a. And it is small palliation, that under
similar circumstances, the armies of all nations have acted in like
manner. Here the sufferers were not enemies. To the garrison, when their
resistance ceased, quarter was given; they were marched away scatheless,
and treated with that humanity which England, notwithstanding the lying
assertions of foreign historians, has ever used towards her prisoners.
No, the victims were friends and allies. The very nation in whose behalf
our soldiers had fought, saw their houses ransacked, their property
wasted, their wives and daughters brutally outraged, by those whose
mission was to protect and defend. Let us hope they have forgotten, or
at least forgiven, such gloomy episodes in the struggle for their
liberation.

The advocates of universal peace might adduce many potent and practical
arguments in favour of their doctrine from the pages of Mr Grattan's
book. He is unsparing in his details of the inevitable horrors of war;
and some of his descriptions, persons of tender hearts and sensitive
nerves will do well to pass over. They may be read with profit by those
who, accustomed to behold but the sunny side of military life, think too
lightly of the miseries war entails. Let such accompany Mr Grattan
though the streets of Badajoz, on the morning of the 7th April, 1812,
and into the temporary hospital of Villa Formosa, after the fierce
conflict of Fuentes d'Onore, where two hundred soldiers still awaited,
twenty-four hours after the action, the surgeons' leisure, for the
amputation of their limbs. Let them view with him the piles of
unsuccoured wounded on the breach of Badajoz, and hear the shrieks and
groans of men dying in helpless agony, without a friendly hand to prop
their head, or a drop of water to cool their fevered lips. From such
harrowing scenes it is pleasant to turn to the more humane and redeeming
features of civilised warfare, and to note the courteous and amicable
relations that existed between the contending armies when, as sometimes
happened, they lay near together without coming to blows. This occurred
previously to the battle of Salamanca. From the 3d to the 12th of July,
the French and British were in presence of each other, encamped on
either side the Douro, at that season little more than a rivulet. Of
course all were on the alert; there was no laxity or negligence that
could tempt to surprise; but neither was there any useless skirmishing
or picket firing; every thin