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 at once his fiercest enemy. She did not want to be ‘reformed ’ or better governed; she wanted to keep her stupid, cruel Catholic kings and priests. Both Spain and Portugal at once cried out for British help; and, as the road by sea was in our hands, we began at once to send help in money, and very soon in men. With the men we sent a man. ‘In war’, said Napoleon himself, ‘it is not so much men as a man that counts.’ Sir Arthur Wellesley, one day to be known as the Duke of Wellington, was perhaps not so great a soldier as Marlborough or as Napoleon. His previous experience of war had been mostly in India, where, under his brother, the Marquis Wellesley, who was Governor-General of India, he had won, in 1803 and 1804, great victories over enormous swarms of native cavalry called Mahrattas. But he was the most patient and skilful leader we had had since Marlborough, and he had complete confidence in himself and in his power to beat the French.

He landed in Portugal in 1808, won a great battle at Vimeiro, and early in the next year had driven the French back into Spain. He then made Lisbon (the capital city of Portugal) his ‘base of operations’. The British fleet was able continually to bring supplies, money, food and men to Lisbon. Wellington fortified the approach to the city very strongly, and was able to repel an enormous French army, which came to attack him there in 1810. He followed it up into Spain as it retreated; and year by year advanced farther into Spain, winning battle after battle. But each winter he fell back upon his base. The fierce patriotism of the Spanish peasants, who killed every Frenchman they met, helped us enormously, though in the battles their armies were of little use to us, and their generals worse than