Napoleon, too, was no longer in a position to help the armies whose opponents were bleeding his empire to death. Russia first, and then united Europe, were keeping his hands far too full to attend to a danger almost nearer home. The last French campaign in the Peninsula was like that in Central Europe in the same year, 1813, a campaign of despair. The numbers on both sides were more equal than they had ever been. The Allies had learned in the bitter school of dreadful experience, and were better organised and somewhat more homogeneous and concentrated than their opponents. The general plan of Wellington’s last campaign here was to directly threaten the French communications with France. It will be remembered that there were but two real lines of invasion from that country, one at the east, the other at the west of the Pyrenees. So, threatening the French right, the strong line of the Douro, behind which the French army lay, was turned at Toro. They fell back behind Burgos, therefore, and then behind the line of the Ebro. This, again, was turned at its upper reaches by a most difficult march. “Neither,” says Napier, “the winter gullies, nor the ravines, nor the precipitate passes amongst the rocks retarded even the march of the artillery--where horses could not draw, men hauled; when the wheels would not roll, the guns were let down or lifted up with ropes--six days they toiled unceasingly, and on the seventh (that is, 20th June), they burst like raging streams from every defile, and went foaming into the basin of Vittoria.” * * * * * So the battle area of Vittoria was reached, and Joseph stood to fight on a front parallel to his line of retreat on Bayonne. As Wellington had been _strategically_ turning the right of the general line of defence so far, so in the battle he _tactically_ continued the same idea, and the result was complete. “Never,” says Napier, “was an army more hardly used by its commander, and never was a victory more complete”; while General Gazan writes that the French “lost all their equipage, all their guns, all their treasure, all their papers, so that no man could prove even how much pay was due to him; generals and subordinate officers alike were reduced to the clothes on their backs, and most of them were barefooted.” [Illustration: _Private 20^{th} Reg^{t} 1812._] The following regiments were engaged in the battle:--3rd and 5th Dragoon Guards, 3rd, 14th, 15th, 16th, 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 20th, 23rd, 24th, 27th, 28th, 31st, 38th, 39th, 40th, 43rd, 45th, 47th, 48th, 50th, 51st, 52nd, 53rd, 57th, 58th, 59th, 60th, 61st, 66th, 68th, 74th, 79th, 83rd, and 84th.