The Spaniards have always been accused of a tendency to vainglorious boasting. The trivial successes which they had attained, in alliance with the English, quite intoxicated them. "We have conquered," they said, "the armies of the great Napoleon. We will soon trample all his hosts in the dust. With an army of five hundred thousand indignant Spaniards we will march upon Paris, and sack the city. The powers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia have fallen before Napoleon; but Spanish peasants, headed by the priests and the monks, will roll back the tide of victory." Such was the insane boasting. Napoleon was, at the same time, the boldest and the most cautious of generals. He ever made provision for every possible reverse. Stationing two strong forces to guard his flanks, he took fifty thousand of the _elite_ of his army, and plunged upon the centre of the Spanish troops. Such an onset none but veterans could withstand. There was scarcely the semblance of a battle. The Spaniards fled, throwing down their arms, and leaping like goats amidst the crags of the mountains. Pressing resistlessly forward, Napoleon reached Burgos on the night of the 11th. Here the Spaniards attempted another stand upon some strongly intrenched heights. A brief conflict scattered them in the wildest confusion, defeated, disbanded, leaving cannon, muskets, flags, and munitions of war. Onward he swept, without a check, without delay, crushing, overwhelming, scattering his foes, over the intrenched heights of Espinosa, through the smouldering streets of the town, across the bridge of Trueba, choked with terrified fugitives, through the pass of Somosierra, in one of the most astounding achievements which war has ever witnessed, till he led his victorious troops, with no foe within his reach, into the streets of Madrid. He commenced the campaign at Vittoria on the 9th of November, and on the 4th of December his army was encamped in the squares of the Spanish metropolis. Europe gazed upon this meteoric phenomenon with astonishment and alarm. The Spanish populace had been roused mainly by the priests. In their frenzy, burning and assassinating, they overawed all who were in favor of regenerating Spain by a change of dynasty. It is the undisputed testimony that the proprietors, the merchants, the inhabitants generally who were rich, or in easy circumstances, and even the magistrates and military chiefs, were quite disposed to listen to the propositions of the Emperor. But overawed by the populace, who threatened to carry things to the last extremity, they dared not manifest their sentiments.