th quite as much exaggeration as was necessary
for his purpose. What he wanted in correct information, he would
assuredly make up with lies, but he would seldom fail to give a general
consistent idea of the affair; and it was obvious, that the manoeuvres
of the armies, and the conduct of the generals, on both sides, had
occupied as much of his consideration and reflection, as his own
individual dangers and adventures.

When we afterwards entered into conversation with some English private
soldiers, at Brussels and Antwerp, concerning the actions they had seen,
we perceived a very marked difference. They were very ready to enter
into details concerning all that they had themselves witnessed, and very
anxious to be perfectly correct in their statements; but they did not
appear ever to have troubled their heads about the general plan of the
actions. They had abundance of technical phrases concerning their own
departments of the service; but very few words relative to the
manoeuvring of large bodies of men. Their rule seemed to be, to do their
own duty, and let their officers do theirs; the principle of the
division of labour seemed to prevail in military, as well as in civil
affairs, much more extensively in England than in France.

The soldiers of the French imperial guard, in particular, are remarkably
intelligent, and in general very communicative. We entered into
conversation with some of these men at La Fere, and from one of them,
who had been in the great battle at Laon, we had fully as distinct an
account of that action as we are able to collect, the next day, from
several officers who accompanied us from St Quentin to Cambray, and who
had likewise been engaged in it. When we asked him the numbers of the
two armies on that day, he replied without the least hesitation, that
the allied army was 100,000 and the French 30,000.--Another of these men
had been at Salamanca, and after we had granted his fundamental
assumption, that the English army there was 120,000 strong, and the
French 40,000, he proceeded to give us a very good account of the
battle.

These men, as well as almost all the French officers and soldiers with
whom we had opportunities at different times of conversing, gave their
opinions of the allied armies without any reserve, and with considerable
discrimination. Of the Russians and Prussians they said, "Ils savent
bien faire la guerre; ils sont de bons soldats;" but of the common
soldiers of these ser