I was an eye-witness to many of the transactions that I relate; and a wide acquaintance with military men has enabled me to consult distinguished officers, both French and English, and to correct my own recollections and opinions by their superior knowledge. Thus assisted, I was encouraged to undertake the work, and I offer it to the world with the less fear because it contains original documents, which will suffice to give it interest, although it should have no other merit. Many of those documents I owe to the liberality of marshal Soult, who, disdaining national prejudices, with the confidence of a great mind, placed them at my disposal, without even a remark to check the freedom of my pen. I take this opportunity to declare that respect which I believe every British officer who has had the honour to serve against him feels for his military talents. By those talents the French cause in Spain was long upheld, and after the battle of Salamanca, if his counsel had been followed by the intrusive monarch, the fate of the war might have been changed. Military operations are so dependent upon accidental circumstances, that to justify censure it should always be shown that an unsuccessful general has violated the received maxims and established principles of war. By that rule I have been guided; but to preserve the narratives unbroken, my own observations are placed at the end of certain transactions of magnitude, where their real source being known they will pass for as much as they are worth, and no more: when they are not well supported by argument, I freely surrender them to the judgment of abler men. Of those transactions which, commencing with “the secret treaty of Fontainebleau” ended with “the Assembly of Notables” at Bayonne, little is known except through the exculpatory and contradictory publications of men interested to conceal the truth; and to me it appears that the passions of the present generation must subside, and the ultimate fate of Spain be known, before that part of the subject can be justly and usefully handled. I have, therefore, related no more of those political affairs than would suffice to introduce the military events that followed, neither have I treated largely of the disjointed and ineffectual operations of the native armies; for I cared not to swell my work with apocryphal matter, and neglected the thousand narrow winding currents of Spanish warfare; to follow that mighty stream of battle which, bearing the glory of England in its course, burst the barriers of the Pyrenees, and left deep traces of its fury in the soil of France.