Soon after this, general William Clinton came from Sicily to take the command, and Wellington who was then before Burgos, thinking Suchet would weaken his army to help the king, recommended an attempt upon the city of Valencia either by a coast attack or by a land operation, warning Clinton however to avoid an action in a cavalry country. This was not very difficult, because the land was generally rocky and mountainous, but Clinton would not stir without first having possession of the citadel of Alicant, and thus all things fell into disorder and weakness. For the jealous Spanish governor would not suffer the British to hold even a gate of the town, nay, he sent Elio a large convoy of clothing and other stores with an escort of only twenty men, that he might retain two of that general’s battalions to resist the attempt which he believed or pretended to believe Clinton would make on the citadel. Meanwhile that general, leaving Whittingham and Roche at Alcoy and Xixona, drew in his other troops from the posts previously occupied in front by Mackenzie; he feared Suchet’s cavalry, but the marshal, estimating the allied armies at more than fifty thousand men, would undertake no serious enterprize while ignorant of the king’s progress against lord Wellington. He however diligently strengthened his camp at St. Felipe de Xativa, threw another bridge over the Xucar, entrenched the passes in his front, covered Denia with a detachment, obliged Whittingham to abandon Alcoy, dismantled the extensive walls of Valencia, and fortified a citadel there. [Sidenote: General Donkin’s correspondence, MS.] It was in this state of affairs that Elio came down to Albacete, and priding himself upon the dexterity with which he had avoided the French armies, proposed to Clinton a combined attack upon Suchet. Elio greatly exaggerated his own numbers, and giving out that Del Parque’s force was under his command, pretended that he could bring forty thousand men into the field, four thousand being cavalry. But the two Spanish armies if united would scarcely have produced twenty thousand really effective infantry; moreover Del Parque, a sickly unwieldy person, was extremely incapable, his soldiers were discontented and mutinous, and he had no intention of moving beyond Alcaraz. [Sidenote: Official correspondence of the duke of Feltre, MS.]