These things I would have the reader reflect upon, because they are the proofs of what it is the main object of this history to inculcate, namely that English steel, English gold, English genius, English influence, fought and won the battle of Spanish independence; and this not as a matter of boast, although it was very glorious! but as a useful lesson of experience. On the other hand also we must wonder at the prodigious strength of France under Napoleon, that strength which could at once fight England and Austria, aim at the conquest of the Peninsula, and the reduction of Russia at the same moment of time, and all with good hope of success. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. IX. Section 2.] Let it not be said that the emperor’s efforts in the war of Spain were feeble, for if the insurrectional epoch, which was unexpected and accidental, be set aside, the grandeur of his efforts will be found answerable to his gigantic reputation. In 1809 the French army was indeed gradually decreased by losses and drafts for the Austrian war, from three hundred and thirty-five thousand, which Napoleon had led into the country, to two hundred and twenty-six thousand. But in 1810 it was again raised to three hundred and sixty-nine thousand, and fluctuated between that number and three hundred and thirty thousand until August 1811, when it was again raised to three hundred and seventy-two thousand men with fifty-two thousand horses! And yet there are writers who assert that Napoleon neglected the war in Spain! But so great is the natural strength of that country, that had the firmness of the nation in battle and its wisdom in council, been commensurate with its constancy in resistance, even this power, backed by the four hundred thousand men who marched to Russia, would scarcely have been sufficient to subdue it; whereas, weak in fight and steeped in folly, the Spaniards must have been trampled in the dust, but for the man whose great combinations I am now about to relate. The nicety, the quickness, the prudence, and the audacity of Wellington’s operations, cannot however be justly estimated without an exact knowledge of his political, local, and moral position. His political difficulties have been already described, and his moral situation was simply, that of a man, who felt, that all depended upon himself; that he must by some rapid and unexpected stroke effect in the field what his brother could not effect in the cabinet, while the power of the Perceval faction was prevalent in England. But to understand his local or military position, the conformation of the country and the lines of communication must be carefully considered. The principal French magazines were at Valladolid, and their advanced troops were on the Tormes, from whence to the Agueda, where they held the important point of Ciudad Rodrigo, was four long marches through a wild forest country.