;

Murray the Quarter Master General coincided in opinion with Sir Harry Burrard; and the orders which Sir Arthur Wellesley had given for advancing on the morrow were consequently countermanded. But a part of that general's opinion was soon verified he had asserted that a battle could not be delayed, and, as he expected, Junot on the following morning brought his whole force to attack the British army before they should receive further reinforcements.

Thus was the enemy allowed to chuse the place, the time, and the manner of attack; and they made full use of the advantage, for they brought the whole of their force to bear upon half the British army. There were in the field about 14,000 French, and 16,000 English; yet they engaged them with a superiority of nearly two to one. To a general of less promptitude, or to troops of less determined courage, this would have been fatal; but on this occasion the skill of the general was admirably seconded by the gallantry of officers and men. The intentions of the enemy were divined at every movement, troops were moved with the utmost celerity just when and where they were needed, and the heart, and the arm, and the bayonet, did the rest. Wherever the French made the attack, they were repelled; wherever they were attacked, they gave way. Yet they were brave enemies; and had they not been sullied by such crimes, they might deserve for their bravery to be mentioned with admiration. One charge which they made upon Major General Ferguson's brigade will long be remembered by those who witnessed it it was made by the flower of the enemy's army with the bayonet; they came resolutely to the point of trial, and in one instant their whole line was cut down, so decisive was the superiority of British courage when brought to this last test. Above three hundred of their grenadiers were found dead in the line where they had been drawn up. Among many fine anecdotes which have been preserved respecting this action, there is one of General Anstruther; during the heat of the battle, one of Sir Arthur Wellesley's aides-de-camp came to tell him that a corps should be sent to his assistance; he replied, Sir, I am not pressed, and I want no assistance ; I am beating the French, and am able to beat them wherever I find them.' Before the action began, Sir Harry Burrard and his staff left the ship; the firing was heard as soon as he was on shore, and the armies were hotly engaged when he reached the heights, and found Sir Arthur, who told him briefly what measures he had taken for defeating the enemy. The new commander had too just a feeling of honour to interfere, and approving all the dispositions, he desired him to go on with what he had so well be

gun. But when the French were beaten on the left, Sir Arthur went to him, and told him this was the moment to advance-the

VOL. XIII. NO. XXV.

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right wing ought to march upon Torres Vedras, and the left pursue the beaten enemy; by this movement Junot would be cut off from the nearest road to Lisbon, and must take a circuitous route by way of Alenquer, dispirited, defeated, and in confusion. There was plenty of ammunition in the camp for another battle, and there were also provisions for twelve days. But neither the representations, urged as they were with natural and fitting warmth, nor the victory which was before his eyes, could induce the Commander to deviate from his former opinion; the thought of responsibility had come over him like a cold blast from the north; and he replied, that he saw no reason to change his purpose, the same motives which yesterday induced him to wait for reinforcements had still the same weight. At that moment the enemy were retiring in great disorder, and most completely disheartened by their defeat. But the irrevocable opportunity was let pass; and Sir Arthur, whose sense of military obedience would not allow him to act upon his own better judgment, as Nelson was accustomed to do, concealing the bitterness of his spirit under a semblance of levity, turned to one of his officers, and said, 'Well then, we have nothing to do, but to go and shoot red-legged partridges !'-the game with which that country abounds.

Such was the most lame and impotent conclusion of the battle of Vimeiro, which, had it been followed up as Sir Arthur Wellesley wished to follow it, would have placed the French army at the mercy of the conquerors, have enabled the Portugueze to obtain some justice upon the robbers and ruffians who had so infamously oppressed them, and have given a signal example to Europe. On the morning after the battle Sir Hew Dalrymple arrived. The French had perceived that the British did not know how to profit by the advantage which they had gained; they supposed it would be easy to make good terms with men who seemed so little to feel their own strength; and they proposed terms accordingly, which, perhaps not less to their own astonishment than to the wonder and indignation of Great Britain, were accepted. By these terms they were to evacuate Portugal, and be conveyed to France, with all their arms, artillery, baggage, and property, then to be at liberty to serve again; and the Russian fleet in the Tagus was to be held in deposit by the British till six months after a peace should be concluded between England and Russia, when the ships were to be restored, the crews being immediately to be conveyed home in British vessels. It was even agreed that the fleet should leave the Tagus unmolested, but the Admiral, Sir C. Cotton, refused to ratify such an agreement. It is easier to account for the terms of this memorable Convention, than to justify or excuse them. When the command was in one general in the morning, in a second at night, and in a

third on the morrow, there could be no singleness of view, and, therefore, no steadiness of conduct. Sir Hew landed in utter ignorance of the state of the army, the enemy, and the country. Sir Harry had hardly more knowledge than Sir Hew; and Sir Arthur Wellesley, who alone was acquainted with all circumstances, had seen his opinion rejected and overruled at the moment when the tide of fortune was at its flood. After seeing so fair an opportunity lost, he may easily be supposed to have felt a certain degree of indifference as to subsequent measures, over which he had no controul, and for which he was not responsible. There was an unusual delay in sending off intelligence of these proceedings to England, the first account actually came from the Junta of Oviedo. This delay seems to imply a latent apprehension in the commander that what he had to communicate would not be joyfully received :men usually lose no time in dispatching the bearer of good tidings. How the tidings of the Convention of Cintra were received is still fresh in remembrance. An outcry of indignation was set up from all parts of the kingdom, such as had seldom been known before. It was unconnected with any party-spirit or party-views; it was the impulse of true British feeling; the fair hopes of the country had been withered at once, like April blossoms by a snow blast; -our own honour and the interests of our allies had been sacrificed-we had looked for a triumph of justice and of moral feeling as well as of our arms;-we had seen these things forgotten and despised, and had been fooled in negociation out of what we had won with the sword.

It is not necessary to pursue this ungrateful subject here, but we must take a brief view of the events which occurred in Spain while Sir Arthur Wellesley was recalled to England, and detained there during the proceedings of the Court of Inquiry upon the Convention of Cintra. The capture of Dupont's army was followed by a series of successes. Palafox had driven the French with great loss from Zaragoza, after one of the most glorious struggles which has ever been recorded in history. Moncey had been defeated in an attempt to seize Valencia; and in Catalonia, the French, after vain attempts to extend their usurped authority, were confined to the walls of Barcelona. A central and superior Junta had been formed with the concurrence of all the local authorities. Joseph Buonaparte, whom his brother had named King of Spain and the Indies, and who, in that character, had arrived at Madrid, found it necessary to retreat in the course of ten days, taking care in that time to plunder the palace and carry off the crown jewels. The legitimate government was now installed at Aranjuez, and preparations were made upon a great scale for completing the work which had been so happily and gloriously begun. The French had at this time about

60,000 men in Spain, who occupied a strong country, having the Ebro in their front, the river Aragon on their left, and the Bay of Biscay on their right. Three armies were set on foot by the Spaniards, in the hope of expelling them; that on the right, or the eastern army as it was called, under Palafox the deliverer of Zaragoza; the central under Castaños, whose deliverance of Andalusia had rendered him deservedly popular; and the left or western army under Blake, who, for the reputation which he had obtained at the battle of Rio Seco, had been thus promoted. The nominal force of these armies was 130,000 men; but it is not probable that they amounted at any time to more than half that number. The Spanish army before this revolution had fallen into the worst state of indiscipline; and during revolutions discipline is the last thing which a soldier learns. Blake, indeed, had 10,000 men with him, who, with their commander the Marquis de Romana, had been brought off from Denmark by Admiral Keates, in a manner as well planned as it was dexterously executed. These were good troops; but except these, the Spanish armies consisted either of raw levies, or of men whọ had never seen any thing more than the worthless routine of their slovenly service. The officers were equally inexperienced: in the first ebullition of national feeling, the local authorities assumed the power of granting commissions, and soon abused the power by granting them to their friends and dependents, without any reference to desert and talents. Men in abundance offered themselves -brave, hardy, patient, devoted to their country, and hating the perfidious enemy with all the vehemence of national and religious hatred. But where all were ready to learn there were none to teach. The Spanish commissariat, always bad, was now in so wretched a state that the armies could scarcely be kept together. Men who, when in active service, bore without a murmur the severest privations, were not equally passive when they found themselves without proper supplies in their own quarters; a sense of injury was felt; and acting as if the contract between them and their government was broken, they made no scruple to forsake their regiments and return home--for in the general overthrow there scarcely remained a shadow of law. The obvious remedy for these evils would have been to reorganize the army by the assistance of British officers. But it must be remembered that, at this time, the British army did not possess that character which it established during the Peninsular war; the French, aided too by many misdirected expeditions on our part, had persuaded the continental nations that we were not a military people, and that they were as decidedly superior to us by land as they acknowledged themselves inferior by sea. The Spaniards also, who are proverbially a high-minded people, were elated with their first successes, and would have regarded such a

measure

measure as a degradation. They had a confidence in the extent and nature of their country, the spirit of the people, the goodness of their cause, and their old renown, which did not allow them to. contemplate the thought of subjugation to France as a thing possible. This confidence may be called blind and unreasoning, as their faith in Santiago and Our Lady of the Pillar; but it was rooted in them. It exposed them often to loss, and to defeat and danger, but it always preserved them from despondency, and in such a contest perseverance was sure of being successful at last.

Buonaparte meantime had not been idle. His first care was to keep the French people as far as possible in ignorance of the events which had taken place in Spain. It is a curious indication of his fear of public opinion respecting this fresh war in which he was about to involve France, merely for his own personal ambition, that he caused it, at this time, to be announced that the King of England was dead, and that the Prince's first act had been to change. his ministers, preparatory to a change of policy on the part of Great Britain. He had expected to strike terror into the Spaniards; but after the capture of the fleet, the surrender of Dupont's army, and the signal defeat of Lefebvre's at Zaragoza, he saw that considerable efforts were required to crush the insurrection. Before this was made, it was necessary to be secure of the continental. powers; for this purpose he had a conference with the Emperor of Russia at Erfurth, which terminated in an insidious proposal of peace to England, the main object being to secure the alliance of Russia, in case of an apprehended attack from Austria. It was not till after his preparations were complete that Buonaparte thought fit to publish a detail of the affairs of Spain, composed, in his usual style, of misrepresentations and falsehoods. In this it was affirmed, that the landholders, the enlightened men, the nobles and the superior clergy, were all animated with the best sentiments; but that the English faction, which had always been very active in the sea-ports and at Madrid, had taken advantage of circumstances, and that England, in fine, had brought about an insurrection by seducing the monks and the Inquisition! The excesses which the people had committed in their fear of treason, and their indignation for the massacre at Madrid, were carefully related, and in this respect the paper is valuable, nothing of this kind being omitted. The loss of the ships at Cadiz was not noticed; it was said that Zaragoza had been almost wholly destroyed by mines, by bombardment, and by fire,-but it was not said that the French had been compelled to abandon the siege ;-the only acknowledged reverse was the capture of Dupont. This unexpected event, it was said, which was more important because it encouraged the insurgents, the information that the English threatened the coast

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