On the one hand, by sacrificing three or four millions of francs from the French treasury, he would have been able to support his troops without requisitions, would have maintained good order and discipline in his armies, and by the distribution of this money among a people poor and interested, he would have made many partisans.  He could then have offered them, with a firm and just hand, the olive or the sword.  But then the drafts upon the French treasury, had the war been a protracted one, would have been enormous for the support of an army of 200,000 men in Spain.  Moreover, the hostile and insurrectionary state of the local authorities rendered regular and legal requisitions almost impossible; and the want of navigable rivers, good roads, and suitable transport, rendered problematical the possibility of moving a sufficient quantity of stores in an insurrectionary country.  Besides, no great detachments could have been made to regulate the administration of the provinces, or to pursue the insurgent corps into the fastnesses of the mountains.  In fine, by this system, he would have effected a military occupation of Spain without its subjugation.

On the other hand, by marching rapidly against all organized masses, living from day to day upon the local resources of the country, as he had done in Italy, sparing his reserves for the occupation and pacification of the conquered provinces; this mode promised more prompt and decisive results than the other.  Napoleon, therefore, determined to adopt it for his active masses, employing the system of magazines and regular requisitions so far as practicable.  In favorable parts of the country, Soult and Souchet, with smaller armies, succeeded in obtaining in this way regular supplies for a considerable length of time, but the others lived mainly by forced requisitions levied as necessity required.  This sometimes gave place to great excesses, but these were principally the faults of subordinate officers who tolerated them, rather than of Napoleon, who punished such breaches of discipline, when they were known to him, with great severity.  He afterwards declared that, “had he succeeded he would have indemnified the great mass of the Spanish people for their losses, by the sale of the hoarded wealth of the clergy, which would have rendered the church less powerful, and caused a more just division of property; thus the evil of the war would have been forgotten in the happy triumph of public and private interest over the interest of an ambitious and exclusive clergy.”

The following maxims on subsistence have the sanction of the best military writers: 

1st.  Regular magazines should be formed, so far as practicable, for the supplies of an army; the levying of requisitions being resorted to only where the nature of the war, and the requisite rapidity of marches, render these absolutely necessary to success.

2d.  Depots should be formed in places strengthened by nature or art, defended by small corps, or garrisons, and situated in positions least liable to attack.