s the model of efficiency. Its methods were
copied in other countries, and foreign officers desiring to excel
in their profession made pilgrimages to Berlin and Potsdam to drink
of the stream of military knowledge at its source. When it came in
contact with the tumultuous array of revolutionary France, the
performances of the force that preserved the tradition of the great
Frederick were disappointingly wanting in brilliancy. A few years
later it suffered an overwhelming disaster. The Prussian defeat
at Jena was serious as a military event; its political effects
were of the utmost importance. Yet many who were involved in that
disaster took, later on, an effective part in the expulsion of
the conquerors from their country, and in settling the history
of Europe for nearly half a century at Waterloo.

The brilliancy of the exploits of Wellington and the British
army in Portugal and Spain has thrown into comparative obscurity
that part of the Peninsular war which was waged for years by
the French against the Spaniards. Spain, distracted by palace
intrigues and political faction, with the flower of her troops
in a distant comer of Europe, and several of her most important
fortresses in the hands of her assailant, seemed destined to
fall an easy and a speedy prey to the foremost military power in
the world. The attitude of the invaders made it evident that they
believed themselves to be marching to certain victory. Even the
British soldiers--of whom there were never many more than 50,000
in the Peninsula, and for some years not half that number--were
disdained until they had been encountered. The French arms met
with disappointment after disappointment. On one occasion a whole
French army, over 18,000 strong, surrendered to a Spanish force,
and became prisoners of war. Before the struggle closed there
were six marshals of France with nearly 400,000 troops in the
Peninsula. The great efforts which these figures indicate were
unsuccessful, and the intruders were driven from the country. Yet
they were the comrades of the victors of Austerlitz, of Jena,
and of Wagram, and part of that mighty organisation which had
planted its victorious standards in Berlin and Vienna, held down
Prussia like a conquered province, and shattered into fragments
the holy Roman Empire.

In 1812 the British Navy was at the zenith of its glory. It had
not only defeated all its opponents; it had also swept the seas of
the fleets of the historic marit