enhanced by the exquisite verdure of riages; and yet how could they be the opening spring, and the luxuriance abandoned without confessing defeat, of the foliage which in every sheltered and relinquishing at the same time the nook clothed the mountain sides. War whole ammunition waggons and miliappeared in these sequestered and pas-tary stores of the army? The rapacity toral valleys, not in its rude and of the French authorities in Spain; bloody garb, but in its most brilliant the general spoliation which, from the and attractive costume; the pomp of marshals downwards, they had exerthe melodrama, the charms of the cised under the imperial orders in opera, seemed realised in the most every part of the country, now fell ravishing scenes of nature. The ani- with just but terrible force upon them, mating strains of military music, as the Their gallant army was about to be troops wended their way through the overwhelmed by the immensity of its valleys, blended with the shepherd's spoil. In retreating through Madrid pipe on the hills above; while the nu- and the two Castiles, the French aumerous trains of horse, foot, and can- thorities had levied contributions surnon, winding in every direction through passing all the former ones in severthe defiles, gave an inexpressible vari- ity and magnitude; and the enormous ety and charm to the landscape. At sums raised in this way, amounting to one time the columns moved through five millions and a half of dollars, were luxuriant valleys, intersprinkled with all existing in hard cash, and constihamlets, vineyards, and flower-gardens; tuted no inconsiderable part of the at another they struggled up mountain weight with which the army was enridges, or pressed through alpine passes cumbered. Not content with these overhung with beetling cliffs, making pecuniary exactions, both Joseph and it almost difficult to decide whether his generals had faithfully followed the the rugged chasm which they follow- example set them by the Emperor, in ed had been rifted from the hillside collecting and bringing off all the most by an earthquake, or cut out by human precious works of art which adorned hands. Beneath lay sparkling rivers the Spanish capital and provinces. All and sunny dells; above rose naked the marshals, from Murat, who comrocks and splintered peaks; while mov-menced the pillage in 1808, had gratiing bands of glittering troops, horse, fied themselves, by seizing upon the foot, and cannon, in all the pride of finest paintings which were to be found war, now lost, now seen amid the wind- in convents or private palaces in every ings of the route, gave inexpressible in- part of the country; and Marshal Soult, terest to the scene. Even the common in particular, had from the rich spoils soldiers were not insensible to the of the Andalusian convents, formed beauty of the spectacle thus perpetu- the noble collection of paintings by ally placed before their eyes. Often Murillo and Velasquez, which now the men rested on their muskets with adorns his hotel at Paris. their arms crossed, gazing on the lovely scenes which lay spread far beneath their feet; and more than once the heads of the columns involuntarily halted to satiate their eyes with a spectacle of beauty, the like of which all felt they might never see again.

75. The immense baggage-trains of Joseph's army had now fallen back into the basin of Vittoria; and seventy thousand men were assembled to protect their retreat into France. But it seemed hardly possible that even that large force could secure the safe transit of such an enormous multitude of car

76. But when Joseph and his whole civil functionaries came to break up finally from Madrid, the work of spoliation went on upon a greater scale, and extended to every object of interest, whether from beauty, rarity, or antiquity, which was to be found in the royal palaces or museums. Many of the finest works of Titian, Raphael, and Corregio, were got hold of in this manner, especially from the Escurial and the royal palace at Madrid; while all the archives and museums in the capital and in Old Castile, had been compelled to yield up their most pre

*

cious contents to accompany the footsteps of the fugitive monarch. Nor was this all: the retreating army met at Vittoria a train with the pay which, by great efforts, Napoleon had collected in France for his Peninsular troops, amounting to two years' arrears, which was all existing in hard cash in the military chest of the army. All this precious spoil was dragged along in endless convoy in the rear of the French army; and when it halted and faced about in the basin of Vittoria, it was rather from a sense of the evident impossibility of transporting the prodigious mass in safety through the approaching defiles of the Pyrenees, than from any well-founded hope of being able to resist the shock of the AngloPortuguese army.

mountains on all sides intersect each other at Vittoria, particularly those to Pampeluna, Bilbao, and Galicia; but although they are all practicable for guns, yet that which leads direct to San Sebastian and Bayonne, through Gamarra Mayor, was alone adequate to receive the vast trains of carriages which were heaped up in and around that town. Two great convoys had already departed by this road, and were now far advanced on the way to France; but a still greater quantity, including the whole imperial and royal treasure, and all the guns and ammunition of the army, remained. It was, therefore, of the highest importance to the French at all hazards to keep possession of the great road to Bayonne, and, above all, not to suffer Gamarra Mayor to fall into the hands of the enemy; while the bulk of the army on the broken ground, in the middle of the plain of Vittoria, endeavoured to arrest the advance of the allied force.

77. The basin of Vittoria, which has become immortal from the battle, decisive of the fate of the Peninsula, which was fought within its bosom, is a small plain, about eight miles in length by six in breadth, situated in an elevated plateau among the moun- 78. The departure of the two heavytains. It is bounded on the north and laden convoys for France, sensibly dieast by the commencement of the Py-minished the strength of Joseph's renean range, and on the west by a army; for they required to be guarded chain of rugged mountains, which se- by strong escorts to prevent them fallparates the province of Alava from ing into the hands of the Biscay that of Biscay. A traveller entering guerillas. The guard attending the the valley from the side of Miranda last, consisted of no less than three del Ebro, by the great road from Ma- thousand troops under General Maudrid, emerges into the plain by the pass cune. After this large reduction, howof Puebla, where the Zadorra forces ever, the French army amounted to its way through a narrow cleft in the above seventy thousand men, of whom mountain, in its descent to the Ebro, sixty-five thousand were effective comand from whence the spires of Vittoria, batants, and they had one hundred and situated at the extremity of the plain, fifty pieces of cannon. On Wellingare visible about eight miles distant. ton's side there were only sixty thouThis little plain is intersected by two sand English and Portuguese sabres ranges of hills, which cross it nearly and bayonets in the field; for the sixth from east to west, and afforded two division, six thousand five hundred very strong positions, where the French strong, had been left at Medina de army endeavoured to stop the advance Pomar; and some stragglers had necesof the Allies; the first being on either sarily fallen behind during so long and side of Ariñiz, and the second, which fatiguing a march as that which they was much stronger ground, around had made from the Portuguese fronGomecha. Several roads from the tier. But in addition to this force, there were fully eighteen thousand Spaniards, so that the total force was nearly eighty thousand, with ninety guns. The strength of the French position consisted chiefly in the great

I had this remarkable fact from Sir George Murray, then quartermaster-general to Wellington, to whose talents and exertions so much of the great leader's success was owing.