Delaborde, whose infantry held the advanced posts. That officer
first tried to approach the head of the bridge by means of a flying
sap; but when it had advanced a certain distance the fire of the
Portuguese from across the river became so deadly, that after many
men had been killed in the endeavour to work up to the palisades
on the bridge, the attempt had to be abandoned. The next device
recommended by the engineers was that an attempt should be made to
lay a trestle bridge at a spot some way below the town, where a
mill-dam contracted the width of the angry river. This was found to
be impossible, the stream proving to be far deeper than had been
supposed, while the Portuguese from the left bank picked off many of
the workmen [April 25].
Soult was now growing vexed at the delay, and sent two guns of
position from Oporto to Loison, to enable him to subdue the fire of
the enemy’s batteries. He also offered to call up Heudelet’s division
from Braga, even at the cost of abandoning his hold on the northern
part of the province of Entre-Douro-e-Minho. But a mere increase
of his already considerable force would have been of no service to
Loison; it was a device for passing the Tamega that he needed.
Such a scheme was at last laid before him by Captain Bouchard, one
of his engineers[318]. The French officers had discovered, by a
careful use of their glasses, that the Portuguese mine, which was
to destroy the bridge, was situated in its left-hand arch, and that
the mechanism by which it was to be worked was not a ‘sausage’ or a
train of powder[319], but a loaded musket, whose muzzle was placed
in the mine, while to its trigger was attached a cord which ran to
the nearest trenches beyond the river. The musket was concealed
in a box, but its cord was visible to those provided with a good
telescope. Bouchard argued that if the cord could be cut or broken,
the enemy would not be able to touch off the mine, and he had thought
out a plan for securing his end. He maintained that an explosion at
the French side of the bridge would probably sever the cord without
firing the mine, and that a sudden assault, made immediately after
the explosion, and before the Portuguese could recover themselves,
might carry the barricades. In spite of the strongly-expressed doubts
of Foy and several other generals, Bouchard was finally permitted to
carry out his scheme.
[318] Napier, ii. pp. 80-1, consistently mis-calls him Brochard.
[319] Either of these might easily have been fired by a casual
shot, during the long cannonading which had been in progress. The
Portuguese, therefore, avoided them.
He executed it on the night of May 2, when a dense fog chanced to
favour his daring and hazardous proceedings. Having first told off
some _tirailleurs_ to keep up a smart fire on the enemy’s trenches
and distract his attention, he sent four sappers, each provided with
a small powder-barrel, on to the bridge. The men, dressed in their
grey _capotes_, crawled on hands and knees, each rolling his barrel
(which was wrapped in cloth to deaden the sound) before him. They
kept in the shadow, and getting close under the parapet of the bridge
crept on till they reached the outermost Portuguese palisade. One
after another, at long intervals, each got forward unobserved, left
his barrel behind, and crawled back. The fourth sapper, starting to
his feet on his return journey, was observed by the Portuguese and
shot down, but Silveira’s men did not realize what he had been doing,
and merely took him for some daring explorer who was endeavouring
to spy out the state of the defences. After waiting for an hour,
Bouchard sent out a fifth sapper, who dragged behind him a ‘sausage’
of powder thirty yards long, which he successfully connected with the
four barrels. All was now ready, and a battalion of picked grenadiers
from Delaborde’s division, filed silently down into the street near
the bridge-head: a whole brigade came behind them.
At two o’clock Bouchard fired his sausage, and the explosion
followed. There were two chances of failure--one that the apparatus
for firing the mine might not be disturbed by the concussion, the
other that the shock might prove too strong, reach the mine, and
destroy the bridge. Neither of these fatalities took place: the
explosion duly broke the cord, shattered the nearest palisades,
but did not affect the mine. Before the smoke had cleared away
Delaborde’s grenadiers had dashed out on to the bridge, scrambled
over the barricades, and driven off the guard on the further
side. Regiment after regiment followed them, and charged up the
mountain-side towards Silveira’s batteries and entrenchments. None
of the Portuguese were under arms, save the few companies guarding
the debouches from the bridge. These were swept away, and the French
columns came storming into the bivouacs of the enemy before he was
well awake. Hardly half a dozen cannon shots were fired on them from
the batteries, and the greater part of the army of the Tras-os-Montes
fled without firing a shot. Silveira escaped almost naked by the back
window of the house above the bridge in which he had been sleeping.
All the ten guns in the Portuguese batteries, five standards, and
several hundred prisoners fell into the hands of the victorious
French, who lost (it is said) no more than two killed and seven
wounded. Their good fortune had been extraordinary: without the
opportune fog which hid their advance, their preliminary operations
would probably have been discovered. If their explosion had done
a little more or a little less than was hoped, the bridge might
have been totally destroyed, or its barricades left practically
uninjured--either of which chances would have foiled Bouchard’s plan.
But the luck of the army of Portugal was still in the ascendant, and
all went exactly as had been intended.
Thus the Tamega was passed, and Silveira decisively beaten: his
levies had fled in all directions, and Soult opined that it would
take a long time to rally them. The day after the fight Loison
was joined at Amarante by Heudelet’s division from Braga, which,
in obedience to the Marshal’s orders, had marched to join the
expeditionary force, leaving only a single battalion behind to hold
Viana. This was an unfortunate move, as on Heudelet’s departure the
_Ordenanza_ came down from the Serra de Santa Catalina, and overran
the district which had been evacuated, in spite of Lorges’ dragoons,
who had been directed to keep the roads clear after the infantry had
been withdrawn.
Meanwhile there were far more troops at Amarante than were needed
for the pursuit of Silveira, so Soult called back to Oporto the
division of Delaborde, leaving to Loison the infantry of Heudelet
and Sarrut, with Lahoussaye’s two brigades of dragoons, a force of
about 7,000 men. He ordered his lieutenant to scour the country as
far as Villa Real, and to send reconnaissances on the roads toward
Chaves and Braganza, with the object of frightening the insurgents
to retreat as far as possible. But Loison was not to advance for
more than two days’ march into the Tras-os-Montes, for rumours were
beginning to arrive concerning the appearance of British troops in
the direction of Coimbra, and the Marshal wished to keep his various
divisions close enough to each other to enable them to concentrate
with ease. If there were any truth in the news from the south, it
would be dangerous to allow a force which formed a third of the
whole army of Portugal to go astray in the heart of the mountains
beyond the Tamega. Loison accordingly marched off on May 8 towards
Villa Real, which he occupied without meeting with resistance. He
learnt that Silveira and his regulars had crossed the Douro, and gone
off in the direction of Lamego; but Botilho had fled up the Tamega
towards Chaves, and the _Ordenanza_ were lurking in the hills. He
then returned to Amarante, where we may leave him, at the end of his
tether, while we describe the state of affairs in Oporto.
SECTION XIII: CHAPTER VI
INTRIGUES AT OPORTO: THE CONSPIRACY OF ARGENTON
It will have occurred to every student of the operations of the army
of Portugal during the month of April, that it was strange that
Marshal Soult should have remained quiescent at Oporto, while the
fate of his entire campaign was at stake during the fighting on the
Tamega. His head quarters were only thirty miles from Amarante--but
one day’s ride for himself and his staff--yet he never paid a single
flying visit to the scene of operations, even after he had come to
the conclusion that Loison was mismanaging the whole business. He
sent his lieutenant many letters of reproach, forwarded to him guns
of position, and ample reinforcements, but never came himself to
the spot to urge on the advance, even when ten and twelve days had
elapsed since the first unsuccessful attempts to force the passage of
the Tamega.
The explanation of this persistent refusal of the Marshal to quit
Oporto is to be found in the political not the military state of
affairs. At Chaves he had proclaimed himself Viceroy of Portugal:
his viceroyalty at that moment embraced only just so much soil as
was covered by the encampments of his battalions. But after the
capture of Oporto and the occupation of the neighbouring towns of
the Entre-Douro-e-Minho, his position assumed an air of reality, and
he himself allowed the duties of the viceroy to trespass on those of
the commander of the Second Corps d’Armée. Nay more, there is good
reason to believe that he was not merely dreaming of setting up a
stable government in northern Portugal, but of something else. The
evidence as to his intentions is hard to weigh, for most of it comes
from the letters and diaries of men who disliked him, but there are
certain facts which cannot be disguised, and the inference from them
is irresistible.
With the example of Murat’s exaltation before them, the more
ambitious and capable of Napoleon’s marshals could not refrain from
dreaming of crowns and sceptres. Nothing seemed impossible in those
astounding days, when the Emperor was creating sovereigns and realms
by a stroke of the pen, whenever the notion seized him. The line
between an appanaged duke and a vassal prince was a very thin one--as
the case of Berthier shows. Junot had dreamed of royalty at Lisbon
in 1808, and there seems little doubt that the same mirage of a
crown floated before Soult’s eyes at Oporto in 1809. The city itself
suggested the idea: in the Treaty of Fontainebleau Napoleon had put
on paper the project for creating a ‘king of Northern Lusitania,’
with Oporto as his capital and the Entre-Douro-e-Minho as his realm.
Soult was cautious and wary, but he was also greedy and ambitious.
If, on the one hand, he had a wholesome fear of his master, he had
on the other good reasons for believing that it might be possible to
force his hand by presenting him with a _fait accompli_.
There was in the city the nucleus of a party which was not wholly
indisposed to submit to the French domination. It was mainly composed
of those enemies of the Bishop of Oporto who had been suffering from
his anarchical rule of the last two months. They were the friends
and relatives of those who had perished by the dagger or the rope,
during the mob-law which had prevailed ever since Dom Antonio
returned from Lisbon. To these may be added some men of purely
material interests, who saw that the insurrection was ruining them,
and a remnant of the old corrupt bureaucracy which had submitted once
before to Junot--whose only thought was to keep or gain profitable
posts under the government of the day, whatever that government might
be. The whole body of dissidents from the cause of patriotism and
independence was so small and weak, that it is impossible to believe
that they would have taken any overt action if they had not received
encouragement from Soult.
This much is certain--that when the disorders which accompanied the
capture of Oporto were ended, Soult showed himself most anxious to
conciliate the Portuguese, not only by introducing a regular and
orderly government, but by going out of his way to soothe and flatter
any notable who lingered in the city. In his anxiety to win over
the clergy he caused new silver vessels and candelabra to be made
to replace those which had been stolen from the churches in the
sack[320]. He filled up all civil appointments, whose holders had
fled, from the small number of persons who were ready to adhere to
the French. He again, as already at Chaves, endeavoured to enlist
a native military force, by putting tempting offers before those
officers of the regular army who had been made prisoners. All this
might have had no other cause than the wish to build up a party
of _Afrancesados_, such as already existed in Spain, and Soult
openly declared that such was his object[321]. This was the only
purpose that he avowed in his dispatches to the Emperor, and in his
communications with his colleagues.
[320] See Le Noble (Soult’s partisan and official vindicator), p.
207, and Fantin des Odoards, p. 227.
[321] See his conversation with his aide-de-camp, St. Chamans,
in the latter’s _Mémoires_, p. 139. The Marshal said that he was
in a hazardous military position and that ‘je ne puis m’en tirer
qu’en divisant les Portugais entre eux, et j’emploie pour cela le
meilleur moyen politique qui soit en mon pouvoir.’ Compare Fantin
des Odoards, p. 227.
But if the Marshal had no ulterior object in view, it is singular
that all his native partisans concurred in setting on foot a movement
for getting him saluted as king of northern Portugal. The new
municipal authorities, whom he had established in the half-deserted
towns occupied by his troops, sent in petitions begging him to assume
the position of sovereign. Documents of this kind came in from Braga,
Barcelos, Guimaraens, Feira, Oliveira and Villa de Conde. In Oporto
proclamations were posted on the walls declaring that ‘the Prince
Regent by his departure to Brazil had formally resigned his crown,
and that the only salvation for Portugal would be that the Duke of
Dalmatia, the most distinguished of the pupils of the great Napoleon,
should ascend the vacant throne[322].’ A priest named Veloso and
other persons went about in the street delivering harangues in favour
of the creation of the ‘kingdom of Northern Lusitania.’ A register
was opened in the municipal buildings to be signed by all persons
who wished to join in the petition to the Marshal to assume the
regal title, and a certain number of signatures were collected. A
newspaper, called the _Diario do Porto_, was started, to support
the movement, and ran for about a month. It is said that Soult’s
partisans even succeeded in gathering small crowds together, before
the mansion where his head quarters were established, to shout
_Viva o Rei Nicolao!_ and that the acclamations were acknowledged
by showers of copper coins thrown from the windows[323]. The latter
part of this story is no doubt an invention of Soult’s enemies, but
it was believed at the time by the majority of the French officers,
and ‘_Le Roi Nicolas_’ was for the future his nickname in the army
of Portugal[324]. On April 19 the Marshal ordered his chief of the
staff, General Ricard, to issue a circular letter to the generals
of divisions and brigades[325], inviting their co-operation in the
movement, and assuring them that no disloyalty to the Emperor would
be involved even if the Marshal assumed regal powers[326]. This
document is the most convincing piece of evidence that exists as to
Soult’s intentions. In it there is no attempt made to conceal the
movement that had been set on foot: the writer’s only preoccupation
is to show that it was not directed against Napoleon. When, five
months later, Ricard’s circular came under the Emperor’s eye, it
roused his wrath to such a pitch that he wrote in the most stinging
and sarcastic terms to Soult. ‘He is astounded,’ he says, ‘to find
the chief of the staff suggesting to the generals that the Marshal
should be requested to take up the reins of government, and assume
the attributes of supreme authority. If he had assumed sovereign
power on his own responsibility, it would have been a crime, clear
_lèse-majesté_, an attack on the imperial authority. How could a
man of sense, like Soult, suppose that his master would permit him
to exercise any power that had not been delegated to him? No wonder
that the army grew discontented, and that rumours got about that the
Marshal was working for himself, not for the Emperor or France. After
receiving this circular, it is doubtful whether any French officer
would not have been fully justified in refusing to obey any further
orders issued from Oporto[327].’
[322] Fantin des Odoards, writing at Oporto under the date May 5,
says that he had just read this proclamation on the walls, and
was astounded at it, for the great bulk of the population was so
hostile that the project seemed absolutely insane.
[323] St. Chamans, aide-de-camp to Soult, speaks of the crowds
assembled by Veloso and others (p. 134): Bigarré says that
General Ricard threw money to the crowd for seven days running
from the Marshal’s balcony, and then stopped because the harvest
of _vivas_ was not large enough (p. 245).
[324] See Fantin des Odoards, p. 229, and Jourdan, p. 218.
[325] This strange document will be found printed in the Appendix.
[326] See Chamans, pp. 134 and 140. He ends with observing that
Soult ‘aurait voulu se faire demander pour roi de Portugal par
les habitants, qu’alors, le premier pas fait, il aurait sollicité
les suffrages de l’armée, ils auraient été consignés sur des
registres pour chaque corps, et il aurait mis toutes ces pièces
sous les yeux de l’Empereur, en lui demandant son approbation.’
[327] Napoleon to Soult from Schönbrunn, Sept. 26, _Nap.
Corresp._, 15,871.
This was written from Vienna, before the Emperor had received any
full and exact account of the details of Soult’s intrigues. Had he
but known them all, it is doubtful if he would have granted his
lieutenant the complete pardon and restoration to favour with which
his dispatch concludes[328].
[328] Napier’s conclusions as to Soult’s conduct are wholly
warped by his strong predilection for the Marshal--which dated
back to the time when the latter dealt kindly with his wounded
brother on the day after Corunna. He understates Soult’s
encouragement of the movement, and will have us believe that
it was purely the work of the Portuguese. He omits all mention
of Ricard’s circular, and finally suppresses all mention of
Napoleon’s angry upbraidings except the following (ii. p. 75):
‘The Emperor wrote to Soult that the rumour had reached him,
adding, with a delicate allusion to the Marshal’s previous
services, “I remember nothing but Austerlitz.”’ Now it was not
a _rumour_ which had reached Schönbrunn, but a copy of Ricard’s
circular, which the Emperor quotes _verbatim_. Therefore Napoleon
was writing with tangible evidence, not with camp reports,
to guide him. How far Napier’s sentence above gives a fair
impression of the tone of the dispatch which I have reproduced,
I leave the reader to judge. It was a surprise to myself when I
put the two together. Once and for all, it must be remembered
that Napier can never be trusted when Soult is in question--the
Marshal’s intrigues, his greed, his shameful plundering of
Andalusian churches, are all concealed.
There can be no doubt that the Duke of Dalmatia might have put a
stop to all the activity of his Portuguese friends by merely raising
his hand. It would have sufficed for him to assure the deputations
which visited him that his duty as the lieutenant of the Emperor
forbade him to listen to their proposals. He could have caused
the proclamations to be torn down, and have silenced the street
orators. ‘They could not have made him king against his own will,’
as one of his officers remarked[329]. But no action of the kind
was taken; and the movement was openly encouraged. The Marshal’s
explanation, that he was only taking the best means in his power to
build up a French party in Oporto, will not stand examination. Why
should the scheme involve his own promotion to the throne, if his
views were disinterested, and his actions merely intended to serve
his master’s ends? Is it conceivable that the Portuguese should, of
their own accord, and without any suggestion from without, have hit
upon the idea of crowning a conqueror whose very name was strange
to them three weeks before, and whose hands were red with the blood
of thousands of their fellow countrymen? Clever and cautious though
the Marshal was, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that he
had for once allowed his ambition to take the bit between its teeth,
and to whirl him off into an enterprise that was worthy of the most
hair-brained of adventurers.
[329] Fantin des Odoards, p. 220.
Meanwhile the consequences of his intrigue were strange and various.
The army received the news of what was going on at Oporto with
puzzled surprise. Of those who were not present at the centre of
affairs, some refused to believe the stories that reached them, and
merely observed that the Marshal was not such a fool as to take in
hand a plan that was both treasonable to his master and preposterous
in itself[330]. Others, particularly his personal enemies, not only
credited the information but began to concert measures for resisting
him if he should try to carry out his scheme. This party was very
strong among the officers of Junot’s old army of Portugal, who had
been transferred in large numbers to the 2nd Corps. They disliked the
expedition, had been prophesying disaster from the first, and had
criticized every move of the Marshal. Now they found in the news of
his intrigue another excuse for running counter to his orders. There
is good reason for believing that Loison and Delaborde had actually
conferred on the necessity for seizing and imprisoning the Marshal
if he should take the final step and allow himself to be proclaimed
king. Both these generals were faithful adherents of Napoleon,
and had no thought save that of serving their master. But there
were other officers who watched the progress of affairs with very
different eyes.
[330] So writes Naylies, of Lahoussaye’s dragoons, who, being
absent at Amarante and elsewhere, never saw the doings in Oporto:
‘Il s’est répandu dans l’armée qu’il aspirait à la souveraineté
du pays: on en conçut d’abord quelques inquiétudes, qui furent
bientôt dissipées’ (p. 119).
There had existed in the French army from the day when the empire was
first proclaimed, a party of malcontents who still regarded Bonaparte
as a usurper, and were only biding their time till it might be safe
to deal a blow at him. Hitherto his career had been so uniformly
successful that no opportunity had arisen. But secret societies, of
which the _Philadelphes_ was the best known, were at work all through
the years of the Emperor’s reign: their one object was to be ready
for a _coup d’état_ when the favourable moment should arrive. The
history of these associations is so obscure that it is impossible to
estimate their strength at any given time--no trustworthy historian
ever arose from their ranks to tell the story of their schemes, when
lips were unsealed by the fall of Napoleon[331]. It is only by the
sudden appearance of phenomena like Malet’s conspiracy of 1812, and
the plot which we are now about to describe, that the reality of the
existence of these secret societies is proved.
[331] Charles Nodier’s _Histoire des conspirations militaires
sous l’Empire_ is unfortunately quite untrustworthy. He was
never among the _Philadelphes_, and writes as a credulous and
ill-informed outsider. Nevertheless there is a basis of fact
underlying his work.
In the army of Portugal there was a group of officers who belonged to
the band of the discontented, and were perfectly prepared to execute
a _pronunciamiento_ against the empire if the times and circumstances
proved propitious. We know the names of four[332]: Donadieu, colonel
of the 47th of the line; Lafitte, colonel of the 18th Dragoons; his
brother, a captain in the same regiment, who was serving on Soult’s
staff; and Argenton, another captain, who was adjutant of Lafitte’s
regiment; two other plotters are hidden under the assumed names of
‘Dupont’ and ‘Garis,’ by which they were introduced to Wellesley.
There were _certainly_ other officers implicated, for it is
inconceivable that six men could have planned an insurrection unless
they were sure of a certain measure of support. At this moment they
were carrying on an active propaganda of discontent, especially among
the officers of Delaborde’s division and of Lahoussaye’s dragoons.
There were many men who saw the full iniquity of the Spanish War,
and were disgusted at finding themselves involved in it[333]. Others
loathed the hanging and burning, the shooting of priests and women,
the riding down of half-armed peasants, which had been their lot for
the last two months. Still more were simply discontented at being
lost in a remote corner of Europe, where glory and profit were both
absent, and where ignominious death at the hands of the lurking
‘sniper’ or the midnight assassin came all too frequently--sometimes
death accompanied by torture. It was three months since the army had
received a mail from France; they might as well have been in Egypt
or America, and they felt themselves forgotten by their master. In
many a mind the question arose whether the game was worth playing:
must they for ever persist in this wretched interminable campaign, in
order that the Duke of Dalmatia might become a king, or even in order
that the Emperor might be able to apply the Continental System in its
full rigour to this land of brutish peasants and fanatical monks? A
speedy return to France seemed the one thing desirable.
[332] The names of Argenton, Lafitte, and Donadieu are public
property. Napier gives them, as does Bigarré. The names of
‘Dupont’ and ‘Garis’ are in suppressed paragraphs of the
_Wellington Dispatches_ which Gurwood chose to omit, and are also
found in the minutes of Argenton’s trial at Paris.
[333] The reader may trace this feeling in Foy’s diaries, and
Naylies (p. 67).
It is easy to understand that the conspirators found many
sympathizers, so long as they confined themselves to setting forth
the miseries of the campaign, and to criticizing the Marshal and the
Emperor. But they erred when they took a general readiness to grumble
for a sign that the army was ripe for revolt. However discontented
the officers might be, there were very few of them who were prepared
to engage in the game of high treason. The vast majority were still
unable to dissociate the idea of the Emperor from the idea of
France. It was only a few who could rise (or sink) to the conception
of turning their arms against Bonaparte in order to free France
from autocracy. This bore too close a resemblance to treachery to
be palatable to men of honour. None save exalted Jacobins, or men
of overweening ambition and few scruples, could contemplate the
idea with patience. When we find that the plans of the conspirators
included not merely a _pronunciamiento_, but the conclusion of a
secret pact with the enemies in arms against them, we are driven to
conclude that they belonged to the last-named of these classes--that
their heads were turned with the grandiose notion of getting an army
into their power and changing the fate of Europe.
The conspirators, observing the course of affairs at Oporto, were
fully convinced that Soult would within a few days declare himself
‘King of Northern Lusitania.’ This act would produce an outburst of
wrath in the army, and they hoped to turn the inevitable mutiny to
their own profit. They intended to seize the Marshal, and then to
make an appeal to the soldiery, not in the name of Napoleon but in
that of France. They were also prepared to lay hands on any general
who might attempt to assume command of the troops in the Emperor’s
interest[334]. Donadieu and Lafitte had secured some of the officers
of their own regiments, and believed that the men would follow them.
The other corps, as they hoped, would be drawn away after them, and
the cry of liberty and the promise of an instant return to France
would lure the whole army into rebellion. So far the plot, though
rash and hazardous, might conceivably have been carried out. But
their next step was to be the issue of an appeal to Ney’s divisions
and the other French troops in northern Spain to join them, and
march upon the Pyrenees. Even though there were members of the
secret societies scattered all through the army, it seems absolutely
impossible to believe that they could have carried away with them
into open revolt the whole of their companions. The movement of
protest against Napoleon would have begun and ended with the 2nd
Corps, if even it got so far as the initial _pronunciamiento_[335].
To be effective it would have required a strong backing in France,
and the list of the leaders in that country, on whom the conspirators
said that they relied for aid, does not give us a high opinion of
the strength and organization of the plot. The persons named were
the old Jacobin general Lecourbe, Macdonald who--though they did not
know it--had just been taken back into favour by the Emperor, and
Dupont, who was in prison and incapable for the moment of helping
himself or any one else[336]. They also spoke of sending for Moreau
from America, and placing him at the head of the whole movement.
But it is clear that they were not in actual communication with the
generals in France, much less with the exiled victor of Hohenlinden.
The whole plan was ill-considered; it was the result of the intense
irritation against Soult and Bonaparte felt by the officers of the
army of Portugal, acting upon the disordered ambition of a knot
of intriguers. Anger and vain self-confidence blinded them to the
inadequacy of their resources.
[334] Napier and Le Noble both hint that Loison was in the
plot, and perhaps Delaborde, though they do not actually name
these officers. But I think that their innocence is proved by
Argenton’s declaration to Wellesley (Wellesley to Castlereagh,
May 7, Record Office), that Loison was attached to Bonaparte, and
would certainly seize Soult if he proclaimed himself king for
‘ambitious abuse of his authority and disobedience to his master.’
[335] This, at the time, was Wellesley’s eminently sensible
conclusion. He wrote to Castlereagh on April 27, ‘I doubt whether
it will be quite so easy as their emissary thinks to carry their
intentions into execution: I also doubt whether it follows that
the successful revolt of this one corps would be followed by
that of others, and I am convinced that the method proposed
by M. D’Argenton would not answer that purpose.’ _Wellington
Dispatches_, iv. 276.
[336] These are the names omitted in the printed version of the
_Wellington Dispatches_: that of Moreau does not occur there, but
is to be found in the confession which Argenton made to Soult:
see Le Noble, p. 236.
It was a main condition of the projected outbreak that Soult’s
position should be made impossible: the most favourable course of
events, so the conspirators held, would be that he should persist
in his monarchical ambitions and proclaim himself king. When he did
so, the party loyal to Bonaparte among his officers would make an
attempt--successful or unsuccessful--to seize his person. Chaos and
civil strife within the army would result, and it was then that the
conspirators intended to show their hand. It would seem that their
Machiavellian foresight went so far that they proposed to wait till
the Marshal should be imprisoned, or should find himself involved
in hostilities with the Bonapartists, and then offer him the aid of
their regiments, on condition that he should put himself at the head
of the anti-imperialist movement. All this was too ingenious for
practical work. But the next development of the plot was even more
astonishing in its futile cunning.
The conspirators wished to draw the English commander at Lisbon into
their scheme--it was Cradock whom they had in view, for Wellesley
was in England when the plot began, and when it developed he had
landed indeed, but his arrival was not known. The part which they had
allotted to Cradock was twofold--he was to be asked to send secret
advice to the Portuguese notables of the north, ordering them to
feign an enthusiastic approval of Soult’s designs on the crown, and
to join with all possible clamour in the demonstrations at Oporto.
When this unexpected outburst of devotion to his person should be
forthcoming, they supposed that the Marshal would not hesitate any
longer to assume the crown. Then would follow civil strife and the
desired opportunity for intervention by the conspirators. The second
request which they intended to make was that Cradock should bring
up the British army to the front, and place it so as to make it
dangerous or impossible for Soult to force his way out of Portugal in
the direction of the middle Douro and Salamanca. They suggested Villa
Real in the Tras-os-Montes as a suitable position for him. Their
idea in making this proposal was that the army would be filled with
despair at seeing its best line of retreat cut off (that by Galicia
was growing to be considered impossible), and would therefore be more
incensed against Soult, and at the same time more inclined to secure
safety by coming to a pact and agreement with the enemy[337].
[337] It must be remembered that the whole plot was far advanced,
and that Argenton had placed himself in treasonable communication
with the British, before Wellesley landed. Sir Arthur came ashore
on the night of April 22. On the morning of the twenty-fifth,
he received a visit from Beresford, who came down from Coimbra
to tell him that a French officer, bearing the message of the
conspirators, had come within the Portuguese lines on the Vouga
on the twenty-first. Argenton arrived at Lisbon the same night,
and had his first interview with the new commander-in-chief,
whom he found in charge of the British army, and not (as he had
expected) Sir John Cradock. The three requests made were (1)
that Wellesley would ‘press upon Soult’s Corps’--the seizure of
Villa Real being suggested, (2) that he would give passports to
Argenton and two others to go to France, (3) that he would stir
up the Portuguese to flatter and deceive Soult into taking overt
steps of treason. Cf. _Wellington Dispatches_, iv. 274 [Lisbon,
April 27] and 308 [Coimbra, May 7].
The officer who volunteered for the dangerous task of going within
the English lines was Captain Argenton, the adjutant of Lafitte’s
regiment of dragoons. He was a vain, ready, plausible man, full of
resources but destitute of firmness: his character is sufficiently
shown by the fact that he ultimately wrecked the plot by his
indiscretion in tampering with loyal Bonapartists, who delated him,
and that when seized he betrayed the whole scheme to Soult in the
hope of saving his life. Clearly he was deficient both in the caution
and in the stoic courage required for a conspirator--successful or
unsuccessful.
We must note that he started from the camp of Lahoussaye’s dragoons,
near Amarante, on April 19, that he reached the French outposts on
the Vouga and got into communication with Major Douglas, one of
Beresford’s officers in the Portuguese service, on the twenty-first,
finally, that at the invitation of Douglas and Beresford he came
into Lisbon and reached that city on the twenty-fifth, just in time
to meet the newly-landed Wellesley. The plot meanwhile stood still
in his absence, for the Duke of Dalmatia did not take the overt step
which would have given the plotters their opportunity--he refrained
from accepting the crown which his Portuguese partisans were so
continually pressing him to assume. Nothing decisive had occurred,
when the situation was suddenly changed by the appearance of the
British army upon the offensive on May 7[338].
[338] It is to these days, and probably to some date about May
4-7, that belongs General Bigarré’s curious story about the
conspirators (see his _Mémoires_, p. 235, and Le Noble, p. 238;
the latter printed the story in 1821 without names, the former’s
version was only given to the light a few years ago; they agree
in every point). The story is too good to be omitted. Bigarré
says that, walking the quay of Oporto on a moonlight night,
he came on Lafitte and Donadieu, muffled in their cloaks and
vehemently discussing something in a dark corner. He stole up
to them unnoticed, slapped his friend Donadieu on the back, and
suddenly shouted in their ears ‘_Ah! je vous y prends, Messieurs
les conspirateurs_.’ Lafitte whipped out a pistol, and had nearly
shot the practical joker, before Donadieu could reassure him that
this was only a boisterous piece of fun and that Bigarré knew
nothing. It was not till much later that the latter found out
what had been brewing.
N.B.--For some documents bearing on Argenton’s conspiracy see
Appendix at the end of this volume.
SECTION XIV
WELLESLEY’S CAMPAIGN IN NORTHERN PORTUGAL
(MAY 1809)
CHAPTER I
SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY
On Nov. 25, 1808, Sir John Moore, in answer to a question from Lord
Castlereagh, wrote the following conclusions as to the practicability
of defending Portugal[339]:
[339] In common fairness to Moore, it is necessary to quote
Wellesley’s own words on their fundamental difference of opinion
as to the possibility of defending Portugal. ‘I have as much
respect as any man can have for the opinion and judgement of Sir
J. Moore, and I should mistrust my own (if opposed to his) in
a case where he had an opportunity of knowing and considering.
But he positively knew nothing of Portugal, and _could_ know
nothing of its existing state.’ Yet he says that ‘The greatest
disadvantage under which I labour is that Sir John Moore gave an
opinion that the country could not be defended by the army under
his command.’ Wellington to Lord Liverpool, from Vizeu, April 2,
1810.
‘I can say generally that the frontier of Portugal is not defensible
against a superior force. It is an open frontier, all equally rugged,
but all equally to be penetrated. If the French succeed in Spain it
will be vain to attempt to resist them in Portugal. The Portuguese
are without a military force ... no dependence can be placed on any
aid that they can give. The British must in that event, I conceive,
immediately take steps to evacuate the country. Lisbon is the only
port, and therefore the only place from whence the army, with its
stores, can embark.... We might check the progress of the enemy while
the stores are embarking, and arrangements are being made for taking
off the army. Beyond this the defence of Lisbon or of Portugal should
not be thought of.’
Four months later, on March 7, 1809, Sir Arthur Wellesley answered
the same question, put to him by the same minister, in very different
terms.
‘I have always been of opinion that Portugal might be defended,
whatever might be the result of the contest in Spain, and that in
the meantime measures adopted for the defence of Portugal would be
highly useful to the Spaniards in their contest with the French. My
notion was that the Portuguese military establishment ought to be
revived, and that in addition to those troops His Majesty ought to
employ about 20,000 British troops, including about 4,000 cavalry.
My opinion was that, even if Spain should have been conquered, the
French would not be able to overrun Portugal with a smaller force
than 100,000 men. As long as the contest may continue in Spain, this
force [the 20,000 British troops], if it could be placed in a state
of activity, would be highly useful to the Spaniards, and might
eventually decide the contest.’
Between these two divergent views as to the practicability of
defending Portugal, Lord Castlereagh had to make his decision. On
it--though he could not be aware of the fact--depended the future
of Britain and of Bonaparte. He carefully considered the situation;
after the disasters of the Corunna retreat it required some moral
courage for a minister to advise the sending of another British
army to the Peninsula. Moore’s gloomy prognostications were echoed
by many military experts, and there were leading men--soldiers and
politicians--who declared that the only thing that now remained to
be done was to withdraw Cradock’s 10,000 sabres and bayonets from
Lisbon, before the French came near enough to that city to make their
embarkation difficult.
Castlereagh resolved to stake his faith on the correctness of
Wellesley’s conclusions: all through these years of contest he had
made him his most trusted adviser on things military, and now he did
not swerve from his confidence. He announced to him, privately in the
end of March, and officially on April 2[340], that the experiment of
a second expedition to Portugal should be tried, and that he himself
should have the conduct of it. Reinforcements should at once be sent
out to bring the British army at Lisbon up to a total of 30,000
men--the number to which Wellesley, on consideration, raised the
original 20,000 of which he had spoken. Beresford had already sailed,
with orders to do all that he could for the reorganization of the
disorderly native forces of Portugal. The few regiments in England
that were ready for instant embarkation were sent off ere March
ended, and began to arrive at Lisbon early in April[341]. Others were
rapidly prepared for foreign service; but it was a misfortune that
the Corunna battalions were still too sickly and depleted to be able
to sail, so that troops who had seen nothing of the first campaign
had to be sent out. The majority of them were ‘second battalions’
from the home establishment[342], many of them very weak in numbers
and full of young soldiers, as they had been drained in the previous
year to fill their first battalions up to full strength. Finally,
just behind the first convoys of reinforcements, Wellesley himself
set sail from Portsmouth, after resigning his position as Under
Secretary for Ireland, which, by a curious anomaly, he had continued
to hold all through the campaign of Vimiero, and the proceedings of
inquiry concerning the Convention of Cintra. He sailed upon April
14, in the _Surveillante_ frigate, had the narrowest of escapes
from shipwreck on the Isle of Wight during the first night of his
voyage, but soon obtained favourable winds and reached Lisbon on the
twenty-second, after a rapid passage of less than eight days. Just
before he started there had been received from Portugal not only
the correct intelligence that Soult had stormed Oporto upon March
29, but a false rumour that Victor had been joined by the corps of
Sebastiani[343] and had after his victory at Medellin laid siege to
Badajoz[344]. If this had been true, the Duke of Belluno would have
been strong enough to move against Portugal with 25,000 men, after
detaching a competent force to watch the wrecks of Cuesta’s army.
Fortunately the whole story was an invention: but it kept Wellesley
in a state of feverish anxiety till he reached Lisbon. His fears are
shown by the fact that he drew up a memorandum for Lord Castlereagh,
setting forth the supposed situation, and asking what he was to do
on arriving, if he should find that Cradock had already embarked his
troops and quitted Portugal[345]. The Secretary of State, equally
harrassed by the false intelligence, replied that he was to make an
effort to induce the Spaniards to let him land the army at Cadiz,
and, if they should refuse, might reinforce the garrison of Gibraltar
to 8,000 men, and bring the rest of the expeditionary force back to
England[346].
[340] The official notice is dated April 2 (_Wellington
Supplementary Dispatches_, vi. p. 210), but several letters dated
late in March show that the matter had been already settled.
[341] The troops from the abortive expedition to Cadiz, under
Mackenzie, Sherbrooke and Tilson, turned up about the middle of
March at Lisbon. But Hill, with the first body of the second
batch of reinforcements, only appeared upon April 5.
[342] Of the first ten battalions to appear, seven were 2nd
battalions--those of the 7th, 30th, 48th, 53rd, 66th, 83rd, 87th
regiments. Some were very weak, with less than 750 bayonets, e.g.
the 7th (628 men), 30th (698 men), 66th (740 men).
[343] This came from Beresford at Lisbon (see _Wellington
Supplementary Dispatches_, vi. p. 219).
[344] Wellesley to the Duke of Richmond, April 14 (_Supplementary
Dispatches_, vi. 227).
[345] _Wellington Supplementary Dispatches_, vi. 221-2. It
is very creditable to Sir Arthur that, adverting to another
possibility, viz. that Cradock may have plucked up courage to go
out against the French, and have successfully beaten them off, he
declares that ‘he could not reconcile it with his feelings’ to
supersede a successful general. He remembered his own state of
mind when supplanted by Burrard on the day of Vimiero.
[346] Castlereagh to Wellesley, _Supplementary Dispatches_, vi.
222 and 228.
It was therefore an immense relief to Wellesley to find, when he
landed, that the news from Estremadura was false, that Victor had
not been reinforced, and that the 1st Corps was lying quiescent at
Merida. Soult was still at Oporto, Cradock had not been molested, and
the French invasion was at a standstill.
It is comparatively seldom that the historian is able to compare in
detail a general’s original conception of a plan of campaign with the
actual scheme which he carried out. Still less common is it to find
that the commander has placed on record his ideas as to the general
policy to be pursued during a war, before he has assumed charge of
his army or issued his first orders. It is therefore most fortunate
that we have three documents from Wellesley’s hand, written early
in 1809, which enable us to understand the principles on which he
believed that the Peninsular War should be fought out. These are
his _Memorandum on the Defence of Portugal_, which we have already
had occasion to quote, and the two dispatches to Lord Castlereagh
and to Mr. Frere which he wrote immediately after his arrival in
Lisbon. The first gives us his general view of the war. He believed
that an English army of 20,000 or 30,000 men, backed by the levies
of Portugal, would be able to maintain itself on the flank of the
French army in Spain. Its presence there would paralyse all the
offensive actions of the enemy, and enable the Spaniards to make
head against the invaders as long as Portugal remained unsubdued.
The news that a British army had once more taken the field would,
he considered, induce the French to turn their main efforts against
Portugal[347], but he believed that considering the geography of the
country, the character of its people, and the quality of the British
troops, they would fail in their attempt to overrun it. They could
not succeed, as he supposed, unless they could set aside 100,000
men for the task, and he did not see how they would ever be able
to spare such a large detachment out of the total force which they
then possessed in the Peninsula--a force whose numerical strength
(in common with all British statesmen and soldiers of the day) he
somewhat underrated. Being in the secrets of the Ministry, he was
already aware in March that a new war in Germany was about to break
out within the next few months. When Austria took the field, Napoleon
would not be able to spare a single battalion of reinforcements for
Spain. If the Spaniards pursued a reasonable military policy, and
occupied the attention of the main armies of the French, the enemy
would never be able to detach a force of 100,000 for the invasion of
Portugal. He would underrate the numbers required, make his attempt
with insufficient resources, and be beaten. When Wellesley landed at
Lisbon, and found that Soult had halted at Oporto, that Victor lay
quiescent at Merida, and that Lapisse with the troops from Salamanca
had gone southward to join the 1st Corps, and so severed the only
link which bound together the army in Northern Portugal and the army
in Estremadura, he was reassured as to the whole situation. Soult and
Victor, isolated as they now were, would each be too weak to beat the
Anglo-Portuguese army. They were too far apart to make co-operation
between them possible, considering the geography of Central Portugal,
and the fact that the whole country behind each was in a state of
insurrection[348].
[347] Memorandum of March 7, ‘As soon as the newspapers shall
have announced the departure of officers for Portugal, the French
armies in Spain will receive orders to make their movements
towards Portugal, so as to anticipate our measures for its
defence,’ &c.
[348] It is noteworthy that Wellesley, when he was placed in
communication with Argenton three days later, considered that
one of the few useful facts which he had got from the plotter
was that Soult and his army had no knowledge of where Victor
might be, or of what he was doing. This was a far more precious
piece of information than any details as to the conspiracy, which
Wellesley regarded from the first as doomed to failure: see
_Wellington Dispatches_, iv. 274.
But ‘the best defensive is a vigorous local offensive,’ and Wellesley
saw the advantage of the central position of the British army upon
the Tagus. A few marches would place it at a point from which it
could fall either upon Victor to the right or Soult to the left,
before either marshal could be in a position to lend help to his
colleague, probably long before he would even be aware that his
colleague was in danger. Wellesley could strike at the one or the
other, with almost perfect certainty of catching him unreinforced.
Ney, it was true, lay behind Soult, but he was known to be entangled
in the trammels of the vigorous Galician insurrection. Victor had
Sebastiani in his rear, but the 4th Corps was having occupation
found for it by the Spanish army of La Mancha. It was improbable
that either Soult or Victor, if suddenly attacked, could call up any
appreciable reinforcements. Victor, moreover, had Cuesta to observe,
and could not move off leaving 20,000 Spaniards behind him. Soult
was known to be distracted by Silveira’s operations on the Tamega.
Wellesley, therefore, saw that it was well within his power to strike
at either of the marshals. He would, of course, be obliged to place
a ‘containing force’ in front of the one whom he resolved to leave
alone for the present. But this detachment need not be very large,
and might be composed for the most part of Portuguese troops: its
duty would be to distract, but not to fight the enemy.
On the whole Wellesley thought it would be best to make the first
onslaught on Soult. ‘I should prefer an attack on Victor,’ he wrote,
two days after landing, ‘in concert with Cuesta, if Soult were not
in possession of a fertile province of this kingdom, and of the
favourite town of Oporto, of which it is most desirable to deprive
him. Any operation upon Victor, connected with Cuesta’s movements,
would require time to concert, which may as well be employed in
dislodging Soult from the north of Portugal, before bringing the
British army to the eastern frontier[349].... I intend to move
upon Soult, as soon as I can make some arrangement, on which I can
depend, for the defence of the Tagus, to impede or delay Victor’s
progress, in case he should come on while I am absent.’ ‘I think it
probable,’ he wrote on the same day but in another letter, ‘that
Soult will not remain in Portugal when I pass the Mondego: if he
does, I shall attack him. If he should retire, I am convinced that it
would be most advantageous for the common cause that we should remain
on the defensive in the North of Portugal, and act vigorously in
co-operation with Cuesta against Victor[350].’
[349] Wellesley to Castlereagh, from Lisbon, April 24. I have
ventured to substitute ‘before bringing’ in the last sentence for
the unmeaning ‘and to bring’ which is clearly a _lapsus calami_.
[350] Wellesley (to Mr. Frere, at Seville) from Lisbon, April
24. In many sentences this dispatch is only a repetition of that
to Castlereagh. But in others Sir Arthur makes his meaning more
clear, by a more detailed explanation.
Further forward it was impossible to look: a blow at Soult, followed
by another at Victor, was all that could at present be contemplated.
Wellesley was directed, by the formal instructions which he had
received from Castlereagh, to do all that was possible to clear
Portugal and the frontier provinces of Spain from the enemy, but
not to strike deep into the Peninsula till he should have received
permission from home to do so. Nevertheless he had devoted some
thought to the remoter possibilities of the situation. If Portugal
were preserved, and Soult and Victor beaten off, more ambitious
combinations might become possible. He expressed his conviction that
the French occupation of Spain would only be endangered when a very
large force, acting in unison under the guidance of a single mind,
should be brought together. The co-operation of the English army and
that of Cuesta ‘might be the groundwork of further measures of the
same and a more extended description[351].’ He was under no delusions
as to the easiness of the task before him: he did not hurry on in
thought, to dream of the expulsion of the French from the Peninsula
as a goal already in sight. But he believed that he and his army
‘might be highly useful to the Spaniards and might eventually decide
the contest[352].’
[351] Wellesley to Frere, Lisbon, April 24, 1809.
[352] _Memorandum on the Defence of Portugal_, of March 7.
It is the survey of documents such as these that enables us to
appreciate Wellesley at his best. He had gauged perfectly well the
situation and difficulties of the French. He saw exactly how much
was in his own power. The whole history of the Peninsular War for
the next two years is foreseen in his prophetic statement, that with
30,000 British troops and the Portuguese levies he would guarantee
to hold his own against any force of less than 100,000 French, and
that he did not think that the enemy would find it easy to collect
an army of that size to send against him. This is precisely what he
accomplished: for the first fifteen months after his arrival he held
with ease that frontier which Moore had described as ‘indefensible
against a superior force.’ When at last Napoleon, free from all
other continental troubles, launched against him an army under
Masséna, which almost reached the figure[353] that he had described
as irresistible in 1809, he showed in 1810-11 that he had built up
resources for himself which enabled him to beat off even that number
of enemies. Though four-fifths of Spain had been subdued, he held his
own, because he had grasped the fundamental truth that (to use his
own words) ‘the more ground the French hold down, the weaker will
they be at any given point.’ In short, he had fathomed the great
secret, that Napoleon’s military power--vast as it was--had its
limits: that the Emperor could not send to Spain a force sufficient
to hold down every province of a thoroughly disaffected country,
and also to provide (over and above the garrisons) a field army
large enough to beat the Anglo-Portuguese and capture Lisbon. If the
French dispersed their divisions, and kept down the vast tracts of
conquered territory, they had no force left with which to take the
offensive against Portugal: if they massed their armies, they had to
give up broad regions, which immediately relapsed into insurrection
and required to be subdued again. This was as true in the beginning
of the war as in the end. In 1809 the army that forced Wellesley
to retreat after Talavera was only produced by evacuating the
whole province of Galicia, which passed back into the hands of the
insurgents. In 1812, in a similar way, the overpowering force which
beat him back from Burgos, had been gathered only by surrendering to
the Spanish Government the whole of the four kingdoms of Andalusia.
On the other hand, during the long periods when the enemy had
dispersed himself, and was garrisoning the whole south and centre of
Spain, e.g. for the first six months of 1810, and for the last six
months of 1811, Wellesley held his own on the Portuguese frontier
in complete confidence, assured that no sufficient force could be
brought up against him, till the enemy either procured new troops
from France or gave up some great section of the regions which he was
holding down. A detailed insight into the future is impossible to
any general, however great, but already in April 1809 Wellesley had
grasped the main outlines of the war that was to be.
[353] If to Masséna’s field army of 60,000 men we add the troops
on his communications (viz. the 9th Corps and the garrisons of
Rodrigo and Almeida) and also the force which Soult and Mortier
brought up against Badajoz and Elvas--a force against which
Wellesley had to provide, by making large detachments--the full
number of 100,000 is reached.
Before passing on to the details of the campaign on the Douro, with
which Wellesley’s long series of victories began, it is well to
take a glance at the man himself, as he sat at his desk in Lisbon
dictating the orders that were to change the face of the war.
Arthur Wellesley was now within a few days of completing his fortieth
year. He was a slight but wiry man of middle stature, with a long
face, an aquiline nose, and a keen but cold grey eye. Owning an iron
constitution on which no climate or season seemed to make the least
impression, he was physically fit for all the work that lay before
him--work more fatiguing than that which falls to most generals. For
in the Peninsula he was required, as it soon appeared, to be almost
as much of a statesman as of a general; while at the same time, owing
to the inexperience of the British officers of that day in warfare on
a large scale, he was obliged for some time to discharge for himself
many of the duties which properly fall to the lot of the chief of
the staff, the commissary-general, the paymaster-general, and the
quartermaster-general in a well organized army. No amount of toil,
bodily or mental, appeared too much for that active and alert mind,
or for the body which seven years of service in India seemed to have
tanned and hardened rather than to have relaxed. During the whole of
his Peninsular campaigns, from 1808 to 1814, he was never prostrated
by any serious ailment. Autumn rains, summer heat, the cold of
winter, had no power over him. He could put up with a very small
allowance of sleep, and when necessary could snatch useful moments of
repose, at any moment of the twenty-four hours when no pressing duty
chanced to be on hand. His manner of life was simple and austere in
the extreme; no commander-in-chief ever travelled with less baggage,
or could be content with more Spartan fare. Long after his wars were
over the habit of bleak frugality clung to him, and in his old age
men wondered at the bare and comfortless surroundings that he chose
for himself, and at the scanty meals that sustained his spare but
active frame. Officers who had long served in India were generally
supposed to contract habits of luxury and display, but Wellesley
was the exception that proved the rule. He hated show of any kind;
after the first few days of the campaign of 1809 he discarded the
escort which was wont to accompany the commander-in-chief. It was on
very rare occasions that he was seen in his full uniform: the army
knew him best in the plain blue frock coat, the small featherless
cocked hat, and the short cape, which have been handed down to us
in a hundred drawings. Not unfrequently he would ride about among
his cantonments dressed like a civilian in a round hat and grey
trousers[354]. He was as careless about the dress of his subordinates
as about his own, and there probably never existed an army in which
so little fuss was made about unessential trappings as that which
served in the Peninsula from 1809 to 1814[355]. Nothing could be less
showy than its head-quarters’ staff--a small group of blue-coated
officers, with an orderly dragoon or two, riding in the wake of the
dark cape and low glazed cocked hat of the most unpretentious of
chiefs. It contrasted in the strangest way with the plumes and gold
lace of the French marshals and their elaborately ornate staffs[356].
[354] See, for example, the anecdote in Sir G. L’Estrange’s
_Reminiscences_, p. 194. Picton was equally given to the use (or
abuse) of _mufti_, and fought Quatre Bras in a tall hat!
[355] ‘Provided we brought our men into the field well appointed,
and with sixty good rounds in their pouches, he never looked to
see whether our trousers were black or blue or grey. Scarcely any
two officers dressed alike. Some wore grey braided coats, others
brown, some liked blue: many from choice or necessity stuck to
the “old red rag.” We were never tormented with that greatest of
_bores_ on active service, uniformity of dress.’ _Grattan’s With
the 88th_, p. 50.
[356] To find a humorous contrast to Wellington’s staff, the
reader might consult Lejeune’s account of that of Berthier, who
had allowed him to design a special and gorgeous uniform, all
fur feathers and braid, for his aides-de-camp. Lejeune dwells
with the enthusiasm of a tailor on his efforts and their glorious
effect on parade [Lejeune, i. p. 95].
Considered as a man Wellesley had his defects and his limitations;
we shall have ere long to draw attention to some of them. But from
the intellectual point of view he commands our undivided admiration
as a practical soldier[357]. A careful study of his dispatches
leaves us in a state of wonder at the imbecility of the school
of writers--mostly continental--who have continued to assert for
the last eighty years that he was no more than a man of ordinary
abilities, who had an unfair share of good luck, and was presented
with a series of victories by the mistakes and jealousies of the
generals opposed to him. Such assertions are the results of blind
ignorance and prejudice. When found in English writers they merely
reflect the bitter hatred that was felt toward Wellesley by his
political opponents during the second and third decades of the
nineteenth century. In French military authors they only represent
the resentful carpings of the vanquished army, which preferred to
think that it was beaten by anything rather than by the ability of
the conqueror. In 1820 every retired colonel across the Channel
was ready to demonstrate that Toulouse was an English defeat, that
Talavera was a drawn battle, and that Wellesley was over-rash or
over-cautious, a fool or a coward, according as their thesis of the
moment might demand[358]. They were but echoing their Emperor’s
rancorous remark to Soult, on the hillside of La Belle Alliance, when
after telling the Marshal that he only thought his old adversary a
good general because he had been beaten by him, he added, ‘Et moi, je
vous dis que Wellington est un mauvais général, et que les Anglais
sont de mauvaises troupes[359].’
[357] Lord Roberts, in his _Rise of Wellington_, only slightly
overstates his case when he observes that the more we study
Wellesley’s life in detail, the more we respect him as a general
and the less we like him as a man. If we come upon much that is
hard and unsympathetic, there are too many redeeming traits to
justify the statement in its entirety.
[358] The reader curious in such things may find as much as he
desires of this sort of stuff in Thiébault, Marbot, Le Noble and
Lemonnier Delafosse.
[359] These phrases are preserved in the notes of Soult’s
aide-de-camp Baudus.
Bonaparte consistently refused to do justice to the abilities of
the Duke. He regarded him as a bitter personal enemy, and his whole
attitude towards Wellesley was expressed in the scandalous legacy to
Cantillon[360] which disgraces his last will and testament. In strict
conformity with their master’s pose, his followers, literary and
military, have refused to see anything great in the victor of June
18, 1815. Even to the present day too many historians from the other
side of the straits continue to follow in the steps of Thiers, and to
express wonder at the inexplicable triumphs of the mediocre general
who routed in succession all the best marshals of France.
[360] Cantillon was the assassin who fired on Wellington in Paris
on Sept. 10, 1818.
To clear away any lingering doubts as to Wellesley’s extraordinary
ability, the student of history has only to read a few of his more
notable dispatches. The man who could write the two Memoranda to
Castlereagh dated September 5, 1808, and March 7, 1809[361], foresaw
the whole future of the Peninsular War. To know, at that early
stage of the struggle, that the Spaniards would be beaten when--and
wherever they offered battle, that the French, in spite of their
victories, would never be able to conquer and hold down the entire
country, that 30,000 British troops would be able to defend Portugal
against any force that could be collected against them, required the
mind of a soldier of the first class. When the earliest of those
memoranda was written, most Englishmen believed that the Spaniards
were about to deliver their country by their own arms: Wellesley saw
that the notion was vain and absurd. When, on the other hand, he
wrote the second, the idea was abroad that all was lost, that after
Corunna no second British army would be sent to the Peninsula, and
that Portugal was indefensible. Far from sharing these gloomy views
he asks for 30,000 men, and states that though Spain may be overrun,
though the Portuguese army may be in a state of hopeless disarray,
he yet hopes with this handful of men to maintain the struggle, and
eventually to decide the contest. How many generals has the world
seen who could have framed such a prophecy, and have verified it?
[361] Wellington to Castlereagh, Zambujal, Sept. 5, 1808, and
London, March 7, 1809.
To talk of the good fortune of Wellesley, of his ‘lucky star,’ is
absurd. He had, like other generals, his occasional uncovenanted
mercies and happy chances: but few commanders had more strokes of
undeserved disappointment, or saw more of their plans frustrated
by a stupid subordinate, an unexpected turn of the weather, an
incalculable accident, or a piece of false news. He had his fair
proportion of the chances of war, good and bad, and no more. If
fortune was with him at Oporto in 1809, or at El Bodon in 1811, how
many were the occasions on which she played him scurvy tricks? A few
examples may suffice. In May 1809 he might have captured the whole
of Soult’s army, if Silveira had but obeyed orders and occupied
the impregnable defile of Salamonde. On the night of Salamanca he
might have dealt in a similar fashion with Marmont’s routed host, if
Carlos d’España had not withdrawn the garrison of Alba de Tormes,
in flat disobedience to his instructions, and so left the fords
open to the flying French. It is needless to multiply instances of
such incalculable misfortune; any serious student of the Peninsular
War can cite them by the dozen. Masséna’s invasion of Portugal in
1810 would have been checked by the autumn rains, and never have
penetrated far within the frontier, but for the unlucky bomb which
blew up the grand magazine at Almeida, and reduced in a day a
fortress which ought to have held out for a month. In the autumn
of 1812 the retreat beyond the Douro need never have been made, if
Ballasteros had obeyed orders, and moved up from Granada to threaten
Soult’s flank, instead of remaining torpid in his cantonments 200
miles from the theatre of war.
Wellington was not the child of fortune; he was a great strategist
and tactician, placed in a situation in which the military dangers
furnished but half his difficulties. He had to cherish his single
precious British army corps, and to keep it from any unnecessary
loss, because if destroyed it could not be replaced. With those
30,000 men he had promised to keep up the war; the home government
was reluctant to risk the whole of its available field army in one
quarter, and for years refused to raise his numbers far above that
total. It was not till the middle of 1810 that his original five
divisions of infantry were increased to six, nor till 1811 that his
seventh and eighth divisions were completed[362]. Right down to 1812
it was certain that if he had lost any considerable fraction of his
modest army, the ministry might have recalled him and abandoned
Portugal. He had to fight with a full consciousness that a single
disaster would have been irreparable, because it would have been
followed not by the sending off of reinforcements to replace the
divisions that might be lost, but by an order to evacuate the
Peninsula. His French opponents fought under no such disabilities;
when beaten they had other armies at hand on which to fall back, and
behind all the inexhaustible reserve of Napoleon’s conscription.
Considering the campaigns of 1809-10-11 it is not Wellington’s
oft-censured prudence that we find astonishing, but his boldness.
Instead of wondering that he did not attempt to relieve Rodrigo or
Almeida in July-August 1810, or to fall upon Masséna at Santarem
in January 1811, we are filled with surprise at the daring which
inspired the storming of Oporto, and the offering of battle at Busaco
and Fuentes d’Oñoro. When a defeat spelt ruin and recall, it required
no small courage to take any risks: but Wellesley had the sanest
of minds; he could draw the line with absolute accuracy between
enterprise and rashness, between the possible and the impossible.
He had learned to gauge with wonderful insight the difficulties and
disabilities of his enemies, and to see exactly how far they might
be reckoned upon in discounting the military situation. After some
time he arrived at an accurate estimate of the individual marshals
opposed to him, and was ready to take the personal equation into
consideration, according as he had to deal with Soult or Masséna,
Marmont or Jourdan. In short, he was a safe general, not a cautious
one. When once the hopeless disparity between his own resources and
those of the enemy had ceased to exist, in the year 1812, he soon
showed the worth of the silly taunts which imputed timidity to him,
by the smashing blows which reduced Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz,
and the lightning-stroke which dashed to pieces Marmont’s army at
Salamanca. In the next year, when for the first time he could count
on an actual superiority of force[363], his irresistible march to
Vittoria displayed his mastery of the art of using an advantage to
the uttermost. Napoleon himself never punished a strategic fault on
the part of the enemy with such majestic ease and confidence.
[362] The Fifth Division was not completed till Oct. 8, 1810, the
Sixth and Seventh on March 8, 1811.
[363] Though even then the superiority, such as it was, consisted
entirely of Spanish troops of doubtful quality.
Of Wellington as a tactician we have already had occasion to speak in
the first volume of this work[364]. It is only necessary to repeat
here that the groundwork of his tactics was his knowledge of the
fact that the line could beat the column, whether on the offensive
or the defensive. The _data_ for forming the conclusions had been in
possession of any one who chose to utilize them, but it was Wellesley
who put his knowledge to full account. Even before he left India, it
is said, he had grasped the great secret, and had remarked to his
confidants that ‘the French were sweeping everything before them
in Europe by the use of the formation in column, but that he was
fully convinced that the column could and would be beaten by the
line[365].’ Yet even though the epoch-making, yet half-forgotten,
fight of Maida had occurred since then, the first Peninsular battles
came as a revelation to the world. After Vimiero and Talavera it
became known that the line was certainly superior for the defensive,
but it was only the triumphant line-advance of Salamanca that
finally divulged the fact that the British method was equally sure
and certain for the attack. If Wellesley’s reputation rested on the
single fact that he had made this discovery known to the world, he
would have won by this alone a grand place in military history. But
his reputation depends even more on his strategical than on his
tactical triumphs. He was a battle-general of the first rank, but
his talents on the day of decisive action would not have sufficed to
clear the French out of Spain. His true greatness is best shown by
his all-embracing grasp of the political, geographical, and moral
factors of the situation in the Peninsula, and by the way in which
he utilized them all when drawing up the plans for his triumphant
campaigns.
[364] See pp. 114-22 of vol. i.
[365] The same idea is well marked in a conversation reported by
Croker, which took place in London, on the eve of Wellesley’s
departure to assume command of the troops at Cork with whom he
was about to sail for the Peninsula. After a long reverie, he
was asked the subject of his thoughts. ‘To say the truth,’ he
replied, ‘I am thinking of the French I am going to fight. I
have not seen them since the campaign in Flanders [1794-5] when
they were capital soldiers, and a dozen years of victory under
Buonaparte must have made them better still. They have besides a
new system of strategy, which has outmanœuvred and overwhelmed
all the armies of Europe. ’Tis enough to make one thoughtful; but
no matter, the die is cast: they may overwhelm me, but I don’t
think they will outmanœuvre me. First, because I am not afraid
of them, as everybody else seems to be; and secondly, because,
if all I hear of their system be true, I think it a false one
against steady troops. I suspect all the continental armies are
half beaten before the battle begins. I, at least, will not be
frightened beforehand.’ Croker’s _Diary and Correspondence_, vol.
i. p. 13, under the date June 14, 1808.
As to tactics indeed, there are points on which it would be easy to
point out defects in Wellesley’s method--in especial it would be
possible to develop the two old, but none the less true, criticisms
that he was ‘pre-eminently an infantry general,’ and that ‘when he
had won a battle he did not always utilize his success to the full
legitimate end.’ The two charges hang closely together, for the one
defect was but the consequence of the other; a tendency to refrain
from making the greatest possible use of his cavalry for breaking up
an enemy who had already begun to give ground, and for pursuing him
_à outrance_ when he was well on the run, was the natural concomitant
of a predilection for the use of infantry in the winning of battles.
If Napoleon had commanded the British army at Salamanca, Marmont’s
troops would have been annihilated by a rapid cavalry pursuit,
instead of merely scattered. If Wellington had commanded the French
army in the Jena-Auerstadt campaign, it is reasonably certain that
Hohenlöhe’s broken divisions would have escaped into the interior,
instead of being garnered in piecemeal by the inexorable and untiring
chase kept up by the French horse. The very distrust which Wellington
expressed for the capacities of the British cavalry[366], who after
all were admirable troops when well handled, is but an illustration
of the fact that he was no true lover of the mounted arm. But of this
we have already spoken, and it is unnecessary to dwell at greater
length on his minor deficiencies than on his numerous excellencies on
the day of battle.
[366] See vol. i. p. 119.
A far more serious charge against Wellesley than any which can
be grounded on his tactical faults, is that, though he won the
confidence of his army, he could never win their affection. ‘The
sight of his long nose among us on a battle morning,’ wrote one
of his veterans, ‘was worth ten thousand men, any day of the
week[367].’ But it was not personal attachment to him which nerved
his soldiers to make their best effort: he was feared, respected,
and followed, but never loved. He was obeyed with alacrity, but not
with enthusiasm. His officers and his men believed, and believed
rightly, that he looked upon them as admirable tools for the task
that had been set him, and did his best to keep those tools unbroken
and in good repair, but that he felt no deep personal interest in
their welfare. It is seldom that the veterans who have served under a
great commander have failed to idolize as well as to respect him. But
Wellesley’s men, while acknowledging all his greatness, complained
that he systematically neglected both their feelings and their
interests[368]. It was but too true: he showed for his army, the
officers no less than the rank and file, a certain coldness that was
partly bred of intellectual contempt, partly of aristocratic hauteur.
There are words of his on record concerning his men which can never
be forgiven, and words, too, not spoken in the heat of action or the
moment of disappointment, but in the leisure of his later years.
Take, for example, the passage in Lord Stanhope’s _Conversations
with the Duke of Wellington_, where he is speaking of the rank and
file: ‘they are the scum of the earth; English soldiers are fellows
who have enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact--they have _all_
enlisted for drink[369].’ He described the men who won Talavera as ‘a
rabble who could not bear success,’ and the Waterloo troops as ‘an
infamous army’--the terms are unpardonable. His notions of discipline
were worthy of one of the drill sergeants of Frederic the Great. ‘I
have no idea of any great effect being produced on British soldiers,’
he once said before a Royal Commission, ‘by anything but the fear of
immediate corporal punishment.’ Flogging was the one remedy for all
evils, and he declared that it was absolutely impossible to manage
the army without it. For any idea of appealing to the men’s better
feeling, or moving them by sentiment, he had the greatest contempt.
[367] See Kincaid, chap. v, May 3, 1811.
[368] The feelings, expressed more or less clearly in a hundred
memoirs, may be summed up in a paragraph by Wm. Grattan of the
88th. ‘In his parting General Order to the Peninsular army he
told us that he would never cease to feel the warmest interest
for our welfare and honour. How this promise was kept every one
knows. That the Duke of Wellington is one of the most remarkable
(perhaps the greatest) man of the present age, few will deny. But
that he neglected the interests and feelings of his Peninsular
army, as a body, is beyond all question. And were he in his grave
to-morrow, hundreds of voices that now are silent would echo what
I write’ (p. 332).
[369] _Conversations with the Duke of Wellington_, p. 14. [Nov.
4, 1831.]
The most distressing feature in Wellington’s condemnation of the
character of his soldiery is that he was sinning against the light:
officers, of less note but of greater heart, were appealing to the
self-respect, patriotism, and good feeling of their men, with the
best results, at the very moment that Wellesley was denouncing them
as soulless clods and irreclaimable drunkards. It was not by the
lash that regiments like Donnellan’s 48th or Colborne’s 52nd, or
many other corps of the Peninsular army were kept together. The
reminiscences of the Napiers, and many other regimental officers of
the better class, are full of anecdotes illustrating the virtues of
the rank and file. There are dozens of diaries and autobiographies
of sergeants and privates of Wellesley’s old divisions, which prove
that there were plenty of well-conditioned, intelligent, sober and
religious men in the ranks--it is only necessary to cite as examples
the books of Surtees, Anton, Morris, and Donaldson[370]. If there
were also thousands of drunkards and reckless brutes in the service,
the blame for their misdoings must fall to a great extent on the
system under which they were trained. The ruthless mediaeval cruelty
of the code of punishment alone will account for half the ruffianism
of the army.
[370] It is often forgotten that there was a strong religious
element in the rank and file of the Peninsular army. In a letter
from Cartaxo [Feb. 3, 1811], Wellington mentions, with no great
pleasure, the fact that there were three separate Methodist
meetings in the Guards’ brigade alone, and that in many other
regiments there were officers who were accustomed to preach and
pray with their men. For the spiritual experiences of a sergeant
in the agonies of conversion, the reader may consult the diary of
Surtees of the 95th during the year 1812.
The same indiscriminate censure which Wellesley poured on his men he
often vented on his officers, denouncing them _en masse_ in the most
reckless fashion. There were careless colonels and stupid subalterns
enough under him, but what can excuse such sweeping statements as
that ‘When I give an order to an officer of the line it is, I venture
to say, a hundred to one against its being done at all,’ or for his
Circular of November, 1812, declaring that all the evils of the
Burgos retreat were due ‘to the habitual inattention of the officers
of regiments to their duty.’ It was a bitter blow to the officers of
the many battalions which had kept their order and discipline, to
find themselves confused with the offending corps in the same general
blast of censure. But by 1812 they were well accustomed to such
slashing criticism on the part of their commander.
Such a chief could not win the sympathy of his army, though he might
command their intellectual respect. Equally unfortunate were his
autocratic temper and his unwillingness to concede any latitude of
instructions to his subordinates, features in his character which
effectually prevented him from forming a school of good officers
capable of carrying out large independent operations. He trained
admirable generals of division, but not commanders of armies, for
he always insisted on keeping the details of operations, even in
distant parts of the theatre of war, entirely under his own hand.
His preference for Hill as a commander of detached corps came
entirely from the fact that he could trust that worthy and gallant
officer to make no movements on his own initiative, and to play a
safe waiting game which gave his chief no anxiety. In his younger
days, while serving under other generals, Wellesley had been by no
means an exponent of blind obedience or unquestioning deference to
the orders of his superiors. But when placed in command himself he
was autocratic to a fault. He was prone to regard any criticism of
his directions as insubordination. He preferred a lieutenant on
whom he could rely for a literal obedience to orders, to another
of more active brain who possessed initiative and would ‘think for
himself.’ There was hardly an officer in the Peninsular army to whom
he would grant a free hand even in the carrying out of comparatively
small tasks[371]. His most trusted subordinates were liable to
find themselves overwhelmed with rebukes delivered in the most
tempestuous fashion if they took upon themselves to issue a command
on their own responsibility, even when the great chief was many
leagues away. Sometimes when their inspirations had been obviously
useful and successful, he would wind up his harangue, not with an
expression of approval, but with a recommendation to the effect
that ‘matters had turned out all right, but they must never again
act without orders[372].’ This was not the way to develop their
strategical abilities, or to secure that intelligent co-operation
which is more valuable than blind obedience. It may be pleaded in
Wellesley’s defence that at the commencement of the war he had many
stupid and discontented officers under him, and that their carpings
at his orders were often as absurd as they were malevolent. But it
was not only for them that he reserved his thunders. They fell not
unfrequently on able and willing men, who had done no more than think
for themselves, when an urgent problem had been presented to them.
He was, it must be confessed, a thankless master to serve: he was
almost as pitiless as Frederic the Great in resenting a mistake or
an apparent disobedience to orders. The case of Norman Ramsay may
serve as an example. Ramsay was perhaps the most brilliant artillery
officer in the Peninsular army: the famous charge of his guns through
a French cavalry regiment at Fuentes d’Oñoro is one of the best-known
exploits of the whole war. But at Vittoria he made an error in
comprehending orders, and moved forward from a village where the
commander-in-chief had intended to keep him stationed. He was placed
under arrest for three weeks, cut out of his mention in dispatches,
and deprived of the brevet-majority which had been promised him. His
career was broken, and two years later he fell, still a captain, at
Waterloo.
[371] Robert Craufurd and Hill were perhaps the only exceptions.
[372] Take, for example, his behaviour to Sir James MacGrigor,
perhaps the most successful of his chiefs of departments.
MacGrigor, being at Salamanca, while Wellesley was at Madrid [Aug.
1812], ordered on his own authority the bringing up of stores for
the mass of wounded left behind there after the battle. He then
came to bring his report to Madrid. ‘Lord Wellington was sitting
to a Spanish painter [Goya] for his portrait when I arrived, and
asked me to sit down and give him a detail as to the state of the
wounded at Salamanca. When I came to inform him that for their
relief I had ordered up purveying and commissariat officers, he
started up, and in a violent manner reprobated what I had done.
His Lordship was in a passion, and the Spanish artist, ignorant
of the English language, looked aghast, and at a loss to know
what I had done to enrage him so much. “I shall be glad to know,”
he asked, “who is to command the army, I or you? I establish one
route, one line of communications for the army; you establish
another, and order up supplies by it. As long as you live, sir,
never do that again; never do _anything_ without my orders.” I
pleaded that there was no time to consult him, and that I had
to save lives. He peremptorily desired me “never again to act
without his orders.” ... A month later I was able to say to him,
“My Lord, recollect how you blamed me at Madrid for the steps
which I took on coming up to the army, when I could not consult
your Lordship, and acted for myself. Now, if I had not, what
would the consequences have been?” He answered, “It is all right
as has turned out; but I recommend you still _to have my orders
for what you do_.” This was a singular feature in the character
of Lord Wellington.’ MacGrigor’s _Autobiography_, pp. 302-3 and
311.
It would almost seem that Wellesley had worked out for himself some
sort of general rule, to the effect that incompetent being more
common than competent subordinates, it would be safer in the long
run to prohibit all use of personal initiative, as the occasions on
which it would be wisely and usefully employed would be less numerous
than those on which it would result in blunders and perils. He had a
fine intellectual contempt for many of the officers whom he had to
employ, and never shrank from showing it. When once he had made up
his mind, he could not listen with patience to advice or criticism.
It was this that made him such a political failure in his latter
days: he carried into the cabinet the methods of the camp, and could
not understand why they were resented. His colleagues ‘started up
with crotchets,’ he complained: ‘I have not been used to that in the
early part of my life. I was accustomed to carry on things in quite
a different manner. I assembled my officers and laid down my plan,
and it was carried into effect without any more words[373].’ For
councils of war, or other devices by which a weak commander-in-chief
endeavours to discharge some of the burden of responsibility upon the
shoulders of his lieutenants, Wellesley had the greatest dislike. He
never allowed discussion as long as he held supreme authority in the
field: he would have liked to enforce the same rule in the cabinet
when he became prime minister of England. Sometimes he had glimpses
of the fact that it is unwise to show open scorn for the opinion of
others, especially when they are men of influence or capacity[374].
But it was not often that the idea occurred to him. His reception of
an officer who came with a petition or a piece of advice was often
such that the visitor went away boiling with rage, or prostrated
with nervous exhaustion. Charles Stewart is said to have wept after
one stormy interview with his chief, and Picton, whose attempts at
familiarity were particularly offensive to the Duke, would go away
muttering words that could not be consigned to print[375]. A passage
from the memoir of the chief of one of his departments may suffice to
paint the sort of scene which used to occur:--
[373] Salisbury MSS., 1835. Quoted in Sir Herbert Maxwell’s
_Wellington_, ii. 194.
[374] Take, as a rare instance of recognition of this fact, his
remark in 1828 that ‘When the Duke of Newcastle addressed to me a
letter on the subject of forming an Administration, I treated him
with contempt. No man _likes_ to be treated with contempt. I was
wrong.’ Ibid. ii. 213.
[375] For a record of such an interview by an eye-witness see
Gronow’s _Reminiscences_, p. 66.
‘One morning I was in his Lordship’s small apartment, when two
officers were there, to request leave to go to England. A general
officer, of a noble family, commanding a brigade, advanced, saying,
“My Lord, I have of late been suffering much from rheumatism--.”
Without allowing him time to proceed further, Lord Wellington rapidly
said--“and you must go to England to get cured of it. By all means.
Go there immediately.” The general, surprised at his Lordship’s
tone and manner, looked abashed, while he made a profound bow. To
prevent his saying anything more, his Lordship turned to address me,
inquiring about the casualties of the preceding night[376],’ &c.
[376] Sir James MacGrigor’s _Memoirs_, pp. 304-5.
Hardly less humiliating to many of Wellesley’s subordinates than
personal interviews of this kind, were the letters which they
received from him, when he chanced to be at a distance. He had not
the art, probably he had not the wish, to conceal the fact that he
despised as well as disliked many of those whom the fortune of war,
or the exigencies of home patronage, placed under his command. The
same icy intellectual contempt which he showed for the needy peers,
the grovelling place-hunters, and the hungry lawyers of Dublin, when
he was under-secretary for Ireland, pierces through many of his
letters to the officers of the army of Portugal. Very frequently
his mean opinion of their abilities was justifiable--but there was
no need to let it appear. In this part of the management of men
Wellesley was deficient: he failed to see that it is better in the
end to rule subordinates by appealing to their zeal and loyalty
than to their fears, and that a little commendation for work well
performed goes further in its effect on an army than much censure
for what has been done amiss. When he has to praise his officers in
a dispatch, the terms used are always formal and official in the
extreme--it is the rarest thing to find a phrase which seems to come
from the heart. The careful reader will know what importance to
attach to these expressions of approval, when he notes that the names
of subordinates whom Wellesley despised and distrusted are inserted,
all in due order of seniority, between those of the men who had
really done the work[377]. All commanders-in-chief have to give vent
to a certain amount of these empty and meaningless commendations,
but few have shown more neglect in discriminating between the really
deserving men and the rest than did the victor of Salamanca and
Waterloo. Occasionally this carelessness as to the merits and the
feelings of others took the form of gross injustice, more frequently
it led to nothing worse than a complete mystification of the readers
of the dispatch as to the relative merits of the persons mentioned
therein[378].
[377] He honourably mentioned Murray in his Oporto dispatch, and
Tripp in his Waterloo dispatch! Both had behaved abominably.
[378] Take, for example, the case of Baring of the K. G. L. at
Waterloo. In a dispatch, not written immediately after the battle
(when accurate information might have been difficult to procure),
but _two months_ later, Wellesley says that La Haye Sainte was
taken at two o’clock, ‘through the negligence of the officer
who commanded the post.’ Yet if anything is certain, it is that
Baring held out till six o’clock, that his nine companies of the
K. G. L. kept back two whole French divisions, and that when
he was driven out, the sole cause was that his ammunition was
exhausted, and that no more could be sent him because the enemy
had completely surrounded the post. If Wellington had taken any
trouble about the ascertaining of the facts, he could not have
failed to learn the truth.
The explanation of this feature in Wellesley’s correspondence is a
fundamental want of broad sympathy in his character. He had a few
intimates to whom he spoke freely, and it is clear that he often
showed consideration and even kindness to his aides-de-camp and other
personal retainers; there were one or two of his relatives to whom he
showed an unswerving affection, and whose interests were always near
his heart[379]. Among these neither his wife nor his elder brother
Richard, the great Governor-General of India, were to be numbered. He
quarrelled so bitterly with the latter that for many years they never
met. No doubt there were faults on both sides, yet Wellington might
have borne much from the brother who started him on his career. But
for him the position of Resident in Mysore would not have been given
to so junior an officer, nor would the command of the army that won
Assaye and Argaum have been placed in his hands. It is small wonder
that the grievances and petty ambitions of the average line officer
never touched the heart of the man who could be estranged from his
own brother by a secondary political question.
[379] See especially his charming letters to his niece, Lady
Burghersh, lately published.
It has often been noted that when the wars were over he showed little
predilection for the company of his old Peninsular officers. Some of
his most trusted subordinates hardly looked upon his face after 1815:
he clearly preferred the company of politicians and men of fashion to
that of the majority of his old generals. They only met him at the
formal festivity of the annual Waterloo Banquet.
The remembrance of the countless panegyrics upon Wellington, not
only as a general but as a man, which have appeared during the last
sixty years, has made it necessary, if painful, to speak of his
limitations. For two whole generations it seemed almost treasonable
to breathe a word against his personal character--so great was the
debt that Britain owed him for Salamanca and Waterloo. His frigid
formalism was regarded with respect and even admiration: his lack
of geniality and his utter inability to understand the sentimental
side of life were even praised as signs of Spartan virtue. Certain
episodes which did not fit in too happily with the ‘Spartan hero’
theory were deliberately ignored[380]. The popular conception of
Arthur Wellesley has been largely built up on laudatory sketches
written by those who knew him in his old age alone. He lives in our
memories as a kind of Nestor, replete with useful and interesting
information, as Lord Stanhope drew him in his _Conversations with the
Duke of Wellington_. This was not the man known to his contemporaries
in the years of the Peninsular War.
[380] His relations with the other sex were numerous and
unedifying. From his loveless and unwise marriage, made on
a point of duty where affection had long vanished, down to
his tedious ‘correspondence with Miss J.,’ there is nothing
profitable to be discovered. See Greville’s _Diaries_ [2nd
Series], iii. 476.
Yet there was much to admire in Wellesley’s personal character.
England has never had a more faithful servant. Though intensely
ambitious, he never allowed ambition to draw him aside from the most
tedious and thankless daily tasks. When once convinced that it was
his duty to undertake a piece of work, he carried it through with
unswerving industry and perseverance, if not always with much tact
or consideration for the feelings of others[381]. He was unsparing
of himself, careless of praise or blame, honest in every word and
deed. He was equally ready to offend his king or to sacrifice his
popularity with the multitude, when he thought that he had to face a
question in which right and wrong were involved. He was essentially,
what he once called himself, using a familiar Hindustani phrase,
‘a man of his salt.’ In spite of all his faults he stands out a
majestic figure in the history of his time. It is the misfortune of
the historian that when he sees so much to admire and to respect, he
finds so little that commands either sympathy or affection.
[381] When we read Wellington’s interminable controversies with
the Portuguese Regency and the Spanish Junta, we soon come to
understand not merely the way in which they provoked him by their
tortuous shuffling and their helpless procrastination, but still
more the way in which he irritated them by his unveiled scorn,
and his outspoken exposure of all their meannesses. A little
more diplomatic language would have secured less friction, and
probably better service.
SECTION XIV: CHAPTER II
WELLESLEY RETAKES OPORTO
On arriving at Lisbon, Wellesley, as we have already seen, was
overjoyed to find that the situation in Portugal remained just as it
had been when he set sail from Portsmouth: Victor was still quiescent
in his cantonments round Merida: Soult had not moved forward on
the road toward Coimbra, and was in the midst of his unfruitful
bickerings with the army of Silveira. Lapisse had disappeared
from his threatening position in front of Ciudad Rodrigo, and had
passed away to Estremadura. All the rumours as to an immediate
French advance on Badajoz and Abrantes, which had arrived just as
the new commander-in-chief was quitting England, had turned out to
be baseless inventions. There were reassuring dispatches awaiting
him from the English attachés with the armies of Cuesta and La
Romana[382], which showed that Galicia was in full insurrection, and
that a respectable force was once more threatening Victor’s flank.
Accordingly it was possible to take into consideration plans for
assuming the offensive against the isolated French armies, and the
defensive campaign for the protection of Lisbon, which Wellesley had
feared to find forced upon him, was not necessary.
[382] Monro to Beresford, April 15, and MacKinley’s inclosure from
Vigo of April 16, 1809.
Within thirty-six hours of his arrival the British commander-in-chief
had made up his mind as to the strategy that was incumbent on him.
He resolved, as we have already seen, to leave a containing force
to watch Victor, while he hastened with the main body of his army
to strike a blow at Soult, whose corps was clearly in a state of
dispersion, which invited attack. The Duke of Dalmatia was operating
at once upon the Minho, the Tamega, and the Vouga, and it seemed
likely that a prompt stroke might surprise him, in the midst of the
movement for concentration which he would be compelled to make, when
he should learn that the British were in the field.
The forces available for Wellesley’s use consisted of some 25,000
British[383] and 16,000 Portuguese troops. Cradock, urged on by
Hill and Beresford, had advanced with the main body of his army to
Leiria and lay there upon the twenty-fourth, the day upon which he
received Wellesley’s notification that he had been superseded and
was to sail to take up the governorship of Gibraltar. But four or
five newly arrived corps still lay at Lisbon, and more were expected.
The army was very weak in cavalry, there were but four regiments and
fractions of two others available[384]. Of the infantry there were
only present five of the battalions[385] which had served at Vimiero
and knew the French and their manner of fighting. The rest were all
inexperienced and new to the field, and the majority indeed were
weak second battalions, which had not originally been intended for
foreign service, and had been made up to their present numbers by
large and recent drafts from the militia[386]. Even at Talavera, six
months after the campaign had begun, it is on record that many of the
men were still showing the names and numbers of their old militia
regiments on their knapsacks. The battalions which had joined in
Moore’s march into Spain only began to reappear in June, when Robert
Craufurd brought back to Lisbon the 1/43rd, 1/52nd and 1/95th, which
were to form the nucleus of the famous Light Division. The remainder
of the Corunna troops, when they had been rested and recruited, were
drawn aside to take part in the miserable expedition to Walcheren.
When Wellesley first took the field therefore, these veterans of the
campaign of 1808 were only represented by the two ‘battalions of
detachments’ which General Cameron had organized from the stragglers
and convalescents of Moore’s army.
[383] Excluding troops that arrived at Lisbon just after
Wellesley’s arrival.
[384] The 3rd Dragoon Guards, 4th Dragoons, 14th and 16th Light
Dragoons, with one squadron of the 3rd Light Dragoons of the K.
G. L., and two of the 20th Light Dragoons.
[385] The 2/9th, 1/45th, 29th, 5/60th and 97th.
[386] Of Wellesley’s twenty-one British battalions, ten were 2nd
battalions, [of the 7th, 9th, 24th, 30th, 31st, 48th, 53rd, 66th,
83rd, 87th], two were single-battalion regiments [the 29th and
97th], three first battalions [of the 3rd, 45th and 88th], two
Guards’ battalions [1st Coldstreams and 1st Scots Fusiliers], two
‘battalions of detachments,’ one a 3rd battalion (27th), one a
5th battalion [60th].
The Portuguese troops which Wellesley found available for the
campaign against Soult consisted entirely of the line regiments
from Lisbon and the central parts of the realm, which Beresford had
been reorganizing during the last two months. The troops of the
north had been destroyed at Oporto, or were in arms under Silveira
on the Tamega. Those of the south were garrisoning Elvas, or still
endeavouring to recruit their enfeebled _cadres_ at their regimental
head quarters. But Beresford had massed at Thomar and Abrantes
ten[387] line regiments, some with one, some with their statutory two
battalions, three newly raised battalions of Cazadores, and three
incomplete cavalry regiments, a force amounting in all to nearly
15,000 sabres and bayonets. Though Wellesley considered that they
‘cut a bad figure,’ and that the rank and file were poor and the
native officers ‘worse than anything he had ever seen,’ he was yet
resolved to give them a chance in the field. Beresford assured him
that they had improved so much during the last few weeks, and were
showing such zeal and good spirit, that it was only fair that they
should be given a trial[388].
[387] These regiments were the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th,
15th, 16th, 19th, raised respectively at Lisbon (1st, 4th, 10th,
16th), Estremoz (3rd), Setubal (7th), Peniche (13th), Villa
Viciosa (15th), Cascaes (19th), Campomayor (20th), the 1st, 4th
and 5th Cazadores, and 1st, 4th and 7th Cavalry.
[388] It is fair to the Portuguese to note that other witnesses
of May 1809 speak much more favourably of them. Londonderry (i.
p. 305) writes that ‘they had applied of late so much ardour to
their military education that some were already fit to take the
field, and it only required a little experience to put them on a
level with the best troops in Europe. There was one brigade under
General Campbell (the 4th and 10th regiments), which struck me as
being in the finest possible order: it went through a variety of
evolutions with a precision and correctness which would have done
no discredit to our own army.’
Accordingly Wellesley resolved to brigade certain picked battalions
among his English troops, and to take them straight to the front,
while he told off others to form part of the ‘containing force’
which was to be sent off to watch Victor and the French army of
Estremadura. The remainder, under Beresford himself, were to act as
an independent division during the march on Oporto.
Five days of unceasing work had to be spent in Lisbon before
Wellesley could go forward, but while he was making his arrangements
with the Portuguese regency, drawing out a new organization for
Beresford’s commissariat, and striving to get into communication
with Cuesta, the British troops were already being pushed forward
from Leiria towards Coimbra, and the Portuguese were converging
from Thomar on the same point, so that no time was being lost.
It was during this short and busy stay at Lisbon that Wellesley
was confronted with the conspirator Argenton, who had come up to
the capital in company with Major Douglas. He did not make a good
impression on the commander-in-chief, who wrote home that he had no
doubt as to the reality of the plot against Soult, and the discontent
of the French army, but thought it unlikely that any good would come
from the plot[389]. He refused to promise compliance with Argenton’s
two requests, that he would direct the Portuguese to fall in with
Soult’s plans for assuming royal power, and that he would bring the
British army forward to a position in which it would threaten the
retreat of the 2nd Corps on Leon. The former savoured too much of
Machiavellian treachery: as to the latter, he thought so little of
the profit likely to result from the plot, that he would not alter
his plans to oblige the conspirators. The only information of certain
value that he had obtained from the emissary was that Soult had
no idea of Victor’s position or projects. All that he granted to
Argenton was passports to take him and his two friends, ‘Captains
Dupont and Garis,’ to England, from whence they intended to cross
into France, in order to set their friends in the interior on the
move. Great care was taken that Argenton on his return journey to
Oporto should see as little as possible of the British army, lest he
should be able to tell too much about its numbers and dispositions.
He was conducted back by Douglas to the Vouga, by a circuitous route,
and safely repassed Franceschi’s outposts[390].
[389] _Wellington Dispatches_, iv. 273-5, 276. To Castlereagh.
Wellesley says that the plot will probably fail, and that even
if the 2nd Corps mutinied, they would not carry away the other
French armies, as Argenton hoped. He had therefore refused to
commit himself to anything.
[390] _Wellington Dispatches_, ii. 306.
On the twenty-ninth Wellesley at last got clear of Lisbon, where the
formal festivities and reception arranged in his honour had tried him
even more than the incessant desk-work which had to be got through
before the organization of his base for supplies was completed. On
April 30 he pushed forward to Leiria, on May 1 to Pombal, on the
second he reached Coimbra and found himself in the midst of his army,
which had only concentrated itself at that city during the last five
days.
All was quiet in the front: Trant, who was holding the line of the
Vouga with 3,000 disorderly militia and some small fragments rallied
from the line regiments which had been dispersed at Oporto, reported
that Franceschi and the French light cavalry had remained quiescent
for many days. The same news came in from Wilson, who, after pursuing
Lapisse to Alcantara, had come back with part of his troops to the
neighbourhood of Almeida, and had a detachment at Vizeu watching the
flank of the French advance. Silveira reported from Amarante that he
was still holding the line of the Tamega, and had at least 10,000
enemies in front of him. All therefore seemed propitious for the
great stroke.
Wellesley’s plan, as finally worked out in detail, was to push
forward his main body upon Oporto with all possible speed, while
sending a flanking column under Beresford to cross the Douro near
Lamego, join Silveira, and intercept Soult’s line of retreat upon
the plains of Leon by way of the Tras-os-Montes. If he could move
fast enough, he hoped to catch the Marshal with his army still
unconcentrated. His design, as he wrote to Castlereagh, was ‘to
beat or cripple Soult,’ to thrust him back into Galicia; he doubted
whether it would be possible to accomplish more with the force that
was at his disposal, but if any chance should occur for destroying or
surrounding the enemy he would do his best. Rumours that the Marshal
was preparing to evacuate Oporto were in the air: if they were true,
and the French were already making ready to retreat, it was unlikely
that they would stand long enough to run into danger.
The detailed arrangements for the distribution of the troops were as
follows:--
It was first necessary to provide a ‘containing force’ to hold back
Victor, in case he should make an unexpected move down the Tagus
or the Guadiana. For this purpose Wellesley told off one of his
brigades, that of Mackenzie, together with two regiments of heavy
cavalry and one of infantry which had lately arrived at Lisbon, and
were now on their march to Santarem. With these four battalions, one
field battery, and eight squadrons, Mackenzie was to take post at
Abrantes, and behind the line of the Zezere[391]. There he was to
be joined by the larger half of Beresford’s reorganized Portuguese
army--seven battalions of line troops, three of Cazadores, five
squadrons of cavalry, and three batteries[392]. He would also have
three regiments of militia at his disposal, to garrison the fortress
of Abrantes. His whole force, excluding the militia, would amount
to 1,400 British and 700 Portuguese cavalry, nearly 3,000 British
infantry, 6,000 Portuguese infantry, and four batteries. These 12,000
men ought to be able to hold back any force that Victor could detach
for a raid along the Tagus: for, having Cuesta’s army in his front,
it was absolutely impossible that he could march with his whole corps
into Portugal. If the Marshal moved forward south of the Tagus, that
river should be held against him, and since it was in full flood it
would be easy to keep him back, as all the boats and ferries could
be destroyed, and it would be useless for him to present himself
opposite Vella Velha, Abrantes, or Santarem. If he advanced north of
the Tagus, the line of the Zezere was to be maintained against him
as long as possible, then those of the Nabao and Rio Mayor. But the
main army would be back from the north, to reinforce the ‘containing
force,’ long ere the Marshal could push so far. As an outlying post
on this front Wellesley ordered Colonel Mayne, with the part of
Wilson’s Lusitanian Legion that had not returned to the north and a
militia regiment, to occupy Alcantara. He was to break its bridge if
forced out of the position.
[391] The regiments were, giving their force present with the
colours from the return of May 5:--
3/27th Foot 726
2/31st ” 765
1/45th ” 671
2/24th ” [From Lisbon] 750
-----
2,912
3rd Dragoon Guards 698
4th Dragoons 716
One battery Field Artillery
[Captain Baynes’s], six-pounders 120
-----
1,534
Total 4,446
[392] The Portuguese regiments were:--1st Foot [La Lippe] one
batt., 3rd and 15th Foot [1st and 2nd of Olivenza] each one
batt., 4th Foot [Freire] and 13th Foot [Peniche] two batts. each.
1st, 4th and 5th Cazadores, one batt. each. Five squadrons of
the 4th and 7th cavalry. Total, 6,000 foot, 700 horse, and three
field-batteries, about 7,100 men.
Victor being thus provided for, Wellesley could turn the rest of
his army against Soult at Oporto. For the main operation he could
dispose of 17,000 British and 7,000 Portuguese troops present with
the colours, after deducting the sick, the men on detached duty, and
one single battalion left in garrison at Lisbon. He divided them, as
we have already stated, into a larger force destined to execute the
frontal attack upon Soult, and a smaller one which was to cut off his
retreat into central Spain.
The flanking column, 5,800 men in all, was entrusted to Beresford:
it was composed of one British brigade (that of Tilson) consisting
of 1,500 bayonets[393], a single British squadron (the 4th of the
14th Light Dragoons) with five battalions[394], three squadrons[395],
and two field-batteries of Portuguese. These troops were originally
directed to join Silveira at Amarante, and co-operate with him in
defending the line of the Tamega. But on May 3 there arrived at
Coimbra the unwelcome news that Loison had forced the bridge of
Amarante, and that Silveira in consequence had retired south of the
Douro and was lying at Lamego with the wrecks of his army, some 4,000
men at most. This untoward event did not cause Wellesley to change
the direction of Beresford’s column, but rendered him more cautious
as to pushing it beyond the Douro. He ordered his lieutenant to pick
up Sir Robert Wilson’s small force at Vizeu[396], to join Silveira
at Lamego, and then to guide his further operations by the attitude
of the French. If they tried to pass the Douro he was to oppose
them strenuously; if they still clung to the northern bank and had
not advanced far beyond Amarante, he might cross, and occupy Villa
Real, if he thought the move safe and the position behind that town
defensible. But he was to risk nothing; if the whole of Soult’s corps
should retreat eastward he was not to attempt to stop them, ‘for,’
wrote Wellesley, ‘I should not like to see a single British brigade,
supported by 6,000 or 8,000 Portuguese, exposed to be attacked by
the French army in any but a very good post[397].’ If Loison alone
were left on the Tamega, Beresford might take post at Villa Real
and fight: if, however, Soult should appear at the head of his
entire force, it would be madness to await him: the column must fall
back and allow him to pass. ‘Remember,’ added Wellesley in another
letter[398], ‘that you are a commander-in-chief _and must not be
beaten_: therefore do not undertake anything with your troops if you
have not some strong hope of success.’ Beresford’s column was sent
off a day before the rest of the army, in order to allow the flanking
movement time to develop before the frontal attack was pushed home.
He left Coimbra on May 6, was at Vizeu on the eighth, and joined
Silveira at Lamego on the tenth; all his movements passed completely
unobserved by the enemy, owing to the wide sweep to the right which
he had been ordered to make.
[393] Viz. 2/87th, 669 bayonets, 1/88th, 608 bayonets, five
companies of the 5/60th, 306 bayonets.
[394] Two battalions each of the regiments nos. 7 (Setubal),
19 (Cascaes), and one of no. 1 (La Lippe), as far as I can
ascertain, composed this force.
[Erratum from p. xii: I found in Lisbon that the regiments which
marched with Beresford to Lamego were not (as I had supposed)
nos. 7 and 19, but nos. 2 and 14, with the 4th cazadores. Those
which joined from the direction of Almeida were two battalions of
no. 11 (1st of Almeida) and one of no. 9.]
[395] Regiment, no. 1.
[396] Wilson had been removed by Beresford from his own
Lusitanian Legion, and told to take up the command of the Brigade
at Almeida: it was, apparently, with two battalions drawn from
the garrison of that fortress that he now joined Beresford.
[397] Wellesley to Beresford, Coimbra, May 7. _Wellington
Dispatches_, iv. 309.
[398] Ibid. iv. 320.
The infantry of Wellesley’s main force, with which the frontal attack
on Oporto was to be made, consisted of six brigades of British,
one of the King’s German Legion, and four picked battalions of
Portuguese who were attached respectively to the brigades of A.
Campbell, Sontag, Stewart, and Cameron. Of cavalry, in which he was
comparatively weak, he had the whole of the 16th, three squadrons
of the 14th, and two of the 20th Light Dragoons, with one squadron
more from the 3rd Light Dragoons of the King’s German Legion. The
artillery, twenty-four guns in all, was composed of two British and
two German field-batteries. No horse artillery had yet been received
from England, though Wellesley had been urging his need for it on the
home authorities, at the same time that he made a similar demand for
good light infantry, such as that which had formed the light brigade
of Moore’s army[399], and for remounts to keep his cavalry up to full
fighting strength. The army was not yet distributed into regular
divisions, but the beginnings of the later divisional arrangement
were indicated by the telling off the brigades of Richard Stewart
and Murray to serve together under Edward Paget (who had commanded
Moore’s reserve division with such splendid credit to himself during
the Corunna retreat), while those of H. Campbell, A. Campbell, and
Sontag were to take their orders from Sherbrooke, and those of Hill
and Cameron to move under the charge of the former brigadier. The
cavalry was under General Cotton, with Payne as brigadier; the senior
officer of artillery was General E. Howorth[400].
[399] _Wellington Dispatches_, iv. pp. 270, 281, 305.
[400] The whole force consisted of the following, present with
the colours:--
CAVALRY: _Officers._ _Men._
14th Light Dragoons 20 471
16th ” ” 37 673
20th ” ” 6 237
3rd ” ” K.G.L. 3 57
INFANTRY:
H. Campbell’s brigade:
Coldstream Guards 33 1,194
3rd Foot Guards 34 1,228
One company 5/60th 2 61
A. Campbell’s brigade:
2/7th Foot 26 559
2/53rd Foot 35 787
One company 5/60th 4 64
1/10th Portuguese -- --
Sontag’s brigade:
97th Foot 22 572
2nd Batt. Detachments 35 787
One company 5/60th 2 61
2/16th Portuguese -- --
R. Stewart’s brigade:
29th Foot 26 596
1st Batt. Detachments 27 803
1/16th Portuguese -- --
Murray’s brigade:
1st Line Batt. K.G.L. 34 767
2nd ” ” 32 804
5th ” ” 28 720
7th ” ” 22 688
Hill’s brigade:
1/3rd Foot 28 719
2/48th Foot 32 721
2/66th Foot 34 667
One company 5/60 Foot 2 61
Cameron’s brigade:
2/9th Foot 27 545
2/83rd Foot 29 833
One company 5/60 Foot 2 60
2/10th Portuguese -- --
With Lawson’s battery of 3-pounders, and Lane’s, Heyse’s, and
Rettberg’s of 6-pounders. Allowing 600 each for the Portuguese
battalions, the total comes to 16,213 infantry, 1,504 cavalry,
and 550 gunners, also sixty-four men of the wagon train, and
thirty-nine engineers. Total, 18,370.
It will be noted that of the total force with which Wellesley was
about to assail the 2nd Corps, about 16,400 were British troops
and 11,400 Portuguese. Considering that Soult had at least 23,000
sabres and bayonets, of whom not more than 2,200 were in his
hospitals, and that over three-eighths of the allies were untried
and newly-organized levies, it cannot be denied that the march on
Oporto showed considerable self-confidence, and a very nice and
accurate calculation of the chances of war on the part of the British
Commander-in-chief.