This was the year 1807, and that is the same thing as saying that it was the period which marked the zenith of Napoleon’s power. The little cadet of Artillery who had been teaching the raw republicans of France how to construct fortifications, and how to knock them down, while Arthur Wellesley was training the 33rd Foot, was now Emperor of the French. More than that, he was practically master of Europe. From the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural mountains he had not a single foe left in arms. Some he had crushed, others he had over-awed or conciliated, but all the nations of Europe were either his subjects or his forced allies. Nelson, it is true, had made Britain the mistress of the seas, but, saving only these little islands of ours, it must be confessed that Napoleon was master of the land. There was, however, just one weak point, one loose joint, as it were, in the armour of the conquering Colossus who now bestrode the Continent from one end to the other. If you take the map of Europe you will see that Portugal is a very small patch on it, and yet if it had not been for Portugal being just where it is, and if there had not been such a man as Sir Arthur Wellesley ready to turn its geographical advantages to the best possible use, Napoleon would very probably have ended his career on a throne, instead of on that lonely island in the Atlantic. This is not the place for me to attempt to redescribe the long glories of the Peninsular War. In the first place, to do so would necessitate more pages than I have paragraphs at my disposal; and, in the second place, are they not already painted with a worthy splendour on the glowing pages of Napier and Allison? But what does fall within the scope of such a sketch as this is the business of pointing out a fact which the school books say nothing about. The work that Wellington did in the Peninsula was of two sorts. He not only saw the weak joint in Napoleon’s armour and struck hard and straight at it. He did a great deal more than that. The genius of his combinations, the tenacity of his purpose, and that inspired confidence which practically doubled the effectiveness of his fighting force, compelled Napoleon to employ his greatest generals, and some of his finest troops in the work of “flinging the English into the sea,” as he himself phrased it. “There is nothing,” he told his marshals over and over again, “there is nothing to be reckoned with except the English.” And it may be added that if the English had not been led by such a man as he who was now Viscount Wellington and Baron Douro the reckoning might have been a somewhat short one.