An army so great and strongly constituted appearing in Aragon would, Soult argued, necessarily raise the blockades of Pampeluna, Jaca, Fraga, and Monzon, the two last being now menaced by the bands, and it was probable that Tortoza and even Saguntum would be relieved. The great difficulty was to pass the guns by Jaca, yet he was resolved to try, even though he should convey them upon trucks to be made in Paris and sent by post to Pau. He anticipated no serious inconvenience from the union of the troops in France since Suchet had already declared his intention of retiring towards Gerona; and on the Bayonne side the army to be left there could dispute the entrenched line between Cambo and St. Jean de Luz. If driven from thence it could take a flanking position behind the Nive, the right resting upon the entrenched camp of Bayonne, the left upon the works at Cambo and holding communication by the fortified mountain of Ursouia with St. Jean Pied de Port. But there could be little fear for this secondary force when the great army was once in Aragon. That which he most dreaded was delay, because a fall of snow, always to be expected after the middle of October, would entirely close the pass of Jaca. This proposition written the 2d of September, immediately after the battle of San Marcial, reached Suchet the 11th and was peremptorily rejected. If he withdrew from Catalonia discouragement, he said, would spread, desertion would commence, and France be immediately invaded by lord William Bentinck at the head of fifty thousand men. The pass of Jaca was impracticable and the power of man could not open it for carriages under a year’s labour. His wish was to act on the defensive, but if an offensive movement was absolutely necessary, he offered a counter-project; that is, he would first make the English in his front re-embark at Taragona, or he would drive them over the Ebro and then march with one hundred guns and thirty thousand men by Lerida to the Gallego river near Zaragoza. Soult’s army, coming by Jaca without guns, might there meet him, and the united forces could then do what was fitting. But to effect this he required a reinforcement of conscripts, and to have Paris’s division and the artillery-men and draft horses of Soult’s army sent to Catalonia; he demanded also that two thousand bullocks for the subsistence of his troops should be provided to meet him on the Gallego. Then touching upon the difficulties of the road from Sanguessa to Pampeluna, he declared, that after forcing Wellington across the Ebro, he would return to Catalonia to revictual his fortresses and prevent an invasion of France. This plan he judged far less dangerous than Soult’s, yet he enlarged upon its difficulties and its dangers if the combined movements were not exactly executed. In fine, he continued, “The French armies are entangled amongst rocks, and the emperor should direct a third army upon Spain, to act