NOTICE
1º. In the present volume will be found a plan of the Peninsula on a very small scale, yet sufficient to indicate the general range of operations. A large map would be enormously expensive without any correspondent advantages to the reader; and it would only be a repetition of errors, because there are no materials for an accurate plan. The small one now furnished, together with the sketches which I have drawn and published with each volume, and which are more accurate than might be supposed, will give a clear general notion of the operations. Those who desire to have more detailed information will find it in Lieutenant Godwyn’s fine atlas of the battles in the Peninsula—a work undertaken by that officer with the sole view of forming a record of the glorious actions of the British army.
2º. Most of the manuscript authorities consulted for former volumes have been also consulted for this volume, and in addition the official correspondence of Lord William Bentinck; some notes by Lord Hill; the journal and correspondence of sir Rufane Donkin; a journal of Colonel Oglander, twenty-sixth regiment; a memoir by sir George Gipps, royal engineers; and a variety of communications by other officers. Lastly, authenticated copies of the official journals and correspondence of most of the marshals and generals who commanded armies in Spain. These were at my request supplied by the French War-office with a prompt liberality indicative of that military frankness and just pride which ought and does characterize the officers of Napoleon’s army. The publication of this volume also enables me with convenience to produce additional authorities for former statements, while answering, as I now do, the attacks upon my work which have appeared in the “Life of Sir Thomas Picton,” and in the “Quarterly Review.”
“Many there are that trouble me and persecute me; yet do I not swerve from the testimonies,”—Psalm cxix.
Robinson’s Life of Picton.—This writer of an English general’s life, is so entirely unacquainted with English military customs, that he quotes a common order of theLife of Picton, page 31. day, accrediting a new staff officer to the army, as a remarkable testimony to that staff officer’s talents. And he is so unacquainted with French military customs, that, treating of the battle of Busaco, he places a French marshal, Marmont, who by the way was not then even inPage 325. Spain, at the head of a division of Ney’s corps. He dogmatises upon military movements freely, and is yet so incapable of forming a right judgment upon the materials within his reach, as to say, that sir John Moore should not have retreated, because as he was able to beat the French at Coruña, he could also have beaten them in the heart of Spain. Thus setting aside the facts that at Coruña Moore had fifteen thousand men to fight twenty thousand, and in the heart of Spain he had only twenty-three thousand to fight more than three hundred thousand!
And lest this display of incompetency should not be sufficient, he affirms, that the same sir John Moore had, comparatively, greater means at Sahagun to beat the enemy than Lord Wellington had in the lines of Torres Vedras. Now those lines, which Wellington had been fortifying for more than a year, offered three nearly impregnable positions, defended by a hundred thousand men. There was a fortress, that of St. Julian’s, and a fleet, close at hand as a final resource, and only sixty thousand French commanded by Massena were in front. But sir John Moore having only twenty-three thousand men at Sahagun, had no lines, no fortifications for defence, and no time to form them, he was nearly three hundred miles from his fleet, and Napoleon in person had turned one hundred thousand men against him, while two hundred thousand more remained in reserve!
Any lengthened argument in opposition to a writer so totally unqualified to treat of warlike affairs, would be a sinful waste of words; but Mr. Robinson has been at pains to question the accuracy of certain passages of my work, and with what justice the reader shall now learn. [1]