Now, the light division were not only good but, I will say it fearlessly, the best soldiers in the world. The three British regiments composing it had been formed by sir John Moore precisely upon the same system. There was no difference save in the colour of the riflemen’s jackets and the weapons which they carried. Captain Kincaid’s observation, quoted by the reviewer, merely says, what is quite true, that the riflemen fought in skirmishing order more frequently than the 43d and 52d did. Certainly they did, and for this very sufficient reason—their arms, the rifle and sword, did not suit any other formation; it is a defect in the weapon, which is inferior to the musket and bayonet, fitted alike for close or open order. Napoleon knew this so well that he had no riflemen in his army, strange as it may appear to those persons who have read so much about French riflemen. The riflemen of the light division could form line, columns, and squares—could move as a heavy body—could do, and did do everything that the best soldiers in the world ought to do; and in like manner the 52d and 43d regiments skirmished and performed all the duties of light troops with the same facility as the riflemen; but the difference of the weapon made it advisable to use the latter nearly always in open order: I do not, indeed, remember ever to have seen them act against the enemy either in line or square. Captain Kincaid is too sensible and too good a soldier, and far too honest a man, to serve the purpose of this snarling blockhead, who dogmatizes in defiance of facts and with a plenitude of pompous absurdity that would raise the bile of an alderman. Thus, after quoting from my work the numbers of the French army, he thus proceeds:— ‘Notwithstanding that this enormous force was _pressing_ upon the _now unaided_ Spanish people with _all its weight_, and acting against them with its _utmost energy_, it proved wholly unable to put down resistance.’—_Review_, page 497. Now this relates to the period following sir John Moore’s death, which was on the 16th of January. That general’s fine movement upon Sahagun, and his subsequent retreat, had drawn the great bulk of the French forces towards Gallicia, and had paralyzed many corps. The war with Austria had drawn Napoleon himself and the imperial guards away from the Peninsula. Joseph was establishing his court at Madrid; Victor remained very inactive in Estremadura; Soult marched into Portugal;—in fine, this was precisely the period of the whole war in which the French army were most insert. Napoleon has fixed upon the four months of February, March, April, and May, 1809, as the period in which the King let the Peninsula slip from his feeble hands.