Coincident with the fall of the Retiro was that of Guadalaxara, which surrendered to the Empecinado. This mode of wasting an army, and its resources, was designated by Napoleon as the most glaring and extraordinary of all the errors committed by the king and by Marmont. And surely it was so. For including the garrisons of Toro, Tordesillas, Zamora and Astorga, which were now blockaded, six thousand men had been delivered, as it were bound, to the allies, and with them, stores and equipments sufficient for a new army. These forts had been designed by the emperor to resist the partidas, but his lieutenants exposed them to the British army, and thus the positive loss of men from the battle of Salamanca was doubled. Napoleon had notice of Marmont’s defeat as early as the 2d of September, a week before the great battle of Borodino; the news was carried by colonel Fabvier, who made the journey from Valladolid in one course, and having fought on the 22d of July at the Arapiles, was wounded on the heights of Moskowa the 7th of September! However, the duke of Ragusa, suffering alike in body and in mind, had excused himself with so little strength, or clearness, that the emperor contemptuously remarking, that the despatch contained more complicate stuffing than a clock, desired his war minister to demand, why Marmont had delivered battle without the orders of the king? why he had not made his operations subservient to the general plan of the campaign? why he broke from defensive into offensive operations before the army of the centre joined him? why he would not even wait two days for Chauvel’s cavalry, which he knew were close at hand? “From personal vanity,” said the emperor, with seeming sternness, “the duke of Ragusa has sacrificed the interests of his country, and the good of my service, he is guilty of the crime of insubordination, and is the author of all this misfortune.” [Sidenote: September] [Sidenote: Appendix, 4, 5, 6.]