General Moore was straining every nerve to escape. The weather was frightful, and the miry roads almost impassable. The advance-guard of Napoleon was soon within a day's march of the foe. General Moore, as he fled, blew up the bridges behind him, and recklessly plundered the wretched inhabitants. His troops became exceedingly exasperated against the Spaniards for their cowardly desertion, and reproached them with ingratitude. "We ungrateful!" the Spaniards replied; "you came here to serve your own interests, and now you are running away without defending us." So bitter was the hostility which thus arose between the English and the Spaniards, and the brutality of the drunken English soldiers was so insupportable, that the Spaniards often welcomed the French troops, who were under far better discipline, as their deliverers. Sir Archibald Alison, in his account of these scenes, says: "The native and uneradicable vice of northern climates, drunkenness, here appeared in frightful colors. The great wine-vaults of Bembibre proved more fatal than the sword of the enemy. And when the gallant rear-guard, which preserved its ranks unbroken, closed up the array, they had to force their way through a motley crowd of English and Spanish soldiers, stragglers and marauders, who reeled out of the houses in disgusting crowds, or lay stretched upon the roadside, an easy prey to the enemy's cavalry, which thundered in close pursuit. "The condition of the army became daily more deplorable; the frost had been succeeded by the thaw; rain and sleet fell in torrents; the roads were almost broken up; the horses foundered at every step; the few artillery-wagons which had kept up fell, one by one, to the rear; and being immediately blown up to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy, gave melancholy tokens, by the sound of their explosions, of the work of destruction which was going on." On the 2d of January Napoleon's advance-guard had reached Astorga. Notwithstanding the condition of the roads, and all the efforts of the retreating foe, an army of forty thousand men had marched two hundred miles in ten days. It was a cold and stormy winter morning when Napoleon left Astorga, in continuance of the pursuit. He had proceeded but a few miles on horseback, when he was overtaken by a courier from France, bearing important dispatches. The Emperor alighted by the roadside, and, standing by a fire which his attendants kindled, read the documents. His officers gathered anxiously around him, watching the expression of his countenance as he read.