of future piracies, and a check upon the Arabs in their attempts to re-build their forts and strong-holds. On the 3rd of January, we quitted the coast, and proceeded to the different harbours in the vicinity, in order to capture and destroy all the piratical vessels and small craft. This operation was carried into complete effect, and, it is hoped, has succeeded effectually in destroying the roots and nipping the branches of piracy in that quarter for a long period to come. A SCENE IN THE PENINSULA. THE French army had long suffered terrible privations. We all knew that Massena could not much longer retain his position, and the "Great Lord," (so the Spaniards call Wellington) allowed famine to do the work of a charge of bayonets. Our army was weary of the lines. It felt as if cooped up by an enemy it yet despised, and would have gladly marched out to storm the formidable French encampment; and such was the first idea that struck many of us, when, on the 5th of March, the army was put in motion, and the animating music of the regimental bands rang through the rocky ridges of Torres Vedras. But it was soon universally understood, that the French were in full retreat; there was now no hope of a great pitched battle, and all that I could expect was, that as our regiment formed part of the advance, we might now and then have a brush with the rear-guard of the French, which was composed of the flower of the army, and commanded by Ney, the "bravest of the brave." They had been cheated out of a victory over us, (so they said, and so in Gallic presumption they probably felt) when, some months before, Massena beheld that army which he threatened to drive into the sea, frowning on him from impregnable heights, all bristling with cannon. Instead of battle, and conquest, and triumph, they had long remained in hopeless inactivity, and at last, their convoys being intercepted by the guerillas, they had endured all the intensest miseries of famine. Accordingly, when they broke up, the soul of the French army was in a burning fever of savage wrath. The consummate skill of their leaders, and the unmitigated severity of their discipline, kept the troops in firm and regular order; and certainly, on all occasions, when I had an opportunity of seeing the rearguard, its movements were most beautiful. I could not help admiring the mass moving slowly away, like a multitude of demons, all obeying the signs of one master spirit. Call me not illiberal in thus speaking of our foe. Wait till you have heard from me a detailed account of their merciless butcheries, and then you will admit, that a true knight violates not the laws of chivalry in uttering his abhorrence of blood-thirsty barbarians. The ditches were often literally filled with clotted and coagulated blood, as with mirethe bodies of peasants, put to death like dogs, were lying there horribly mangled-little naked infants, of a year old, or less, were found besmeared in the mud of the road, transfixed with bayonet wounds-and in one instance, a child of about a month old, I myself saw with the bayonet left still sticking in its neck-young women and matrons were found lying dead with cruel and shameful wounds, and, as if some general law to that effect had been promulgated to the army, the priests were hanged upon trees by the road-side. But no more of this at present. I wish now to give some idea of a scene I witnessed at Miranda de Cervo, on the ninth day of our pursuit. Yet I fear that a sight so terrible cannot be shadowed out, except in the memory of him who beheld it. I entered the town about dusk. It had been a black, grim, and gloomy sort of a day—at one time fierce blasts of wind, at another perfect stillness, with far-off thunder. Altogether there was a wild adaptation of the weather and the day to the retreat of a great army. Huge masses of clouds lay motionless on the sky before us; and then they would break up suddenly, as with a whirlwind, and roll off in the red and bloody distance. I felt myself, towards the fall of the evening, in a state of strange excitement. My imagination got the better entirely of all my other faculties, and I was like a man in a grand but terrific dream, who never thinks of questioning anything he sees or hears, but believes all the phantasms around with a strength of belief seemingly proportioned to their utter dissimilarity to the objects of the real world of nature. face had a different expression, but all painful, horrid, agonized, and bloodless. Many glazed eyes were wide open; and perhaps this was the most shocking thing in the whole spectacle. So many eyes that saw not, all seemingly fixed upon different objects: some cast up to heaven, some looking straight forward, and some with the white orbs turned round, and deep sunk in the sockets. Just as I was passing the great cross in the principal street, I met an old haggard-looking wretch, a woman, who seemed to have in her hollow eyes an unaccountable expression of cruelty a glance like that of madness; but her deportment was quiet and rational, and she was evidently of the middle rank of society, though her dress was faded and squalid. She told me (without being questioned) in broken English, that I would find comfortable ac-hag said, would not trouble me. commodation in an old convent that stood at some distance among a grove of cork-trees; pointing to them at the same time, with her long shrivelled hand and arm, and giving a sort of hysterical laugh. You will find, said she, nobody there to disturb you. It was a sort of hospital. These wretched beings were mostly all desperately or mortally wounded; and after having been stripped by their comrades, they had been left there dead and to die. Such were they, who, as the old I had begun to view this ghastly sight with some composure, when I saw, at the remotest part of the hospital, a gigantic figure sitting, covered with blood and almost naked, upon a rude bedstead, with his back leaning against the wall, and his eyes fixed directly on I followed her advice with a kind of mine. I thought he was alive, and superstitious acquiescence. There was shuddered; but he was stone dead. In no reason to anticipate any adventure the last agonies he had bitten his under or danger in the convent; yet the wild lip almost entirely off, and his long eyes, and the wilder voice of the old black beard was drenched in clotted crone powerfully affected me; and gore, that likewise lay in large spots on though, after all, she was only such an his shaggy bosom. One of his hands old woman as one may see any where, had convulsively grasped the wood-work I really began to invest her with many of the bedstead, which had been crushed most imposing qualities, till I found, in the grasp. I recognised the corpse. that in a sort of reverie, I had walked He was a sergeant in a grenadier regiup a pretty long flight of steps, and ment, and, during the retreat, distinwas standing at the entrance to the guished for acts of savage valour. One cloisters of the convent. I then saw day he killed, with his own hand, the something that made me speedily forget right-hand man of my own company, the old woman, though what it was I perhaps the finest made and most powdid see, I could not, in the first mo-erful man in the British army. My ments of my amazement and horror, soldiers had nicknamed him with a very very distinctly comprehend. coarse appellation, and I really felt as Above a hundred dead bodies lay and if he and I were acquaintances. There sat before my eyes, all of them appa-he sat, as if frozen to death. I went up rently in the attitude or posture in which to the body, and raising up the giant's they had died. I looked at them for at muscular arm, it fell down again with a least a minute, before I knew that they hollow sound against the bloody side of were all corpses. Something in the the corpse. mortal silence of the place told me that I alone was alive in this dreadful company. A desperate courage enabled me then to look steadfastly at the scene before me. The bodies were mostly clothed in mats and rugs, and tattered great coats; some of them merely wrapped round about with a girdle of straw; and two or three perfectly naked. Every My eyes unconsciously wandered along the walls. They were covered with grotesque figures and caricatures of the English, absolutely drawn in blood. Horrid blasphemies, and the most shocking obscenities in the shape of songs, were in like manner written there; and you may guess what an effect they had upon me, when the wretches who had conceived them lay all dead corpses around my feet. I saw two books lying on the floor. I lifted them up. One seemed to be full of the most hideous obscenity: the other was the Bible! It is impossible to tell you the horror it produced in me by this circumstance. The books fell from my hand. They fell upon the breast of one of the bodies. It was a woman's breast. A woman had lived and died in such a place as this! What had been in that heart, now still, perhaps only a few hours before, I knew not. It is possible, love, strong as death, love, guilty, abandoned, depraved, and linked by vice unto misery-but still love that perished but with the last throb, and yearned in the last convulsion towards some one of these grim dead bodies. I think some such idea as this came across me at the time; or has it now only arisen? Near this corpse lay that of a perfect boy, certainly not more than seventeen years of age. There was a little copper figure of the Virgin Mary round his neck, suspended by a chain of hair. It was of little value, else it had not been suffered to remain there. In his hand was a letter. I saw enough to know that it was from his mother-Mon chere fils, &c. It was a terrible place to think of mother-of home-of any social human ties. Have these ghastly things parents, brothers, sisters, lovers? Were they once all happy in peaceful homes? Did these convulsed, and bloody, and mangled bodies once lie in undisturbed beds? Did those clutched hands once press in infancy a mother's breast? Now all was loathsome, terrible, ghostlike. Human nature itself seemed here to be debased and brutified. Will such creatures, I thought, ever live again? Why should they? Robbers, ravishers, incendiaries, murderers, suicides (for a dragoon lay with a pistol in his hand, and his skull shattered to pieces), heroes! The only two powers that reigned here, were agony and death. Whatever might have been their characters when alive, all faces were now alike. I could not, in those fixed contortions, tell what was pain from what was anger-misery from wickedness. It was now almost dark, and the | night was setting in stormier than the day. A strong flash of lightning_suddenly illuminated this hold of death, and for a moment showed me more distinctly the terrible array. A loud squall of wind came round about the building, and the old window-casement gave way, and fell with a shivering crash in upon the floor. Something rose up with an angry growl from among the dead bodies. It was a huge dark-coloured wolf-dog, with a spiked collar round his neck; and seeing me he leaped forwards with gaunt and tony limbs. I am confident that his jaws were bloody. I had instinctively moved back towards the door. The surly savage returned growling to his lair; and, in a state of stupefaction, I found myself in the open air. A bugle was playing, and the light-infantry company of my own regiment was entering the village with loud shouts and hurras. NAPOLEON'S REBUKE OF PARSIMONY. EVEN Napoleon, the great captain, did not think it beneath him sometimes to turn his attention to female dress. Several ladies at the Court of the Tuileries knew this by sad experience. One day at St. Cloud, I heard him say, in a very angry tone, to the wife of a general, “Madame, when a lady has a husband with an income of 10,000 francs per annum, she may very well afford a new dress every time she has the honour to pay her court to the empress. Endowments, madame, are favours. I do not owe them; and when I give them it is with the view that they should help to maintain that luxury without which commerce cannot thrive." The poor lady was overwhelmed with confusion; yet it must be admitted that the general shabbiness of her dress fully justified this mark of imperial displeasure. EARLY INTELLIGENCE. A sergeant in the guards, writing a letter to his wife, during the campaign in Flanders, said, "Pray send me a few newspapers, as I want sadly to know how we get on, and what we are doing.” LONDON:-Printed by JOSEPH LAST, No. 3, Edward-street, Hampstead-road.-Published by WILLIAM MARK CLARK, 19, Warwick-lane, Paternoster-row; J. PATTIE, Brydges-street, Corent-garden; and may be had, by order, of all Booksellers in town and country. soners, and 2,000 killed, had marched two columns through difficult passages to turn the French. As soon as Mortier perceived this, he marched straight against the troops that had turned him, and cut his way through the enemy's lines, at the very moment that the 9th [RETREAT OF THE RUSSIANS AND DESTRUCTION OF LOIBEN.] THE Russians, having declined all the temptations held out to them to engage on the heights of St. Polten, passed the Danube at Krems, burning the bridge, which was a very handsome one. When Marshal Mortier, with six battalions, advanced towards Stein, on the 11th of November, 1809, he reckoned upon find-regiment of light infantry and the 33d ing the Russian rear-guard only there, but found their whole army, except the advanced guard, which had not passed. The battle of Diernstein then took place, which it was said would be for ever celebrated in military annals. From six in the morning till four in the afternoon, 4,000 French made head against all that opposed them, and having made themselves masters of Loiben, they thought all was over; but the enemy, enraged at having lost ten stand of colours, six pieces of canon, 900 priVOL. III. of the line, had charged and defeated another Russian corps, taking two stands of colours, and making 400 prisoners. This was a day of blood; more than 4,000 Russians were killed and wounded, and 1,300 made prisoners; and the loss of the French was very considerable. Colonel Waltier, of the 4th Dragoons, an officer of great worth, was made prisoner. The following account of this gallant affair at Diernstein, gives the whole credit of saving the French division, on the occasion, to a Major 2 L Henriod, although his name was not | Attacked by this mass, the French divi mentioned in the bulletins of the French army at the time. After the Russians had made the retrograde movement that threw them upon Diernstein, they remained quietly in their position for sometime; but at night, after the departure of Marshal Mortier, Major Henriod, a superior officer in the camp, seeing the heights before Stein covered with the enemy's troops, lost no time in detaching the 100th regiment towards the extremity of the enemy's line. He also sent to inform the troops posted behind Loiben of these movements, and went to that village to rally some posts, that had been dispersed by the enemy's appearance. Marshal Mortier and General Gazan, being apprized by the orderly men of what was passing, set out on full gallop towards Diernstein, with some dragoons and officers of the staff, when both of them had nearly been taken by a corps of 1,500 Russians, with whom they exchanged some pistol shots. But having escaped this danger, before they reached Diernstein, the marshal and the general perceived several other heads of columns beginning to descend from the heights to the left of the road leading to that village. They then quickened their pace, to gain the hamlet between Diernstein and Loiben, thinking to find a part of the troops they had left there; but this post was already occupied by the enemy, and the French division they sought were in advance upon the plain above Loiben. This column had hitherto been able to keep the enemy before them in check, who, for particular reasons, did not press them so closely as they might have done. General Gazan, who rightly guessed the intentions of the Russian general, ordered Colonel Ritay, to advance to the ravine on the left of Diernstein, with one of his battalions, and the escort of the head quarters, to secure this passage for his division; scarcely had the colonel approached the point to which he was directed, when he found himself in the presence of an immense column debouching from the village. In fact, this was the point of the reunion of all the enemy's troops, then forming for the purpose of crowning the height at the foot of which Diernstein is situated. I sion was overthrown, and Colonel Ritay badly wounded; about 150 infantry, and some dragoons, who abandoned their horses, succeeded in gaining the head of the ravine; the rest were thrown upon the plain of Loiben in disorder. After the enemy, 1,200 strong, had thus debouched from Diernstein, they formed into two columns, to proceed by two roads which joined at the foot of the heights of Stein. The road on the left was enclosed between two stone walls about the height of five feet, and only broad enough to admit of eight men in front. This division was in number about 8,000; those that took the other road on the left, consisted of 5,000. Thus were the 4,000 French upon the plain of Loiben in a desperate situation, having masses in their front and rear sufficient to crush them; on their left there was a steep boundary without any opening; on their right was the river Danube, which they had no means of passing. Feeling all the danger of the situation, Marshal Mortier and General Gazan called their officers about them, to deliberate upon the means of extricating themselves out of the souriciere, (mousetrap) in which they were enclosed. To capitulate, and lay down their arms before the enemy, would have been a part unworthy of the conqueror's of Albeck and Elchingen; and when some pusillanimous individuals talked of this, the whole division swore they would rather perish with arms in their hands. During this deliberation, the brave Major Henriod, then stationed in advance at the head of the plain, the place most threatened by the enemy, sent to inform the generals, that if they would adopt a plan he had to propose, he would answer for the safety of the whole division. Henriod pointed out to General Gazan the fault which the enemy had committed, in advancing through the walled passage before mentioned, as it was impossible for a column of that length to act upon its flanks; and besides, as it could only present eight men in front, it might be most effectually attacked with the bayonet-a terrible instrument in the hands of those who knew how to use it, and who, besides, |