of the mutinous janizaries were strangled.

The armies soon felt the impulse of this vigour on the part of government; the Russians, who were besieging Rudschuck, were repulsed with great loss in an attack; Czerni George also suffered a defeat; and these, with a few other successes, were communicated to the people of Constantinople in official bulletins, not a little curious, both as being the first of their kind, and for the characteristic language in which the intelligence was made known. "The zephyr of victory,"it was said, "had breathed on the side of the true believers, and, with the aid of the Most High, and under the influence of the happy star of his highness their sublime monarch, they had been completely successful. Their commander had been favoured and enlightened by the prophet. In one instance, when the bat tle was doubtful, the soldiers in the front rank, crying out, Blessed be, the Prophet, and long live the Sultan!' threw themselves upon the Russian bayonets, seized with one hand the weapons which mortally wounded them, and plunged their daggers in the enemy's heart with the other. The trifling loss which they had sustained could only be attributed to the especial protection which Allah extended to the followers of the true prophet; while they had made great slaughter of the infidels, and taken the heads of great numbers to serve as bridges for the true believers in their passage to the other world."

his very honoured teachers and professors of theology, explainers of the Koran and tradition, his imams, the great of his court, his seven military corps, his agas, officers, and soldiers, &c. &c., telling them that the treacherous Muscovites, those enemies of the faith, persevered in their audacious resolution to execute the devices which their depraved souls had invented. "They have already," said he, "invested our imperial cities and fortresses with war, and further overrun the territory of the true believers. They are not satisfied with putting the adherents of our holy faith, without distinction of age or sex, in chains, wherever they come, and with driving many of our plundered brethren naked from their homes to seek a shelter in the wilderness; but they menace us, the devout followers of the holy prophet, the adorers of the true religion; we to whom power and command have been given by the Almighty at the express intercession of Mahommed, whose holy blood now flows in our veins, with further indignities.-Desirous of consulting only the happiness of our people, we have not hesi tated to make known our pacific wishes; but the proposals we have received in return have been too degrading to make us hesitate in rejecting them. In every line of those proposals, the insatiable ambition of our foes may be traced; indeed, nothing but submission, say they, can save us from everlasting war. I, for my own part, cheerfully embrace this latter alternative, rather than endure so great a shame, well remembering the precepts of our holy prophet, as contained in the two following sentences of the Koran :- God has momentarily left you, in order to make you sensible of your weakness and dependence. Supplicate him, and he will

assuredly return; then with one hundred men who put their trust in him, you will vanquish two hundred enemies.'-In another part, God says to the prophet, 'Assemble the true believers for battle; if there be twenty firm and brave men, they shall conquer two hundred; and if there be an hundred, they shall vanquish a thousand of their foes.'-I entreat the assistance of the Most High; I pray for the spiritual influence of the prophet. Full of hope, I hasten to share the labours and dangers of my brave troops, to put myself at their head; to rouse the valour of some, to confirm that of others, and to direct that of all: in short, to lead them to battle-to victory!-It is not my design to attribute the fruits of our victories to myself. No; the only aim of my ambition is to make the faith of Mahommed triumph; to frustrate the devices of our enemies, and, if possible, to contribute to the fulfilling of his holy will."

The sultan then gave orders that his intention of putting himself at the head of the army should again be published throughout his dominions, decreeing that in every town or vil lage where the inhabitants did not forthwith join the army, the naibs and imams should lose their places. "Good men," said he, "ought not

to be more slow in frustrating evil deeds, than bad men are quick in executing them. May the prophet intercede for us! May the Almighty grant us the victory, and cover our enemies with shame!" Yet, notwithstanding this language, and the promise thus twice repeated of taking the field in person, the sultan remained in Constantinople. Giurgewo and Rudschuck fell, and the Russians were now masters of all the strong places on the right bank of the Danube, from its mouth for more than a hundred leagues upward. The Servians also gained several victories; the most important was upon the Drina, where they took 6000 prisoners. These successes were not purchased without a great loss of men; both parties were weary of h. stilities, and negociations for peace were opened. But Russia demanded cessions which the Porte was neither so weak nor so weakhearted as to grant; and both parties, while the discussions were carrying on, renewed their exertions for continuing the war. During this campaign the Americans, whose spirit of enterprise leads them wherever profit is to be obtained, found their way to the scene of action, and the flag of the United States was seen for the first time in the Black Sea.

THOSE persons who, during the struggle of the Spaniards against Buonaparte, have looked on with unshaken confidence to their final success, found their opinion upon the extent and nature of the country, and the character of the people. The continent, notwithstanding its extent, fell under the yoke of France, because the spirit of the people was not such as to supply the want of sense and of honour in their rulers; and the Tyrolese were subdued notwithstanding their heroism, because, in so small a territory as the Tyrol, an immense superiority of numbers, remorselessly employed, must necessarily overcome all resistance. But no force can be large enough to conquer and keep in subjection a peninsula, containing above 175,000 square miles, and twelve millions of inhabitants, if the people have the virtue to carry resistance to the uttermost. Their armies will be defeated, their towns may be occupied, their fortresses taken, their villages burnt, but the country remains; the mountains form a chain of fastnesses running through the whole peninsula, and connecting all its provinces with each other; and when the war ceases to be carried on by army against army, and becomes the struggle of a nation against its oppressors, pursued incessantly by

VOL. III. PART I.

night and by day, the soldier, no longer acting in large bodies, loses that confidence which discipline gives him; while the peasant, on the other hand, feels the whole advantage which the love of his country, and the desire of vengeance, and the sense of duty, and the approbation of his own heart, give to the individual in a contest between man and man. The character of the Spaniards might have been learnt from their history; it has been abundantly proved in the dreadful trials which they have undergone. The extent of the country is known, and its local circumstances remain the same as when Henri IV. said of it, that it was a land where a weak army must be beaten, and a strong one starved. They who were neither ignorant of history nor of human nature considered these things; and therefore, from the first dawn of the revolution, regarded it with unabated hope,

But to expect that a wise government could be as it were created, and that the people were at once to become free while they were asserting their independence, was an error into which none but the ignorant and the unthinking could fall; such an expectation, however, was entertained, because, of those who are called the public, the unthinking and the igno

right of election themselves, and so naturally did they look up to those by whom they were wont to be directed. Some of these persons accordingly met; but the power with which they were thus as it were by acclamation invested, confounded and intimidated them; many withdrew from the assembly, and they who remained were glad to rid themselves of an unwelcome responsibility, by assenting to any nomination which might be proposed. Count Tilly took advantage of this; he was a man of notorious profligacy, who had acquired great wealth by the vilest means, but that wealth gave him great influence over the populace. He and his creatures mutually proposed each other to be members of the junta, or rather nominated themselves; and to give authority to the body, they added some of those persons who were most respected in the city, either for their reputed talents or the offices which they filled. Some members were thus included who deserved to be chosen, but the temper of the majority was ominously marked before they had been in power four-and-twenty hours. A man, by name Nicolas Tap y Nunez, had hitherto been the leader of the people; he came to Seville for the sole purpose of making the Sevillians declare against the French, and his success in this gave him great popularity, which he never abused even in the slightest instance. This man, being a stranger, knew nothing of the character of Tilly and his party, and therefore assented to their nomination; and for the same reason never attempted, which he might easily have done, to include himself in the junta. But having the next day been informed who the persons were who had intruded themselves as members of the new government, he went to the junta

and required that two of these unworthy individuals should be expelled, as not having the good opinion of the people; the consequence was, that he himself was immediately arrested and hurried away to Cadiz, where he remained in prison during the whole reign of the central junta. It is almost as disgraceful for the people of Seville to have suffered this villainous act, as for the junta to have committed it.

Madrid being in the hands of the enemy, the other parts of the country looked to Seville for an example, and juntas in consequence were formed everywhere. But there was less of intrigue in their formation; those persons were appointed whom the people were accustomed to respect; and thus in every part of Spain the government was delivered, or rather fell into the hands of the provincial nobility and gentry, a set of men whom their total want of education, their prejudices, and all their previous habits, completely disqualified for the situation to which they were called. Among these were a few who had formerly been in office at Madrid; but whatever habits of business they had acquired were more than counterbalanced by the formalities which were acquired at the same time, and their attachment to the old routine and to the old abominations. Whereever, therefore, these statesmen of the old school were found, the juntas were worse than they would have been without them. In all these bodies there was a zealous love of their country, and a rooted detestation of the French; but these feelings were counteracted by their instinctive dread of revolution: that spirit by which alone the whole strength of the country could be brought forth, and talents called into action wherever they could