The reviewer speaking of the battle of Baylen scoffs at the inconsistency of calling it an insignificant event and yet attributing to it immense results. But my expression was, an insignificant action in itself, which at once reconciles the seeming contradiction, and this the writer who has no honest healthy criticism, suppresses. My allusion to the disciplined battalions of Valley Forge, as being the saviours of American independence, also excites his morbid spleen, and assuming what is not true, namely, that I selected that period as the time of the greatest improvement in American discipline, he says, their soldiers there were few, as if that bore at all upon the question.
But my expression is at Valley Forge not “of Valley Forge.” The allusion was used figuratively to shew that an armed peasantry cannot resist regular troops, and Washington’s correspondence is one continued enforcement of the principle, yet the expression may be also taken literally. It was with the battalions of Valley Forge that Washington drew Howe to the Delawarre, and twice crossing that river in winter, surprised the Germans at Trenton and beat the British at Prince Town. It was with those battalions he made his attacks at German’s-town; with those battalions he prevented Howe from sending assistance to Burgoyne’s army, which was in consequence captured. In fine, to use his own expression, “The British eagle’s wings were spread, and with those battalions he clipped them.” The American general,See Stedman’s History, 4to. p. 285. however, at one time occupied, close to Valley Forge, a camp in the Jerseys, bearing the odd name of Quibble-town, on which probably the reviewer’s eye was fixed.
But notwithstanding Quibble-town, enthusiasm will not avail in the long run against discipline. Is authority wanted? We have had Napoleon’s and Washington’s, and now we have Wellington’s, for in the fifth volume of his Despatches, p. 215, as compiled by colonel Gurwood, will be found the following passage upon the arming of the Spanish and Portuguese people.
“Reflection and above all experience have shown me the exact extent of this advantage in a military point of view, and I only beg that those who have to contend with the French, will not be diverted from the business of raising, arming, equipping, and training regular bodies by any notion that the people when armed and arrayed, will be of, I will not say any, but of much, use to them. The subject is too large for discussion in a paper of this description, but I can show hundreds of instances to prove the truth of as many reasons why exertions of this description ought not to be relied on. At all events no officer can calculate upon an operation to be performed against the French by persons of this description, and I believe that no officer will enter upon an operation against the French without calculating his means most anxiously.”
It is said that some officers of rank have furnished the reviewer’s military criticisms, I can understand why, if the fact be true, but it is difficult to believe that any officer would even for the gratification of a contemptible jealousy, have lent himself to the assertion that sir Arthur Wellesley could not have made a forced or a secret march from Vimiero to Mafra, because he was encumbered with four hundred bullock-carts. Sir Arthur did certainly intend toSee his evidence, Court of Inquiry on the Convention of Cintra. make that march, and he would as certainly not have attempted such a flank movement openly and deliberately while thus encumbered and moving at the rate of two miles an hour, within a short distance of a general having a more experienced army and an overwhelming cavalry. The sneer is therefore directed more against sir Arthur Wellesley than against me.
This supposed officer of rank says that because the enemy had a shorter road to move in retreat, his line of march could not even be menaced, still less intercepted by his opponent moving on the longer route! How then did Cæsar intercept Afranius and Petreius, Pompey’s lieutenants, on the Sicoris? How Pompey himself at Dyrrachium? How did Napoleon pass Beaulieu on the Po and gain Lodi? How did Massena dislodge Wellington from Busaco? How did Marmont turn him on the Guarena in 1812? How did Wellington himself turn the French on the Douro and on the Ebro in 1813? And above all how did he propose to turn Torres Vedras by the very march in question, seeing that from Torres Vedras to Mafra is only twelve miles and from Vimiero to Mafra is nineteen miles, the roads leading besides over a river and through narrow ways and defiles? But who ever commended such dangerous movements, if they were not masked or their success insured by some peculiar circumstances, or by some stratagem? And what is my speculation but a suggestion of this nature? “Under certain circumstances,” said sir Arthur Wellesley at the enquiry, “an army might have gained three hours’ start in such a march.” The argument of the supposititious officer of rank is therefore a foolish sophism; nor is that relative to sir John Moore’s moving upon Santarem, nor the assertion that my plan was at variance with all sir Arthur Wellesley’s objects, more respectable.
My plan, as it is invidiously and falsely called, was simply a reasoning upon the advantages of sir Arthur Wellesley’s plan, and the calculation of days by the reviewer is mere mysticism. Sir Arthur wished sir John Moore to go to Santarem, and if sir Arthur’s recommendation had been followed, sir John Moore, who, instead of taking five days as this writer would have him do, actually disembarked the greatest part of his troops in the Mondego in half a day, that is before one o’clock on the 22d, might have been at Santarem the 27th even according to the reviewer’s scale of march, ten miles a day! Was he to remain idle there, if the enemy did not abandon Lisbon and the strong positions covering that city? If he could stop Junot’s retreat either at Santarem or in the Alemtejo, a cavalry country, he could surely as safely operate towards Saccavem, a strong country. What was sir A. Wellesley’s observation on that head? “If the march to Mafra had been made as I had ordered it on the 21st of August in the morning, the position of Torres Vedras would have been turned, and there was no position in the enemy’s possession, excepting that in our front at Cabeça de Montechique and those in rear of it. And I must observe to the court that if sir John Moore’s corps had gone to Santarem as proposed as soon as it disembarked in the Mondego, there would have been no great safety in those positions, if it was, as it turned out to be, in our power to beat the French.” Lo! then, my plan is not at variance with sir Arthur Wellesley’s object. But the whole of the reviewer’s sophistry is directed, both as to this march and that to Mafra, not against me, but through me against the duke of Wellington whom the writer dare not attack openly; witness his cunning defence of that “wet-blanket” counsel which stopped sir Arthur Wellesley’s pursuit of Junot from the field of Vimiero. Officer of rank! Aye, it sounds grandly! but it was a shrewd thing of Agesilaus when any one was strongly recommended to him to ask “who will vouch for the voucher?”
Passing now from the officer of rank, I affirm, notwithstanding Mr. Southey’s “magnificent chapters” and sir Charles Vaughan’s “brief and elegant work,” that the statement about Palafox and Zaragoza is correct. My authority is well known to sir Charles Vaughan, and is such as he is not likely to dispute; that gentleman will not, I feel well assured, now guarantee the accuracy of the tales he was told at Zaragoza. But my real offence is not the disparagement of Palafox, it is the having spoiled some magnificent romances, present or to come; for I remembered the Roman saying about the “Lying Greek fable,” and endeavoured so to record the glorious feats of my countrymen, that even our enemies should admit the facts. And they have hitherto done so, with a magnanimity becoming brave men who are conscious of merit in misfortune, thus putting to shame the grovelling spirit that would make calumny and vituperation the test of patriotism.