7º. During the siege the sea communication with Bayonne was free. “Any thing in the shape of a naval force,” said lord Wellington, “would drive away sir George Collier’s squadron.” The garrison received reinforcements artillery ammunition and all necessary stores for its defence, sending away the sick and wounded men in empty vessels. The Spanish general blockading Santona complained at the same time that the exertions of his troops were useless, because the French succoured the place by sea when they pleased; and after the battle of Vittoria not less than five vessels laden with stores and provisions, and one transport having British soldiers and clothing on board, were taken by cruizers issuing out of that port. The great advantage of attacking San Sebastian by water as well as by land was foregone for want of naval means, and from the same cause British soldiers were withdrawn from their own service to unload store-ships; the gun-boats employed in the blockade were Spanish vessels manned by Spanish soldiers withdrawn from the army, and the store-boats were navigated by Spanish women. 8º. The coasting trade between Bordeaux and Bayonne being quite free, the French, whose military means of transport had been so crippled by their losses at Vittoria that they could scarcely have collected magazines with land carriage only, received their supplies by water, and were thus saved trouble and expense and the unpopularity attending forced requisitions. Between April and August, more than twenty applications and remonstrances, were addressed by lord Wellington to the government upon these points without producing the slightest attention to his demands. Mr. Croker, the under-secretary of the Admiralty, of whose conduct he particularly complained, was indeed permitted to write an offensive official letter to him, but his demands and the dangers to be apprehended from neglecting them were disregarded, and to use his own words, “_since Great Britain had been a naval power a British army had never before been left in such a situation at a most important moment_.” Nor is it easy to determine whether negligence and incapacity or a grovelling sense of national honour prevailed most in the cabinet, when we find this renowned general complaining that the government, ignorant even to ridicule of military operations, seemed to know nothing of the nature of the element with which England was surrounded, and lord Melville so insensible to the glorious toils of the Peninsula as to tell him that his army was the last thing to be attended to. RENEWED SIEGE OF SEBASTIAN.