of the
war, he erected the four northern provinces into commands for French
generals, who were independent of his brother's authority and levied
all the taxes over that vast area (February). On May 29th he withdrew
Burgos and Valladolid from Joseph's control, and divided the greater
part of Spain for military and administrative purposes into districts
that were French satrapies in all but name. The decree was doubly
disastrous: it gave free play to the feuds of the French chiefs; and
it seemed to the Spaniards to foreshadow a speedy partition of Spain.
The surmise was correct. Napoleon intended to unite to France the
lands between the Pyrenees and the Ebro. Indeed, in his conception,
the conquest of Portugal was mainly desirable because it would provide
his brother with an indemnity in the west for the loss of his northern
provinces. Joseph's protests against such a partition of the land,
which Napoleon had sworn at Bayonne to keep intact, were disregarded;
but letters on this subject fell into the hands of the Spanish
guerillas and were published by order of the Regency at Cadiz.
Despised by the Spaniards, flouted by Napoleon, set at defiance by the
French satraps, and reduced wellnigh to bankruptcy, the puppet King
felt his position insupportable, and, hurrying to Paris, tendered his
resignation of the crown (May, 1811). In his anxiety to huddle up the
scandal, Napoleon appeased his brother, promised him one-fourth of the
taxes levied by the French commanders, and coaxed or drove him to
resume his thankless task at Madrid. But the doggedness of the
Emperor's resolve may be measured by the fact that, even when on the
brink of war with Russia, he defied Spanish national sentiment by
annexing Catalonia to France (March, 1812).

It seems strange that Napoleon did not himself proceed to Spain in
order to direct the operations in person and thus still the jealousies
of the Marshals which so hampered his armies. Wellington certainly
feared his coming. At a later date he told Earl Stanhope that Napoleon
was vastly superior to any of his Marshals: "There was nothing like
him. He suited a French army so exactly.... His presence on the field
made a difference of 40,000 men."[224] That estimate is certainly
modest if one looks not merely at tactics but at the strategy of the
whole Peninsular War. But the Emperor did not again come into Spain.
At the outset of 1810 he prepared to do so; but, as soon as the
Austrian marriage was