CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
1812. Lord Wellington exasperated by the conduct of the army and by the many crossings he had experienced during the campaign, had no sooner taken his winter-quarters, than he gave vent to his indignation in a circular letter, addressed to the superior officers, which, being ill-received by the army at the time, has been frequently referred to since with angry denunciations of its injustice. In substance it declared, “that discipline had deteriorated during the campaign in a greater degree than he had ever witnessed or ever read of in any army, and this without any disaster, any unusual privation or hardship save that of inclement weather; that the officers had, from the first, lost all command over their men, and hence excesses, outrages of all kinds, and inexcusable losses had occurred; that no army had ever made shorter marches in retreat, or had longer rests; no army had ever been so little pressed by a pursuing enemy, and that the true cause of this unhappy state of affairs was to be found in the habitual neglect of duty by the regimental officers.”
These severe reproaches were generally deserved, and only partially unjust; yet the statements, on which they were founded, were in some particulars unintentionally inaccurate, especially as regarded the retreat from Salamanca. The marches, though short as to distance, after quitting the Tormes, were long as to time, and it is the time an English soldier bears his burthen, for like the ancient Roman he carries the load of an ass, that crushes his strength. Some regiments had come from Cadiz without halting, and as long garrison duty had weakened their bodies, both their constitutions and their inexperience were too heavily taxed. The line of march from Salamanca was through a flooded, and flat, clayey country, not much easier to the allies than the marshes of the Arnus were to Hannibal’s army; and mounted officers, as that great general well knew when he placed the Carthaginian cavalry to keep up the Gallic rear, never judge correctly of a foot-soldier’s exertions; they measure his strength by their horses’ powers. On this occasion the troops, stepping ankle-deep in clay, mid-leg in water, lost their shoes, and with strained sinews heavily made their way, and withal they had but two rations in five days.
Wellington thought otherwise, for he knew not that the commissariat stores, which he had ordered up, did not arrive regularly because of the extreme fatigue of the animals who carried them; and those that did arrive were not available for the troops, because, as the rear of an army, and especially a retreating army, is at once the birth-place and the recipient of false reports, the subordinate commissaries and conductors of the temporary dépôts, alarmed with rumours that the enemy’s cavalry had forestalled the allies on the march, carried off or destroyed the field-stores: hence the soldiers were actually feeding on acorns when their commander supposed them to be in the receipt of good rations. The destruction of the swine may be therefore, in some measure, palliated; but there is neither palliation nor excuse to be offered for the excesses and outrages committed on the inhabitants, nor for many officers’ habitual inattention to their duty, of which the general justly complained. Certainly the most intolerable disorders had marked the retreat, and great part of the sufferings of the army arose from these and previous disorders, for it is too common with soldiers, first to break up the arrangements of their general by want of discipline, and then to complain of the misery which those arrangements were designed to obviate. Nevertheless Wellington’s circular was not strictly just, because it excepted none from blame, though in conversation he admitted the reproach did not apply to the light division nor to the guards.
With respect to the former the proof of its discipline was easy though Wellington had not said so much in its favour; for how could those troops be upbraided, who held together so closely with their colours, that, exclusive of those killed in action, they did not leave thirty men behind. Never did the extraordinary vigour and excellence of their discipline merit praise more than in this retreat. But it seems to be a drawback to the greatness of lord Wellington’s character, that while capable of repressing insubordination, either by firmness or dexterity as the case may require, capable also of magnanimously disregarding, or dangerously resenting injuries, his praises and his censures are bestowed indiscriminately, or so directed as to acquire partizans and personal friends rather than the attachment of the multitude. He did not make the hard-working military crowd feel that their honest unobtrusive exertions were appreciated. In this he differs not from many other great generals and statesmen, but he thereby fails to influence masses, and his genius falls short of that sublime flight by which Hannibal in ancient, and Napoleon in modern times, commanded the admiration of the world. Nevertheless it is only by a comparison with such great men that he can be measured, nor will any slight examination of his exploits suffice to convey a true notion of his intellectual power and resources. Let this campaign be taken as an example.
It must be evident that it in no manner bears out the character of an easy and triumphant march, which English writers have given to it. Nothing happened according to the original plan. The general’s operations were one continual struggle to overcome obstacles, occasioned by the enemy’s numbers, the insubordination of his own troops, the slowness, incapacity, and unfaithful conduct of the Spanish commanders, the want of money, and the active folly of the different governments he served. For first his design was to menace the French in Spain so as to bring their forces upon him from other parts, and then to retire into Portugal, again to issue forth when want should cause them to disperse. He was not without hopes indeed to strike a decisive blow, yet he was content, if the occasion came not, to wear out the French by continual marching, and he trusted that the frequent opportunities thus given to the Spaniards would finally urge them to a general effort. But he found his enemy, from the first, too powerful for him, even without drawing succour from distant parts, and he would have fallen back at once, were it not for Marmont’s rashness. Nor would the victory of the Arapiles itself have produced any proportionate effect but for the errors of the king, and his rejection of Soult’s advice. Those errors caused the evacuation of Andalusia, yet it was only to concentrate an overwhelming force with which the French finally drove the victors back to Portugal.
Again, Wellington designed to finish his campaign in the southern provinces, and circumstances obliged him to remain in the northern provinces. He would have taken Burgos and he could not; he would have rested longer on the Carrion, and his flanks were turned by the bridges of Palencia and Baños; he would have rested behind the Douro, to profit of his central position, but the bridge at Tordesillas was ravished from him, and the sudden reparation of that at Toro, obliged him to retire. He would have united with Hill on the Adaja, and he could only unite with him behind the Tormes; and on this last river also he desired either to take his winter quarters, or to have delivered a great battle with a view to regain Madrid, and he could do neither. Finally he endeavoured to make an orderly and an easy retreat to Ciudad Rodrigo, and his army was like to have dissolved altogether. And yet in all these varying circumstances, his sagacity as to the general course of the war, his promptness in taking advantage of particular opportunities, was conspicuous. These are the distinguishing characteristics of real genius.
Passing over as already sufficiently illustrated that master-stroke, the battle of Salamanca, the reader would do well to mark, how this great commander did, after that event, separate the king’s army from Marmont’s, forcing the one to retreat upon Burgos, and driving the other from Madrid; how he thus broke up the French combinations, so that many weeks were of necessity required to reunite a power capable of disturbing him in the field; how he posted Clinton’s division and the Gallicians, to repress any light excursion by the beaten army of Portugal; how, foreseeing Soult’s plan to establish a new base of operations in Andalusia, he was prepared, by a sudden descent from Madrid, to drive Soult himself from that province; how promptly, when the siege of Burgos failed, and his combinations were ruined by the fault of others, how promptly I say, he commenced his retreat, sacrificing all his high-wrought expectation of triumph in a campaign which he burned to finish, and otherwise would have finished, even with more splendour than it had commenced.
If Burgos, a mean fortress of the lowest order, had fallen early, the world would have seen a noble stroke. For the Gallicians, aided by a weak division of Wellington’s army, and by the British reinforcements making up from Coruña, would, covered by Burgos, have sufficed to keep the army of Portugal in check, while Popham’s armament would have fomented a general insurrection of the northern provinces. Meanwhile Wellington, gathering forty-five thousand Anglo-Portuguese, and fifteen thousand Spaniards, on the Tagus, would have marched towards Murcia; Ballesteros’ army, and the sixteen thousand men composing the Alicant army, would there have joined him, and with a hundred thousand soldiers he would have delivered such a battle to the united French armies, if indeed they could have united, as would have shaken all Europe with its martial clangor. To exchange this glorious vision, for the cold desolate reality of a dangerous winter retreat was, for Wellington, but a momentary mental struggle, and it was simultaneous with that daring conception, the passage of the bridge of Burgos under the fire of the castle.
Let him be traced now in retreat. Pursued by a superior army and seeing his cavalry defeated, he turned as a savage lion at the Carrion, nor would he have removed so quickly from that lair, if the bridges at Palencia and Baños had been destroyed according to his order. Neither is his cool self-possession to be overlooked; for when both his flanks were thus exposed, instead of falling back in a hurried manner to the Duero, he judged exactly the value of the rugged ground on the left bank of the Pisuerga, in opposition to the double advantage obtained by the enemy at Palencia and Baños; nor did the difficulty which Souham and Caffarelli, independent commanders and neither of them accustomed to move large armies, would find in suddenly changing their line of operations escape him. His march to Cabeçon and his position on the left of the Pisuerga was not a retreat, it was the shift of a practised captain.
When forced to withdraw Hill from the Tagus, he, on the instant, formed a new combination to fight that great battle on the Adaja which he had intended to deliver near the Guadalaviar; and though the splendid exploit of captain Guingret, at Tordesillas, baffled this intent, he, in return, baffled Souham by that ready stroke of generalship, the posting of his whole army in front of Rueda, thus forbidding a passage by the restored bridge. Finally, if he could not maintain the line of the Duero, nor that of the Tormes, it was because rivers can never be permanently defended against superior forces, and yet he did not quit the last without a splendid tactical illustration. I mean that surprising movement from the Arapiles to the Valmusa, a movement made not in confusion and half flight, but in close order of battle, his columns ready for action, his artillery and cavalry skirmishing, passing the Junguen without disorder, filing along the front of and winding into the rear of a most powerful French army, the largest ever collected in one mass in the Peninsula, an army having twice as many guns as the allies, and twelve thousand able horsemen to boot. And all these great and skilful actions were executed by lord Wellington with an army composed of different nations; soldiers, fierce indeed, and valiant, terrible in battle, but characterised by himself, as more deficient in good discipline than any army of which he had ever read!
Men engaged only in civil affairs and especially book-men are apt to undervalue military genius, talking as if simple bravery were the highest qualification of a general; and they have another mode of appeasing an inward sense of inferiority, namely, to attribute the successes of a great captain, to the prudence of some discreet adviser, who in secret rules the general, amends his errors, and leaves him all the glory. Thus Napoleon had Berthier, Wellington has sir George Murray! but in this, the most skilful, if not the most glorious of Wellington’s campaigns, sir George Murray was not present, and the staff of the army was governed by three young lieutenant-colonels, namely, lord Fitzroy Somerset, Waters, and Delancey; for though sir Willoughby Gordon joined the army as quarter-master-general after the battle of Salamanca, he was inexperienced, and some bodily suffering impeded his personal exertions.
Such then were the principal points of skill displayed by Wellington; yet so vast and intricate an art is war, that the apophthegm of Turenne will always be found applicable: “he who has made no mistakes in war, has seldom made war.” Some military writers, amongst them the celebrated Jomini, blame the English general, that with a conquering army, and an insurgent nation at his beck, he should in three months after his victory have attempted nothing more than the unsuccessful siege of Burgos. This censure is not entirely unfounded; the king certainly escaped very easily from Madrid; yet there are many points to be argued ere the question can be decided. The want of money, a want progressively increasing, had become almost intolerable. Wellington’s army was partly fed from Ciudad Rodrigo, partly from the valley of the Pisuerga, Hill’s troops were fed from Lisbon; the Portuguese in their own country, and the Spaniards every where, lived as the French did, by requisition; but the British professed to avoid that mode of subsistence, and they made it a national boast to all Europe that they did so; the movements of the army were therefore always subservient to this principle, and must be judged accordingly, because want of money was with them want of motion.
Now four modes of operation were open to Wellington.
1º. After the victory of Salamanca to follow the king to Valencia, unite with the Alicant army, and, having thus separated Soult from Joseph and Suchet, to act according to events.
To have thus moved at once, without money, into Valencia, or Murcia, new countries where he had no assured connexions, and which were scarcely able to feed the French armies, would have exposed him to great difficulties; and he must have made extensive arrangements with the fleet ere he could have acted vigorously, if, as was probable, the French concentrated all their forces behind the Guadalaviar. Meanwhile the distance between the main allied army and those troops necessarily left in the north, being considered, the latter must have been strengthened at the expense of those in the south, unless the army of Portugal joined the king, and then Wellington would have been quite over-matched in Valencia; that is, if Soult also joined the king, and if not he would have placed the English general between two fires. If a force was not left in the north the army of Portugal would have had open field, either to march to the king’s assistance by Zaragoza, or to have relieved Astorga, seized Salamanca, recovered the prisoners and the trophies of the Arapiles, and destroyed all the great lines of magazines and dépôts even to the Tagus. Moreover, the yellow fever raged in Murcia, and this would have compelled the English general to depend upon the contracted base of operations offered by Alicant, because the advance of Clauzel would have rendered it impossible to keep it on the Tagus. Time, therefore, was required to arrange the means of operating in this manner, and meanwhile the army was not unwisely turned another way.
2º. To march directly against Soult in Andalusia.
This project Wellington was prepared to execute, when the king’s orders rendered it unnecessary, but if Joseph had adopted Soult’s plan a grand field for the display of military art would have been opened. The king going by the Despenas Peros, and having the advantage of time in the march, could have joined Soult, with the army of the centre, before the English general could have joined Hill. The sixty thousand combatants thus united could have kept the field until Suchet had also joined; but they could scarcely have maintained the blockade of Cadiz also, and hence the error of Wellington seems to have been, that he did not make an effort to overtake the king, either upon or beyond the Tagus; for the army of the centre would certainly have joined Soult by the Despenas Peros, if Maitland had not that moment landed at Alicant.
3º. To follow the army of Portugal after the victory of Salamanca.
The reasons for moving upon Madrid instead of adopting this line of operations having been already shewn in former observations, need not be here repeated, yet it may be added that the destruction of the great arsenal and dépôt of the Retiro was no small object with reference to the safety of Portugal.
4º. The plan which was actually followed.
The English general’s stay in the capital was unavoidable, seeing that to observe the development of the French operations in the south was of such importance. It only remains therefore to trace him after he quitted Madrid. Now the choice of his line of march by Valladolid certainly appears common-place, and deficient in vigour, but it was probably decided by the want of money, and of means of transport; to which may be added the desire to bring the Gallicians forward, which he could only attain by putting himself in actual military communication with them, and covering their advance. Yet this will not excuse the feeble pursuit of Clauzel’s retreating army up the valley of the Pisuerga. The Spaniards would not the less have come up if that general had been defeated, nor would the want of their assistance have been much felt in the action. Considerable loss would, no doubt, have been suffered by the Anglo-Portuguese, and they could ill bear it, but the result of a victory would have amply repaid the damage received; for the time gained by Clauzel was employed by Caffarelli to strengthen the castle of Burgos, which contained the greatest French dépôt in this part of Spain. A victory therefore would have entirely disarranged the enemy’s means of defence in the north, and would have sent the twice-broken and defeated army of Portugal, behind the Ebro; then neither the conscript reinforcements, nor the junction of Caffarelli’s troops, would have enabled Clauzel, with all his activity and talent, to re-appear in the field before Burgos would have fallen. But that fortress would most probably have fallen at once, in which case the English general might have returned to the Tagus, and perhaps in time to have met Soult as he issued forth from the mountains in his march from Andalusia.
It may be objected, that as Burgos did not yield, it would not have yielded under any circumstances without a vigorous defence. This is not so certain, the effect of a defeat would have been very different from the effect of such a splendid operation as Clauzel’s retreat; and it appears also, that the prolonged defence of the castle may be traced to some errors of detail in the attack, as well as to want of sufficient artillery means. In respect of the great features of the campaign, it may be assumed that Wellington’s judgement on the spot, and with a full knowledge both of his own and his adversaries’ situations, is of more weight than that of critics, however able and acute, who knew nothing of his difficulties. But in the details there was something of error exceedingly strange. It is said, I believe truly, that sir Howard Douglas being consulted, objected to the proceeding by gallery and mine against an outward, a middle, and an inward line of defence, as likely to involve a succession of tedious and difficult enterprizes, which even if successful, would still leave the White Church, and the upper castle or keep, to be carried;—that this castle, besides other artillery armament, was surmounted by a powerful battery of heavy guns, bearing directly upon the face of the horn-work of San Michael, the only point from which it could be breached, and until it was breached, the governor, a gallant man, would certainly not surrender. It could not however be breached without a larger battering train than the allies possessed, and would not, as he supposed, be effected by mines; wherefore proposing to take the guns from two frigates, then lying at Santander, he proffered to bring them up in time.
In this reasoning lord Wellington partly acquiesced, but his hopes of success were principally founded on the scarcity of water in the castle, and upon the facility of burning the provision magazines; nor was he without hope that his fortune would carry him through, even with the scanty means he possessed. Towards the end of the siege, however, he did resort, though too late, to the plan of getting guns up from Santander. But while sir Howard Douglas thus counselled him on the spot, sir Edward Pakenham, then in Madrid, assured the author of this history, at the time, that he also, foreseeing the artillery means were too scanty, had proposed to send by the Somosierra twelve fine Russian battering guns, then in the Retiro; and he pledged himself to procure, by an appeal to the officers in the capital, animals sufficient to transport them and their ammunition to Burgos in a few days. The offer was not accepted.
Something also may be objected to the field operations, as connected with the siege; for it is the rule, although not an absolute one, that the enemy’s active army should first be beaten, or driven beyond some strong line, such as a river, or chain of mountains, before a siege is commenced. Now if Wellington had masked the castle after the horn-work was carried on the 19th, and had then followed Clauzel, the French generals, opposed toSouham’s Official Correspondence, MSS. him, admit, that they would have gone over the Ebro, perhaps even to Pampeluna and St. Sebastian. In that case all the minor dépôts must have been broken up, and the reorganization of the army of Portugal retarded at least a month; before that time, the guns from Santander would have arrived and the castle of Burgos would have fallen. In Souham’s secret despatches, it is said, of course on the authority of spies, that Castaños urged an advance beyond Burgos instead of a siege; of this I know nothing, but it is not unlikely, because to advance continually, and to surround an enemy, constituted, with Spanish generals, the whole art of war. Howbeit on this occasion, the advice, if given, was not unreasonable; and it needed scarcely even to delay the siege while the covering army advanced, because one division of infantry might have come up from Madrid, still leaving two of the finest in the army, and a brigade of cavalry, at that capital, which was sufficient, seeing that Hill was coming up to Toledo, that Ballesteros’ disobedience was then unknown, and that the king was in no condition to advance before Soult arrived.
The last point to which it is fitting to advert, was the stopping too long on the Tormes in hopes of fighting in the position of the Arapiles. It was a stirring thought indeed for a great mind, and the error was brilliantly redeemed, but the remedy does not efface the original fault; and this subject leads to a consideration, of some speculative interest, namely, why Wellington, desirous as he was to keep the line of the Tormes, and knowing with what difficulty the French fed their large army, did not order every thing in his rear to take refuge in Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and entrench himself on St. Christoval and in Salamanca. Thus posted with a bridge-head on the left bank that he might operate on either side of the Tormes, he might have waited until famine obliged the enemy to separate, which would have been in a very few days; but perhaps the answer would be that the Spaniards had left Ciudad Rodrigo in a defenceless state.
Turning now to the French side we shall find that they also committed errors.
Souham’s pursuit after the cavalry combat at Vente de Pozo was feeble. Wellington, speaking of his own army, said, “no troops were ever less pressed by an enemy.” The king’s orders were however positive not to fight, and as the English general continually offered Souham battle in strong positions, the man had no power to do mischief. Soult’s pursuit of Hill, which was also remarkably cautious, arose from other motives. He was not desirous of a battle, and until the Guadarama was passed, Hill had the larger force, for then only was the whole French army united. The duke of Dalmatia wished to have marched in one great mass through La Mancha, leaving only a small corps, or a detachment of Suchet’s army, on the Cuenca road; but the king united the whole of the army of the centre, his own guards and seven thousand men of the army of the south, on the Cuenca line, and there were no good cross communications except by Taracon. Soult therefore advanced towards the Tagus with only thirty-five thousand men, and from commissariat difficulties and other obstacles, he was obliged to move by divisions, which followed each other at considerable distances; when his advanced guard was at Valdemoro, his rear-guard not having reached Ocaña was two marches distant. The danger of this movement is evident. Hill might have turned and driven him over the Tagus; or if his orders had permitted him to act offensively at first, he might, after leaving a small corps on the Upper Tagus, to watch the king, have passed that river at Toledo, and without abandoning his line of operations by the valley of the Tagus, have attacked Soult while on the march towards Ocaña. The latter in despite of his numerous cavalry must then have fallen back to concentrate his forces, and this would have deranged the whole campaign.
The duke of Dalmatia, who thought Ballesteros was with Hill, naturally feared to press his adversary under such a vicious disposition of the French army, neither could that disposition be changed during the operation, because of the want of good cross roads, and because Souham had been taught that the king would meet him on the side of Guadalaxara. In fine Soult had learned to respect his adversaries, and with the prudence of a man whose mental grasp embraced the whole machinery of the war, he avoided a doubtful battle where a defeat would, from the unsettled state of the French affairs, have lost the whole Peninsula. Wellington had Portugal to fall back upon, but the French armies must have gone behind the Ebro.
These seem to be the leading points of interest in this campaign, but it will not be uninteresting to mark the close affinities between Wellington’s retreat and that of sir John Moore. This last-named general marched from Portugal into the north of Spain, with the political view of saving Andalusia, by drawing on himself the French power, having before-hand declared that he expected to be overwhelmed. In like manner Wellington moved into the same country, to deliver Andalusia, and thus drew on himself the whole power of the enemy; like Moore declaring also before-hand, that the political object being gained, his own military position would be endangered. Both succeeded, and both were, as they had foretold, overwhelmed by superior forces. Moore was to have been aided by Romana’s Spanish army, but he found it a burthen; so also Wellington was impeded, not assisted, by the Gallicians, and both generals were without money.
Moore having approached Soult, and menaced Burgos, was forced to retreat, because Napoleon moved from Madrid on his right flank and towards his rear. Wellington having actually besieged Burgos was obliged to raise the siege and retire, lest the king, coming through Madrid, should pass his right flank and get into his rear. Moore was only followed by Soult to the Esla, Wellington was only followed by Souham to the Duero. The one general looked to the mountains of Gallicia for positions which he could maintain, but the apathy of the Spanish people, in the south, permitted Napoleon to bring up such an overwhelming force that this plan could not be sustained; the other general had the same notion with respect to the Duero, and the defection of Ballesteros enabled the king to bring up such a power that further retreat became necessary.
Moore’s soldiers at the commencement of the operation evinced want of discipline, they committed great excesses at Valderas, and disgraced themselves by their inebriety at Bembibre and Villa Franca. In like manner Wellington’s soldiers broke the bonds of discipline, disgraced themselves by drunkenness at Torquemada and on the retreat from the Puente Larga to Madrid; and they committed excesses every where. Moore stopped behind the Esla river to check the enemy, to restore order, and to enable his commissariat to remove the stores; Wellington stopped behind the Carrion for exactly the same purposes. The one general was immediately turned on his left, because the bridge of Mancilla was abandoned unbroken to Franceschi; the other general was also turned on his left, because the bridge of Palencia was abandoned unbroken to Foy.
Moore’s retreat was little short of three hundred miles; Wellington’s was nearly as long, and both were in the winter season. The first halted at Benevente, at Villa Franca, and at Lugo; the last halted at Duenas, at Cabeçon, Tordesillas, and Salamanca. The principal loss sustained by the one, was in the last marches between Lugo and Coruña; so also the principal loss sustained by the other, was in the last marches between the Tormes and the Agueda. Some of Moore’s generals murmured against his proceedings, some of Wellington’s generals, as we have seen, went further; the first were checked by a reprimand, the second were humbled by a sarcasm. Finally both generals reproached their armies with want of discipline, both attributed it to the negligence of the officers generally, and in both cases the justice of the reproaches was proved by the exceptions. The reserve and the foot-guards in Moore’s campaign, the light division and the foot-guards in Wellington’s, gave signal proof, that it was negligence of discipline, not hardships, though the latter were severe in both armies, that caused the losses. Not that I would be understood to say that those regiments only preserved order; it is certain that many others were eminently well conducted, but those were the troops named as exceptions at the time.
Such were the resemblances of these two retreats. The differences were, that Moore had only twenty-three thousand men in the first part of his retreat, and only nineteen thousand in the latter part, whereas Wellington had thirty-three thousand in the first part of his retreat, and sixty-eight thousand men in the latter part. Moore’s army were all of one nation and young soldiers, Wellington’s were of different nations but they were veterans. The first marched through mountains, where the weather was infinitely more inclement than in the plains, over which the second moved, and until he reached the Esla, Moore’s flank was quite exposed, whereas Wellington’s flank was covered by Hill’s army until he gained the Tormes. Wellington with veteran troops was opposed to Souham, to Soult, to the king, and to Jourdan, men not according in their views, and their whole army, when united, did not exceed the allies by more than twenty thousand men. Moore with young soldiers was at first opposed to four times, and latterly to three times his own numbers, for it is remarkable, that the French army assembled at Astorga was above eighty thousand, including ten thousand cavalry, which is nearly the same as the number assembled against Wellington on the Tormes; but Moore had little more than twenty thousand men to oppose to this overwhelming mass, and Wellington had nearly seventy thousand. The Partidas abounded at the time of Wellington’s retreat, they were unknown at the time of Moore’s retreat, and this general was confronted by Napoleon, who, despotic in command, was also unrivalled in skill, in genius, and in vigour. Wellington’s army was not pressed by the enemy, and he made short marches, yet he lost more stragglers than Moore, who was vigorously pressed, made long marches, and could only secure an embarkation by delivering a battle, in which he died most honourably. His character was immediately vilified. Wellington was relieved from his pursuers by the operation of famine, and had therefore no occasion to deliver a battle, but he also was vilified at the time, with equal injustice; and if he had then died it would have been with equal malice. His subsequent successes, his great name and power, have imposed silence upon his detractors, or converted censure into praise, for it is the nature of mankind, especially of the ignorant, to cling to fortune.
Moore attributed his difficulties to the apathy of the Spaniards; his friends charged them on the incapacity of the English government. Wellington attributed his ultimate failure to the defection of Ballesteros; his brother, in the House of Lords, charged it on the previous contracted policy of Perceval’s government, which had crippled the general’s means; and certainly Wellington’s reasoning, relative to Ballesteros, was not quite sound. That general, he said, might either have forced Soult to take the circuitous route of Valencia, Requeña, and Cuenca, or leave a strong corps in observation, and then Hill might have detached men to the north. He even calculated upon Ballesteros being able to stop both Soult and Souham, altogether; for as the latter’s operations were prescribed by the king, and dependent upon his proceedings, Wellington judged that he would have remained tranquil if Joseph had not advanced. This was the error. Souham’s despatches[Appendix, No. 8, A.] clearly shew, that the king’s instructions checked, instead of forwarding his movements; and that it was his intention to have delivered battle at the end of four days, without regard to the king’s orders; and such was his force, that Wellington admitted his own inability to keep the field. Ballesteros’ defection therefore cannot be pleaded in bar of all further investigation; but whatever failures there were, and however imposing the height to which the English general’s reputation has since attained, this campaign, including the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, the forts of Salamanca, and of Burgos, the assault of Almaraz, and the battle of Salamanca, will probably be considered his finest illustration of the art of war. Waterloo may be called a more glorious exploit because of the great man who was there vanquished; Assye may be deemed a more wonderful action, one indeed to be compared with the victory which Lucullus gained over Tygranes, but Salamanca will always be referred to as the most skilful of Wellington’s battles.