1806.]

BATTLE OF MAIDA.

473

command was sufficient; as it was sufficient for brother Louis, who was proclaimed king of Holland in June. Joseph entered the city of Naples on the 15th of February; the king withdrew to Palermo; and Joseph caused himself to be proclaimed king on the 30th of March. In Sicily there was a British army commanded by sir John Stuart. Sir Sidney Smith had the command of a squadron at Palermo. The people of Calabria were discontented under their French masters; and Stuart was urged by the court of Naples to render them assistance. He landed near the northern frontier of Lower Calabria on the 1st of July. The French general Reynier collected his forces, and directed them towards the place of disembarkation. "I wished to march immediately on the English, to throw them into the sea," he writes to king Joseph. The English did not wait upon the beach to be thrown into the sea. They marched to the interior, and on the 4th fought the battle of Maida,—a battle which has given a name to a district of London. It was quickly decided-not by cannon or musketry, but by the bayonet. Reynier has related his defeat with unusual candour. When within halfgun-shot of the English, which remained carrying arms, the drums of the French regiments beat the charge. On they rushed, as the English battalions opened their fire. "But," says Reynier, "when they had only fifteen steps to make in order to reach the enemy's line with the bayonet, and destroy it, the soldiers of the 1st regiment turned their backs and fled. Those of the 42nd perceived the movement; and, though they had only a few more steps to take, began to hesitate, and followed the example of the 1st. As soon as I perceived the flight of the 1st regiment I turned towards the second line, to charge with that, but the Poles were already in flight." It was all over. The slaughter of the flying French was terrific. There was an officer in Reynier's army, more known as a man of genius-one of the wittiest of pamphleteers after the Restoration of the Bourbons-Paul Louis Courier, who writes to a friend after this battle," the adventure is grievous for poor Reynier. We fought no-where. All eyes are upon us. With our good troops, and forces equal, to be beaten in a few minutes! Such a thing has not been seen since the Revolution." The victory was decisive; but there were no permanent advantages from the victory. The Calabrian insurgents drove the French out of the province. But they returned after sir John Stuart had left; and there was a protracted and a cruel warfare of soldiery against peasantry, with the usual result of such unequal conflicts.

The news of the battle of Maida which reached London on the 2nd of September made the English pulse beat a little higher; but it did not produce half the excitement of the news of the taking of Buenos Ayres, which news arrived on the 13th. What did it matter to the eager hopes of commercial men that sir Home Popham had accomplished this great adventure without orders from home? He had commanded the naval force at the taking of the Dutch Settlement of the Cape of Good Hope in January—an important conquest, which, whether for good or for evil, we have retained ever since. The Spanish colonies on the Rio de la Plata were considered to be ill-defended; and sir Home Popham determined to make a dash at a

VOL. VII.

Reynier o Joseph, July 5.

"Envres de P. L. Courier," tome iv. p. 113 (Bruxelles, 1828).

I I

474

BUENOS AYRES.

[1806. region reported to be so rich in treasure and merchandize, and so capable of affording a great opening to British commercial enterprize, that he would be justified in acting upon his own impulse. Having obtained from the general at the Cape the assistance of some troops, he arrived in June at the mouth of La Plata. Buenos Ayres was taken without opposition, with a great booty in the Treasury, and vast stores in the shipping on the river. The triumphant man sent home a circular addressed to the mercantile and manufacturing towns in Great Britain, which drove the speculators wild. Not the Scotch when they colonized Darien sent out such wonderful cargoes of goods as were sent in 1806. When the cargoes arrived Buenos Ayres had again changed masters. Under the command of a French colonel in the Spanish service, an attack was made on the British troops in the city; and after a sanguinary conflict they surrendered as prisoners of war. There was a more fatal termination of the South American enterprizes in the following year. Thus it was, and thus it had been, from the commencement of the war in 1793. Year after year the armies of England were engaged in what the greatest of her commanders described as the most ruinous of systems-the carrying on “a little war." Expeditions were again and again organized, to operate rather as distractions of the enemy than to produce any permanent impression upon the issue of the contest. Whilst Napoleon rapidly directed a great and overwhelming force upon one point, England was attempting enterprizes in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in America, some of which had a temporary success, others a lamentable failure; but in all of which the bravery of her troops amply proved what a large army of such men could do, if fairly brought to grapple even with the veterans of Marengo or Austerlitz. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, and for seven years before, vast as were the sums expended upon small achievements, the government of George III. could never 66 screw its courage to the sticking-place," to conduct a war against Republic and the ambition of Napoleon, upon a scale that might emulate the vigour with which the government of Anne conducted the war against the ambition of Louis the Fourteenth.

the aggressions of the