1808, and there Sir Samuel Hood, detached with a large squadron of
men-of-war, found them. While they lay there, that is, for more than a
month, the wind continued from the eastward, and would have rendered it
difficult and tedious for them to beat up to Coruña. Sir John Moore,
before he left Lugo on January 9, sent orders to Vigo to bring the
transports to Coruña, but the messenger lost the dispatch and arrived
without it. Captain Capel,[21] however, on the 13th or 14th, received
another and private letter from the army. There was a hasty note on
the cover, written, I think, in pencil, and nearly obliterated by the
carriage and damp weather. It mentioned the orders to retreat on Coruña,
and after some consultation Sir Samuel Hood inferred from it that the
lost dispatch must have contained orders to sail from that port. The
wind, as if to favour that design, suddenly changed to the south and
south-west. It blew fresh, but the whole fleet weighed anchor, put to
sea, and actually entered the Bay of Coruña on the evening of the 15th,
with a stiff breeze which, both from its strength and direction, would
have impeded, if not prevented, its sailing out of the same bay in the
face of an enemy.
Sir John Moore had been there four days, and the French army had come up
to him more than forty-eight hours before the transports arrived. Had
the wind that brought them continued, they would scarcely have improved
the prospects of the English army. But during the night of the 15th and
the ensuing day, while the battle was yet fighting, it came round more
and more to the eastward, and was so favourable in the afternoon that
the greater part of the troops, though in considerable confusion, were
not only on board, but actually at sea the very night of the action,
which did not commence till about midday on the 16th. The General, who,
after a painful campaign, had fallen as it closed, was “buried sadly” at
dead of night, and left, as the melancholy dirge expresses it, “to his
glory”: which, however, is not only commemorated in that very beautiful
composition, and in the Latin inscription written by Dr. Parr on his
monument at Coruña, but must live in the recollection of the English
army, and be preserved by every impartial historian of the time.
The particulars I have related prove, indeed, that the transports should
either never have been sent to Vigo, or the retreat should have been
made upon that place; not perhaps from Lugo, but from Astorga by Orense
and Tuy. The country through which that road lies is comparatively
fertile, and it had been less exhausted by the recent passage of troops.
The roads are less practicable, and the cannon of both the flying
and pursuing armies must have been left behind. But Vigo is a port
admirably adapted for the embarkation of troops. The preference given to
Coruña, which nothing but the most signal good fortune prevented from
being fatal to fleet and army, and the irresolution between November
16 and December 5, seem the only mistakes that military critics can
discover in the unfortunate but arduous campaign of Sir John Moore.
The vagueness, inaccuracy, and contradictions of the intelligence he
received sufficiently account for the latter. It was, in truth, more
extraordinary that he was not led into yet greater embarrassments, than
that he incurred inconveniences from the expectations held out to him
by the Spaniards, the sudden dispersion of all their armies, and the
contradictory statements by which it was attempted to conceal the extent,
nature, and consequences of those disasters.
A transcendent genius would, I think, have done more than this great
officer accomplished; but very few would have displayed more firmness or
so much sagacity. Less of either of those qualities would have betrayed
him into a situation which, without serving the cause of Spain, must have
terminated in the surrender or annihilation of the English army. His view
of affairs appeared at the time to some, and among them to myself, to
be dictated by an unwarrantable indifference in the cause and an excess
of circumspection, amounting to timidity, in council. But subsequent
disclosures prove such circumspection to have been necessary. It reflects
honour on his discernment, without in the smallest tittle detracting from
his zeal in the service of his country. He formed a just estimate of the
effects of his advance; it exposed his army to be attacked and almost
surrounded by superior numbers, but by bringing the whole disposable
French force northwards, it gave the Spaniards a chance, and deferred
the invasion of the Andalusias. In his last melancholy letter, written
three days before his death, he seems to repent of having departed
from his original determination of retreating from Salamanca through
Portugal.[22] But the movement which he regrets saved Spain, though it
did so, perhaps, chiefly in consequence of the Austrian war, of which he
was not apprised.[23] Seville and Cadiz would have inevitably fallen had
the French corps pressed forward through Estremadura and La Mancha. They
were recalled on the alarm of Sir John Moore’s advance into Old Castile.
It was consequently some time before the French could resume offensive
operations in the south. The hostility of the peasantry and the increase
of the irregular bands or guerillas harassed their communications, when
their armies were spread over so large a surface.
Numerous though not very formidable armies were collected by the
Spaniards in the south, and that sanguine officer, Sir Robert Wilson,[24]
with a miserable band of ragamuffins called the “Lusitanian Legion,”
contrived, by threatening proclamations, letters purposely thrown in the
way of the enemy, and other devices, to preserve Ciudad Rodrigo from
attack and to keep on the alert a French force considerable enough to
have taken that fortress and made a fatal inroad on Portugal itself. He
remained where he was, in spite of the orders of Sir John Cradock[25]
and the remonstrances of almost every English officer with whom he
communicated. The value of this service can only be estimated by those
who were in the country at the time. Such was the consternation at Lisbon
that his retreat would have been the signal for embarking every British
soldier in that capital or its neighbourhood.
The result of this campaign produced disappointment and dismay in
England. Sir John Moore was in habits and opinions more connected with
the Whigs than with their opponents. He was sincerely lamented by
that party; and in vindicating his memory, sometimes from reasonable
criticism, at others from malevolent aspersions, many members of it
were hurried into disparaging a cause in which they thought he had been
sacrificed by Ministers. Mr. Canning was compelled to give up his friend
Mr. Frere in debate. He did so with much emotion in manner, but without
assigning those reasons in his defence which might have been urged with
truth, though probably with little public effect. He was recalled,
and Lord Wellesley appointed Ambassador to Spain. Mr. Frere, though
mortified, loitered on at Seville, accepted a title from the Junta, which
he was permitted by our Court to bear anywhere _out of England_,[26] and
would not have quitted Spain if the progress of the French had not driven
him to the coast.
I was in Spain during the whole Session of 1809, and was fortunate in
being so. All minds in England were engrossed with the inquiry into
the conduct of the Duke of York and the examination, among other bad
characters, of his mistress, Mrs. Clarke. It was a disgusting business,
and I am unacquainted with the details. The intemperate defiance to which
Mr. Charles Yorke and the Ministers resorted, his own sanguine temper and
hasty assertion of a negative proposition, and, I am afraid I must add,
the injudicious management of Mr. Adam,[27] both before and during the
investigation, combined with the unpopularity which an apprehension of
his commanding an expedition had produced, were the leading causes of a
result unfavourable to the Commander-in-Chief. His case, though exempt
from moral turpitude, legal guilt, or dishonourable feeling, was yet
indefensible in public. He was compelled to resign. Sir David Dundas,[28]
who succeeded him, was considered, how truly I know not, as his creature:
and the Army was thought to be as much under his direction, through the
connivance of the King and the subserviency of that General after his
removal, as before.
The accusation originated in a cabal of disappointed and malignant men,
among whom were to be found Captain Dodd, aide-de-camp to the Duke of
Kent, and Mr. Glennie, an officer of Engineers, formerly treated with
some harshness by the Duke of Richmond. They availed themselves of
disclosures, true and false, made to them in moments of passion by a
Mrs. Clarke, a mistress discarded by the Duke of York and defrauded
of the annuity to which a direct promise had entitled her. The woman,
however, acted more from interest and vanity than malignity or revenge.
She was at first averse to any public exposure of His Royal Highness,
and only desirous to extort the money which she thought her due, and
which, in honour as well as policy, ought never to have been withheld.
Irritated afterwards by the taunts of the Duke’s advisers and partisans,
and tickled by the success of her personal charms and flippant repartees
in the House of Commons, she ransacked her memory for every private
transaction and confidential conversation on the subject of promotions,
and related them, with great apparent accuracy and perspicuity and
without asperity or exaggeration, to the public.
All the popular writers, Tory as well as Whig, Methodist as well
as Jacobin, joined in representing the testimony as conclusive of
corruption. The country was in a flame. There had never hitherto (at
least in our time) been any measure hostile to the Court so popular
as the inquiry and censure of the Duke of York. Colonel Wardle, who
conducted it, of mean capacity and meaner disposition, was remarkable
for nothing but the atrocities he had perpetrated and encouraged against
the Irish insurgents in 1797; he was a party to the designs and a tool
in the hands of that little knot of discontented officers with whom the
proceeding originated.[29] Other members in pursuit of popularity were
led into too much co-operation with them; and Lord Folkestone,[30] a man
of integrity, honour, and understanding, perhaps the most formidable of
the Duke’s opponents, got so much entangled in an amour with Mrs. Clarke,
that he might have made allowance for weaknesses of which he found
himself, even at the moment of arraigning them, very susceptible.
Many Whigs, though they disdained all connection with such associates
as Colonel Wardle and Mrs. Clarke, thought they were not bound to show
much forbearance towards one who abhorred their principles and had sapped
their power; much less to incur the offence and odium of screening what,
if not delinquency, was at least impropriety of conduct, for the sake of
riveting in authority a Prince who would never exert it in their favour.
“We have for once,” said Lord Althorp,[31] a spirited young man, keen in
sport and in politics, “the people in full cry against the Court, and
we are fools if we do not ride up to the hounds.” The older and more
sober members of the party, especially the Cavendishes and those who
recollected the Duke of York’s good qualities when they agreed with
him on politics in 1788, were inclined to adopt a more magnanimous but
less popular policy; but the Whigs as a body took no distinct or manly
tone whatever on this embarrassing occasion. The different sides they
espoused proved that no leader had any authority over them, and perhaps
the violence of some and the irresolution of others proved as clearly
that not one of them had the qualities requisite to assume it. Mr.
Ponsonby[32] sunk in the estimation of the party, and the party sunk yet
more in the estimation of the public.
During the remainder of the Session many motions were brought forward
with a view of courting popularity or allaying the ferment of men’s
minds. Ministers were arraigned by name for interfering with elections
and other corrupt practices; bills for abolishing sinecures, reducing
pensions, and reforming Parliament were announced, and one with many
alterations by the Ministry for the further prevention of bribery was
passed, though with little benefit to the public. On the whole these
discussions did harm. The exaggeration of the reformers, on one side, and
the scandalous admission and defence of many practices grossly improper,
on the other, lowered the House of Commons without strengthening the
people, and thereby weakened the only weapon which can be used with
any efficacy against the silent but steady encroachments of Regal and
Ministerial power.
During this period Ministers were not united. The shrewd among their
opponents perceived both in their speeches and their measures strange
symptoms of difference, if not disunion. The fatal expedition to
Walcheren was evidently adopted as a compromise, but in its consequences
widened and proclaimed the breach. Lord Castlereagh was not consulted by
his colleague, Mr. Canning, on the affairs of Spain, and a diversion in
the north of Europe, strongly urged by the Austrians, was, in the shape
of an expedition to Walcheren, resorted to as an expedient to prevent
his interference with projects relating to the Peninsula, where the
nature of his views was likely to create (and in one or two instances did
actually create) considerable embarrassment. During the retreat of Sir
John Moore he had sent a Sir George Smith with a small force to Cadiz,
to secure by negotiation, and in certain cases by force, the Spanish
squadron there.[33] That object was not, I suspect, even communicated
to Mr. Canning; it was certainly mistaken and unknown by Mr. Frere, and
when suspected by the Junta, pointedly and sincerely disclaimed by Mr.
Frere. Whether right or wrong, a measure so offensive to the Spanish was
inconsistent with all our professions, and not of a piece with any of
the other transactions in that country. Sir Sidney Smith[34] likewise
had received instructions in the Brazils from Lord Castlereagh, which
justified him in adopting a line directly contrary to that which Lord
Strangford, in obedience to Mr. Canning, was pursuing.
To prevent such conflicts of authority, it seems that the notable device
of giving Lord Castlereagh some expedition entirely his own was hit
upon.[35] The enterprise on the Scheldt originated with him at a time
when so little cordiality subsisted between him and Mr. Canning, that the
latter had applied to the Duke of Portland to remove him from his office,
and declared that his continuance in it was incompatible with his own
possession of the Foreign Seals. The removal of Lord Castlereagh had been
agreed to, but was deferred on various pretences of the Duke of Portland
and Lord Camden.
The expedition originated with a Minister thus circumstanced, and,
as it were, secretly condemned by his colleagues. Lord Chatham[36]
was entrusted with the command, at whose suggestion I know not. The
appointment was certainly a strange and unfortunate one. His countenance
and carriage, indeed, bespoke high spirit and genius, and such qualities
might readily have been expected from the brother of Mr. Pitt and the son
of Lord Chatham. But his life had hitherto belied all such appearances
and expectations. He had never spoken in Parliament, and in the high
offices he had filled had been remarkable for nothing but procrastination
and inactivity. Alike insensible to the glories shed on his name by his
father and the favours showered upon him by his brother, he sold the
monument raised to the first Lord Chatham at Burton Pynsent[37] for a
few pounds to a neighbouring apothecary; and he remained in office with
Mr. Addington when all Mr. Pitt’s personal friends retired with him in
1801. Injuries, real or supposed, made a deeper impression on his mind;
he never forgave Lord Melville for urging his removal from the Admiralty
in 1795, and he hardly excused his brother for complying with that
suggestion, though his indolence in office had rendered it unavoidable
and become so notorious that he was nicknamed by the Navy, from the hours
he kept, _The Late Lord Chatham_. He had imperceptibly risen to be an old
General in the Army; for, with the exception of the disastrous descent
at the Helder in 1799, and possibly a part of the siege of Gibraltar,
he had never seen any service,[38] and for more than twenty-five years
had discharged no military duties whatever. Yet he now assumed the
command of the largest expedition which ever left our coast with as much
indifference as he had voted in Parliament and received the emoluments
of the Admiralty, the Presidentship, or the Ordnance, during the last
twenty-three years of his life.
The calamities of the expedition are matter for history. The Navy
ascribed the failure to Lord Chatham; his conduct at the Admiralty was
not forgotten by them, and Sir Home Popham,[39] who had instigated
the expedition and devised many of the plans, was not sorry to shift
the whole blame on the execution rather than the design. No exploit
was performed sufficient to reconcile the public to so unexpected an
appointment as that of Lord Chatham. When, however, he was examined in
the House of Commons, the stateliness of his deportment, the firmness
and compass of his voice, his self-possession, dignity, and dexterity,
persuaded some who were no mean judges that the necessity of exertion
would have discovered in him great parliamentary talents, though command
in the field had drawn forth no display of military genius. He delivered
clandestinely to the King a paper justifying himself, and in some degree
inculpating the Navy, and even the Admiralty. Lord Mulgrave[40] repelled
the charge in the House of Lords with spirit; but Lord Chatham, who was
obliged to retire from his office, never opened his lips, but on his
examination.
The expedition to Walcheren occasioned changes in France as well as
in England. Napoleon was on the Danube. Fouché,[41] Minister of the
Interior, on the first alarm of our descent on the coast of Holland,
raised, without communicating the step to the Emperor, a large body
of national guards. They were of some service at Antwerp; but the
circumstance, together with a negotiation with Lord Wellesley soon
afterwards for peace, which was carried on by an agent of Fouché without
the participation of his colleagues or of the Emperor himself, gave
Napoleon great umbrage.[42] He thought his Minister too powerful and
too busy; and though his conduct on the invasion of Walcheren had been
serviceable to France, it furnished a motive for dismissing him.
In England, Lord Castlereagh, mortified at the complete discomfiture
of his favourite project, found that he had been all along sacrificed
by his colleagues, and, partly from calculation, partly from anger,
resigned. Mr. Canning had done so the day before, either because Lord
Castlereagh had not been apprised of the intention of removing him, or
because he had not been removed. The duel between these two Ministers,
the challenge, correspondence, and circumstances which led to it, were
all printed, published, and canvassed at the time. Lord Castlereagh, in
his rage, sought a mode of redress not well suited to the injury, and
perhaps he did not select the real offender. For if the concealment, not
the conception, of the design of removing him constituted the offence,
with the Duke of Portland and Lord Camden, not Mr. Canning, rested the
guilt of the concealment. Mr. Canning pressed them to disclose it; he
possibly, and even probably, thought that they had disclosed it. The
conduct of Lord Castlereagh, who was an excellent marksman, and had
practised with pistols to qualify himself for the Irish House of Commons,
seemed dictated by a thirst of vengeance rather than a sense of wounded
honour.[43] “A gentleman,” observed Mr. Windham, “does not fight to
avenge his political wrongs, but to vindicate his character. Here is an
injury, and possibly some duplicity, of which Lord Castlereagh has a
right to complain; but there has been no aspersion on his reputation, no
insult which demands reparation or satisfaction.”
Nevertheless, the proof of spirit, where very unwarrantably none had
hitherto been supposed to reside, raised the character of the man,
and even softened the unpopularity he had incurred by the disastrous
expedition to Walcheren.[44] On the other hand, no explanation of Mr.
Canning could do away the impression in the world that he had acted
unfairly and treacherously by his colleague. He sunk in the same
proportion as his rival rose in public estimation, and particularly in
the House of Commons. It was whimsically observed that the first two
Irishmen that had ever sat together in an English _Cabinet_ terminated
their differences in the _field_.
The day after the duel Mr. Perceval wrote to Lord Grey and Lord
Grenville, the former of whom was in Northumberland, the latter in
Cornwall. His letter mentioned the intention of the Duke of Portland to
resign in consequence of bad health, and stated His Majesty’s authority
to Lord Liverpool and himself to communicate with the two Lords, “for
the purpose of forming an extended and combined Administration”; he then
expressed his hopes that they would come to town to forward, with as
little delay as possible, that important object, and apprise him of their
arrival. He also mentioned Lord Castlereagh’s and Mr. Secretary Canning’s
intentions of resigning.
Lord Grey construed this letter as containing _His Majesty’s authority_
to Mr. Perceval to communicate with him, and _Mr. Perceval’s_ hopes that
he would come up to town and avoid loss of time in forwarding the object
of forming a combined Administration. He therefore contented himself with
declaring that such a union was impossible; and thinking his appearance
in London might occasion delay in forming a settled Government, remained
in the country, after requesting Mr. Perceval to lay before His Majesty
his humble entreaties that His Majesty would not attribute his conduct to
any want of attachment or diminished zeal in his service.
Lord Grenville, thinking that Mr. Perceval’s letter contained an express
signification of His Majesty’s pleasure that he should come up to
London, left Cornwall; but immediately on his arrival at Camelford
House wrote to Mr. Perceval to decline the proposed communication,
from a conviction that it would be productive of no public advantage.
He disclaimed in his letter all personal hostilities and all desire of
prolonging political differences, and hinted at his opinions on the
Catholic question, by declaring that it was “his wish and the duty
of every loyal subject to compose, not enflame, the divisions of the
Empire.” “His accession to the Administration,” he observed, “could not
contribute to that object, and could only be considered as a dereliction
of public principles. The retreat of some members from the Ministry
made no difference; his objections not being to persons, but to the
principles of the Government itself and the circumstances attending its
appointment.” He then closed the letter with the usual assurances of zeal
and attachment to His Majesty.