“We have at last broke ground for some works, but I am almost at a loss to explain to you the cause of our delay. The truth is, we left England so ill provided with tools and other requisites for beginning works that till lately it has been positively impossible to commence, even on a small scale, from our own resources and number of men. These facts, with the backwardness of the Spaniards to contribute either stores or workmen to the general cause, has kept us so long inactive. We have now one thousand three hundred men at work, and the Board of Ordnance has supplied us with more tools.”
SECTION 2.
“Isla, June 1, 1810.
“We might defy the power of France to expel us by force from hence if all were done that might be done, or even what is projected, but we have only British troops at work on this important position, and our numbers will not permit the progress which the exigency of affairs requires.”—“We have in our respected general (Graham) a confidence which is daily on the increase. He has a mind and temper well adapted to encounter difficulties which less favoured dispositions could not bear. We may possibly maintain our ground. If we do, although our success may have none of the brilliancy of victory, yet his merits, who, by patience, prudence, and self-possession, shall have kept all quiet within our lines, preserved tolerable harmony, and kept an enterprizing enemy off with very inadequate means, should be rewarded by his country’s good opinion, although none but those who have witnessed can fully estimate the value of his exertions. On the whole, our situation may be said to inspire hope, though not security: to animate resistance, though not to promise victory.”
SECTION 3.
“June 29, 1810.
“I have been attending a committee of Spanish engineers and artillery officers, to settle some determinate plan for taking up the ground near the town of La Isla; but they will enter into no views which include the destruction of a house or garden. They continue to propose nothing but advanced batteries upon the marsh in front of the town, the evident object of which is to keep the shells of the enemy rather farther from the houses. At a general attack, all this would be lost and carried, by small parties coming in on the flanks and gorges. Instead of deepening the ditches and constructing good redoubts at every seven hundred yards, this is what they propose, although we offer to perform the labour for them. On a barren spot they will agree to our working; but of what service is one redoubt, if unsupported by a collateral defence, and if a general system is not attended to. We have now been here three months, and although they have been constantly urged to construct something at that weak tongue of low land, St. Petri, still nothing of importance is begun upon, nor do I imagine they will agree to any work of strength at that point. I am almost in despair of seeing this place strongly fortified, so as to resist an army of from fifty to one hundred thousand men, which I am convinced it is capable of.”—“We have now one thousand three hundred labourers of the line and eighty carpenters, but, for the latter, the timber we are supplied with from our ally, is so bad that these artificers produce not more than one-fifth or one-sixth what they would be capable of if the materials were good. To judge from their conduct it is impossible to suppose them determined to oppose a vigorous resistance even in La Isla, and I have no idea of there ever being a siege of Cadiz itself.”—“Of our seven subalterns of engineers two are generally ill; we are obliged, therefore, to get assistance from the line. The consequence is that the work is neither so well nor so speedily executed. We ought to have many more (engineers). It is not economy in the governments; and with Lord Wellington they have hardly any with the army.”
EXTRACTS FROM THE OFFICIAL ABSTRACT OF MILITARY REPORTS FROM THE BRITISH COMMANDERS AT CADIZ.
SECTION 4.
General William Stewart, March 13, 1810.