d that any scarcity of provisions could be
pleaded in excuse of it.

[Pageheading: _MILITARY REFORMS._]

By the middle of November the campaign ended, and Wellington's
headquarters were at Ciudad Rodrigo. For the present, Spain was still
dominated by the French, but its southern provinces were clear of the
invaders, and elsewhere the tide was already on the turn. The Russian
war cast its shadow beforehand on the Spanish peninsula; the French
army was constantly weakened in numbers and still more in quality, as
conscripts were substituted for veterans, and inferior generals
succeeded to high commands; the Portuguese and Spanish contingents of
the British army were stronger and better disciplined. Wellington
himself, tenacious of his purpose as ever, received heartier support
from home, where Liverpool had become prime minister in June, and had
been succeeded by Bathurst as secretary for war and the colonies; and
though the Marquis Wellesley, no longer in the government, complained
that his brother's operations had been crippled by ministerial apathy,
the Peninsular war, on the eve of its completion, was adopted with pride
and sympathy by the nation.

The last chapter of the Peninsular war opens with the operations
culminating in the battle of Vitoria, and closes with the battle of
Toulouse. Having accepted the office of generalissimo of the Spanish
armies, Wellington repaired to Cadiz during the winter of 1812-13, and
formed the lowest estimate of the make-shift government there carried on
under the dual control of the cortes and the regency. He failed to
obtain a reform of this system, but succeeded in effecting a
reorganisation of the Spanish army, to be in future under his own
command. He next addressed himself, with the aid of Beresford and the
British minister at Lisbon, to amend the monstrous abuses, civil and
military, of Portuguese administration. By the beginning of May, 1813, a
great improvement was visible in the equipment and _moral_ of the
Spanish and Portuguese troops; a vigorous insurrection against the
French occupation had broken out in the province of Biscay, endangering
the great road into Spain; and an Anglo-Sicilian army of 16,000 men,
under Sir John Murray, had repulsed Suchet, hitherto undefeated, at
Castalla on the Valencian coast, without, however, completing their
victory, or capturing any of the French guns in the narrow defile by
which the enemy fled. The want of unity in the command of the