and as weakening the enemy, was very petty work when examined in
detail. The great victories, the mighty feats of war that figure in
history's page, were due to British discipline, pluck, and generalship.
And whatever merit remains with the Spaniards, is to be attributed to
their guerillas and irregular partisans. As to their regular troops,
after they had overthrown Dupont at Baylen, they seemed to think they
might doze upon their laurels, which were very soon wrenched from them.
Baylen was their grand triumph, and subsequently to it they did little
in the field. Behind stone walls they still fought well: Spaniards are
brave and tenacious in a fortress, and Saragossa is a proud name in
their annals. Nothing could be better than old General Herrasti's
valiant defence of Cuidad Rodrigo against Ney and his thirty thousand
Frenchmen. The garrison, six thousand strong, lost seven hundred men by
the first day's fire. Only when their guns were silenced, when the town
was on fire in various places, and when several yards of wall were
thrown down by a mine, did the brave governor hoist the white flag.
Other instances of the kind might be cited, when Spanish soldiers fought
as well as mortal men could do. But with respect to pitched battles,
another tale must be told. At Ocana, Almonacid, and on a dozen other
disastrous fields, Baylen was amply revenged. The loss at Ocana alone is
rated by Spanish accounts at thirty thousand men, chiefly prisoners. Mr
Grattan estimates it at twenty-five thousand men, and _thirteen thousand
eight hundred and seventy-seven guitars_. Of these latter, he tells us
twelve thousand seven hundred and fifty-two were in cases, and the
remainder without; Indeed he is so exceedingly circumstantial that we
presume he counted them himself. Otherwise, although well aware of the
Spaniard's predilection for the fascinating tinkle of his national
instrument, we could hardly credit the accuracy of the figures. Even a
_Spanish_ general, we should think, would hardly allow his men thus to
encumber themselves with harmony. The march of such an army of
Orpheuses, in which every third soldier shouldered a fiddle-case as a
pendant to his musket, must have been curious to behold; suggesting the
idea that the melodious warriors designed subduing their foes by the
soothing strains of _jotas_ and _cachuchas_, rather than by the more
cogent arguments of sharp steel and ball-cartridge. Great must have been
the tinkling at event