1807, leaving behind him a high and well merited reputation, together with most affectionate remembrances of his social qualities. He died on the 21st of February, 1808, in the 64th year of his age, just six months before the death of his beloved and affectionate son and gallant companion in arms, Colonel George Lake, who, after sharing in the toils and dangers of his father's Indian campaigns, fell in Portugal.*

It was on the Indian field that General Wellesley and many of our best officers acquired that practice and skill which, after a brief lapse of time, enabled them to contend with such brilliant success against the marshals and generals of France; and, on this account, all that relates to our wars in the East is highly interesting and important.

See Battle of Roliça.

PENINSULAR WAR.

A. D. 1808-1813.

HAVING trepanned the royal family of Spain, Napoleon Bonaparte, by fraud and by force of arms, had thrust his elder brother Joseph on the throne of that country. Spain was overrun by large French armies, her chief fortresses were in the hands of the intruders, and an unnational faction, inconsiderable neither in number nor in influence, played into the hands of the Emperor of the French and his brother.

Not content with the possession of Spain, Bonaparte must needs extend his conquests. He was, from the first, determined to possess the whole of the Iberian Peninsula, and this mainly in order to shut out the English from every port on the continent of Europe. Thus the stream of invasion was poured from Spain into Portugal, the fortresses of our old ally were taken, and Junot, with a French army, occupied Lisbon, the capital.

Popular insurrections, at first excited by the insolence and rapacity of the invaders, soon broke out both in Spain and Portugal; and the armed bands were rapidly swelled by atrocious acts of cruelty and wholesale massacres, perpetrated by Junot and other French commanders. In Spain the patriots had even formed considerable armies, not destitute of bravery, but badly disciplined and officered, and almost invariably directed by incompetent commanders. In Portugal, the patriots had driven the French out of Oporto, had set up a provisional government, and had formed a small army, at the head of which was General Freire.

"At this time, also, that system of warfare (the guerilla) began, which soon extended through Spain, and occasioned greater losses to the French than they suffered in all their pitched battles. The first adventurers attracted notice by

collecting stragglers from their own dispersed armies, deserters from the enemy, and men who, made desperate by the ruin of their private affairs in the general wreck, were ready for any service in which they could at the same time gratify their just vengeance, and find subsistence."* These guerillas counted for far more than the regular troops of Spain. At an early period of the war, the docile Portuguese submitted to be drilled, disciplined, and officered by British officers; and, under this arrangement, they very soon became excellent light troops, and not unworthy of a companionship with the British infantry. The Spaniards would not submit to the same salutary system, and thus they remained, even at the close of the war, as troops that could be but little depended upon in the field of battle. When we entered into the war for the defence of the liberties of the Peninsula, the defects of these Spanish armies, and the little trust to be put in any combinations or arrangements with Spanish juntas and Spanish generals, were not sufficiently known; and hence the failure of the gallant General Sir John Moore, and numerous other disappointments and vexations.

The command of our little army was entrusted to General (then Sir Arthur) Wellesley, whose excellent training in India has been previously noticed.

When this illustrious soldier and statesman took the field in Portugal, the same belief in the invincibility of the French prevailed all over the continent of Europe, as obtained when Marlborough first entered the lists as commander-inchief in the Netherlands. Perhaps the French themselves were still more confident now than in the days of Louis XIV. They boasted that they had invariably beaten the armies of Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Spain; and that they had come off victorious in every important action in which they had been engaged during the preceding fifteen years: and, although very considerable deductions might have been made from their roll of victoires et conquétes,' there was no denying or concealing that they had gained a long series of successes, and had overrun nearly the whole face of Europe. They were veteran soldiers; they were, for the most part, men born and bred in the camp. Sir Arthur Wellesley's forces consisted in good part of recruits, or young soldiers * Southey, Hist. of Peninsular War,

who had seen very little service. With despotic power and with the conscription, there seemed no limits to Bonaparte's means of reinforcing his army. Sir Arthur, on his side, was limited, and even stinted, in this particular.

ROLIÇA,

WELLINGTON'S FIRST BATTLE IN THE PENINSULA.

A. D. 1808. August 17.

THE disembarkation of our troops in Portugal, took place near the little fort of Figueras, taken from the French in the early part of the insurrection by one Zagalo, a student in the university of Coimbra. Here the English first landed upon a service, the duration and the issue of which no one living, however sagacious, could have at all anticipated. The landing began on the 1st of August; but it was not completed till the 5th.

"The united forces amounted to 12,300 men. It was the desire of General Freire, who commanded all the Portuguese then in arms, that Sir Arthur should abandon the coast, march up into the heart of Beira, and open an offensive campaign; and he promised large supplies of provision. Sir Arthur declined this measure. He gave Freire 5,000 stand of arms, and the necessary ammunition for his troops, which did not exceed 6,000 of all arms effective; and these by no means in a state to give real assistance in any severe trial. Sir Arthur, however, though resolute not to abandon the line of communication which he had chosen, nor to move to any great distance from his ships, did, at the earnest desire of Freire, to save, according to his report, a magazine of provisions collected for the British, march upon Leria. The English advanced guard moved from their ground upon the Mondego on the 9th of August, and was followed on the 10th by the main body of the army. Upon this wide theatre of fierce and sanguinary warfare, was now first heard the careless whistle, and the cheerful laughter of the English soldier."* The French forces at this time in Portugal, consisted of * Major M. Sherer, Military Memoirs of the Duke of Wellington.