"It is hard to imagine anything so inconceivable as what is now going on in Spain. The King could have collected 100,000 picked men: _they might have beaten the whole of England_." Reflection, however, showed him that the fault was his own; that if, as had occurred to him when he left Paris, he had intrusted the supreme command in Spain to Soult, the disaster would never have happened.[322] His belief in Soult's capacity was justified by the last events of the Peninsular War. But neither his splendid rally of the scattered French forces, nor the skilful movements of Clausel and Suchet, nor the stubborn defence of Pamplona and San Sebastian, could now save the French cause. The sole result of these last operations was to restore the lustre of the French arms and to keep 150,000 men in Spain when the scales of war were wavering in the plains of Saxony. Napoleon's letters betray the agitation which he felt even at the first vague rumours of the disaster of Vittoria. On the first three days of July he penned at Dresden seven despatches on that topic in a style so vehement that the compilers of the "Correspondance de Napoléon" have thought it best to omit them. He further enjoined the utmost reserve, and ordered the official journals merely to state that, after a brisk engagement at Vittoria, the French army was concentrating in Arragon, and that the British had captured about a hundred guns and wagons left behind in the town for lack of horses. There was every reason for hiding the truth. He saw how seriously it must weaken his chances of browbeating the Eastern Powers, and of punishing Austria for her armed mediation. Hitherto there seemed every chance of his succeeding. The French standards flew on all the fortresses of the Elbe and Oder. Hamburg was fast becoming a great French camp, and Denmark was ranged on the side of France.