The most brilliant, desperate, and bloody siege of those campaigns was that of Badajos, in 1812. No one who has read the story Napier tells of how, on the night Badajos was stormed, the men of the Light Division died on its dark breach, can ever forget the tale. Now the siege of Badajos lasted twenty days; it cost Wellington 5000 men. The storming parties were let loose at 10 o’clock on the night of April 6; when morning dawned Badajos was won. Compare this with Verdun. The German attack began on February 23. Some 3000 guns—amongst them the great howitzers that destroyed Namur—poured for days and nights an unceasing tempest of high explosives on the French lines. Then the assault was launched. For nearly six months the thunder of the German guns has risen and sunk, but never ceased; again and again, now on one point, now on another, the vast grey waves of the German infantry have flung themselves in bloody ebb and flow on the French position. What the German losses have been can only be guessed; they must reach half a million men. And still the tricolour flies over Verdun. If we take the fighting on the sea, again, there is the same tremendous increase of scale. Trafalgar is—or _was_, till May 31 of the present year—the greatest sea-fight under the British flag, and it is curious to set it in contrast with the fight in the North Sea. The resemblances and differences of the two great battles are alike most striking. That little, one-eyed, one-armed, weather-beaten, sun-tanned figure, Nelson, is the dominating figure in Trafalgar; and he is still the most famous of all who have led the fleets of Great Britain into battle. But if we turn to the recent battle in the North Sea—a battle so splendidly fought, and so ill-told—it is clear that, in quickness of vision to read the iron alphabet of sea-battle, and in the dash and fire with which he dared all risks to turn and hold his enemy, Sir David Beatty is of Nelson’s school, and has ‘the Nelson touch.’ Nelson himself, indeed, could hardly have done better on that foggy afternoon in the North Sea than Sir David Beatty did. For seamanship, for technical skill, and for pure valour, the North Sea fight, in brief, will compare with Trafalgar. But in its general aspect, in the scale of the forces engaged, and in the amount of destruction achieved—and the terrifying speed of that destruction—the two battles are utterly unlike each other. A comparison betwixt them shows how completely the whole physiognomy of sea-battle is changed. Beatty’s six battle-cruisers carried only 9-inch armour, but they had the hitting-power of Dreadnoughts and the pace of destroyers; and _speed_ was the great feature of the North Sea fight. The ships engaged under both flags were amongst the swiftest afloat, and the battle was fought at full speed. At the critical moment of the fight the ships of Beatty’s squadron were travelling at the rate of thirty miles an hour, firing as they raced.