The government, rather than adopt the measures suggested by Wellington, such as keeping up the credit of the paper-money, by regular payments of the interest, the fair and general collection of the “Decima,” and the repression of abuses in the custom-house, in the arsenal, and in the militia, always more costly than the line, projected the issuing of fresh paper, and endeavoured, by unworthy stock-jobbing schemes, to evade instead of meeting the difficulties of the times. To check their folly the general withheld the subsidy, and refused to receive their depreciated paper into the military chest; but neither did this vigorous proceeding produce more than a momentary return to honesty, and meanwhile, the working people were so cruelly oppressed that they would not labour for the public, except under the direction of British officers. Force alone could overcome their repugnance and force was employed, not to forward the defence of the country, but to meet particular interests and to support abuses. Such also was the general baseness of the Fidalgos, that even the charitable aid of money, received from England, was shamefully and greedily claimed by the rich, who insisted, that it was a donation to all and to be equally divided.
Confusion and injustice prevailed every where, and Wellington’s energies were squandered on vexatious details; at one time he was remonstrating against the oppression of the working people, and devising remedies for local abuses; at another superintending the application of the English charities, and arranging the measures necessary to revive agriculture in the devastated districts; at all times endeavouring to reform the general administration, and in no case was he supported. Never during the war did he find an appeal to the patriotism of the Portuguese government answered frankly; never did he propose a measure which was accepted without difficulties. This opposition was at times carried to such a ridiculous extent, that when some Portuguese nobles in the French service took refuge with the curate Merino, and desired from their own government, a promise of safety, to which they were really entitled, the regency refused to give that assurance; nor would they publish an amnesty, which the English general desired for the sake of justice and from policy also, because valuable information as to the French army, could have been thus obtained. The authorities would neither say yes! nor no! and when general Pamplona applied to Wellington personally for some assurance, the latter could only answer that in like cases Mascarheñas had been hanged and Sabugal rewarded!
To force a change in the whole spirit, and action of the government, seemed to some, the only remedy for the distemperature of the time; but this might have produced anarchy, and would have given countenance to the democratic spirit, contrary to the general policy of the British government. Wellington therefore desired rather to have the prince regent at Lisbon, or the Azores, whence his authority might, under the influence of England, be more directly used to enforce salutary regulations; he however considered it essential that Carlotta, whose intrigues were incessant, should not be with him, and, she on the other hand, laboured to come back without the prince, who was prevented from moving, by continued disturbances in the Brazils. Mr. Stuart, then despairing of good, proposed the establishment of a military government at once, but Wellington would not agree, although the mischief afloat clogged every wheel of the military machine.
A law of king Sebastian, which obliged all gentlemen holding land to take arms was now revived, but desertion, which had commenced with the first appointment of British officers, increased; and so many persons sailed away in British vessels of war, to evade military service in their own country, that an edict was published to prevent the practice. Beresford checked the desertion for a moment, by condemning deserters to hard labour, and offering rewards to the country people to deliver them up; yet griping want renewed the evil at the commencement of the campaign, and the terrible severity of condemning nineteen at once to death, did not repress it. The cavalry, which had been at all times very inefficient, was now nearly ruined, the men were become faint-hearted, the breed of horses almost extinct, and shameful peculations amongst the officers increased the mischief: one guilty colonel was broke and his uniform stripped from his shoulders in the public square at Lisbon. However these examples produced fear and astonishment rather than correction, the misery of the troops continued, and the army, although by the care of Beresford it was again augmented to more than thirty thousand men under arms, declined in moral character and spirit.
To govern armies in the field, is at all times a great and difficult matter; and in this contest the operations were so intimately connected with the civil administration of Portugal, Spain, and the Brazils, and the contest, being one of principles, so affected the policy of every nation of the civilised world, that unprecedented difficulties sprung up in the way of the general, and the ordinary frauds and embarrassments of war were greatly augmented. Napoleon’s continental system joined to his financial measures, which were quite opposed to debt and paper money, increased the pernicious effects of the English bank restriction; specie was abundant in France, but had nearly disappeared from England; it was only to be obtained from abroad, and at an incredible expense. The few markets left for British manufactures, and colonial produce, did not always make returns in the articles necessary for the war, and gold, absolutely indispensable in certain quantities, was only supplied, and this entirely from the incapacity of the English ministers, in the proportion of one-sixth of what was required, by an army which professed to pay for every thing. Hence continual efforts, on the part of the government, to force markets, hence a depreciation of value both in goods and bills; hence also a continual struggle, on the part of the general, to sustain a contest, dependant on the fluctuation of such a precarious system. Dependant also it was upon the prudence of three governments, one of which had just pushed its colonies to rebellion, when the French armies were in possession of four-fifths of the mother country; another was hourly raising up obstacles to its own defence though the enemy had just been driven from the capital; and the third was forcing a war with America, its greatest and surest market, when by commerce alone it could hope to sustain the struggle in the Peninsula.
The failure of the preceding year’s harvest all over Europe had rendered the supply of Portugal very difficult. Little grain was to be obtained in any country of the north of Europe accessible to the British, and the necessity of paying in hard money rendered even that slight resource null. Sicily and Malta were thrown for subsistence upon Africa, where colonial produce was indeed available for commerce, yet the quantity of grain to be had there, was small, and the capricious nature of the barbarians rendered the intercourse precarious. In December 1811 there was only two months’ consumption of corn in Portugal for the population, although the magazines of the army contained more than three. To America therefore it was necessary to look. Now in 1810 Mr. Stuart had given treasury bills to the house of Sampayo for the purchase of American corn; but the disputes between England and the United States, the depreciation of English bills, from the quantity in the market, together with the expiration of the American bank charter, had prevented Sampayo from completing his commission, nevertheless, although the increasing bitterness of the disputes with America discouraged a renewal of this plan, some more bills were now given to the English minister at Washington, with directions to purchase corn, and consign it to Sampayo, to resell in Portugal as before, for the benefit of the military chest. Other bills were also sent to the Brazils, to purchase rice, and all the consuls in the Mediterranean were desired to encourage the exportation of grain and the importation of colonial produce. In this manner, despite of the English ministers’ incapacity, lord Wellington found resources to feed the population, to recover some of the specie expended by the army, and to maintain the war. But as the year advanced, the Non-intercourse-Act of Congress, which had caused a serious drain of specie from Portugal, was followed by an embargo for ninety days, and then famine, which already afflicted parts of Spain, menaced Portugal.
Mr. Stuart knew of this embargo before the speculators did, and sent his agents orders to buy up with hard cash, at a certain price, a quantity of grain which had lately arrived at Gibraltar. He could only forestall the speculators by a few days, the cost soon rose beyond his means in specie, yet the new harvest being nearly ripe, this prompt effort sufficed for the occasion, and happily so, for the American declaration of war followed, and American privateers were to take the place of American flour-ships. But as ruin seemed to approach, Stuart’s energy redoubled. His agents seeking for grain in all parts of the world, discovered that in the Brazils a sufficient quantity might be obtained in exchange for English manufactures, to secure Portugal from absolute famine; and to protect this traffic, and to preserve that with the United States, he persuaded the regency to declare the neutrality of Portugal, and to interdict the sale of prizes within its waters. He also, at Wellington’s desire, besought the English admiralty to reinforce the squadron in the Tagus, and to keep cruisers at particular stations. Finally he pressed the financial reforms in Portugal with the utmost vigour and with some success. His efforts were, however, strangely counteracted from quarters least expected. The English consul, in the Western Isles, with incredible presumption, publicly excited the Islanders to war with America, when Mr. Stuart’s efforts were directed to prevent such a calamity; the Admiralty neglecting to station cruisers in the proper places, left the American privateers free to range along the Portuguese and African coast; and the cupidity of English merchants broke down the credit of the English commissariat paper-money, which was the chief medium of exchange on the immediate theatre of war.
This paper had arisen from a simple military regulation. Lord Wellington, on first assuming the command in 1809, found that all persons, gave their own vouchers in payment for provisions, whereupon he proclaimed, that none save commissaries should thus act; and that all local accounts should be paid within one month, in ready money, if it was in the chest, if not, with bills on the commissary-general. These bills soon became numerous, because of the scarcity of specie, yet their value did not sink, because they enabled those who had really furnished supplies, to prove their debts without the trouble of following the head-quarters; and they had an advantage over receipts, inasmuch as they distinctly pointed out the person who was to pay; they were also in accord with the customs of the country, for the people were used to receive government bills. The possessors were paid in rotation, whenever there was money; the small holders, who were the real furnishers of the army first, the speculators last, a regulation by which justice and the credit of the paper were alike consulted.
In 1812, this paper sunk twenty per cent., from the sordid practices of English mercantile houses whose agents secretly depreciated its credit and then purchased it; and in this dishonesty they were aided by some of the commissariat, notwithstanding the vigilant probity of the chief commissary. Sums, as low as ten pence, payable in Lisbon, I have myself seen in the hands of poor country people on the frontiers. By these infamous proceedings the poorer dealers were ruined or forced to raise their prices, which hurt their sales and contracted the markets to the detriment of the soldiers; and there was much danger, that the people generally, would thus discover the mode of getting cash for bills by submitting to high discounts, which would soon have rendered the contest too costly to continue. But the resources of lord Wellington and Mr. Stuart were not exhausted. They contrived to preserve the neutrality of Portugal, and by means of licenses continued to have importations of American flour, until the end of the war; a very fine stroke of policy, for this flour was paid for with English goods, and resold at a considerable profit for specie which went to the military chest. They were less successful in supporting the credit of the Portuguese government paper; bad faith, and the necessities of the native commissariat, which now caused an extraordinary issue, combined to lower its credit.
The conde de Funchal, Mr. Villiers, and Mr. Vansittart proposed a bank, and other schemes, such as a loan of one million and a half from the English treasury, which shall be treated more at length in another place. But lord Wellington ridiculing the fallacy of a government, with revenues unequal to its expenditure, borrowing from a government which was unable to find specie sufficient to sustain the war, remarked, that the money could not be realised in the Portuguese treasury, or it must be realised at the expense of a military chest, whose hollow sound already mocked the soldiers’ shout of victory. Again therefore he demanded the reform of abuses, and offered to take all the responsibility and odium upon himself, certain that the exigences of the war could be thus met, and the most vexatious imposts upon the poor abolished; neither did he fail to point out in detail the grounds of this conviction. His reasoning made as little impression upon Funchal, as it had done upon Linhares; money was no where to be had, and the general, after being forced to become a trader himself, now tolerated, for the sake of the resources it furnished, a contraband commerce, which he discovered Soult to have established with English merchants at Lisbon, exchanging the quicksilver of Almaden for colonial produce; and he was still to find in his own personal resources, the means of beating the enemy, in despite of the matchless follies of the governments he served. He did so, but complained that it was a hard task.