Note 278 — SECTION IV: CHAPTER V

This letter, written to Castlereagh from Zambujal (Well. Disp., iv. 127-32), is one of the most conclusive proofs of Wellesley’s military genius. He valued the Spanish armies at their true force. He foresaw that Bonaparte would make ‘the driving of the leopard into the sea’ a point of honour, and would send corps on corps into Spain in order to secure it. He even noted that the affairs of Central Europe, ‘of which I have no knowledge whatever,’ would be the only possible reason that might prevent the Emperor from inundating the Peninsula with his legions. He saw that the presence of the British in Leon would be the one thing that would keep the French from subduing Central Spain: a disaster in the Douro valley was the nightmare of the Emperor, as half a dozen of his dispatches show. The first news that Moore was near Valladolid drew Napoleon from Madrid in wild haste, and deferred for six months the conquest of the valley of the Guadiana.