threat, that if they refused, every man should be put to the sword. The white flag was then hoisted, and a negotiation begun, which the French were conducting with a view to gain time, till the Spanish commander cut it short, by allowing them a quarter of an hour to surrender at discretion. Upon this they submitted; Mendizabal then, as an act of free grace, permitted the officers to keep their horses and portmanteaus, and the men their knapsacks; and the colonel-commandant of the French, in returning thanks for this generosity, complimented him upon his good fortune in having captured the finest regiment in the Emperor Napoleon’s service. The prisoners were about 800. The Spaniards lost two officers and thirty men, eighty-two wounded. The result of the success was, that the Bierzo was cleared of the French, who fell back from the neighbouring part of Asturias upon Lugo, there to make a stand, supported by their main force, which was divided between Santiago, Coruña, and Ferrol. ♦EFFORTS OF THE GALICIANS.♦ Marshal Ney had still a predominant force in Galicia after Soult’s army was departed; there were garrisons in every town which was sufficiently important, either for its size or situation, to require one, and the French had military possession of the province. But they had yet to subdue the spirit of the people; and the Galicians, who had no longer an example of panic and disorder before their eyes, carried on the war in their own way. Captain M’Kinley in the Lively frigate, with the Plover sloop under his command, arrived off the coast to assist them. He discovered none of that apathy for their own country, none of that contented indifference who was to be their master, none of that sullen and ungrateful dislike of the English, of which the retreating army had complained so loudly; he heard from them only expressions of gratitude to the British government and praise of the British nation; he perceived in them the true feelings of loyalty and patriotism, and saw in all their actions honest, enthusiastic ardour, regulated by a cool and determined courage. The invaders attempted, by the most unrelenting severity, to keep them down. On the 7th of March a party of French entered the little towns of Carril and Villa Garcia, murdered some old men and women in the streets, set fire to the houses of those persons whom they suspected of being hostile to them, and then retreated to Padron. To lay waste villages with fire, abandon the women to the soldiery, and put to death every man whom they took in arms, was the system upon which the French under Marshals Ney and Soult proceeded. Such a system, if it failed to intimidate, necessarily recoiled upon their own heads; and the thirst of vengeance gave a character of desperation to the courage of the Galicians. About an hundred French were pillaging a convent, when Don Bernardo Gonzalez, with two-and-thirty Spaniards, fell upon them, and did such execution while