l suddenly, nor by one manner of death--that some perished by steel,
some by shot, some by water; that some were crushed and mangled by
heavy weights, some trampled upon, some dashed to atoms by the fiery
explosions--that for hours this destruction was endured without
shrinking, and the town was won at last. Let these things be
considered, and it must be admitted a British army bears with it an
awful power. And false would it be to say the French were feeble men.
The garrison stood and fought manfully and with good discipline,
behaving worthily. Shame there was none on any side. Yet who shall do
justice to the bravery of the British soldiers or the noble emulation
of the officers? . . . No age, no nation, ever sent forth braver
troops to battle than those who stormed Badajos."

THE FIRE-SHIPS IN THE BASQUE ROADS

"Ship after ship, the whole night long,
their high-built galleons came;
Ship after ship, the whole night long,
with her battle-thunder and flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long,
drew back with her dead and her shame.
For some were sunk and many were shattered,
and so could fight us no more--
God of battles, was ever a battle like this
in the world before?"
--TENNYSON.

On the night of April 11, 1809, Lord Cochrane steered his floating mine
against the gigantic boom that covered the French fleet lying in Aix
Roads. The story is one of the most picturesque and exciting in the
naval annals of Great Britain. Marryat has embalmed the great
adventure and its chief actor in the pages of "Frank Mildmay," and Lord
Cochrane himself--like the Earl of Peterborough in the seventeenth
century, who captured Barcelona with a handful of men, and Gordon in
the nineteenth century, who won great battles in China walking-stick in
hand--was a man who stamped himself, as with characters of fire, upon
the popular imagination.

To the courage of a knight-errant Cochrane added the shrewd and
humorous sagacity of a Scotchman. If he had commanded fleets he would
have rivalled the victories of Nelson, and perhaps even have outshone
the Nile and Trafalgar. And to warlike genius of the first order
Cochrane added a certain weird and impish ingenuity which his enemies
found simply resistless. Was there ever a cruise in naval history like
that of Cochrane in his brig misnamed the _Speedy_, a mere coasting tub
that would neither steer nor tack, and w