There was an English spirit in this speech, such as might have been looked for from Mr. Windham: for if sometimes he seemed to delight in making with perverse ingenuity the worse appear the better reason, and treated as a sport for the intellect subjects which deserved a serious and severe feeling, no political views or enmities ever betrayed him into an unworthy act, or sentiment inconsistent with his natural generosity. The motion for inquiry was rejected; but whatever papers were called for were granted, though Lord Liverpool warned his opponents, that if they insisted upon making ♦Sir John Moore’s dispatches.♦ some of these documents public, they would perceive the impropriety when it was too late. They found in these papers what they wanted, ... an assertion broadly made by Sir John Moore, “that the Spaniards had neither the power nor the inclination to make any efforts for themselves. To convince the people of England, as well as the rest of Europe, of this,” he said, “it was necessary to risk his army, and for that reason he made the march to Sahagun. As a diversion,” he continued, “it succeeded. I brought the whole disposable force of the French against this army, and it has been allowed to follow me, without a single movement being made to favour my retreat. The people of Galicia, though armed, made no attempt to stop the passage of the French through the mountains. They abandoned their dwellings at our approach, drove away their carts, oxen, and every thing that could be of the smallest aid to the army. The consequence has been, that our sick have been left behind: and when our horses or mules failed, which, on such marches, and through such a country, was the case to a great extent, baggage, ammunition, stores, and even money, were necessarily destroyed or abandoned.” This was a heavy charge against the Spaniards, and it was triumphantly repeated by those who, being the opponents of ministry, became thereby the enemies of the Spanish cause. Yet it might have occurred to them that it was neither generous nor prudent to reproach an undisciplined peasantry for not attempting to defend defiles through which the finest army that had ever left England, with a man who was supposed to be their best general at its head, was retreating faster than ever army had retreated before. If these passes were not defensible, why should the Galicians be condemned for not defending them? If they were, why did the British army run through, leaving their baggage, stores, and ammunition, their money, their horses, their sick, their dying, and their dead, to track the way?
This accusation against our allies the opposition had expected to find; but they had not looked for a heavier charge against the army itself from the same authority, ... a charge too which, if any thing more than the consternation and flight of the British force had been required to excuse the Galicians, would have supplied it. For the General added in this unhappy dispatch, “I am sorry to say, that the army whose conduct I had such reason to extol on its march through Portugal, and on its arrival in Spain, has totally changed its character since it began to retreat. I can say nothing in its favour, but that when there was a prospect of fighting the enemy, the men were then orderly, and seemed pleased, and determined to do their duty.” “Of what nature,” it was asked, “was this misconduct with which General Moore so roundly accused a whole army, almost with his dying breath? Did the officers behave ill, or the men, or both? Did they refuse to fight, or did they refuse to fly? What had they done, or what had they omitted to do?” These questions were asked by the wiser part of the public, and the narratives of the campaign, which were afterwards published, amply answered them. It then appeared that the army, from the hour in which it was turned into a rout, considered themselves like sailors after a shipwreck, released from all discipline by the common ruin; ... that they plundered, burnt, and destroyed before them; ... that while many of the officers murmured against the conduct of the commander, the men cried out loudly against the disgrace of running away; ... that order, discipline, temperance, and even humanity, were laid aside by them in their desperation: but that they had never forgotten the honour of England; and that whenever a hope of facing the enemy was held out to them, order was instantaneously restored, they were themselves again, and, in spite of all their fatigues and sufferings, manifested that invincible courage which, happily for themselves and for their country, they were allowed at last to prove upon the French at Coruña.
Such consequences, however, humiliating as they were, were inevitable in a retreat so conducted. But Sir John Moore’s dispatch contained a more startling avowal, for it was then first made known that he had been advised to propose terms to the enemy, that he might be permitted to embark quietly. It was indeed an unexpected shock to learn that there were officers, and of such rank as to offer advice to the General, who were for asking leave of the French to embark, and purchasing by such dishonour that safety which the army, broken-hearted as it was, without horse, and almost without artillery, won gloriously for itself. From this incalculable evil, this inexpiable disgrace, Sir John Moore had saved us. But who were the men who had so little confidence in British valour, that they would not have fought the battle of Coruña? Who were they who, instead of relying upon their own hearts and hands, would have proposed terms to Marshal Soult, and set the Spaniards an example to which every traitor or every coward among them might have appealed as a precedent for any baseness? This question was not asked in Parliament; nor was any pledge required from Government, or given, that these men should never on any future occasion be trusted with command. Not a single remark was made in either House by either party upon this subject, nor upon any of the information contained in a dispatch which had been loudly called for as of such great importance. It furnished no matter of reproach against the ministry, and therefore it was not the kind of information which their opponents wanted. And ministers themselves could make no use of it in their own justification, for, having it in their hands, they had passed a vote of thanks to the officers and men of whose previous misconduct they possessed these proofs; and instead of defending their own measures by arguing that the campaign might probably have turned out well, and beyond all doubt less disastrously, if the Commander had acted with more vigour and more discretion, they had asserted that every thing had been ably executed, as well as wisely planned.
♦Mr. Frere’s correspondence with Sir John Moore.♦
Some matter, however, for accusation the opposition thought they had found in Mr. Frere’s correspondence with Sir John Moore. They affirmed that the fatal event of the campaign had been caused by his interference, he having been the sole cause of the army’s advance. To have his conduct fairly and impartially considered is what no agent of the British government expects from a party in opposition to the government, the just and honourable feelings of private life being so commonly cast aside in political warfare, that the wonder is when a trace of them is found remaining. But Mr. Frere was attacked with peculiar acrimony, as the intimate friend of Mr. Canning; this being motive enough for virulence when a spirit of faction prevails. He was charged in the most unqualified terms with folly, ignorance, and presumption; it was declared that his incapacity had given Buonaparte the same advantage as that Emperor was accustomed to derive from corruption and treason; and it was announced that an address would be moved for his immediate recall. That intention was not pursued when it was understood that Marquis Wellesley would be appointed to succeed him in the embassy; and upon every point except that of having desired that Colonel Charmilly might be examined before a council of war, his conduct was fully vindicated and ♦1809.
April.♦ approved by the ministers. In so doing they thought he had adopted an improper course; but they proved from the documents which had supplied the grounds of the accusation, that Sir John Moore had not been guilty of the gross fault which his admirers, in their desire of criminating another, imputed to him: he had not made a forward movement which endangered the army contrary to his own judgement, and in deference to an opinion which he disapproved; but upon his own plans, and in consequence of the information which he obtained from an intercepted dispatch.
♦Earl Grey. April 21.♦
In the course of these debates Earl Grey complained that only 2000 cavalry had been sent to Spain, though we had 27,000, and though that description of force was peculiarly necessary in that country; and he contrasted the conduct of the British government with that of Buonaparte, “the consummate general whose plans they had to oppose. In rapidity of execution,” said his lordship, “he is only equalled by his patience in preparing the means. He has all the opposite qualities of Fabius and Marcellus, whether you consider the country in which he acts, the people with whom he has to contend, or the means by which he is to subdue them. He rivals Hannibal in the application of the means, and is exempt from his only fault, that of not improving by past experience. The means provided by Buonaparte for the accomplishment of his purposes are so well combined, and his objects so ably prosecuted, as generally to give him a moral certainty of success; and whatever may be thought of his total disregard of the justice of those objects, it is impossible not to admire the ability and wisdom with which he combines the means of accomplishing them. In order to maintain against such an antagonist the ultimate contest which is to decide for ever the power and independence of this country, the true policy of those who govern it must be, to pay a strict attention to economy, to be actuated by a determination to concentrate our means, not to endanger them in any enterprise or speculation in which the event is doubtful; but pursuing the economical system of husbanding our resources, by which alone we could enable ourselves to continue a contest, the cessation of which does not depend upon us, but upon the injustice of our enemy.”
♦Earl of Liverpool.♦
The Earl of Liverpool remarked, in reply, how singular it was that every one who censured the plan which ministers had followed with regard to Spain had a plan of his own, and that none of those plans should have a single principle of agreement with each other. This at least, he said, showed the difficulty which government must have felt in forming its measures, though it afforded a facility in defending them. As to the accusation of not sending a sufficient force of cavalry, he stated that as much tonnage was required for 5000 horse as for 40,000 foot; and moreover that vessels of a different description were necessary, of which a very limited number could at any time be procured. Yet from 8000 to 9000 horse had been sent, and there would have been not less than 12,000, had not the General countermanded the reinforcements which were ready. Weak as Earl Grey might be pleased to deem the ministers, they had not been so foolish as to expect that the first efforts of the Spaniards would meet with uninterrupted success; they were not yet guilty of calculating upon impossibilities; they had not supposed that such a cause as the cause of Spain, to be fought for with such an enemy as the ruler of France, could be determined in one campaign. Reverses they had met; but those reverses were not owing to the indifference or apathy of the Spaniards; they were imputable to their want of discipline, and to an ill-judged contempt for the French, a proof in itself of their zeal and ardour. And what would have been the general sentiment in that country and in this if our army had retired without attempting any thing? If, when after all her repeated disasters, the spirit of Spain was unsubdued, and her capital bidding defiance to an immense army at the very gates; if a British army, so marshalled and equipped, and after a long march to the aid of their ally, had in that hour of trial turned their backs upon her danger, what would have been thought of the sincerity of our co-operation? “I believe in my conscience,” he continued, “that that movement of Sir John Moore saved Spain. There are some, perhaps, who may be startled at the assertion: it is my fixed and decided opinion, and as such I will avow it. After the destruction of Blake’s army, the defeat of Castaños, and the dispersion of the army of Extremadura, ... after the capitulation of Madrid, which promised to emulate the glory of Zaragoza, and would have done so, had not treachery interposed; if at that crisis Buonaparte had pursued his conquests, by pushing to the southern provinces, the Spanish troops would never have had time to rally there. But that time was given by Sir John Moore’s advance in their favour. Never was there a more effectual diversion. Sir John Moore himself said, that as a diversion it had completely and effectually succeeded. Nor was the moral effect of thus re-animating the spirit of the nation to be overlooked. Let the final issue of the contest be what it may, France has not yet succeeded in subduing Spain. I admit that Buonaparte has 200,000 men in that country; that his troops are of the bravest, and his generals among the most skilful in the world; and, above all, that he has been himself at their head: and yet, with all this, he has not got possession of more territory than he had last year: he only holds such parts as in every war fell to the lot of whichever brought the largest army into the field. I am far from saying, regard being had to the man and the circumstances of the case, that the Spaniards must ultimately succeed; but, at the same time, looking at the spirit they have evinced, and the actions that have happened, particularly the defence of Zaragoza, I cannot feel lukewarm in my hope that their efforts will be crowned with ultimate success. In that fatal contest with America we gained every battle; we took every town we besieged, until the capture of General Burgoyne; and yet the Americans ultimately succeeded, by perseverance, in the contest. In the present struggle, do not the extent and nature of the country afford a hope of success? does not its population forbid despair? We have not lost the confidence of the Spanish people; we know that every true Spanish heart beats high for this country; we know that whatever may happen, they do not accuse us. Submission may be the lot they are fated to endure in the end; but they do not impute to us the cause of their misfortunes: they are sensible that neither the thirst after commerce, nor territory, nor security, is to be imputed to us, in the assistance we have afforded to them upon this important occasion. Whatever may be the result, we have done our duty; we have not despaired; we have persevered, and will do so to the last, while there is any thing left to contend for with a prospect of success.”
♦Mr. Canning.