Robert Southey

PROCEEDINGS IN FRANCE. THE DUC D’ANGOULEME GOES TO LORD WELLINGTON’S ARMY. LERIDA, MEQUINENZA, AND MONZON RECOVERED BY STRATAGEM. PASSAGE OF THE ADOUR. BATTLE OF ORTHES. THE ALLIES RECEIVED AT BOURDEAUX. BATTLE OF TOULOUSE. SORTIE FROM BAYONNE. RESTORATION OF FERDINAND. CONCLUSION.

?1814.?

Buonaparte had returned to France breathing vengeance. He sent before him two-and-twenty standards taken in the course of his German campaign; and he announced to his Council of State, in troubled and passionate language, the extent of his danger, and his determination of opposing and overcoming it by the most ?Buonaparte’s speech to his council.? violent efforts. “Wellington,” said he, “is in the south, the Russians threaten the northern frontier, Austria the south-eastern, ... yet, shame to speak it, the nation has not risen in mass to repel them! Every ally has abandoned me: the Bavarians have betrayed me!... Peace? no peace, till Munich is in flames! I demand of you 300,000 men; I will form a camp at Bourdeaux of 100,000, another at Lyons, a third at Metz: with the remnant of my former levies, I shall have 1,000,000 of men in arms. But it is men whom I demand, full-grown men; not these miserable striplings who choke my hospitals with sick, and my highways with their carcases.... Give up Holland? rather let it sink into the sea! Peace, it seems, is talked of, when all around ought to re-echo with the cry of war!”

?November.Proceedings of the French government.?

Accordingly the obsequious senate placed, in official form and phrase, 300,000 conscripts at the disposal of the minister of war: they were to be taken from the men who had been liable to the conscription in former years, as far back as 1806, with an exception however in favour of those who should have been married prior to the publication of this decree; half this number were immediately to take the field, the others to be held in reserve, and brought forward in case the eastern frontier should be invaded. Comte Dejean, who ?Comte Dejean.? addressed the senate upon this measure, said that painful as it was thus to call upon classes who had formerly been free from the conscription, circumstances now required such a measure: by this means men would be ranged under the French eagles, who united strength with courage, and could support the fatigues of war; while the younger conscripts would have time in garrisons and in armies of reserve to acquire vigour for seconding the sentiments which inspired them. “The cry of alarm,” said Regnaud de S. Jean d’Angely, ?Regnaud de S. Jean d’Angely.? “and of succour, sent forth by our sons and brethren in arms, still gloriously combating upon the banks of the Rhine, has resounded upon the Seine and the Rhone, the Doubs and the Gironde, the Moselle and the Loire, the mountains of Jura and of the Vosges, the Alps and the Pyrenees. All true Frenchmen are already prepared to meet the wants of their country, ... to meet the dangers and sacrifices which must prevent other dangers and sacrifices far more frightful, both for their extent and for the humiliation which must accompany them. If the coalesced armies could penetrate beyond the Pyrenees, the Alps, or the Rhine, then the day of peace could not shine upon France; there could be no peace till we should repulse the enemy, and drive him far from our territory. Noble sons of our dear France! generous defenders of our glorious country! you, who close the entrance of France against the English, the Russians, and their allies, you shall not be left without support in the holy and honourable struggle to which you have devoted yourselves. A little while, and numerous battalions of men, mighty in strength and in courage, will come to aid you in again seizing upon victory, and in delivering the French soil.”

?Comte LacepÈde.?

“Your Majesty,” said Comte LacepÈde, “who knows better than any one the wants and the sentiments of your subjects, know that we desire peace. But all the nations of the continent are in greater need of it than we are; and if, notwithstanding the wishes and interest of more than 150 millions of souls, our enemies should think of presenting to us a sort of capitulation, their expectations will be deceived; the French people show by their devotement and their sacrifices that no nation ever better understood their duties toward their country, their honour, and their sovereign.” To this Buonaparte made answer, ... “It is but a year since all Europe was with us; all Europe marches against us now: this is because the opinion of the world is directed by France or by England. We should have every thing to fear, were it not for the energy and the power of the nation. Posterity will say that if great and critical circumstances offered themselves, they were not superior to France and to me.” His heart was hardened, or he might now have made peace upon terms which would speedily have enabled him again to disturb the world; but his spirit was unbroken; and his abilities were never at any time so signally displayed, as in making head against the dangers which were about to beset him on all sides. It was no longer possible to keep the people in ignorance of the real state of things: the press, which hitherto under his tyranny had been employed in deceiving them, was made use of now to excite them, by declaring the whole truth as respected the danger, but suppressing it upon all other points: the allies were charged with breach of faith and inordinate ambition, they were represented as all seeking their own aggrandizement; and the Emperor Napoleon as struggling alone against them, for the honour and the interests ?Buonaparte’s speech to the Legislative Assembly.? of France. He himself addressed the legislature to the same effect, ... “Brilliant victories,” said he, “have illustrified the French arms in this campaign; unexampled defections have rendered those victories useless. Every thing has turned against us. France itself would be in danger were it not for the energy and unanimity of the French. I have never been seduced by prosperity; adversity will find me superior to its attacks. Often have I given peace to nations when they had lost all.... From part of my conquests I have erected thrones for kings who have abandoned me. I had conceived and executed great designs for the prosperity and happiness of the world. A monarch and a father, I know what peace adds to the security of thrones and of families. Negotiations have been set on foot. I hoped that the congress would by this time have met; but delays, which are not attributable to France, have deferred the moment which is called for by the wishes of the world.” When Buonaparte said this, he had no hope of peace, no desire for it, no intention of making any such concessions as would render it possible.

?British regulations for trading with the captured French ports.?

As yet none of the other allied armies had passed the frontier; but Lord Wellington was established in France, where, taking into consideration the necessity of fixing the bases upon which the trade with the ports of French Navarre to the south of the Adour should be regulated, he published a proclamation, declaring that those ports were ?Dec. 18.? open to all nations who were not at war with any of the allied powers, and fixing a duty of five per ?Dec. 31.? cent. ad valorem upon all articles, except grain and salt, and stores for the use of the army. An order of council was also published in England, permitting British ?Jan. 14.? vessels to trade with these and such other French ports as might be under the protection, or in the military occupation of his Majesty’s arms. To this then were the decrees of Berlin and Milan come at last! The tyrant who had endeavoured to shut the ports of all Europe against British ships and British merchandise, and at one time had well nigh accomplished his barbarous and barbarizing purpose, saw England now regulating the commerce of his own ports, and levying duties in France, ... not after his example, with blind and merciless rapacity, but upon those principles of moderation and equity, on which her power has been raised, and by which her prosperity is supported. Three years had not elapsed since the official journal of Buonaparte’s government had said, that instead of defending Portugal and Cadiz, Great Britain’s efforts would soon be required for the defence of Gibraltar; that Spain having been conquered foot by foot was on the point of being entirely subjected; that Wellington’s mode of defending Portugal had been by abandoning the fortresses and laying waste the country, and God grant, said the Moniteur, that he may one day defend England in the same manner! “Our continental system,” said the official journalist, “is completed; it diminishes your receipts by crippling your commerce, and increases your expenses by obliging you to keep armies in Lisbon and Sicily. In the meantime the French army, according to our fundamental law, lives on the country in which it is making war, and only costs us the pay which it would do at home.” “The credit which sustained the colossal power of Great Britain,” said Buonaparte to his Legislative Body in the summer of 1811, “is no more. Her allies are either lost or destroyed. She ruins all whom she would subsidize; she exhausts her own people in useless efforts. But the struggle against this modern Carthage will now be decided on the plains of Spain; the peace of the continent will not be disturbed; England herself shall feel the evils which during twenty years she has inflicted on the continental nations. A clap of thunder shall put an end to the affairs of the Peninsula, seal the fate of her armies, and avenge Europe and Asia by terminating this second Punic ?December.? war.” With what feelings must Buonaparte now have reflected upon these bootless boasts!

With as little satisfaction too could he reflect upon the result of that fundamental principle of his military system, by which his armies were made to live on the countries wherein they were making war. The principle of the British commander was to demand nothing from the inhabitants, and to seize nothing; not a single ration was required from them; they were paid on the spot for every thing which they brought, while Soult’s army drained the adjoining provinces by its requisitions, and his soldiers were rendered at once formidable and odious to their own countrymen by the insolent and lawless habits which they had acquired in the Peninsula. The passage of the Nive had put the allies in possession of a large tract of country singularly fertile; they obtained great part of their forage from it; and the right wing by its position on the left of the Adour, commanded the navigation of that river, and often intercepted the enemy’s supplies. In that deep soil, and in a season of continued rain, it was not possible for the army to advance, an individual indeed could with difficulty make his way any where but on the paved road; ... it was hardly thought bad walking if the waters were not more than knee-deep. ?Injury done by destroying the woods in this part of the Pyrenees.? One of those unforeseen effects which frequently arise when man interferes upon a large scale with the works of nature, has rendered this country liable to inundations in winter and spring, and to drought in summer. About the middle of the seventeenth century a speculator4 undertook to supply the French government with ship timber from the Pyrenees; to effect this it was necessary for him to increase the waters of the two rivers, or, as they are there called, Gaves of Pau and Oleron; and by turning into them the course of numerous rivulets, he doubled the volume of the latter stream, and increased the current of the Adour so much that a 50-gun ship could cross the bar of Bayonne with less difficulty than before that time was experienced by a vessel with ten guns. He expended 300,000 crowns upon this scheme, succeeded in it, and ruined his family. But permanent evil was occasioned to the country: for when the mountains were clothed with woods, the snow which was collected there melted gradually under their shade, and fed the streams during the whole year; afterwards, when the snow was exposed to the sun and rain, the streams poured down in torrents, rendering the rivers destructive during the winter and spring, and scarcely supplying water enough in summer for navigation.

While the allies waited in their cantonments till the season should allow them to recommence their operations, telegraphic signal stations, to guard against surprise, were formed on the churches of Guethary, Arcangues, and Vieux Monguerre, and these communicated with one upon a high sand-hill, on the north side of St. Jean de Luz, near the entrance from the Bayonne road: so that notice of any hostile movement might almost instantaneously be communicated to the head-quarters. Works were thrown up in front of the left, as the most assailable part of the line, at Bidaut, at Arcangues, and almost on every knoll. On such occasions it was that unavoidable injury was done to the inhabitants. If a chateau unfortunately stood where it was deemed expedient to fortify it, every part was pulled down that did not serve for the purposes of defence; and all the noble trees around it were felled, while the owner looked on, a sad and helpless spectator of the ruin. These were cases of individual hardship; nothing could be more honourable to the British character than the extreme care which was taken to prevent all avoidable injury, and this was acknowledged by the people with equal surprise and thankfulness. No army ever behaved better even in its own country than the British army at this time in France, and this was owing to Lord Wellington’s regulations. There was another part of the British general’s conduct which attracted the notice and commanded the respect of the French people; he regularly attended divine service, with all his staff, not in the church, but on the sandy beach, the brigade of guards forming a square there. The service of Christmas-day5 was performed there, on a bright frosty day, not a breath of wind stirring, and no extraneous sound but that of a high surf breaking at least half a mile from the shore, and flashing in the sunshine.

?Movements in the month of January. 1814.?

Towards the end of December the floods carried away the bridges which had been thrown over the Nive, but they were soon replaced. A detachment was sent towards Hasparren to clear the country in the rear of the right wing of the enemy’s cavalry under Paris; and on new year’s day a small island in the Adour, near Monguerre, was taken from the French without opposition. At this time Clausel was assembling a considerable force on the Gave de Oleron; on the third he drove in the cavalry piquets between the Joyeuse and the Bidouze, and attacked the posts of Major-General Buchan’s Portugueze brigade on the former river, near La Bastide, and those of the third division in Bouloc. The enemy turned the right of the Portugueze brigade on the heights of La Costa, and established two divisions there and on La Bastide, on the Joyeuse, with the remainder of their force on the Bidouze and the Gave. The centre and right of the allies were immediately concentrated and prepared to move; Lord Wellington reconnoitred the enemy the next day, and would have attacked them on the ensuing, if the weather and the swelling of the rivulets had not occasioned a day’s delay. But on the 6th the attack was made by the 3rd and 4th divisions, supported by Buchan’s Portugueze brigade of General Le Cor’s division, and the cavalry under Major-General Fane; the enemy were dislodged without loss on our side, and the troops resumed their former positions. Mina was at this time with three battalions at Bidarray and St. Etienne de Baygorey, observing the movements of the enemy from St. Jean de Pied-de-Port. The people of the vale of Baygorey had distinguished themselves in the war of 1793 by their brave opposition to the Spanish troops; that spirit had been transmitted to the present generation, and it was called into action by their countryman Harispe, one of the most active of the French generals. They were the only peasantry who manifested any disposition to act against the allies; by their aid, with that of Paris’s division, and such troops as could be spared from the garrison of St. Jean, Harispe ?Jan. 12.? moved against Mina, and compelled him to retire into the valley of Aldudes.

?False reports circulated by the French government.?

These were the only military movements on this side during the month of January; and the state of affairs here was disguised as much as possible from the French people; Buonaparte persisting to the last in that system of falsehood by which he had so long flattered and deluded them. It could not, indeed, be concealed that Lord Wellington’s army was wintering in France, though by what train of events it should have arrived there the French were left to guess. But it was affirmed that he had been defeated in the actions before Bayonne with the loss of 15,000 men; that he now thought of nothing more than intrenching himself within his own lines; that Clausel had assumed an attitude which alarmed him; ... that his situation was becoming more and more critical; ... that the misunderstanding between the Spanish and English troops increased every day; ... that the British commander began to fear lest the part of the French army which remained in the camp at Bayonne might cut off his retreat; in fine, that the allies were filled with consternation, and that while they were suffering from want of provisions, their convoys were wrecked upon the coast of the Landes department, and supplied the French with beef and clothing, and with packages of pressed hay, which were sent to Bayonne, and there served out to Marshal Soult’s cavalry.

?The Duc d’AngoulÊme goes to Lord Wellingtons army.?

But while the Moniteur, in its official articles, dwelt thus upon a chance shipwreck, and attempted, in its usual strain, to deceive the French people, that part of the nation who remembered what had been the state of France before its baneful revolution regarded the progress of the British arms with secret satisfaction, because it offered a hope of the restoration of the Bourbons, and of that peace and security which could be obtained by no other means. The Bourbons themselves thought it was now time for them to take advantage of the course of events, and remind France that by putting an end to their unmerited exile she might put an end to her own multiplied calamities. The Duc d’AngoulÊme, therefore, with the Duc de Guiche, Comte Etienne de Damas, and Comte d’Escars, sailed from England for Passages, and proceeded to St. Jean de Luz. But as the allied powers, whether wisely or not, had as yet held out no encouragement to the hopes of this royal family, Lord Wellington could receive him with no public honours. Many of the inhabitants, however, hastened to pay their court to him; and the mayor of this little town, expressing to him a hope that the calamities which France had so long endured would soon be terminated by peace, observed, that peace could no otherwise be guaranteed than by the word of their legitimate sovereign; and requested his Royal Highness to convey to the king an assurance of cordial allegiance from the municipality and people of that place. Deputations were also sent to him from the neighbouring communes; and, before his arrival, a circumstance had occurred which more unequivocally manifested the disposition of the people. There was an emigrant officer in the British army whose family estates were in the neighbourhood of Pau; a native of that part of the country came to St. Jean de Luz charged by the tenants of those estates to tell him how much they wished to live again under their own old laws and customs, and how happy they should be once more to pay their rents to their old master. The Duc, under the name of the Comte de Pradelles, lived with the utmost privacy, as the circumstances required; but he addressed a proclamation to the French army, and agents were not wanting to circulate it. He called upon them to rally round the fleurs-de-lys, which he was come, he said, to display once more in his dear country; and he guaranteed, in the name of the king, his uncle, their rank and pay to those who should join him, and rewards proportionate to their services. “Soldiers,” he said, “it is the descendant of Henri IV.; ... it is the husband of a princess whose misfortunes are unequalled, but whose only wishes are for the prosperity of France; ... it is a prince who, forgetting, in imitation of your king, all his own sufferings, and mindful only of yours, throws himself now with confidence into your arms!”

?Rochejaquelein comes to the British camp.?

A movement such as this address was intended to excite had already begun, but it was among men who had been trained in better principles than the soldiers of the revolution. An agent of Louis XVIII. had arrived at Bourdeaux, and had found in that city the Marquis de la Rochejaquelein, whom it was part of his commission to see, and say to him that the king depended upon him for La VendÉe. Rochejaquelein is one of the redeeming names that appear in the black and bloody history of the French revolution. The present Marquis had succeeded to the title, the principles, and the virtues of his brother, who, in the first Vendean war, had addressed his soldiers in these memorable words: “Si j’avance, suivez-moi; si je recule, tuez-moi; si je meurs, vengez-moi6!” “If I advance, follow me; if I falter, kill me; if I fall, avenge me!” He now went through Anjou and Touraine, and awakened that spirit which the National Convention had not been able, even by its most atrocious barbarities, to suppress. A scheme was formed for delivering Ferdinand from ValenÇay; but the person who was to have headed the enterprise died at the time when it should have taken place; and, indeed, no advantage could have been derived from it then, if it had succeeded. Rochejaquelein’s designs were suspected, and M. Lynch, the mayor of Bourdeaux, who was then at Paris, warned him, by an express that orders were given for arresting him, and bringing him dead or alive before Savary, Buonaparte’s worthy minister of police. He escaped to Bourdeaux, and while remaining there in concealment, heard that the Duc d’AngoulÊme was with the English army. Upon this he determined immediately to repair to him, and receive his orders; but before he set out upon this most hazardous adventure he requested an interview with M. Lynch, who was just then returned from the capital. That magistrate, who was always a loyalist at heart, foresaw the speedy overthrow of Buonaparte, and had already given his word to the Polignacs (then in confinement), that if Bourdeaux declared for the king, he would be the first to mount the white cockade; this promise he now renewed to Rochejaquelein, and charged him to assure the Duc of his devoted services, and that he would deliver to him the keys of the town. After many difficulties and dangers, the Marquis succeeded in getting on board a ship bound, with a license, to S. Sebastian’s; and, escaping from a storm by which several vessels were wrecked on the coast, he landed at Passages, and hastened to St. Jean de Luz.

?Lord Wellington refuses to send an expedition to the coast of Poitou.?

When the Duc heard his report of the state of feeling in La VendÉe, of the general opinion which prevailed in France, and of the disposition which there was to receive him in Bourdeaux, he declared that nothing should now make him forsake that country in which he had found subjects who were still so faithful. Without delay, accompanied by the Duc de Guiche, Rochejaquelein proceeded to Lord Wellington, who was then at Garitz; he assured him that Bourdeaux would declare for the Bourbons as soon as a British force should approach it; and, as the means of effecting a powerful diversion in aid of that loyal city, he proposed that the British General should send one or two vessels and a few hundred men to land him by night upon the coast of Poitou, escort him some two leagues into the interior, and then leave him there: while they re-embarked and drew the attention of the troops, he would pursue his way alone, and raise once more that loyal race who had exerted themselves so dutifully, and suffered so severely, in the most frantic and ferocious times of the revolution. Lord Wellington listened with great interest to these representations; but he doubted whether the feelings of the people towards the royal family were what Rochejaquelein believed them to be; and he did not think himself authorized to detach even a small force upon an expedition such as ?MÉmoires de la Marquise de la Rochejaquelein, pp. 513–28.? was proposed, when he had no instructions from his own government, and moreover when he was on the eve of great operations, ... for he was now preparing to pass the Adour.

?Suchet fails in an attempt to surprise a British corps. December.?

On the side of Catalonia, meantime, all went on favourably for the allies; for if they were too weak to obtain any advantages for themselves, the enemy was weakened to a greater degree, in consequence of the progress of the war in other quarters. Marshal Suchet made one vigorous attempt in the beginning of December to surprise the corps at Villafranca, where the British head-quarters were established. He made a forced night march in this hope with about 15,000 men; but timely information had been obtained. Sarsfield’s division, which was stationed there, retired across the country to the left; the British cavalry and artillery fell back about eight miles along the main road to Arbos, where there was a strong position, and whither General Mackenzie moved his division to their support; and Suchet, having failed in his intention, retired from Villafranca on the afternoon of the same day, and returned to the Llobregat as rapidly as he had advanced. The wants of the Spanish army had now become so pressing that it was necessary to send Sarsfield’s cavalry to the rear, where it might be possible for them to subsist, his infantry being sometimes upon the shortest allowance, and without any sure prospect of even that insufficient dole for more than two or three days. His troops must from sheer destitution have quitted the field had it not been for the merchants of Villa-nueva, who, at his earnest persuasion, but on their own credit, and at their own risk, supplied them with provisions from the imports which arrived at that port. Not a murmur meantime was heard from the men; nor did they evince the slightest feeling of discontent or jealousy when they saw the Anglo-Sicilian troops, forming part of the same army, duly supplied, while they themselves were hungered. Only if the greater strength of the British soldiers appeared, when they were engaged together in the public works, a Spaniard would sometimes quietly say, “Give us your rations, and you shall see us work as well as you do.”

After the Nassau battalions had passed over to Lord Wellington’s camp, immediate advice had been dispatched to Sir William Clinton; and the information was with due secrecy communicated to the officer who commanded the Nassau troops in Catalonia; but this person preferring what he considered his military obligations to his national duty, delivered the papers into General Habert’s hands, who had succeeded Maurice ?The German troops in Barcelona disarmed.? Mathieu in the command at Barcelona. The French would, perhaps, have been better pleased if he had followed the example of his better-minded countrymen; for that German feeling which the officer had renounced existed among the men, and it was deemed necessary to disarm them all, 2400 in number, thus weakening the army of Catalonia, and bringing upon it this additional inconvenience, that the men of whose services it was deprived were to be supported as prisoners, and guarded also. This officer was mortally wounded a few weeks afterwards in a sally from Barcelona.

?Troops withdrawn from Suchet’s army.?

Suchet’s force was still farther weakened by the withdrawal of 2000 of his Italian troops; he then proposed to the French government, as a measure of expediency, that they should dismantle the city of Barcelona, and content themselves with occupying the citadel and Fort Monjuic, whereby 5000 of the garrison would be disposable for service; but his advice was rejected, the possession of Barcelona being deemed necessary for the support of the army in Catalonia. About the same time two strong battalions of Spaniards were detached from the Anglo-Sicilian army, at the pressing request of General Roche, to assist him in blockading Murviedro. Tarragona had now been so far repaired as to be in a defensible state; but such was the exhausted condition of the province that no stores of any kind could be obtained from it for the Spanish authorities. ?Failure of an attempt against the enemy at Molins del Rey. January.? While both armies were withheld from undertaking any important operation by the diminution of strength on both sides, and by the increasing difficulties of obtaining supplies on the part of the Anglo-Sicilians, a plan was concerted between Sir William Clinton and Manso for attacking the enemy’s cantonments at Molins del Rey and the adjoining villages on the Llobregat: Sir William was to move with 8000 men upon the Barcelona road and attack them in front, while Manso should post himself upon the strong ground in the rear of Molins del Rey, close to the only road by which they could retire. Copons had assented to this project, and agreed to lend Manso and his brigade for this service, both the men and their commander being worthy of all confidence. ?Jan. 17.? The enterprise failed, because Copons, without making any communication to the English General, instead of sending Manso, chose to go himself with a larger force, set off two hours later than the time which had been agreed upon, and finally appeared on the right flank of the enemy instead of in the rear; meantime the force from Villafranca having arrived at the hour appointed, the French, who, if there had been the same punctuality on the other side, must have been taken by surprise, were able to effect their retreat over the Llobregat by the stone bridge near Molins, which was well fortified. Upon the first alarm Suchet dispatched troops to support General Pannetier, who was in command there, and manoeuvred in the hope of decoying the allies to a dangerous advance: but Sir William was too wary to incur any unwise risk, when the object of his movement had been disappointed. Had Manso been left to execute what had been concerted with him, Pannetier’s division must in all likelihood have been captured.

?Farther drafts from Suchet’s army.?

A few days afterwards Marshal Suchet received positive orders from Paris to dispatch for Lyons with the least possible delay two-thirds of his cavalry, from 8000 to 10,000 foot, and fourscore field-pieces. He renewed his representations concerning Barcelona, saying, he should delay till the latest minute his departure from the vicinity of that city, in the hope of farther instructions; and he advised that, as the mission of the Duque de S. Carlos had produced no good effect, Ferdinand should be sent to Barcelona, with an understanding that France put him in possession of the fortified places, in reliance upon his honour for sending the garrison home. Meantime he appointed Habert to the command of Lower Catalonia, the division of the Lower Ebro being under General Robert, who commanded in Tortosa; that General was assured that he should soon be delivered, either by succour or by the conclusion of peace; but at the worst, he was instructed, when his provisions should fail, which would be before the end of April, to make for Lerida, collect his troops there, and by a rapid march through the mountains proceed to Benasque, and so into France. No farther ?He retires to Gerona.? advices having reached him by the first of February, Marshal Suchet moved with the remains of his army to the neighbourhood of Gerona; and when, in the course of another fortnight, instructions came to act as he had advised with regard to Barcelona, it was too late, the allies having immediately upon his removal blockaded that city.

?One of his aides-de-camp opens a correspondence with Eroles.?

A greater mortification awaited him. Eroles, in the month of November, when confined by a dangerous illness at Manresa, received information from one in whom he had reason to place entire confidence, that a Spanish officer, by name D. Juan de Halen, who was then one of Suchet’s aides-de-camp, was desirous of being restored to the service of his country, under his protection. Eroles replied that this was not to be hoped for, unless the officer could make some signal reparation for the injury which he had done to the Spanish name; but that in waiting till this could be effected, he might give proof of his sincerity and earnest of his intentions by communicating such useful information as his situation about Suchet’s person enabled him to obtain. Van Halen replied as if he felt himself wounded by being expected to act the part of a spy: there was not much difficulty in overcoming this objection; and he found means of transmitting intelligence from time to time, and, among other papers, a copy of Suchet’s cipher. The more important communications were not intrusted to writing, but made orally, through the person by whom this correspondence was opened.

?Van Halen.?

Juan Van Halen, as may be inferred from his name, was a Spaniard of Flemish or Brabantine descent. He was a native of the Isle of Leon, and born in 1789. After some years of active service in the navy, he was employed in the engineers; and as an officer in that corps bore a part at Madrid in the tragedy of the 2nd of May. Escaping from the capital, he joined Blake’s army after the battle of Rio-seco, and was sent by him to Ferrol; when that place was surrendered, he took the oath of fidelity to the Intruder, and afterwards held a commission in his body guards. He had the good fortune subsequently to be employed in other parts of Europe, and was at Paris when Buonaparte’s reverses in Germany rendered it no longer doubtful that the part in which he had engaged must finally be the unsuccessful one. A friend and countryman, who had come to the same unpleasant conviction, advised him to forsake the sinking cause; but Van Halen, in his own words, “could not think of prostrating himself at the feet of the throne and of his country, unless he could bear with him the testimony of some such service as might make him worthy of being received in the arms of Spanish generosity and gratitude, not in those of indulgence, or of ?Restauracion de las Plazas, &c. p. 12.? strict justice.” So getting leave from the then expelled Intruder to solicit employment in Spain, he obtained from the Duc de Feltre an appointment upon Suchet’s staff, and provided himself with credentials to Eroles, and also with a letter of recommendation to Sir Rowland Hill.

?He deserts from the French army.?

After carrying on a correspondence with Eroles for about two months, and arranging with him a plan for attacking some of the places which the French held on the left of the Llobregat, it was agreed that he should come over to the Spaniards and put the design in execution; and hoping both to render service to the cause in which he now embarked, and to conceal the fact of his own desertion, leaving Barcelona in the night, he led away with him from the ?Jan. 17.? neighbourhood of that city two squadrons of cuirassiers, to whom he produced a forged order of the Marshal’s that they should follow him on a secret expedition. His intention was that Eroles should intercept them, and make them and himself prisoners: but the messenger, whom he had dispatched two days before to apprise the Baron of his movements, fell in with a party of hussars belonging to the Anglo-Sicilian army, who were scouring the road to Moncada, and was detained by them; and when Van Halen came to the place appointed, and found that the scheme had failed, nothing remained for him but to provide for his own safety by escaping as soon as he could. Thus his desertion became notorious, and all the plans which had been formed upon the supposition of keeping it secret were frustrated.

?His scheme for recovering certain places.?

But Van Halen’s disposition was turned to perilous intrigues and enterprises: he now conceived a design of recovering some strong places by stratagem; and Eroles remembering the Rovirada by which Figueras had been surprised, and being himself of an adventurous spirit, entered readily into his views, and went with him to General Copons, whose head-quarters were then at Vich. Copons was not without difficulty induced to give his consent, and they then proceeded to Xerta, where Don Josef Sans, who commanded the force before Tortosa, had his head-quarters. This place was so strictly blockaded that it was certain no tidings of Van Halen’s desertion could have reached it; and to induce a belief in other quarters that he had left Catalonia, bills upon Madrid and other places at a distance had been taken up for him. He had possessed himself not only of Suchet’s cipher, but of the handwritings which it was necessary to counterfeit; and letters were now written as from the Marshal, informing General Robert the commander that the exigencies of the Emperor’s affairs compelled him to withdraw all his garrisons from that side of the Llobregat; that Colonel D’Eschalard of his staff was gone to Tarrasa, there to conclude the treaty for evacuating them; and that he must be prepared to depart with his equipage and field-artillery as soon as orders to that effect should reach him. It was added, that the Emperor had been pleased to honour him with the grand-cross of the Imperial Order of the Reunion, and upon this the Marshal offered him his congratulations. An unlucky peasant was found, who undertook, in the character of a spy of Suchet’s, to carry this forged dispatch into the town. So few communications, without a strong escort, escaped the vigilance of the Catalans, that whenever a single messenger was sent, the letter ... written in the smallest compass and in the fewest words ... used to be inclosed in lead, and swallowed by the bearer. Van Halen was well acquainted with all the details of such transactions. If the enemy sent a spy out from one of their fortresses, they usually made a sally, and thus brought him out unobserved, and set him on his way; but the messenger who was to make his way in, approached in the darkness, and made a certain signal with a flint and steel. The peasant, though carefully instructed upon this as upon all other points, forgot this important part of his instructions, and in consequence was wounded by the sentinel: the first part of his errand, however, was not the less performed; the dispatch was delivered to General Robert, and no suspicion being entertained of the stratagem, the man was sent to the hospital, and there carefully attended. But the answer which he should have delivered into the hands of his employers was sent by another person, and consequently not received by those who were expecting it.

?The deceit tried at Tortosa.?

Having learnt what had befallen their messenger, Eroles and Van Halen proceeded with their device. A Spanish officer was sent with a letter from Sans, saying he had just received a copy of a treaty signed at Tarrasa by the Spanish and French commanders-in-chief in Catalonia, agreeing upon an armistice of fifteen days for the evacuation of the places named in the treaty, Tortosa being one; he inclosed a letter with D’Eschalard’s signature, which it was pretended had accompanied it, and in which it was stated that the chef d’escadron, Van Halen, one of the Marshal’s aides-de-camp, would speedily arrive with full instructions. The garrison were on the point of making a sally when the officer arrived: the news of the armistice spread; a free communication in consequence took place with the advanced posts of the Spaniards, and on the next morning General Robert sent out Colonel Plique to make arrangements for evacuating the place; at the same time he liberated some soldiers who had lately been surprised and made prisoners. The Colonel accordingly came at the hour appointed; Van Halen presented himself in his aide-de-camp’s uniform, and the Spanish Captain Daura, as having accompanied him from the Llobregat, delivered a letter from Copons. Plique desired to be left alone with Van Halen, whose instructions he was authorized to receive, in case the Spanish commander should not permit him to enter the town. He inquired of him concerning the state of affairs which had reduced the Emperor to sacrifice these places, and Van Halen briefly related the series of reverses which rendered it necessary to withdraw from Spain 30,000 men, leaving only garrisons in Barcelona, Gerona, and Figueras. The Marshal, he said, was before Barcelona, waiting impatiently ?February.? for their arrival, that he might begin his march: his desire was that no man should be left in the hospitals if he could safely be removed; that General Robert should bring away all the artillery he could, and include the public money with his own to avoid all difficulty upon that score: for himself, he added, he must proceed with the same orders to Murviedro and PeÑiscola. Plique inquired if the English assented to the armistice, and was assured that they did. He then asked if the only favour which the Emperor had bestowed upon their garrison was that of granting the grand-cross to General Robert, the Marshal, he said, when he withdrew from Valencia, having promised to recommend several officers for promotion. Van Halen told him he had understood that two Generals of Brigade were made, M. Plique himself he believed being one, and M. Jorry, then at Murviedro, the other. The Colonel appears to have been completely deceived; but he was instructed to invite Brigadier Sans to a repast before the town should be evacuated, and to request that he would send officers of artillery to take possession of the magazines, and that he would allow the aide-de-camp to return with him into the town, and take up his quarters there. This, Sans said, he was positively enjoined not to permit; all he could allow was that M. Van Halen, accompanied by a Spanish officer, should present himself at the Puente de Jesus, and confer there with General Robert. When they reached the bridge, Robert did not come out, but he sent the chief of his staff, with several officers, and one company, and they renewed the request that Van Halen might enter; this of course was refused, and in case an attempt had been made to seize him, Eroles with a body of horse was near at hand. A letter was sent in, inclosing a copy of the forged treaty, and the parties then separated. Van Halen suspected that the deceit had been discovered; still, however, he carried it on, and wrote to Robert, saying, ?It fails there.? that as the officers had urged him to do, he should have evaded the presence of the Spanish Colonel, had he not been strictly ordered by Marshal Suchet to do nothing which could tend to interrupt the good understanding during the armistice; and being now obliged to communicate without delay his orders in Murviedro and PeÑiscola, he was deprived of the honour of seeing him. General Robert answered this by a letter to Sans, regretting that he had not accepted his invitation. Van Halen’s letter, he said, gave him no satisfactory notion either of his proceedings or those of his government; and unless he conferred with Van Halen in the fortress, he should not observe the armistice, but renew hostilities that afternoon, and continue them till this aide-de-camp, whom he must see, returned from Murviedro.

It was known afterwards that a spy during the preceding night had entered the town, and his letters made General Robert immediately suspect the stratagem: disappointed of getting Van Halen into his hands, and of taking the Spanish officers in a counter-snare, he took the only vengeance in his power, by putting to death the wounded peasant who had brought the first forged letter. Eroles, meantime, not discouraged by this failure, lost no time in trying the same artifice elsewhere. Mequinenza had hitherto only been observed by part of one regiment; and the garrison, though reduced in number, made incursions for many leagues round, by which means they had laid in stores of provision for eighteen months, and kept the surrounding country in continual alarm. Eroles, on his way from Xerta towards Lerida, sent his adjutant, Don Antonio Mazeda, with Don JosÉ Antonio Cid, a member of the provincial deputation of Catalonia, to raise the Somatenes, and by this means cut off all communication with the place; and he dispatched before them a peasant with such another letter as that which at first had imposed upon General Robert. He halted that night a day’s journey from Lerida, having in his company Don Juan Antonio Daura, who forged the signatures, Van Halen, and Lieutenant Don Eduardo Bart, who spoke French so perfectly, that he was able to personate a French officer. Here they parted company, the two latter making for Torres del Segre, a place on the river of that name, six leagues from Mequinenza, and three from Lerida; there they remained in secret, coming out only at night to confer with Eroles, learn from him the state of affairs, and copy such papers as were required, none of which were forwarded till they had been examined by each of the party most carefully. The Baron himself proceeded to the blockading force before Lerida, and appearing there as Commandant-General of the blockade of that place, Monzon and Mequinenza, he reviewed the troops, inspected their posts, and made ?Feb. 9.? dispositions for straitening the blockade; meanwhile the forged orders were sent in by a trusty agent to the governor, General Lamarque. Hither the spy from Mequinenza returned, bringing with him the reply of Baron Bourgeois, the governor, to Marshal Suchet, in which he acknowledged the receipt of his orders, said that he was preparing to obey, inclosed the returns of his force, the state of the military chest and the magazines, and thanked the Emperor for the grand-cross with which he had been pleased to honour him; the same messenger brought also a letter from Mazeda, saying that he had strictly blockaded the place. The reply from the governor of Lerida was in like manner brought him, and he thus obtained the exact returns which he wished, and understood also that both commandants were ready to fall into the snare.

?and at Mequinenza, where it succeeds.?

He then set out for Mequinenza, with 300 foot and 40 horse, including a company of Mina’s division, which he met upon the way, and ordered to follow him. Van Halen was instructed to join him by a different road, which he did, in sight of the fortress, Eroles having first sent in dispatches, signed in D’Eschalard’s name, and sealed with the seal of the staff, informing the governor of the pretended armistice, and stating that the two aides-de-camp, Van Halen and Captain Castres, would go round to the fortresses with the necessary orders; he accompanied this with a letter in his own name, announced the arrival of an officer from Marshal Suchet, and requested to be informed what number of officers the French Commandant would bring out to confer with this officer in his presence, that he might present himself with an equal number; coming himself, if the Commandant came, or deputing one of his chief officers, if General Bourgeois should think proper to act by delegate: in either case, his troops should be drawn out at an equal distance with those of the French from any central point which the Commander might please to name. Time and place were accordingly appointed, and Van Halen in his French uniform, and Bart as his orderly, went to the conference without an escort, and with an effrontery which prevented all suspicion. Van Halen presented a letter as from Suchet, in which the Marshal was made to say how painfully he felt the circumstances which compelled him to give orders for evacuating places wherein, at the cost of so many sacrifices, they had planted their victorious banners. But unexampled defections had forced the Emperor to this measure; and his object now was, to preserve these brave garrisons, and place them once more in the first rank of his bayonets. His aide-de-camp was charged with verbal communications. Van Halen acted his part perfectly; and having arranged everything for the march of the troops, who were to evacuate the place on the following noon, Eroles hastened with his subtle agent to Lerida, there to repeat the stratagem.

?Success at Lerida;?

The news that Mequinenza was recovered had already spread; but none of the circumstances were known, and the better to deceive the French, it was now necessary to deceive the Spaniards also. Eroles, therefore, issued an order of the day, stating that Mequinenza was that day to be evacuated, and that Lerida and Monzon were to be given up by the same treaty; and commanding the Spaniards not to molest the French during the twelve days’ truce, but to treat them with that generosity which characterized the Spanish nation. He had approached the blockading force amid the rejoicings of the people, who gathered round him on his way. General Lamarque’s suspicions were completely disarmed; and when he requested that Van Halen might be allowed to enter the place and confer with him, because his own orders did not permit him to go beyond a certain distance from it, Van Halen, relying upon his courage and his strength of countenance, ventured in. The governor met him on the bridge, and they retired into an adjoining house, where, after some searching questions, he produced a dispatch received, as he said, by an emissary who had recently arrived, in which the Marshal approved of some proposals for the further security of the place, and held out a hope of succouring him in the course of a few weeks. Van Halen answered by a reference to the date of his own letter, and the recent events which had produced an alteration in the Marshal’s views. The conversation turned upon the Spanish Generals, and the circumstances of the blockade; and Van Halen took occasion to represent that Eroles seemed hurt by the General’s declining to communicate with him in person, when he, in proposing such a meeting, had gone beyond the line of his instructions from General Copons. The French General, upon this, not to be outdone in ?Feb. 14.? courtesy, sent to offer a meeting; and went accordingly beyond his own advanced posts with his treacherous companion. At this interview everything was arranged, and three o’clock on the following afternoon was fixed upon as the hour for evacuating the city. Van Halen was invited to return with the General, and be his guest that night; but he pleaded the necessity of hastening to Monzon as his excuse, and thither he departed with a Spanish escort.

?and at Monzon.?

Monzon had been besieged by part of Mina’s troops since the end of September, to the great distress of the inhabitants, who were under the guns of the fortress. The besiegers attempted to mine the rock on which it was placed. There was but one man belonging to the engineers in the place, and he was a simple miner; but, being a man of great ability, the commandant and the garrison confided in him; and the ?Suchet, 2. n. pp. 371, 372.? works which were executed under his direction were so skilfully devised, that they baffled all the attempts of the assailants, and they had in consequence converted the siege into a blockade. Here Van Halen had two difficulties to overcome with the Commandant: a report had reached him that there was a Spaniard at this time with Eroles who had served as aide-de-camp to Suchet; and, the place being held under the orders of the governor of Lerida, he could not surrender it, without sending to receive his instructions. The suspicion which the report ought to have excited seems to have been removed by the confidence with which Van Halen presented himself. And the second objection was easily disposed of: the false aide-de-camp, though he might reasonably judge that the real purport was to discover whether or not there was any fraud in the business, knew that Lerida had by this time been delivered up; he prevailed upon the blockading force, therefore, to let an officer pass with this commission, and required the Commandant to hold himself in readiness for marching as soon as he should return. The officer accordingly arrived before Lerida on the night after its surrender. Eroles affected anger when he heard his errand, and declared that, if there were any further delay, the treaty as it respected Monzon should be annulled, and he would march against it and reduce it to ashes. The officer, finding him in possession of Lerida, was confounded, made what excuse he could for his superiors, and faithfully promised that Monzon should be given up immediately on his arrival there; and this was done.

?The three garrisons made prisoners.?

Monzon was at this time stored for seven months, Mequinenza for eighteen, and Lerida for two years. By the recovery of these places, 40,000 inhabitants were saved from the miseries of a siege, and 6000 Spanish troops were rendered disposable for other service. The navigation of the Ebro, the Cinca, and the Segre was restored, and the most fertile part of Catalonia delivered, Aragon secured, and a direct communication opened with Lord Wellington’s army. The next business was to secure the garrisons who had been thus deceived, amounting to more than 2300 men. As soon as Eroles had taken measures for preserving order in Lerida, which, under such circumstances, required extraordinary care, he set out with two battalions of infantry and 200 horse in the rear of the French, Colonel Don Josef Carlos having gone before them with an equal force. The intention was to intercept them in the defiles of Igualada; but they made a forced march, and frustrated this part of the plan. Upon this, lest they should succeed in effecting a junction with the troops in Barcelona, part of the blockading army was sent for; and when they arrived at Martorell, they found themselves surrounded there. General Lamarque was then informed that he had been deceived by a stratagem of war; and that nothing remained for him but to lay down his arms, give up the public treasure, and to submit to fortune. Eroles expressed his personal esteem for the General, and his sorrow that the misadventure should have fallen upon him; he promised that the officers should be sent to Tarragona, and receive every attention which could alleviate their imprisonment; and he observed, that the General himself could not but in his heart approve a stratagem by which so much bloodshed and misery was prevented, as must have attended the reduction of these places, whether by siege or by blockade. Lamarque upon this asked if Van Halen was a Spaniard; and Bourgeois remarked upon the answer, that in truth he had rendered a great service to his country. The former said he had been dreaming for the last five days, and hardly knew if he were yet awake.7

Chagrined as Marshal Suchet was by the success of what, though he might justly deem it treachery in the agent, he could not but consider to be an allowable stratagem on the part of an injured, enterprising, and ever active enemy, ... it was even more mortifying for him immediately afterwards to make overtures, by order of ?Suchet dismantles Gerona and other places. Suchet, 2, 374.? the minister at war, to General Copons for evacuating all the places which he yet retained, Figueras only excepted; and to find the allies so confident of speedily obtaining them unconditionally that his proposals were disregarded, in retiring from the vicinity of Barcelona he had destroyed his works at the bridge of Molins del Rey, and in the pass of Moncada, and at Mongat; he now found it necessary to demolish the fortified posts at Besalu, Olot, Bascara, Palamos, and other smaller places; and even to dismantle Gerona, evacuate it, and retire with the remains of his army to the neighbourhood of Figueras. Jaca, too, about the same time was compelled to surrender to a part of Mina’s army.

?State of Lord Wellington’s army.?

On the Biscayan coast Santona was the only place which still remained in the enemy’s power; the garrison were blockaded; but they contrived to get supplies by sea, sometimes by successful runners from the opposite side of the bight, sometimes by capturing traders that approached too near, for they had one or two armed vessels in the port; but more by means of smugglers, who ran in for the sake of a good market, and in the spirit of their illicit occupation cared not with whom they dealt. The British depÔts had been removed from Bilbao and S. Sebastian’s; and, notwithstanding the stormy season, the army was always abundantly supplied, except with fodder; when this failed, bruized furze was used: the horses ate it with avidity, and kept in excellent condition. The men, during this inaction, suffered more; some of the corps were very sickly; and one regiment, which lost many men by a fever, was sent into the rear, both for change of air, and that it might be removed from intercourse with the rest of the army. The rain sometimes rendered it difficult to communicate with the more distant corps: a Portugueze brigade belonging to Sir Rowland was once four days without bread or meat, a rivulet, small at other times, being so swoln as to become impassable. But in general, money was the scarcest article: dollars, which were exchanged at so low a rate after the spoils at Vittoria, sold now for eight shillings each.

?Operations are renewed.?

The disposition of the French towards the Bourbons could at this time be so little doubted, that though the allies did not yet openly support their claims, dies were made to cut out fleurs-de-lys for scarfs, to be worn on the arms of those who might be willing to declare in favour of the old loyal cause. During the weeks of inactivity which the season occasioned, preparations were made for crossing the Adour, investing Bayonne, and carrying the war into the heart of France. The snow on the lower range of the Pyrenees had visibly lessened on the 6th, and in the course of a week had wholly disappeared. On the 14th of February, Sir Rowland put the right of the army in motion, drove in the enemy’s piquets on the Joyeuse river, attacked Harispe’s position at Hellete, and compelled him to retire with loss towards St. Martin. That General then took up a strong position in front of Garris, on the heights of Le Montagne, where he was joined by troops from the enemy’s centre, and by Paris with his division, who, having commenced their march toward the interior of France, had been recalled because of the danger in this quarter. On the same day the detachment of Mina’s troops in the valley of Bastan advanced upon Baygorrey and Bidarrey, and blockaded St. Jean de Pied-de-Port, Sir Rowland having cut off the direct communication of the enemy with that fort. On the ?Feb. 15.? morrow, Morillo, after driving in their advanced posts, was ordered to move toward St. Palais, by a ridge parallel to that on which they had taken their position, that he might turn their left, and cut off their retreat upon that road by the bridge of St. Palais, while the second division under Sir William Stewart should attack in front. The day was far gone before the attack could be commenced, and the action lasted till after night had closed: the position, though remarkably strong, was carried without much loss on the first effort; many gallant attempts were made to recover it, and as gallantly resisted; the struggle was more obstinate in the darkness than it had been while daylight lasted, and the French being encountered in all their charges with the wonted resolution of British troops, more men were bayoneted than usual in proportion to the numbers engaged. The enemy at length gave up the contest, and retired with considerable loss, leaving ten officers and about 200 men prisoners; but they reached St. Palais before Morillo could arrive, and crossed the Bidouze during the night, and destroyed the bridges. The right of the centre made a corresponding movement with the right wing on these two days, and the allied posts were this evening on the Bidouze. The bridges were repaired; Sir Rowland crossed the next day, and on the following drove the enemy across the Gave de Mouleon. They attempted to destroy the bridge at Arriverete, as if it were their intention to dispute the passage, but time was not allowed them to complete its destruction; and a ford having been discovered above the bridge, the 92nd, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron, crossed there, covered by the fire of Captain Beane’s troop of horse artillery, which was advantageously placed; this regiment made a gallant attack upon two battalions of French infantry in the village of Arriverete, and drove them out with much loss. The enemy retired in the night across the Gave d’Oleron. Sir Rowland’s posts were established on that Gave the next day; and the French took up a position in the neighbourhood of Sauveterre, where they were reinforced. The position was very strong, and covered in front by a broad and rapid river; but it seemed now as if no position, however advantageous, could give the French confidence; they had been driven during the last four days from a country of peculiar difficulty, where frequent rivers afforded them great opportunities for defending it; and when Marshal Soult understood with how little success it had been defended, he directed his whole attention to that side, destroyed all the bridges over the Adour, which were not protected ?Feb. 22.? by Bayonne, left that place to its own resources, and, concentrating his forces behind the Gave de Pau, fixed his head-quarters at Orthes.

?Preparations for crossing the Adour.?

During these operations the left wing of the army continued to observe Bayonne, with the 4th division, also, which occupied the heights of Monguerre, communicating with the left on the Nive, and resting its right on the Adour, and thus preventing the enemy from drawing any supplies for the fortress from that side of the river. Preparations had been made for passing that river, and for throwing a bridge over it, both below Bayonne, ... enterprises so difficult, that though Soult had witnessed the passage of the Douro, he seems not to have apprehended that they would be attempted. His attention had now been withdrawn from that side by Sir Rowland’s movements; the 4th division moved to the right to support that larger part of the allied army which was now assembled on the Gave d’Oleron; the 5th replaced it in the position of Monguerre, and was itself replaced by Lord Aylmer’s brigade of the first, and the Portugueze under Colonel Campbell: thus making room for Freyre’s Spanish division, which had been cantoned within their own frontier, and now, to the dismay of the inhabitants, re-entered France. The people lamented the departure of the English, and dreaded the arrival of the Spaniards; and knowing their vindictive spirit, and the long provocation which it had received, they expressed their earnest hopes that some English authorities might be left for their protection.

?The Adour.?

Adour is like Gave, a name common to many rivers in the Pyrenees, both simply meaning water in some of those primeval languages, the remains of which are still widely preserved in the appellations of rivers and mountains. The greater and noted streams, into which the others are received, has its sources in the county of Bigorre, under the Pics du Midi and d’Espade, two of the highest mountains in the chain; it passes by Campan, BagnÈres, Montgaillard, and Tarbes, and begins to be navigable near Grenade, a small town in the little county of Marsan; having been joined by the Douze on its right below Tartas, it inclines to the southwest from its junction, passes Acqs, and then holds an almost southerly course to meet the Gave de Pau, which brings with its own waters those of the Gave d’Oleron, into which the Gave de Mauleon has been received. The Adour is then joined by the Bidouze, and lastly by the Nive. Formerly it made a turn to the northward, after that junction, at Boucaut, below Bayonne, and held for about six leagues a slow and winding way, parallel with the coast, before it entered the sea at Cape Breton, its direct course having apparently been obstructed by an accumulation of sand. But towards the latter part of the sixteenth century, Louis de Foix, whose water-works at Toledo were then among the wonders of machinery, and who built the lighthouse at the mouth of the Garonne, (the Smeaton and the Telford of his age,) opened the present channel, ... an arduous undertaking, in which he was more than once foiled. His intent was, by erecting a dam across the river at its curvature, to force it into a straighter line, and make it clear a way for itself through the sands: the river again and again swept away his embankments, but he, with a just confidence in his own theory, persevered in the attempt; at length, on the day of St. Simeon and St. Jude, in the year 1579, such torrents poured down from the ?Pierre de Marca. Histoire de Bearn, p. 28.? Pyrenees, that Bayonne was in danger of being destroyed by an inundation; the Adour took then, with its increased weight of water, a straight course, and the engineer was rewarded for all his anxieties by beholding the complete triumph of his art. The Bayonnese, however, ascribed the whole ?Thuanus, l. 80. T. 3. p. 619.? merit, not to him, but to the two joint Saints of the day, and appointed a commemorative thanksgiving to be celebrated annually from that time forth upon their festival. An excellent port would now have been formed in the Adour, if the constant tendency of the sea to throw up a bar at its entrance could have been overcome. With this view the French government constructed massive stone embankments on both sides, from Boucaut to the sea; it was hoped that by thus confining the stream, its current, which at ebb tide runs about seven miles an hour, would with its own force and weight of water keep always a clear channel; but the effect was only to remove the bar somewhat farther, without lessening the difficulty or the danger of the entrance. These were so great, that the enemy at this time relied on them. They had the Sappho corvette anchored so as to flank an inundation which protected the right of their intrenched camp; they had many armed boats on the Adour, above the town, to protect the convoys of provision which came down the river, and sometimes succeeded in getting in; the mountain guns of the allies, which were the only ones that could be removed, now and then exchanged shots with these: below Bayonne they had some gun-boats in the bend of the river, by the village of Boucaut, stationed there, as it seemed, to strengthen their intrenched camp by a flanking fire; but the only precaution that the enemy had taken to impede the passage, was that of removing the signal-staff on the left bank, which marked the line for vessels to steer by, in making for the mouth of the river.

?Passage of the Adour.?

A number of Spanish chasse-marÉes had been collected at Socoa for forming a bridge; materials also were ready for a boom to protect it. The naval part of the operation was under Admiral Penrose’s direction, and the 21st was the day appointed for the attempt; but the weather proved unfavourable, and it was not possible for the vessels and their convoy to get out of Socoa. Sir John Hope, however, would not delay his movement, and resolved to attempt the passage without naval co-operation; the troops, it was thought, might be towed over upon rafts formed of pontoons, and carrying about 100 men each. On the evening of the 22nd, the troops were ordered to be in readiness for marching at midnight; they had with them a brigade of 18-pounders, and a rocket detachment which had arrived at Passages a few days after the passage of the Nive. There was a prejudice in the army against this weapon, which had hitherto not been used in the field; the opinion seems to have been, that if it had been an efficient means of destruction, it would sooner have been borrowed from the East Indian nations. Lord Wellington, however, was willing that they should be tried; and some experiments which were made at Fontarabia gave reason for supposing that they might be found useful on the Adour. The direction of this new arm was assigned to Sir Augustus Fraser, but the trial was to be made under all the disadvantages of inexperience; for the corps was composed of men hastily brought together, and entirely ignorant of the arm they were to use; and the rockets themselves were equipped in five different ways, and consequently liable to as many failures. Altogether the enterprise was one of no ordinary hazard; the entrance of the river was frequently impracticable, and always perilous; its width where it was to be bridged was 270 yards, and the tide and the ripple were there so formidable as to preclude the use of anything smaller than decked vessels of twenty or thirty tons burthen; the navigation from Socoa was uncertain; and there were the corvette and the flotilla of gun-boats to assist a garrison which consisted of more than 10,000 men. Yet even those who fully understood the difficulties of the operation had nevertheless full confidence that it would succeed.

Soon after midnight the troops were in motion; when within a short distance of Anglet, they turned by a crossroad toward the coast, marching in strict silence along the skirts of the enemy’s outposts. It was a dark night, the road narrow, deep in mud, and with ditches on either side; one of the 18-pounders was drawn too near the edge in the darkness, the side of the road gave way under its weight, and it sunk into the ditch, dragging the near horses after it. This delayed the march for some time, till, by the greatest exertions, the gun was drawn up out of the deep mud; but no ill consequence arose from this mischance; the enemy were not on the alert, and the troops arrived before daylight on the sand-hills which border the coast from the vicinity of Biaritz to the mouth of the Adour: the tract between these hills and the intrenched camp is almost wholly covered by the pine-wood called the Bois de Bayonne. At daybreak, two light battalions of the German legion patroled through the wood, and dislodged the enemy’s piquets, which retired from thence, and from the village of Anglet, into the intrenched camp. The first brigade of guards, under Colonel Maitland, debouched from the wood near the place where the signal-staff, known by the name of the Balise Orientale, had stood, which was on a high sand-hill nearly opposite Boucaut. The ground here could not be reconnoitred till the enemy’s piquets were driven in; and this of course was avoided till the last moment, that no alarm might be given. It had been supposed that the guns might be brought within 700 or 800 yards of the Sappho, and that they might sink her, lest she should be employed against the bridge; but, when they had been brought with great labour through the deep sandy ground, it was necessary to place them where they were sheltered from the guns of the intrenched camp, and this was in a situation 1500 yards from the corvette. There they were placed in battery, and the brigade was posted behind some sand-hills, close to the marsh which protected the front of the camp. Don Carlos d’EspaÑa meantime made a demonstration on the heights above Anglet, to prevent the enemy from detaching any troops.

As soon as the French saw the brigade debouching from the pine-wood they commenced a cannonade against it from their gun-boats. This had been foreseen; the rocket-corps had, therefore, been divided into three parties, one of which went, with the first division, towards the mouth of the Adour, and the other two accompanied the 18-pounders to be employed against the flotilla. There were twelve boats to assist the Sappho; but when a few rockets had been discharged, the terrified sailors took to their oars, and made all speed up the river; the effect, indeed, of these weapons was most terrific; they dashed through the water like fiery serpents, and pierced ?Batty’s Campaign, p. 119.? the sides of the boat, burning apparently even under water with undiminished force. The guns meantime opened upon the corvette, and fired about 400 rounds at her, some toward the conclusion with hot shot. This failed to set her on fire; and when the three-coloured flag was shot from the flag-staff, the enemy presently nailed it to the mast-head; but after some hours the French retired from the contest, under the protection of the citadel, their captain having been killed, and 34, out of a crew of 40 men, killed or wounded, ... sacrificed, as it should seem, in a display of courage which could be of no avail. The action had served as a spectacle for the inhabitants of Bayonne, who came out from the promenade which skirts the river, to witness, and apparently to enjoy it, ... the day being remarkably fine, and the action itself, with all its circumstances, as described by an eye-witness, more resembling some festival display than the dreadful reality of war; the spectators, too, thought themselves at safe distance, till one poor fellow came rashly within range of the guns, and had his head carried off by a shot which passed completely through the corvette.

That vessel had not been destroyed, but the attack on it, and the other demonstrations in front of the intrenched camp, had the desired effect of occupying the enemy’s whole attention; a bend which the Adour makes on the seaward side of the town, and the pine-wood, which extended almost close to its banks, prevented them from seeing the movements of the allies on that side, and they kept little watch there, because they apprehended no danger. But meantime the whole of the first division, except the brigade of guards which accompanied the artillery that attacked the Sappho, had marched to attempt a passage near the mouth of the river. With this force there were eighteen pontoons and six small boats, forty rocketeers, and an officer with a few artillerymen, destined to spike the guns of a battery on the enemy’s side of the water. The intention was, to construct six rafts, each upon three pontoons, by which, in two passages, 1200 men might be passed across before the day should dawn; 1200 more being ready to follow, while these held their ground, supported by twelve field-pieces from the left bank. But, owing to the difficulty of getting the pontoons on, it was found that only three of them could be brought to the water’s edge before daylight; and therefore it was deemed advisable by the officers in command to withdraw the troops behind some sand-hills, where they were quite concealed, and collect the pontoons. Some of the officers, meantime, before day broke, examined the shore, to see where would be the most favourable points for putting the rafts into the water; the sentry on the opposite bank challenged them, but no answer was returned, and no alarm taken. Sir John Hope came to the spot at daylight, but afterwards sent orders to attempt the passage, at all hazards, when the tide would permit. A little before noon the river became passable, the tide, still running out, being nearly slack. At this time the fleet from Socoa was in sight, but at considerable distance, and with an unfavourable though not a strong wind, rather losing than gaining ground. The river at the point where the passage was to be attempted appeared to be about 200 yards wide at low water. The British made no show of men, and could only see a small piquet of the enemy’s on the other side; this piquet appeared at a loss what to do, and as soon as the first boats were carried to the water’s edge on men’s shoulders, they fairly ran off, without discharging a single shot, the piece of their advanced sentry having missed fire. The six boats were soon on the water, each carrying only six soldiers; and the tide coming in soon increased the labour of the passage. A rope was passed from one side to the other, and three rafts were put together with all speed, each carrying from 50 to 60 men; but, after two or three passages had been effected, the tide came in with such force that it was found impracticable to get the raft either backward or forward from the middle of the current, where it remained tide-bound, the united strength of all who were on board not being sufficient to haul with any effect upon the hawser. About five o’clock they ceased working, the few seamen whom they had, and who were all Portugueze, being exhausted with fatigue. By that time 500 of the guards had been ferried across, the rocketeers having been the last, with Captain Lane of the artillery, who came out with them from England. All was at this time quiet, and apparently the day’s work was done. But a little before dusk the enemy pushed down two regiments from the citadel; they came on with apparent spirit, beating the charge. Colonel Stopford posted the guards behind some low sand-hills, with their right on the river, and their left on a morass, the ground in their front being flanked by the artillery on the opposite bank; but a well-directed discharge of rockets made the French hastily retreat: the effect of this weapon was more terrible because they had never before witnessed it, and they retired with all speed into the citadel.

?Entrance of the flotilla.?

The troops bivouacked that night on the ground which they occupied; those who were in the wood felled trees and kindled fires. As soon as the tide served more men were passed across, the pontoons being used as row-boats, carrying fifteen men at each turn: it was bright moonlight, the weather perfectly still, and there was no enemy to offer any opposition. ?Feb. 24.? The wind sprung up for the flotilla during the night, and at morning it was seen, ... about threescore vessels, including boats of all kinds, some of them near the mouth of the river, standing off and on. The Admiral was in the Porcupine frigate: he had been apprized, through the naval agent at Socoa, how anxiously the entrance of the vessels for the bridge was desired. The surf had increased in proportion as the wind became favourable; and the bar, which extends from the right bank, nearly across the river, shifting with the change of wind and tide, and at all times dangerous, was at this time more than usually formidable. The agent, who set off in his boat from Socoa as soon as he received the last night’s advices, had no pilot on board, and mistaking the channel where he should have entered the river, beached himself on a spit of sand; fortunate, however, in his mishap, for the boat cleared the sand by great exertion, and having been pulled, sails standing, over the spit, got into deep water. One boat, which had the principal pilot on board, and therefore was selected as the safest, led the way, and was overset, several of the crew perished, and most of those who saved themselves were dreadfully bruised. Captain O’Reilly, who had command of the flotilla, was on board, and Captain Faddy (who had charge of 50 artillerymen sent in five gun-boats), both with great difficulty escaped: a second succeeded in reaching the beach; the larger vessels then put off, to wait the chance of the next tide, it being, as the Admiral declared, scarcely possible that one in fifty could then have effected the passage. Some small boats, however, attempted it, and were swamped; what boats were on the river were sent to pick up those who were struggling for life, but without success; some who regained their own boats, and clung to them, were swept off into the sea, and only one man was saved.

Had the bar been smoother, the tide was now too low for vessels to attempt the entrance; but a pilot was landed to the south-west of it, that he might walk to the Adour, and make signals from within the bar, to guide the vessels into the safer parts, supplying thus the signal-staff which on that side had been removed, for from the sea there appeared only one long and heavy line of surf. Meantime the troops continued to cross as they could, about 100 yards above the mouth of the river, some on rafts, some in a pontoon-boat which carried only twelve at a time; and when the tide presented least difficulty, a few cavalry by swimming. When the tide had risen sufficiently, the vessels boldly stood in, the pilot who had been landed having set up a halberd, with a handkerchief fixed to it, as a signal for directing them. The master’s mate of the Lyra led the way; his boat was lost, and himself and the whole of the crew. Several vessels shared the same fate. One who was on the shore, close at hand, and who had been accustomed to fields of battle, declared that he had never beheld a scene so awful. The boats were so agitated as they attempted the passage, sails flapping, oars apparently useless, and all steerage lost, that it seemed as if each must inevitably be wrecked. Two vessels were stranded, but almost all their crews were by great exertion saved. A gun-brig also was driven ashore; Captain Elliot, of the Martial gun-brig, was swamped in his boat; his surgeon was picked up by this gun-boat, but upon her striking the ground the shock threw down a 24-pounder, which fell upon him and killed him. Three transport boats with their crews were lost; every exertion was made to save those who were struggling for life in the surf, literally within ten yards of their countrymen on shore; but though there were men with ropes tied to them on the beach, who spared no endeavour for assisting them, and who when the waves retired appeared as if they were close to them, not a soul could be saved: some who actually obtained footing on the ground were carried back by the receding surf, and swept away for ever. But the zeal and intrepidity of British seamen will overcome all obstacles that are not absolutely insuperable: officers and men on this occasion displayed gallantry which could not be surpassed, and skill which has seldom been equalled; vying with each other they essayed the passage; and happily the wind towards evening gradually died away, and about thirty vessels got in.

?A bridge carried over the Ardour.?

The passage of the troops, meantime, had been continued; it was quite dark before the last party were ferried over, and the tide was then running out so rapidly, that the most strenuous rowing hardly prevented the boat from being drifted out to sea. The whole of General Howard’s division, about 6000 in number, were then on the right bank. They bivouacked on the sand-hills where the enemy on the yester-evening ?Feb. 25.? had been discomfited by the rockets. On the morrow they advanced towards the citadel, their right flank resting on the Adour, the left extending to the great road leading from Bayonne to Bourdeaux. Closing in to the verge of a deep and marshy ravine, which separates the high ground about the citadel from the surrounding country, they cut off the enemy’s communication with the open tract to the north of the river, and completed the investment of the fortress and its camp; a feint attack being kept up the while on the opposite side by Lord Aylmer’s brigade, the 5th division, and the Spaniards. By great exertions the bridge was finished on the following day. The point fixed upon for it was near the village of Boucaut, where the river is 270 yards wide. It consisted of six-and-twenty chasse-marÉes, anchored each at the bow and stern so as to resist both the ebbing and the flowing tide; to many of these, as a substitute for anchors, the heavy iron guns were used which had been taken in the redoubts on the Nive. The vessels were lashed together both at bow and stern. Five cables were stretched by capstans across these vessels from shore to shore, and oaken planks were laid athwart upon these, and secured to the two outer cables, so as to form a platform strong enough to bear the passage of artillery, yet pliant enough to adapt itself to the motion of the vessels with the tide. On the right bank the cable ends were fastened to some of the heaviest iron guns which had been taken in the camp of the Nivelle; on the left they were wound round capstans, which were firmly fixed by large stakes driven into the ground; and by these the tension of the platform could be increased or lessened as the rise or fall of the river might require. A little way above the bridge a boom-chain was laid down for its protection; and above this the gun-boats were anchored, in readiness to engage those of the enemy, should any attempt be made upon the bridge by sending them down the river. The piers on both sides were wide enough for carriages of all descriptions; and that on the right bank was used for the artillery, in a part where the ?Batty’s Campaign, 126, 127.? water is admitted at flood through apertures, and where a road could not have been formed without great expense of labour and of time.

This bridge was of the greatest importance, not only as affording a communication between the troops upon both banks during the blockade and intended siege of Bayonne, but also because it opened a way to the chaussÉes on the right of the river, whereby the army in its advance towards the interior could be much more easily supplied than by the bad roads in the exhausted country along the skirts of the Pyrenees, and where the Gaves and other tributary streams of the Adour were to be crossed. The inhabitants of Boucaut and of the adjacent villages had been ordered to take up arms against the allies; they had refused; and in consequence, the French troops upon leaving them committed some excesses. The contrast indeed was so great between the treatment which they experienced from their own soldiers and from the allies, that the peasantry volunteered to repair the roads for their uninvited, but now not unwelcome visitors.

?Passage of the Gaves.?

While Bayonne was thus being invested by the left wing of the army, the two divisions which had hitherto observed that place between the Adour and the Nive joined the main body; and Lord Wellington, as soon as the troops were closed up, continuing his operations to the right, made a general advance. Marshal Beresford, who had remained since Sir Rowland’s movement with the 4th and 7th divisions and with Colonel Vivian’s brigade on the lower Bidouze, attacked the enemy on the 23rd in their fortified posts at Hastingues and Oyergave, on the left of the Gave de Pau, and made them retire within their tÊte-de-pont at Peyrehorade. On the 24th, Sir Rowland, with the light, the 2nd, and the Portugueze divisions, under Baron Alten, Sir William Stewart, and Camp-Marshal Lecor, passed the Gave d’Oleron, by a ford near Ville-nave, without opposition. Sir Henry Clinton passed in like manner with the 6th, between Monfort and Laas; and Sir Thomas Picton with the 3rd made demonstrations as if he would have attacked the enemy’s position at the bridge of Sauveterre, upon which they blew up the bridge. Morillo at the same time drove in their posts near Navarreins, and blockaded that place, which was fortified strongly enough to require battering-artillery for its reduction. Immediately after the passage of the Oleron Gave, Sir Rowland and Sir Henry Clinton moved towards Orthes, and the great road leading from Sauveterre to that town; and the enemy retiring from Sauveterre across the Gave de Pau in the night, destroyed the bridges upon that river, and assembled their army near Orthes on the 25th. The allies continued to advance that day, and on the following Beresford crossed the Gave de Pau below its junction with that of Oleron, at some fords about four miles above Peyrehorade; these were not discovered till after some unsuccessful attempts, and the current there was so rapid, that the infantry of General Walker’s division could hardly support each other against it, and for some minutes there was reason to fear that the column would be carried down the stream. The Marshal then moved along the high road from Peyrehorade toward Orthes, on the enemy’s right. Sir Thomas Picton had found a ford below the bridge of Berenx, where he crossed with the 3rd division, and Sir Stapleton with the cavalry as Beresford approached; the 6th and light divisions made a flank movement to support them, and Sir Rowland occupied the heights opposite Orthes, and the high road leading to Sauveterre, on the left bank of the Gave. His corps advanced directly upon the bridge of Orthes, with the hope of forcing it; but, being without artillery, and finding the approach defended by loop-holed houses, and by a tower strongly manned against them, they desisted from their intent.

Orthes, which before the territorial arrangement of France was revolutionized, was the capital of the Senechalry of the same name, is supposed by Scaliger to have been the ancient city of Bearum, the Beneharnus of Antoninus, and the Benarnus of writers in a later age; but this opinion seems to have been satisfactorily ?Ramond’s Tr. in the Pyrenees, p. 92.? disproved. It stands upon the Gave de Pau, there a considerable river, and remarkable, because its accessible source is a waterfall, higher, except one in America, than any that has ever yet been measured; it springs from a height of 1266 feet, and being twice broken on the way by projections of the precipice, falls upon a bed of perpetual snow, under ?P. de Marca. Hist. de Bearn, L. 1. c. 6. § 4. 14.? which it works its passage. Orthes was the residence of the Princes of Bearn during some 200 years from the middle of the 13th century, when Gaston de Moncada built the Chasteau Noble there, upon the plan of his hereditary castle in Aragon, and in a like situation, on an eminence commanding the town, and overlooking a wide circuit of country. In that castle Froissart was entertained by Gaston Phebus, the twelfth Count of Foix, and Lord of Bearn, and there he was informed concerning the affairs of Castille, Portugal, Navarre, Aragon, Gascony, and England, Gaston himself communicating to him what he knew, and telling him that the history which he had undertaken to write would be esteemed above all others, because more marvellous deeds of arms had been done in the world within the last fifty years than in three centuries preceding. There the good old chronicler was as happy as splendid hospitality, and the diligent use of favourable opportunities, could make him; the thing which he most desired being to collect information for his great work, and having at his wish there, lords, knights, and squires, ready and willing to inform him. In this castle Gaston Phebus kept his treasure, and it is said to have amounted at one time to no less a sum than three million florins, raised by taxation, which was borne cheerfully, because he maintained order in his dominions; neither English nor French, nor robber nor rover, harassed his people; and he had the reputation of being as liberal as he was just, not heralds and minstrels only, but strangers who came there having cause to praise him for his bounty. Froissart had been in many courts of kings, dukes, princes, earls, and great ladies, but never in any, he says, that so well liked him as the Castle Noble of Orthes; and he had seen many knights, kings, and princes, but none like this Count of Foix for personage, nor of so fair form, nor so well made; for in every thing he was so perfect, that he could not be praised too much, loving what ought to be beloved, and hating that which ought to be hated. Yet so accustomed were men to the most atrocious actions, in that which was the brightest age of chivalry, that this very Gaston committed a murder in this castle as much in violation of honour and of hospitality, as of laws both human and divine; tortured innocent persons to death upon mere suspicion, and with his own hands killed his own son at the close of a frightful tragedy, of which this castle was the scene; and the faithful historian who thus extols him has related all these things! The ruins of the Chasteau Noble are yet to be seen, and the tower in which Gaston kept his treasure was standing in the last century. Orthes ceased to be the residence of the Counts in 1460, when they removed their court to Pau; and their removal was not compensated by the short-lived university which about a century after Queen Jeanne of Navarre founded there for the Huguenots, and endowed from the church property in her dominions.

Here Marshal Soult had taken a strong position, extending about a mile in length along a range of tabular heights; his right, under ReillÉ, resting on them upon the high road to Dax, and occupying the village of St. Boes; the centre, under Drouet, taking the bend of a sickle, as the hill formed a cove, and being thus protected by the flanks; the left, under Clausel, resting upon the town and the heights above it, and defending the passage of the river from Sir Rowland. Villatte’s and Harispe’s divisions, and Paris’s brigade, were formed in reserve on high ground upon the road ?Feb. 27.? to Sault de Navailles. “Thus,” in the words of a French historian, “from 35,000 to 40,000 French troops were collected at a point as favourable as the most skilful commander could have chosen for ?Beauchamp’s Narrative of the Invasion, 2. p. 52.? resisting the advance of an invading army.” Lord Wellington’s arrangements were, that Beresford, with the 4th and 7th divisions, and Colonel Vivian’s brigade of cavalry, should turn and attack the enemy’s right; while Picton, with the 3rd and 6th, supported by Sir Stapleton with Lord Edward Somerset’s brigade of horse, should move along the Peyrehorade road, and attack their centre and left. Baron Alten, with the light division, kept up the communication, and was in reserve between these; and Sir Rowland was to force the passage of the Gave, and turn and attack their left.

The action commenced about nine in the morning. The 4th division, under Sir Lowry Cole, carried the village of St. Boes, after an obstinate resistance. Beresford then directed his efforts against two lines of the enemy formed on the heights above it; but the troops had not room here to deploy for the attack, the only approach being along a narrow tongue of land, which had on either side a deep ravine, and was completely commanded by the enemy’s guns. Sir Lowry’s division led the way; 15 pieces of artillery played on them diagonally with full effect; in front they were opposed by the main line of the French infantry, and strong bodies were formed in the ravines on their flanks. Repeated attempts were made by Major-General Ross, and by Vasconcellos’s Portugueze brigade, till at length that brigade was completely broken, and the remainder of the division, with a brigade of Baron Alten’s that hastened to their assistance, with difficulty covered their retreat: thus, on this point, the attack totally failed.

Lord Wellington saw that it was impossible to turn this wing of the enemy by their right, without extending his line too far; he therefore ordered the immediate advance of the 3rd and 6th divisions, and the 7th, with a brigade of the light division, to support them by attacking the height which the enemy occupied at the point of junction between their right and centre. The 52nd regiment, under Colonel Colborne, led up the hill, supported closely by the other troops both on the right and left; and the artillery gained a knoll from whence it swept the whole line of the enemy’s centre. It made such havoc among their reserve masses, that the French 21st hussars were provoked to a most daring movement for seizing it; they galloped round the hill, and, under a heavy fire of musquetry, charged and drove back one of the supporting battalions; then with equal courage fell upon the 42nd Highlanders, but the Highlanders received their charge firmly, and the hussars suffered so much in it, that they gave up this brave though unsuccessful attempt. Meantime the allied troops were advancing steadily, under a destructive fire: Major-General Inglis’s brigade distinguished itself now, as it had done on all occasions, and made a successful charge on the enemy’s left; every regiment in the 3rd division was hotly engaged, they drove the French from every height where they attempted to make a stand, and in spite of all resistance gained at length the summit of the main position. There a severe struggle ensued; on no former occasion had the enemy fought so well when opposed to British troops; it was the only action in which they came fairly to the bayonet; but the determination which brought them to that sure trial could not support them in it, and, giving up all hope now of a successful resistance, they began to retreat over the level ground in their rear in good order, by echellons of divisions, each successively covering the other, and supported by their cavalry, which, by a gallant charge on the 6th division, endeavoured, but in vain, to check the pursuit. The infantry rallied upon some rising ground, and attempted again to make a stand: the 9th hussars, under Colonel Vivian, made them again give way. They then formed into squares, and continued to retire still in admirable order; and, though warmly pursued, and suffering heavily from the British guns, they took every advantage of the numerous positions which the ground afforded.

Marshal Soult, in whom nothing was that day wanting which could be required of a commander in the field, was compelled to withdraw his wings, when the centre had thus been forced, and to order a general retreat. The wings had comparatively suffered little; and this movement was as well conducted as all his former ones had been. But meantime Sir Rowland had forced the passage of the Gave above the town; and seeing the state of the action, he moved, with the 2nd division, and Major-General Fane’s brigade of cavalry, for the great road to St. Sever, keeping thus upon the enemy’s left, but in a direction towards a point in their rear which would have cut off their retreat on Sault de Navailles. Their movements quickened as soon as they perceived this danger; and as their march was accelerated, Sir Rowland quickened his, till the retreat became a flight; they ran, and the allies ran also, and the race continued till the French broke so completely, that no resemblance of a column was remaining. It was the lively expression of an officer there present that, “in the battle they met the charge like lions, but that the pursuit was like hare-hunting;” prisoners were literally caught by the skirts as they ran. Could the cavalry have acted sooner off the great road, the French army must have been almost destroyed. They suffered greatly where any obstacle impeded their flight; the enclosures and ditches were thickly strewn with their killed and wounded; 2000 fugitives were picked up by the infantry, and 12 pieces of cannon taken, and many more prisoners upon the only opportunity which was offered for the cavalry to charge, when the enemy had been driven from the high road by Sir Rowland. The victory, complete as it was, might have been followed to more advantage, if Lord Wellington had not been struck on the pommel of his sword by a musquet-shot, and bruised so severely by the blow, that he was unable to cross this intersected country on horseback time enough to direct the farther movements of the divisions in pursuit: the most decisive victory would have been dearly purchased by his loss. When it became dusk, the army was halted in the neighbourhood of Sault de Navailles. The loss of the allies, in killed, wounded, and missing, was somewhat less than 2300, of whom about 600 were Portugueze; no Spaniards were engaged that day. That of the ?Beauchamp, 2. p. 55.? enemy was estimated by one of their own writers at from 14,000 to 16,000, very much the greater part being by desertion after the rout; for the conscripts threw down their arms, and took the opportunity of escaping from compulsory service. Foy was severely wounded, General Bechaud killed, and another General mortally wounded.

The main body of the French army continued its retreat during the night, and was joined at Hagetman by the garrison of Dax, and by two fresh battalions of conscripts; it then halted behind the Adour, near St. Sever, to re-organize itself: the allies followed them to St. Sever on the day after the battle, and the centre advanced in three columns with the hope of enveloping them. That which marched on the chaussÉe arrived at the appointed moment; but the flank columns ?March 1.? could not proceed upon the unpaved roads at the pace which was required; and thus the enemy had time to move off in the direction of Agen, escaping an attack which they were in no condition to have withstood. Beresford then with the light division, and with Colonel Vivian’s brigade, passed the Higher Adour, and occupied Mont de Marsan, the principal town in the department of the Landes, where he took a very large ?The French driven from Aire.? magazine of provisions. Here no resistance was attempted; but at Aire, where the enemy had other magazines, a corps was collected with the intention of making a stand to protect their removal. Against this place, which is on the left bank of the Adour, Sir Rowland moved upon the 2nd of March; and when his advanced guard arrived within two miles of the town, the French were discovered strongly posted on a ridge of hills, with their right upon the river, thus covering the approach. Notwithstanding the strength of the post, Sir William Stewart was ordered to attack them with the second division along the road, and Brigadier-General Da Costa’s Portugueze brigade about the centre of their position. The French force consisted of two divisions; and the Portugueze, when they forced their way up and gained the summit, found, which had not been expected, an extent of flat ground on the top, and a strong body of the enemy completely formed there to resist them; the Portugueze were so broken and confused that they could regain no formation, and must have suffered accordingly, if Sir William Stewart, having beaten back the enemy on his side, had not dispatched his first brigade under Major-General Barnes to their timely support. The enemy were then in their turn thrown into confusion by a vigorous charge, nor could they after many attempts recover the ground, but were driven from all their positions, and finally from the town, where the magazines fell into the conqueror’s hands. Two divisions of the French were engaged in this affair, one of them was Harispe’s, which had not been at Orthes; their loss was very considerable: that of the allies amounted to 20 killed and 135 wounded; among the former was the Honourable Lieutenant-Colonel Hood, of the general staff, an officer of great merit and promise.

At this time the French were once more favoured by the weather. Heavy and continued rain fell during the beginning of the month, swelling all the rivulets so as materially to impede the progress of the allies, increasing in proportion the Adour, which was so rapid that pontoons could not be laid upon it, and rendering it more difficult to repair the numerous bridges which the enemy had destroyed in their retreat; yet till this could be done, the different parts of the army were without communication. Lord Wellington was therefore compelled to halt; and Marshal Soult, who after his defeat at Orthes had been forced by the movement of Sir Rowland’s corps to retire in the direction of Bourdeaux, had leisure and opportunity to choose his course. The divisions which had been driven from Aire retreated up both banks of the Adour towards Tarbes, with a view, as Lord Wellington perceived, of being reinforced by farther detachments from Marshal Suchet’s army. This direction Soult had resolved to take, because it was only from Suchet that he could look for any efficient aid; though it appears that there was not that concert and clear understanding between the two Marshals which might have been expected in men of such experience and great ability. By thus approaching the Pyrenees he left the way to Bourdeaux open to the allies; he, however, supposed that Lord Wellington would not venture to advance upon that city, but of necessity must follow his movements. In the latter conclusion he was not mistaken; but he greatly mistook the disposition of the French people, who now looked to the English as their liberators, a disposition that was increased by his own conduct, and by the licentious habits of his troops. The loss of his magazines compelled him to impose heavy requisitions, as far as his power to collect them extended, to the ruin of the inhabitants, while their countrymen in other parts were enriched by the presence of an invading army, paying for every thing at the exorbitant prices that its own demand occasioned. His troops, therefore, in their own country were in want of every thing, and the English were abundantly supplied. ?Beauchamp, 2. 61. Batty’s Narrative, 139.? The depredations and the enormities which his men committed, though not aggravated by that fiendish cruelty which had characterized the French in Portugal, were yet such that they were execrated wherever they went; and the allies, in every town and village where they entered, were welcomed as deliverers and protectors. Many instances occurred in which our sick soldiers were taken in by some hospitable family, and nursed with the greatest kindness.

One of the enemy’s columns having been cut off from the Adour by Sir Rowland’s rapid march upon Aire, retreated in disorder toward Pau, the men throwing away their arms, the better to effect their escape and facilitate their desertion. The few who reached that place were driven out by a detachment which Lord Wellington sent thither under General Fane to occupy it; and there the allies established a hospital in which the Soeurs de la CharitÉ attended upon the sick and wounded soldiers, after the manner of their exemplary order. Travellers are still shown at Pau the chamber in which Henri IV. was born, and the tortoise-shell in which he slept as in a cradle. The gardens which had been his delight were remaining at the close of the 17th century; and the walks overarched with trees, the arbours, and the evergreens, though all neglected then, bore testimony still to the care with which they had formerly been dressed, and to the topiary skill which had been displayed there. Bearn, of which Pau was the capital in former times, was one of the most favoured parts of France, and indeed of the world, before the French revolution cut up the well-being of a whole generation by the roots; for the division of property, and the industry and manners of the people had combined there with all fortunate circumstances of soil, surface, and climate, to render the inhabitants contented and happy.

When the news of the battle of Orthes reached St. Jean de Luz, two deputies arrived at the same time from Toulouse, to assure the Duc d’AngoulÊme that the inhabitants of that city eagerly desired the restoration of the Bourbons. The Duc upon this repaired to Lord Wellington’s head-quarters at St. Sever; Rochejaquelein followed him, and they were joined there by M. Bontemps Dubarry, who came from Bourdeaux, charged by the better part of the citizens to invite the Duc, and to assure Lord Wellington that a British force would be received there as friends. Lord Wellington no longer hesitated; and as soon as Freyre’s Spanish corps, which had been stationed in reserve near Irun, could be brought up, and every disposable body was closed to the right, he dispatched Marshal Beresford ?The Duc d’AngoulÊme proceeds thither with Marshal Beresford.? with three divisions toward that important city, to drive out its inconsiderable garrison, and give the inhabitants an opportunity of declaring for the exiled family if such were their wish, and they chose to venture upon a measure which might be so injurious to themselves, if Buonaparte should accept of the peace that still was offered him. Lord Wellington still doubted of this, even after he had determined upon making the trial; and Rochejaquelein, when he went to receive the Duc’s last order, before he set off with the advanced guard, found that the Duc himself seemed to entertain the same discouraging opinion. Upon this he requested permission to precede the English by six-and-thirty hours, and declared that if Bourdeaux did not declare itself, his head should be ?MÉmoires de la Marquise de la Rochejaquelein, p. 529.? responsible for the failure. “You are certain then of your grounds,” the Duc rejoined. “As certain,” replied Rochejaquelein, “as one can be of any earthly thing!” The Duc then expressed his full confidence in him, and bade him go.

The sandy tract which extends from Bayonne to Bourdeaux is well known by the name of the Landes; so called, it has been supposed, because all other ground in the adjacent country had its proper appellation of field, meadow, marsh, wood, or other such terms according to its produce and uses; but this region ?Gallia Christiana, T. 1. Gloss.? was mere land and nothing else; it is a vast plain, perfectly level, in some parts covered with pine forests, in others only a wide waste of sand, where the trees are so thinly scattered in the sea-like circle, that in hot and hazy weather they have the appearance of ships at sea. The peasant stalks over the loose sand upon high stilts, which are found as useful here as racquets for the snow in Canada. Uncultivated, however, and thinly peopled as this extensive tract is, the pine forests yield a considerable revenue; the trees are regularly tapped for turpentine, pitch is extracted from them, and candles made from resin are in common use. While Marshal Beresford advanced without opposition over this remarkable country, Rochejaquelein having proceeded with the light troops as far as Langon, made his way to the house of one of his confederates at Preignac; and from thence was safely conducted, though the avenues were then watched by detachments of soldiers and of gendarmerie, into Bourdeaux. He found that the secret council of the royalists there, contrary alike to his wishes and expectations, had just dispatched ?March 10.? a messenger to Marshal Beresford, requesting him to delay his movement, that they might have more time for preparing the people, and bringing the royalists from the country round to the support of those in the town. This was at ten on the night of the 10th; his representations how impolitic it was to allow the timid time for considering the danger, and how desirable that at this crisis Bourdeaux should declare itself for their legitimate king by a spontaneous movement, inspired them with a braver spirit: and four of their confederates were then successively sent off to meet the Duc d’AngoulÊme and the English, and entreat them to expedite their march.

The battle of Orthes had already struck fear into those persons from whom the royalists had most to apprehend; and no sooner was it known that a British force was advancing towards Bourdeaux, than the principal persons there who were in Buonaparte’s service thought it hopeless to resist. The senator M. Cornudet, who was Commissioner Extraordinary in this department, ordered all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities to be dissolved, and every person in the employ of government to leave the city. He gave directions for destroying two frigates which were upon the stocks; and when it was rumoured that this would be opposed by the people, he set fire to them himself; and, taking with him the public chests, and as much gunpowder and saltpetre as he could remove in haste from the public stores, he withdrew. General Lhuillier, who had the military command, could not collect more than 2000 soldiers; he, therefore, withdrew also. But the Archbishop, as well as the Mayor, M. Lynch, remained and prepared to receive the Duc d’AngoulÊme as the nephew of their lawful King, and the English as his allies. Instead of finding any force to resist him on the way, or any disposition for resistance, Marshal Beresford was met by royalists from all parts of Medoc and Guienne, who came in crowds to welcome the Duc. Long accustomed to adversity, the Duc himself was not elated by this fair appearance of returning fortune; he knew that, whatever might be the wishes of the allied sovereigns, they did not yet consider it their policy to espouse the cause of the Bourbons, and he requested the people not to endanger themselves by a hasty declaration; but ?March 1.? notwithstanding this expressed desire, the cry of “Vive le Roi!” was raised in the little town of Bazan when he entered it. Early on the morning of the 12th, the local authorities of Bourdeaux assembled ?The Duc enters, and the white flag is hoisted there.? at the Hotel de Ville. The English hussars were beginning to enter, when Rochejaquelein rode with all speed to meet Marshal Beresford, and requested him to withdraw them, that the royalists might declare themselves before he entered: of course this was instantly done. The municipality went out to meet him; the royal guard which had secretly been formed were instructed to assemble upon the road with arms concealed, and their officers followed in the magistrates’ train. As soon as Beresford arrived at the bridge of La Maye, he sent Colonel Vivian to the Mayor, saying that he hoped to enter the city as a friend and an ally. The Mayor met the Marshal without the gates, and addressed him to this effect, that if he were about to enter Bourdeaux as a conqueror, he might possess himself of the keys, which there were no means of defending; but if he came in the name of the King of France and of his ally, the King of England, they should then be joyfully presented to him. Marshal Beresford replied, that his orders were to occupy the city and to protect it; that he hoped his message had been satisfactory, and that the city which he was about to enter was the city of an ally inhabited by the subjects of Louis XVIII. M. Lynch, upon this, exclaimed, “Vive le Roi!” cast away his scarf, and put on the white cockade. At the same moment the white flag was displayed from the steeple of St. Michael’s: those who were prepared with white cockades mounted them, those who were not supplied their place with paper; and when, about an hour afterwards, the Duc de Guiche arrived and announced the near arrival of Monseigneur the Duc d’AngoulÊme, Bourdeaux had never before witnessed so general or so generous a joy as was then manifested. Crowds pressed round him, if they might but touch his clothes or his horse; some cried, “He is of our blood; he was born a Frenchman, and feels like a Frenchman!” numbers fell on their knees and blessed him, and blessed God that they had lived to see this day; mothers pointed him out to their children and said, “Now we shall no longer lose all our sons in the war!”

It was nearly two hours before the Duc could make his way through the multitude to the cathedral. There the Archbishop at the head of the clergy awaited him at the great door, and Te Deum was performed there amid the acclamations of the populace. M. Lynch issued a proclamation in a strain well pitched to support the feeling which had thus strongly been excited. “Inhabitants of Bourdeaux,” said he, “happy circumstances have called upon the paternal magistrate of your city to become the interpreter of your long suppressed wishes and the organ of your interests, by welcoming in your name the nephew of Louis XVI., whose presence has converted into allies an irritated nation bearing the character of enemies till they reached your gates. It is not to subjugate our country that the English, and the Spaniards, and the Portugueze appear where they now are: they are come with united forces into the south of France actuated by the same feelings as the nations of the north, to destroy the scourge of Europe, and supply his place by a monarch who will be the father of his people. The hands of the Bourbons are undefiled with French blood; the testament of Louis XVI. is their guide, and they renounce all thoughts of resentment: they proclaim that clemency and tolerance are the leading features of their conduct; and, in deploring the terrible ravages of that tyranny which licentiousness introduced, they forget the errors caused by the illusions of liberty. No more tyranny! no more war! no more conscription! no more vexatious taxes! are the concise and consoling expressions addressed to you by a Prince who has the daughter of Louis XVI. for his consort. I am proud that you are the first who have set an example to France. Every thing tends to assure us that our misfortunes are about to terminate, and that national rivalry will cease with them. It seems to have been decreed by Providence that the great commander, who so well deserves to be entitled the Liberator of Nations, should attach his glorious name to this glorious epoch, this memorable consummation of all my wishes. Fellow-citizens, such are the hopes and motives which have supported me at this trying period, and directed my conduct, and determined me, if necessary, to sacrifice my life for you. God is my witness, that I have no object in view but the good of my country. Long live the King!”

The Royalists, by whom this most important movement was prepared and directed, were none of those time-servers who take advantage of all changes to forward their own fortunes, and whose professed principles are always found to be in perfect accord with their immediate interest. When Rochejaquelein and the Bordelais set life and fortune thus upon the die, the Bourbons were wholly disregarded by the Allied Powers; those powers were still negotiating with Buonaparte, ... still willing, and, as it seemed, desirous to conclude a peace with him which should have left him the recognized Emperor of France. He, too, giving proof of greater military genius than could justly be inferred from his most brilliant career of success, had made head against their invading armies with an inferior force; and obtained advantages which raised the hopes of his admirers, and confirmed his overweening confidence in his own resources and strength of character. He flattered himself at this time, and endeavoured to persuade the French people, that the allies considered the scheme of invasion hopeless, that they were about to withdraw from the French territory, and to dissolve their ill-compacted league. The former conduct of those powers afforded some ground for such expectation; but they had profited by experience, and while the negotiations for peace were ?Mar. 1.? still pending at Chatillon, concluded a treaty among themselves which might have wakened Buonaparte from his delusion. By this treaty, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain, formed a league offensive and defensive for twenty years, each binding itself not to treat separately with the enemy, and each to keep on foot an army of 150,000 men, exclusive of garrisons, England reserving an option to subsidize other troops in place of her own, and agreeing to supply five millions sterling, to be divided among the other powers for maintaining the war. Each of these contracting powers was fully supported in this energetic policy by the spirit of its people. But Buonaparte continued to act as if he had still only to deal with sovereigns whom he might cajole, and statesmen whom ?Mar. 15.? he might intimidate or corrupt; and in this temper he sent his ultimatum to the congress, demanding for himself the whole line of the Rhine, great part of that of the Waal, and the fortress of Nimeguen; Italy, including Venice, for his son-in-law Eugene Beauharnois; indemnities for that prince as having been Grand Duke of Frankfort, for Jerome on the score of his kingdom of Westphalia, for Louis as Grand Duke of Berg, ... and for Joseph the Intruder, not indeed in compensation for Spain, but for Naples, ... from whence Buonaparte himself had moved him to Madrid! Such demands were at once rejected, and the congress was dissolved.

This was subsequent to the declaration of Bourdeaux in favour of the Bourbons; and when the news of that declaration was known in England, some apprehensions were felt for its immediate consequences to the persons who were principally concerned. What mercy they might expect if Buonaparte should maintain himself upon the throne was plainly indicated in a proclamation addressed at this time by Marshal Soult to his troops; it was directed against the British General as well as the Royalists, and in the spirit of one who had served the tyrant in his schemes of iniquitous ambition, without scruple and without remorse. “Soldiers,” said he, in this remarkable address, “there will be no repose for us till this hostile army shall be annihilated, or till it shall have evacuated the territory of the Emperor. It does not suspect the dangers which surround, nor the perils which await it; but time will teach this army, and the General who commands it, that our territory is not invaded with impunity, and that French honour is not with impunity insulted. The British General has had the audacity to incite you and your countrymen to revolt and sedition! He has dared insult the national honour: he has had the baseness to excite the French to break their oaths, and to be guilty of perjury! Yet a few days and those who have been capable of believing in the sincerity and delicacy of the English will learn to their cost that the English have no other object in this war than to destroy France by its own instrumentality, and reduce the French to servitude like the Portugueze, the Sicilians, and all the other people who have groaned under their yoke. Let these deluded Frenchmen look back upon the past; they will see the English at the head of every conspiracy, of the overthrow of all principles, of the destruction of all establishments, whether of greatness or of industry, for the sake of gratifying their inordinate ambition and their insatiable avarice. Is there a single point on the surface of the globe where they have not either by fraud or violence brought about the ruin of the manufactories which rivalled or surpassed their own? Soldiers, let us devote to shame and general execration every Frenchman who shall have favoured the projects of the enemy; there is no longer any bond between them and us! Our motto is Honour and Fidelity. Our duty is marked out: implacable hatred to traitors and to the enemies of the French name: interminable war to those who would divide in order to destroy us; as well as to the wretches who would desert the imperial eagles for any other standard! Let us have always in our minds fifteen ages of glory, and the innumerable triumphs which have rendered our country illustrious! Let us contemplate the prodigious efforts of our great Emperor, and his signal victories which will eternize the French name! Let us be worthy of him, and that we may bequeath to our posterity without a stain the inheritance which we have received from our fathers!”

This proclamation was more in accord with the moral than with the military reputation which Marshal Soult had established for himself. It ill became him as a great General to pour out coarse and angry invectives against his adversary; but the rancour with which he reviled and calumniated the English, the threat of interminable war to them, and of implacable hatred to the French loyalists, these were in the spirit of his councils and his conduct. For he had proved himself by his impassibility not less than by his talents, worthy of the confidence which Buonaparte placed in him ... and of the service in which he had been employed. But his exhortation to the French soldiers that they should be worthy of their Emperor was superfluous: Buonaparte’s soldiers had long been worthy of him! To this Jaffa had borne witness: Madrid and Porto, Ucles and Tarragona were witnesses; the wrongs, the sufferings, and the curses of all Europe testified it; and the confederated nations, in whom the insolence and the excesses of those soldiers had roused a feeling which no ordinary war could have excited, and who were now moving from the Tagus and the Elbe, the Danube and the Moskwa against the general oppressor, ... the common enemy, ... the individual who, when he might have conferred greater benefits upon Europe than ever sovereign before him, in ancient or modern times, had deliberately chosen the evil part, and employed his mighty power to bring about the worst ends by the most flagitious means.

But if some fears were entertained in England for the loyalists at Bourdeaux who had not waited to declare their loyalty till the danger would have been in delaying the declaration, a generous sympathy also was manifested. The militia availed themselves of the act which allowed them to volunteer for foreign service. The example was set by the Marquis of Buckingham and Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, and they sailed as soon as possible with 4000 men for the Gironde. Contrary winds impeded their passage: meantime Buonaparte had ordered a division under General Decaen to march against it by Perigueux, and Lhuillier collected what force he could to the north of the city. But Buonaparte and his Generals had now no force at their disposal strong enough to put down the spirit that had shown itself; the rich raised companies of cavalry, the artisans formed a volunteer guard for the Duc; and Lord Wellington was now so well acquainted with the disposition of the French people, that without any fears for Bourdeaux, he recalled Marshal Beresford with two divisions, thinking that Lord Dalhousie with 5000 men would secure it from any attempt that could be made against it. Admiral Penrose had hastened thither with ?March 27.? the Egmont, the Andromache, and Belle Poule frigates, and some smaller vessels, and entered the Gironde without sustaining any loss from the fire of the forts and batteries at its mouth. There was more danger from the difficulty of the navigation, but this also was surmounted by the skill and the exertion of British seamen. The enemy had the Regulus line-of-battleship, three brigs of war, and some chasse-marÉes lying in the river, and the squadron chased them as high as the shoal of Talmont, where the French passed up through the narrow channel to the north, which had been buoyed for the purpose, and then took shelter under the strong batteries on each side of Talmont bay, the British squadron anchoring outside the shoal. Fort de Blaye still prevented the navigation of the Garonne; the mayor of that place would willingly have hoisted the white flag, but though he found means of letting the Duc know his own sentiments, he could not persuade the garrison to take that part. While the Admiral prepared to act against it, Lord Dalhousie, taking Rochejaquelein for his guide, crossed the Garonne, and pushed the enemy’s parties under General Lhuillier, beyond the Dordogne; ?April 4.? he then crossed that river at St. Andre de Cubzac, with a view to the attack of the fort, but learning that Lhuillier with 300 cavalry and 1200 foot had retired by Etauliers, he moved on that point, intending to turn back again upon Blaye if that General continued his retreat. Lhuillier however drew out his corps in a large open common near Etauliers, and occupied some woods in front of it: the woods were soon cleared; the enemy’s horse and foot gave way and retired through the town, leaving scattered parties to shift for themselves; some 300 prisoners were taken, including about 30 officers, great numbers dispersed in the woods, and the conscripts took the desired opportunity of escaping. On the preceding day a detachment under Captain Coode, of the Porcupine, took or destroyed a numerous ?March.? flotilla, which had been equipped in haste, and which, before the arrival of the British squadron, had threatened the coast of Medoc, and Bourdeaux itself. Among the prizes was a splendid barge designed for the Emperor when he visited that city, with his name on the stern, and his golden eagle on the prow; this the sailors humbly requested might be presented with their duty to the Prince Regent. Another corps of 600 seamen and marines, under Captain Harris of the Belle Poule, landed, marched more than fifty miles in six-and-thirty hours, reduced and dismantled five forts, destroyed 47 pieces of cannon and 17 mortars, and re-embarked without any loss. The Regulus and the smaller vessels which had sought protection with it, were attacked and burnt, and by the 9th of April the river was cleared as high up as Blaye. General Merle held out in that fortress till the 16th; when the news that had arrived induced the Admiral to agree to an armistice with him, and the Gironde was then opened from its mouth to Bourdeaux.

Meantime another restoration, which once might have been deemed as little likely as that of the Bourbons in France, had taken place. When Ferdinand and his counsellors at ValanÇay found that neither San Carlos nor Palafox returned from their mission, they represented to Laforest that the best mode of removing all difficulties would be for the Emperor to let Ferdinand depart unconditionally, relying upon his honour to fulfil the treaty, if the obstacles to it should not be insurmountable. Suchet had given advice to the same effect, seeing that at that time, when there was no longer a hope of retaining any hold on Spain, it was of great consequence to withdraw from thence the garrisons, and that they could be extricated only by this means. If Ferdinand were honourable enough to restore them to their country upon being put in possession of the places which they occupied, the great and only advantage which was now desired would be obtained; if he should refuse to do this, or be unable to effect it, doubtful as it was what his authority might be, nothing would be lost, nor ever risked by the experiment. This the French government saw; and they were not without hope that the presence of Ferdinand in his own country might lead to a civil war, which would have the effect of at least embarrassing the English, and probably of impeding their operations in Gascony.

Ferdinand and his counsellors might have escaped from any imputation of bad faith in this transaction, if they had not themselves claimed credit for acting with duplicity. When they said the fulfilment of the treaty might be relied on, if there were no insurmountable obstacles, they well supposed that such obstacles existed in their relations to the allied powers; “but,” says the Canon Escoiquiz, “not knowing this of a certainty, we had a right, when treating with so perfidious a person, to put it in doubt; and by this just dissimulation to obtain the object of our wishes, which was the King’s liberty. Skilfully to deceive with truth a man so false was not an evil deed, but an excellent one; and this was our maxim8.” They represented farther that an unconditional liberation was of all things most likely to conciliate Ferdinand’s entire good-will; that it would moreover make the allied powers believe Buonaparte to be sincere in his desire of peace, and which was of more consequence, gratify the French nation, who had always indignantly regarded the war with Spain; that if Ferdinand should find it impossible to confirm the peace with France, it was not his interest that France should be dismembered, and to prevent any such danger he would only carry on an illusive war, merely to save appearances; that even if it were his desire to carry it on with vigour, he must of necessity be less able to do this than the Regency, because of the changes which his arrival in Spain could not but produce; finally, that his farther detention would occasion the Emperor a great and useless expense, and must also be a matter of some anxiety, when it was so possible that he might be delivered by the arms of the allies. Buonaparte, indeed, seems at one time to have been sensible either of the reproach which he had brought upon himself by his treachery toward Ferdinand, or of the likelihood that some successful plan might be formed for his escape; and it was once his intention to have shipped him off for Mexico, or for any other part of the Spanish colonies which he might have preferred, with Charles IV. and the Queen, the Infantes, his brothers, the Queen of Etruria, and as many other members of the family as he could collect, and to have given them large possessions there; but upon discovering that none of those colonies were at his disposal, as he had hoped them to be, and considering moreover that Ferdinand might easily from thence find his way to Spain, and there protest against the validity ?Idea Sencilla, 78.? of his renunciation, he abandoned this project. At present, willing to be rid of him, knowing that his presence now could do him no hurt any where, desiring to get his soldiers out of Spain, which he had no hope of effecting by any other means, and perhaps also having a hope that Ferdinand’s return might create new troubles in that country, he readily assented to the proposal; and Laforest was instructed by the first post after the receipt of his dispatch to inform Ferdinand and the Infantes, that they were at liberty to depart unconditionally, and that orders had been given for forwarding to them the necessary passports.

Ferdinand had endured captivity as contentedly as if his patience had been the effect of philosophy or of religion. Nothing, however, could have rejoiced him more than this reply; and, as if believing that his return would be not less a matter of joy to the Regency, he determined that as soon as the passports came, Zayas should precede him by three or four days, and travel with all speed to notify his approach, that preparations might be made for receiving him. This happiness was but of six hours’ duration; for on the evening of the same day, San Carlos arrived with the refusal of the treaty. To conceal this was impossible, the utmost publicity having been given to it by the Spanish press; and as it was likely to irritate Buonaparte, whose violent temper was well known to his ministers, Laforest proposed that San Carlos himself should be the first bearer of the intelligence, and present with it such representations as might tend to appease him, and if possible avert his displeasure. The Duque accordingly, who had come post from Madrid, set off without delay, and at the same speed for Paris. Buonaparte was then with the army in the neighbourhood of Troyes; the ministers at Paris had withheld the passports till they should receive fresh instructions, and not allowing the Duque to proceed, sent him back to ValenÇay. Laforest, however, was of opinion that he should repair to the Emperor’s quarters: San Carlos again departed; failing to find, and perhaps not being able to follow him in the rapidity of his movements, he communicated his business by letter: the course which Laforest recommended coincided with the advice given by Suchet, in whom Buonaparte had great confidence, and the result was that orders were sent to Paris for forwarding the passports without delay. They reached ValenÇay on the night of March 7; San Carlos arrived on the 9th; Zayas set out for Madrid the next day. He bore a dispatch to the Regency, wherein Ferdinand said that their letter, which he had now received by Palafox, had filled his soul with satisfaction: he saw in it how anxiously the nation wished for his return, which he desired not less ardently, that he might devote all his powers to the good of his beloved subjects, to whom he was so greatly indebted on so many accounts. Then, after notifying his speedy departure, he said that the re-establishment of the Cortes, concerning which the Regency had informed him, and the other measures for the good of the realm which had been adopted during his absence, deserved his approbation, because they were in conformity with his ?Idea Sencilla, 113, 119.? own royal intentions. On the following Sunday, March 13, Ferdinand and the Infantes commenced their journey towards Perpignan.

Marshal Suchet received them in that city. His instructions from the minister at war were, that he should send Ferdinand to Barcelona, and cause all the places which the French still possessed in Spain to be delivered up, taking, however, securities and precautions for the return of the garrisons to their own country. Hence the Marshal concluded that there was not such entire confidence placed in this prince as might otherwise have been inferred from the manner of his liberation. Both parties, however, were desirous of smoothing all difficulties, which may always best be done by fair dealing; and this was now the interest of both. San Carlos gave Suchet a full account of the temper of the Cortes, and their determination to control the King, or to resist him, if he should be found refractory; and he expressed his belief that the Generals, whether they were influenced by their fear or their opinions, would not acknowledge his authority until they received orders from Madrid. Ferdinand’s desire was to proceed without delay, and not to enter Barcelona, but go on to Valencia; and he promised to expedite as much as he could the deliverance of the garrisons in exchange for the places which they occupied. The Marshal frankly stated the difficulty wherein he was placed by his instructions, these being to conduct the King to Barcelona, and take securities for the deliverance of the garrisons; he had written to Paris, he said, for farther explanations, and till these should arrive, it was agreed that the Infante, Don Carlos, should remain at Perpignan, and that the King should pass the frontier without delay. Accordingly, on the 22nd, Ferdinand re-entered his own country. The rain had so swoln the streams, that he was detained two days at Figueras; during this delay, the Marshal addressed a note to him, requesting that the treatment of the French prisoners might be improved, and pressing for the deliverance of the garrisons. An assurance was given that there should be an immediate alteration in the condition of the prisoners, and a promise was given respecting the garrisons, to which Ferdinand affixed his signature. This answer was returned from Figueras, where he was still in the hands of the French; but, that it might appear more evidently his own free act and deed, he dated it from Gerona. Upon receiving this, Suchet immediately dispatched orders for letting the Infante, Don Carlos, proceed from Perpignan; thus he conferred an obligation, by releasing a hostage whom it would have been useless to detain; all questions concerning the fortresses and garrisons being, as by a tacit understanding, waived on both sides, there being a third party, without whose consent the garrison of Barcelona could not be dismissed; for Sir H. Clinton was then with the Anglo-Sicilian army blockading that city. A little before this time, instructions had been received by that General to embark one portion of his troops, including the Calabrians, ?Suchet, 2. 375–8.? for the coast of Italy, there to be employed in an expedition under Lord William Bentinck; and with the remainder to march, by way of Zaragoza and Pamplona, into France, there to reinforce Lord Wellington. Sir Henry took upon himself the responsibility of not obeying these instructions: and his conduct in so doing was fully approved by Lord Wellington; for, if that army had been withdrawn, the Spaniards in Catalonia could not have prevented Suchet from collecting and bringing off the whole of his remaining garrisons.

As soon as the waters permitted, Ferdinand proceeded towards Gerona. General Copons had been apprized of his coming. Marshal Suchet escorted him to the Fluvia, ?March 24.Ferdinand writes from Gerona to the Regency.? The French troops were drawn up in a semicircle on one side of the river, the Spaniards on the other; and, having crossed it amid salutes of artillery, and the joyful sound of martial music, and the acclamations of the surrounding inhabitants, who had flocked thither from all sides, Ferdinand found himself then indeed free, ... in his own country, among his own people, and a King. There was no difficulty about his reception; his retinue consisted only of Spaniards, among whom there were none to whom any exception could be taken, if Copons had been disposed to offer it. The General delivered into his hands the Regency’s letter, and the documents which accompanied it; and when Ferdinand came the same day to Gerona, he acknowledged them in a letter to the Regency announcing his arrival, saying that he should make himself acquainted with the contents of their papers; meantime he assured them that his greatest wish was to give them proofs of his satisfaction, and of his lively desire to do every thing which might conduce to the happiness of his subjects. It was a comfort indeed for him, he said, to see himself in his own country, in the midst of a nation and an army to whom he was beholden for a fidelity as constant as it was generous.

The Cortes had regulated Ferdinand’s route; and as it was understood that he would proceed by the line prescribed for him, which was straight by way of Valencia, the Governors of Barcelona, Tortosa, and Murviedro, received instructions to commit no hostilities when he should pass. But Ferdinand was in no haste to proceed; he needed time for consideration, and for such rest as the critical position in which he now found himself would allow: he halted, therefore, a few days at Gerona. On the 30th, he passed through the blockading army in front of Barcelona, the enemy firing a salute, the allies receiving him with all honours, and the people with every possible manifestation of joy. It was believed that he was proceeding to Valencia; but, altering his intention on the way, he made for Zaragoza, meaning to remain there till he should have determined how to act.

This restoration Buonaparte regarded at this time with indifference; but there was nothing which he dreaded so much as the progress of that feeling which had manifested itself at Bourdeaux; for peace, upon some terms, he thought himself always sure of obtaining, as long as the allies forbore to take up the cause of the Bourbons. Soult saw how likely it was that this feeling should spread from the Gironde to the Loire, and had resolved upon carrying the war back toward the Pyrenees, more with the view of occupying the English force at a distance from those parts in which he knew that the existing tyranny was borne with most impatience, than for the sake of the succours which he could draw from Catalonia. Not being acquainted with the success of Marshal Beresford’s movement upon Bourdeaux, he expected thus to frustrate it, and that Lord Wellington would find it necessary to recall all the detachments which he had sent in that direction. He had, indeed, written to the Minister at War, saying he did not think the British General would dare to weaken himself by sending a force against that city. With this intention, he resumed the offensive; and, having sent most of his encumbrances to Toulouse, moved ?Suchet, t. 2. PiÈces Justif, pp. 530–2.? by Lembege to Conchez and Viella, on the right flank of the allies, drove in Sir Rowland’s piquets, and made a demonstration as if intending to ?March 13.? attack him with his whole force. Sir Rowland, upon this, took a position behind the Gros Lees, extending ?He retreats upon Tarbes.? from Aire to Garlin, on the road to Pau. Lord Wellington quickly moved two divisions to his support, and prepared to concentrate the army in the neighbourhood of Aire. Marshal Soult did not then feel himself strong enough to venture upon an attack, and not finding his situation secure, retired in the night toward Lembege, keeping his advanced posts toward Conchez; and on the 15th, he halted his main body in position near Burosse, covered by a strong rear-guard at Mascarras; but, on the approach of a single brigade, they retired upon Vic Bigorre, not offering to maintain their ground, though in a country peculiarly defensible. The various detachments which Lord Wellington had sent out, and the reserves of cavalry and artillery from Spain, did not join him till the 17th. On the morrow the army marched; the right by Conchez, ?Colonel Jones’s Account, 2. 262.? the centre by Castelnau, the left by Plaisance; and Sir Rowland drove in the enemy’s outposts upon Lembege. The French retired in the night, but held a strong rear-guard in front of Vic Bigorre, posted in the vineyards that encircle that town, and extend for several miles around it. There they made a stand, with a show of resolution which was not supported; for Sir Thomas Picton, with the 3rd division and Major-General Bock’s Portugueze brigade, attacked them there, dislodged, and drove them through the vineyards and through the town. The allied army then assembled at Vic Bigorre and Rabastens, and the enemy retired during the night upon Tarbes.

Buonaparte had rested in this city on his way to Bayonne in 1808, when the treachery which he had plotted for the usurpation of Spain was about to be consummated: a monument had been erected here in commemoration of this imperial visit; and now that journey had in consequence brought thither a victorious enemy’s army. So different, too, were the feelings of the inhabitants toward him from what they had been, that when Soult sent General Maransin thither before him to raise a levy en masse throughout the department, they refused to take arms. Here, on the morning of the 20th, the French were found, having the advanced posts of their left in the town, their right upon the heights near the windmill of Oleac, and their centre and left retired, the latter upon the heights near Angor. The allies marched in two columns from Vic Bigorre and Rabastens; and Lord Wellington directed Sir Henry Clinton, with the 6th division, to turn and attack their right, through the village of Dour, while Sir Rowland attacked the town by the high road. Sir Henry’s movement was completely successful: Baron Alten, also, with the light division, drove the enemy from the heights above Orleix: and when Sir Rowland had moved through the town and disposed his columns for the attack, they retired in all directions. The troops ascended the position which had been thus relinquished, thinking to pursue their advantage; but having gained the summit, they unexpectedly discovered a large portion of Soult’s army, formed on a parallel height of great strength, and the body which had retreated before them, about 15,000 in number, ascending to join their comrades. This new position could not be attacked without incurring severe loss; and to preserve the advantages which had been obtained, it was necessary that the corps from Rabastens should move further forward. But before this arrangement could be completed, the evening closed, and Marshal Soult, once more taking advantage of night to cover his movements, retired toward Toulouse. There are two roads from Tarbes to that city, by S. Gaudens, and by Auch; Soult retreated by the first, but having collected his troops at St. Gaudens, crossed the country from thence to Auch. He had previously sent off all his remaining encumbrances; and marching with all possible celerity, that he might profit at Toulouse by the time which he gained upon his pursuers, and destroying the bridges as he went, he entered that city on the 24th, having suffered no other loss during the pursuit than that of some prisoners, taken by General Fane in an attack upon his rear-guard at St. Gaudens on the 22nd.

Once more Lord Wellington’s operations were impeded by heavy and continued rains; he had to carry with him a pontoon train, as well as most of his supplies; and it was not till three days after the French army had entered Toulouse, that the allies halted on the left of the Garonne, opposite that city. ?March 27.? On the following day, Lord Wellington ordered a bridge to be laid at Portet, a village immediately below the junction of the Ariege, and above the city. The current was so rapid, that the sheer line could not without much difficulty be stretched across; and when this was effected the distance was found to be twenty-six yards more than the pontoons would cover. It was desirable to obtain a passage above the city; for in that case Soult must either abandon Toulouse, or lose the hope of being joined by Suchet, now, though late in his movements, on the march to join him; ... a tardiness not imputable to that skilful commander, but to the unwillingness with which Buonaparte consented to give up any object of his ambition. Three days after the failure of the first attempt, a place was found near Roques, where the river was not too wide, and the spot in other respects favourable; here, ?March 31.? therefore, the pontoons were laid down, and Sir Rowland’s corps crossed, and seized the bridge over the Ariege at Cintegabelle; but after an anxious trial of some hours, it was ascertained that from thence to Toulouse there was no way passable for an army; and that till finer weather should have hardened the roads, it would be impracticable to direct an attack from the upper side of the town. The corps therefore repassed the Garonne; and it then became Lord Wellington’s object to bridge the river below the city, and attack Soult in front before he should be reinforced. A favourable bend in the stream was discovered about two miles above Grenade, at a point where the Garonne skirts the ?April 4th.? main road: here some flanking batteries were established before daybreak on the 4th; but owing to some accidental delay, it was five o’clock before the first pontoon was brought to the water’s edge. A few of the enemy’s cavalry were patrolling on the right bank, and their whole army was within a short march: the patroles retired, and it was expected every moment ?Suchet, PiÈces Justif. p. 536.? that some attempt would be made to oppose the passage. Marshal Soult, indeed, had assured Suchet that whenever the passage should be effected, he would march and give the allies battle, whatever might be the disproportion of his force; but of this he thought more wisely when the time came, and his whole attention was now engaged in strengthening a position so advantageous in itself, that with the labour and skill now employed in fortifying it, he thought he might there safely defy even such an enemy as Lord Wellington. The river at this point was 127 yards wide, and exceedingly rapid; the bridge however was finished in four hours; and just before it was completed the day became beautifully fine. The right bank is some fifty feet high, the other considerably lower; and on that side there was a plain of open wood, after a rise of about twelve feet. A few men had previously been sent over in small boats, and posted in this wood. The cavalry passed in single files, the infantry by threes, the bands playing “British Grenadiers,” and the “Downfall of Paris,” ... not knowing that at that time Paris had indeed fallen, and the allied sovereigns were in possession of it. Unopposed as the passage was, it had the appearance rather of some festival display, than of an actual military operation; the people from the neighbouring villages had by this time collected to behold it, ... with so little fear or dislike were the allies regarded by the inhabitants; and when the horse artillery crossed, the peasants volunteered their aid, and pulled the guns up the bank with all possible alacrity.

The more concerned spectators were not without fear for the bridge; it had been made fast by four stays to trees on either side, but the strength of the current was such that it was soon forced into the shape of a bow. Marshal Beresford passed with three divisions of infantry and some cavalry; but when Freyre’s Spaniards and the light division should have followed, the river had increased so much in height and strength, that it was necessary to take up the platform. During the night, it rose two feet; the rain had also recommenced; and on the morrow the centre pontoon was removed, as a measure of precaution, and at length the whole were taken up. The army was thus divided, the main body being still on the left bank, and Soult, if he had thought proper, might have attacked either flank; but he had suffered severely for such an attempt in the battles before Bayonne, when he was more confident and in greater strength.

The extent of Toulouse is disproportionately large with respect to its population, being in length from north to south about two miles, and a mile and quarter in breadth from east to west; while the inhabitants were computed at not more than 60,000. It has little commerce, though most favourably situated for inland communication: but it flourished as a provincial capital: formerly it was second only to Paris in size. The houses, and even the cathedral, are built of brick, which is very unusual in France: the latter edifice, therefore, though remarkable for its magnitude, is neither beautiful nor grand; for a structure composed of such mean materials can produce no impression of grandeur, unless it be like the pyramids in size. That cathedral boasted of possessing the bodies of no fewer than seven Apostles, one of them being a duplicate of Santiago. The Dorade church derived its name from a gilt image of Notre Dame, the reputed work of St. Luke, who is better known in Roman Catholic countries as an artist in this line, or as a painter, than by his Gospel. The Dominicans exhibited a less doubtful relic in their church, the body of St. Thomas Aquinas, authenticated by himself in ghostly person, and brought to that city, after numerous adventures, with 10,000 lighted tapers, and 150,000 people in procession. Devout or curious persons were formerly indulged by a sight of the head, which had been fitted to a half-body of silver; upon opening a plate at the top, the real skull was to be seen, and, under circumstances of special favour, kissed by adoring lips. Few places in France afford more subject for reflective thought. It was the capital of a great Gothic kingdom, till the last of its kings was overthrown by Clovis. The pulpit is still preserved there from which St. Bernard preached the crusade. Poetry flourished there in those ages when it stood most in need of patronage and culture; and the city, under its own Counts, was then the seat of religious liberty as well as of literature. Its Floral Games may still remind us of the Gay Science of the Troubadours; but the freedom of opinion and the truths of religion for which Toulouse made so heroic and so virtuous a stand were succeeded there, as in the Catholic Netherlands, by that victorious bigotry of the deepest die which eats into the soul; and, down to the revolution, a festival was yearly observed there in commemoration of the destruction of the Albigenses. That name must ever bring with it painful reflections to an Englishman’s mind, when he remembers the history of a papal crusade under an English leader: and, looking to much later times, never were blind superstition and legal iniquity seen in such accursed combination as here, in the case of Calas; never, in human history, was a judicial murder accomplished with circumstances of such peculiar barbarity and injustice, ... circumstances so monstrous, that they could not be believed, if it were possible to deny or doubt them.

Marshal Soult had retreated upon Toulouse less for the sake of the abundant supplies which it afforded him, than because of the singular advantages that its situation offered as a defensible position. The canal of Brienne (so called after the Cardinal Archbishop of that name), and which is broad enough for several barges to lie on it abreast, connects the Garonne with the great canal of Languedoc about two miles from the town, the navigation of the river being impeded in that part of its course by a weir for the use of the corn-mills. The whole western side is protected by the river; on the east and north the canal covers it; and on the south, the only part which was not covered by the river, could be approached only by roads impassable for artillery, and was therefore so secure, that Soult, who omitted no means of defence, deemed it wholly unnecessary to erect any works on that side. There were formerly three bridges over the Garonne: the single one which is left connects the city with the Fauxbourg St. Cyprien; and the enemy had fortified that suburb with strong field-works in front of the old walls. The walls were high, thick enough for defence in old times, and flanked by towers. The communication across the canal was covered by tÊtes-de-pont, defended by various buildings which had now been fortified for that purpose, and by artillery from the walls. East of the city is a range of bold heights extending along the space between the canal and the river Ers; over these heights all the roads from the eastward pass, and here Marshal Soult had taken his position, having fortified the summit with five redoubts, with various lines of intrenchment to support them, and to connect the flanks of the ground with the defences of the town. The left and centre being the points which he considered most assailable, were thus strengthened; toward the right, where the line approached the Ers, the river itself was sufficient defence. He flattered himself that his determination to defend Toulouse had astounded Lord Wellington, because four days elapsed after the passage of the river, and the allies had undertaken nothing. But the bad weather, he said, might have occasioned this delay; and expecting an attack, not without an ominous feeling of its result, he wrote to Marshal Suchet, saying that, in case of being compelled to retire, he should draw nearer to him, and that it would be for the advantage of both, if Suchet would make a diversion by the shortest line upon the Upper Garonne.

Formidable as this position was, it was necessary to attack the enemy there; Lord Wellington had no alternative, the roads from Ariege being impracticable for artillery, and even for horse. On the 8th the stream had subsided enough for the pontoons to be again laid down; the head-quarters then, and General Freyre with the Spanish corps and the Portugueze artillery, crossed the Garonne, and immediately moved forward to the neighbourhood of the town. Colonel Vivian, with the 18th hussars, had here an opportunity of attacking some cavalry, which, though superior in number, they drove through the village of Croix d’Aurade, taking about 100 prisoners, and pursuing them so closely, that they had not time to destroy the bridge over the Ers, the only one which had been left standing, and by which it was necessary to pass in order to attack the position; Colonel Vivian was severely wounded in this charge. That attack was designed for the following day; but Sir Rowland’s corps was on the left of the Garonne, in front of the suburb St. Cyprien; the pontoon bridge was too far off for that ready communication which might be required during the action; orders were therefore given for moving it a league higher up, near Ausonne. Some unexpected difficulties occurred in laying it; it was not completed till after mid-day, and the attack was, therefore, deferred till the following morning, being Easter Sunday: long will that Easter be remembered at Toulouse.

Lord Wellington’s arrangements were that Marshal Beresford, who was on the right of the Ers with the 4th and 6th divisions, should cross that river at the bridge of Croix d’Aurade, gain possession of the village of Montblanc, and march up the left of the Ers to turn the enemy’s right, while the Spaniards supported by the British cavalry should attack their front. Sir Stapleton was to follow the Marshal’s movements with Lord Edward Somerset’s brigade of hussars; and Vivian’s brigade, now under Colonel Arentschild, was to observe the enemy’s cavalry on both banks of the Ers, beyond the left of the allies. On the lower part of the canal, Picton and Baron Alten, with the 3rd and light divisions, and the brigade of German cavalry, were to threaten the tÊte-de-pont, and so draw the enemy’s attention to that quarter; and Sir Rowland was to do the same on the side of St. Cyprien.

The business of this dreadful day commenced about seven o’clock, when Sir Thomas Picton drove in the French piquets in front of Pont Jumeau, at the point where the Canal de Brienne joins that of Languedoc; the action became warm here, and the enemy retiring, set fire to a fine large chateau, in the cypress avenues of which they had sought in vain to cover themselves. To the left of this division the light division extended nearly to the road to Alby, by which road Freyre’s army advanced, in two columns, and formed in front of Croix d’Aurade, near a hill on which Lieutenant-Colonel Arentschild’s Portugueze guns, protected by General Ponsonby’s brigade of cavalry, were advantageously placed to cover their movements. Marshal Beresford, with the 4th and 6th divisions, under Sir Lowry Cole and Sir Henry Clinton, advanced also by the Alby road, turned off to their left at Croix d’Aurade, toward the village of Montblanc, carried the village, and proceeded up the left bank of the Ers, in three open columns, along the foot of the heights, over difficult ground, which was much intersected with deep ditches and hollow roads. Upon their march they were exposed to a heavy cannonade from all the guns of the enemy’s works; and those guns throughout the day were served with great spirit and correctness, Toulouse having been an artillery school since the Revolution. Beresford’s artillery was left at Montblanc because of the badness of the roads; it was posted there on some low ground, in front of the village, and kept up a fire upon the works on the heights of Pujade. The Spaniards advanced in good order to assault these works, which formed the left of the enemy’s position, and which Clausel and Villatte occupied with their divisions, having a brigade of cavalry in their front. They advanced across the valley with great bravery under a most severe fire: a brigade of their own troops, and one of British heavy dragoons, had been formed in reserve in the rear, and Gardiner’s troop of artillery was brought up to their left to answer the enemy’s. At first they drove before them a brigade of French, but as they approached the intrenchment, a heavy fire of grape was poured upon them with full effect, and to escape it they pushed forward with inconsiderate speed, ... the nimblest outrunning their comrades, in such disorder that before the first line arrived at a hollow road some fifty yards in front of the intrenchment, it was completely broken. The reserve, as if deterred rather than instructed by this error, fell into the opposite fault, and came on so slowly as not to be near enough for supporting them, when the French advanced against them vigorously, and drove them down the hill, and in spite of the utmost exertions of Freyre and the superior officers, were on the point of seizing the bridge over the Ers, in which, if they had succeeded, Beresford’s troops would have been isolated. But the 1st Portugueze CaÇadores, forming part of Baron Alten’s light division, moved opportunely to their left, and advancing through the flying Spaniards, rallied them, and caused the enemy to halt in their pursuit: a squadron of British dragoons, who were still more in their rear, turned others, by striking them with the flat side of their swords; and Lord Wellington himself, the moment he saw them give way, galloped to the spot, and by his personal exertions rallied about a company of them, near the cypress trees on the Alby road. They suffered greatly in their flight, and the consequences might have been worse if the enemy had followed up the advantage with spirit. The great exertions of General Freyre, and of the staff officers, Mendizabal and Barcena among others, formed them again sooner than might have been expected after such a failure, and they were again placed in position, from which they afterwards moved to their left in support of the 6th division; but they were not again brought into serious action.

This was not the only time at which the circumstances of the day turned in favour of the enemy. Picton saw that a great advantage might be gained at this moment by pushing across the canal, while the enemy were engaged so far in front; and thinking to profit by the opportunity, having driven them within their tÊte-de-pont at Pont Jumeau, he attempted, contrary to his instructions, to carry it. It was not till the assailants were on the counterscarp that they discovered the formidable nature of the works, which had been regularly formed, and with the greatest possible care; an assault, indeed, was impracticable; they were exposed to a heavy fire of musketry in front, and to a numerous artillery in their flank, and nothing but a speedy retreat could have saved them from destruction. Lieutenant-Colonel Forbes was killed here, and Major-General Brisbane wounded.

Meantime Beresford was more successful. The 4th and 6th divisions moved on till they came opposite to the points of attack assigned them; there they halted, and formed in three lines. Sir Lowry advanced against the extreme right of the enemy’s line, where General Leseur guarded the heights of Montaudran with one brigade, having General Berton’s cavalry in his front, on the road to Bordes: and Sir Henry moved up, in front, to attack the redoubts on Mount Calvinet, which were occupied by Harispe’s division, now considerably reinforced with the troops whom the repulse of the Spaniards had rendered disposable for this service. The face of the heights was irregular and steep, yet the 6th division steadily ascended under a severe fire of artillery, to which at every step they were exposed. A body of cavalry made many serious attacks on their right flank when they had gained the summit: the 79th formed into a square, received the charge, and totally routed them; and the troops drove back everything that opposed them, carried with the bayonet the principal redoubt on the right, and established themselves on the crest of the position. Sir Lowry on his part, though menaced by Berton’s cavalry on his left, and opposed by infantry in front, made his way successfully up, and having driven the enemy from the heights beyond the right of the intrenchment, took up ground on the left of Sir Henry Clinton, just before noon.

Two divisions of the allies were thus formed on the heights; but their artillery which had been left at Montblanc was not yet brought up, and the enemy meantime moved in force toward the points which were now threatened. The whole face of the hill is intersected with deep hollow roads; and the soil is a stiff heavy clay, in which at this time horses could with difficulty move out of a ?PrÉcis Historique, P. 2. p. 61.? walk: the French, therefore, had laid planks from one of their works to another, on which their artillery could rapidly be moved wherever it was most needed. During the interval which elapsed before Beresford’s guns arrived, they had time to effect this removal from their left, on the heights of Pujade, to those of Calvinet; and General Taupin’s division was moved to the same point from the Fauxbourg S. Cyprien, (where Reille commanded with Maransin under him) when it was perceived that no serious attack was intended ?Ib. p. 47.? against that suburb. The roofs and steeples of Toulouse were at this time covered with spectators, who, whatever their hopes and fears might be for the issue of the battle, execrated Marshal Soult for bringing the war thus to their own doors, and exposing a populous city to its horrors. About one, Beresford was joined by his artillery; and the 4th and 6th divisions advanced steadily in line against the redoubts on the heights of Calvinet. Soult thought he could overpower Sir Henry’s division by a vigorous attack both in front and flank, before Sir Lowry’s could come up to its support; with this view the French pushed forward beyond their works to meet the assailants, Clausel and Taupin against the front of the 6th division, Leseur’s brigade and Berton’s cavalry against its flank. They could receive no support from the fire of their intrenchments in this advance; it became, therefore, a trial of courage; and the brave movement was as bravely met: Sir Henry Clinton, instead of waiting to receive the attack, pushed forward and met it with the bayonet; and his charge was a most determined and successful one. General Taupin was killed. The French were not only broken but routed; and General Pack’s brigade carried the two principal redoubts and fortified houses in the enemy’s centre. They made a desperate effort from the canal to recover these redoubts; and a Scotch battalion, which was placed in the interior of one, was nearly exhausted in defending it, when a brigade came in good time to their assistance, charged the French, and drove them down the hill. The enemy then formed their two routed divisions and General Rouget’s brigade in a line from the heights of Pujade to Pont des Demoiselles, a bridge over the canal on the Montaudran road; from thence they made a second attempt in great force to recover that redoubt, which they looked upon as the key of the position; and the English, seeing them approach, planted their colours on the parapet in defiance. The French soldiers never throughout the whole war displayed more courage, nor more of that intelligence, which is their peculiar praise, than on this day; and in no part of the action did they behave better than in this attack, where they knew that they had support at hand, and, if need were, a sure retreat. To that need they were driven by men who exceeded them in cool and patient courage, a courage depending less upon excitement than upon constitution; and after many and strenuous efforts they were finally repulsed with great loss.

The victorious division continued its movement along the ridge; and the Spaniards, brought into a serviceable position, though not into action, made a corresponding movement upon the front. The enemy did not wait to be assaulted in their remaining works: they withdrew from them gradually, and removed their artillery by the hollow road across the bridge over the canal. By four o’clock the action was at an end; and the allies, having accomplished the object of the day, were with their artillery formed on the hills, looking down on the city; the French occupying in strength an intermediate rising ground. Sir Rowland on his side had done all that was assigned him; he had driven the enemy from their exterior works in the suburb, and made them retire within the ancient wall. This had had the intended effect of distracting them, and keeping one of their divisions employed.

The loss in this severe action was very great; that of the British being in killed and wounded 2124, of the Portugueze 607, of the Spaniards 1983, in all above 47009. The brunt of the action fell on the 6th division, which had 13 officers killed and 88 wounded. General Pack was wounded, but remained in the field. Lieutenant-Colonel Coghlan was killed; Mendizabal and Espalata wounded. The loss of the enemy was not known; but from the circumstances of their position they are believed to have suffered less than the allies: their dead lay in full view of the city, and they asked leave on the following day to bury them. General Lamorandiere was killed. Generals Harispe, Baurot, and S. Hilaire were wounded and made prisoners. Only one gun was taken in the position; the rest of the enemy withdrew in time. Soult’s force had consisted of not less than 36,000 men, that of Lord Wellington’s was numerically little greater.

At night every post of the French was withdrawn within their intrenched line behind the canal. The only remaining bridge over the Ers was in possession of the allies, and the road from that over the Garonne was guarded by Sir Rowland: Toulouse was thus closed on three sides, and preparations were made for completing the investment. There was a want of ammunition, so much had been expended in the action; the reserve therefore was ordered up from Aire and Orthes; and shot were collected from the field of battle, the men searching for them at a fixed price. The inhabitants had now the miseries of a blockade before them, or the fear of having their lines forced, and the city at the mercy of an enemy’s army. Above all, they dreaded the rockets, which it was falsely reported would be discharged against the town; but so far was Lord Wellington from entertaining any such purpose, that though some heavy guns were fired from the ramparts, not a shot was directed against the city in return. It was said that Marshal Soult hesitated what part to take; whether to hold Toulouse, in the likelihood of obtaining some great advantage by bringing his forces out in a mass against any part of a line widely extended, and occupied by a force little more numerous than his own; or, retiring toward Carcassonne, to effect a junction with Suchet. General d’Armagnac is said to have advised this course, in consideration of the inhabitants, and they blessed him for it; for Soult, whom they hated, and whom they openly accused of extortion and rapacity, followed the advice: a considerable body of his troops left the city on the night after the battle, leaving their wounded, 1600 in number, much of their artillery, and stores of all descriptions in large quantities.

The allies entered Toulouse not as conquerors, but as friends and deliverers, amid cries of “Vivent les Anglois!” “Vive le Roi!” “Vivent nos liberateurs!” It was known officially at this time that the allied armies were in possession of Paris; and, though it was uncertain what measures might be taken with respect to the government of France, the wishes of the people were loudly declared, and the white flag hoisted. That same evening Colonel Cooke arrived from Paris to inform Lord Wellington that the allied Sovereigns had declared they would enter into no fresh negotiations with Buonaparte, because of his bad faith; that the Senate had passed resolutions declaring he had forfeited all right to the crown, and absolving the soldiers and the nation from their oaths of allegiance; finally, that he had submitted to their decree, and was permitted to retire to Elba, with the independent sovereignty of that island. Colonel St. Simon accompanied the British officer, charged with the same communication from the Provisional Government to Marshals Soult and Suchet. It was in the theatre that this news was published, for the theatre was not closed that night: the dead were lying all around the walls; the hospitals and many of the houses were filled with wounded, all of whom were not yet brought in: the inhabitants themselves had been, by the mercy of Providence, spared from the horrors of an assault, of a blockade which would speedily have caused famine, and from the evils of fire and sword which they had apprehended; and it was the theatre at Toulouse that was opened, not the churches!... But the play was altered, and Richard Coeur de Lion was represented, for the sake of its applicable passages and songs. Nothing could exceed the cheering at these passages, except the bursts of applause with which Lord Wellington was received and greeted whenever he moved: only those who know the French character, said one who was present, could imagine the excessive joy of the people; they shouted and wept, and shouted again. In the midst of this exultation, an unusual tumult announced something new; and a person in black, attended by many candles, and having a paper in his hand, appeared in one of the side boxes, struggling for room, and endeavouring to obtain a hearing. Many minutes elapsed before even the eagerness of their own expectation could still that vociferous audience sufficiently for the magistrate to make himself heard; ?Louis XVIII. proclaimed.? nor was anything then audible except that he announced the abdication of Buonaparte, and the proclamation of Louis XVIII.

Here it might have been hoped that the bloody account ?Sally of the French from Bayonne.? of this long war had closed; even this last bloodshed might have been spared if, through some great treachery or inexcusable neglect, there had not been either delay in sending off tidings of the cessation of hostilities, or in impeding them upon the road; for the courier, who was dispatched on the first of the month, ought to have arrived a week before the battle; indeed suspicions were expressed in the Moniteur that orders and dispatches had been intercepted, with the view of giving Marshal Soult an opportunity of retrieving the reputation of the French armies by fighting in a position which he thought inexpugnable. Colonels Cooke and S. Simon had passed through Bourdeaux, and advice was dispatched from thence to Sir John Hope before Bayonne, while they proceeded to Toulouse. As this advice was not official, Sir John did not think proper to notify it officially to General Thouvenot, till he should receive orders from Lord Wellington; but he caused it to be communicated to the French officers at their advanced piquets, in the hope and expectation that it might prevent any hostilities in the mean time. The intimation seems to have produced a very different effect. On the night of the 13th, two deserters came from the town, and gave information that the garrison were to make a sortie in great strength early on the morrow. The first division, upon this, was ordered to ?April 14.? arms at three in the morning; and in a few minutes afterward a feint attack was made upon the outposts in front of Anglet. But it soon appeared that the chief effort would be on the right of the Adour. Parties from the citadel crept up the hill on which the piquets were stationed, took them almost by surprise, and instantly two columns rushed forward with loud cheers, and by their numbers broke through the line of piquets between St. Etienne and St. Bernard; another strong column advancing at the same time against the former village. The line of outposts through this village, and along the heights towards Boucaut, was marked by a road worn in some places to a deep hollow way, and in others bounded by high garden-walls, so that it was not easy to get out of it, except where gaps at long intervals had been broken down for the passage of the troops. The piquets, therefore, were cut off from their supports; and, fighting with desperate animosity on both sides, heaps of slain were found here, both French and English, mostly killed with the bayonet. Sir John Hope, hastening with his staff, in the early part of the attack, to St. Etienne, entered this road, as the shortest way, not aware that great part of it was in the enemy’s possession, and that the piquets of the right flank had fallen back when the line of outposts had been pierced. As soon as he discovered this, he endeavoured to retire; but having been in front himself, with his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Moore, and Captain Herries of the Quarter-Master-General’s department, they were consequently the last in retiring; and before they could get out of this hollow way, the French came up within a few yards, and began firing. Sir John’s horse was struck with three balls, and falling dead, brought his rider to the ground. Captain Herries and Lieutenant ?Sir J. Hope taken prisoner.? Moore dismounted to assist him, for his foot was under the dead horse; but the first of these officers was instantly brought down himself severely wounded, and the latter had his right arm shattered; the General was also wounded in the arm; and the French coming immediately up, made them all three prisoners. As they were carrying them to Bayonne, Sir John received a second and severe wound in the foot, from a ball which was supposed to come from his own piquets. Major-General Hay was in command of the outposts for the night; and having just given directions that the church of St. Etienne should be defended till the last, he was killed shortly after the attack commenced. The enemy, having here a great superiority of numbers, got into the village towards the left, and obtained possession of the whole, except one house, which Captain Foster of the 38th occupied with a piquet, and bravely maintained, though the greater part of his men were killed or wounded, till a brigade of the German Legion retook the village.

It had been supposed that the French would make it their main object to destroy the bridge, which would have been the only reasonable or justifiable object of such a sortie in that state of the siege, when neither stores nor artillery were on the ground, nor the works commenced. To guard against this, Lord Saltoun had intrenched the convent of St. Bernard, and with great ability converted it into a respectable little fortress; and Colonel Maitland now formed the first brigade of Guards on the heights above it, to charge the enemy in flank, should he advance toward the bridge. But, though their gun-boats came down the river, and opened a heavy flanking cannonade, no attempt was made on the bridge by water; and it was soon perceived that they had as little intention of attacking it by land, their efforts being wholly directed against the centre of the countervallation opposite to the citadel. Major-General Howard now directed Maitland to support the right flank, and Major-General Stopford, with the 2nd brigade of guards, to co-operate in recovering the ground between that flank and St. Etienne; that officer was soon after wounded, and the command of the brigade fell to General Guise.

The night was very dark; but the French from time to time sent up blue lights from the citadel, obtaining light enough thereby to direct their guns, of which nearly 70 were constantly firing to support their attack. Some of their shells and fire-balls fell upon the depÔt of fascines, and several houses also were set on fire by the same means. These partial illuminations made the darkness deeper in those places to which the light did not extend; and the guards when they approached the French line could distinguish it only by the fire of musketry from behind the hedges and walls. They were directed to lie down and wait till orders could be communicated to the Coldstream guards, under Lieutenant-Colonel Woodford, who were to charge simultaneously for recovering the old position in the hollow road. Meanwhile they kept close to the ground, for the eminence on which they were was so exposed to the citadel, that had they stood up for a few minutes they must have been nearly destroyed: but when the signal was given they rose and rushed forward; the Coldstream charged on the opposite flank at the same moment, and the contest on this part of the line was decided by this well-combined attack: the French ran with all speed lest their retreat should be intercepted; and they suffered from a most destructive fire which both battalions poured upon them as they retired over the glacis of the citadel. When also they were driven out of St. Etienne by the German Legion, a field-piece was brought to bear on their columns, and thirteen rounds of grape and canister were fired at them with dreadful effect as they retreated down the great road into St. Esprit. The moon rose toward the close of the action; and, as day broke, French and English were seen lying on all sides, killed or wounded, and so intermixed, that there seemed to have been no distinct line belonging to either party. The loss was severe on both sides: on the part of the allies 143 were killed, 452 wounded, and 231 made prisoners; the loss of the French amounted to 913, of whom only twenty were prisoners.

During the short truce which took place on the outposts when the engagement was over, the British officers expressed their regret that so many brave men should thus uselessly have been sacrificed; and they were justly disgusted at the heartless levity with which the French officers affected to treat the affair, saying it had been nothing more than a petite promenade militaire! Under all circumstances it seemed indeed to have been planned less in a military spirit than with a feeling of bitter enmity; made as it was when the French had reason to know that the war was at an end, ... and when, if it had been otherwise, no object but that of the immediate slaughter could be effected, there being no works to be destroyed, no cannon to be spiked; and when whatever ?Batty’s Campaign, 158, 165.? loss might have been inflicted could not have been so great as to prevent or delay the operations of the siege. Major-General Colville, on whom the command devolved, landed his guns, and made preparations upon a scale which, if hostilities had been renewed, would, in all human probability, in the course of a very few weeks have added Bayonne to the British conquests. But no new conquest, no farther victories were needed for the honour of the British name. The reputation of the English soldiers had not been higher in the days of the Black Prince, nor that of a British commander in the days of Marlborough.

Colonels Cooke and S. Simon made no tarriance in Toulouse, but hastened on to inform Marshal Soult of Buonaparte’s deposition, and the consequent termination of the war. The Marshal discovered no willingness to acquiesce in the new order of things; the information, he said, came to him without any character of authenticity, nevertheless, inasmuch as Lord Wellington seemed persuaded of its truth, he proposed an armistice, that he might have time to receive from the Emperor’s government official advices, which might direct him how to act. When Colonel Cooke returned to Toulouse with this reply, Lord Wellington dispatched a second letter to Marshal Soult, saying, it appeared to him that Colonel Simon had been sent to the French Marshal by the Provisional Government of France, just as Colonel Cooke had been to him by the British minister who was with the King of Prussia, both bearers of official intelligence; nor could the truth of that intelligence be doubted, nor did it require proof. Without requiring his Excellency to come to a decision, whatever that might be, he himself, he added, must not depart from the line of conduct which the allied sovereigns had pursued in their negotiations at Paris; but were he to consent to an armistice before his Excellency should have followed the example of his companions in arms, and declared his adhesion to the Provisional Government, he should be sacrificing the interest not only of the allies, but of France itself, whom it concerned so much to be saved from a civil war. Meantime Colonel S. Simon proceeded to Marshal Suchet, whom he found at Narbonne with about 12,000 men, all whom he could bring out of Spain. His last act in Catalonia had been to demolish the fortifications of Rosas; Denia and Morella had capitulated; he left garrisons blockaded in Figueras, Hostalric, Barcelona, Tortosa, Murviedro, and PeÑiscola, in which latter place the governor with his staff, and many others, perished by the explosion of a magazine. Marshal Suchet was far from approving the latter movements of Marshal Soult, and from his own dispatches had been led to believe that he could surely have maintained himself at Toulouse. Upon Colonel S. Simon’s arrival, he assembled his superior officers, laid the information before them, and with their unanimous consent sent in the adhesion of the army of Aragon and Catalonia. Soult had now no choice; the allies were moving against ?April 19.? him ready to have acted if he had hesitated longer; yielding an unwilling consent, he then acknowledged the Provisional Government, and a convention for the suspension of hostilities was arranged.

Thus was the war concluded, happily for all parties, even for the French, whom nothing but such a series of defeats could have delivered from the tyranny which their former victories had brought upon themselves. It was by the national spirit which had first shown itself in the Peninsula, by the persevering efforts of Great Britain in the peninsular war, the courage of her troops, and the skill of her great commander, that Buonaparte’s fortune had been checked at its height, and successfully resisted, till other governments were encouraged, and other nations roused by the example; and that power, the most formidable which had ever been known in the civilized world, was then beaten down. The independence of Spain and Portugal had been triumphantly vindicated and secured; and if the civil liberties of both countries were not restored, and firmly established upon a sure foundation, the cause is to be found, not in any foreign influence exercised ill, nor in the perverse disposition, nor malignant designs of any individual or set of men, but in old evils which time had rendered inveterate, for which there is no sudden cure, and which when it is attempted to remove them by the knife and the cautery, must ever be rendered worse.

Ferdinand had returned from captivity with the belief in which he had been trained up, that by right of birth, and by the laws and customs of his country, he was an absolute King; and in this the great majority of the nation entirely agreed with him. But he had been accustomed to yield to circumstances which he could not control, feeling in himself neither the wish nor the strength to struggle against them; and had the general opinion been in favour of the new constitution, he would have submitted to it, as he had to his detention at ValenÇay, if with no better will, with the same apparent contentment, and the same convenient insensibility. Certain it is that he had no intention of overthrowing it when he arrived at Zaragoza:... “there are many parts of it,” said he, “which I do not approve; but if any opposition on my part were likely to cause the shedding of one drop of Spanish blood, I would swear to it immediately.” He soon found that this was not the national wish; that the people cared for the constitution as little as they understood it, that they execrated the Liberales, and hated the Cortes for their ?Impolitic measures of the Cortes.? sake. That assembly, indeed, had acted toward all classes with such strange impolicy as to offend or injure all. The nobles, though the constitution gave them not that weight in the political scale, without which there can be no well-balanced monarchy, might nevertheless have submitted to it without repugnance, because they possessed no authority as an order under the old government: but their property had been attacked; and a sweeping decree had abolished those feudal rights and customs from which a large portion of their hereditary revenues was derived. The clergy might have acquiesced in the suppression of the Inquisition, if they had not been required to proclaim the triumph of the Liberales, ... a triumph whereby nothing was gained for toleration, death being still the punishment for any one who should dare dissent from the Roman Catholic faith. The monasteries might have been quietly reduced, as Pombal had begun to reduce them, without wrong to the existing communities, and without offence to the feelings or prejudices of the nation, simply by forbidding the admittance of new members: by suppressing them the Cortes not only made the monks and friars their enemies, but the people also, among whom the revenues of the former were expended, and over whom the latter exercised far greater influence than either the gospel or the laws. This measure, indeed, would have been impolitic, even if the whole expected profit to the treasury had accrued from it; but as a measure of finance it was worse than a failure. Purchasers could not be found for church property thus confiscated, in a country where the people revolted at this species of sacrilege; the estates, therefore, were administered for the government; and what with the excuses and opportunities which were afforded for mal-administration and peculation, it was generally found that the costs of management consumed the whole proceeds; whereas a regular impost might always have been levied upon the former possessors. The necessity of raising money to support the war was the plea for this suppression; yet the pay of the armies was always greatly in arrear; and it has been seen how much they suffered for want of proper clothing and of sufficient food: such evils are always imputed to the government under which they exist; and as the Cortes had, in fact, assumed the government, the Cortes were as unpopular with the soldiers as with the great body of the people. Nothing but the army could support them if the King should refuse to take upon himself the yoke which they had prepared for him; yet such was the infatuation of the Liberales, that one of their most influential members said the liberties of the country could never be safe if there were even four paid soldiers and a corporal in it; and another described the army as composed of privileged mercenaries and hired assassins.

Yet this party courted popularity; and while they declaimed in the hall of the Cortes fancied that they enjoyed it. The galleries were filled with their admirers; and they had active partizans who could at any time raise tumult enough out of doors to carry violent measures by intimidation. The Serviles, as they contemptuously called those who disapproved the new constitution, either wholly or in any of its parts, were kept silent, some by prudence, others by this system of terror. ?Feb. 3.? One deputy ventured to say that Ferdinand, as soon as he arrived, ought to be acknowledged as being born to all the rights and privileges of an absolute King, and that the constitution ought therefore to be annulled. The indignation of the Liberales burst forth at this, and of the galleries also, for the persons who attended there had always a potential voice; the president thought it prudent to close the doors, lest the liberal mob should be brought in to take summary vengeance upon the indiscreet member: a vote for expelling him was passed, and orders given for commencing a process against him, upon a law passed in the preceding ?Aug. 18, 1813.? summer, by which any person who should affirm, either by word of mouth or by writing, that the constitution ought not to be observed, was to be punished with perpetual banishment, and the deprivation of all offices, pay, and honours. Another law had been passed, on the same day, declaring, that whoever should conspire to establish any other religion in Spain than the Catholic-Apostolic-Roman religion, or to make the Spanish nation cease to profess it, should be prosecuted as a traitor, and suffer death, the established law concerning offences against the faith remaining in full force. It was only by thus consenting to the persecution of religious opinions that the Liberales could make the Serviles concur in a law which gave them authority to persecute for political ones!

“Happy,” said a journalist who spoke the sentiments of the ruling party, “happy will be the day when Ferdinand, having been restored to his faithful subjects, may be thus addressed: Here is your throne, preserved by the loyalty of your subjects; here is your crown, repurchased for you by the blood of Spaniards; here is your sceptre, which Spanish constancy replaces in your hands; here is your royal robe, purpled with the blood of thousands who have fallen that you might wear it! Peruse our history; inform yourself of all that the Spaniards have done for you, and never forget that to the Spanish people you owe everything. Never forget that you are come to be the chief of a nation, the monarch of subjects who have abolished the vestiges of despotism! It is the law which orders; ... the King is the executive magistrate.... But, that such a day of jubilee may arrive, King Ferdinand must return absolutely free, neither influenced by the tyrant of France, nor by Spaniards who are ignorant of the state of Spain, or who regard our institutions with dislike.” This was written before the overthrow of Buonaparte, and before Ferdinand’s enlargement, and perhaps before the Liberales themselves apprehended the consequence in which their own rashness must inevitably involve them. Indifferent spectators saw clearly that either the constitution must be modified, or that the King would make himself absolute again: and even now, if the Liberales had not been possessed with an overweening opinion of their own strength, such a modification might have been effected as would have given the Spaniards all the liberty which they were willing to receive, and, indeed, all the political freedom which those who had the sincerest wish for their improvement and their prosperity could have desired for them. But when the last communication from ValenÇay was read in the Cortes, conciliatory as it was intended to be, and satisfactory as it ought to have been deemed, one member took a sudden exception to the word subjects: “We are not subjects!” he exclaimed. And another member, expressing his assent to the absurd exception, said, that the Spanish people were subjects of the law alone; but that the use of a word which he erroneously represented as being peculiar to the ancient despotism was accounted for by Ferdinand’s long imprisonment, and his consequent ignorance of the new political phraseology of Spain! Meantime the most preposterous projects were started by those who saw that such language and such opinions were likely to occasion a struggle, and who saw no farther. Some were for assembling an army to defend the Cortes against the King; others were for setting him aside, and appointing his brother, the Infante Don Carlos, to reign in his stead: and it is said that there was a party in the Cortes who dreamed of offering the crown to Lord Wellington!

Some of the Guerrilla chiefs are said at this time to have tendered their services to the Cortes; and this is rendered probable by their subsequent conduct. The Cortes is supposed to have reckoned, also, upon Lacy’s attachment to the constitution; but the enthusiasm with which Ferdinand was received by the troops might have shown them how little they could expect from any declarations of the military in their favour. When it was expected that he would proceed from Barcelona to Valencia, Elio, with the double purpose of rendering most honour to the King and affording most gratification to the soldiers, proposed a truce to General Robert, in order that the troops employed in the blockade of Tortosa might join ?April.? their comrades, who were assembled at Amposta, to receive him on his way. When Ferdinand apprized them that he had changed his route, he assigned as a reason his desire of viewing the ruins of Zaragoza, and showing a mark of respect to that faithful city. But the season of festivity at Valencia was rather prolonged than retarded by this deviation; for the Infante Don Antonio proceeded immediately thither, and his arrival kept the inhabitants in a jubilant state till the King himself arrived. Ferdinand may have intended to gain time by this delay for making himself acquainted with the real state of public opinion; but the visit was probably suggested by Palafox, without any such view: he knew that it would be creditable to the King’s feelings, and honourable to the Zaragozans; and what could be so gratifying to himself as to return under such circumstances to Zaragoza, where, with a devoted heroism which had never been surpassed, he had performed his duty to the uttermost, and won for himself a glorious name not to be stained by calumny, and not to be obscured by lapse of ages, while any remembrance of these times shall endure.

After tarrying some twelve days at Zaragoza, Ferdinand set out for Valencia. On the way he was met by his uncle, Cardinal Bourbon, whom, as President of the Regency, the Cortes had sent to meet the King, but with a strict injunction that he was not to kiss the King’s hand, because they deemed any such mark of homage inconsistent with their dignity. Ferdinand had been apprized of this; and, as a first and easy trial of his strength, when the Cardinal accosted him, he presented his hand, and commanded him to kiss it. The old prelate, who had weakly promised to obey the orders of the Cortes, which in his heart he disapproved, obeyed the King with better will than grace, after he had shown a wish to avoid the ceremony; but Ferdinand, having thus humbled him, turned his back upon him in displeasure, and presently deprived him of his archbishopric.

The objection to the word subjects might have been imputed to the folly of the individuals who started and supported it; ... but this refusal of a ceremony which was as old as the monarchy itself, was the act of the Cortes as a body, and might well be considered as one more proof that they, who had so preposterously assumed the title of Majesty for themselves, were resolved to leave the sovereign little but his bare title. But Ferdinand had seen the disposition of the people at Zaragoza; he had seen that all classes heartily united in reprobating the measures of the Cortes, and that the re-establishment of the Inquisition was one of the blessings which they expected from his return The disposition of the ?Elio meets the King. April 15.? army was distinctly declared by Elio, who met him at Jaquesa, on the frontiers of Aragon and Valencia, and addressed him in the name of the second army, that army, he said, which had shed most blood, and made most sacrifices for the deliverance of their country and their King. “Your Majesty,” said he, “arrived in a happy hour to occupy the throne of your fathers; and the God of Hosts, who by such strange and wonderful ways has brought your Majesty hither to restore the monarchy of the Spains, which Nature has given you, may He give you all the strength of mind and body that are required for governing it worthily: then, Sire, you will not forget the armies which have deserved so well, those armies who, having moistened with their blood the land which they have delivered, find themselves at this day in want, neglected, and what is worse, outraged; but they trust that you, Sire, will do them justice!” Elio then offered to resign his General’s staff; and upon Ferdinand’s declining to receive it, and saying it was well placed in his hand, the General, with ready adulation, said, “Take it, Sire, ... let your Majesty grasp it but for a moment, and in that moment it will acquire new worth, new strength!” The King took the staff accordingly, and instantly returned it. Elio then requested permission to kiss his royal hand, and in a short but studied speech, which concluded this ominous scene, he pledged himself that 40,000 strong right arms should be as they had been in the worst of times, the support of his throne.

Ferdinand entered Valencia on the following evening, drawn into the city as he had been into every place upon the road by the joyous people who yoked themselves to his carriage, and who testified by every possible expression of word and deed their desire of taking the old yoke upon themselves and upon their children. An English traveller, who had the good fortune to be present on this memorable day, describes their enthusiasm as bordering upon madness; he had seen before the King’s deliverance the extreme unpopularity of the Cortes throughout Spain, but the feeling which was now manifested surprised him by its intensity and its eagerness, and by the sudden conversion of those who but a few days before professed fidelity to the new constitution; those very persons were now ready to shed their blood in Ferdinand’s cause, that he might be restored, they said, to the full enjoyment of all the rights which his fathers had possessed. “Long live the Absolute King!” was the cry, “and down with the Constitution!”

On the morrow the King went on foot to the cathedral, to be present at a thanksgiving service for his restoration. The streets were lined with soldiers; the colours of the crown regiment were lowered as he passed, so as to be spread before him, that he might see they were stained with blood; and Elio, who had prepared this scene, said, “I have detained you for a sight worthy of you! The stains which you see upon this flag are of the blood of the officer who now holds it, and who, when covered with wounds, saved it from the enemy at Castalla. The crown which this blood has dyed seems to say that the blood which the loyal Spanish army has shed is that which has recovered for you your crown; and the blood which remains in all the Spanish armies they are ready to shed for securing you upon the throne in the plenitude of those rights which Nature has made your portion!” Ferdinand could not have performed his part better at that moment if he had studied it; he stooped and kissed the flag, and announced to the standard-bearer, who had before received no promotion for his services, that he was now promoted. In the afternoon, after the officers had been presented and had kissed hands, Elio, in their name and presence, renewed for the army under his command the oath which the whole loyal Spanish nation had taken in the year 1808, when Ferdinand was acknowledged King: the constitution was not mentioned in his address, nor the Cortes; “this oath,” said he, “they renew by me as their organ upon your royal hand (and he knelt and kissed the hand at this part of his speech), and they promise your Majesty that at the price of their blood they will preserve the throne for you with all those rights to which the heroic Spanish ?The officers swear fidelity to him.? nation at that time swore.” Turning then to the officers, he asked whether these were the sentiments which animated them? He was answered by a general acclamation of assent: many of them burst into tears in the strength of their emotion, and some cries were heard of death to those who did not hold such sentiments, and would not maintain them! The time came when General Elio paid with his own life’s blood for this and other services to the absolute cause.

He was indeed an evil counsellor now, acting honestly and bravely, but upon an erring judgment. Unhappily there never was a time in which wise counsel was more needed; for if the blind, unreflecting, generous loyalty of the nation had been rightly estimated, so as to call forth a generous but thoughtful feeling in return, it would be rash and presumptuous to say that things might have been settled upon a sure foundation, but certainly much evil might have been averted, much wickedness might have been prevented, and blood, and tears, and misery, might have been spared. General Whittingham, who commanded the cavalry and artillery in Aragon when the King arrived at Zaragoza, and who accompanied him by his express orders to Valencia, was ?General Whittingham’s advice.? asked in that city his opinion whether the King should swear to the constitution or not? He replied, that the constitution was too democratic to be in accord either with the habits and opinions of the Spanish people, or with the laws and customs of the Spanish monarchy; it must be modified therefore in many parts, or there could be no hope of its duration. Yet one of its articles forbade the slightest alteration during the space of eight years; and thus the King, if he swore to it, must either deprive himself of all possibility of amending it during that time, or be guilty of predetermined perjury. He delivered it therefore as his opinion, that the King under these circumstances could not swear to the constitution as it then existed; but, he added, that the Cortes had deserved well both of the King and of the country; that the King, unaccompanied by a single soldier, should in person dissolve the Cortes, should thank them for the service they had rendered the state, and say that it would gratify him to see them re-elected by their constituents as members of the Cortes which he was about to summon.

The British ambassador, Sir Henry Wellesley, had gone to Valencia to meet the King, and the advice which he gave was to the same effect, that he should modify the constitution, but not annul it. This indeed was the opinion which any Englishman who regarded the situation of Spain with a sincere wish for the peace and prosperity and improvement of a great and noble nation would then have formed; for this was the straightforward course which at that golden opportunity it behoved the King to take. But there were few Spaniards who saw this, few who were in a state of sufficient equanimity to see it: inflamed by strong passions, or settled in strong prepossessions which no force of reason, no lessons of experience could shake, a small minority were bent upon violent change, a much more powerful and now more active party were resolved to resist all alteration, even such as was most needed; while the great majority of the people, looking back upon the tranquillity they had enjoyed before the war as to a golden age, desired nothing but to return to their old habits and their old pursuits, and relapse into their former state of happy indifference to all political affairs. The care of the nation they were for leaving to the government, the care of religion to the Holy Office, and the care of their individual consciences to the priest, as implicitly as they relied on Providence for the due return of the seasons; and it was with these, who were the great body of his subjects, that Ferdinand, who would have been just such a subject himself, was in perfect sympathy. It is often seen that circumstances awaken dormant genius, and bring latent qualities into strong action: but no circumstances can raise an ordinary man to the level of extraordinary times, no circumstances can give strength to a weak mind; nor can anything but the special grace of God call forth in the heart a virtue which is not innate in it.

The Cortes at this time repeated their solicitations that the King would proceed to Madrid, and establish the happiness of Spain; but they made a show of military preparations to support their own authority; and they took upon themselves, with singular indiscretion, to regulate the establishment of his household. But every day ?Memorial of the Serviles.? now diminished their numbers as well as their strength; and more than seventy of the members sent a deputation to Valencia to present a memorial, in which they protested against the measures of the Cortes as having been carried by force and intimidation, and professed for themselves, and for the provinces which they represented, fidelity to their ancient laws and institutions. Beyond all doubt they spoke the sense of ?Stone of the Constitution removed.? the provinces. In most of the large towns, the Plaza Mayor, or Great Square, had been new named Plaza de la Constitucion, and a stone with these words engraven on it erected there; at Valencia this was removed one night, and in the morning what is absurdly called a provisional stone of wood, was set up in its place, with the words Real Plaza de Fernando VII.: this was publicly done; and the provisional stone was first borne under Ferdinand’s window with military honours, in a long procession formed by the populace, with officers intermixed, carrying drawn swords, and bearing the royal flag. A stanza, composed10 and printed for the occasion, was soon affixed to it, denouncing, in a ferocious spirit, vengeance upon any one who should profane it, and upon the liberal party.

The news of Buonaparte’s deposition, and the consequent termination of hostilities, reached Ferdinand during his tarriance at Valencia. Any perplexity which he might have felt (if he could be supposed to have felt any) concerning the treaty of ValenÇay was thus removed, and there was nothing to withdraw his attention from the immediate object of resuming his absolute authority, and suppressing what he now regarded as a mere revolutionary faction. He was delayed a week by indisposition, which confined him to his apartment. The first thing he did, when he was sufficiently recovered to leave the house, was to visit all the nunneries, that the nuns might not be disappointed in their ardent desire of seeing him; and in these visits part of two days was employed much to the increase of his popularity, this being at the same time an evidence, it was thought, of good-nature, and of devout respect to the superstition of the country. When ?Breve Relacion de los sucesos en Valencia.? these visits were concluded, he attended an evening Te Deum in the cathedral, performed by the light of 20,000 tapers; after which he and the Infantes adored a chalice of legendary reputation which is venerated there. Hitherto there had been no avowal of the course which he intended to pursue; but on this day a declaration appeared, signed ?Ferdinand’s declaration. May 4.? by the King and by Macanaz, as Secretary of State, with special powers for this peculiar occasion. In this memorable paper, Ferdinand, speaking in his own person, began by briefly touching upon his accession to the throne, and his imprisonment, at the commencement of which he had issued, he said, as well as he could, while surrounded by force, a decree addressed to the Council of Castille, or, in defect of it, to any other chancellery or audience that might be at liberty, requiring them to convoke a Cortes which should employ itself solely on the immediate business of taking measures and raising supplies for the defence of the kingdom, and remain permanent for other emergencies. This decree had arrived too late; and when the Cortes of 1810 was assembled, the states of the nobility and clergy were not summoned to it, although the Central Junta had so directed; and the members, after taking the oaths, “whereby,” said he, “they bound themselves to preserve to me, as their sovereign, all my dominions, on the very day of their installation, and for a commencement of their proceedings, despoiled me of the sovereignty which they had just before acknowledged, attributing it nominally to the nation, for the purpose of appropriating it to themselves, and then dictating what laws they pleased. Thus, without authority from province, place, or junta, and without the knowledge of those which were said to be represented by substitute members, they imposed upon the nation the yoke of a new constitution, wherein almost the whole form of the old constitution of the monarchy was changed; and, copying the revolutionary and democratical principles of the French constitution of 1791, they sanctioned ... not the fundamental laws of a moderate monarchy, ... but those of a popular government, with a chief or magistrate, their mere delegated executor, and not a King, although they gave him that name to deceive and seduce the unwary. They carried these laws by means of the threats and violence of those persons with whom the galleries of the Cortes were filled; giving thus the colour of the general will to what was in fact only the work of a faction. With the same want of liberty, the constitution was signed and sworn to; and it was notorious to all what had been the treatment of the respectable Bishop of Orense, and the punishment with which others had been threatened who refused to sign and swear to it.”

He proceeded then to say in what manner revolutionary principles had been diffused in journals, some of which were edited by members of the Cortes; that king, and tyrant, and despot had been used as synonymous terms; that the army and navy and other establishments which used to be called royal, had been re-named national, in order to flatter the people, who, nevertheless, in spite of these arts, retained by their native loyalty the good feelings which always formed their character. “Of all this,” he continued, “since I happily re-entered the kingdom, I have been acquiring faithful information, partly by my own observation, and partly from the public papers, in which, up to this day, representations of my coming and of my character are circulated, so false and infamous in themselves, that even with regard to any other individual they would be heavy offences, worthy of severe exposure and punishment. Such unexpected circumstances have filled my heart with bitterness, which has only been tempered by demonstrations of affection from all those who hoped for my arrival, that my presence might put an end to these evils, and to the oppression in which those were held who preserved the remembrance of my person, and desired the true happiness of their country. True and loyal Spaniards, I promise and vow to you that you shall not be deceived in your noble hopes! Your sovereign wishes to be so for your sake; and in this he places his glory, ... in being the sovereign of an heroic nation, who by immortal deeds have gained the admiration of all, and preserved their liberty and their honour. I abhor and detest despotism: the intelligence and cultivation of the nations of Europe do not suffer it now; neither in Spain have its Kings ever been despots, nor have its good laws and constitution authorized it, though by misfortune there may have been from time to time there, as every where, and in every thing human, abuses which no possible constitution can entirely preclude; and these were not the faults of the constitution, but of individuals, and the effects of melancholy but very rare circumstances which gave occasion to them. Yet to prevent them as far as may be by human foresight, preserving the honour of the royal dignity and its rights (for rights it has) and those which belong to the people, which are equally inviolable, I will consult with the procuradores of Spain and of the Indies, and in a Cortes, legitimately assembled, composed of both, as soon as they can be brought together, (order having been restored, and the good usages in which the nation has lived, and which with its accord the Kings, my august predecessors, have established,) every thing that can conduce to the good of my kingdom shall be firmly and legitimately established, that my subjects may live prosperously and happily under a religion and a government closely united in an indissoluble tie, wherein and wherein alone consists the temporal happiness of a King and a kingdom bearing for excellence the title of Catholic. Immediate preparations shall be made for assembling these Cortes. Liberty and security, individual and royal, shall be firmly secured by means of laws, which, guaranteeing public tranquillity and order, shall leave to all that wholesome liberty, the undisturbed enjoyment of which distinguishes a moderate government from an arbitrary and despotic one. This just liberty all, likewise, shall enjoy to communicate their ideas and thoughts through the press, that is, within those limits which sound reason prescribes to all, that it degenerate not into licentiousness; for the respect which is due to religion and to government, and that which men ought mutually to observe towards each other, can under no civilized government be reasonably permitted to be violated with impunity. All suspicion, also, of any waste of the public revenues shall cease; those which shall be assigned for the expenses required for the honour of my royal person and family, and that of the nation which I have the glory to govern being separated from the revenues, which, with consent of the kingdom, may be assigned for the maintenance of the state in all the branches of its administration. And the laws which shall hereafter serve as a rule of action for my subjects shall be established in concert with the Cortes; so that these bases may serve as an authentic declaration of my royal intentions in the government with which I am about to be charged, and will represent to all, not a despot or a tyrant, but a King and a father of his subjects.”

He went on to say, that having heard complaints from all parts against the constitution, and against the measures of the Cortes, ... considering also the mischiefs which had sprung therefrom, and would increase if he should sanction that constitution with his consent, ... acting, moreover, in conformity to the decided and general demonstration of the wishes of his people, wishes which were just in themselves and well founded, he declared that he would not swear to the Cortes, but that he annulled it, and abrogated all such of its acts as derogated from the rights and prerogatives of his sovereignty established by that constitution and those laws under which the nation had so long lived. And he declared all persons guilty of high treason who should attempt to support them, and to excite discontent and disturbance in his dominions, whether by writing, word, or deed. The administration was to go on under the present system till the old one could be restored; and the political and administrative branches till the future Cortes should have determined upon the permanent order of this part of the government. But from the day on which this his decree should be published and communicated to the President of the Cortes, the sittings of that Cortes should cease; all their papers should be delivered to the officers charged with the execution of this decree, and deposited in the house of the Ayuntamiento of Madrid, and the room in which they were deposited be locked and sealed up; and whoever should obstruct the execution of the decree, should be deemed guilty of high treason, and punished with death. All proceedings pending for any infraction of the constitution were to cease; and all persons imprisoned for such infraction to be set at liberty forthwith. “Such,” the King concluded, “is my will, because the welfare and happiness of the nation require it.”

By another decree of the same date, Ferdinand conferred upon the capital, in testimony of his esteem and gratitude, and in earnest of some more signal favour, the privilege of adding to its appellation of the “right noble, loyal, and imperial town of Madrid,” that of “heroic” also; and upon its Ayuntamiento the title of “excellency.” In this decree, also, he ordered a hundred doubloons to be distributed in each of the parishes of Madrid, on the day when he should make his entrance; and he regretted that circumstances did not allow him to give greater proofs of his natural bounty. ?Ferdinand sets out for Madrid. May 5.? On the following day he departed for Madrid. Such were the multitudes who came from far and near to obtain a sight of their King, that one continued concourse of people lined the whole way from Valencia. Every village devised some means of displaying its loyalty; some by erecting triumphal arches, such as their abilities could afford; others by strewing the road with branches and flowers for miles together. The Cortes, as he approached, could no longer dream of resistance; the decree which abrogated their constitution and put an end to their authority was posted in the streets of Madrid, countersigned by General Eguia, as Captain-General of New Castille, and Political and Military Governor of the Province, now by the King appointed; and deputations from its Audience and its Ayuntamiento went to meet him at Aranjuez, where he halted two days, and where the rejoicing of the inhabitants, and the illuminations which they exhibited, and the confluence of visitors, contrasted strangely with the devastation that the French had committed there; for they had stripped the gardens of every thing which could be carried away, and had destroyed or mutilated the statues and the fountains.

Such members of the Cortes as were marked for the King’s displeasure were arrested on the night before his arrival by General Eguia. On the 13th Eguia went out with the grandees in procession, habited in the ancient costume, to meet him. The Majorcan division lined the Prado, from the Puerta de Atocha, at which he entered, and the Calle de Alcala to the Puerta del Sol, ... not to overawe the people (for a corporal and four soldiers might have repressed any discontent that appeared that day), but to increase the pomp and splendour of the festival. In the highest part of the Calle de Alcala, ... and no scene could be better suited to such a pageant, ... a triumphal arch had been erected, as imposing in appearance as if it had been of durable materials. The balconies were hung with silk of various colours, fringed with gold and silver; and Ferdinand made his entrance amid the salute of cannon, and the sound of bells from all the churches, and the shouts and acclamations of an innumerable multitude rising above all. Their invaders had been totally defeated and expelled; their strong places were recovered; their national independence had been gloriously vindicated and established; the tyrant who had deceived, and outraged, and insulted them, had been beaten from his throne; the Intruder whom he had set over them had been hunted out of their land; their King, ... their legitimate, their popular, their beloved King was restored! Greater joy could not have been expressed, greater happiness could not have been felt, if that King had been in all respects deserving of the generous enthusiasm which was that day manifested for his sake.

If Ferdinand had now performed the promises which were distinctly made in his declaration, he might have averted much, if not all, of the subsequent danger which he incurred, and the just reproaches which will be attached to his name in history. It ought not to be said that in making those promises he had no intention of fulfilling them; for though he scrupled at no dissimulation when under duresse, they were voluntary in this case, and the temper of the nation, then unequivocally declared, was such, that no purpose was to be gained by it. Ferdinand was a person of narrow mind, and his heart seems to have been incapable of generous feeling; but he was not a wicked man, nor would he have been a bad King if he had met with wise ministers, and had ruled over an enlightened people. On the two important subjects of civil and religious freedom he and the great body of the nation were in perfect sympathy, ... both, upon both subjects, imbued with error to the core; and the popular feeling in both cases outran his. The word Liberty (Libertad) appeared in large bronze letters over the entrance of the Hall of the Cortes in Madrid. The people of their own impulse hurried thither to remove it; they set up ladders, forced out letter by letter from the stone, and as each was thrown into the street the spectators renewed their shouts of exultation. They collected as many of the journals of the Cortes, and of the papers and pamphlets of the Liberales, as could be got together; formed a procession in which the religious fraternities, and the clergy regular and secular, took the lead; piled up these papers in one of the public squares, and sacrificed them there as a political auto-da-fÉ, after which high mass was performed and Te Deum sung, as a thanksgiving for their triumph. The Stone of the Constitution, as it was called, was everywhere removed, and replaced as it had been at Valencia. The people at Seville deposed all the existing authorities, elected others in their stead to all the offices which had existed under the old system, and then required those authorities to re-establish the Inquisition. In re-establishing that accursed tribunal by a formal act of government, in suppressing the freedom of the press, which had been abused to its own destruction, and in continuing to govern not merely as an absolute monarch, but as a despotic one, Ferdinand undoubtedly complied with the wishes of the Spanish nation. He did these things conformably to his own misguided conscience and weak judgment, as well as to his inclinations; and for so doing he was, by the voice of the people, a patriotic and popular King. In all this he cannot justly be charged with anything worse than error of judgment; fearfully injurious indeed in its consequences, but in the individual to be pitied as well as pardoned. But, in his treatment of the more conspicuous persons among the Liberales, whom he condemned to strict and long imprisonment, many of them for life, he brought upon himself an indelible reproach, and incurred the guilt of individual sin. Quintana, who, more than any other person, contributed by his eloquent writings to excite and sustain the national spirit, and awaken the sympathy of other nations, was one of the victims thus sentenced, and his life is said to have been not the only one which was shortened by severe confinement.

But the peninsular war concludes with the return of Ferdinand to Madrid; and its history may best be concluded with the return to his own country of the General by whom it was brought to this triumphant termination. A dukedom was conferred upon Lord Wellington, £300,000 were voted by Parliament for the purchase of an estate suitable to the dignity, and such an additional grant of income as made up the annual amount of his parliamentary allowances to £17,000. ?He takes his seat in the House of Lords. June 28.? He had not been in England since he was raised to the peerage; and thus it happened, that when he was introduced into the House of Lords to take his seat, his patents of creation as Baron, Earl, Marquis, and Duke were all to be read on the same day. No ceremony of honour was omitted on this occasion: the Duchess his wife, and his mother, the Countess of Mornington, were present to behold it, being seated below the throne. After the oaths had been administered, and he had taken his seat, the Lord Chancellor ?The Lord Chancellor’s speech.? Eldon addressed him for the purpose of conveying the thanks of the House, which had been voted to him on the preceding evening, for the twelfth time. In performing this duty, Lord Eldon said, he could not refrain from calling the attention of his Grace, and of the noble Lords present, to a circumstance singular in the history of that House, ... that upon his introduction he had gone through every dignity of the peerage in this country which it was in the power of the crown to bestow. These dignities had been conferred upon him for eminent and distinguished services; and he would not have the presumption to attempt to state the nature of those services, nor to recapitulate those brilliant acts which had given immortality to the name of Wellington, and placed this empire on a height of military renown of which there was no example in its history. He could not better discharge the duty which had devolved upon him than by recurring to the terms in which that House had so often expressed their sense of the energy, the unremitting exertions, the ardour, and the ability with which the noble Duke had conducted the arduous campaigns of the Peninsula, ... exertions and ability which finally enabled him to place the allied armies in the heart of France, fighting their way there through the blaze of victory. The glorious result of his victories had been to achieve the peace and security of his country; while, by his example, he had animated the rest of Europe, and enabled her governments to restore their ancient order. The Lord Chancellor then expressed his own satisfaction in being the instrument of informing the Duke that the House unanimously voted their thanks for his eminent and unremitted services, and their congratulations upon his return to his country.

The House of Commons in voting their thanks had voted also that a committee of the House should wait upon his Grace to communicate the same, and to offer him their congratulations on his return. The Duke in reply signified that he was desirous of expressing to the House his answer in person. He was admitted in consequence the following day; a chair was set for him toward the middle of the House: he came in making his obeisances, ?July 1.He returns thanks to the House.? the whole House rising upon his entrance. The Speaker having informed him that there was a chair in which he might repose himself, the Duke sat down, covered for some time, the serjeant standing on his right hand with the mace grounded, and the House resumed their seats. The Duke then rose and uncovered, and addressed the Speaker thus: “I was anxious to be permitted to attend this House in order to return my thanks in person for the honour they have done me in deputing a committee of members to congratulate me on my return to this country; and this after the House had animated my exertions by their applause upon every occasion which appeared to merit their approbation; and after they had filled up the measure of their favours by conferring upon me, at the recommendation of the Prince Regent, the noblest gift that any subject had ever received.

“I hope it will not be deemed presumptuous in me to take this opportunity of expressing my admiration of the great efforts made by this House and by the country, at a moment of unexampled pressure and difficulty, in order to support the great scale of operation by which the contest was brought to so fortunate a termination.

“By the wise policy of Parliament the government was enabled to give the necessary support to the operations which were carried on under my direction; and I was encouraged by the confidence reposed in me by his Majesty’s ministers and by the Commander-in-chief, by the gracious favour of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and by the reliance which I had on the support of my gallant friends the general officers of the army, and on the bravery of the officers and troops, to carry on the operations in such a manner as to acquire for me those marks of the approbation of this House, for which I have now the honour to make my humble acknowledgments. Sir, it is impossible for me to express the gratitude which I feel; I can only assure the House that I shall always be ready to serve his Majesty in any capacity in which my services can be deemed useful, with the same zeal for my country which has already acquired for me the approbation of this House.”

Mr. Abbot, the Speaker, who had sat covered during this speech, then stood up uncovered, and replied to his Grace in these words: “My Lord, since last I had the honour of addressing you from this place, a series of eventful years has elapsed, but none without some mark and note of your rising glory.

“The military triumphs which your valour has achieved upon the banks of the Douro and the Tagus, of the Ebro and the Garonne, have called forth the spontaneous shouts of admiring nations. Those triumphs it is needless at this day to recount. Their names have been written by your conquering sword in the annals of Europe, and we shall hand them down with exultation to our children’s children.

“It is not, however, the grandeur of military success which has alone fixed our admiration, or commanded our applause; it has been that generous and lofty spirit which inspired your troops with unbounded confidence, and taught them to know that the day of battle was always a day of victory; that moral courage and enduring fortitude which, in perilous times, when gloom and doubt had beset ordinary minds, stood nevertheless unshaken; and that ascendency of character which, uniting the energies of jealous and rival nations, enabled you to wield at will the fates and fortunes of mighty empires.

“For the repeated thanks and grants bestowed upon you by this House, in gratitude for your many and eminent services, you have thought fit this day to offer us your acknowledgments: but this nation well knows that it is still largely your debtor; it owes to you the proud satisfaction, that amidst the constellation of great and illustrious warriors who have recently visited our country, we could present to them a leader of our own, to whom all, by common acclamation, conceded the pre-eminence. And when the will of Heaven, and the common destinies of our nature, shall have swept away the present generation, you will have left your great name and example as an imperishable monument, exciting others to like deeds of glory, and serving at once to adorn, defend, and perpetuate the existence of this country amongst the ruling nations of the earth.”

With these honours was the Duke of Wellington received, and such honours were never more fully deserved. Since the peace of Utrecht, in which the interests of Europe were sacrificed by that party-spirit which is the reproach of England, our military reputation had declined. The American war contributed to lower us in the estimation of our neighbours; for though the courage of our men was never found wanting in the day of trial, the circumstances of that contest were such that, after the first season for vigorous measures was gone by, success became morally impossible. This was not taken into the account. The war ended to our loss; and the disgrace which should exclusively have attached to our councils affected our arms also. When the Duke of York was made commander-in-chief, our military establishments were in a wretched state; boys held commissions literally before they were out of leading-strings; there was not a single institution in Great Britain wherein tactics were taught; and it was in France that young Arthur Wellesley learned the elements of war! The Duke of York soon began a silent and efficient reform; abuse after abuse was removed, defect after defect supplied; but these improvements were known only to persons connected with the army; and its military character suffered materially in the revolutionary war from causes which are neither imputable to the commander, nor to the soldiers under him: for then also, as in the American war, they were placed in circumstances which rendered success impossible. The evil, however, was done. The enemy insulted us; the continental nations were persuaded that we were not a military people; and we, contenting ourselves with our acknowledged maritime supremacy, were but too ready to assent to an opinion which in its consequences must have operated as a death-sentence upon national honour, national power, and national independence. It is not too much to say that our army would have sunk into contempt, if the expedition to Egypt had not thrown some splendour over the close of a most ill-fated and ill-conducted war. But the effect which that expedition produced upon public feeling soon passed away; and the French convinced themselves that our success had been owing to the incapacity of their commander, the disputes among their generals, and the universal desire of their troops to escape from Egypt, ... any cause rather than the true one. A second war broke out; and while the enemy obtained the most signal victories, we had only the solitary battle of Maida to boast, which was upon so small a scale, and so nugatory in its consequences, that the continent never heard of it, though our disgrace at Buenos Ayres was known everywhere.

Meantime the French had persuaded Europe as well as themselves that Buonaparte was the greatest military genius of ancient or of modern times; that his generals were all consummate masters in the art of war; and that his troops were, in every respect, the best in the world. This opinion was more than ever prevalent when Sir Arthur Wellesley took the command in Portugal in 1809, and began a career which, when all circumstances are considered, may truly be said to be unparalleled in military history. He entered upon that career at a time when the military reputation and the military power of France were at their greatest height; when a belief that it was impossible to resist the commanding genius and inexhaustible resources of Buonaparte had been inculcated in this country with pestilent activity, and had deeply tainted the public mind. Daily and weekly, monthly and quarterly, this poison was administered with the most mischievous perseverance in newspapers, magazines, and reviews. Never was there an opinion more injurious, more fatal to the honour, interest, safety, independence, and existence of the country; yet was it propagated by writers who were then held in the highest estimation, and they enforced it with a zeal which arrayed their passions, and seemed to array their wishes, as well as their intellect, on the enemy’s side; and with a confidence which boldly affirmed that nothing but folly or madness could presume to doubt their predictions. Suicidal as the belief was, it was the creed of that party in the state to which these writers had attached themselves; and no effort was omitted on their part for deadening the hopes, thwarting the exertions, disgusting the allies, and encouraging the enemies of their country. Our government was not influenced by such advisers; but it was long before its exertions were commensurate with the occasion; and during four years Lord Wellington was crippled by the inadequacy of his means. Yet, even when thus crippled, he contended successfully against the undivided power of France. Every operation of the British army under his command tended to give the troops and the nation fresh confidence in their general, and to impress upon the enemy a proper sense of the British character. Wherever he met the French he defeated them; whenever he found it necessary to retire for want of numbers, or of food, or of co-operation in the Spaniards, it was in such order, and so leisurely, as neither to raise the hopes of the enemy, nor abate those of his army, or of his allies. After the battle of Talavera, and the series of provoking misconduct by which the effects of that victory were frustrated, he distinctly perceived the course which the enemy would pursue, and, anticipating all their temporary advantages (which yet he omitted no occasion of opposing and impeding), he saw and determined how and where the vital struggle must be made. The foresight of a general was never more admirably displayed; and if there be one place in the Peninsula more appropriate than another for a monument to that leader whose trophies are found throughout the whole, it is in the lines of Torres Vedras that a monument to Lord Wellington should be erected. When he took his stand there, Lisbon was not the only stake of that awful contest: the fate of Europe was in suspense; and they who, like Homer, could see the balance in the hand of Jupiter, might then have perceived that the fortunes of France were found wanting in the scale. There the spell which bound the nations was broken; the plans of the tyrant were baffled, his utmost exertions when he had no other foe and no other object were defied; his armies were beaten; and Europe, taking heart when she beheld the deliverance of Portugal, began to make a movement for her own, ... for that spirit by which alone her deliverance could be effected was excited. Foresight and enterprise, meantime, with our commander went hand in hand; he never advanced, but so as to be sure of his retreat; and never retreated, but in such an attitude as to impose upon a superior enemy. He never gave an opportunity, and never lost one. His movements were so rapid as to deceive and astonish the French, who prided themselves upon their own celerity. He foiled general after general, defeated army after army, captured fortress after fortress; and, raising the military character of Great Britain to its old standard in the days of Marlborough, made the superiority of the British soldier over the Frenchman as incontestable as that of the British seaman.

The spirit of the country rose with its successes. England once more felt her strength, and remembered the part which she had borne, and the rank which she had asserted in the days of her Edwards and her Henrys. Buonaparte had bestowed upon France the name of the Sacred Territory, boasting, as one of the benefits conferred upon her by his government, that France alone remained inviolable when every other part of the continent was visited by the calamities of war. That boast was no longer to hold good! Our victories in the Peninsula prepared the deliverance of Europe, and Lord Wellington led the way into France. A large portion of his army consisted of Portugueze and Spaniards, who had every imaginable reason to hate the people among whom they went as conquerors; they had seen the most infernal cruelties perpetrated in their own country by the French soldiers; and it might have been supposed, prone as their national character was to revenge, that they would eagerly seize the opportunity for vengeance. But such was Lord Wellington’s influence over the men whom he conducted to victory, that not an outrage, not an excess, not an insult was committed; and the French, who had made war like savages in every country which they had invaded, experienced all the courtesies and humanities of generous warfare when they were invaded themselves. In Gascony, as well as in Portugal and Spain, the Duke of Wellington’s name was blessed by the people. Seldom indeed has it fallen to any conqueror to look back upon his career with such feelings! The marshal’s staff, the dukedom, the honours and rewards which his Prince and his country so munificently and properly bestowed, were neither the only nor the most valuable recompense of his labours. There was something more precious than these, more to be desired than the high and enduring fame which he had secured by his military achievements, ... the satisfaction of thinking to what end those achievements had been directed; ... that they were for the deliverance of two most injured and grievously oppressed nations; ... for the safety, honour, and welfare of his own country; ... and for the general interests of Europe and of the civilized world. His campaigns were sanctified by the cause; ... they were sullied by no cruelties, no crimes; the chariot-wheels of his triumphs have been followed by no curses; ... his laurels are entwined with the amaranths of righteousness, and upon his death-bed he might remember his victories among his good works.

This is the great and inappreciable glory of England in this portion of its history, that its war in the Peninsula was in as strict conformity with the highest principles of justice as with sound state policy. No views of aggrandizement were entertained either at its commencement or during its course, or at its termination; conquests were not looked for, commercial privileges were not required. It was a defensive, a necessary, a retributive war; engaged in as the best means of obtaining security for ourselves, but having also for its immediate object “to loose the bands of wickedness,” and to break the yoke of oppression, and “to let the oppressed go free.” And this great deliverance was brought about by England, with God’s blessing on a righteous cause. If France has not since that happy event continued to rest under a mild and constitutional monarchy, ... if Spain has relapsed into the abuses of an absolute one, ... if the Portugueze have not supported that character which they recovered during the contest, ... it has been because in all these instances there were national errors which retained their old possession, and national sins which were not repented of. But the fruits of this war will not be lost upon posterity: for in its course it has been seen that the most formidable military power which ever existed in the civilized world was overthrown by resolute perseverance in a just cause; it has been seen also that national independence depends upon national spirit, but that even that spirit in its highest and heroic degree may fail ... if wisdom to direct it be wanting. It has been seen what guilt and infamy men, who might otherwise have left an honourable name, entailed upon themselves, because, hoping to effect a just end by iniquitous means, they consented to a wicked usurpation, and upheld it by a system of merciless tyranny, sinning against their country and their own souls: this was seen in the Spanish ministers of the Intruder; and the Spanish reformers, more lamentably for Spain, but more excusably for themselves, have shown the danger of attempting to carry crude theories of government into practice; and hurrying on precipitate changes, from the consequences of which men too surely look to despotism for protection or for deliverance. These lessons have never been more memorably exemplified than in the Peninsular War; and for her own peculiar lesson, England, it may be hoped, has learnt to have ever from thenceforth a just reliance, under Providence, upon her resources and her strength; ... under Providence, I say, for if that support be disregarded, all other will be found to fail.

My task is ended here: and if in the course of this long and faithful history, it should seem that I have any where ceased to bear the ways of Providence in mind, or to have admitted a feeling, or given utterance to a thought inconsistent with glory to God in the highest, and good-will towards men, let the benevolent reader impute it to that inadvertence or inaccuracy of expression from which no diligence, however watchful, can always be secure; and as such let him forgive what, if I were conscious of it, I should not easily forgive in myself.

Keswick, 26th March, 1832.

Laus Deo.