Down to the moment of the general outbreak of the Spanish insurrection Junot’s task in Portugal had not been a difficult one. As long as Spain and France were still ostensibly allies, he had at his disposition a very large army. He had entered Portugal in 1807 with 25,000 French troops, and during the spring of 1808 he had received 4,000 men in drafts from Bayonne, which more than filled up the gaps made in his battalions by the dreary march from Ciudad Rodrigo to Abrantes[166]. Of the three Spanish divisions which had been lent to him, Solano’s had gone home to Andalusia, but he had still the two others, Caraffa’s (7,000 strong) in the valley of the Tagus, and Taranco’s at Oporto. The last-named general died during the winter, but his successor, Belesta, still commanded 6,000 men cantoned on the banks of the Douro. The discontent of the Portuguese during the early months of 1808 showed itself by nothing save a few isolated deeds of violence, provoked by particular acts of oppression on the part of Junot’s subordinates. How promptly and severely they were chastised has been told in an earlier chapter. There were no signs whatever of a general rising: the means indeed were almost entirely wanting. The regular army had been disbanded or sent off to France. The organization of the militia had been dissolved. The greater part of the leading men of the country had fled to Brazil with the Prince-Regent: the bureaucracy and many of the clergy had shown a discreditable willingness to conciliate Junot by a tame subservience to his orders. The Duke of Abrantes himself thoroughly enjoyed his Vice The sudden outbreak of the Spanish insurrection in the last days of May, 1808, made an enormous change in the situation of the On June 6 there arrived at Oporto the news of the insurrection of Galicia and the establishment of the Provincial Junta at Corunna. The first thought of the new government in Galicia had been to call home for its own defence the division in northern Portugal. When its summons reached General Belesta, he obeyed without a moment’s hesitation. The only French near him were General Quesnel, the Governor of Oporto, his staff, and a troop of thirty dragoons which served as his personal escort. Belesta seized and disarmed both the general and his guard, and forthwith marched for Spain, by Braga and Valenza, with his prisoners. Before leaving he called together the notables of Oporto, bade them hoist the national flag, and incited them to nominate a junta to organize resistance against Junot. But he left not a man behind to aid them, and took off his whole force to join General Blake. On receiving, on June 9, the news of this untoward event, Junot determined to prevent Caraffa’s troops on the Tagus from following the example of their countrymen. Before they had fully realized the situation, or had time to concert measures for a general evasion, he succeeded in disarming them. Caraffa himself was summoned to the quarters of the commander-in-chief, and placed under arrest before he knew that he was suspected. Of his regiments some were ordered to attend a review, others to change garrisons; while unsuspectingly on their way, they found themselves surrounded by French troops and were told to lay down their arms. All were successfully trapped except the second cavalry regiment, the ‘Queen’s Own,’ whose colonel rode off to Oporto with his two squadrons instead of obeying the orders sent him, and fractions of the infantry regiments of Murcia and Valencia who escaped to Badajoz The imminent danger that Caraffa’s force might openly revolt, and serve as the nucleus for a general rising of the Portuguese, was thus disposed of. But Junot’s position was still unpleasant: he had only some 26,500 men with whom to hold down the kingdom: if once the inhabitants took arms, such a force could not supply garrisons for every corner of a country 300 miles long and a hundred broad. Moreover, there was considerable probability that the situation might be complicated by the appearance of an English expeditionary army: Napoleon had warned his lieutenant to keep a careful watch on the side of the sea, even before the Spanish insurrection broke out. All through the spring a British force drawn from Sicily was already hovering about the southern coast of the Peninsula, though hitherto it had only been heard of in the direction of Gibraltar and Cadiz. Another cause of disquietude was the presence in the Tagus of the Russian fleet of Admiral Siniavin: the strange attitude adopted by that officer much perplexed Junot. He acknowledged that his master the Czar was at war with Great Britain, and stated that he was prepared to fight if the British fleet tried to force the entrance of the Tagus. But on the other hand he alleged that Russia had not declared war on Portugal or acknowledged its annexation by the Emperor, and he therefore refused to land his marines and seamen to help in the garrisoning of Lisbon, or to allow them to be used in any way on shore. Meanwhile his crews consumed an inordinate amount of the provisions which were none too plentiful in the Portuguese capital. Junot’s main advantage lay in the extreme military impotence of Portugal. That realm found its one sole centre in Lisbon, where a tenth of the population of the whole kingdom and half of its wealth were concentrated. At Lisbon alone was there an arsenal of any size, or a considerable store of muskets and powder. Without the resources of the capital the nation was absolutely unable to equip anything fit to be called an army. Oporto was a small place in comparison, and no other town in the kingdom had over 20,000 It is necessary to remember this in order to excuse the utter feebleness of the Portuguese rising in June, 1808. Otherwise it would have seemed strange that a nation of over 2,000,000 souls could not anywhere produce forces sufficient to resist for a single day a column of 3,000 or 4,000 French soldiers. The insurrection—such as it was—started in the north, where the departure of Belesta and his division had left the two provinces of Tras-os-Montes and Entre-Douro-e-Minho free from any garrison, French or Spanish. Oporto had been bidden to work out its own salvation by Belesta, and on the day of his departure (June 6), a junta of insurrection had been acclaimed. But there followed a curious interval of apathy, lasting for ten days: the natural leaders of the people refused to come forward: here, just as in Spain, the bureaucracy showed itself very timid and unpatriotic. The magistrates sent secret offers of submission to Junot: the military commandant, Oliveira da Costa, hauled down the national flag from the citadel of San JoÃo da Foz. The members of the insurrectionary junta absconded from the city or kept quiet[170]. It was only on the news that the neighbouring districts and towns had risen, that the people of Oporto threw themselves frankly into the rebellion. The rough mountain districts which On June 18 the false report that a French column was drawing near Oporto so roused the multitude in that city that they broke loose from the control of the authorities, rehoisted the Portuguese flag, threw into prison Da Costa and many other persons suspected, rightly or wrongly, of a wish to submit to the enemy, and called for the establishment of a provisional government. Accordingly a ‘Supreme Junta of the Kingdom’ was hastily elected with the Bishop of Oporto at its head. This was a strange choice, for the aged prelate, Dom Antonio de Castro, though popular and patriotic, was neither a statesman nor an administrator, and had no notion whatever as to the military necessities of the situation. However, the other local juntas of Northern Portugal united in recognizing his authority. His colleagues started on the organization of an army with more zeal than discretion; they called out the militia which Junot had disbanded, and tried to reconstruct some of the old regular battalions, by getting together the half-pay officers, and the men who had been dismissed from the colours in December, 1807. But they also encouraged the assembly of thousands of peasants armed with pikes and scythes, who consumed provisions, but were of no military use whatever. In the seven weeks which elapsed before the coming of the English, the Supreme Junta had only got together 5,000 men properly equipped and told off into regular corps[171]. The fact was that they could provide arms for no more, Northern Portugal having always looked to Lisbon for its supplies. Field artillery was almost wholly wanting—perhaps a dozen guns in all had been found: of cavalry three The Supreme Junta also concluded a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the Galician Spaniards, from whom they hoped to get arms, and perhaps a loan of troops. Moreover they sent two envoys to England to ask for aid, and eagerly welcomed at Oporto Colonel Brown, a British agent with a roving commission, who did his best to assist in organizing the new levies. The command of the whole armed force was given to General Bernardino Freire, a pretentious and incapable person, who turned his very moderate resources to no profitable account whatever. A few days later than the outbreak of the insurrection in the regions north of the Douro, there was a corresponding movement, but of a weaker kind, in the extreme south. On June 16 the small fishing-town of OlhÃo in Algarve gave the signal for revolt: on the eighteenth Faro, the capital of the province, followed the example. General Maurin, the Governor of Algarve, was lying ill in his bed; he was made prisoner along with seventy other French officers and men, and handed over to the captain of an English ship which was hovering off the coast. The whole shore between the Sierra de CaldeirÃo and the sea took arms, whereupon Colonel Maransin, Maurin’s second-in-command, resolved to evacuate the province. He had only 1,200 men, a battalion each of the 26th of the line and the LÉgion du Midi, and had lost his communications with Lisbon, wherefore he drew together his small force and fell back first on Mertola and then on Beja, in the Alemtejo. The insurgents whom he left behind him could do little till they had obtained muskets from Seville and Gibraltar, and made no attempt to follow the retreating column northwards. Meanwhile Junot, even after he had succeeded in disarming Caraffa’s Spanish division, was passing through a most anxious time. In obedience to the Emperor’s orders he had sent a brigade under General Avril towards Andalusia, to help Dupont, and another under Loison to Almeida to open communications with BessiÈres. But these detachments had been made under two false ideas, the one that the troubles in Spain were purely local, the other that Portugal would keep quiet. Avril marched southward with 3,000 men, but, when his vanguard reached San Lucar on the Spanish border, he found Andalusian militia provided with artillery Lisbon in the meanwhile was on the verge of revolt, but was still contained by the fact that Junot held concentrated in and about it the main body of his army, some 15,000 men. On the Feast of Corpus Christi (June 16) the annual religious procession through the streets nearly led to bloodshed. This was the greatest festival of Lisbon, and had always led to the assembly of enormous crowds: Junot allowed it to be once more celebrated, but lined the streets with soldiers, and placed artillery ready for action in the main squares and avenues. While the function was in progress a senseless panic broke out among the crowd, some shouting that they felt a shock of earthquake (always a terror in Lisbon since the catastrophe of 1755), others that the English were landing, others that the soldiers were about to fire on the people. The frantic But though this tumult passed off without a disaster, Junot’s position was uncomfortable. He had just begun to realize the real proportions of the insurrection in Spain, which had now completely cut him off from communication with his colleagues. He had only the vaguest knowledge of how Dupont and BessiÈres were faring: and the fact that large Spanish forces were gathering both at Ciudad Rodrigo and at Badajoz inclined him to think that affairs must be going ill in Castile and Andalusia. The long-feared English invasion seemed at last to be growing imminent: General Spencer’s division from Sicily and Gibraltar was at sea, and had showed itself first off Ayamonte and the coast of Algarve, then off the Tagus-mouth. Ignorant that Spencer had only 5,000 men, and that he had been brought near Lisbon merely by a false report that the garrison had been cut down to a handful, Junot expected a disembarkation. But Spencer went back to Cadiz when he learnt that there were 15,000 instead of 4,000 men ready to defend the capital. Meanwhile the populace of Lisbon was stirred up by all manner of wild rumours: it was said that Loison had been surrounded and forced to surrender by the northern insurgents, that the Spanish army of Galicia was marching south, that an English corps had landed at Oporto. All sorts of portents and signs were reported for the benefit of the superstitious. The most preposterous was one which we should refuse to credit if it were not vouched for by Foy, and other respectable French authorities. A hen’s egg was found on the high-altar of the patriarchal church, with the inscription Morran os Franceses (‘Death to the French’) indented in its shell. This caused such excitement that Junot thought it worth while to show that a similar phenomenon could be produced on any egg by a skilful application of acids. When his chemists Recognizing that he could expect no further help from the French armies in Spain, and that the insurrection would certainly spread over every parish of Portugal that did not contain a garrison, Junot wisely resolved to concentrate the outlying fractions of his army, which lay exposed and isolated at points far from Lisbon. At a council of war, held on June 25, he laid before his chief officers the alternatives of evacuating Portugal and retiring on Madrid by the way of Badajoz, or of uniting the army in the neighbourhood of Lisbon and making an attempt to hold Central Portugal, while abandoning the extreme north and south. The latter plan was unanimously adopted: in the state of ignorance in which the generals lay as to what was going on at Madrid and elsewhere in Spain, the retreat by Badajoz seemed too hazardous. Moreover, it was certain to provoke Napoleon’s wrath if it turned out to have been unnecessary. Accordingly it was resolved to place garrisons in the fortresses of Elvas, Almeida and Peniche, to fortify Setuval on the peninsula opposite Lisbon, and to draw in all the rest of the troops to the vicinity of the capital. Dispatches to this effect were sent to Loison at Almeida, to Avril at Estremoz, to Maransin at Mertola, and to Kellermann, who was watching Badajoz from Elvas[173]. Many of the aides-de-camp who bore these orders were cut off by the insurgents[174], but in the end copies of each dispatch were transmitted to their destinations. In several instances the detached corps had begun to fall back on the Tagus, even before they received the command to do so. This was the case with Maransin at Mertola, who, finding himself hopelessly isolated with 1,200 men in the centre of the insurrection, had marched on Lisbon via Beja. On June 26 he reached the latter place and found its ancient walls manned by a disorderly mass of citizens, who fired upon him as he drew near. But he stormed the town without much difficulty, cruelly sacked it, and resumed his march on Lisbon unharmed. This was not the first fighting that had occurred in the Alemtejo; four days before On receiving Junot’s orders, General Kellermann, who bore the chief command in the Alemtejo, left a battalion and a half[175]—1,400 men—in Elvas and its outlying fort of La Lippe. With the rest he retired on Lisbon, picking up first the corps of Avril and then that of Maransin, which met him at Evora. He then entered the capital, leaving only one brigade, that of Graindorge, at Setuval to the south of the Tagus [July 3]. Loison in the north did not receive his orders for a full week after they were sent out, owing to the disorderly state of the intervening country. But on July 4 he left Almeida, after making for it a garrison of 1,200 men, by drafting into a provisional battalion all his soldiers who did not seem fit for forced marching. He then moved for seven days through the mountains of Beira to Abrantes, skirmishing with small bands of insurgents all the way. At two or three places they tried to block his path, and the town of Guarda made a serious attempt to defend itself, and was in consequence sacked and partly burnt. Leaving a trail of ruined villages behind him, Loison at last reached Abrantes and got into communication with his chief. He had lost on the way 200 men, mostly stragglers whom the peasantry murdered: but he had inflicted such a cruel lesson on the country-side that his popular nickname (Maneta, ‘One-Hand’) was held accursed for many years in Portugal. The withdrawal of the French troops from the outlying provinces gave the insurrection full scope for development. It followed close in the track of the retiring columns, and as each valley was evacuated its inhabitants hoisted the national flag, sent in their vows of allegiance to the Junta at Oporto, and began to organize armed bands. But there was such a dearth of military stores that very few men could be properly equipped with musket and bayonet. Junot had long before called in the arms of the disbanded militia, and destroyed them or forwarded them to Lisbon. In the southern provinces the lack of weapons was even worse than in the valley of the Douro: there was practically no armament except a few hundred muskets hastily borrowed from the Spaniards of Badajoz But for a fortnight the Portuguese made no further move, and Junot now resolved to attack the insurgents who lay beyond the Tagus in the plains of the Alemtejo. His chief motive seems to have been the wish to reopen his communications with Elvas, and to keep the way clear towards Badajoz, the direction in which he would have to retreat, if ever he made up his mind to evacuate Lisbon and retire on Spain. Accordingly, on July 25, he sent out the energetic Loison at the head of a strong flying column—seven and a half battalions, two regiments of dragoons, and eight guns—over 7,000 men in all[176]. This force was directed to march on Elvas by way Loison’s first charge broke the weak line of the allied army; the Spanish cavalry fled without crossing swords with the French, and General Leite left the field with equal precipitation. But the bulk of the infantry fell back on Evora and aided the peasantry to defend its ruined mediaeval walls. They could not hold out, however, for many minutes; the French forced their way in at four or five points, made a great slaughter in the streets, and ended the day by sacking the city with every detail of sacrilege and brutality. Foy says that 2,000 Spaniards and Portuguese fell; his colleague ThiÉbault gives the incredible figure of 8,000. Even the smaller number must include a good many unarmed inhabitants of Evora massacred during the sack. The French lost ninety killed and 200 wounded [July 29]. On the third day after the fight Loison marched for Elvas, and drove away the hordes which were blockading it. He was then preparing to push a reconnaissance in force against Badajoz, when he received from his commander-in-chief orders to return at once to Lisbon. The long-expected English invasion of Portugal had at last begun, for on August 1 Sir Arthur Wellesley was already SECTION IV: CHAPTER IILANDING OF THE BRITISH: COMBAT OF ROLIÇA From the first moment when the Asturian deputies arrived in London, with the news of the insurrection in Northern Spain [June 4], the English Government had been eager to intervene in the Peninsula. The history of the last fifteen years was full of the records of unfortunate expeditions sent out to aid national risings, real or imaginary, against France. They had mostly turned out disastrous failures: it is only necessary to mention the Duke of York’s miserable campaign of 1799 in Holland, Stewart’s invasion of Calabria in 1806, and Whitelock’s disgraceful fiasco at Buenos Ayres in 1807. As a rule the causes of their ill success had been partly incapable leading, partly an exaggerated parsimony in the means employed. Considering the vast power of France, it was futile to throw ashore bodies of five thousand, ten thousand, or even twenty thousand men on the Continent, and to expect them to maintain themselves by the aid of small local insurrections, such as those of the Orange party in Holland or the Calabrian mountaineers. The invasion of Spanish South America, on the hypothesis that its inhabitants were all prepared to revolt against the mother-country—a fiction of General Miranda—had been even more unwise. The ‘policy of filching sugar islands,’ as Sheridan wittily called it—of sending out expeditions of moderate size, which only inflicted pin-pricks on non-vital portions of the enemy’s dominions—was still in full favour when the Spanish War began. There was hardly a British statesman who rose above such ideas; Pitt and Addington, Fox and Grenville, and the existing Tory government of the Duke of Portland, had all persisted in the same futile plans. At the best such warfare resulted in the picking up of stray colonies, such as Ceylon and Trinidad, the Cape, St. Thomas, or CuraÇao: but in 1808 the more important oversea possessions of France and her allies were still unsubdued. At the worst the policy led to checks and disasters small or great, like Duckworth’s failure at But the policy of sending small auxiliary forces to the Iberian Peninsula was quite a familiar one. We had maintained a few thousand men under Generals Burgoyne and Townsend for the defence of Portugal against Spain in 1762. And again in 1801 there had been a small British division employed in the farcical war which had ended in the Treaty of Badajoz. In the year after Austerlitz, when it seemed likely that Bonaparte might take active measures against Portugal, the Fox-Grenville ministry had offered the Regent military aid, but had seen it politely refused, for the timid prince was still set on conciliating the Emperor. With so many precedents before them, it was natural that the Portland cabinet should assent to the demands of the Spanish deputies who appeared in London in June, 1808. The insurrection in the Iberian Peninsula was so unexpected[179] and so fortunate a chance, that it was obviously necessary to turn it to account. Moreover, its attendant circumstances were well calculated to rouse enthusiasm even in the breasts of professional politicians. Here was the first serious sign of that national rising against Bonaparte which had been so often prophesied, but which had been so long in coming. Even the Whigs, who had systematically denounced the sending of aid to the ‘effete despotisms of the Continent,’ and had long maintained that Napoleon was not so black as he was painted, were disarmed in their criticisms by the character of the Spanish rising. What excuse could be made for the treachery at Bayonne? And how could sympathy be refused to a people which, deprived of its sovereign and betrayed by its bureaucracy, had so gallantly taken arms to defend its national ‘Whenever any nation in Europe,’ said Canning, ‘starts up with a determination to oppose that power which (whether professing insidious peace or declaring open war) is alike the common enemy of all other peoples, that nation, whatever its former relations with us may have been, becomes ipso facto the ally of Great Britain. In furnishing the aid which may be required, the Government will be guided by three principles—to direct the united efforts of both countries against the common foe, to direct them in such a way as shall be most beneficial to our common ally, and to direct them to such objects as may be most conducive to British interests. But of these objects the last shall never be allowed to come into competition with the other two. I mention British interests chiefly for the purpose of disclaiming them as any material part of the considerations which influence the British Government. No interest can be so purely British as Spanish success: no conquest so advantageous to England as conquering from France the complete integrity of the Spanish dominions in every quarter of the globe.’ Sheridan repeats the same theme in a slightly different key:—‘Hitherto Buonaparte has run a victorious race, because he has contended with princes without dignity, ministers without wisdom, and peoples without patriotism. He has yet to learn what it is to combat a nation who are animated with one spirit against him. Now is the time to stand up boldly and fairly for the deliverance of Europe, and if the ministry will co-operate effectually with the Spanish patriots they shall receive from us cordial support.... Never was anything so brave, so noble, so generous as the conduct of the Spaniards: never was there a more important crisis than that which their patriotism has occasioned to the state of Europe. Instead of striking at the core of the evil, the Administrations of this country have hitherto gone on nibbling merely at the rind: filching sugar islands, but neglecting all that was dignified and consonant to the real interests of the country. Now is the moment It may perhaps be hypercritical to point out the weak spot in each of these stirring harangues. But Canning protested a little too much—within a few weeks of his speech the British Government was applying to the Junta of Seville to allow them to garrison Cadiz, which was refused (and rightly), for in the proposal British interests peeped out a little too clearly. And Sheridan, speaking from vague and overcoloured reports of the state of affairs in the Peninsula, went too far when he extolled the unmixed generosity and nobility of the conduct of the Spaniards: mingled with their undoubted patriotism there was enough of bigotry and cruelty, of self-seeking and ignorance, to make his harangue ring somewhat false in the ears of future generations. Yet both Canning and Sheridan spoke from the heart, and their declarations mark a very real turning-point in the history of the great struggle with Bonaparte. Fortunately for Great Britain, and for the nations of the Iberian Peninsula, we were far better prepared for striking a heavy blow on the Continent in 1808 than we had been at any earlier period of the war. There was no longer any need to keep masses of men ready in the south-eastern counties for the defence of England against a French invasion. There were no longer any French forces of appreciable strength garrisoned along the English Channel: indeed Castlereagh had just been planning a raid to burn the almost unprotected French flotilla which still mouldered in the harbour of Boulogne. Our standing army had recently been strengthened and reorganized by a not inconsiderable military reform. The system had just been introduced by which Wellington’s host was destined to be recruited during the next six years. Every year two-fifths of the 120,000 embodied militia of the United Kingdom were to be allowed to volunteer into the regular army, while the places of the volunteers were filled up by men raised by ballot from In June, 1808, there chanced to be several considerable bodies of troops which could be promptly utilized for an expedition to Spain. The most important was a corps of some 9,000 men which was being collected in the south of Ireland, to renew the attack on South America which had failed so disastrously in 1807. The news of the Spanish insurrection had, of course, led to the abandonment of the design, and General Miranda, its originator, had been informed that he must look for no further support from England. In addition to this force in Ireland there were a couple of brigades in the south-eastern counties of England, which had been intended to form the nucleus of Castlereagh’s projected raid on Boulogne. They had been concentrated at Harwich and Ramsgate respectively, and the transports for them were ready. A still more important contingent, but one that lay further off, and was not so immediately available, was the corps of 10,000 men which Sir John Moore had taken to the Baltic. In June it became known that it was impossible to co-operate with the hairbrained King of Sweden, who was bent on invading Russian Finland, a scheme to which the British Ministry refused its assent. Moore, therefore, after many stormy interviews with Gustavus IV, was preparing to bring his division home. With the aid of Spencer’s troops, which had so long been hovering about Cadiz and Gibraltar, and of certain regiments picked out of the English garrisons, it was easily possible to provide 40,000 men for service in Spain and Portugal. But a number of isolated brigades and battalions suddenly thrown together do not form an army, and though Castlereagh had provided a large force for the projected expedition to the Peninsula, it was destitute of any proper organization. With the But the arrangements as to the command of the expedition were the most ill-managed part of the business. The force at Cork was, as we have already explained, under the orders of Sir Arthur Wellesley, the younger brother of the great viceroy who had so much extended our Indian Empire between 1799 and 1805. He was the junior lieutenant-general in the British army, but had already to his credit a more brilliant series of victories than any other officer then living, including the all-important triumph of Assaye, which had so effectually broken the power of the Mahrattas. In 1808 he was a Member of Parliament and Under-Secretary for Ireland, but Castlereagh (who had the most unbounded belief in his abilities, and had long been using his advice on military questions) had picked him out to command the expedition mustering at Cork. When its destination was changed from America to Spain, the Secretary for War still hoped to keep him in command, but the His political instructions had been forwarded as early as June 30. They were drawn up mainly on the data that the Asturian and Galician deputations had furnished to the ministry[183]. Both the Juntas had been unwise enough to believe that the national rising would suffice to expel the French—whose numbers they much underrated—from Spain. While empowering their envoys to ask for money, arms, and stores, they had ordered them to decline the offer of an auxiliary force. They requested that all available British troops might be directed on Portugal, in order to rouse an insurrection in that country (which was still quiet when they arrived in London), and to prevent the troops of Junot from being employed against the rear of the army of General Blake. In deference to their suggestions the British Government had sent enormous stores of muskets, powder, and equipment to Gihon and Ferrol, but directed Wellesley to confine his activity to Portugal. The Spaniards, with their usual inaccuracy, had estimated the total of Junot’s army at no more than 15,000 men. Misled by this absurd undervaluation, Castlereagh informed Wellesley that if he found that his own and Spencer’s forces sufficed for the reduction of Portugal, he might ‘operate against the Tagus’ at once. But if more men were required, an additional 10,000 bayonets would be provided from England, and the expeditionary force might meanwhile ask the leave of the Galician Junta to stop at Vigo—a halt which would have cost many weeks of valuable time. Wellesley himself was to choose a fast-sailing vessel and make for Corunna, where he was to confer with the Junta and pick up the latest information as to the state of affairs in the Peninsula. In accordance with these instructions Sir Arthur preceded the bulk of his armament on the Crocodile, and reached Corunna in the short space of eight days [July 20]. He found the Galicians somewhat depressed by the disaster of Medina de Rio Seco, whose details they misrepresented in the most shameless fashion to their distinguished visitor. BessiÈres, they said, had lost 7,000 men and six guns, and although he had forced Blake and Cuesta to retreat on Benavente, those generals had still 40,000 troops under arms, As to the Portuguese troops, the Supreme Junta agreed that Bernardino Freire and his 5,000 men should go forward with the British army, while the new levies should blockade Almeida, and guard the frontier along the Douro against any possible advance on the part of Marshal BessiÈres from Castile. The Junta calculated that, if supplied with arms, they could put into the field from the three northern provinces of Portugal 38,000 foot and 8,000 horse—a liberal estimate, as they had, including their peasant levies, no more than 19,000 collected on July 25. They asked for weapons and clothing for the whole mass, and for a loan of 300,000 Cruzado Novas (about £35,000)—no very large sum considering the grants that were being made to the Spaniards at this time. Wellesley would only promise that he would arm the militia and peasantry who were lying along the Mondego in company with Freire’s regulars, ‘if he found them worth it[186].’ The Bishop undertook to forward from Oporto all the remounts for cavalry and all the draught-mules for commissariat purposes that he could get together. He thought that he could procure 150 of the former and 500 of the latter in six days. On August 1, 1808, the disembarkation in Mondego Bay began, in the face of a heavy surf which rendered landing very dangerous, especially for the horses, guns, and stores. Many boats were upset and a few lives lost[187]; but the troops and their commander Meanwhile there were yet a few days during which he would retain the command, and it was in his power to start the campaign on the right lines, even if he was not to reap the reward of its success. His first eight days on shore (August 2-9), were spent in the organization of the commissariat of his army, which the Home Government had disgracefully neglected. Except the two troops of the Irish Wagon Train, which he had insisted on bringing with him, he had no transport at his disposal, and, as he wrote to Castlereagh, ‘the existence of the army depends upon the commissariat, and yet the people who manage it are incapable of managing anything out of a counting-house[191].’ All that could be got out of the country he utilized: the Bishop of Oporto had sent him a few horses which enabled him to raise his force of mounted men from 180 to 240[192], and to give some animals to the artillery[5], to add to those that had come from Ireland[193]. But though he succeeded in equipping his own three batteries, the two which Spencer brought from Andalusia had to be left behind on the Mondego for want of draught-horses[194]: the dismounted men of the 20th Dragoons had also to be dropped. For the commissariat the Bishop of Oporto had sent some mules, which were raised to a total of 500 by purchases in the country-side, while 300 bullock Wellesley had resolved to advance by the coast-road on Lisbon, via AlcobaÇa, Obidos, and Torres Vedras, and it was along the desolate shore ‘up to the knees in sand and suffering dreadfully from thirst[196],’ that his men made their first march of twelve miles to Lugar. The distance was moderate, but the troops had been so long cramped on shipboard that some of the regiments had fallen out of condition and left many stragglers. The reasons which had determined Wellesley to take the coast route, rather than that which leads from the Mondego to Lisbon via Santarem, were, as he afterwards explained, partly a wish to keep in touch with the fleet for the purpose of obtaining supplies—for he found that the country could support him in wine and beef, but not in flour—and partly the fact that he had learnt that new reinforcements from England were likely to appear within a few days. The brigades from Harwich and Ramsgate, under Generals Acland and Anstruther, had sailed on July 19 and might be looked for at any moment. Sir John Moore, with the division from Sweden, was also reported to be on his way to the south, but could not be expected to arrive for some time. Having ascertained that the French force in Portugal was somewhat larger than he originally supposed, Sir Arthur wished to pick up the troops of Acland and Anstruther before giving battle. In this he was even wiser than he knew, for he still estimated Junot’s total disposable force at 18,000 men[197], while it was really 26,000. To have attacked Wellesley had at first intended to take on with him the whole of Bernardino Freire’s army. He had visited the Portuguese commander at Montemor Velho on the seventh, and had issued to his ally a supply of 5,000 muskets. Freire was anxious to persuade him to give up the coast route, and to throw himself into the interior on the side of Santarem. But the cogent reasons which compelled him to prefer the road which allowed him to keep in touch with the fleet, made him refuse to listen to this plan, and he invited the Portuguese general to transfer himself on to the same line. Freire so far submitted as to move to Leiria, where he met the British army on August 10. But here the two commanders came to hard words and parted. Freire, a self-willed and shifty man, was determined not to act in unison with Wellesley. Whether he wished to preserve his independent command, or whether he feared (as Napier hints) to oppose his raw levies to the French, even when supported by 13,000 British bayonets[198], he now showed himself utterly impracticable. He began by laying hands on all the stores of food in Leiria, though they had been promised to Wellesley. Then he made the absurd and impudent statement that he could only co-operate with his allies if Wellesley would undertake to provide rations for his 6,000 men. This proposal was all the more astounding because he had just been trying to persuade his colleague to move into the inland, by the statement that resources of every kind abounded in Estremadura, and that the whole British army could easily live upon the country-side! Wellesley’s men had now been subsisting for ten days on biscuit landed by the fleet, and it was ludicrous that he should be asked to take upon his shoulders the whole burden of feeding the Portuguese in their own country. Accordingly he utterly rejected the proposal, but he insisted that Freire should lend him some cavalry and light troops, and these he promised to maintain. The bulk of the Portuguese, therefore, remained behind at Leiria, their general being left free to take up, if he should choose, his favourite plan of marching on Santarem. But 260 horsemen—the skeletons of three old cavalry regiments—a battalion of Cazadores, and three weak line-regiments were placed at Wellesley’s disposition: they Turning once more into the road that skirts the coast, Wellesley marched on the thirteenth from Leiria, and reached AlcobaÇa on the fourteenth. Here he got his first news of the French: a brigade under ThomiÈres had occupied the village till the previous day, and he learnt that General Delaborde, with a weak division, was somewhere in his front, in the direction of Obidos and RoliÇa. Junot had received prompt information of the landing of the British in Mondego Bay; on the very day after it had commenced he was able to send orders to Loison to abandon his post in front of Badajoz and to march at once to join the main army. Meanwhile Delaborde was sent out from Lisbon on August 6 to observe and, if possible, contain Wellesley, till Junot should have concentrated his whole field-army and be ready to fight. He was told to expect Loison from the direction of Thomar and Santarem, and to join him as soon as was possible. For his rather hazardous task he was given no more than five battalions of infantry and a single Delaborde at first thought of making a stand, and compelling Wellesley to show his force, at Batalha near AlcobaÇa, where John I had beaten the Spaniards, four and a half centuries ago, at the decisive battle of Aljubarotta. But, after examining the position, he found it so much surrounded by woods, and so destitute of good points of view, that he feared to be enveloped if he committed Wellesley, meanwhile, knowing himself to be close to the enemy, advanced steadily but with caution. He left behind his tents and other weighty baggage at Leiria, and moved forward with a lightly equipped army to AlcobaÇa on the fourteenth, to Caldas on the fifteenth. On that day the first shot of the campaign was fired: four companies of the fifth battalion of the 60th and of the second battalion of the 95th Rifles discovered the French outposts at Brilos in front of Obidos, drove them in, and pursuing furiously for three miles, came on the battalion which formed Delaborde’s rearguard. This corps turned upon them, checked them with the loss of two[203] officers and twenty-seven men killed and wounded, and only retired when General Spencer led up a brigade to save the riflemen. Next morning the French were discovered to have fallen back no further than RoliÇa, where Delaborde had found the position that he had sought in vain at Batalha. The road from Caldas and Obidos towards Torres Vedras and Lisbon passes for some miles over a sandy plain enclosed on either flank by bold hills. The southern limit of the basin is a cross-ridge, which connects the other two: in front of it lies RoliÇa, on the side-slope of an isolated eminence which overlooks the whole plain: a mile further south the road passes over the cross-ridge by a sort of gorge or defile, on the right hand of which is the village of Columbeira, while to its left rear lies that of Zambugeira. Though Delaborde had drawn up his men on the hill of RoliÇa down in the plain, it was not this advanced position that he intended to hold, but the higher and steeper line of the cross-ridge, on either side of the defile above Columbeira. Here he had a short front, only three-quarters of a mile in length, scarped by precipitous slopes, and covered by thickets and brushwood, which served to mask the strength (or rather the weakness) of his division. Discovering Delaborde drawn up on the isolated hill of RoliÇa, where both his flanks could easily be turned, the British commander resolved to endeavour to envelop and surround him. He waited Delaborde had warned his men to be ready for a sudden rush to the rear the minute that the enveloping movement should grow dangerous. Waiting till the last possible moment, when Fane’s riflemen were already engaged with his tirailleurs, and Trant and Ferguson were showing on the flanks, he suddenly gave the order for retreat. His men hurried back, easily eluding the snare, and took post on the wooded heights above Columbeira a mile to the rear. Wellesley had to rearrange his troops for an attack on the second position, and half the morning had been wasted to no effect. He resolved, however, to repeat his original manoeuvre. Trant and the Portuguese once more made a long sweep to the right: Ferguson’s column mounted the foot-hills of the Sierra de Baragueda and commenced a toilsome detour to the left[205]. In the centre two batteries formed up near a windmill on the northern slope of RoliÇa hill and began to bombard the French position, while Fane’s brigade to the left on the main road, and Hill’s and Nightingale’s to the right deployed for the attack. Wellesley had not intended to assault the Columbeira heights till the turning movements of Trant and Ferguson should be well The 29th Regiment, urged on by the rash courage of its colonel, Lake, attacked some time before any other corps was engaged. It pushed up a narrow craggy pass, the bed of a dried-up mountain torrent, where in some places only two or three men abreast could keep their footing: the further that the battalion advanced, the more did the ravine recede into the centre of the enemy, and the 29th was soon being fired on from three sides. The right wing, which led, at last forced its way to the brow of the hill, and was able to deploy in a more or less imperfect way, and to commence its fire. In front of it were the few companies of the 4th Swiss, some of whom tried to surrender, calling out that they were friends, turning up their musket butts, and rushing in to shake hands with the British[206]. But before the 29th could fully recover its formation, it was fiercely charged from the rear: some of the French troops on the lower slopes of the position, finding themselves likely to be cut off, formed in a dense mass and rushed straight through the right wing of Colonel Lake’s regiment from behind, breaking it, killing its commander and capturing six officers and some thirty of its rank and file, whom they took back with them in triumph. The 29th reeled down the slope into a wood, where it reformed on its comparatively intact left wing, and then resumed the fight, aided by the 9th, its supporting regiment. About this moment the 5th and Fane’s rifles made other attacks on the two ends of the hostile line, but were at first checked. Delaborde and his brigadier, He retired by alternate battalions, two in turn holding back the disordered pursuers, while the other two doubled to the rear. His regiment of chasseurs À cheval also executed several partial charges against the British skirmishers, and lost its commander mortally wounded: the Portuguese cavalry refused to face them. In this way the French reached the pass behind Zambugeira, a mile to the rear, without any great loss. But in passing through this defile, they were forced to club together by the narrowness of the road, were roughly hustled by their pursuers, and lost three[208] of their guns and a few prisoners. The rest of the force escaped in some disorder to Cazal da Sprega, where Wellesley halted his men, seeing that it was now impossible to catch Delaborde’s main body. Two miles to the rear the French were rejoined by the three companies of the 70th Regiment which had been detached to the east. They then retreated to Montechique some fifteen miles from Lisbon, where they at last got news of Loison and Junot. Delaborde had fought a most admirable rearguard action, holding on to the last moment, and escaping by his prompt manoeuvres the very serious risk of being enveloped and captured by the forces of the English, who outnumbered him fourfold. But he had lost 600 men and three guns, while his assailants had only suffered to It is doubtful whether Delaborde should have fought at all: he was holding on in the hope that Loison’s division would come up and join him, but this junction was very problematical, as nothing had been heard of that general for many days. By fighting at Columbeira, Delaborde risked complete destruction for an inadequate end. It was true that if Loison was now close at hand Wellesley’s further advance might cut him off from Lisbon. But as a matter of fact Loison was still far away. He had reached Santarem on August 13, with his troops so tired by his long march from the Alemtejo, that he halted there for two days to rest them and allow his stragglers to come up. Marching again on the sixteenth, he was at Cercal, fifteen miles from RoliÇa to the east, while Delaborde was fighting. He barely heard the distant cannonade, and rejoined the rest of the army at Torres Vedras, by a route through Cadaval and Quinta da Bugagliera, which crossed his colleague’s line of retreat at an acute angle [August 18]. It is true that if Wellesley had been accurately informed of Loison’s position on the seventeenth, he could have so manoeuvred as to place himself directly between that general and Lisbon on the following day, by seizing the cross-roads at Quinta da Bugagliera. In that case Loison’s division could only have rejoined Junot by a perilous flank march through Villafranca and Saccavem, or by crossing the Tagus and moving along its eastern bank to the heights of Almada opposite the capital. But the English general’s object at this moment was not to cut off Loison, but to pick NOTE TO CHAPTER II By far the best English account of RoliÇa is that by Col. Leslie of the 29th, in his Military Journal, which was not printed till 1887 (at the Aberdeen University Press). He corrects Napier on several points. I have also found useful details in the letters (unpublished) of Major Gell, of the same regiment, which were placed at my disposition by Mr. P. Lyttelton Gell. Leslie and Gell agree that Colonel Lake led on his regiment too fast, contrary to Wellesley’s intentions. The narrative of Colonel Leach of the 2/95th is also valuable. The accounts of Landsheit of the 20th Light Dragoons, of Colonel Wilkie in Maxwell’s Peninsular Sketches (vol. i), and the anonymous ‘T.S.’ of the 71st (Constable, Edinburgh, 1828) have some useful points. Foy and ThiÉbault, the French narrators of the fight, were not eye-witnesses, like the six above-named British writers. SECTION IV: CHAPTER IIIVIMIERO Junot much disliked leaving Lisbon: he greatly enjoyed his viceregal state, and was so convinced that to retain the capital was equivalent to dominating the whole of Portugal[212], that he attached an exaggerated importance to his hold on the place, and was very reluctant to cut down its garrison. But it was clearly necessary to support Delaborde and Loison, and at last he took his departure. As a preliminary precaution he resolved to deal a blow at the Alemtejo insurgents, who, emboldened by Loison’s retreat, were creeping nearer to the mouth of the Tagus, and showing themselves opposite Setuval. On August 11, five days after Delaborde had marched off, General Kellermann was sent out with two battalions and a few dragoons to drive off these hovering bands, a task which he executed with ease, giving them a thorough beating at Alcacer do Sal. Having cleared this flank Junot evacuated Setuval and his other outlying posts beyond the Tagus, and only retained garrisons at Forts Bugio and Trafaria, which command the entrance of the river, and on the heights of Almada, which face Lisbon across the ‘Mar de Palio.’ He put in a state of defence the old citadel which crowns the highest of the seven hills on which the city is built, and established a battalion in each of the suburban villages of Belem and Saccavem, another in Fort San Julian at the mouth of the Tagus, and two at Cascaes, in the batteries which command the only point where a disembarkation from the side of the Atlantic is barely possible. This excess of precaution was largely due to the fact that a small English convoy of transports, carrying the 3rd Regiment (the Buffs) from Madeira, had been seen off the mouth of the Tagus. The duke feared that this portended an attempt to throw troops ashore in the immediate vicinity of the capital, when he should have gone off to meet Wellesley. Altogether Junot left seven battalions, not less than 6,500 men, in Lisbon and the neighbouring forts, a much greater number than Not the least of Junot’s troubles was the obstinate torpidity of the Russian admiral, Siniavin, whose 6,000 seamen and marines might have taken over the whole charge of Lisbon, if only their commander had been willing. The Russian had refused to take part in the war as long as only Portuguese were in the field, on the plea that his master had never declared war on the Prince-Regent or recognized the French annexation. But when the British had landed, Junot hoped to move him to action, for there was no doubt that Russia and the United Kingdom were technically at war. The Duke of Abrantes first tried to induce Siniavin to put out from the Tagus, to fall upon scattered British convoys, and to distract the attention of the blockading squadron under Cotton. But the reply that to sally forth into the Atlantic would probably mean destruction in two days by the British fleet was too rational to be overruled. Then Junot proposed that Siniavin should at least take charge of the pontoons containing the captive Spanish division of Caraffa: but this too was denied him, and he had to leave a battalion of Graindorge’s brigade to mount guard on the prisoners[215]. The Russians were perfectly useless to Junot, except in so far as their guns helped to overawe Lisbon, and presented a show of force to deter British vessels from trying to force the passage of the forts at the mouth of the Tagus. The fact was that Siniavin was not so much stupid as disaffected: he belonged to the party in Russia which was opposed to France, and he had perhaps received a hint from home that he was not expected to show too much zeal in supporting the projects of Napoleon. On the night of August 15, Junot marched out of Lisbon at the head of his reserve, a very small force consisting of a battalion of the 82nd of the line, one of the two regiments of grenadiers, which he had created by concentrating the grenadier companies of the eighteen line battalions in his army[216], the 3rd provisional regiment On the eighteenth Loison and Junot marched southward to Torres Vedras, and heard that Delaborde had fallen back so far that he was ten miles to their rear, at Montechique. He only came up to join them next day [August 19], and the reserve with its heavy convoy, much hampered by bad country roads in the Monte Junto hills, did not appear till the twentieth. Junot had been much exercised in mind by the doubt whether Wellesley would march by the direct road on Lisbon through Torres Vedras and Montechique, or would continue to hug the shore by the longer route that passes by Vimiero and Mafra. Not knowing of the approach of Acland’s and Anstruther’s brigades, he was ignorant of the main fact which governed his adversary’s movements. But learning on the twentieth that the British were still keeping to the coast-road, by which they could in one more march turn his position at Torres Vedras, he determined to rush upon them with his united forces and give battle. At the last moment he resolved to draw a few more men from Lisbon, and called up a battalion of the 66th of the line, and another composed of four picked companies selected from the other corps of the garrison—a trifling reinforcement of 1,000 or 1,200 men, which arrived just too late for the fight at Vimiero. The organization of the French army had been so much cut up by the numerous garrisons which Junot had thought fit to leave behind him, that although five of his six infantry brigades were more or less represented in his field-army, not one of them was complete. He accordingly recast the whole system, and arranged Hearing that Wellesley was stationary in Vimiero since the morning of the nineteenth, Junot determined to attack him at the But Wellesley meanwhile had received his reinforcements, and was 4,000 men stronger than the Duke of Abrantes supposed. On the nineteenth Anstruther’s[218] brigade had accomplished its dangerous disembarkation, through the surf that beats upon the sandy shore north of the mouth of the Maceira. It had been a tedious business, many boats having been upset and some lives lost. On the afternoon of the twentieth the convoy that brought Acland’s brigade was got inshore, and the greater part of the men disembarked in the dusk in the actual mouth of the little river, and slept upon the beach. But some of them were still on shipboard on the morning of the twenty-first, and came too late for the battle of that day[219]. While covering this disembarkation Wellesley had taken up an excellent position on the heights of Vimiero, with the sea at his back. The surrounding country was pleasant, good water was forthcoming in abundance, and the neighbouring villages provided a considerable quantity of food. The region is both more fertile and better wooded than most of central Portugal. The only fault Map of the battle of Vimiero Enlarge Battle of Vimiero. August 21, 1808. The position of Vimiero consists of a well-marked line of heights sweeping from the north to the south-west, and cut through the centre by the narrow valley of the river Maceira, on which the village of Vimiero stands. The southern part of the range, which lies nearest the sea, is especially steep and formidable: the northern part, beyond the Maceira, is lower and broader: along its ridge runs a country road leading northward to LourinhÃo. But even here the position is very strong, for a ravine creeps along its eastern foot and acts as a sort of ditch to the broad ridge, or rather plateau, which the British army was holding. Its only accessible side is the north, where it sinks down into a rolling upland beyond the village of Ventosa. In the very centre of the position, well in front of the main ridge, just above the village of Vimiero, lies an isolated hill, well suited to serve as an outwork or first line of defence. It was partly occupied by vineyards and thickets, partly by open fields, and gave admirable cover for its defenders. This hill Wellesley had chosen as the key of his position: on it were placed the two brigades of Fane and Anstruther, seven battalions in all. The high ridge running from behind it to the sea was held by the brigades of Hill, Bowes, Catlin Crawfurd, Nightingale, and Acland. That of Ferguson lay behind Vimiero, astride of the valley of the Maceira. Trant’s four battalions of Portuguese were near Ferguson, on the lower heights north of Vimiero, ready to act as a reserve to Fane and Anstruther. The handful of cavalry, 240 English and 260 Portuguese sabres, were in the low ground on the banks of the Maceira, close under Crawfurd’s position. Of the three batteries which Wellesley had been able to bring with him, six guns were on the projecting height with Anstruther, eight were on the high mountain south of Vimiero, and four were with the reserve. A glance at this order of battle shows that Wellesley expected to be attacked from the south, up the valley of the Maceira, and that he thought that the enemy’s plan would be to force his right-centre. Little or no provision is made against the plan which Junot actually adopted, that of assaulting the British left-centre and simultaneously turning their extreme left flank, while leaving the right unmolested. But the whole position was so short—it was less than three miles in length—that there was no difficulty in shifting troops rapidly from one end of it to the other, and, as the event showed, no risk whatever was run. Wellesley was busy arranging his line of battle, when to his bitter disappointment he received the news that he was superseded, a calamity which he had been expecting to occur at any moment. Sir Harry Burrard had arrived from England at the tail of Acland’s convoy, and was now on board the sloop Brazen in Maceira Bay. Sir Arthur at once went off in a boat to greet him, and to give him an account of the condition in which affairs stood. Burrard heard him out, and then placed a strong embargo on any further offensive movement. He had learnt that Sir John Moore, with the division from the Baltic, was now off the Portuguese coast, and was resolved not to stir till those troops should have been landed. Being, as it seems, a leisurely sort of man, he resolved to sleep on board his ship for one night more, and to come ashore next morning—a resolve which cost him that chance of commanding a British army in a pitched battle which so many generals have in vain desired. Wellesley went back through the surf charged, for a short fifteen hours more, with the destinies of the army of Portugal[220]. The French cavalry had been hovering around Vimiero all through the twentieth, and knowing that Junot was not far off, But the enemy was late in appearing: Junot had halted on the near side of the bridge of Villa Facaia, four miles away, to rest his men after their night march and to allow them to cook their breakfast. It was not till nearly nine in the morning that dense clouds of dust rolling along the Torres Vedras road bore witness to the approach of the French. They were indistinctly visible, among woods and rolling upland, as they advanced with a broad front on each side of the village of Villa Facaia—a regiment of cavalry in front, then Loison on the left and Delaborde on the right side of the road, finally Kellermann’s grenadiers, the reserve of artillery, and the bulk of Margaron’s cavalry. The English were surprised to note that the columns showed as masses of dust colour, not of the customary dark blue. On account of the hot weather they had been provided with white linen frocks, and were wearing their uniform coats folded and buckled over their knapsacks[223]. Wellesley had been expecting to see the great column swerve to its left, and approach him along the valley of the Maceira, by Cunhados and Sobreiro Curvo. But instead of so doing Junot continued his progress northward, till he had completely marched past the English right wing, and only fronted and deployed when he had got on a level with Vimiero. After driving off the small Junot after reconnoitring the British position in a somewhat perfunctory fashion, had resolved to leave alone the formidable heights occupied by the right wing, and to try to storm the low hill in front of Vimiero with his main body, while he turned Wellesley’s left with a secondary column. This detachment was composed of the 3rd provisional regiment of dragoons, and Brennier’s brigade, the same four battalions which had fought so handsomely at RoliÇa. But the moment that Wellesley had seen that his right flank was safe, and that his left was about to be attacked, he rapidly changed his line of battle. Ferguson, from behind Vimiero, started to march north. Behind him followed three of the four brigades which had occupied the hills above the sea. Only Hill was still left on the crest to the south-west of Vimiero; Bowes, Nightingale, and Acland—six battalions in all, taking with them six guns—dropped down into the valley of the Maceira, crossed it behind Vimiero, and marched along the LourinhÃo road parallel with Brennier’s movement on the opposite side of the valley. In rear of these troops, and nearer the sea, Catlin Crawfurd and the Portuguese also moved northward, and took up a position near Ribamar, where they covered the flank of the other corps and were in a good position for preventing any movement of the French on the extreme north-west. Junot caught a glimpse of the extensive transference of troops to the left which his adversary was making, and struck with a sudden fear lest Brennier might be overwhelmed, sent off another brigade—Solignac’s of Loison’s division—to support him. He would have been much wiser had he kept these three battalions in hand to support his main attack, and merely directed Brennier to demonstrate against the British left without pressing his attack home. His last movement had divided his army into two halves, separated from each other by a gap of nearly two miles: for the main attack he had only kept eight and Meanwhile the French general deployed the second brigades of his two divisions, Charlot’s of Loison’s, and ThomiÈres’ of Delaborde’s, only four and a quarter battalions in all, as a first line for the attack on Vimiero. Kellermann’s four battalions of grenadiers in a second line were for the moment held back, as was the cavalry and the reserve artillery. But seven guns went forward with the first line. The French came on in their usual style, a thick line of tirailleurs, supported by battalion columns close in their rear. Fane and Anstruther were very comfortably placed for repelling the attack: the latter had drawn up the 52nd and 97th in line on the slope of the hill, partly hidden by a dip in the ground and largely covered by vines and brushwood: the 9th and 43rd were in open column to the rear, ready to act as a reserve. Fane had got most of the riflemen of the 60th and 95th out in front, at the foot of the hill, in a very thick skirmishing line: only a few companies of them were in reserve along with the 50th (the famous ‘dirty half-hundredth’) at the head of the slope. In consequence of the order which Junot had adopted, ThomiÈres’ two battalions were opposed to Fane, and Charlot’s brigade to Anstruther on the southern half of the hill. In each quarter the course of the fight was much the same: the French tirailleurs pushed up the slope among the brushwood and vineyards, slowly driving the riflemen before them. Then, as they drew near the crest, the two English brigadiers suddenly let loose their formed battalions upon the assailants. There was one fierce volley from the six guns on the hill top, and then the 97th charged Charlot’s men in front, while the 52nd swerved round and took them in flank. One Junot’s first attack had failed, but his spirit was not yet broken: he called up half his reserve of grenadiers, two battalions under Colonel St. Clair, and sent them against the hill on the same point, while the dÉbris of the two wrecked brigades were rallied and pushed forward in support. Eight guns under Foy (the historian in after-years of the war), were brought out from the artillery reserve and pushed to the front. The second attack, however, failed even more disastrously than the first: the grenadiers, attacking on a narrow front and a single point, were blown to pieces by the converging fire of the 52nd, the 97th, and Fane’s two rifle battalions, as well as by the battery on the hill, which having no longer any British skirmishers in front of it had a free field. It was here, as Wellesley’s dispatches show, that shrapnell shell, a recent invention of the British colonel of that name, was first used, and with the most effective results. St. Clair’s battalions climbed halfway up the hill, but could do no more, and finally gave way, bearing back with them their half-rallied supports. The fight was rolling down the slope into the pine-wood at its foot, when Junot made his last desperate stroke. His only infantry reserve was now the 1st Regiment of Grenadiers, two battalions under Colonel Maransin. He resolved to throw them into the fight pour en finir, as he said to his chief of the staff, but they ‘made a finish of it’ in a way very different from his intention. This time the assailants, led by General Kellermann in person, made not for the front of the hill, but for the gap between it and the heights to the north, trying to turn Fane’s flank and to penetrate into the village of Vimiero by coasting round the foot of the higher ground. There were at first The double flank attack cost Kellermann many men, and brought his column to a standstill, but he held his ground for some time, till the 43rd closed in upon him at the eastern end of Vimiero village. Both French and English were in great disorder, the houses and enclosure-walls having broken up their formation. There was a furious hand-to-hand fight, volleys were interchanged at the distance of five yards, and both sides used the bayonet freely. At last the grenadiers gave way and retired sullenly towards their original position: they had lost many men, but so had the 43rd, who from a weak battalion of 700 men had forty killed and seventy-nine wounded. All along the line the French were now falling back, and Junot brought up a regiment of dragoons to cover the retreat of the disordered masses. Wellesley now resolved to make use of his handful of cavalry: close behind Vimiero there were drawn up the 240 sabres of the 20th Light Dragoons, with 260 Portuguese horsemen in two squadrons on their flanks[227]. ‘Now, Twentieth, now is the time!’ cried Wellesley, lifting his cocked hat, and Colonel Taylor wheeled his regiment from behind the sheltering hill and dashed at the retreating Frenchmen. The two Portuguese squadrons started level with him, but after going a few hundred yards and receiving a shot or two, they broke, fell into disorder, and finally galloped to the rear amid the hoots of Anstruther’s We must now turn to the northern part of the battle-field, where the main stress of the fighting did not begin till the engagement round Vimiero was nearly over. This was the result of the reckless way in which Junot had sent his flanking brigades to attack over unexplored ground. When Brennier reached the point at which he would naturally have wheeled inward to climb the slopes along the LourinhÃo road, he came upon the deep and rugged valley of Toledo, the steepness of whose slopes he did not realize till he had almost reached its brink. Having guns with him, the French brigadier thought the obstacle impassable, and turned northward again in a long sweep by the village of Carrasqueira, the 3rd Dragoons still heading his march. In this wide flanking movement he passed quite out of sight of the British. But Solignac, with the second brigade which Junot had told off for the northern diversion, was not so cautious. He too came upon the ravine; but instead of turning it he sought out its least precipitous point and passed it near its head, underneath the farm of Ventosa. Having crossed, he deployed his three battalions, brought up his right shoulder, and ascended the gentle slope. By this movement he was devoting his brigade to destruction. On the hill above he could see only the thin line of British skirmishers, but When Solignac’s men reached the brow of the hill, the four British battalions in the front line rose up and marched to meet them. Their long array completely overlapped at both ends the advancing columns and their screen of light troops[229], At the distance of one hundred yards all the four regiments directed a converging volley on the French, which almost swept away the tirailleurs and shook terribly the supporting masses. Then they reloaded and advanced in silence on the enemy, who were shouting, firing irregularly, and endeavouring to deploy, with their officers all in front. For troops in such disorder the near approach of the majestic two-deep line of 3,300 bayonets was too much. They wavered and fled northward along the summit of the ridge, carrying with them their commander, Solignac, desperately wounded. The British pursued, halting at intervals to pour a volley into the retreating masses, and picking up on the way many prisoners, and also the three guns which the enemy had laboriously dragged up the hill. The pursuit was stopped by an unexpected development. General Brennier had heard from afar the heavy musketry fire which told him that his supporting brigade was engaged. He was now on the summit of the heights, having at last accomplished his long flank march. Pushing hastily forward, he came to the edge of a saddle-backed depression in the ridge, and had the spectacle of the fight at his feet. The 36th and 40th were engaged in driving the wrecks of Solignac’s men back in a north-westerly direction, while the 71st and 82nd, halted around the captured guns, were resting and reforming their ranks. Without a moment’s hesitation, Brennier threw his four battalions upon the two regiments that All the fighting here had been done by Ferguson’s and Nightingale’s five battalions. Bowes’ brigade did not fire a shot or lose a man, and Catlin Crawfurd and the Portuguese were only beginning to approach the scene of action when Brennier’s column broke up and fled. The main honours of the fight must be given to the 71st and 82nd, who lost respectively 112 and 61 men out of the total of 272 casualties suffered in this part of the action. Two and a half hours after the battle began the French, both in the north and the south of the field, were retiring in confusion. The British were awaiting eagerly the order for a general advance—especially Ferguson, who, with the 36th and 40th, had got part of Solignac’s brigade pinned into an angle of the hills, from which they could not easily escape when attacked. But instead of the order to advance there came a prohibition to move, and the French were allowed to withdraw unmolested. The stream of fugitives from Brennier’s and Solignac’s fight joined that from the centre; then both shook themselves together and formed up in more or less order on the heights. The reserve artillery under Hulot and Prost (Foy had been wounded) kept up a distant and ineffective fire towards the hill of Vimiero, more to put heart into their own But while the French were striving to rally and to form a new front, the leaden hand of Sir Harry Burrard was laid upon the British army. That leisurely person had only landed on the morning of the twenty-first, and the battle was in full progress before he rode up from the beach to Vimiero. He had the grace not to interfere with the movements of troops which Wellesley had already ordered; but when the victory was won, and his subordinate rode up to him crying, ‘Sir Harry, now is your time to advance, the enemy is completely beaten, and we shall be in Lisbon in three days[231],’ he refused to listen. The army, he said, had done enough for one day, and he intended to wait for the arrival of Sir John Moore and the division from the Baltic before making any further move. Greatly disconcerted by this stolid opposition, Wellesley launched forth into argument: the French army, as he pointed out, was now so placed that it had lost control of its line of retreat on Torres Vedras and Lisbon. Hill’s intact brigade, and those of Fane and Anstruther had but to advance a mile or so, and the French were irretrievably cut off from their base of operations. At the same time the five brigades of the left wing, of which those of Bowes and Crawfurd were absolutely intact, might so hustle and press the retreating enemy that he could never rally. At this moment arrived an aide-de-camp from Ferguson, who begged to be allowed to go on: ‘a column of broken troops 1,500 to 2,000 strong had in their confusion got into a hollow, and could be cut off from The losses had been very moderate—four officers and 131 men killed, thirty-seven officers and 497 men wounded, two officers and forty-nine men missing. Of the total of 720 no less than 573 were from the ten battalions of Fane’s, Anstruther’s, and Ferguson’s brigades. Those of Hill, Bowes, and Catlin Crawfurd did not return a single casualty. The handful of prisoners were mainly supplied by the 20th Light Dragoons, and by the two rifle battalions, whose pickets had been driven in at the commencement of the fight[235]. The French losses were very different: both Foy SECTION IV: CHAPTER IVTHE CONVENTION OF CINTRA For only one single day did the incubus of Burrard rest upon the British army in Portugal, though that day was one on which he succeeded in changing a decisive victory, which might have laid a whole kingdom at his feet, into an ordinary successful defensive action. He had stopped Wellesley’s triumphant march at noon on August 21; early on the morning of the twenty-second Sir Hew Dalrymple appeared in Maceira Bay, disembarked, and took over the command. He naturally began his tenure of control by interviewing his two predecessors, whose divergent views as to the situation and its requirements were laid before him. He was an old man, and unpractised in the field: he had only seen war in the wretched Flanders campaign of 1793-4. His prejudice was in favour of caution, and he was not slow to let it be seen that he regarded Wellesley’s actions in the past, and still more his plans for the future, as rash and hazardous. ‘On the first interview that I had with Sir Hew Dalrymple,’ said Wellesley at the Court of Inquiry in the following winter, ‘I had reason to believe that I did not possess his confidence: nay more, that he was prejudiced against any opinions which I should give him[237].’ The veteran’s ill-concealed hostility was, we cannot doubt, mainly due to an unhappy inspiration of Castlereagh, who had sent him a letter bidding him ‘take Sir Arthur Wellesley into his particular confidence, as he had been, for a length of time past, in the closest habits of communication with His Majesty’s ministers with respect to the affairs of Spain.’ He was also directed ‘to make the most prominent use of him which the rules of the service would permit[238].’ Such a letter very naturally caused Dalrymple to look upon the young lieutenant-general as a sort of emissary from the Government, sent to overrule his plans and curb his full power of command. He was inclined, consciously or unconsciously, to entertain a strong The plan which Wellesley had drawn up for the conduct of the campaign, and which he now urged upon his chief, is detailed in the proceedings of the Court of Inquiry. He had hoped to get Sir John Moore’s division, whose arrival was just reported, sent to Santarem, to cut off any attempt of Junot to escape out of the Lisbon peninsula by following the road along the right bank of the Tagus: the Portuguese were to be brought up to assist. Meanwhile the army which had fought at Vimiero was to turn the position of Torres Vedras, on which the enemy had retired, by marching along the sea-coast by the route that leads to Mafra. If Junot let them march past him, he would infallibly lose Lisbon; for they could, by forcing the pace, arrive in the capital as soon as he. If he abandoned Torres Vedras, and fell back on Mafra or Montechique as soon as he saw them moving, he would have to fight a second battle on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth, with an army which had been gravely demoralized by the events of RoliÇa and Vimiero, and which could not receive much succour from Lisbon: for the populace of that city, when apprised of the defeat of the French, would undoubtedly have burst into insurrection, and would have required for its repression every man of the 5,000[239] troops who had been left to hold it down. There was a third possibility, that Junot, on hearing that the English were marching past his flank, might have hastened from Torres Vedras to attack their line of march by one of the cross-roads (such as that from Torres Vedras to Puente de Roll), which cut down to the Atlantic coast. But Wellesley had convinced himself that this chance would not occur: he reckoned, very rightly, on the exhaustion of the enemy on the day after such a crushing blow as Vimiero. As a matter of fact, on the morning of the twenty-second, at the moment when the head of the British column, if it had marched, would have been outflanking their position, Junot Wellesley’s arguments to Dalrymple had no further effect than to induce that general to make up his mind that the troops should march not on the twenty-second but on the twenty-third, and not on Mafra but on Torres Vedras. Sir John Moore’s division was to be brought down at once to Maceira Bay, to join the main army, and not to be sent (as Wellesley had urged) to Santarem. With But things were not destined to take this course. Dalrymple was busy drafting his orders for the movement of the next day on Torres Vedras, when an alarm ran through the camp that the French were at hand, and the whole force flew to arms. This rumour was caused by the folly of a Portuguese cavalry officer, whose vedettes had seen French horsemen in the distance; he imagined an army on the move and reported its approach. What he had really seen was General Kellermann, with two squadrons of dragoons as his escort, bearing the white flag, and about to propose to the British commander-in-chief the evacuation of Portugal by the French army under a convention. We have already mentioned the fact that on the early morning of the twenty-second, Junot had called together at Torres Vedras a council of war composed of all his surviving generals—Loison, Kellermann, Delaborde (who attended though suffering from two severe wounds), ThiÉbault, the chief of the staff, Taviel, the commander of the artillery, Col. Vincent, the chief engineer, and Trousset, the chief commissary at Lisbon. Junot’s spirits were very low: he began by explaining that he had only fought at Vimiero to save the honour of the French arms, not because he hoped for victory—a statement which will not bear investigation in the light of his previous dispatches and letters[244]. The British, he said, were expecting huge reinforcements from the sea: Freire was now moving on Obidos, another Portuguese corps on Santarem: the reports of the state of public opinion in Lisbon were most alarming. Under these circumstances, ought the army to try the fortune of battle a second time? And if it must, what plan Having resolved that the army was not ready for another battle, the council of war had three alternatives before it: to fall back to cover Lisbon on the positions of Mafra and Montechique; to evacuate Lisbon, cross the Tagus, and make for Elvas; or to try to negotiate with the British. The decision was soon made in favour of the third: Lisbon, without regular fortifications, and swarming with a discontented populace, would be a mere snare for the army. The retreat via Elvas on Old Castile would mean the slow but certain destruction of the whole corps[246]. For it was now known that Joseph Bonaparte had evacuated Madrid, and that Burgos was probably the nearest point where a French force was to be found. Not one of the officers present had the heart to make a serious proposal for such a retreat. It only remained to try whether Dalrymple was open to receive an offer: if he could be tempted by the prospect of receiving Lisbon with all its magazines and riches intact, he might allow the French army to return under safe conduct to their own land. Kellermann, who could understand English, more or less, and was considered a skilful diplomatist, was charged with the negotiations. He rode out of Torres Vedras between ten and eleven in the morning with his escort, charged with ample powers to treat. As he passed the rearguard in the pass, four miles outside the town, he told the officer in command that he was going to visit the English ‘to see if he could get the army out of the mousetrap[247].’ By two o’clock Kellermann was conferring with the English commander—he was astonished to find that it was Dalrymple and not Wellesley. The reception that he met was an agreeable surprise to him. Dalrymple showed his pleasure at the broaching of the idea of a convention in the most undisguised fashion. The fact was that he was very glad to avoid the possible dangers of an immediate advance and a second fight. He called in Burrard and Wellesley to the interview, and from his unguarded ‘asides’ to them, Kellermann soon learnt that Moore had not yet landed, and that till he was ashore Dalrymple did not feel safe. This gave the Frenchman a confidence which he had not at first possessed, and he at once assumed an air of self-reliance which he had been far from showing when he rode out of Torres Vedras. Instead of merely trying to save the army at all costs, he began to haggle about details, and to speak about the possibility of resuming hostilities—the last thing in the world that he really desired[248]. There was no doubt that a convention by which Portugal and all its fortresses could be recovered without the necessity of firing another shot was an eminently desirable thing. Wellesley did not hesitate a moment in advising his superiors to take the offer. Burrard had given away the certainty of recapturing Lisbon yesterday: Dalrymple, by delaying his advance, had on this very morning sacrificed the second chance (a much less brilliant one, it must be confessed) of ending the campaign by a single blow. If Junot’s proposals were rejected and hostilities were resumed, there lay before the British army either a siege of Lisbon, which could not fail to ruin the city, or a long stern-chase after the French, if they should resolve to cross the Tagus and march off through the Alemtejo. No doubt it would sound better in the ears of the British public if the surrender or destruction of Junot’s army could be reported. But as a matter of practical expediency, the recovery of Lisbon and all its wealth unharmed was worth far more than the capture of a French army at the cost of much time, many lives, and the ruin of the Portuguese capital. The loss of 25,000 soldiers would be nothing to Napoleon, who disposed of more than half a million men: the blow to his pride would be almost as great if he lost Portugal by a convention as if he lost it by a capitulation. As a matter of fact he was much incensed at Junot, and would have dealt hardly with him if Dupont had not After hearing what Kellermann had to say, the three English generals withdrew into an inner room, and after a very short discussion agreed to treat. They told their visitor that he might have a forty-eight hours’ suspension of hostilities at once, and that they would open negotiations on the general base that Junot and his army should be allowed to evacuate Portugal by sea without any of the forms of capitulation, and be returned to their own country on British ships. The details would take much discussion: meanwhile they invited Kellermann to dine with them and to settle the main lines of the Convention before he returned to his commander. There was a long post-prandial debate, which showed that on two points there was likely to be trouble; one was the way in which Siniavin’s Russian fleet in the Tagus was to be treated: the other was how much the French should be allowed to carry away with them from Portugal. Kellermann said that he asked for no more than their ‘military baggage and equipments,’ but he seemed to have a large idea of what came under these headings[250]. Meanwhile the terms of the suspension of hostilities were successfully drafted; the line of the Zizandre river was to be fixed as that of demarcation between the two hosts. Neither of them was to occupy Torres Vedras: Dalrymple undertook to get the armistice recognized by Freire and the other Portuguese generals in the field. They were not to advance beyond Leiria and Thomar. The garrisons at Elvas, Almeida, Peniche, and elsewhere were to be included in the Convention, unless it should turn out that any of them had surrendered before August 25—which as a matter of fact they had not. The Russian fleet in the Tagus was to be treated as if in a neutral port. This last clause was much objected to by Wellesley, who found also several minor points in the agreement of which he could not approve. But by the directions of The subsequent negotiations for a definite convention occupied seven days, from August 23 to 30. On the first-named day Junot evacuated Torres Vedras, according to the stipulations of the agreement made by Kellermann. He retired to the line of hills behind him, establishing Loison’s division at Mafra and Delaborde’s at Montechique. Dalrymple, on the other hand, moved his head quarters forward to Ramalhal, a position just north of Torres Vedras, and only nine miles from Vimiero. In this respect he profited less than the French from the suspension of hostilities: it is true that he got leisure to disembark Moore’s troops, but Junot gained the much more important advantage of a safe retreat to a good position, and of leisure to strengthen himself in it. It must not be supposed, however, that he was in a comfortable situation; Lisbon was seething with suppressed rebellion. The news of French victories, which had been published to quiet the people, had soon been discovered to be nothing more than an impudent fiction. At any moment an insurrection might have broken out: the garrison and the mob were alike in a state of extreme nervous tension, which took shape on the one side in assassinations, and on the other in wanton firing at every person who approached a sentinel, or refused to stand when challenged by a patrol. The negotiations for a definitive convention suffered several checks. At one moment it seemed likely that the Portuguese army might give trouble. General Freire arrived at Ramalhal in a state of high wrath, to protest that he ought to have been made a party to the suspension of hostilities. There was, as Napier remarks, more plausibility than real foundation in his objection[252], for his motley army had taken no part whatever in the operations that had brought Junot to his knees. But he could make a distinct point when he asked by what authority Dalrymple had given promises as to his neutrality in the agreement with Kellermann, or laid down lines which he was not to pass. Freire was all the bolder because his levies were now being strengthened by the forces from Oporto which the Bishop had lately raised, while a small Spanish brigade under the Marquis of Valladares, lent by A more dangerous source of possible rupture was the view of the situation taken by Sir Charles Cotton, the admiral in command of the British blockading squadron off the mouth of the Tagus. As Wellesley had foreseen, the naval men were determined to secure the possession of the Russian ships of Siniavin. Cotton refused to entertain the proposal that such a force should be allowed a free departure from Lisbon, as if from a neutral port, and should be given a long start before being pursued. He had held the Russians under blockade for many a weary month, and was not going to abandon his hold upon them. Why should the French evacuation of Portugal place Siniavin in a better position than he had ever occupied before? The admiral declared that he saw no reason why the Russians should be included in the Convention at all. If there was going to be any agreement made with them, he should conduct it himself, treating directly with Siniavin instead of through a French intermediary. Sir Hew Dalrymple was forced to report to the French commander these objections of the admiral. It seemed possible for a moment that the difficulty would not be got over, and that war must recommence. Wellesley strongly advised his chief to try the game of bluff—to announce to Junot that operations would be resumed at the end of the stipulated forty-eight hours, as Sir Charles Cotton had objected to the terms of the armistice, but that he was prepared to take into consideration any new proposals which might be made to him before the interval of two days expired[253]. Such a firm policy, he thought, would induce the French to yield the point—all the more because Junot and Siniavin were known to be on very bad terms. But Dalrymple would not accept this plan. He merely reported the admiral’s proposals to Junot, without any intimation that the resumption of hostilities must result from their rejection. This move placed the power of playing the game of brag in the Frenchman’s hands. Seeing that Dalrymple did not seem to desire to break off negotiations, he assumed an indignant tone, and began to talk of his determination not to concede an inch, and of the harm that he could do if he were forced to fight. ‘The English might take away the half-drafted convention: he All Junot’s desperate language was, in fact, no more than a device to squeeze better terms out of Dalrymple. The actual point on which the argument grew hot was a mere pretext, for the Russian admiral utterly refused to assist the French, and intimated that he should prefer to conclude a separate convention of his own with Sir Charles Cotton. Clearly it was not worth while for the Duke of Abrantes to risk anything on behalf of such a torpid ally. Accordingly the Convention was reduced to a definitive form between August 27 and 30. Colonel George Murray, the quartermaster-general, acted as the British negotiator, while Kellermann continued to represent Junot. The details were settled in Lisbon, where Murray took up his residence, sending back frequent reports to his superior officer at Ramalhal. Dalrymple and Cotton carried their point in that no allusion whatever was made to the Russians in the document. Junot found a salve for his injured pride by remembering that he had slipped a mention of Napoleon as ‘Emperor of the French,’ into the text of the suspension of hostilities[255]: in this he thought that he had won a great success, for the British Government had hitherto refused to recognize any such title, and had constantly irritated its adversaries by alluding to the master of the Continent as ‘General Bonaparte,’ or the ‘actual head of the French executive.’ The terms of the Convention need close study[256]: it comprised twenty-two articles and three supplementary paragraphs of addenda. The first article provided that the French should surrender Lisbon But the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth articles were the most objectionable part of the Convention. It was true that they secured that no more taxes or contributions were to be raised by Junot, and that undischarged fines which he had laid on the Portuguese should be regarded as cancelled. But they also provided that French civilians in Portugal might either depart with the army, or, if they preferred it, might be allowed to remain behind unmolested, and have a year in which to dispose of their property. This might perhaps pass: not so, however, the ensuing clause, which provided that Portuguese subjects should not be rendered accountable for their political conduct during the French occupation: all who had taken service with the usurping government were to be placed under the protection of the British, and to suffer no injury in person or property. They were also to be granted liberty to depart with the French army if they chose. The five remaining articles were unimportant. The eighteenth secured the release of Caraffa and the rest of Junot’s Spanish prisoners, and provided that in return the few French officers of the army of Portugal, whom the Spaniards had captured at Oporto and Elvas, should be liberated. The twenty-first permitted Junot Three unimportant supplementary articles were added below the signatures of Murray and Kellermann: one stipulated that French civilian prisoners in the hands of the English and Portuguese should be released, another that Junot’s army should subsist on its own magazines till it embarked, a third that the British should permit the entry of provisions into Lisbon, now that the Convention had been concluded. Such was the celebrated agreement which was destined to gain a most unhappy notoriety in England under the name of the ‘Convention of Cintra,’ a designation which it is hard to understand, for it was first sketched at Torres Vedras, and was discussed and ratified at Lisbon. The only connexion which it had with Cintra was that Dalrymple’s dispatch to the British Government, enclosing the document in its latest form, was dated from that pleasant spot in the environs of Lisbon. But it would perhaps be pedantic to give any other name to such a well-known document, than that under which it has been known for the last ninety-three years. After a careful investigation of the details of this famous agreement, the conclusion at which the impartial student will probably arrive is that while on the military side it was justifiable, it presented grave political faults. In order to recover Lisbon with its arsenals, its forts and its shipping, all intact, Dalrymple might without serious blame have granted even more to the French. By the Convention he saved, not only the wealth of the capital, and the lives of the troops who must have fallen in storming it, but, most important of all, time. If he had but known the value of that commodity, he might have been in Madrid at the head of all his British troops by October 1, or even earlier. ‘I do not know what Sir Hew proposes to do,’ wrote Wellesley the morning after the Convention was signed, ‘but if I were in his situation I would have 20,000 men in Madrid in less than a month from this day[258]’ But the importance of time was never realized by the old commander-in-chief: he was superseded long before his army had It is when we turn to the political section of the Convention that we light upon grave faults and mistakes on the part of Dalrymple. The first and foremost was that he signed the document without previously submitting certain portions of it to the Portuguese government. In the sixteenth and seventeenth articles the British general took upon himself to grant certain favours both to French civilians resident in Portugal, and to Portuguese subjects who had taken service under Junot, which he had no authority to concede. These were points which concerned not the British army but the Portuguese civil administration, and should not have been decided without a consultation with our allies, and a permission from them to make terms on their behalf. The sixteenth article allowed Frenchmen resident in Lisbon to remain there for a year after the Convention, if they did not chose to leave the country with Junot and his troops. To permit subjects of the hostile power to remain in Lisbon for so long was, of course, most distasteful to the Portuguese government, which was naturally desirous of expelling at once, according to the ordinary customs of war, a body of persons many of whom had made themselves the partners and instruments of Junot’s peculations, and who for the next twelve months would serve as spies and purveyors of intelligence to the French Emperor. Nothing more than the leave to quit Lisbon in Junot’s wake should have been secured to them, unless the Junta of Regency gave its consent. The seventeenth article is even more objectionable: a considerable portion of the bureaucracy of Portugal had been weak and criminal enough to acquiesce in the French usurpation, and to make themselves the tools of the Duke of Abrantes. It was natural that their countrymen should feel deeply indignant with them; and their lot was likely to be so hard that it was but rational and humane to give them leave to quit the kingdom. But considering that they had deserved very ill of the state, it was surely wrong for the British general to promise to take them under his special protection, and to guarantee them against injury to their persons or property. He had no power to grant them an amnesty for their It was fortunate, therefore, that the practical harm done did not turn out to be very great. Both the aliens and the natives covered by these two clauses were so perfectly aware of their own unpopularity in Lisbon, that they absconded almost en masse. The populace of the capital had given them fair warning of what they might expect, for not only were they threatened and insulted in the streets whenever they were out of sight of a French sentry, but unknown hands posted on the walls lists of houses to be sacked and individuals to be hung as soon as Junot’s army should have sailed. The watchwords, ‘Death to the French’ and ‘Death to the traitors,’ were muttered even under the muzzles of the cannon, which had been trained on all the main streets, to keep down the insurrection for the few days which had to elapse before the embarkation. The invaders, therefore, had to take away with them a very large body of civilian dependants, headed by the Comte de Novion, a French ÉmigrÉ, who, after being hospitably entertained in Lisbon for many years, had shown his gratitude by accepting the post of head of Junot’s police—a capacity in which he had much odd business to transact. But besides Articles XVI and XVII of the Convention there were other clauses to which Dalrymple should not have given his assent without consulting the representatives of his allies. Almeida was being blockaded by a mass of Portuguese militia, and Elvas, a few days after the treaty had been signed, was attacked by a Spanish force sent out from Badajoz by Galluzzo, the Captain-General of Estremadura. No British soldier had yet been seen within a hundred miles of either fortress. What was to be done if the generals of the besieging troops refused to abide by an agreement which they had not been asked to sign, and which had Dalrymple’s main reason for leaving the Portuguese out of the negotiations was that the Junta at Oporto had not yet been formally recognized as the legitimate government of Portugal[259]. Wellesley, no doubt, had conferred with the Bishop, given him arms and munitions, procured from him food and draught animals, and asked his advice, but the British ministry had not yet acknowledged the existence of any regular executive in Portugal. This being so, Dalrymple thought himself justified in acting as if there were none in being; and it cannot be denied that thereby he saved himself much present trouble, at the cost of future friction. All, therefore, that he did was to inform the Junta’s agent at the British head quarters, one Pinto da Souza, that he was negotiating with Junot for the evacuation of Lisbon, and that he was open to receive any observations which the Junta might make. The same announcement was made to Bernardino Freire, who had ridden over to Ramalhal[260] to complain that he and his army were not mentioned in the armistice of August 22. Both Freire and the Junta were treated as persons whose opinions it was useful to obtain, not as constituted authorities whose consent to the definitive convention was necessary in order to make it binding. Dalrymple tried to cover himself during the subsequent inquiry by maintaining that the Convention was purely military, and concerned the French and English armies alone: but this plea cannot seriously be put forward in face of Articles XV, XVI, and XVII, all of which are concerned with problems of civil government, which would arise after the French army should have embarked. Each Both the Bishop of Oporto and General Freire were deeply wounded by the way in which Dalrymple ignored their status—the prelate more justly than the soldier, for he had done his best to assist the British army, while Freire by his captious and impracticable behaviour had been more of a hindrance than a help. The Bishop charged the representative of the Supreme Junta in London to complain to the British Government as to the behaviour of their generals, denouncing not only their neglect to make the Junta a party to the Convention, but also the terms of that document, which were stated to be far too favourable to Junot. Owing to Dalrymple’s extraordinary delay in apprising the ministry of the details of the treaty, the Bishop’s excited denunciations of the agreement had currency for nearly a fortnight, before any one in England knew what exactly had been granted to Junot, or how far the Junta was justified in its wrath. SECTION IV: CHAPTER VTHE FRENCH EVACUATE PORTUGAL The Convention of Cintra being once signed, the difficulties which were bound to arise from the unwisdom of some of its articles were not long in showing themselves. Indeed the first fortnight of September turned out to be a very critical time. The Portuguese authorities were furious: Dalrymple found the greatest trouble in preventing the insurgents of the Alemtejo, who had gathered opposite the mouth of the Tagus under the Conde de Castro Marim[261], from attacking the French detachments in the forts on the left bank. Their commander protested against the Convention, and actually appealed to Admiral Cotton to repudiate it: fortunately he was content to confine his opposition to words. But there was much more trouble at Elvas: the Junta of Estremadura did not object to the settlement, and liberated the French prisoners who were in its hands, according to the proposal in the eighteenth article. But Galluzzo, the Captain-General of that province, showed himself much more disobliging. He refused to call off the troops under his lieutenant De Arce, who were beleaguering Elvas, and behaved in the most dictatorial manner within Portuguese territory, raising not only requisitions of food but contributions of money. He even seized, at Campo Mayor, the military chest of the Portuguese general Leite, who commanded the wrecks of the force that had been beaten at Evora by Loison in July[262]. His detestable behaviour had the good effect of throwing the natives of the country on the English side, and Leite welcomed the arrival of troops from Lisbon, which enabled him to protest with effect against the misdoings and plunderings of the Spaniards. De Arce’s troops were doing no real good: they only maintained The garrison of Almeida departed about the same time: they had maintained themselves without difficulty against the Portuguese insurgents, but duly yielded up the place on the arrival of British troops. They were marched down to Oporto under an escort of 200 men, a force so weak that it nearly led to a disaster. For the mob of Oporto, under the pretext that church plate and other public plunder was being carried off by the French, fell upon them as they were embarking and nearly made an end of them. It required all the exertions of the escort, the Bishop of Oporto, and Sir Robert Wilson—who was then on the spot organizing his well-known ‘Lusitanian Legion’—to prevent the populace from boarding the transports and slaying the whole of the French battalion. The baggage of the departing troops was seized and plundered, and they barely succeeded in escaping with their lives[263]. Meanwhile, long before the garrisons of Elvas and Almeida had been brought down to the coast, Junot and the main body of his army had departed. The commander-in-chief himself had sailed on September 13, the first division of his army on the fifteenth, the rest between that day and the thirtieth. The last weeks of the French occupation of Lisbon had been most uncomfortable for all parties concerned. The populace was seething with discontent, It was no wonder that the resentment of the Portuguese was so great that the last French who embarked could only get away under the protection of British bayonets, and that many of those who straggled or lingered too long in remote corners of the town lost their lives. The wild fury of the Lisbon mob surprised the British officers who were charged with the embarkation[268]: they But finally the last French bayonet disappeared from the streets of Lisbon, and the populace, with no object left on which to vent their fury, turned to illuminations, feasts, and the childish delights of fireworks. They did not show themselves ungrateful to the army of liberation; all the British officers who have described the first weeks after the evacuation of Lisbon, bear witness to the enthusiasm with which they were received, and the good feeling displayed by their allies[269]. It was only in the highest Portuguese quarters that dissatisfaction was rampant: the Bishop of Oporto, General Freire, and the Monteiro Mor, had all suffered what they considered an insult, when their consent was not asked to the Convention of Cintra, and made no secret of their anger against Dalrymple. But it does not seem that their feelings affected any large section of the people. The French army embarked for its native soil still 25,747 strong. It had entered Portugal in the previous November with a strength of nearly 25,000, and had received during the spring of 1808 some 4,500 recruits: in the month of May, before hostilities began, its full force had been 26,594[270]. Of this total 20,090 were under arms at the moment that the Convention was signed, 3,522 were in hospital, sick or wounded: 916 were prisoners in the hands of the English or the Portuguese. There remain, therefore, some 4,500 men to be accounted for: these, however, were not all dead. More than 500 had deserted and taken service with the British before the embarkation: they came, almost without exception, from the ranks of the three foreign battalions which had been serving with Junot, the 1st Hanoverians and the 2nd and 4th Swiss[271]. As the total force of these corps had been only 2,548, it is clear that about one man in five deserted. This was natural in the case of the Germans, who were old subjects of George III, and most unwilling recruits to the French army, but the equally well-marked defection It is necessary to give some account of the fate of Siniavin’s Russian squadron, before dismissing the topic of the evacuation of Portugal. The admiral, as we have already had occasion to state, had steadfastly refused to throw in his lot with Junot and to join in the Convention of Cintra. He preferred to make an agreement of his own with Sir Charles Cotton. It was a simple document of two articles: the first provided that the nine sail of the line and one frigate, which formed the Russian fleet, should be given up, sent to England, and ‘held as a deposit’ by his Britannic majesty, to be restored within six months of a peace between Great Britain and Russia. The second was to the effect that Siniavin, his officers and crews, should be sent back to Russia on English ships without being in any way considered prisoners of war, or debarred from further service. Admiral Cotton, it is clear, regarded the ships as important and the crews as worthy of small attention. It was profitable to Great Britain to keep down the number of vessels in the power of Napoleon, though now that the Danish fleet was captured, and the Spanish fleet transferred to the other side of the balance, there could be no longer any immediate danger of the French taking the offensive at sea. The easy terms of release granted to the personnel of the Russian squadron suggest that the British admiral had determined to reward its commander for his persistent refusal to help Junot. It almost appears that Cotton looked upon Siniavin The most pressing necessity in Portugal, after the French had departed, was the construction of a new national government, for it was clear that the Supreme Junta at Oporto represented in reality only the northern provinces of the realm, and could not be accepted—as its president, the Bishop, suggested—as a permanent and legitimate executive for the whole kingdom. Constitutionally speaking, if one may use such a phrase when dealing with a country like Portugal, the only body which possessed a clear title of authority was the Council of Regency, which Prince John had nominated nine months before, on the eve of his departure for Brazil. But this council had long ceased to act; its members were dispersed; several had compromised themselves by submitting to the French and taking office under Junot; and its composition gave no promise of vigorous action for the future. If a choice must be made between the Junta at Oporto, which was active and patriotic, though perhaps too much given up to self-assertion and intrigue, and the effete old Regency, there could be no doubt that the former possessed more claims to the confidence of the Portuguese nation and its English allies. But it was not necessary to adopt either alternative in full: Wellesley, who had already got a firm grip upon the outlines of Portuguese politics, advised Dalrymple to invite the old Regency, with the exception of those members who had compromised themselves with the French, to reassemble, and to bring pressure upon them to co-opt to the vacant places the Bishop of Oporto and the other prominent members of the Junta. This proposal would have secured legality of form (since the old Regency would theoretically have continued to exist), while introducing new and vigorous elements of undoubted patriotism into the body[273]. But Dalrymple preferred to reinstate, by a proclamation of his own, those members of the Regency who had never On the reconstitution of the Regency the Junta of Oporto, with more self-denial than had been expected, dissolved itself. The minor juntas in the Algarve, the Alemtejo, and the Tras-os-Montes followed its example, and Portugal was once more in possession of a single executive, whose authority was freely recognized throughout the kingdom. Unfortunately it turned out to be slow, timid, and divided into cliques which were always at variance with each other. We have already seen that owing to various causes of delay, of which Galluzzo’s preposterous proceedings at Elvas were the most prominent, the last French troops did not quit Portugal till September had expired, and that Junot himself and the main body of his army had only begun to leave on the fifteenth of that month. It would have been impossible for Dalrymple to advance into Spain till the French had left Lisbon, however urgently his presence might have been required. But it would perhaps have proved feasible to push forward towards the Spanish frontier a considerable part of his army, and to make preparations for the movement of the whole towards Madrid or Salamanca as soon as the evacuation should be complete. Dalrymple, however, was as leisurely as the generals of the old days before the Revolutionary War. He kept his troops cantoned about Lisbon, only pushing forward two brigades towards Elvas in order to bring Galluzzo to No one felt this more clearly than Wellesley, whose views as to his commander’s competence had never changed since that hour on the morning of August 22, when Dalrymple had refused to march on Mafra, and had decided to delay his advance till the advent of Moore. Since then he had offered his advice on several points, and had almost always seen it refused. Dealing with the disputed details of the Convention of Cintra, he had spoken in favour of meeting the French demands with high-handed decision: hence he was vexed by Dalrymple’s tendency towards weakness and compromise. One of his special grievances was that he had been ordered to sign the armistice of August 22 as representing the British army, although he had privately protested against its details[274]. His unofficial letters home during the first half of September are full of bitter remarks on the weakness of the policy that had been adopted, and the many faults of the Convention[275]. Seeing that warlike operations appeared This letter was different in its general character from the other reports which Castlereagh was receiving: most of the correspondents of the Secretary for War could write of nothing but the enthusiastic patriotism of the Spaniards and their enormous resources: they spoke of the French as a dispirited remnant, ready Wellesley sailed from Lisbon on September 20, and reached Plymouth on October 4. On his arrival in England he was met with news of a very mixed character. On the one hand he was rejoiced to hear that both Dalrymple and Burrard had been recalled, and that Sir John Moore had been placed in command of the British forces in the Peninsula. He wrote at once to the latter, to say that there could be no greater satisfaction than to serve under his orders, and that he would return at once to Spain to join him: ‘he would forward with zeal every wish’ of his new commander[279]. It was also most gratifying to Wellesley to know that the dispatch of September 25, by which Moore was given the command of the army of Portugal, directed him to move into Northern Spain and base himself upon the Asturias and Galicia, the very plan which formed the main thesis of the document that we have been discussing. There can be no doubt that Castlereagh had recognized the strategical and political verities that were embodied in Wellesley’s letter, and had resolved to adopt the line therein recommended. SECTION IV: CHAPTER VITHE COURT OF INQUIRY There was another and a less pleasant surprise in store for Wellesley when he landed at Plymouth. He learnt that if he himself disliked the armistice of August 22, and the Convention of Cintra, the British public had gone far beyond him, and was in a state of frantic rage concerning them. To his anger and amazement he also learnt that he himself was considered no less responsible for the two agreements than were Dalrymple and Burrard. The fact that the former had told him to set his signature opposite to that of Kellermann on the document signed at Vimiero, had misled the world into regarding him as the negotiator and framer of the armistice. ‘Every whisperer who disliked the name of Wellesley[280]’—and Sir Arthur’s brother, the Governor-General, had made it very unpopular in certain quarters—was busy propagating the story that of the three generals who had lately commanded in Portugal, each one was as slack and supine as the others. The wave of indignation which swept across England on the receipt of the news of the Convention of Cintra is, at this distance of time, a little hard to understand. Successes had not been so plentiful on the Continent during the last fifteen years, that an agreement which gave back its liberty to a whole kingdom need have been criticized with vindictive minuteness. But the news of Baylen had set the public mind on the look-out for further triumphs, and when the dispatches which gave an account of RoliÇa and of Vimiero had come to hand, there had been a confident expectation that the next news received would be that Junot’s army had been scattered or captured, and that Lisbon had been set free. Then came a gap of thirteen days, caused by Dalrymple’s strange fit of silence. The only intelligence that reached London in this interval was the Bishop of Oporto’s letter of protest against the armistice, in which, without giving any definite details about that agreement, The rage against the Convention was not confined to any one class or faction in the state. If some Whigs tried to turn it into the shape of an attack on the government, there were plenty of Tories who joined in the cry, begging their leaders in the ministry to dismiss and punish the three unpopular generals. A number of public meetings were held with the object of forcing the hands of the Duke of Portland and his colleagues, but the most prominent part in the agitation was taken by the Corporation of London. Accordingly such a petition was laid before the King on October 12. Its terms are worth a moment’s attention, as they show very clearly the points on which popular indignation had been concentrated. ‘The treaty,’ it states, ‘is humiliating and degrading, because after a signal victory, by which the enemy appears to have been cut off from all means of succour or escape, we had the sad mortification of seeing the laurels so nobly acquired torn from the brows of our brave soldiers, and terms granted to the enemy disgraceful to the British name.... By this ignominious Convention British ships are to convey to France the French army and its plunder, where they will be at liberty immediately to recommence their active operations against us and our allies. And the full recognition of the title and dignity of Emperor of France[282], while all mention of the Government of Portugal is omitted, must be considered as highly disrespectful to the authorities of that country.’ There was another clause denouncing the sending back of the Russian sailors, but not so much stress was laid on this point. Finally the King is asked ‘in justice to the outraged feelings of a brave, injured, and indignant people, whose blood and treasure have been thus expended,’ to cause the guilty persons to be punished. King George III replied to these flowers of oratory by a short speech which displays admirably that power of getting an occasional lucid glimpse of the obvious in which he was by no means deficient. He was fully sensible, he said, of the loyalty and good intentions of the City of London, but he wished the deputation to remember that to pronounce judgement without previous trial and investigation was hardly consonant with the principles of British justice. He was always ready to institute an inquiry when the honour of the British arms was in question: and the interposition of the It was not, however, till seventeen days later that his majesty’s formal orders for the summoning of a Court of Inquiry ‘to investigate into the late Armistice and Convention concluded in Portugal, and all the circumstances connected therewith,’ were communicated to the Commander-in-Chief. Dalrymple and Burrard, both of whom had now returned to England, were directed to hold themselves in readiness to present themselves before the court, and Wellesley, for the same reason, was directed to abandon his project of going back to the Peninsula in order to serve under Sir John Moore. The members of the celebrated Court of Inquiry, which commenced its sittings on November 14, 1808, were seven in number, all general officers of great respectability and advanced years, men more likely, for the most part, to sympathize with caution than with daring. The president was Sir David Dundas, the author of a celebrated drill-book which had long been the terror of young officers: the other members were Lord Moira, Lord Heathfield[283], the Earl of Pembroke, and Generals Craig, Sir G. Nugent, and Nicholls. Not one of them has left behind a name to be remembered, save indeed Lord Moira, who, as Lord Rawdon in the old American War, had won the victory of Hobkirk’s Hill, and who was destined to be the next Viceroy of India and to make the name of Hastings famous for a second time in the East. The court began its sittings on November 14, and did not terminate them till December 22. In the great hall of Chelsea Hospital, where its proceedings were held, there was much warm debate. As the details of the Campaign of Portugal were gradually worked out, not only by the cross-examination of Dalrymple, Burrard, and Wellesley, but by that of many of the other officers of rank who had been in Portugal—Spencer, Acland, Ferguson, Lord Burghersh, and others—the points on which the verdict of the court must turn gradually became clear. They were six in number:—Had Burrard been justified in preventing Wellesley from pursuing the French at the end of the battle of Vimiero? Had Dalrymple erred in refusing to take Wellesley’s advice to march On the other hand, Burrard and Dalrymple urged all the justifications of caution. Each had arrived at a crisis, the details of which could not be properly known to him from sheer want of time to master them. Each acknowledged that Wellesley had vehemently pressed him to strike boldly and promptly, but thought that he had not been justified in doing so till he had made out for With regard to the armistice and the Convention, all the three generals, when defending themselves, agreed that they were wise and justifiable. To clear the French out of Portugal without further fighting, and to recover Lisbon and all its resources intact, were ends so important that it was well worth while to sacrifice even the practical certainty of capturing all Junot’s army, after a resistance that might have been long and desperate. But as to the wisdom of certain clauses and articles, both in the document of August 22 and that of August 30, there was considerable difference of opinion. Wellesley proved that he had opposed many details of each agreement, and that he was in no way responsible for the final shape taken by them. He only assented to the general proposition that it was right to let the French army depart under a convention, rather than to force it to a capitulation. He considered that Dalrymple had yielded far too much, from his unwillingness to ‘drive Junot into a corner.’ On December 22 the Court of Inquiry issued its report. It was a very cautious and a rather inconclusive document. But its main point was that nothing had been done in Portugal which called for the punishment of any of the parties concerned: ‘On a consideration of all the circumstances, we most humbly submit our opinion that no further military proceeding is necessary,’ i.e. there was no ground for a court-martial on any one of the three British generals. As to Such a report amounted to a plain acquittal of all the three generals, but it left so much unsaid that the Government directed the Commander-in-Chief to require from the members of the court their decision as to whether the armistice of the twenty-second and the Convention of the thirtieth were advisable, and, if they were advisable, whether their terms were proper, and honourable. On the twenty-seventh the court returned its answer: there was, this time, no unanimous report, but a series of written opinions, for the members of the body differed from each other on many points. As to the armistice, six members replied that they approved of it, one, but he the most distinguished of the seven—Lord Moira—said that he did not. On the question as to the definitive Convention there was more difference of opinion: Dundas, Lord Heathfield, Craig, and Nugent thought it fair and reasonable; Lord Moira, the Earl of Pembroke, and Nicholls considered it as unjustifiable, considering the relative situations of the two armies. The two last-named officers added short explanatory notes to their opinions, while Lord Moira subjoined to his a long and elaborate argument, The Court of Inquiry had thus delivered its last opinion. But the matter of the Convention was not even yet at an end. The ministry resolved to inflict a rebuke on Dalrymple, not for his military action, on which they completely accepted the verdict of the seven generals, but for his political action in allowing the Articles XV, XVI, and XVII to be inserted in the Convention. These, it will be remembered, were the clauses which conceded certain privileges to the French inhabitants of Lisbon, and to the Portuguese who had compromised themselves by taking service under Junot. The Duke of York, as commander-in-chief, was It cannot be denied that these rebukes were well deserved: we have already pointed out that the three articles to which allusion is made were the only part of the Convention for which no defence is possible. It is equally clear that it was the thirteen days’ gap in the information sent home which gave time for the rise and development of the unreasoning popular agitation against the whole agreement made with Junot. As to the verdict of the court, it does substantial justice to the case. There existed ‘fair military reasons’ for all that Burrard and Dalrymple had done, or left undone. In a similar way ‘fair military reasons’ can be alleged for most of the main slips and errors committed during any campaign in the Napoleonic War—for Dupont’s stay at Andujar, or for Murray’s retreat from Tarragona, or for Grouchy’s operations on June 17 and 18, 1815. It would be unjust to punish old and respectable generals for mere errors of judgement, and inability to rise to the height of the situation. Burrard and Dalrymple had sacrificed the most brilliant possibilities by their torpid caution, after refusing to listen to Wellesley’s cogent arguments for bold action. But their conduct had resulted neither from cowardice nor from deliberate perversity. The blame must rest quite as much on the government, which had entrusted the expedition to elderly men unaccustomed to command in the field, as on those men themselves. And as to the details of the armistice and Convention, we may well accept Wellesley’s verdict, that the gain secured by the rescue of Lisbon with all its wealth intact, and by the prompt termination of the campaign, fully justified the resolve not to drive Junot to extremity. But there was an unexpressed corollary to the verdict of the |
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