would have found a battering train with which to take Ciudad Rodrigo, and thus have again balanced the campaign. The duke of Ragusa was averse to serving in the Peninsula, he wished to be employed in the Russian expedition, and he had written to the emperor to desire his recal, or that the whole of the northern district, from Sebastian to Salamanca, including Madrid, should be placed under his orders. Unless that were done, he said he could only calculate the operations of his own troops. The other generals would make difficulties, would move slowly, and the king’s court was in open hostility to the French interest. The army of the north had in retiring from Leon scrupulously carried away every thing that could be useful to him, in the way of bridge, or battering equipages, or of ammunition or provisions, although he was in want of all these things. Then he painted all the jealousies and disputes in the French armies, and affirmed that his own force, care being had for the posts of communication, and the watching of the army of Gallicia, would not furnish more than thirty-four thousand men for the field; a calculation contradicted by the imperial muster-rolls, which on the 1st of March bore sixty thousand fighting men present with the eagles. He also rated the allies at sixty thousand, well provided with every thing and ready to attack him, whereas the returns of that army gave only fifty-two thousand men including Hill’s corps; about thirty-five thousand only could have passed the Agueda, and their penury of means had, as we have seen, prevented them from even holding together, on the northern frontier. In like manner he assumed that two of the allied divisions were left upon the Agueda, when the army marched against Badajos, whereas no more than six hundred cavalry remained there. All these things prove that Marmont, either from dislike to the war, or natural want of vigour, was not equal to his task, and it is obvious that a diversion, begun so late, and followed up with so little energy, could have had little effect upon the siege of Badajos; it would have been far better to have followed his own first design of detaching three divisions to aid Soult, and retained the other two to menace Ciudad Rodrigo. It is fitting now to test the operations of the armies of the south, and of the centre. The latter is easily disposed of. The secret of its inactivity is to be found in Marmont’s letter. Every thing at Madrid was confusion and intrigue, waste and want of discipline; in fine, the union of a court and an army, had destroyed the latter. Not so at Seville. There the hand of an able general, an indefatigable administrator were visible, and the unravelling the intricate combinations, which produced such an apparent want of vigour in the operations of the duke of Dalmatia, will form at once the apology for that general, and the just eulogium of lord Wellington.