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train (p. 419) and by his engineers' mistakes, Badajoz was nearing starvation. Philippon had actually resolved to imitate Brennier at Almeida if help did not come soon, when, on June 10, Wellington resolved to raise the siege, fell back before Soult and Marmont, and took up a position astride the Caya, in which he could offer battle with every confidence. One of his flanks rested on the fortress of Elvas, the other on mountainous country. By this time he had been joined by the divisions left on the Coa, which had moved south parallel with Marmont; and thus his force was within a few thousands of the 60,000 men whom the French concentration had brought together. Napier calls the moment 'one of the most dangerous of the whole war,' and says 'a great battle was in the interests of the French' -a very doubtful verdict. As he himself says, 'the blood spilled at Albuera still reeked in the nostrils of Soult's soldiers.' Neither Marshal fancied attacking Wellington in a position of his own selection; they were content to hold him in check. The offensive spirit had passed from them to him.

Moreover, as usual, there was a price to pay for concentration. Badajoz delivered meant trouble elsewhere the Asturias evacuated, Bessières' Army of the North fully occupied with the guerillas, Andalusia endangered, for Wellington had already despatched thither Blake and his Spaniards. The diversion fulfilled Wellington's anticipations (p. 445). Soult had to hasten off to Seville, leaving Marmont too weak to do anything but retire to the Tagus valley, where he spent July and August, his troops widely dispersed and in great straits for food. The French had now lost the initiative, they had to wait on Wellington's movements and be satisfied if they could thwart him. Thus what brought Marmont into the field again was another fortress in danger. On returning from Badajoz to Beira (August) Wellington had blockaded Ciudad Rodrigo, and to assist Marmont to relieve it Dorsenne had to collect half the Army of the North, with the usual corollary of letting territory lapse to the guerillas. This episode was marked by 'one of Wellington's rare slips' (p. 572). Instead of promptly retiring to his selected position Wellington left his advanced divisions, Picton's and Craufurd's, perilously near the enemy, and only the admirable conduct of the

Third Division at El Bodon extricated them. Even then had Marmont attacked in force at Fuente Guinaldo, he would have caught Wellington with under half his army. But once again he shrank from attacking Wellington. Bussaco and Fuentes had instilled into French minds a belief well summed up in the opinion attributed to Montbrun, The English position is impregnable; what proves it is that Wellington is offering battle upon it' (p. 576). It was not, then, wholly to fortune that Wellington owed the safe passage of this crisis. He had calculated on being able to bluff the French, and had not calculated wrongly. But Graham's 'very pretty-but spun rather fine' expresses one's feelings. The real criticism is that no adequate object was to be achieved by running the risk.

With the revictualling of Ciudad Rodrigo and the dispersion of Marmont's and Dorsenne's armies into their old cantonments, the operations of 1811 ended, save for one episode-Hill's brilliant surprise of Girard at Arroyo des Molinos (pp. 596-8). Confined as a rule to the rôle of observation, Hill was an 'executive officer of the highest merit,' capable of planning and conducting most difficult operations, and this blow, which filled Soult with apprehension and for a time severed his communications with Marmont, is a proof of Hill's brilliancy as well as his prudence. On a smaller scale it resembles the stroke Wellington was even then carefully preparing the sudden dash on Ciudad Rodrigo, with which 1812 opened. For Prof. Oman's account of that and of the subsequent operations of the great Salamanca campaign we must wait for his fifth volume.

Two interesting questions suggest themselves. How would Napoleon's presence in Spain have influenced the course of events? Why did he never return thither? To discuss what never happened might seem superfluous, but some cautions may be urged against the hasty assumption that Napoleon had only to cross the Pyrenees to dissipate all the obstacles to the French conquest of the Peninsula. His presence would have substituted a single will for quarrelling Marshals, each intent on his own immediate success, but the 'stony narrow track' from Pinhel to Vizeu would not have smoothed itself out because Napoleon was using it; the barren valley of the

Tagus would have produced no more food or forage had Napoleon commanded Marmont's divisions in July 1811; the guerillas would have cut off French despatch-carriers no less surely because the messages they carried were Napoleon's.

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To the second question M. Fournier offers several answers (ii, 124). It was generally expected that Napoleon would return to Spain after Wagram, but 'some declared he would not risk his life in a land seething with fanaticism, others that his divorce. prevented him.' To this last view Prof. Oman inclines; he thinks the Emperor did genuinely intend to return to Spain, but stayed back on account of the dissolution of his marriage, not because the news of Ocana made him think all was over. Still, it looks as if he failed to realise the difficulties of the task. M. Fournier thinks he had no conception of the terrible significance of the guerillas.' Prof. Oman finds the fundamental error which wrecked Masséna's expedition in the Emperor's refusal to reckon the Portuguese regulars as serious opponents. M. Fournier himself leans to the view that distrust of Talleyrand, Fouché and other intriguers made Napoleon reluctant to betake himself to so great a distance from the centre of his policy.' Prof. Oman tells us that the Peninsula was saved from the presence of the Emperor in 1811 because of the necessary limitations of a one-man power. Napoleon dared not leave the centre of affairs; at Vienna or Berlin he was still in touch with Paris, in Portugal he would have been at the end of the world.' From Spain he could not hope to supervise the rigid enforcement of the Continental blockade at Dantzic and Trieste. In 1810 he might perhaps have been able to risk going, yet, as Prof. Lindner argues (vii, 351), the Emperor may well be excused for thinking victory already in his grasp, for the enormous reinforcements he was pouring into the Peninsula seemed amply sufficient to secure success. But in 1811 his relations with Russia were far too strained to permit him to go. His only chance then would have been to have entrusted the supreme command to Soult and to have abandoned the futile attempt to conduct from Paris a war of whose peculiarities he could never form a correct idea.

C. T. ATKINSON,

Art. 2. THE LIGHTER SIDE OF IRISH LIFE.

1. An Irish Cousin (Bentley), The Real Charlotte (Ward and Downey), The Silver Fox (Laurence and Bullen), Some Experiences of an Irish R.M., All on the Irish Shore, Some Irish Yesterdays (Longmans), Dan Russel the Fox (Methuen). By E. E. Somerville and Martin Ross, 1889-1911.

2. Spanish Gold, The Search Party (Methuen), The Major's Niece, The Red Hand of Ulster (Smith, Elder), The Simpkins Plot, The Inviolable Sanctuary (Nelson). By George A. Birmingham, 1908-12.

3. The Novels of Charles Lever. Collected edition. Thirty-seven vols. London: Downey, 1897-9.

IN a survey of the Anglo-Irish humorous novel of recent times, the works of Charles Lever form a convenient point of departure, for with all his limitations he was the first to write about Irish life in such a way as to appeal widely and effectively to an English audience. We have no intention of dwelling upon him at any length -he belongs to an earlier generation-but between him and his successors there are points both of resemblance and of dissimilarity sufficient to make an interesting comparison. The politics and social conditions of Lever's time are not those of the present, but the spirit of Lever's Irishman, though with modifications, is still alive to-day.

Lever had not the intensity of Carleton, but he was less uncompromising in his use of local colour, and he was far more cheerful. He had not the tender grace or simplicity of Gerald Griffin, and never wrote anything so moving or beautiful as 'The Collegians,' but he surpassed him in vitality, gusto, exuberance and knowledge of the world. Overrated in the early stages of his career, Lever paid the penalty of his too facile triumphs in his lifetime and his undoubted talents have latterly been depreciated on political as well as artistic grounds. His heroes were drawn with few exceptions from the landlord class or their faithful retainers. The gallant Irish officers, whose Homeric exploits he loved to celebrate, held commissions in the British army. Lever has never been popular with Nationalist politicians, though as a

matter of fact no one ever exhibited the extravagance and recklessness of the landed gentry in more glaring colours. And he is anathema to the hierophants of the Neo-Celtic Renascence on account of his jocularity. There is nothing crepuscular about Lever; you might as well expect to find a fairy in a railway station.

Lever never was and never could be the novelist of literary men. He was neither a scholar nor an artist; he wrote largely in instalments; and in his earlier novels was wont to end a chapter in a manner which rendered something like a miracle necessary to continue the existence of the hero: 'He fell lifeless to the ground, the same instant I was felled to the earth by a blow from behind, and saw no more.' In technique and characterisation his later novels show a great advance, but if he lives, it will be by the spirited loosely-knit romances of love and war composed in the first ten years of his literary career. His heroes had no scruples in proclaiming their physical advantages and athletic prowess; Charles O'Malley, that typical Galway miles gloriosus, introduces himself with ingenuous egotism in the following passage: 'I rode boldly with foxhounds; I was about the best shot within twenty miles of us; I could swim the Shannon at Holy Island; I drove four-in-hand better than the coachman himself; and from finding a hare to hooking a salmon, my equal could not be found from Killaloe to Banagher.'

The life led by the Playboys of the West (old style) as depicted in Lever's pages was one incessant round of reckless hospitality, tempered by duels and practical joking, but it had its justification in the family annals of the fire-eating Blakes and Bodkins and the records of the Connaught Circuit. The intrepidity of Lever's heroes was only equalled by their indiscretion, their good luck in escaping from the consequences of their folly, and their susceptibilities. His womenfolk may be roughly divided into three classes; sentimental heroines, who sighed and blushed and fainted on the slightest provocation; buxom Amazons like Baby Blake; and campaigners or adventuresses. But the gentle, sentimental, angelic type predominates, and finds a perfect representative in Lucy Dashwood. His serious heroines, except that they could ride, did not differ in essentials from those of

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