at 34,871:—in which, however, by dating his return the 1st of April, ten days before the battle, he does not comprise the garrison of Toulouse, stated by Vaudoncourt at 4000, nor a division of the army of Arragon, under General Paris-which was, nevertheless, to the amount of about 5000 men, in the battle. With these additions, Marshal Soult's force, even according to their own accounts, would be 43,871 men. But though M. Choumara finds General Vaudoncourt's return of the French army so shamefully short that he adds (exclusive of Paris's division) no less than 12,471 men to it (above a third), yet he adopts, without hesitation or alteration, his estimate of the Anglo-Spanish armies. The Victoires et Conquêtes des Francais rate (vol. xxix. p. 348) the army which Soult brought from the Adour at 33,000 men in round numbers-which agrees pretty nearly with Choumara's official return'-and make the whole French force at Toulouse not less than 42,000 men.

6

If our readers wanted any additional proof of the notorious system of delusion, in which it was the rule of Buonaparte and his lieutenants to falsify, for the purposes of the moment, their own numbers and those of their antagonists, they would find it most happily illustrated in the correspondence between the two Marshals, who, in writing confidentially to each other, spare no pains to underrate each his own force, and to swell that of the troops opposed to him. Marshal Suchet,' says M. Choumara, ́ on the one hand, diminishes considerably the forces he really had, and, on the other, exaggerates prodigiously those of his opponents' (p. 39 et passim); and we have no doubt that Marshal Suchet's partisans will retort the same charge against Marshal Soult. But nothing of that sort can be alleged as to an English army; for the publicity of our whole system, and the jealous and inquisitorial power of parliamentary inquiry, render any serious errors or misrepresentation utterly impossible.

We, therefore, can assert-and it could, if necessary, be proved from the war-offices-that the English, Germans, and Portuguese (who, acting with our divisions, and checked by our staff, can be estimated as accurately as the English) engaged in the battle of Toulouse, were about 30,000 men; with about 15,000 Spaniardsnamely, Freyre's Spanish corps, 10,000—and Morillo's division, about 5000; total about 45,000 men. As to the other Spanish army of 18,900 men, under Giron, which Vaudoncourt's note says the Duke of Wellington must have had somewhere in reserve, though he never mentions them;' we can state that his Grace's silence is not wonderful, for there was no such reserve in existence. Giron's corps, called the Army of Andalusia' never passed the Spanish frontier at all.

6

All

All this, as we before said, is of no kind of importance to the question of who won the victory ?-but it is amusing to see these French authorities so widely contradicting themselves, as to their own numbers, and so contradicted by our official documents, which every Englishman at least, knows, cannot be in any important degree erroneous. The result of all is, that the armies were within two or three thousand men of each other, though, as we shall see, it happened that the French had a superiority of numbers in the main part of the battle.

But if the numbers thus approached equality, the positions of the two armies were far different. The French army occupied a position of great natural strength, which they had fortified with redoubts and entrenchments, resting both their flanks on the great river Garonne, and connected and supported by the city of Toulouse and the suburb St. Cyprien, which themselves were surrounded by an ancient fortification, consisting of a rampart with towers and bastions. It is obvious that a smaller army defending such works, was more than a match for a much greater number of assailants.

In order to make this position and the details of the action more clear, we subjoin a sketch of the ground and of the battle, copied from M. Choumara's own plan.

N.B. On this plan, it is to be observed. that the English are represented in double their actual numbers, because M. Choumara describes them in their original positions before the battle, and in their march to the attack, as well as in the actual attack.

The natural line of the English advance was by the western suburb of St. Cyprien, to resist which there was not only the wail of the suburb itself, but Marshal Souit had constructed in advance a semi-circular line of works, resting both its flanks on the Garonne. But-foreseeing that the Duke of Wellington would probably not waste time and men in contesting a point which, if carried, would still leave the Garonne and the city between him and the French army-Marshal Soult had also fortified, on the opposite side, the naturally formidable heights of Mount Calvinet and Mount Syptere, and had connected them on the ridge of the hills with redoubts and entrenchments along the whole front of the position. We gladly concede to Marshal Soult, that no situation could be better chosen or more skilfully improved for his object.

The Duke of Wellington's proceeding was proportionably difficult: he had to leave his natural line of march and his resources to make a circuit to the very diametrical point of the circle formed by the French works, in doing which he had to cross a great river, in face of a powerful enemy-and when all that should be accomplished, he would find his army divided on the opposite sides of the river, and connected only by a temporary and precarious bridge of boats which was in fact, once carried and while the French, by means of the stone bridge within the city, were entbied to transport their troops according to the exigenex on the short diameter of the circle, the English communications could only be made by a long and difficult

We will not enter into ary of the previous strategy which had Tenaghy meters into this posidon. It will be seen in the sequel that the Pake of Wellington had enleniated all this with the MORE RAGROÑOUS vendence, and had incurred the difficulties for the eske of the eventua”, advantages, which if the armistice in consequence of the surrender of Paris had not arrested his victorious pingves must have ended in the destruction or capture of the Whole Zapach aoey. We wish that our space allowed us to en Fandonapu's domi, of the French lines of defence douand feedle on the north, and east, strengthened by upmovex wydondon, di & tas di pont on the canals, and by the foodmeat on or wanyong and other accidental buildings along the དོ དོ ། རི ར ར ད རྟོག 1:|: ཀྱི ཟ བསྐོར ཆོ But again, aval, this wonia only go to the merit of the Vitory and not to the fact, we omit these details, of which

the

the plan will afford some, but from the minuteness of the scale a very inadequate idea.

In the night of the 4th of April a bridge of boats was established at a point below-that is, to the north-west of-the city (beyond the plan), and above the junction of the small, but deep and muddy river Ers, which higher up protected the front of the French position. On the morning of the 5th, the English left wing, under Beresford crossed the Garonne; but he had scarcely passed when a sudden flood carried away the bridge. We have no wish to repeat the severe strictures with which the French military critics have visited Marshal Soult's remissness in not having taken advantage of this accident, and destroyed-as they say was inevitable-the English army, thus divided and exposed to separate attacks. But the inevitabilities of military speculatists are very precarious-particularly when English troops are to be the object of the experiment. The French critics argue beautifully-IF Soult had done this-IF Suchet had done that-IF this thing had happened-IF that thing had not happened-IF-IF-IF- -the very reverse of everything that did occur, had occurred—the English must have been beaten out of France. Shakspeare says your IF is the only peace-maker;' in the hands of the French he is a wonderful war-maker. In spite, however, of all their IFS, the Duke of Wellington twice marched to Paris. But with reference to the case under consideration :Marshal Soult-though he did not win the battle of Toulouseis incontestably a great officer, and probably saw better than General de Vaudoncourt, that if he had left his position to attack Beresford, the latter had the means of defending himself-at least long enough to allow the Duke of Wellington to have attacked on the side of St. Cyprien, and have taken both the city and the fortified position. In the whole of the Duke of Wellington's military career there is not, probably, any other circumstance which proves his consummate sagacity and astonishing combination of boldness and caution more forcibly, than his being in a position to prevent Marshal Soult from availing himself of this unexpected accident. It was like a game of chess: Soult, perhaps, might have taken Wellington's knight, but Wellington at the next move would have taken his queen, and check-mated him altogether. Be all this as it may, Wellington had time to recover his boats and repair his bridge, which was not completed till the 8th, when the left and centre of the English army-(the right division, under Lord Hill, remaining before St. Cyprien)-crossed over, and

'the same day the British cavalry attacked the French cavalry under General

General Soult (the Marshal's brother) in front of Launaguet, and drove it into Toulouse. General Vicat's brigade was so hard pressed, that it had not time to blow up the bridge of Croix d'Orade, which remained in the power of the enemy.'-Vaudoncourt, vol. iii. p. 105.

Here, again, Marshal Soult is severely criticised by General Vaudoncourt for permitting his cavalry to be thus beaten, and so important a pass as the bridge of Croix d'Orade taken, by an attack which he must have foreseen for four days, and might have defeated by advancing some of his infantry.-The excuse suggested for him on this occasion-as for his quiescence the preceding days, is, that he had determined that nothing would induce him to quit his impregnable position, which he had prepared at leisure, and where he was sure of fighting with an absolute advantage.' (Ibid.)

On the 9th, the French cavalry and advanced troops were driven in from the whole right of the river Ers with such precipitation, that, as some of their accounts state, only one of the five bridges, all of which had been mined, was blown up. Thus Marshal Soult seemed to have already lost that first protection to his position. But, in point of fact, it was not so great a loss as it seemed; for the Duke of Wellington had in his own mind conceived the idea of marching along the left or inner bank of the Ers; a movement which, though it seems one of the boldest ever made in face of such an enemy, had the great advantage of rendering his attack independent of that river, its muddy banks and its mined bridges, and of affording a somewhat less (though still very difficult country to march through than that on the opposite bank, which was exceedingly intricate.

On the morning of the 10th, the allied army advanced to the attack in the following distribution—are copy the French accounts ol alme Hill with the right wing of the whole army, viz., one Faglish, one Spanish, and one Portuguese division, and a brigade of early estimated by Vandoncourt, with no great exaggeration, at 16.300 men-shout one-third of our force—was to attack the advanood work of St. Cyprien :—the right centre, under General Poton wax to attack sex Tandoncourt—to threaten, we say— and the Phataires du Comonétos scree with us the portion of the se next the Garonne or its righ; bank : General Alten's division was to må misao plong the Montauban, road against the fortified conYour pr die Vissimos(2), and the let; centre consisting of Freyre's AZ Pisey wax, to nimek an. ful force Mount Calvinet;— delt wire o the arm, under Marsha. Beresford, was blogg pho inna bank of the Ers between it and the poli à should come opposite the extreme right of the

French