_Chapters from the Memoirs of Manuel (or Manus) McNeill, an agent
in the Secret Service of Great Britain during the campaigns of the
Peninsula (1808-1813). A Spanish subject by birth, and a Spaniard in
all his upbringing, he traces in the first chapter of his Memoirs
his descent from an old Highland family through one Manus McNeill,
a Jacobite agent in the Court of Madrid at the time of the War of
Succession, who married and settled at Aranjuez. The authenticity of
these Memoirs has been doubted, and according to Napier the name of
the two scouts whom Marmont confused together (as will appear in a
subsequent chapter) was not McNeill, but Grant: which is probable
enough, but not sufficient to stamp the Memoirs as forgeries. Their
author may have chosen McNeill as a nom de guerre, and been at pains
to deceive his readers on this point while adhering to strictest
truth in his relation of events. And this I conceive to be the real
explanation of a narrative which itself clears up, and credibly,
certain obscurities in Napier_.--Q.]