“In Spain, only six thousand middling troops can be employed on a secondary operation, and for a limited period, whereas twelve thousand British soldiers, and six thousand men composing the Neapolitan army of Sicily, can land in Italy, a grand theatre, where success will most efficaciously assist Spain. The obnoxious Neapolitan force being thus removed, the native Sicilian army can be organised, and the new constitution established with more certainty.” The time, also, he thought critical for Italy, not so for Spain, which would suffer but a temporary deprivation, seeing that failure in Italy would not preclude after aid to Spain.
Impressed with these notions, which, it must be confessed, were both plausible and grand, he permitted the expedition, already embarked, to sail for Palma in Sardinia, and Mahon in Minorca, yet merely as a blind, because, from those places, he could easily direct the troops against Italy, and meanwhile they menaced the French in Spain. But the conception of vast and daring enterprises, even the execution of them up to a certain point, is not very uncommon, they fail only by a little! that little is, however, the essence of genius, the phial of wit, which, held to Orlando’s nostril, changed him from a frantic giant to a perfect commander.
It was in the consideration of such nice points of military policy that lord Wellington’s solid judgement was always advantageously displayed. Neither the greatness of this project nor the apparent facility of execution weighed with him. He thought the recovery of Italy by the power of the British arms would be a glorious, and might be a feasible exploit, but it was only in prospect, Spain was the better field, the war in the Peninsula existed; years had been devoted to the establishment of a solid base there, and experience had proved that the chance of victory was not imaginary. England could not support two armies. The principle of concentration of power on an important point was as applicable here as on a field of battle, and although Italy might be the more vital point, it would be advisable to continue the war already established in Spain: nay it would be better to give up Spain, and direct the whole power of England against Italy, rather than undertake double operations, on such an extensive scale, at a moment when the means necessary to sustain one were so scanty.
The ministers, apparently convinced by this reasoning, forbad lord William Bentinck to proceed, and they expressed their discontent at his conduct. Nevertheless their former instructions had unquestionably conferred on him a discretionary power to act in Italy, and so completely had he been misled by their previous despatches, that besides delaying the expedition to Spain, he had placed twelve hundred men under admiral Fremantle, to assist the Montenegrins. And he was actually entangled in a negotiation with the Russian admiral, Greig, relative to the march of a Russian army; a march planned, as it would appear, without the knowledge of the Russian court, and which, from the wildness of its conception and the mischief it would probably have effected, deserves notice.
While the Russian war was still uncertain, admiral Tchtchagoff, who commanded sixty thousand men on the Danube, proposed to march with them, through Bosnia and the ancient Epirus, to the mouths of the Cattaro, and, there embarking, to commence the impending contest with France in Italy. He was, however, without resources, and expecting to arrive in a starving and miserable condition on the Adriatic, demanded, through admiral Greig, then commanding a squadron in the Mediterranean, that lord William Bentinck should be ready to supply him with fresh arms, ammunition, and provisions, and to aid him with an auxiliary force. That nobleman saw at a glance the absurdity of this scheme, but he was falsely informed that Tchtchagoff, trusting to his good will, had already commenced the march; and thus he had only to choose between aiding an ally, whose force, if it arrived at all, and was supplied by England, would help his own project, or permit it, to avoid perishing, to ravage Italy, and so change the people of that country from secret friends into deadly enemies. It would be foreign to this history to consider what effect the absence of Tchtchagoff’s army during the Russian campaign would have had upon Napoleon’s operations, but this was the very force whose march to the Beresina afterwards obliged the emperor to abandon Smolensko, and continue the retreat to Warsaw.
It was in the midst of these affairs, that the English minister’s imperative orders to look only to the coast of Spain arrived. The negociation with the Russians was immediately stopped, the project of landing in Italy was relinquished, and the expedition, already sent to the Adriatic, was recalled. Meanwhile the descent on Catalonia had been delayed, and as a knowledge of its destination, had reached Suchet through the French minister of war, and through the rumours rife amongst the Spaniards, all his preparations to meet it were matured. Nor was this the only mischief produced by the English minister’s want of clear views and decided system of policy. Lord William Bentinck had been empowered to raise money on bills for his own exigences, and being desirous to form a military chest for his project in Italy, he had invaded lord Wellington’s money markets. With infinite trouble and difficulty that general had just opened a source of supply at the rate of five shillings and four-pence, to five shillings and eight-pence the dollar, when lord William Bentinck’s agents offering six shillings and eight-pence, swept four millions from the markets, and thus, as shall be hereafter shewn, seriously embarrassed lord Wellington’s operations in the field.
This unhappy commencement of the Sicilian expedition led to other errors, and its arrival on the coast of Spain, did not take place, until after the campaign in Castile had commenced; but as its proceedings connected the warfare of Valencia immediately with that of Catalonia, and the whole with lord Wellington’s operations, they cannot be properly treated of in this place. It is, however, worthy of observation, how an illiberal and factious policy, inevitably recoils upon its authors.
In 1807 sir John Moore, with that sagacity and manliness which distinguished his career through life, had informed the ministers, that no hope of a successful attack on the French in Italy, could be entertained while the British army upheld the tyrannical system of the dissolute and treacherous Neapolitan court in Sicily. And as no change for the better could be expected while the queen was allowed to govern, he proposed, that the British cabinet should either relinquish Sicily, or, assuming the entire controul of the island, seize the queen and send her to her native Austria. This he judged to be the first step necessary to render the large British army in Sicily available for the field, because the Sicilian people could then be justly governed, and thus only could the organization of an effective native force attached to England, and fitted to offer freedom to Italy be effected.
He spoke not of constitutions but of justice to the people, and hence his proposal was rejected as a matter of Jacobinism. Mr. Drummond, the English plenipotentiary, even betrayed it to the queen, a woman not without magnanimity, yet so capable of bloody deeds, that, in 1810, she secretly proposed to Napoleon the perpetration of a second Sicilian vespers upon the English. The emperor, detesting such guilt, only answered by throwing her agent into prison, yet the traces of the conspiracy were detected by the British authorities in 1811; and in 1812 lord William Bentinck was forced to seize the government, in the manner before recommended by Moore, and did finally expel the queen by force. But because these measures were not resorted to in time, he was now, with an army of from twenty-five to thirty thousand men, sixteen thousand of which were British, only able to detach a mixed force of six thousand to aid lord Wellington. And at the same time the oppression of Ireland required that sixty thousand fine soldiers should remain idle at home, while France, with a Russian war on hand, was able to over-match the allies in Spain. Bad government is a scourge with a double thong!