invariably expected only success in objects for the attainment of which they had adopted no measures. They have never looked to, nor prepared for, a lengthened contest; and all those, or nearly all, who have had anything to do with them, have imbibed the same spirit and the same sentiments. Without adverting to the enormous armies which are daily pouring into Spain, in addition to those which were before in the country, and were already superior in numbers to the allies, or to the fact that there is now no army in the field excepting the British army, they are thinking of offensive operations from Cadiz; and they appear to me to hold the Isla de Leon more as the intrenched camp (and hardly even deserving that name) of an army, than as a fortified post, upon the possession of which everything is to turn in future. To Major-General the Hon. W. Stewart.

Viseu, 10th March, 1810.

It appears to me to be most probable that, in a short time, there will be no resistance to the French troops in any part of Spain, excepting at Cadiz, and in any other of the forts and strongholds which may be able to hold out.

I can tell you no more than I have already told you about the embarkation of the Portuguese army. If you will let us have a large fleet of ships of war, and 45,000 disposable tons of transports, I shall try, and I think I shall bring them all off; but I cannot be certain, until the time comes, that I shall be able to bring off a man.

In respect to home politics, I acknowledge that I do not like them much, and I am convinced that the Government cannot last. I do not think that any Government can stand after an inquiry into an important measure by a Committee of the House of Commons. However, I am of opinion that the king has a right, and must be supported in the exercise of that right, to choose his own servants, as long as he thinks it proper to persevere in retaining those whom he prefers in his service; and if no other advantage shall have been gained by the formation of the existing Government, it has, at least, drawn from Lord Grenville opinions which will render the employment of him not inconsistent with the king's ease, if he should think proper to call him to his service.

I assure you that what has passed in Parliament respecting me has not given me one moment's concern, as far as I am personally concerned; and, indeed, I rejoice at it, as it has given my friends an opportunity of setting the public right upon some points on which they had not been informed,

and on others on which the misrepresentations had driven the truth from their memories. But I regret that men like Lord, and others, should carry the spirit of party so far as to attack an officer in his absence, and should take the ground of their attack from Cobbett and the Moniteur, and should at once blame him for circumstances and events over which he could have no control, and for faults which, if they were committed at all, were not committed by him.

To the Earl of Liverpool.

Viseu, 27th March, 1810.

The affairs of the Peninsula have invariably had the same appearance since I have known them; they have always appeared to be lost; means have always appeared inadequate to objects; and the sole dependence of the whole has apparently been upon us. The contest still continues, and is in its third year; and we must continue it as long as we can, with what the country affords, improving them as much as the people will allow us, as it is obvious that Great Britain cannot give us larger means than we have.

To Major-General the Hon. W. Stuart.

Few successful generals, when success was even but a possibility, would have made so candid an admission as the "cannot" in the foregoing letter.

Viseu, 4th April, 1810.

The Austrian marriage is a terrible event, and must prevent any great movement on the Continent for the present. Still I do not despair of seeing, at some time or other, a check to the Buonaparte system. Recent transactions in Holland show that it is all hollow within, and that it is so inconsistent with the wishes, the interests, and even the existence of civilized society, that he cannot trust even his brothers to carry it into execution. If the Spaniards had acted with common prudence, we should be in a very different situation in the Peninsula, but I fear there are now no hopes.

To Brigadier-General R. Craufurd.

The concluding words show another touch of despondency, but such feelings in the strong mind of Wellington were as fleeting as light summer-clouds.

As to the "Austrian marriage," Buonaparte put it on record in his dictations at St. Helena, that his marriage with the young Archduchess, Maria Louisa, was a precipice covered with flowers," which he was rashly

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induced to approach from hopes of domestic happiness! A pitiful piece of cant in such a man, and under such circumstances.

The allusion to Holland was called forth by the abdication of Louis Buonaparte (so Wellington always spells that Italian surname), the brother of Napoleon, and the father of the present ruler of France; he married Hortense, the daughter of the Empress Josephine, by her first marriage. We need but allude to this incident, as it is alluded to in Lord Wellington's letter to General Craufurd, but it bears no connection with the subject of this work, otherwise than as it illustrates the character of the man who was Wellington's last and greatest opponent on the battle-field.

Gerona, Tarragona, and Tortosa, although vigorously defended, had fallen before the superior forces, means, and skill of the French. Their emperor-for he had dictated a peace to Austria, under the walls of Viennacould now spare fresh troops to fight south of the Pyrenees, and consigned them to his ablest lieutenants (according to his own judgment). Soult, Ney, Junot, Drouet, Kellermann, Loison, Victor, Mortier (afterwards one of Fieschi's infernal machine victims), and Regnier, were in readiness, in different stations in the Peninsula; while the commands of Napoleon, which brooked no appeal, were imperative that the British should be driven out of Portugal, for the Emperor of the French saw clearly, that as long as they had a footing in Portugal, his conquest of Spain, and his rule of it, was jeopardised. Hence the positiveness of his orders. His troops, when told that such was their emperor's will, obeyed unhesitatingly, and all his commands, when communicated to them by their officers, were received with shouts of Vive l'Empereur. Even from his most successful marshals, Napoleon exacted, or rather required, the most implicit obedience to hear must be to obey; and his reproaches were sometimes so unreasonable and harsh, that they were resented in the hour of his adversity. His style of command was really oriental, as if it were suggested by the native princes of the realms he longed to possess—

India. "You suggest," wrote Lord Wellington's former antagonist, Tippoo Sultaun, to a commercial agent, "with our permission, to open warehouses for the sale of cloths at Bangalore and other places. It is comprehended. There is no regulation issued by us that does not cost us, in the framing of it, the deliberation of five hundred years. This being the case, do you perform exactly what we order; neither exceeding our directions, nor suggesting anything further from yourself."

Joseph Buonaparte, again "every inch a king," according to the measures of Napoleon, entered Cordova on the 17th January, 1810, and Seville opened her gates to him on the 1st of February. Madrid soon after sullenly received its new monarch. Before this, the Supreme Junta "retired" to Cadiz, which is situated on a small island, cut off from the mainland by a canal, and washed on three sides by the Atlantic ocean. It is a place capable of a strenuous defence, if not, as was often said, of strength "to laugh a siege to scorn." Here, moreover, was a garrison of about 7000 men, English (including always, in that word, Irish and Scotch), Spanish, and Portuguese, under the command of General Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, a wealthy Scottish gentleman, who entered the army in middle age, as a volunteer, to overcome, it was said, his grief for the death of his wife. He died full of years and honors. He first distinguished himself, like Buonaparte and Junot, at the siege of Toulon. The mainland, near to Cadiz, was blockaded by the force under Victor.

Northward, the Spaniards held Galicia and Asturia; eastward, Murcia and Valencia were still, but not strongly, in their hands, while no one province but Catalonia waged a regular warfare with the "intruders." The Catalonians possessed a disciplined militia (the Somateres and Miguelets), a force superior to any other infantry of the Spaniards. The distance of Catalonia from Portugal, however, prevented the exercise of any influence by this militia on the manœuvres in that kingdom.

In May, Marshal Massena reached Vallodolid. Napoleon considered Massena the ablest professor of his

peculiar military system, and designated him the Spoilt Child of Victory. The marshal's orders were as imperative as those of the other leaders-to drive the English to their ships. His force was intended to be overwhelming, and was really most powerful-72,000 men, well appointed, and the majority of them old soldiers, with an addition, not immediately, but in the course of this momentous campaign, of 18,000 men, under General Drouet. The British force comprised 25,000 tried soldiers, and about as many Portuguese, but they were then untried, and were less regulars than militia. A further, and by no means insignificant, Portuguese force, but its number has not been stated, was in occupation of garrisons and of the country beyond the Douro. Massena's host was so situated that it could be concentrated on the north of the Tagus ; while Lord Wellington had to detach a part of his troops to the south of the Tagus, a region threatened by the powerful French army of Andalusia, which, unchecked, would have entered Portugal.

At this era of the fight between France and England, on ground where the two nations had never met before in their military array, Lord Wellington established his head-quarters in Celorico, a Portuguese town in Beira, from which he made the following communications :

Celorico, 1st May, 1810.

Some deserters, Germans as well as of other nations, have declined altogether to enlist in the king's service; and these have been sent to England, with a letter to the commandant of the depôt, stating that I had promised that means should be facilitated to them for their return to their own countries. In the meantime, till these means shall be found, your Lordship will observe that they are to be paid, and in every respect treated as British soldiers.

The great impediment to desertion is the danger of being murdered, which all soldiers of the French army incur in Spain, when they wander from their quarters and are found singly, or in small bodies, by the inhabitants. This impediment was in some degree removed in last year, by the offer of a reward, by General Cuesta, for every soldier of the French army brought in by the peasantry; and it is probable that