the arrival of so able a
lieutenant as Graham from Cadiz, and by the brilliant success of Hill
against a detached body of Marmont's army south of the Tagus. There were
other tendencies also secretly working in favour of the British and
their allies. Joseph Bonaparte, as King of Spain, openly protested
against the extortions which he was enjoined to practise on his
subjects, and went so far as to resign his crown at Paris, though he was
induced to resume it. Again the broken armies of the Spanish had
reappeared in the form of guerilla bands under leaders such as Mina;
they could not be dispersed, since they had no cohesion, and were more
formidable through their extreme mobility than organised battalions.
Above all, the domination of France over Europe was already undermined
and tottering invisibly to its fall. The Tsar Alexander had, as we have
seen, been deeply offended by the preference of an Austrian to a Russian
princess, as the consort of Napoleon, and still more by his imperious
annexation of Oldenburg. Sweden, following the example of Russia, had
begun to rebel against the continental system. A series of internal
reforms had aroused a national spirit, and stealthily created the basis
of a national army in Prussia, and the intense hostility of all North
Germany to France was thinly disguised by the unwilling servility of the
Prussian court. Napoleon, who seldom laboured under the illusions
propagated by his own manifestoes and bulletins, well knew what he was
doing when, in August, 1811, he allowed himself to burst into a storm of
indignation against the Russian ambassador at the Tuileries. From that
moment he clearly premeditated a rupture with Russia, and soon he
withdrew 60,000 of his best troops from Spain, to be employed in that
fatal enterprise of 1812 which proved to be his doom.

[Pageheading: _CAPTURE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO AND BADAJOZ._]

The winter of 1811-12 was spent by Wellington in preparing, with the
utmost secrecy, for the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, as the
first steps in an offensive campaign. In January, 1812, he struck a
sudden blow against the former, and captured it by an assault, attended
with great carnage, on the 19th of that month. In this furious conflict,
lasting but half an hour, Craufurd, the renowned leader of the light
division, fell mortally wounded. Shameful excesses sullied the glory of
a splendid exploit. Marmont immediately drew in his troops towards
Salamanca, leaving S