had many good qualities:  he was a good husband and father, and his kindly manners endeared him to the Viennese even in the midst of defeat.  But he was capricious and shortsighted; anything outside of the well-worn ruts of routine vexed and alarmed him; and it is a supreme proof of the greatness and courage of his reforming Minister, Stadion, that his innovations should have been tolerated for so long.  Now that disasters were shaking his throne he began to suspect the reformer; and Stadion confessed to the publicist, Gentz, that it was impossible to reckon on the Emperor for a quarter of an hour together, unless one stayed by him all the twenty-four hours.—­“After a great defeat, he will take himself off at once and will calmly commend us to God.”—­This was what now happened.  Another failure at Znaim so daunted the Archduke that he sued for an armistice (July 12th).  For this there was some excuse.  The latest news both from Spain and Prussia inspired the hope that, if time were gained, important diversions might be made in both quarters.

As we have seen, Sir Arthur Wellesley opened the campaign with a brilliant success, and then prepared to strike at the heart of the French power.  The memorable campaign of Talavera was the result.  Relying on promises of aid from the Spanish Junta and from their cross-grained commander, Cuesta, he led a small British force up the valley of the Tagus to seize Madrid, while the chief French armies were engaged in distant provinces.  In one sense he achieved his aim.  He compelled the enemy to loose their hold on those provinces and concentrate to save the capital.  And before they fully effected their concentration, he gave battle to King Joseph and Marshals Jourdan and Victor at Talavera (July 28th).  Skilfully posting the Spaniards behind intrenchments and in gardens where their raw levies could fight with every advantage, he extended his thin red lines—­he had only 17,000 British troops—­along a ridge stretching up to a plateau that dominated the broken ground north of the town.  On that hill Wellesley planted his left:  and all the efforts of Victor to turn that wing or to break it by charges across the intervening ravine were bloodily beaten off.

The fierce heat served but to kindle French and British to greater fury.  Finally, the dashing charge of our 23rd dragoons and the irresistible advance of the 48th regiment of foot overthrew the enemy’s centre; and as the day waned, the 30,000 French retired, with a loss of 17 cannon and of 7,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners.  Had the other Spanish armies now offered the support which Wellesley expected, he would doubtless have seized Madrid.  He had written three days before Talavera:  “With or without a battle we shall be at Madrid soon.”  But his allies now failed him utterly:  they did not hold the mountain passes which confronted Soult in his march from Salamanca into the valley of the Tagus; and they left the British forces half starving.—­“We