Joseph’s personal sentiments, abstractedly viewed, were high-minded and benevolent; but they sorted ill with his situation as an usurper. He had neither patience nor profundity in his policy, and at last such was his irritation, that having drawn up a private but formal renunciation of the crown, he took an escort of five thousand men, and about the period of the battle of Fuentes Onoro, passed out of Spain and reached Paris: there Ney, Massena, Junot, St. Cyr, Kellerman, Augereau, Loison, and Sebastiani, were also assembled, and all discontented with the war, and with each other. [Sidenote: See Chap. I.] By this rash and ill-timed proceeding, the intrusive government was left without a head, and the army of the centre was rendered nearly useless at the critical moment, when Soult, engaged in the Albuera operations, had a right to expect support from Madrid. The northern army also was in a great measure paralysed, and the army of Portugal, besides having just failed at Fuentes, was in all the disorganization attendant upon the retreat from Santarem, and upon a change of commanders. This was the principal cause why Bessieres abandoned the Asturias and concentrated his forces in Leon and Castile on the communications with France; for it behoved the French generals, everywhere to hold their troops in hand, and to be on the defensive, until the emperor’s resolution in this extraordinary conjuncture should be known. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. III. Section 3.] Napoleon astounded at this precipitate action of the king, complained, with reason, that having promised not to quit the country without due notice, Joseph had failed to him, both as a monarch and as a general, and that he should at least have better chosen his time; for if he had retired in January, when the armies were all inactive, the evil would have been less, as the emperor might then have abandoned Andalusia, and concentrated Soult’s and Massena’s troops on the Tagus; which would have been in accord with the policy fitting for the occasion. But now when the armies had suffered reverses, when they were widely separated, and in pursuit of different objects, the mischief was great, and the king’s conduct not to be justified! [Sidenote: Appendix, No. III. Section 2.] Joseph replied that he had taken good measures to prevent confusion during his absence, and then reiterating his complaints and declaring his resolution to retire into obscurity, he finished by observing, with equal truth and simplicity of mind, that it would be better for the emperor that he should do so, inasmuch as in France he would be a good subject, but in Spain a bad king.