PREFACE xi

the occupation of Sicily and the transactions in the Mediterranean connected therewith, including the terrible fiascos of Duckworth's expedition to Constantinople and the failure at Alexandria under General Fraser, the strange episode of the Swedish expedition to help a mad king, and, finally, Moore's share in the Peninsular War.

The Diary thus covers the whole of the period of the great war prior to the Peninsular campaigns.

As Captain Mahan has shown, that is a period of our war with France which does not deserve the neglect into which it has been allowed to lapse. Its vast importance from the naval side is now universally recognised, but I hope to show cause in the course of the two volumes why the share of the army in these transactions should not pass into oblivion. The Peninsular War was necessarily in all its circumstances very exceptional. In the present condition of the Continent it is scarcely conceivable that a British army should ever again be employed as Wellington's army was in Spain. The circumstances of the earlier period of the war implying the closest possible co-operation between the navy and army are much more typical of the ordinary means by which the pressure of a great sea power may be brought to bear upon land power. If that be recognised, then here will be found the mistakes and causes of failure, the successes and causes of success as they were observed by one of the keenest and shrewdest of soldiers, and noted down at the time as and when they occurred. I venture to think the lessons to be learnt both from the failures and the successes are of even more interest to the nation and its statesmen than to soldiers, for whom Moore's whole life is chiefly interesting, as Sir Bartle Frere has