quick submission, or behold the punishment that awaits you! Every village or town in which the people have taken up arms against my army, and the inhabitants of which have fired upon my troops, shall be delivered up to pillage, and entirely destroyed, and the inhabitants shall be put to the sword. Every individual found in arms shall be shot in the field." It is only in the performance of such threats as these that the generals of Buonaparte keep their word.

On the day of the Corpo de Deos, also, the insurrection began in Algarve. Here, where the commotions in Andalusia could not possibly be concealed from the people, an edict was fixed up in all the towns, calling upon the Portugueze to take arms against the Spanish insurgents. This was done on the day of the festival, in the little town of Olhao, a place inhabited by seafaring men, about a league from the city of Faro. Jose Lopes de Sousa, a colonel in the Portugueze army, happening to come to Olhao, tore down the edict, and turning round to the people, who silently witnessed what he had done, exclaimed to them, "Ah Portugueze, we no longer deserve that name, and we are now nothing!" But they answered that they were still Portugueze, and ready to lay down their lives for their religion, their prince, and their country. The revolution was immediately begun a meeting was held in the church, and Jose Lopes chosen to command them: they then took the artillery from the little fort of Armona, upon the coast, and made preparations to defend the town, knowing that the French in Faro would attack it, as soon as they heard what had past.

General Morain, the French go

VOL. I. PART I.

vernor of Algarve, resided at Faro, and, on the following day, he sent a detachment to invest Olhao. They were driven back, with some loss; and they revenged themselves by killing a few persons who were in the fields,-too old or too young to be employed in bearing arms. One of these was a man who had passed his hundredth year. Reinforcements were sent from Faro: the inhabitants of that city took advantage of the absence of these troops; a countryman put himself at their head; they overpowered the remainder of the garrison, now reduced to 170 men, and made them prisoners, together with the general. The national flag was hoisted, all ranks rallied round it; the clergy and the religioners took arms; and an oath was taken, that they would, to the last drop of their blood, defend the rights of the house of Braganza. The French returned from Olhao, to secure Faro, and were driven off by the artillery: they then retreated about a league inland, toward the mountains. But, by this time, the whole country was rising against them; and they fled to Mertola, where there was a division destined, with the troops from Algarve, to enter Spain, and succour Dupont: a measure which this insurrection, and the movements of General Spencer, frustrated. The countryman who had so successfully exerted himself at Faro now hastened upon a patriotic mission to Loule, Albofeira, Sylves, Alvor, Lagos, and other towns ;the French and their most notorious partizans were made prisoners in every place, and in eight-and-forty hours the whole province of Algarve had recovered its liberty.

Other parts of Portugal were less fortunate in asserting their rights. The open and level country of Alen

Z

tejo was peculiarly unfavourable to a war carried on by peasantry and townsmen, against a regular force of horse and foot; and here Junot's threats were carried into full execution. Two hundred persons were killed in the streets of Villa Viçosa; they were pursued into the country, where a great number of them, in the words of Junot's official account, suffered the punishment due to their crimes; and twelve, who were made prisoners, were condemned, and shot, as rebels. Six thousand Portugueze attempted to defend the city of Beja, and how bravely they defended it may be understood from the admission of the French,-that they did not give way till 1200 of them were left on the field. No quarter was given; every man taken with arms in his hands was put to the sword; every house from which resistance had been made was burnt, and the city given up to the soldiers. A battle was fought before Evora, with the same result; inevitable, under such circumstances. Above an hundred Spaniards, who were discovered among the prisoners, were immediately put to death; and the same horrors which had reduced Beja to ruins were repeated here. Similar horrors were perpetrated to the north of Lisbon: towns and villages were burnt, priests murdered at the altar, nuns violated in their convents, and scarcely a female above twelve years of age escaped the brutality of these accursed ruffians. Six hundred patriots fell near Leiria, above a thousand before Guarda,-not put to death in flight, but falling bravely upon the field of battle." The insurgents," said the French, in their official account, "have left at least 13,000 dead in the field," "It is thus," the French writer continued, "that de

luded men, ungrateful children as well as culpable citizens, exchange all their claims to the benevolence and protection of government for misfortune and wretchedness; ruin their families; carry into their habitations desolation, conflagrations, and death; change flourishing cities into heaps of ashes, and into waste tombs; and bring on their whole country calamities which they deserve, and from which (feeble victims!) they cannot escape. In fine, it is thus, that, covering themselves with opprobrium and ridicule, at the same time that they complete their destruction they have no other resource but the pity of those whom they have wished to assassinate,-a pity which they never have implored in vain, when, acknowledging their crimes, they have solicited pardon from Frenchmen, who, incapable of departing from their noble character, are ever as generous as they are brave.”. "To be the victim," says Mr Wordsworth, in that strain of profoundest feeling and philosophy by which his higher compositions are so eminently distinguished, "to be the victim of such bloody-mindedness is a doleful lot for a nation; and the anguish must have been rendered still more poignant by the scoffs and insults, and by that heinous contempt of the most awful truths, with which the perpetrator of those cruelties has proclaimed them. Merciless ferocity is an evil familiar to our thoughts; but these combinations of malevolence historians have not yet been called upon to record; and writers of fiction, if they have ever ventured to create passions resembling them, have confined, out of reverence for the acknowledged constitution of human nature, those passions to reprobate spirits. Such tyranny is, in the

strictest sense, intolerable; not be cause it aims at the extinction of life, but of every thing which gives life its value, of virtue, of reason, of repose in God, or in truth.”

Such was the state of Portugal at the time when the patriots in Andalusia were pressing on Dupont, when the intruder was advancing to Madrid, and when Palafox was so gloriously defending the streets and houses of Zaragoza. There was no force which could withstand the French in battle, with any reasonable hope of success; yet neither the slaughter which was made among them in the field, nor the massacre which took place upon the fugitives, nor the murders which were committed upon the prisoners, could break the spirit of the Portugueze. The enemy were masters only of as much country as they could over-run, and even there their small parties were cut off, and every straggler put to the death which he deserved. As soon as the French departed from the solitude which they had made, they who had escaped collected again, and again renewed the war, which they were the better enabled to do, because the Spaniards along the whole line of frontier, not having an immediate enemy, were enabled to afford assistance. Thus the unconquerable spirit of the patriots in Estremadura and Alentejo, notwithstanding the carnage * which was made among

them, prevented Junot from sending forces to Porto and to Algarve.

These transactions in Spain and Portugal excited the deepest interest in the English people, not so much for the hope, which had thus unexpectedly arisen, of advantages to England, and to the general welfare of Europe, as for the nature of the contest, their detestation of the unequalled iniquity by which it had been provoked, and their sympathy in the instinct and principle by which it was carried on. Every day seemed lost till an army of our own should be cooperating with men engaged in a cause so sacred, so congenial to the feelings of a Briton. Such was the eagerness to participate in the glorious struggle, that the militia almost universally offered themselves for foreign service, and the country called for an effort equal to the occasion, which, had it been made, would, according to all reasonable calculation of success, have completed the work that had now been begun, and, in all human probability, have destroyed the fortune of Buonaparte. That this effort was not made, is not exclusively imputable to the English cabinet, deficient as it unfortunately was, both in foresight and in vigour. The juntas preferred assistance in money and supplies to an auxiliary force, foreseeing the danger, that mutual dislike would arise between combined armies, whose habits and

prejudices were so widely dissimilar, and perhaps also having an undue confidence in their own strength. In Portugal, however, our aid was needed; and it was not doubted that, when the deliverance of that kingdom was completed, a plan of co-operation with the Spaniards might be arranged.

A rumour was thrown out, that the Duke of Yok would take the command upon this expedition :-the manner in which it was received curiously discovered the general feeling. By those writers who were the avowed political enemies of the duke, the keenest and most stinging sarcasm was employed-others, who maintain for their journals a character of uniform decorum, gravely deprecated the thought of exposing one of the royal family, and warned ministers against consenting to such an appointment, as if, upon these grounds, it were a crime. The sound constitutional plea was urged by others, that if a prince were employed, there could be no actual responsibi-, lity, and responsibility ought to be inseparable from command. There was not, perhaps, any point upon which the whole nation so entirely accorded in opinion. An expedition had been preparing at Cork, which, as different prospects opened upon us, had been supposed to be destined, at one time for Ceuta, at another, for South America. The destination

was now fixed for the peninsula, and the command was given to Sir Arthur Wellesley, an appointment not less grateful to the army than it was to the people,

A general order which was issued to the army at this time, however unsuitable it may appear to the dig nity of historical narration, is yet too characteristic to be omitted. The commander-in-chief gave notice that his majesty had been graciously pleased to dispense with the use of queues until farther orders; and the officers were directed to take care that the men's hair should be cut close to their necks, in the neatest and most uniform manner, and that their heads should be kept perfectly clean, by combing, brushing, and frequently washing them; for which latter essential purpose, it was his majesty's pleasure that a small spunge should hereafter be added to each man's regimental necessaries. Such orders, issued at such a time, indicate by what kind of spirit the military system of Great Britain was regulated. They excited the scorn of many per sons, the wonder of all: they who felt the deepest interest in the honour of the country, and in those principles the immediate fate of which seemed to depend upon the issue of this war, regarded them with shame and sorrow, as matter of mockery for the enemy, and of evil omen for ourselves.

SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY, having about ten thousand men under his command, sailed from Cork on the 12th of July, and leaving the fleet as soon as he had seen it clear of the coast, to make its way for Cape Finisterre, he himself made all sail, in a frigate, for Coruna, and arrived there on the 20th. There the junta of Galicia informed him of the battle of Rio Seco, and that the French, being, in Consequence, masters ofthe course of the Douro, were enabled to cut off the communication between that province and the country to the south and east. The French in Portugal were estimated at 15,000, of whom twelve were supposed to be at Lisbon; and he was told that the Portugueze troops at Porto amounted to 10,000, and that a Spanish corps of 2000 had begun their march for that city on the 15th, and were expected to arrive there about the 25th. Sir Arthur consulted with them concerning the immediate employment of his army. They explicitly stated that they were in no need of men, but wanted arms, ammunition, and money:-this latter want was relieved by the arrival of £200,000 from

9

England, that very day. They strong ly recommended him to employ his forces against Junot, because while his army remained unbroken, the Spaniards could never make any simultaneous effort to drive the French out of the peninsula; and they advised him to land in the north of Portugal, that he might bring forward and avail himself of the Portugueze troops in that quarter.

Accordingly Sir Arthur sailed for Porto, ordering the fleet to follow him. He arrived there the 24th, and had a conference that night with the bishop and, the general officers. From them, and from Lieutenant. colonel Browne, who had previously joined them, he learnt that the regular Portugueze troops who had been collected amounted to 5000 men, and were posted at Coimbra ; that there were about 1200 peasants in advance, and a corps of 2500 Portugueze and 300 Spanish infantry at Porto, besides volunteers and peasants; but all were badly equipped and armed, and armed, the peasantry having only pikes. It was concerted that the 5000 should co-operate with him, and the remainder with the Spanish