I have therefore nothing to add to the arguments I have already used in my Justification, and in my History, in favour of the march to Merida; if I am wrong the world will so judge me. But the two points I have reserved are, 1º. That you assert now, in direct contradiction to your former avowal, that the march to Merida would have been one of _four_ days instead of _two_; and that the road by Albuquerque was the only one which you could use. In answer to this last part I observe, that the French before, and the Spaniards then, marched by the road of Montigo; and that a year after, when lord Hill’s expedition against Almaraz took place, the whole of his battering and pontoon train, with all the ammunition belonging to it, moved with great facility in three days from Elvas, by this very road of Montigo, to Merida; and Elvas as your Lordship knows is rather further than Campo Mayor from Merida. The second point is that mode of conducting a controversy which I have so often had occasion to expose in your former publications, viz. mis-stating my arguments to suit your own reasoning. I never said that you should have attempted, or could have succeeded in a “_coup de main_” against Badajos; I never even said you should have commenced the siege immediately. What I did say was, that by the march through Merida you could have placed your army at once between Badajos and the French army, and so have thrown the former upon its own resources at a most inconvenient time; that in this situation you could have more readily thrown your bridge at Jerumenha, and proceeded at your convenience. Further than this I do not think it necessary to dissect and expose your new fallacies and contradictions; it requires too much time. You have written upwards of six hundred pages, four hundred of them I have before demolished; but my own volumes are rather thick and to me at least much more important than yours; your lordship must therefore spare me the other two hundred, or at least permit me to treat them lightly. I will leave the whole siege of Badajos to you, it is matter of opinion and I will not follow your example in overloading what is already clear by superfluity of argument. I will only expose one error into which you have been led by colonel La Marre’s work. On his authority you say the garrison on the 10th of April had three months’ provisions; but the following extract from a letter of marshal Soult’s to the prince of Wagram will prove that La Marre is wrong:— _“Seville, 18th April._ “From the 11th of this month the place was provisioned, according to the report of general Phillipon, for _two months and some days_ as to subsistence; and there are 100 milliers of powder,” &c. &c. Let us now come to the _battle of Albuera_.