He proceeded to say that he had frequently observed during the late campaign with how much more ease and celerity the French soldiers cooked their food than the British. This disadvantage on our part, he said, must be ascribed to the same cause as the other evils which he lamented, “the want of attention in the officers to the orders of the army and to the conduct of their men, and the consequent want of authority over their conduct. Certain men of each company should be appointed to cut and bring in wood, others to fetch water, and others to get the meat, &c. to be cooked: and it would soon be found if this practice were duly enforced, and a particular hour for serving the dinners, and for the men dining, named, as it ought to be, equally as for the parade, that cooking would no longer require the inconvenient length of time which it had lately been found to take, and that the soldiers would not be exposed to the privation of their food at the moment when the army may be engaged in operations with the enemy.” He concluded by repeating that the great object of the general and field officers must be to get the captains and subalterns of the regiments to understand, and to perform the duties required from them, as the only mode by which the discipline and efficiency of the army could be restored and maintained during the next campaign. This letter excited no little surprise in the nation, mortifying and disgraceful as the faults were which were thus openly and manfully exposed. But it was not more severe than the occasion called for. No retreat had ever been conducted with greater military skill; and nothing but that skill, and the reputation which the British troops had established for themselves under its direction, could have saved the army from the consequences of the ignorance or neglect of duty in many of the officers, and the insubordination of the men, which was a consequence of such neglect or ignorance. The circumstances of that retreat justified the whole severity of Lord Wellington’s remarks, and would more evidently have done so, if the sufferings of the army had been more broadly stated; for though the marches had indeed been short, and the halts long and frequent, no army which was not flying from an enemy, but retreating before it, in strength, ever suffered so much from exposure, and hunger, and exhaustion. Nothing could be more judicious than his orders during the whole retreat, and nothing more irregular than the way in which they were carried into effect; and this, though in part owing to casual and unavoidable obstructions on the way, arose in a far greater degree from negligence and incapacity. Sometimes divisions were moved too soon, more frequently too late, and kept standing on wet ground, in the rain, for two hours, perishing with cold, waiting the order to move. Their clothes were seldom dry for six hours together, and during the latter part of the retreat