Admiral Cotton, it is clear, regarded the ships as important and the crews as worthy of small attention. It was profitable to Great Britain to keep down the number of vessels in the power of Napoleon, though now that the Danish fleet was captured, and the Spanish fleet transferred to the other side of the balance, there could be no longer any immediate danger of the French taking the offensive at sea. The easy terms of release granted to the personnel of the Russian squadron suggest that the British admiral had determined to reward its commander for his persistent refusal to help Junot. It almost appears that Cotton looked upon Siniavin as a secret friend, and treated him accordingly. Milder terms could hardly have been devised, for the moment that the harbour-forts of Lisbon were surrendered to the British, the Russians must obviously be made prisoners, since they could not get out of the river. It is probable that the two admirals thoroughly understood each other’s mind, and that the Russian was undisguisedly pleased at the disaster of his detested French allies.
The most pressing necessity in Portugal, after the French had departed, was the construction of a new national government, for it was clear that the Supreme Junta at Oporto represented in reality only the northern provinces of the realm, and could not be accepted—as its president, the Bishop, suggested—as a permanent and legitimate executive for the whole kingdom. Constitutionally speaking, if one may use such a phrase when dealing with a country like Portugal, the only body which possessed a clear title of authority was the Council of Regency, which Prince John had nominated nine months before, on the eve of his departure for Brazil. But this council had long ceased to act; its members were dispersed; several had compromised themselves by submitting to the French and taking office under Junot; and its composition gave no promise of vigorous action for the future. If a choice must be made between the Junta at Oporto, which was active and patriotic, though perhaps too much given up to self-assertion and intrigue, and the effete old Regency, there could be no doubt that the former possessed more claims to the confidence of the Portuguese nation and its English allies. But it was not necessary to adopt either alternative in full: Wellesley, who had already got a firm grip upon the outlines of Portuguese politics, advised Dalrymple to invite the old Regency, with the exception of those members who had compromised themselves with the French, to reassemble, and to bring pressure upon them to co-opt to the vacant places the Bishop of Oporto and the other prominent members of the Junta. This proposal would have secured legality of form (since the old Regency would theoretically have continued to exist), while introducing new and vigorous elements of undoubted patriotism into the body[273]. But Dalrymple preferred to reinstate, by a proclamation of his own, those members of the Regency who had never wavered in their allegiance to Prince John [Sept. 18]. He called upon all public bodies and officials in the realm to obey this reconstituted executive. Here was an undoubted mistake; it was wounding to Portuguese pride to see the central governing body of the kingdom created by the edict of an English general: Dalrymple should surely have allowed the Regents to apprise the nation, by a proclamation of their own, that they had resumed their former functions. However, they fell in with Wellesley’s plans so far as to co-opt the Bishop of Oporto as a colleague, though refusing any places to the rest of his Junta. The whole body now consisted of three original members, the Conde de Castro Marim (otherwise known as the Monteiro Mor), Francisco Da Cunha, and Xavier de Noronha, of two persons chosen from a list of possible substitutes, which the Prince-Regent had left behind, Joam de Mendonça and General Miguel Forjas Coutinho, and of two co-opted members, the Bishop and the Conde das Minas, an old nobleman who had shown a very determined spirit in resisting Junot during the days of his power.
On the reconstitution of the Regency the Junta of Oporto, with more self-denial than had been expected, dissolved itself. The minor juntas in the Algarve, the Alemtejo, and the Tras-os-Montes followed its example, and Portugal was once more in possession of a single executive, whose authority was freely recognized throughout the kingdom. Unfortunately it turned out to be slow, timid, and divided into cliques which were always at variance with each other.
We have already seen that owing to various causes of delay, of which Galluzzo’s preposterous proceedings at Elvas were the most prominent, the last French troops did not quit Portugal till September had expired, and that Junot himself and the main body of his army had only begun to leave on the fifteenth of that month. It would have been impossible for Dalrymple to advance into Spain till the French had left Lisbon, however urgently his presence might have been required. But it would perhaps have proved feasible to push forward towards the Spanish frontier a considerable part of his army, and to make preparations for the movement of the whole towards Madrid or Salamanca as soon as the evacuation should be complete. Dalrymple, however, was as leisurely as the generals of the old days before the Revolutionary War. He kept his troops cantoned about Lisbon, only pushing forward two brigades towards Elvas in order to bring Galluzzo to reason, and dispatching the 6th Regiment as a garrison to Almeida. He seems to have been quite as much interested in the administration of Portugal as in the further prosecution of the war in Spain. We find him much busied in the reconstruction of the Portuguese government and army, reviewing and rearming the Spanish division of Caraffa before shipping it off to Catalonia [Sept. 22], and spending a great deal of time over the redistribution into brigades and divisions of his army, which had now swelled to something like 35,000 men, by the arrival of Moore’s force and certain regiments from Madeira, Gibraltar, and England. He was also engaged in endeavours to organize a proper commissariat for this large body of men, a hard task, for every brigade arrived in the same state of destitution as to means of transport as had those which landed with Wellesley at Mondego Bay on the first of August. But in all his actions there was evident a want of vigour and of purposeful resource, which was very distressing to those of his subordinates who were anxious for a rapid and decisive advance towards the main theatre of war in Spain.
No one felt this more clearly than Wellesley, whose views as to his commander’s competence had never changed since that hour on the morning of August 22, when Dalrymple had refused to march on Mafra, and had decided to delay his advance till the advent of Moore. Since then he had offered his advice on several points, and had almost always seen it refused. Dealing with the disputed details of the Convention of Cintra, he had spoken in favour of meeting the French demands with high-handed decision: hence he was vexed by Dalrymple’s tendency towards weakness and compromise. One of his special grievances was that he had been ordered to sign the armistice of August 22 as representing the British army, although he had privately protested against its details[274]. His unofficial letters home during the first half of September are full of bitter remarks on the weakness of the policy that had been adopted, and the many faults of the Convention[275]. Seeing that warlike operations appeared likely to be postponed for an indefinite time, he at last asked and obtained leave to return to England, after declining in somewhat acid terms an offer made to him by Dalrymple that he should go to Madrid, to concert a plan for combined operations with Castaños and the other Spanish generals. ‘In order to be able to perform the important part allotted to him,’ he wrote, ‘the person sent should possess the confidence of those who employ him, and be acquainted with their plans, the means by which they hope to carry them into execution, and those by which they intend to enable the Spanish nation to execute that which will be proposed to them. I certainly cannot consider myself as possessing these advantages[276].’ Wellesley also refused another and a less tempting offer of a mission to the Asturias, for the purpose of seeing what facilities that province would offer as the base of operations for a British army. He was not a ‘draftsman,’ he wrote, or a ‘topographical engineer,’ and he could not pretend to describe in writing the character of such a region. In short he was set on going home, and would not turn from his purpose. But before leaving Portugal he wrote two remarkable letters. One was to Sir John Moore, the third in command of the army, telling him that he regarded him as the right person to take charge of the British forces in the Peninsula, and would use every effort with the ministers to get the post secured to him. ‘It is quite impossible that we can go on as we are now constituted: the commander-in-chief must be changed, and the country and the army naturally turn their eyes to you as their commander[277].’ The second and longer was a letter to his patron Castlereagh, in which he laid down his views as to the general state of the war in Spain, and the way in which the British army could be best employed. It is a wonderful document, as he foretells in it all the disasters that were about to befall the Spaniards from their reckless self-confidence. The only real fighting-force that they possessed was, he said, the army of Castaños: the rest, with the possible exception of Blake’s Galicians, were ‘armies of peasantry,’ which could not be relied upon to meet the French in the field. Though they might on some occasions fight with success in their own mountains, ‘yet in others a thousand French with cavalry and artillery will disperse thousands of them.’ They would not, and indeed could not, leave their native provinces, and no officer could calculate upon them for the carrying out of a great combined operation. How then could the British army of Portugal be best employed to aid such allies? The only efficient plan, Wellesley concludes, would be to place it upon the flank and rear of any French advance to Madrid, by moving it up to the valley of the Douro, and basing it upon Asturias and Galicia. Posted in the kingdom of Leon, with its ports of supply at Gihon, Corunna, and Ferrol, it should co-operate with Blake, and hang upon the right flank of the French army which was forming upon the line of the Ebro. The result would be to prevent the invaders from moving forward, even perhaps (here Wellesley erred from ignorance of the enemy’s numbers) to oblige them to retire towards their own frontier. But Bonaparte could, unless occupied by the affairs of Central Europe, increase his armies in Spain to any extent. The moment that he heard of an English force in the field, he would consider its destruction as his first object, and so multiply his numbers in the Peninsula that the British commander would have to give back. ‘There must be a line of retreat open, and that retreat must be the sea.’ Accordingly, Sir Arthur recommended that the Asturias should be made the ultimate base, and the transports and stores sent to its port of Gihon[278].
This letter was different in its general character from the other reports which Castlereagh was receiving: most of the correspondents of the Secretary for War could write of nothing but the enthusiastic patriotism of the Spaniards and their enormous resources: they spoke of the French as a dispirited remnant, ready to fly, at the first attack, behind the line of the Pyrenees. It is therefore greatly to the credit of Castlereagh that he did not hesitate to pin his faith upon Wellesley’s intelligence, and to order the execution of the very plan that he recommended. It was practically carried out in the great campaign of Sir John Moore, after the collapse of the Spanish armies had justified every word that Sir Arthur had written about them.
Wellesley sailed from Lisbon on September 20, and reached Plymouth on October 4. On his arrival in England he was met with news of a very mixed character. On the one hand he was rejoiced to hear that both Dalrymple and Burrard had been recalled, and that Sir John Moore had been placed in command of the British forces in the Peninsula. He wrote at once to the latter, to say that there could be no greater satisfaction than to serve under his orders, and that he would return at once to Spain to join him: ‘he would forward with zeal every wish’ of his new commander[279]. It was also most gratifying to Wellesley to know that the dispatch of September 25, by which Moore was given the command of the army of Portugal, directed him to move into Northern Spain and base himself upon the Asturias and Galicia, the very plan which formed the main thesis of the document that we have been discussing. There can be no doubt that Castlereagh had recognized the strategical and political verities that were embodied in Wellesley’s letter, and had resolved to adopt the line therein recommended.
SECTION IV: CHAPTER VI
THE COURT OF INQUIRY