On the other hand, the French discipline continued to render them superior over the patriots, wherever the latter could be brought to face them in any thing resembling a pitched battle. Thus Blake, after a gallant action, was totally defeated near Murviedro, and that town itself fell into possession of the enemy. A more severe consequence of the battle of Ocana, as that disastrous action was termed, was the capture of Valencia, where Blake and the remainder of his army were made prisoners. But amid those vicissitudes of good or bad fortune, Spain continued to Buonaparte the same harassing and exhausting undertaking, which it had been almost from the commencement. Sickness and want made more ravages amongst the French troops than the sword of the enemy, though that did not lie idle. Many of the districts are unhealthy to strangers; but of these, as well as others, it was necessary for the invaders to retain possession. There, while numerous deaths happened among the troops, the guerillas watched the remnant, until sickness and fatigue had reduced the garrisons to a number insufficient for defence, and then pounced upon them like birds of prey on a fallen animal, upon whom they have been long in attendance. [Sidenote: JOSEPH WISHES TO ABDICATE.] Besides, disunion continued to reign among the French generals. Joseph, although in point of power the very shadow of what a king ought to be, had spirit enough to resent the condition in which he was placed amid the haughty military chiefs who acknowledged no superior beside the Emperor, and listened to no commands save those emanating from Paris. He wrote to his brother a letter, accompanying a formal abdication of the throne of Spain, unless he was to be placed in more complete authority than even the orders of Napoleon himself had hitherto enabled him to attain. But the prospect of a northern war approaching nearer and nearer, Napoleon was induced to postpone his brother's request, although so pressingly urged, and Spain was in some measure left to its fate during the still more urgent events of the Russian campaign.[87] FOOTNOTES: [79] Jests, as well as serious observations, were made on this occasion. "Have you any commands for France?" said a Frenchman at Naples to an English friend; "I shall be there in two days."--"In France?" answered his friend, "I thought you were setting off for Rome."--"True; but Rome, by a decree of the Emperor, is now indissolubly united to France."--"I have no news to burden you with," said his friend; "but can I do any thing for you in England? I shall be there in half an hour."--"In England?" said the Frenchman, "and in half an hour!"--"Yes," said his friend, "within that time I shall be at sea, and the sea has been indissolubly united to the British empire."--S. [80] See Mémoires de Savary, tom. iii., part i., p. 37.