s corps replaced Soult's at Corunna, I had camped the companies of
the artillery-train between Betanzos and Corunna, in the midst of four
brigades distant from the camp from two to three leagues, and no Spanish
forces had been seen within fifty miles; Soult still occupied Santiago
de Compostela, the division Maurice-Mathieu was at Ferrol and Lugo,
Marchand's at Corunna and Betanzos: nevertheless, one fine night the
companies of the train--men and horses--disappeared, and we were never
able to discover what became of them: a solitary wounded corporal
escaped to report that the peasants, led by their monks and priests, had
thus made away with them. Four months afterward, Ney with a single
division marched to conquer the Asturias, descending the valley of the
Navia, while Kellermann debouched from Leon by the Oviedo road. A part
of the corps of La Romana which was guarding the Asturias marched behind
the very heights which inclose the valley of the Navia, at most but a
league from our columns, without the marshal knowing a word of it: when
he was entering Gijon, the army of La Romana attacked the center of the
regiments of the division Marchand, which, being scattered to guard
Galicia, barely escaped, and that only by the prompt return of the
marshal to Lugo. This war presented a thousand incidents as striking as
this. All the gold of Mexico could not have procured reliable
information for the French; what was given was but a lure to make them
fall more readily into snares.

No army, however disciplined, can contend successfully against such a
system applied to a great nation, unless it be strong enough to hold all
the essential points of the country, cover its communications, and at
the same time furnish an active force sufficient to beat the enemy
wherever he may present himself. If this enemy has a regular army of
respectable size to be a nucleus around which to rally the people, what
force will be sufficient to be superior everywhere, and to assure the
safety of the long lines of communication against numerous bodies?

The Peninsular War should be carefully studied, to learn all the
obstacles which a general and his brave troops may encounter in the
occupation or conquest of a country whose people are all in arms. What
efforts of patience, courage, and resignation did it not cost the troops
of Napoleon, Massena, Soult, Ney, and Suchet to sustain themselves for
six years against three or four hundred thousand armed Span