Napoleon, victorious in Germany, and ready to turn his undivided strength once more against the Peninsula, complained of the past inactivity of the king, and Joseph prepared to commence the campaign of 1810 with vigour. His first operations, however, indicated great infirmity of purpose. When Del Parque’s defeat on one side and Echevaria’s on the other had freed his flanks, and while the British army was still at Badajos, he sent the fourth corps towards Valencia, but immediately afterwards recalled it, and also the first corps, which, since the battle of Ocaña, had been at Santa Cruz de Mudela. The march of this last corps through La Mancha had been marked by this peculiarity, that, for the first time since the commencement of the war, the peasantry, indignant at the flight of the soldiers, guided the pursuers to the retreats of the fugitives. [Sidenote: Appendix No. IV. Sec. 1.] Joseph’s vacillation was partly occasioned by the insurrection in Navarre, under Renovalles and Mina. But lord Wellington, previous to quitting the Guadiana, had informed the Junta of Badajos, as a matter of courtesy, that he was about to evacuate their district; and his confidential letter being published in the town Gazette, and ostentatiously copied into the Seville papers, Joseph naturally suspected it to be a cloak to some offensive project. However, the false movements of the first and fourth corps distracted the Spaniards, and emboldened the French partizans, who were very numerous both in Valencia and Andalusia. The troubles in Navarre were soon quieted by Suchet; the distribution of the British army in the valley of the Mondego became known, and Joseph seriously prepared for the conquest of Andalusia. This enterprise, less difficult than an invasion of Portugal, promised immediate pecuniary advantages, which was no slight consideration to a sovereign whose ministers were reduced to want from the non-payment of their salaries, and whose troops were thirteen months in arrears of pay. Napoleon, a rigid stickler for the Roman maxim, that “War should support war,” paid only the corps near the frontiers of France, and rarely recruited the military chest.