Whatever was the result of the hard work and fighting in the Peninsula from 1808 to 1814, the British certainly owe no debt of gratitude to either Spain or Portugal. The utter ingratitude of both nations towards the insular power who alone of all the nations of Europe gave them practical help, is more than apparent. The Iberian Peninsula was, and is, full of the graves of brave men who fought to save a country that had not the intelligence to save itself. Its coffers were filled with hard-earned British gold, which they had not the grace to acknowledge. But the long war did one thing. It trained British officers and British soldiers to fight the last great fight in Europe for many a year. Though the army at Waterloo contained but a proportion of the Peninsular veterans, the glory of the work they had done, the conviction of their own military masterfulness, the memory of what the army had been there, was a great factor in the final struggle against the greatest military power in Europe, when that final struggle came. The teaching and the glory of the Peninsula made raw soldiers fight at Quatre Bras and Waterloo as brave men should. Peninsular victories had wiped out the remembrance of many years of either only partial success or actual defeat, and had carried the enthusiastic morale all armies should have back to the best days of Blenheim and Ramilies. Thus things were when the return from Elba was devised, and, “with the violets in the spring,” Napoleon returned to France. At the moment of his return the French army numbered in round numbers about 150,000 men, and this he speedily increased to 200,000, a small body to meet the huge masses that were putting themselves in motion for his destruction. There were the Russians about Poland, numbering 280,000; the Austrians were 250,000 strong; Prussia alone could furnish 200,000 men; and, in addition, there were the minor German states, as well as Portugal and Spain. Holland and Belgium were not to be firmly reckoned on in case of disaster, but, stiffened by the British and Prussians, they might find it difficult to avoid casting in their lot with the other nations, and even assume an enthusiasm that possibly was only superficial. To stand, centrally situated, on the defensive, was but to invite disaster; and the time required for the close concentration of the enormous Allied mass could be calculated with tolerable certainty, though railways were not. For a time at least, therefore, the nations east of the Rhine could be disregarded, but those north of the Sambre came under a different category. They were closer, and therefore within striking distance. They could not only be got at quickly, and possibly be defeated, before the eastern armies could arrive to their assistance, but in case the emperor felt compelled to move towards the Rhine, they might assail him in flank, attack his communications, and even capture his capital. Finally, the Brussels road marked the line of junction of