shillings a dozen for such recruits, or a serjeant who would be at the expence of a bowl of punch for fourscore of them?-The French and their partizans did not fail to make all due use of this most improper and imprudent conduct; but the Portugueze were too well acquainted with the real character and feelings of this nation towards them, to have their faith in British friendship shaken by the gross misrepresentations of a virulent party: and they knew, perhaps, that statesmen who take part against the government, and against the allies of their country, and writers who pervert to the most wicked and perilous purposes the freedom of the press, are the concomitant evils of a free constitution like ours, under which both public and private libellers breed as naturally, as vermin in a genial climate.

This contemptuous opinion of the Portugueze must have originated more in party spirit than in ignorance; for even if the persons who advanced it could be supposed to be utterly unacquainted with the history of that people, and with the nature of man, they must have seen, if they were capable of understanding what they saw, in the practice of the French, that the men of any country will make good soldiers under proper discipline. The Italians, who, under the gross mismanagement of Austria, or of their own princes, ran like sheep before the French, form at this time a portion of the French army, in every respect equal to their former conquerors. And that the Portugueze might soon be disciplined, had been proved by Sir Robert Wilson, to whom a vote of thanks was moved during this session, for the essential service which he had rendered with his legion, and refused only upon the

ground that the thanks of parliament were never voted but for great victories; but the merits of Sir Robert and his legion were admitted in the clearest and strongest terms. It is greatly to be regretted, that a man who had given such proofs of ability and enterprize, should have remained unemployed. The work which he had so well begun, was now carried into effect by Marshal Beresford upon a great scale. The Portugueze army, which, under a system of complicated abuses, had been reduced to such degradation, that officers have been seen asking charity in the streets of Lisbon, was immediately reformed, as far as the power of the commander-in-chief extended, in all its branches. The offi cers and non-commissioned officers were in the habit of kicking and striking the soldiers; wherever British officers were appointed to command regiments, this was immediately forbidden, and their example, with the decided opinion of Marshal Beresford, has nearly, or altogether, put a stop to the disgraceful practice. In England, we hear of the barbarity of our martial laws, and the stigma ought to be taken away; in Portugal, the ordinary punishment, though less disgraceful and less severe than the abominable system of flogging, proved more frequently fatal; it consisted in striking the soldier on the back, across the shoulders, with the broad side of a sword. The number of strokes, or pancadas, never exceeded fifty; but the sufferers have not unfrequently been known to drop down dead immediately after receiving thirty, from a rupture of the aorta. Marshal Beresford ordered a small cane to be used instead of the sword; and thus, without altering the national method of punishment, rendered it no longer dangerous.

There were other evils which were beyond the reach of Marshal Beresford's power, and which could only be remedied by a restoration of the old constitution of Portugal, and the reforms which would necessarily follow that most desirable event. When the troops of the line are recruited, it is neither done by ballot nor by bounty. A certain number are demanded from each district; the captain of that district picks all whom he chuses, sends them to prison till he has col. lected the whole number, then marches them to join their regiment. The Marshal introduced the easy improvement of sending them to a recruiting depot, to be drilled before they joined; but unluckily he fixed upon the peninsula of Peniche, a swampy and unwholesome spot, which proved fatal to many, acting with double effect upon the depressed, half-starved, and ill-treated peasants, who were sent there. The depot was afterwards removed to Mafra, a fine healthy situation; "but," says a British physician who served with this army, and to whom the public are indebted for an account of its re-organization, “unless the recruits undergo a strict medical examination on their being first levied, the depot will never be healthy, nor will it be possible to keep the army effective; the sick, the lame, and the lazy, are all crowded into the same dungeon when recruited by the Capitam Mor; contagion is generated, and very often those, and those alone, who were fit for the service, are carried off by disease."*

Over the method of levying troops Marshal Beresford had no controul, nor is it likely that any mitigation of this cruel grievance will be effected, till Portugal, like Spain, sees the re

establishment of its cortes. The hospitals, which, according to Dr Halliday, were infinitely more destructive to the army than the sword of the enemy, and would have destroyed it much faster than it could have been recruited, were greatly improved under a British inspector, though the government would not permit his regulations to be carried into effect to their full extent. Still a great and material improvement was accomplished. The commissariat was so conducted, as to be at once inefficient for the army, and oppressive for the people. A board of administration at Lisbon has its intendants in every province, and its factor in every town. Government contracts for provisions and forage, at fixed prices, with the board, and the board directs its factors to purchase what may be requi red for the troops on the spot. Payment is made by bills upon the board, which in the best times were seldom taken up till twelve months after they became due, and in the present state of things were considered as worth nothing. The farmer, therefore, naturally concealed his grain; it was very seldom that magazines were formed, or any provision made against scarcity; and what the farmer could not or would not sell at the disadvantageous rate which the factors offered, was usually taken, when it could be found, by force. Marshal Beresford got commissaries appointed to the different brigades, but he could not get money for them, and therefore they were of little use. To reform the civil establishments of the army, was almost as difficult as it would have been to reform the government; the utmost exertions of Marshal Beresford, aided as they were

of Castille, and probably draw after it the loss of the Portugueze fortress of Almeida.

Before the French began the siege, they thought it necessary to obtain complete possession of Leon, that their communication might be open with Valladolid. They had been driven from Astorga, in the September of the preceding year, by D. Josef Maria Santocildes, colonel of the provincial regiment of Santiago, who remained as governor there. The city was surrounded with walls, which gave it an appearance of antiquity, not of strength. They had been erected many centuries ago, and were so massy, and at the same time considered as of so little consequence for purposcs of defence, that the poor were permitted to dig holes in them which served for habitations. The garrison consisted of about 3000 men, of whom from 5 to 600 were on the hospital list. Some attempts had been made to render the city defensible, according to the system of modern warfare, by the enemy, after Buonaparte entered it in pursuit of Sir J. Moore; and when the Spaniards recovered it, they added to these works. Still the fortifications were such, that though the French might deem them sufficient against an armed peasantry, or a guerilla party, it was never expected that any resistance would be made against a regular force. After the French had over-run Andalusia, and when they were proclaiming, that the brigands had been put to the sword, and the Napoleonic throne established in Cadiz, for this falsehood was in such phrase asserted in their Spanish gazettes, Loison, whose head-quarters were at Baneza, the nearest town, wrote to the governor, telling him, that King Joseph had entered Seville amid the acclamations of all the in

habitants; that Andalusia had submitted; the junta Feb. 16. was dissolved; and almost all the people of Spain, awakened now to a sense of their true interest, had had recourse to the clemency of their sovereign, who received them like a father. He urged Santocildes to imitate so good an example, and appoint a place where they might meet and confer upon such terms as would not fail to persuade him to this wise and honourable course. Santocildes replied, that he knew his duty, and should fulfil it.

On the 21st of March, Junot invested Astorga with about 12,000 men, of whom about a tenth part were cavalry, by means of which he became completely master of the open country. The vigorous measures of Santocildes obstructed his operations so much, that a month elapsed before he opened his batteries. They began on three sides at once, at day-break on the 20th of April, and soon effected a breach on the north, by the Puerta de Hierro; but immediately behind the breach the Spaniards pulled down a house, the foundations of which served as a formidable trench; they kept up their fire during the night, and at eleven the following morning Junot once more summoned the governor to surrender, declaring that, if he held out two hours longer, the city should be stormed, and the gar rison put to the sword. The governor returned a becoming answer; the batteries then renewed their fire; the bombardment was recommenced; the cathedral was set on fire, with many other houses, and a whole street in the suburbs; and the French, think. ing to profit by the confusion, assaulted the breach: 2000 men were appointed to this service; great part of them perished before they could