“Twice,” said he, “has the duke of Ragusa placed an interval of thirty leagues between his army and the enemy, contrary to all the rules of war; the English general goes where he will, the French general loses the initial movements and is of no weight in the affairs of Spain. Biscay and the north are exposed by the evacuation of the Asturias; Santona and St. Sebastian are endangered, and the guerillas communicate freely with the coast. If the duke of Ragusa has not kept some bridges on the Agueda, he cannot know what Wellington is about, and he will retire before light cavalry instead of operating so as to make the English general concentrate his whole army. The false direction already given to affairs by marshal Marmont, makes it necessary that Caffarelli should keep a strong corps always in hand; that the commander of the reserve, at Bayonne, should look to the safety of St. Sebastian, holding three thousand men always ready to march; finally that the provisional battalions, and troops from the dépôts of the interior, should immediately reinforce the reserve at Bayonne, be encamped on the Pyrennees, and exercised and formed for service. _If Marmont’s oversights continue, these troops will prevent the disasters from becoming extreme._” Napoleon was supernaturally gifted in warlike matters. It has been recorded of Cæsar’s generalship, that he foretold the cohorts mixed with his cavalry would be the cause of victory at Pharsalia. But this letter was written by the French emperor on the 28th of May before the allies were even collected on the Agueda, and when a hundred thousand French troops were between the English general and Bayonne, and yet its prescience was vindicated at Burgos in October! 2º. To fulfil the conditions of the emperor’s design, Marmont should have adopted Soult’s recommendation, that is, leaving one or two divisions on the Tormes he should have encamped near Baños, and pushed troops towards the upper Agueda to watch the movements of the allies. Caffarelli’s divisions could then have joined those on the Tormes, and thus Napoleon’s plan for 1811 would have been exactly renewed; Madrid would have been covered, a junction with the king would have been secured, Wellington could scarcely have moved beyond the Agueda, and the disaster of Salamanca would have been avoided.