From Guadalcanal, he advanced towards Cordoba on the 23d, and he might have thrown himself into that town; yet the prudence of taking such a decided part, was dependent upon the state of public sentiment, of which he must have been a good judge. Albuquerque indeed, imagined, that the French were already in possession of the place, whereas they did not reach it until four days later; but they could easily have entered it on the 24th: and as he believed that they had done so, it is apparent that he had no confidence in the people’s disposition. In this view, his determination to cross the Guadalquivir, and take post at Carmona, was the fittest for the occasion. It was at Carmona he first appears to have considered Seville a lost city; and when the French approached, we find him marching, with a surprising energy, towards Cadiz, yet he was again late in deciding; for the enemy’s cavalry, moving by the shorter road to Utrera, overtook his rear-guard: and the infantry would assuredly have entered the Island of Leon with him, if the king had not directed them upon Seville. The ephemeral resistance of that city therefore saved Albuquerque; and he, in return, saved Cadiz. CHAPTER II. Lord Wellington’s plans were deeply affected by the invasion of Andalusia: but before treating of the stupendous campaign he was now meditating, it is necessary, once more to revert to the operations in the other parts of the Peninsula, tracing them up to a fixed point; because, although bearing strongly on the main action of the war, to recur to them chronologically, would totally destroy, the unity of narrative indispensable to a just handling of the subject. OPERATIONS IN NAVARRE, ARAGON, AND VALENCIA. Suchet, being ordered to quell the disorders in Navarre, repaired to Pampeluna, but previously directed an active pursuit of the student Mina, who, availing himself of the quarrel between the military governor and the viceroy, was actually master of the country between that fortress and Tudela, and was then at Sanguessa. General Harispe, with some battalions, marched straight against him from Zaragoza, while detachments from Tudela and Pampeluna endeavoured to surround him by the flanks, and a fourth body moving into the valleys of Ainsa and Medianoz, cut him off from the Cinca river. [Sidenote: Suchet’s Memoirs.]