The people of all ranks in Buenos Ayres were fond of copying English fashions in dress and furniture, and the facilities for comparing these would have been favourable to the invaders. The people born in the country, who were despised by the Spaniards, would have been raised to a degree of consideration unknown to them previously; and it would have been politic to place many of them in the situations of which the Castilians had been deprived. As for the Indians, the gain to them would have been immense, for their skins would have met with a ready sale at an increased price. Commercial intercourse between England and Buenos Ayres once established, every vessel that sailed between their ports would have spun another thread in the web which bound them together, until what at first might have been a mere commercial alliance, would have ended in a firm friendship and union. All these possibilities were frustrated by the ignorance of a General. His landing so far from the city was one great blunder: his sub-division of his army, leaving part at Reduccion and part at Colonia, was another: his dispensing with siege artillery was a fatal error; and his crowning folly was the employment of a trained soldiery in street fighting, thus depriving them of the opportunity of exercising the qualities which a disciplined army possesses, and compelling them to meet an enemy under the very circumstances which that enemy would himself have chosen. General Whitelocke had sufficient troops to prevent the entry of supplies into the city if he had chosen;--or he might have entered Buenos Ayres two days before, when there was nothing but the wildest confusion within;--or he might have confined the attack to the side of the Ritoro, and approached the Citadel by regular parallels, using the streets to a great extent for that purpose, and ending by an assault which would have certainly been successful. But he took the very course which was certain to be fatal; and the army he commanded, after performing useless prodigies of valour, had to succumb to terms which were openly talked of at Monte Video, while the army was awaiting embarkation for England, as disgraceful. And with this irritating consciousness of failure, there came among the troops, when at Monte Video, not a little demoralization. Crime was general; desertions frequent; insubordination not unknown; and capital punishment was resorted to to enforce discipline. It is with pride that the Artilleryman learns from Captain Frazer’s letters, that not a single desertion occurred from the ranks of the Royal Artillery.