Chandler states, the British army had been "... compelled to conduct a precipitate retreat and evacuate by sea." Also, "Madrid and the Northern half of Spain were under occupation by French troops". Fremont-Barnes, in "The Napoleonic Wars: The Peninsular War 1807–1814", writes that the then British Foreign Secretary Canning: " ... privately condemned Moore's failed campaign in increasingly stronger terms," while in public he " ... in the great British tradition of characterizing defeat as victory, insisted that although Moore's army had been pushed out of Spain his triumph at the battle of Corunna had left 'fresh laurels blooming upon our brows'".