CHAPTER IV.
The British army remained in the camp of Abrantes until the latter end of June. During this period, sir Arthur Wellesley, although burning to enter Spain, was kept back by a variety of difficulties.
He had been reinforced with five thousand men immediately after his return from the Douro; and, in the preceding operations, the killed and hurt in battle did not exceed three hundred men, but the deaths by sickness were numerous. Four thousand men in hospital, and fifteen hundred employed in escort and depôt duties, being deducted, the gross amount of the present under arms, as late even as the 25th of June, did not exceed twenty-two thousand men; and these were, at any moment, liable to be seriously diminished, because the ministers, still intent upon Cadiz, had authorized Mr. Frere, whenever the junta should consent to the measure, to draw a garrison for that town from sir Arthur’s force. As an army, therefore, it was weak in every thing but spirit. The commissariat was without sufficient means of transport; the soldiers nearly barefooted, and totally without pay; the military chest was empty, and the hospitals were full.
The expense, at a low estimation, was about two hundred thousand pounds a month, and, with the most strenuous exertions, a hundred and sixty thousand pounds only had been procured in the two months of May and June; and of this, thirteen thousand had been obtained as a temporary loan in Oporto. The rate of exchange in Lisbon was high, and, notwithstanding the increased value given to the government paper by the successes on the Douro, Parl. Papers, 1810. this rate was daily rising. The Spanish dollar was at five shillings, while Spanish gold sunk so much in value that the commissary-general sent all that he received from England, or could collect in Lisbon, to Cadiz, and other parts, to truck for dollars; but, in all places of commerce, the exchange was rising against England, a natural consequence of her enormous and increasing issues of paper. Those issues, the extravagant succours given to Spain, together with subsidies to Austria, made it impossible to supply the army in Portugal with specie, otherwise than by raising cash, in every quarter of the globe, on treasury-bills, and at a most enormous loss; an evil great in itself, opening a wide door to fraud and villany, and rendered the war between France and England not so much a glorious contest of arms as a struggle between public credit and military force, in which even victory was sure to be fatal to the former.
The want of money, sickness, Cuesta’s impracticable temper, and a variety of minor difficulties, too tedious to mention, kept the army in a state of inactivity until the end of June; but, at that period, the retreat of the first corps from Torremocha, and the consequent advance of Cuesta, removed one obstacle to offensive operations, and sir Arthur, having the certainty that eight thousand additional troops were off the rock of Lisbon, then commenced his march into Spain by the northern banks of the Tagus, meaning to unite with Cuesta on the Tietar, and to arrange, if possible, a plan of operations against Madrid.
But, before I embark on the full and broad stream into which the surges and eddies of the complicated warfare that succeeded Napoleon’s departure from the Peninsula settled, I must give a general view of the state of affairs, that the reader, comprehending exactly what strength each party brought to the encounter, may judge more truly of the result.
FRENCH POWER.
| Men. | Horses. | |||
| The French, having received some reinforcements of conscripts, amounted, in the beginning of July, including the king’s guards, to about | 275,000 | |||
| In hospital | 61,000 | } | 68,000 | |
| Stragglers and prisoners borne on the states | 7,000 | } | ||
| ——— | ||||
| Total under arms | 207,000 | 36,000 | ||
| The military governments, lines of correspondence, garrisons, and detachments, absorbed | 32,000 | 3,000 | ||
| ——— | ——— | |||
| Present under arms with the corps d’armée | 175,000 | 33,000 | ||
Muster roll of the French Army, MSS.
The actual strength and situation of each corps d’armée was as follows:—
In addition to these corps there were twelve hundred men belonging to the battering train, four thousand infantry under Bonnet, at St. Andero, and two thousand two hundred cavalry under Kellerman, in the Valladolid country.
The fortresses and armed places in possession of the French army were—St. Sebastian, Pampeluna, Bilbao, Santona, St. Andero, Burgos, Leon, Astorga, on the northern line;
Jacca, Zaragoza, Guadalaxara, Toledo, Segovia, and Zamora, on the central line;
Figueras, Rosas, and Barcelona, on the southern line.
It needs but a glance at these dispositions and numbers to understand with what a power Napoleon had fastened upon the Peninsula, during his six weeks’ campaign. Much had been lost since his departure, but his army still pressed the Spaniards down, and, like a stone cast upon a brood of snakes, was immoveable to their writhings. Nevertheless, the situation of Spain, at this epoch, was an ameliorated one compared to that which, four months before, the vehemence of Napoleon’s personal warfare had reduced it to. The elements of resistance were again accumulated in masses, and the hope, or rather confidence, of success was again in full vigour; for, it was in the character of this people, while grovelling on the earth, to suppose themselves standing firm; and, when creeping in the gloom of defeat, to imagine they were soaring in the full blaze of victory.
The momentary cessation of offensive operations on the part of the French, instead of being traced to its true sources, the personal jealousies of the marshals, and the king’s want of vigour, was, as usual, attributed, first—to fear and weakness; secondly—to the pressure of the Austrian war. It was not considered that the want of unity, checking the course of conquest, would cease when the French army was driven to the defensive; neither was the might of France duly weighed, while the strength of Austria was unduly exalted. The disasters at Ucles, at Almaraz, at Zaragoza, Rosas, Cardadeu, Valls, at Ciudad Real, Medellin, Braga, and Oporto, and in the Asturias, were all forgotten. The French had been repulsed from Portugal, and they had not taken Seville. This, to the Spaniards, was sufficient evidence of their weakness; and, when the French were supposed to be weak, the others, by a curious reasoning process, always came to the conclusion that they were themselves strong. Hence, the fore-boasting at this period was little inferior to what it had been after the battle of Baylen; and the statement of the relative numbers was almost as absurd. The utmost amount of the French force was not calculated higher than a hundred and fifteen, or a hundred and twenty, thousand men, of which about fifty thousand were supposed to be on the French side of the Ebro, and the whole only waiting for an excuse to abandon the Peninsula.
SPANISH POWER.
The Spanish armies, on paper, were, as usual, numerous; and the real amount of the regular force was certainly considerable, although very inadequate to the exigencies or the resources of the country. Before the battle of Belchite had broken Blake’s strength, there were, organized and under arms, twelve thousand cavalry, and about one hundred and twenty thousand infantry, exclusive of irregular bands and armed peasantry, who were available for particular defensive operations. After that defeat the number of regular forces, capable of taking the field in the south-eastern provinces, was not above twenty thousand men, of which about ten thousand, under Coupigny, were watching Barcelona, or, again, rallying under Blake; the remainder were in Valencia, where Caro, Romana’s brother, had taken the command.
In the north-western provinces there were about twenty-five thousand men, of which fifteen thousand were in Gallicia; some thousands in the Asturias, under Voster and Ballasteros, and the remainder, under the duke del Parque, who was directed to organize a new army in the neighbourhood of Ciudad Rodrigo.
In Andalusia, or covering it, there were about seventy thousand men. Of these twenty-three thousand infantry, and two thousand five hundred cavalry, were assembled in the Morena, near St. Elena and Carolina, under the command of general Venegas; and thirty-eight thousand, including seven thousand cavalry, were in Estremadura, under the orders of Cuesta, who was nominally commander-in-chief of both armies.
The troops, thus divided into three grand divisions, were called the armies of the right, the centre, the left. The fortresses were—Gerona, Hostalrich, Lerida, Maquinenza, Tarragona, Tortosa, Valencia, Carthegena, and Alicant, for the army of the right; Cadiz and Badajos for that of the centre; Ciudad Rodrigo, Coruña, and Ferrol, for the army of the left.
The Spanish troops were, however, far from being serviceable, in proportion to their numbers; most of them were new levies, and the rest were ill-trained. The generals had lost nothing of their presumption, learnt nothing of war, and their mutual jealousies were as strong as ever. Cuesta still hating the junta, was feared and hated by that body in return; and Venegas was placed at the head of the Carolina army as a counterpoise to him. Romana, also, was obnoxious to the junta; and, in return, with more reason, the junta was despised and disliked by him. In Valencia and Murcia generals and juntas appeared alike indifferent to the public welfare, and satisfied if the war was kept from their own doors. In Catalonia there never was any unanimity.
Blake, who had abandoned Romana in Gallicia, and who was still at enmity with Cuesta, had been, for these very reasons, invested with supreme power in Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia; and, moreover, there were factions and bickerings among the inferior officers in the armies of Venegas and Cuesta. Albuquerque was ambitious of commanding in chief, and Mr. Frere warmly intrigued in his cause, for that gentleman still laboured under the delusion that he was appointed to direct the military instead of conducting the political service in the Peninsula.
In April, he had proposed to the junta that a force of five thousand cavalry and some infantry, taken from the armies of Cuesta and Venegas, should, under the command of the duke of Albuquerque, commence offensive operations in La Parliamentary Papers, 1810. Mancha; this, he said, would, “if the enemy refused to take notice of it,” become “a very serious and perhaps a decisive movement;” and he was so earnest that, without communicating upon the subject with sir Arthur Wellesley, without waiting for the result of the operations against Soult, he pretended to the junta that the co-operation of the English army with Cuesta (that co-operation which it was sir Arthur’s most anxious wish to bring [Appendix, No. 8]. about) could only be obtained, as the price of the Spanish government’s acceding to his own proposal. The plenipotentiary’s greatest efforts were, however, directed to procure the appointment of Albuquerque to the command of an army; but that nobleman was under the orders of Cuesta, who was not willing to part with him, and, moreover, Frere wished to displace Venegas, not that any fault was attributed to the latter, but merely to make way for Albuquerque; a scheme so indecorous that both the junta and Cuesta peremptorily rejected it.
Parliamentary Papers, 1810.
Mr. Frere did not hesitate to attribute this rejection to a mean jealousy of Albuquerque’s high birth and talents; but the junta had sufficient reason for their conduct, not only on this occasion, but afterwards, when they refused to give him any independent command. The duke, although a brave and patriotic and even an able soldier, was the dupe of a woman who corresponded with the French. The junta, in the fear of offending him, forbore to punish her, at first, yet, finally, they were obliged to shut her up, and they could not entrust him with a command while her dangerous influence lasted. Hence, Mr. Frere’s intrigue failed to serve Albuquerque, and his military project for La Mancha fell to the ground, when sir Arthur Wellesley, unable to perceive its advantages, strongly advised the junta, not to weaken but to reinforce Cuesta’s army; not to meddle with the French either in La Mancha or Estremadura, but to preserve a strict defensive in all quarters.
The supreme junta was itself in fear of the old junta of Seville, and the folly and arrogance of the first and its neglect of the public weal furnished ample grounds of attack, as a slight sketch of its administrative proceedings will suffice to prove. The king, after the battles of Medellin and Ciudad Real, had, through the medium of don Joachim Sotelo, a Spanish minister in his service, made an attempt to negotiate for the submission of the junta, which was spurned at by the latter, in suitable terms, for dignified sentiments and lofty expressions were never wanting to the Spanish, although, taken with their deeds, they were but as a strong wind and a few shrivelled leaves.
The junta did not fail to make the nation observe their patriotism upon this occasion, and, indeed, took every opportunity to praise their own proceedings. Nevertheless, men were not wanting in Spain most anxious, not only to check the actual abuses of power, but to lay bare all the ancient oppressions of the country, and recur to first principles, both for present reform and future permanent good government; in short, to make public avowal of the misrule which had led to their misfortunes, and, if possible, to amend it. Knowing that although national independence may co-exist with tyranny, it is inseparable from civil and religious freedom,—they desired to assemble the cortez, and to give the people an earnest that national independence was worth having; to convince them that their sufferings and their exertions would lead to a sensible good, instead of a mere choice between an old and a new despotism; and this party was powerful enough to have a manifesto to their purpose drawn up by the junta, and it would have been published, if the English ministers had not interposed; for, as I have before said, their object was not Spain, but Napoleon.
Parliamentary Papers, printed 1810.
Mr. Frere vigorously opposed the promulgation of this manifesto, and not ambiguously hinted that the displeasure of England, and the wrath of the partizans of despotism in Spain, would be vented on the junta, if any such approach to real liberty was made. In his despatches to his cabinet he wrote that, from his knowledge of the members of the junta, he felt assured they would “shrink from the idea of giving permanent effect to the measures which they held out;” and this expression he meant in their praise! but still he thought it necessary to check the tendency to freedom in the outset; and it would be injustice not to give his sentiments in his own words, sentiments which were at this time perfectly agreeable to his immediate superior, Mr. Canning, but offering a curious contrast to the political liberality which that politician afterwards thought it his interest to affect.
Writing as a Spaniard, Mr. Frere thus addressed don Martin Garay:—
Papers laid before Parliament, 1810.
“If we have indeed passed three centuries under an arbitrary government, let us not forget that it is a price which we pay for having conquered and peopled the fairest portion of the globe; that the integrity of this immense power rests solely on these two words, religion and the king. If the old constitution has been lost by the conquest of America, our first object should be to recover it, but in such a manner as not to lose what has cost us so much in the acquisition. From this consideration, it appears to me that we ought to avoid, as political poison, any annunciation of general principles, the application of which it would be impossible to limit or qualify, even when the negroes and Indians should quote them in favour of themselves. But let us allow that we have made a bad exchange in bartering our ancient national liberty for the glory and extension of the Spanish name. Let us allow that the nation has been deceived for three centuries, and that this error should, at all hazards, be immediately done away. Even though it were so, it does not appear very becoming the character of a well educated person to pass censures upon the conduct of his forefathers, or to complain of what he has lost by their negligence or prodigality; and still less so, if it is done in the face of all the world: and what shall we say of a nation who should do this publicly, and after mature deliberation?”
The manifesto was suppressed, a new one more consonant to Mr. Frere’s notions was published, and a promise to convoke the cortez given, but without naming any specific time for that event. The junta, who, as Mr. Frere truly stated, were not at all disposed to give any effect to free institutions, now proceeded to prop up their own tottering power by severity: they had, previous to the manifesto, issued a menacing proclamation, in which they endeavoured to confound their political opponents with the spies and tools of the French; and having before established a tribunal of public security, they caused it to publish an edict, in which all men, who endeavoured to raise distrust of the junta, or who tried to overturn the government, by popular commotions, or other means that had, by the junta, been reprobated, were declared guilty of high treason, undeserving the name of Spaniards and sold to Napoleon, their punishment to be death, and confiscation of property. Any person propagating rumours, tending to weaken or soften the hatred of the people against the French, was instantly to be arrested and punished without remission; lastly, rewards were offered for secret information upon these heads.
This decree was not a dead letter. Many persons were seized, imprisoned, and executed, without trial, or knowing their accusers. But the deepest stain upon the Spanish character, at this period, was the treatment experienced by prisoners of war. Thousands, and amongst them part of Dupont’s troops, who were only prisoners by a breach of faith, were sent to the Balearic Isles, but no order was taken for their subsistence. When remonstrated with, the junta cast seven thousand ashore on the little desert rock of Cabrera. At Majorca, numbers had been massacred by the inhabitants, in the most cowardly and brutal manner, but those left on Cabrera suffered miseries that can scarcely be described. The supply of food, always scanty, was often neglected altogether: there was but one spring on the rock, which dried up in summer; clothes were never given to them except by the English seamen, who, compassionating their sufferings, often assisted them, in passing the island. Thus, afflicted with hunger, thirst, and nakedness, they lived like wild beasts while they could live, but perished in such numbers, that less than two thousand remained to tell the tale of this inhumanity; and surely, it was no slight disgrace that the English government failed to interfere on such an occasion.
But what were the efforts made for the defence of the country by this inhuman junta, which, having been originally assembled to discuss the form of establishing a central government, had, unlawfully, retained their delegated power, and used it so shamefully? There was a Spanish fleet, and a sufficient number of sailors to man it, in Carthagena. There was another fleet, and abundance of seamen, in Cadiz. Lord Collingwood, and others, pressed the junta, constantly and earnestly, to fit these vessels out, and to make use of them, or at least to place them beyond the reach of the enemy. His remonstrances were unheeded; the sailors were rendered mutinous for want of pay, and even of subsistence, and the government would neither fit out [Appendix, No. 9]. ships themselves, nor suffer the English seamen to do it for them; and at the very period when the marquis of Romana and the insurgents in Gallicia were praying for a few stands of arms and five Lord Collingwood’s Correspondence. thousand pounds, from sir John Cradock, the junta possessed many millions of money, and their magazines, General Miller’s Memoirs. in Cadiz, were unable to contain the continually increasing quantity of stores and arms arriving from England, which were left to rot as they arrived, while, from every quarter of the country not yet subdued, the demand for these things was incessant.
The fleet in Cadiz harbour might have been at sea in the beginning of February. In a week it might have been at Vigo, with money and succours of all kinds for the insurgents in Gallicia; after which, by skilful operations along the coast from Vigo to St. Sebastian, it might have occupied an enormous French force on that line of country. But instead of a fleet, the junta sent colonel Barios, an obscure person, to steal through by-ways, and to take the command of men who were not in want of leaders. In the same manner, the fleet in Carthagena might have been employed on the Catalonian and French coasts; but, far from using their means, which were really enormous, with energy and judgement, the junta carried on the war by encouraging virulent publications against the French, and confined their real exertions to the assembling of the unfortunate peasants in masses, to starve for a while, and then to be cut to pieces by their more experienced opponents.
The system of false reports, also, was persevered in without any relaxation: the French were beaten on all points; the marshals were slain or taken; their soldiers were deserting, or flying in terror at the sight of a Spaniard; Joseph had plundered and abandoned Madrid; and Zaragoza had not fallen. Castro, the envoy to the Portuguese regency, so late as April, anxiously endeavoured to persuade that government and the English general, that Zaragoza had never been subdued, and that the story of its fall was a French falsehood. In June, official letters were written to marshal Beresford, from the neighbourhood of Lugo, dated the very day upon which Soult’s army relieved that town, not to give intelligence of the event, but to announce the utter defeat of that marshal, and the capture of Lugo itself; the amount of the killed and wounded, and the prisoners taken, being very exactly stated; and this, with such an appearance of truth, as to deceive Beresford, notwithstanding his previous experience of the people he had to deal with.
But the proofs of corruption and incapacity in the junta are innumerable, and not confined to the records of events kept by British officers. Romana, a few months later, upon the question of appointing a regency, thus describes their conduct: “He himself,” he said, “had doubted if the central junta was a lawful government, and this doubt was general in the provinces through which he had passed; yet he had, to preserve the nation from anarchy, not only yielded obedience to it, but he had, likewise, forced the provinces of Gallicia, Leon, and Asturias to do the same; because he thought that an illegal government might be useful if it deserved the confidence of the people, and that they respected its authority. The central junta, however, was not thus situated: the people, judging of measures by their effects, complained that the armies were weak, the government without energy; that there were no supplies; that the promised accounts of the public expenditure were withheld; and yet, all the sums drawn from America, all the succours granted by England, the rents of the crown, and the voluntary contributions were expended. The public employments were not given to men of merit and true lovers of their country. Some of the members of the junta rendered their power subservient to their own advantage; others conferred lucrative appointments on their relations and dependents. Ecclesiastical offices had been filled up to enable individuals to seize those rents for themselves which ought to be appropriated for the public service. There was no unity to be found: many of the junta cared only for the interest of their particular province, as if they were not members of the Spanish monarchy; confirming the appointments of the local juntas, without regard to fitness; and even assigning recompenses to men destitute of military knowledge, who had neither seen service nor performed the duties assigned to them.”
“The junta, divided into sections, undertook to manage affairs in which they were unversed, and which were altogether foreign to their professions. Horses, taken from their owners under pretence of supplying the armies, were left to die of hunger in the sea-marshes: and, finally, many important branches of administration were in the hands of men, suspected, both from their own conduct and from their having been creatures of that infamous favourite who was the author of the general misery.”
It was at this period that the celebrated Partidas first commenced the guerilla, or petty warfare, which has been so lauded, as if that had been the cause of Napoleon’s discomfiture. Those bands were infinitely numerous, because, every robber, that feared a jail, or that could break from one; every smuggler,[8] whose trade had been interrupted; every friar, disliking the trammels of his convent; and every idler, that wished to avoid the ranks of the regular army, was to be found either as chief or associate in the partidas.
The French, although harassed by the constant and cruel murders of isolated soldiers, or followers of the army, and sometimes by the loss of convoys, were never thwarted in any great object by these bands; but the necessity of providing subsistence, and attaching his followers to his fortunes, generally obliged the guerilla chief to rob his countrymen; and, indeed, one of the principal causes of the sudden growth of this system was the hope of intercepting the public and private plate, which, under a decree of Joseph, was bringing in from all parts to be coined in Madrid; for that monarch was obliged to have recourse to forced loans, and the property of the proscribed nobles, and suppressed convents, to maintain even the appearance of a court.
This description will apply to the mass of the partidas; but there were certainly some who were actuated by nobler motives; by revenge; by a gallant enterprising spirit; or, by an honest ambition, thinking to serve their country better than by joining the regular forces. Among the principal chiefs may be placed, Renovales, and the two Minas, in Navarre and Arragon; Porlier named the marquisetto, and Longa, in the Asturias and Biscay; Juan Martin, or El Empecinado, who vexed the neighbourhood of Madrid; Julian Sanchez, in the Gata and Salamanca country; doctor Rovera, Pereña, and some others, in Catalonia; Juan Paladea, or El Medico, between the Moreno and Toledo; the curate Merino, El Principe, and Saornil, in Castile; the friar Sapia, in Soria, and Juan Abril, near Segovia.
But these men were of very different merit. Renovales, a regular officer, raised the peasantry of the valleys between Pampeluna and Zaragoza, after the fall of the latter city; but he was soon subdued. Juan Martin, Rovera, Julian Sanchez, and the student Mina, discovered most military talent, and Sanchez was certainly a very bold and honest man; but Espoz y Mina, the uncle and successor of the student, far outstripped his contemporaries in fame. He shed the blood of his prisoners freely, but rather from false principle, and under peculiar circumstances, than from any real ferocity, his natural disposition being manly and generous; and, although not possessed of any peculiar military genius, he had a sound judgement, surprising energy, and a constant spirit.
By birth a peasant, he despised the higher orders of his own country, and never would suffer any hidalgo, or gentleman, to join his band. From 1809, until the end of the war, he maintained himself in the provinces bordering on the Ebro; often defeated, and chased from place to place, he gradually increased his forces; until, in 1812, he yet was at the head of more than ten thousand men, whom he paid regularly, and supplied from resources chiefly created by himself; one of which was remarkable:—He established a treaty with the French generals, by which articles, not being warlike stores, coming from France, had safe conduct from his partida, on paying a duty, which Mina appropriated to the subsistence of his followers.
That the guerilla system could never seriously affect the progress of the French, is proved by the fact, that the constant aim of the principal chiefs was to introduce the customs of regular troops; and their success against the enemy was proportionate to their progress in discipline and organization. There were not less than fifty thousand of these irregular soldiers, at one time, in Spain; and so severely did they press upon the country that it may be assumed as a truth that if the English army had abandoned the contest, one of the surest means by which the French could have gained the good will of the nation would have been the extirpating of the partidas. Nevertheless, one great and unquestionable advantage was derived by the regular armies, and especially by the British, from the existence of these bands. The French corps could never communicate with each other, nor combine their movements, except by the slow method of sending officers with strong escorts; whereas, their adversaries could correspond by post, and even by telegraph, an advantage equal to a reinforcement of thirty thousand men.
PORTUGUESE POWER.
The Portuguese military system has been already explained. The ranks of the regular army, and of the militia, were filling; the arms and equipments were supplied by England; and means were taking to give effect to the authority of the captans mor, or chiefs of districts, under whom the ordenanzas were to be gathered for the defence of the country. The people having been a second time relieved from an invasion, by the intervention of a British army, were disposed to submit implicitly to the guidance of their deliverers; but the effect of former misgovernment pervaded every branch of administration, political and municipal, and impeded the efforts made to draw forth the military resources of the kingdom. It is a curious fact that, not only at this period, but until the end of the war, such was the reluctance of the people to become soldiers, that, notwithstanding their undoubted hatred of the French, their natural docility, and the visible superiority of the soldiers’ condition over that of the peasant or artisan, the recruiting was always difficult; and the odious spectacle was constantly exhibited, of men marched in chains, to reinforce armies, which were fighting in what was a popular, and ought to have been a sacred cause.
The actual number of regular troops, armed and organized, was not above fifteen thousand, and, notwithstanding the courage displayed by those employed in the late operations, marshal Beresford was doubtful of their military qualities, and reluctant to act separately from the British troops. The most important fortresses in a condition for defence were Elvas, Albuquerque, and Almeida, in the first line; Abrantes and Peniché, in the second; the citadel, and forts of Lisbon and Palmela, in the third. But there were many other walled places, capable, if armed, of standing a siege, and presenting a variety of strong points for the irregular force of the country to assemble upon; and hence, Portugal offered, not only great resources in men, but a base of operations solid in itself; central with respect to the French armies, and enabling the English general to act, without reference to the Spanish government or Spanish commanders; an advantage more justly appreciated at the end of the campaign than at the commencement. Such were the relative situations of the contending hosts in the Peninsula; yet, to take an enlarged view of affairs, it is necessary to look beyond the actual field of battle; for the contest in Spain, no longer isolated, was become an integral part of the great European struggle against France.
Napoleon, after his first successes near Ratisbon, entered Vienna, and attempted to carry the war to the left bank of the Danube; but a severe check, received at the battle of Esling on the 21st of May, so shook his moral ascendancy in Europe, that he deemed it necessary to concentrate all the disposable strength of his empire for one gigantic effort, which should restore the terror of his name. The appearance of inactivity assumed by him, while thus mightily gathering his forces, deceived his enemies; and, as their hopes rose, their boasts became extravagant, more especially in England, where, to express a doubt of his immediate overthrow was regarded as a heinous offence; and where the government, buoyed up with foolish expectations, thought less of supporting a noble and effectual warfare in Portugal than of nourishing and aiding the secondary and rather degrading hostility of conspirators, malcontents, and military adventurers in Germany.
While sir Arthur Wellesley was waiting impatiently on the Tagus for the scanty reinforcements afforded him, two other armies were simultaneously preparing to act against the extremities of the French empire; the one, consisting of about twelve thousand men, drawn from Sicily, was destined to invade Italy, the southern parts of which had been denuded of troops to oppose the Austrians on the Adjutant-general’s Returns. Tagliamento. The other was assembled on the coast of England, where above forty thousand of the finest troops the nation could boast of, and a fleet of power to overthrow all the other navies of the world combined, composed an armament, intended to destroy the great marine establishment which the French emperor had so suddenly and so portentously created at Antwerp. So vast an expedition had never before left the British shores; neither any one so meanly conceived, so improvidently arranged, so calamitously conducted, for the marine and land forces, combined, numbered more than eighty thousand fighting men, and those of the bravest; yet the object in view was comparatively insignificant, and even that was not obtained. Delivered over to the leading of a man, whose military incapacity has caused the glorious title of Chatham to be scorned, this ill-fated army, with spirit, and strength, and zeal to have spread the fame of England to the extremities of the earth, perished, without a blow, in the pestilent marshes of Walcheren! And so utterly had party spirit stifled the feeling of national honour that public men were found base enough to reprobate the convention of Cintra, to sneer at sir John Moore’s operations, and yet to declare the Walcheren expedition wise, profitable, and even glorious!
The operation against Italy was less unfortunate rather than more ably conducted, and it was equally abortive. What with slow preparations, the voyage, and the taking of the petty islands of Ischia and Procida, thirteen weeks were wasted; and yet, during that period, Murat, conscious of his inability to resist, was only restrained from abandoning Naples by the firmness of his queen, and the energy of Sallicetti, the minister of police. We have seen that it was the wish of the ministers to have the troops in Sicily employed in the south of Spain, but, yielding to the representations of sir John Stuart, they permitted him to make this display of military foolery: yet it is not with the bad or good success of these expeditions that this history has to deal, but with that palpable and direful ministerial incapacity which suffered two men, notoriously unfitted for war, to waste and dissipate the military strength of England on secondary objects, while a renowned commander, placed at the most important point, was left without an adequate force.
For the first time since the commencement of the Peninsula war, sixty thousand Spanish troops, well armed and clothed, were collected in a mass, and in the right place, communicating with a British force. For the first time since Napoleon swayed the destiny of France, the principal army of that country had met with an important check: the great conqueror’s fortune seemed to waver, and the moment had arrived when the British government was called to display all its wisdom and energy. The duke of York had performed his duty; he had placed above ninety thousand superb soldiers, all disposable for offensive operations, in the hands of the ministers; but the latter knew not their value, and, instead of concentrating them upon one, scattered them upon many points. Sir Arthur Wellesley might have had above eighty thousand British troops on the frontiers of Portugal, and he was a general capable of wielding them. He was forced to commence a campaign, upon which the fate of the Peninsula, a quick triumph or a long-protracted agony of twelve millions of people depended, with only twenty-two thousand; while sixty thousand fighting men, and ships numerous enough to darken all the coasts of Spain, were waiting, in Sicily and England, for orders which were to doom them, one part to scorn, and the other to an inglorious and miserable fate. Shall the deliverance of the Peninsula, then, be attributed to the firmness and long-sighted policy of ministers who gave these glaring proofs of improvidence, or shall the glory of that great exploit lighten round the head of him who so manfully maintained the fierce struggle, even under the burden of their folly?