The duke of Ragusa, apparently because he would not have the king in his camp, run counter both to the emperor and to Soult. 1º. He kept no troops on the Agueda, which might be excused on the ground that the feeding of them there was beyond his means; but then he did not concentrate behind the Tormes to sustain his forts, neither did he abandon his forts, when he abandoned Salamanca, and thus eight hundred men were sacrificed merely to secure the power of concentrating behind the Duero. 2º. He adopted a line of operations perpendicular to the allies’ front, instead of lying on their flank; he abandoned sixty miles of country between the Tormes and the Agueda, and he suffered Wellington to take the initial movements of the campaign. 3º. He withdrew Bonet’s division from the Asturias, whereby he lost Caffarelli’s support and realized the emperor’s fears for the northern provinces. It is true that he regained the initial power, by passing the Duero on the 18th, and had he deferred the passage until the king was over the Guadarama, Wellington must have gone back upon Portugal with some shew of dishonour if not great loss. But if Castaños, instead of remaining with fifteen thousand Gallicians, before Astorga, a weak place with a garrison of only twelve hundred men, had blockaded it with three or four thousand, and detached Santocildes with eleven or twelve thousand down the Esla to co-operate with Silveira and D’Urban, sixteen thousand men would have been acting upon Marmont’s right flank in June; and as Bonet did not join until the 8th of July the line of the Duero would scarcely have availed the French general.