History of the Peninsular War, Volume 4 (of 6)

by Robert Southey

The Portugueze regency now declared Alorna a traitor, and offered a reward of a thousand moidores for bringing him in alive or dead. The Marquis of Ponte de Lima, the Marquis of Loule, the Count of St. Miguel, the Count of Ega, Gomes Friere de Andrade, and D. José Carcome Lobo, were also declared traitors, and their property declared to be confiscated: but they had powerful friends in the state; and it is said that, notwithstanding the decree, their property remained untouched, in the hands of persons in whom they could confide. A change had lately taken place in the Portugueze regency. The Marquez das Minas resigned, in consequence of an illness which soon proved fatal. The other two members were, the Bishop of Porto, who was Patriarch elect, and the Marquis Monteiro Mor. Four new members were now added; the Principal Sousa, brother to the Conde de Linhares, who was minister in Brazil, and to the Portugueze ambassador in England; the Conde de Redondo; Ricardo Raymundo Nogueira, who had been law professor at Coimbra; and the English ambassador, Mr. Stuart. Admiral Berkeley was at the same time appointed by the Prince of Brazil commander-in-chief of the naval, as Lord Wellington had been of the military force of Portugal. There are few things in the annals of Great Britain more honourable to the national character than the perfect confidence reposed in the English nation by its old ally, and the manner in which that confidence was requited. While the enemies of both countries were endeavouring to incense the Portugueze against the English, by telling them that the British government designed to usurp Portugal; and while the enemies of administration were traducing and insulting the Portugueze people, crying out that they would not defend themselves and could not be defended by us, and therefore that we ought not to attempt to defend them, the English army and the Portugueze people were acting with the most perfect unanimity, for the common interests and common safety of Great Britain and Portugal.

♦Conduct of the Portugueze government.♦

The spirit of the people, without which all other means of defence must have been ineffectual, was what England could neither give nor take away; but for the measures by which that spirit was so directed as to secure its end, Portugal was indebted to British councils. Military and financial resources, of which the nation had not supposed itself capable, were called forth; and the Portugueze were addressed by their rulers in language to which they had long been unaccustomed, ... the language of hope and confidence, and of conscious rectitude as well as conscious strength. Like the Supreme Junta, the regents reminded the Portugueze of their heroic ancestors; they spake of the wickedness of the enemy, the inexpressible miseries which would accompany their yoke, and the certainty of glorious success, if those exertions and sacrifices were made which the emergency required; but the Portugueze regency did not, like the Spaniards, speak to the people of the causes which had rendered this invasion possible, and produced the decay of Portugal; nor did they hold out the promise of the restoration of their rights, the redress of their grievances, and the due execution of their laws. Such promises were not necessary as excitement; a people who were literally defending their hearths and altars, and fighting to save their wives and daughters from violation and butchery, or to revenge them, needed no additional feeling to goad them on: ... as pledges they were not held out; because the government had not the prudence to think of reforming itself. In providing for the defence of the country, it acted providently and bravely, with wisdom and with vigour; but in other things, the old leaven discovered itself, and made it apparent that the pleasure of the minister was still the law of Portugal. A decree was published, assigning to the widows, children, or dependent brethren of those who had fallen at Almeida, the full pay of the deceased, and half pay to the families of those who were made prisoners. “The Prince,” it said, “would not believe that any of his faithful vassals could have entered the service of the enemy; and if any had been compelled to do so, he trusted they had only yielded to compulsion, with the purpose of effecting their escape. He suspended, therefore, his justice; but if a month elapsed before such persons acquitted themselves by appearing, they would be considered as traitors.” Now, the treason of the lieutenant-governor and the major of artillery was open and undoubted: Lord Wellington had stated it in his dispatches to the minister at war; their names were given in those dispatches here in England, but suppressed in Portugal, out of favour to their connexions.

♦Arbitrary arrests at Lisbon.♦

In another respect the conduct of the Portugueze regency was more inexcusable. Eight-and-forty persons, of all ranks and professions, and many of them unacquainted with each other, were seized in the night; ten of them were sent to the tower of St. Julian, and the rest to the Limoeiro, the common prison of the city. The most alarming rumours were scattered abroad. A formidable and extensive conspiracy, it was said, had been discovered, which had nothing less for its object than a general massacre of the British, for the purpose of delivering up the country to the French. These reports reached England, and received their first contradiction from the Portugueze government themselves, who found it expedient to declare, that neither Lord Wellington nor Mr. Stuart had any part in their proceedings upon this occasion; that the stories of the conspiracy, and of the arms which had been discovered, were false; and that the individuals who had been arrested had been sent out of the kingdom, only because it was the opinion of the police that their residence in it might be prejudicial to the public tranquillity. Some of these individuals were permitted to come to England, others were sent to the Azores, after they had suffered every kind of inconvenience, privation, and indignity, to the alarm and distress of the families of all, and the ruin of some; ... there was neither proof nor accusation against them; the whole, as a public act, was one of those acts which mark the unheeding and unfeeling folly of an ignorant and obstinate despotism, but of which the secret springs are to be found in private malice or cupidity.

The manner in which the Portugueze government declared, that neither Marshal General Lord Wellington, nor the minister plenipotentiary of his Britannic Majesty, nor any individual of the British nation, had any part in these proceedings, nor any previous knowledge of them, make it apparent that the British general and the British minister disapproved of an act of tyranny which was thus in reality disclaimed on their part. They could not prevent that of which they were not apprised before it was done, nor after it was done could they express their disapprobation better than by requiring to have it thus distinctly stated, that the regency had neither acted upon their advice, nor received their sanction. It was the more to be regretted, because the other measures of the government entitled them to respect and gratitude. They had restored order in the country, and brought its resources into action, and their public acts and declarations corresponded to the spirit of the people. The ringleaders of the mutiny, which, in its consequences, had given Soult possession of Porto, were brought to trial and condign punishment; and after the most impartial examination of his conduct, General Bernardim Freire de Andrada, who had been murdered at Braga, was declared to have served his country faithfully and well, and the memory of those unfortunate men who perished in the same tumult was cleared of all imputation. An army more numerous than Portugal had ever before possessed was formed, equipped, and disciplined; and the government, when it reminded the people of their strength, did not fear to tell them of their danger. It announced the loss of Almeida, ... “a loss,” said the regents, “greatly to be lamented for the death of part of its defenders, and the unhappiness of others, who have thus fallen into captivity, but of little importance to the great cause of the salvation of the country. Wellington at the head of the allied armies; Beresford directing our troops, who are indebted to him for their organization and their discipline; brave soldiers, and a faithful people, who have sworn to defend their prince and their native land to the last extremity; these are the bulwarks which defend us; and these an army of slaves, who are continually wasting away by want and desertion, will never be able to beat down.”

♦Apprehensions of the British government.♦

The Portugueze, and those especially who were intrusted with the government of their country, cannot be extolled above their merits, for the spirit which they displayed at this crisis, the most momentous, and to ordinary minds the most appalling of the whole war. Their merit is the greater because there was not that vigour in the British cabinet which the emergency required; and because with all their confidence in British fidelity, they could not have been without some apprehension of seeing the defence of Portugal abandoned by Great Britain. The enemy had exultingly proclaimed that the English would fly to their ships, and some colour for the boast was afforded by the fact that a fleet large enough to receive the troops was lying in the Tagus, and evidently detained there for such a service. The heavy baggage of the army was actually kept on board; and Lord Wellington was at that time acting under instructions of a character to excite in him any thing rather than confidence or hope. They were to this effect, that his majesty would be better pleased if the army were withdrawn too soon, than that its embarkation should be endangered by the least delay. Such instructions must inevitably have drawn on the disgrace and ruin which they anticipated, if they had been addressed to a man of inferior capacity, or meaner mind. A want of courage and of generosity was implied in them which is but too characteristic of British ministries. Instead of assuring the commander of support, whatever might be the issue, if nothing on his part were left undone, he was made to understand that any risk which he incurred must be upon his own responsibility, and that any disaster which he might sustain would be imputed to his decision. But Providence was with us, and directed the course of events to a glorious and happy issue, notwithstanding our repeated errors.

Lord Wellington had the farther mortification of knowing that the army, satisfied as he was with its conduct in all respects, partook that despondency which the pestilent activity of a faction at home was continually labouring to produce, and which the events of the campaign had hitherto tended to confirm. His plans had been long meditated and wisely formed; but the reasonable expectations which he founded upon them were disappointed by the accident that drew after it the fall of Almeida. That place might easily have held out till the autumnal rains should have rendered it impossible for the French to advance, and scarcely practicable for them to have subsisted their army upon that frontier. To gain time at this juncture was for him to gain every thing: here he thought to have wintered in the sure expectation that every day would render the Portugueze troops more efficient, and with the reasonable hope that, through Marquis Wellesley’s influence in the cabinet, he should receive such reinforcements as would enable him to act upon the offensive. Accident had frustrated this intent; the enemy were enabled to advance, elated with their fortune, and relying upon it as the only divinity in which they were encouraged to trust; and Massena, whose plans had hitherto succeeded beyond his calculations, and even to the extent of his hopes, had the advantage of relying upon the disposition as well as the efficiency of his army, and the full support of a government which placed ample means at his command, crippled him with no restrictions, and threatened him with no responsibility.

♦Movements of Regnier’s corps, and of General Hill.♦