The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

From these successes of the English general, it is necessary to turn to the condition of the Portuguese regency. After the departure of the Prince Regent, all the able men of the English party and the trained administrators had left Portugal for Brazil; the leaders of the radical party were either in disgrace, or had fled to France, and none were left to compose the regency save a set of intriguers, whose chief idea was to get as much money from England as possible, and convey it into their own pockets. The Portuguese people acted very differently; they were indignant at the outrageous conduct of the French soldiery, and were ready to sacrifice their lives for the national cause. This enthusiasm was reported to the English Government, which determined to take ten thousand Portuguese soldiers into English pay, and to send out a number of English regimental officers to discipline and command them. No better man than Beresford could have been selected as commander-in-chief of the Portuguese army. He proved himself in after-years, and especially at the battle of Albuera, to be but a poor general; but as an organizer his firmness, which almost amounted to severity, made him at once obeyed and feared. His chief assistants in this work were the English officers who had been sent to him, and a small body of Portuguese officers whom patriotism had forced into exile in preference to serving in the French Portuguese Legion, and at the head of these two classes were his Quartermaster-General, Major-General Benjamin D’Urban, an Englishman, and his Adjutant-General, Colonel Manoel de Brito Mousinho, a Portuguese. So hard did Beresford work during the winter of 1809, while Lord Wellington, as Sir Arthur Wellesley had been created, was in Spain, that in the spring of 1810, certain Portuguese regiments were brigaded with the English, and showed themselves worthy of the honour. They fought side by side with the English soldiers at the battle of Busaco, and the behaviour of the 8th Portuguese Infantry is one of the most disputed points in the history of that battle, every historian of the war stating that it behaved well, but all differing as to the time it came into action, and the effect of its bayonet charge.

While Beresford was doing this good work, and the flower of the Portuguese youth was rushing to arms in the regular army, or in the militia reserve, the regency at Lisbon was going from bad to worse. The Prince Regent at Rio de Janeiro had no control over it, and it was divided into parties, which quarrelled over the disposition of the English subsidies as if they were legitimate spoil. There is no need to study the intrigues of these parties, but it is worth notice, that Dom Pedro de Sousa Holstein, better known in after-years as the Duke of Palmella, was despatched to the Spanish junta to claim the Regency of Spain for Donna Carlotta Joaquina the Queen of Portugal, when Portugal could not even defend its own territory. Neither Wellington nor Beresford could work with this factious regency, and the English cabinet had to insist that the English ambassador at Lisbon, Sir Charles Stuart, the son of General the Honourable Sir Charles Stuart, should receive a seat upon the council. His great ability and tact soon made him the master of his colleagues, and a certain portion of the money, sent by England to pay the Portuguese troops, did at last find its way to its proper destination. The Regency, even when thus strengthened, failed to become popular; it was hotly criticized and abused; and the murmuring radical party in Lisbon, which hankered after peace with France, was only suppressed by the deportation of eighteen leading journalists to the Azores in September, 1810.

It is little wonder that some opposition to the war existed in 1810, for in that year the most formidable invasion of French troops took place. This was the famous invasion of Masséna. The Portuguese nation showed all the valour of a people, fighting for its very existence as a nation, and when Lord Wellington, on being obliged to retire into the lines of Torres Vedras, commanded the peasants to abandon their homes and leave nothing for the French to subsist upon, they obeyed him with touching fidelity. While Wellington was entrenched within his lines, Beresford established his headquarters at Lisbon, and continued the work of reorganization with the help of a fresh contingent of English regimental officers, which reached him at this time. He proceeded rapidly, but in regular order, and having organized and disciplined the Portuguese regiments in the winter of 1809, he made them into independent Portuguese brigades in the winter of 1810. In all he formed a powerful Portuguese army of twelve infantry brigades, partly commanded by English brigadiers, such as Ashworth, Pack, Bradford, and Archibald Campbell, partly by native officers, such as Le Cor, Fonseca, Palmeirim, and Bernadim Ribeiros, four cavalry brigades, under Povoa and Barbacena, Madden and Hawker, and an artillery park of forty-eight guns under Colonel Alexander Dickson. While Beresford was engaged at Lisbon in organizing the Portuguese army, the Portuguese militia was doing good work in the northern provinces, where the chief command was held by Major-General Manoel Pinto Bacellar. Brigades of militia under such dashing commanders as Antonio de Silveira, John Miller, Nicholas Trant, and John Wilson, harassed Masséna’s lines of communication with Spain; and while he was before the lines of Torres Vedras and at Santarem, he had to keep three divisions employed in keeping open his line of retreat and escorting his convoys. In the field, the Portuguese militia was always defeated, but Masséna could never feel safe from their attacks, and to mention but one brilliant exploit, Trant’s capture of Coimbra seriously inconvenienced him at a critical moment.

Finally in the March of 1811, Masséna had to retire, and the Portuguese then reaped their reward in having their frontiers freed from the invader for the rest of the Peninsular War. Englishmen of modern times are too apt to look upon the victories of the Peninsular War, as the results of English valour alone. Wellington knew better; he knew what he owed to the Portuguese troops, and recognized their services in his despatches; and contemporaries always spoke of the victorious soldiers, as the allied, or the Anglo-Portuguese army. Throughout the great campaigns of 1812, 1813, and 1814, the Portuguese troops, shared the labours and the glories of Wellington’s army; and to mention but a single exploit, the attacks of Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese brigades on the Arapiles in the battle of Salamanca roused the warm admiration of the English soldiers and officers though they were not crowned with success. During the winter of 1812, while the allied army was in winter quarters after the retreat from Burgos, Beresford put the finishing touch to his work by the formation of independent Portuguese divisions. The çaçadores or light infantry were however too valuable to be separated from the English light infantry regiments, and continued to form part of the famous Light Division until the close of the war. The Portuguese divisions were like the brigades divided between English and Portuguese generals, among whom the most conspicuous were Sir John Hamilton, and Sir Archibald Campbell, the future conqueror of Burma, Carlos Frederic Le Cor and Agostino Luis da Fonseca. During the movements which followed the victory of Vittoria, the Portuguese showed their courage and discipline, and not only Wellington, but all the historians of the war, draw attention to their good conduct alike in the field and in quarters, as compared with the licentiousness and want of discipline of the Spanish armies. Meanwhile, matters went on well at home; the Regency, under the control of Sir Charles Stuart, was unable to embezzle the English subsidies; he took care that the troops were well paid, clothed, and fed; the Portuguese people rejoiced at the achievements of their soldiers against France, and profited by the large influx of English money into Portugal. When the war was over and the news of the abdication of Napoleon, and of the battle of Toulouse arrived, the returning troops were enthusiastically received, and all promised brightly for the future. The English Government were not unmindful of the services rendered by the Portuguese, and when Wellington’s generals were raised to the peerage, Marshal Beresford, the organizer of the Portuguese army, was created Lord Beresford, and Sir Charles Stuart, the ambassador at Lisbon, Lord Stuart de Rothesay.

But these rejoicings were soon followed by bitter lamentations, for the English plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Vienna headed by Lord Castlereagh, basely deserted their gallant allies. The Portuguese envoys at this famous meeting for the re-settlement of Europe were Pedro de Sousa Holstein, Count of Palmella, afterwards Duke of Palmella, Antonio de Saldanha da Gama, afterwards Count of Porto Santo, and Jeronymo Lobo da Silveira, afterwards Count of Oriolla. These diplomatists urged that Spain should be forced to restore Olivença, which Portugal had been obliged to cede at the Treaty of Badajoz in 1801, a claim which was perfectly fair and just; but Talleyrand opposed this act of justice, and Castlereagh unjustifiably abandoned the faithful ally of England, an act at once ungrateful and impolitic. A feeling that England was ungrateful was the prevailing idea among the Portuguese, when the news arrived from Rio de Janeiro that the mad Queen Maria Francisca had died on March 20, 1816, and that the Prince Regent had been proclaimed king as John VI.