danger their being thrown into disorder”. (General Anne Savary, French General and Diplomat) This could show Napoleon’s underestimation of the Spanish due to his belief in French “political and cultural superiority” he was “inclined to regard Belgians, Dutchmen, Germans, Italians and Spaniards alike as backward, superstitious, priest-ridden and uncouth” ( Popular Resistance in Napoleonic Europe – By Charles Esdaile) which in turn lead him to undersupply and already weak army in the peninsular. In 1812 Marshall Marmont even complained to the emperor that “we have not 4 day’s food in any of our magazines, we have no transport, we cannot draw requisitions from the most wretched village without sending thither a foraging party of 200 strong; to live from day to day, we have to scatter detachments to vast distances, and always to be on the move … Lord Wellington is quite aware that I have no magazines…” Wellington would later recognise that “It is certainly astonishing that the enemy [French] have been able to remain in this country so long” despite their lack of food, weapons and morale. Although, the Spanish Ulcer cannot be credited as the sole source of Napoleon’s ultimate downfall in 1815 as Brenden Simms eludes to when he states that “The Grande armee was not bled to death by a thousand cuts, worn down by British sponsored guerrillas (in Spain) or starved into submission by the Royal Navy: it was totally destroyed at great cost in Russia in 1812” – Brendan Simms, Napoleon a political life- This argument has much validity to it as we know that Napoleon lost an estimated half a million men, thousands of horses and one thousand cannons in a single failed campaign. This loss is arguably one of the main reasons for the downfall of Napoleon at Waterloo, Napoleon himself recognised that “In most battles the Guard artillery is the deciding factor…” Previously “… French gunners dominated Europe’s battlefields in the 19th century because of their aggressive tactics, imaginative leaders and their raw courage” and so wit>