Exclusive of national guards and detachments of the line, disposed along the whole frontier to guard the passes of the Pyrenees against sudden marauding excursions, the French armies counted at this time about one hundred and seventy thousand men and seventeen thousand horses. Of these one hundred and thirty-eight thousand were present under arms, and thirty thousand conscripts were in march to join them. They held all the fortresses of Valencia and Catalonia, and most of those in Aragon Navarre and Guipuscoa, and they could unite behind the Pyrenees for a combined effort in safety. Lord Wellington could not, including the Anglo-Sicilians and all the Spaniards in arms on the eastern coast, bring into line one hundred and fifty thousand men; he had several sieges on his hands, and to unite his forces at any point required great dispositions to avoid an attack during a flank march. Suchet had above thirty thousand disposable men, he could increase them to forty thousand by relinquishing some unimportant posts, his means in artillery were immense, and distributed in all his strong places, so that he could furnish himself from almost any point. It is no exaggeration therefore to say that two hundred pieces of artillery and ninety thousand old soldiers might have united at this period upon the flank of lord Wellington, still leaving thirty thousand conscripts and the national guards of the frontier, supported by the fortresses and entrenched camps of Bayonne and St. Jean Pied de Port, the castles of Navarens and Jaca on one side, and the numerous garrisons of the fortresses in Catalonia on the other, to cover France from invasion. To make this great power bear in a right direction was the duke of Dalmatia’s object, and his plans were large, and worthy of his reputation. Yet he could never persuade Suchet to adopt his projects, and that marshal’s resistance would appear to have sprung from personal dislike contracted during Soult’s sojourn near Valencia in 1812. It has been already shown how lightly he abandoned Aragon and confined himself to Catalonia after quitting Valencia. He did not indeed then know that Soult had assumed the command of the army of Spain and was preparing for his great effort to relieve Pampeluna; but he was aware that Clauzel and Paris were on the side of Jaca, and he was too good a general not to know that operating on the allies’ flank was the best mode of palliating the defeat of Vittoria. He might have saved both his garrison and castle of Zaragoza; the guns and other materials of a very large field-artillery equipment were deposited there, and from thence, by Jaca, he could have opened a sure and short communication with Soult, obtained information of that general’s projects, and saved Pampeluna.