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WEL these immense works were kept a profound secret from the French, and Wellington having thus silently made all requisite preparations, calmly took post on the Coa and waited the approach of the enemy. After a delay of some weeks Massena put his army in motion. As he advanced, Wellington slowly retired to his inaccessible stronghold; but for the purpose of inspiriting his men, and to show to the world that his retreat proceeded neither from weakness nor fear, he deliberately halted at Busaco and offered battle. The attack of the French (27th September), though delivered with great gallantry, was utterly defeated with immense loss. Having thus given his pursuers "a knock-down blow" the British general retired to his defences, which he entered on the 8th of October. Massena followed expecting to find a level country all the way to Lisbon, and to see his opponent taking refuge in his ships, when to his astonishment and dismay he found himself arrested in his march by the impregnable lines of Torres Vedras. The country around had been laid waste, the crops destroyed and the villages burned, in order to deprive the enemy of all supplies on the spot; and while the British forces, through the foresight of their commander, were enjoying the utmost comfort and abundance within their lines, the French army in front was reduced to the greatest extremities by destitution and disease. At the end of a month Massena abandoned his position in despair, and with greatly diminished forces, and effected a masterly retreat to Santarem, which he occupied throughout the remainder of the winter. About the beginning of March, 1811, he recommenced his retrograde movement; and though pressed and harassed by the British, he made good his retreat to the Portuguese frontier. Wellington immediately availed himself of the opportunity to invest the fortress of Almeida, one of the keys of Portugal. Anxious to preserve this important place, the prince of Essling wheeled round with his whole force on the foe, and on the 5th made a vigorous attack upon the British at Fuentes d'Oñoro, which, however, was repulsed with great slaughter, and Almeida fell. After this conflict Massena, the ablest of Napoleon's generals, closed his long and active career, and was superseded by Marshal Marmont. Throughout the campaign of 1810, which military critics pronounce one of his best, Wellington displayed extraordinary foresight, firmness, forbearance, and military skill; but he had still to complain of the feeble support which was afforded him by our timid and vacillating government, the unscrupulous attacks of the opposition, and the continued annoyance which he received from the Portuguese regency. Yet he failed neither in heart nor hand. Unmoved by the hesitations, doubts, and fears of the government, the sarcasms and ridicule of the opposition, the taunts of the French generals, the suspicions and misrepresentations of the Spaniards, and the accusations of the Portuguese, with a perfectly tranquil mind and unflagging spirit, he adhered resolutely to the plan which he had formed, and without hesitation accepted before the whole world the entire responsibility of the situation.

Wellington having successfully repulsed the invaders from Portugal, resolved in the next campaign to carry his arms into Spain; but before he could venture to proceed with offensive operations in that country, it was necessary to possess himself, at any price, of the strong fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos—alternately the keys of Spain and Portugal. Beresford was therefore directed to commence the siege of the latter, which had fallen into the hands of the French through the treachery or cowardice of the governor. Soult marched rapidly to the relief of the place, but was defeated in the glorious though sanguinary battle of Albuera, fought on the 16th of May, 1811. Wellington himself soon after took the command of the besieging army, but not even his genius could overcome the obstacles arising out of the want of the means necessary for conducting sieges. He had no trained artificers, no sappers and miners, no transport; the trenching tools snapped in the hands of the workmen, and his guns were of small calibre, old fashioned, weak, and worthless. Two assaults were made against Badajos and failed; and having learned that the whole French forces in the centre and south of Spain, to the number of sixty thousand, were advancing against him, the British general determined on relinquishing the attempt and returning to the northern frontier of Portugal. Wellington, however, had only delayed, not abandoned his resolution, to obtain possession of these indispensable strongholds. Foiled by Marmont in an attempt to blockade Ciudad Rodrigo into submission, he resolved to carry it by assault. During the latter months of 1811 he secretly prepared a battering train and abundant stores, constructed a portable bridge, formed a commissariat waggon train, and rendered the Douro navigable forty miles higher than boats had ever before ascended it. Meanwhile Marmont, completely thrown off his guard, had dispersed his army into cantonments, when the British general suddenly pushed his bridge across the Agueda on the 8th of January, 1812, and immediately invested Ciudad Rodrigo. On the 19th he carried it by storm in the face of a most determined resistance, which cost him a thousand men before Marmont had even mustered his forces. After this brilliant exploit Wellington turned to Badajos, which likewise fell, on the 7th of April, after a siege of twenty days, before Soult, who commanded in Andalusia, could get half way to the relief of the place. But nearly five thousand men were killed and wounded in the assault, one of the most sanguinary ever delivered. "When the extent of the night's havoc," says Napier, "was made known to Lord Wellington, the firmness of his nature gave way for a moment, and the pride of conquest yielded to a passionate burst of grief for the loss of his gallant soldiers." Having thus secured his flanks and rear, Wellington at length broke up from his cantonments on the 18th of June, and advanced into Spain with about forty thousand men. Marmont retired as he advanced, and Salamanca, which for five years had suffered severely from the barbarities of the French, was now evacuated, and its forts, after a few days' siege, were captured. The French armies in Spain, however, though somewhat weakened by the requirements of the war which Napoleon was now waging in Russia, still numbered two hundred and fifty thousand men; and Marmont speedily obtained strong reinforcements, which rendered his army nominally superior to that of Wellington. The latter, as he said, had resolved not to fight an action "unless under very advantageous circumstances, or it should become absolutely necessary." Marmont, however, who prided himself on the skill with which he handled his troops, made a vigorous attempt to cut off the British from Ciudad Rodrigo. For this purpose he undertook a series of elaborate manœuvres which gained him some advantages in position; but in his eagerness to prevent the retreat of his adversary, he committed the serious mistake of over-extending his line, and allowing a gap to intervene between his left and centre. The eagle glance of the British general in a moment detected and seized the opportunity. An attack was instantly ordered, and, as he himself said, in forty minutes he defeated an army of forty thousand men (22nd July). The battle though brief was fierce and bloody. The victors lost five thousand two hundred and twenty, and the vanquished six thousand men in killed and wounded, besides nearly seven thousand taken prisoners, with eleven pieces of cannon, two eagles, four standards, and many ammunition waggons. Marmont himself was severely wounded, as were his second and third in command. The battle of Salamanca was by far the most decisive which had as yet been fought in the peninsula. Wellington himself told the friend already referred to, that he looked upon it as one of his three best battles, the other two being Vittoria and Waterloo. "It relieved the whole south of Spain, at once changed the character of the war, and was felt even in Russia," where the news appears to have paralyzed the efforts of Napoleon in the bloody battle of Borodino.

The battle of Salamanca paralyzed the entire French force in Spain, and laid open the road to Madrid. On the 12th of August the British general made a triumphant entry into the capital with his victorious army, and was received with the utmost enthusiasm. Meanwhile the pressure of their common danger had compelled the French marshals to lay aside for a time their mutual jealousies, and to act in concert against their formidable adversary. After providing garrisons for the fortresses, they could still bring one hundred and twenty thousand men into the field, while Wellington could not muster half that number. He saw, therefore, that there was no time to be lost, in taking steps to prevent an overpowering concentration of the enemy's troops, and resolved first to turn his arms against Clausel, who had rallied Marmont's army near Valladolid, and raised its effective strength to thirty-five thousand men. But that able general was not disposed to risk another battle, and retired cautiously as his redoubtable antagonist advanced. On the 18th September the British general appeared before Burgos, the possession of which he considered absolutely necessary for the security of his army. The means at his disposal, however, were quite