter “earnestly recommended that no such maritime operations should be undertaken. For,” said he, “unless a very large force was sent, it would scarcely be able to effect a landing, and maintain the situation of which it might take possession. Then that large force would be unable to move or effect any object at all adequate to the expense, or to the expectations which would be formed from its strength, owing to the want of those equipments and supplies in which an army landed from its ships must be deficient. It was vain to hope for any assistance, even in this way, much less military assistance from the Spaniards; the first thing they would require uniformly would be money; then arms, ammunition, clothing of all descriptions, provisions, forage, horses, means of transport, and every thing which the expedition would have a right to require from them; and, after all, _this extraordinary and perverse people would scarcely allow the commander of the expedition to have a voice in the plan of operations, to be followed when the whole should be ready to undertake any, if indeed they ever should be ready_.”