Lord Wellesley, a man with too many weaknesses to be called great, but of an expanded capacity, and a genius at once subtle and imperious, had come out on a special mission,—and Mr. Frere, whose last communication with the junta had been to recommend another military project, was happily displaced; yet, even in his private capacity, he made an effort to have some of the generals superseded; and the junta, with a refined irony, truly Spanish, created him marquis of Union.
At Cadiz, the honours paid to lord Wellesley were extravagant and unbecoming, and his journey from thence to Seville was a scene of triumph; but these outward demonstrations of feeling did not impose upon him beyond the moment. His brother’s correspondence and his own penetration soon enabled him to make a just estimate of the junta’s protestations. Disdaining their intrigues, and fully appreciating a general’s right to direct the operations of his own army, he seconded sir Arthur’s remonstrances with firmness, and wisely taking the latter’s statements as a guide and basis for his own views, urged them upon the Spanish government with becoming dignity.
The junta, on their part, always protesting that the welfare of the British army was the principal object of their care, did not fail to prove, very clearly upon paper, that the troops, ever since their entry into Spain, had been amply supplied: and that no measure might be wanting to satisfy the English general, they invested don Lorenzo Calvo, a member of their body, with full powers to draw forth and apply all the resources of the country to the nourishment of both armies. This gentleman’s promises and assurances, relative to the supply, were more full and formal than M. de Garay’s, and equally false. He declared that provisions and forage, in vast quantities, were actually being delivered into the magazines at Truxillo, when, in fact, there was not even an effort making to collect any. He promised that the British should be served, although the Spanish troops should thereby suffer; and, at the very time of making this promise, he obliged the alcaldes of a distant town to send, into the Spanish camp, provisions which had been already purchased by an English commissary. In fine, lord Wellesley had arrived too late; all the mischief that petulance, folly, bad faith, violence, and ignorance united, could inflict, was already accomplished, and, while he was vainly urging a vile, if not a treacherous government, to provide sustenance for the soldiers, sir Arthur withdrew the latter from a post where the vultures, in their prescience of death, were already congregating.
The 20th, the main body of the British army quitted Jaraicejo, and marched by Truxillo upon Merida. The light brigade, under Craufurd, being relieved at Almaraz by the Spaniards, took the road of Caceres to Valencia de Alcantara. But the pass of Mirabete bore ample testimony to the previous sufferings of the troops; Craufurd’s brigade, which, only three weeks before, had traversed sixty miles in a single march, were now with difficulty, and after many halts, able to reach the summit of the Mirabete, although only four miles from their camp; and the side of that mountain was covered with baggage, and the carcases of many hundred animals that died in the ascent.
The retreat being thus commenced, the junta, with the malevolence of anger engendered by fear, calumniated the man to whom, only ten days before, they had addressed the most fulsome compliments, and to whose courage and skill they owed their own existence. “It was not the want of provisions,” they said, “but some other motive that caused the English general to retreat.” This was openly and insultingly stated by Garray, by Eguia, and by Calvo, in their correspondence with lord Wellesley and sir Arthur; and at the same time the junta industriously spread a report that the true reason was their own firm resistance to the ungenerous demands of the English ministers, who had required the cession of Cadiz and the island of Cuba, as the price of furthur assistance.
At Talavera, sir Arthur Wellesley had been forced to give over to the Spaniards the artillery taken from the enemy. At Meza d’Ibor, he had sacrificed a part of his ammunition, to obtain conveyance for the wounded men, and to effect the present movement from Jaraicejo, without leaving his sick behind, he was obliged to abandon all his parc of ammunition, and stores, and then the Spanish generals, who had refused the slightest aid to convey the sick and wounded men, immediately found ample means to carry off all these stores to their own magazines. In this manner, almost bereft of baggage and ammunition, those soldiers, who had withstood the fiercest efforts of the enemy, were driven, as it were, ignominiously from the country they had protected to their loss.
The 24th, the head-quarters being at Merida, a despatch from lord Wellesley was received. He painted in strong colours the terror of the junta, the distraction of the people, and the universal confusion; and with a natural anxiety to mitigate their distress, he proposed that the British army should, notwithstanding the past, endeavour to cover Andalusia, by taking, in conjunction with the Spanish army, a defensive post behind the Guadiana, in such manner that the left should rest on the frontier of Portugal: to facilitate this he had, he said, presented a plan to the junta for the future supply of provisions, and the vicinity of the frontier and of Seville would, he hoped, obviate any difficulty on that point. But he rested his project entirely upon political grounds; and it is worthy of observation that he who, for many years had, with despotic power, controlled the movements of immense armies in India, carefully avoided any appearance of meddling with the general’s province. “I am,” said he, “fully sensible not only of the indelicacy, but of the inutility of attempting to offer to you any opinion of mine in a situation where your own judgement must be your best guide.”—“Viewing, however, so nearly, the painful consequences of your immediate retreat into Portugal, I have deemed it to be my duty to submit it to your consideration the possibility of adopting an intermediate plan.”
On the receipt of this despatch, sir Arthur Wellesley halted at Merida for some days. He was able in that country to obtain provisions, and he wished, if possible, to allay the excitement occasioned by his retreat; but he refused to co-operate again with the Spaniards. Want, he said, had driven him to separate from them, but their shameful flight at Arzobispo would alone have justified him for doing so. To take up a defensive position behind the Guadiana would be useless, because that river was fordable, and the ground behind it weak. The line of the Tagus, occupied at the moment by Eguia, was so strong, that if the Spaniards could defend any thing they might defend that. His advice then was that they should send the pontoon-bridge to Badajos, and remain on the defensive at Deleytoza and Almaraz. But, it might be asked, was there no chance of renewing the offensive? To what purpose? The French were as numerous, if not more so, than the allies; and, with respect to the Spaniards at least, superior in discipline and every military quality. To advance again was only to play the same losing game as before. Baños and Perales must be guarded, or the bands in Castile would again pour through upon the rear of the allied army; but who was to guard these passes? The British were too few to detach, and the Spaniards could not be trusted; and if they could, Avila and the Guadarama passes remained, by which the enemy could reinforce the army in front,—for there were no Spanish troops in the north of Spain capable of making a diversion.
“But there was a more serious consideration, namely, the constant and shameful misbehaviour of the Spanish troops before the enemy. We, in England,” said sir Arthur, “never hear of their defeats and flights, but I have heard Spanish officers telling of nineteen or twenty actions of the description of that at the bridge of Arzobispo, accounts of which, I believe, have never been published.” “In the battle of Talavera,” he continued, “in which the Spanish army, with very trifling exception, was not engaged,—whole corps threw away their arms, and run off, when they were neither attacked nor threatened with an attack. When these dastardly soldiers run away they plunder every thing they meet. In their flight from Talavera they plundered the baggage of the British army, which was, at that moment, bravely engaged in their cause.”
For these reasons he would not, he said, again co-operate with the Spaniards; yet, by taking post on the Portuguese frontier, he would hang upon the enemy’s flank, and thus, unless the latter came with very great forces, prevent him from crossing the Guadiana. This reasoning was conclusive; but, ere it reached lord Wellesley, the latter found that so far from his plans, relative to the supply, having been adopted, he could not even get an answer from the junta; and that miserable body, at one moment stupified with fear, at the next bursting with folly, now talked of the enemy’s being about to retire to the Pyrenees, or even to the interior of France: and assuming the right to dispose of the Portuguese army as well as of their own, importunately pressed for an immediate, combined, offensive operation, by the troops of the three nations, to harass the enemy in his retreat; but, at the same time, they ordered Eguia to withdraw from Deleytoza, behind the Guadiana.