All these malignant efforts Wellington viewed with indifference. “Every leading man,” he said, “was sure to be accused of criminal personal ambition, and, if he was conscious of the charge being false, the accusation did no harm.” Nevertheless his position was thereby rendered more difficult, and these intrigues were accompanied by other mischiefs of long standing and springing from a different source, but even of a more serious character, for the spirit of captious discontent had reached the inferior magistracy, who endeavoured to excite the people against the military generally. Complaints came in from all quarters of outrages on the part of the troops, some too true, but many of them false, or frivolous; and when the English general ordered courts-martial for the trial of the accused, the magistrates refused to attend as witnesses, because Portuguese custom rendered such an attendance degrading, and by Portuguese law a magistrate’s written testimony was efficient in courts-martial. Wellington in vain assured them that English law would not suffer him to punish men upon such testimony; in vain he pointed out the mischief which must infallibly overwhelm the country if the soldiers discovered they might thus do evil with impunity. He offered to send in each case, lists of Portuguese witnesses required that they might be summoned by the native authorities, but nothing could overcome the obstinacy of the magistrates; they answered that his method was insolent; and with a sullen malignity they continued to accumulate charges against the troops, to refuse attendance in the courts, and to call the soldiers, their own as well as the British, “licensed spoliators of the community.”
For a time the generous nature of the poor people, resisted all these combining causes of discontent; neither real injuries nor the exaggerations, nor the falsehoods of those who attempted to stir up wrath, produced any visible effect upon the great bulk of the population; yet by degrees affection for the British cooled, and Wellington expressed his fears that a civil war would commence between the Portuguese people on the one hand, and the troops of both nations on the other. Wherefore his activity was redoubled to draw, while he could still controul affairs, all the military strength to a head, and to make such an irruption into Spain as would establish a new base of operations beyond the power of such fatal dissensions.
March. These matters were sufficiently vexatious and alarming, but what made him tremble, was, the course, which the misconduct of the Portuguese government, and the incapacity of the English cabinet, had forced upon the native furnishers of the supplies. Those persons, coming in the winter to Lisbon to have their bills on the military chest paid, could get no money, and in their distress had sold the bills to speculators, the Portuguese holders, at a discount of fifteen, the Spanish holders at a discount of forty in the hundred. The credit of the chest immediately fell, prices rose in proportion, and as no military enterprize could carry the army beyond the flight of this harpy, and no revenues could satisfy its craving, the contest must have ceased, if Mr. Stuart had not found a momentary and partial remedy, by publicly guaranteeing the payment of the bills and granting interest until they could be taken up. The expense was thus augmented, but the increase fell far short of the enhanced cost of the supplies which had already resulted even from this restricted practice of the bill-holders, and of two evils the least was chosen. It may seem strange that such transactions should belong to the history of the military operations in the Peninsula, that it should be the general’s instead of the minister’s task, to encounter such evils, and to find the remedy. Such however was the nature of the war, and no adequate notion of lord Wellington’s vigorous capacity and Herculean labours can be formed, without an intimate knowledge of the financial and political difficulties which oppressed him, and of which this work has necessarily only given an outline.
The disorders of the Portuguese military system had brought Beresford back to Lisbon while the siege of Burgos was still in progress, and now, under Wellington’s direction, he strained every nerve to restore the army to its former efficient state. To recruit the regiments of the line he disbanded all the militia men fit for service, replacing them with fathers of families; to restore the field-artillery, he embodied all the garrison artillery-men, calling out the ordenança gunners to man the fortresses and coast-batteries; the worst cavalry regiments he reduced to render the best more efficient, but several circumstances prevented this arm from attaining any excellence in Portugal. Meanwhile Lord Wellington and Mr. Stuart strenuously grappled with the disorders of the civil administration and their efforts produced an immediate and considerable increase of revenue. But though the regency could not deny this beneficial effect, though they could not deny the existence of the evils which they were urged to remedy, though they admitted that the reform of their custom-house system was still incomplete, that their useless navy consumed large sums which were wanted for the army, and that the taxes especially the “Decima,” were partially collected, and unproductive, because the rich people in the great towns, who had benefited largely by the war, escaped the imposts which the poor people in the country, who had suffered most from the war, paid; though they acknowledged that while the soldiers’ hire was in arrears, the transport service neglected, and all persons, having just claims upon the government, suffering severe privations, the tax-gatherers were allowed to keep a month’s tribute in their hands even in the districts close to the enemy; though all these things were admitted, the regency would not alter their system, and Borba, the minister of finance, combatted Wellington’s plans in detail with such unusual obstinacy, that it became evident nothing could be obtained save by external pressure. Wherefore as the season for military operations approached, Mr. Stuart called upon lord Castlereagh to bring the power of England to bear at once upon the court of Rio Janeiro; and Wellington, driven to extremity, sent the Portuguese prince-regent one of those clear, powerful, and nervous statements, which left those to whom they were addressed, no alternative but submission, or an acknowledgement that sense and justice were to be disregarded.
April. “I call your highness’s attention,” he said, “to the state of your troops and of all your establishments; the army of operations has been unpaid since September, the garrisons since June, the militia since February 1812. The transport service has never been regularly paid, and has received nothing since June. To these evils I have in vain called the attention of the local government, and I am now going to open a new campaign, with troops to whom greater arrears of pay are due than when the last campaign terminated, although the subsidy from Great Britain, granted especially for the maintenance of those troops, has been regularly and exactly furnished; and although it has been proved that the revenue for the last three months has exceeded, by a third, any former quarter. The honour of your highness’s arms, the cause of your allies, is thus seriously affected, and the uniform refusal of the governors of the kingdom to attend to any one of the measures which I have recommended, either for permanent or temporal relief, has at last obliged me to go as a complainant into your royal highness’s presence, for here I cannot prevail against the influence of the chief of the treasury.
“I have recommended the entire reform of the customs system, but it has only been partially carried into effect. I have advised a method of actually and really collecting the taxes, and of making the rich merchants, and capitalists, pay the tenth of their annual profits as an extraordinary contribution for the war. I declare that no person knows better than I do, the sacrifices and the sufferings of your people, for there is no one for the last four years has lived so much amongst those people; but it is a fact, sir, that the great cities, and even some of the smallest places, have gained by the war and the mercantile class has enriched itself; there are divers persons in Lisbon and Oporto who have amassed immense sums. Now your government is, both from remote and recent circumstances, unable to draw resources from the capitalists by loans; it can only draw upon them by taxes. It is not denied that the regular tributes nor the extraordinary imposts on the mercantile profits are evaded; it is not denied that the measures I have proposed, vigorously carried into execution, would furnish the government with pecuniary resources, and it remains for that government to inform your highness, why they have neither enforced my plans, nor any others which the necessity of the times calls for. They fear to become unpopular, but such is the knowledge I have of the people’s good sense and loyalty, such my zeal for the cause, that I have offered to become responsible for the happy issue, and to take upon myself all the odium of enforcing my own measures. I have offered in vain!
“Never was a sovereign in the world so ill served as your highness has been by the ‘Junta de Viveres,’ and I zealously forwarded your interests when I obtained its abolition; and yet, under a false pretext of debt, the government still disburse fifty millions of reis monthly on account of that board. It has left a debt undoubtedly, and it is of importance to pay it, although not at this moment; but let the government state in detail how these fifty millions, granted monthly, have been applied; let them say if all the accounts have been called in and liquidated? who has enforced the operation? to what does the debt amount? has it been classified? how much is really still due to those who have received instalments? finally, have these millions been applied to the payment of salaries instead of debt? But were it convenient now to pay the debt, it cannot be denied that to pay the army which is to defend the country, to protect it from the sweeping destructive hand of the enemy, is of more pressing importance; the troops will be neither able nor willing to fight if they are not paid.”
Then touching upon the abuse of permitting the tax-gatherers to hold a month’s taxes in their hands, and upon the opposition he met with from the regency, he continued,
“I assure your royal highness that I give my advice to the governor of the kingdom actuated solely by an earnest zeal for your service without any personal interest. I can have none relative to Portugal, and none with regard to individuals, for I have no private relation with, and scarcely am acquainted with those who direct, or would wish to direct your affairs. Those reforms recommended by me, and which have at last been partially effected in the custom-house, in the arsenal, in the navy, in the payment of the interest of the national debt, in the formation of a military chest, have succeeded, and I may therefore say that the other measures I propose would have similar results. I am ready to allow that I may deceive myself on this point, but certainly they are suggested by a desire for the good of your service; hence in the most earnest and decided manner, I express my ardent wish, and it is common to all your faithful servants, that you will return to the kingdom, and take charge yourself of the government.”
These vigorous measures to bring the regency to terms succeeded only partially. In May they promulgated a new system for the collection of taxes which relieved the financial pressure on the army for the moment, but which did not at all content Wellington, because it was made to square with old habits and prejudices, and thus left the roots of all the evils alive and vigorous. Every moment furnished new proofs of the hopelessness of regenerating a nation through the medium of a corrupted government; and a variety of circumstances, more or less serious, continued to embarrass the march of public affairs.