hed 55,000,000 francs from his own private hoard, but seized that
of his parsimonious mother.[397] Cannon, muskets, uniforms were
wanting: their manufacture was pushed on with feverish haste: Napoleon
ordered his War Office to "procure all the cloth in France, good and
bad," so as to have 200,000 uniforms ready by the end of February; and
he counted on having half a million of effectives in the field at the
close of spring.

Among these he reckoned--so, at least, he wrote to Melzi--"nearly
200,000" French soldiers from Arragon, Catalonia, and at Bayonne. Even
if we allow for his desire to encourage his officials in Italy, the
estimate is curious. Wellington at that time, it is true, had lessened
his numbers by sending back across the Pyrenees all his Spanish
troops, whose atrocities endangered that good understanding with the
French peasantry which our great leader, for political motives, was
determined to cultivate.[398] Yet, despite the shrinkage in numbers,
he drove the French from the banks of the River Nive, and inflicted on
them severe losses in desperate conflicts near Bayonne (December
9th-13th). In fact, the intrenched camp in front of that town was now
the sole barrier to Wellington's advance northwards, and it was with
difficulty that Soult clung to this position. The peasantry, too,
finding that they were far better treated by Wellington's troops than
by their own soldiers, began to favour the allied cause, with results
that will shortly appear. Yet these disquieting symptoms did not daunt
Napoleon; for he now based his hopes of resisting the British advance
on a compact which he had concluded with Ferdinand VII., the rightful
King of Spain.

As soon as he returned to St. Cloud after the Leipzig campaign he made
secret overtures to that unhappy exile;[399] and by the Treaty of
Valencay (December 11th, 1813) he agreed to recognize him as King of
the whole of Spain, provided that British and French troops evacuated
that land. His imagination ran riot in picturing the results of this
treaty. Ferdinand was to enter Spain; Suchet, then playing a losing
game in Catalonia, was quietly to withdraw his columns through the
Pyrenees, while Wellington would have his base of operations cut from
under him, and thenceforth be a negligeable quantity.[400] These
pleasing fancies all rested on the acceptance of the new treaty by the
Spanish Regency and Cortes. But, alas for Napoleon! they at once
rejected it, declaring null