Page:Reminisences of Captain Gronow.djvu/26

8 —If the present generation of Englishmen would take the trouble of looking at the newspaper which fifty years ago informed the British public of passing events both at home and abroad, they would, doubtless, marvel at the very limited and imperfect amount of intelligence which the best journals were enabled to place before their readers. The progress of the Peninsular campaign was very imperfectly chronicled; it will, therefore, be easily imagined what interest was attached to certain letters that appeared in the Morning Chronicle, which criticized with much severity, and frequently with considerable injustice, the military movements of Lord Wellington's Spanish campaign.

The attention of the Commander-in-Chief being drawn to these periodical and personal comments on his conduct of the war, his lordship at once perceived from the information which they contained that they must have been written by an officer holding a high command under him. Determined to ascertain the author—who, in addressing a public journal, was violating the Articles of War, and, it might be, assisting the enemy—means were employed in London to