Nothing, he said, could be procured from the country in the mode proposed by the ministers’ memoir, unless resort was also had to the French mode of enforcing their requisitions. The proceedings of the French armies were misunderstood. It was not true, as supposed in the memoir, that the French never paid for supplies. They levied contributions where money was to be had, and with this paid for provisions in other parts; and when requisitions for money or clothing were made, they were taken on account of the regular contributions due to the government. They were indeed heavier than even an usurping government was entitled to demand, still it was a regular government account, and it was obvious the British army could not have recourse to a similar plan without depriving its allies of their own legitimate resources.
The requisitions were enforced by a system of terror. A magistrate was ordered to provide for the troops, and was told that the latter would, in case of failure, take the provisions and punish the village or district in a variety of ways. Now were it expedient to follow this mode of requisition there must be two armies, one to fight the enemy and one to enforce the requisitions, for the Spaniards would never submit to such proceedings without the use of force. The conscription gave the French armies a more moral description of soldiers, but even if this second army was provided, the British troops could not be trusted to inflict an exact measure of punishment on a disobedient village, they would plunder it as well as the others readily enough, but their principal object would be to get at and drink as much liquor as they could, and then to destroy as much valuable property as should fall in their way; meanwhile the objects of their mission, the bringing of supplies to the army and the infliction of an exact measure of punishment on the magistrates or district would not be accomplished at all. Moreover the holders of supplies in Spain being unused to commercial habits, would regard payment for these requisitions by bills of any description, to be rather worse than the mode of contribution followed by the French, and would resist it as forcibly. And upon such a nice point did the war hang, that if they accepted the bills, and were once to discover the mode of procuring cash for them by discounting high, it would be the most fatal blow possible to the credit and resources of the British army in the Peninsula. The war would then soon cease.
The memoir asserted that sir John Moore had been well furnished with money, and that nevertheless the Spaniards would not give him provisions; and this fact was urged as an argument for enforcing requisitions. But the assertion that Moore was furnished with money, which was itself the index to the ministers’ incapacity, Wellington told them was not true. “Moore,” he said, “had been even worse furnished than himself; that general had borrowed a little, a very little money at Salamanca, but he had no regular supply for the military chest until the army had nearly reached Coruña; and the Spaniards were not very wrong in their reluctance to meet his wants, for the debts of his army were still unpaid in the latter end of 1812.” In fine there was no mode by which supplies could be procured from the country without payment on the spot, or soon after the transaction, except by prevailing on the Spanish government to give the English army a part of the government contributions, and a part of the revenues of the royal domains, to be received from the people in kind at a reasonable rate. This had been already done by himself in the province of Salamanca with success, and the same system might be extended to other provinces in proportion as the legitimate government was re-established. But this only met a part of the evil, it would indeed give some supplies, cheaper than they could otherwise be procured, yet they must afterwards be paid for at Cadiz in specie, and thus less money would come into the military chest, which, as before noticed, was only supported by the mercantile speculations of the general.
Such were the discussions forced upon Wellington when all his faculties were demanded on the field of battle, and such was the hardiness of his intellect to sustain the additional labour. Such also were the men calling themselves statesmen who then wielded the vast resources of Great Britain. The expenditure of that country for the year 1812, was above one hundred millions, the ministers who controuled it, were yet so ignorant of the elementary principles of finance, as to throw upon their general, even amidst the clangor and tumult of battle, the task of exposing such fallacies. And to reduce these persons from the magnitude of statesmen to their natural smallness of intriguing debaters is called political prejudice! But though power may enable men to trample upon reason for a time with impunity, they cannot escape her ultimate vengeance, she reassumes her sway and history delivers them to the justice of posterity.
Perverse as the proceedings of the English ministers were, those of the Portuguese and Spanish governments were not less vexatious; and at this time the temper of the Spanish rulers was of infinite importance because of the misfortunes which had befallen the French emperor. The opportunity given to strike a decisive blow at his power in the Peninsula demanded an early and vigorous campaign in Spain, and the experience of 1812 had taught Wellington, that no aid could be derived from the Spaniards unless a change was made in their military system. Hence the moment he was assured that the French armies had taken winter-quarters, he resolved before all other matters, in person to urge upon the Cortez the necessity of giving him the real as well as the nominal command of their troops, seeing that without an immediate reformation the Spanish armies could not take the field in due season.
During the past campaign, and especially after the Conde de Abispal, indignant at the censure passed in the Cortez on his brother’s conduct at Castalla, had resigned, the weakness of the Spanish government had become daily more deplorable; nothing was done to ameliorate the military system; an extreme jealousy raged between the Cortez and the regency; and when the former offered lord Wellington the command of their armies, Mr. Wellesley advised him to accept it, not so much in the hope of effecting any beneficial change, as to offer a point upon which the Spaniards who were still true to the English alliance and to the aristocratic cause might rally in case of reverse. The disobedience of Ballesteros had been indeed promptly punished; but the vigour of the Cortez on that occasion, was more the result of offended pride than any consideration of sound policy, and the retreat of the allies into Portugal was the signal for a renewal of those dangerous intrigues, which the battle of Salamanca had arrested without crushing.
Lord Wellington reached Cadiz on the 18th of December, he was received without enthusiasm, yet with due honour, and his presence seemed agreeable both to the Cortes and to the people; the passions which actuated the different parties in the state subsided for the moment, and the ascendency of his genius was so strongly felt, that he was heard with patience, even when in private he strongly urged the leading men to turn their attention entirely to the war, to place in abeyance their factious disputes and above all things not to put down the inquisition lest they should drive the powerful church party into the arms of the enemy. His exhortation upon this last point, had indeed no effect save to encourage the Serviles to look more to England, yet it did not prevent the Cortez yielding to him the entire controul of fifty thousand men which were to be paid from the English subsidy; they promised also that the commanders should not be removed, nor any change made in the organization or destination of such troops without his consent.
A fresh organization of the Spanish forces now had place. They were divided into four armies and two reserves.
The Catalans formed the first army.
Elio’s troops including the divisions of Duran, Bassecour, and Villa Campa, received the name of the second army.