In this state of affairs, and when a quarrel had arisen between Bernadotte and the Saxon king (for the people of that country were ill-disposed towards the French), it is evident that a large English army appearing in the north of Germany would have gathered around it all the people and armies of the north, and accordingly Stadion proposed a landing in the Weser and the Elbe. Now England had at that time the great armament which went to Walcheren, the army under Wellington in the Peninsula, and that under sir John Stuart in Sicily, that is to say, she had about 80,000 or 90,000 men disposable; and yet so contriving were the ministers, that they kept Wellington too weak in Spain, Stuart too strong in Sicily; and instead of acting in the north of Germany where such a great combination awaited them, they sent their most powerful force to perish in the marshes of Walcheren, where the only diversion they caused was the bringing together a few thousand national guards from the nearest French departments. And this the reviewer calls ‘the forming a combination of those states in Europe which still retained some degree of independence and magnanimity to resist the ambition of a conqueror.’ What a profound, modest, and, to use a Morning Post compound, not-at-all-a-flagitious writer this reviewer is.
Well, notwithstanding this grand ‘combination,’ things did not turn out well. The Austrians changed their first plan of campaign in several particulars. Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly appeared at the head of his army, which, greatly inferior in number, and composed principally of German contingents, was not very well disposed towards him; and yet, such was the stupendous power of this man’s genius and bravery, he in a few days by a series of movements unequalled in skill by any movement known in military records, broke through the Austrian power, separated her armies, drove them in disorder before him, and seized Vienna; and but for an accident, one of those minor accidents so frequent in war, which enabled the archduke Charles to escape over the Danube at Ratisbon, he would have terminated this gigantic contest in ten days. The failure there led to the battle of Esling, where the sudden swell of the Danube again baffled him and produced another crisis, which might have been turned to his hurt if the English army had been in the north of Germany; but it was then perishing amongst the stagnant ditches of Walcheren, and the only combination of the English ministers to be discovered was a combination of folly, arrogance, and conceit. I have now done with the review. Had all the objections contained in it been true, it would have evinced the petty industry of a malicious mind more than any just or generous interest in the cause of truth; but being, as I have demonstrated, false even in the minutest particular, I justly stigmatise it as remarkable only for malignant imbecility and systematic violation of truth.
The reviewers having asserted that I picked out of Foy’s history the charge against lord Melville of saying “the worst men made the best soldiers,” I replied that I drew for it on my own clear recollection of the fact.
Since then a friend has sent me the report of lord Melville’s speech, extracted from the Annual Register (Baldwin’s) 1808, p. 112, and the following passage extracted from his lordship’s speech bears out my assertion and proves the effrontery with which the reviewers deny facts.
“What was meant by a better sort of men? Was it that they should be taller or shorter, broader or thinner? This might be intelligible, but it was not the fact. The men that had hitherto formed the British armies were men of stout hearts and habits; men of spirit and courage; lovers of bold enterprize. These were the materials of which an army must be composed. Give him such men though not of the better description. The worse men were the fittest for soldiers. Keep the better sort at home.”
HISTORY
OF THE
WAR IN THE PENINSULA.