dannah, and 5000 at the town of Carrion below Saldannah. The British were collected between Sahagua, Grahal, and Villado. It was the intention of the British general to march from Sahagun upon Carrion, and thence to Saldannah by night, while Romana proceed ed to the same point by Mansilla. The marquis prepared, in the best manner the defective state of his troops would permit, to co-operate in the design for which purpose he arrived at Mansilla on the 23d, at three o'clock in the afternoon, and from thence announced his arrival to Sir John, who was to march from Sahagun the same evening.

The expectations of the army were wound up to the highest pitch. The dispositions were already made for combat, and the generals had received their instructions, when Sir John Moore received information that considerable re-inforcements had arrived to the French from Palentia. A courier from Los Santos told of the halt of the French at Talavera, and several messengers reported their advance from Madrid. The latter part of this intelligence was confirmed by an express from the Marquis of Romana. -The purport of these movements was easily frustrated by the British commander. He countermanded the advance of his troops, and determined on a retreat.

From this time to the end of the campaign, Spanish armies no more appear upon the stage; they had every were vanished from the sight of friends and foes.

It could not, nor we presume did it, excite any degree of surprise in any human breast, that such armies, and such a govern

ment, as those of Spain, were found altogether unequally opposed to the strength and genius of Buonaparte.

If 45, or 50,000 were able, without annoyance, to maintain their positions for several months against the whole strength of the kingdom, the same strength must be utterly insufficient to resist the offensive operations of nearly 200,000. It is not easy to calculate the exact amount of the forces brought by the French emperor, after his return from the conferences at Erfurth, against the Spaniards. According to an intercepted letter from the governor of Bayonne, 78,000 were to enter Spain between the 16th of October and the 16th of November. About the same period, 15,000, chiefly from Italy, entered Catalonia; and 30,000 under Junot entered Spain in the beginning of December. The forces stationed behind the Ebro, together with the force in Barcelona and the other garrisons, amounted to 65,000, making a total of 182,000. This at least. But the French prisoners agreed in making the total of the French army in Spain, at the end of 1808, and beginning of 1809, 200,000. The right wing of this army, it will be recollected by the readers of our annual labours, under the command of Marshal Soult, penetrating by Bilboa, scattered the army of Blake in successive combats from Valma-Seda to Regnosa. The French light troops decided this contest. Marshal Bessieres, descending by the Ebro, defeated and dispersed the army of Castanos, drawn up between Tudela and Tarragona. In neither armies, respectively under the command of

the

the generals Blake and Castanos, did the soldiers display, to use an expression of Sir John Moore's, common obstinacy. They fled on the first fire, and then claimed merit for having effected their escape. It ought to be observed, in favour, though it is not a complete defence of the Spanish generals who so imprudently hazarded these engagements, that they had cautiously abstained from risking any offensive operations against the French, till they were propelled by the treachery of Morla. They have been repeatedly blamed by the ignorant for their inactivity during the autumn: whereas their greatest praise is, to have been sensible of their own weakness and inferiority, and to have shaped for themselves a course of conduct suitable to their circumstances. They were justified by the event. By the ruin of the armies under Blake, Castanos, and the young Count Belvedere, the road was cleared, and Buonaparte moved from Burgos upon the capital.

The several divisions of the French army were every where in pursuit of the flying Spaniards, when Buonaparte received information that the British army had not retreated upon Portugal, as he, (judging no doubt from what would have been his own conduct in Sir John Moore's situation,) but was threatening the Duke of Dalmatia's position behind the Carrion. The advance of the French into the southern provinces of Spain was suspended.

Orders were immediately sent to the Duke of Dalmatia if attacked, to give way, and to decoy the British to Burgos, or as far eastward as possible; and at the same time

to push on a corps towards Leon, on their left flank. And, should they attempt to retreat, he was ordered to impede this by every means in his power. But from the 22d to the 29th of Dec., Soult received strong re-inforcements: so that his army alone was much superior to the British. It was posted behind the River Carrion, between Carrion and Saldannah. Junot, the Duke of Abrantes, who had advanced from Burgos to Palentia, threatened the right flank of the British. The corps under Le Fêfre, Duke of Dantzick, which had advanced to Talavera de La Reyna in its way to Badajoz, was directed to march backward on Salamanca. Buonaparte himself, in person, on the 18th of Dec., marched from Madrid with an army consisting of 32,000 infantry and 8000 cavalry: even the division under Mortier, called the Duke of Treviso, which was on its march to Saragossa, was stopped. In a word, the whole disposable force of the French army, forming an irregular crescent, was marching in radii to environ the British. To accomplish this favourite object, Buonaparte interrupted his victorious career to the south, where there was nothing capable of resisting him. Lisbon and Cadiz, at that time, would have yielded as easily as Madrid. The bold measures that had been adopted by Sir John Moore, prevented the immediate subjugation of the peninsula. It remains to be seen, what was the plan he adopted for the extrication of his own army from its present most perilous situation.

The advanced guard of the French cavalry that Buonaparte had brought from Madrid, passed

though

through Tordesillas on the 24th of December, on the same day the van of the British army left Sahagun: and both moved towards the same point, which was Benevento. The retreat of the British army began by the passage of the river Eslar. The Marquis of Romana was left in possession of the bridge of Mansilla, and the road to Leon. Sir David Baird crossed the Eslar by the ferry of Valentia, where he took post to cover the magazines at Benevento and Zamora. Sir John Moore with the remainder of the army passed by the bridge of Castro Gonsalo. These movements were masked by the cavalry under Lord Paget, who, advancing close to the positions of the enemy, fell in with, and defeated several detachments of cavalry which Buonaparte had pushed forward from Torde sillas.

At Benevento Sir John Moore for the first time since the commencement of the retreat, judged it necessary to publish general orders reflecting in the severest terms on the conduct of both of ficers and soldiers. The subjects of the censures were chiefly the marauding and drunkenness of the soldiers, the extreme relaxation of discipline, which appeared in various ways, and the free criticisms in which a number of officers had indiscreetly indulged their fancies and humours on military operations. "The qualities" (required by the arduous posture of affairs), said the general," are not bravery alone, but patience and constancy under fatigue and hardship, obedience to command, sobriety, firmness, and resolution in every different situation in which they may VOL. LI,

be placed. It is impossible for the general to explain to his army the motive of the movement he directs. The commander of the forces, however, can assure the army that he has made none since he left Salamanca, which he did not foresee, and was not prepared for: and, as far as he is a judge, they have answered the purposes for which they were intended. When it is proper to fight a battle, he will do it, and he will chuse the time and place he thinks most fit. In the mean time, he begs the officers and soldiers of the army to attend diligently to the discharge of their parts, and to leave to him and the general officers the decision of measures which belong to them alone. The army may rest assured, that there is nothing he has more at heart than their honour, and that of their country." The spirit

of insubordination and disorder that prevailed in his own army was a subject of not less disquietude and anxiety to the general, than the rapid movements of the enemy. We find him again issuing general orders at Lugo, 6th Janu-ary, 1809, "Generals and commanding officers of the corps must be as sensible as the commander of the forces of the complete disorganization of the army. The commander of the forces is tired of giving orders which are never attended to: he therefore appeals to the honour and feelings of the army he commands, and if these are not sufficient to induce them to do their duty, he must despair of succeeding by any other means. He was forced to order one soldier to be shot at Villa Franca, and he will order all others to be executC

ed who are guilty of similar enormities. But he considers that there would be no need of proceeding to such extremities, if the officers did their duty as it is chiefly from their negligence, and the want of proper regulations in the regiments, that crimes and irregularities are committed in quarters and upon the march." It was not, it may be fairly presumed, any ordinary degree of irregularity and excess that drew from the commander in chief such heavy and repeated censures.-Sir John, in a letter dated at Benevento, 27th December, 1808, tells the Marquis of Romana, that " The people of that part of Spain seemed to be less well-disposed than those he had hitherto met with. Some of the corregidors and alcaids had of late run away from the towns, which had been the unavoidable cause of irregularities having been committed by the troops, for, says Sir John, when the magistrates are not present to give regularly, the soldier must take, and this produces a mischievous habit." From the time that our army turned from Sahagun, their footsteps were marked with robbery and insolence to the inhabitants: which was aggravated by the want of both parties understanding each others' lan

and villagers, again, poor, and destitute of every thing beyond mere necessaries, were but ill disposed to share their pittance with men whom they hated, and even abhorred as heretics, whom they dreaded as guests, and whom they now conceived to be abandoning them to all the fury of an enraged enemy. Such wants and sentiments on either side, engendered all the bitterness which marked the intercourse of the two nations during the remainder of the campaign.

Before Sir John Moore quitted Benevento, about 5 or 600 of Buonaparte's imperial cavalry crossed a ford below the town, and attacked the English pickets, who immediately assembled to the amount of 220 men under brigadier general Stewart, retired slowly, disputing every inch of ground, and repeatedly charging through the enemy's squadrons, till the arrival of Lord Paget with the 10th hussars; who, together with the pickets, drove the enemy into the river, killing or wounding 55, and taking 70 prisoners: among whom was the young general Le Fêbre, commander of Buonaparte's imperial guard. Buonaparte is said to have viewed the action from a lofty hill, about a league from Benevento.

Here Sir John Moore detached general Crauford with 3,000 chosen troops on the road to Orense. Had he neglected this precaution, Buonaparte might have sent a light corps by this road, headed the British columns, and obstructed their retreat. Besides, there was great reason to apprehend that the whole army could not have

bea

been provided with subsistence had it remained united.

General Crauford proceeded undisturbed to Vigo, while the other columns pursued their march through deep snows across the dreary plains of Leon to Astorga: where the British general found the town filled, and the road encumbered with the straggling army of Romana, who, having abandoned the position and bridge of Mansilla without breaking it down, according to his instructions, was going to Orense.-The Duke of Dalmatia having crossed the Eslar at Mansilla, quietly entered Leon. His intention most probably was, to occupy Astorga before the arrival of the British. In this, however, if this was his intention, he was disappointed, by the skill and promptitude of Sir John Moore.

The British commander uniting his army with the division of Sir David Baird from Valentia, proceeded on the 30th of December, on Villa Franca and Lugo. At Astorga all the superfluous camp epuipage was destroyed, and all the sumpter mules, horses, &c. that could not keep up with the columns, abandoned. On the march from hence the military chest was sacrificed. Barrels full of dollars were staved and precipitated over rocks, into ravines, dens, and rivers. From Astorga to Lugo the road lay for the most part through bleak mountains covered with snow, affording so scanty a supply of provisions that the

troops were sometimes 2 days without tasting any food. During this march the extremes of vice and misery seemed to meet. In some of the villages the unburied dead bodies of the inhabitants lay outstretched before the doors of their own houses, from which they had been driven by the unrelenting soldier urged by his own necessities, to perish with cold and hunger. In others no traces of inhabitants were to be found. Stragglers from different corps plundered the different magazines, commissariat stores, and cellars, and afterwards lay intoxicated by the way-side mixed with the sick and those overcome with fatigue, to be trampled under feet or mangled by the sabres of the enemy's cavalry.* Besides the terrible example above noticed in a letter from Sir John Moore to the Marquis of Romana, of a soldier shot at Villa Franca, other warnings were held up by the general, not less impressive. Several stragglers who had been hacked and hewed by the French troopers, were led through their respective corps as examples of the consequences of drunkenness and disobedience to orders.

Buonaparte having been joined by the Duke of Dalmatia at Astorga, after reviewing his troops to the amount of 70,000 men, had dispatched these divisions, under three marshals, in pursuit of the English army. Continual skirmishing took place between the French advanced and the British rear guard, commanded by Sir