No man could have anticipated the extraordinary errors of the French in 1813. Wellington did not expect to cross the Ebro before the end of the campaign, and his battering train was prepared for the siege of Burgos not for that of Bayonne. A sudden invasion of France her military reputation considered, was therefore quite out of the pale of his methodized system of warfare, which was founded upon political as well as military considerations; and of the most complicated nature, seeing that he had at all times to deal with the personal and factious interests and passions, as well as the great state interests of three distinct nations two of which abhorred each other. At this moment also, the uncertain state of affairs in Germany strongly influenced his views. An armistice which might end in a separate peace excluding England, would have brought Napoleon’s whole force to the Pyrenees, and Wellington held cheap both the military and political proceedings of the coalesced powers. “_I would not move a corporal’s guard in reliance upon such a system_,” was the significant phrase he employed to express his contempt. These considerations justified his caution as to invading France, but there were local military reasons equally cogent. 1º. He could not dispense with a secure harbour, because the fortresses still in possession of the French, namely, Santona, Pancorbo, Pampeluna, and St. Sebastian, interrupted his communications with the interior of Spain; hence the siege of the latter place. 2º. He had to guard against the union of Suchet and Clauzel on his right flank; hence his efforts to cut off the last-named general; hence also the blockade of Pampeluna in preference to siege and the launching of Mina and the bands on the side of Zaragoza. 3º. After Vittoria the nature of the campaign depended upon Suchet’s operations, which were rendered more important by Murray’s misconduct. The allied force on the eastern coast was badly organized, it did not advance from Valencia as we have seen until the 16th, and then only partially and by the coast, whereas Suchet had assembled more than twenty thousand excellent troops on the Ebro as early as the 12th of July; and had he continued his march upon Zaragoza he would have saved the castle of that place with its stores. Then rallying Paris’ division, he could have menaced Wellington’s flank with twenty-five thousand men exclusive of Clauzel’s force, and if that general joined him with forty thousand.