Sir John Moore strenuously grappled with the difficulties besetting him: well knowing the value of time in military transactions, he urged forward the preparations with all possible activity. He was very desirous, that troops who had a journey of six hundred miles to make previous to meeting the enemy, should not, at the commencement, be overwhelmed by the torrents of rain which in Portugal descend at this period with such violence as to destroy the shoes, ammunition, and accoutrements of a soldier, and render him almost unfit for service. The Spanish generals recommended that the line of march should be conducted by Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Valladolid, and Burgos, and that the magazines for the campaign should be formed at one of the latter towns; and as this coincided with the previous preparations, the army was organized in three columns, two of which were directed upon Almeida, by the routes of Coimbra and Guarda, and the third, comprising the artillery, the cavalry, and the regiments quartered in the Alemtejo, was destined to move by Alcantara, upon Ciudad Rodrigo. Almeida itself was chosen for a place of arms, and all the reserve-stores and provisions were forwarded there, as time and circumstances would permit; but the want of money, the unsettled state [Appendix, No. 13], section 3. of the country, and the inexperience of the commissariat, rendered it difficult to procure the means of transport even for the light baggage of the regiments, although the quantity of the latter was reduced so much as to create discontent. One Sattaro (the same person who has been already mentioned as an agent of Junot’s in the negotiation with sir Charles Cotton) engaged to supply the army, but dishonestly failing in his contract, so embarrassed the operations, that the general resigned all hope of being able to move with more than the light baggage, the ammunition necessary for immediate use, and a scanty supply of medicines. The formation of the magazines at Almeida was also retarded, and the future subsistence of the troops was thus thrown upon a raw commissariat, unprovided with money. The general, however, relying upon its increasing experience, and upon the activity of lord William Bentinck and Mr. Stuart, did not delay his march, but sent agents to Madrid and other places to make contracts, and to endeavour to raise money, for such was the policy of the ministers, that they supplied the Spaniards with gold, and left the English army to get it back in loans.
Many of the regiments were actually in movement when an unexpected difficulty forced the commander-in-chief to make a fresh disposition of the troops. The state of the Portuguese roads north of the Tagus was unknown; the native officers and the people declared that they were impracticable for artillery. The opinion of colonel Lopez, a military commissary, sent by the Spanish government to facilitate the march of the British, coincided with this information, and the reports of one of the most intelligent and enterprising of the officers of the quarter-master-general’s department, who were employed to examine the lines of route, corroborated the general opinion[16]. Junot, indeed, with infinite pains, had carried his guns along these roads, but his carriages had been broken, and the batteries rendered unserviceable by the operation. In this dilemma, sir John Moore reluctantly determined to send his artillery and cavalry by the south bank of the Tagus, to Talavera de la Reyna, from whence they might gain Naval Carneiro, the Escurial, the pass of the Guadarama mountains, Espiñar, Arevalo, and Salamanca. He would have marched the whole army by the same route, if this disagreeable intelligence respecting the northern roads had been obtained earlier; but when the arrangements were all made for the supplies to go to Almeida, and when most of the regiments were actually in movement towards that town, it was too late to alter their destination.
This separation of the artillery violated a great military principle, which prescribes that the point of concentration for an army should be beyond the reach of the enemy. But it was a matter of apparent necessity, and, moreover, no danger was apprehended from the offensive operations of an adversary represented to be incapable of maintaining his own line of defence. Valladolid and Burgos were considered by the Spaniards as safe places for the English magazines, and sir John Moore shared so much of the universal confidence in the Spanish enthusiasm and courage, as to suppose that Salamanca would not be an insecure point of concentration for his columns, under the protection of such numerous patriotic armies as were said to be on the Ebro. One brigade of six-pounders he retained with the head-quarters, the remainder of his artillery, twenty-four pieces; the cavalry, amounting to a thousand troopers; the great parc of the army, containing many hundred carriages, and escorted by three thousand infantry, he sent by the road of Talavera, under the command of sir John Hope, an officer qualified by his talents, firmness, and zeal, to conduct the most important enterprises.
The rest of the army marched in three columns, the first by Alcantara, the second by Abrantes, the third by Coimbra, in the direction of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo; and with such energy did the general overcome all obstacles, that the whole of the troops were in movement, and head-quarters quitted Lisbon by the 26th of October, just twenty days after the receipt of the despatch which appointed him to the chief command; a surprising diligence, but rendered necessary by the pressure of circumstances. “The army,” to use his own words, “run the risk of finding itself in front of the enemy with no more ammunition than the men carried in their pouches:” “but had I waited,” he adds, “until every thing was forwarded, the troops would not have been in Spain until the spring, and I trust that the enemy will not find out our wants as soon as they will feel the effects of what we have.”
The Spaniards, however, who expected “every body to fly except themselves,” thought him slow, and were impatient, and from every quarter indeed letters arrived, pressing him to advance. Lord William Bentinck and Mr. Stuart, witnesses of the sluggish incapacity of the Spanish government, judged that such a support was absolutely necessary to sustain the reeling strength of Spain. The supreme government were even awakened for a moment. Hitherto, as a mask for its ignorance, it had treated the French power with contempt, and the Spanish generals and the people echoed the sentiments of the government: but now, a letter addressed by the governor of Bayonne to general Jourdan, stating, that sixty thousand infantry, and seven thousand cavalry, would reinforce the French armies between the 16th of October and the 16th of November, was intercepted, and made the junta feel that a crisis for which it was unprepared was approaching. With the folly usually attendant on improvidence, these men, who had been so slow themselves, required that others should be supernaturally quick when danger pressed.
In the mean time sir David Baird’s forces arrived at Coruña. Lord William Bentinck had given intimation of their approach, and the central junta had repeatedly assured him, that every necessary order was given, and that every facility would be afforded, for the disembarkation and supply of the troops. This was untrue; no measures of any kind had been taken, no instructions issued, and no preparations were made. Capt. Kennedy’s Letter.
Pary. Paps. The junta of Coruña disliked the personal trouble of a disembarkation in that port, and in the hope that Baird would be driven to another, refused him permission to land, until a communication was had with Aranjuez; but fifteen days elapsed before an answer could be obtained from a government, who were daily pestering sir John Moore with complaints of the tardiness of his march.
[Appendix, No. 13], section 1.
Sir J. Moore to lord Castlereagh, 27th Oct.
Sir David Baird came without money, sir John could only give him 8000l., a sum which might have been mistaken for a private loan, if the fact of its being public property were not expressly mentioned. But at this time Mr. Frere, the plenipotentiary, arrived at Coruña, with two millions of dollars, intended for [Appendix, No. 13], section 5 and 6. the use of the Spaniards; and while such large sums, contrary to the earnest recommendations of Mr. Stuart and major Cox, were lavished in that quarter, the penury of the English general obliged him to borrow from the funds in Mr. Frere’s hands. Thus assisted, the troops were put in motion; but, wanting all the equipments essential to an army, they were forced to march by half battalions, conveying their scanty stores on country cars, hired from day to day, nor was that meagre assistance obtained but at great expense, and by compliance with a vulgar mercenary spirit predominant among the authorities of Gallicia. The junta frequently promised to procure the carriages, but did not; the commissaries pushed to the wall by the delay, offered an exorbitant remuneration: the cars were then forthcoming, and the procrastination of the government proved to be a concerted plan, to defraud the military chest. In fine, the local rulers were unfriendly, crafty, fraudulent, the peasantry suspicious, fearful, rude, disinclined towards strangers, and indifferent to public affairs. A few shots only were required to render theirs a hostile instead of a friendly greeting.
With Mr. Frere came a fleet, conveying a Spanish force, under the marquis of Romana. When the insurrection first broke forth, that nobleman commanded fourteen or fifteen thousand troops, who were serving with the French armies. How to recover this disciplined Sir H. Dalrymple’s Correspondence. body of men from the enemy was a subject of early anxiety with the junta of Seville; and Castaños, in his first intercourse with sir Hew Dalrymple, signified his wish that the British government should adopt some mode of apprising Romana, that Spain was in arms, and should endeavour to extricate him and his army from the toils of the enemy. A gentleman named M’Kenzie was employed by the English ministers to conduct the enterprise; the Spanish troops were quartered in Holstein, Sleswig, Jutland, and the islands of Funen, Zealand, and Langeland; Mr. M’Kenzie, through the medium of one Robertson, a catholic priest, opened a communication with Romana. Neither the general, nor the soldiers he commanded, hesitated, and a judicious plan being concerted, sir Richard Keats, with a squadron detached from the Baltic fleet, suddenly appeared off Nyborg, in the island of Funen. A majority of the Spanish regiments quartered in Sleswig immediately seized all the Danish craft in the different harbours of that coast, and pushed across the channel to Funen, where Romana, with the assistance of Keats, had already seized the port and castle of Nyborg without opposition, save from a small ship of war that was moored across the mouth of the harbour. From Nyborg Romana passed to Langeland, and there awaited the arrival of sir James Saumarez with the English fleet, on board of which he embarked with about nine thousand five hundred men. Of the remainder, some were disarmed, or overawed by the Danish troops in Zealand, and some did not escape from Sleswig. This enterprise was conducted with prudent activity, and the unhesitating patriotism of the Spanish soldiers was very honourable, but the danger was trifling; Mr. Robertson incurred the most. Romana, after touching at England, repaired to Coruña; his troops did not, however, land at that port, but after a while coasted to St. Andero, and being there disembarked, and equipped from the English stores, proceeded by divisions to join Blake’s army in Biscay.
Among the various subjects calling for sir John Moore’s attention, there was none of greater interest than the appointment of a generalissimo to the Spanish armies. Impressed with the imminent danger of procrastination, or uncertainty in such a matter, he desired lord William Bentinck and Mr. Stuart to urge the central government with all their force upon that head; to lord Castlereagh he represented the injury that must accrue to the cause, if the measure was delayed, and he proposed to go himself to Madrid, with a view of adding weight to his representations. Subsequent events, which left him no time for the journey, frustrated this intention, and there seems no reason to imagine, that his personal remonstrances would have weighed with a government, described by Mr. Stuart, after a thorough experience of their qualities, as, “never having made a single exertion for the public good, neither rewarding merit nor punishing guilt,” and being for all useful purposes “absolutely null.” The junta’s dislike to a single military chief was not an error of the head, and reason is of little avail against the suggestions of self-interest.