“The credit which sustained the colossal power of Great Britain,” said Buonaparte to his Legislative Body in the summer of 1811, “is no more. Her allies are either lost or destroyed. She ruins all whom she would subsidize; she exhausts her own people in useless efforts. But the struggle against this modern Carthage will now be decided on the plains of Spain; the peace of the continent will not be disturbed; England herself shall feel the evils which during twenty years she has inflicted on the continental nations. A clap of thunder shall put an end to the affairs of the Peninsula, seal the fate of her armies, and avenge Europe and Asia by terminating this second Punic ♦DECEMBER.♦ war.” With what feelings must Buonaparte now have reflected upon these bootless boasts! With as little satisfaction too could he reflect upon the result of that fundamental principle of his military system, by which his armies were made to live on the countries wherein they were making war. The principle of the British commander was to demand nothing from the inhabitants, and to seize nothing; not a single ration was required from them; they were paid on the spot for every thing which they brought, while Soult’s army drained the adjoining provinces by its requisitions, and his soldiers were rendered at once formidable and odious to their own countrymen by the insolent and lawless habits which they had acquired in the Peninsula. The passage of the Nive had put the allies in possession of a large tract of country singularly fertile; they obtained great part of their forage from it; and the right wing by its position on the left of the Adour, commanded the navigation of that river, and often intercepted the enemy’s supplies. In that deep soil, and in a season of continued rain, it was not possible for the army to advance, an individual indeed could with difficulty make his way any where but on the paved road; ... it was hardly thought bad walking if the waters were not more than knee-deep. ♦INJURY DONE BY DESTROYING THE WOODS IN THIS PART OF THE PYRENEES.♦ One of those unforeseen effects which frequently arise when man interferes upon a large scale with the works of nature, has rendered this country liable to inundations in winter and spring, and to drought in summer. About the middle of the seventeenth century a speculator[4] undertook to supply the French government with ship timber from the Pyrenees; to effect this it was necessary for him to increase the waters of the two rivers, or, as they are there called, _Gaves_ of Pau and Oleron; and by turning into them the course of numerous rivulets, he doubled the volume of the latter stream, and increased the current of the Adour so much that a 50-gun ship could cross the bar of Bayonne with less difficulty than before that time was experienced by a vessel with ten guns. He expended 300,000 crowns upon this scheme, succeeded in it, and ruined his family. But permanent evil was occasioned to the country: for when the