fame and of success. In a single brief campaign he had captured two great fortresses, overthrown a powerful army, an army commanded by a famous French marshal; he had driven Joseph in flight to Toledo, and had occupied Madrid in triumph. But in reality Wellington's position was most perilous, and the peril grew every hour more menacing. Soult was marching from Andalusia; from every province the French columns were gathering towards Valencia. If the armies of Soult, Joseph, and Suchet united, they would form a host thrice as great in scale as that under Wellington's command. An expedition from Sicily, indeed, under Lord Bentinck, was to have landed at Alicante, on the eastern coast of Spain, so as to hold Suchet engaged, and make a combination so dangerous impossible. But Bentinck chose to attempt a meaningless adventure in Italy instead, and the English Cabinet lacked energy sufficient to compel him to carry out the plan arranged. Bentinck took 15,000 good soldiers into Italy, where he accomplished nothing. Thrown into the east of Spain, he might have changed the course of history. "Lord William's decision," wrote Wellington, "is fatal to the campaign, at least at present. If he should land anywhere in Italy, he will, as usual, be obliged to re-embark, and we shall have lost a golden opportunity here."

Wellington, however, calculated on outstripping

the French armies in speed, and beating them if met in equal numbers, or evading a battle if their numbers were overwhelming, until, by discord amongst the commanders and hunger in the ranks, the French hosts were driven once more asunder.

CHAPTER XXVI

CLIMAX AND ANTI-CLIMAX

EANWHILE Burgos was the next great place

MEAR

of strength the French held in the north, and Wellington resolved to assail it. It commanded the French line of communications with the Pyrenees. Its capture would enable Wellington to cut himself loose from Lisbon as a base, and to find a new sea base on the northern coast. On September 1 Wellington left Madrid, Clausel falling back before him; on the 19th he reached Burgos. The castle of Burgos stood on the summit of an oblong conical hill, close to the base of which flows the Arlanzon. There were three concentric lines of defences. The first, running round the base of the hill, consisted of an old escarp wall, modernised and strengthened. Next, higher up the slope, came a complete field retrenchment, palisaded and formidably armed. Higher still came another girdle of earthworks. There are two crests to the hill; on one stood an ancient building called the White Church, which had been transfigured into a modern fortress; on the second and higher crest stood the ancient keep of the castle, turned

..

by the skill of the French engineers into a heavy casemented work called the Napoleon battery.

The fire of the Napoleon battery commanded all the lower lines of defence save to the north, where the slope was so sharp that the guns of the castle could not be depressed sufficiently to cover them. Three hundred yards from this face rose the hill of San Michael, held by a powerful hornwork, the front scarp of which, hard, slippery, and steep-angled, rose to a height of twenty-five feet, and was covered by a counter-scarp ten feet deep. Wellington's plan was to carry by storm the hornwork on San Michael, thence by sap and escalade to break through the successive girdles of defence, and storm the castle.

Napier says that Burgos was "a small fortress, strong in nothing but the skill and bravery of its defenders." Jones, who took part as an engineer in the attack, says that it "would only rank as a very insignificant fortress when opposed to the efforts of a good army." And yet Burgos represents one of Wellington's rare failures. The siege was pushed for thirty-three days, five assaults were delivered, the besiegers suffered a loss of more than 2000 men, and then the siege was abandoned! What can explain such a failure? In part, no doubt, the failure was due to the skill and courage with which the place was defended. Dubreton, its commander, was a soldier of a very fine type. He had all Philippon's genius for defence, and added to it a fiery valour in