Meanwhile the French, in doubt of his intentions, appeared torpid. Kellerman remained at Salamanca, watching the movements of the duke Del Parque; and Gazan returned to Madrid. Milhaud, with a division of the fourth corps, and some cavalry, was detached against Echavaria; but, on his arrival at Cuença, finding that the latter had retreated, by Toboado, to Hellin, in Murcia, combined his operations with general Suchet, and, as I have before related, assisted to reduce the towns of Albaracin and Teruel. Other movements there were none, and, as the Spanish regiments of the guard fought freely against their countrymen, and many of the prisoners, taken at Ocaña, offered to join the invaders’ colours, the king conceived hopes of raising a national army. French writers assert that the captives at Ocaña made a marked distinction between Napoleon and Joseph. They were willing to serve the French emperor, but not the intrusive king of Spain. Spanish authors, indeed, assume that none entered the enemy’s ranks save by coercion and to escape; and that many did so with that view, and were successful, must be supposed, or the numbers said to have reassembled in the Morena, and at Cuença, cannot be reconciled with the loss sustained in the action. The battles of Ocaña and Alba de Tormes terminated the series of offensive operations, which the Austrian war, and the reappearance of a British army in the Peninsula had enabled the allies to adopt, in 1809. Those operations had been unsuccessful; the enemy again took the lead, and the fourth epoch of the war commenced. OBSERVATIONS. 1º. Although certain that the British army would not co-operate in this short campaign, the Junta openly asserted, that it would join Albuquerque in the valley of the Tagus. The improbability of Areizaga’s acting, without such assistance, gave currency to the fiction, and an accredited fiction is, in war, often more useful than the truth; in this, therefore, they are to be commended; but, when deceiving their own general, they permitted Areizaga to act under the impression that he would be so assisted, they committed not an error but an enormous crime. Nor was the general much less criminal for acting upon the mere assertion that other movements were combined with his, when no communication, no concerting of the marches, no understanding with the allied commander, as to their mutual resources, and intentions, had taken place.