enable it
to act together as a body; and abandons all those who are entitled to
its protection, but add to its weight and impede its progress;[4] it
must be able to march by roads through which it cannot be followed, with
any prospect of being overtaken by an army which has not made the same
sacrifice.

[Footnote 4: Alluding to the rapidity of the French retreat.]

_Dispatch, May 18, 1809._

* * * * *

I have long been of opinion that a British army could bear neither
success nor failure.[5]

[Footnote 5: Referring to their habits of plunder.]

_Dispatch, May 31, 1809._

* * * * *

_Inefficiency of Spanish Officers._

Nothing can be worse than the officers of the Spanish army, and it is
extraordinary that when a nation has devoted itself to war, as this
nation has by the measures which it has adopted in the last two years,
so little progress has been made in any one branch of the military
profession by any individual, and that the business of an army should be
so little understood. They are really children in the art of war, and I
cannot say they do anything as it ought to be done, with the exception
of running away, and assembling again in a state of nature.

_Dispatch, Aug. 1809._

* * * * *

_Terrorism and Force, not Enthusiasm, enabled the French Revolutionary
Armies to conquer._

People are very apt to believe that enthusiasm carried the French
through their revolution, and was the parent of those exertions which
have nearly conquered the world; but if the subject is nicely examined,
it will be found that enthusiasm was the name only, but that force was
the instrument which brought forward those great resources under the
system of terror which first stopped the allies; and that a perseverance
in the same system of applying every individual and every description of
property to the service of the army, by force, has since conquered
Europe.

_Dispatch, Aug. 25, 1809._

_The Spaniards and Portuguese want the true spirit of Soldiers._

We are mistaken if we believe that what these Portuguese and Spanish
armies require is discipline, properly so called. They want the habits
and spirit of soldiers--the habits of command on one side, and of
obedience on the other--mutual confidence between officers and men; and
above all, a determination in superiors to obey the spirit of the orders
they receive, let what wil