t first showed a noisy zeal, but they had been torn
too young from their home nurture, and had neither strength nor power
of resistance. The troops from vassal kingdoms and newly annexed
territories were dismayed by the sufferings they had to endure, and
beheld with interest the national uprising of the Spaniards, which, in
spite of local jealousies, of rabid and radical doctrines that could
lead to nothing but anarchy, of disastrous failure in government, of
feebleness and falsehood in the temporary rulers, seemed likely to
render of no avail the efforts and successes of a great empire.

[Footnote 37: Oman, History of the Peninsular War, furnishes
much valuable material on this period. His point of view in
one feature is corrected by J. B. Rye and R. A.
Bence-Pembroke of Oxford. See the Army Service Corps
Quarterly, October, 1905.]

Yet in some respects the French character appeared in a stronger light
throughout the disasters of the Peninsular war than at any other time.
Marbot's tale of the beautiful young cantiniere, or woman sutler, of
the Twenty-sixth regiment, who after Busaco rushed unhurt through the
English outposts in order to alleviate the sufferings of the captured
general of her brigade, and who returned on her donkey through the
lines without having suffered an insult, reflects equal credit on the
unselfish daring of the French, which she typified, and on the
pure-minded gallantry of the English. The same writer's narrative of
the French deserters who, under a leader nicknamed Marshal Stockpot,
established themselves as freebooters in a convent not far from
Massena's headquarters at Santarem, and of the general's swift,
condign punishment of such conduct, graphically delineates the straits
of the French, which led them into the extreme courses that devastated
the land, but it also displays the quality of the discipline which was
exercised whenever possible. Nor should it be forgotten that the two
most splendid writers of France's succeeding age were profoundly
impressed with the terrible scenes of the French invasion of Spain.
George Sand was in Madrid as an infant for a considerable portion of
1808; Victor Hugo passed the year 1811 in a Madrid school, fighting
childish battles for "the great Emperor," whom his Spanish schoolmates
called Napoladron (Napo the robber). Upon both the fact of their
connection with the repulse of Napoleon's armies left a profound