emissaries, though it was evidently a manifestation of the general temper. Threats of condign punishment were denounced against any person who should again offer insult to a British subject; and the people were assured it was only by the powerful assistance of the British army that their national independence could be maintained. ♦M. SOULT ORDERED TO ENTER PORTUGAL FROM GALICIA.♦ The bulletins had announced that Marshal Soult would cross the Minho from Tuy on the 11th of February, reach Porto by the 20th, and Lisbon by the 28th. His instructions were to march along the coast, as the shortest and most convenient line, where, though there was no high road, there were no mountains, and the ways every where practicable for carriages; he was to govern the country as Junot had done, and induce the people as soon as possible to request from Napoleon a King of his appointment. The nominal force allotted him was 50,000 men, and the staff might have sufficed for twice that amount; but the efficient numbers fell far short. They had suffered much in the battle of Coruña; they had suffered also by their rapid advance through so difficult a country in the severest weather; and in means also they were deficient; for though it was their system to take whatever they required, they were now in a province where little was to be found. Plate, jewels, indigo, Peruvian bark, whatever marketable plunder Galicia afforded, these dealers in wholesale rapine shipped from Coruña for France. Articles ♦DIFFICULTY OF PROVIDING FOR THE FRENCH ARMY.♦ of immediate necessity were not so readily obtained. The military hospitals were in want of every thing, even rags for the wounded, for linen here was a luxury not in general use. The mills of that country (which are of the simplest construction, working by a single horizontal wheel) were so small that ninety of them could not supply more flour in a day than was required for the daily consumption of the invading army; and as the invaders could find no Spaniards to serve them, they were obliged to draw not only millers, but bakers and butchers from the regiments. Grain was scarce, Galicia being a grazing province, which at no time produced more than a third of what its own inhabitants required. The summary mode of stripping them by requisitions, to which the French as usual resorted, was in this instance impeded by their own people: for the detachments who were stationed in different parts to keep the communication open, finding how scanty the resources were, and apprehending that if food were sent away they should be left without it, suffered the ♦MÉM. SUR LES OPERATIONS DU M. SOULT, 56, 60.♦ orders of the commissariat to be neglected, and took care of themselves alone. ♦HIS CONFIDENCE OF SUCCESS.♦