The whole letter is very patient and calm; and especially touching are those simple words, “Pray for me,” from a man so intensely reserved on religious questions. If words are needed to show what he _was_, besides the plain utterance of such a character and life as his, these alone would serve to make clear that silence on his part meant neither lack of thought nor lack of feeling. Again, on the 23rd of December, he wrote to the British Envoy in Spain—“I march this night to Carrion, and the next day to Saldana, to attack the corps under Marshal Soult.... Buonaparte is dating his proclamations from Madrid; and as to the British Army, if it were in a neutral or Enemy’s country, it could not be more completely left to itself. If the Spaniards are enthusiasts, or much interested in this cause, their conduct is the most extraordinary that ever was exhibited. The movement I am making is of the most dangerous kind. I not only risk to be surrounded every moment by superior forces, but to have my communication intercepted with the Galicias. I wish it to be apparent to the whole world, as it is to every individual of the Army, that we have done everything in our power in support of the Spanish cause; and that we do not abandon it until long after the Spaniards had abandoned us.” * * * * * Buonaparte seldom did things by halves; and he acted now with even more than his usual energy. The force and genius of this English Commander, by whom he was so daringly opposed, had suddenly burst upon him; and he at once realised that no ordinary effort on his part would ensure to him the victory. To oppose Moore’s twenty-three thousand men with only another twenty-eight or thirty thousand was not to be thought of. That might mean disaster. Without an hour’s delay, orders went forth to check the southward march of his columns, and, as a first step, to pour fifty thousand men in a torrent across the snowy Guadarrama hills, that they might cut off the retreat of Moore to the coast. His object was, to place the small force of Moore between the great Army of the south and the other French corps under Soult, consisting of some twenty-five or thirty thousand men. That once done, the crushing out of existence of the British Army might be looked upon as a mere matter of detail. At any moment Napoleon could supplement his first fifty thousand with another fifty or hundred thousand.[4] But Napoleon’s fierce northward rush was exactly what Sir John Moore had intended to bring about. He had drawn away the main body of the French Army from the harassed south; he had given the Spaniards a breathing-space in which to rally, if they would, for renewed resistance; and he had for the moment saved Portugal from desperate peril.