Two additional articles were, subsequently to the ratification of the original treaty, proposed by the Russians, and assented to by the English admiral. The first stipulated that the imperial flag should be displayed, even in the British harbours, as long as the Russian admiral remained on board. The second provided that the ships themselves and their stores should be delivered again at the appointed time, in the same state as when surrendered. The rights of the Portuguese were not referred to; but sir Charles Parliamentary Papers, 1809. Cotton individually was justified by his instructions in this breach of neutrality, for by them he was authorised to make prize of the Russian fleet, which thus suffered all the inconvenience of hostilities, and its commander the shame of striking his colours without having violated in any manner the relations of amity in which his nation stood with regard to the Portuguese. On the other hand, for the sake of a few old and decaying ships, the British government made an injudicious display of contempt for the independence of their ally, as, with singular inconsistency, they permitted the officers and crews, the real strength of the squadron, to return to the Baltic, although scarcely a year had elapsed since the national character was defiled to extinguish in that quarter the existence of a navy inimical to Great Britain.
Pary. Paps. 1809. Admiralty Instructions to sir C. Cotton, 16th April, 1808.
Ibid. Mr. Welly. Pole to sir C. Cotton, 17th Sept. 1808.
This inconsistency belonged wholly to the ministers; for the two original articles of the treaty only were confirmed by them, and they were copied verbatim from the Admiralty instructions delivered to sir Charles Cotton four months previous to the transaction. Yet that officer, by the very men who had framed those instructions, was, with matchless inconsistency, rebuked, for having adopted a new principle of maritime surrender!
The 2d of September head-quarters were established at Oyeras. The right of the army occupied the forts at the mouth of the river, the left rested upon the heights of Bellas.
The French army being concentrated in Lisbon, posted their piquets and guards as if in front of an enemy, and at night the sentries fired upon whoever Thiebault. approached their posts; the police disbanded of their own accord, and the city became a scene of turbulence, anarchy, and crime. Notwithstanding the presence of their enemies, the inhabitants of the capital testified their joy, and evinced their vengeful feelings in a remarkable manner; they refused to sell any provisions, or to deal in any manner with the French, they sung songs of triumph in their hearing, and in their sight fabricated thousands of small lamps for the avowed purpose of illuminating the streets at their departure. The doors of many of the houses occupied by the troops were marked in one night; men were observed bearing in their hats lists of Portuguese or Frenchmen designed for slaughter, and the quarters of Loison were threatened with a serious attack. Yet amidst all this disorder and violence, general Travot, and some others of the French army, fearlessly and safely traversed the streets, unguarded save by the reputation of their just and liberal conduct when in power; a fact extremely honourable to the Portuguese, and conclusive of the misconduct of Ibid. Loison. Junot himself was menaced by an assassin, but he treated the affair with magnanimity, and, in general, he was respected, although in a far less degree than Travot. The dread of an explosion, which would have compromised at once the safety of the French army and of the city, induced Junot to hasten the period when an English division was to occupy the citadel and take charge of the public tranquillity.
Emissaries from the junta of Oporto fomented the disposition of the populace to commit themselves by an attack upon the French; the convention was reprobated, and endeavours were fruitlessly made to turn the tide of indignation even against the English, as abettors of the invaders. The judge of the people, an energetic, but turbulent fellow, issued an inflammatory address calling for a suspension of the treaty, and designating the French as robbers and as insulters of religion. The Monteiro Mor, who commanded a rabble of peasantry which he dignified with the title of an army, had taken possession of the south bank of the Tagus, and from his quarters issued a protest against the convention, the execution of which he had the audacity to call upon sir Charles Cotton to interrupt. The latter sent his communications to sir Hew Dalrymple, who treated them with the contemptuous indignation they merited.
Sir John Hope being appointed the English commandant of Lisbon, took possession of the castle of Belem on the 10th, and of the citadel on the 12th, and, by his firm and vigorous conduct, soon reduced the effervescence of the public mind, and repressed the disorders which had arisen to a height that gave opportunity for the commission of any villany. The duke of Abrantes, with his staff, embarked the 13th. The first division of his army sailed the 15th, it was followed by the second and third divisions, and on the 30th all the French, except the garrisons of Elvas and Almeida, were out of Portugal.
The execution of the convention had not been carried on thus far without much trouble and contestation. Lord Proby, the English commissioner appointed to carry the articles of the treaty into effect, was joined by major-general Beresford on the 5th, and their united labours were scarcely sufficient to meet the exigencies of a task in the prosecution of which disputes hourly arose. Anger, the cupidity of individuals, and opportunity, combined to push the French beyond the bounds of honour and decency, and several gross attempts were made to appropriate property which no interpretation of the stipulations could give a colour to; amongst the most odious were the abstraction of manuscripts and rare specimens of natural history from the national museum, and the invasion of the deposito publico, or funds of money awaiting legal decision for their final appropriation. Those dishonest attempts were met and checked with a strong hand, and at last a committee, consisting of an individual of each of the three nations, was appointed by the commissioners on both sides. Their office was to receive reclamations, to investigate them, and to do justice by seizing upon all contraband baggage embarked by the French. This measure was attended with excellent effect. It must, however, be observed, that the loud complaints and violence of the Portuguese, and the machinations of the bishop of Oporto, seem to have excited the suspicions of the British, and influenced their actions more than the real facts warranted; for the national character of the Portuguese was not then understood, nor the extent to which they supplied the place of true reports, by the fabrication of false ones, generally known. Writers have not been wanting to exaggerate the grounds of complaint. The English have imputed fraud, and evasions of the most dishonourable kind to the French, and the latter have retorted by accusations of gratuitous insult and breach of faith, asserting that their soldiers when on board the British ships were treated with cruelty in order to induce them to desert. It would be too much to affirm that all the error was on one side, but it does appear reasonable and consonant to justice to decide, that as the French were originally aggressors and acting for their own interest, and that the British were interfering for the protection of the Portuguese, any indecorous zeal upon the part of the latter, if not commendable, was certainly more excusable than in their opponents. Upon the ground of its being evidently impossible for him to know what was doing in his name, the British commissioners acquitted Junot of any personal impropriety of conduct, and his public orders, which denounced severe punishments for such malpractices, corroborated Sir H. Dalrymple’s Narrative. Court of Inquiry. this testimony; yet Kellerman, in his communications with sir Hew Dalrymple, did not scruple to insinuate matter to the duke’s disadvantage. But, amidst all these conflicting accusations, the British commander’s personal good faith and scrupulous adherence to justice has never been called in question.
To define the exact extent to which each party should have pushed their claims is not an easy task; but an impartial investigator would begin by carefully separating the original rights of the French from those rights which they acquired by the convention. Much of the subsequent clamour in England against the authors of that treaty sprung from the error of confounding these essentially distinct grounds of argument. Conquest being the sole foundation of the first, defeat, if complete, extinguished them, if incomplete, nullified a part only. Now the issue of the appeal to arms not having been answerable to the justice of the cause, an agreement ensued, by which a part was sacrificed for the sake of the remainder, and upon the terms of that agreement the whole question of right hinges. If the French were not prisoners of war, it follows that they had not forfeited their claims founded on the right of conquest, but they were willing to exchange an insecure tenure of the whole for a secure tenure of a part. The difficulty consisted in defining exactly what was conceded, and what should be recovered from them. With respect to the latter, the restitution of plunder acquired anterior to the convention was clearly out of the question: if officially made, it was part of the rights bargained for, and if individually, to what tribunal could the innumerable claims which would follow such an article be referred? Abstract notions of right in such matters are misplaced. If an army surrenders at discretion, the victors may say with Brennus, “Woe to the vanquished;” but a convention implies some weakness, and must be weighed in the scales of prudence, not in those of justice.