Another new comer at dinner yesterday was a Monsieur Saudri, an agent for the Portuguese, a sort of interpreter. He gave an account of the state of the Portuguese provinces. Some are recovering fast, it seems, Coimbra particularly, but many are still in great distress.
Yesterday was the last day of a sort of carnival here. We had fools, and pantaloons, and straw bulls, &c., and masks walking about the streets—much noise but no great magnificence. I saw poor pantaloon fall in earnest when throwing his sword after a soldier, and he could scarcely get up again.
A general order has just been issued for all the officers to apply for tents for the next campaign. I must do the same, I suppose, and try that sort of life, which in dry weather may be well enough, but bad work if as it was last year, when the little bed-legs sunk in mud up to the mattress, and the blankets got quite muddy!
Head-Quarters, Frenada, March 6th, 1813.—A man arrived here two days ago from Madrid in five days, for payment of a Commissariat bill due to him. He states that the French are in small force at Madrid, and that Joseph was packing up. But I believe this is only because he individually is going away; for I understand that the French are still in force below Madrid, and that the only notion entertained as genuine here as to their troops going homewards is that ten men picked from each squadron and battalion, or as some say from each company, are to be sent home to make good the Imperial Guards. I do not think myself they will withdraw at all now. They keep the country to support themselves till we are ready to move, and then I think they will collect and risk an early action with us, as their difficulty is to keep together long. If they beat us, they will remain as they were, and I think that is all, unless we are quite routed; if we beat them, then they will go behind the Ebro. The conjecture is, as far as I can understand from the probabilities, a late opening of the campaign on account of the Spaniards not being ready, and then an early action when it does begin.
Some say that the Spaniards will not be ready to move before the harvest in July, or not much before. The French have nearly ninety thousand men in their extended positions, with their right on and near the Douro and the left on or along the Tagus. We shall have, when we begin, about forty-four or forty-five thousand British, about twenty or twenty-two thousand Portuguese, and how many Spaniards no one can tell, or what they will do. So do not expect to hear of a march to France—to the Ebro, or very possibly up to Burgos again. The opportunity for effecting this must be by obliging the French to assemble, and then by rousing up all the Guerillas to starve them. Having heard Lord Wellington give his account of the battle of Fuentes d’Onore to General Wimpfen, the Spanish Inspector-General, I rode there yesterday with Lord Aylmer (who was present in the action) over the whole field of battle, saw all the field-works, the positions of the different divisions, and the plan of the whole. I perfectly understood Lord Wellington’s blunder, and the risk he had run, and could form a very good notion of the strength of the position, and the nature of it as protected by the ravines of the Coa, &c. Lord Aylmer gave me two striking instances of Lord Wellington’s coolness: one when, as he was pursuing the French, in a fog in the morning, he found a division of our men under Sir William Erskine much exposed in advance, and nearly separated from the rest of the army, and the French in a village within a mile of where he was standing, he could see nothing; but, on some prisoners being brought in, and asked what French division and how many men were in the village, they, to the dismay of every one except Wellington, stated that the whole French army were there; all he said was, quite coolly, “Oh! they are all there, are they? Well, we must mind a little what we are about then.” Another time, soon after the battle of Fuentes d’Onore, and when we were waiting in our position near them to risk an attack, in order to protect the siege of Almeyda, early one morning Lord Aylmer came suddenly in to him whilst he was shaving, to tell him that “the French were all off, and the last cavalry mounting to be gone;” the consequence of which movement was to relieve him entirely, to give him Almeyda, and preserve Portugal. He merely took the razor off for one moment, and said, “Ay, I thought they meant to be off; very well;” and then another shave just as before, without another word till he was dressed. I find, however, it is said he magnifies the French now and then—sees double as to the number of blue uniforms, and cannot see all the scarlet; but I believe most men in his situation do this more or less. I must now proceed to summon some witnesses: so, for the present, adieu.
Monday, 4 o’clock.—You ask me what my house is like, and what Frenada is? Frenada is a village much in decay, very dirty; in the streets are immense masses of stones, and holes, and dung all about, houses like a farm kitchen, with this difference that there are the stables underneath. My last lodging was like a part of a Welsh farm-house, boarded off at one end from the common room, with a hole through the wall and one pane of glass let in. I am now in a distinct building like a granary, with the stables below, in an English farm-yard, in which are my animals of all sorts, servants and all. The kitchen is a miserable shed, not water-tight, where the woman of the house and three children live quite separate. The building I occupy has one opening with a wooden door besides the entrance-door, and the end, about eight feet wide by sixteen long, was boarded off by an officer last year. In this I sleep, eat, drink, write, &c., and live altogether, as it has a fireplace in the corner built by the same officer. The fireplace is so contrived, however, as to let more smoke into the room than up the chimney, and of course my eyes suffer, and all I have looks yellow and smells of smoke.
It is said that Lord Wellington and the Court here are to go to Ciudad Rodrigo, to a fête, to install the new Knight of the Bath, General Cole. I shall not go unless especially invited, and I have enough to do here, for except, probably, the Adjutant-general, the Quarter-Master-general, and perhaps the Commissary-general, I have more correspondents than any one here.
I take it in the army that the officers in the lower branches of the staff are sharp-set, hungry, and anxious to get on, and make the most of everything, and have a view even in their civilities. I have tried not to notice much that I could not help seeing, and which gave me a moderate opinion of the profession, which has not the independence to be seen in all the most respectable at the bar. There is much obsequious, time-serving conduct to any one who is in office, or is thought to have a word to say to his lordship.
Lord Wellington gets angry about the Courts-martial, the difficulty as to getting witnesses, the inconvenience, and then at last the great lenity of the Courts. “How can you expect,” he remarked to me, “a Court to find an officer guilty of neglect of duty, when it is composed of members who are all more or less guilty of the same?” He does not like the tribunal. We have, however, hung six men within this month, broken several officers (at least their cases are gone home with that sentence), and flogged about sixteen or eighteen (pretty well, this), and we are still at work. I have now twenty-two cases left on hand, about thirty-six tried, about two or three new cases every week, yet I hope we are getting on better now. I am glad to be made of such importance as you say I am in England; my reputation increases here a little, several Courts-martial having been sent back for revision: for this I get in a degree the credit, and in some instances justly. I am thought a formidable person to whom it is as well to be civil, and who can often be of service to others.
The Princess of Wales’s letter is good; and I think, and have always thought, that if she could once dare inquiry, her case would be unanswerable, and the Prince in a complete dilemma. We have heard here that Brougham wrote the Princess’s letter: is there such a story in England?