them whenever they had any thing like a fair chance; but this is not
to be wondered at, for the same thing has always happened the world
over under similar conditions. Our defeats were exactly such as
any man might have foreseen, and there is nothing to be learned
from the follies committed by incompetent commanders and untrained
troops when in the presence of skilled officers having under them
disciplined soldiers. The humiliating surrenders, abortive attacks,
and panic routs of our armies can all be paralleled in the campaigns
waged by Napoleon's marshals against the Spaniards and Portuguese
in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of our own war. The
Peninsular troops were as little able to withstand the French veterans
as were our militia to hold their own against the British regulars.
But it must always be remembered, to our credit, that while seven
years of fighting failed to make the Spaniards able to face the
French,[Footnote: At the closing battle of Toulouse, fought between
the allies and the French, the flight of the Spaniards was so rapid
and universal as to draw from the Duke of Wellington the bitter
observation, that "though he had seen a good many remarkable things
in the course of his life, yet this was the first time he had ever
seen ten thousand men running a race."] two years of warfare gave us
soldiers who could stand against the best men of Britain. On the
northern frontier we never developed a great general,--Brown's claim
to the title rests only on his not having committed the phenomenal
follies of his predecessors,--but by 1814 our soldiers had become
seasoned, and we had acquired some good brigade commanders, notably
Scott, so that in that year we played on even terms with the British.
But the battles, though marked by as bloody and obstinate fighting
as ever took place, were waged between small bodies of men, and were
not distinguished by any feats of generalship, so that they are not
of any special interest to the historian. In fact, the only really