Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847

The pugnacity of Irishmen has grown into a proverb, until, in the belief of many, a genuine Milesian is never at peace but when fighting. With certain nations, certain habits are inseparably associated as peculiarly characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances, the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is fight, there can be no mistake about it. From highest to lowest—in the peer and the bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less modified by station and education.

Be its expression parliamentary or popular, in Donnybrook or St Stephen's, out it will. "Show me the man who'll tread on my coat!" shouts ragged Pat, flourishing his shillelagh as he hurls his dilapidated garment on the shebeen-house floor. From his seat in the senate, a joint of the "Tail" intimates, in more polished but equally intelligible phrase, his inclination for a turn upon the turf. Wherever blows are rife, Hibernia's sons appear; in big fights or little wars the shamrock gleams in the van. No matter the cloth, so long as the quarrel be there. In Austrian white, or Spanish yellow, or Prussian blue,—even in the blood-coloured breeks of Gallia's legions, but especially, and preferred above all, in the "old red rag" of the British grenadier, have Irishmen displayed their valour. And on the list of heroes whom the Green Isle has produced, a proud and prominent place is justly held by that gallant corps, the Rangers of Connaught.

Those of our civilian readers to whom the word "Ranger" is more suggestive of bushes and kangaroos, or of London parks and princes of the blood, than of parades and battle-fields, are referred to page 49 of the Army List. They will there find something to the following effect:—

There is a forest of well-won laurels in this dozen of names. They form a proud blazon for any corps, and one that might satisfy the most covetous of honour. But of all men in the world, old soldiers are the hardest to content. They are patented grumblers. Napoleon knew it, and christened his vieille garde his grognards: tough and true as steel, they yet would have their growl. Now the lads of the Eighty-Eighth, having proved themselves better men even than the veteran guards of the Corsican corporal, also claim the grumbler's privilege, setting forth sundry griefs and grave causes of complaint. They are not allowed the word "Pyrenees" upon their colours, although, at the fight of that name, they not only were present, but rendered good service:—whilst for Waterloo many a man got a medal who, during the whole battle, was scarce within boom of cannon. During more than four years of long marches, short commons, severe hardships, and frequent fighting, the general commanding the third division—the fighting division, as it was called—viewed the Connaughters with dislike, even stigmatised them as confirmed marauders, and recommended none of their officers for promotion, although many greatly distinguished themselves, and some,—the brave Mackie, at Ciudad Rodrigo, for instance—successfully led forlorn-hopes. Finally, passing over the old sore of non-decoration for Peninsular services, since that, common to many regiments, is at last about to be healed,—Mr Robinson, the biographer of Sir Thomas Picton, has dared, in order to vindicate the harsh and partial conduct of his hero, to cast dust upon the facings of the brave boys of Connaught. It need hardly be said that they have found defenders. Of these, the most recent is Lieutenant Grattan, formerly an officer of the Eighty-eighth, and who, after making a vigorous stand, in the pages of a military periodical, against the calumniators of his old corps, has brought up his reserves and come to its support in a book of his own. His volumes, however, are not devoted to mere controversy. He has understood that he should best state the case, establish the merits, and confound the enemies of his regiment, by a faithful narrative of his and its adventures, triumphs, and sufferings. Thus, whilst he has seized the opportunity to deal out some hard knocks to those who have blamed the conduct (none have ever impugned the courage) of the Connaught Rangers, he has produced an entertaining book, thoroughly Irish in character, where the ludicrous and the horrible, the rollicking and the slaughtering, mingle and alternate. Even when most indignant, good humour and a love of fun peep through his pages. His prologue or preamble, entitled "An Answer to some attacks in Robinson's Life of Picton," although redolent of "slugs in a sawpit," is full of the national humour. "Frequently," Mr Robinson has asserted, "just before going into battle, it would be found, upon inspection, that one-half of the Eighty-eighth regiment were without ammunition, having acquired a pernicious habit of exchanging the cartridge for aguardiente, and substituting in their places pieces of wood, cut and coloured to resemble them." Such things have been heard of, even in very well-regulated regiments, as the exchange of powder and ball for brandy and other creature comforts; but it is very unlikely that the practice should have prevailed to any thing like the extent here set down, in a British army in active service and under Wellington's command, and the artfully prepared quaker-cartridges increase the improbability of the statement. Lieutenant Grattan scouts the tale as a base fabrication, lashes out in fine style at its propagator, and claims great merit for the officers who taught their men to beat the best troops in the world with timber ammunition. He puts forward a more serious refutation by a string of certificates from men and officers of all ranks who served with him in the Peninsula, and who strenuously repel the charge as a malignant calumny.

It was at the close of the campaign of 1809, that the historian of the Connaught Rangers, then a newly commissioned youngster, joined, within a march of Badajoz, the first battalion of his regiment. The palmy and triumphant days of the British army in the Peninsula could then hardly be said to have begun. True, they had had victories; the hard-earned one of Talavera had been gained only three months previously, but the general aspect of things was gloomy and disheartening. The campaign had been one of much privation and fatigue; rations were insufficient, quarters unhealthy, and Wellington's little army, borne on the muster-rolls as thirty thousand men, was diminished one-third by disease. The Portuguese, who numbered nearly as many, were raw and untried troops, scarce a man of whom had seen fire, and little reliance could be placed upon them. In spite of Lord Wellington's judicious and reiterated warnings, the incompetent and conceited Spanish generals risked repeated engagements, in which their armies—numerous enough, but ill disciplined, ill armed, and half-starved—were crushed and exterminated. The French side of the medal presented a very different picture. Elated by their German victories, their swords yet red with Austrian blood, Napoleon's best troops and ablest marshals hurried southwards, sanguinely anticipating, upon the fields of the Peninsula, an easy continuation of their recent triumphs. Three hundred and sixty thousand men-at-arms—French, Germans, Italians, Poles, even Mamelukes—spread themselves over Spain, occupied her towns, and invested her fortresses. Ninety thousand soldiers, under Massena, "l'enfant chéri de la Victoire," composed the so-called "army of Portugal," intended to expel from that country, if not to annihilate, the English leader and his small but resolute band, who, undismayed, awaited the coming storm. In the ever-memorable lines of Torres Vedras, the legions of Buonaparte met a stern and effectual dike to their torrent of headlong aggression. Upon the happy selection and able defence of those celebrated positions, were based the salvation of the Peninsula and the subsequent glorious progress of the British arms. Whilst referring to them, Mr Grattan seizes the opportunity to enumerate the services rendered by the army in Spain. "The invincible men," he says, "who defended those lines, aided no doubt by Portuguese and Spanish soldiers, afterwards fought for a period of four years, during which time they never suffered one defeat; and from the first commencement of this gigantic war to its final and victorious termination, the Peninsular army fought and won nineteen pitched battles, and innumerable combats; they made or sustained ten sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal, preserved Alicant, Carthagena, Cadiz, and Lisbon; they killed, wounded, and took about two hundred thousand enemies, and the bones of forty thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of the Peninsula." And thereupon our friend, the Connaughter, bursts out into indignation that warriors who did such deeds, and, on fifteen different occasions received the thanks of parliament, should have been denied a medal for their services. Certainly, when men who went through the whole, or the greater part, of those terrible campaigns, which they began as commissioned officers, are now seen holding no higher than a lieutenant's rank, one cannot but recognise their title to some additional recompense, and marvel that the modest and well-merited badge they claim should so long have been refused them. Mr Grattan puts much of the blame of such refusal at the door of the Duke of Wellington. Not that he is usually a depreciator of his former leader, of whose military genius and great achievements he ever speaks with respect amounting to veneration. But he does not hesitate to accuse him of having sacrificed his old followers and friends to his own vanity, which petty feeling, he maintains, made the Duke desire that the only medal granted for the war against Napoleon, should be given for the only victory in which he beat the Emperor in person. We believe that many Peninsular officers, puzzled to account for the constant and seemingly causeless refusal of the coveted decoration, hold the same opinion with Mr Grattan. We esteem it rather plausible than sound. The names Of Wellington and Waterloo would not the less be immortally associated because a cross bearing those of Peninsula and Pyrenees, or any other appropriate legend, shone upon the breasts of that "old Spanish infantry," of whom the Duke always spoke with affection and esteem, and to whom he unquestionably is mainly indebted for the wealth, honours, and fame which, for more than thirty years, he has tranquilly enjoyed. Moreover, we cannot credit such selfishness on the part of such a man, or believe that he, to whom a grateful sovereign and country decerned every recompense in their power to bestow, would be so thankless to the men to whose sweat and blood he mainly owed his success—to men who bore him, it may truly be said, upon their shoulders, to the highest pinnacle of greatness a British subject can possibly attain. Waterloo concluded the war: its results were immense, the conduct of the troops engaged heroic; but when we compare the amount of glory there gained with the renown accumulated during six years' warfare—a renown undimmed by a single reverse;—still more, when we contrast the dangers and hardships of one short campaign, however brilliant, with those of half-a-dozen long ones crowded with battles and sieges, we must admit that if the victors of La Belle Alliance nobly earned their medal, the veterans of Salamanca and Badajoz, Vittoria and Toulouse, have a threefold claim to a similar reward. They have long been unjustly deprived of it, and now comparatively few remain to receive the tardily-accorded distinction.

The first action to which Mr Grattan refers, as having himself taken share in, is that of Busaco. The name is familiar to every body, but yet, of all the Peninsular battles, it is perhaps the one of which least is generally known. It was not a very bloody fight—the loss in killed and wounded having been barely seven per cent of the numbers engaged; still it was a highly important one, as testing the quality of the Portuguese levies, upon which much depended. Upon the whole, they behaved pretty well, although they committed one or two awkward blunders, and one of their militia regiments took to flight at the first volley fired by their own friends. Mr Grattan does not usually set himself up as a historical authority with respect to battles, except in matters pertaining to his own regiment or brigade, and which came under his own observation. Nevertheless, concerning Busaco, he speaks boldly out, and asserts his belief that no correct report of the action exists in print. Napier derives his account of it from Colonel Waller, whose statement is totally incorrect, and has been expressly contradicted by various officers (amongst others, by General King) who fought that day with Picton's division. Colonel Napier's strong partiality to the light division sometimes prevents his doing full justice to other portions of the army. In this instance, however, any error he has fallen into, arises from his being misinformed. He himself was far away to the left, fighting with his own corps, and could know nothing, from personal observation, of the proceedings of Picton's men. Opposed to a very superior force, including some of the best regiments of the whole French army, they had their hands full; and the Eighty-eighth, especially, covered themselves with glory. At one time, the Rangers had not only the French fire to endure, but also that of the Eighth Portuguese, whose ill-directed volleys crossed their line of march. An officer sent to warn the Senhores of the mischief they did, received, before he could fulfil his mission, a French and a Portuguese bullet, and the Eighth continued their reckless discharge. But no cross-fire could daunt the men of Connaught. "Push home to the muzzle!" was the word of their gallant lieutenant-colonel, Wallace; and push home they did, totally routing their opponents, and nearly destroying the French Thirty-sixth, a pet battalion of the Emperor's. Stimulus was not wanting; Wellington stood by, and, with his staff and several generals, watched the charge. The Eighty-eighth were greatly outnumbered, and Marshal Beresford, their colonel, "expressed some uneasiness when he saw his regiment about to plunge into this unequal contest. But when they were mixed with Regnier's division, and putting them to flight down the hill, Lord Wellington, tapping Beresford on the shoulder, said to him, 'Well Beresford, look at them now!'" And when the work was done, and the fight over, Wellington rode up to Colonel Wallace, and seizing him warmly by the hand, said, "Wallace, I never witnessed a more gallant charge than that made by your regiment!" Beresford spoke to several of the men by name, and shook the officers' hands; and even Picton forgot his prejudice against the regiment, whom he had once designated as the "Connaught foot-pads," and expressed himself satisfied with their conduct. Many of the men shed tears of joy. So susceptible are soldiers to praise and kindness, and so easy is it by a few well-timed words to repay their toils and perils, and renew their store of confidence and hope. And numerous were the occasions during the Peninsular contest when they needed all the encouragement that could be given them. After Busaco, when blockaded in the lines of Torres Vedras, their situation was far from agreeable. The wet season set in, and their huts, roofed with heather—a pleasant shelter when the sun shone, but very ineffectual to resist autumnal rains—became untenable. Every device was resorted to for the exclusion of the deluge, but in vain. Fortunately, the French were in a still worse plight. In miserable cantonments, short of provisions and attacked by disease, the horses died, and the men deserted; until, on the 14th November, Massena broke up his camp, and retired upon Santarem. The Anglo-Portuguese army made a corresponding movement into more comfortable quarters, and rumours were abroad of an approaching engagement; but it did not take place, and a period of comparative relaxation succeeded one of severe hardship and arduous duty. Men and officers made the most of the holiday. There was never any thing of the martinet about the Duke. He was not the man to harass with unnecessary and vexations drills, or rigidly to enforce unimportant rules. Those persons, whether military or otherwise, who consider a strictly regulation uniform as essential to the composition of a British soldier, as a stout heart and a strong arm, and who stickle for a closely buttoned jacket, a stiff stock, and the due allowance of pipe-clay, would have been somewhat scandalised, could they have beheld the equipment of Wellington's army in the Peninsula. Mr Grattan gives a comical account of the various fantastical fashions and conceits prevalent amongst the officers. "Provided," he says, "we brought our men into the field well-appointed, and with sixty rounds of good ammunition each, he (the Duke) never looked to see whether their trousers were black, blue, or grey; and as to ourselves, we might be rigged out in all the colours of the rainbow, if we fancied it." The officers, especially the young subs, availed themselves largely of this judicious laxity, and the result was a medley of costume, rather picturesque than military. Braided coats, long hair, plumed hats, and large mustaches, were amongst the least of the eccentricities displayed. In a curious spirit of contradiction, the infantry adopted brass spurs, anticipatory, perhaps, of their promotion to field-officers' rank; and, bearing in mind, that "there is nothing like leather," exhibited themselves in ponderous over-alls, à la Hongroise, topped and strapped, and loaded down the side with buttons and chains. One man, in his rage for singularity, took the tonsure, shaving the hair off the crown of his head; and another, having covered his frock-coat with gold tags and lace, was furiously assaulted by a party of Portuguese sharpshooters, who, seeing him, in the midst of the enemy's riflemen, whither his headlong courage had led him, mistook him for a French general, and insisted upon making him prisoner. And three years later, when Mr Grattan and a party of his comrades landed in England, in all the glories of velvet waistcoats, dangling Spanish buttons of gold and silver, and forage caps of fabulous magnificence, they could hardly fancy that they belonged to the same service as the red-coated, white-breeched, black-gaitered gentlemen of Portsmouth garrison.

The embarkation of the British army, which in the summer of 1810 was deemed imminent both in England and the Peninsula and considered probable by Lord Liverpool himself, was no longer thought of after Busaco, save by a few of those croaking gentlemen, who, in camps as in council-houses, view every thing through smoked spectacles. Reinforcements, both English and Spanish, reached the lines of Torres Vedras, which Wellington continued to strengthen, and Massena dared not attack. The accession of General Drouet's corps increased the army of the Prince of Essling to upwards of 70,000 men. His cavalry, too, was twice as strong as that of the British; but, notwithstanding this superiority, and the desire which he must have felt to retrieve his fame, tarnished by the repulse at Busaco, and by his fruitless movement on the lines of Lisbon, Massena remained inert, in front of the man whom Napoleon's Moniteur contemptuously designated as the "Sepoy General." Spring approached without either army assuming the offensive, until, on the 5th of March 1811, the French began their retreat from Portugal, closely followed up by Wellington. There was little difficulty in tracing them: they left a broad trail of blood, and desolation. With bare blade, and blazing brand, they swept across the land; church and convent, town and village, the farm and the cottage, were given to the flames; on the most frivolous pretexts, often without one, women, children, and unarmed men were barbarously murdered; and many a Portuguese lost his life for refusing to point out treasures which existed only in the imagination of the fierce and greedy Frenchman. Enraged at the dearth of provisions, of which they stood in great need, and which had been every-where removed or destroyed, the retreating army abandoned themselves to frightful cruelties and excesses. All along the line of march, the pursuers found piles of bodies, groups of murdered peasantry, and, mingled with them, the corpses of Frenchmen, often hideously mutilated, according to the barbarous usage which has been continued in more recent wars by the vindictive population of the Peninsula. The retaliation was terrible, but the provocation had been extreme. Mr Grattan's details of some of the scenes he himself witnessed, are painfully minute and vivid; and whilst reading them, we cease to wonder that, after the lapse of a third of a century, hatred of the French exists almost undiminished in the countries they so cruelly and wantonly ravaged.

However orderly and well-conducted, there is always something discouraging in a retreat, as there is a cheerful and exhilarating feeling attendant on an advance. Nevertheless, during their progress across Portugal, the French maintained their high reputation. Their rear-guard, commanded by Marshal Ney, made good fight when pressed by the British, but their losses were heavy before they reached the Spanish frontier. This they crossed early in April, and a month later they had to recross it, to convey supplies to the fortress of Almeida, the only place in Portugal over which the tricolor still floated. The result of this movement was the bloody combat of Fuentes d'Onore, a complete but dearly-bought triumph for our arms. Here the Eighty-eighth nobly distinguished themselves. At first they were in reserve, whilst for eight hours two Highland regiments, the Eighty-third and some light companies, fought desperately in the town, opposed to the fresh troops which Massena continually sent up. Their loss was very heavy, the streets were heaped with dead, the heat was excessive, and ammunition grew scarce. The Highlanders and the French grenadiers fought in the cemetery, across the graves and tombstones. "Wallace, with his regiment, the Eighty-eighth, was in reserve on the high ground which overlooked the churchyard, and was attentively viewing the combat which raged below, when Sir Edward Pakenham galloped up to him, and said, 'Do you see that, Wallace?'—'I do,' replied the colonel; 'and I would rather drive the French out of the town than cover a retreat across the Coa.'—'Perhaps,' said Sir Edward, 'his lordship don't think it tenable.' Wallace answering, said, 'I shall take it with my regiment, and keep it too.'—'Will you?' was the reply; 'I'll go and tell Lord Wellington so.' In a moment or two, Pakenham returned at a gallop, and waving his hat, called out, 'He says you may go.—Come along, Wallace!'"

Poor Pakenham! ever foremost to lead a charge or brave a peril. He deserved a better fate, after his glorious exploits in the Peninsula, than to be picked off by a sneaking Yankee rifle, in the swampy plains of New Orleans. But the same "boiling spirit and hasty temper" that won him laurels in Europe, led him to his death in another hemisphere. Over-confidence may be pardoned in a man who had so often driven before him the redoubtable cohorts of the modern Alexander. And one mistake cannot obliterate the memory of fifty gallant feats.—Full of fight, and led on by Pakenham, Mackinnon, and Wallace, the Eighty-eighth advanced at a smart trot into the town, where the French Ninth regiment and a few hundreds of the Imperial Guard awaited them. Their charge was irresistible; they cleared the place and drove the enemy into the river. They even pursued them through it, and several Rangers fell on the French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan, whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of military narrative, is amusingly cool and naïf in referring to this incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance, every man was put to death; but our soldiers, as soon as they had leisure, paid the enemy that respect which is due to brave men." We apprehend that, with the Connaughters, leisure, in this sense, was scanty, at least at Fuentes d'Onore; but, in so close and desperate a fight, hot blood is apt to drown mercy. The dashing charge of the Eighty-eighth nearly closed the day's performances, although the French batteries, admirably served, still peppered the town. Men and officers sheltered themselves as well as they could, but many were killed; whilst Pakenham, with reckless bravery, rode about the streets, a mark for the enemy's shot, which tore up the ground around him whenever he stood still. "He was in a violent perspiration and covered with dust, his left hand bound round with a handkerchief, as if he had been wounded; he was ever in the hottest of the fire: and, if the whole fate of the battle had depended on his exertions, he could not have fought with more devotion."

Amongst the many daring acts witnessed on the bloody day of Fuentes d'Onore, that of the Spanish guerilla chief, Julian Sanchez, deserves notice. At the head of his ragged and ill-disciplined band, he had the temerity to charge a crack French regiment, and, as might be expected, was sent back with a sore head. Whilst on the subject of guerillas, Mr Grattan combats an opinion which he believes many persons in this country entertain, "that the Spaniards and Portuguese did as much, if not more, during the Peninsular contest, than the British." Here he is certainly mistaken. Very few persons, out of the Peninsula, have any such notion. The French know well enough by whom they were beaten. Loth as they are to acknowledge a thrashing at the hands of their old antagonists, they do not dream of attributing their defeats to the "brigands," of whom they declare they would have had a very cheap bargain, but for the intervention of the troublesome English. And certainly, if the Spaniards and Portuguese had been left to themselves, although, favoured by the mountainous configuration of the country, they might long have kept up a desultory contest, they would never have succeeded in expelling the invaders; for the simple reason that they were wholly unable to meet them in the plain. Most true it is that, during the war of independence, the people of the Peninsula gave numerous examples of bravery and devotion, and still more of long suffering and patient endurance for their country's sake. The irregular mode of warfare adopted by the peasantry, the great activity and constant skirmishings, stratagems, and ambuscades of Mina, the Empecinado, Sanchez, and many other patriotic and valiant men, greatly harassed and annoyed the French; and, by compelling them to employ large bodies of troops in garrison and escort duty, prevented their opposing an overwhelming force to the comparatively small army under Wellington. But all that sort of thing, however useful and efficacious as a general system, and as weakening the enemy, was very petty work when examined in detail. The great victories, the mighty feats of war that figure in history's page, were due to British discipline, pluck, and generalship. And whatever merit remains with the Spaniards, is to be attributed to their guerillas and irregular partisans. As to their regular troops, after they had overthrown Dupont at Baylen, they seemed to think they might doze upon their laurels, which were very soon wrenched from them. Baylen was their grand triumph, and subsequently to it they did little in the field. Behind stone walls they still fought well: Spaniards are brave and tenacious in a fortress, and Saragossa is a proud name in their annals. Nothing could be better than old General Herrasti's valiant defence of Cuidad Rodrigo against Ney and his thirty thousand Frenchmen. The garrison, six thousand strong, lost seven hundred men by the first day's fire. Only when their guns were silenced, when the town was on fire in various places, and when several yards of wall were thrown down by a mine, did the brave governor hoist the white flag. Other instances of the kind might be cited, when Spanish soldiers fought as well as mortal men could do. But with respect to pitched battles, another tale must be told. At Ocaña, Almonacid, and on a dozen other disastrous fields, Baylen was amply revenged. The loss at Ocaña alone is rated by Spanish accounts at thirty thousand men, chiefly prisoners. Mr Grattan estimates it at twenty-five thousand men, and thirteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven guitars. Of these latter, he tells us twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-two were in cases, and the remainder without; Indeed he is so exceedingly circumstantial that we presume he counted them himself. Otherwise, although well aware of the Spaniard's predilection for the fascinating tinkle of his national instrument, we could hardly credit the accuracy of the figures. Even a Spanish general, we should think, would hardly allow his men thus to encumber themselves with harmony. The march of such an army of Orpheuses, in which every third soldier shouldered a fiddle-case as a pendant to his musket, must have been curious to behold; suggesting the idea that the melodious warriors designed subduing their foes by the soothing strains of jotas and cachuchas, rather than by the more cogent arguments of sharp steel and ball-cartridge. Great must have been the tinkling at eventide, exceeding that of the most extensive flock of merinos that ever cropped Castilian herbage. Was it because they were certain of a dance that these barrack-yard minstrels came provided with music, sure, in any case, to have the piper to pay? If the instruments were provided to celebrate a triumph, they might as well have been left at home. In Spain, however, time has effaced, or greatly weakened, the remembrance of many reverses, whilst slight and dubious successes, carefully treasured up, have swollen by the keeping into mighty victories; and at the present day, foreigners who should be so uncourteous and impolitic as to express, in the hearing of Spaniards, a doubt that Spanish valour was the main agent in driving the French from the Peninsula, might reckon, not on a stab—knifeing being less in vogue beyond the Bay of Biscay than is often imagined—but certainly on a scowl, and probably on an angry contradiction. And in every province, almost in every town, in Spain the traveller may, if he so pleaseth, be regaled with marvellous narratives of signal victories, gained over the gavachos, in that immediate neighbourhood, by valiant generals whose names, so partial is fame, have never transpired beyond the scenes of their problematical exploits. Under the constitutional system, and owing to the long civil war, Spanish troops have improved in discipline and in various other respects; and with good generals, there is no manifest reason why they should not successfully cope with Frenchmen, although we doubt whether they could. But in Napoleon's day matters were very different, and in the open field their chance was desperate. The Portuguese were doubtless of a better quality; and in the pages of Napier and other historians, we find them spoken of in terms of praise. They had British officers to head them, and there is much in good leading; they had British troops to emulate, and national pride spurred them on. At the same period, Italians—certainly very poor soldiers when left to themselves—fought gallantly under French generals, and with French example before them. Of the general bearing of the Portuguese, however, we have heard few Peninsular men speak very highly. They appear to have been extremely inconsistent; brave one day, dastards the next.

At, Ciudad Rodrigo, Mr Grattan greatly lauds their gallantry, which struck him the more as being unexpected. At Salamanca, on the other hand, he records their weakness, and the easy repulse of Pack's brigade, two thousand strong, by four hundred Frenchmen. "Notwithstanding all that has been said and written of the Portuguese troops, I still hold the opinion that they are utterly incompetent to stand unsupported and countenanced by British troops, with any chance of success, against even half their own numbers of Frenchmen." Again, after Salamanca, when Wellington and his victorious army advanced on Madrid, the Portuguese dragoons fled, without striking a blow, before the French lancers, exposing the reserve of German cavalry to severe loss, abandoning the artillery to its fate, and tarnishing the triumphal entry of the British into the capital—within a march of which this disgraceful affair occurred. Still, to encourage these wavering heroes, it was necessary to speak civilly of them in despatches; to pat them on the back, and tell them they were fine fellows. And this has sometimes been misunderstood by simple persons, who believe all they see in print, and look upon despatches and bulletins as essentially veracious documents. "I remember once," says Mr Grattan, "upon my return home in 1813, getting myself closely cross-examined by an old lawyer, because I said I thought the Portuguese troops inferior to the French, still more to the British. 'Inferior to the British, sir! I have read Lord Wellington's last despatch, and he says the Portuguese fought as well as the British; and I suppose you won't contradict him?' I saw it was vain to convince this pugnacious old man of the necessity of saying these civil things, and we parted mutually dissatisfied with each other; he taking me, no doubt, for a forward young puppy, and I looking upon him as a monstrous old bore."

The Eighty-eighth, we gather from Mr Grattan's narrative, whilst respected by all as a first-rate battle regiment, was, when the stirring and serious events of that busy time left a moment for trifling, a fertile source of amusement to the whole third division. This is not wonderful. Many of the officers, and all the men, with the exception of three or four, were Irish, not Anglicised Irishmen, tamed by long residence amongst the Saxon, but raw, roaring Patlanders, who had grown and thriven on praties and potheen, and had carried with them to Spain their rich brogue, their bulls, and an exhaustless stock of gaiety. The amount of fun and blunders furnished by such a corps was naturally immense. But if in quarters they were made the subject of much good-humoured quizzing, in the field their steady valour was justly appreciated. No regiment in the service contained a larger proportion of "lads that weren't aisy," which metaphorical phrase, current among the Rangers, is translated by Mr Grattan as signifying fellows who would walk into a cannon's month, and think the operation rather a pleasant one. Whenever a desperate service was to be done, "the boys," as they, more Hibernico, familiarly termed themselves, were foremost in the ranks of volunteers. The contempt of danger, or non-comprehension of it, manifested by some of these gentlemen, was perfect. "My fine fellow," said an engineer officer, during the unsuccessful siege of Badajoz in May 1811, to a man under Lieutenant Grattan's orders, who sat outside a battery, hammering at a fascine; "my fine fellow, you are too much exposed; get inside the embrasure, and you will do your work nearly as well." "I'm almost finished, colonel," was the reply, "and it isn't worth while to move now. Those fellows can't hit me, for they've been trying it these fifteen minutes." Just then, a round-shot gave the lie to his prediction by cutting him in two; and, according to their custom, the French gunners set up a shout of triumph at their successful practice. Some of the Connaughters, who had never lost sight of their native bogs till exported to the Peninsula, understood little or no English beyond the words of command. On an inspection parade, one of this class was asked by General Mackinnon, to whose squad he belonged. Bewildered and puzzled, Darby Rooney applied to his sergeant for a translation of the general's question—thus conveying to the latter an idea that this was the first time he had heard such a thing as a squad spoken of. The story got abroad—was, of course, much embellished—and an hour afterwards the third division was enjoying a prodigious chuckle at the notion that not one of the Connaughters knew what a squad meant. The young men laughed, the old officers shook their heads and deplored the benighted state of the Irishmen; whilst all the time, Mr Grattan assures us, "the Eighty-eighth was a more really efficient regiment than almost any two corps in the third division." As efficient as any they undoubtedly were, when fighting was to be done; but in some other respects their conduct was less irreproachable. According to their historian and advocate's own showing, their knapsacks were often too light and their havresacks too heavy. "A watchcoat, a piece of pipe-clay, and a button-brush," compose rather a scanty kit: yet those three articles formed—with the exception of the clothes he stood in—the entire wardrobe and means of personal adornment of the Rooney above-named; and many of his comrades were scarce better provided. But if the back was neglected and left bare, the belly, on the contrary, was cared for with vigilant affection. On occasion, the Eighty-eighth could do their work on meagre diet as well, or better than any other corps. They would march two days on a pipe of tobacco; or for a week, with the addition of a biscuit and a dram. But when they did such things, it was no sign of any abstract love of temperance, or wish to mortify the flesh; it was simply a token of the extreme poverty of the district in which they found themselves. For the article provend they always kept a bright look-out. A greasy havresack, especially on the line of march, is the soldier's first desideratum; and it was rare that a very respectable workhouse soup could not have been produced by infusing that of a Connaughter in a proper quantity of water. When rations were scanty, or commissaries lagged in the rear, none understood better than the Eighty-eighth how to forage for themselves. "Every man his own quartermaster" was then their motto. Nothing came amiss to them; sweet or savoury, from a pig to a bee-hive, they sacked every thing; and their "taking ways" were often cast in their teeth. The natives were compelled to mount guard over their sheepfolds; but the utmost force they could muster was of small avail against the resolute onslaught of the half-famished Irishmen. Even the exertions of the Provost-marshal, and the liberal application of the cat, proved ineffectual to check these depredations; whilst the whimsical arguments used by the fellows in their defence sometimes disarmed the severity of Picton himself.

It would have been quite out of character for an Irish regiment to march without ladies in their train, and accordingly the female following of the Rangers was organised on the most liberal scale. Motley as it was numerous, it included, besides English and Irish women, a fair sprinkling of tender-hearted Spaniards and Portuguese, who had been unable to resist the fascinations of the insinuating Connaughters. The sufferings of these poor creatures, on long marches, over bad roads and in wet and cold seasons, were of course terrible, and only to be equalled by their fidelity to those to whom they had attached themselves. Their endurance of fatigue was wonderful; their services were often great; and many a soldier, stretched disabled on the field of some bloody battle, and suffering from the terrible thirst attendant on wounds, owed his life to their gentle ministry. In circumstances of danger, they showed remarkable courage. At the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, the baggage-guard, eager to share in the fight, deserted their post and rushed to the trenches. Immediately a host of miscreants—fellows who hung on the skirts of the army, watching opportunities to plunder—made a dash at the camp, but the women defended it valiantly, and fairly beat them off. Of course feminine sensibility got a little blunted by a life of this kind, and it was rarely with very violent emotion that the ladies saw their husbands go into action. Persuaded of their invincibility, they looked upon success as certain, and if, unfortunately, the victory left them widows, they deemed a very short mourning necessary before contracting a new alliance. Now and then a damsel of birth and breeding would desert the paternal mansion to follow the drum; and Mr Grattan tells a romantic history of a certain Jacinta Cherito, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy judge, who blacked her face and tramped off as a cymbal boy under the protection of the drum-major of the Eighty-eighth—a magnificent fellow, whose gorgeous uniform and imposing cocked hat caused him to be taken by the Portuguese for nothing less than a general of division. The young lady had not forgotten to take her jewels with her, and the old judge made a great fuss, and appealed to the colonel, who requested him to inspect the regiment as it left the town. But the sooty visage and uniform jacket baffled his penetration, and at the first halt, the drummer and the lady were made one flesh. Thorp, the lucky bridegroom, was a fine dashing fellow, bent upon distinguishing himself. He was often wounded, but never missed an engagement, even when his hurts were unhealed. He fell gloriously at Toulouse, and the next day came the gazette with his promotion to an ensigncy, which, if it was then of little value to him, was at any rate "a great consolation to his poor afflicted widow, and the means of reconciling her father to the choice she had made; and her return once more to her home was a scene of great rejoicing." When the British troops embarked at Bordeaux, for America and England, a crowd of poor Spanish and Portuguese women, who had long followed their fortunes and were now forbidden to accompany their husbands and lovers, watched their departure with tearful eyes. "They were fond and attached creatures, and had been useful in many ways, and under many circumstances, not only to their husbands, but to the corps they belonged to generally. Many of them, the Portuguese in particular, had lived with our men for years, and had borne them children." But the stern rules of the service prevailed. The battalions bound for America were allowed but a limited number of soldiers' wives, and the surplus were of necessity left to their fate. Some had money; more were penniless, and nearly naked. Men and officers were then greatly in arrear, but nevertheless a subscription was got up, and its amount divided amongst the unfortunates, thus abandoned upon a foreign shore, and at many hundreds of miles from their homes.

General Picton was a man of action, not of words. There was no palaver about him, nothing superfluous in the way of orations, but he spoke strongly and to the point. Long harangues, as Mr Grattan justly observes, are not necessary to British soldiers. Metaphor and flowers of rhetoric are thrown away upon them. Something plain, pithy, and appropriate is what they like; the shorter the better. "Rangers of Connaught!" said Picton, as he passed the Eighty-eighth, drawn up for the assault of Ciudad Rodrigo, "it is not my intention to expend any powder this evening. We'll do this business with the cold iron." This was a very unpretending speech; nothing of the clap-trap or melodramatic about it; a mere declaration in the fewest possible words, of the speaker's intentions, implying what he expected from those he addressed. That it was just what was wanted, was proved by the hearty respondent cheer of the brave Irishmen. The result of the attack is well known; the Rangers took a gallant share in it. The next morning the troops were ordered out of the captured town, which they had ransacked to some purpose, and the Eighty-eighth, drawn up on their bivouac ground, were about to march away to the village of Atalaya, when Picton again rode past. "Some of the soldiers, who were more than usually elevated in spirits," (they had passed the night in bursting open doors and drinking brandy,) "called out, 'Well, General, we gave you a cheer last night: it's your turn now!' The general smiled, took off his hat, and said, 'Here, then, you drunken set of brave rascals—hurrah! we'll soon be at Badajoz.'" A prophecy which was not long unaccomplished. With all deference to Mr Grattan, we cannot but think that the Eighty-eighth were very appropriately placed under Picton's orders. Excellent fighting men though they were, they certainly, according to their champion's own showing, needed a strict hand over them. We should like to know how they would have got on under such an officer as Mr Grattan tells us of, who, when in command of a regiment, came to mess one day in very low spirits, because, having sent his adjutant to inquire of an ensign why he did not attend parade, the ensign returned no answer, and, on subsequently meeting his commanding officer, cut him dead. The colonel told the story at the mess-table, and concluded by saying, "I thought nothing of his not answering my message, but I cannot express how much I am hurt at the idea of his cutting me as he did when I wished to speak to him!" Field-officers of such susceptible feelings, and such very loose ideas on the subject of discipline, were not plentiful in the Peninsula, and this one, we are given to understand, did not long retain his regiment. He would hardly have done at the head of the high-spirited Connaughters. But if Picton's severity to the men of the Eighty-eighth may be justified, his neglect of the officers is far more difficult to excuse. "Not one of them was ever promoted through his recommendation." The conduct of Lieutenant Mackie at Ciudad Rodrigo was chivalrous in the extreme. General Mackinnon—who commanded the brigade and was blown to pieces at its head by the explosion of a mine—wished to confer a mark of distinction on the gallant Eighty-eighth, and ordered that one of its subalterns should lead the forlorn-hope. The moment this was announced to the assembled officers, "Mackie stepped forward, and lowering his sword, said, 'Major Thompson, I am ready for that service.'" Mackinnon had promised a company to the forlorn-hope leader, if he survived. But it must be observed that Mackie was senior lieutenant, and consequently sure of early promotion. The Eighty-eighth was to be in the van at the assault, and the probabilities were that at least one captain would be knocked off. Or, if not that day, it would happen the next. So that Mackie, in volunteering on the most desperate of all services, could have little to actuate him beyond an honourable desire for glory. How was he repaid? Gurwood, who led the forlorn-hope at the lesser breach, got his company; Mackie remained a lieutenant—no captain of the Eighty-eighth having been killed, and General Mackinnon not being alive to fulfil his promise. And whilst all the other officers who had been forward in the attack, had their names recorded in Picton's division-order, poor Mackie was denied even the word of barren praise so gratifying to a soldier's heart.

The loss of Ciudad Rodrigo was a stunning blow to the French. They could not understand it at all. Herrasti and his Spaniards had held out the place a month against Ney and Massena, with thirty or forty thousand veterans, and that in fine weather, a great advantage to the besiegers—in eleven days, and in the depth of winter, Wellington reduced it, with twenty thousand men and opposed by a French garrison. The contrast was great, and quite inexplicable to the French. "On the 16th," wrote Marmont to Berthier, "the English batteries opened their fire at a great distance. On the 19th the place was taken by storm, and fell into the power of the enemy. There is something so incomprehensible in this event, that I allow myself no observation. I am not provided with the requisite information." No testimony could be more complimentary to the brave captors of Rodrigo. That great success, however, was only a forerunner of greater ones. Badajoz was the next place to be taken, preparatory to marching into the interior of Spain. To conceal his intentions from the enemy, Wellington had recourse to an elaborate stratagem. A powerful battering train, supplied by the men of war in the Tagus, was shipped at Lisbon, on board vessels of large size, which put out to sea, and, when out of sight of land, transhipped their cargo into smaller craft. These carried them up the Tagus into the heart of the country. At the same time the necessary magazines were formed; and at Elvas, only three leagues from Badajoz, a large quantity of fascines and gabions were prepared. All this, however, was done so quietly, Wellington appeared so supine, and Badajoz was so well provided, that Soult was lulled into security; and when at last he took the alarm, and marched from Seville at the head of twenty-five thousand men, it was too late. Philippon, and his brave garrison, did all that skill and courage could; but in vain. When Soult reached Villafranca, two days' march from Badajoz, the fortress had already been two days in the power of the English. This, to the French, was another unaccountable business; they, even yet, had not learned fully to appreciate the sovereign virtues of British bayonets. "I think the capture of Badajoz a very extraordinary event," Lery, Soult's chief engineer, wrote to General Kellerman, "and I am much at a loss to account for it in a clear and distinct manner." This comes at the end of a mysterious sort of epistle, in which the engineer general talks of fatality, and seems to think that the British had no right to take Badajoz, defended as it was. But Wellington and his army were great despisers of that sort of right, and, in spite of the really glorious defence, in spite of the strategy of the governor and the valour of the garrison, of chevaux de frise of sword-blades, and of the deadly accuracy of the French artillery and musketeers, Badajoz was taken. The triumph was fearfully costly. Nearly four thousand five hundred men fell on the side of the besiegers;—Picton's division was reduced to a skeleton, and the Connaught Rangers lost more than half their numbers.

Shot through the body at Badajoz, Mr Grattan was left there when his division marched away. He gives a terrible account of the sacking of the town; but on such details, even had they not been many times recapitulated, it is not pleasant to dwell. The frightful crimes perpetrated during those two days of unbridled excess and violence, rest at the door of the man whose boundless ambition occasioned that most desolating war. From an ignorant and sensual soldiery, excited to madness by a prolonged resistance, and by one of the most sanguinary conflicts recorded in the history of sieges, forbearance could hardly be expected. The horrible saturnalia, in which murder and rape, pillage and intoxication, are pushed to their utmost limits, are the necessary condition of a successful assault on a desperately defended fortress; and supposing them prohibited, and that such prohibition could be enforced, we agree with Mr Grattan in believing that many a town that has been victoriously carried, might have been found impregnable. But one must ever deplore the disgraceful scenes enacted in the streets and houses of Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and St Sebastian. Unsurpassed in atrocity, they remain everlasting blots upon the bright laurels gathered by the British in the Peninsula. And it is small palliation, that under similar circumstances, the armies of all nations have acted in like manner. Here the sufferers were not enemies. To the garrison, when their resistance ceased, quarter was given; they were marched away scatheless, and treated with that humanity which England, notwithstanding the lying assertions of foreign historians, has ever used towards her prisoners. No, the victims were friends and allies. The very nation in whose behalf our soldiers had fought, saw their houses ransacked, their property wasted, their wives and daughters brutally outraged, by those whose mission was to protect and defend. Let us hope they have forgotten, or at least forgiven, such gloomy episodes in the struggle for their liberation.

The advocates of universal peace might adduce many potent and practical arguments in favour of their doctrine from the pages of Mr Grattan's book. He is unsparing in his details of the inevitable horrors of war; and some of his descriptions, persons of tender hearts and sensitive nerves will do well to pass over. They may be read with profit by those who, accustomed to behold but the sunny side of military life, think too lightly of the miseries war entails. Let such accompany Mr Grattan though the streets of Badajoz, on the morning of the 7th April, 1812, and into the temporary hospital of Villa Formosa, after the fierce conflict of Fuentes d'Onore, where two hundred soldiers still awaited, twenty-four hours after the action, the surgeons' leisure, for the amputation of their limbs. Let them view with him the piles of unsuccoured wounded on the breach of Badajoz, and hear the shrieks and groans of men dying in helpless agony, without a friendly hand to prop their head, or a drop of water to cool their fevered lips. From such harrowing scenes it is pleasant to turn to the more humane and redeeming features of civilised warfare, and to note the courteous and amicable relations that existed between the contending armies when, as sometimes happened, they lay near together without coming to blows. This occurred previously to the battle of Salamanca. From the 3d to the 12th of July, the French and British were in presence of each other, encamped on either side the Douro, at that season little more than a rivulet. Of course all were on the alert; there was no laxity or negligence that could tempt to surprise; but neither was there any useless skirmishing or picket firing; every thing was conducted in the most gentlemanly and correct manner. The soldiers bathed together and exchanged their rations, and the officers were on equally good terms. "The part of the river of which I speak was occupied, on our side, by the Third division; on the French side by the Seventh division. The French officers said to us at parting, 'We have met, and have been for some time friends. We are about to separate, and may meet as enemies. As friends we received each other warmly; as enemies we shall do the same.' Ten days afterwards the British Third and the French Seventh division were opposed to each other at Salamanca, and the Seventh French was destroyed by the British Third." Mr Grattan's wound was healed in ample time for him to assist at the battle of Salamanca; a glorious victory, which would have been even more complete had the British been properly seconded by their Portuguese allies. The behaviour of these was any thing but creditable to their nation. One detachment of caçadores actually threw themselves on their faces to avoid the enemy's fire, and not all the blows showered on them by their commander, Major Haddock, could induce them to exchange their recumbent attitude for one more dignified. Notwithstanding this, and the more fatal feebleness of Pack's brigade, the French were totally beaten, and their loss was nearly four times that of the British. Lord Wellington's opinion of the battle—a particularly honourable one to our troops, inasmuch as they not only fought better, but (which was not always the case) moved and manœuvred better, than the picked veterans of the French army—is sufficiently shown by the fact that "he selected it in preference to all his other victories, as the most fitting to be fought over in sham-fight on the plains of St Denis, in the presence of the three crowned heads who occupied Paris after the second abdication of the Emperor Napoleon, in 1815."

At Salamanca, the right brigade of the Third division, including the Connaught Rangers, charged the entire division of the French General Thomière. So awful was the volley that welcomed them, that more than half the officers, and nearly the whole front rank, were swept away. Doubtless the French thought this would prove a sickener, for great was their consternation when, before the smoke had well cleared away, they saw the shattered but dauntless brigade advancing fiercely and steadily upon them. Panic-stricken, they wavered; "the three regiments ran onward, and the mighty phalanx, which a moment before was so formidable, loosened and fell in pieces before fifteen hundred invincible British soldiers fighting in a line of only two deep." In this memorable charge, the standard-pole of the Eighty-eighth was struck by a bullet, the same that killed Major Murphy, who commanded the battalion. New colours have since been presented to the regiment, but the wounded pole is still preserved, and on it is engraved, on a plate of silver, the day and the manner of its mutilation.

An advance on Madrid was consequent on the triumph at Salamanca, and on the 12th of August, Wellington and his army reached the Spanish capital. Their entrance has often been described, but in default of novelty, Mr Grattan's account of it possesses spirit and interest. It was one of those scenes that repay soldiers for months of fatigue and danger. The troops were almost carried into the city in the arms of the delighted populace. The steady, soldier-like bearing of the men, the appearance of the officers, nearly all mounted, inspired respect and increased the general enthusiasm. For miles from Madrid, the road was thronged; when the army got into the streets, it was no longer possible to preserve the order of march. The ranks were broken by the pressure of the crowd, and the officers (lucky dogs!) were half-smothered in the embraces of the charming Madrileñas. Young and old, ugly and handsome, all came in for their share of hugs and kisses. Still, although patriotism impelled the Spanish fair to look with favour upon the scarlet-coated Britons, the painful confession must be made that as individuals they gave the preference to the lively, light-hearted Frenchmen. Napoleon was the fiend himself, incarnate in the form of an under-sized Corsican, and the gavachos were his imps, whom it was praise-worthy to shoot at from behind every hedge, and to poniard whenever the opportunity offered. Such was the creed inculcated by the priests, and devoutly entertained by their petticoated penitents—that is to say, by every Christian woman in the Peninsula. But somehow or other, when French regiments were quartered in Spanish towns, the female part of the population forgot the anathemas of their spiritual consolers, and looked complacently upon those they were enjoined to abhor. It was a case of "nos amis les ennemis," and the French, beaten every where in the field, obtained facile and frequent triumphs in the boudoir. "It is a singular fact, and I look upon it as a degrading one," says Mr Grattan with diverting seriousness, "that the French officers, whilst at Madrid, made in the ratio of five to one more conquests than we did." The dignity of the admission might be questioned; the degree of degradation is matter of opinion; the singularity is explained away by Mr Grattan himself. He blames his comrades for their stiff, unbending manners, and for their non-conformance to the customs of the country. They were nearly three months at Madrid, and yet he declares that, at the end of that time, they knew little more of the inhabitants than of the citizens of Pekin. And he opines that the impression left in Spain by the Peninsular army was rather one of respect for their courage, than of admiration of their social graces and general affability. If Mr Grattan, whilst reposing at ease upon his well-earned bays, would devise and promulgate an antidote to the mixture of shyness, reserve, and hauteur, which renders Englishmen, wherever they travel, the least popular of the European family, he would have a claim on his country's gratitude stronger even than the one he established whilst defending her with his sword in the well-contested fields of the Peninsula. Notwithstanding, however, the unamiability with which he reproaches his companions in arms, there was much fun and feasting, and sauntering in the Prado, and bull-fighting and theatre-going, whilst the British were at Madrid. But it was too pleasant to last long. The best a soldier can expect in war-time, is an alternation of good quarters and severe hardship. The "quart-d'heure de Rabelais" was at hand, when all the dancing, drinking, masking, and other pleasant things should be paid for, and the brief enjoyment forgotten, amidst the sufferings of the most painful retreat—excepting, of course, that of Corunna—effected by a British army during the whole war. We refer to the retrograde movement that followed the unsuccessful siege of Burgos.

The high reputation of the British soldier rests far more upon his arms than upon his legs; in other words, he is a fighting rather than a marching man. Slowness of movement, in the field as on the route, is the fault that has most frequently been imputed to him. One thing is pretty generally admitted; that, to work well, he must be well fed. And even then he will hardly get over the ground as rapidly, or endure fatigue as long, as the lean lathy Frenchman, who has never known the liberal rations and fat diet the other is accustomed to. When a certain period of active service and long marches has given the English soldier his campaigning legs, he must still have his regular grog, or he soon flags, if he does not grumble and become insubordinate. Rations were bad, and hard to be got, on the retreat from Burgos. Then, Mr Grattan tells us, the superior marching qualities of the Irish were manifest. There had been very little beef-steak and bacon expended in their bringing up; scanty fare was nothing new to them, and by no means affected their gaiety and good-humour. And when shoes were scarce, what cared they? The stones in Connaught are not a bit softer than those in Spain; and nine-tenths of the boys had trotted about, from infancy upwards, with "divel a brogue, save the one on their tongues." Some of the English regiments—the Forty-fifth for instance, chiefly composed of Nottingham weavers—would, under ordinary circumstances, march as well as any Irishman of them all: "But if it came to a hard tug, and that we had neither rations nor shoes, then, indeed, the Connaught Rangers would be in their element, and out-march almost any battalion in the service." On the retreat from Burgos to Portugal, they gave proof of their toughness and endurance; for whilst other regiments were decimated by fatigue and sickness, the Eighty-eighth scarcely lost a man, except by the enemy's fire. It was a time when the good qualities of all were severely tested. The movement began in a most unfavourable season. The roads were nearly impassable from heavy rains, and for days together there was not a dry jacket in the army. At night they lay in the open country, often in a swamp, without a tent to shelter them; the baggage was detached, and they never saw it till they reached Ciudad Rodrigo. It was share and share alike amongst men and officers, and many of the latter were mere striplings, who had but lately left the comforts of their English homes. When they halted from their weary day's march, the ill-conditioned beasts collected for rations had to be slaughtered; sometimes they came too late to be of any use, or the camp-kettles did not arrive in time to cook them; and the famished soldiers had to set out again, with a few pieces of dry biscuit rattling in their neglected stomachs, and driven to satisfy the cravings of hunger with the acorns that strewed the forests. There was little money afloat, for pay was four months in arrear, but millions would have been useless where there was nothing to buy. The country was deserted; every where the inhabitants fled on the approach of the two armies. Disease was the natural consequence of so many privations; ague and dysentery undermined the men's strength, and many poor fellows, unable to proceed, were left upon the road. Horses died by hundreds, and those which held out were for the most part sore-backed, one of the greatest calamities that can happen to cavalry and artillery on the march. Fortunately Soult, who, with ninety thousand men, followed the harassed army, had some experience of British troops. And what he had seen of them, especially at Albuera and on the Corunna retreat, had inspired him with a salutary respect for their prowess. They might retreat, but he knew what they could and would do when driven to stand at bay. And therefore, although Wellington was by no means averse to fight, and actually offered his antagonist battle on the very ground where, four months previously, that of Salamanca had occurred, the wary Duke of Dalmatia declined the contest. He played a safe game: without risking a defeat by a general action, or attempting to drive the British before him with the bayonet, he hovered about their rear, disquieted them by a flank movement of part of his force, and had the satisfaction of knowing that their loss by the casualties and fatigues of the march and inclemency of the weather, was as great as it would probably have been had he engaged them. For, besides those who perished on the road, when the army got into winter quarters, a vast number of men and officers went into hospital, and months elapsed before the troops were fully reorganised and fit for the field. At a day's march from Ciudad Rodrigo, Wellington's rear-guard had a smart skirmish, and then Soult desisted from his pursuit, and the Anglo-Portuguese were allowed to proceed without further molestation. Although disastrous, and in some respects ill managed, the retreat was in no way disgraceful. The French, very superior in numbers, had, whenever they pressed forward, been bravely met, and invariably repulsed.

With this retreat, Mr Grattan's Peninsular campaigns closed. He returned to Ireland, and in the summer of 1814, embarked for Canada. He rather refers to, than records the service he saw there; taking occasion, however, for a strong censure on Sir George Prevost, who, after forcing our ill-appointed fleet on Lake Champlain into action, refused to allow Brisbane and his brigade of "Peninsulars" to take the fort of Platsburgh, an enterprise easy of achievement, and which would have placed the captured ships, and the victorious but disabled American flotilla, at the mercy of the British. But we have not space to follow the Ranger across the Atlantic, nor is it essential so to do; for, although he gives some amusing sketches of Canada and the Canadians, the earlier portion of his book is by far the most interesting, and certainly the most carefully written. We could almost quarrel with him for defacing his second volume with perpetual and not very successful attempts at wit. We have rarely met with more outrageous specimens of punning run mad, than are to be found in its pages. Barring that fault, we have nothing but what is favourable to say of the book. Its tone is manly, and soldier-like, and it is creditable both to the writer and to the service, by which, during the last thirty years, our stores of military and historical literature have been so largely and agreeably increased.

LORD SIDMOUTH'S LIFE AND TIME.[4 - The Life and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Henry Addington, First Viscount Sidmouth. By the Honourable George Pellew, D.D., Dean of Norwich. 3 vols. J. Murray.]

To read a memoir of the late Lord Sidmouth, is like taking a walk through Westminster Abbey. All the literature, is inscriptions; all the figures are monumental; and all the names are those of men whose characters and distinctions have been echoing in our ears since we had the power to understand national renown. The period between 1798, when the subject of this memoir made his first step in parliamentary life as Speaker, and 1815, when the close of the war so triumphantly finished the long struggle between liberty and jacobinism, was beyond all comparison the most memorable portion of British history.

In this estimate, we fully acknowledge the imperishable fame of Marlborough in the field, and the high ability of Bolingbroke in the senate. The gallantry of Wolfe still throws its lustre over the concluding years of the second George; and the brilliant declamation of Chatham will exact the tribute due to daring thought, and classic language, so long as oratory is honoured among men. But the age which followed was an age of realities, stern, stirring, and fearful. There was scarcely a trial of national fortitude, or national Vigour, through which the sinews of England were not then forced to give proof of their highest power of endurance. All was a struggle of the elements; in which every shroud and tackle of the royal ship of England was strained; and the tempest lasted through nearly a quarter of a century. England, the defender of all, was the sufferer for all. Every principle of her financial prosperity, every material of her military prowess, every branch of her constitutional system, every capacity of her political existence, her Church, her State, and her Legislature, were successively compelled into the most perilous yet most powerful display; and the close of the most furious hostility which Europe had ever seen, only exhibited in a loftier point of view the victorious strength which principle confers upon a people.

Compared with this tremendous scene, the political conflicts of the preceding age were a battle on the stage, compared with the terrors of the field. The spectators came to enjoy a Spectacle, and sit tranquilly admiring the brilliancy of the caparisons and the dexterity of the charge; but perfectly convinced that all would end without harm to the champions, and that the fall of the curtain would extinguish the war. But, in the trials of the later time, there were moments when we seemed to be throwing our last stake; when the trumpets of Europe, leagued against us, seemed to be less challenging us to the field, than preceding us to the tomb; and when the last hope of the wise and good might be, to give the last manifestation of a life of patriotic virtue.

In language like this, we are not abasing the national courage. We are paying the fullest homage to the substantial claims of the English heart. It is only by the severest national struggles that the superiority of national powers can be developed; and without doubting the qualities of the Marlboroughs and Chathams—or even without doubting, that if thrown into the battle of the last fifty years, they would have exhibited the same intellectual stature and powerful adroitness which distinguished their actual displays—yet they wanted the strong necessities of a time like ours, to place them on a similar height of renown. Still their time continues in admirable study. But it is like the story of the Volscian and Samnite combats, read in the day when the consul, flying through the streets of Rome, brought the news of Cannæ.

The wars and politics of the eighteenth century were the manœuvres of a garde du corps, and the intrigues of a boudoir. Our fathers saw no nation of thirty millions rushing to the field; frantic with the passion for overthrow, no Napoleon thundering at the head of vassal Europe against England; no conspiracy of peoples against thrones; no train of crouching sovereignties, half in terror and half in servility, ready to do the wildest will of the wildest despot of the world; no army of five hundred thousand men ready to spring upon our shores, and turning off only to the overthrow of empires. All was on a smaller scale; the passions feebler, the means narrower, the objects more trivial, the triumphs more temporary, the catastrophe more powerless, and the glory more vanishing.

All has since subsided; and the mind of man is turned to efforts in directions totally new. All now is the rigid struggle with the physical difficulties of society. The grand problems are, how to level the mountain, and to drain the sea: or, if we must leave the Alps to be still the throne of the thunder, and suffer even the Zuyder-zee to roll its sullen waves over its incorrigible shallows; yet to tunnel the mountain and pass the sea with a rapidity, which makes us regardless of the interposition of obstacles that once stopped the march of armies, and made the impregnable fortresses of kingdoms. But the still severer trials of human intelligence are, how to clothe, feed, educate, and discipline the millions which every passing year pours into the world. The mind may well be bewildered with a prospect so vast, so vivid, and yet so perplexing. Every man sees that old things are done away, that physical force is resuming its primitive power over the world, and that we are approaching a time when Mechanism will have the control of nature, and Multitude the command of society.

There are many families in England which, without any change of circumstances, without any increase of fortune, or any discoverable vicissitudes, have existed for centuries, in possession of the same property, generally a small one, and handed down from father to son as if by a law of nature. The family of Lord Sidmouth is found to have held the proprietorship of the small estate of Fringford, in Oxfordshire, from the year 1600, and to have had a residence in Bannebury about a century and a half before;—the first descendant of this quiet race who became known beyond the churchyard where "his village fathers sleep," being Dr Addington, who died in 1799. Genealogies like those give a striking view of the general security of landed possession, which the habits of national integrity, and the influence of law, must alone have effected, during the turbulent times which so often changed the succession to the throne of England.

Dr Addington, who had been educated at Winchester school, and Trinity College, Oxford, having adopted medicine as his profession, commenced his practice at Reading, where he married the daughter of the Rev. Dr Niley, head-master of the grammar-school. The well-known trial of the wretched parricide, Miss Blandy, for poisoning, in which he was a principal witness, brought him into considerable notice; and probably on the strength of this notice, he removed to London, and took a house in Bedford Row, where the late Lord Sidmouth, his fourth child, but eldest son, was born. He next removed to Clifford Street, a more fashionable quarter, which brought him into intercourse with many persons of distinction. Among these were Louth, Bishop of London, the Duke of Montagu, Earl Rivers, and, first of the first, the great Earl of Chatham. With this distinguished man, Dr Addington seems to have been on terms of familiar friendship, as the following extracts show:—Chatham writes from Burton Pynsent, in 1771.

"All your friends here, the flock of your care, are truly sensible of the kind attentions of the good shepherd. My last fit of the gout left me as it had visited me, very kindly. I am many hours every day in the field, and, as I live like a farmer abroad, I return home and eat like one. * *

"Ale goes on admirably, and agrees perfectly. My reverence for it, too, is increased, having just read in the manners of our remotest Celtic ancestors much of its antiquity and invigorating qualities. The boys all long for ale, seeing papa drink it, but we do not try such an experiment. Such is the force of example, that I find I must watch myself in all I do, for fear of misleading. If your friend William saw me smoke, he would certainly call for a pipe."

Lord Chatham died May 11th, 1788, which event was thus notified by Dr Addington to his son Henry.

"You will be grieved to hear that Lord Chatham is no more. It pleased Providence to take him away this morning, as if it were in mercy that he might not be a spectator of the total ruin of a country which he was not permitted to save."

The doctor was a croaker, as was the fashion of the time, with all who pretended to peculiar political sagacity. Of course the family physician of the ex-minister was in duty bound to echo the ex-minister's discontent. It is clear that, whatever professional gifts the doctor inherited from Apollo, he did not share the gift of prophecy. The doctor, after realising enough by his profession to purchase an estate in Devonshire, retired to Reading, where, in 1790, he died, having had, in the year before, the enviable gratification of seeing his son elected to the Speakership of the House of Commons.

Henry Viscount Sidmouth was born in 1757, on the 30th of May. At the age of five years, he was placed under the care of the Rev. William Gilpin, author of the Essays on the Picturesque, who for many years kept a school at Cheam, in Surrey.

Lord Sidmouth had but one brother, Hiley, who subsequently figured so often in the caustic rhymes of Canning, and who, under his brother's auspices, was successively secretary of the treasury, paymaster of the forces, and under-secretary of state. In his twelfth year, Henry, followed by Hiley, was sent to Winchester, then under the government of the well-known Dr Joseph Wharton, with George Isaac Huntingford as one of the assistants.

The author of the biography gives Huntingford credit for the singular degree of attachment exhibited in his occasional letters to his pupil. It certainly seems singular; when we know the slenderness, if not sternness of the connexion generally subsisting between the teachers at a great English seminary, and the pupils. In one of those epistles Huntingford says to this boy of fifteen.

"For my own part, to you I lay open my whole heart without reserve. I divest myself of the little superiority which age may have given me. With you I can enter into conversation with all the familiarity of an intimate companion. The few hours of intercourse which we thus enjoy with each other give more relief to my wearied body and mind than any other amusement on earth. What I am to do when you leave school, a melancholy thought, I cannot foresee. May the evil hour be postponed as late as possible. Yet let me add, whenever it shall be most for your advantage to leave me, I will not doubt to sacrifice my own peace and comfort for your interest. I love myself, but you better."

We hope that this style is not much in fashion in our public schools. Dean Pellew tells us that numerous letters of this kind were written by this tutor to his pupil in after life, and adds with a ludicrous solemnity, "It will readily be imagined how efficacious they must have proved, in forming the character of the future statesman, and erecting Spartan and Roman virtues on the noble foundation of Christianity."

For our part, we know not what to make of such communications: they seem to us intolerably silly, and we think ought not to have been published. In later life, their writer was made Bishop of Hereford and Warden of Winchester. He seems to have been a fellow of foresight!

In 1773, Henry and Hiley were both removed from Winchester, and put under the tuition of Dr Goodenough, who took private pupils at Ealing, and who was afterwards Bishop of Carlisle. In the next year, Henry entered as commoner in Brazen-Nose College under the tuition of Radcliffe, then a tutor of some celebrity. In this college he became acquainted with Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester, and William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell. He took his degree in 1778, and in this year had the misfortune to lose his mother, who seems to have been an amiable and sensible person. In the next year, he obtained the Chancellor's prize for an English essay on "the affinity between painting and writing in point of composition;" and at the recital of this essay in the theatre he first became acquainted with Lord Mornington, afterwards Marquis Wellesley, an intimacy which lasted for sixty-two years. He now adopted law as his profession, took chambers in Paper Buildings, and kept his terms regularly at Lincoln's Inn. In 1781, he married Ursula Mary, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Leonard Hammond, Esq. of Cheam, in Surrey, and took a house in Southampton Street, Bloomsbury, where he determined to follow the profession of the law. But this determination was speedily over-ruled by the success of the celebrated son of Chatham. On the 26th of February, 1781, William Pitt, then only in his twenty-second year, made his first speech in the House of Commons, in support of Burke's bill for the regulation of the civil list. This epoch in parliamentary annals is noticed in a brief letter from Dr Goodenough to Pitt's early tutor, Wilson, who sent it to Mr Addington, among whose papers it was found:—

"Dear Sir,—I cannot resist the natural impulse of giving pleasure, by telling you that the famous William Pitt, who made so capital a figure in the last reign, is happily restored to his country. He made his first public re-appearance in the senate last night. All the old members recognised him instantly, and most of the young ones said he appeared the very man they had so often heard described: the language, the manner, the gesture, the action were the same; and there wanted only a few wrinkles in the face, and some marks of age, to identify the absolute person of the late Earl of Chatham."

Addington, at this period, had a good deal of intercourse with Pitt, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of twenty-three, and whose brilliant success in parliament evidently stimulated his friend to political pursuits. But the infamous coalition broke in, and Pitt was dismissed from the ministry. Its existence, however, was brief: it not merely fell, but was crushed amidst a universal uproar of national scorn; and Pitt, not yet twenty-five, was appointed prime minister. In the course of the month, an interview took place between Pitt and Addington, which gave his friends strong hopes of seeing him in immediate office. His friend Bragge thus writes to him:

"I give you joy of the effects of the interview of last Sunday, of which I am impatient to hear the particulars. Secretary, either official or confidential, I should wish you, and indeed all the boards are already filled."

Still, he remained unappointed, though his intimacy with the minister grew more confidential from day to day. Pitt was at this time engaged in a desperate struggle with the Opposition, who, ruined as they were in character, yet retained an overwhelming majority in parliament. On this occasion, the young statesman gave perhaps the most triumphant evidence of his remarkable sagacity. Every one was astonished, that he had not at once dissolved a parliament which it seemed impossible for him either to convince or conquer. But, with the House of Lords strongly disposed towards him, and the King for his firm friend, Pitt fought the House night after night, until he found the national feeling wholly on his side. Then, on the 25th of March, 1784, he dissolved the parliament, and by that act extinguished the whole power of Whiggism for twenty years. There never was a defeat more ruinous; more than a hundred and sixty members, who had generally been of the Foxite party, were driven ignominiously from their seats, and the party was thenceforth condemned to linger in an opposition equally bitter, fruitless, and unpopular. In the new parliament, Addington was returned for the borough of Devizes in place of Sutton, his brother-in-law, who, being advanced in life, made over his interest to his young relative. On this occasion, he received a letter from his old master, Joseph Wharton:—

"I cannot possibly forbear expressing to you the sincere pleasure I feel, in giving you joy of being elected into a parliament that I hope and trust will save this country from destruction, by crushing the most shameful and the most pernicious coalition that I think ever disgraced the annals of any kingdom, ancient or modern. I am, dear sir, with true regard, yours, &c.—Joseph Wharton."

There are few more remarkable instances of contrasted character and circumstance than Addington's ultimate rise to power. The anecdote is mentioned, that on one occasion, when they were riding together to Holl Wood, then Mr Pitt's seat near Bromley in Kent, that on Pitt's urging him to follow up politics with vigour, and the latter alleging in excuse the distaste and disqualification for public life created by early habits and natural disposition, Pitt burst forth in the following quotation from Waller:—

"The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build
Her humble nest, lies silent in the field:
But should the promise of a brighter day,