d six weeks. In that brief
period Wellington marched with 100,000 men 600 miles, passed six great
rivers, gained one historic and decisive battle, invested two
fortresses, and drove 120,000 veteran troops from Spain. There is no
more brilliant chapter in military history; and, at its close, to quote
Napier's clarion-like sentences, "the English general, emerging from
the chaos of the Peninsular struggle, stood on the summit of the
Pyrenees a recognised conqueror. From those lofty pinnacles the
clangour of his trumpets pealed clear and loud, and the splendour of
his genius appeared as a flaming beacon to warring nations."

But the great barrier of the Pyrenees stretched across Wellington's
path, a tangle of mountains sixty miles in length; a wild table-land
rough with crags, fierce with mountain torrents, shaggy with forests, a
labyrinth of savage and snow-clad hills. On either flank a great
fortress--San Sebastian and Pampeluna--was held by the French, and
Wellington was besieging both at once, and besieging them without
battering trains. The echoes of Vittoria had aroused Napoleon, then
fighting desperately on the Elbe, and ten days after Vittoria the
French Emperor, acting with the lightning-like decision characteristic
of his genius, had despatched Soult, the ablest of all his generals, to
bar the passes of the Pyrenees against Wellington. Soult travelled day
and night to the scene of his new command, gathering reinforcements on
every side as he went, and in an incredibly short period he had
assembled on the French side of the Pyrenees a great and perfectly
equipped force of 75,000 men.

Wellington could not advance and leave San Sebastian and Pampeluna on
either flank held by the enemy. Some eight separate passes pierce the
giant chain of the Pyrenees. Soult was free to choose any one of them
for his advance to the relief of either of the besieged fortresses, but
Wellington had to keep guard over the whole eight, and the force
holding each pass was almost completely isolated from its comrades.
Thus all the advantages of position were with Soult. He could pour his
whole force through one or two selected passes, brush aside the
relatively scanty force which held it, relieve San Sebastian or
Pampeluna, and, with the relieved fortress as his base, fling himself
on Wellington's flank while the allied armies were scattered over the
slopes of the Pyrenees for sixty miles. And Soult was exactly the
general to av