Wellington was not simply a general who with greater or less means, was to plan his military operations leaving to others the care of settling the political difficulties which might arise. He had, coincident with his military duties, to regenerate a whole people, to force them against the current of their prejudices and usages on a dangerous and painful course; he had to teach at once the populace and the government, to infuse spirit and order without the aid of rewards or punishments, to excite enthusiasm through the medium of corrupt oppressive institutions, and far from making any revolutionary appeal to suppress all tendency towards that resource of great minds on the like occasions. Thus only could he maintain an army at all, and as it was beyond the power of man to continue such a struggle for any length of time he was more than ever anxious to gather strength for a decisive blow, which the enemy’s situation now rendered possible, that he might free himself from the critical and anomalous relation in which he stood towards Portugal. It may indeed be wondered that he so long bore up against the encreasing pressure of these distracting affairs, and certain it is that more than once he was like to yield, and would have yielded if fortune had not offered him certain happy military chances, and yet such as few but himself could have profited from. In 1810, on the ridge of Busaco, and in the lines, the military success was rather over the Portuguese government than the enemy. At Santarem in 1811 the glory of arms scarcely compensated for the destitution of the troops. At Fuentes Onoro and on the Caya, after the second unsuccessful siege of Badajos, the Portuguese army had nearly dissolved; and the astonishing sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos in 1812, were necessary to save the cause from dying of inanition and despair. Even then the early deliverance of Andalusia was frustrated, and time, more valuable than gold or life, in war, was lost, the enemy became the strongest in the field, and in despite of the victory of Salamanca, the bad effects of the English general’s political situation were felt in the repulse from Burgos, and in the double retreat from that place and from Madrid. Accumulated mischiefs were now to be encountered in Portugal.