Meanwhile Wellington was able to report considerable progress in some of the regiments in the Portuguese army, thanks very largely to the exertions of Marshal Beresford. Fifteen regiments he had seen while marching from Badajoz to Coimbra showed decided improvement in discipline, and he had “no doubt that the whole will prove an useful acquisition to the country.” They were “in general unhealthy.” The conduct of his own troops was “infamous” when not under the inspection of officers. “They have never brought up a convoy of money that they have not robbed the chest; nor of shoes, or any other article that could be of use to them, or could produce money, that they do not steal something.”
The failure of the Walcheren Expedition[57] not only led to a duel between Canning and Castlereagh and the fall of Portland’s administration, but caused the British public to lose faith in things military. It seemed not at all improbable that the new Ministry formed by Perceval, in which Lord Wellesley became Foreign Secretary, and Lord Liverpool Secretary for War and the Colonies, would withdraw the British army from the Peninsula, especially as Talavera had aroused little or no enthusiasm, and a retreat was regarded by the man in the street as scarcely better than a defeat. In this connexion it is interesting to note that when Wellington was asked what was the best test of a great general, he gave as his answer, “To know when to retreat; and to dare to do it.” Aware of the state of public opinion, he did not press for further reinforcements.
In a letter to the Rt. Hon. John Villiers, dated Viseu, 14th January 1810, the Commander-in-Chief definitely states “that in its present state” the army was “not sufficient for the defence of Portugal.” He anticipated having 30,000 effective British troops when the soldiers then on their way from England and those in hospital were available: “I will fight a good battle for the possession of Portugal, and see whether that country cannot be saved from the general wreck.”
“I conceive,” he concludes, “that the honor and interests of the country require that we should hold our ground here as long as possible; and, please God, I will maintain it as long as I can; and I will neither endeavor to shift from my own shoulders on those of the Ministers the responsibility for the failure, by calling for means which I know they cannot give, and which, perhaps, would not add materially to the facility of attaining our object; nor will I give to the Ministers, who are not strong, and who must feel the delicacy of their own situation, an excuse for withdrawing the army from a position which, in my opinion, the honor and interest of the country require they should maintain as long as possible.
“I think that if the Portuguese do their duty, I shall have enough to maintain it; if they do not, nothing that Great Britain can afford can save the country; and if from that cause I fail in saving it, and am obliged to go, I shall be able to carry away the British army.”
The war in Spain still continued see-saw fashion. A province would be apparently conquered by Napoleon’s troops when no sooner did the troops march on than the trouble began again. This happened more especially with Suchet in Aragon. In Catalonia the intrepid O’Donnell and his men flitted about like a will-o’-the-wisp and worked sad havoc whenever they came across a detached force, though Hostalrich fell and Lerida surrendered in May, as well as the castle of Mequinenza a little later.
Napoleon had not been sleeping. In the previous year he had been too occupied in humbling Austria and annexing Rome and the Ecclesiastical States to give much attention to the Peninsula. He now placed Marshal Masséna, Prince of Essling, who by reason of his success was known as “the spoilt child of victory”—incidentally he was the son of an inn-keeper—in command of 180,000 troops, for which purpose he arrived at Valladolid in the middle of May 1810. Within a month the French forces in Spain were raised to no fewer than 366,000 men of all ranks and arms.
Surely “the heir of Charlemagne,” as Napoleon termed himself, was on the point of crushing the resistance of the Iberian Peninsula, and with it insignificant Portugal and Wellington? Was it feasible that 60,000 British, Germans, and Portuguese, sometimes aided but more often hindered by an “insurgent” rabble, and indirectly by the two remaining Spanish armies in Galicia and Estremadura, could contest with any likelihood of success more than a third of a million of trained troops? The law of probability answered in the negative.