remembered that one of his French brigades, that of Pannetier, had
been sent as escort to the captive Spaniards of Blake’s army. While
the remainder of the new ‘Army of the Ebro’ went off in the direction
of Lerida, as has already been seen, this brigade was turned aside
against Mina. Dorsenne at the same time directed the greater part
of his available field-force to join in the hunt, and all such of
Caffarelli’s troops as were not shut up in garrisons were told off for
the same purpose. These detachments, when added to the normal force
of occupation in Navarre and Biscay, made up in all some 30,000 men.
Divided into many columns, each of which was strong enough to face
the 3,000 or 4,000 irregulars under Mina’s command, they endeavoured
to converge upon him, and to enclose him within the net of their
operations. The chase was very hot in March: on the first of that month
Caffarelli invaded the remote Pyrenean valley of Roncal, where it had
been discovered that Mina kept his dépôts, his ammunition factory, and
his hospitals. The valley was swept clean, but no appreciable number
of the guerrilleros were captured. On the 24th, however, it looked as
if disaster was impending, as three columns under Abbé, Dumoustier
(who had a brigade of the Young Guard), and Laferrière had succeeded
in disposing themselves around Mina’s main body, between Sanguessa and
Ochagavia. The guerrillero, however, saved himself by a night march
of incredible difficulty across impracticable hills, and got away
into Aragon. He was lost to sight, and was believed to have been too
harassed to be formidable for many a day.
Such was not the true state of affairs. Mina at once came back to his
old haunts, by a circuitous march through southern Navarre, and on
April 9th performed one of his most notable exploits. On that day he
surprised an immense convoy of convalescents, civilians, baggage, and
food-stuffs, which was marching from Vittoria to Mondragon, in the
Pass of Salinas (or Puerto de Arlaban). Though escorted by 2,000 men
(including the whole of the 7th Polish regiment just drawn off from
Soult for the Russian war), it was completely destroyed. Five hundred
of the Poles were slain, 150 captured, and an enormous booty, including
(it is said) several hundred thousand francs in cash, fell into Mina’s
hands. He also delivered 450 Spanish prisoners, who were being
conducted to captivity beyond the Pyrenees.
Such an exploit naturally drew down once more upon Mina the attention
of all the neighbouring French commanders: Dorsenne and Reille again
sent columns to aid the governor of Navarre, and from the 23rd to
the 28th of April Mina was being hunted by powerful detachments
converging on him from all sides[97]. He himself was very nearly
captured at Robres by General Pannetier--who surprised him at dawn,
helped by treachery on the part of a subordinate guerrillero chief,
and dispersed his followers for the moment[98]. But all who were not
slain or captured rallied around their indomitable leader, and followed
him in a hazardous retreat, in which he threaded his way between the
converging columns of the French and ultimately escaped to the Rioja.
He asserts in his Memoirs, and with truth, that he was at this time of
the highest service to Wellington’s main operations, since he attracted
and detained beyond the Ebro such a large proportion of Dorsenne’s Army
of the North, that in April and May it had not a man to spare to help
Marmont. Even Dumoustier’s Guard division, under orders to return to
France for the Russian war, was put into the pack of pursuers who tried
in vain to hunt him down.
[97] There seems to be an error of dates in Napier, iv. p. 172,
concerning Mina’s operations, as the surprise of the convoy at
Salinas is put _after_ Mina’s escape from Pannetier at Robres.
But Mina’s own Memoirs fix the date of the latter as April 23rd,
1812, while the former certainly happened on April 7th. Toreno
(iii. p. 87) has got the sequence right.
[98] There is a curious and interesting account of this in Mina’s
own Memoirs, pp. 31-2, where he relates his narrow escape,
and tells how he had the pleasure of hanging his treacherous
lieutenant, and three local alcaldes, who had conspired to keep
from him the news of Pannetier’s approach.
To sum up the results of all the operations in Catalonia, Aragon,
and Navarre, which followed on the release of Reille’s troops from
the Valencian expedition, it may be said that Napoleon’s scheme for
the complete reduction of north-eastern Spain had completely failed
by April. Large forces had been put in motion; toilsome marches had
been executed over many mountain roads in the worst season of the
year; all the bands of the insurgents had been more than once defeated
and dispersed. But the country-side was not conquered: the isolated
garrisons were still cut off from each other by the enemy, wherever
the heavy marching columns had passed on. The communications were no
more safe and free than they had been in December. The loss of men
by sickness and in the innumerable petty combats and disasters had
been immense. The game had yet to be finished, and the spare time in
which it could be conducted was drawing to an end. For Wellington was
on the march, and ere long not a man from the Armies of the North or
the Centre was to be available to aid Reille, Suchet, and Decaen in
their unending and ungrateful task. Gone, too, were the days in which
reserves without end could be poured in from France: the Russian war
was about to open, and when once it began reinforcements were to be
drawn from Spain rather than sent into it. The invasion had reached
its high-water mark in January 1812 before the walls of Valencia and
Alicante.
SECTION XXXI: CHAPTER II
OPERATIONS OF SOULT IN ANDALUSIA: THE SIEGE OF TARIFA, DEC. 1811-JAN.
1812
In the south-west no less than in the south-east of Spain the month
of January 1812 was to witness the last offensive movement of the
French armies of invasion. But while Suchet’s advance ended, as we
have seen, in a splendid success, that of Soult was to meet with a
disastrous check. Neither marshal was to have another chance of taking
the initiative--thanks, directly or indirectly, to the working out of
Wellington’s great plan of campaign for the New Year.
In the previous volume the fortunes of Soult and the Army of Andalusia
were narrated down to the first days of November 1811, when Hill’s raid
into Estremadura, after the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos, ended with
his retreat within the borders of Portugal. That raid had inflicted
a severe blow on Drouet’s corps of observation, which formed Soult’s
right wing, and covered his communications with Badajoz. But its net
result was only to restrict the activities of the French on this side
to that part of Estremadura which lies south of the Guadiana. Hill
had made no attempt to drive away Drouet’s main body, or to blockade
Badajoz, and had betaken himself to winter quarters about Elvas,
Portalegre, and Estremos. Consequently Drouet was able to settle
down opposite him once more, in equally widespread cantonments, with
his right wing at Merida, and his left at Zafra, and to devote his
attention to sending successive convoys forward to Badajoz, whenever
the stores in that fortress showed signs of running low. Drouet’s
force no longer bore the name of the ‘5th Corps’--all the old corps
distinctions were abolished in the Southern Army this autumn, and no
organization larger than that of the divisions was permitted to remain.
The troops in Estremadura were simply for the future Drouet’s and
Daricau’s divisions of the ‘Armée du Midi.’ The composition of this
‘containing force,’ whose whole purpose was now to observe Hill, was
somewhat changed after midwinter: for the Emperor sent orders that the
34th and 40th regiments, the victims of Girard’s carelessness at Arroyo
dos Molinos, were to be sent home to France to recruit their much
depleted ranks. They duly left Drouet, and marched off northward[99],
but they never got further than Burgos, where Dorsenne detained them
at a moment of need, so that they became attached to the ‘Army of
the North,’ and (after receiving some drafts) were involved in the
operations against Wellington in the valley of the Douro. Two regiments
from Andalusia (the 12th Léger and 45th Line) came up to replace them
in Drouet’s division, but even then the French troops in Estremadura
did not exceed 13,500 men, if the garrison of Badajoz (about 5,000
strong) be deducted. This constituted a field-force insufficient to
hold back Hill when next he should take the offensive; but all through
November and far into December Hill remained quiescent, by Wellington’s
orders, and his adversary clung to his advanced positions as long as he
could, though much disturbed as to what the future might bring forth.
[99] Napoleon to Berthier, Dec. 30, 1811, speaks of the order
to march having been _already_ given. The two regiments were
in Castile by March: when precisely they left Drouet I cannot
say--perhaps as late as February.
Of the remainder of Soult’s army, the troops in front of Cadiz,
originally the 1st Corps, had been cut down to an irreducible minimum,
by the necessity for keeping flank-guards to either side, to watch the
Spanish forces in the Condado de Niebla on the west and the mountains
of Ronda on the south. Even including the marines and sailors of the
flotilla, there were seldom 20,000 men in the Lines, and the Spanish
force in Cadiz and the Isle of Leon, stiffened by the Anglo-Portuguese
detachment which Wellington always retained there, was often not
inferior in numbers to the besiegers. The bombardment from the heavy
Villoutreys mortars, placed in the works of the Matagorda peninsula,
continued intermittently: but, though a shell occasionally fell in
the city, no appreciable harm was done. The inhabitants killed or
injured by many months of shelling could be counted on the fingers of
two hands. The citizens had come to take the occasional descent of a
missile in their streets with philosophic calm, and sang a derisive
street ditty which told how
‘De las bombas que tiran los Gavachos
Se hacen las Gaditanas tirabuzones.’
‘The splinters of the bombs that the French threw served the ladies of
Cadiz as weights to curl their hair[100].’
[100] See Schepeler, p. 172.
The Fort of Puntales, on the easternmost point of the isthmus that
links Cadiz to the Isle of Leon, felt the bombardment more severely,
but was never seriously injured, and always succeeded in keeping up
an effective return fire. With the artillery of those days--even when
mortars of the largest calibre, specially cast in the arsenal of
Seville, were used--Cadiz was safe from any real molestation.
Marshal Victor was still in command of the troops in the Lines at the
end of 1811, but the Emperor gave orders for his return to France,
when he ordered the Army of Andalusia to drop its organization into
army-corps, and replaced them by divisions. He directed that the
Marshal should set out at once, unless he was engaged in some serious
enterprise at the moment that the summons arrived. This--as we shall
see--chanced to be the case, and Victor was still hard at work in
January, and did not leave Spain till early in April.
The third main section of Soult’s troops consisted of the two infantry
and one cavalry divisions which had lately formed the 4th Corps, and
had, since their first arrival in the South, been told off for the
occupation of the kingdom of Granada. The whole of the coast and the
inland from Malaga as far as Baza fell to their charge. The corps had
been a strong one--16,000 foot and 4,000 horse--but was shortly to be
reduced; the order of December 30, recalling troops for the expected
Russian war, took off the whole Polish infantry division of Dembouski,
5,000 bayonets: the regiment of Lancers of the Vistula, who had won
such fame by their charge at Albuera, was also requisitioned, but did
not get off till the autumn. But in the last month of the old year
the Poles were still present and available, and Soult was far from
expecting their departure. Yet even before they were withdrawn the
garrison of the kingdom of Granada was by no means too strong for the
work allotted to it. The greater part of its available field-force
had been drawn to the south-west, to curb the insurrection of the
_Serranos_ of the Ronda mountains, and the inroads of Ballasteros.
The forces left in Granada itself and the other eastern towns were so
modest that Soult protested, and apparently with truth, that he could
not spare from them even a small flying column of all arms, to make the
demonstration against Murcia in assistance of Suchet’s operations which
the Emperor ordered him to execute. Nothing, as it will be remembered,
was done in this direction during December and January, save the
sending out of Pierre Soult’s raid[101], a mere affair of a single
cavalry brigade.
[101] See above, p. 81.
The total force of the Andalusian army was still in December as high
as 80,000 men on paper. But after deducting the sick, the garrison
of Badajoz--5,000 men,--the troops of Drouet, entirely taken up with
observing and containing Hill, the divisions in the Lines before Cadiz,
and the obligatory garrisons of Granada, Malaga, Cordova, and other
large towns, the surplus left over for active operations was very
small. At the most ten or twelve thousand men, obtained by borrowing
from all sides, could be formed to act as a central reserve, prepared
to assist Drouet in Estremadura, Victor in the Cadiz region, or Leval
in the East, as occasion might demand. During the two crises when Soult
brought up his reserves to join Drouet, in the winter of 1811-12 and
the spring of 1812, their joint force did not exceed 25,000 men. The
Marshal was resolved to hold the complete circuit of Andalusia, the
viceroyalty which brought him so much pride and profit; and so long as
he persisted in this resolve he could make no offensive move, for want
of a field army of competent strength.
Soult made some effort to supplement the strength of his garrisons by
raising Spanish levies--both battalions and squadrons of regulars,
and units for local service in the style of urban guards. The former
‘Juramentados’ never reached any great strength: they were composed
of deserters, or prisoners who volunteered service in order to avoid
being sent to France. Occasionally there were as many as 5,000 under
arms--usually less. The men for the most part disappeared at the first
opportunity, and rejoined the national army or the guerrilleros: the
officers were less prone to abscond, because they were liable to
be shot as traitors on returning to their countrymen. Two or three
cases are recorded of such renegades who committed suicide, when they
saw themselves about to fall into the hands of Spanish troops[102].
The urban guards or ‘escopeteros’ were of a little more service,
for the reason that, being interested in the preservation of their
own families, goods, and houses, they would often prevent the entry
into their towns of any roving Spanish force which showed itself for
a moment. For if they admitted any small band, which went on its
way immediately, and could make no attempt to defend them on the
reappearance of the enemy, they were liable to be executed as traitors
by the French, and their town would be fined or perhaps sacked. Hence
it was to their interest, so long as Soult continued to dominate all
Andalusia, to keep the guerrilleros outside their walls. But their
service was, of course, unwilling; and they were usually ready to
yield on the appearance of any serious Spanish force, whose size was
sufficient to excuse their submission in the eyes of Soult. Often a
town was ostensibly held for King Joseph, but was privately supplying
recruits, provisions, and money contributions to the national cause.
Nevertheless there were real ‘Afrancesados’ in Andalusia, people who
had so far committed themselves to the cause of King Joseph that they
could not contemplate the triumph of the Patriots without terror. When
Soult evacuated Andalusia in September 1812 several thousand refugees
followed him, rather than face the vengeance of their countrymen.
[102] One case is noted of a captain of the ‘Juramentado’
detachment at Badajoz who blew himself from a gun when he saw
the place taken (Lamare’s _Défense de Badajoz_, p. 260). Carlos
de España shot the other five Spanish officers captured on that
occasion (Belmas, iv. p. 362).
During the midwinter of 1811-12 Soult’s main attention was taken up by
a serious enterprise in the extreme south of his viceroyalty, which
absorbed all the spare battalions of his small central reserve, and
rendered it impossible for him to take the offensive in any other
direction. This was the attempt to crush Ballasteros, and to capture
Tarifa, which rendered his co-operation in Suchet’s Valencian campaign
impossible.
General Ballasteros, as it will be remembered, had landed from Cadiz
at Algeciras on September 4th, 1811, and had been much hunted during
the autumn by detachments drawn both from the troops in the kingdom of
Granada and those of Victor[103]. As many as 10,000 men were pressing
him in October, when he had been forced to take refuge under the cannon
of Gibraltar. But when want of food compelled the columns of Barrois,
Sémélé, and Godinot to withdraw and to disperse, he had emerged
from his refuge, had followed the retiring enemy, and had inflicted
some damage on their rearguards [November 5, 1811]. His triumphant
survival, after the first concentrated movement made against him, had
much provoked Soult, who saw the insurrectionary movement in southern
Andalusia spreading all along the mountains, and extending itself
towards Malaga on the one side and Arcos on the other. The Marshal,
therefore, determined to make a serious effort to crush Ballasteros,
and at the same time to destroy one of the two bases from which he was
wont to operate. Gibraltar was, of course, impregnable: but Tarifa, the
other fortress at the southern end of the Peninsula, was not, and had
proved from time to time very useful to the Spaniards. It was now their
only secure foothold in southern Andalusia, and was most useful as a
port of call for vessels going round from Cadiz to the Mediterranean,
especially for the large flotilla of British and Spanish sloops, brigs,
and gunboats, which obsessed the coast of Andalusia, and made the use
of routes by the seaside almost impracticable for the enemy. Soult
was at this time trying to open up communications with the Moors of
Tangier, from whom he hoped to get horses for his cavalry, and oxen for
the army before Cadiz. But he could not hope to accomplish anything
in this way so long as Tarifa was the nest and victualling-place of
privateers, who lay thick in the straits only a few miles from the
coast of Morocco.
[103] See vol. iii. pp. 594-5.
The main reason for attacking Tarifa, however, was that it had recently
become the head-quarters of a small Anglo-Spanish field-force, which
had been molesting the rear of the lines before Cadiz. The place had
not been garrisoned in 1810, when Soult first broke into Andalusia:
but a few months after General Colin Campbell, governor of Gibraltar,
threw into it a small force, that same battalion of flank-companies
of the 9th, 28th, 30th, and 47th Foot, which distinguished itself so
much at Barrosa in the following year, when led by Colonel Brown of the
28th. This hard fighter had moved on with his regiment later in 1811,
but his place had been taken by Major King of the 82nd--a one-legged
officer of great energy and resolution[104]. The garrison was trifling
down to October 1811, when General Campbell threw into Tarifa a brigade
under Colonel Skerrett, consisting of the 2/47th and 2/87th, and some
details[105], making (with the original garrison) 1,750 British troops.
Three days later the Spaniards sent in from Cadiz another brigade[106]
of about the same strength, under General Copons. After the French
expedition against Ballasteros had failed, Copons and Skerrett went
out and drove from Vejer the southernmost outposts of Victor’s corps
in the Lines (November 6th). A fortnight later they marched across the
hills to Algeciras, and prepared to join Ballasteros in an attack on
the French troops in the direction of Ronda, but returned to Tarifa
on the news that Victor was showing a considerable force at Vejer,
and threatening to cut them off from their base[107]. Ballasteros by
himself was a sufficient nuisance to Soult, but when his operations
began to be aided by another separate force, partly composed of
British troops, the Duke of Dalmatia determined that a clean sweep must
be made in southern Andalusia.
[104] After the 28th went off, the flank-companies were those of
the 2/11th, 2/47th, and 1/82nd, two from each battalion.
[105] 2/47th (8 companies) 570 men, 2/87th (560 men), 1 company
95th (75 men), 70 2nd Hussars K.G.L., 1 field-battery (Captain
Hughes) 83 men, or in all 1,358 of all ranks.
[106] A battalion each of Irlanda and Cantabria, and some
light companies of cazadores, with 120 gunners and 25 cavalry,
amounting to about 1,650 men (sick included).
[107] For details of these operations see the anonymous _Defence
of Tarifa_ (London, 1812), and letters in Rait’s _Life of Lord
Gough_, i. pp. 69-70.
The idea of capturing Tarifa did not appear by any means impracticable.
This little decayed place of 6,000 souls had never been fortified in
the modern style, and was surrounded by nothing more than a mediaeval
wall eight feet thick, with square towers set in it at intervals.
There was a citadel, the castle of Guzman El Bueno[108], but this,
too, was a thirteenth-century building, and the whole place, though
tenable against an enemy unprovided with artillery, was reckoned
helpless against siege-guns. It is described by one of its defenders
as ‘lying in a hole,’ for it was completely commanded by a range of
low heights, at no greater distance than 300 yards from its northern
front. In the sea, half a mile beyond it, was a rocky island, connected
with the mainland by a very narrow strip of sand, which was well
suited to serve as a final place of refuge for the garrison, and
which had been carefully fortified. It was furnished with batteries,
of which one bore on the sand-spit and the town: a redoubt (Santa
Catalina) had been erected at the point where the isthmus joined the
mainland: several buildings had been erected to serve as a shelter
for troops, and a great series of caves (Cueva de los Moros) had been
converted into casemates and store-rooms: they were perfectly safe
against bombardment. In the eyes of many officers the island was
the real stronghold, and the city was but an outwork to it, which
might be evacuated without any serious damage to the strength of the
defence. Nevertheless something had been done to improve the weak
fortifications of the place: the convent of San Francisco, seventy
yards from its northern point, had been entrenched and loopholed, to
serve as a redoubt, and some of the square towers in the _enceinte_ had
been strengthened and built up so as to bear artillery. The curtain,
however, was in all parts far too narrow and weak to allow of guns
being placed upon it, and there was no glacis and practically no
ditch, the whole wall to its foot being visible from the heights which
overlook the city on its eastern side. There were only twenty-six
guns available, and of these part belonged to the defences of the
island. In the town itself there were only two heavy guns mounted on
commanding towers, six field-pieces (9-pounders) distributed along the
various fronts, and four mortars. When the siege actually began, the
main defence was by musketry fire. It was clear from the topography of
Tarifa that its northern front, that nearest to and most completely
commanded by the hills outside, would be the probable point of attack
by the enemy; and long before the siege began preparations were made
for an interior defence. The buildings looking on the back of the
ramparts were barricaded and loopholed, the narrow streets were blocked
with traverses, and some ‘entanglements’ were contrived with the iron
window-bars requisitioned from all the houses of the town, which served
as a sort of _chevaux de frise_. The outer _enceinte_ was so weak that
it was intended that the main defence should be in the network of
streets. Special preparations were thought out for the right-centre of
the north front, where the walls are pierced by the ravine of a winter
torrent of intermittent flow, called the Retiro. The point where it
made its passage under the _enceinte_ through a portcullis was the
lowest place in the front, the walls sinking down as they followed
the outline of the ravine. Wherefore palisades were planted outside
the portcullis, entanglements behind it, and all the houses looking
down on the torrent bed within the walls were prepared with loopholes
commanding its course[109]. There was ample time for work, for while
the first certain news that the French were coming arrived in November,
the enemy did not actually appear before the walls till December 20. By
that time much had been done, though the balance was only completed in
haste after the siege had begun.
[108] This was the famous knight who, holding the place for King
Sancho IV in 1294, refused to surrender it when the Moors brought
his son, captured in a skirmish, before the walls, and threatened
to behead him if his father refused to capitulate. Guzman would
not yield, saw his son slain, and successfully maintained the
fortress.
[109] For these precautions, the work of Captain Charles Smith,
R.E., see the anonymous _Defence of Tarifa_ (p. 62), and Napier,
iv. pp. 59-60.
The long delay of the enemy was caused by the abominable condition of
the roads of the district--the same that had given Graham and La Peña
so much trouble in February 1811[110]: moreover, any considerable
concentration of troops in southern Andalusia raised a food problem
for Soult. The region round Tarifa is very thinly inhabited, and it
was clear that, if a large army were collected, it would have to carry
its provisions with it, and secure its communication with its base,
under pain of falling into starvation within a few days. Heavy guns
abounded in the Cadiz lines, and Soult had no trouble in selecting a
siege-train of sixteen pieces from them: but their transport and that
of their ammunition was a serious problem. To complete the train no
less than 500 horses had to be requisitioned from the field artillery
and military wagons of the 1st Corps. While it was being collected,
Victor moved forward to Vejer, near the coast, half-way between
Cadiz and Tarifa, with 2,000 men, in order to clear the country-side
from the guerrillero bands, who made survey of the roads difficult
and dangerous. Under cover of escorts furnished by him, several
intelligence officers inspected the possible routes: there were two,
both passing through the mountainous tract between the sea and the
lagoon of La Janda (which had given Graham so much trouble in the last
spring). One came down to the waterside at the chapel of Virgen de
la Luz, only three miles from Tarifa, but was reported to be a mere
mule-track. The other, somewhat more resembling a road, descended to
the shore several miles farther to the north, and ran parallel with it
for some distance. But in expectation of the siege, the Spaniards, with
help from English ships, had blown up many yards of this road, where
it was narrowest between the water and the mountain. Moreover, ships
of war were always stationed off Tarifa, and their guns would make
passage along this defile dangerous. Nevertheless General Garbé, the
chief French engineer, held that this was the only route practicable
for artillery, and reported that the road could be remade, and that
the flotilla might be kept at a distance by building batteries on
the shore, which would prevent any vessel from coming close enough
to deliver an effective fire. It was determined, therefore, that the
siege-train should take this path, which for the first half of its way
passes close along the marshy borders of the lagoon of La Janda, and
then enters the hills in order to descend to the sea at Torre Peña.
[110] See vol. iv. pp. 101-2.
On December 8th the siege-train was concentrated at Vejer, and in
the hope that it would in four days (or not much more) reach its
destination before Tarifa, Victor gave orders for the movement of the
troops which were to conduct the siege. Of this force the smaller
part, six battalions[111] and two cavalry regiments, was drawn from
Leval’s command, formerly the 4th Corps. These two divisions had also
to provide other detachments to hold Malaga in strength, and watch
Ballasteros. The troops from the blockade of Cadiz supplied eight
battalions[112], and three more to keep up communications[113]; one
additional regiment was borrowed from the brigade in the kingdom of
Cordova, which was always drawn upon in times of special need[114]. The
whole force put in motion was some 15,000 men, but only 10,000 actually
came before Tarifa and took part in the siege.
[111] Two battalions each of 43rd Line and 7th and 9th Poles, and
16th and 21st Dragoons.
[112] Three of 16th Léger, two of 54th Line, one each of 27th
Léger and 94th and 95th Line.
[113] Two of 63rd and one of 8th Line.
[114] 51st Line.
The various columns, which were under orders to march, came from
distant points, and had to concentrate. Barrois lay at Los Barrios,
inland from Algeciras, with six battalions from the Cadiz lines,
watching Ballasteros, who had once more fallen back under shelter of
the guns of Gibraltar. To this point Leval came to join him, with the
3,000 men drawn from Malaga and Granada. The third column, under Victor
himself, consisting of the siege-train and the battalions told off for
its escort, came from the side of Vejer. All three were to meet before
Tarifa: but from the first start difficulties began to arise owing to
the bad weather.
The winter, which had hitherto been mild and equable, broke up into
unending rain-storms on the day appointed for the start, and the sudden
filling of the torrents in the mountains cut the communications between
the columns. Leval, who had got as far as the pass of Ojen, in the
range which separates the district about Algeciras and Los Barrios
from the Tarifa region, was forced to halt there for some days: but
his rear, a brigade under Cassagne, could not come forward to join
him, nor did the convoy-column succeed in advancing far from Vejer.
Victor sent three successive officers with escorts to try to get into
touch with Cassagne, but each returned without having been able to push
through. It was not till the 12th that a fourth succeeded in reaching
the belated column, which only got under way that day and joined on
the following afternoon. The siege-train was not less delayed, and was
blocked for several days by the overflowing of the lagoon of La Janda,
along whose shore its first stages lay. It only struggled through to
the south end of the lagoon on the 14th, and took no less than four
days more to cover the distance of sixteen miles across the hills to
Torre Peña, where the road comes down to the sea. Forty horses, it is
said, had to be harnessed to each heavy gun to pull it through[115].
Much of the ammunition was spoilt by the rain, which continued to fall
intermittently, and more had to be requisitioned from the Cadiz lines,
and to be brought forward by supplementary convoys.
[115] For details of this toilsome march see Belmas, iv. pp.
15-17.
These initial delays went far to wreck the whole scheme, because of
the food problem. Each of the columns had to bring its own provisions
with it, and, when stopped on the road, consumed stores that had been
intended to serve it during the siege. The distance from Vejer to
Tarifa is only thirty miles, and from Los Barrios to Tarifa even less:
but the columns, which had been ordered to march on December 8th, did
not reach their destination till December 20th, and the communications
behind them were cut already, not by the enemy but by the vile weather,
which had turned every mountain stream into a torrent, and every
low-lying bottom into a marsh. The column with the siege artillery
arrived two days later: it had got safely through the defile of Torre
Peña: the sappers had repaired the road by the water, and had built
a masked battery for four 12-pounders and two howitzers, whose fire
kept off from the dangerous point several Spanish and English gunboats
which came up to dispute the passage. The column from the pass of Ojen
had been somewhat delayed in its march by a sally of Ballasteros, who
came out from the Gibraltar lines on the 17th-18th and fell upon its
rear with 2,000 men. He drove in the last battalion, but when Barrois
turned back and attacked him with a whole brigade, the Spaniard gave
way and retreated in haste to San Roque. Nevertheless, by issuing from
his refuge and appearing in the open, he had cut the communications
between the army destined for the siege and the troops at Malaga. At
the same time that Ballasteros made this diversion, Skerrett, with his
whole brigade and a few of Copons’s Spaniards, had issued from Tarifa
to demonstrate against the head of the approaching French column, and
advanced some distance on the road to Fascinas, where his handful of
hussars bickered with the leading cavalry in the enemy’s front. Seeing
infantry behind, he took his main body no farther forward than the
convent of Nuestra Señora de la Luz, three miles from the fortress. On
the 19th the French showed 4,000 men on the surrounding hills, and on
the 20th advanced in force in two columns, and pushed the English and
Spanish pickets into Tarifa, after a long skirmish in which the British
had 31, the Spaniards about 40 casualties, while the French, according
to Leval’s report, lost only 1 officer and 3 men killed and 27 wounded.
By four in the afternoon the place was invested--the French pickets
reaching from sea to sea, and their main body being encamped behind the
hills which command the northern side of Tarifa. They could not place
themselves near the water, owing to the fire of two British frigates
and a swarm of gunboats, which lay in-shore, and shelled their flanks
all day, though without great effect.
Copons and Skerrett had divided the manning of the town and island
between their brigades on equal terms, each keeping two battalions in
the town and a third in the island and the minor posts. Of the British
the 47th and 87th had the former, King’s battalion of flank-companies
(reinforced by 70 marines landed from the ships) the latter charge. The
convent of San Francisco was held by a company of the 82nd, the redoubt
of Santa Catalina on the isthmus by one of the 11th. Seeing the French
inactive on the 21st--they were waiting for the siege-train which was
not yet arrived--Skerrett sent out three companies to drive in their
pickets, and shelled the heights behind which they were encamped. On
the following day the sortie was repeated, by a somewhat larger force
under Colonel Gough of the 87th, covered by a flanking fire from the
gunboats. The right wing of the French pickets was driven in with some
loss, and a house too near the Santa Catalina redoubt demolished. The
besiegers lost 3 men killed and 4 officers and 19 men wounded, mainly
from the 16th Léger. The sallying troops had only 1 man killed and 5
wounded (2 from the 11th, 4 from the 87th). That night the siege-train
arrived, and was parked behind the right-hand hill of the three which
face the northern side of Tarifa.
The engineer officers who had come up with the siege-train executed
their survey of the fortress next morning, and reported (as might have
been expected) that it would be best to attack the central portion of
the north front, because the ground facing it was not exposed to any
fire from the vessels in-shore, as was the west front, and could only
be searched by the two or three guns which the besieged had mounted
on the towers of Jesus and of Guzman, the one in the midst of the
northern front, the other in a dominating position by the castle, at
the southern corner. However, the 24-pounders on the island, shooting
over the town, could throw shells on to the hillside where the French
were about to work, though without being able to judge of their effect.
On the night of the 23rd the French began their first parallel, on
their right flank of the central hill, at a distance of 300 yards from
the walls: the approaches to it needed no spadework, being completely
screened by a ravine and a thick aloe hedge. The besieged shelled it on
the succeeding day, but with small effect--only 3 workers were killed
and 4 wounded. On the 24th a minor front of attack was developed on
the left-hand hill, where a first parallel was thrown up about 250
yards from the walls. The gunboats on the southern shore fired on this
work when it was discovered, but as it was invisible to them, and as
they could only shoot at haphazard, by directions signalled from the
town, they generally failed to hit the mark, and did little to prevent
the progress of the digging. The besiegers only lost 4 killed and 25
wounded this day, and on the original point of attack were able to
commence a second parallel, in which there was marked out the place for
the battery which was destined to breach the town wall at the lowest
point of its circuit, just south of the bed of the Retiro torrent.
On the two following days the French continued to push forward with
no great difficulty; they completed the second parallel on the centre
hill, parts of which were only 180 yards from the town. On the left or
eastern hill the trenches were continued down the inner slope, as far
as the bottom of the ravine, so as almost to join those of the right
attack. On the 26th a violent south-east gale began to blow, which
compelled the British and Spanish gunboats to quit their station to
the right of Tarifa, lest they should be driven ashore, and to run
round to the west side of the island which gave them shelter from wind
coming from such a quarter. The French works were, therefore, only
molested for the future by the little 6-pounders on the north-east (or
Corchuela) tower, and the heavy guns firing at a high trajectory from
the island and the tower of Guzman.
But the gale was accompanied by rain, and this, beginning with
moderate showers on the 26th, developed into a steady downpour on the
27th and 28th, and commenced to make the spadework in the trenches
more laborious, as the sappers were up to their ankles in mud, and
the excavated earth did not bind easily into parapets owing to its
semi-liquid condition. Nevertheless the plans of the engineers were
carried out, and two batteries were finished and armed on the central
hill, one lower down to batter the walls, the other higher up, to deal
with the guns of the besieged and silence them if possible. The French
lined all the advanced parallel with sharpshooters, who kept up a heavy
fire on the ramparts, and would have made it difficult for the garrison
to maintain a reply, if a large consignment of sandbags had not been
received from Gibraltar, with which cover was contrived for the men on
the curtain, and the artillery in the towers.
At eleven o’clock on the morning of the 29th the two French batteries
opened[116], with twelve heavy guns. The weakness of the old town
wall at once became evident: the first shot fired went completely
through it, and lodged in a house to its rear. Before evening there
was a definite breach produced, just south of the Retiro ravine,
and it was clear that the enemy would be able to increase it to any
extent that he pleased--the masonry fell to pieces the moment that
it was well pounded. The two small field-guns on the tower of Jesus
were silenced by 3 o’clock, and the heavy gun on Guzman’s tower also
ceased firing--of which more anon. By night only the distant guns on
the island, and the ships in the south-western bay, were making an
effective reply to the French.
[116] The breaching battery on the lower slope with four 16-
and two 12-pounders: the upper battery with four howitzers
for high-trajectory fire against the more distant guns of the
besieged and the island, and two 12-pounders.
This, from the psychological point of view, was the critical day of the
siege, for on the clear demonstration of the weakness of the walls,
Colonel Skerrett, who had never much confidence in his defences,
proposed to evacuate the city of Tarifa. At a council of officers he
argued in favour of withdrawing the garrison into the island, and
making no attempt to hold the weak mediaeval walls which the French
were so effectively battering. This would have been equivalent, in the
end, to abandoning the entire foothold of the British on this point of
the coast. For there was on the island no cover for troops, save two
or three recently erected buildings, and the recesses of the ‘Cueva de
los Moros.’ Some of the inhabitants had already taken refuge there,
and were suffering great privations, from being exposed to the weather
in tents and hastily contrived huts. It is clear that if 3,000 men,
British and Spanish, had been lodged on the wind-swept rocks of the
island, it would soon have been necessary to withdraw them; however
inaccessible the water-girt rock, with its low cliffs, might be, no
large body of troops could have lived long upon it, exposed as they
would have been not only to wind and wet, but to constant molestation
by heavy guns placed in and about the city and the hills that dominate
it. Meanwhile the French would have possessed the excellent cover of
the houses of Tarifa, and would have effectively blocked the island
by leaving a garrison to watch the causeway, the only possible exit
from it. It is certain that the abandonment of the island would have
followed that of the town within a few days: indeed Skerrett had
already obtained leave from General Cooke, then commanding at Cadiz,
to bring his brigade round to that port as soon as he should feel it
necessary. He regarded the evacuation of the place as so certain, that
he ordered the 18-pounder gun on Guzman’s tower to be spiked this day,
though it was the only piece of heavy calibre in the city[117]--the
reason given was that one of its missiles (spherical case-shot) had
fallen short within the streets, and killed or wounded an inhabitant.
But the real cause was that he had fully decided on abandoning Tarifa
that night or the following day, and thought the moving of such a big
gun in a hurry impossible--it had been hoisted with great difficulty to
its place by the sailors, with cranes and tackle[118].
[117] According to some authorities he also spiked a 32-lb.
carronade. See _Defence of Tarifa_, p. 63.
[118] The author of the _Defence of Tarifa_ pretends not to know
the real story (p. 63), saying that the spiking caused much
‘indignation, apprehension, and discontent,’ and that ‘whence the
order proceeded is unknown.’ For the explanation see the letter
from an officer of the garrison in Napier, iv, Appendix, p. 438.
Skerrett stated his decision in favour of the evacuation at the
council of war, produced General Cooke’s letter supporting his plan,
and stated that Lord Proby, his second in command, concurred in the
view of its necessity. Fortunately for the credit of the British arms,
his opinion was boldly traversed by Captain C. F. Smith, the senior
engineer officer, Major King commanding the Gibraltar battalion of
flank-companies, and Colonel Gough of the 87th. The former urged that
the town should be defended, as an outwork of the island, to the last
possible moment: though the breach was practicable, he had already made
arrangements for cutting it off by retrenchments from the body of the
town. The streets had been blocked and barricaded, and all the houses
looking upon the back of the walls loopholed. Tarifa could be defended
for some time in the style of Saragossa, lane by lane. He pointed
out that such was the configuration of the ground that if the enemy
entered the breach, he would find a fourteen-foot drop between its
rear and the ground below, on to which he would have to descend under
a concentric fire of musketry from all the neighbouring buildings.
Even supposing that the worst came, the garrison had the castle to
retire into, and this was tenable until breached by artillery, while a
retreat from it to the island would always be possible, under cover of
the guns of the flotilla. There was no profit or credit in giving up
outworks before they were forced. Major King concurred, and said that
his battalion, being Gibraltar troops, was under the direct orders of
General Campbell, from whom he had received directions to hold Tarifa
till the last extremity. If Skerrett’s brigade should embark, he and
the flank-companies would remain behind, to defend it, along with
Copons’s Spaniards. Gough concurred in the decision, and urged that the
evacuation would be wholly premature and ‘contrary to the spirit of
General Campbell’s instructions’ until it was seen whether the French
were able to effect a lodgement inside the walls[119].
[119] Gough speaks of his reply that ‘evacuation would be
contrary to the spirit of General Campbell’s instructions,’ as
if given at an earlier date, but, the 29th seems fixed by King’s
letter to Napier in appendix to the latter’s _Peninsular War_,
iv. pp. 443-4, quoted above.
Skerrett’s resolve was shaken--he still held to his opinion, but
dismissed the council of war without coming to a decision: he tried
to avoid responsibility by requesting the officers who voted for
further resistance to deliver him their opinions in writing. This
King, Smith, and Gough did, in the strongest wording. The first named
of these three resolute men sent that same night a messenger by boat
to Gibraltar, to inform General Campbell of Skerrett’s faint-hearted
decision, and to observe that, with a few companies more to aid his own
flank-battalion and the Spaniards, he would try to hold first Tarifa
and then the island, even if Skerrett withdrew his brigade. Campbell,
angry in no small degree, sent a very prompt answer to the effect
that the town should not be abandoned without the concurrence of the
commanding officers of artillery and engineers, while the Gibraltar
battalion should be concentrated in the island, in order to ensure its
defence even if Tarifa itself fell. Still more drastic was an order to
the officers commanding the transports to bring their ships back at
once to Gibraltar: this decisive move made it impossible for Skerrett
to carry out his plan[120]. A few days later Campbell sent two more
flank-companies to join the garrison--but they only arrived after the
assault.
[120] See especially the notes from officers on the spot in
Napier’s appendix to vol. iv. pp. 442-4.
The idea of evacuating the town without attempting any defence was
all the more ignominious because Copons had declared his intention of
holding it to the last, had protested against the spiking of the heavy
gun in Guzman’s tower, and next morning, when Leval summoned the place
to surrender, sent in a most unhesitating, if somewhat bombastic[121],
note of refusal. If Skerrett had withdrawn into the island, or taken to
his ships, and Copons had been overwhelmed, fighting in the streets,
the disgrace to the British flag would have been very great. As a
sidelight on the whole matter, we may remember that this was the same
officer who had refused to land his troops to defend the breach of
Tarragona six months before. He was no coward, as he showed in many
fights, and he died gallantly at Bergen-op-Zoom in 1814, but he was
undoubtedly a shirker of responsibilities.
[121] ‘Sin duda ignorará V.S. que me hallo yo en esta plaza,
cuando se prononce á su gubernador que admite una capitulacion.
Á la cabeza de mis tropas me encontrará V.S. y entonces
hableremos.’ See Arteche, appendix to vol. xi. p. 524.
On the morning of the 30th the besiegers’ batteries opened again,
and enlarged the breach to a broad gap of thirty feet or more; they
also dismounted a field-piece which the besieged had hoisted on the
Jesus tower, to replace those injured on the previous day. At midday
Leval sent in the summons already recorded, and receiving Copons’s
uncompromising reply, directed the fire to continue. It was very
effective, and by evening the breach was nearly sixty feet long,
occupying almost the whole space between the tower at the portcullis
over the ravine, and that next south of it. At dusk the garrison
crept out to clear the foot of the breach, and began also to redouble
the inner defences in the lanes and houses behind it. All work on
both sides, however, was stopped, shortly after nightfall, by a
most torrential downpour of rain, which drove the French from their
batteries and the English and Spaniards from their repairing. The sky
seemed to be falling--the hillsides became cataracts, and the Retiro
ravine was soon filled with a broad river which came swirling against
the walls, bearing with it fascines, planks, gabions, and even dead
bodies washed out of the French lines. Presently the mass of débris,
accumulating against the palisades erected in front of the portcullis,
and urged on by the water, swept away these outer defences, and then,
pressing against the portcullis itself, bent it inwards and twisted
it, despite of its massive iron clamps, so as to make an opening into
the town, down which everything went swimming through the ravine. The
flood also swept away some of the defensive works on each side of the
depression. When the hurricane was over, the rain still continued to
fall heavily, but the garrison, emerging from shelter, commenced to
repair their works, and had undone much of the damage by daylight[122].
[122] For this, see Jones, _Sieges of the Peninsula_, ii. p. 477,
from which Napier copies his narrative, iv. p. 55.
If the besieged had been sorely incommoded by the tempest, the
besiegers on the bare hillsides had been still worse tried. They had
been forced to abandon their trenches and batteries, of which those
high up the slope were water-logged, while those below had been largely
swept away by the flood. The breach had been pronounced practicable
by the engineers, and an assault had been fixed for dawn. But it
was necessary to put it off for some hours, in order to allow the
artillery to reoccupy their batteries, and recommence their fire, and
the infantry to come up from the camps where they had vainly tried
to shelter themselves during the downpour. Nevertheless the French
commanders resolved to storm as soon as the men could be assembled,
without waiting for further preparations. ‘The troops,’ says the French
historian of the siege, ‘unable to dry themselves, or to light fires
to cook their rations, loudly cried out for an assault, as the only
thing that could put an end to their misery.’ A large force had been
set apart for the storm, the grenadier and voltigeur companies of each
of the battalions engaged in the sieges, making a total of over 2,200
men. They were divided into two columns--the grenadiers were to storm
the breach; the voltigeurs to try whether the gap at the Portcullis
tower was practicable or not: they were to break in if possible, if
not, to engage the defenders in a fusilade which should distract their
attention from the main attack.
As soon as day dawned, the besieged could detect that the trenches
were filling, and that the storm was about to break. They had time to
complete their dispositions before the French moved: the actual breach
was held by Copons with a battalion of his own troops[123]: the 87th,
under Gough, occupied the walls both to right and left of the breach,
including the Portcullis tower, with two companies in reserve. Captain
Levesey with 100 of the 47th was posted in the south-eastern (Jesus)
tower, which completely enfiladed the route which the enemy would have
to take to the foot of the breach. The rest of the 47th was in charge
of the south front of the town.
[123] Their part in the defence must not be denied to the
Spaniards. Napier, with his usual prejudice, remarks (iv. p. 60)
that Skerrett ‘assigned the charge of the breach entirely to the
Spaniards, and if Smith had not insisted upon placing British
troops alongside of them this would have ruined the defence,
because hunger and neglect had so broken the spirit of these
poor men that few appeared during the combat, and Copons alone
displayed the qualities of a gallant soldier.’
At nine o’clock the column of French grenadiers issued from the
trenches near the advanced breaching battery, and dashed down the side
of the Retiro ravine towards the breach, while the voltigeur companies,
at the same time, running out from the approaches on the eastern hill,
advanced by the opposite side of the ravine towards the Portcullis
tower. Demonstrations to right and left were made by Cassagne’s brigade
on one flank and Pécheux’s on the other. The progress of the storming
column was not rapid--the slopes of the ravine were rain-sodden and
slippery; its bottom (where the flood had passed) was two feet deep
in mud. The troops were forced to move slowly, and the moment that
they were visible from the walls they became exposed to a very heavy
fire of musketry, both from the curtain and the enfilading towers on
each of their flanks. Of guns the besieged had only one available--a
field-piece in the northernmost (or Corchuela) tower, which fired
case-shot diagonally along the foot of the walls.
Nevertheless the French grenadiers pushed forward across the open space
towards the breach, under a rain of bullets from the 87th which smote
them on both flanks. The Fusiliers were firing fast and accurately,
to the tune of _Garry Owen_, which the regimental band was playing by
order of Gough just behind the breach, accompanied by bursts of shouts
and cheering. On arriving at the foot of the walls, in great disorder,
the French column hesitated for a moment; many men began to fire
instead of pressing on, but some bold spirits scaled the rough slope of
the breach and reached its lip--only to get a momentary glimpse of the
fourteen-foot drop behind it, and to fall dead. The bulk of the column
then swerved away to its right, and fell upon the palisades and other
defences in front of the Portcullis tower, where the hasty repairs
made after the flood of the preceding night did not look effective.
Apparently many of the voltigeurs who had been already engaged in this
quarter joined in their assault, which surged over the outer barricades
and penetrated as far as the portcullis itself. It was found too well
repaired to be broken down, and the stormers, crowded in front of it,
and caught in an angle between the front wall defended by the 87th, and
the flanking Jesus tower from which the 47th were firing, found the
corner too hot for them, and suddenly recoiled and fled. The officer
at the head of the forlorn hope gave up his sword to Gough through the
bars of the portcullis, which alone separated them, and many other
men at the front of the column also surrendered, rather than face the
point-blank fire at close range which would have accompanied the first
stage of their retreat.
This was a striking instance of an assault on a very broad breach, by
a strong force, being beaten off by musketry fire alone. The French
seem never to have had a chance in face of the steady resistance of
the 87th and their comrades. Their loss is given by the official
French historian at only 48 killed and 159 wounded, which seems an
incredibly low figure when over 2,000 men were at close quarters with
the besieged, in a very disadvantageous position, for some time[124].
The British lost 2 officers and 7 men killed, 3 officers, 2 sergeants,
and 22 men wounded: the Spaniards had a lieutenant-colonel killed and
about 20 men killed and wounded.
[124] Skerrett and Copons estimated the loss of the enemy at
nearly 500, no doubt an exaggeration. But Leval’s 207 seems far
too few. The commanding officer of the 51st Ligne reports from
his four flank-companies 7 officers and 81 men hit (Belmas, iv,
Appendix, p. 58). Of the sapper detachment which led the column,
from 50 men 43 were _hors de combat_ (Belmas, iv. p. 31). It
seems incredible that when 23 companies took part in the assault
5 of them should have suffered 131 casualties out of a total of
207. Martinien’s tables show 18 officers killed and wounded on
Dec. 31, a figure which proves nothing, for though at the usual
casualty rate of 20 men per officer this would imply a total loss
of 360, yet it is well known that in assaults the officers often
suffer a loss out of all proportion to that of the rank and file.
Eighteen officers hit might be compatible with a loss as low as
200 or as high as 400 in such a case.
The assault having failed so disastrously, the spirits of the
besiegers sank to a very low pitch. The rain continued to fall during
the whole day and the following night, and the already water-logged
trenches became quite untenable. On New Year’s Day, 1812, the dawn
showed a miserable state of affairs--not only were the roads to the
rear, towards Fascinas and Vejer, entirely blocked by the swelling
of mountain torrents, but communications were cut even between the
siege-camps. All the provision of powder in the siege-batteries was
found to be spoilt by wet, and a great part of the cartridges of the
infantry. Nearly a third of the horses of the train had perished from
cold combined with low feeding. No rations were issued to the troops
that day, and on the three preceding days only incomplete ones had been
given, because of the impossibility of getting them up from the reserve
dépôt, and many of the men wandered without leave for three miles to
the rear in search of food or shelter. An exploring party of the 47th
pushing out into the trenches found them quite unguarded[125] and full
of water. Leval wrote a formal proposal for the abandonment of the
siege to his chief, Victor, saying that the only choice was to save
the army by retreat, or to see it perish in a few days if it remained
stationary[126]. The Marshal, however, refused to turn back from an
enterprise in which he considered his honour involved, and the tempest
having abated on the night of Jan. 2nd-3rd, ordered the batteries and
approaches to be remanned, and directed that an attempt should be made
to sap forward toward the Jesus tower from the left advanced trenches.
The work done was feeble--the batteries had fired only fifty shots by
evening, and the repairs to the damaged works were very incomplete.
[125] _Defence of Tarifa_, p. 47.
[126] See the letter in Belmas, iv. pp. 55-6.
Even Victor’s obstinacy yielded, however, when on the night of the
3rd-4th January another furious storm arose, and once more stopped all
possibility of continuing operations. No food had now come up from the
base for many days, and the stores at the front being exhausted, the
Marshal saw that it was necessary to march at once. An attempt was
made to withdraw the guns from the batteries, but only one 12-pounder
and two howitzers were got off--the horses were so weak and the
ground so sodden that even when 200 infantry were set to help, most of
the pieces could not be dragged more than a few yards. Wherefore the
attempt was given over, the powder in the batteries was thrown open to
the rain, the balls rolled into the Retiro ravine, the nine remaining
heavy guns spiked.
[Illustration: TARIFA]
On the night of the 4th-5th the army crawled off on the road to Vejer,
abandoning nearly all its material in its camps. An attempt was made
to fire a mass of abandoned vehicles, but the rain stopped it. Next
morning the French were passing the defile of Torre Peña, under the
not very effective fire of an English frigate, which kept as close
to the shore as was possible on a very rough day. The four guns from
the battery at this point were brought on, with much toil, and no
wounded were abandoned. On the 6th the column reached Tayvilla, where
it found a convoy and 100 horses, which were of inestimable value, for
those with the field-force were completely spent. Nevertheless the one
12-pounder brought off from Tarifa was abandoned in the mud. On the
7th Vejer was reached, and the expedition was at an end. The troops of
Victor’s division, after a short rest, went back to the Cadiz Lines,
those of Leval’s division marched for Xeres.
Thus ended the leaguer of Tarifa, which cost the besiegers about 500
lives, more by sickness than by casualties in the trenches. There
were also some deserters--fifteen Poles came over in a body and
surrendered to Captain Carroll on the 3rd[127], and other individuals
stole in from time to time. But the main loss to the French, beyond
that of prestige, was that the battalions which had formed part of the
expeditionary force were so tired out and war-worn, that for several
weeks they continued to fill the hospitals in the Lines with sick, and
were incapable of further active service. Wherefore Soult could not
send any appreciable detachment to help Suchet on the side of Valencia:
the cavalry brigade, which sacked Murcia on January 26 and killed La
Carrera,[128] was his only contribution to the operations on the east
side of Spain. The field-force which might otherwise have accompanied
Pierre Soult’s cavalry raid had been used up in the Tarifa expedition.
[127] _Defence of Tarifa_, p. 75.
[128] See page 8 above.
Another distraction had come upon Soult while the Tarifa expedition
was in progress. On December 27, six days after Victor and Leval
commenced the siege, General Hill had once more begun to move on the
Estremaduran side, after remaining quiescent for nearly two months
since the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos. His advance was a diversion
made by Wellington’s direct orders, with the purpose of drawing Soult’s
attention away from the pursuit of Ballasteros and the molesting
of Tarifa[129]. It failed to achieve the latter purpose, since the
operations of Victor had gone so far, before Hill moved, that the
Marshal stood committed to the siege, and indeed only heard that Hill
was on the move after the assault of December 31st had been made and
beaten off. But it caused Soult to cut off all support from Victor,
to turn his small remaining reserves in the direction of Estremadura,
and to welcome as a relief, rather than to deplore as a disaster, the
return of the defeated expeditionary force to the Lines of Cadiz on
January 7th. For about that date Hill was pushing Drouet before him,
and the reserves from Seville were moving northwards, so that Soult
was pleased to learn that the 10,000 men from Tarifa had returned, and
that, in consequence of their reappearance, he could draw off more
men from the direction of Cadiz to replace the troops moved toward
Estremadura.
[129] See Wellington to Hill, Dec. 18th, _Dispatches_, ix. pp.
465-6.
Hill crossed the Portuguese frontier north of the Guadiana on December
27th, with his own division, Hamilton’s Portuguese, two British cavalry
brigades (those of Long and de Grey[130]) and one of Portuguese (4th
and 10th regiments under J. Campbell of the former corps), or about
12,000 men. The small remainder of his force[131] was left about Elvas,
to watch any possible movement of the French from the direction of
Badajoz. His objective was Merida, where it was known that Dombrouski,
with the greater part of the 5th French Division, was lying, in a
position far advanced from the main body of Drouet’s troops, who were
cantoned about Zafra and Llerena. There was some hope of surprising
this force, and a certainty of driving it in, and of throwing Drouet
and Soult into a state of alarm. Wellington directed Hill to keep
to the desolate road north of the Guadiana, because a winter raid
from this direction would be the last thing expected by the enemy. He
bade his lieutenant keep a wary eye in the direction of Truxillo and
Almaraz, from which the divisions of Marmont’s army then in New Castile
might possibly descend upon his rear. But the warning turned out to
be superfluous, since, before Hill moved, Marmont had been forced by
the Emperor’s orders to detach his troops on the Tagus for the ruinous
expedition under Montbrun to Alicante.
[130] But the last-named officer was absent.
[131] One Portuguese infantry and one Portuguese cavalry brigade.
Marching very rapidly Hill reached Albuquerque on the 27th, and La
Rocca, only twenty miles from Merida, on the 28th. On the next day[132]
the prospect of surprising Dombrouski came to an end by the merest of
chances. The French general had sent out that morning a small column
to raise requisitions of food in the villages on this road. A troop
of hussars at its head discovered Hill’s advanced cavalry, near Navas
de Membrillo, and alarmed the infantry, three companies of the 88th
regiment under a Captain Neveux, who formed up and began to retreat
hastily towards Merida. Hill sent two squadrons each of the 13th Light
Dragoons and 2nd Hussars of the King’s German Legion in pursuit, with
orders to head off and capture, if possible, these 400 men. The result
was a combat of the same sort as that of Barquilla in 1810, where
it had already been shown that steady infantry could not be ridden
down by cavalry save under very exceptional circumstances. Neveux,
seeing the dragoons hurrying forward, turned off the road, formed
his men in square, and made for a cork wood on a rising ground. The
cavalry overtook him, and delivered five determined charges, which
were all beaten off with heavy loss. We are told that their order and
impetus were both broken by scattered trees outside the wood, but the
main cause of their defeat was the impossibility of breaking into a
solidly-formed square of determined men, well commanded[133]. After the
final charge the squadrons drew off, and Neveux hastened on through
the wood, fell back again into the road, and reached Merida, though he
lost a few men[134] by shells from Hawker’s battery, which came up late
in the day. The K.G.L. Hussars had 2 men killed and 1 officer and 17
men wounded: the 13th Light Dragoons 1 killed and 19 wounded.
[132] Napier (iv. 49) wrongly puts the combat of Navas de
Membrillo on the 28th of December, not the 29th. The diaries
of Stoltzenberg of the 2nd K.G.L. Hussars and Cadell of the
28th prove that the second date is correct. No force could have
marched from Albuquerque to Navas in one day.
[133] Hill’s dispatch has a handsome but ungrammatical testimony
to the enemy: ‘the intrepid and admirable way in which the French
retreated, the infantry formed in square, and favoured as he was
by the nature of the country, of which he knew how to take the
fullest advantage, prevented the cavalry alone from effecting
anything against him.’
[134] Apparently two killed and nine wounded.
Dombrouski, warned of the approach of the allies in force, immediately
evacuated Merida, where Hill made prize of 160,000 lb. of wheat,
unground, and a large magazine of biscuit. He found that the French had
been fortifying the town, but the works were too unfinished to allow
them to defend it. On January 1st Hill, continuing his advance, marched
across the bridge of Merida on Almendralejo, thinking that Drouet might
possibly have come up to help Dombrouski, and that he might force him
to fight. This was not to be: the rearguard of the force from Merida
was discovered drawn up in front of Almendralejo, but gave way at the
first push: a small magazine of food was captured in the town.
It was now clear that Drouet did not intend to make a stand, but would
fall back towards the Andalusian frontier, and wait for aid from Soult.
Hill resolved to move his main body no further, but sent out a small
flying column under Major-General Abercrombie, with orders to press
the French rearguard as long as it would give way, but to halt and
turn back on finding serious forces in front of him. This detachment
(1/50th regiment, two squadrons 2nd Hussars K.G.L., two squadrons
10th Portuguese, three guns) passing Fuente del Maestre neared Los
Santos on January 3rd, and found Dombrouski, with a rearguard of all
arms, disposed to fight. This led to a sharp cavalry combat, between
two squadrons of the 26th French Dragoons and the allied horse. One
squadron of the hussars and one of the Portuguese, gallantly led by
Colonel Campbell, charged the enemy in front, the other squadrons
remaining in reserve. The dragoons, soon broken, lost 6 killed, many
wounded, and 2 officers and 35 men prisoners. Thereupon the French
infantry moved rapidly off southwards, making no attempt to stand. The
victors lost 1 man killed and 14 wounded from the hussars, 1 officer
and 5 men from the Portuguese.
Drouet was now concentrating at Llerena, and ready to give up all
Estremadura north of that point. He was sending daily appeals for
succour to Soult, who had little to give him, while Victor and the
expeditionary force were away at Tarifa. On January 5th the Duke of
Dalmatia wrote a dispatch which ordered that the siege should be
abandoned--but long ere it came to hand Victor had been forced to
depart, as we have seen, for reasons entirely unconnected with Hill’s
midwinter raid. Wellington’s plan would have worked if the weather had
not already driven Victor away, but had in actual fact no effect on his
proceedings.
Hill, having accomplished all that could be done in the way of alarming
Soult, held Merida and Almendralejo for a few days, with his advanced
cavalry about Fuente del Maestre: but retired on January 13th to
Albuquerque and Portalegre, to the intense relief of his enemy. The
raising of the siege of Tarifa being known, there was no further reason
for keeping Hill in an advanced position, which might have tempted
Soult to make a great concentration and take the offensive. Wellington
had no desire that he should do so, since the Army of Andalusia, while
dispersed, was harmless, but might become dangerous if it should
evacuate great regions, and so be able to collect in force. Soult did
not wish to make such sacrifices unless he were obliged, and on hearing
of Hill’s retreat countermanded all orders for concentration, and
contented himself with bringing back Drouet to Llerena and Zalamea, and
with reopening his communication with Badajoz, which had been cut while
the allies were at Fuente del Maestre. He did not at this time reoccupy
Merida, partly because the position had been demonstrated to be
dangerous by Hill’s recent raid, partly because its main importance was
that it covered the road to Truxillo and Almaraz and Marmont’s army.
But Marmont having, for the moment, no troops in this direction, owing
to the Alicante expedition, it was useless to try to keep in touch with
him.
Hill’s expedition, by driving Drouet for some time from the line of
the Guadiana, made possible a sudden irruption of the Spaniards into La
Mancha, where none of their regular troops had been since the battle
of Ocaña two years before. This raid was carried out by Morillo at the
head of a brigade of the Estremaduran army of Castaños. That general
had heard of the way in which the upper valley of the Guadiana had
been denuded of troops, in order that the Army of the Centre might
assist Suchet in the direction of Cuenca and Requeña[135]. Nothing
was left in La Mancha save a few battalions of King Joseph’s German
Division, and a brigade of Treillard’s dragoons, a force which could
only provide garrisons for a few large towns and watch the high-road
from Madrid to Andalusia. Morillo was directed to slip eastward through
the gap made by Hill between the Armies of the South and Portugal,
to endeavour to cut up the French posts, and to collect recruits and
contributions in the country-side. With luck he might even break the
line of communication between Soult and Madrid. His force of 3,000 men
was insufficient for anything more than a raid.
[135] See page 56 above.
Starting from Montanches near Caçeres on December 30th--three days
after Hill’s expedition had begun--Morillo crossed the Guadiana, and
after making a fruitless dash at Belalcazar, the isolated French
garrison which protected the northernmost corner of Andalusia, marched
straight on by Agudo and Sarceruela into the heart of La Mancha, where
he seized Ciudad Real, its capital [January 15]. The small French force
quartered there fled at his approach, which was wholly unexpected--no
Spanish army had ever marched up the valley of the Guadiana before. On
the next day Morillo attacked Almagro, where there was a garrison of
500 men; but before he had made any impression he was surprised by the
arrival of General Treillard, with a column hastily gathered from the
posts along the high-road. The Spanish general refused to fight, and,
abandoning Ciudad Real, withdrew with little loss into the passes of
the Sierra de Guadalupe, where his enemy declined to follow. Since Hill
had by this time abandoned Merida and returned to Portugal, Morillo
felt his position to be uncomfortably isolated, and feared that French
troops from Estremadura or from the Tagus valley might intercept his
way homeward. The danger turned out to be imaginary, and on reaching
Truxillo on January 30 the column was able to rest unmolested for a
fortnight at that important strategical point, and then to retire at
leisure to Montanches, its original starting-point.
Thus ended an extraordinary raid, which, though it had no positive
results whatever, demonstrated two things clearly enough--one was
the marching power of the Spanish infantry, which between December
28 and January 30 covered 250 miles of vile mountain roads in bitter
weather, and came back intact with little loss[136], the other was the
slightness of the French hold on La Mancha, where the appearance of a
small brigade of 3,000 men upset the whole country-side. Morillo was
only driven off by a concentration of many small garrisons, and, when
they were withdrawn, the local guerrillero bands overran the land.
Their chiefs, El Medico [Palarea], Chaleco, and others, did an immense
amount of damage while the French were concentrated, and ravaged up
to the very gates of Madrid. Chaos reigned in New Castile till Foy’s
and Sarrut’s divisions came back from the Alicante expedition, and
dispersed themselves along the valley of the Tagus at the beginning of
February. For, as we have often had occasion to remark before, every
province of Spain required not only to be conquered but to be held
down by a permanent garrison. The moment that it was left too lightly
held, the guerrilleros came down from the hills, occupied all the open
country, and cut all communications.
[136] Napier (iv. p. 50) overrates the damage that Morillo
suffered. He was not ‘completely defeated’ by Treillard, because
he absconded without fighting. In his elaborate dispatch he gives
his whole loss as two killed and nine wounded. See his life by
Rodriguez Villa, appendices to vol. ii, for an almost daily
series of letters describing his march.
SECTION XXXI: CHAPTER III
POLITICS AT CADIZ AND ELSEWHERE
The military operations in the South during the winter of 1811-12
were inconclusive, and only important in a negative way, as showing
that the initiative of the French armies was spent in this direction.
But it must not be forgotten that while Soult had been brought to
a standstill, Suchet’s operations were still progressing: January,
indeed, saw the last great Spanish disaster of the war, the fall of
Valencia, so that the spirits of government and people still ran very
low. It was not till the sudden irruption of Wellington into the
kingdom of Leon had ended in the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo (January
19), that there was any great occasion for hopefulness. And for a long
time after that event its importance was not fully understood. That
the central turning-point of the war had come, that for the future the
allies were to be on the offensive, and the French on the defensive,
was not realized till Badajoz had fallen in April, a blow which shook
the whole fabric of King Joseph’s power throughout the regions where he
seemed to reign. Nor was it only the state of affairs in the Peninsula
which, during the winter of 1811-12, seemed sufficiently gloomy
both for the present and for the future. The news from the Spanish
colonies in America grew steadily worse: in most of the viceroyalties
of the Western world there was now a nucleus of trouble: the name of
Ferdinand VII was still used by the insurgents as a rallying cry,
except in Venezuela, where Miranda had proclaimed an independent
republic in July 1811. But in La Plata and Chili lip-loyalty to the
sovereign was accompanied by practical secession from the Spanish
state: the _Cabildos_ or Juntas paid no attention to orders received
from Cadiz. In Mexico, though the capital and the greater part of the
country were still in the hands of the constituted authorities, there
was a lively insurrection on foot since September 1810, under the
priest Hidalgo--he was captured and executed in 1812, but his death
did not crush his faction. The Viceroyalty of Peru was almost the
only part of Spanish America which still remained loyal. The Cortes
at Cadiz made elaborate attempts to conciliate the Americans, but was
unable to satisfy their expectations or to end their discontents. The
deeply-rooted belief of the Creoles that they and their country were
still being exploited for the benefit of Spain, could not be removed
by any declaration that they were now to be Spanish citizens with full
rights, or by giving them representation in the Cortes. The idea of
autonomy was already abroad in Spanish America, and in every quarter
ambitious men were quoting the precedent of the revolt of the Thirteen
United Colonies from Great Britain in the previous generation. Truly
Spain had committed an unwise act when she joined France in wrecking
the British domination in North America. She revenged an old grudge
successfully, but she taught her own colonists a lesson impossible to
forget and easy to copy.
The Peninsular War had hitherto been maintained in no small degree by
the money which kept flowing in from America: what would happen if
the treasure-ships with their regular supply of silver dollars from
the mines of Mexico and Peru ceased altogether to come in? Already
affairs were looking so threatening that, despite of all the needs of
the campaign at home, reinforcements were being sent out to the New
World from Cadiz and from Corunna: the Army of Galicia, as we shall
presently see, was nearly put out of action in the spring of 1812 by
the dispatch of an over-great proportion of its trained artillerymen to
America[137]. Some French observers of the situation formed the idea
that the Spaniards, if pressed to a decision between the possible loss
of their colonies and the chance of obtaining a free hand by peace with
Napoleon, might make the choice for empire rather than freedom. By
acknowledging Joseph Bonaparte as king, and coming into the Napoleonic
system, they might be able to turn their whole strength against the
discontented Americans. This idea had one fatal error: any Spaniard
could see that submission to France meant war with Great Britain:
and then the way across the Atlantic would be closed. The British
government would be forced into an alliance with the colonists; it
had already thought of this device in the old days before Napoleon’s
invasion of the Peninsula. Whitelock’s unhappy Buenos Ayres expedition
in 1807 had been sent out precisely to take advantage of the discontent
of the Americans, and in the hope that they would rise against the
mother country if promised assistance. The adventurer Miranda had
spent much time in pressing this policy on the Portland cabinet.
Whitelock’s descent on the Rio de la Plata, it is true, had been as
disappointing in the political as in the military line: he had got no
help whatever from the disaffected colonists. But feeling in America
had developed into much greater bitterness since 1807: in 1812 actual
insurrection had already broken out. British aid would not, this time,
be rejected: the malcontents would buy it by the grant of liberal
trading concessions, which the Cadiz government, even in its worst time
of trouble, had steadily refused to grant. There was every chance,
therefore, that a policy of submission to Napoleon would ensure the
loss of America even more certainly and more rapidly than a persistence
in the present war. It does not seem that any person of importance at
Cadiz ever took into serious consideration the idea of throwing up
the struggle for independence, in order to obtain the opportunity of
dealing with the American question.
[137] See below, section xxxiii, page 337.
The idea, however, was in the air. This was the time at which King
Joseph made his last attempt to open up secret negotiation with
the patriots. His own condition was unhappy enough, as has been
sufficiently shown in an earlier chapter: but he was well aware that
the outlook of his enemies was no less gloomy. One of the numerous--and
usually impracticable--pieces of advice which his brother had sent him
was the suggestion that he should assemble some sort of a Cortes, and
then, posing as a national king, try to open up communications with
the Cadiz government, setting forth the somewhat unconvincing thesis
that Great Britain, and not France, was the real enemy of Spanish
greatness. The idea of calling a Cortes fell through: the individuals
whom Joseph could have induced to sit in it would have been so few,
so insignificant, and so unpopular, that such a body could only have
provoked contempt[138]. But an attempt was made to see if anything
could be done at Cadiz: the inducement which Joseph was authorized to
offer to the patriots was that immediately on his recognition as a
constitutional king by the Cortes--and a constitution was to be drawn
up in haste at Madrid--the French army should retire from Spain, and
the integrity of the realm should be guaranteed. Napoleon even made a
half-promise to give up Catalonia, though he had practically annexed it
to his empire in the previous year[139].
[138] For all this scheme see the Memoirs of Miot de Melito, iii.
pp. 215-16, beside the Emperor’s own dispatches. Note especially
the instructions which the French ambassador, Laforest, was to
set before Joseph.
[139] See vol. iv. p. 215.
Joseph and his ministers had no confidence either in the Emperor’s
sincerity in making these offers, or in the likelihood of their
finding any acceptance among the patriots. He sent, however, to Cadiz
as his agent a certain Canon La Peña, a secret _Afrancesado_, but a
brother of Manuel La Peña, the incapable general who had betrayed
Graham at Barrosa. This officer was on his trial at the moment for his
misbehaviour on that occasion, and the canon pretended to have come
to assist him in his day of trouble on grounds of family affection.
It would seem that he sounded certain persons but with small effect.
Toreno, who was present in Cadiz at the time, and well acquainted
with every intrigue that was in progress, says that the Regency never
heard of the matter, and that very few members of the Cortes knew what
La Peña was doing. It seems that he had conversations with certain
freemasons, who were connected with lodges in Madrid that were under
French influence, and apparently with one member of the ministry. ‘I do
not give his name,’ says the historian, ‘because I have no documentary
proof to bear out the charge, but moral proof I have[140].’ Be this as
it may, the labours of La Peña do not seem to have been very fruitful,
and the assertion made by certain French historians, and by Napoleon
himself in the _Mémorial de Ste-Hélène_, that the Cortes would have
proceeded to treat with Joseph, but for Wellington’s astonishing
successes in the spring of 1812, has little or no foundation. As Toreno
truly observes, any open proposal of the sort would have resulted
in the tearing to pieces by the populace of the man hardy enough to
make it. The intrigue had no more success than the earlier mission
of Sotelo, which has been spoken of in another place[141]. But it
lingered on, till the battle of Salamanca in July, and the flight of
Joseph from Madrid in August, proved, to any doubters that there may
have been, that the French cause was on the wane[142]. One of the most
curious results of this secret negotiation was that Soult, hearing that
the King’s emissary was busy at Cadiz, and not knowing that it was at
Napoleon’s own suggestion that the experiment was being made, came to
the conclusion that Joseph was plotting to abandon his brother, and to
make a private peace with the Cortes, on condition that he should break
with France and be recognized as king. He wrote, as we shall presently
see, to denounce him to Napoleon as a traitor. Hence came no small
friction in the following autumn.
[140] Toreno, iii. p. 100.
[141] See vol. ii. p. 168.
[142] Toreno says that the mistress of the Duke of Infantado was
implicated in the negotiation, after he had become a regent, but
that he himself had no treasonable intentions, being a staunch
supporter of Ferdinand.
These secret intrigues fell into a time of keen political strife at
Cadiz--the famous Constitution, which was to cause so much bickering
in later years, was being drafted, discussed, and passed through the
Cortes in sections, all through the autumn of 1811 and the winter of
1811-12. The Liberals and the Serviles fought bitterly over almost
every clause, and during their disputes the anti-national propaganda of
the handful of _Afrancesados_ passed almost unnoticed. It is impossible
in a purely military history to relate the whole struggle, and a few
words as to its political bearings must suffice.
The Constitution was a strange amalgam of ancient Spanish national
tradition, of half-understood loans from Great Britain and America,
and of political theory borrowed from France. Many of its framers
had obviously studied the details of the abortive ‘limited monarchy’
which had been imposed on Louis XVI in the early days of the French
Revolution. From this source came the scheme which limited within
narrow bounds the sovereign’s power in the Constitution. The system
evolved was that of a king whose main constitutional weapon was that
right of veto on legislation which had proved so unpopular in France.
He was to choose ministers who, like those of the United States of
America, were not to sit in parliament, nor to be necessarily dependent
on a party majority in the house, though they were to be responsible
to it. There was to be but one Chamber, elected not directly by the
people--though universal suffrage was introduced--but by notables
chosen by the parishes in local primary assemblies, who again named
district notables, these last nominating the actual members for the
Cortes.
The right of taxation was vested in the Chamber, and the Ministry was
placed at its mercy by the power of refusing supply. The regular army
was specially subjected to the Chamber and not to the King, though the
latter was left some power with regard to calling out or disbanding
the local militia which was to form the second line in the national
forces--at present it was in fact non-existent, unless the guerrillero
bands might be considered to represent it.
The most cruel blows were struck not only at the King’s power but at
his prestige. A clause stating that all treaties or grants made by him
while in captivity were null and void was no doubt necessary--there
was no knowing what documents Napoleon might not dictate to Ferdinand.
But it was unwise to formulate in a trenchant epigram that ‘the nation
is free and independent, not the patrimony of any family or person,’
or that ‘the people’s obligation of obedience ceases when the King
violates the laws.’ And when, after granting their sovereign a veto on
legislation, the Constitution proceeded to state that the veto became
inoperative after the Cortes had passed any act in three successive
sessions, it became evident that the King’s sole weapon was to be made
ineffective. ‘Sovereignty,’ it was stated, ‘is vested essentially in
the nation, and for this reason the nation alone has the right to
establish its fundamental laws.’ But the most extraordinary attack on
the principle of legitimate monarchy was a highhanded resettlement
of the succession to the throne, in which the regular sequence of
next heirs was absolutely ignored. If King Ferdinand failed to leave
issue, the crown was to go to his brother Don Carlos: if that prince
also died childless, the Constitution declared that the infante Don
Francisco and his sister the Queen of Etruria were both to be passed
over. No definite reasons were given in the act of settlement for
this astonishing departure from the natural line of descent. The real
meaning of the clause concerning Don Francisco was that many suspected
him of being the son of Godoy and not of Charles IV[143]. As to the
Queen of Etruria, she had been in her younger days a docile tool of
Napoleon, and had lent herself very tamely to his schemes. But it is
said that the governing cause of her exclusion from the succession
was not so much her own unpopularity, as the incessant intrigues of
her sister Carlotta, the wife of the regent João of Portugal, who had
for a long time been engaged in putting forward a claim to be elected
as sole regent of Spain. She had many members of the Cortes in her
pay, and their influence was directed to getting her name inserted in
the list above that of her brother in the succession-roll, and to the
disinheritance of her sister also. Her chance of ever reaching the
throne was not a very good one, as both Ferdinand and Carlos were still
young, and could hardly be kept prisoners at Valençay for ever. It is
probable that the real object of the manœvres was rather to place her
nearer to the regency of Spain in the present crisis, than to seat her
upon its throne at some remote date. For the regency was her desire,
though the crown too would have been welcome, and sometimes not only
the anti-Portuguese party in the Cortes, but Wellington and his brother
Henry Wellesley, the Ambassador at Cadiz, were afraid that by patience
and by long intrigue her partisans might achieve their object.
[143] See Villa Urrutia, i. p. 13 and ii. pp. 355-9.
Wellington was strongly of opinion that a royal regent at Cadiz
would be most undesirable. The personal influences of a _camarilla_,
surrounding an ambitious but incapable female regent, would add another
difficulty to the numerous problems of the relations between England
and Spain, which were already sufficiently tiresome.
This deliberate humiliation of the monarchy, by clauses accentuated
by phrases of insult, which angered, and were intended to anger, the
_Serviles_, was only accomplished after long debate, in which protests
of the most vigorous sort were made by many partisans of the old
theory of Spanish absolutism. Some spoke in praise of the Salic Law,
violated by the mention of Carlotta as heiress to the throne, others
(ignoring rumours as to his paternity) defended Don Francisco, as
having been by his youth exempted from the ignominies of Bayonne, and
dwelt on the injustice of his fate. But the vote went against them by a
most conclusive figure.
The majority in the Cortes, which made such parade of its political
liberalism, did not pursue its theories into the realm of religion.
After reading its fulsome declarations in favour of freedom, it is
astounding to note the black intolerance of the clause which declares
not only, as might naturally be expected, that ‘the religion of the
Spanish nation is, and ever shall be, the Catholic Apostolic Roman,
the one true faith,’ but that ‘the nation defends it by wise laws,
_forbidding the exercise of any other_.’ Schism and unorthodoxy still
remained political as well as ecclesiastical crimes, no less than
in the time of Philip II. The Liberals, despite of murmurs by the
_Serviles_, refused to recreate the Inquisition, but this was as far as
their conception of religious freedom went.
Contemplating this exhibition of mediaeval intolerance, it is
impossible to rate at any very high figure the ostentatious liberalism
which pervades the greater part of the Constitution. We are bound to
recognize in it merely the work of a party of ambitious politicians,
who desired to secure control of the state-machine for themselves,
and to exclude the monarchy from all share in its manipulation. No
doubt any form of limited government was better than the old royal
bureaucracy. But this particular scheme went much farther than the
needs or the possibilities of the time, and was most unsuited for
a country such as the Spain of 1812. When its meaning began to be
understood in the provinces, it commanded no enthusiasm or respect.
Indeed, outside the Cortes itself the only supporters that it possessed
were the populace of Cadiz and a few other great maritime towns.
Considered as a working scheme it had the gravest faults, especially
the ill-arranged relations between the ministers (who did not form
a real cabinet) and the Chamber, in which they were prohibited from
sitting. In 1814 Lord Castlereagh observed, with great truth, that he
could now say from certain experience, that in practice as well as in
theory the Constitution of 1812 was one of the worst among the modern
productions of its kind[144].
[144] The best and most recent account of all this, explaining
many contradictions and some insincere suppression of fact in
Toreno’s great history, is to be found in chapter ix of vol. ii
of Señor Villa Urrutia’s _Relaciones entre España y Inglaterra
1808-14_.
Among the many by-products of the Constitution was a change in the
membership of the Regency. The old ‘trinitarian’ body composed of
Blake, Agar, and Cisgar, had long been discredited, and proposals for
its dissolution had been debated, even before its further continuance
was rendered impossible by Blake’s surrender to the French at Valencia
in the earliest days of 1812. A furious discussion in the Cortes had
ended in a vote that no royal personage should be a member of any
new regency, so that the pretensions of the Princess of Portugal
were finally discomfited. The new board consisted of the Duke of
Infantado, Joaquim Mosquera, a member of the Council of the Indies,
Admiral Villavicencio, military governor of Cadiz, Ignacio Rodriguez de
Rivas, and Henry O’Donnell, Conde de la Bispal, the energetic soldier
whose exploits in Catalonia have been set forth in the last volume of
this book. He was the only man of mark in the new regency: Infantado
owed his promotion to his rank and wealth, and the fact that he had
been the trusted friend of Ferdinand VII. He possessed a limited
intelligence and little education, and was hardly more than a cipher,
with a distinct preference for ‘Serviles’ rather than for Liberals.
Villavicencio had no military reputation, but had been an energetic
organizer, and a fairly successful governor during the siege of Cadiz.
Mosquera and Rivas were elected mainly because they were of American
birth--their choice was intended to conciliate the discontented
colonists. Neither of them was entitled by any great personal merit to
the promotion which was thrust upon him. Henry O’Donnell, now at last
recovered from the wound which had laid him on a sick bed for so many
months in 1811[145], was both capable and energetic, but quarrelsome
and provocative: he belonged to that class of men who always irritate
their colleagues into opposition, by their rapid decisions and
imperious ways, especially when those colleagues are men of ability
inferior to their own. The Duke of Infantado was absent for some time
after his election--he had been serving as ambassador in London. Of
the other four Regents two ranked as ‘Serviles,’ two as Liberals, a
fact which told against their efficiency as a board. They had little
strength to stand out against the Cortes, whose jealousy against any
power in the State save its own was intense. On the whole it may be
said that the substitution of the five new Regents for the three old
ones had no great political consequences. The destiny of the patriot
cause was not in the hands of the executive, but of the turbulent,
faction-ridden, and ambitious legislative chamber, an ideally
bad instrument for the conduct of a difficult and dangerous war.
Fortunately it was neither the Regency nor the Cortes whose actions
were to settle the fate of the campaign of 1812, but purely and solely
Wellington and the Anglo-Portuguese army. The intrigues of Cadiz turned
out to be a negligible quantity in the course of events.
[145] See vol. iv. p. 240.
In Lisbon at this time matters were much more quiet than they had
been a little while back. The Portuguese government had abandoned any
overt opposition to Wellington, such as had been seen in 1810, when
the Patriarch and the President Souza had given him so much trouble.
The expulsion of Masséna from Portugal had justified the policy of
Wellington, and almost silenced his critics. He had not even found it
necessary to press for the removal of the men whom he distrusted from
the Council of Regency[146], in which the word of his loyal coadjutor,
Charles Stuart, who combined the rather incompatible functions of
British Ambassador and Regent, was now supreme. Open opposition had
ceased, but Wellington complained that while compliance was always
promised, ‘every measure which I propose is frittered away to nothing,
the form and the words remain, but the spirit of the measure is taken
away in the execution[147].’ This was, he remarked, the policy of the
Portuguese government: they no longer refused him anything; but if
they thought that any of his demands might offend either the Prince
Regent at Rio Janeiro or the popular sentiment of the Portuguese
nation, they carried out his proposals in such a dilatory fashion, and
with so many exceptions and excuses, that he failed to obtain what he
had expected.
[146] Early in 1812, however, Wellington once more spoke of
requiring Souza’s retirement from office. _Dispatches_, ix. p. 88.
[147] Wellington to Charles Stuart, April 9, 1812. _Dispatches_,
ix. p. 48.
In this there was a good deal of injustice. Wellington does not always
seem to have realized the abject poverty which four years of war had
brought upon Portugal. The Regency calculated that, on account of
falling revenue caused by the late French invasion, for 1812 they could
only count on 12,000,000 _cruzados novos_ of receipts[148]--this silver
coin was worth about 2_s._ 6_d._ sterling, so that the total amounted
to about £1,500,000. Of this three-fourths, or 9,000,000 cruzados, was
set aside for the army, the remainder having to sustain all the other
expenses of the State--justice, civil administration, roads, navy, &c.
The British subsidy had been raised to £2,000,000 a year, but it was
paid with the utmost irregularity: in one month of 1811 the Portuguese
treasury had received only £6,000, in another only £20,000, instead
of the £166,000 promised[149]. When such arrears accumulated, it was
no wonder that the soldiers starved and the magazines ran low. It
was calculated that to keep the army up to its full numbers, and to
supply all military needs efficiently, 45,000,000 cruzados a year were
required. Taking the British subsidy as equalling 16,000,000, and the
available national contribution at 9,000,000 cruzados, there was little
more than half the required sum available. This Portuguese calculation
appears to be borne out by the note of Beresford’s chief of the staff,
D’Urban, in February 1812. ‘The Marshal at Lisbon finds that, after a
perfect investigation, it appears that the expenditure must be nearly
£6,000,000--the means at present £3,500,000! _Nous verrons._’
[148] Napier (iv. p. 212) says that Portugal raised 25,000,000
cruzados this year. I cannot understand this, comparing it with
Soriano de Luz, iii. p. 523, which quotes 12,000,000 cruzados as
the total receipt of taxes for 1811. Does Napier include loans,
and the inconvertible paper issued by the government?
[149] See complaints of the Conde de Redondo, the Portuguese
finance minister, in Soriano de Luz, iii. p. 520.
It is clear that the Portuguese government must have shrunk from many
of Wellington’s suggestions on account of mere lack of resources.
A third of the country had been at one time or another overrun by
the French--the provinces north of the Douro in 1809, the Beira and
northern Estremadura in 1810-11. It would take long years before
they were in a position to make their former contributions to the
expenses of the State. It was impossible to get over this hard fact:
but Wellington thought that a rearrangement of taxes, and an honest
administration of their levy, would produce a much larger annual
revenue than was being raised in 1812. He pointed out, with some
plausibility, that British money was being poured into Portugal by
millions and stopped there: some one--the merchant and contractor for
the most part--must be making enormous profits and accumulating untold
wealth. Moreover he had discovered cases of the easy handling of the
rich and influential in the matter of taxation, while the peasantry
were being drained of their last farthing. Such little jobs were
certain to occur in an administration of the _ancien régime_: fidalgos
and capitalists knew how to square matters with officials at Lisbon.
‘A reform in the abuses of the Customs of Lisbon and Oporto, a more
equal and just collection of the Income Tax on commercial property,
particularly in those large and rich towns [it is scandalous to hear
of the fortunes made by the mercantile classes owing to the war,
and to reflect that they contribute practically nothing to bear its
burdens], a reform of the naval establishment and the arsenal, would
make the income equal to the expenditure, and the government would get
on without calling upon Great Britain at every moment to find that
which, in the existing state of the world, cannot be procured, viz.
money[150].’ So wrote Wellington, who was always being irritated by
discovering that the magazines of Elvas or Almeida were running low, or
that recruits were not rejoining their battalions because there was no
cash to arm or clothe them, or that troops in the field were getting
half-rations, unless they were on the British subsidy list.
[150] See tables on pp. 324-5 of Halliday’s _Present State of
Portugal_, published in 1812.
No doubt Wellington was right in saying that there was a certain
amount of jobbery in the distribution of taxation, and that more could
have been raised by a better system. But Portuguese figures of the
time seem to make it clear that even if a supernatural genius had
been administering the revenue instead of the Conde de Redondo, all
could not have been obtained that was demanded. The burden of the war
expenses was too heavy for an impoverished country, with no more than
two and a half million inhabitants, which was compelled to import a
great part of its provisions owing to the stress of war. The state
of Portugal may be estimated by the fact that in the twelve months
between February 1811 and January 1812 £2,672,000 worth of imported
corn, besides 605,000 barrels of flour, valued at £2,051,780 more,
was brought into the country and sold there[151]. On the other hand
the export of wine, with which Portugal used to pay for its foreign
purchases, had fallen off terribly: in 1811 only 18,000 pipes were
sold as against an average of 40,000 for the eight years before the
outbreak of the Peninsular War. An intelligent observer wrote in 1812
that the commercial distress of the country might mainly be traced to
the fact that nearly all the money which came into the country from
England, great as was the sum, found its way to the countries from
which Portugal was drawing food, mainly to the United States, from
which the largest share of the wheat and flour was brought. ‘As we
have no corresponding trade with America, the balance has been very
great against this country: for the last three years this expenditure
has been very considerable, without any return whatever, as the money
carried to America has been completely withdrawn from circulation.’
[151] Halliday’s _Present State of Portugal_, p. 320.
The shrinkage in the amount of the gold and silver current in Portugal
was as noticeable in these years as the same phenomenon in England,
and (like the British) the Portuguese government tried to make up the
deficiency by the issue of inconvertible paper money, which gradually
fell in exchange value as compared with the metallic currency. The
officers of the army, as well as all civil functionaries, were paid
their salaries half in cash and half in notes--the latter suffered a
depreciation of from 15 to 30 per cent. Among the cares which weighed
on Wellington and Charles Stuart was that of endeavouring to keep the
Regency from the easy expedient of issuing more and more of a paper
currency which was already circulating at far less than its face value.
This was avoided--fortunately for the Portuguese people and army, no
less than for the Anglo-Portuguese alliance.
After all, the practical results of the efforts made by the Portuguese
government were invaluable. Wellington could not have held his ground,
much less have undertaken the offensive campaign of 1812, without the
aid of the trusty auxiliaries that swelled his divisions to normal
size. Without their Portuguese brigades most of them would have been
mere skeletons of 3,000 or 4,000 men. Beresford’s army was almost up
to its full establishment in January 1812--there were 59,122 men on
the rolls, when recruits, sick, men on detachment, and the regiment
lent for the succour of Cadiz are all counted. Deducting, beyond these,
the garrisons of Elvas, Abrantes, Almeida, and smaller places, as also
the dismounted cavalry left in the rear[152], there were over 30,000
men for the fighting-line, in ten brigades of infantry, six regiments
of cavalry, and eight field-batteries. Beresford, lately entrusted
by orders from Rio Janeiro with still more stringent powers over the
military establishment, was using them to the full. An iron hand kept
down desertion and marauding, executions for each of those offences
appear incessantly in the _Ordens do Dia_, which give the daily
chronicle of the Portuguese head-quarters. In addition to the regular
army it must be remembered that he had to manage the militia, of which
as many as 52,000 men were under arms at one time or another in 1812.
Counting the first and the second line together, there were 110,000 men
enrolled--a fine total for a people of two and a half million souls.
[152] The deductions were--sick, 7,500; untrained recruits,
4,000; dismounted cavalry, 3,000; regiment at Cadiz, 1,500;
garrisons (infantry and artillery) and men on detachment, 10,000;
leaving some 33,000 for the field. By May the gross total had
gone down to 56,674.
Putting purely Portuguese difficulties aside, Wellington was much
worried at this time by a trouble which concerned the British and not
the local finances. This was the delay in the cashing of the ‘_vales_’
or bills for payment issued by the Commissary-General for food and
forage bought from the peasantry. As long as they were settled at short
intervals, no difficulty arose about them--they were indeed treated
as negotiable paper, and had passed from hand to hand at a lesser
discount than the inconvertible Portuguese government papers. But all
through the year 1811 the interval between the issue of the ‘_vale_’
and its payment in cash at Lisbon had been growing longer, and an
uncomfortable feeling was beginning to spread about the country-side.
The peasantry were growing suspicious, and were commencing to sell
the bills, for much less than their face value, to speculators who
could afford to wait for payment. To recoup themselves for their loss
they were showing signs of raising prices all round. Fortunately they
were a simple race, and communication between districts was slow and
uncertain, so that no general tendency of this sort was yet prevalent,
though the symptoms were making themselves visible here and there.
Hence came Wellington’s constant applications for more cash from
England at shorter notice. Late in the spring he devised a scheme by
which interest at 5 per cent. was to be paid by the Commissary-General
on bonds or certificates representing money or money’s worth advanced
to the British army, till the principal was repaid--two years being
named as the period after which the whole sum must be refunded. This
was a desperate measure, an endeavour to throw forward payment on to
a remote future, ‘when it is not probable that there will be the same
difficulty in procuring specie in England to send abroad as there is
at the present moment.’ The plan[153] was never tried, and was not
good: for how could small creditors of the English army be expected
to stand out of their money--representing the price of their crops
or their cattle--for so long a period as two years, even if they
were, in the meantime, receiving interest on what was really their
working capital? Wellington himself remarked, when broaching the
scheme to Lord Liverpool, that there remained the difficulty that no
one could look forward, and say that the British army would still be
in the Peninsula two years hence. If it had left Portugal--whether
victorious and pushing towards the Pyrenees, or defeated and driven
back on to Great Britain--how would the creditors communicate with
the Commissary-General, their debtor? They could only be referred to
London, to which they would have no ready access: indeed many of them
would not know where, or what, London was. That such an idea should
have been set forward only shows the desperate financial situation of
the British army.
[153] Set forth in detail, and with a sample bond for 1,000
dollars added, in _Dispatches_, ix. pp. 104-5.
We shall have to be referring to this problem at several later points
of the history of the campaign of 1812[154]: at the opening of the
invasion of Leon in June it reached its worst point, just before
the great victory of Salamanca. But it was always present, and
when Wellington’s mind was not occupied with deductions as to the
manœuvres of French marshals, it may undoubtedly be said that his
main preoccupation was the normally depleted state of the military
chest, into which dollars and guineas flowed, it is true, in enormous
quantities, but only to be paid out at once, in settling arrears many
months old. These were never fully liquidated, and began to accumulate
again, with distressing rapidity, after every tardy settlement.
[154] See especially below in chapter iii of section xxxiii. p.
349.
Whig historians have often tried to represent Wellington’s financial
difficulties as the fault of the home government, and it is easy to
pick passages from his dispatches in which he seems to assert that
he is not being supported according to his necessities. But a nearer
investigation of the facts will not bear out this easy theory, the
product of party spite. The Whigs of 1811-12 were occupied in decrying
the Peninsular War as a failure, in minimizing the successes of
Wellington, and in complaining that the vast sums of money lavished on
his army were wasted. Napoleon was invincible, peace was the only way
out of disaster, even if the peace must be somewhat humiliating. It
was unseemly for their representatives, twenty years after, to taunt
the Perceval and Liverpool ministries with having stinted Wellington
in his hour of need. We have learnt to estimate at their proper
value tirades against ‘the administration which was characterized
by all the corruption and tyranny of Mr. Pitt’s system, without his
redeeming genius.’ We no longer think that the Napoleonic War was waged
‘to repress the democratic principle,’ nor that the cabinets which
maintained it were ‘the rapacious usurpers of the people’s rights[155].’
[155] For these phrases and much more abuse, see Napier, iv. p.
199, a most venomous and unjust passage.
Rather, in the spirit of Mr. Fortescue’s admirable volume on _British
Statesmen of the Great War_, shall we be prone to stand amazed at
the courage and resolution of the group of British ministers who
stood out, for long years and against tremendous odds, to defeat the
tyrant of Europe and to preserve the British Empire. ‘On the one side
was Napoleon, an autocrat vested with such powers as great genius
and good fortune have rarely placed in the hands of one man, with
the resources of half Europe at his disposition, and an armed force
unsurpassed in strength and devotion ready to march to the ends of
the world to uphold his will. On the other were these plain English
gentlemen, with not so much as a force of police at their back, with a
population by nature five times as turbulent as it is now, and in the
manufacturing districts inflamed alike by revolutionary teaching and by
real distress, with an Ireland always perilously near revolt, with a
House of Commons unreformed indeed, but not on that account containing
a less factious, mischievous, and obstructive opposition than any
other House of Commons during a great war. In face of all these
difficulties they had to raise armies, maintain fleets, construct and
pursue a military policy, and be unsuccessful at their peril. Napoleon
might lose whole armies with impunity: five thousand British soldiers
beaten and captured would have brought any British minister’s head
perilously near the block. Such were the difficulties that confronted
Perceval, Liverpool, and Castlereagh: yet for their country’s sake they
encountered them without flinching[156].’
[156] Fortescue’s _British Statesmen_, pp. 277-8.
The winter of 1811-12 was not quite the darkest hour: the Russian war
was looming in the near future, and Napoleon was already beginning to
withdraw troops from Spain in preparation for it. No longer therefore,
as in 1810 and the earlier half of 1811, was there a high probability
that the main bulk of the French armies, under the Emperor himself,
might be turned once more against the Peninsula. It was all but certain
that England would soon have allies, and not stand practically alone
in the struggle, as she had done ever since Wagram. Nevertheless, even
with the political horizon somewhat brightened in the East, the time
was a sufficiently anxious one. In Great Britain, as in the rest of
Europe, the harvest of 1811 had been exceptionally bad, and the high
price of bread, coinciding with much unemployment, was causing not only
distress but wide-spread turbulence in the manufacturing districts.
This was the year of the first outbreak of the ‘Luddites,’ and of their
senseless exploits in the way of machine-smashing. The worst stringency
of domestic troubles coincided with the gradual disappearance of the
external danger from the ambition of Napoleon.
In addition it must be remembered that the Perceval cabinet, on which
all the responsibilities fell, was by no means firmly established in
power. When it first took office many politicians believed that it
could not last for a single year. All through 1811 the Prince Regent
had been in secret negotiation with the Whigs, and would gladly have
replaced his ministers with some sort of a coalition government. And
in January 1812 Lord Wellesley, by far the most distinguished man in
the cabinet, resigned his post as Foreign Minister. He asserted that
he did so because his colleagues had failed to accept all his plans
for the support of his brother and the Peninsular army: and no doubt
this was to a certain extent true. Yet it cannot be said that, either
before or after his resignation, the Ministry had neglected Wellington;
in 1811 they had doubled his force of cavalry, and sent him about a
dozen new battalions of infantry. It was these reinforcements which
made the victories of 1812 possible, and in that year the stream of
reinforcements did not cease--nine more infantry regiments came out,
mostly in time for the great crisis in June[157]. In the autumn the
dispatch of further succours had become difficult, because of the
outbreak of the American war, which diverted of necessity to Canada
many units that might otherwise have gone to Spain. It is impossible to
maintain that Wellington was stinted of men: money was the difficulty.
And even as regards money--which had to be gold or silver, since paper
was useless in the Peninsula--the resources placed at his disposal were
much larger than in previous years, though not so large as he demanded,
nor as the growing scale of the war required.
[157] _Per contra_ five depleted second battalions went home.
It is difficult to acquit Wellesley of factiousness with regard to
his resignation, and the most damaging document against him is the
_apologia_ drawn up by his devoted adherent Shawe[158], in the belief
that it afforded a complete justification for his conduct: many of
the words and phrases are the Marquess’s own. From this paper no one
can fail to deduce that it was not so much a quixotic devotion to his
brother’s interests, as an immoderate conception of his own dignity
and importance that made Wellesley resign. He could not stand the free
discussion and criticism of plans and policies which is essential in
a cabinet. ‘Lord Wellesley has always complained, with some justice,
that his suggestions were received as those of a mere novice.... His
opinions were overruled, and the opposition he met with could only
proceed from jealousy, or from a real contempt for his judgement.
It seemed to him that they were unwilling to adopt any plan of his,
lest it might lead to his assuming a general ascendancy in the
Cabinet.... He said that he took another view of the situation: the
Government derived the most essential support from his joining it,
because it was considered as a pledge that the war would be properly
supported.... “The war is popular, and any government that will
support Lord Wellington properly will stand. I do not think the war
is properly supported, and I cannot, as an honest man, deceive the
nation by remaining in office.” ... It is needless to particularize all
the points of difference between Lord Wellesley and his colleagues:
Spain was the main point, but he also disapproved of their obstinate
adherence to the Orders in Council, and their policy towards America
and in Sicily’--not to speak of Catholic Emancipation.
[158] Printed in Wellington’s _Supplementary Dispatches_, vii.
pp. 257-88.
These are the words of injured pride, not of patriotism. The essential
thing at the moment was that the war in Spain should be kept up
efficiently. By resigning, Wellesley intended to break up the Ministry,
and of this a probable result might have been the return to office of
the Whigs, whose policy was to abandon the Peninsula and make peace
with Napoleon. Wellesley’s _apologia_ acknowledges that his influence
in the Cabinet had brought about, on more occasions than one, an
increase of the support given to his brother, e.g. his colleagues had
given in about additions to the Portuguese subsidy, and about extra
reinforcements to the army. This being so, it was surely criminal in
him to retire, when he found that some of his further suggestions were
not followed. Would the wrecking of the Perceval cabinet, and the
succession of the Whigs to power, have served Wellington or the general
cause of the British Empire?
Wellington himself saw the situation with clear eyes, and in a letter,
in which a touch of his sardonic humour can be detected, wrote in reply
to his brother’s announcement of his resignation that ‘In truth the
republic of a cabinet is but little suited to any man of taste or of
large views[159].’ There lay the difficulty: the great viceroy loved to
dictate, and hated to hear his opinions criticized. Lord Liverpool, in
announcing the rupture to Wellington in a letter of a rather apologetic
cast, explains the situation in a very few words: ‘Lord Wellesley
says generally that he has not the weight in the Government which he
expected, when he accepted office.... The Government, though a cabinet,
is necessarily _inter pares_, in which every member must expect to
have his opinions and his dispatches canvassed, and this previous
friendly canvass of opinions and measures appears necessary, under
a constitution where all public acts of ministers will be hostilely
debated in parliament.’ The Marquess resented all criticism whatever.
[159] Wellington to Wellesley, camp before Badajoz,
_Supplementary Dispatches_, vii. p. 307.
The ministers assured Wellington that his brother’s resignation would
make no difference in their relations with himself, and invited him to
write as freely to Lord Castlereagh, who succeeded Wellesley at the
Foreign Office, as to his predecessor. The assurance of the Cabinet’s
good will and continued confidence was received--as it had been
given--in all sincerity. Not the least change in Wellington’s relations
with the Ministry can be detected from his dispatches. Nor can it be
said that the support which he received from home varied in the least,
after his brother’s secession from the Cabinet. Even the grudging
Napier is forced to concede this much, though he endeavours to deprive
the Perceval ministry of any credit, by asserting that their only
chance of continuance in office depended on the continued prosperity
of Wellington. Granting this, we must still conclude that Wellesley’s
resignation, even if it produced no disastrous results--as it well
might have done--was yet an unhappy exhibition of pride and petulance.
A patriotic statesman should have subordinated his own _amour propre_
to the welfare of Great Britain, which demanded that a strong
administration, pledged to the continuance of war with Napoleon, should
direct the helm of the State. He did his best to wreck Perceval’s
cabinet, and to put the Whigs in power.
The crisis in the Ministry passed off with less friction and less
results than most London observers had expected, and Lord Liverpool
turned out to be right when he asserted that in his opinion[160]
it would be of no material prejudice to the Perceval government.
Castlereagh, despite of his halting speech and his involved phrases,
was a tower of strength at the Foreign Office, and certainly replaced
Wellesley with no disadvantage to the general policy of Great Britain.
[160] Liverpool to Wellington, _Supplementary Dispatches_, vii.
p. 257.