Note 41 — SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER II

This dispatch of March 29 (Nap. Corresp., no. 17,531), which must have reached Soult about the end of April, when Masséna had long retired to Spain, told him that he should have withdrawn all the 4th Corps from Granada save the six Polish battalions, and have drawn in Godinot’s brigade from Cordova, i. e. have abandoned the whole eastern half of Andalusia, and have tried to hold nothing but the siege lines of Cadiz and the city of Seville. But this was ‘wisdom after the event.’ In December Napoleon was harping upon a diversion with 10,000 men to Montalvão and Villaflor, not ordering the evacuation of the greater part of Andalusia.