chastise this disposition by great severities, and even by burning one or two of the villages.

The insurgent army was now entirely in Spain; and finding that Rego passed the frontier in pursuit of them, they retreated upon Leon. It was hoped that Morillo, with the Spanish army of the north, might here have intercepted them; but that lukewarm champion of liberty did not oppose

any obstacle to their progress. Amarante, therefore, proceeded towards Burgos, where he could come into contact with the French army; for, in order to exhibit a connected view of this campaign, we have anticipated somewhat on the order of time. Rego, finding the enemy beyond his reach, withdrew within the Portuguese frontier.

under the influence of alarm caused by the approach of Bessieres to Madrid, had been invested with the command of that capital, which he continued to hold, in combination with that of the Castiles, and of all the centre of Spain. In order to obtain the services of Ballasteros, the Cortes had dispensed in his favour with a law, more plausible than truly wise, requiring that none of their members should hold an office under the crown. He was now invested with the command of the important eastern provinces of Arragon, Valencia, and Murcia. Morillo, ever since the affair of the guards, had been the object of deep suspicion to the constitutional party. His conduct on that occasion had even been unfavourably reported on by a committee of the Cortes; and the clamour against him had risen so high, that he was induced to quit Madrid, and to remain for some time in concealment. Having, however, reappeared, and declared his readiness, in the great exigency of his country, to forget whatever wrongs he might have suffered from it, and to devote his exertions to its deliverance, the sense of his military talents hushed former suspicion, and he was appointed to the command of the north of Spain, including Galicia, Asturias, Leon, and the bordering part of Old Castile. Villacampa, meantime, was employed in Andalusia, to organize an army of reserve, whose services, it was to be feared, would at no distant period be required in a theatre, little removed from that

of its formation.

The armies were thus placed under the first military names which Spain could boast; yet were there circumstances attending them which might have induced the government to pause. One had the reputation of being closely attached to the cause of royalty, the other of being destitute of every form of faith or honour. Now the govern

ment, being ready to cede Madrid to the enemy, knew that this was a war which must begin, at least, with retreat and disaster-a war which must probe to the core the faith of all their adherents. None could stand such a test who were not wholly committed and devoted to the cause. Assurance of fidelity in such circumstances was more essential than talent; and to secure the former, the latter, to a certain extent, ought to have been sacrificed.

In regard to the plan of campaign, we clearly conceive it to be so far wise, as it was founded on the principle of avoiding immediate encounter in the field. The reproaches thrown upon the Spaniards on this ground are rash and senseless. They had not numbers sufficient, which was their grievous fault; but however numerous their levies had been, they could never have had discipline sufficient to give them any chance in a general battle with the first troops in Europe. A defensive and dilatory warfare, in the first instance, was their only hope. The plan formed did not want ingenuity. The two corps of Morillo and Ballasteros were to operate on the flanks of the enemy, having the one Galicia, and the other Arragon, to retreat upon when hard pressed. By harassing attacks, by successive advances and retreats, they might, it was hoped, occupy the attention of the French, and render it dangerous for them to advance deep into the interior. The plan would have been good, had there been force sufficient to execute it; but when these two generals had between them scarcely 20,000 men, to oppose 60 or 70,000, it was easy for the French to leave troops sufficient to watch, and even to drive back these flanking corps; while they retained, at the same time, a great army to march into the interior, defended only by a handful of undisciplined levies.

In such circumstances, the flower of the army ought to have covered the centre of Spain and the seat of government, and to have been ready to fall back with it upon some entrenched and impregnable position. Mina and his troops, the best and surest general, and the bravest army, ought to have been called to this post. Catalonia was now only a secondary field, which must, and did follow the fate of the main theatre of war.

The chief activity displayed by the Spanish government, was in provisioning and putting in a state of defence the frontier fortresses; on the west Pampeluna, St Sebastian, and Santona; on the east Figueras, Barcelona, Tarragona, Lerida, and Urgel. Unless in the case of the great cities, this did not prove of much use, as might perhaps have been foreseen. Under the present, perhaps too improved system of offensive warfare, detached forts are no longer considered sufficient to stay the march of an army. They require, merely, that a certain amount of troops be left to watch them. The French could much more easily spare these corps of observation, than the Spaniards could spare the garrisons. This service absorbed all their best troops, and left scarcely the vestige of an army for active service in the field. The only effective fortification would have been to have converted the great cities, capitals of provinces, at least into strong entrenched camps, to have put all their population under arms, and defended them' a la Saragosse. These were the prime seats of liberalism; and if these did not resist, nothing else in Spain would. Several months were allowed, which were much more than Palafox had to prepare his glorious defence. The idea of resisting and expelling the French by guerillas, was of all others the most illusory. The guerillas, in the war of independence, were brave

and honourable to the nation; they harassed the enemy much; but they never prevented him from penetrating and occupying every part of the peninsula; they never dislodged him from any quarter of it, and he never would have been dislodged, but for the operations of the Anglo-Portuguese regular army. At the present moment there were peculiar grounds for hoping little from this description of force. They consisted of the peasantry, animated, and in a great measure led by the priests; but at this moment both priests and peasantry were almost, in one mass, armed and arrayed against the existing government of Spain.

On the 15th March, the nominal generalissimo took his departure from Paris. He proceeded first to Toulouse, and thence to Perpignan, whence he might "dart his experienced eye" upon the whole military line extending along the Pyrenees. Just, however, as he was in act to strike, an alarm arose as to the soundness of the instrument with which the blow was to be given. There had been formed, on the Spanish frontier, corps of French exiles, obliged to abandon their coun try on account of political opinions, and attempts to subvert the existing dynasty. This was a step which Spain, from the moment that France placed herself in a state of declared hostility, was fully entitled to take; though we cannot but somewhat wonder that she should have lent herself to the support of the name and house of Napoleon. Through their efforts it was generally believed that a plot had been formed, having extensive ramifica tions, and embracing several officers of high rank. It was discovered, however, and its ringleader, a General Piat, was arrested, with two companions, on his way from Bayonne to Bourdeaux. The plot being thus crushed in the bud, the French go

vernment chose absolutely to deny that it had ever existed; and as no one connected with the army could, or durst, make any statement in contradiction, an impenetrable mystery has continued to hang over the subject. What tended to confirm the prevailing rumour, was the sudden manner in which the Duke of Belluno (Victor) quitted Paris and the war department, and set out professedly to take the place of major-general of the army, that is, of real commander-inchief; instead of Guilleminot, who then held that office. The end of this transaction was more singular than the beginning. Scarcely had Belluno reached the army, than it was announced that he was instantly to return, and leave Guilleminot still acting as major-general. The government jour nals endeavoured to solve so sudden a return, by representing the whole excursion as made merely to take a hasty glance at the army before it entered on its campaign. But this was a small reason for a journey of a thousand miles, preparatory to which a successor had even been appointed in the war-office. Rumour, strengthened by future circumstances, bore, that the generalissimo had considered this abrupt suspending of his major-ge neral as a personal wrong to himself, as a reflection upon the manner in which the army had been adminis

and

tered.

On the 2d April, the Duke d'Angouleme prefaced the commencement of warlike operations by a proclaination addressed to the Spanish nation. His most Christian Majesty, for two long years, had endured, with a patience beyond example, the provocations given by the revolutionary faction at the head of the Spanish government. That faction now carried its efforts beyond the frontier, and sought, by the contagion of its doctrine and example, to corrupt the

French army, and excite insurrections similar to those of Naples and Piedmont. It was time to put a period to the anarchy which distracted Spain, which deprived it of the power of pacifying its colonies, broke its relations with the august monarchs of Europe, and endangered the repose and interests of France. "Spaniards," said he, "France is not at war with your country. Born of the same blood with your kings, I can desire only your independence, your happiness, and your glory. I go to pass the Pyrenees at the head of a hundred thousand Frenchmen, but it is to unite myself with the Spaniards who are the friends of order and law, to assist them in delivering their captive king, in re-establishing the altar and the throne, in rescuing the priests from proscription, the proprietors from spoliation, the whole kingdom from the sway of ambitious men, who, in proclaiming li berty, prepare only the ruin of Spain. Spaniards! all will be done for you and with you. The French are and wish to be only your auxiliaries; your standard alone will float on your cities; the provinces traversed by our soldiers will be administered in the name of Ferdinand by Spanish authorities; the most severe discipline will be observed; all that shall be necessary for the service of the army be paid with religious exactness."

will

On the following day, an order was issued to the French troops, in which they were told that they were entering Spain, not animated by any spirit of conquest, but solely to restore order and the legitimate authority of the king. They were exhorted to respect religion, the laws, and property, and to render easy the rule which their commander had imposed upon himself, of maintaining the strictest discipline.

On the 7th April, the right division of the French army, under the