experience. We cannot, however, consider them superior to those great
qualities of our nature which discipline may regulate and embellish, but
which it can never destroy or supersede. As every man is bound to form
his own opinion on religious matters, though he may not be a priest,
every man is obliged to defend his country when invaded, though he may
not be a soldier. Nor can the miseries which such a state of things
involves, furnish any argument against its necessity. All war must be
attended with misfortunes, which freeze the blood and make the soul sick
in their contemplation; but these very misfortunes deter those who wield
the reins of empire from appealing wantonly to its determination. The
resistance of Saragossa was not the less glorious, it does not the less
fire the heart of every reader with a holy and passionate enthusiasm,
because it was not conducted according to the strict forms of military
tactics, because citizens and even women participated in its fame. The
inextinguishable hatred of the Spanish nation for its oppressor--which
wore down the French armies, which no severities, no violence, no
defeat, could subdue--will be, as long as time shall last, a terrible
lesson to ambitious conquerors. They will learn that there is in the
fury of an insulted nation a danger which the most exquisite military
combinations cannot remove, which the most perfectly served artillery
cannot sweep away, before which all the bayonets, and gunpowder, and
lines of fortification in the world are useless--and compared with which
the science of the commander is pedantry, and strategy but a word. They
will discover that something more than mechanical power, however
great--something more than the skill of the practised officer, or the
instinct of well-trained soldiers, are requisite for success--where
every plain is a Marathon, and every valley a Thermopylæ.

Would to God that the same reproach urged against the Spanish
nation--that they defended their native soil irregularly--that they