commander, and making three thousand prisoners. A second British division now came on against Clausel, who was hastening to Thomière's support, but who arrived only in time to share his defeat: the whole mass broke at the first charge, and fled from the ground, leaving two thousand prisoners in the hands of the victors.

Meantime, a bloody contest was going on in the centre, with more doubtful success. Pack, at the head of the Portuguese, attempted to carry the French Arapeiles, but after bravely gaining the summit of the height, he was forced down in confusion and with great loss, and the disorder of this corps, having reached the division advancing to its support, threatened for a time to change the fate of the battle. Wellington and Beresford, however, led on their reserves; and, taking the French columns in flank, while they were incautiously pursuing Pack's division, forced the whole mass to a disastrous retreat. Wellington now ordered a general pursuit, but the approach of night and a misapprehension as to the route of Marmont's troops, saved the defeated army from any further loss than they had sustained on the field. The killed and wounded on the part of the allies, amounted to five thousand two hundred men; of whom three thousand one hundred and seventy-four were British; two thousand and eighteen, Portuguese; and eight, Spanish. The French loss in the battle exceeded fourteen thousand men, including seven thousand prisoners, besides two eagles, six standards and eleven pieces of cannon: and during their retreat, owing to Marmont's negligence in not providing magazines for such a contingency, nearly eight thousand men straggled from the ranks in search of food, and were for the time lost to the army; so that the French force actually suffered a reduction of twenty-two thousand men, by the battle of Salamanca. Marmont continued his retreat to Valladolid, where he arrived on the 26th of July: and Wellington, after vainly endeavoring to overtake him, moved against the central army of Madrid.

King Joseph, however, who in effect directed the movements of this army, although Jourdan was its leader, felt himself in no condition to face the conqueror of Salamanca, and retreated rapidly upon the capital. Wellington pursued with equal celerity, and when his advanced guard approached the town, on the 11th of August, Joseph with his court retired to Toledo, followed by his troops. Crowds of people from all quarters now hastened to Madrid to witness the entrance of their deliverers, and long before the British soldiers could be seen on the Guadarama, every balcony, window and door was thronged with the eager multitude. No words can express the enthusiasm that prevailed, when the British standard appeared in the distance, and the scarlet uniforms began by thousands to glow under the rays of the morning sun. After a time, the massy columns reached the gates and made their entrance into the Spanish capital. The citizens came forward to meet the victorious chief, not with courtly adulation but heartfelt gratitude; and their wan cheeks and trickling tears, as they pressed around him to kiss his hand or touch his horse, bespoke the magnitude of the evils from which he had come to deliver their country. Garlands of flowers and festoons of drapery decorated every street; the inhabitants poured out of their houses to distribute fruits and refreshments through the ranks, and in the evening a general illumination gave token of the universal joy.

When Joseph retreated from Madrid, he left a garrison of seventeen hundred veterans to protect the Retiro, which contained the greatest

arsenal of military stores and artillery that the French possessed in Spain; its capture, therefore, was a matter of consequence, for, as the battering train of Ciudad Rodrigo had fallen into the hands of the allies, the French could command no heavy guns for prosecuting a siege other than those now lying in this fortress. Wellington immediately reconnoitered its defences, and found them to consist of a double set of intrenchments; one, so large that an army was requisite to man the bastions, and the other so contracted that the garrison, if driven into it, could not withstand vigorous cannonade. As soon, therefore, as preparations were completed for an assault, the commander of the place surrendered at discretion. On the same day, Don Carlos D'Espana was appointed governor of Madrid, and the Constitution was proclaimed with great solemnity.

The French affairs in every part of the Peninsula, now for a time exhibited that general tendency toward ruin that so commonly follows a great military disaster, and presages the breaking up of political power. At the same time that the Retiro, with its immense stores of arms and ammunition, yielded to the British forces, Guadalaxara with its garrison surrendered to Empecinado; three hundred men were captured by the partidas near Valladolid; six thousand were shut up and blockaded in Toro, Tordesillas and Zamora, on the Duoro; Astorga was taken with its garrison of twelve hundred men; Torden, also, capitulated; the castle of Mirabete was blown up; Castro Nediales, Santander, Gueteira, Talavera, and the Puerto de Banos were evacuated; and the French troops in the valley of the Tagus withdrew to the neighborhood of Aranjuez. Finally, Soult received orders to abandon Andalusia; and, on the 25th of August, he retreated from his lines before Cadiz, leaving behind him five hundred pieces of cannon and an immense quantity of military stores. This general withdrawal of forces from the more remote provinces, however, followed as it was by a concentration in the centre of the kingdom, while it demonstrated the magnitude of the losses sustained by the French, served also greatly to strengthen their position in the vicinity of the capital, by bringing all their disposable troops into communication in one mass. Indeed, Wellington was so well aware of this, that he resolved to attack some of the corps on their route before such a junction could be effected; and on the 1st of September he marched from Madrid for Burgos, intending to unite himself with the army of Galicia, under Sautaclides, at Palencia. He reached the latter place on the 8th; but instead of being joined there by the thirty thousand Spaniards who had long received British rations as regular soldiers, he found only twelve thousand ill-disciplined and half naked recruits, who could not be relied on for the least effective service. He nevertheless continued his march to Burgos, where he expected to meet the remains of Marmont's army, amounting to twenty-two thousand men but Clausel, who was then in command of the corps, retired as Wellington advanced, and on the 19th the latter reached Burgos unopposed, and immediately laid siege to it. The British commander at first hoped to carry this fortress without delay; but, after storming the outwork of St. Michael, he found the troops of the garrison were both too numerous and too resolute to yield to any other attack than regular approaches. This proved a serious embarrassment, as the heavy artillery had all been left at Madrid, and it was proposed to abandon the siege: Wellington, however, persisted, and he gave orders

to open trenches and proceed in form, hoping that some contingency would favor his project; but, after four weeks of laborious effort, during which every expedient of sap, mine and assault was frequently attempted, he submitted to necessity and relinquished the undertaking.

While the siege of Burgos was in progress, Soult, with unexpected rapidity owing to the abandonment of the defiles on his route by the Spanish troops-had advanced toward the capital from Cadiz; and as General Hill became endangered by this accumulation of force, Wellington ordered him to withdraw from the line of the Tagus, evacuate Madrid, and fall back to Salamanca, whither he, also, directed his own march. The two armies formed a junction at Alba de Tormes and San Christoval on the 8th of November, and on the 9th, they took up a defensive position on the heights of the Arapeiles. Wellington's entire force amounted now to fifty-two thousand men, of whom fourteen thousand were Spaniards. On the 11th, Soult and Jourdan, who followed the British line of retreat, united their respective corps at Mozarbes, and arrayed themselves against Wellington with no less than ninety-five thousand men. The two French marshals immediately debated the question of attacking the allies, and Jourdan was strenuous for giving battle; but Soult, unwilling to risk an action with an enemy so advantageously posted, steadily refused his concurrence, and moved with a considerable part of his corps to the left, so as to menace the allies' communication with Ciudad Rodrigo.

As the immense superiority of the French in numbers, and especially in strength of cavalry, rendered it an easy matter for them to outflank the British position, and as it was evident from their movements that they did not intend to fight, Wellington resolved to retreat upon Ciudad Rodrigo; and, on the 15th of November, he accomplished the difficult and delicate manœuvre of a flank march in presence of an army double his own in efficient force, with a loss of but two hundred men. The retreat occupied three days, and the allies were not seriously molested by the enemy. Both armies soon after went into winter-quarters, and the campaign of 1812 was terminated.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

WAR IN TURKEY; ACCESSION OF BERNADOTTE TO THE SWEDISH THRONE, FINAL RUPTURE BETWEEN FRANCE AND RUSSIA.

In the beginning of the year 1810, the cabinet of St. Petersburganxious to improve the opportunity offered by the peace then existing between Russia and France, and conceiving that the time had arrived for carrying into effect those clauses in the treaty of Tilsit which ceded to Russia certain portions of the Turkish dominions-issued an imperial ukase, by which Moldavia and Wallachia were formally annexed to their territories, and the Danube, from the Austrian frontier to the sea, declared to be the southern European houndary of their mighty Empire.

This step was followed by adequate military preparations. The Muscovite army on the Danube was augmented to a hundred and ten thousand

men, and placed under the command of Kaminski, a brave officer, but as yet not much experienced in Turkish warfare. Nevertheless, his first movements were eminently successful. He commenced the campaign on the 15th of May; and between that day and the 17th of June, he captured the fortresses of Bazarjik, Silistria, Tourtoukai and Rasgrad. Greatly encouraged by this rapid progress, he dispatched his right wing against Rondschouck, and himself advanced with forty thousand men to the siege of Schumla.

This fortress, which in all former wars had proved the limit of Muscovite conquest in Turkey, is situated on the northern slope of the Balkan, where the great road from Belgrade and Bucharest to Constantinople first ascends the acclivity of the mountains. To the traveller who approaches it from the hills south of the Danube, it exhibits the appearance of a large triangular sheet, not unlike the distant view of Algiers over the waves of the Mediterranean. The town was not regularly fortified, though its position at the intersection of the principal roads which cross the Balkan from north to south, rendered it a stratagetical point of the highest importance; it was protected in front by walls and ditches, and overhung in the rear by a succession of eminences, that rise one above another until they are lost in the woody thickets of Mount Hemus. These heights, owing to the broken character of the ground and the thick brushwood with which it is covered, are inaccessible to European cavalry and artillery; and the vast circuit of the natural defences, renders it almost impossible to invest or blockade the entire circumference of the place. Kaminski spent three weeks in unavailing attempts to storm Schumla; at the end of which time he withdrew with twelve thousand men, to assist his right wing in the siege of Rondschouck, leaving the remainder of his army in front of Schumla to cover the disgrace of an open retreat.

Rondschouck, a Turkish town containing thirty thousand inhabitants, was defended only by a single rampart and wet ditch, and a garrison of seven thousand men. The besieging force, after Kaminski's arrival, amounted to twenty thousand; and as the Russian batteries had already partly destroyed the rampart, an assault was ordered on the 3rd of August. Bosniak Aga, the governor, had not yet fired a shot in reply to the Russian batteries; and those soldiers of the attacking force who were not familiar with the Turkish mode of defending a town, flattered themselves with the hope of an easy conquest. They advanced to the breach, therefore, with great alacrity and confidence; but the moment they came within range of the Turkish musketry, a dreadful storm of bullets saluted them from the roofs, windows and loopholes of the houses, which literally destroyed whole columns of the besiegers, and not one man could gain a footing within the walls. After a time, the Turkish fire slackened, and two divisions of Russians, supposing the defence to be abandoned, made their way into the town; but it soon appeared that this was an artifice to bring them into the reach of the armed inhabitants and janizaries, who fell upon them in the streets with muskets, cimeters and daggers, and cut them entirely to pieces. At noon, the Moslem flag still waved on all the minarets; and at six o'clock in the evening, Kaminski sounded a retreat, leaving no less than eight thousand killed and wounded men behind him. He was now forced to limit his operations to a simple blockade, and remained in that position for some weeks. In the meantime, the garrison of Schumla made a sally against the Russians around their

walls, but they were repulsed with great loss: nevertheless, the Russians, on the day following, raised the siege of the town and retired to Bazarjik. While Kaminski lay inactively in front of Rondschouck, an army of thirty thousand Turks approached that place, and intrenched themselves on the river Jantra, near Battin. The Russian general, anxious to retrieve his late losses, ordered a part of the forces from Bazarjik to join him, and, advancing upon the Turkish position, made a spirited attack on the 7th of September. His combinations, however, were imperfect, and the first assault, led by himself, not having been supported in time by Kulneff, he was forced to fall back and make preparations for renewing the battle on the following day. At daybreak on the 8th, his whole force was in motion, and his men assailed the Turkish intrenchments with such determined valor that, at the first charge, they swept everything before them, routed the entire Turkish army with great loss, made five thousand men prisoners, and captured fourteen guns, two hundred standards, and a large flotilla laden with provisions for the relief of Rondschouck. That town soon after surrendered to the Russians, as did also Sistowa, a fortified post near it on the Danube. Kaminski next laid siege to Nicopolis, which capitulated on the 12th of December; and he then concluded the campaign by retiring to winter-quarters in Moldavia, where he was seized with a malady of which he died in January, 1811. General Kutusoff succeeded to the command of the army.

The campaign of 1811 was at first confined to defensive operations on the part of the Russians, as the Emperor Alexander, in the spring of that year, withdrew five divisions of the army from the Danube to Poland and the Vistula. About the middle of June, the Turkish government, encouraged by this diminution in the numbers of their enemies, assembled an army of sixty thousand men and marched against Kutusoff, then in position at Rondschouck. A battle took place between the two armies on the 2nd of July, in which the Turks were defeated with a loss of three thousand men; but Kutusoff abandoned Rondschouck after the action, and retired to the left bank of the Danube.

The Turks now spent nearly two months in repairing the houses and fortifications of their released city. Early in September, however, they resumed the offensive, crossed the Danube, attacked the Russian position on the 8th of that month so successfully as to endanger Kutusoff's whole army, and inflicted a loss of more than two thousand men upon the Russian divisions. But, instead of following up this success, they, in conformity to the Ottoman tactics, proceeded to fortify their encampment; and thus gave Kutusoff time to recover from his discomfiture and retaliate upon them. He made preparations for assaulting their intrenchments in front; and while these movements occupied the Turks' attention, he secretly dispatched General Markoff with ten thousand men to fall upon their rear; who so well executed his commission, that the Turks, finding themselves between two armies, broke from their lines and fled in the wildest confusion, leaving their tents, baggage, stores, artillery, horses and camels, together with a prodigious amount of booty, in the hands of the Russians, whose total loss in the affair was eight men.

Kutusoff next attacked the encampment of the Turks on the right bank of the Danube; and he succeeded so well in surrounding their position, that after a few days the entire army surrendered, and evacuated their camp without arms or artillery, on condition of being quartered in the