The remainder of February passed without any event of importance, yet the people suffered from the want of provisions, especially fresh meat; and from the 7th to the 10th of March, a continued tempest, beating upon the coast, drove three Spanish and one Portuguese sail of the line, and a frigate and from thirty to forty merchantmen, on shore, between San Lucar and St. Mary’s. One ship of the line was taken, the others burnt and part of the crews brought off by boats from the fleet; but many men, and amongst others a part of the fourth English regiment fell into the hands of the enemy, together with an immense booty.
Early in March, Mr. Henry Wellesley, minister plenipotentiary arrived, and on the 24th of that month, general Graham coming from England assumed the chief command of the British, and immediately caused an exact military survey of the Isla to be made. It then appeared, that the force hitherto assigned for its defence, was quite inadequate, and that to secure it against the utmost efforts of the enemy, twenty thousand soldiers, and a system of redoubts, and batteries, requiring the labour of four thousand men for three months, Appendix, No. 3, Sect. 1.were absolutely necessary. Now, the Spaniards had only worked beyond the Santi Petri, and that without judgement; their batteries in the marsh were ill placed, their entrenchments on the tongue of land at the sea mouth of that channel, were of contemptible strength, and the Caraccas which they had armed with one hundred and fifty guns, being full of dry timber could be easily burned by carcasses. The interior defences of the Isla were quite neglected, and while they had abandoned the important posts of Matagorda, and the Troccadero, they had pushed their advanced batteries, to the junction of the Chiclana road with the Royal Causeway, in the marsh, that is to say, one mile and a half beyond the bridge of Zuazo, and consequently exposed, without support, to flank attacks both by water and land.
It was in vain that the English engineers presented plans, and offered to construct the works; the Spaniards would never consent to pull down a house, or destroy a garden; their procrastination, paralized their allies, and would have lost the place, had the enemy been prepared to press it vigorously. Nor were the English works (when the Spaniards would permit any to be constructed) well and rapidly completed, for the Junta furnished bad materials, there was a paucity of engineer-officers, and, from the habitual negligence of the ministerial departments at home, neither the proper stores, nor implements had been sent out. Indeed, an exact history, drawn from the private journals of commanders of British expeditions, during the war with France, would show an incredible carelessness of preparation on the part of the different cabinets. The generals were always expected to “make bricks without straw,” and thus the laurels of the British army were for many years blighted. Even in Egypt, the success of the venerable hero, Abercrombie, was due, more to his perseverance and unconquerable energy before the descent, than to his daring operations afterwards.
Additional reinforcements reached Cadiz the 31st of March, and both sides continued to labour, but the allies slowly and without harmony, and, the supplies being interrupted, scarcity increased, many persons were forced to quit Cadiz, and two thousand men were sent to Ayamonte to collect provisions on the Guadiana. But now Matagorda, which, though frequently cannonaded, had been held fifty-five days, impeded the completion of the enemy’s works at the Troccadero point. This small fort, of a square form, without a ditch, with bomb-proofs insufficient for the garrison, and with one angle projecting towards the land, was little calculated for resistance, and, as it could only bring seven guns to bear, a Spanish seventy-four and an armed flotilla were moored on the flanks, to co-operate in the defence. The French had however raised great batteries behind some houses on the Troccadero, and, as daylight broke, on the 21st of April, a hissing shower of heated shot, falling on the seventy-four, and in the midst of the flotilla, obliged them to cut their cables and take shelter under the works of Cadiz. Then the fire of forty-eight guns and mortars, of the largest size, was concentrated upon the little fort of Matagorda, and the feeble parapet disappeared in a moment before this crashing flight of metal. The naked rampart and the undaunted hearts of the garrison remained, but the troops fell fast, the enemy shot quick and close, a staff, bearing the Spanish flag, was broken six times in an hour, and the colours were at last fastened to the angle of the work itself, while the men, especially the sailors, besought the officers to hoist the British ensign, attributing the slaughter to their fighting under a foreign flag. Thirty hours the tempest lasted, and sixty-four men out of one hundred and forty were down, when general Graham, finding a diversion he had projected impracticable, sent boats to carry off the survivors. The bastion was then blown up, under the direction of major Lefebre, an engineer of great promise, and he also fell, the last man whose blood wetted the ruins thus abandoned. Here I must record an action of which it is difficult to say whether it were most feminine or heroic. A sergeant’s wife, named Retson, was in a casemate with the wounded men, when a very young drummer was ordered to fetch water from the well of the fort; seeing the child hesitate, she snatched the vessel from his hand, braved the terrible cannonade herself, and, although a shot cut the bucket-cord from her hand, she recovered the vessel, and fulfilled her mission.[8]
After the evacuation of Matagorda, the war languished at Cadiz; but Sebastiani’s cavalry infested the neighbourhood of Gibraltar, and he himself entered the capital of Murcia, on the 23d of April, when Blake retired upon Alicant and Carthagena. Meanwhile the French covered Matagorda point General Campbell’s Correspondence. MSS.with batteries; but they were pressed for provisions, and general Campbell, throwing a detachment into Tarifa, drove their foragers from that vicinity, which abounds with cattle. The Spaniards at San Roque promised to reinforce this detachment, but their tardiness enabled the enemy to return with four hundred foot and some cavalry, and although the former were repulsed, the horse foraged the country, and drove off several herds of cattle during the action. General Campbell then increased the detachment to five hundred men, joining some guns, and placing the whole under the command of major Brown of the 28th.
In May the French prisoners, cutting the cables of two hulks, drifted in a heavy gale to the French side of the bay; and the boats sent against them being beat off, by throwing cold shot from the decks, above fifteen hundred men saved themselves, in despite of the fire from the allied fleet, and from Puntales, which was continued after the vessels had grounded, although the miserable creatures, thus struggling for life, had been treated with horrible cruelty, and, being all of Dupont’s or Vedel’s corps, were prisoners only by a dishonourable breach of faith. Meanwhile, in Cadiz, disorder was daily increasing. The Regency having recalled Cuesta to their military councils, he published an attack on the deposed Central Junta, and was answered so as to convince the world, that the course of all parties had been equally detrimental to the state. Thus fresh troubles were excited. The English general was hampered by the perverse spirit of the authorities, and the Spanish troops were daily getting more inefficient from neglect, when the departure of Albuquerque enabled Blake to take the chief command in the Isla, and his presence produced some amelioration in the condition and discipline of the troops. At his instance, also, the Municipal Junta consented, although reluctantly, that the British engineers should commence a regular system of redoubts for the defence of the Isla.
English reinforcements continued to arrive, and four thousand Spaniards, from Murcia, joined the garrison, or, rather, army now within the lines; but such was the state of the native troops, and the difficulty of arranging plans, that hitherto the taking of Matagorda had been the only check given to the enemy’s works. It was, however, General Graham’s Despatches. MSS.necessary to do something; and, after some ill-judged plans of the Regency had been rejected by Graham, general Lacy was embarked, with three thousand infantry and two hundred cavalry, to aid the armed peasants, or Serranos, of the Ronda. These people had been excited to arms, and their operations successfully directed by captain Cowley and Mr. Mitchel, two British artillery-officers, sent from Gibraltar, and general Campbell offered to reinforce Lacy, from Gibraltar, if he would attack Malaga, where there were twenty thousand males fit to carry arms. The French were only two thousand, and cooped in the citadel, a Moorish castle, containing but twelve guns, and dependent for water on the town, which was itself only supplied by aqueducts from without. Lacy rejected this enterprise, but demanded that eight hundred men, from Gibraltar, should make a diversion to the eastward, while he, landing at Algesiras, moved on Ronda; and, this being assented to, the English armament sailed under the command of general Bowes. Lacy made good his movement upon Ronda the 18th of June; but the French, having fortified it, were too strong at that point, or, rather, Lacy, a man of no enterprise, durst not act, and, when he was joined by many thousand mountaineers, he arrested their leaders for some offence, which so disgusted the men that they disbanded. The enemy, alarmed by these operations, which were seconded from the side of Murcia, and by an insurrection at Baeza, put all their disposable troops in motion; but the insurrection at Baeza was quickly crushed, and general Rey, marching from Seville, against Lacy, entirely defeated and cut him off from Gibraltar, so that he was forced to re-embark with a few men at Estipona, and returned to Cadiz in July.
Here it is impossible not to reflect on the little use made of the naval power, and the misapplication of the military strength in the southern parts of Spain. The British, Portuguese, and Spanish soldiers, at Cadiz, were, in round numbers, 30,000, the British in Gibraltar 5000, in Sicily 16,000, forming a total of more than fifty thousand effective troops, aided by a great navy, and favourably placed for harassing that immense, and, with the exception of the Valencian and Murcian coasts, uninterrupted French line of operations, which extended from the south of Italy to Cadiz, for, even from the bottom of Calabria, troops and stores were brought to Spain. Yet a Neapolitan rabble, under Murat, in Calabria, and from fifteen to twenty thousand French around Cadiz, were allowed to paralize this mighty power.
It is true that vigilance, temper, and arrangement, and favourable localities, are all required, in the combined operations of a fleet and army, and troops disembarking, also require time to equip for service. But Minorca offered a central station, and a place of arms for the army, and a spacious port for the fleet; the operations would always have been short, and independent of the Spanish authorities, and lord Collingwood was fitted, by his talents, discretion, zeal, experience, and accurate knowledge of those coasts, successfully to direct such a floating armament. What coast-siege, undertaken by the seventh or third corps, could have been successfully prosecuted, if the garrison had been suddenly augmented with fifteen or twenty thousand men from the ocean? After one or two successful descents, the very appearance of a ship of war would have checked the operations of a siege, and obliged the enemy to concentrate: whereas, the slight expeditions of this period, were generally disconcerted by the presence of a few French companies.