The plan for defeating the enemy by the system of devastation was neither ‘dictated by the hard heart of a general trained in the atrocious wars of the East,’ as certain French authors have written, nor was it (as some of the English authors have supposed) suggested to Wellington by the measures which had been taken in 1803-4 for withdrawing all food and transport from the south coast of England, if Napoleon should be successful in crossing from Boulogne. It was an ancient Portuguese device, practised from time immemorial against the Castilian invader, which had never failed of success. Nor had it come to an end with the War of Independence of 1640, or the war of the Spanish Succession of 1704. When Spain had made her last serious assault on Portugal in 1762 (Godoy’s miserable mock-war of 1801 does not deserve to be counted), the plan had worked admirably. When the Conde d’Aranda invaded the Beira ‘the country had been “driven” in the most systematic style, and everything that could not be carried off had been destroyed, so that the Spaniard found himself in a desert, being unable to discover either provisions, cars, or peasants: the inhabitants had abandoned their villages, and carried off everything. The enemy had to be supplied with every necessary from Spain: the infantry were harassed with fatigue in remaking the roads, and the cavalry-horses destroyed in conducting provisions. At last d’Aranda retreated, leaving his sick and wounded at Castello Branco, with a letter commending them to the attention of the allies[194].’ Of this same war Dumouriez wrote: ‘As soon as the Spaniards enter Portugal the King publishes a declaration, by which he enjoins on his subjects to fall upon the invaders, and the national hatred always excites them to execute the “Ordinance.” As the Spanish army pushes on, the villages are depopulated, and the inhabitants fall back on the capital. The peasantry arrive there in crowds with wives and children, so that the king at the end of three months has 200,000 or 300,000 extra mouths to feed[195].’
This sounds like a description of the great migration of 1810, but was actually written in 1766. It is clear, then, that Wellington did not invent the system of devastation, but simply utilized, and carried out to its logical end, an old custom essentially national, and familiar to the Portuguese from time immemorial. It was the regular device of the weak against the strong in the Middle Ages, and differed in nothing from ‘Good King Robert’s Testament,’ the time-honoured system applied by the Scots to the English in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
‘In strait placis gar hide all store,
And byrnen ye plaineland thaim before,
Thanne sall thei pass away in haist,
When that thai find na thing but waist,
So sall ye turn thaim with gret affrai,
As thai were chasit with swerd awai.’
Fortunately for himself, for England, and for Europe, Wellington had to deal with a peasantry almost as frugal, as tough, and as stubborn in their hatred as the mediaeval Scot. They saw nothing strange in the demand now made to them, and obeyed. The difficulty lay with the townsfolk of large places, such as Coimbra, Thomar, or Santarem, which lay far from the frontier, and had not the old traditions of the peasantry, since the Spaniards had never penetrated to their doors since the seventeenth century. Here there was much recalcitrance, as was but natural; the burgher had much to abandon where the peasant had little. Yet, as we shall see, the scheme was carried out in the end, and those who stayed behind to greet the French could be counted on one hand in places of the size of Vizeu, Coimbra, or Leiria. That fanatical patriotism went far towards producing such a result is true, but does not explain the whole matter: quite as strong a motive was the unforgotten tale of the horrors that had followed Soult’s entry into Oporto. To the Portuguese citizens the approach of the French meant probable murder and rape, hence came the readiness that they showed to depart. There were exaggerated rumours abroad of the ruthlessness of the French: was not Loison, the ‘Maneta’ of whom so many atrocious (and mostly false) stories were told, known to be in high command?
Wellington’s scheme for the clearing of the country-side in face of the enemy had long been thought out. It included not merely the evacuation of the towns and villages, but the destruction of bridges, mills, even ovens; the removal of all animals and means of transport, the destruction of all food-stuff that could not be carried off, the burning of all ferry-boats and other small craft on the navigable rivers. ‘The moment that the enemy crosses the frontier,’ he wrote to Beresford, ‘the governor of the province of Estremadura must be told that it is necessary to order all carts, carriages, and other means of conveyance, with all the provisions they can carry, away. He ought to have all his arrangements prepared for ordering them off as soon as the French approach. The Captains Mor[196] and their Ordenança must be prepared to give the enemy all the opposition in their power, not by assembling in large bodies, but by lying out in the mountains and the strong parts of the roads, annoying their patrols and small parties, and interrupting their communications[197].’ This comes from an order of February: by August, when a new harvest had been gathered in, the question of the destruction of food stuffs became more difficult. The peasantry, as was natural, persisted in hiding rather than burning what could not be carried off. By one means or another a certain number of these concealed stores, even when buried in pits or removed to remote ravines, were discovered by the French, and enabled them to prolong their precarious stay in front of the Torres Vedras lines.