2º. When the disputes with America commenced, Mr. Stuart’s efforts to obtain flour for the army were most vexatiously thwarted by the board of admiralty, which permitted if it did not encourage the English ships of war to capture American vessels trading under the secret licenses.
3º. The refusal of the admiralty to establish certain cruisers along the coast, as recommended by lord Wellington, caused the loss of many store-ships and merchantmen, to the great detriment of the army before it quitted Portugal. Fifteen were taken off Oporto, and one close to the bar of Lisbon in May. And afterwards, the Mediterranean packet[Appendix, No. 1.] bearing despatches from lord William Bentinck was captured, which led to lamentable consequences; for the papers were not in cypher, and contained detailed accounts of plots against the French in Italy, with the names of the principal persons engaged.
4º. A like neglect of the coast of Spain caused ships containing money, shoes, and other indispensable stores to delay in port, or risk the being taken on the passage by cruizers issuing from Santona, Bayonne, and Bordeaux. And while the communicationsWellington’s Despatches, MSS. of the allies were thus intercepted, the French coasting vessels supplied their army and fortresses without difficulty.
5º. After the battle of Vittoria lord Wellington was forced to use French ammunition, though too small for the English muskets, because the ordnance store-ships which he had ordered from Lisbon to Santander could not sail for want of convoy. When the troops were in the Pyrenees, a reinforcement of five thousand men was kept at Gibraltar and Lisbon waiting for ships of war, and the transports employed to convey them were thus withdrawn from the service of carrying home wounded men, at a time when the Spanish authorities at Bilbao refused even for payment to concede public buildings for hospitals.
6º. When snow was falling on the Pyrenees the soldiers were without proper clothing, because the ship containing their great coats, though ready to sail in August, was detained at Oporto until November waiting for convoy. When the victories of July were to be turned to profit ere the fitting season for the siege of San Sebastian should pass away, the attack of that fortress was retarded sixteen days because a battering train and ammunition, demanded several months before by lord Wellington, had not yet arrived from England.
7º. During the siege the sea communication with Bayonne was free. “Any thing in the shape of a naval force,” said lord Wellington, “would drive away sir George Collier’s squadron.” The garrison received reinforcements artillery ammunition and all necessary stores for its defence, sending away the sick and wounded men in empty vessels. The Spanish general blockading Santona complained at the same time that the exertions of his troops were useless, because the French succoured the place by sea when they pleased; and after the battle of Vittoria not less than five vessels laden with stores and provisions, and one transport having British soldiers and clothing on board, were taken by cruizers issuing out of that port. The great advantage of attacking San Sebastian by water as well as by land was foregone for want of naval means, and from the same cause British soldiers were withdrawn from their own service to unload store-ships; the gun-boats employed in the blockade were Spanish vessels manned by Spanish soldiers withdrawn from the army, and the store-boats were navigated by Spanish women.
8º. The coasting trade between Bordeaux and Bayonne being quite free, the French, whose military means of transport had been so crippled by their losses at Vittoria that they could scarcely have collected magazines with land carriage only, received their supplies by water, and were thus saved trouble and expense and the unpopularity attending forced requisitions.
Between April and August, more than twenty applications and remonstrances, were addressed by lord Wellington to the government upon these points without producing the slightest attention to his demands. Mr. Croker, the under-secretary of the Admiralty, of whose conduct he particularly complained, was indeed permitted to write an offensive official letter to him, but his demands and the dangers to be apprehended from neglecting them were disregarded, and to use his own words, “since Great Britain had been a naval power a British army had never before been left in such a situation at a most important moment.”
Nor is it easy to determine whether negligence and incapacity or a grovelling sense of national honour prevailed most in the cabinet, when we find this renowned general complaining that the government, ignorant even to ridicule of military operations, seemed to know nothing of the nature of the element with which England was surrounded, and lord Melville so insensible to the glorious toils of the Peninsula as to tell him that his army was the last thing to be attended to.