A few skirmishes ensued between the contending parties until the 3d of November, when Joseph, with thirty thousand men, encountered fifty-five thousand Spaniards. The odds in favor of the Spaniards was so great that they rushed vigorously upon the French. A battle of four hours ensued. The Spanish army was broken to pieces, dispersed, trampled under foot. Twenty thousand prisoners, fifty-five pieces of cannon, and the whole ammunition of the army were captured by the French. "Wearied with collecting prisoners," says Alison, "the French at length merely took the arms from the fugitives, desiring them to go home, telling them that war was a trade which they were not fit for." From this conflict Joseph returned in triumph to his capital. It seemed for a time that no more resistance could be offered, and that his government was firmly established. Wellington was driven back into Portugal, and loudly proclaimed that he could place no reliance upon the promises or the arms of the Spaniards or the Portuguese. Napoleon had returned from the triumphant campaign of Wagram. Again he had shattered the coalition in the north, and was upon the pinnacle of his greatness. The total failure of Wellington's campaign had greatly disappointed the British people. The Common Council of London petitioned Parliament for an inquiry into the circumstances connected with this failure. "Admitting the valor of Lord Wellington," they said in their address, "the petitioners can see no reason why any recompense should be bestowed on him for his military conduct. After a useless display of British valor, and a frightful carnage, that army, like the preceding one, was compelled to seek safety in a precipitous flight before an enemy who we were told had been conquered, abandoning many thousands of our wounded countrymen into the hands of the French. That calamity, like the others, has passed without any inquiry, and, as if their long-experienced impunity had put the servants of the Crown above the reach of justice, ministers have actually gone the length of advising your majesty to confer honorable distinctions on a general who has thus exhibited, with equal rashness and ostentation, nothing but a useless valor."