with good effect; the tide turned; the other boats unable to stem it, or approach the shore, where they could assist their comrades, found it necessary to return; some were sunk, and about forty men were made prisoners. ♦SOULT MARCHES BY WAY OF ORENSE.♦ Four days had been consumed in preparations for this vain attempt. It was impossible to wait till the river should have fallen so as to render the passage practicable, for the troops could not be supplied where they were, and they were beginning to suffer from inaction. Soult therefore left General Lamartiniere to command at Tuy, with 350 men, besides 900 who were on the sick list. Some public money had been found in that city, and six-and-thirty field-pieces were left there, besides some guns and ammunition which had been brought from Vigo. It was thought a position of some importance at this time, and this force sufficient to maintain it. He then marched for Orense, making this long circuit to cross the river with less unwillingness because he had received intelligence from Lahoussaye ♦OPERATIONS DU M. SOULT, 73, 80.♦ that the peasantry were in a state of insurrection in consequence of Romana’s proclamations. ♦ROMANA ROUSES THE GALICIANS.♦ Romana indeed had not been inactive during the short respite which had been allowed him. Had the French rightly appreciated his unconquerable spirit, and apprehended the effect which such a man was capable of producing upon a brave and generous peasantry, they would have deemed his single destruction of more importance to their cause than the capture of Ferrol ♦FEB. 13.♦ and Coruña. By this time he had collected some 9000 men; to form an efficient army was in his circumstances impossible, utterly destitute as he was of means; but what was of more consequence, he had roused the country; his presence was infinitely important there, and his name and his example hardly less so in other parts of Spain, for in every part the people were encouraged by a persuasion that their countrymen elsewhere were more fortunate than themselves. Every where except upon the spot it was believed by the Spaniards that Romana was at the head of a formidable army; when his troops were so ♦OPINION OF HIS STRENGTH.♦ broken, a victorious enemy so close upon him, and his condition so hopeless in all human appearance, that he himself must have considered his escape from captivity, and the death to which he would then have been condemned, as manifestly providential. The Galicians at Lisbon (in which city there were always some thousands of those industrious men) were at that time embodied for the purpose of marching to join him; and the Spanish minister wrote to desire that he would send officers to discipline and take charge of them. The dispatch found him on the Portugueze frontier: he represented in reply that his own force consisted chiefly of new volunteers, so that none of his officers could be spared: he could only send some who