This great project was strictly in the spirit of the emperor’s instructions. For that consummate commander had desired his lieutenants to make lord Wellington feel that his enemies were not passively defensive. He had urged them to press the allies close on each flank, and he had endeavoured to make Marmont understand that, although there was no object to be attained by entering the north-east of Portugal, and fighting a general battle on ground favourable to lord Wellington, it was contrary to all military principles, to withdraw several days’ march from the allies’ outposts, and by such a timid defensive system, to give the English general the power of choosing when and where to strike. Now the loss of Badajos, and the difficulty of maintaining a defensive war against the increasing forces of the allies in the south of Andalusia, rendered it extremely onerous for Soult to press Wellington’s flank in Estremadura; and it was therefore a profound modification of the emperor’s views, to urge the king and Marmont to active operation in the north, while he besieged Tarifa and Carthagena, keeping his army in mass ready for a sudden stroke in the field, if fortune brought the occasion, and if otherwise, sure of fixing a solid base for future operations against Portugal. The duke of Dalmatia wished to have commenced his operations by the siege of Tarifa in May, when Wellington’s return to Beira had relieved him from the fear of an immediate invasion of Andalusia, but the failure of the harvest in 1811 and the continual movements during the winter, had so reduced his magazines, both of provisions and ammunition, that he could not undertake the operation until the new harvest was ripe, and fresh convoys had replenished his exhausted stores. His soldiers were already on short allowance, and famine raged amongst the people of the country. Meanwhile his agents in Morocco had so firmly re-established the French interests there, that the emperor refused all supplies to the British, and even fitted out a squadron to insure obedience to his orders. To counteract this mischief, the Gibraltar merchant, Viali, who had been employed in the early part of the war by sir Hew Dalrymple, was sent by sir Henry Wellesley with a mission to the court of Fez, which failed, and it was said from the intrigues of the notorious Charmilly who was then at Tangier, and being connected by marriage with the English consul there, unsuspected: indeed from a mean hatred to sir John Moore, there were not wanting persons in power who endeavoured still to uphold this man.