♦Soult proposes immediately to invade Portugal.♦
The Peninsula was but a secondary object in the all-grasping schemes of Buonaparte’s ambition. At first he had expected to secure it without a struggle; nor was he yet so undeceived concerning the real nature of the resistance to be experienced there, as to believe that any serious effort would be required for completing its conquest. In Germany it was, he thought, that the fate of Europe must be decided; and this opinion was proclaimed in England by those who, on every occasion, sought to persuade the public that resistance to such a statesman and such a general, wherever it was attempted, could only end in defeat, and humiliation, and ruin. Under this impression he had ordered the intrusive government, which was in fact entirely under his orders, to content itself with protracting the war till the campaign in Germany should be brought to a close. That campaign was now ended. The battle of Wagram had re-established his shaken power; an armistice had immediately been sued for, and in the negotiations which followed, the house of Austria surrendered more than the French king Francis I. had lost at Pavia. The news of this great success did not, however, induce the Intruder to deviate from his instructions. M. Soult, the most enterprising as well as the ablest of the French officers who were employed in Spain, proposed at this time a plan for re-entering Portugal. The line which should have secured the communication of the British army with Lisbon he occupied, now that that army had found it necessary to retreat across the Tagus. He proposed, therefore, to move from Plasencia against Beresford’s inefficient force, while Ney, advancing from Salamanca, should act upon its left flank. That army, if not absolutely destroyed, would be prevented from forming a junction by way of Alcantara with Sir Arthur; and the French, by rapidly pursuing this advantage, might occupy Abrantes, and once more take possession of Lisbon, in which case Soult, ♦Campaign of 1809, pp. 49–52.
Ib. App. C-K.♦ still deceiving himself with regard to the disposition of the Portugueze, thought they would submit to an enemy whom they found it hopeless to resist. The plan was boldly conceived, though M. Soult had not sufficiently taken into his calculation the character of the troops with which he would again be brought in contact: but it was rejected by Joseph, who was at that time guided chiefly by M. Jourdan. That General, distinguished for his signal successes in the revolutionary war, held the high situation of Major-General of the army of Spain; and he preferring what seemed the surer though the slower course, resolved implicitly to follow the Emperor Napoleon’s instructions, and undertake no offensive operation for the present. A plan, he said, had been laid down for invading Portugal, and would be executed in the month of February. It was their intention to subjugate the south of Spain before this should be undertaken; and if the British Commander had possessed as little foresight as appeared in the conduct of the Spanish government, or if the British army had not derived better support from the Portugueze than from the Spaniards, the French might have succeeded in both parts of their intended operations.
♦Sir A. Wellesley raised to the peerage.♦
The Central Junta expressed its sense of Sir Arthur Wellesley’s services, by nominating him one of the Captain-generals of the army (a rank nearly equivalent to that of our field-marshal), and presenting him, in the name of Ferdinand, with some horses selected from the best breeds of Andalusia. “This tribute,” they said, “was of small value in comparison with the services which he had rendered to Spain, and still less in proportion to the wishes of those who offered it: but for hearts like his, the satisfaction resulting from great achievements was their best recompense; not was it in the power of man to bestow any reward which could equal the glory of being one of the principal deliverers of a great and generous people, of listening to their blessings, and of deserving their gratitude.” Sir Arthur accepted the horses, and the appointment also, provided he should receive permission from his own sovereign; but he declined the pay attached to it, not thinking it becoming that he should burthen the finances of Spain during such a contest. In England, also, he was recompensed with new honours. As soon as the news of his victory arrived, he was raised to the peerage by the titles of Baron Douro of Wellesley, and Viscount Wellington of Talavera, and of Wellington in the county of Somerset.
♦Aug. 1.
Marquis Wellesley arrives in Spain.♦
On the fourth morning after the battle, while the bells of Cadiz were ringing, the cannon firing, and the people rejoicing with higher hopes than had been felt since the surrender of Dupont, Marquis Wellesley landed in that harbour to supersede Mr. Frere. A great concourse assembled to see him land, and as he set foot on shore, a French flag was spread before him, that he might tread upon it in honour of his brother’s victory. The people drew his carriage, which in that country is an unusual mark of respect. The Marquis gave one of them a purse of gold to distribute among his comrades: but the man returned it, and, in the name of the people, assured him they desired no reward, being happy that they had this opportunity of expressing the sentiments of the whole nation. Both at Cadiz and at Seville the Marquis was received with every mark of public honour, and with the most enthusiastic expressions of attachment and gratitude to the British nation. But the first dispatches from Sir Arthur opened ♦Distress of the army for provisions.♦ upon him a disheartening prospect. The combined armies, amounting to not less than 60,000 men, and 16,000 or 18,000 horse, were depending entirely for their daily supply upon the country, which did not contain a population in many square miles equal to the number of the army, and could not of course produce a sufficiency for its sustenance. Extremadura indeed is the worst peopled and least cultivated province of the whole Peninsula. It was necessary to send to a great distance for supplies, which, scanty as they were, could not be procured regularly, nor without great difficulty. The troops were ill fed, and frequently received no rations whatever. Effectual measures, Sir Arthur said, must be taken, and that speedily. No army could serve to any purpose unless it were properly fed; and it was absurd to suppose that a Spaniard, or a man or animal of any country, could make exertions without a due supply of food; in fact the Spaniards were more clamorous, and more exhausted, if they did not receive it regularly, than the English. The English, however, were in a state of great distress; from the 3d till the 7th they had had no bread; then about 4000 pounds of biscuit were divided among 30,000 mouths, and the whole supply ♦Aug. 8.♦ was exhausted. “The army,” said Sir Arthur, “will be entirely lost, if this treatment continues. If efficient measures had been adopted by the government when the distress of the British troops was first represented to them, the benefit must ere this have been experienced. There had been no neglect on the part of Mr. Frere: the evil was owing to the poverty and exhausted state of the country; to the inactivity of the magistrates and people; to their disinclination to taking any trouble, except that of packing up their property, and removing when they heard of the approach of a French patrole; to their habits of insubordination and disobedience, and to the want of power in the government and their officers.”
♦Disputes with Cuesta concerning supplies.♦
Cuesta’s unaccommodating temper aggravated the evil. He was applied to after the battle for ninety mules to draw the British artillery in place of those lost in the action; there were at that time hundreds in his army employed in drawing empty carts, and yet he refused to part with any. Five guns belonging to Alburquerque’s division having been taken at Arzobispo, the Duke endeavoured to make over to the British army the mules attached to them; but Cuesta took them for himself. His own cavalry were plentifully supplied with barley, while hundreds of the British horses died for want of it. In other respects, his men suffered as many privations as the English; and vexation at this and at the untoward issue of the campaign, combined with bodily infirmity, seems to have bewildered him: he lent ear to every complaint against the allies; and at a time when they were literally starving, both men and horses, he wrote to their General, stating that his own troops were in want of necessary food, because all that he ordered for their use was intercepted by the British and their commissaries. The English, he said, actually sold biscuit and meat; and he heard continual complaints and saw continual traces that they plundered all the places through which they passed, and even followed the peasantry to the mountains, for the purpose of stripping them even to the shirt. Sir Arthur positively denied that any thing going to the Spanish army had been stopped by the British; as for the tale of his soldiers selling provisions, he observed, that it was beneath the dignity of his Excellency’s situation and character to notice such things, and beneath his own to reply to them. He was concerned that General Cuesta should conceive there was any reason for complaining of the British troops; but, continued he, “when troops are starving, which those under my command have been, as I have repeatedly told your Excellency since I joined you, and particularly when they had no bread from the 3d to the 7th, it is not astonishing that they should go to the villages and even to the mountains to look for food where they think they can get it. The complaints of the inhabitants, however, should not have been confined to the conduct of the British; here in Deleitosa I have seen Spanish soldiers, who ought to have been elsewhere, take off the doors of the houses which were locked up, in order that they might plunder the houses; and they afterwards burnt the doors.”
To preserve discipline among starving troops is indeed impossible, and neither Cuesta nor Sir Arthur could be responsible for their men under such circumstances; but the letter of the former brought the question respecting provisions to a point, and Sir Arthur called upon him to state distinctly whether he understood that the Spanish army was to have not only all the provisions which the country could afford, but all those also which were sent from Seville; whether any magazines had been formed, and from whence the troops were to draw provisions? “I hope,” said he, “that I shall receive satisfactory answers to these questions to-morrow morning; if not, I beg that your Excellency will be prepared to occupy the posts opposite Almaraz, as it will be impossible for me to remain any longer in a country in which no arrangement is made for provisioning my troops, and in which it is understood that all the provisions which are either found in the country, or are sent from Seville (as I have been informed, for the use of the British army) are to be applied solely and exclusively to the Spanish troops.” On the day that this correspondence took place, an English commissary arriving from Truxillo with bread and barley for the British army, was stopped on the way, and deprived of all his barley and part of his bread by a detachment of Spanish horse. Whatever momentary irritation might be occasioned by circumstances like these, Sir Arthur commiserated the sufferings of the Spanish army too sincerely to harbour any resentment; but he perceived the absolute necessity of withdrawing. “It is useless,” he said to the British ambassador, “to complain; but we are not treated as friends, much less as the only prop on which the cause of Spain can depend. But, besides this want of good-will, which can easily be traced to the temper of the General, there is such a want of resources in the country, and so little exertion in bringing forward what is to be found; that if the army were to remain here much longer, it would become totally useless. The daily and increasing loss of horses from deficiency of food, and from the badness of what there is, is really alarming.” Ney’s return to Old Castille strengthened him in this resolution; it satisfied him that no serious attack upon Andalusia was intended for the present, and he thought it not unlikely that this corps of the enemy was about to invade Portugal, for the sake of drawing him out of Spain.
♦Mr. Frere requires the removal of Cuesta.♦