History of the war in the Peninsula, Vol. 6 of 6

‘I intend to move towards Soult and attack him, if I should be able to make any arrangement in the neighbourhood of Abrantes which can give me any security for the safety of this place during my absence to the northward.

‘I am not quite certain, however, that I should not do more good to the general cause by combining with general Cuesta in an operation against Victor; and I believe I should prefer the last if Soult was not in possession of a part of this country very fertile in resources, and of the town of Oporto, and if to concert the operations with Cuesta would not take time which might be profitably employed in operations against Soult. I think it probable, however, that Soult will not remain in Portugal when I shall pass the Mondego. If he does I shall attack him. If he should retire, I am convinced that it would be most advantageous for the common cause that we should remain upon the defensive in the north of Portugal, and act vigorously in co-operation with Cuesta against Victor.

‘An operation against Victor is attended by these advantages—if successful it effectually relieves Seville and Lisbon, and in case affairs should take such a turn as to enable the King’s ministers to make another great effort for the relief of Spain, the corps under my command in Portugal will not be removed to such a distance from the scene of operation as to render its co-operation impossible; and we may hope to see the effect of a great effort made by a combined and concentrated force.’

The assertion of the reviewer that I have underrated Cuesta’s force, inasmuch as it was only 19,000 infantry and 1,500 cavalry, instead of 30,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, as I have stated it to be, and that consequently the greatest numbers could not be brought to bear on Victor, is one of those curious examples of elaborate misrepresentation in which this writer abounds. For first, admitting that Cuesta had only 20,000 men, sir Arthur would have brought 24,000 to aid him, and Victor had only 30,000. The allies would then have had double the number opposed to Soult. But the pith of the misrepresentation lies in this, that the reviewer has taken Cuesta’s account of his actual force on the 23d of April, and suppresses the facts, that reinforcements were continually pouring into him at that time, and that he actually did advance against Victor with rather greater numbers than those stated by me.

‘Cuesta is at Llerena, collecting a force again, which it is said will soon be 25,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry.’

‘They (Victor’s troops) have in their front a Spanish army with general Cuesta at Llerena, which army was defeated in the month of March, and has since been reinforced to the amount of twenty thousand men.’... ‘They will be attacked by Cuesta, who is receiving reinforcements.’

‘We have here 3,000 cavalry, considered as part of the army of Estremadura (under Cuesta). Cuesta has with him 4,000 cavalry.’

‘We had every reason to believe that the French army consisted of about 27,000, of which 7,000 were cavalry; and the combined British and Portuguese force which I was in hopes I should have enabled to march upon this expedition would have amounted to about 24,000 men.’

‘The army of Cuesta, which crossed the Tagus thirty-six or thirty-eight thousand strong, does not now consist of 30,000.’

‘The Spanish army under General Cuesta had been reinforced with cavalry and infantry, and had been refitted with extraordinary celerity after the action of Medellin.’

All the reviewer’s remarks about Cuesta’s numbers, and about the unfordable nature of the Tagus, are a reproduction of misrepresentations and objections before exposed and refuted by me in my controversy with marshal Beresford; but as it is now attempted to support them by garbled extracts from better authorities, I will again and completely expose and crush them. This will however be more conveniently done farther on. Meanwhile I repeat, that the Tagus is only unfordable during the winter, and not then if there is a few days dry weather; that six months of the year it is always fordable in many places, and as low down as Salvaterra near Lisbon; finally, that my expression, ‘a river fordable at almost every season,’ is strictly correct, and is indeed not mine but lord Wellington’s expression. To proceed with the rest:—

Without offering any proof beyond his own assertion, the reviewer charges me with having exaggerated the importance of D’Argenton’s conspiracy for the sole purpose of excusing Soult’s remissness in guarding the Douro. But my account of that conspiracy was compiled from the duke of Wellington’s letters—some public, some private addressed to me; and from a narrative of the conspiracy written expressly for my guidance by major-general sir James Douglas, who was the officer employed to meet and conduct D’Argenton to and from the English army;—from Soult’s own official report; from Le Noble’s history; and from secret information which I received from a French officer who was himself one of the principal movers—not of that particular conspiracy—but of a general one of which the one at Oporto was but a branch.

Again, the reviewer denies that I am correct in saying, that Soult thought Hill’s division had been disembarked from the ocean; that he expected the vessels would come to the mouth of the Douro; and that considering that river secure above the town his personal attention was directed to the line below Oporto. Let Soult and Le Noble answer this.

‘In the night of the 9th and 10th the enemy made a considerable disembarkation at Aveiro, and another at Ovar. The 10th, at daybreak, they attacked the right flank of general Franceschi, while the column coming from Lisbon by Coimbra attacked him in front.’

‘The house occupied by the general-in-chief was situated beyond the town on the road to the sea. The site was very high, and from thence he could observe the left bank of the Douro from the convent to the sea. His orders, given on the 8th, to scour the left bank of the river, those which he had expedited in the morning, and the position of his troops, rendered him confident that no passage would take place above Oporto; he believed that the enemy, master of the sea, would try a disembarkation near the mouth of the Douro.’

Such is the value of this carping disingenuous critic’s observations on this point; and I shall now demolish his other misstatements about the passage of the Douro.

1st. The poor barber’s share in the transaction is quite true; my authority is major-general sir John Waters who was the companion of the barber in the daring exploit of bringing over the boats. And if Waters had recollected his name, it is not the despicable aristocratic sneer of the reviewer about the ‘Plebeian’ that would have prevented me from giving it. 2d. The Barca de Avintas, where sir John Murray crossed, has already been shown by a reference to the maps and to lord Wellington’s despatch, to be not nine miles from the Serra Convent as the reviewer says, but three miles as I have stated: moreover, two Portuguese leagues would not make nine English miles. But to quit these minor points, the reviewer asks, ‘Why colonel Napier departed from the account of the events given in the despatch of sir Arthur Wellesley?’ This is the only decent passage in the whole review, and it shall have a satisfactory answer.

Public despatches, written in the hurry of the moment, immediately after the events and before accurate information can be obtained, are very subject to errors of detail, and are certainly not what a judicious historian would rely upon for details without endeavouring to obtain other information. In this case I discovered several discrepancies between the despatch and the accounts of eye-witnesses and actors written long afterwards and deliberately. I knew also, that the passage of the Douro, though apparently a very rash action and little considered in England, was a very remarkable exploit, prudent skilful and daring. Anxious to know the true secret of the success, I wrote to the duke of Wellington, putting a variety of questions relative to the whole expeditions. In return I received from him distinct answers, with a small diagram of the seminary and ground about it to render the explanation clear. Being thus put in possession of all the leading points relative to the passage of the Douro by the commanders on each side, for I had before got Soult’s, I turned to the written and printed statements of several officers engaged in the action for those details which the generals had not touched upon.

Now the principal objections of the reviewer to my statement are,—1st. That I have given too many troops to sir John Murray. 2d. That I have unjustly accused him of want of military hardihood. 3d. That I have erroneously described the cause of the loss sustained by the fourteenth dragoons in retiring from their charge. In reply I quote my authorities; and first, as to the numbers with Murray.

‘The right of the troops which passed over to the seminary, which in fact made an admirable tête de pont, was protected by the passage of the Douro higher up by lieut.-general sir John Murray and the king’s German legion, supported by other troops.’

Armed with this authority, I did set aside the despatch, because, though it said that Murray was sent with a battalion and a squadron, it did not say that he was not followed by others. And in lord Londonderry’s narrative I found the following passage:—

‘General Murray, too, who had been detached with his division to a ferry higher up, was fortunate enough to gain possession of as many boats as enabled him to pass over with two battalions of Germans and two squadrons of the fourteenth dragoons.’

And his lordship, further on, says, that he himself charged several times and with advantage at the head of those squadrons. His expression is ‘the dragoons from Murray’s corps.’

With respect to the loss of the dragoons sustained by having to fight their way back again, I find the following account in the narrative of sir James Douglas, written, as I have before said, expressly for my guidance:—

‘Young soldiers like young greyhounds run headlong on their prey; while experience makes old dogs of all sorts run cunning. Here two squadrons actually rode over the whole rear French guard, which laid down upon the road; and was, to use their own terms, passé sur le ventre: but no support to the dragoons being at hand no great execution was done; and the two squadrons themselves suffered severely in getting back again through the infantry.’

Thus, even in this small matter, the reviewer is not right. And now with the above facts fixed I shall proceed to rebut the charge of having calumniated sir John Murray.

First, the reviewers assertion, that Murray’s troops were never within several miles of the seminary, and that they would have been crushed by Soult if they had attacked the enemy, is evidently false from the following facts. Lord Wellington expressly says, in his answer to my questions quoted before,—That the right of the troops in the seminary was protected by the troops under Murray; which could not be if the latter were several miles off. Again, if the dragoons of Murray’s corps could charge repeatedly with advantage, the infantry and guns of that corps might have followed up the attack without danger upon a confused, flying, panic-stricken body of men who had been surprised and were at the same time taken both in flank and rear. But if Murray dared not with any prudence even approach the enemy,—if it were absolutely necessary for him to retire as he did,—what brought him there at all? Is the duke of Wellington a general to throw his troops wantonly into such a situation,—and on ground which his elevated post at the Serra Convent enabled him to command perfectly, and where the men and movements of both sides were as much beneath his eye as the men and movements on a chess-board? Bah!

But the fact is that a part of the Germans under Murray, aye!—a very small part! did actually engage the enemy with success. Major Beamish, in his ‘History of the German Legion,’ on the authority of one of the German officers’ journals, writes thus:—

‘The skirmishers of the first line under lieutenant Von Hölle, and two companies of the same regiment under ensign Hodenberg, were alone brought into fire. The skirmishers made several prisoners, and one rifleman (Henry Hauer) was lucky enough to capture a French lieutenant-colonel. Seven of the legion were wounded.’

Murray wanted hardihood. And it is no answer to say lord Wellington did not take notice of his conduct. A commander-in-chief is guided by many circumstances distinct from the mere military facts, and it might be, that, on this occasion he did not choose to judge rashly or harshly a man, who had other good qualities, for an error into which, perhaps, a very bold and able man might have fallen by accident. And neither would I have thus judged sir John Murray from this fact alone, although the whole army were disgusted at the time by his want of daring and openly expressed an unfavourable opinion of his military vigour. But when I find that the same want of hardihood was again apparent in him at Castalla, as I have shown in my fifth volume, and still more glaringly displayed by him at Taragona, as I shall show in my sixth volume, the matter became quite different, and the duty of the historian is to speak the truth even of a general, strange as that may and I have no doubt does appear to this reviewer.

Having disposed of this matter, I shall now set down some passages evincing the babbling shallowness and self-conceit of the critic, and beneath them my authorities, whereby it will appear that the big book containing all sir George does not know is increasing in bulk:—

‘Sir Arthur Wellesley was detained at Oporto neither by the instructions of the English Cabinet nor by his own want of generalship, but simply by the want of provisions.’—Review.

Indeed! Reader, mark the following question to, and answer from the duke of Wellington.

Answer.—‘The halt was made next day,—first, because the whole army had not crossed the Douro and none of its supplies and baggage had crossed. Secondly, on account of the great exertion and fatigue of the preceding days particularly the last. Thirdly, because we had no account of lord Beresford being in possession of Amarante, or even across the Douro; we having, in fact, out-marched everything. Fourthly, the horses and animals required a day’s rest as well as the men.’

And, in the answer to another question, the following observation occurs:—‘The relative numbers and the nature of the troops must be considered in all these things; and this fact moreover, that excepting to attain a very great object we could not risk the loss of a corps.’

I pass over the reviewer’s comments upon my description of Soult’s retreat, because a simple reference to my work will at once show their folly and falseness; but I beg to inform this acute and profound historical critic that the first field-marshal captured by an English general was marshal Tallard, and that the English general who captured him was called John, duke of Marlborough. And, with respect to his sneers about the ‘little river of Ruivaens;’ ‘Soult’s theatrical speech;’ ‘the use of the twenty-five horsemen;’ ‘the non-repairs of the Ponte Nova;’ and the ‘Romance composed by colonel Napier and Le Noble;’ I shall, in answer, only offer the following authorities, none of which, the reader will observe, are taken from Le Noble.

‘The 15th, in the morning, the enemy appeared one league from Braga; our column was entangled in the defile; the rain came down in torrents; and the wind was frightful. On reaching Salamanca we learned that the bridge of Ruivaens, over the little river (ruisseau) of that name was cut, and the passage guarded by 1,200 men with cannon. It was known also that the Ponte Nova on the route of Montelegre, which they had begun to destroy, was feebly guarded; and the marshal gave to major Dulong the command of 100 brave men, of his own choice, to carry it. The valiant Dulong under cover of the night reached the bridge, passed it notwithstanding the cuts in it, surprised the guard, and put to the sword those who could not escape. In four hours the bridge was repaired; general Loison passed it and marched upon the bridge of Misserella, near Villa da Ponte, where 800 Portuguese well retrenched defended the passage. A battalion and some brave men, again led by the intrepid Dulong, forced the abbatis entered the entrenchments and seized the bridge.’

‘The marshal held a council, at the end of which he called major Dulong. It was nine o’clock in the evening. “I have selected you from the army, he said to that brave officer, to seize the bridge of Ponte Nova which the enemy are now cutting: you must endeavour to surprise them. The time is favourable. Attack, vigorously with the bayonet you will succeed or you will die. I want no news save that of your success, send me no other report, your silence will be sufficient in a contrary case. Take a hundred men at your choice; they will be sufficient; add twenty-five dragoons, and kill their horses to make a rampart, if it be necessary, on the middle of the bridge to sustain yourself and remain master of the passage.”’

‘The major departed with determined soldiers and a Portuguese guide who was tied with the leather slings of the muskets. Arrived within pistol-shot of the bridge he saw the enemy cutting the last beam. It was then one o’clock the rain fell heavily and the enemy’s labourers being fatigued thought they might take some repose before they finished their work. The torrents descending from the mountains and the cavado itself made such a noise that the march of the French was not heard, the sentinel at the bridge was killed without giving any alarm, and Dulong with twenty-five grenadiers passed crawling on the beam, one of them fell into the cavado but happily his fall produced no effect. The enemy’s advanced post of twenty-four men was destroyed, &c. &c. The marshal, informed of this happy event, came up in haste with the first troops he could find to defend the bridge and accelerate the passage of the army; but the repairing was neither sufficiently prompt or solid to prevent many brave soldiers perishing. The marshal embraced major Dulong, saying to him, “I thank you in the name of France brave major; you have saved the army.”’

Then follows a detailed account of the Misserella bridge, or Saltador, and its abbatis and other obstacles; of Dulong’s attack; of his being twice repulsed; and of his carrying of the bridge, the Leaper as it was called, at the third assault, falling dreadfully wounded at the moment of victory; finally, of the care and devotion with which his soldiers carried him on their shoulders during the rest of the retreat. And the reader will observe that this account is not a mere description in the body of the work, but a separate paper in the Appendix, written by some officer evidently well acquainted with all the facts, perhaps Dulong himself, and for the express purpose of correcting the errors of detail in the body of that work. Theatrical to the critic, and even ridiculous it may likely enough appear. The noble courage and self-devotion of such a soldier as Dulong is a subject which no person will ever expect a Quarterly viewer to understand.

In the foregoing comments I have followed the stream of my own thoughts, rather than the order of the reviewer’s criticisms; I must therefore retrace my steps to notice some points which have been passed over. His observations about Zaragoza have been already disposed of in my reply to his first articles published in my fifth volume, but his comments upon Catalonian affairs shall now be noticed.

The assertion that lord Collingwood was incapable of judging of the efforts of the Catalans, although he was in daily intercourse with their chiefs, co-operating with their armies and supplying them with arms and stores, because he was a seaman, is certainly ingenious. It has just so much of pertness in it as an Admiralty clerk of the Melville school might be supposed to acquire by a long habit of official insolence to naval officers, whose want of parliamentary interest exposed them to the mortification of having intercourse with him. And it has just so much of cunning wisdom as to place it upon a par with that which dictated the inquiry which we have heard was sent out to sir John Warren during the late American war, namely, “whether light—very light frigates, could not sail up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario?” And with that surprising providence, which did send out birch-brooms and tanks to hold fresh water for the use of the ships on the said lake of Ontario. But quitting these matters, the reviewer insinuates what is absolutely untrue, namely, that I have only quoted lord Collingwood as authority for my statements about Catalonia. The readers of my work know that I have adduced in testimony the Spanish generals themselves, namely, Contreras, Lacy, and Rovira; the testimony of sir Edward Codrington, of sir Edward Pellew, of colonel Doyle, and of other Englishmen. That I have referred to St. Cyr, Suchet, Lafaille, and other French writers; that I have quoted Vacani and Cabane’s Histories, the first an Italian serving with the French army in Catalonia, the last a Spaniard and chief of the staff to the Catalan army: and now, to complete the reviewer’s discomfiture, I will add the duke of Wellington, who is a landsman and therefore according to this reviewer’s doctrine, entitled to judge:—

‘In Catalonia the resistance is more general and regular; but still the people are of a description with which your armies could not co-operate with any prospect of success, or even of safety. You see what Burghersh says of the Somatenes; and it is notorious that the Catalans have at all times been the most irregular, and the least to be depended upon of any of the Spaniards.’

So much for light frigates, birch-brooms, fresh-water tanks, and Collingwood’s incapacity to judge of the Catalans, because he was a seaman; and as for Reding’s complaints of the Spaniards when dying, they must go to sir George’s big book with this marginal note, that St. Cyr is not the authority. But for the grand flourish, the threat to prove at another time, ‘from Wellington’s despatches,’ that the Spaniards gave excellent intelligence and made no false reports, let the reader take the following testimony in anticipation:—

‘At present I have no intelligence whatever, excepting the nonsense I receive occasionally from ——; as the Spaniards have defeated all my attempts to obtain any by stopping those whom I sent out to make inquiries.’

‘I do not doubt that the force left in Estremadura does not exceed 8,000 infantry and 900 cavalry; and you have been made acquainted with the exact extent of it, because, the Duque del Albuquerque, who is appointed to command it, is interested in making known the truth; but they have lied about the cavalry ordered to the Duque del Parque.’

‘It might be advisable, however, to frighten the gentlemen at Seville with their own false intelligence.’

‘It is most difficult to obtain any information respecting roads, or any local circumstances, which must be considered in the decisions to be formed respecting the march of troops.’

1810. ‘We are sadly deficient in good information, and all the efforts which I have made to obtain it have failed; and all that we know is the movement of troops at the moment, or probably after it is made.’

‘I have had accounts from the marquis de la Romana: he tells me that the siege of Cadiz was raised on the 23d, which cannot be true.’

‘I believe there was no truth in the stories of the insurrection at Madrid.’

‘There is so far a foundation for the report of O’Donnel’s action, as that it appears that Suchet’s advanced guard was at Lerida on the 11th of April. It is doubtful, however, according to my experience of Spanish reports, whether O’Donnel was beaten or gained a victory.’

‘I recommend to you, however, to proceed with great caution in respect to intelligence transmitted to you by the marquis de la Romana, and all the Spanish officers. It is obvious there is nothing they wish for so much as to involve our troops in their operations. This is evident both from the letters of the marquis himself, and from the false reports made to lieutenant Heathcote of the firing heard from Badajos at Albuquerque.’

‘The circumstances which I have related above will show your Lordship that the military system of the Spanish nation is not much improved, and that it is not very easy to combine or regulate operations with a corps so ill-organised, in possession of so little intelligence, and upon whose actions no reliance can be placed. It will scarcely be credited that the first intelligence which general Mendizabal received of the assembling of the enemy’s troops at Seville was from hence.’

‘Mendizabal, &c. &c., have sent us so many false reports that I cannot make out what the French are doing.’

‘This is a part of the system on which all the Spanish authorities have been acting, to induce us to take a part in the desultory operations which they are carrying on. False reports and deceptions of every description are tried, and then popular insults, to show us what the general opinion is of our conduct.’

‘The Spaniards take such bad care of their posts, and have so little intelligence, that it is difficult to say by what troops the blow has been struck.’

‘It is strange that the governor of Ciudad Rodrigo should have no intelligence of the enemy’s movements near his garrison, of which we have received so many accounts.’

‘We hear also a great deal of Blake’s army in the Alpujarras, and of a corps from Valencia operating upon the enemy’s communications with Madrid; but I conclude that there is as little foundation for this intelligence as for that relating to the insurrection of Ronda.’

‘I enclose a letter from General Carrera, in which I have requested him to communicate with you. I beg you to observe, however, that very little reliance can be placed on the report made to you by any Spanish general at the head of a body of troops. They generally exaggerate on one side or the other; and make no scruple of communicating supposed intelligence, in order to induce those to whom they communicate it to adopt a certain line of conduct.’

The reader must be now somewhat tired of quotations; let us therefore turn for relaxation to the reviewer’s observations about light troops,—of which he seems indeed to know as much as the wise gentleman of the Admiralty did about the facility of sailing up the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario; but though that wise gentleman did not know much about sailing-craft, the reviewer knows something of another kind of craft, namely misrepresentation. Thus he quotes a passage from captain Kincaid’s amusing and clever work as if it told in his favour; whereas it in no manner supports his foolish insinuation—namely, that the 43d and 52d regiments of the light division were not light troops, never acted as such, and never skirmished! Were he to say as much to the lowest bugler of these corps, he would give him the fittest answer for his folly—that is to say, laugh in his face.

‘There are but two kinds of soldiers in the world’ said Napoleon, ‘the good and the bad.’

Now, the light division were not only good but, I will say it fearlessly, the best soldiers in the world. The three British regiments composing it had been formed by sir John Moore precisely upon the same system. There was no difference save in the colour of the riflemen’s jackets and the weapons which they carried. Captain Kincaid’s observation, quoted by the reviewer, merely says, what is quite true, that the riflemen fought in skirmishing order more frequently than the 43d and 52d did. Certainly they did, and for this very sufficient reason—their arms, the rifle and sword, did not suit any other formation; it is a defect in the weapon, which is inferior to the musket and bayonet, fitted alike for close or open order. Napoleon knew this so well that he had no riflemen in his army, strange as it may appear to those persons who have read so much about French riflemen. The riflemen of the light division could form line, columns, and squares—could move as a heavy body—could do, and did do everything that the best soldiers in the world ought to do; and in like manner the 52d and 43d regiments skirmished and performed all the duties of light troops with the same facility as the riflemen; but the difference of the weapon made it advisable to use the latter nearly always in open order: I do not, indeed, remember ever to have seen them act against the enemy either in line or square. Captain Kincaid is too sensible and too good a soldier, and far too honest a man, to serve the purpose of this snarling blockhead, who dogmatizes in defiance of facts and with a plenitude of pompous absurdity that would raise the bile of an alderman. Thus, after quoting from my work the numbers of the French army, he thus proceeds:—

‘Notwithstanding that this enormous force was pressing upon the now unaided Spanish people with all its weight, and acting against them with its utmost energy, it proved wholly unable to put down resistance.’—Review, page 497.

Now this relates to the period following sir John Moore’s death, which was on the 16th of January. That general’s fine movement upon Sahagun, and his subsequent retreat, had drawn the great bulk of the French forces towards Gallicia, and had paralyzed many corps. The war with Austria had drawn Napoleon himself and the imperial guards away from the Peninsula. Joseph was establishing his court at Madrid; Victor remained very inactive in Estremadura; Soult marched into Portugal;—in fine, this was precisely the period of the whole war in which the French army were most insert. Napoleon has fixed upon the four months of February, March, April, and May, 1809, as the period in which the King let the Peninsula slip from his feeble hands.

Let us see then what the Spaniards did during that time. And first it is false to say that they were unaided. They were aided against Victor by the vicinity of sir John Craddock’s troops; they were aided on the Gallician coast by an English squadron; they were aided on the Beira frontier, against Lapisse, by the Portuguese troops under sir Robert Wilson; they were aided on the Catalonian coast by lord Collingwood’s fleet; they were aided at Cadiz by the presence of general M‘Kenzie’s troops, sent from Lisbon; and they were aided everywhere by enormous supplies of money arms and ammunition sent from England. Finally, they were aided, and most powerfully so, by sir John Moore’s generalship, which had enabled them to rally and keep several considerable armies on foot in the southern parts of the country. What did these armies—these invincible Spaniards—do? They lost Zaragoza, Monzon, and Jaca, in the east; the fortresses of Ferrol and Coruña, and their fleet, in the north; they lost Estremadura, La Mancha, Aragon, the Asturias, and Gallicia; they lost the battles of Ucles and of Valls; the battle of Monterrey, that of Ciudid Real, and the battle of Medellin. They won nothing! they did not save themselves, it was the British army and the indolence and errors of the French that saved them.

‘After the embarkation of the English army, the king of Spain did nothing; he lost four months; he ought to have marched upon Cadiz, upon Valencia, upon Lisbon; political means would have done the rest.’

‘It is obvious that the longer, and the more intimately we become acquainted with the affairs of Spain, the less prospect do they hold out of anything like a glorious result. The great extent of the country, the natural difficulties which it opposes to an enemy, and the enmity of the people towards the French may spin out the war into length, and at last the French may find it impossible to establish a government in the country; but there is no prospect of a glorious termination to the contest.’

‘After the perusal of these details, and of Soult’s letters, can any one doubt that the evacuation of Gallicia was occasioned by the operations of the British troops in Portugal?’

‘The fact is, that the British army has saved Spain and Portugal during this year.’

The reviewer is not only a great critic, he is a great general also. He has discovered that there are no positions in the mountains of Portugal; nay, he will scarcely allow that there are mountains at all; and he insists that they offer no defence against an invader, but that the rivers do—that the Douro defends the eastern frontier of Beira, and that the frontier of Portugal generally is very compact and strong for defence, and well suited for a weak army to fight superior numbers;—that the weak army cannot be turned and cut off from Lisbon, and the strong army must invade in mass and by one line.

Now, first, it so happened, unluckily for this lucid military notion of Portugal, that in Massena’s invasion lord Wellington stopped to fight on the mountain of Busaco, and stopped Massena altogether at the mountains of Alhandra, Aruda, Sobral, and Torres Vedras—in other words at the lines, and that he did not once stop him or attempt to stop him by defending a river. That Massena, in his retreat, stopped lord Wellington on the mountain of Santarem, attempted to stop him on the mountains of Cazal Nova, Moita, and Guarda, but never attempted to stop him by defending a river, save at Sabugal, and then he was instantly beaten. Oh, certainly, ’tis a most noble general, and a very acute critic! Nevertheless, I must support my own opinions about the frontier of Portugal, the non-necessity of invading this country in one mass, and the unfordable nature of the Tagus, by the testimony of two generals as distinguished as honest Iago.

‘I am not prepared at this moment to answer minutely your lordship’s question respecting the defence of Portugal; but I can say generally that the frontier of Portugal is not defensible against a superior force. It is an open frontier, all equally rugged, but all equally to be penetrated.’

‘In whatever season the enemy may enter Portugal, he will probably make his attack by two distinct lines, the one north the other south of the Tagus; and the system of defence must be founded upon this general basis. In the summer season, however, the Tagus being fordable, &c. &c., care must be taken that the enemy does not by his attack directed from the south of the Tagus and by the passage of that river, cut off from Lisbon the British army engaged in operations to the north of the Tagus.’

‘The line of frontier to Portugal is so long in proportion to the extent and means of the country, and the Tagus and the mountains separate the parts of it so effectually from each other, and it is so open in many parts, that it would be impossible for an army acting upon the defensive to carry on its operations upon the frontier without being cut off from the capital.’

‘In the summer it is probable as I have before stated that the enemy will make his attacks in two principal corps, and that he will also push on through the mountains between Castello Branco and Abrantes. His object will be by means of his corps, south of the Tagus, to turn the positions which might be taken in his front on the north of that river; to cut off from Lisbon the corps opposed to him; and to destroy it by an attack in front and rear at the same time. This can be avoided only by the retreat of the right centre and left of the allies, and their junction at a point, at which from the state of the river they cannot be turned by the passage of the Tagus by the enemy’s left. The first point of defence which presents itself below that at which the Tagus ceases to be fordable, is the river Castenheira close to the lines.’

In the above extracts, the fordable nature of the Tagus has been pretty clearly shown, but I will continue my proofs upon that fact to satiety.

‘The line of operations which we are obliged to adopt for the defence of Lisbon and for our own embarkation necessarily throws us back as far as below Salvaterra on the Tagus, to which place, and I believe lower, the Tagus is fordable during the summer; and we should be liable to be turned or cut off from Lisbon and the Tagus if we were to take our line of defence higher upon the river.’

‘I had already considered the possibility that Regnier might move across the fords of the Tagus at Vilha Velha and thus turn your right.’

‘If there are no boats, send them (the sick and encumbrances) across the Tagus by the ford (at Santarem).’

‘I have desired Murray to send you the copy of a plan we have, with some of the fords of the Tagus marked upon it, but I believe the whole river from Barquina to Santarem is fordable.’

‘I enclose a letter which colonel Fletcher has given me, which affords but a bad prospect of a defence for the Tagus. I think that if captain Chapman’s facts are true his arguments are unanswerable, and that it is very doubtful whether any heavy ordnance should be placed in the batteries on the upper Tagus.’

‘But if the invasion should be made in summer, when the Tagus is fordable in many places.’... ‘In the event of the attack being made between the months of June and November, when the Tagus is fordable, at least as low down as Salvaterra (near the lines).’

‘There is a ferry at Salvaterra, near Alcantara, and another up the left bank of the Tagus in the Alemtejo, where there is also a ford, and the river may be easily passed.’

Extract from a Memoir by sir B. D’Urban, quarter-master-general to Beresford’s army:—‘The Tagus, between Golegao and Rio Moinhos was known to offer several fords after a few days’ dry weather.’[12]

Thus we see that, in nearly every month in the year, this unfordable Tagus of the reviewer is fordable in many places, and that in fact it is no barrier except in very heavy rains. But to render this still clearer I will here give one more and conclusive proof. In an elaborate manuscript memoir upon the defence of Portugal, drawn up by the celebrated general Dumourier for the duke of Wellington, that officer argues like this reviewer, that the Tagus is unfordable and a strong barrier. But a marginal note in Wellington’s hand-writing runs thus:—‘He (Dumourier) does not seem to be aware of the real state of the Tagus at any season.’

What can I say more? Nothing upon this head, but much upon others. I can call upon the reader to trace the deceitful mode in which the reviewer perverts or falsifies my expressions throughout. How he represents the Spaniards at one moment so formidable as to resist successfully the utmost efforts of more than 300,000 soldiers, the next breath calls them a poor unarmed horde of peasants incapable of making any resistance at all. How he quotes me as stating that the ministers had unbounded confidence in the success of the struggle in Spain; whereas my words are, that the ministers professed unbounded confidence. How he represents me as saying, the Cabinet were too much dazzled to analyse the real causes of the Spanish Revolution; whereas it was the nation not the Cabinet of which I spoke. And this could not be mistaken, because I had described the ministers as only anxious to pursue a warlike system necessary to their own existence, and that they were actuated by a personal hatred of Napoleon. Again, how he misrepresents me as wishing the British to seize Cadiz, and speaks of a mob in that city, when I have spoken only of the people (oh, true Tory!); and never proposed to seize Cadiz at all, and have also given the unexceptionable authority of Mr. Stuart, general M‘Kenzie, and sir George Smith, for my statement. And here I will notice a fine specimen of this reviewer’s mode of getting up a case. Having undertaken to prove that every river in Portugal is a barrier, except the Zezere which I had fixed upon as being an important line, he gives an extract of a letter from lord Wellington to a general Smith, to the effect that, as the Zezere might be turned at that season in so many ways, he did not wish to construct works to defend it then. Now, first, it is necessary to inform the reader that there is no letter to general Smith. The letter in question was to general Leith, and the mistake was not without its object, namely, to prevent any curious person from discovering that the very next sentence is as follows:—‘If, however, this work can be performed, either by the peasantry or by the troops, without any great inconvenience, the line of the Zezere may, hereafter, become of very great importance.’

All this is very pitiful, and looks like extreme soreness in the reviewer; but the effrontery with which he perverts my statements about the Austrian war surpasses all his other efforts in that line, and deserves a more elaborate exposure.

In my history it is stated, that some obscure intrigues of the princess of Tour and Taxis, and the secret societies on the continent, emanating from patrician sources, excited the sympathy, and nourished certain distempered feelings in the English ministers, which feeling made them see only weakness and disaffection in France. This I stated, because I knew that those intrigues were, in fact, a conspiracy concocted, with Talleyrand’s connivance, for the dethronement of Napoleon; and the English ministers neglected Spain and every other part of their foreign affairs for the moment, so intent were they upon this foolish scheme and so sanguine of success. These facts are not known to many, but they are true.

In the same paragraph of my history it is said, the warlike preparations of Austria, and the reputation of the archduke Charles, whose talents were foolishly said to exceed Napoleon’s, had awakened the dormant spirit of coalitions; meaning, as would be evident to any persons not wilfully blind, had awakened that dormant spirit in the English ministers.

Now reader, mark the candour and simplicity of the reviewer. He says that I condemned these ministers, ‘for nourishing their distempered feelings by combining the efforts of a German monarch in favour of national independence.’ As if it were the Austrian war, and not the obscure intrigues for dethroning Napoleon that the expression of distempered feelings applied to. As if the awakening the dormant spirit of coalitions, instead of being a reference to the sentiments of the English ministers, meant the exciting the Austrians and other nations to war, and the forming of a vast plan of action by those ministers! And for fear any mistake on that head should arise, it is so asserted in another part of the review in the following terms:—