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and conveyed first to Oporto and then in boats to Lamego, whilst the ships went on to Cadiz. At length, his preparations thoroughly complete, and his project unguessed even by his own soldiers, he suddenly put the army in motion, reached, battered, and stormed Ciudad Rodrigo. Its fall on the 16th of January 1812 came like a thunderbolt upon the French marshals, who did not at first credit the intelligence. There was, however, no help for it; and as their spies informed them that Wellington was returning to his old quarters, after a little idle bustle, they gradually settled into quietude again. The thunder of the English cannon, directed against the crumbling walls of Badajos, awoke them a second time from their dream of security; but before any effectual combination could be concerted, that fortress too had fallen. It was stormed on the night of the 6th of April, at a sacrifice of life so frightful as to overcome for a moment the iron sternness of the British general, who, at the sight of the thousands of his gallant veterans that had fallen before an entrance could be won, burst into tears. Philippon, the commandant of Badajos, preserved Soult from a worse disaster than had yet befallen him, by conveying to him timely intelligence of the fall of that fortress. The Duke of Dalmatia was marching to Philippon's assistance when the messenger reached him, and he had just time to retrace his steps, and escape the signal overthrow that General Hill, who had been lying in wait for his advance, would unquestionably have inflicted upon him, seconded as he would now have been by the whole of the disengaged army.

In the beginning of July the opposing armies once more gradually approached each other near Salamanca. A contest of manœuvres took place on the Tormes, in which neither side for some time gained any advantage. At length Lord Wellington, becoming utterly destitute of the means of keeping the field, reluctantly determined on retiring by the road to Ciudad Rodrigo, and dispositions with that view were made. His inability to prosecute the campaign arose entirely from the supineness of the English ministry, who had failed to afford him the necessary supplies. I have never,' he wrote at the time, 'been in such distress as at present, and some serious misfortune must happen if the government does not attend to the subject, and supply us regularly with money.' Marmont divined the intention of the British commander, and on the 22d of July hazarded a move which, had a less skilful player been opposed to him, might have been successful, but attempted against Wellington it turned out to be a disastrous blunder, ruinous alike to the French army and the marshal's own reputation. He despatched Thomière's corps d'armée with fifty guns by a circuitous route to turn the left of the British army, and thus prevent its retreat by Ciudad Rodrigo. Owing to the nature of the ground, this movement was not observed by the English officers till about two hours after it had commenced. It was of course immediately communicated to Lord Wellington, who saw at a glance its full significance. He sprang to his feet, so eagerly that he overturned the table at which he had been sitting, and exclaimed with irrepressible exultation: If that be so, Marmont's good-fortune has for once deserted him.' It was quite true. Thomière's corps d'armée, extending two or three miles in length, was hopelessly sundered from the main body of Marmont's troops. The blunder was an enormous one, and the British general

quickly rendered it irreparable. Staff-officers went off at a gallop in every direction; the infantry stood to their arms; the cavalry vaulted to their saddles; the artillery unlimbered; and Marmont's weakened army was instantly attacked in overwhelming force. The French marshal saw his error, and officer after officer was despatched to command the return of Thomière. They never reached him. As the head of Thomière's leading column emerged upon the Ciudad Rodrigo road, where they expected to find the British in full retreat, Pakenham fell like a thunderbolt upon his rear, and rolled up the long, straggling line with hideous slaughter, to which no effectual resistance could be opposed. Marmont's heart died within him at the sight. Brave as steel, however, as most French soldiers are, he struggled desperately to maintain the combat, but the explosion of a shell grievously wounding him, he was carried out of the battle. Clausel succeeded to the command, but the fortune of the day could not be changed. The French army was utterly defeated, and driven off the field, with the loss of its artillery, several thousand prisoners, and a vast number of slain and wounded men. General Foy, who exerted himself zealously to protect the retreat, writing of Salamanca, said: 'It was a battle in which forty thousand men were beaten in forty minutes.' The news of Marmont's signal defeat reached the French Emperor just as he had crossed the Borodino, and must have fallen as a dread and evil omen upon that superstitious votary and child of destiny. Salamanca was by far the completest victory yet gained by the British general over the French armies, and was always that upon which he chiefly prided himself. 'I saw him,' remarks the historian, General Napier- I saw him late in the evening of that great day, when the advancing flashes of cannon and musketry shewed how well the field was won: he was alone. The flush of victory was upon his brow, and his eyes were eager and watchful, but his voice was calm and even gentle. With a prescient pride he seemed to accept this glory as an earnest of greater things to come.' The valour and enthusiasm displayed by all ranks of the victorious army on this occasion historians speak of as remarkable; and one of the weaker and better sex exhibited a heroic disregard of danger that would not have shamed the bravest soldier there. 'The wife of Colonel Dalbiac,' says the author we have just quoted, ' a delicate and timid English lady, rode deep into the fire, actuated by a fear stronger than that of death.' A daughter of this lady is, we believe, the present Duchess of Roxburghe.

On the 12th of August following, Wellington made his triumphant entry into Madrid amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants, and was immediately afterwards appointed generalissimo of the Spanish armies. On the 18th of the same month he was created Marquis of Wellington by the Prince-Regent of England.

The next great incidents of the war were the unsuccessful attack upon the fortress of Burgos, numerously garrisoned by French troops commanded by Marshal Clausel, the consequent retreat upon Portugal, and the evacuation of Madrid.

In the beginning of 1813, the Marquis of Wellington, upon whom the colonelcy of the royal regiment of Horseguards had been previously conferred, was created a Knight of the Garter. He visited Cadiz, and sailed thence to Lisbon, where he was received by the population with great

enthusiasm. Hope of permanent deliverance had revived in the hearts of the people. The news of the disastrous issue of Napoleon's Russian campaign had been published, and everywhere a determination to press the French armies vigorously was manifested. The Marquis of Wellington's army advanced rapidly through Spain, King Joseph and his marshals retiring to concentrate their forces near Vittoria, where, on the 21st June 1813, they accepted battle, and the total irremediable rout of the French army was the result. That army lost their cannon, stores, a vast number of killed, wounded, and prisoners, and the intrusive monarch his carriages, treasure, and baggage, glad doubtless to escape with life from his imaginary kingdom. Marshal Jourdan, in the hurry of his flight, left his truncheon behind him a trophy for the victors, which on 3d of July the Gazette announced had been conferred by the Prince-Regent upon Field-Marshal the Marquis of Wellington. Honours and rewards were thickly showered about this time upon the triumphant British general. One hundred thousand pounds for the purchase of an estate had been voted him by the English parliament, and he was now created by the Spanish authorities Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo, and a grandee of Spain of the first class. The estate of Soto de Roma, of which the unhappily celebrated Prince of Peace had been despoiled, was bestowed upon him by the Cadiz Cortes, 'in testimony of the gratitude of the Spanish nation.' He accepted the gift, but the proceeds of the estate were devoted during the war to the public service.

These honours, gifts, and compliments were, so far as the Cortes and ruling powers of Spain were concerned, mere veils to hide from the world their envy and dislike both of the English nation and their general. All fear of the French having passed away, the instinctive Spanish aversion to foreigners seized anew upon the soldiers and people, to whom, it galled their pride to be compelled to confess, they were mainly indebted for the recovery of their national independence. They did not want plausible excuses either for their enmity towards the British army. The horrors enacted at St Sebastian by some of the furious soldiers-who, during five hours of dreadful battle at the breach, had seen nearly 3000 men struck down around them by the fierce destruction vomited forth from the at last captured town-were published with many exaggerations by the municipality of the ill-fated city, and created naturally a strong sensation throughout Spain. The town, it was well known, had been fired by the French garrison as they retired through it to the citadel; but the fact was purposely concealed, and every horror of the fearful time-flame, robbery, murder were attributed, not alone to the infuriated ruffians who had perpetrated the outrages, but to the entire soldiery: a gross injustice, the mass of the troops, as well as the officers who risked their lives, and in two instances lost them, to calm the dreadful tumult, being as indignant at the excesses committed as the Spaniards themselves could be. Two-thirds of the officers of the storming force were unfortunately killed or hurt, and it was for some hours impossible to maintain or restore discipline. Lord Wellington was not present on the day of the successful assault, although he had intended to be so, when, angered by the former failure of the 5th division, he issued his requisition, demanding fifteen volunteers from each of the regiments composing the 1st, 4th, and light divisions- men who could shew other troops how to mount a breach-an appeal answered by

750 gallant men, who nearly all perished. Sir Thomas Graham (Lord Lynedoch) commanded, but the day after the assault Wellington arrived: some severe examples were made, and order was restored with a rigorous, unsparing hand. These calumnies on the army appear to have irritated the British general much more than the numerous libels directed personally against himself. Amongst other things he was accused of plotting to get himself made king of Spain by the nobles, and some of the grandees thought it worth while to publish a solemn contradiction of the rumour. The quarrel became at last so envenomed, that when about to enter France he fully expected a civil war to break out upon his communications, and wrote home that if he were the government the army should not remain in the country another hour. Happily these disputes were checked before they could break out into open violence: the mass of the population, the soldiers, and regimental officers had no confidence but in his leadership; the turbulent spirits of the Cortes were overawed, and decorum, if not content, was re-established.

The French Emperor sent Soult from Germany, with full powers as his lieutenant to take the command of all the French troops in Spain, in order if possible to arrest the conquering march of Wellington upon France. This task Soult gallantly, if vainly, attempted. But the hour of defeat had struck. Step by step all intervening obstacles, whether of man or nature, were pushed aside or overleaped, and in November 1813 the standards that three years before had floated over the last dike at Torres-Vedras, which withstood the irruptive torrent of the Imperial armies, now waved in retributive triumph over the vainly-imagined' sacred soil' from whence the armed invasion had come forth. We need not further dwell upon the incidents of a struggle, terminated by the bitter fight before Toulouse, that, during six years, had desolated the Peninsula. Enough has been written to shew how terrible was the strife, and how great and constant were the skill and courage ultimately crowned with victory.

The peace of 1814 terminated the war, it was hoped permanently, and the British troops returned home. Their renowned commander was created, on the 3d of May of that year, Marquis of Douro and Duke of Wellington; and in June £400,000, making, with the previous grant of £100,000, half a million of money, was awarded him by the House of Commons. On the 28th of the same month the Duke took his seat in the House of Peers, and subscribed the parliamentary - roll, the patents of all his titles having been first read by the officer of the House.

The Duke of Wellington was at the Congress of Kings in Vienna when the news of Bonaparte's return from Elba startled the world from its transient dream of peace, and speedily afterwards we find him in Belgium, to use his own expression, at the head-with the exception of his old soldiers who had fought in Spain - 'of the most infamous army in the world.' The British troops with the Duke, it must be remembered, did not exceed 35,000 men, the rest of the army, with some brilliant exceptions, being composed of troops better fitted for a parade than a stubborn battle. Had the 70,000 men led by Wellington been all men who had gone through the fiery ordeal of the Peninsular campaigns, it is no disparagement to the unquestionable bravery of the French army-many of whom were mere

conscripts to say that the struggle would have been nothing like so long and obstinate as it proved.

The events of the 16th and 18th of June 1815 are too familiar to every reader in the British Empire to need recapitulation here. There is, however, one circumstance in connection with them, with respect to which delusion still extensively prevails, chiefly perhaps because some of Lord Byron's best verses chronicle the fiction: we mean those relative to the way in which the Duke of Wellington and his officers are represented as being suddenly startled by the sound of cannon whilst dancing-unconscious of the approach of danger-at the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the night of the 15th, at Brussels. They commence thus—

There was a sound of revelry by night;'

and presently we are told that, amidst the voluptuous swell of music the sudden booming of the French artillery arrested the flying feet of the dancers, paled the cheeks of the fair dames, and pressed innumerable sighs from out young hearts. Nothing can be prettier, only there is not a particle of truth in the story. It would have been odd if there were, the French attack on the Prussians at Charleroi commencing in the morning and closing before dark: the echoes of the opening roar' of the guns must have taken an immense time on the road only to reach Brussels at midnight. But the truth is, that long before a ball-candle was lighted, or a ball-dress fitted on, every officer and man in the army knew of the attack of the French on the Sambre, and had received orders from the quartermaster to be in readiness to march at daybreak. The last order issued by the Duke of Wellington on the evening of the ball was dated ‘à Bruxelles, ce 15 Juin, 9 P.M.,' and directs the Duc de Berri to send what force he had to Alost by daybreak. Brunswick's 'fated chieftain' had, before going to the 'surprise'-ball, directed his corps, by order of the British field-marshal, to assemble and bivouac on the high-road between Brussels and Bivorde, in readiness for the march at dawn. Provided the invited officers had made the necessary preparations for departure, there could be no possible objection to their attending the ball for a few hours—the reverse rather; for men do not now, any more than in the days of paladins and tournaments, fight the less bravely for the actual or recent presence of graceful and beautiful women. The whole story is an invention, not one whit truer than the words ascribed to the Duke of Wellington during the great fight, 'Would that the night or Blucher were come!' And, in truth, spite of all the fables and assumptions of both French and Prussian writers-excusable perhaps under the circumstances-Blucher's army took no effective part in the fight, invaluable as they proved themselves in the pursuit. If this were not so, the Prussian authorities would scarcely have studiously omitted to publish an official list of their killed and wounded in the battle. The capitulation of Paris, agreed to between Marshal Davotist, Prince of Eckmul, acting on behalf of the provisional government, at the head of which was Fouché, Duc d'Otrante, and Wellington and Blucher, was signed on the 3d of July 1815, and the French army occupying Paris retired beyond the Loire.

Two days after the Convention was signed, Marshal Ney, who, on being intrusted by Louis XVIII. with the command of a body of troops to arrest

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