Now, if Marmont had thus conceived the war himself, he could have commenced operations before the end of January; but this letter, written the 15th of February, reached him in the latter end of that month, and found him desponding and fearful even in defence. Vacillating between his own wishes and the emperor’s orders, he did nothing; but had he, as his despatch recommended, commenced his operations in twenty-four hours, his advanced posts would have been near Ciudad early in March, that is at the moment when the allies were, as I have before shewn, disseminated all over Portugal, and when only the fifth division was upon the Coa to oppose him. The works of Almeida were then quite indefensible, and the movement upon Badajos must have necessarily been suspended. Thus the winter season would have passed away uselessly for the allies unless Wellington turned to attack Marmont, which was a difficult operation in itself, and would have been dangerous to the Alemtejo, while Soult held Badajos, for that marshal, as we have seen, had received orders to attack Hill with twenty thousand men. Here then the errors were of execution, not of design, and the first part of the emperor’s combinations was evidently just and solid. It remains to test the second part which was to have been executed if lord Wellington invested Badajos. It must be remembered, that Marmont was so to hold his army, that he could concentrate in four days; that he was to make an incursion into Beira the moment Wellington crossed the Tagus; that Oporto was to be menaced, Almeida to be attacked, Coimbra to be occupied. These operations would undoubtedly have brought the allies back again at the commencement of the siege, because the fall of Badajos could not be expected under three weeks, which would have been too long to leave Beira and the fortresses at the mercy of the invader. Now Marmont did not reach the Agueda before the 31st March, when the siege of Badajos was approaching its conclusion; he did not storm Almeida, nor attack Ciudad Rodrigo, nor enter Coimbra, nor menace Oporto; and yet his operation, feebly as it was executed, obliged lord Wellington to relinquish his meditated attack on Andalusia, and return to the assistance of Beira. Again therefore the error was in the execution. And here we may observe how inferior in hardihood the French general was to his adversary. Wellington with eighteen thousand men had escaladed Badajos, a powerful fortress and defended by an excellent governor with five thousand French veterans; Marmont with twenty-eight thousand men would not attempt to storm Ciudad, although its breaches were scarcely healed, and its garrison disaffected. Nor did he even assail Almeida, which hardly meriting the name of a fortress, was only occupied by three thousand militia, scarcely able to handle their arms; and yet if he had captured Almeida, as he could scarcely have failed to do with due vigour, he