A difficulty inseparable from this subject is its great historical and political interest, which although in one respect an advantage in another is a considerable drawback. With events so well known and comparatively so recent it is impossible to take liberties; invention is restrained, and the imagination is confined within limits more strict than the poetical faculty might desire for its operations. If this objection has been felt with regard to Tasso’s _Gerusalemme_, the personages of which were French and Italian counts and princes familiar to the reader of general history, and whose acts and characters were well known though they lived four centuries before he wrote, it is clearly far more applicable in the present instance. The answer at once is that an entirely different treatment must be resorted to, that celestial machinery, witchcraft, and all analogous means must be excluded, and that actual truth must be made the basis of the whole composition. To truth I have accordingly adhered, and invite the strictest historical criticism, consistent with poetical diction and imagery, of my account of these campaigns. The events were fortunately of that brilliant description, and their theatre, the Pyrenees, so essentially romantic, that the true and the marvellous are here one and the same. Historical accuracy is here an element of beauty; and my minor plot is alone invented, yet is meant to be strictly probable. Nearly the entire of our modern military system dates from the commencement of the Peninsular War. The cumbrous old system which fought a whole campaign for a comfortable place for winter quarters (a great aim with Turenne) was broken up rapidly by the vigour of Napoléon, and our first débût under the Duke of York had taught us that we must change our plan. In 1808, the very year of our first victories in the Peninsula (Roriça and Vimieiro) the use of hair-powder was for the first time discontinued in the British army. Rifle corps were then first formed--in the first instance as rather a hopeless experiment, our soldiers having been deemed too slow and heavy for this practice; but, as the result proved, with perfect success. From the Polish lancers whom we first saw at Albuera we borrowed the idea of our corps of lancers, as we afterwards took from the French cuirassiers the modern equipment of our lifeguards. The brilliant appearance of our light dragoons astonished the French on their first appearance in the Peninsula. “Nos soldats, frappés de l’élégance de l’habit des dragons légers, de leurs casques brillants, de la tournure svelte des hommes et des chevaux, leur avaient donné le nom de _lindors_.”--Foy, _Hist. Guerre Pénins._ liv. 2. For this rather theatrical display we substituted with better taste in 1813 an uniform similar to that worn by the German light cavalry. The Shrapnell shell, or spherical case shot, (the invention of an English Colonel of that name) was