“Vast combinations, inexhaustible personal resources, a clear judgment, unshaken firmness and patience under difficulties, unwavering fidelity to his sovereign and his country, are what no man can justly deny him. In this celebrated campaign of nine months, although counteracted by the treacherous hostility of many of his countrymen, he repaired and enlarged the works of five strong places, and entrenched five great camps with such works as Marius himself would not have disdained; once he changed his line of operations, and, either attacking or defending, delivered twenty-four battles and combats. Defeated in all, he fought the last as fiercely as the first; remaining unconquered in mind, and still intent upon renewing the struggle, when peace came to put a stop to his prodigious efforts. These efforts were fruitless, because Suchet renounced him; because the people of the south were apathetic, and fortune was adverse; because he was opposed to one of the greatest generals of the world at the head of unconquerable troops.” Wellington, patient under difficulties, had fully succeeded in his task of freeing the Peninsula from French domination. And if at Salamanca he showed a tactical skill which stands out in contrast to some of his other victories, the final campaign of Vittoria shows a strategical grasp which is not, in the opinion of foreign experts in the art of war, so brilliantly apparent in the years before 1813-14. But one thing may be mentioned, of which many are now ignorant. A common cry among the French throughout the prolonged war was the cruelty with which their prisoners in England were treated. The charge embittered the already bitter contest, and though foreign nations were little better than ourselves, if at all, there was more than a sub-stratum of truth in what was openly proclaimed in France.