Chapter XXIX: Section XXI: Chapter V (3)

[572] _Dispatches_, vii. p. 20, to Craufurd.

[573] Ibid., p. 36, to Lord Liverpool.

Here, then, we leave Masséna and his army, cantoned in the space between the Rio Mayor and the Zezere, still destitute of news from France, and still entirely ignorant whether or no any endeavour was being made to relieve them. Of their further doings during the three months that ended on March 1, 1811, we shall tell elsewhere. Suffice it to say that, despite many dangers and risks, Wellington’s scheme of starvation was played out to the end, and achieved complete success. Of the privation and losses that the French suffered, and the atrocities that they committed, of the difficulties of the British Commander-in-Chief--with an obstinate enemy still in front of him, a factious Regency and a half-starved population behind him in Lisbon, and a disquieting prospect that Soult might take a hand in the game--the fourth volume of this work will give full details.

SECTION XXII

END OF THE YEAR 1810