The Duke of Wellington himself was a haughty, overbearing man. No soldier loved him, but all bowed submissive to his inflexible will. The deportment of the British troops in the Spanish capital was such as to alienate those who at first welcomed them, and they soon became universally disliked. The Spaniards are proud, proverbially proud; and they could not endure this contemptuous assumption of superiority. So great became the dissatisfaction that many of the Spanish generals proposed to unite their troops with those of King Joseph if he would grant them independent commands. Exultantly the English on the Peninsula heard the tidings of the terrible disasters Napoleon was encountering in Russia. They could scarcely exaggerate them. It was manifest that for a long time, at least, Joseph could receive no assistance from France; on the contrary, many regiments of infantry and cavalry, and a number of companies of artillery, received orders immediately to leave Spain, and to hasten to the aid of the Emperor. Joseph, thus hopelessly crippled, was directed by the Emperor to concentrate his enfeebled forces upon the line of the Douro. Leaving a garrison of ten thousand men in Madrid, Joseph, with the remainder of his troops, retired toward the north. In Wellington's retreat from Madrid, his troops committed all imaginable outrages. In his dispatch to his officers commanding his divisions and brigades, he said: "From the moment the troops commenced their retreat from the neighborhood of Madrid on the one hand, and Burgos on the other, the officers lost all command over the men. Irregularities and outrages of all descriptions were committed with impunity, and losses have been sustained which ought never to have occurred. The discipline of every army, after a long and active campaign, becomes in some degree relaxed; but I am concerned to observe that the army under my command has fallen off in this respect, in the late campaign, _to a greater degree than any army with which I have ever been, or of which I have ever read_."[Y] [Footnote Y: Wellington to Officers commanding Divisions and Brigades, ix. 574, 575.] Thus terminated the year 1812. The disappointment of the British Government, in view of the discomfiture and retreat of Wellington, was very great, and the indignation of that portion of the English people who were opposed to this interminable warfare against the new regime in France knew no bounds. That the English army had, through a long line of disastrous retreat, according to the testimony of its commander, inflicted outrages upon the Spanish people, its allies, _greater than that commander had ever read of in history_, keenly wounded the national pride.