enterprise, durst not act, and, when he was joined by many thousand mountaineers, he arrested their leaders for some offence, which so disgusted the men that they disbanded. The enemy, alarmed by these operations, which were seconded from the side of Murcia, and by an insurrection at Baeza, put all their disposable troops in motion; but the insurrection at Baeza was quickly crushed, and general Rey, marching from Seville, against Lacy, entirely defeated and cut him off from Gibraltar, so that he was forced to re-embark with a few men at Estipona, and returned to Cadiz in July. Here it is impossible not to reflect on the little use made of the naval power, and the misapplication of the military strength in the southern parts of Spain. The British, Portuguese, and Spanish soldiers, at Cadiz, were, in round numbers, 30,000, the British in Gibraltar 5000, in Sicily 16,000, forming a total of more than fifty thousand effective troops, aided by a great navy, and favourably placed for harassing that immense, and, with the exception of the Valencian and Murcian coasts, uninterrupted French line of operations, which extended from the south of Italy to Cadiz, for, even from the bottom of Calabria, troops and stores were brought to Spain. Yet a Neapolitan rabble, under Murat, in Calabria, and from fifteen to twenty thousand French around Cadiz, were allowed to paralize this mighty power. It is true that vigilance, temper, and arrangement, and favourable localities, are all required, in the combined operations of a fleet and army, and troops disembarking, also require time to equip for service. But Minorca offered a central station, and a place of arms for the army, and a spacious port for the fleet; the operations would always have been short, and independent of the Spanish authorities, and lord Collingwood was fitted, by his talents, discretion, zeal, experience, and accurate knowledge of those coasts, successfully to direct such a floating armament. What coast-siege, undertaken by the seventh or third corps, could have been successfully prosecuted, if the garrison had been suddenly augmented with fifteen or twenty thousand men from the ocean? After one or two successful descents, the very appearance of a ship of war would have checked the operations of a siege, and obliged the enemy to concentrate: whereas, the slight expeditions of this period, were generally disconcerted by the presence of a few French companies.