SECTION XXXI: CHAPTER III
POLITICS AT CADIZ AND ELSEWHERE
The military operations in the South during the winter of 1811-12 were inconclusive, and only important in a negative way, as showing that the initiative of the French armies was spent in this direction. But it must not be forgotten that while Soult had been brought to a standstill, Suchet’s operations were still progressing: January, indeed, saw the last great Spanish disaster of the war, the fall of Valencia, so that the spirits of government and people still ran very low. It was not till the sudden irruption of Wellington into the kingdom of Leon had ended in the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo (January 19), that there was any great occasion for hopefulness. And for a long time after that event its importance was not fully understood. That the central turning-point of the war had come, that for the future the allies were to be on the offensive, and the French on the defensive, was not realized till Badajoz had fallen in April, a blow which shook the whole fabric of King Joseph’s power throughout the regions where he seemed to reign. Nor was it only the state of affairs in the Peninsula which, during the winter of 1811-12, seemed sufficiently gloomy both for the present and for the future. The news from the Spanish colonies in America grew steadily worse: in most of the viceroyalties of the Western world there was now a nucleus of trouble: the name of Ferdinand VII was still used by the insurgents as a rallying cry, except in Venezuela, where Miranda had proclaimed an independent republic in July 1811. But in La Plata and Chili lip-loyalty to the sovereign was accompanied by practical secession from the Spanish state: the Cabildos or Juntas paid no attention to orders received from Cadiz. In Mexico, though the capital and the greater part of the country were still in the hands of the constituted authorities, there was a lively insurrection on foot since September 1810, under the priest Hidalgo—he was captured and executed in 1812, but his death did not crush his faction. The Viceroyalty of Peru was almost the only part of Spanish America which still remained loyal. The Cortes at Cadiz made elaborate attempts to conciliate the Americans, but was unable to satisfy their expectations or to end their discontents. The deeply-rooted belief of the Creoles that they and their country were still being exploited for the benefit of Spain, could not be removed by any declaration that they were now to be Spanish citizens with full rights, or by giving them representation in the Cortes. The idea of autonomy was already abroad in Spanish America, and in every quarter ambitious men were quoting the precedent of the revolt of the Thirteen United Colonies from Great Britain in the previous generation. Truly Spain had committed an unwise act when she joined France in wrecking the British domination in North America. She revenged an old grudge successfully, but she taught her own colonists a lesson impossible to forget and easy to copy.
The Peninsular War had hitherto been maintained in no small degree by the money which kept flowing in from America: what would happen if the treasure-ships with their regular supply of silver dollars from the mines of Mexico and Peru ceased altogether to come in? Already affairs were looking so threatening that, despite of all the needs of the campaign at home, reinforcements were being sent out to the New World from Cadiz and from Corunna: the Army of Galicia, as we shall presently see, was nearly put out of action in the spring of 1812 by the dispatch of an over-great proportion of its trained artillerymen to America[137]. Some French observers of the situation formed the idea that the Spaniards, if pressed to a decision between the possible loss of their colonies and the chance of obtaining a free hand by peace with Napoleon, might make the choice for empire rather than freedom. By acknowledging Joseph Bonaparte as king, and coming into the Napoleonic system, they might be able to turn their whole strength against the discontented Americans. This idea had one fatal error: any Spaniard could see that submission to France meant war with Great Britain: and then the way across the Atlantic would be closed. The British government would be forced into an alliance with the colonists; it had already thought of this device in the old days before Napoleon’s invasion of the Peninsula. Whitelock’s unhappy Buenos Ayres expedition in 1807 had been sent out precisely to take advantage of the discontent of the Americans, and in the hope that they would rise against the mother country if promised assistance. The adventurer Miranda had spent much time in pressing this policy on the Portland cabinet. Whitelock’s descent on the Rio de la Plata, it is true, had been as disappointing in the political as in the military line: he had got no help whatever from the disaffected colonists. But feeling in America had developed into much greater bitterness since 1807: in 1812 actual insurrection had already broken out. British aid would not, this time, be rejected: the malcontents would buy it by the grant of liberal trading concessions, which the Cadiz government, even in its worst time of trouble, had steadily refused to grant. There was every chance, therefore, that a policy of submission to Napoleon would ensure the loss of America even more certainly and more rapidly than a persistence in the present war. It does not seem that any person of importance at Cadiz ever took into serious consideration the idea of throwing up the struggle for independence, in order to obtain the opportunity of dealing with the American question.
The idea, however, was in the air. This was the time at which King Joseph made his last attempt to open up secret negotiation with the patriots. His own condition was unhappy enough, as has been sufficiently shown in an earlier chapter: but he was well aware that the outlook of his enemies was no less gloomy. One of the numerous—and usually impracticable—pieces of advice which his brother had sent him was the suggestion that he should assemble some sort of a Cortes, and then, posing as a national king, try to open up communications with the Cadiz government, setting forth the somewhat unconvincing thesis that Great Britain, and not France, was the real enemy of Spanish greatness. The idea of calling a Cortes fell through: the individuals whom Joseph could have induced to sit in it would have been so few, so insignificant, and so unpopular, that such a body could only have provoked contempt[138]. But an attempt was made to see if anything could be done at Cadiz: the inducement which Joseph was authorized to offer to the patriots was that immediately on his recognition as a constitutional king by the Cortes—and a constitution was to be drawn up in haste at Madrid—the French army should retire from Spain, and the integrity of the realm should be guaranteed. Napoleon even made a half-promise to give up Catalonia, though he had practically annexed it to his empire in the previous year[139].
Joseph and his ministers had no confidence either in the Emperor’s sincerity in making these offers, or in the likelihood of their finding any acceptance among the patriots. He sent, however, to Cadiz as his agent a certain Canon La Peña, a secret Afrancesado, but a brother of Manuel La Peña, the incapable general who had betrayed Graham at Barrosa. This officer was on his trial at the moment for his misbehaviour on that occasion, and the canon pretended to have come to assist him in his day of trouble on grounds of family affection. It would seem that he sounded certain persons but with small effect. Toreno, who was present in Cadiz at the time, and well acquainted with every intrigue that was in progress, says that the Regency never heard of the matter, and that very few members of the Cortes knew what La Peña was doing. It seems that he had conversations with certain freemasons, who were connected with lodges in Madrid that were under French influence, and apparently with one member of the ministry. ‘I do not give his name,’ says the historian, ‘because I have no documentary proof to bear out the charge, but moral proof I have[140].’ Be this as it may, the labours of La Peña do not seem to have been very fruitful, and the assertion made by certain French historians, and by Napoleon himself in the Mémorial de Ste-Hélène, that the Cortes would have proceeded to treat with Joseph, but for Wellington’s astonishing successes in the spring of 1812, has little or no foundation. As Toreno truly observes, any open proposal of the sort would have resulted in the tearing to pieces by the populace of the man hardy enough to make it. The intrigue had no more success than the earlier mission of Sotelo, which has been spoken of in another place[141]. But it lingered on, till the battle of Salamanca in July, and the flight of Joseph from Madrid in August, proved, to any doubters that there may have been, that the French cause was on the wane[142]. One of the most curious results of this secret negotiation was that Soult, hearing that the King’s emissary was busy at Cadiz, and not knowing that it was at Napoleon’s own suggestion that the experiment was being made, came to the conclusion that Joseph was plotting to abandon his brother, and to make a private peace with the Cortes, on condition that he should break with France and be recognized as king. He wrote, as we shall presently see, to denounce him to Napoleon as a traitor. Hence came no small friction in the following autumn.
These secret intrigues fell into a time of keen political strife at Cadiz—the famous Constitution, which was to cause so much bickering in later years, was being drafted, discussed, and passed through the Cortes in sections, all through the autumn of 1811 and the winter of 1811-12. The Liberals and the Serviles fought bitterly over almost every clause, and during their disputes the anti-national propaganda of the handful of Afrancesados passed almost unnoticed. It is impossible in a purely military history to relate the whole struggle, and a few words as to its political bearings must suffice.
The Constitution was a strange amalgam of ancient Spanish national tradition, of half-understood loans from Great Britain and America, and of political theory borrowed from France. Many of its framers had obviously studied the details of the abortive ‘limited monarchy’ which had been imposed on Louis XVI in the early days of the French Revolution. From this source came the scheme which limited within narrow bounds the sovereign’s power in the Constitution. The system evolved was that of a king whose main constitutional weapon was that right of veto on legislation which had proved so unpopular in France. He was to choose ministers who, like those of the United States of America, were not to sit in parliament, nor to be necessarily dependent on a party majority in the house, though they were to be responsible to it. There was to be but one Chamber, elected not directly by the people—though universal suffrage was introduced—but by notables chosen by the parishes in local primary assemblies, who again named district notables, these last nominating the actual members for the Cortes.
The right of taxation was vested in the Chamber, and the Ministry was placed at its mercy by the power of refusing supply. The regular army was specially subjected to the Chamber and not to the King, though the latter was left some power with regard to calling out or disbanding the local militia which was to form the second line in the national forces—at present it was in fact non-existent, unless the guerrillero bands might be considered to represent it.
The most cruel blows were struck not only at the King’s power but at his prestige. A clause stating that all treaties or grants made by him while in captivity were null and void was no doubt necessary—there was no knowing what documents Napoleon might not dictate to Ferdinand. But it was unwise to formulate in a trenchant epigram that ‘the nation is free and independent, not the patrimony of any family or person,’ or that ‘the people’s obligation of obedience ceases when the King violates the laws.’ And when, after granting their sovereign a veto on legislation, the Constitution proceeded to state that the veto became inoperative after the Cortes had passed any act in three successive sessions, it became evident that the King’s sole weapon was to be made ineffective. ‘Sovereignty,’ it was stated, ‘is vested essentially in the nation, and for this reason the nation alone has the right to establish its fundamental laws.’ But the most extraordinary attack on the principle of legitimate monarchy was a highhanded resettlement of the succession to the throne, in which the regular sequence of next heirs was absolutely ignored. If King Ferdinand failed to leave issue, the crown was to go to his brother Don Carlos: if that prince also died childless, the Constitution declared that the infante Don Francisco and his sister the Queen of Etruria were both to be passed over. No definite reasons were given in the act of settlement for this astonishing departure from the natural line of descent. The real meaning of the clause concerning Don Francisco was that many suspected him of being the son of Godoy and not of Charles IV[143]. As to the Queen of Etruria, she had been in her younger days a docile tool of Napoleon, and had lent herself very tamely to his schemes. But it is said that the governing cause of her exclusion from the succession was not so much her own unpopularity, as the incessant intrigues of her sister Carlotta, the wife of the regent João of Portugal, who had for a long time been engaged in putting forward a claim to be elected as sole regent of Spain. She had many members of the Cortes in her pay, and their influence was directed to getting her name inserted in the list above that of her brother in the succession-roll, and to the disinheritance of her sister also. Her chance of ever reaching the throne was not a very good one, as both Ferdinand and Carlos were still young, and could hardly be kept prisoners at Valençay for ever. It is probable that the real object of the manœvres was rather to place her nearer to the regency of Spain in the present crisis, than to seat her upon its throne at some remote date. For the regency was her desire, though the crown too would have been welcome, and sometimes not only the anti-Portuguese party in the Cortes, but Wellington and his brother Henry Wellesley, the Ambassador at Cadiz, were afraid that by patience and by long intrigue her partisans might achieve their object.
Wellington was strongly of opinion that a royal regent at Cadiz would be most undesirable. The personal influences of a camarilla, surrounding an ambitious but incapable female regent, would add another difficulty to the numerous problems of the relations between England and Spain, which were already sufficiently tiresome.
This deliberate humiliation of the monarchy, by clauses accentuated by phrases of insult, which angered, and were intended to anger, the Serviles, was only accomplished after long debate, in which protests of the most vigorous sort were made by many partisans of the old theory of Spanish absolutism. Some spoke in praise of the Salic Law, violated by the mention of Carlotta as heiress to the throne, others (ignoring rumours as to his paternity) defended Don Francisco, as having been by his youth exempted from the ignominies of Bayonne, and dwelt on the injustice of his fate. But the vote went against them by a most conclusive figure.
The majority in the Cortes, which made such parade of its political liberalism, did not pursue its theories into the realm of religion. After reading its fulsome declarations in favour of freedom, it is astounding to note the black intolerance of the clause which declares not only, as might naturally be expected, that ‘the religion of the Spanish nation is, and ever shall be, the Catholic Apostolic Roman, the one true faith,’ but that ‘the nation defends it by wise laws, forbidding the exercise of any other.’ Schism and unorthodoxy still remained political as well as ecclesiastical crimes, no less than in the time of Philip II. The Liberals, despite of murmurs by the Serviles, refused to recreate the Inquisition, but this was as far as their conception of religious freedom went.
Contemplating this exhibition of mediaeval intolerance, it is impossible to rate at any very high figure the ostentatious liberalism which pervades the greater part of the Constitution. We are bound to recognize in it merely the work of a party of ambitious politicians, who desired to secure control of the state-machine for themselves, and to exclude the monarchy from all share in its manipulation. No doubt any form of limited government was better than the old royal bureaucracy. But this particular scheme went much farther than the needs or the possibilities of the time, and was most unsuited for a country such as the Spain of 1812. When its meaning began to be understood in the provinces, it commanded no enthusiasm or respect. Indeed, outside the Cortes itself the only supporters that it possessed were the populace of Cadiz and a few other great maritime towns. Considered as a working scheme it had the gravest faults, especially the ill-arranged relations between the ministers (who did not form a real cabinet) and the Chamber, in which they were prohibited from sitting. In 1814 Lord Castlereagh observed, with great truth, that he could now say from certain experience, that in practice as well as in theory the Constitution of 1812 was one of the worst among the modern productions of its kind[144].
Among the many by-products of the Constitution was a change in the membership of the Regency. The old ‘trinitarian’ body composed of Blake, Agar, and Cisgar, had long been discredited, and proposals for its dissolution had been debated, even before its further continuance was rendered impossible by Blake’s surrender to the French at Valencia in the earliest days of 1812. A furious discussion in the Cortes had ended in a vote that no royal personage should be a member of any new regency, so that the pretensions of the Princess of Portugal were finally discomfited. The new board consisted of the Duke of Infantado, Joaquim Mosquera, a member of the Council of the Indies, Admiral Villavicencio, military governor of Cadiz, Ignacio Rodriguez de Rivas, and Henry O’Donnell, Conde de la Bispal, the energetic soldier whose exploits in Catalonia have been set forth in the last volume of this book. He was the only man of mark in the new regency: Infantado owed his promotion to his rank and wealth, and the fact that he had been the trusted friend of Ferdinand VII. He possessed a limited intelligence and little education, and was hardly more than a cipher, with a distinct preference for ‘Serviles’ rather than for Liberals. Villavicencio had no military reputation, but had been an energetic organizer, and a fairly successful governor during the siege of Cadiz. Mosquera and Rivas were elected mainly because they were of American birth—their choice was intended to conciliate the discontented colonists. Neither of them was entitled by any great personal merit to the promotion which was thrust upon him. Henry O’Donnell, now at last recovered from the wound which had laid him on a sick bed for so many months in 1811[145], was both capable and energetic, but quarrelsome and provocative: he belonged to that class of men who always irritate their colleagues into opposition, by their rapid decisions and imperious ways, especially when those colleagues are men of ability inferior to their own. The Duke of Infantado was absent for some time after his election—he had been serving as ambassador in London. Of the other four Regents two ranked as ‘Serviles,’ two as Liberals, a fact which told against their efficiency as a board. They had little strength to stand out against the Cortes, whose jealousy against any power in the State save its own was intense. On the whole it may be said that the substitution of the five new Regents for the three old ones had no great political consequences. The destiny of the patriot cause was not in the hands of the executive, but of the turbulent, faction-ridden, and ambitious legislative chamber, an ideally bad instrument for the conduct of a difficult and dangerous war. Fortunately it was neither the Regency nor the Cortes whose actions were to settle the fate of the campaign of 1812, but purely and solely Wellington and the Anglo-Portuguese army. The intrigues of Cadiz turned out to be a negligible quantity in the course of events.
In Lisbon at this time matters were much more quiet than they had been a little while back. The Portuguese government had abandoned any overt opposition to Wellington, such as had been seen in 1810, when the Patriarch and the President Souza had given him so much trouble. The expulsion of Masséna from Portugal had justified the policy of Wellington, and almost silenced his critics. He had not even found it necessary to press for the removal of the men whom he distrusted from the Council of Regency[146], in which the word of his loyal coadjutor, Charles Stuart, who combined the rather incompatible functions of British Ambassador and Regent, was now supreme. Open opposition had ceased, but Wellington complained that while compliance was always promised, ‘every measure which I propose is frittered away to nothing, the form and the words remain, but the spirit of the measure is taken away in the execution[147].’ This was, he remarked, the policy of the Portuguese government: they no longer refused him anything; but if they thought that any of his demands might offend either the Prince Regent at Rio Janeiro or the popular sentiment of the Portuguese nation, they carried out his proposals in such a dilatory fashion, and with so many exceptions and excuses, that he failed to obtain what he had expected.
In this there was a good deal of injustice. Wellington does not always seem to have realized the abject poverty which four years of war had brought upon Portugal. The Regency calculated that, on account of falling revenue caused by the late French invasion, for 1812 they could only count on 12,000,000 cruzados novos of receipts[148]—this silver coin was worth about 2s. 6d. sterling, so that the total amounted to about £1,500,000. Of this three-fourths, or 9,000,000 cruzados, was set aside for the army, the remainder having to sustain all the other expenses of the State—justice, civil administration, roads, navy, &c. The British subsidy had been raised to £2,000,000 a year, but it was paid with the utmost irregularity: in one month of 1811 the Portuguese treasury had received only £6,000, in another only £20,000, instead of the £166,000 promised[149]. When such arrears accumulated, it was no wonder that the soldiers starved and the magazines ran low. It was calculated that to keep the army up to its full numbers, and to supply all military needs efficiently, 45,000,000 cruzados a year were required. Taking the British subsidy as equalling 16,000,000, and the available national contribution at 9,000,000 cruzados, there was little more than half the required sum available. This Portuguese calculation appears to be borne out by the note of Beresford’s chief of the staff, D’Urban, in February 1812. ‘The Marshal at Lisbon finds that, after a perfect investigation, it appears that the expenditure must be nearly £6,000,000—the means at present £3,500,000! Nous verrons.’
It is clear that the Portuguese government must have shrunk from many of Wellington’s suggestions on account of mere lack of resources. A third of the country had been at one time or another overrun by the French—the provinces north of the Douro in 1809, the Beira and northern Estremadura in 1810-11. It would take long years before they were in a position to make their former contributions to the expenses of the State. It was impossible to get over this hard fact: but Wellington thought that a rearrangement of taxes, and an honest administration of their levy, would produce a much larger annual revenue than was being raised in 1812. He pointed out, with some plausibility, that British money was being poured into Portugal by millions and stopped there: some one—the merchant and contractor for the most part—must be making enormous profits and accumulating untold wealth. Moreover he had discovered cases of the easy handling of the rich and influential in the matter of taxation, while the peasantry were being drained of their last farthing. Such little jobs were certain to occur in an administration of the ancien régime: fidalgos and capitalists knew how to square matters with officials at Lisbon. ‘A reform in the abuses of the Customs of Lisbon and Oporto, a more equal and just collection of the Income Tax on commercial property, particularly in those large and rich towns [it is scandalous to hear of the fortunes made by the mercantile classes owing to the war, and to reflect that they contribute practically nothing to bear its burdens], a reform of the naval establishment and the arsenal, would make the income equal to the expenditure, and the government would get on without calling upon Great Britain at every moment to find that which, in the existing state of the world, cannot be procured, viz. money[150].’ So wrote Wellington, who was always being irritated by discovering that the magazines of Elvas or Almeida were running low, or that recruits were not rejoining their battalions because there was no cash to arm or clothe them, or that troops in the field were getting half-rations, unless they were on the British subsidy list.
No doubt Wellington was right in saying that there was a certain amount of jobbery in the distribution of taxation, and that more could have been raised by a better system. But Portuguese figures of the time seem to make it clear that even if a supernatural genius had been administering the revenue instead of the Conde de Redondo, all could not have been obtained that was demanded. The burden of the war expenses was too heavy for an impoverished country, with no more than two and a half million inhabitants, which was compelled to import a great part of its provisions owing to the stress of war. The state of Portugal may be estimated by the fact that in the twelve months between February 1811 and January 1812 £2,672,000 worth of imported corn, besides 605,000 barrels of flour, valued at £2,051,780 more, was brought into the country and sold there[151]. On the other hand the export of wine, with which Portugal used to pay for its foreign purchases, had fallen off terribly: in 1811 only 18,000 pipes were sold as against an average of 40,000 for the eight years before the outbreak of the Peninsular War. An intelligent observer wrote in 1812 that the commercial distress of the country might mainly be traced to the fact that nearly all the money which came into the country from England, great as was the sum, found its way to the countries from which Portugal was drawing food, mainly to the United States, from which the largest share of the wheat and flour was brought. ‘As we have no corresponding trade with America, the balance has been very great against this country: for the last three years this expenditure has been very considerable, without any return whatever, as the money carried to America has been completely withdrawn from circulation.’
The shrinkage in the amount of the gold and silver current in Portugal was as noticeable in these years as the same phenomenon in England, and (like the British) the Portuguese government tried to make up the deficiency by the issue of inconvertible paper money, which gradually fell in exchange value as compared with the metallic currency. The officers of the army, as well as all civil functionaries, were paid their salaries half in cash and half in notes—the latter suffered a depreciation of from 15 to 30 per cent. Among the cares which weighed on Wellington and Charles Stuart was that of endeavouring to keep the Regency from the easy expedient of issuing more and more of a paper currency which was already circulating at far less than its face value. This was avoided—fortunately for the Portuguese people and army, no less than for the Anglo-Portuguese alliance.
After all, the practical results of the efforts made by the Portuguese government were invaluable. Wellington could not have held his ground, much less have undertaken the offensive campaign of 1812, without the aid of the trusty auxiliaries that swelled his divisions to normal size. Without their Portuguese brigades most of them would have been mere skeletons of 3,000 or 4,000 men. Beresford’s army was almost up to its full establishment in January 1812—there were 59,122 men on the rolls, when recruits, sick, men on detachment, and the regiment lent for the succour of Cadiz are all counted. Deducting, beyond these, the garrisons of Elvas, Abrantes, Almeida, and smaller places, as also the dismounted cavalry left in the rear[152], there were over 30,000 men for the fighting-line, in ten brigades of infantry, six regiments of cavalry, and eight field-batteries. Beresford, lately entrusted by orders from Rio Janeiro with still more stringent powers over the military establishment, was using them to the full. An iron hand kept down desertion and marauding, executions for each of those offences appear incessantly in the Ordens do Dia, which give the daily chronicle of the Portuguese head-quarters. In addition to the regular army it must be remembered that he had to manage the militia, of which as many as 52,000 men were under arms at one time or another in 1812. Counting the first and the second line together, there were 110,000 men enrolled—a fine total for a people of two and a half million souls.
Putting purely Portuguese difficulties aside, Wellington was much worried at this time by a trouble which concerned the British and not the local finances. This was the delay in the cashing of the ‘vales’ or bills for payment issued by the Commissary-General for food and forage bought from the peasantry. As long as they were settled at short intervals, no difficulty arose about them—they were indeed treated as negotiable paper, and had passed from hand to hand at a lesser discount than the inconvertible Portuguese government papers. But all through the year 1811 the interval between the issue of the ‘vale’ and its payment in cash at Lisbon had been growing longer, and an uncomfortable feeling was beginning to spread about the country-side. The peasantry were growing suspicious, and were commencing to sell the bills, for much less than their face value, to speculators who could afford to wait for payment. To recoup themselves for their loss they were showing signs of raising prices all round. Fortunately they were a simple race, and communication between districts was slow and uncertain, so that no general tendency of this sort was yet prevalent, though the symptoms were making themselves visible here and there. Hence came Wellington’s constant applications for more cash from England at shorter notice. Late in the spring he devised a scheme by which interest at 5 per cent. was to be paid by the Commissary-General on bonds or certificates representing money or money’s worth advanced to the British army, till the principal was repaid—two years being named as the period after which the whole sum must be refunded. This was a desperate measure, an endeavour to throw forward payment on to a remote future, ‘when it is not probable that there will be the same difficulty in procuring specie in England to send abroad as there is at the present moment.’ The plan[153] was never tried, and was not good: for how could small creditors of the English army be expected to stand out of their money—representing the price of their crops or their cattle—for so long a period as two years, even if they were, in the meantime, receiving interest on what was really their working capital? Wellington himself remarked, when broaching the scheme to Lord Liverpool, that there remained the difficulty that no one could look forward, and say that the British army would still be in the Peninsula two years hence. If it had left Portugal—whether victorious and pushing towards the Pyrenees, or defeated and driven back on to Great Britain—how would the creditors communicate with the Commissary-General, their debtor? They could only be referred to London, to which they would have no ready access: indeed many of them would not know where, or what, London was. That such an idea should have been set forward only shows the desperate financial situation of the British army.
We shall have to be referring to this problem at several later points of the history of the campaign of 1812[154]: at the opening of the invasion of Leon in June it reached its worst point, just before the great victory of Salamanca. But it was always present, and when Wellington’s mind was not occupied with deductions as to the manœuvres of French marshals, it may undoubtedly be said that his main preoccupation was the normally depleted state of the military chest, into which dollars and guineas flowed, it is true, in enormous quantities, but only to be paid out at once, in settling arrears many months old. These were never fully liquidated, and began to accumulate again, with distressing rapidity, after every tardy settlement.
Whig historians have often tried to represent Wellington’s financial difficulties as the fault of the home government, and it is easy to pick passages from his dispatches in which he seems to assert that he is not being supported according to his necessities. But a nearer investigation of the facts will not bear out this easy theory, the product of party spite. The Whigs of 1811-12 were occupied in decrying the Peninsular War as a failure, in minimizing the successes of Wellington, and in complaining that the vast sums of money lavished on his army were wasted. Napoleon was invincible, peace was the only way out of disaster, even if the peace must be somewhat humiliating. It was unseemly for their representatives, twenty years after, to taunt the Perceval and Liverpool ministries with having stinted Wellington in his hour of need. We have learnt to estimate at their proper value tirades against ‘the administration which was characterized by all the corruption and tyranny of Mr. Pitt’s system, without his redeeming genius.’ We no longer think that the Napoleonic War was waged ‘to repress the democratic principle,’ nor that the cabinets which maintained it were ‘the rapacious usurpers of the people’s rights[155].’
Rather, in the spirit of Mr. Fortescue’s admirable volume on British Statesmen of the Great War, shall we be prone to stand amazed at the courage and resolution of the group of British ministers who stood out, for long years and against tremendous odds, to defeat the tyrant of Europe and to preserve the British Empire. ‘On the one side was Napoleon, an autocrat vested with such powers as great genius and good fortune have rarely placed in the hands of one man, with the resources of half Europe at his disposition, and an armed force unsurpassed in strength and devotion ready to march to the ends of the world to uphold his will. On the other were these plain English gentlemen, with not so much as a force of police at their back, with a population by nature five times as turbulent as it is now, and in the manufacturing districts inflamed alike by revolutionary teaching and by real distress, with an Ireland always perilously near revolt, with a House of Commons unreformed indeed, but not on that account containing a less factious, mischievous, and obstructive opposition than any other House of Commons during a great war. In face of all these difficulties they had to raise armies, maintain fleets, construct and pursue a military policy, and be unsuccessful at their peril. Napoleon might lose whole armies with impunity: five thousand British soldiers beaten and captured would have brought any British minister’s head perilously near the block. Such were the difficulties that confronted Perceval, Liverpool, and Castlereagh: yet for their country’s sake they encountered them without flinching[156].’
The winter of 1811-12 was not quite the darkest hour: the Russian war was looming in the near future, and Napoleon was already beginning to withdraw troops from Spain in preparation for it. No longer therefore, as in 1810 and the earlier half of 1811, was there a high probability that the main bulk of the French armies, under the Emperor himself, might be turned once more against the Peninsula. It was all but certain that England would soon have allies, and not stand practically alone in the struggle, as she had done ever since Wagram. Nevertheless, even with the political horizon somewhat brightened in the East, the time was a sufficiently anxious one. In Great Britain, as in the rest of Europe, the harvest of 1811 had been exceptionally bad, and the high price of bread, coinciding with much unemployment, was causing not only distress but wide-spread turbulence in the manufacturing districts. This was the year of the first outbreak of the ‘Luddites,’ and of their senseless exploits in the way of machine-smashing. The worst stringency of domestic troubles coincided with the gradual disappearance of the external danger from the ambition of Napoleon.
In addition it must be remembered that the Perceval cabinet, on which all the responsibilities fell, was by no means firmly established in power. When it first took office many politicians believed that it could not last for a single year. All through 1811 the Prince Regent had been in secret negotiation with the Whigs, and would gladly have replaced his ministers with some sort of a coalition government. And in January 1812 Lord Wellesley, by far the most distinguished man in the cabinet, resigned his post as Foreign Minister. He asserted that he did so because his colleagues had failed to accept all his plans for the support of his brother and the Peninsular army: and no doubt this was to a certain extent true. Yet it cannot be said that, either before or after his resignation, the Ministry had neglected Wellington; in 1811 they had doubled his force of cavalry, and sent him about a dozen new battalions of infantry. It was these reinforcements which made the victories of 1812 possible, and in that year the stream of reinforcements did not cease—nine more infantry regiments came out, mostly in time for the great crisis in June[157]. In the autumn the dispatch of further succours had become difficult, because of the outbreak of the American war, which diverted of necessity to Canada many units that might otherwise have gone to Spain. It is impossible to maintain that Wellington was stinted of men: money was the difficulty. And even as regards money—which had to be gold or silver, since paper was useless in the Peninsula—the resources placed at his disposal were much larger than in previous years, though not so large as he demanded, nor as the growing scale of the war required.
It is difficult to acquit Wellesley of factiousness with regard to his resignation, and the most damaging document against him is the apologia drawn up by his devoted adherent Shawe[158], in the belief that it afforded a complete justification for his conduct: many of the words and phrases are the Marquess’s own. From this paper no one can fail to deduce that it was not so much a quixotic devotion to his brother’s interests, as an immoderate conception of his own dignity and importance that made Wellesley resign. He could not stand the free discussion and criticism of plans and policies which is essential in a cabinet. ‘Lord Wellesley has always complained, with some justice, that his suggestions were received as those of a mere novice.... His opinions were overruled, and the opposition he met with could only proceed from jealousy, or from a real contempt for his judgement. It seemed to him that they were unwilling to adopt any plan of his, lest it might lead to his assuming a general ascendancy in the Cabinet.... He said that he took another view of the situation: the Government derived the most essential support from his joining it, because it was considered as a pledge that the war would be properly supported.... “The war is popular, and any government that will support Lord Wellington properly will stand. I do not think the war is properly supported, and I cannot, as an honest man, deceive the nation by remaining in office.” ... It is needless to particularize all the points of difference between Lord Wellesley and his colleagues: Spain was the main point, but he also disapproved of their obstinate adherence to the Orders in Council, and their policy towards America and in Sicily’—not to speak of Catholic Emancipation.
These are the words of injured pride, not of patriotism. The essential thing at the moment was that the war in Spain should be kept up efficiently. By resigning, Wellesley intended to break up the Ministry, and of this a probable result might have been the return to office of the Whigs, whose policy was to abandon the Peninsula and make peace with Napoleon. Wellesley’s apologia acknowledges that his influence in the Cabinet had brought about, on more occasions than one, an increase of the support given to his brother, e.g. his colleagues had given in about additions to the Portuguese subsidy, and about extra reinforcements to the army. This being so, it was surely criminal in him to retire, when he found that some of his further suggestions were not followed. Would the wrecking of the Perceval cabinet, and the succession of the Whigs to power, have served Wellington or the general cause of the British Empire?
Wellington himself saw the situation with clear eyes, and in a letter, in which a touch of his sardonic humour can be detected, wrote in reply to his brother’s announcement of his resignation that ‘In truth the republic of a cabinet is but little suited to any man of taste or of large views[159].’ There lay the difficulty: the great viceroy loved to dictate, and hated to hear his opinions criticized. Lord Liverpool, in announcing the rupture to Wellington in a letter of a rather apologetic cast, explains the situation in a very few words: ‘Lord Wellesley says generally that he has not the weight in the Government which he expected, when he accepted office.... The Government, though a cabinet, is necessarily inter pares, in which every member must expect to have his opinions and his dispatches canvassed, and this previous friendly canvass of opinions and measures appears necessary, under a constitution where all public acts of ministers will be hostilely debated in parliament.’ The Marquess resented all criticism whatever.
The ministers assured Wellington that his brother’s resignation would make no difference in their relations with himself, and invited him to write as freely to Lord Castlereagh, who succeeded Wellesley at the Foreign Office, as to his predecessor. The assurance of the Cabinet’s good will and continued confidence was received—as it had been given—in all sincerity. Not the least change in Wellington’s relations with the Ministry can be detected from his dispatches. Nor can it be said that the support which he received from home varied in the least, after his brother’s secession from the Cabinet. Even the grudging Napier is forced to concede this much, though he endeavours to deprive the Perceval ministry of any credit, by asserting that their only chance of continuance in office depended on the continued prosperity of Wellington. Granting this, we must still conclude that Wellesley’s resignation, even if it produced no disastrous results—as it well might have done—was yet an unhappy exhibition of pride and petulance. A patriotic statesman should have subordinated his own amour propre to the welfare of Great Britain, which demanded that a strong administration, pledged to the continuance of war with Napoleon, should direct the helm of the State. He did his best to wreck Perceval’s cabinet, and to put the Whigs in power.
The crisis in the Ministry passed off with less friction and less results than most London observers had expected, and Lord Liverpool turned out to be right when he asserted that in his opinion[160] it would be of no material prejudice to the Perceval government. Castlereagh, despite of his halting speech and his involved phrases, was a tower of strength at the Foreign Office, and certainly replaced Wellesley with no disadvantage to the general policy of Great Britain.
Here the jealousies and bickerings in London may be left for a space. We shall only need to turn back for a moment to ministerial matters when, at midsummer, the whole situation had been transformed, for France and Russia were at last openly engaged in war, a great relief to British statesmen, although at the same time a new trouble was arising in the West to distract their attention. For the same month that started Napoleon on his way to Moscow saw President Madison’s declaration of war on Great Britain, and raised problems, both on the high seas and on the frontiers of Canada, that would have seemed heart-breaking and insoluble if the strength of France had not been engaged elsewhere. But the ‘stab in the back,’ as angry British politicians called it, was delivered too late to be effective.