to be without power, without autho. rity, without talents to create respect, or to command obedience. The French armies in Spain, instead of concentrating under Joseph's orders, had been dispersed every day more and more over the Peninsula--Weak on every point, they exhausted them selves even by their victories over the Spaniards; and in Galicia, Portugal, and the Asturias, they had lost, even among the insurgent peasants, their wonted reputation of invincibility.

As the dynasty of the wretched intruder was closed by the successes of this year as he was present in person at the battle of Vittoria, and as the French ascribe much of their misfortunes to his weakness and impolicy, the sketch of his character and proceedings which they have given us may not be uninteresting.

Joseph fancied, we are told, that he might attach the people of Spain to his sway by the well-known mildness of his character, in the same manner as he had gained the Neapolitans ; and he had allowed the French troops to advance from all sides into the peninsula, with the intention of gaining provinces, that he might reign over a greater extent of country. He had contracted habits of indolence upon the peaceful throne of Naples. Instead of following his armies he remained in the capital, plunged in dissipation, and regretting the delights of Italy. He wanted to sleep and reign at Madrid as he had done at Naples, even before his armies had conquered for him, supposing the conquest possible, a kingdom at the price of their blood.

He filled the columns of his state journal with decrees which were never executed, and scarcely read; he gave to one church the wax and sacred vases of another, pillaged long before by the French, or stripped by the Spa. niards themselves. He lavished the decorations of his royal order on his

courtiers, who did not dare to wear them in any place which was not occupied by the French, for fear of being murdered by the Spanish peasants. He made several promotions in his Spanish army, which, however, was not as yet in existence; he gave away places in reversion, governments, and administrations, in the most distant provinces of the kingdom in both hemispheres, while he dared not sleep even a few leagues from Madrid in one of his country houses. Like his brother at Paris, he pulled down old buildings to beau tify his capital, but he had no money to raise a single new edifice, and the extent of his munificence was the removal of rubbish.

In order to please the people, he endeavoured to imitate the solemn pomp and grave ceremony of his predecessors. He marched on foot at the head of processions through the streets of Madrid, making the officers of his staff, and the soldiers of his body guard, follow him with lighted tapers in their hands. All these pretensions to sanetity, this affectation of munificence, and absurd prodigality, only made him an object of ridicule and contempt.

The Spaniards had amused them. selves with spreading a report that King Joseph was a one-eyed drunkard, which made a profound impression on the imagination of the country people. It was in vain that he endeavoured to overcome the popular prejudice by shewing himself often in public; the people never lost the conceit that he was one eyed. We are told that even on the day of his coronation, at one of the theatres, a farce, called Harlequin Emperor of the Moon, was played se-` veral times. During the representa tion, the people made applications to the ephemeral situation of Joseph at Madrid. Devotees, who were accus. tomed to mingle in all their conversa. tions the ejaculation Jesus, Maria, y Joseph, stopped short when they had

pronounced the two first names, and, pausing, would use the paraphrase, Y el Padre de nuestro senor, lest they might draw down a benediction on Joseph, by naming the saint who was his supposed patron in Heaven.

The good nature of Joseph came afterwards to be considered as weakness, even by the French themselves. After battles had been won over the Spaniards, he would go himself to the prisoners sent from the army to the Retiro, and receive their oaths of fide. lity, telling them that they had been deceived by traitors, and that he, as their king, wished only for their happiness and that of their country. The prisoners, who expected nothing less than to be shot, immediately made no scruple of taking the oaths of submission required of them, but the moment they were armed and equipped they deserted and returned to their own armies; so that the French soldiers called King Joseph the administrator in chief of the military depots of the supreme junta. Even French marshals and generals, we are told, were very unwilling to obey a man whom they did not consider a Frenchman, since he had been acknowledged King of Spain; and they often contradicted him, and sought to disgust him, that they might be sent back into Germany. They would have been happy, at any price, to have quitted an irregular war, which had become unpopular even in the army. Joseph had neither enough of military talent and authority, nor sufficient confidence in himself, to venture to command such operations as the changes in the general situation of affairs imperiously required. He dared not issue any new order without consulting his brother. The plans sent from Paris, or from Germany, frequently arrived too late, and they could never be otherwise than imperfectly executed by one who had not conceived them.

Such was the character of Joseph as drawn by his own countrymen; but the circumstances which had recently occurred so favourable to the cause of the allies, although they were in some measure the result of the weak and insignificant character of the head of the central government, were also to a great degree inseparable from the nature of the enterprise which the French had undertaken. When the ruler of France confined himself to one object, which, however impossible the attainment of it might be, was interesting to the French, his army seconded his views, and was ready to sacrifice itself in his service; but when his ambition led him to distant enterpriseswhen he embarked in projects which were carried into effect at the same time in distant parts of the world, and when, instead of directing the execu tion himself, he left it to a government more weak and imbecile than any which had disgraced Europe, then, as might have been expected, his views of aggrandizement received a check, which, in the issue, proved decisive and fatal.Such was the state of affairs at the beginning of this year. The French were not in a condition to act offensively; and, so long as the war in the north continued, could have no other object in view but to maintain the ground which they occupied. On the part of the allies, however, this interval was spent in preparations for an active and glorious campaign.

Much had already been done for Spain. A large and fertile district of the kingdom had been finally recovered, and an opportunity had been afforded to the Spaniards to embody a considerable army. The Spanish go. vernment, indeed, was still weak and inefficient; yet experience had taught them to correct some of the grosser errors of their policy. An excellent symptom of this amendment was shewn in the appointment of Lord Welling

ton to the chief command of the Spanish armies.-The cortes, on the sug gestion of the regency passed a decree, investing his lordship with extraordinary powers as generalissimo of the Spanish land forces. A portion of the Spanish general staff was appointed to attend him, and to them all the communications from the different ar mies were to be addressed: on the other hand, all orders relative to the armies were to emanate from his lordship through the channel of the Spanish staff near his person.-General Castanos, who was much in the confi. dence of Marquis Wellington, arrived at Seville early in the present year, to prepare the Spanish army for active operations; and it was understood that a great and determined effort would be made by the Spaniards themselves in the course of the approaching spring. The cortes agreed to furnish Lord Wellington with an army of 50,000 men for the ensuing campaign; and for these troops his lordship. had the power of appointing officers. A corps of reserve was also formed in Andalusia, and another in Gallicia, in or der to maintain the more prominent force in a condition of permanent efficiency.

Yet were the discontents of the Spaniards, and their distrust of the British, by no means removed. The abolition of the Inquisition, the suppression of the convents, and the establishment of persons not noble by birth in the departments formerly occupied by nobles alone, appear to have excited about this time murmurings among the clergy and nobility of the ancient regime; some of whom, in conjunction with the partizans of Joseph Buonaparte, published libels upon the regency, and against British influence. Three or four of this faction were ar rested in Seville. The regency, on this occasion, demanded of the cortes a temporary suspension of the laws re

VOL. VI. PART I.

lating to personal liberty, that they might arrest a greater number of the traitors, but were refused by the cortes, who did not think the affair of sufficient importance to require so strong a measure. One of the libels was in the following terms :-" The streets of Seville present to the Spanish people, to that people ever pious and friendly to the monks, a spectacle which must excite the most painful sentiments. Priests, who never could have believed that the smallest opposition could be made to their assembling, present themselves; the intendant commands them in the name of the government not to assemble, and prohibits their entrance into the monasteries ; they entreat, they supplicate, but they are not heard; they are abandoned, they are repulsed; and to avoid dying with hunger, these wretches disperse themselves through the streets, and beg their bread from door to door, clad in their sacred habits; they stop in the churches, and there implore the pity of the populace. What have these ministers of God done? what crime have they committed?" &c.--Such were the artifices of traitors, who sought to disunite and enslave the country.

The Spanish troops meanwhile had been slowly acquiring discipline and experience.-The British army had received a strong reinforcement of 20,000 men after the battle of Salamanca, and discipline had been restored by strict regulations, and enforced during the period of repose. The disposable troops at the opening of the campaign were estimated at about 80,000 British and Portuguese, with 40 or 50,000 Spanish regulars, besides a considerable guerilla force, which was hourly increasing.-The French force in Spain was still however very numerous; and Buonaparte, notwithstanding the signal reverses he had sustained in the north, was unwilling to reduce his army in the peninsula, or to hazard the

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loss of so great a country. He had been compelled, however, to make numerous drafts to supply officers for the immense levies which he was then raising; but the deficiencies thus occasioned were replaced from the new conscription. No sooner, however, did he suspect the intentions of Austria, than he found it necessary to relax for a time his exertions in Spain; and considerable detachments were withdrawn to reinforce the grand army on the Elbe. Soult, who had long possessed the chief direction of the war in Spain, was called to the assistance of his mas ter in Germany; and as the enemy's force had been thus considerably reduced, Lord Wellington hoped, by one grand effort, to liberate the peninsula, and drive the French beyond the Pyrenees.

The allied forces, before the opening of the campaign, were spread over a very extensive line. Lord Welling ton, with the main body of the British and Portuguese, occupied cantonments along the northern frontier of Portugal, while General Hill, with a part of the army, and with the Spanish forces under Murillo, was posted in Estremadura. The second and third Spanish armies, commanded by the Duc del Parque and General Ellio, were stationed, the one in La Mancha, and the other on the frontiers of Murcia and Valencia. The force recently levied in Andalusia, which was denominated the army of reserve, had set out from Seville, under the command of General O'Donnel, who, on account of his exploits in Catalonia, had received the title of Conde de Abisbal. The army of Gallicia, under the command of General Castanos, was stationed on the frontiers of the province of that name. This officer was devoted to Lord Wellington, and the army of Gallicia was, of course, very much in the same situation as if it had been under the immediate command of his lordship. The

whole forces of the north of Spain, therefore, which, besides the regular a troops, comprehended numerous bands of guerillas, were completely under the controul of the British commander.

Such was the situation of the allied armies. The enemy again, enlightened by the reverses of the last year, occupied a more concentrated situation. The three French armies of Portugal, the centre and the south, were united in Castile, under Joseph Buonaparte, whose head quarters were at Madrid. The army of Portugal was under the immediate command of General Reille, who bad his head quarters at Valladolid; that of the centre obeyed the or ders of Count d'Erlon, whose headquarters were in the vicinity of Madrid, while the army of the south had its head-quarters at Toledo. The position of the allies thus formed a very extensive semicircle round that which the enemy occupied in the centre of Spain. On this circumstance, perhaps, the French founded their hopes of a successful resistance, conceiving that by the rapid movement of their concentrated forces they might baffle attacks made from so many different points. The plan of the campaign, however, which Lord Wellington had formed was profound and judicious. General Hill at first threatened Madrid; but so soon as the season for ac. tion arrived, he turned to the left, marched through the Puerto de Banos, and joined the main army, which was assembling in the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo. General O'Don-` nel, at the same time, marched through Estremadura, and the whole force of the allied army directed its course northward on the line of the Douro. That river, the largest in Spain, had, in the preceding campaign, proved ar important barrier; and the French who possessed along its northern bank a series of fortified positions, hoped. for a time at least, to dispute the pas

sage. Lord Wellington, however, by a very able arrangement, completely provided against this obstacle. His force, as already mentioned, was divided into three parts, of which the centre, composed chiefly of light troops, was commanded by his lordship in person. With these he pushed on to Salamanca, and once more delivered that famous city from the modern Vandals. The French general, Villat, had scarcely time to evacuate it with the loss of 300 of his rear guard; the British entered the town at full gallop. The right, commanded by Sir Rowland Hill, including only one division of British, moved in a parallel direction with the centre on the left bank of the Douro. But the grand feature of the plan consisted in the passage of the main body of the army to the north of the Douro at Braganza; whence, under the command of Sir Thomas Graham, it proceeded along the right bank of the river, thus superseding the necessity of forcing a passage in the face of the enemy. The right of the Douro, throughout this part of its course, is rugged and precipitous, and completely commands the opposite bank; and the French had confidently reckoned on advantages, which this fine plan entirely defeated.Such were the admirable arrangements made for opening the campaign, and they were executed with ability scarcely inferior to that by which they had been planned. These successive dispositions baffled at once the provisions made by the enemy for arresting the victorious progress of the allies. Their detachments on both sides of the Douro retired precipitately, and Lord Wellington advanced without any obstacle besides those which nature presented.

The British commander, attended by his staff, and several British and Spanish generals, remained a few days in Salamanca. The morning after the French had been driven away, Te Deum

was performed at the cathedral, and the service was attended by Lord Wellington. This cathedral is considered as one of the finest in Spain. It is built of a white freestone, is surmounted with elegant turrets, bastions, arches, and a large dome, and adorned with a profusion of carved work in a rich and elaborate style. It is a very lofty and spacious edifice, standing in an open square. The grand altar is very magnificent; opposite to which stands the chancel, greatly resembling those of the English cathedrals. The altar and chancel are surrounded by a screen of stone-work, exquisitely carved. The edifice contains two organs in the gallery, one of which is remarkable for its size and superior tone. The church also, from its munificent endowments, is able to maintain a very superior band of singers from Italy. Yet neither the magnificence nor the sanctity of this fine building would have restrained the licentious fury of the invaders; for shortly before the arrival of the British it had been doomed to destruction. A large contribution could not (from a total deficiency of means) be discharged; and the French general, in consequence, threatened to destroy the cathedral, unless his unreasonable demands were complied with. The reply returned was, that as the cathedral was public property, its destruction would not affect the personal interests of individuals, and that no one would interfere. The arrival, however, of the English prevented the ac complishment of this barbarous resolution.

The situation of Salamanca commands many advantages; the natural position is strong, and pains have been taken to secure it by a substantial wall, which, in its most exposed situation, is flanked by a strong bastion. The appearance of the town since the invasion of the French, excites many melancholy reflections to those who have