in despair the protection of St George, the patron of the brave. At last some of the bravest and most ardent, forgetting the orders they had received, precipitated themselves on the Saracens. This example soon drew the Hospitallers after them; the contagion spread from rank to rank, and soon the whole Christian army was at blows with the enemy, and the scene of carnage extended from the sea to the mountains. Richard showed himself wherever the Christians had need of his succour; his presence was always followed by the flight of the Turks. So confused was the mêlée, so thick the dust, so vehement the fight, that many of the Crusaders fell by the blows of their comrades, who mistook them for enemies. Torn standards, shivered lances, broken swords, strewed the plain. Such of the combatants as had lost their arms, hid themselves in the bushes, or ascended trees; some, overcome with terror, fled towards the sea, and from the top of the rocks precipitated themselves into its waves.

"Every instant the combat became warmer and more bloody. The whole Christian army was now engaged in the battle, and, returning on its steps, the chariot which bore the royal standard was in the thickest of the fight. Ere long, however, the Saracens were unable to sustain the impetuous assault of the Franks. Boha-Eddin, an eyewitness, having quitted the Mussulman centre, which was put to the rout, fled to the tent of the Sultan, whom he found attended only by seventeen Mamelukes. While their enemies fled in this manner, the Christians, hardly able to credit their victory, remained on the field which they had conquered. They were engaged in tending their wounded, and in collecting the arms which lay scattered over the field of battle, when all at once twenty thousand Saracens, whom their chief had rallied, fell upon them. The Crusaders, overwhelmed with heat and fatigue, and not expecting to be attacked, showed at first a surprise which bordered on fear. Taki-Eddin, nephew of Saladin, led on the Turks, at the head of whom were seen the Mameluke guard of Saladin, distinguished by their yellow banner. So vehement was their onset, that it ploughed deep into the Crusaders' ranks; and they had need of the presence and example of Richard, before whom no Saracen could stand, and whom the contemporary chronicles compare to a reaper cutting down corn. At the moment when the Christians, again victorious, resumed their march towards Assur, the Mussulmans, impelled by despair, again attacked their rearguard. Richard, who had twice repulsed the enemy, no sooner heard the outcry, than, followed only by fifteen knights, he flew to the scene of combat, shouting aloud the war-cry of the Christians-God protect the Holy Sepulchre!' The bravest followed their king; the Mussulmans were dispersed at the first shock, and their army, then a third time vanquished, would have been totally destroyed, had not night and the forest of Assur sheltered them from the pursuit of the enemy. As it was, they lost eight thousand men, including thirty-two of their bravest emirs slain; while the victory did not cost the Christians a thousand men. Among the wounded was Richard himself, who was slightly hurt in the breast. But the victory was prodigious, and if duly improved by the Crusaders, without dissension or defection, would have decided the fate of Palestine and of that Crusade."-Hist. des Croisades, i. 468-471.

These extracts convey a fair idea of M. Michaud's power of description and merits as an historian. He cannot be said to be one of the highest class. He does not belong to the school who aim at elevating history to its loftiest pitch. The antiquarian school never have, and never will do so. The minute observation and prodigious attentions to detail which their habits produce, are inconsistent with extensive

vision. The same eye scarcely ever unites the powers of the microscope and the telescope. He has neither the philosophic mind of Guizot, nor the pictorial eye of Gibbon ; he neither takes a luminous glance like Robertson, nor sums up the arguments of a generation in a page, like Hume. We shall look in vain in his pages for a few words diving into the human heart such as we find in Tacitus, or splendid pictures riveting every future age as in Livy. He is rather an able and animated abridger of the chronicles, than an historian. But in that subordinate, though very important department, his merits are of a very high order. He is faithful, accurate, and learned; he has given a succinct and yet interesting detail, founded entirely on original authority, of the wars of two centuries. Above all, his principles are elevated, his feelings warm, his mind lofty and generous. He is worthy of his subject, for he is entirely free of the grovelling utilitarian spirit, the disgrace and the bane of the age in which he writes. His talents for description are very considerable, as will be apparent from the account we hope to give in a future Number of his highly interesting travels to the principal scenes of the Crusades. It is only to be regretted, that in his anxiety to preserve the fidelity of his narrative, he has so frequently restrained it, and given us rather descriptions of scenes taken from the old chronicles, than such as his own observations and taste could have supplied. But still his work supplies a great desideratum in European literature; and if not the best that could be conceived, is by much the best that has yet appeared on the subject. And it is written in the spirit of the age so finely expressed in the title given by one of the most interesting of the ancient chroniclers to his work-" Gesta DEI per Francos."*

*The doings of God by the Franks.

THE CARLIST STRUGGLE IN SPAIN

[BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, MAY 1837]

AMIDST all our declamations in favour of the lights of the age, and the extraordinary influence of the press, and the extension of journals in diffusing correct ideas on every subject of policy, foreign and domestic, it may be doubted whether there is to be found in the whole history of human delusion, not even excepting the benighted ages of Papal despotism, or the equally dark era of Napoleon's tyranny, an example of ignorance so complete and general as has prevailed in this country, for the last seven years, as to the affairs of Spain. While a contest has been going on there during all that period between constitutional right and revolutionary spoliation; while the Peninsula has been convulsed by the long-protracted conflict between legal government and democratic despotism; while the same cause which has been supported since 1830 in Great Britain by the arms of reasoning, eloquence, or influence, has there been carried on with the edge of the sword; while for the last four years a struggle has been maintained by the Basque mountaineers for their rights and their liberties, their hearths and their religion, which history will place beside the glories of Marathon and Salamis, of Naefels and Morgarten; while a heroic Prince and his heroic followers have borne up against a load of oppression, foreign and domestic, in defence of legal right and constitutional freedom, with a courage and skill rarely paralleled in the annals of military achievement, the great bulk of the English nation have looked with supineness or indifference on the glorious spectacle. They have been deceived, and willingly deceived, by the endless falsehoods which the revolutionary press and the holders of

Spanish bonds spread abroad on this subject; they have been carried away by the false and slanderous appellations bestowed on Don Carlos; they have been mystified by a denial of his clear and irresistible title to the throne, they have not duly considered the stern and inexorable necessity which compelled him to abandon the humane system of warfare which he at first adopted, and retaliate upon his enemies the atrocious and murderous rule of war which they had so long practised against him and his followers; and by their supineness permitted the royal arms of England to be implicated in the most savage crusade ever undertaken in modern times against the liberty of mankind, and allowed a band of brave but deluded mercenaries to prolong to their own and their country's eternal disgrace a frightful conflict between sordid democratic despotism, striving to elevate itself on the ruins of its country, and the freeborn bravery of unconquerable patriots.

We take blame to ourselves on this subject; we confess ourselves implicated in the charge which, through all the succeeding ages of the world, will attach to the name of England, for its deplorable concern in this heroic conflict, which will go far to obliterate the recollection of all its memorable exertions in the cause of freedom. The calamity is not the defeat sustained at St Sebastian or Hernani: not the disgrace of English regiments being routed and driven back at the point of the bayonet in shameful confusion. These stains are easily wiped out: the national courage, when brought into the field in a just cause, will soon obliterate the recollection of the defeat which was sustained in supporting that of cruelty and injustice. The real disgrace-the calamity which England has indeed to mourn, is that of having joined in an alliance to beat down the liberties of mankind; of having sent forth a band of mercenary troops to oppress and massacre our faithful allies; of having combined with France, in defiance alike of the faith of treaties and the rules of international law, to deprive a gallant prince of his rightful inheritance; of having sent out the royal forces of England, under the old flag of Wellington, to aid a set of cut-throats and assassins, of robbers and plunderers, in carrying fire and sword, mourning and despair, through the valleys of a simple

and virtuous people, combined in no other cause but that of loyalty and patriotism.

"Woe unto those," says the Scripture," who call evil good, and good evil; for theirs is the greater damnation." It is in this fatal delusion-in the confusion of ideas produced by transposing the names of things, and calling the cause of despotism that of freedom, merely because it is supported by Urban despots-and that of freedom slavery, because it is upheld by rural patriots, that the true cause of this hideous perversion, not merely of national character, but even of party consistency, is to be found. We are perfectly persuaded that, if the people of England were aware of the real nature of the cause in which they embarked a gallant but unfortunate band of adventurers; if the government were aware of the real tendency of the quasi-intervention which they have carried on, both the one and the other would recoil with horror from the measures which they have so long sanctioned. But both were deluded by the name of freedom; both were carried away by the absurd mania for the extension of democratic institutions into countries wholly unprepared for them; and both thought they were upholding the cause of liberty and the ultimate interests of Great Britain, by supporting a band who have proved themselves to be the most selfish, corrupt, and despotic tyrants who ever yet rose to transient greatness upon the misery and degradation of their country. But, while we thus absolve both the government and the country from intentional abuse of power in the deplorable transactions which both have sanctioned, there is a limit beyond which this forbearance cannot be extended.

This result of our shameful intervention to oppress the free, and aid the murderers in massacring the innocent, is now fixed and unalterable, and in no degree dependent on the future issue of the contest. What that may finally be, God only knows. It is possible, doubtless, that the weight of the Quadruple Alliance-the direct intervention of France -the insidious support of England--the exhaustion of a protracted contest-and the extirpation of the population capable of bearing arms in the Basque Provinces, may beat down these heroic mountaineers, and establish amidst blood and ashes, anguish and mourning, the cruel oppression of the