Aragon being now unquiet, and Navarre and Biscay in a state of insurrection, the French forces in the interior of Spain were absolutely invested. Their front was opposed by regular armies, their flanks annoyed by the British squadrons, and their rear, from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, plagued and stung by this chain of partidas and insurrections. And England was the cause of all this. England was the real deliverer of the Peninsula. It was her succours thrown into Biscay that had excited the new insurrection in the northern provinces, and enabled Mina and the other chiefs to enter Aragon, while Wellington drew the great masses of the French towards Portugal. It was that insurrection, so forced on, which, notwithstanding the cessation of the regular warfare in Catalonia, gave life and activity to the partidas of the south. It was the army from Sicily which, though badly commanded, by occupying the attention of Suchet in front, obliged him to keep his forces together instead of hunting down the bands on his communications. In fine, it was the troops of England who had shocked the enemy’s front of battle, the fleets of England which had menaced his flanks with disembarkations, the money and stores of England which had supported the partidas. Every part of the Peninsula was pervaded by her influence, or her warriors, and a trembling sense of insecurity was communicated to the French wherever their armies were not united in masses. Such then were the various military events of the year 1812, and the English general taking a view of the whole, judged that however anxious the French might be to invade Portugal, they would be content during the winter to gather provisions and wait for reinforcements from France wherewith to strike a decisive blow at his army. But those reinforcements never came. Napoleon, unconquered of man, had been vanquished by the elements. The fires and the snows of Moscow combined, had shattered his strength, and in confessed madness, nations and rulers rejoiced, that an enterprize, at once the grandest, the most provident, the most beneficial, ever attempted by a warrior-statesman, had been foiled: they rejoiced that Napoleon had failed to re-establish unhappy Poland as a barrier against the most formidable and brutal, the most swinish tyranny, that has ever menaced and disgraced European civilization. CHAPTER VII. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. [Sidenote: 1812.]