Although, as I say, it would be quite out of the question to attempt to draw even the briefest outline of these magnificent campaigns, yet there are one or two incidents in them which may be looked at in passing for the sake of the glimpses they afford of the man in the midst of his work, and, few though they may be, there is yet more real knowledge to be got from them than from many pages of descriptions of battles and sieges.
Thus, for instance, shortly after he landed for the second time in Portugal there was a conspiracy among the French officers to depose Marshal Soult, and one of these men came to Wellington across the Douro to tell him of this so that he might make their work easier by a crushing defeat. This might have been of enormous advantage to him, but he refused point blank to avail himself of such base assistance, and sent the traitor back to the master whom he had betrayed. He was not the man to work by methods like this. He had his own methods, and so effectual were they that ten days after he had landed at Lisbon there was not a single French soldier on Portuguese soil who was not a prisoner of war.
A month afterwards Napoleon writing to Soult and Ney said: “You are to advance on the English, pursue them without cessation, beat them and fling them into the sea. The English alone are redoubtable—they alone. If the army is not differently managed, before the lapse of a few months they will bring upon it a catastrophe.” How prophetic these words were a glance at the splendidly inscribed colours of the British Peninsular Regiments will amply suffice to show.
As usual, Wellington in the Peninsula, like Nelson in the Mediterranean, was forced by the incompetence or imbecility of the authorities at home to do his tremendous work with most inadequate means. In Spain the people whom he had come to save refused his soldiers food, and those at home, whom he was no less fighting to save, refused him money enough to buy it. In a letter written in January, 1811, he put the position very plainly.
“If we cannot persevere in carrying on the contest in the Peninsula or elsewhere on the Continent we must prepare to make one of our own islands the seat of war. I am equally certain that if Buonaparte cannot root us out of this country he must alter his system in Europe and give us such a peace as we ought to accept.”
This was the work that he had to do and did, and here is a glimpse of the means he had to do it with. “I have not,” he says in the same letter, “authority to give a shilling or a stand of arms or a round of ammunition to anybody. I do give all, it is true, but it is contrary to my instructions and at my peril. Not another officer in the army would even look at the risks that I have to incur every day.” There are not many more eloquent pictures than this of a man serving his country and saving it in spite of itself.
Like all good generals, Wellington insisted upon absolute obedience, and nothing could excuse in his eyes even the most splendid breach of discipline. After the taking of Ciudad Rodrigo, General Crawford, the leader of the famous Light Division, had been ordered not to push his operations beyond the river Coa, but he forgot his instructions in the temptation to make a splendid dash at an overwhelming force under Ney.
Nothing but the magnificent valour and discipline of the Division saved it from utter destruction. Still it was saved, and when its gallant leader reported himself to Wellington he said: “I am glad to see you safe, Crawford.”
“Oh, we were in no danger I can assure you!” was the answer.
“No, but I was through your conduct!” came the dry retort, and Crawford walked away crestfallen, remarking to himself that the General was “damned crusty to-day.”