[19] The Duke expressed no such opinion in either of his speeches on Canada (February 4th).
I walked out and joined the Duke, who talked to me for I dare say an hour and a half about his Spanish campaigns, and most interesting it was. I told him that the other day Allen[20] had asked me to find somebody, a military man, to review the Wellington Despatches in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ and that he had suggested Sir George Murray as the fittest person if he would undertake it; that I had accordingly spoken to Fitzroy Somerset, who had agreed to apply to Murray; and, if Murray would not do it, I begged him to turn in his mind what officer could be found equal to such a task, and I then asked the Duke if he knew of anybody. He seemed amazingly pleased at the idea, said he knew nobody, but Murray was the fittest man. From this he began to talk, and told me a great deal of various matters, which I wish I could have taken down as it fell from his lips. I was amused at the simplicity with which he talked of the great interest of these Despatches, just as he might have done if they had been the work of any other man; said he had read them himself with considerable astonishment and great interest, and that everybody might see that there was not one word in them that was not strictly and literally true. He said of his generals, ‘that in the beginning they none of them knew anything of the matter, that he was obliged to go from division to division and look to everything himself down to the minutest details.’ I said, ‘What on earth would have happened if anything had befallen you?’ He laughed and said, ‘I really do not know. There was a great deal of correspondence about my successor at the time Sir Thomas Graham went home.[21] I was against having any second in command, which was quite useless, as nobody could share the responsibility with me. However, afterwards Graham came back, and then there was Hope next to him.’ He said, ‘Hill had invariably done well, always exactly obeyed my orders, and executed THE BATTLE OF SALAMANCA. them successfully.’ The fall of Badajoz was a great blow to him, but he did not know that it was by an act of treachery. The Spanish Government perhaps did not believe that he was approaching to relieve the place, but it was a most curious fact, that whereas it was agreed that the Spanish army should march out over the breach with the honours of war, they were obliged, after the capitulation, to make a breach for them to go over, none having been made by the besiegers. The General, with whom he finds much fault (in the ninth volume) for disobeying his orders and making false movements, was Victor Allen, but he said he treated him with great leniency, and so he did his officers on all occasions, and was as forbearing and indulgent with them as it was possible to be.
[20] [Mr. Allen, an accomplished literary inmate of Holland House, the author of a work on the ‘Royal Prerogative,’ and himself an occasional contributor to the ‘Edinburgh Review.’]
[21] [The intention of the Government was that if any accident befell the Duke of Wellington, General Sir Thomas Graham, afterwards Lord Lynedoch, should take the command of the British forces in Spain. This appears from the Memoir of Lord Lynedoch, published in 1880, by Captain Alexander Delavoye.]
All the movements and operations before the battle of Salamanca were to the last degree interesting. The Duke was anxiously waiting for some advantageous occasion to attack Marmont, and at last it arrived; he saw it happen, and took his resolution on the spot. He was dining in a farm-yard with his officers, where (when he had done dinner) everybody else came and dined as they could. The whole French army was in sight, moving, and the enemy firing upon the farmyard in which he was dining. ‘I got up,’ he said, ‘and was looking over a wall round the farm-yard, just such a wall as that’ (pointing to a low stone wall bounding the covert), ‘and I saw the movement of the French left through my glass. “By God,” said I, “that will do, and I’ll attack them directly.” I had moved up the Sixth Division through Salamanca, which the French were not aware of, and I ordered them to attack, and the whole line to advance. I had got my army so completely in hand that I could do this with ease, and in forty minutes the battle was won—‘quarante mille hommes battus en quarante minutes.’ I asked him if it was true that he and Marmont had subsequently talked over the event of the battle, and that Marmont had asserted that his orders had been disobeyed, or that this movement of which the Duke took advantage would not have been made. He said he believed there had been some conversation on the subject, and that Marmont had said he was wounded before this movement took place; he said he did not know if this was true, but it might be, as there had been continual fighting for some time previous. I asked him why Bonaparte had not himself come to Spain to attack him; and if he had with a great force, whether he would have driven him out. He replied that he thought Napoleon had satisfied himself that it would be a work of great difficulty, and what was more, of great length, and he had no mind to embark in it; and that the French certainly would not have driven him out: he should have taken up some position, and have been enabled to baffle the Emperor himself just as he had done his marshals. He thinks that Napoleon’s military system compelled him to employ his armies in war, when they invariably lived upon the resources of the countries they occupied, and that France could not have maintained them, as she must have done if he had made peace: peace, therefore, would have brought about (through the army itself) his downfall. He traces the whole military system of France from its first organisation during the Reign of Terror, in a letter in the tenth volume of the Despatches. I asked him how he reconciled what he had said of the extraordinary discipline of the French army with their unsparing and habitual plunder of the country, and he said that though they plundered in the most remorseless way, there was order and discipline in their plundering, and while they took from the inhabitants everything they could lay their hands upon, it was done in the way of requisition, and that they plundered for the army and not for themselves individually, but they were reduced to great shifts for food. At the battle of Fuentes d’Onor he saw the French soldiers carry off horses that were killed to be cooked and eaten in another part of the field. ‘I saw particularly with my own eyes one horse put upon a cart drawn by two bullocks (they could not afford to kill the bullocks), and drawn off; and I desired a man to watch where the cart went, and it was taken to another French division for the horse to be eaten. Now we never were reduced to eat horseflesh.’ I remarked that he alluded in A PARTY AT BELVOIR CASTLE. one of his letters to his having been once very nearly taken, and he said it was just before the battle of Talavera in consequence of some troops giving way. He was on a ruined tower from which he was obliged to leap down; and if he had not been young and active, as he was in those days, he should certainly have been taken.
He talked a great deal of the Spanish character, unchanged to this day; of the vast difficulties he had had to contend with from both Spanish and Portuguese Governments, the latter as bad as the former; of their punctilios and regard to form and ceremony. ‘At the time of the battle of the Pyrenees[22] I had occasion to send O’Donnel to advance, and he was mightily affronted because he did not receive the order by an officer from head-quarters. I was living under hedges and ditches, and had not been to head-quarters for several days, and so I told him, but that he should have an order if he pleased in the proper form.’ I asked him if it was not then that he found the troops in full retreat. He said they were beginning to retreat when he arrived, ‘then they threw up their caps and made a most brilliant affair of it.’
[22] [This expression occurs more than once in these Journals. No battle is known in history as the ‘battle of the Pyrenees,’ but the expression doubtless relates to the actions which were fought in the Pyrenees, after Soult took the command of the French army in July 1814.]
It is impossible to convey an idea of the zest, eagerness, frankness, and abundance with which he talked, and told of his campaigns, or how interesting it was to hear him. He expressed himself very warmly about Hill, of all his generals, and said, ‘When I gave him my memorandum about Canada the other day I said, Why it looks as if we were at our old trade again.’ He added that he ‘always gave his opinion when it was required on any subject.’
Belvoir Castle, January 4th, 1838
Came here yesterday, all the party (almost) migrating, and many others coming from various parts to keep the Duke of Rutland’s birthday. We are nearly forty at dinner, but it is no use enumerating the people. Last night the Duke of Wellington talked of Hanover, said he really did not know much of the matter; that neither William IV. nor George IV. had ever talked to him on the subject or he must have made himself acquainted with it; that the Duke of Cumberland had written him word that he had never had any notion of adopting the measures he has since done till he was going over in the packet with Billy Holmes.[23] The Duke wrote him word that he knew nothing of his case, and the only advice he could give him was to let the affair be settled as speedily as possible. When the late King had evidently only a few days to live, the Duke of Cumberland consulted the Duke as to what he should do. ‘I told him the best thing he could do was to go away as fast as he could: Go instantly,’ I said, ‘and take care that you don’t get pelted.’ The Duke, Aberdeen, and FitzGerald all condemned his proceedings without reference to their justice or to his legal and constitutional right as regards Hanover, but on account of the impression (no matter right or wrong) which they are calculated to produce in this country, where it ought to be a paramount interest with him to preserve or acquire as good a character as he can. They all declared that Lyndhurst was equally ignorant with themselves of his views and intentions, with which in fact the Conservatives had no sort of concern. The Duke also advised him not to take the oaths as Privy Councillor, or those of a Peer in the House of Lords, because he thought it would do him an injury in the eyes of his new subjects, that he, a King, should swear fealty as her subject to the Queen as his Sovereign; but somebody else (he thought the Duke of Buckingham) overruled this advice, and he had himself a fancy to take the oaths.