Note 443 — SECTION XXVI: CHAPTER III

Pelet thinks that ‘l’excessive supériorité du général anglais lui donnait le moyen de tout entreprendre. Il s’est montré, dans cette campagne, et même ailleurs, fort étranger à la stratégie comme à la tactique.’ He concludes that Wellington with his superior numbers should have attacked the French centre or Reynier! He was ‘plus fort des deux cinquièmes que les Français.’ (Appendice sur la Guerre d’Espagne, pp. 340-2.) Fririon states as an incontestable fact that the French cavalry was inferior to the English in numbers (Journal historique de la Campagne de Portugal, p. 207). Marbot, on the other hand, thinks that Wellington was over rash in fighting at all on such a position (Mémoires, ii. 460), coming to much the same conclusion as Napier. Belmas’s arguments, like those of Pelet, are all vitiated by his giving Wellington 45,000 men—9,000 more than he actually possessed. Delagrave thinks, like Pelet, that Wellington showed ‘timidity which passed into cowardice.’ Yet he allows that Masséna had 41,000 infantry and cavalry, without counting gunners or sappers, and Wellington only 40,000 (p. 239).