workships, were all in full employment.  Field and breaching batteries were mounted on a new principle lately adopted; gabions, earth-bags, chevaux-de-frise, and projectiles were made in the greatest abundance maps, notes, and all the information that could be procured respecting Barbary were transmitted to the war office, where their contents were compared and digested, and a plan of operations was drawn out.  The commissariat were busied in collecting provisions, waggons, and fitting out an efficient hospital train; a deputy-commissary was despatched to reconnoitre the coasts of Spain and the Balearic Islands, to ascertain what resources could be drawn from them, and negociate with the king for leave to establish military hospitals at Port Mahon.  Eighteen regiments of the line, three squadrons of cavalry, and different corps of artillery and engineers were ordered to hold themselves in readiness; four hundred transports were assembled, and chartered by government in the port of Marseilles, while the vessels of war, which were to form the convoy, were appointed their rendezvous in the neighborhood of Toulon.  After some hesitation as to who should command this important expedition, the Count de Bourmont, then minister at war, thought fit to appoint himself; and his etat-major was soon complete, Desprez acting as chief, and Tholoze as second in command.  Maubert de Neuilly was chosen provost-marshal, De Bartillat (who afterwards wrote an entertaining account of the expedition) quarter-master general, and De Carne commissary-general to the forces.  In addition to these, there were about twenty aid-de-camps, orderlies, and young men of rank attached to the staff, together with a Spanish general, an English colonel, a Russian colonel and lieutenant, and two Saxon officers, deputed by their respective governments.  There were also a section of engineer-geographers, whose business was to survey and map the country as it was conquered, “and,” says M. Roget, who was himself employed in the service we have just mentioned, and to whose excellent work, written in that capacity, we are so much indebted, “twenty-four interpreters, the half of whom knew neither French nor Arabic, were attached-to the different corps of the army, in order to facilitate their intercourse with the inhabitants.”  As the minister had determined on risking his own reputation on the expedition, the supplies were all, of course, of the completest kind, and in the greatest abundance.  Provisions for three months were ordered; an equal quantity was to be forwarded as soon as the army had landed in Africa; and, amongst the other materials furnished we observe, in looking over the returns, thirty wooden legs, and two hundred crutches, for the relief of the unfortunate heroes, a boring apparatus to sink pumps, if water should run short, and a balloon, with two aeronauts, to reconnoitre the enemy’s position, in case, as was represented to be their wont, they should entrench themselves under the shelter of hedges and brushwood.