The assumption of the sovereignty of Spain by Joseph Bonaparte, although the strongest places and most commanding positions in the Peninsula were occupied by French troops, had excited the indignation of the Spanish people, who solicited, and readily obtained, the aid of Great Britain; and the latter power had, in April 1809, sent Lieut.-General Sir Arthur Wellesley with reinforcements to Portugal, to save that country from invasion, and also to assist the Spaniards in their struggle for independence. The second battalion was selected to proceed to join the army in the Peninsula under the command of Lieut.-General the Honorable Sir Arthur Wellesley: it embarked on the 22nd of June 1809 for the Tagus, and arrived at Lisbon on the 2nd of July. The battalion shortly afterwards proceeded with a division, consisting of reinforcements, under the command of Brigadier-General Catlin Crawfurd, who endeavoured, by a forced march, to arrive in time for the battle of _Talavera_, which was fought on the 27th and 28th of July, and for which victory Lieut.-General the Honorable Sir Arthur Wellesley was raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Wellington. When the second battalion arrived at Sarza la Mayor, a despatch was received from Sir Arthur Wellesley, ordering the brigade and detachments to halt and bivouac at Niza until his arrival with the head-quarters at Badajoz, after which the battalion was stationed at the village of Torre Mayor: here it suffered severely from sickness, which at that season of the year is prevalent in Estremadura, and particularly on the banks of the Guadiana. On the 3rd of September the head-quarters arrived at Badajoz, and the army was distributed about Elvas, Campo Mayor, and other places adjacent; but when Viscount Wellington broke up from the Guadiana in the month of December, and crossed the Tagus, he left Major-General Rowland Hill (afterwards Viscount Hill), with a force of 10,000 men, British and Portuguese, at Abrantes: among the former was the second battalion of the THIRTY-NINTH regiment. [Sidenote: 1810. 1st Batt.] In the summer of 1810, Joachim Murat, King of Naples, assembled upwards of a hundred heavy gunboats, a number of others more lightly armed, and about four hundred transport boats, and brought thirty thousand troops to the coast of Calabria for the purpose of invading Sicily. The battalion companies, under the command of Brevet-Lieut.-Colonel Cavendish Sturt, accordingly proceeded from Malta, in June 1810, to Sicily, where they were employed in the defence of the island against the threatened invasion. [Sidenote: 2nd Batt.]