If the Central Junta had at one time dissembled the danger of the country (or rather partaken too much of that unreasoning confidence which was one characteristic of the Spaniards), they never attempted to conceal its disasters, nor to extenuate them. On such occasions their language was frank and dignified, becoming the nation which they represented. In announcing the loss of Coruña and Ferrol, they pronounced the surrender of those strong places to have been cowardly and scandalous, and promised to condemn the persons who had thus betrayed their duty, to condign punishment. The enemy meantime failed not to blazon forth their triumphs in this Galician campaign: to represent the battle of Coruña as a victory on their part was a falsehood, which all circumstances, except those of the action itself, tended to confirm; ... and the results of the campaign had been so rapid, and apparently so complete, as to excite their own wonder. Three British regiments, they said, the 42d, 50th, and 52d, had been entirely destroyed in the action, and Sir John Moore killed in attempting to charge at their head, with the vain hope of restoring the fortune of the day. The English had lost every thing which constitutes an army, artillery, horses, baggage, ammunition, magazines, and military chests. 80 pieces of cannon they had landed, they had re-embarked no more than 12. 200,000 weight of powder, 16,000 muskets, and 2,000,000 of treasure (about £83,000) had fallen into the hands of the pursuers, and treasure yet more considerable had been thrown down the precipices along the road between Astorga and Coruña, where the peasantry and the soldiers were now collecting it. 5000 horses had been counted which they had slaughtered upon the way, ... 500 were taken at Coruña, and the carcasses of 1200 were infecting the streets when the conquerors entered that town. The English would have occupied Ferrol and seized the squadron there, had it not been for the precipitance of their retreat, and the result of the battle to which they had been brought at last. Thus then had terminated their expedition into Spain! thus, after having fomented the war in that unhappy country, had they abandoned it to its fate! In another season of the year not a man of them would have escaped; now the facility of breaking up the bridges, the rapidity of the winter torrents, shortness of days, and length of nights, had favoured their retreat. But they were driven out of the peninsula, harassed, routed, and disheartened. The kingdom of Leon, the province of Zamora, and all Galicia, which they had been so desirous to cover, were conquered and subdued; and Romana, whom they had brought from the Baltic, was, with the wreck of his army, reduced to less than 2500 men, wandering between Vigo and Santiago, and closely pursued.... This was the most stinging of all the French reproaches. Wounded to the heart as we were that an English army should so have retreated, still