for his management of this battle, and for his fighting it at all, it was certainly not by his considerate and generousminded commander-in-chief. Wellington praised Beresford for having raised the siege of Badajoz, without the loss of ordnance or stores of any description; and for having collected the troops under his command, and formed his junction with Blake and Castaños skilfully and promptly; and he did not hesitate to call the battle of Albuera a signal victory, gained by Beresford and his British officers and soldiers, in the most gallant manner. He joined to his admiration of it, his cordial concurrence in the favourable reports made by Beresford of the good conduct of all. He attributed the great sacrifices which the battle had cost us, and the unmolested condition of the French after they had crossed the river, to the right cause: "It was owing to the Spaniards, who could not be moved."

"I should," says his lordship, "feel no anxiety about the result of any of our operations, if the Spaniards were as well disciplined as the soldiers of that nation are brave, and if they were at all moveable; but this is, I fear, beyond hope! All our losses have been caused by this defect. At Talavera the enemy would have been destroyed, if we could have moved the Spaniards. At Albuera the natural thing would have been to support the Spaniards on the right with the Spaniards who were next to them; but any movement of that body would have created an inextricable confusion, and it was necessary to support the right solely with British, and thus the great loss fell upon our troops. In the same way, I suspect, the difficulty and danger of moving the Spanish troops was the cause that General Lapeña did not support General Graham at Barrosa."*

After this murderous conflict, Beresford improved his position, and planted in defiance, along the crest of the hill, some hundreds of spears and flags taken from the Polish lancers, who had paid dearly for their barbarity. On the morrow, the 17th of May, the two armies remained in their respective positions; not a single movement being hazarded by Soult. On the 18th, Kemmis's brigade of 1,500 English came up and joined Beresford on the ridge of Albuera, and * Colonel Gurwood, Wellington Despatches. + Southey, Hist. of the Peninsular War.

then, late at night, the French marshal began to move off his baggage, and some of his wounded, and to prepare for his retreat upon Seville, which he commenced in the morning, leaving behind him, to the generosity and humanity of the English, 800 soldiers severely wounded. On the very next day, Lord Wellington reached Albuera, with two fresh divisions, and gave directions to resume immediately the siege of Badajoz. Owing to our usual deficiency in cavalry, Soult's retreat was not so much molested as it ought to have been; nevertheless, he lost some hundreds of men, and our weak horse defeated his strong rear-guard of cavalry at Usagre. For his great enterprise, the French marshal had almost stripped Andalusia of French troops, yet he now returned to Seville with a curtailed army and a diminished reputation.*

Trenches were opened before Badajoz, but Wellington was obliged to raise the siege by the approach of Marshal Marmont, who had succeeded Massena, and who was joining his forces to those of Soult and Drouet. His lordship fell back, and took up a position near Campo Mayor, along the frontiers of Portugal. Although the French brought together from 60,000 to 70,000 foot and 8,000 horse, and although Wellington, counting Portuguese and some Spaniards, did not muster more than 56,000, of whom only 3,500 were horse, the French marshals would not venture to attack him. After a time, Marmont separated from Soult, and marched back to Salamanca. This rendered indispensable a corresponding movement to the northward on the part of Lord Wellington; and, leaving General Hill with one British division and the Portuguese in the south, his lordship with the rest of the army marched to his old line of the Agueda, and established himself there. Marmont, having received a large reinforcement from France, moved round upon the Agueda, and by his superiority of numbers, especially in cavalry, obliged Wellington, after a partial engagement at El Bodon, to withdraw his army to his old position, a little in the rear, on the Coa. This movement in the face of an enemy numerically so superior, was beautifully executed. Marmont did not venture to press upon the line of the Coa.

* Marshal Beresford's Despatch to Lord Wellington.

BARROSA.

A. D. 1811. March 5.

THIS affair, however honourable to British valour, was little more than a brilliant episode in the war of 1811. As will be seen by the date, it was anterior to the battles of Fuentes de Onoro and Albuera.

In order to defend Cadiz, we had thrown good English troops, and some disciplined Portuguese, into the place, and stationed a strong squadron in the bay. But for this assistance, Soult must have taken this important place at the beginning of the year.

While Marshal Soult was engaged in Estremadura, and Marshal Victor in the siege of Cadiz, General Graham (afterwards the veteran and venerable Lord Lynedoch) issued from Cadiz with the greater part of the British and Portuguese garrison, and embarked, with the intention of landing higher up the Andalusian coast, and of throwing himself upon the rear of Victor and his French blockading army, which was reduced, by the draughts which Soult had been forced to make upon it, to some 16,000 men.

The British and Portuguese, about 4,000 strong, got to sea, for their short voyage, on the 21st of February. Graham had intended to land somewhere between Cape Trafalgar and Cape de Plata, on the Atlantic, or at the old and still essentially Moorish town of Tarifa, on the Straits of Gibraltar; but, finding it impracticable to effect a landing, either from the ocean or in the Straits, he went farther off, passed through the narrow Straits altogether, and, entering the Bay of Gibraltar, landed at Algeciras, which town, with its Moorish aqueduct, faces the impregnable rock.

From Algeciras, Graham had to go back by land to Tarifa. The road between these two old towns, running over mountains, and along the edge of precipices, is about as bad as

any in Europe-difficult in the winter season even to the traveller who has no other encumbrance than a light portmanteau. As it was impassable for wheeled carriages of any description, Graham sent his artillery stores and provisions back to Tarifa by sea; and they were conveyed in boats, and safely landed by our seamen in spite of wind and weather.

A Spanish force, 7,000 strong, under the command of General Lapeña, came into the Straits to co-operate with the English and Portuguese; and, after being thrice driven back, the Spaniards reached Tarifa, and disembarked on the 27th of February. In order to remove all feeling of jealousy on the part of the Spaniards, General Graham consented to yield the superior command to Lapeña, and to serve under him during this expedition. But, with one or two exceptions, it had never been found possible for a British commander and British troops to agree with a Spanish general and Spanish troops: differences of opinion arose immediately, misunderstanding of intention followed; and these evil influences appear to have increased during the march from Tarifa to the neighbourhood of the French positions.

The roads continued to be execrably bad. After the mountains (high off-shoots from the Sierra de Ronda) had been crossed, the army had to traverse a spacious plain, which, in many parts, may be compared to the Pontine marshes, for it is intersected with innumerable streams running in all directions; it has an immense mere-called the Lake of Junda-a lake at this time of the year, but in summer, for the most part, a muddy, slimy, pestiferous bog, across which a high road runs on an artificial causeway.

General Graham had good claim to both epithets, veteran and venerable, even at this period. In 1811, he was in the sixty-first year of his age. Yet, in the battle of Barrosa, and in those dreadful marches which preceded it, he displayed all the activity, all the spirit and energy, of youth, facing every hazard, and undergoing every fatigue. In crossing the Lake of Junda, he dismounted from his horse, to guide and encourage the infantry soldiers; and he traversed the whole of the inundated causeway on foot, with the water to his waist, and at times almost to his chin.

On either side of the causeway were deep bogs and pools, in which the soldiers would have perished, if they had missed

their footing, or deviated a little from the road. Even the muleteers and peasantry of that part of the country said it was impossible to get an army across. But the feat was achieved, and without any disaster.

In the plain, beyond the lake, at Vega, about midway between Tarifa and the Bay of Cadiz, the French had an outpost of infantry and cavalry; and a little further on, on the road to Medina Sidonia, they had a small fort. Lapeña intended to surprise both these posts; but his measures were so ill taken that there was no surprise at all. The posts were, however, carried by fighting; and at the fort the French lost sixty or seventy men in killed, wounded, and prisoners, and abandoned their two cannons and all their stores.

At this point, Lapeña was joined by 1,600 men, from the so-called army of St. Roque. The whole allied force now amounted to 11,200 foot, and 800 horse; but, instead of being kept united, it was divided into three or four columns, which pursued different lines of road, or marched at considerable distances from each other. They had twenty-four pieces of artillery; but this good train was divided, like the rest of the. force.

Victor, who was in command of the French army in front of Cadiz, was alarmed at the approach of the enemy on his rear; but this approach was far from being so rapid as it might have been, even after making every allowance for the difficulties of the road; and the French general appears to have had timely notice of the whole plan, and of every movement of the allies. He reinforced General Cassagne, who occupied the town of Medina Sidonia; and he took post himself, with ten battalions, between Medina Sidonia and Chiclana. As Victor made this movement, the Spanish campmarshal, de Zayas, quitted the Isle of Leon, threw a body of troops over the Santi Petri, and menaced the extreme left of the French lines; and, although vigorously attacked by the French General Villatte, de Zayas kept his ground manfully, repulsing his assailants with loss.

Upon this, Victor marched back towards Chiclana, and ordered Cassagne to joinhim; for he now expected nothing less than that the allied army, united and led on by Lapeña, would make a concentrated and vigorous attack on the left of his positions, break through his lines, give the hand to de Zayas,