[21] [The intention of the Government was that if any accident befell the Duke of Wellington, General Sir Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, should take the command of the British forces in Spain. This appears from the _Memoir of Lord Lynedoch_, published in 1880, by Captain Alexander Delavoye.] [Page Head: THE BATTLE OF SALAMANCA.] All the movements and operations before the battle of Salamanca were to the last degree interesting. The Duke was anxiously waiting for some advantageous occasion to attack Marmont, and at last it arrived; he saw it happen, and took his resolution on the spot. He was dining in a farm-yard with his officers, where (when he had done dinner) everybody else came and dined as they could. The whole French army was in sight, moving, and the enemy firing upon the farmyard in which he was dining. 'I got up,' he said, 'and was looking over a wall round the farm-yard, just such a wall as that' (pointing to a low stone wall bounding the covert), 'and I saw the movement of the French left through my glass. "By God," said I, "that will do, and I'll attack them directly." I had moved up the Sixth Division through Salamanca, which the French were not aware of, and I ordered them to attack, and the whole line to advance. I had got my army so completely in hand that I could do this with ease, and in forty minutes the battle was won--'quarante mille hommes battus en quarante minutes.' I asked him if it was true that he and Marmont had subsequently talked over the event of the battle, and that Marmont had asserted that his orders had been disobeyed, or that this movement of which the Duke took advantage would not have been made. He said he believed there had been some conversation on the subject, and that Marmont had said he was wounded before this movement took place; he said he did not know if this was true, but it might be, as there had been continual fighting for some time previous. I asked him why Bonaparte had not himself come to Spain to attack him; and if he had with a great force, whether he would have driven him out. He replied that he thought Napoleon had satisfied himself that it would be a work of great difficulty, and what was more, of great length, and he had no mind to embark in it; and that the French certainly would not have driven him out: he should have taken up some position, and have been enabled to baffle the Emperor himself just as he had done his marshals. He thinks that Napoleon's military system compelled him to employ his armies in war, when they invariably lived upon the resources of the countries they occupied, and that France could not have maintained them, as she must have done if he had made peace: peace, therefore, would have brought about (through the army itself) his downfall. He traces the whole military system of France from its first organisation during the Reign of Terror, in a letter in the tenth volume of the Despatches.