lash, and cry
For quarter or for victory,
Mingle there with the volleying thunder,
Which makes the distant cities wonder
How the sounding battle goes,
If with them, or for their foes;
If they must mourn, or must rejoice
In that annihilating voice,
Which pierces the deep hills through and through
With an echo dread and new.
* * * * * * *
From the point of encountering blades to the hilt,
Sabres and swords with blood were gilt;
But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun,
And all but the after carnage done."
--BYRON.

It would be difficult to find in the whole history of war a more
thrilling and heroic chapter than that which tells the story of the six
great campaigns of the Peninsular war. This was, perhaps, the least
selfish war of which history tells. It was not a war of aggrandisement
or of conquest: it was waged to deliver not merely Spain, but the whole
of Europe, from that military despotism with which the genius and
ambition of Napoleon threatened to overwhelm the civilised world. And
on what a scale Great Britain, when aroused, can fight, let the
Peninsular war tell. At its close the fleets of Great Britain rode
triumphant on every sea; and in the Peninsula between 1808-14 her land
forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles, made or sustained ten
fierce and bloody sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled
the French from Portugal and once from Spain. Great Britain expended
in these campaigns more than 100,000,000 pounds sterling on her own
troops, besides subsidising the forces of Spain and Portugal. This
"nation of shopkeepers" proved that when kindled to action it could
wage war on a scale and in a fashion that might have moved the wonder
of Alexander or of Caesar, and from motives, it may be added, too lofty
for either Caesar or Alexander so much as to comprehend. It is worth
while to tell afresh the story of some of the more picturesque
incidents in that great strife.

[Illustration: Siege of Badajos, 1812. From Napier's "Peninsular War."]

On April 6, 1812, Badajos was stormed by Wellington; and the story
forms one of the most tragical and splendid incidents in the military
history of the world. Of "the night of horrors at Badajos," Napier
says, "posterity can scarcely be expected to credit the tale." No
tale, however, is better authenticated, or, as an example of what
disciplined human valour is capable of achieving,