My lord, you will never by such special pleading, I know of no other term by which I can properly designate your argument, you will never, I say, by such special pleading, hide your bad generalship at Campo Mayor. The proofs of your errors there are too many and too clear; the errors themselves too glaring too gross to leave you the least hope; the same confusion of head which prevented you from seizing the advantages then offered to you seems to prevail in your writing; and yet while impeaching every person’s credit where their statements militate against your object, you demand the most implicit confidence in your own contradictory assertions and preposterous arguments. My lord, you only fatigue yourself and your readers by your unwieldy floundering, you are heavy and throw much mud about; like one of those fine Andalusian horses so much admired in the Peninsula, you prance and curvet and foam and labour in your paces but you never get on. At Campo Mayor you had an enormous superiority of troops, the enemy were taken by surprize, they were in a plain, their cavalry were beaten, their artillery-drivers cut down, their infantry, hemmed in by your horsemen and under the play of your guns, were ready to surrender; yet you suffered them to escape and to carry off their captured artillery and then you blamed your gallant troops. The enemy escaped from you, my lord, but you cannot escape from the opinion of the world by denying the truth of all statements which militate against you. _The march by Merida._ If you had said at once that the duke of Wellington forbade you to go by Merida, there would have been an end of all my arguments against your skill; yet it by no means follows that these arguments would be futile in themselves, though not applicable to you personally. New combinations were presented, and the duke of Wellington might very probably have changed his instructions had he been present on the spot. But, why was this your justification withheld until now? why was so plain, so clear, so decisive a defence of yourself never thought of before? and why is it now smothered with such a heap of arguments as you have added, to prove that you ought not to have gone by Merida? Have you found out that I am not such a bad reasoner upon military affairs as you were pleased to style me in your former publication? Have you found out that pleading high rank is not a sufficient answer to plain and well supported statements? It is good however that you have at last condescended to adopt a different mode of proceeding. I applaud you for it, and with the exception of two points I will leave you in the full enjoyment of any triumph which the force of your arguments may procure you; always, however, retaining my right to assume that your lordship’s memory with respect to the duke of Wellington’s negative, may have been as treacherous as it was about your own letter to the junta of Badajos.