strated in two sentences of his address to the citizens of Madrid.
"The Bourbons," he said, "can no longer reign in Europe," and "No power
under the influence of England can exist on the continent". The
counter-proclamations of Spanish juntas were more prolix and equally
arrogant, but one of them reveals the secret of national strength when
it asserts that "a whole people is more powerful than disciplined
armies". The British estimate of Napoleon's Spanish policy was tersely
expressed by the Marquis Wellesley in the house of lords, "To him force
and fraud were alike; force, that would stoop to all the base artifices
of fraud; and fraud, that would come armed with all the fierce violence
of force".

[Pageheading: _WELLESLEY TAKES COMMAND._]

For three months after the battle of Coruna, the Peninsular war, as
regards the action of Great Britain, was all but suspended. Two days
before that battle, a formal treaty of peace and alliance between Great
Britain and the Spanish junta, which had withdrawn to Seville, was
signed at London. Sir John Cradock was in command of the British troops
at Lisbon, and took up a defensive position there, with reinforcements
from Cadiz, awaiting the approach of Soult, who had captured Oporto by
storm, and of Victor, who was in the valley of the Tagus. At the request
of the Portuguese, Beresford had been sent out to organise and command
their army. Early in 1809 the Spaniards were defeated with great
slaughter at Ucles, Ciudad Real, and Medellin; Zaragoza was taken after
another siege, and still more obstinate defence; and the national cause
seemed more desperate than ever. On April 2, however, Sir Arthur
Wellesley, who had returned home after the convention of Cintra, was
appointed to the command-in-chief of our forces in the Peninsula.
Before leaving England, he left with the ministers a memorandum on the
conduct of the war which, viewed by the light of later events, must be
accounted a masterpiece of foresight and sagacity. When it was laid
before George III., his natural shrewdness at once discerned its true
value, and he desired its author to be informed of the strong impression
which it had produced on his mind.

Wellesley, indeed, could not estimate beforehand the vast numerical
superiority of the French while the rest of Europe was at peace, or the
impotent vacillations of Spanish juntas, or the "mulish obstinacy" of
Spanish generals, which so often wrecked his plans and spoiled his