Nevertheless the same number of men under a good discipline would have been more efficacious, less onerous to the country people, and less subversive of social order. When the regular army is completed, all that remains in a country may be turned to advantage as irregulars, yet they are to be valued as their degree of organization approaches that of the regular troops: thus militia are better than armed bodies of peasantry, and these last, if directed by regular officers, better than sudden insurrections of villagers. But the Spanish armies were never completed, never well organized; and when they were dispersed, which happened nearly as often as they took the field, the war must have ceased in Spain, had it not been kept alive by the Partidas, and it is there we find their moral value. Again, when the British armies kept the field, the Partidas harassed the enemy’s communications, and this constituted their military value; yet it is certain that they never much exceeded thirty thousand in number; and they could not have long existed in any numbers without the supplies of England, unless a spirit of order and providence, very different from any thing witnessed during the war, had arisen in Spain. How absurd then to reverse the order of the resources possessed by an invaded country, to confound the moral with the military means, to place the irregular resistance of the peasants first, and that of the soldiers last in the scale of physical defence. That many of the Partida chiefs became less active, after they received regular rank, is undeniable; but this was not so much a consequence of the change of denomination, as of the inveterate abuses which oppressed the vigour of the regular armies, and by which the Partidas were necessarily affected when they became a constituent part of those armies; many persons of weight have indeed ascribed entirely to this cause, the acknowledged diminution of their general activity at one period. It seems, however, more probable that a life of toil and danger, repeated defeats, the scarcity of plunder, and the discontent of the people at the exactions of the chiefs, had in reality abated the desire to continue the struggle; inactivity was rather the sign of subjection than the result of an injudicious interference by the government. But it is time to support this reasoning by facts.