ne on November third, had it announced that there were between
three and four hundred thousand! With such a numerous and efficient
fighting force, there was no need of exaggeration. To oppose it Blake
had thirty-two thousand Spaniards at Valmaseda as the left wing of the
Spanish army, and La Romana, having disembarked at Santander, soon
arrived with eight thousand more; the center, twenty-five thousand
strong, lay between Calahorra and Tudela under Castanos; the right
seventeen thousand in number, was at and near Saragossa under Palafox.
Before Barcelona was Vives, with twenty thousand, and near Burgos was
a reserve of eighteen thousand under Belvedere--about a hundred and
twenty thousand men, all told. In addition to this regular army, there
was another irregular one of vast but vague dimensions, consisting of
the entire nation.

[Illustration: Map of the Spanish Campaign.]

Amid the exciting cares of Erfurt, Napoleon had still found time to
study the military situation in Spain with minuteness, and he finally
wrote to Joseph that he was coming in person to end the war by one
skilful stroke. This hope was founded on the position held by Blake,
advanced as it was beyond the Spanish line, and remote enough to be
exposed. By a swift blow that general's army might therefore be cut
off from its support, and annihilated; the center and right would
successively meet the same fate. This plan had been jeopardized by the
rashness of Lefebvre. On October thirty-first Blake had advanced from
Durango for an attack. He had not only been routed, but in the heat of
victory had been thrown far back to Valmaseda by the over-zealous
French general. Although the Emperor had hoped for something quite
different, having given orders to draw him forward toward Biscay and
Navarre, he still did not abandon his strategic plan. The Spaniards
had grown warlike in a day, but their victories had intoxicated
them, and of military science they had only what they had learned by
experience. There was no harmony among the generals--not even a
preconcerted plan of operation. Accordingly the mass of the French
army was directed toward Burgos to cut off and overwhelm Blake, while
two corps under Soult were directed to intercept his retreat.

Burgos fell almost without opposition on November tenth; Blake was
defeated the next day at Espinosa, and his scattered columns, turned
but not captured by Soult, fled into Asturias, where they joined the
force of La