Put to lord Bacon’s test, in what shall the retreat to Coruña be found deficient? something in discipline perhaps, but that fault does not attach to the general. Those commanders who have been celebrated for making fine retreats were in most instances well acquainted with their armies; and Hannibal, speaking of the elder Scipio, derided him, although a brave and skilful man, for that, being unknown to his own soldiers, he should presume to oppose himself to a general who could call to each man under his command by name: thus inculcating, that, unless troops be trained in the peculiar method of a commander, the latter can scarcely achieve any thing great. Now sir John Moore had a young army suddenly placed under his guidance, and it was scarcely united, when the superior numbers of the enemy forced it to a retrograde movement under very harassing circumstances; he had not time, therefore, to establish a system of discipline, and it is in the leading events, not the minor details, that the just criterion of his merits is to be sought for.
Was the retreat uncalled for? Was it unnecessarily precipitate? Was any opportunity of crippling the enemy lost? Was any weakness to be discovered in the personal character of the general? These are the questions that sensible men will ask; the first has been already examined, the second is a matter of simple calculation. The rear guard quitted Astorga on the 1st of January; on the 3rd, it repulsed the enemy in a sharp skirmish at Calcabelos; the 6th it rejoined the main body at Lugo, having three times checked the pursuers during the march. It was unbroken, and lost no gun, suffered no misfortune; the whole army offered battle at Lugo for two successive days, it was not accepted, and the retreat recommencing, the troops reached Betanzos on the morning of the 10th, and Coruña on the 11th; thus in eleven days, three of which were days of rest, a small army passed over a hundred and fifty miles of good road. Now Napoleon, with fifty thousand men, left Madrid on the 22d of December, the 28th he was at Villapando, having performed a march, on bad roads, of a hundred and sixty-four miles in seven days. The retreat to Coruña was consequently not precipitate, unless it can be shown, that it was unnecessary to retreat at all beyond Villa Franca, neither can it be asserted, that any opportunity of crippling the enemy was lost. To fight a battle was the game of the French marshal, and if any censure will apply to his able campaign, it is that he delayed to attack at Lugo; victorious or beaten, the embarrassments of his adversary must have been increased; sir John Moore must have continued his retreat encumbered with the wounded, or the latter must have been abandoned without succour in the midst of winter.
At Coruña the absence of the fleet necessarily brought on a battle; that it was honourable to the British troops is clear from the fact that they embarked without loss after the action; and that it was absolutely necessary to embark notwithstanding the success, is as certain a proof how little advantage could have been derived from any battle fought farther inland, and how prudently sir John Moore acted in declining an action the moment he had rallied his army at Lugo, and restored that discipline which the previous movements had shaken; but, notwithstanding the clamour with which this campaign has been assailed, as if no army had ever yet suffered such misfortunes, it is certain that the nominal loss was small, the real loss smaller, and that it sinks into nothing when compared with the advantages gained. An [Appendix, No. 26.]
Ibid. army which, after marching in advance or retreat above five hundred miles before an enemy of immensely superior force, has only lost, including those killed in battle, four thousand men, or a sixth part of its numbers, cannot be said to have suffered severely, nor would the loss have been so great but for the intervention of the accidental occurrences mentioned in the narrative. Night marches are seldom happy; that from Lugo to Betanzos cost the army in stragglers more than double the number of men lost in all the preceding operations; nevertheless the reserve in that, as in all the other movements, suffered little; and it is a fact, that the light brigades detached by the Vigo road, which were not pursued, made no forced marches, slept under cover, and were well supplied, left, in proportion to their strength, as many men behind as any other part of the army; thus accumulating proof upon proof that inexperience was the primary and principal cause of the disorders which attended the retreat. Those disorders were sufficiently great, but many circumstances contributed to produce an appearance of suffering and disorganization which was not real. The intention of sir John Moore was, to have proceeded to Vigo, in order to restore order before he sailed for England: instead of which the fleet steered home directly from Coruña; a terrible storm scattered it; many ships were wrecked, and the remainder, driving up the channel, were glad to put into any port. The soldiers, thus thrown on shore, were spread from the Land’s End to Dover. Their haggard appearance, ragged clothing, and dirty accoutrements, things common enough in war, struck a people only used to the daintiness of parade, with surprise; the usual exaggerations of men just escaped from perils and distresses were increased by the uncertainty in which all were as to the fate of their comrades; a deadly fever, the result of anxiety, and of the sudden change from fatigue to the confinement of a ship, filled the hospitals at every port with officers and soldiers, and thus the miserable state of sir John Moore’s army became the topic of every letter, and a theme for every country newspaper along the coast. The nation, at that time unused to great operations, forgot that war is not a harmless game, and judging of the loss positively, instead of comparatively, was thus disposed to believe the calumnies of interested men, who were eager to cast a shade over one of the brightest characters that ever adorned the country. Those calumnies triumphed for a moment; but Moore’s last appeal to his country for justice will be successful. Posterity, revering and cherishing his name, will visit such of his odious calumniators as are not too contemptible to be remembered with a just and severe retribution; for thus it is that time freshens the beauty of virtue and withers the efforts of baseness; and if authority be sought for in a case where reason speaks so plainly, future historians will not fail to remark, that the man whose talents exacted the praises of Soult, of Wellington, and of Napoleon, could be no ordinary soldier.
“Sir John Moore,” says the first, “took every advantage that the country afforded to oppose an active [Appendix, No. 16.] and vigorous resistance, and he finished, by dying in a combat that must do credit to his memory.”
Vivian’s Conversations at Elba.
Napoleon more than once affirmed, that if he committed a few trifling errors they were to be attributed Voice from St. Helena to his peculiar situation, for that his talents and firmness alone had saved the English army from destruction.
“In sir John Moore’s campaign,” said the duke of Wellington, “I can see but one error; when he advanced to Sahagun he should have considered it as a movement of retreat, and sent officers to the rear to mark and prepare the halting-places for every brigade; but this opinion I have formed after long experience of war, and especially of the peculiarities of a Spanish war, which must have been seen to be understood; finally, it is an opinion formed after the event.”
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.