Their misfortunes did not end here.  In the north-east the hardy Catalans had risen against the invaders, and by sheer pluck and audacity cooped them up in their ill-gotten strongholds of Barcelona and Figueras.  The men of Arragon, too, never backward in upholding their ancient liberties, rallied to defend their capital Saragossa.  Their rage was increased by the arrival of Palafox, who had escaped in disguise from the suite of Ferdinand at Bayonne, and brought news of the treachery there perpetrated.  Beaten outside their ancient city, and unable to hold its crumbling walls against the French cannon and columns of assault, the defenders yet fiercely turned to bay amidst its narrow lanes and massive monasteries.  There a novel warfare was waged.  From street to street and house to house the fight eddied for days, the Arragonese opposing to French valour the stubborn devotion ever shown by the peoples of the peninsula in defence of their walled cities, and an enthusiasm kindled by the zeal of their monks and the heroism of the Maid of Saragossa.  Finally, on August 10th, the noble city shook off the grip of the 15,000 assailants, who fell back to join Joseph’s forces higher up the Ebro.

Even now the Emperor did not fully realize the serious nature of the war that was beginning.  Despite Savary’s warnings of the dangers to be faced in Spain, he persisted in thinking of it as an ordinary war that could be ended by good strategy and a few victories.  He censured Joseph and Savary for giving up the line of the Upper Douro:  he blamed them next for the evacuation of Tudela, and summed up the situation by stating that “all the Spanish forces are not able to overthrow 25,000 French in a reasonable position”—­adding, with stinging satire:  “In war men are nothing:  it is a man who is everything.”

When, at the close of August, Napoleon penned these memorable words in his palace of St. Cloud, he knew not that a man had arrived on the scene of action.  At the beginning of that month, Sir Arthur Wellesley with a British force of 12,300 men landed at the mouth of the River Mondego, and, aided by Portuguese irregulars, began his march on Lisbon.  This is not the place for a review of the character and career of our great warrior:  in truth, a volume would be too short for the task.  With fine poetic insight, Lord Tennyson has noted in his funeral Ode the qualities that enabled him to overcome the unexampled difficulties caused by our own incompetent Government and by jealous, exacting, and slipshod allies: 

  “Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood,
  The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute,
  Whole in himself, a common good.”