CHAPTER XXVII. I JOIN THE CANTONMENTS OF THE ALLIED ARMY—LIEUTENANT CROTTY’S INTERVIEW WITH LORD WELLINGTON.
“Sir James. Surely you exaggerate a little?
Papillon. Yes—yes, this interview will sink him.
Young Wilding. True to the letter, upon my honour.”
“Why he will tell you more lies in an hour than all the circulating libraries put together will publish in a year.”—The Liar.
I had scarcely landed when I received the unwelcome intelligence that General —————, to whose staff I had been appointed, had been wounded on the retreat from Burgos, and in consequence obliged to resign his command, and return to England invalided. I felt the disappointment severely—but as the corps that I had previously exchanged into was at Valencia, with the Anglo-Sicilian army there collected, much as I should have desired “to follow to the field” the victor of Salamanca, I determined to join my regiment without delay, and “flesh my maiden sword” the ensuing campaign, under the colours of the old and honourable Twenty-seventh. Ignorant of the route by which I could cross the country to the eastern coast of Spain, and anxious to see that gallant army under whose conquering banners I had anticipated a glorious opening to my career in arms, after a three days’ sojourn in Lisbon, I left that city of filth and splendour in company with half a dozen officers en route to join their respective battalions—some, in return from leave—and others, like myself, to smell powder for the first time. A captain of an Irish regiment was of the party. He was a gay, honest-hearted, blundering countryman; and from the graphic sketches D’Arcy gwe me on the road of all attached to the battalion I was about to join, from the junior Ensign of sixteen, to the old stiff-backed Colonel of sixty, I became so familiar with the corps, that I almost fancied at first sight I could have placed my hand on every head, and identified the individual—and, on the evening when we entered the encampment of the regiment, I felt perfectly at home, and entered the rude mess-room as much at ease, as if, after a temporary absence, I was merely returning to join some old acquaintances.
It was a memorable epoch in the military history of Britain, when, early in the second week of February, 1813, I found myself in the cantonments of the fourth division on the banks of the Agueda. Like all sublunary affairs, war has its season of repose; and those mighty masses of armed men, who but a few months before had stood in threatening array in presence of each other, were separated by mutual consent to recover their losses and fatigues, and prepare for renewed exertions. Each had selected that portion of the country best adapted for obtaining supplies and reinforcements. The allied infantry were cantoned generally on the Agueda and Douro—with their cavalry in the valley of the Moudego, and round Moncorbo. One Spanish corps passed the winter in Gallicia, a second in Estremadura, and a third garrisoned Ciudad Rodrigo. Of the French armies, the head quarters of the northern was at Valladolid; the southern at Toledo; and those of the centre, including King Joseph and his guards, were established at Segovia. In military circumstances, the rival armies found themselves, at the end of the preceding autumn, in a position similar to that of men who have fought a battle in which neither have come off conqueror. Both had sustained enormous losses without countervailing advantages; and each required its casualties to be replaced, and its discipline restored. At the opening of the campaign, fortune went as heavily against the enemy, as it did against the allies at the close. From the 18th of July, when the French passed the Douro, until they recrossed it on the 30th, their loss might have been set down at fifteen thousand men, and the allies at about a third of that number. While, from the time when Lord Wellington broke ground before Burgos, until he halted on the banks of the Huebra, in retreat, chiefly from drunkenness and military irregularity, eight thousand of the allies were rendered hors de combat.
No wonder therefore that to both armies, winter presented a seasonable period of repose, and that both willingly accepted it. Nearly one third of his army were in hospital, and hence Lord Wellington deemed that rest for it was indispensable. Nor could his opponents avail themselves of this weakness, and continue active operations, for the French supplies were insecure, and their bases of operation disturbed by Partida bands, which were every where swarming on their flanks and in their rear. Indeed each army dreaded that the other would resume hostilities; and when a report prevailed that Soult, who was upon the Upper Tonnes, meditated an invasion of Portugal by the valley of the Tagus, and Wellington had, accordingly, removed the boat bridges at Almarez and Arzobispo, the French, equally afraid that the allies might cross the river, destroyed all means of passage at other points which the English general had overlooked as unnecessary.
Such was the military position of the allies in the field—one that, abroad, rendered the question of ulterior success an uncertainty; while at home, the failure before Burgos renewed loud expressions of discontent, which the brilliant opening of the late campaign had partially subdued. England was divided into two great sections; one party advocating the necessity of continuing the Spanish war, and another decrying it as a ruinous experiment. What Salamanca had effected in establishing the policy of maintaining the struggle on the Peninsula, the retreat to the Agueda had undone; and the balance of public opinion respecting the expediency of abandoning the contest in Spain was restored. “The ministerial party had expected far too much, and consequently their disappointment was proportionate: the opposition had raised the wolf-cry until the country had ceased to dread it; and they caught desperately at what proved a last pretext, to reiterate their denunciations, and abuse him who conducted, and those who planned the war. Ministers were denounced for continuing the contest, and for starving it—Lord Wellington both for inactivity and for rashness—for doing too little and too much” *—for wasting time at Madrid, and for attempting a siege with means so inadequate, that nothing but an enormous expenditure of blood could possibly obtain success.