ttling with
superior numbers, the British leader at last revealed the full majesty
of his powers now that the omens were favourable. In six weeks he
marched more than five hundred miles, crossed six rivers, and, using
the Navarrese revolt as the anvil, dealt the hammer-stroke of
Vittoria. It cost Napoleon 151 pieces of cannon, nearly all the stores
piled up for his Peninsular campaigns--and Spain itself.[320]

As for Joseph, he left his carriage and fled on horseback towards
France, reaching St. Jean de Luz "with only a napoleon left." He there
also assured his queen that he had always preferred a private station
to the grandeur and agitations of public life.[321] This, indeed, was
one of the many weak points of his brother's Spanish policy. It rested
on the shoulders of an amiable man who was better suited to the ease
of Naples than to the Herculean toils of Madrid. Napoleon now saw the
magnitude of his error. On July 1st he bade Soult leave Dresden at
once for Paris. There he was to call on Clarke, with him repair to
Cambaceres; and, as Lieutenant-General, take steps to re-establish the
Emperor's affairs in Spain. A Regency was to govern in place of
Joseph, who was ordered to remain, according to the state of affairs,
either at Burgos(!) or St. Sebastian or Bayonne.

"All the follies in Spain" (he wrote to Cambaceres on that day)
"are due to the mistaken consideration I have shown the King, who
not only does not know how to command, but does not even know his
own value enough to leave the military command alone."

And to Savary he wrote two days later:

"It is hard to imagine anything so inconceivable as what is now
going on in Spain. The King could have collected 100,000 picked
men: _they might have beaten the whole of England_."

Reflection, however, showed him that the fault was his own; that if,
as had occurred to him when he left Paris, he had intrusted the
supreme command in Spain to Soult, the disaster would never have
happened.[322] His belief in Soult's capacity was justified by the
last events of the Peninsular War. But neither his splendid rally of
the scattered French forces, nor the skilful movements of Clausel and
Suchet, nor the stubborn defence of Pamplona and San Sebastian, could
now save the French cause. The sole result of these last operations
was to restore the lustre of the French arms and to keep 150,000 men
in Spain when the scales of war were wavering in the pl