First, the reviewers assertion, that Murray’s troops were never within several miles of the seminary, and that they would have been crushed by Soult if they had attacked the enemy, is evidently false from the following facts. Lord Wellington expressly says, in his answer to my questions quoted before,—That the _right_ of the troops in the seminary _was protected_ by the troops under Murray; which could not be if the latter were several miles off. Again, if the dragoons of Murray’s corps could charge repeatedly with advantage, the infantry and guns of that corps might have followed up the attack without danger upon a confused, flying, panic-stricken body of men who had been surprised and were at the same time taken both in flank and rear. But if Murray dared not with any prudence even approach the enemy,—if it were absolutely necessary for him to retire as he did,—what brought him there at all? Is the duke of Wellington a general to throw his troops wantonly into such a situation,—and on ground which his elevated post at the Serra Convent enabled him to command perfectly, and where the men and movements of both sides were as much beneath his eye as the men and movements on a chess-board? Bah! But the fact is that a part of the Germans under Murray, aye!—a very small part! did actually engage the enemy with success. Major Beamish, in his ‘History of the German Legion,’ on the authority of one of the German officers’ journals, writes thus:— ‘The skirmishers of the first line under lieutenant Von Hölle, and two companies of the same regiment under ensign Hodenberg, were alone brought into fire. The skirmishers made several prisoners, and one rifleman (Henry Hauer) was lucky enough to capture a French lieutenant-colonel. Seven of the legion were wounded.’ Murray wanted hardihood. And it is no answer to say lord Wellington did not take notice of his conduct. A commander-in-chief is guided by many circumstances distinct from the mere military facts, and it might be, that, on this occasion he did not choose to judge rashly or harshly a man, who had other good qualities, for an error into which, perhaps, a very bold and able man might have fallen by accident. And neither would I have thus judged sir John Murray from this fact alone, although the whole army were disgusted at the time by his want of daring and openly expressed an unfavourable opinion of his military vigour. But when I find that the same want of hardihood was again apparent in him at Castalla, as I have shown in my fifth volume, and still more glaringly displayed by him at Taragona, as I shall show in my sixth volume, the matter became quite different, and the duty of the historian is to speak the truth even of a general, strange as that may and I have no doubt does appear to this reviewer.