On the 29th of July, the province of Alem Tejo witnessed a third merciless infliction, worse than that which desolated either Beja or Villa Viçosa. The town of Evora was besieged and taken from the insurgents. It was abandoned to the soldiers.

"Convents and churches," says Southey, "afforded no asylum; not those who had borne arms alone, but children and old men were massacred, and women were violated and slaughtered. The lowest computation makes the number of these victims amount to nine hundred. The clergy and religioners were especial objects of vengeance; they were literally hunted from their hiding places like wild beasts: eight-and-thirty were butchered; among them was the Bishop of Maranham. According to the French account, eight thousand were killed and wounded." The conduct of the conquerors, Southey affirms on good authority, was marked with deliberate and sportive cruelty of the most flagitious kind. He also says, "Concerning the conduct of the general officers, as respects their sense of honor, I happen to possess some rather curious information. Loison promised the archbishop that his property should not be touched. After this promise, Loison himself, with some of his officers, entered the archbishop's library, which was one of the finest in Portugal; they took down all the books, in the hope of discovering valuables behind them; they broke off the gold and silver clasps from the magnificent bindings of the rarest part of the collection; and in their disappointment at finding so little plunder, tore in pieces a whole pile of manuscripts. They took every gold and silver coin from his cabinet of medals, and every jewel and bit of the precious metals with which the relics were adorned, or which decorated anything in his oratory. Loison was even seen, in noon day, to take the archbishop's episcopal ring from the table, and pocket it."-p. 147.

While the French were thus manifesting their prowess, an English armament, under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, landed in Portugal, some fifty miles north of Lisbon, and Junot, already rendered uneasy by the insurrection which had become general, saw the coming term of his tyranny keep pace with the approach of the English. He recalled as many of his troops as were within reach, and prepared for the result, whatever it might be. The church plate, which he had sacrilegiously seized to an enormous amount, and had caused to be melted, he removed, together with a quantity of portable plunder, on board of a ship in the harbor. "Whole piles of rich hangings and vestments, the spoils of palaces and churches, were burnt in a building

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erected for that purpose,... for the sake of the gold and silver wherewith they were embroidered."-p. 179.

The approach of the day of retribution produced upon Junot the effect which it always does upon bad, low-minded, and mean-spirited men,-a fear of the consequences of evil deeds. Junot endeavored, in a proclamation issued before his march to meet the English, to conciliate the inhabitants of Lisbon, to whom his presence had been a daily source of pain, and poverty, and starvation, and death." He still threatened, but in the style of one who was anxious to shift off the responsibility of putting his threats into execution upon those whose own misconduct would bring the fulfilment upon themselves. He affected a horror at anticipated calamities, which he had never evinced at all the actual atrocities of the past. It was time for him to begin to look amiable and speak softly, and his altered style reminds us of an insolent bully, who suddenly lowers his loud tone and qualifies his bold words, when he sees some one approaching able and ready to rescue the victim of his cowardly oppression. It is not needful for us to state how successfully the army of England contended for the oppressed Portuguese in the battles of Rolica and Vimeiro; nor does it come within the design of this article to notice how little English diplomacy profited by the advantages won by English courage. An armistice was agreed to, preparatory to a definite convention, the object of which was the evacuation of Portugal by the French. One article of the armistice, however, we must not pass over, and our readers will not forget that we asked for it, their special attention. It was, that every individual of the French army should be transported into France with his arms, baggage, and private property, and that he should be deprived of no part of it whatsoever. To this article an objection was made, but Kellermann, one of the most prominent of the French generals, who negotiated the armistice, explained, that the words were only to bear their strict grammatical meaning. In the convention of Cintra, subsequently concluded, this article, with others, was ratified. The previous discussion had clearly explained its meaning, and if there was one part of the treaty more binding upon the French than another, it was this, for they themselves had settled its interpretation. Moreover, before the negotiations were concluded, an article was proposed to compel the French generals "to disgorge the church plate which they had stolen;" but it was withdrawn, "on the

repeated representations of Kellermann, that its introduction into a public document would be reproachful to the French army. The commander-in-chief, he said, was particularly desirous it should be omitted" (no wonder, considering the contents of that ship in the harbor)-" and he was willing, on that condition, to pledge his word of honor! that no property of this kind should be removed." He then disclaimed any knowledge of past depredations, and succeeded, by downright LYING, in deceiving the honorable men with whom he was dealing.

We admire the manly candor and boldness, as well as the Christian principle, Southey manifests in reproving the leniency which the British generals showed to the immorality of the French. He speaks of it severely, and rightly condemns his countrymen for meeting at social entertainments "men who were responsible for the horrors committed at Evora and Leiria." Such conduct emboldened the French, and they commenced plundering the treasury, the museum, public libraries, arsenals, churches, houses and stores of individuals. It was found that they expected to carry off the private valuables of the prince of Brazil and other individuals, and of the churches; the royal library and the museum. They robbed the Deposito Publico of twenty thousand pounds, and they demanded the public revenues. They proposed to carry off several ships, and Junot asked for five vessels to convey his personal effects! Such bold robbery could not be tolerated, and the English commissioners, who were charged with the due execution of the convention, were obliged to insist upon restitution. Their demand was unwillingly complied with, and Junot issued an order to his army to restore, within twenty-four hours, everything which had been taken from any public or private establishment. What testimony this order bears to the true character of these men, and wherein does their respectability appear greater than that of the thief or the robber, who confesses at the bar of justice, the filching of a handkerchief, or the midnight burglar? But we have not yet fully developed their nice appreciation of the laws of honor.

Immediately after issuing the order just mentioned, Junot, Duke of Abrantes, general in the army of the Peninsula, and one of the brightest stars that encircled the imperial throne, through the agency of an aide-de-camp, attempted to embark the prince regent's horses as his own property. He

was compelled to restore them. The next day, a similar experiment was tried with two carriages belonging to the duke of Sussex, and with like success. Then it was found that he had embarked a collection of pictures. Being charged with it, he said they had been given him. This was found to be false, and he then tried to shift the blame upon a relation of his, who, refusing to land or to give up the paintings, was compelled to do both. Fifty-three boxes of indigo were then discovered among Junot's "personal" effects, but he disclaimed any knowledge of them, and the commissioners acquitted him of the charge of stealing them, with what reason, does not appear. In all the instances above named, the robbers-such they literally were, — were detected, and obliged to refund. But the enormous sums of gold and silver coin which they had taken, could not be recovered, or were not, as it appears, through want of energy. The silver melted into bars, which they had stolen from the churches, was also the subject of considerable negotiation, and a compromise was at length agreed to, by which the French bound themselves to pay their debts with this stolen specie. But even then, ingenuity was put to the torture, to wring from her some method of avoiding the payment. Southey alludes to these efforts; but we are tired of transcribing these records of dishonesty and meanness, and trust we have done enough to show how amply we could justify the language used in the commencement of this article. We conclude with the just comments of the historian.

"The courtesy which had been shown towards the French generals, in the course of the negotiation, had the effect of fixing upon them a deeper stigma, by bringing into full view a low chicanery, a total want of honor, and utter disregard of truth, which could not have been suspected, if it had not been thus officially proved and placed upon public record. Had such charges been advanced by the enemy against the general officers of the British army, the strictest inquiry would have been instituted, and no rank, no influence, no professional merits, could have screened the offenders. They would have been dismissed with ignominy from the service which they had disgraced, and for ever excluded from all honorable society. There was a time when the highest eulogium which the French bestowed upon a soldier, was to say that he was without fear, and without reproach; but under the system of Bonaparte, nothing was considered reproachful in his soldiers, provided they feared nothing in this world or in the next.”—Vol. IÍ,, p. 254.

We have now given our readers a sketch of the conduct of the French army, in a small part of the Peninsula, during a portion of the time that ill-fated district was abandoned to their power. Were we to continue our narrative to the end of the war, and embrace all the instances of oppression, cruelty, and perfidy which Southey has recorded, the closest condensation would not enable us to come within the prescribed limits of a Review. It is the war in Spain that was marked by the greatest outrages and barbarities; but we have confined ourselves to Portugal, and have considered the movements in that country only down to the time of the convention of Cintra, not touching upon the subsequent military operations on a larger scale, when horrors were multiplied to an almost incalculable amount. All these we have left untouched, and yet have found enough to justify us in expressing the deepest detestation of the conduct of the French. The facts we have given are a fair sample of the mode in which, throughout the whole Peninsula, Bonaparte's power, and the terror of his name, and its GLORY too, were supported. When he could no longer sustain himself, and the French armies were retreating through the desolated scenes, and over the blasted soil, which they had found at their first coming fair and fruitful, the last wanton displays of their wickedness seemed to flow from utter depravity of heart, to be indulged for the sake of wickedness, and can only be described as the final efforts of devilish hate to concentrate as much torment as possible in the few remaining moments in which it was permitted to spend its baffled fury. Let us not be thought to exaggerate. Our readers may judge whether the facts we have already detailed do not utterly destroy any à priori objections, drawn from the improbability that men of such high military fame would be guilty of such atrocities; and that if they really had been so depraved, the world would never have been so loud in its applause of their courage, skill, and intellect objections which, one unacquainted with the true history of those times might oppose to the severity of our condemnation. On the contrary, do not those facts establish strong à priori grounds for expecting that a war, commenced, as we have seen, in lawless violence, would end in deeds which might properly be called "devilish ?"

The very nature of the Peninsular war, its design and origin, and the mode of carrying it on, placed all who were