History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 5

CHAPTER I.

[Sidenote: 1812.]

Great and surprising as the winter campaign had been, its importance was not understood, and therefore not duly appreciated by the English ministers. But the French generals saw with anxiety that lord Wellington, having snapped the heavy links of the chain which bound him to Lisbon, had acquired new bases of operation on the Guadiana, the Agueda, a...