nd men from Madrid to
Astorga with nearly the same rapidity, marching through deep snows,
across high mountains, and rivers swollen by the winter rains. The
activity, perseverance, and endurance of his troops, during these ten
days' march, are scarcely equalled in history.

In 1812, the activity of the French forces under Clausel was truly
extraordinary. After almost unheard-of efforts at the battle of
Salamanca, he retreated forty miles in a little more than twelve hours!

In 1814, Napoleon's army marched at the rate of ten leagues a day,
besides fighting a battle every twenty-four hours. Wishing to form a
junction with other troops, for the succor of Paris, he marched his army
the distance of seventy-five miles in thirty-six hours; the cavalry
marching night and day, and the infantry travelling _en poste_.

On his return from Elba, in 1815, his guards marched fifty miles the
first day after landing; reached Grenoble through a rough and
mountainous country, a distance of two hundred miles, in six days, and
reached-Paris, a distance of six hundred miles, in less than twenty
days!

The marches of the allied powers, during the wars of the French
Revolution, were much less rapid than those of the armies of Napoleon.
Nevertheless, for a single day the English and Spaniards have made some
of the most extraordinary marches on record.

In 1809, on the day of the battle of Talavera, General Crawford, fearing
that Wellington was hard pressed, made a forced march with three
thousand men the distance of sixty-two miles in twenty-six hours!

The Spanish regiment of Romana, in their march from Jutland to Spain,
marched the extraordinary distance of fifty miles in twenty-one hours.

Cavalry, for a single day, will march a greater distance than infantry;
but for a campaign of several months the infantry will march over the
most ground. In the Russian campaign of Napoleon, his cavalry failed to
keep pace with the infantry in his forced march on Moskwa. But in the
short campaigns of 1805 and 1806, the cavalry of Murat displayed the
most wonderful activity, and effected more extraordinary results than
any mounted troops of modern ages.

The English cavalry, however, have made one or two short marches with a
rapidity truly extraordinary.

In 1803 Wellington's cavalry in India marched the distance of sixty
miles in thirty-two hours.

But the march of the English cavalry under Lord Lake, before the battle
of Furruckabad, is, if