the road from Oporto to Coimbra and Lisbon. Wellington, without attempting to disturb him in this march, fell back to the lines of Torres Vedras, now completed and mounted with six hundred guns. Massena followed at a slower pace; and, on the 7th of October, Trant, with the Portuguese militia, fell on his rear and took possession of Coimbra, where were about five thousand French soldiers, principally sick and wounded. But this disaster did not cause any change in Massena's dispositions: he pressed resolutely forward without regard to magazines or communications, and on the 15th came in sight of Wellington's defensive positionan obstacle that he was previously unaware of, but which now rose before him to bar his further progress toward the Portuguese capital.

The lines of Torres Vedras, on which the English engineers had been quietly engaged for more than a twelvemonth, consisted of three distinct ranges of defence, one within another. The first was twenty-nine miles long, extending from Alhandra on the Tagus to Zezambre on the seacoast. The second, about eight miles in the rear of the first, stretched from Quintella on the Tagus to the mouth of the St. Lorenza. The third reached from Passo d'Arcos on the Tagus to the Tower of Jonquera. Within this interior line, was an intrenched camp destined to cover an embarkation of the troops, should that measure become necessary. Of the three lines, the second was incomparably the strongest, and it was there that Wellington originally intended to make his stand; but the first was so far completed by the time Massena reached it, that the English general resolved to undertake its defence.

Massena, with all his resolution, paused at the sight of this formidable barrier, and employed several days in reconnoitering, while his troops were gradually collecting at the foot of the intrenchments; but at length, being unable to find a single point where he could attack with a prospect of success, he sent General Foy under a strong escort to Paris, to ask instructions from Napoleon. In the meantime, Wellington's army was well supplied with provisions and everything requisite for maintaining the war; but the French troops, isolated from their communications, and finding but little subsistence in the provinces they occupied, began to suffer from famine; and at length Massena, to escape utter starvation, was compelled, on the 14th of November, to abandon his position and commence a retreat. The moment intelligence reached the allied head-quarters that the French were in motion, Wellington ordered a pursuit, and detached General Hill across the Tagus to move on Abrantes, while he himself led the bulk of the army on the great road by Cartaxo, toward Santarem. At this town, Massena made a halt, and took so strong a position that Wellington deemed it advisable not to attack him; but he encamped in front of the French marshal's lines and narrowly watched his movements. It was soon ascertained that Massena intended to cross the Tagus and march into the rich province of Alentejo; but General Hill's vigilance entirely frustrated this attempt; and, after exhausting the country in which he lay, Massena, on the 2nd of March, 1811, broke up from his intrenchments and retreated toward Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo.

While Wellington was thus gradually driving Massena from his footing in Portugal, Soult had made such progress in the south as to threaten the British rear. On the 22nd of January, the latter general, leaving Victor to maintain the blockade of Cadiz, had advanced with twenty thousand men as far as the Spanish town of Badajoz, to which he laid siege. The

ramparts of this fortress were of great strength, its garrison consisted of nine thousand men, and it was well supplied with ammunition and provisions, so that Soult had little hope of reducing it. But the treachery of Imaz, its governor, relieved him from all apprehension on that score: and in a few days the place, with its magazines and artillery, was shamefully surrendered to the French troops. Soult now seemed to be in a condition to act decisively on Wellington's communications; but he had hardly secured this conquest, when he learned that Sir Thomas Graham, with a considerable force of Spanish and British troops, had planned an attack on the French blockading force at Cadiz. The English general reached the heights of Barrosa on the 5th of March, when Victor sallied from his lines to give battle. The French soldiers came on, as usual, in columns, and for a time carried everything before them; but the obstinate valor of the British soon arrested their progress, and drove them back in confusion; indeed, had La Pena, the commander of the Spanish troops on the field, seconded Graham's efforts, Victor must have been totally defeated; but that base Spaniard, like so many of his countrymen at this period, refused to act in concert with his allies in the very hour of victory; and Graham, disgusted at his detestable stupidity or cowardice, withdrew to the island of Leon, taking with him his own trophies, which consisted of six guns, one eagle and three hundred prisoners. This expe dition caused Soult to hasten back to Cadiz, leaving Wellington to act without molestation on Massena's retreat.

Massena was enabled by his great preponderance of numbers to perform this retrograde movement in good order. He took the route through the valley of the Mondego, and moved on gradually until he reached Colorico, on the 21st of March, where he proposed to make a stand. But Wellington's rapid approach induced him to abandon this project. He retreated thence upon Coa, threw a garrison into Almeida on the 5th of April, and the next day crossed the Portuguese frontier and proceeded to Salamanca. Nevertheless, although he thus made good his retreat, the losses of his expedition were enormous. He had marched into Portugal with seventy thousand men, and had been subsequently reënforced by nineteen thousand; yet his numbers were so reduced by want, sickness and the sword, that he now entered Spain at the head of only forty-five thousand troops of all arms.

Wellington immediately invested Almeida; and as the French had gone into cantonments on the Tormes, he deemed it safe to send twentytwo thousand men to the south of the Tagus, to cooperate with the troops which Beresford had collected for the siege of Campo Mayor and Badajoz, and he repaired thither himself to conduct the operations. When Napoleon heard of this division of the allied forces, he sent orders to Massena to return from Tormes and relieve Almeida; and on the other hand, as soon as Wellington became aware of the French advance, he hastened from his head-quarters at Elva, and drew up his covering army, about thirty thousand strong, at Fuentes d'Onoro.

An engagement between the outposts and skirmishers took place on the afternoon of May 3rd, but the entire forces did not come into action until the 4th, when the battle begun on the British right. The attack of the French was impetuous and well sustained; the allies gave ground, and it was apparent that their right wing must soon be driven from the field unless they could gain a new defensive position. In this emergency,

Wellington drew back his whole centre and right, the left remaining firm, acting as the pivot on which the backward wheel was formed. Massena endeavored to take advantage of this delicate movement, so perilous in front of an army confident of victory, and he ordered the most desperate charges of his cavalry to break the British ranks. But despite the onset of the cuirassiers and dragoons, supported by a heavy train of artillery, the English soldiers retired with perfect regularity and gained the heights on the banks of the Coa. Massena made no attempt to dislodge this part of the army, but directed all his force against the British left. The Imperial Guard led the attack with levelled bayonets, but the Highland regiments met them in the charge with such surprising vehemence, that the front rank of the French veterans was literally raised from the ground and borne backward some paces while suspended on the Highland bayonets. The battle terminated with this repulse; each party lost about fifteen hundred men, and each retained a portion of the field. Massena remained in his position for three days, and on the 9th, despairing of either forcing or turning the British lines, he left Almeida to its fate and retreated across the Agueda to Salamanca, while Wellington quietly took possession of the abandoned fortress.

The reign of George III. was now drawing to a close. The health of the venerable monarch had for some time declined, owing in part to grief occasioned by the protracted illness of his daughter, the princess Amelia; and when at length, on the 2nd of November, 1810, she breathed her last, the anguish of the king was so great as to produce a return of the alarming mental malady which, in 1788, had given such concern to the nation. Parliament met on the 1st of November, but deemed it advisable to adjourn from time to time, in expectation of the king's speedy recovery.

This hope, however, at length vanished; for the mental aberration of his majesty assumed a fixed character, and Mr. Perceval, on the 20th of December, brought forward in the House of Commons three propositions, based on Mr. Pitt's Regency Bill, to the following effect. "First. As the king is prevented by indisposition from attending to the public business, the personal exercise of the royal authority is suspended. Secondly. It is the right and duty of Parliament, as representing all the estates of the people of the realm, to provide the means of supplying the defect in such a manner as the exigency of the case may seem to them to require. Thirdly. For this purpose the Lords and Commons shall determine in what manner the royal assent must be given to bills which have passed both Houses of Parliament, and how the exercise of the powers and authori ties of the crown shall be put in force during the continuance of the king's illness." The first proposition passed unanimously. The second, declaring the right of Parliament to supply the defect, was carried with but one dissenting voice, Sir Francis Burdett's. But on the third, which decreed, in effect, that Parliament should appoint the individual who was to exercise the royal authority, the opposition took their stand. The debate occurred on an amendment of Mr. Ponsonby, proposing an address to the Prince of Wales, with a petition that he would take upon himself the royal functions. The appointment of the Prince of Wales, with the title of Prince Regent, was, however, finally decided in the House of Lords on the 29th of January, by a majority of eight votes.

A negotiation for the exchange of prisoners was this year opened between the governments of France and Great Britain, which resulted in

nothing, by reason of Napoleon's unprecedented demands. Mr. Mackenzie, on behalf of Great Britain, proposed an even exchange for the natives of the two countries, man for man, which was the only equitable basis but when Napoleon discovered that fifty thousand Frenchmen were in bondage in England, whereas there were only ten thousand British subjects in France, he insisted, as a sine qua non in the transaction, that the remaining forty thousand should be supplied from the Spanish and Portuguese rabble, captured during the preceding campaigns in the Peninsula. As the effect of this would have been to restore to the French army fifty thousand efficient troops, while England would gain but ten thousand; and especially, as the balance of forty thousand Spanish and Portuguese could not in a national, political or military point of view be considered an equivalent to Great Britain for the same number of French captured by her arms in battle, the British government very properly declined to accede to Napoleon's demand, and the negotiation was abruptly closed.

The remaining memorable event of this year was the capture, by the British forces, of the Island of Java, the last colonial possession of the French Empire. This noble island, in itself a kingdom, is six hundred and forty miles long, from eighty to a hundred and forty broad, and contained more than two millions of inhabitants. Its annual production for export may be rated at one hundred and twenty million pounds of sugar, and five million pounds of pepper; it furnishes, besides, rice and grain for the support of its inhabitants, and yields a lucrative commerce in nutmegs, cinnamon and other spices. The island surrendered to the land and naval force of Great Britain, on the 26th of September.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE CORTES; WAR IN SPAIN; CAMPAIGN OF 1811 ON

THE PORTUGUESE FRONTIER.

Ir was with feelings of unmingled admiration that the people of Europe beheld the able and energetic movements of the Duke of Albuquerque toward Cadiz, when he outstripped the celerity of the French legions and preserved the last bulwark of Spanish independence from the arms of the invader. The subsequent assembly of the Cortes within the impregnable ramparts of that city promised to give a unity to the Spanish operations, from the want of which they had hitherto so greatly suffered, at the same time that it presented a legitimate national authority with which other powers might treat in their negotiations for the furtherance of the common cause. Yet from these very events, so fortunate at the moment and so apparently auspicious for the future, results have arisen deeply pernicious to the welfare of the Spanish Peninsula.

The Cortes, in the course of its proceedings in Cadiz, wrought an entire change, both in the character and policy of the government. The acts and spirit of its legislation were revolutionary in the highest degree; and, after a long season of violent debate, the democratic party carried

their own measures by a decided majority, and embodied them in a new Constitution, embracing the following provisions and enactments. It de. clared the Roman Catholic faith to be the religion of the state, the supreme sovereignty to reside in the nation, and the supreme legislative power in the Cortes. That assembly assumed the exclusive right of voting taxes and levies of men; of regulating the armed force; of nominating judges; of creating a regency in case of a minority, incapacity, or other event suspensive of the succession; of enforcing the responsible. ness of all public functionaries; and of introducing and enacting laws. During the intervals of the session, the Cortes was to be represented by a permanent commission or deputation, to which a considerable part of its power was committed. The person of the king was declared to be inviolable, and his consent was requisite to the passing of laws; but he could not withhold his consent more than twice to different legislatures; and if a bill were presented him a third time, he was forced to give it his sanction. He was to hold the prerogative of pardon, but circumscribed within very narrow limits. He could conclude treaties and truces with foreign powers, but the consent of the Cortes was requisite to their ratification. He had command of the army, but the regulations for its government were to emanate still from the Cortes; and he could nominate public functionaries, but only from lists furnished by that body. The king could not leave the kingdom nor marry without the consent of the Cortes: if he did either, he was to be held as having abdicated the throne. For his assistance in discharging his public duties, he could appoint a privy council of forty members, selected from one hundred and twenty names presented by the Cortes; but these councillors could not be removed except by that power, and in the whole number there could be only four grandees and four ecclesiastics. In short, all appointments made by the king were to be under the dictation of the Cortes. By a subsequent provision it was decreed that the assembly should sit, as then constituted, in a single chamber: and for future elections there was to be one member to every seventy thousand inhabitants, and every man over the age of five-and-twenty, a native of the province, or who had resided in it for seven years, was entitled alike to elect or be elected.

This Constitution was approved by some and detested by other portions of the inhabitants. In the principal towns, especially those devoted to commerce, the enthusiasm of the people on this great accession of power, was loudly and sincerely expressed while in the lesser boroughs and in the rural districts, where revolutionary ideas had not spread and the ancient faith and loyalty remained uncorrupted, it was the object of unqualified denunciation. Wellington, from the first, clearly perceived and loudly condemned the pernicious tendency of these measures, not merely because they diverted the attention of the government from the national defence, but because they tended to establish democratic principles and republican institutions in a country wholly unfitted to receive them, and because they would sow the seeds of future and interminable discord throughout the Spanish monarchy. His opinions, little heeded at that time, by reason of the absorbing interest of the contest with Napoleon, have now acquired an extraordinary interest from the exact and melancholy accomplishment that subsequent events have given to his predictions.

In the meantime, so completely did hostilities seem to be concluded south of the Sierra Morena, Joseph Bonaparte crossed that formidable