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the frontiers of that country. Soult, with Loison under him, was preparing to cross the Minho, and enter from the North, while Ney remained to keep the Gallicians in subjection. Between these Generals and Victor, Le Febvre, and Sebastiani, who, from New Castille and Estremadura, equally threatened Andalusia and Portugal, Salamanca was the point of communication, and General Maupetit was stationed there to keep up that communication, and dispatch supplies to each as they might be wanted.-His plan, however, was defeated by a small body of Portuguese, under Sir Robert Wilson. That officer, with little assistance and little encouragement from the Regency, had, during his stay at Porto, raised a legion of 2,000 volunteers.-It might have been increased to 10,000 could he have relied upon resources for them: for the quickness with which they learnt our discipline, the pride which they felt in being displayed, and their officers in displaying them, excited the emulation of all their countrymen. In ten weeks they were perfectly disciplined, and Sir Robert, on the 14th of Décember, before Sir John Moore and Sir David Baird had formed a junction, marched towards the frontier, with the intent of facilitating the communication between them, and covering, as far as his means would permit, the approach to the Northern provinces.-Little, or rather nothing, was done by the Regency to assist him,-even the common means which they had at their command were neglected.-Sir John Craddock, indeed, who had the command of the British forces at Lisbon, did all he could to forward Sir Robert Wilson's views, and gave him full power to act according to his own judgment.

Sir Robert Wilson marched his legion to Cuidad Rodrigo, through a country which, by officers of ordinary talents, would have been pronounced impracticable. It was in a season of heavy rains, and' the torrents were sometimes breast-high.-By dint of manual exertion, cannon and carts were drawn up steeps which had been before thought inaccessible to carriages: sometimes, when the carriages would have swam, the wheels were taken off, and they were slidden. over on the foot bridges; sometimes hauled along causeways and connecting bridges so narrow, that the wheels rested on half their fellies, upon angular stones placed point upwards to form the edge of the road. It was the first march that these troops had ever made; yet there was not one straggler; not a murmur was heard amid all their difficulties; they sung as they went along, and reached their resting place at night with unabating spirit and cheerfulness. When they reached Cuidad Rodrigo, which was their head-quarters, Sir

Robert issued a proclamation in reply to one of the French, in which they threatened to put death all who did not obey their requisitions; if this threat was put in execution, he declared that he would hang a Frenchman for every Spaniard.—The people took heart, seeing the determination with which he acted; the Supreme Junta conferred on him the rank of Brigadier-General, and placed the garrison of Cuidad Rogrigo and the troops in the province at his disposal; from thence he extended his excursions as far as Salamanca, keeping the enemy in constant alarm, intercepting their collections of money, horses and supplies, and carrying their posts in open day: nor did the retreat of the British army, and the evacuation of Galicia, abate his hopes or alter his resolution; he determined to maintain the country to the last, notwithstanding the general alarm, and his own peculiar danger, if the fortune of war should throw him into the hands of Buonaparte.-Maupetit was confined by this indefatigable enemy to the walls of Salamanca: the communication between Victor and Soult was interrupted, and the latter was thus checked in his intention of marching to Lisbon.-The vigorous conduct of Sir Robert Wilson, and the spirit with which the people of Galicia prosecuted that mode of warfare which was best suited to themselves, and most destructive to the enemy, disconcerted the projects of the French, and delayed the invasion of Portugal.

While the south of the Peninsula obtained leisure to prepare for defence, through the diversion occasioned by Sir John Moore, by the bolder measures of Sir Robert Wilson, and by the devoted courage of the Zaragozans, the provinces near the Pyrenees had nothing to protect them against the invader, except their own unconquerable patriotism. The first fruits of the French victories was the relief of Barcelona, which had been long and closely blockaded by the Spaniards. Catalonia, indeed, seemed to have been neglected by the British government, in a manner for which it would be impossible to account, if Lord Castlereagh had not explained it.—We had a fine army in July, and part of this army was ordered to the assistance of the Catalonians.-Of a measure so obviously important the French could not but be aware; they made a threat of invading Sicily from Naples, and the British troops were therefore detained for its protection.

As soon as the French began to act on the offensive, they detached about 6,000 men, chiefly Italians, against Rosas.-The Lucifer and Meteor bomb vessels were in the bay, under Captain West of the Excellent. The enemy appeared on the 6th of November, 1808,

from the side of Figueras (one of the important places of which they had obtained possession by treachery before the commencement of the war); there was no force to oppose them, and on the following morning they were masters of the heights which encompass the whole bay. That same day they entered the town, the inhabitants flying, some to their boats, others to the citadel; but the Excellent and Meteor lay within point blank shot of the place, and soon compelled the invaders to retreat more rapidly than they had advanced. The citadel was in a wretched state for defence; the southwest bastion had been blown down in the last war by the explosion of a magazine, and all that had been done was to hide the breach, by patching it with a few thin planks and loose stones; such was the supine security of Godoy's administration, and the Junta had had too many occupations to distract its attention. The stores were as incomplete as the works; there were neither measures for their powder nor saws for their fusees,-hats and axes were used instead.Twenty-five of the Excellent's marines were sent to reinforce Fort Trinidad, which stands east of the town, upon an eminence on the shore, commanding the port, but itself commanded by the heights; the rest of the ships' marines, with fifty seamen, went to assist the garrison of the citadel. O'Daly, the governor, sent for reinforcements to the Junta of Gerona; but a traitor was employed by the French to intercept all his dispatches, while at the same time their emissaries reported that the English had taken possession of the fortress, and suspended the Spanish commander.-Hearing this confidently affirmed, and receiving no other intelligence, the Junta wrote to Captain West, requesting he would explain to them the motives for this conduct.-The artifice of the enemy was then discovered; but meantime between two and three weeks had elapsed, during which the Junta were kept in ignorance, and thus prevented from taking any measure for the relief of that place, if any were in their power.

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NARRATIVE

OF THE

CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA.

"Warriors!—It is not necessary to awaken your courage; it is not necessary to call on that loyalty and love to your monarch and to your country, for which you ever have been renowned; you were born with those proud features of distinction above all other nations, you grew up and will die with them."

THE ruin and misery which the want of commerce rapidly spread throughout the Empire of Russia, obliged the Emperor Alexander to relax in the system which the machinations of Buonaparte had engaged him to enter on at the Treaty of Tilsit; and this relaxation determined the Ruler of the French nation to re-commence hostilities against that country.-It was in vain that Alexander represented to him that Russia could not longer exist as a nation without commerce; and that he was willing to make great sacrifices to secure even a portion of trade to his subjects.-It was in vain that he proposed to lay a new duty of 25 per cent. on all colonial produce and goods of British manufacture, and would allow France half the revenue to sanction the measure.-To these proposals Buonaparte replied, that nothing short of shutting the ports of Russia against British shipping would satisfy him; and that any compromise on his part would be a total abandonment of the continental system.-Alexander had already used all possible endeavours to avert the evils of war: he had suffered his relation, the Duke of Oldenburgh, to be plundered of his dominions by Buonaparte, in a time of peace, without doing more in his behalf than to issue a protest; and yet this harmless protest, against an act of the most glaring inhumanity and injustice, was now, above a year after its promulgation, considered as one occasion of offence.

Before he entered on the war with France, the Emperor Alexander issued a proclamation to his subjects, stating the extremities to which he had allowed himself to be reduced previous to taking that step, and exhorting them to the most strenuous exertion; and on the commencement of hostilities published the subjoined address:

"For a long time past we had remarked the hostile comportment of the French Emperor towards Russia; but we still hoped, through moderate and pacific measures, to avert hostilities. At last, notwithstanding all our wishes to maintain peace, we witnessed an incessant repetition of open outrages,

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