chapter X

that nothing of this kind happened: Soult hung on to Andalusia for a month longer than Wellington or any one else deemed probable: he only left Granada on September 17th, and when he did move on Valencia he took the bad inland roads by Huescar, Calasparra, and Hellin, leaving Murcia and Cartagena and the whole sea-coast undisturbed. The reason, as has been already pointed out, was the outbreak of yellow fever at Cartagena, which caused the Duke of Dalmatia so much concern that he preferred to keep away from the infection, even at the cost of taking inferior and circuitous roads.

For the whole of September, therefore, Suchet on the one side and Maitland and the Spaniards on the other, were waiting on Soult: in the expectation of his early arrival both sides kept quiet. Thus tamely ended the first campaign of the Anglo-Sicilian army, on whose efforts Wellington had so much counted. And its later operations, as we shall presently see, were to be wholly in keeping with its unlucky start.

SECTION XXXIII: