ised under their eyes_, and the
whole neighbourhood exhausted of its resources, _without the possibility
of their opposing any resistance to such incursions_.'

The second charge is made on the retreat to Corunna: 'the Gallicians,
though armed,' Sir J.M. says, 'made no attempt to stop the passage of
the French through the mountains.' That they were armed--is a proof that
they had an _intention_ to do so (as one of our journals observed): but
what encouragement had they in that intention from the sight of a
regular force--more than 30,000 strong--abandoning, without a struggle,
passes where (as an English general asserts) 'a body of a thousand men
might stop an army of twenty times the number?'

The third charge relates to the same Province: it is a complaint that
'the people run away; the villages are deserted;' and again, in his last
letter,--'They abandoned their dwellings at our approach; drove away
their carts, oxen, and every thing which could be of the smallest aid to
the army.' To this charge, in so far as it may be thought to criminate
the Spaniards, a full answer is furnished by their accuser himself in
the following memorable sentence in another part of the very same
letter:--'I am sorry to say that the army, whose conduct I had such
reason to extol in its march through Portugal and on its arrival in
Spain, has totally changed its character since it began to retreat.'
What do we collect from this passage? Assuredly that the army
ill-treated the Gallicians; for there is no other way in which an army,
as a body, can offend--excepting by an indisposition to fight; and that
interpretation (besides that we are all sure that no English army could
_so_ offend) Sir J. Moore expressly guards against in the next sentence.

The English army then treated its Ally as an enemy: and,--though there
are alleviations of its conduct in its great sufferings,--yet it must be
remembered that these sufferings were due--not to the Gallicians--but to
circumstances over which they had no controul--to the precipitancy of
the retreat, the inclemency of the weather, and the poverty of the
country; and that (knowing this) they must have had a double sense of
injustice in any outrages of an English army, from, contrasting them
with the professed objects of that army in entering Spain.--It is to be
observed that the answer to the second charge would singly have been
some answer to this; and, reciprocally, that the answer to this is a
full