The concentration on which Napoleon laid such stress would doubtless have proved a most effective step had the French forces on the Douro been marshalled by an able leader.  But here, again, the situation had been fatally compromised by the recall of the ablest of the French commanders in Spain.  Wellington afterwards said that Soult was second only to Massena among the French Marshals pitted against him.  He had some defects.  “He did not quite understand a field of battle:  he was an excellent tactician, knew very well how to bring his troops up to the field, but not so well how to use them when he had brought them up."[313] But the fact remains that, with the exception of his Oporto failure, Soult came with credit, if not glory, out of every campaign waged against Wellington.  Yet he was now recalled.

Indeed, this vain and ambitious man had mortally offended King Joseph.  After Salamanca he had treated him with gross disrespect.  Not only did he, at first, refuse to move from Andalusia, but he secretly revealed to six French generals his fears that Joseph was betraying the French cause by treating with the Spanish national government at Cadiz.  He even warned Clarke of the King’s supposed intentions, in a letter which by chance fell into Joseph’s hands.[314] The hot blood of the Bonapartes boiled at this underhand dealing, and he at once despatched Colonel Desprez to Napoleon to demand Soult’s instant recall.  The Emperor, who was then at Moscow, temporized.  Perhaps he was not sorry to have in Spain so vigilant an informer; and he made the guarded reply that Soult’s suspicions did not much surprise him, that they were shared by many other French generals, who thought King Joseph preferred Spain to France, and that he could not recall Soult, as he had “the only military head in Spain.”  The threatening war-cloud in Central Europe led Napoleon to change his resolve.  Soult was recalled, but not disgraced, and, after the death of Bessieres, he received the command of the Imperial Guard.

The commander who now bore the brunt of responsibility was Jourdan, who acted as major-general at the King’s side, a post which he had held once before, but had forfeited owing to his blunders in the summer of 1809.  The victor of Fleurus was now fifty-one years of age, and his failing health quite unfitted him for the Herculean tasks of guiding refractory generals, and of propping up a tottering monarchy.  For Jourdan’s talents Napoleon had expressed but scanty esteem, whereas on many occasions he extolled the abilities of Suchet, who was now holding down Valencia and Catalonia.  Certainly Suchet’s tenacity and administrative skill rendered his stay in those rich provinces highly desirable.  But the best talent was surely needed on Wellington’s line of advance, namely, at Valladolid.  To the shortcomings and mishaps of Joseph and Jourdan in that quarter may be chiefly ascribed the collapse of the French power.