‘Notwithstanding that this enormous force was pressing upon the now unaided Spanish people with all its weight, and acting against them with its utmost energy, it proved wholly unable to put down resistance.’—Review, page 497.
Now this relates to the period following sir John Moore’s death, which was on the 16th of January. That general’s fine movement upon Sahagun, and his subsequent retreat, had drawn the great bulk of the French forces towards Gallicia, and had paralyzed many corps. The war with Austria had drawn Napoleon himself and the imperial guards away from the Peninsula. Joseph was establishing his court at Madrid; Victor remained very inactive in Estremadura; Soult marched into Portugal;—in fine, this was precisely the period of the whole war in which the French army were most insert. Napoleon has fixed upon the four months of February, March, April, and May, 1809, as the period in which the King let the Peninsula slip from his feeble hands.
Let us see then what the Spaniards did during that time. And first it is false to say that they were unaided. They were aided against Victor by the vicinity of sir John Craddock’s troops; they were aided on the Gallician coast by an English squadron; they were aided on the Beira frontier, against Lapisse, by the Portuguese troops under sir Robert Wilson; they were aided on the Catalonian coast by lord Collingwood’s fleet; they were aided at Cadiz by the presence of general M‘Kenzie’s troops, sent from Lisbon; and they were aided everywhere by enormous supplies of money arms and ammunition sent from England. Finally, they were aided, and most powerfully so, by sir John Moore’s generalship, which had enabled them to rally and keep several considerable armies on foot in the southern parts of the country. What did these armies—these invincible Spaniards—do? They lost Zaragoza, Monzon, and Jaca, in the east; the fortresses of Ferrol and Coruña, and their fleet, in the north; they lost Estremadura, La Mancha, Aragon, the Asturias, and Gallicia; they lost the battles of Ucles and of Valls; the battle of Monterrey, that of Ciudid Real, and the battle of Medellin. They won nothing! they did not save themselves, it was the British army and the indolence and errors of the French that saved them.
Extract from Napoleon’s Memoirs.
‘After the embarkation of the English army, the king of Spain did nothing; he lost four months; he ought to have marched upon Cadiz, upon Valencia, upon Lisbon; political means would have done the rest.’
Extracts from lord Wellington’s Correspondence. 1809.
‘It is obvious that the longer, and the more intimately we become acquainted with the affairs of Spain, the less prospect do they hold out of anything like a glorious result. The great extent of the country, the natural difficulties which it opposes to an enemy, and the enmity of the people towards the French may spin out the war into length, and at last the French may find it impossible to establish a government in the country; but there is no prospect of a glorious termination to the contest.’
‘After the perusal of these details, and of Soult’s letters, can any one doubt that the evacuation of Gallicia was occasioned by the operations of the British troops in Portugal?’
‘The fact is, that the British army has saved Spain and Portugal during this year.’
The reviewer is not only a great critic, he is a great general also. He has discovered that there are no positions in the mountains of Portugal; nay, he will scarcely allow that there are mountains at all; and he insists that they offer no defence against an invader, but that the rivers do—that the Douro defends the eastern frontier of Beira, and that the frontier of Portugal generally is very compact and strong for defence, and well suited for a weak army to fight superior numbers;—that the weak army cannot be turned and cut off from Lisbon, and the strong army must invade in mass and by one line.