The 5th of December sir John Cradock, being on his voyage to Lisbon, touched at Coruña. Fifteen hundred thousand dollars had just arrived there in the Lavinia frigate; but, sir John Moore’s intention to retreat upon Portugal being known, Cradock divided this sum, and carried away eight hundred thousand dollars, proposing to leave a portion at Oporto, and to take the remainder to Lisbon, that Moore might find, on whatever line he retreated, a supply of money.
From Coruña he proceeded to Oporto, and landed to gather information of the state of affairs. Here he found that sir Robert Wilson had succeeded in organizing, under the title of the Lusitanian Legion, about thirteen hundred men, and that others were [Appendix, No. 3], section 2. on their way to reinforce him; but, this excepted, nothing at Oporto, civil or military, bespoke either arrangement or common sense. The bishop, still intent upon acquiring supreme rule, was deeply engaged with secret intrigues, and, under him, a number of factious and designing persons instigated the populace to violent actions, with a view to profit from their excesses.
The formation of the Lusitanian Legion was originally a project of the chevalier da Souza, the Portuguese minister in London. Souza was one of the bishop’s faction, and the prelate calculated upon this force not so much to repel the enemy as to give weight to his own party against the government. The men were promised higher pay than any other Portuguese soldiers, to the great discontent of the latter, and they were clad in uniforms differing in colour from the national troops. The regency, who dreaded the machinations of the turbulent priest, entertained the utmost jealousy of the legion, which, in truth, was a most anomalous force, and, as might be expected from its peculiar constitution, was productive of much embarrassment.
Sir John Cradock left three hundred thousand dollars at Oporto, and having directed the two British battalions which were in that neighbourhood to march to Almeida, he took on board a small detachment of German troops, and set sail for Lisbon; but, before his departure, he strongly advised sir Robert Wilson to move such of his legionaries as were sufficiently organized to Villa Real, in Tras os Montes, a place appointed by the regency for the [Appendix, No. 6], section 1. assembly of the forces in the north. Sir Robert, tired of the folly and disgusted with the insolence and excesses of the ruling mob, readily adopted this advice, so far as to quit Oporto, but, having views of his own, took the direction of Almeida instead of Villa Real.
The state of the capital was little better than that of Oporto. There was arrangement neither for present nor for future defence, and the populace, [Appendix, No. 3], section 5. albeit less openly encouraged to commit excesses, were quite uncontrolled by the government. The regency had a keener dread of domestic insurrection than of the return of the French, whose operations they regarded with even less anxiety than the bishop did, as being further removed than he was from the immediate theatre of war. Their want of system and vigilance, evinced by the following fact, was truly surprising. Sattaro and another person, having contracted for the supply of the British troops, demanded, in the name of the English general, all the provisions in the public stores of Portugal, and then sold them to the English commissaries for his own profit.
Sir John Cradock’s instructions directed him to reinforce sir John Moore’s army, and, if the course of events should bring that general back to Portugal, he was not to be interfered with. In fact, Cradock’s operations were limited to the holding of Elvas, Almeida, and the capital; for, although he was directed to encourage the formation of a native army upon a good and regular system, and even to act in concert with it on the frontier, he was [Appendix, No. 4], section 1. debarred from political interference; and even his relative situation, as to rank, was left unsettled until the arrival of Mr. Villiers, to whose direction all political and many military arrangements were entrusted.
It is evident that the influence of a general thus fettered, and commanding only a small force, which was moreover much scattered, must be feeble and insufficient to produce any real amelioration in the military situation of the country. But the English ministers, attentive to the false information obtained from interested agents, still imagined that not only the Spanish, but the Portuguese armies were numerous, and to be relied upon; and they confidently expected, that the latter would be able to take an active part in the Spanish campaign.
Cradock, feeling the danger of this illusion, made it his first object to ascertain, and to transmit home, exact information of the real strength and efficiency of the native regular troops. They were nominally twenty thousand; but Miguel Percira Forjas, military secretary to the regency, and the ablest public man Portugal possessed, acknowledged that this force was a nullity, and that there were not more Cradock’s Correspondence, MSS. than ten thousand stand of serviceable arms in the kingdom, the greatest part of which were English. The troops themselves were undisciplined and unruly; and the militia and the “ordenanza,” or armed peasantry, animated rather by a spirit of outrage than of enthusiasm, evinced no disposition to submit to regulation, neither was there any branch of administration free from the grossest disorder.
The Spanish dollar had a general acceptance in Portugal. The regency, under the pretence that a debased foreign coin would drive the Portuguese coin out of circulation, deprived the dollar of its current value. This regulation, true in principle, and applicable, as far as the Portuguese gold coin (which is of peculiar fineness) was concerned, had, however, a most injurious effect. The Spanish dollar was in reality finer than the Portuguese silver cruzado-nova, and would finally have maintained its value, notwithstanding this decree. But a slur being thus thrown upon it by the government, the money changers contrived to run its value down for the moment, a matter of infinite importance; for the English soldiers and sailors being all paid in these dollars, at four shillings and sixpence, which was the true value, were thus suddenly mulcted four-pence in each, by the artificial depreciation of the moment. The men attributed this to fraud in the shopkeepers; the retail trade of Lisbon was interrupted, and quarrels between the tradesmen and the soldiers took place hourly.
To calm this effervescence, a second decree was promulgated, directing that the dollar should be received at the mint and in the public offices at its real value. It then appeared that the government could profit by coining the dollar of four shillings and sixpence into cruzado-novas, a circumstance which gave the whole affair the appearance of an unworthy trick to recruit the treasury. This happened in October; and as the financial affairs were ill managed, and the regency destitute of vigour or capacity, the taxes were unpaid, the hard cash exhausted, and the treasury paper at a heavy discount when Cradock arrived. Upon the scroll thus unfolded he could only read confusion, danger, and misfortune; for such being the fruits of victory, what could be expected from disaster; and at this period (the middle of December) sir John Moore was supposed to be in full retreat upon Portugal, followed by the emperor with one French army, while another threatened Lisbon by the line of the Tagus. The English troops in the kingdom did not amount to ten thousand men, including the sick, and they were ill equipped and scattered; moreover, the capital was crowded with women and children, with baggage and non-combatants, belonging as well to the army in Spain as to that in Portugal.