The navy of England is the right arm of the British empire. The gallantry of British troops requires no praise of ours, as it admits of no doubt on the part of our enemies. But until some convulsion of the globe shall make England Continental, so long must her chief force be naval, her chief defence be by her strength at sea, and her chief victories be gained on the ocean.

The navy has another incomparable adaptation to the especial circumstances of England. Her empire is colonial: the extent of Great Britain itself scarcely equals one of those provinces beyond the ocean which Providence has given into her hands. Their defence, their maintenance, and their existence, must depend on the superiority of our fleet: if it were once extinguished, the British empire must be again contracted within the British Isles.

A third, and perhaps a more important qualification than either, is—that a fleet is the only form of national force which can never endanger national freedom.

On those data, the question of national fleets is easily decided. England is not only the first naval power in the world, but she must continue the first; because a fleet is necessary to her existence, which it is not to that of any other European throne. This is the dictate of nature, and is therefore a law. Other powers may possess a fleet as an appendage to their national strength, as suitable to their rank, or as adding to their means of hostilities. Still, to them, a fleet is not a necessity. Russia, France, and Spain have no more necessity for a fleet, than Prussia, Austria, and Switzerland! But England, without a fleet, would be exposed to invasion on every point of a coast extending two thousand miles. Her wealth is all loose upon the ocean; her chief territories are all beyond the ocean: thus, without a fleet, she would be almost wholly without the means of external defence, of retaliation for injuries, and of the commerce which is the most essential basis of her revenue. The result is, that, while the Continental kingdoms might be powerful states, yet not possess a ship on the seas, England, stript of her naval superiority, would instantly sink from her high position, would lose the larger portion of her power, would be separated from her most important colonies, would see her revenues decay,—and, if assailed by a foreign enemy, would see her resources suddenly stopped, and must prepare for the last extremities of struggle, hand to hand.

In this view, we do not confine the question to the national fondness for the sea—to that mixture of boldness and skill which predominates in the character of our sailors, and forms the especial qualification of a sea-faring people,—nor to national superiority of any kind; but to the simple fact, that the possession of predominant power on the ocean cannot be dispensed with by England, while it can be dispensed with by every other power of the globe.

There is also another reason for this supremacy; arising from the fact, that England may throw her whole national force into a navy; while other powers, however ambitious of naval eminence, must at least divide their force between the land and sea services. France, with its immense frontier, must keep up an immense army during war. Russia, with a frontier from the Niemen to the North Pole, must keep up an immense army at all times. The maintenance of those armies is essential to the national existence, while the maintenance of a fleet is only gratifying to the national ambition. The consequence is as clear as a matter of arithmetic. France and Russia, attacking England separately, must be ultimately beaten. America, even if she were a more formidable opponent than either, will also be beaten, and for the same reason. A fleet is not essential to her; the undivided force of the States will never be applied to her navy. The national strength will be expanded over inland conquest; the sea-coast towns will be rapidly reduced to insignificance by the superiority of the great inland settlements; and the time will come, when the cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, will have no more weight with the inland powers of Louisiana and the prairies, than Brighton or Broadstairs have with the power of London. They will be watering places, or, at best, warehousing places, and will be no more able to keep up a navy, than the Isle of Thanet would be able to keep up the Channel fleet. All this, however, tends only to show, that a fleet is the supreme instrument of British dominion; and that its strength, its skill, and its discipline, should employ the utmost activity, liberality, and vigilance of every Cabinet which desires to do its duty to the empire.

We now proceed to give some account of the interesting and intelligent work of which Captain Plunket has supplied the translation, accompanied with valuable explanatory notes of his own.

Some time since, there appeared in the well-known Parisian Revue des deux Mondes, articles on the English and French naval systems, by a French officer, Captain de la GraviÈre. The object of those papers was less to give a history of the naval war, than to ascertain the causes of that almost unbroken series of triumphs which made the fame of the British fleet; and, on the other hand, which ultimately extinguished the fleet of a nation so brave, ambitious, and enterprising as the French.

M. de la GraviÈre, to his credit, had not followed the usual "perfide Albion" style of the French journalists, nor exhibited that jesuitical evasion of fact, and the perpetual peevishness against England, which marks and disgraces French history. He never sinks English success into failure, or inflates French failure into victory. He writes with the calmness of a man in search of the truth; judges with every visible intention of impartiality; examines the private documents of the transactions; and pronounces a judgment which, though obviously and essentially French, is perhaps as honest an effort in pursuit of the reality of things, as is compatible with the nature of our clever and lively libellers on the other side of the Channel.

Those volumes begin by some striking remarks of Napoleon at St Helena. This extraordinary man never spoke of his defeat at Acre in 1799 but with bitter regret. He declared that it was his intention, had he taken that fortress, to have marched to Constantinople at the head of the tribes of Mount Lebanon, or to have followed the steps of Alexander to the Indus. His repulse from Acre, he always said, "marred his destiny."

All this verbiage of the great Captain, however, has been sufficiently exposed by the actual event. He could no more have marched to Constantinople than he could have marched to the Indus, nor have marched to the Indus more than he could have marched to the Pole star. With but 40,000 men, (the whole number which landed in Egypt,) it would have been utterly impossible for him to have carried a force through Syria and Asia Minor equal to the attack on Constantinople—even if the Russians were not at hand. The march to the Indus would have lain through the deserts of Arabia and Persia, and have stripped him down to a corporal's guard before he had got half-way. A French foot would never have been dipt in that far-famed river, which is now a British Canal. The tribes of Lebanon would no more have recruited his ranks, than they would have given him their sequins. His destiny lay in another direction. No man knew this better; and doubtless he rejoiced, when he found himself on board the frigate carrying him westward, and relieving him of the "glory" of being slaughtered by the Arabs, and embalmed by the sands.

But the inveterate hostility of Napoleon seemed to rage against England, with the ravening of a mad dog, who dies biting the club which has laid him on the ground. All his anti-English policy was a succession of gross and ruinous blunders. To assail England without a fleet was naturally impossible. To form a fleet for the purpose of assailing her was, therefore, always a new temptation. If, after the First of June, which destroyed the Channel fleet of France, and the burning of the arsenals of Toulon, which destroyed her Mediterranean fleet, France had never built another vessel beyond the tonnage of a coaster, she would have shown her good sense. But Napoleon, when in the plenitude of power, went on building huge vessels, only to see them sent into English ports.

The waste of time, waste of thought, and waste of money, on those projects of English invasion, were among the most capital faults of his extravagant career. He might have made France the great corn country, or the great garden of Europe, with half the sums which he threw away only to be beaten. His fifty ships of the line which were to sweep the Channel, in the absence of our fleet—his one hundred and twenty thousand men on the shore of Boulogne—all only enhanced the naval glory of the great commander; who, after pursuing the French flying squadron of eighteen great ships, with ten, to the West Indies, finished in one day the naval war, extinguished the existence of the French and Spanish navies, and crowned his own gallant career.

The impolicy of these attempts was equally exhibited in another form—they stimulated at once the power and the spirit of England. The monotony of a war of defence would have disgusted the gallantry of the nation, but the victories of the British navy continually cheered the people under the burdens of the war. What minister could have dared to propose a "compromising" peace, on the day after the battle of the Nile? What minister would have dared to propose any peace on the day after Trafalgar? The war, too, broke down more than the French fleet—it buried the Opposition.

The French author divides his history into three periods—the first, that of the battles of Howe and Hood, of Hotham and Bridport; the second, that of Jervis; the third, (from 1798 to 1805) belonging to Nelson, without an equal, without even a competitor—the most glorious series of successes ever won on the ocean.

The true definition of these volumes is, in fact, a "Life of Nelson"—a hurried, but clear and animated memoir, on a subject which can never be too often repeated to the ear or the heart of Englishmen; but a subject which is here coloured with the inevitable, and yet not unamusing, prejudices of a Frenchman and an enemy. He admits Nelson to have been a naval hero, while he labours to show that his chief successes arose from a lofty disregard of circumstances, a native contempt of rule, a transcendental rashness, which, continually exposing him to the chance of utter ruin, strangely always issued in victory. But those views are wholly imaginary. It is the foreign habit, to be perpetually in pursuit of astonishment; to think nothing meritorious which is not magical; and to carry into the greatest and gravest operations of public life the passion for the harlequinades of the theatre. The supremacy of Nelson arose from the more substantial grounds, of a thorough knowledge of his profession, of a strict deference for discipline, and a sort of instinctive and unhesitating determination to do the work set before him, with all the powers of his mind and frame. He, of course, possessed personal intrepidity in the most complete degree; but this amounted simply to the exposure of his life on all occasions where duty was to be done. Nelson was no fire-eater—no man of quarrel. We are not aware that he ever fought a duel. But he knew what was due to himself as much as any man—a fact shown by his answer to the Governor of Jamaica, who, having, on some remonstrances to him, rather haughtily observed, "that old generals were not accustomed to take advice from young captains." Nelson retorted by letter—"That he was of the same age as the prime minister of England, (Pitt), and that he thought himself as capable of commanding one of his Majesty's ships, as the premier was of governing the state."

But Nelson could not have gained his glories alone: he made his captains like himself; and every sailor in his fleet was ready to die along with him. His art in this was the simple one of justice. He acknowledged every man's merit. The officer who distinguished himself, was sure of receiving due honour from Nelson; promotion was regulated by service, and every brave man was confident in the recommendation of the admiral. He was also a kind man by nature: he hated punishment on board; he spoke good-naturedly to the sailors; he even gave way to any peculiarity which was not injurious to discipline. Some of his crew had become Methodists, and, offended with the general coarse conversation of the ship, desired to have their mess separate. Nelson immediately gave the required permission. The hearts of men naturally follow such a leader.

He had also the powerful sagacity which insures confidence; and no man doubted that, when Nelson commanded, he was leading to victory. He was, besides, a master of his profession—all his battles were the finest lessons of the tactician. He was never outmanoeuvred; he was never surprised; he was never even thrown into any difficulty, for which he had not a ready resource. The "Nelson touch" became proverbial; and the variety, completeness, and brilliancy of his plans for action sometimes excited the most extraordinary emotion, even to tears, among his officers. Something of this kind is said to have occurred on the final summoning of his captains into the cabin of the Victory, and laying before them his plan for the battle of Trafalgar.

Nelson had also the power, perhaps the most characteristic of genius, of throwing his thought into those shapes of vividness which penetrate at once to the understanding. When, on steering down for the French line at Aboukir, some one observed to him that the enemy were anchored too near the shore, for the British to pass within them;—"Where a French ship can swing, a British ship can anchor," was his decisive reply; and he instantly rushed in, and placed the French line between two fires. Another of those noble maxims was—"The captain cannot be wrong, who lays his ship alongside the enemy." It contains the whole theory of British battle. His "I can see no signal," when he was told that Admiral Parker had made the signal for retiring at Copenhagen, would have been immortalised, with the act which accompanied it, among the most brilliant "sayings and doings" of ancient Greece. But his last and well-known signal at Trafalgar surpassed all the rest, as much as the triumph surpassed these triumphs. The addresses of Napoleon to his armies were unquestionably fine performances. They spoke to the Frenchman by his feelings, his recollections, his personal pride, and his national renown. But, with the animation of the trumpet, they had its sternness and harshness. They were invocations to the French idol, that was to be worshipped only with perpetual blood. But the signal at Trafalgar recalled the Englishman only to the feelings of home. The voice of war never spoke a language more capable of being combined with all the purposes of peace. "England expects every man to do his duty" was fitted to bring before the Englishman the memory of his country, his home, his wife and children, all who might feel concerned in his conduct and character in the proud transactions of that great day. We think it the noblest appeal to national feeling ever made by a warrior to warriors.

Yet, what was the especial secret of that supreme rank which Nelson held over all the naval leaders of his time? Others may have been as intelligent, and indefatigable, and, it is to be hoped, all were as brave. The secret was—that Nelson was never satisfied with what he had done, and that he never half did anything. There was no "drawn battle," among his recollections. This is the more remarkable, as, for fifty years before, nearly all our naval battles had been drawn battles. Rodney's defeat of de Grasse was the great exception. British admirals, who were afraid of nothing else, were afraid of losing their masts! and were content with knocking down those of the enemy. Great fleets met each other, passed in parallel lines, fired their broadsides as they passed, one to the north and the other to the south. They might as well have been firing salutes. The wind soon carried them out of sight of each other; the admirals sat down in their cabins to write their respective histories of "the battle," which would have been only too much honoured by being called a brush; and the fleets went by mutual consent into harbour. In this sort of War! the French were as clever as we; and the Suffreins, di Guichens, d'Estaings, and Villeneuves, made their fame on this system of cannonading a mile off, and getting out of the way as quickly as possible.

Rodney first spoiled the etiquette of those affairs, by driving straight forward through the enemy's line, changing the easy parallel for the fighting perpendicular, and compelling at least one-half of the Frenchmen to come to close quarters. This was the method of Jervis, when his captain told him, that the fleet on which he was bearing down in the morning twilight were at least twenty. "If they were fifty," said the brave sailor, "I'll drive through them." He drove through them accordingly, and beat the Spaniards, with half their numbers.

Wellington observed, in the Peninsula, that the generals commanding under him were afraid of nothing but responsibility. This fear arose from the ignorant insolence, with which the loungers of the legislature were in the habit of fighting campaigns over their coffee-cups. It is to be hoped that the fashion has since changed. But Wellington demurred to the authority, and Nelson seemed not to have thought of its existence. They both supplied the sufficient answer to the home campaigners, by beating the enemy wherever they met him.

We find a striking evidence of the hatred of "doing well enough" in one of Nelson's letters to his wife, on Hotham's battle with the French, under Martin, off Genoa, in 1795. Hotham was one of the old school, and though, in two awkward engagements, he had taken two of the French line, while a third had been burned, Nelson was indignant that the whole French fleet had not been captured. He had urged the admiral to leave the disabled ships in charge of the frigates, and chase the French.

"But," says the letter, "he, much cooler than myself, said, 'we must be contented—we had done very well.'" Nelson's evidently disgusted remark on this species of contentment is—"Had we taken ten sail, and suffered the eleventh to escape, when we could have got at her, I could never have called it well done." In another part he says, "I wish to be an admiral, and in command of the British fleet. I should very soon do much, or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures. Sure I am, that, had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, the whole French fleet would have graced our triumph, or I should have been in a confounded scrape." This was the language which, like the impulse of a powerful instinct, predicted the days of Aboukir, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar.

But the drag-chain on the progress of British intrepidity was at length to be taken of. Hotham was succeeded by Jervis. This eminent officer instantly reformed the whole condition of the Mediterranean fleet. He had evidently adopted the same conception of naval merit, which Nelson had so long kept before his eye. In selecting him for the command of the squadron sent to the Nile, Jervis wrote to the admiralty: "Nelson is an officer, who, whatever you bid him do, is sure to do more." And, in this spirit, Nelson was not content with running to Alexandria, and returning to say, that he found no one there; his resolve was, to find the French wherever they were, and fight them wherever they were found.

One word still for gallant old Jervis, the man who first confirmed the discipline of the navy. His firmness was the secret. When the Irish conspirators on board the Channel fleet had spread the spirit of mutiny in 1797, Jervis was warned from the admiralty that his fleet was in danger. It was suggested to him by some of his officers, to stop the letters from home: "No," said he, "the precaution is useless: I will answer for it that the commander-in-chief of this fleet will know how to maintain his authority, if it is threatened."

But he left nothing to chance: he prohibited communication between the ships—he sent for the captains of marines, and ordered that their men should mess and sleep separately from the sailors; that the sailors should not be suffered to converse in Irish, and that the officers should be on the alert. He hanged the detected mutineers without delay. Forgiveness was out of the question. To Captain Pellew, who had interceded in favour of a mutineer, whose conduct had previously been irreproachable, he replied, "We have, we think, punished only the worthless. It is time, that our men should learn, that no past conduct can redeem an act of treason."

Nothing could be more rational, or even more necessary, than this determination; for treason is the most comprehensive of all crimes. The mere robber, or murderer, commits his single act of guilt—but the guilt of the traitor may cost the lives of thousands. The traitor is never to be regarded as a solitary criminal, and this maxim was never more necessary than at this moment. If laws are to be turned into sentimentality, and conspiracy is to be dealt with like the tricks of children, there must be an end of all security to honest men. If the villains who have been lately inflaming the Irish mind into madness, had been hanged by the sentence of the drum-head, within half an hour after their seizure, there would have been no necessity, at this moment, for keeping up a garrison of 45,000 men in Ireland. Martial law is the only law fit for the ruffians of the torch and pike, and the gibbet is the only moral which they will ever comprehend. To suppose that the Irish conspirators had even entertained the expectation of forming an established government, or of being suffered by England to raise a republic—or that any man out of Bedlam could have dreamt of the possibility of waging a successful war against England, while her fleets might starve Ireland in a week, and nothing but English alms even now enables her to live—would be absolute folly. The true object of Irish conspiracy was, and is, and will always be, robbery and revenge; a short burst of rapine and blood, followed by again running away, again begging pardon, again living on alms, and again laughing at the weak indulgence and insulted clemency of England.

Jervis, instead of listening to the cant of men of blood whining about their wives and children, hanged them; and, by thus ridding his fleet of a nest of villains, saved it from destruction, and perhaps, with it, saved not merely the lives of thousands of brave men, whom their impunity might have debauched into conspiracy, but saved the honour of our naval name, and restored the enfeebled hopes of his country.

We here quote with pleasure from the Frenchman:—"Jervis, in the face of those symptoms, which threatened the British navy with disaffection, sternly devoted himself to the establishment of implicit obedience. The efficient organisation of the fleet was the labour of his life, and occupied his latest thoughts. Never rash himself, he nevertheless opened the way for the most daring deeds. Nelson rushed into the arena, and, with the rapidity of lightning, showed the latent results of the change. The governing principle witnessed, rather than decreed the change. Its source, in fact, was not in the Admiralty, but in those floating camps, wherein the triumphs which astonish us are gradually elaborated. Official power is but the inert crucible which transmutes the subsidies of Parliament into ships. But a quickening principle is wanting to those immense fleets, and the admirals supply it. Jervis and Nelson rapidly transmitted the creative spark, and bequeathed a certain sort of sovereignty under the distrustful eye of the English Admiralty—a kind of dynasty arose—'the mayors of the palace took the sceptre from the do-nothing kings.'"

All this is comparatively just. But the Frenchman peeps out under the panegyrist, after all. Can it be conceived that any other human being, at the end of nearly half a century, would quote, with the slightest degree of approval, the report of DecrÈs, the French minister of the marine to Napoleon, in 1805, after all Nelson's victories, and just preceding the most illustrious of them all—Trafalgar?

"The boasting of Nelson," writes DecrÈs, "equals his silliness, (ineptie)—I use the proper word. But he has one eminent quality—namely, that of aiming among his captains only at a character for bravery and good fortune. This makes him accessible to counsel, and consequently, in difficult circumstances, if he commands nominally, others direct really."

We have no doubt that, after scribbling this supreme ineptie, DecrÈs considered himself to have settled the whole question, and to have convicted Nelson of being simply a bold blockhead—Nelson, the man of the hundred fights—the prince of tacticians—the admiral who had never been beaten, and from whom, at the battle of Aboukir, DecrÈs himself was rejoiced to make his escape, after having seen the ruin of the French fleet.

We find a good deal of the same sort of petulant perversion, in the narrative of Nelson's conduct at Naples. M. GraviÈre suddenly becomes moral, and tells us the ten-times-told story of Lady Hamilton. But what is all this to the naval war? Englishmen are not bound to defend the character of Lady Hamilton; and if Nelson was actually culpable in their intercourse, (a matter which actually has never yet been proved,) Englishmen, who have some morality,—not Frenchmen, who make a point of laughing at all morality—may upbraid his conduct. But a French stoic is simply ridiculous. There are perhaps not fifty men in all France, who would not have done, and are not doing every day, where they have the opportunity, all that this moralist charges Nelson with having done. Even if he were criminal in his private life, so much the worse for himself in that solemn account which all must render; but he was not the less the conqueror of Copenhagen, Aboukir, and Trafalgar.

The hanging of Caraccioli also figures among the charges. We regret that this traitor was not left to die of remorse, or by the course of nature, at the age of eighty. We regret, too, that he could allege even the shadow of a capitulation for his security. We equally regret the execution of Ney under a similar shadow. But Caraccioli had been an admiral in the Neapolitan service, had joined the rebellion by which rapine and slaughter overspread the country, and had driven the King into exile. No man more deserved to be hanged, by the order of his insulted, and apparently ruined King;—he was hanged, and all rebels ought thus to suffer. They are made for the scaffold.

The men who plunge a kingdom in blood, whose success must be purchased by havoc, and whose triumph makes the misery of thousands or millions, ought to make the small expiation which can be made by their public punishment; and no country can be safe in which it is not the custom to hang traitors. Still, those acts, even if they were of an order which might shock the sensibility of a Frenchman to breach of treaty, or the sight of blood, have no reference to the talents and the triumphs of Nelson.

But these volumes suddenly deviate from the history of the great admiral, into remarks on the great living soldier of England. There, too, we must follow them; and our task is no reluctant one; for it enables us at once to enlighten intelligent inquiry, and to offer our tribute to pre-eminent fame. But, in this instance, we argue with our accomplished neighbours on different principles. The Frenchman loves glory—the Englishman its fruits. The Frenchman loves the excitement of war; the Englishman hates it, as mischievous and miserable, and to be palliated only by the stern necessity of self-defence. He honours intrepidity, but it only when displayed in a cause worthy of human feeling. No man more exults in the talent of the field; but it is only when it brings back security to the fireside. The noblest trophy of Wellington, in the eyes of his country, is the thirty years of peace won by his sword!

It has become the fashion of the French to speak of this illustrious personage with something of a sneer at what they pronounce his "want of enterprise." Every thing that he has done is by "phlegm!" Phlegm must be a most valuable quality, in that case, for it enabled him to defeat every officer to whom he had been opposed; and there was scarcely any man of repute in the French army to whom he had not been opposed. It is in no spirit of rational taunt, or of that hostility which, we will hope, has died away between England and France, that we give the list of the French marshals whom Wellington has fought, and always beaten, and several of them several times:—Junot at Vimeira, Soult at Oporto and the Pyrenees, Victor and Sebastiani at Talavera, Massena at Busaco, Marmont at Salamanca, Jourdan at Vitoria, and a whole group of the chief generals of France, with Ney, Soult, and Napoleon himself, at their head, at Waterloo.

But have the British military authors ever doubted the talent, or disparaged the gallantry, of those distinguished soldiers? Certainly not; they have given them every acknowledgment which ability and bravery could demand. Let the French nation read the eloquent pages of Alison, and see the character given by the historian to the leaders in the Italian, German, and Spanish campaigns. Let them read the spirited pages of Napier, and see them decorated almost with the colours of romance. Does either of these popular and powerful authors stigmatise the French generals with "ineptie," or characterise their victories, as the mere results of inability either to attack or to run away? Let them be the example of the future French military writers, and let those writers learn that there is a European tribunal, as well as a Parisian one.

But the French altogether mistake the question. Men like Wellington are not the growth of any military school, of any especial army, or of any peculiar nation. Without offering this great soldier any personal panegyric, he was a military genius. Since Marlborough, England had produced no such commander of an army, and may not produce another such for a century to come. Nelson was similarly a genius: he sprang at once to the first rank of sea-officers; and England, fertile as she is in first-rate sailors and brave men, may never produce another Nelson. Napoleon was a genius, and almost as palpably superior to the crowd of brave and intelligent generals round him, as if he had been of another species. The conduct of men of this exclusive capacity is no more a rule for other men, than their successes are to be depreciated to the common scale of military good fortune. The campaigns of Napoleon in Italy; the sea campaign in which Nelson pursued the French fleet half-round the globe, to extinguish it at Trafalgar; the seven years' continued campaign of Wellington in the Peninsula, finished by the most splendid march in European history, from the frontier of Portugal into the heart of France, have had no example in the past, and can be no example to the future. The principle, the power, and the success, lie equally beyond the limits of ordinary calculation. The evident fact is, that there is an occasional rank of faculty, which puts all calculation out of sight, which is found to produce effects of a new magnitude, and which overpasses all difficulties, by the use of an intellectual element, but occasionally, and but for especial purpose, communicated to man.

We have no doubt whatever of the truth of this solution, and are consequently convinced, that it would have been much wiser in M. GraviÈre to have attempted to describe the career of Wellington, than to pronounce on the principles of his science; and, above all, than to account for his victories by the very last means of victory—the mere brutishness of standing still, the simple immobility of passive force, the mere unintelligent and insensate working of a machine.

"What a contrast," exclaims the Frenchman, "between these passionate traits (of Nelson) and the impassive bearing of Wellington, that cool and methodical leader, who maintained his ground in the Peninsula by the sheer force of order and prudence! Do they belong to the same nation? Did they command the same men? The admiral, full of enthusiasm, and devoured by the love of distinction, and the general, so phlegmatic and immovable, who, intrenched behind his lines at Torres Vedras, or re-forming, without emotion, his broken squares on the field of Waterloo—(where not a single British square was broken)—seems rather to aim at wearying out his enemy than at conquering him, and triumphs only by his patient and unconquerable firmness."

Must it not be asked, Why did the French suffer him to exhibit this firmness? why did they not beat him at once? Do generals win battles merely by waiting, until their antagonists are tired of crushing them?

But the Frenchman still has a resource—he accounts for it all by the design of a higher power! "It was thus, nevertheless, that the designs of Providence were to be accomplished. It gave to the general, destined to meet incontestably superior troops(!!), whose first efforts were irresistible, that systematic and temporising character, which was to wear out the ardour of our soldiers." Having thus accounted for the French perpetuity of defeat on land, by a man of stupidity and stone; he accounts, with equal satisfaction, for the perpetuity of defeat at sea by a man of activity and animation. "To the admiral who was to meet squadrons fresh out of harbour, and easily disconcerted by a sudden attack, Providence gave that fiery courage and audacity which alone could bring about those great disasters, that would not have been inflicted under the rules of the old school of tactics."

The Frenchman, in his eagerness to disparage Wellington as dull, and Nelson as rash, forgets that he forces his reader to the conclusion, that tardiness and precipitancy are equally fit to beat the French. Or if they are incontestably superior troops, and their first onset is irresistible, how is it that they are beaten at the last, or are ever beaten at all? We also find the curious and rather unexpected acknowledgment, that Providence was always against them, and that it had determined on their defeat, whether their enemy were swift or slow.

We are afraid that we have been premature in giving M. de la GraviÈre credit for getting rid of his prejudices. But we shall set him a better example. We shall not deny that the French make excellent soldiers; that they have even a sort of national fitness for soldiership; that they form active, bold, and highly effective troops: though, for them, as sailors, we certainly cannot say as much. Henry IV. remarked "that he never knew a French king lucky at sea;" and Henry spoke the truth. And the wisest thing which France could do, would be to give up all attempts to be a "naval power,"—which she never has been, and never can be—and expend her money and her time on the comforts, the condition, and the spirit of her people, both citizens and soldiery.

But, we must assist the French judgment on the character of Wellington: and a slight detail will prove him to be the most enterprising leader of troops in the history of modern Europe. Let us first settle the meaning of the word enterprise. It is not a foolish restlessness, a giddy fondness for the flourish of Bulletins, or a precipitate habit of rushing into projects unconsidered and ineffective. It is activity, guided by intelligence; a daring effort to attain a probable success. The French generals, in the commencement of the revolutionary war, dashed at every thing, and yet were not entitled to the praise of enterprise. They fought under the consciousness that, unless they attracted Parisian notice by their battles, they must pay the penalty with their heads. Thus nearly all the principal generals of the early Republic were guillotined. The levÉe-en-masse gave them immense multitudes, who must fight, or starve. The Republic had fourteen armies at once in the field, who must be fed; commissioners from Paris were in the camps; and the general who declined to fight on all occasions, was stripped of his epaulets, and sent to the "Place de GrÈve."

But enterprise, in the style which distinguishes a master of strategy, is among the rarest military qualities. Marlborough was almost the only officer, in the last century, remarkable for enterprise, and its chief example was his march from Flanders to attack the French and Bavarian army, which he routed in the magnificent triumph of Blenheim. Wolfe's attack on the heights of Abraham was a capital instance of enterprise, for it showed at once sagacity and daring, and both in pursuit of a probable object,—the surprise of the enemy, and the power of bringing him to an engagement on fair ground.

But enterprise has been the chief characteristic of the whole military career of Wellington.

His first great Indian victory, Assaye, (23d September 1802,) was an "enterprise," by which, in defiance of all difficulties, and with but 5000 men, he beat the army of Scindiah and the rajah of Berar, consisting of 50,000, of which 30,000 were cavalry. There, instead of phlegm, he was accused of rashness; but his answer was, the necessity of stopping the enemy's march; and, more emphatic still, a most consummate victory.

On his landing in Portugal, at the head of only 10,000 men, (August 5, 1808,) this man of phlegm instantly broke up the whole plan of Junot. He first dashed at Laborde, commanding a division of 6000 men, as the advanced guard of the main army; drove him from the mountain position of RoliÇa; marched instantly to meet Junot, whom he defeated at Vimeira; and, on the 15th of September, the British troops were in possession of Lisbon. The French soon embarked by a convention, and Portugal was free! This was the work of a six-weeks' campaign by this passive soldier.

The convention of Cintra excited displeasure in England, as the capture of the whole army had been expected, from the high public opinion of the British commander; and the opinion would not have been disappointed, if he had continued in the command. The testimony of Colonel Torrens, (afterwards military secretary to the Duke of York,) on the court of inquiry, was, "That, on the defeat of the French at Vimeira, Sir Arthur rode up to Sir Harry Burrard and said—'Now, Sir Harry, is your time to advance upon the enemy; they are completely broken, and we may be in Lisbon in three days.' Sir Harry's answer was, 'that he thought a great deal had been done.'" The army was halted, and the French, who felt that their cause was hopeless, sent to propose the convention.

On the 22d of April 1809, Sir Arthur again landed in Portugal, to take the command of the army, consisting of but 16,000 men, with 24 guns. His plan was to drive Soult out of Oporto, fight the French, wherever he found them; and then return and attack Victor on the Tagus. Such was the project of the man of phlegm! He made a forced march of 80 miles, in three days and a-half, from Coimbra, crossed the Douro, drove Soult out of Oporto, ate the dinner which had been prepared for the Frenchman, and hunted him into the mountains, with the loss of all his guns and baggage. The French army was ruined for the campaign. This was the work of three weeks from his landing at Lisbon!

Sir Arthur's next enterprise was an advance into Spain. The kingdom was held by a French force of upwards of 200,000 men, with all the principal fortresses in their possession, the Pyrenees open, and the whole force of France ready to repair their losses. The Spanish armies were ill commanded, ill provided, and in all pitched battles regularly beaten. The French force sent to stop him at Talavera, on his road to Madrid, amounted to 60,000 men, under Jourdan, Victor, and Sebastiani, with King Joseph at the head of the whole. The battle began on the 27th of July, and, after a desperate struggle of two days, with a force of nearly three times the number of the British, ended by the rapid retreat of the French in the night, with the loss of 20 pieces of cannon and four standards. The Spanish army under Cuesta did good service on this occasion, but it was chiefly by guarding a flank. Their position was strong, and they were but little assailed. The British lost a fourth of their number in killed and wounded; the French, 10,000 men.

The purpose of these pages is, not to give a history of the illustrious Duke's exploits, but to show the utter absurdity of the French notion, that he gained all his battles by standing still, until the enemy grew tired of beating him. There is scarcely an instance in all his battles, in which he did not seek the enemy, and there is no instance in which he did not beat them! This is a sufficient answer to the French theory.

The ruin of the Spanish armies, and the immense numerical superiority of the French, commanded by Massena, compelled the British general, in 1810, to limit himself to the defence of Portugal. Massena followed him at the head of nearly 90,000 men. The British general might have marched, without a contest, to the lines of Torres Vedras; but the man of phlegm resolved to fight by the way. He fought at Busaco, (September 27.)

Massena, proverbially the most dashing of the French generals—the "Enfant gÂtÉ de la Victoire," as Napoleon styled him—could not believe that any officer would be so daring as to stop him on his road. On being told that the English would fight, and on reconnoitring their position, he said, "I cannot persuade myself that Lord Wellington will risk the loss of his reputation; but, if he does, I shall have him."

Napoleon, at Waterloo, was yet to utter the same words, and make the same mistake. "Ah! je les tiens, ces Anglais."—"To-morrow," said Massena, "we shall reconquer Portugal, and in a few days I shall drive the leopards into the sea." The day of Busaco finished this boast, with a loss to the French of 2000 killed, 6000 wounded, and with the loss, which Massena, perhaps, felt still more, of his military reputation for life.

But the lines of Torres Vedras must not be forgotten in any memorial, however brief, to the genius of Wellington. The great problem of all strategists, at that period, was "the defence of Portugal against an overwhelming force." Dumouriez and Moore had looked only to the frontier, and justly declared that, from its extent and broken nature, it was indefensible. Wellington, with a finer coup d'oeil, looked to the half-circle of rising grounds stretching from the Tagus to the sea, and enclosing the capital. He fortified them with such admirable secrecy, that the French had scarcely heard of their existence; and with such incomparable skill, that, when they saw them at last, they utterly despaired of an attack. They were on the largest scale of fortified lines ever constructed, their external circle occupying forty miles. The defences consisted of 10 separate fortifications, mounting 444 guns, and manned by 28,000 men. They formed two lines, the exterior mounting 100 guns, the interior (about eight miles within) mounting 200; the remaining guns being mounted on redoubts along the shore and the river. The whole force, British and Portuguese, within the lines, and keeping up the communication to Lisbon, was nearly 80,000 men.

The contrast without and within the lines was of the most striking kind, and formed a new triumph for the feelings of the British general. Without, all was famine, ferocity, and despair; within, all was plenty, animation, and certainty of triumph. Massena, after gazing on those noble works for a mouth, broke up his hopeless bivouac; retired to Santarem; saved the remnant of his unfortunate army only by a retreat in the night; was hunted to the frontier; fought a useless and despairing battle at Fuentes d'Onore; was beaten, returned into France, and resigned his command. He was thenceforth forgotten, probably died of the loss of his laurels, and is now known only by his tomb in the Cemetery of Paris.

In October of the year 1811, though the British army had gone into winter quarters, the man of "passive courage" gave the enemy another example of "enterprise." The fifth French corps, under Gerard, had begun to ravage Estremadura. General Hill, by the order of Lord Wellington, moved against the Frenchman; took him by surprise at Aroyo de Molinos; fought him through the town, and out of the town; captured his staff, his whole baggage, commissariat, guns, 30 captains, and 1000 men. He drove the rest up the mountains, and, in short, destroyed the whole division—Gerard escaping with but 300 men.

The French field-marshal here amply acknowledged the effect of enterprise. In his despatch to Berthier from Seville, Soult says,—"This event is so disgraceful, that I know not how to qualify it. General Gerard had choice troops with him, yet shamefully suffered himself to be surprised, from excessive presumption and confidence. The officers and soldiers were in the houses, as in the midst of peace. I shall order an inquiry, and a severe example."

The next year began with the two most splendid sieges of the war. A siege is proverbially the most difficult of all military operations, requiring the most costly preparations, and taking up the longest time. Its difficulty is obviously enhanced by the nearness of a hostile force. Wellington was watched by two French armies, commanded by Soult and Marmont, either of them of nearly equal force with his own, and, combined, numbering 80,000 men. Ciudad Rodrigo was one of the strongest fortresses of the Peninsula; Marmont was on his march to succour it. Wellington rushed on it, and captured it by storm, (January 19.) Marmont, finding that he was too late, retired. Badajoz was the next prize, a still larger and more important fortress. Soult was moving from the south to its succour. He had left Seville on the 1st of April; Wellington rushed on it, as he had done on Ciudad Rodrigo, and took it by one of the most daring assaults on record, (April 7.)

This was again the man who conquered "by standing still." The letter of General Lery, chief engineer of the army of the south, gives the most unequivocal character of this latter enterprise. "The conquest of Badajoz cost me eight engineers. Never was there a place in a better state, or better provided with the requisite number of troops. I see in that event a marked fatality. Wellington, with his Anglo-Portuguese army, has taken the place, as it were, in the presence of two armies. In short, I think the capture of Badajoz a very extraordinary event. I should be much at a loss to account for it in any manner consistent with probability." The language of this chief engineer seems, as if he would have brought all concerned to a court-martial.

The conqueror, after those magnificent exploits, which realised to M. Lery's eye something supernatural—the work of a destiny determined on smiting France—might have indulged his passiveness, without much fear even of French blame. He had baffled the two favourite marshals of France—he had torn the two chief fortresses of Spain out of French hands. There was now no enemy in the field. Soult had halted, chagrined at the fall of Badajoz. Marmont had retired to the Tormes. Wellington determined to continue their sense of defeat, by cutting off the possibility of their future communication. The bridge of Almarez was the only passage over the Tagus in that quarter. It was strongly fortified and garrisoned. On this expedition he despatched his second in command, General Hill, an officer who never failed, and whose name is still held in merited honour by the British army. The tÊte-du-pont, a strong fortification, was taken by escalade. The garrison were made prisoners; the forts were destroyed, (May 19.) The action was sharp, and cost, in killed and wounded, nearly 200 officers and men.

Wellington now advanced to Salamanca, the headquarters of Marmont during the winter; and pursued him out of it, to the Arapeiles, on the 22d of July. In this battle Marmont was outmanoeuvred and totally defeated, with the loss of 6000 killed and wounded, 7000 prisoners, 20 guns, and several eagles and ammunition waggons. The British army now moved on Madrid. King Joseph fled; Madrid surrendered, with 181 guns; and the government of Ferdinand and the Cortes was restored.

But a still more striking enterprise was to come, the march to Vitoria,—the brilliant commencement of the campaign of 1813. Wellington had now determined to drive the French out of Spain. They still had a force of 160,000 men, including the army of Suchet, 35,000. Joseph, with Jourdan, fearing to be outflanked, moved with 70,000 men towards the Pyrenees. On the 16th of May, Wellington crossed the Douro. On the 21st of June he fought the battle of Vittoria, with the loss of 6000 to the enemy, 150 guns, all their baggage, and the plunder of Madrid. For this great victory Wellington was appointed field-marshal.

The march itself was a memorable instance of "enterprise." It was a movement of four hundred miles, through one of the most difficult portions of the Peninsula, by a route never before attempted by an army, and which, probably, no other general in Europe would have attempted. Its conduct was so admirable, that it was scarcely suspected by the French; its movement was so rapid, that it outstripped them; and its direction was so skilful, that King Joseph and his marshal had scarcely encamped, and thought themselves out of the reach of attack, when they saw the English columns overtopping the heights surrounding the valley of the Zadora.

In his last Spanish battle, the victory of the Pyrenees, where he had to defend a frontier of sixty miles, he drove Soult over the mountains, and was the first of all the generals engaged in Continental hostilities, to plant his columns on French ground!

Those are the facts of seven years of the most perilous war, against the most powerful monarch whom Europe had seen for a thousand years. The French army in the Peninsula had varied from 150,000 to 300,000 men. It was constantly recruited from a national force of 600,000. It was under the authority of a great military sovereign, wholly irresponsible, and commanding the entire resources of the most populous, warlike, and powerful of Continental states. The British general, on the other hand, was exposed to every difficulty which could embarrass the highest military skill. He had to guide the councils of the two most self-willed nations in existence. He had to train native armies, which scoffed at English discipline; he had the scarcely less difficult task of contending with the fluctuating opinions of public men in England: yet he never shrank; he never was shaken in council, and he never was defeated in the field.

But by what means were all this succession of unbroken victories achieved? Who can listen to the French babbling, which tells us that it was done, simply by standing still to be beaten? The very nature of the war, with an army composed of the raw battalions of England, which had not seen a shot fired since the invasion of Holland in 1794, a period of fourteen years; his political anxieties from his position with the suspicious governments of Spain and Portugal, and not less with his own fluctuating Legislature; his encounters with a force quadruple his own, commanded by the most practised generals in Europe, and under the supreme direction of the conqueror of the Continent—A condition of things so new, perplexing, and exposed to perpetual hazard, in itself implies enterprise, a character of sleepless activity, unwearied resource, and unhesitating intrepidity—all the very reverse of passiveness.

That this illustrious warrior did not plunge into conflict on every fruitless caprice; that he was not for ever fighting for the Gazette; that he valued the lives of his brave men; that he never made a march without a rational object, nor ever fought a battle without a rational calculation of victory—all this is only to say, that he fulfilled the duties of a great officer, and deserved the character of a great man. But, that he made more difficult campaigns, fought against a greater inequality of force, held out against more defective means, and accomplished more decisive successes, than any general on record, is mere matter of history.

His last and greatest triumph was Waterloo,—a victory less over an army than an empire,—a triumph gained less for England than for Europe,—the glorious termination of a contest for the welfare of mankind. Waterloo was a defensive battle. But it was not the rule, but the exception. The object of the enemy was Brussels: "To-night you shall sleep in Brussels," was the address of the French Emperor to his troops. Wellington's was but the wing of a great army spread over leagues to meet the march of the French to Brussels. His force consisted of scarcely more than 40,000 British and Hanoverians, chiefly new troops; the rest were foreigners, who could scarcely be relied on. The enemy in front of him were 80,000 veterans, commanded by Napoleon in person. The left wing of the Allied force—the Prussians—could not arrive till seven in the evening; after the battle had continued eight hours. The British general, under those circumstances, could not move; but he was not to be beaten. If he had 80,000 British troops, he would have finished the battle in an hour. On seeing the Prussian troops in a position to follow up success, he gave the order to advance; and in a single charge swept the French army, the Emperor, and his fortunes, from the field! Thus closed the 18th of June 1815.

Within three days, this "man of passiveness" crossed the French frontier, (June 21,) took every town in his way, (and all the French towns on that route are fortified,) and, on the 30th, the English and Prussians invested Paris. On the 3d of July, the capitulation of Paris, garrisoned by 50,000 regular troops and the national guard, was signed at St Cloud, and the French army was marched to the Loire, where it was disbanded.

We have now given the answer which common sense gives, and which history will always give, to the childishness of accounting for Wellington's unrivalled successes by his "doing nothing" until the "invincible" French chose to grow weary of being invincible. The historic fact is, that their generals met a superior general; that their troops met Englishmen, commanded by an officer worthy of such a command; and that "enterprise" of the most daring, sagacious, and brilliant order, was the especial, peculiar, and unequalled character of Wellington.

The volumes of M. GraviÈre are interesting; but he must unlearn his prejudices; or, if that be nationally impossible, he must palliate them into something like probability. He must do this even in consideration of the national passion for "glory." To be beaten by eminent military qualities softens the shame of defeat; but to be beaten by mere passiveness,—to be driven from a scene of possession by phlegm, and to be stript of laurels by the hand of indolence and inaptitude,—must be the last aggravation of military misfortune.

Yet, this stain they must owe to the pen of men who subscribe to the doctrine, that the great soldier of England conquered simply by his incapacity for action!

We think differently of the French people and of the French soldiery. The people are intelligent and ingenious; the soldiery are faithful and brave. England has no prejudices against either. Willing to do justice to the merits of all, she rejoices in making allies of nations, whom she has never feared as enemies. She wants no conquest, she desires no victories. Her glory is the peace of mankind.

But, she will not suffer the tombs of her great men to be defaced, nor their names to be taken down from the temple consecrated to the renown of their country.