that struck with a sudden panic, they gave way after the bayonets of the two armies had began to cross, and endeavoured to save themselves by flight. It was too late, however, to escape. They were overtaken with immense slaughter, and in a short time the whole of the left wing of their army was totally routed and dispersed. The enemy being thus completely discomfited on their left, made an effort with their right, to retrieve the honour of the day; but they were resisted with great steadiness by the English left, and their cavalry being thrown into disorder, in an attempt to turn the English flank, by an unexpected fire from the twentieth regiment, which landed during the action, and came up at this critical juncture, they aban. duned the field of battle with precipitation, and left an undisputed victory to their opponents. About 700 French were buried on the ground, and 1000 prisoners taken, among whom were general Compere and several other officers of rauk; but their total loss from this conflict is estimated by sir John Stuart, at not less than 4000 men. The English had only 45 men killed and 282 wounded in the action. the panic terrors, which had seized them at Maida. The villages, which declared against them, were plundered and burned to the ground, and the inhabitants massacred without distinction of age or sex. This usage still farther inflamed the Calabrians, whose attacks on their posts were incessant and furious, till with the assistance of the English, they drove them entirely out of their country. Unable to contend with their numerous and exasperated assailants, the French were compelled at length to evacuate both Calabrias, and to abandon all the cannon, stores, and ammunition, which they had collected in these provinces for the invasion of Sicily. Not a single place along the coast was left in their possession, from Coohne to Sicosa. Of 9000 men, which was the amount of their force in lower Calabria, before the battle of Maida, not above 3000 made good their retreat; and in upper Calabria their loss from the insurgents, for the English did not penetrate into that province, was by their own confession very considerable. This glorious victory which was gained on the 6th of July, was the signal of a general insurrection in both the Calabrias. The peasants, already prepared to take up arms, rose in every direction against the French, cut off their stragglers, pursued their flying partics, and attack. ed their posts. The French, provoked by their defeat, and exasperated by the cruelty of the insur. gents, who gave no quarter to such as fell into their hands, retaliated with a savageness and ferocity, more disgraceful to their character than But glorious and successful as this expedition had been, it soon appeared, how far it was from having opened to the king of Sicily any prospect of regaining his kingdom of Naples. So sensible was sir John Stuart of his inability to maintain the ground he had won in Calabria, that from the plain of Maida he announced his intention of returning without loss of time to Sicily. On the 18th of July his head-quarters were at Bagnara near Reggio; and on the 23d, the fort of Scylla, opposite to Messina, a place of great importance for the secure navigation of the straits, surrendered to one of his officers. The whole of the British army was now withdrawn from Calabria, except the garrison of Scylla, and a detachment of the 78th regiment, under col. M'Leod; which had been sent in the Amphion frigate to the coast near Catanzaro, in order to countenance and assist the insurgents in that quarter. This service was effectually performed by col. M'Leod and captain Hoste of the Amphion. The French under Regnier were severely harassed in their retreat along the shore from Catanzaro to Cotrone, and the latter place, with all its magazines and stores, fell into the hands of the English. General Acland was also dispatched to the bay of Naples with the 58th and 81st regiments, to make demonstrations in that direction, which might alarm the enemy, and deter him from scnding reinforcements to Calabria. General Acland was not absolutely prohibited from landing his troops, but he was directed not to expose his soldiers to that danger, unless he had a prospect of effecting some object of real and permanent utility. Sir Sidney Smith was in the mean time actively, if not judiciously, employed along the coast, assisting the insurgents with arms and ammunition, supplying them with provisions, and conveying them from one place to another, in the vessels under his command. By these exertions he contributed materially to extend the insurrection along the coast, and to expel the enemy from the watch-towers and castles, which they occupied upon the shore. These operations were, in some instances, of use, by securing a safer and better anchorage for his ships; but in others, the blood and treasure which they cost, exceeded the value of his acquisitions. In one of these adventures, two officers and five seamen were killed and thirty-four seamen wounded, in the attack of an insignificant fort at point Licosa, `which he destroyed when it fell into his hands. No British troops were stationed any where to maintain his conquests, except in the isle of Capri, which was kept as a place of refreshment for the navy: but a number of posts were occupied and garrisoned, by the insurgents, such as Amantea, Scalea and the isle of Dino on the coast of upper Cala. bria, and Maratea, Sapei, Camerota, Palinuro and other places in the bay of Policastro. The chief, or rather sole use of these posts consisted in the protection which they afforded to the anchorage upon the coast, and facilities thereby given to the British and Neapolitan small craft, of intercepting the coasting communications of the enemy, so as to prevent the supply of his army in Calabria with cannon, which, from the badness of the roads, it was impossible for him to convey by land. The loss of Gaeta, which surrendered to the French soon after the battle of Maida, more than counterbalanced these trifling successes in other parts of the coast. While the prince of Hesse continued to have the command of Gaeta, that place was gallantly defended; and sallies were repeatedly made with the greatest success, by which the operations of the enemy were impeded, their cannon spiked, and their batteries taken and destroyed. But the prince of Hesse having been wounded by a splinter, and removed for his recovery to Palermo, and the French having at length brought their artillery to act upon the place, the lieut. governor, colonel Hotz, saw himself forced to capitulate. The surrender of Gaeta cut off the communication with the northern parts of the kingdom of Naples, where the spirit of disaffection was as strong as in the south; and set at liberty a force of 16,000 men, previ ously employed in that siege, to act against the Calabrians. A decree was issued at Naples on the 31st of July, declaring the two Calabrias in a state of war, and subjecting them to all the rigours of military law. Massena, invested with despotic authority, was placed at the head of a powerful army, and sent to reduce them to obedience. The insurgents were not in sufficient force to meet him in the field, and were too much divided among themselves, to attempt any enterprize of importance, even against his outposts. The difficulty of transporting artillery over the mountains retarded his operations; but his progress, though slow, was uninterrupted, and his successes, though often dearly bought, were not checked by any reverse. On the 16th of August, the advanced guard of the French army entered Cosenza, the capital of upper Cala bria, and before the beginning of September they had recovered possession of the whole of that province, excepting Amantea, Scalea, and some other places upon the coast. But it was some time before they penetrated in force into the lower Calabria. Their head-quarters, in December, were still at Cosenza and Fiume Frede, in upper Cala bria, though their advanced posts had long before been at Monteleone and Mileto, about 30 miles distant from Scylla. Cotrone did not fall into their hands till the end of the year, nor Amantea, the last place held by the insurgents upon the coast, till the beginning of the ensu ing spring. The Calabrian insurgents or massé were composed of the lowest, worst and most miserable of the country people and villagers. Attracted by pay or the hope of plunder to the standard under which they fought, no confidence could be reposed in their fidelity; and though individually brave, when assembled in bodies no dependence could be placed on their steadiness. While the French were still at a distance, a report was brought to the massé in lower Calabria, that the enemy was advancing to attack them, on which the capi, or chiefs of the massé fled in the most shameful manner, and the massé, abandoned by their leaders, after recovering from their first panic, broke out in such acts of murder, cruelty and rapine, that it became necessary for sir John Stuart to cross over to Scylla, and send detachments of British troops into the interior of the country, to put a stop to their excesses. On a subsequent occasion, intelligence having been sent to the Neapolitan generals, that the French, who were lying at Nicastro to the number of 4000 men, were afraid to cross the river Lamato, lest the English should land and attack them in the rear, it was resolved to attempt to surprise them in that situation, by advancing from Monteleone and Filadelfia, with 1600 of the massé and 2000 Neapolitan troops; but when this corps had arrived within 4 miles of the enemy, latter part of August. L suspicion suddenly seized the massé, that the Neapolitans meant to desert them in the heat of the engagement, upon which they immediately secur. ed the person of Cancelliere, the general set over them by his Sicilian majesty, and refused to deliver him up, when demanded, to the other generals. Many of the capi or chiefs of the insurgents were men of infamous character, who had justly forfeited their lives to the laws of their country. Pane di Grano, one of the most celebrated of their lead ers, was a priest, whose crimes had been so enormous, that, though a clergyman, he had been condemned to the galleys. Fra Diavolo, who distinguished himself in the neigh bourhood of Naples, had been guilty of robbery and murder. Galley slaves, polluted with every crime and prepared for every atrocity, were collected by order of the court of Palermo, and landed among its former subjects, in order to keep alive the insurrection, and render desperate the hope of accommodation with the enemy. The consequences of employing such agents to conduct the war may be easily imagined. Murder and rapine spread universally over the country. The lawless and vicious combined against the orderly and well.disposed. Those who had property were oppressed and plundered by those who had none, and many victims were sacrificed to private resentment, under the mask and pretence of public duty. The French, irritated by cruelties, which the humanity of sir John Stuart interposed ineffectually to prevent, retaliated on the insurgents with a barbarity equal to their own. Prisoners taken with arms in their hands were shot instantly, on the false and monstrous pretext, that they were rebels against Joseph Bonaparte. Villages, which refused to admit French troops within their walls, or to pay the contributions demanded from them, were pillaged and burned; and in some atrocious cases, the wretched inhabitants were included, without mercy or distinction, in the conflagration, and, with their wives and children, prevented by French soldiers, from making their escape from the flames that consumed their habitations. When sir John Stuart returned to Messina from his glorious expedition in Calabria, he found lieutenant-general Fox arrived there from Gibraltar, with a commission of commander-in-chief of the British forces in Italy. General Fox took upon him the command of the army on the 29th of July, and immediately appointed sir John Stuart to conduct the war, which he had begun with so much success, in the two Calabrias. This office sir John Stuart most readily undertook, and in the prosecution of it, made a second expedition to Calabria, for the purpose of restoring some degree of order in that country, and repressing the excesses of the massé; but, when sir John Moore, his senior officer, joined the army with reinforcements from England and became, of course, second in command, he preferred returning home to England, to continuing third in command in Italy. Soon after the arrival of sir John Moore, that gallant and experienced officer was dispatched along the coast to the bay of Naples, to collect information of the state of the country, and to confer with sir Sidney Smith about operations, in which the assistance of the navy might be wanted. The result of sir John Moore's inquiries was unfavourable to any new expedition to the continent. He found the populace of Naples discontented and ready to attempt an insurrection, if encouraged by the presence of a considerable British army; but, without some prospect of coopera. tion from the upper part of Italy, he saw no advantage to be gained by encouraging these dispositions; and with respect to the war in Cala bria, he was satisfied that, by supplying the people with arms and ammunition and exciting them to insurrection, we were merely organising and keeping alive a predatory civil war, ruinous and destructive to individuals, while it was unattended with any real or permanent benefit to ourselves or to our ally. The information collected by general Fox at Messina, and the conduct of the massé in Lower Calabria, coincided with the report of sir John Moore, and determined general Fox to make no expedition to the continent, unless some more favourable opportunity presented itself, and in the mean time to withhold from the massé supplies of arms and ammunition, which they were obviously employing in other uses, than such as a British general could approve of. This determination was far from being acceptable at Palermo, where the court listened greedily to every plan proposed to it for the recovery of Naples, and thought always the ast project laid before it the surest to succeed. The marquis di Circello, who had been appointed minister of foreign affairs on the resignation of sir John Acton, was a person of very middling abilities, but high in favour with the queen, and implicitly devoted to her service. It was natural for such a minister, desirous of pleasing his sovereign, and indifferent or blind to all other consequences, to propose to the commander of the British forces, to engage, in conjunction with the troops of his Sicilian majesty, in a combined attack upon Naples. A temporary possession of that city, he argued, though it were for twentyfour hours only, if it did no other good, would at least enable their majesties to take vengeance on their rebellious subjects. Such a consideration was not calculated to disposea British officer in favour of their plan; but there were other reasons, besides the disgust arising from the disclosure of such views, which de. termined general Fox to express, in the most peremptory manner, his decided disapprobation of the project, and to signify that it was totally impossible for the British army to co-operate in such an expedition. The preservation of Sicily from the French, the great object for which a British army was stationed in the Mediterranean, was not to be hazarded for the uncertain prospect of recovering the useless and preca rious possession of Naples. The season of the year was unfavourable for military operations in Calabria, where it was proposed that the British army should act, while the Neapolitan and Sicilian troops made an attack on Naples. The malaria of Calabria had been fatal to many officers and soldiers engaged in sir John Stuart's expedition; but if so pernicious at Midsummer, how much more destructive was its influence likely to be in the end of autumn, the season when this new expedition was to be attempted. It was no exaggeration to calculate, that after a campaign of three L 2 months |