[Illustration] CHAPTER XX. THE REIGN OF FERDINAND VII. The same month of July, 1808, in which Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed King of Spain at Madrid, the British troops were despatched to Portugal. After Junot had been expelled from that kingdom the genius of Napoleon reorganized his armies, until the French in Spain numbered not less than four hundred thousand men, which he left divided into eight corps under as many generals and marshals. Soult invaded Portugal, and was promptly driven out by Wellington; while King Joseph, with eighty thousand men, was defeated at Talavera, July, 1809. During the ensuing winter Wellington constructed that famous line of earthworks, twenty–nine miles in length, known as the lines of Torres Vedras. The French had then captured every city of note in southern Spain except Cadiz, and Wellington foresaw the necessity of preparing an impregnable base for retreat, in case he was pursued by the overwhelmingly powerful forces of the enemy. His foresight was justified when General Massena, with sixty–five thousand soldiers, moved against him in the spring of 1810. He retreated slowly behind his lines of defence, taking with him all the available sustenance of the country, and Massena, unable to force the works, and in effect starved out, after losing thirty thousand men, sullenly retreated northward. Following him cautiously, the English general, in the spring of 1811, overtook and whipped him in a battle fought in April, and for the third time rid Portugal of the French invaders. After this, by a succession of skilfully planned battles, and with victory alternating defeat, Wellington persistently advanced, until in August, 1812, he entered Madrid. He had not yet accomplished his purpose, however, of ridding Spain of the French, who still had nearly two hundred thousand men in the field. He was compelled to retire again in the direction of his protecting earthworks; but in the spring of 1813, finding himself now commander–in–chief of an army of two hundred thousand men, seventy thousand of whom were Anglo–Portuguese veterans, Wellington advanced boldly northward, and at Vittoria, on the 21st of June, met and overwhelmingly defeated the French under King Joseph, who fled from the field “with a ‘Napoleon’ (coin) in his pocket, and leaving another Napoleon in a predicament.” After that, Wellington’s advance was an almost uninterrupted series of victories, until, by February, 1814, he was well over the frontier and investing cities on the soil of France. But by that time Bonaparte himself was a fugitive, having abdicated, and the capital of France was in possession of the allied armies.