The Spanish armies in the course of the Peninsular campaign had met so many and discouraging defeats, that their military reputation sunk below the standard of mediocrity. They were despised by their enemies, and distrusted by their allies, and whether from the imbecility of the government, the ignorance of their leaders, or some national peculiarity, their inefficiency became so notorious, that no important operation could be entrusted to them with any certainty of its being successful. As an organized force, the Spanish army was contemptible; while, in desultory warfare, the peasantry were invaluable. With few exceptions, the history of Spanish service would be a mere detail of presumption and defeat; while their neighbours, the Portuguese, merited the perfect approbation of their officers, and proved worthy of standing in the battle-field by the side of British soldiers. The irregular bands, termed Partidas and Quadrillas, partly formed from peasant volunteers and smugglers, and enlisted and paid by government, were embodied originally by order of the Central Junta. At first their numbers were few, and their efficiency as military partisans not very remarkable--but as the Spanish armies declined in strength and reputation, the guerillas proportionately increased. The most determined spirits would naturally select a life of wild and desperate adventure[74]--and a love of country and religion, an unextinguishable hatred of oppression, inflamed the passions of a people proverbial for the intensity of feeling with which they regarded even an imaginary insult. They had now deep and heart-burning injuries to stimulate them to hatred and revenge,--and the ferocity with which they retaliated for past and present wrong, gained for these formidable partisans a name that made the boldest of their oppressors tremble. A brief sketch of this wild and devoted confederacy, so connected with the Peninsular operations during that arduous struggle, will not be irrelevant. “There was in the whole system of guerilla warfare a wild and romantic character, which, could its cruelty have been overlooked, would have rendered it both chivalrous and exciting--and men, totally unfitted by previous habits and education suddenly appeared upon the stage, and developed talent and determination, that made them the scourge and terror of the invaders. “But theirs was a combat of extermination,--none of those courtesies, which render modern warfare endurable, were granted to their opponents,--the deadliest hostility was unmitigated by success,-- and, when vanquished, expecting no quarter from the French, they never thought of extending it to those who unfortunately became their prisoners. A sanguinary struggle was waging, and _væ victis_ seemed, with ‘war to the knife,’ to be the only mottos of the guerilla.