It must be evident that it in no manner bears out the character of an easy and triumphant march, which English writers have given to it. Nothing happened according to the original plan. The general’s operations were one continual struggle to overcome obstacles, occasioned by the enemy’s numbers, the insubordination of his own troops, the slowness, incapacity, and unfaithful conduct of the Spanish commanders, the want of money, and the active folly of the different governments he served. For first his design was to menace the French in Spain so as to bring their forces upon him from other parts, and then to retire into Portugal, again to issue forth when want should cause them to disperse. He was not without hopes indeed to strike a decisive blow, yet he was content, if the occasion came not, to wear out the French by continual marching, and he trusted that the frequent opportunities thus given to the Spaniards would finally urge them to a general effort. But he found his enemy, from the first, too powerful for him, even without drawing succour from distant parts, and he would have fallen back at once, were it not for Marmont’s rashness. Nor would the victory of the Arapiles itself have produced any proportionate effect but for the errors of the king, and his rejection of Soult’s advice. Those errors caused the evacuation of Andalusia, yet it was only to concentrate an overwhelming force with which the French finally drove the victors back to Portugal. Again, Wellington designed to finish his campaign in the southern provinces, and circumstances obliged him to remain in the northern provinces. He would have taken Burgos and he could not; he would have rested longer on the Carrion, and his flanks were turned by the bridges of Palencia and Baños; he would have rested behind the Douro, to profit of his central position, but the bridge at Tordesillas was ravished from him, and the sudden reparation of that at Toro, obliged him to retire. He would have united with Hill on the Adaja, and he could only unite with him behind the Tormes; and on this last river also he desired either to take his winter quarters, or to have delivered a great battle with a view to regain Madrid, and he could do neither. Finally he endeavoured to make an orderly and an easy retreat to Ciudad Rodrigo, and his army was like to have dissolved altogether. And yet in all these varying circumstances, his sagacity as to the general course of the war, his promptness in taking advantage of particular opportunities, was conspicuous. These are the distinguishing characteristics of real genius.