While the armies were striving, the political affairs had become exceedingly complicated and unsteady. Their workings were little known or observed by the public, but the evils of bad government in England, Spain, and Portugal, the incongruous alliance of bigoted aristocracy with awakened democracy, and the inevitable growth of national jealousies as external danger seemed to recede, were becoming so powerful, that if relief had not been obtained from extraneous events, even the vigour of Wellington must have sunk under the pressure. The secret causes of disturbance shall now be laid bare, and it will then be seen that the catastrophe of Napoleon’s Russian campaign was absolutely necessary to the final success of the British arms in the Peninsula. I speak not of the physical power which, if his host had not withered on the snowy wastes of Muscovy, the emperor could have poured into Spain, but of those moral obstacles, which, springing up on every side, corrupted the very life-blood of the war. If Russia owed her safety in some degree to the contest in the Peninsula, it is undoubted that the fate of the Peninsula was in return, decided on the plains of Russia; for had the French veterans who there perished, returned victorious, the war could have been maintained for years in Spain, with all its waste of treasures and of blood, to the absolute ruin of England, even though her army might have been victorious in every battle. Yet who shall say with certainty what termination any war will ever have? Who shall prophecy of an art always varying, and of such intricacy that its secrets seem beyond the reach of human intellect? What vast preparations, what astonishing combinations were involved in the plan, what vigour and ability displayed in the execution of Napoleon’s march to Moscow! And yet when the winter came, only four days sooner than he expected, the giant’s scheme seemed a thing for children to laugh at!