The French, who were utterly unprepared for these rapid movements, retired precipitately, destroying in their retreat the bridges at Toro and Zamora; and the combined army now directed its march in triumph on Valladolid, one of the finest cities of Old Castile, and one which might be styled a city of convents, as it contains no fewer than seventy,—one of them the palace of Philip IV. Crossing Escueva, the allies continued to press impetuously forward, and the enemy to retire unresistingly before them. Joseph abandoned Madrid, concentrated the French legions around the castle of Burgos, which he blew up on the 13th of June, and with his whole force retired under the cloud of night towards the Ebro, the passage of which his generals made every preparation to defend. But again he and they were signally baffled by the skill, talent, and penetration of Wellington, who moving his troops by the San Andero road, crossed the river near its source at Puente de Arenas and San Martino, a measure which so disconcerted the plans of Joseph and Marshal Jourdan, that they were again compelled to retreat, and the allied army continued its march to Vittoria. On the 20th of June the second division encamped on the plain of Puebla, near Vittoria. The first brigade was then commanded by the Hon. William Stuart (a brother of the Earl of Galloway) a true and gallant soldier of the old school, whose valuable services received no requital from his country. The time had now arrived when Joseph was compelled to make a final and determined stand in defence of the crown he had usurped, or behold it torn ingloriously from his brow, and on the very ground where Edward the Black Prince, on the 3rd of April, 1367, totally defeated another intruder on the Spanish soil—Henry the Bastard, and restored Don Pedro to the crown of Castile.[*] The time was likewise arrived when the legions of France, whose movements since the commencement of the campaign had been a series of retreats, should make a decisive effort to renew their fading laurels, or by being driven disgracefully across the Pyrenees, lose for ever that hard-earned fame which they won under the banners of the great Emperor. [*] This battle was fought at Navarete, a village on the Zadorra, near Vittoria. See the Chronicles of Sir John Froissart.