Preface to Third Edition 9 



of skilled officers having under them disciplined sol 

 diers. The humiliating surrenders, ahortive at 

 tacks, and panic routs of our armies can all be paral 

 leled in the campaigns waged by Napoleon's mar 

 shals against the Spaniards and Portuguese in the 

 years immediately preceding the outbreak of our 

 own war. The Peninsular troops were as little able 

 to withstand the French veterans as were our militia 

 to hold their own against the British regulars. But 

 it must always be remembered, to our credit, that 

 while seven years of fighting failed to make the 

 Spaniards able to face the French, 1 two years of 

 warfare gave us soldiers who could stand against 

 the best men of Britain. On the Northern frontier 

 we never developed a great general, Brown's claim 

 to the title rests only on his not having committed 

 the phenomenal follies of his predecessors, but by 

 1814 our soldiers had become seasoned, and we had 

 acquired some good brigade commanders, notably 

 Scott, so that in that year we played on' even terms 

 with the British. But the battles, though marked 

 by as bloody and obstinate fighting as ever took 

 place, were waged between small bodies of men, and 

 were not distinguished by any feats of generalship, 

 so that they are not of any special interest to the 

 historian. In fact, the only really noteworthy feat 



1 At the closing battle of Toulouse, fought between the 

 allies and the French, the flight of the Spaniards was so 

 rapid and universal as to draw from the Duke of Wellington 

 the bitter observation, that "though he had seen a good many 

 remarkable things in the course of his life, yet this was the 

 first time he had ever seen ten thousand men running a race." 



