As reasons for questioning _‡ priori_ the impartiality of these letters,--it might be suggested (in reference to what they would be likely to _omit_)--first--that they are the letters of a _soldier_; that is, of a man trained (by the prejudices of his profession) to despise, or at least to rate as secondary, those resources which for Spain must be looked to as supreme;--and, secondly, that they are the letters of a _general_; that is, of a soldier removed by his rank from the possibility of any extensive intercourse with the lower classes; concerning whom the question chiefly was. But it is more important to remark (in reference to what they would be likely to _mis-state_)--thirdly--that they are the letters of a _commander-in-chief_; standing--from the very day when he took the field--in a dilemma which compelled him to risk the safety of his army by advancing, or its honour by retreating; and having to make out an apology, for either issue, to the very persons who had imposed this dilemma upon him.--The reader is requested to attend to this. Sir John Moore found himself in LeÛn with a force 'which, if united,' (to quote his own words) 'would not exceed 26,000 men.' Such a force, after the defeat of the advanced armies,--he was sure--could effect nothing; the best result he could anticipate was an inglorious retreat. That he should be in this situation at the very opening of the campaign, he saw, would declare to all Europe that somewhere there must be blame: but where? with himself he knew that there was none: the English Government (with whom he must have seen that at least a part of the blame lay--for sending him so late, and with a force so lamentably incommensurate to the demands of the service) it was not for him--holding the situation that he did--openly to accuse (though, by implication, he often does accuse them); and therefore it became his business to look to the Spaniards; and, in their conduct, to search for palliations of that inefficiency on his part--which else the persons, to whom he was writing, would understand as charged upon themselves. Writing with such a purpose--and under a double fettering of his faculties; first from anxious forebodings of calamity or dishonour; and secondly from the pain he must have felt at not being free to censure those with whom he could not but be aware that the embarrassments of his situation had, at least in part, originated--we might expect that it would not be difficult for him to find, in the early events of the campaign, all which he sought; and to deceive himself into a belief, that, in stating these events without any commentary or even hints as to the relative circumstances under which they took place (which only could give to the naked facts their value and due meaning), he was making no misrepresentations,--and doing the Spaniards no injustice.