hand to aid the Spaniards. It was not only from
Spain that bitter invective was hurled upon him; British journalism
poured scorn and rage upon his incompetence, French journalism held his
pusillanimity up to the ridicule of the world. His own officers took
shame in their general, and expressed it. Parliament demanded to know
how long British honour was to be imperilled by such a man. And finally
the Emperor's great marshal, Massena, gathering his hosts to overwhelm
the kingdom of Portugal, availed himself of all this to appeal to the
Portuguese nation in terms which the facts would seem to corroborate.

He issued his proclamation denouncing the British for the disturbers
and mischief-makers of Europe, warning the Portuguese that they were
the cat's-paw of a perfidious nation that was concerned solely with
the serving of its own interests and the gratification of its predatory
ambitions, and finally summoning them to receive the French as their
true friends and saviours.

The nation stirred uneasily. So far no good had come to them of their
alliance with the British. Indeed Wellington's policy of devastation had
seemed to those upon whom it fell more horrible than any French invasion
could have been.

But Wellington held the reins, and his grip never relaxed or slackened.
And here let it be recorded that he was nobly and stoutly served in
Lisbon by Sir Terence O'Moy. Pressure upon the Council resulted in the
measures demanded being carried out. But much time had been lost through
the intrigues of the Souza faction, with the result that those measures,
although prosecuted now more vigorously, never reached the full extent
which Wellington had desired. Treachery, too, stepped in to shorten the
time still further. Almeida, garrisoned by Portuguese and commanded by
Colonel Cox and a British staff, should have held a month. But no sooner
had the French appeared before it, on the 26th August, than a powder
magazine traitorously fired exploded and breached the wall, rendering
the place untenable.

To Wellington this was perhaps the most vexatious of all things in that
vexatious time. He had hoped to detain Massena before Almeida until the
rains should have set in, when the French would have found themselves
struggling through a sodden, water-logged country, through bridgeless
floods and a land bereft of all that could sustain the troops. Still,
what could be done Wellington did, and did it nobly. Fighting a
rearguard action