himself, to education. A minister in Europe finds himself, on the first day on which he commences his functions, surrounded by experienced public servants, the depositaries of official traditions. Hastings had no such help. His own reflection, his own energy, were to supply the place of all Downing Street and Somerset House. Having had no facilities for learning he was forced to teach. He had first to form himself and then to form his instruments, and this not in a single department, but in all the departments of the administration.

It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task, he was constantly trammelled by orders from home, and frequently borne down by a majority in Council. The preservation of an empire from a formidable combination of foreign enemies, the construction of a government in all its parts, were accomplished by him while every ship brought out bales of censure from his employers, and while the records of every consultation were filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. But the temper of Hastings was equal to almost any trial. It was not sweet, but it was calm. Quick and vigorous as his intellect was, the patience with which he endured the most cruel vexations till a remedy could be found resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to have been capable of resentment, bitter and long-enduring, yet his resentment so seldom hurried him into any blunder that it may be doubted whether what appeared to be revenge was anything but policy.

The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always had the full command of all the resources of one of the most fertile minds that ever existed. Accordingly no complication of perils and embarrassments could perplex him. For every difficulty he had a contrivance ready, and, whatever may be thought of the justice and humanity of some of his contrivances, it is certain that they seldom failed to serve the purpose for which they were designed.

Macaulay.

PENINSULAR WAR (1807-1813).*

THE treaty of Tilsit gave Napoleon a commanding position over the potentates of Europe, but it unmasked the war of principles, bringing England and himself, the champions of equality and privileges, into direct contact. Peace could not be while both were strong; the French emperor had only gained the choice of his future battle-field; and as the fight of Trafalgar forbade the invasion of England, he with fertile genius purposed to sap her naval and commercial strength. by barring the Continent against her manufactures. This continental system was however inoperative where not enforced by French troops. It failed in Portugal, British influence being paramount, notwithstanding the terror inspired by the emperor, because self-interest is lasting, fear momentary, wherefore Portugal was virtually an unguarded province of England, whence and from Gibraltar English goods passed into Spain. To check this traffic by force was not easy, and otherwise impossible.

Spain was to France what Portugal was to Great Britain. Friendship for England's enemy naturally followed the wellknown seizure of the Spanish frigates in the time of peace. The French cause was, therefore, popular in Spain, and the weak court subservient; yet nothing could keep the people from a profitable contraband trade—they would not yield to a foreign power what they refused to their own government. Neither was aristocratic enmity to Napoleon asleep in Spain; a proclamation issued before the battle of Jena, and hastily

* In May, 1804, Buonaparte created himself Emperor of France. The blow he had received in his attempt to cut off the communication of England with India (B. III. p. 288) was repeated at Trafalgar (1805); yet his continental successes (Austerlitz and Jena) emboldened him to plan a combination of all the European fleets. This failed ruefully for Denmark (1807). These events preceded the Peninsular War.

withdrawn after that action, indicated the true feelings of the Spanish court.

The state of affairs turned the emperor's thoughts towards the Peninsula, and a chain of strange events soon induced him to remove the Bourbons and place his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. He thought the people, sick of an effete government, would be quiescent, and his uninterrupted good fortune, matchless genius, and vast power made him disregard ulterior consequences. Hence the cravings of his military and political system, the dangerous vicinity of a Bourbon dynasty, and still more the temptation offered by a miraculous folly, outrunning even his desires, urged him to a deed which, well accepted, would have proved beneficial to the people, but enforced contrary to their wishes, was unhallowed by justice or benevolence. In an evil hour for his own greatness and the happiness of others, he commenced the fatal project. Founded in violence, attended with fraud, it spread desolation through the Peninsula, was calamitous to France, destructive to himself, and the conflict between his hardy veterans and the vindictive race he insulted was of unmitigated ferocity, for the Spaniards defended their just cause with proverbial hereditary cruelty, while the French struck a terrible balance of barbarous actions.

Napoleon, although startled at the energy of the Peninsula, then bent his whole force to the work. England lent her power in opposition, and the two leading nations of the world were thus brought into contact when both were disturbed by angry passions, eager for great events, and of astonishing dominion. The French empire, including Upper Italy, the Confederation of the Rhine, Switzerland, the Duchy of Warsaw, and the dependant States of Holland and Naples, enabled Napoleon, through the conscription, to array an army numerous as the host which followed the Persian of old, and though, like it, gathered from many nations, trained with Roman discipline, and led with Carthaginian genius.

There seemed no reason, therefore, why Napoleon should fail to bring any war to a favorable conclusion, for by a happy combination of vigor and flattery, of order, discipline, and moral excitement, adapted to the genius of his people, he had created a power seemingly resistless. And it would have been so if applied to only one great object at a time, but this the ambition of the man, or rather the force of circumstances, did not permit.

England, omnipotent on the ocean, was little regarded as a military power; her enormous debt, yearly augmenting in an accelerated ratio, a necessary consequence of anticipating the national resources and dealing in a fictitious currency, was sapping her vital strength. Merchants and manufacturers were indeed thriving from incidental circumstances, but the laboring population suffered and degenerated; pauperism, and its sure attendant, crime, were augmenting in the land, and the community splitting into classes, one rich and arrogant, the other poor and discontented, the first profiting, the second distressed by the war. Of Ireland it is unnecessary to speak; her wrongs, her misery, peculiar and unparalleled, are but too well known, too little regarded.

This comparative statement, so favorable to France, would, however, be a false criterion of relative strength with regard to the struggle in the Peninsula. A cause manifestly unjust is a heavy weight upon the operations of a general; it reconciles men to desertion, sanctifies want of zeal, furnishes pretexts for cowardice, renders hardships more irksome, dangers more obnoxious, glory less satisfactory to the mind of the soldier. The invasion of Spain, whatever its real origin, was an act of violence repugnant to the feelings of mankind; the French were burthened with a sense of its iniquity, the British exhilarated by a contrary sentiment. All the continental nations had smarted under the sword of Napoleon, yet none were crushed except Prussia; a common feeling of humiliation, the hope of

revenge, the ready subsidies of England, were therefore bonds of union among their governments stronger than treaties; France could calculate on their fears, England on their self-love. Napier.

BATTLE OF CORUNNA.

WHEN Laborde's division arrived, the French force was not less than twenty thousand men, and the Duke of Dalmatia made no idle evolutions of display. Distributing his lighter guns along the front of his position, he opened a fire from the heavy battery on his left, and instantly descended the mountain with three columns covered by clouds of skirmishers. The British piquets were driven back in disorder, and the village of Elvina was carried by the first French column, which then divided and attempted to turn Baird's right by the valley, and break his front at the same time. The second column made against the English centre, and the third attacked Hope's left at the village of Palavia Abaxo. Soult's heavier guns overmatched the English six-pounders, and swept the position to the centre; but Moore, observing that the enemy, according to his expectations, did not show any body of infantry beyond that moving up the valley to outflank Baird's right, ordered Paget to carry the whole of the reserve to where the detached regiment was posted, and, as he had before arranged with him, turn the left of the French columns and menace the great battery. Fraser he ordered to support Paget, and then, throwing back the 4th Regiment, which formed the right of Baird's division, opened a heavy fire upon the flank of the troops penetrating up the valley, while the 50th and 42nd Regiments met those breaking through Elvina. The ground about that village was intersected by stone walls and hollow roads, a severe scrambling