After a brief stay in Madrid, he turned to crush Sir John Moore. That brave soldier, relying on the empty promises of the patriots, had ventured into the heart of Leon with a British force of 26,000 men. If he could not save Madrid, he could at least postpone a French conquest of the south. In this he succeeded; his chivalrous daring drew on him the chief strength of the invaders; and when hopelessly outnumbered he beat a lion-like retreat to Corunna. There he turned and dealt the French a blow that closed his own career with glory and gained time for his men to embark in safety.
While the red-coats saw the snowy heights of Galicia fade into the sky, Napoleon was spurring back to the Pyrenees. He had received news that portended war with Austria; and, cherishing the strange belief that Spain was conquered, he rushed back to Paris to confront the Hapsburg Power. But Spain was not conquered. Scattered her armies were in the open, and even brave Saragossa fell in glorious ruins under Lannes' persistent attacks. But the patriots fiercely rallied in the mountains, and Napoleon was to find out the truth of the Roman historian's saying: "In no land does the character of the people and the nature of the country help to repair disasters more readily than in Spain."
There was another reason for Napoleon's sudden return. Rumours had reached him as to the _rapprochement_ of those usually envious rivals, Talleyrand and Fouché, who now walked arm in arm, held secret conclaves, and seemed to have some understanding with Murat. Were they plotting to bring this ambitious man and his still more ambitious and vindictive consort from the despised throne at Naples to seize on power at Paris while the Emperor was engulfed in the Spanish quagmire? A story ran that Fouché had relays of horses ready between Naples and Paris for this enterprise.[206] But where Fouché and Talleyrand are concerned, truth lurks at the bottom of an unfathomable well.
All that we know for certain is that Napoleon flew back to Paris in a towering rage, and that, after sharply rebuking Fouché, he subjected the Prince of Benevento to a violent tirade: just as he (Talleyrand) had first advised the death of the Duc d'Enghien and then turned that event to his sovereign's discredit, so now, after counselling the overthrow of the Spanish dynasty, he was making the same underhand use of the miscarriage of that enterprise. The Grand Chamberlain stood as if unmoved until the storm swept by, and then coldly remarked to the astonished circle: "What a pity that so great a man has been so badly brought up." Nevertheless, the insult rankled deep in his being, there to be nursed for five years, and then in the fullness of time to dart forth with a snake-like revenge. In 1814 and 1815 men saw that not the least serious result of Napoleon's Spanish policy was the envenoming of his relations with the two cleverest of living Frenchmen.