neighbourhood of Pamplona, by the road of Roncesvalles, into France, followed by the light troops of the allies; and on the next day Lord Wellington caused the fort of Pamplona to be invested. Sir Thomas Graham had in the mean time taken possession of Tolosa, after two actions with the enemy, in which they sustained considerable loss. He continued to push them along the road to France, dislodging them from all their strong posts; and a brigade of the army of Gallicia, under General Castanos, drove them across the Bidassoa (the boundary river) over the bridge of Irun. The garrison of Passages surrendered on the 30th to the troops of Longa, and St. Sebastian was blockaded by a Spanish detachment. A garrison being left by the enemy in Pancorbo, commanding the road from Vittoria to Burgos, Lord Wellington directed the Condé del Abispał to make himself master of the place, which he effected, the garrison surrendering themselves prisoners of war. General Clausel having remained some time in the neighbourhood of Logrona, hopes were conceived of being able to intercept him, and a force of light troops and cavalry was detached towards Tudela for that purpose: by extraordinary forced marches, however, he arrived first at Tudela, whence he made good his retreat to Saragossa, followed by General Mina, who took some guns and prisoners.

Notwithstanding the enemy had withdrawn their right and left quite into France, their centre still maintained itself in the valley of Bastan, of which, on account of its richness, and the strong positions it affords, they seemed determined to keep possession, having assembled in it three divisions of the army of the south; Sir Rowland Hill, therefore, being relieved from the blockade of Pamplona, was directed by Lord Wellington, with a considerable force of British and Portuguese infantry, to dislodge them: this he effected, and the enemy abandoned the strongest of their posts, and retired into France. The loss of the allies in these operations was inconsiderable. The siege of St. Sebastian was now proceeding under the directions of Sir Thomas Graham, and on the 17th July the fortified convent of San Bartholone, and an adjoining work on a steep hill, were carried by assault. General Mina, in a report to Lord Wellington, informed his Lordship, that being joined by General Duran in

the neighbourhood of Saragossa, they had attacked, on the 8th, General Paris, who commanded a French division in Arragon, and who retired in the night, leaving a garrison in redoubt. General Duran was left to reduce this work, while Mina, with his cavalry, and that of Don Julian Sanchez, followed Paris, and took from him many prisoners, and a quantity of baggage, and also intercepted a convoy.-Paris arrived at Jaca on the 14th, bringing with him the garrisons of several intermediate places.

The operations on the border, between Spain and France, had hitherto been upon a comparatively small scale; but towards the close of July, an effort was made by the French, which brought into action the whole force on each side. Marshal Soult having been appointed by an imperial decree Commander-in-Chief of the French army in Spain, and the southern provinces of France, joined the army on July the 13th, which had been re-formed into nine divisions of infantry and three of cavalry, with a large proportion of artillery. The allied army was posted in the different passes of the mountain, with mutual communications, and Pamplona was blockaded by a Spanish force under the Condé del Abispal.

On the 24th, Marshal Soult collected at St. Jean Pied de Port the right and left wings of his army, and a division of his centre, with some cavalry, amounting in all to 30 or 40,000 men, and on the 25th attacked Major-General Byng's post at Roncesvalles. He was supported by a division of the allied army, under Sir Lowry Cole, and the position was maintained during the day; but being turned in the evening, it was neces sary to abandon it in the night. On the same day, two divisions of the enemy's centre attacked Sir Rowland Hill's position in the Puerto de Maya, the defenders of which at first gave way, but being reinforced, they recovered the most important part of their post, which they could have held, had not the retreat of Sir Lowry Cole rendered it expedient for them also to retire.

On the 27th Sir Lowry Cole and Sir Thomas Picton, thinking the post to which they had retreated untenable, drew further back to a position to recover the blockade of Pamplona. Their forces consisted of the 2d and 4th divisions of the allied army? and as they were taking their ground, they were joined by Lord

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Wellington. Shortly after, the enemy made an attack on a hill the right of the 4th division, the importance of which post rendered it an object of vigorous assault and defence during that and the following day, and the enemy was finally repulsed. On the 28th, the sixth division joined, which, as soon as it had taken its position, was attacked by a large body of the enemy, who were driven back with vast loss. The battle then became general along the front of the heights occupied by the 4th division, every regiment of which charged with the bayonet, some of them four different times, and the result was a repulse of the enemy, with great slaughter.

Lord Wellington, on the 30th, directed an attack upon the enemy, the success of which obliged him to abandon a position said by his Lordship to be "one of the strongest and most difficult of access that he had yet seen occupied by troops." In the retreat from it, the French lost a great number of prisoners. A separate attack upon Sir Rowland Hill's position was also repelled after a hard contest; and on the night of August 1st, the allied army was nearly in the same position which it occupied on the 26th of July.

His Lordship was enabled to bestow the highest commendations on the behaviour of the troops of the different nations on this trying occasion; and perhaps in none of the actions during this war was more military skill displayed by the commanders, or steady valor by the soldiers.

Yet one more exploit remains to be related:-The enemy continuing posted on the 2d with two divisions on the Puerto de Eschalar, and nearly their whole army behind the Puerto, Lord Wellington determined to dislodge them by a combined movement of three advanced divisions. One of these, however, the seventh, under the command of Major-General, now Sir Edward, Barnes, being first formed, commenced the attack by itself, and actually drove the two divisions of the enemy from the formidable heights which they occupied. This part of the Spanish frontier was now entirely cleared of the foe: the loss of the French in all these affairs was generally mentioned by his Lordship to have been severe both in officers and men. private account states it at 15,000, of whom 4,000 were prison

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ers that of the allies was considerable, though scarcely equal to what might have been expected from the warmth and variety of the actions in which they were engaged.

A serious addition to the actual loss was made by an unsuccessful attempt upon St. Sebastian on the 25th.-Early on that morning, when the fall of the tide had left the foot of the wall dry, an attack of the breach in that line was ordered, and was executed with great gallantry, some of the troops having penetrated into the town; but the defences raised by the enemy were so strong and numerous, and the fire of musketry and grape so destructive, that it became necessary to abandon the enterprize. On this occasion, the 3d battalion of Royal Scots, which led the attack, suffered severely in men and officers; and the whole loss in killed, wounded, and missing, was nearly 900.

On the 31st of August Lord Wellington having directed Sir Thomas Graham to attack and form a lodgment on the breach of St. Sebastian, which now extended to a large surface of the left of the fortifications, the assault commenced at eleven in the forenoon of that day, by a combined column of British and Portuguese. The external appearance of the breach, however, proved extremely fallacious; for when the column, after being exposed to a heavy fire of shot and shells, arrived at the foot of the wall, it formed a perpendicular scarp of twenty feet to the level of the streets, leaving only one accessible point, formed by the breaking of the end and front of the curtain, and which admitted our entrance only by single files. In this situation the assailants made repeated but fruitless exertions to gain an entrance, no man surviving the attempt to mount the narrow ridge of the curtain. The attack thus being almost in a desperate state, Sir Thomas Graham adopted the venturous expedient of ordering the guns to be turned against the curtain, the shot of which passed only a few feet over the heads of the men at the foot of the breach. In the meantime a Portuguese brigade was ordered to ford the river near its mouth, and attack the small breach to the right of the great one. The success of this manœuvre, joined to the effect of the batteries upon the curtain, at R. M. Cal.

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length gave an opportunity for the troops to establish themselves on the narrow pass, after a most determined assault of more than two hours; and in an hour more the defenders were driven from all their complicated works, and retired with great loss to the castle, leaving the town in full possession of the assailants.

A prize thus contended for could not but cost dear to the successful party; the loss amounted to above 2,300 in killed and wounded; but the possession of this place Lord Wellington justly regarded as of essential importance to the further operations of his campaign. The light in which it was regarded by the enemy appeared from a vigorous effort for its relief.

After the fire against St. Sebastian had re-commenced, the French had drawn the greatest part of their force to one point, which convinced Lord Wellington of their intentions. Three divisions of the Spanish army, under Don Manuel Freyre, were therefore posted upon heights near the town of Irun, commanding the high road to St. Sebastian, and were strengthened by a British and a Portuguese division on the right and left, whilst other troops occupied different positions for the greater security, Early in the morning of the 31st, the enemy crossed the Bidassoa in great force, and made a desperate attack on the whole front of the Spanish position on the heights of San Marcial, but were repeatedly repulsed with great gallantry by the Spanish troops, whose conduct, his Lordship observed, was equal to that of any whom he ever saw engaged." the afternoon, the French having thrown a bridge over another part of the river, renewed their attack, but were again repulsed, and at length they took the advantage of a violent storm to retire from this front entirely. On this occasion it was not found necessary to bring any other troops in aid of the Spanish in the defence of their post. Another attack was made by the French upon a Portuguese brigade on the bank of the Bidassoa, which some British troops were moved to support. In fine, after a variety of operations this second attempt to prevent the establishment of the Allies upon the frontiers was defeated by a part only of the allied army, at the very moment when the town

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