personal friends alone, but by every individual that served under him.” CONNECTING CHAPTER. Consequences of the embarkation.--Wretched position of Spanish affairs.--State of Portugal.--Memoir of the Guerillas. The immediate consequence of the embarkation, was the surrender of Corunna on the second day from that on which the once proud army of England quitted the coast of Spain. Ferrol soon followed the example-- and in both these places, an immense supply of stores and ammunition was obtained. All effective resistance was apparently at an end--and French dominion seemed established in Gallicia more strongly than it had ever been before. In every part of Spain, the cause of freedom appeared hopeless. One campaign was closed, and never did one end more hopelessly;[73]--an unvarying scene of misfortune from the commencement, it seemed to have withered every national feeling that might have existed in Spanish breasts. Fortresses that should have held out, provisioned, garrisoned, and open to receive supplies from England, surrendered to a weak army, who could not command “a battering gun or siege store within four hundred miles.” In fact, Spanish resistance seemed a mockery. Their military force was now the ruins of Romana’s army, and some half-starved fugitives who occasionally appeared in Estremadura and La Mancha,--while the French had nearly two hundred thousand veteran troops covering the whole country,--and these too in masses, that set any hostile demonstration at defiance. Portugal, in its military footing, was nearly on a par with Spain. A British corps, under Sir John Craddock, garrisoned Lisbon--and, that place excepted, there were no troops in the kingdom on which the slightest dependence could be placed. The appointment of Marshal Beresford to a chief command, produced in time a wonderful reformation. The English system of drill was successfully introduced,--and, before the war ended, the Portuguese, when brigaded with the British, were always respectable in the field, and sometimes absolutely brilliant. At this period, there was but one national force in the least degree formidable to the invaders--and that was the Spanish Guerillas.