This was a most irritating interruption to Wellington’s arrangements for the next campaign: the Alicante force was a valuable piece in the great game which he was working out. To see it taken off the board would disarrange all his plan. Accordingly he made the strongest protest to Lord Bathurst against the Italian expedition being permitted. To make any head in Italy, he said, at least 30,000 or 40,000 men would be needed. No doubt many Italians were discontented with the Napoleonic régime, but they would not commit themselves to rebellion unless a very large force came to their help. If only a small army were landed, they would show passive or even active loyalty to their existing government. They might prefer a British to a French or an Austrian domination in their peninsula, because it would be more liberal and less extortionate. But they would want everything found for them—arms, equipment, a subsidy. Unless the Government were prepared to start a new war on a very large scale, to raise, clothe, and equip a great mass of Italian troops, and to persevere to the last in a venture as big as that in Spain, the plan would fail, and any landing force would be compelled to re-embark with loss and disgrace[321].
On the whole Wellington’s protest proved successful: Lord William was forced to leave a large body of his Anglo-Sicilians in Spain, though he withdrew 2,000 men from Alicante early in April, when it was most needful that the Allied force on the East Coast should be strong. The remainder, despite (as we shall see) of very bad handling by Sir John Murray, proved sufficient to keep Suchet employed. No Italian expedition was permitted during the campaigning season of 1813, though Lord William sent out a small foreign expeditionary force for a raid on Tuscany, which much terrified the Grand Duchess Eliza[322]. Next year only, when the whole Napoleonic system was crumbling, did he collect a heterogeneous army of doubtful value, invade Liguria, and capture Genoa from a skeleton enemy. But by that time the French were out of Spain, and Wellington’s plans could not be ruined by the distraction of troops on such an escapade. In May 1813 the Italian expedition, if permitted, might have wrecked the whole campaign of Vittoria, by leaving Suchet free to join the main French army. How it would have fared may be judged from the fact that the Viceroy Eugène made head all through the autumn against 80,000 men of the Austrian Army of Italy.
So much may suffice to explain Wellington’s dealings during the winter and spring of 1813 with the British Cabinet. His advice, as we have seen, was always asked, and generally settled the problem in the way that he desired. So much cannot be said for his dealings with the Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards: the Duke of York seems to have been the last person in Whitehall to recognize the commanding intellect of the great general. Though he always wrote with perfect courtesy, he evidently considered that his own views on the organization, personnel, and management of the British Army were far more important than those of the victor of Salamanca. The correspondence of Wellington with the Duke and his Military Secretary, Colonel Henry Torrens, occupies an enormous number of pages in the volumes of Dispatches and Supplementary Dispatches. Torrens, an obliging man, seems to have tried to make himself a buffer between the two contending wills, and Wellington was conscious of the fact that he was no enemy. The subjects of contention were many.
One of the most important was patronage. Now that he had reached the fifth year of his command in the Peninsula, Wellington considered that he had won the right to choose his own chief subordinates. But still he could not get officers of tried incapacity removed from the front, nor prevent others, against whom he had a bad mark, from being sent out to him. When he asked for removals, he was told of ‘the difficulty of setting aside general officers who have creditably risen to high rank’ on the mere ground that they have been proved incapable, and unfit for their situations. But it was far worse that when he had requested that certain generals should not be sent out, they came to him nevertheless, despite of his definite protest; and then, when he requested that they might be removed, he was told that he would incur odium and responsibility for their removal. ‘What a situation then is mine! It is impossible to prevent incapable men from being sent to the army; and then when I complain that they have been sent, I am to be responsible! Surely the “odium” ought not to attach to the person who officially represents that they are not capable of filling their situations’—but (the aposiopesis may be filled up) to the Horse Guards for sending them out. Yet Wellington’s pen did not add the words which are necessary to complete the sense.
The most tiresome case in 1812-13 was that of Colonel James Willoughby Gordon, who had come out as Quartermaster-General in 1812, when Wellington’s first and most trusted quarter-master, George Murray, was removed (quite without his desire) to a post in Ireland. Gordon was sent by the Duke of York’s personal choice[323], without any previous consultation with the Commander-in-Chief in Spain as to whether he would be acceptable. The atrocity of this appointment was not only that Gordon was incapable, but that he was a political intriguer, who was in close touch with the Whig Opposition at home, and before he went out had promised to send confidential letters on the campaign to Lord Grey. This he actually did: the malicious Creevey had a privileged peep at them, and found that ‘his accounts are of the most desponding cast. He considers our ultimate discomfiture as a question purely of time, and that it may happen any day, however early: and that our pecuniary resources are utterly exhausted. The skill of the French in recovering from their difficulties is inexhaustible: Lord W. himself owns that the resurrection of Marmont’s broken troops after Salamanca was an absolute miracle of war. In short, Gordon considers that Lord W. is in very considerable danger[324].’ The writer was holding the most important post on Wellington’s staff, and using the information that he obtained for the benefit of the Parliamentary Opposition; he should have been court-martialled for the abuse of his position for personal ends. Wellington at last detected his mischief-making, by the appearance in the Whig papers of definite facts that could only have been known to three people—Wellington himself, his secretary Fitzroy Somerset, and the Quartermaster-General. ‘I showed him,’ writes Wellington to Bathurst, ‘my dispatch to your Lordship of August 3, as the shortest way of making him acquainted with the state of affairs.... The topics of this dispatch find their way into the Morning Chronicle, distorted into arguments against the Government. I am quite certain that the arguments in the Morning Chronicle are drawn from a perusal of my dispatches, and that no one saw them here excepting the Quartermaster-General and Lord Fitzroy. Even your Lordship had not yet received this dispatch, when the topics it contained were used against the Government in the newspapers.... For the future he shall not see what I write—it would be no great loss to the Army if he were recalled to England. I cypher part of this letter in the cypher you sent me to be used for General Maitland[325].’
It was four months before this traitor was got rid of, though Lord Bathurst had been shocked by the news, and corroborated it by his own observation: he had seen mischievous letters from Gordon to the Horse Guards, and if he wrote such stuff to the Duke it was easy to guess what he might write to Lord Grey or Whitbread. Certain of the newspaper paragraphs must have come ‘from some intelligent person with you[326].’ The strange way in which the removal was accomplished was not by a demand for his degradation for misuse of his office[327], but by a formal report to the Horse Guards that ‘Colonel Gordon does not turn his mind to the duties to be performed by the Quartermaster-General of an Army such as this, actively employed in the field: notwithstanding his zeal and acknowledged talent, he has never performed them, and I do not believe he ever will or can perform them. I give this opinion with regret, and I hope His Royal Highness will believe that I have not formed it hastily of an officer respecting whose talents I, equally with His Royal Highness, had entertained a favourable opinion[328].’ Three weeks later the Military Secretary at the Horse Guards writes that Wellington shall have back his old Quartermaster-General George Murray—and Gordon is recalled[329]. But why had Gordon ever been sent? The Duke of York alone could say. The impression which he had left as a soldier upon men at the front, who knew nothing of his political intrigues, was exceedingly poor[330].
This was the worst trick which was played on Wellington from the Horse Guards. Another was the refusal to relieve him of the gallant but muddle-headed and disobedient William Stewart, who despite of his awful error at Albuera was allowed to come out to the Peninsula again in 1812, and committed other terrible blunders: it was he who got the three divisions into a marshy deadlock on the retreat from Salamanca, by deliberate and wilful neglect of directions[331]. ‘With the utmost zeal and good intentions he cannot obey an order,’ wrote Wellington on December 6, 1812—yet Stewart was still commanding the Second Division in 1814[332]. In letters sent to the Horse Guards in December 1812 the Commander-in-Chief in Spain petitioned for the departure of five out of his seven cavalry generals—which seems a large clearance—and of ten infantry divisional and brigade commanders. About half of them were ultimately brought home, but several were left with him for another campaign. He had also asked that he might have no more generals who were new to the Peninsula inflicted upon him, because their arrival blocked promotion for deserving colonels, to whom he was anxious to give brigades. ‘I hope I shall have no more new Generals: they really do but little good, and they take the places of officers who would be of real use. And then they are all desirous of returning to England[333].’ The appeal was in vain—several raw major-generals were sent out for the spring campaign of 1813, and we have letters of Wellington making apologies to Peninsula veterans, to whom he had promised promotion, for the fact that the commands which he had been intending for them had been filled up against his wishes by the nominees of the Horse Guards. Things went a little better after Vittoria, when several undesired officers went home, and several deferred promotions took place—the news of that victory had had its effect even in Whitehall.
It is more difficult to sympathize with Wellington’s judgement—though not with his grievance—in another matter of high debate during this winter. Like most men he disliked talking about his own coffin, i. e. making elaborate arrangements for what was to happen in the event of his becoming a casualty, like Sir John Moore. He loathed the idea of ‘seconds in command’, arguing that they were either useless or tiresome. He did not want an officer at his elbow who would have a sort of right to be consulted, as in the bad old days of ‘councils of war’; nor did he wish to have to find a separate command for such a person to keep him employed[334]. It was true that he often trusted Hill with an independent corps in Estremadura; but frequently he called in Hill’s column and it became part of the main army—as on the Caya in 1811, in the Salamanca retreat in 1812, and at Vittoria in 1813. In the winter of 1812-13 a point which might have been of high importance was raised: who would be his successor in case of a regrettable accident? Wellington decided that Beresford was the proper choice—despite of Albuera. ‘All that I can tell you is that the ablest man I have yet seen with the army, and the one having the largest views, is Beresford. They tell me that, when I am not present, he wants decision: and he certainly embarrassed me a little with his doubts when he commanded in Estremadura: but I am quite certain that he is the only person capable of conducting a large concern[335].’ He also held that Beresford’s position as a marshal in the Portuguese Army gave him a seniority in the Allied Army over British lieutenant-generals.
This judgement of Wellington’s is surprising: Beresford was courageous, a good organizer, a terror to shirkers and jobbers, and accustomed to command. Yet one would have thought that his record of 1811, when he displayed almost every possible fault alike of strategy and of morale in Estremadura, would have ruled him out. Wellington thought, as it would appear, that he had a better conception of the war as a whole—‘the large concern’—than any of the other generals in the Peninsula, and had every opportunity of knowing. On this most critical point Wellington and the Duke of York fell out at once: it was not that the Duke wanted to rule out Beresford because he was undecided in the field, unpopular with his colleagues, self-assertive or arrogant. He had a simple Horse Guards rule which in his view excluded Beresford from consideration at once. ‘According to the general received opinion of the Service no officer in the British Army above the rank of lieutenant-colonel is ever expected to serve under an officer junior to himself, even though he may possess a superior local commission.’ He then proceeded to recall the fact that in 1794, when Lord Moira came to Flanders with the local rank of general, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and a number of other general officers with commissions of senior date, refused to serve under him: in consequence of which Lord Moira had to resign and to return to England. There were many similar examples in the past. The right of officers to refuse to serve under a junior being established, it could not be argued that higher rank acquired by that junior in a foreign service had any weight. Beresford might be a Portuguese field-marshal, but from the British point of view he was junior to Sir Thomas Graham, Sir Stapleton Cotton, and Sir Rowland Hill. If by some deplorable accident Lord Wellington were incapacitated from command at the present moment, Sir Thomas Graham, if with the Army, would succeed. If Sir Thomas were on sick leave, Sir Stapleton Cotton would be the senior officer in the Peninsula, and the command of the Army would automatically devolve on him: if Sir Stapleton were also on leave, it would go to General Hill.
‘It appears impossible to expect that British generals senior to Marshal Beresford will submit to serve under him. It appears to the Commander-in-Chief, therefore, that there remains but one of two alternatives—the one to recall Marshal Beresford from the Peninsula in case he should persist in his claim; the other, in case Lord Wellington still prefers that officer as his second in command, to recall all the British lieutenant-generals senior to him in our own Army[336].’