of the mountain, the engineers were employed in tracing out and forming a road. This was completed in the course of the 18th, and on the afternoon of that day the army passed the Col without having lost any part of its baggage, artillery, stores, or ammunition. On the 19th they encamped at Oned Tenati, situated in the most elevated region, and less than two days' march from Constantine. Here, during the night, rain, snow, and hail fell so constantly and abundantly, that they were exposed, in the words of the marshal, to all the rigours of a St. Petersburgh winter, while the ground resembled, in the eyes of old officers, the mire of Warsaw. On the 20th, the army, with the exception of the baggage and rear guard, reached the monument of Constantine, where it was forced to halt. The cold became more severe; no fuel was to be obtained, many of the men had their feet frozen during the night, and many perished. The baggage having come up, they crossed the river Mezroug on the 21st. It had overflowed its banks; the infantry were up to the waist in water, and several of the draught-horses were drowned in the passage-a loss the more serious as the deepness of the roads rendered it necessary to double the number of horses yoked to the baggage waggons to bring them forward. In a few hours afterwards they reached the plateau or table-ground of Mansoura, under the walls of Con

stantine.

Constantine, which although now greatly reduced in trade and population, was even in the latter half of the last century a large and flourishing town, is strongly defended by nature. A wide and

very deep ravine, at the bottom of which runs the Oued Rammel, presents a scarp and counterscarp of perpendicular rock, equally inaccessible by mining and bombardment; on the other side, the river protected it as a fosse. It was immediately seen that a regular siege would be required. This was an operation which circumstances did not allow, the cold and snow still continuing, and it being mpossible to bring forward the field artillery, which was buried in mud up to the naves of the wheels on the plateau of Mansoura. Part of the infantry having crossed the river, carried the heights of Koudiat Ati on the opposite side, notwithstanding the resistance of the Kabyles by whom they were defended, and the fire of two pieces of artillery from the town; but as it was still found utterly impracticable to bring forward the heavy artillery, nothing remained but to storm or to retreat. Not more than 3,000 men were said now to be under arms. With such guns as could be moved forward, one of the gates, called El Cantara, was battered during the 22nd. During the night colonel Davirier, at the head of a battalion, burst open the gate; but it was found that there was an inner inclosure equally strong, and the assailants were forced to retire with considerable loss. To carry this inner gate, however, was the only chance of success that now remained. The necessary preparations were made for putting forward the sappers and the picked companies which were to follow them. The attack was fixed for the night of the 23rd; and, in order to divide the attention of the garrison, a simultaneous assault was to be made by the troops who had carried and

were posted on the heights of Koudiat Ati. On the approach of night the attempt was made; but the unintermitting and destructive fire kept up by the garrison threw the sappers into confusion almost before they had begun their la bours; the men who carried the ladders were killed and wounded; it was found necessary to abandon the attack, and draw off those of the men engaged in it who still survived. On the side of Koudiat Ati, the French had not been more successful. In every assault they were repulsed, with the loss of many of their men, and some of their best officers.

Nothing now remained for marshal Clausel than to give up his enterprise, and find the best of his way back to Bona. He employed the rest of the night, therefore, in collecting his troops, and on the 24th the retreat began. The remains of the army did not reach Guelma till the 28th, and night and day they were harassed by

the attacks of the ever-active Arabs. The marshal acknowledged, that on the first day, at least, the retreat was very difficult; but other accounts made the matter much worse, and represented it as being not a retreat but a rout. The wounded were said to have been left behind from the impossibility of bringing them off, and to have been massacred by the Arabs. Provisions had failed even before the retreat began; horses were wanting to draw the artillery, and ammunition, and baggage waggons, and the means of transport for the weary and wounded had either been entirely destroyed or were miserably scanty. The sick were left at Guelma, of which the garrison and the works were strengthened, and marshal Clausel, with the bare skeleton of his army, returned. to Bona to dictate a dispatch, which began with the words, "The expedition against Constantine has not had complete success."

troops was not waged with any greater regard to the dictates of humanity than in the other parts of the peninsula. On the 3rd of January intelligence arrived at Barcelona, that a large body of Carlists, retreating before Mina, had taken post in a fortified castle, carrying along with them a number of prisoners whom they had recently made, most, if not all of whom, were inhabitants of Barcelona. Mina having laid siege to the castle, the Carlists relieved themselves of their prisoners by throwing them from the ramparts: it was even added that they fired at them as they fell. Nearly at the same time that the inhabitants of Barcelona learned this savage barbarity, they likewise learned that a company of national guards, and of a regiment of the line, escorting the mail on its way to Madrid, had been surprised, and many of them put to death, by some of the Carlist bands. It was not wonderful that public exasperation should have been excited in Barcelona, but it showed itself in acts of still more deplorable atrocity. On the morning of the 4th, groups of people assembled in the public places, uttering cries of Death to the Carlists," "Down with bad government," and giving evident symptoms of a tendency to revolution. Towards evening the crowd increased, and having proceeded to the residence of general Alvarez, who commanded during Mina's absence, insisted that the Carlist prisoners, detained in the forts, should be delivered into their hands for instant execution. The general proposed to have them tried the following day by a council of war, to be formed of the officers of the national guard; but this more slow

and regular mode of vengeance did not suit the sanguinary disposition of the multitude, who had now been reinforced by several detachments of national guards. They proceeded in a body to the citadel, armed, and furnished with scaling ladders; and as they met with no resistance from the governor of the garrison, they immediately became its masters. The governor was compelled to deliver up a list of all the persons confined as Carlists, and point out the place of their imprisonment. A horrible massacre ensued. Colonel O'Donnell was the first victim. They then shot or bayoneted about eighty more, amongst whom was a canon of the church, and a lieutenant-colonel, a Frenchman. The several battalions of the national guard, although drawn up, refused, to a man, to act against them; nay, a company of the 12th battalion caused about fifteen prisoners who were in the Atarazanas to be delivered into their hands, and shot every one of them. The body of O'Donnell was burnt, and his head paraded through the streets. Even the sick and wounded confined in the hospital were taken out of their beds, and shot in the court yard. While all this was going on, neither general Alvarez, who was commandant of the town, in the absence of Mina, nor any other of the constituted authorities, civil or military, made the slightest effort to prevent or to interrupt the massacre. The commander of a British ship of war in the roads offered to land his men to prevent it, but the offer was declined by the governor.

Matters did not stop here; from blood the mob proceeded to politics; they had begun with shouts for the constitution, as well