Portuguese this restless Emperor may have had some respect; for the Spanish he had only hatred, since their determination not to accept his brother as their king, and their incessant rioting and attacks upon his soldiers had caused him trouble and anxiety. Now there were the British to deal with. British opposition had wrested Portugal from the all-conquering Emperor of France. She was now thrusting her way into the heart of Andalusia. That meant further strenuous fighting, and if past records were to be repeated, it meant further British victories, in spite of the mass of Napoleon's armies. Who knows, then, we suggest, that this fear may have weighed with the restless Emperor of the French, with the ambitious and avaricious little corporal? To be balked in his wishes was with him ever, as with all such men, galling in the extreme. Here, in the Peninsula, our coming and our intervention had resulted in tremendous efforts on the part of Napoleon, efforts set aside by Wellington's armies. And now the tide had turned. What wonder if Napoleon, realizing that here he was on the verge of a defeat, turned his eyes to other conquests? Whatever the cause, Russia now attracted the attention of the Emperor. He had ridden posthaste for Paris. France, groaning already beneath the weight of taxation necessary to maintain such huge armies in the field, was being bled still further, both in money and men, to provide another army of conquest. Troops were already massing on the borders of Russia, and soon was to arrive that calamity which will always hold a prominent place in the histories of the world. For Napoleon was marching to defeat. The plains of Russia were to see his armies swept almost out of existence, while the crops now ripening at the beginning of summer, a summer which Wellington in Spain had determined to make the greatest use of, were to flare up before Napoleon's troops could lay their hungry hands on them. Moscow, the city of promise, the magnet drawing the ambitious and reckless Emperor to destruction, was to burn before his eyes, and thereafter snow and frost and desperate hunger were to fight his armies silently, while Cossacks in their thousands hung like a swarm of flies about the flanks, slaughtering the helpless. But we are forestalling events. Napoleon had left the Peninsula for other and, as he imagined no doubt, easier conquests, leaving his generals in Spain the difficult task of driving out a British army which, with few exceptions, had proved itself absolutely invincible.