LIII. 1808. CHAP. words instead of things, and are attached, not to abstract principles, but to actual parties; and, therefore, the enunciation of such sentiments by any of the Whig leaders not only was an honourable instance of moral courage, but evinced a remarkable change in the general feeling of their party. Not less clearly was the disclaiming of interested views or British objects by the ministerial chiefs, an indication of the arrival of that period in the contest, when the generous passions were at length aroused, and the fervent warmth of popular feeling had melted or overcome that frigid attention to interested views, which, not less than their tenacity and perseverance, is the uniform characteristic of commercial or aristocratic governments among mankind. 1808. 60. Animated by such powerful support, from the quarter Budget for where it was least expected, to enter vigorously into the contest, the English government made the most liberal provision for its prosecution. The supplies voted for the war-charges amounted to the enormous sum of £48,300,000; to meet which, ways and means to the value of £48,400,000, were voted by parliament; and the total income of the year 1808, including the ordinary and permanent revenue, was estimated at £86,780,000, and the expenditure £84,797,000. The loan was £10,102,000 for England, and £2,000,000 for Ireland, and the new taxes imposed only £300,000; the Chancellor of the Exchequer having adhered, in a great measure, to the system approved of by both sides of the House in the finance debates of the preceding year, of providing for the increased charges of the year and the interest of 1 Parl. Deb. the loans, in part at least, by an impignoration, in time of peace, of the war taxes. A subsidy of £1,100,000 was No. I. Ann. provided for the King of Sweden. But these sums, great 103, 105. as they are, convey no adequate idea of the expenditure Tables. of this eventful year; the budget was arranged in April, before the Spanish contest had arisen ;' and for the vast expenses with which it was attended, and which, not April 14. xi. 14, 21, and App. Reg. 1808, Marshall's Statement, No. I. years. * LIII. 1808. 61. extent of which were sent out to Spain from having been foreseen, had not been provided for, there CHAP. was no resource but a liberal issue of Exchequer bills, which fell as an oppressive burden future upon The supplies of all sorts sent out during this year to the Spanish patriots, though in great part misapplied or Immense wasted, were on a princely scale of liberality, and worthy the supplies of the exalted station which, by consent of all parties, England now took at the head of the alliance. In every Great Bri province of the Peninsula juntas were established, and to tain. all British envoys were sent, who made as minute inquiries into the wants and capabilities of the district as the circumstances would admit, and received ample powers from government to afford such aid, either in money, arms, clothing, or warlike stores, as they deemed it expedient to demand. Military supplies of every description were, in consequence of these requisitions, sent to Corunna, Santander, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Valencia, Malaga, and other places, with a profusion which astonished the inhabitants, and gave them at least ample means to fit themselves out for the contest in which they were engaged. It may readily be conceived, that from the enthusiasm and animation of the insurgent provinces, and the universal transport with which the British envoys were received, abundance of room was afforded for misrepresentation or delusion; that the accounts transmitted to government must, in many cases, have been inaccurate; and that, amidst the extraordinary profusion with which supplies of * Appendix A, Chap. LIII. + The following is a statement of the sums of money and warlike stores sent by Great Britain to the Peninsula, from the beginning of the contest in June 1808, to the commencement of 1809: LIII. 1808. CHAP. all sorts were poured into the country, there were many opportunities afforded to the native authorities of fraud or embezzlement, of which, amidst the general confusion, they were not slow to avail themselves. In truth, lamentable experience afterwards demonstrated that a large proportion of these magnificent supplies was misapplied or neglected. The money was in great part em1 Ann. Reg. bezzled or squandered, the stores sold or wasted, the arms Hard. x.190, piled and forgotten in magazines, when the patriots in the i. 102. field were in want of the most necessary part of military 1808, 184. 192. Lond. 62. equipment.1 Still, with all these evils, inseparable probably from the Beneficial condition of a country thus driven into a dreadful contest which these in the absence of any regular government, and unavoidattended. ably thrown under the direction of local and recently effects with efforts were elected authorities, alike destitute of the knowledge, unacquainted with the arrangements, and relieved from the responsibility requisite for the faithful discharge of official duty, the prodigal bounty of England was attended with the most important effects upon the progress of the strife. It removed at once the imputation of cautious and prudential policy, which the incessant declamations of the French writers during the former periods of the war, joined to the feeble temporising measures of preceding 2 Tor. i. 301, cabinets, had so strongly affixed to the British name. Reg. 1808, demonstrated the sincerity and energy of a government which x. 191, 193, thus, with unprecedented profusion, spread abroad in every i. 102. quarter the means of resistance;2 and inspired boundless confidence in the resources of a power which, great at all 307. Ann. 104. Hard. 236. Lond. It -See Parl. Pap. July 16, 1808; and HARD. x. 492-Pièces Just. In addition to these immense national supplies, private subscriptions were entered into in the chief towns of the empire, and large sums collected and remitted from the British islands to the Spanish patriots.—Annual Register 1808, 195. LIII. times, seemed capable of gigantic expansion at the deci- CHAP. sive moment, and appeared rather to have increased than diminished from a contest of fifteen years' duration. 1808. 63. parations of for the war Peninsular Nor were these great efforts on the part of the British government either unnecessary or uncalled for; for the Vast preforces, both military and naval, which Napoleon had now Napoleon arrayed for their subjugation were immense. If the con- against Engtest were not fixed in the Peninsula, it was plain that it land in the would ere long approach the English shores. All his pre-harbours. parations in every quarter were intended to procure the accumulation of a force which might, by sea and land, overmatch the British empire. The moment his troops entered Spain, his orders were directed to this object. He sent funds from Paris for the construction of two sail of the line at Carthagena; Spain was to furnish two magnificent three-deckers, the Santa Anna and San Carlos these, with the five French ships at Cadiz and six Spanish, and other ships afloat in the Spanish harbours, would produce a force of eighteen ships of the line ready for sea. The Carthagena fleet, which had taken refuge at Port Mahon, consisting of six line-of-battle ships, was directed forthwith to put to sea and join the Toulon squadron, already consisting of twelve in very good condition. Junot received the most pressing orders to equip immediately two line-of-battle ships left at Lisbon when the royal family embarked. "Consider it first glory," Murat, wrote Napoleon to Murat, "during your short tration, to have reanimated the Spanish marine. It is Thiers, viii. the best way to attach the Spaniards to us, and to justify 641. our occupation of their territory." your "1 Nap. to adminis- March 17, 1808. 640, 641, designs by against These preparations in the Peninsula were but a part of 64. the vast designs which the French Emperor had formed His general and matured at this period for the overthrow of the sea and land British empire, and which the Spanish war alone pre-Great Brivented being carried into execution. The nine Russian ships of the line under Admiral Siniavin at Lisbon were to be reinforced by three Portuguese, seized in the dock tain. LIII. 1808. CHAP. yards of Lisbon. Four ships of the line were ready for sea at Rochefort; four were at l'Orient; and at Brest, seven line-of-battle ships, in good order, remained of its once formidable squadron. Eight splendid new vessels, constructed at Antwerp, lay in the bay of Flushing; twelve were in the course of construction in the Scheldt. At the Texel, Louis Napoleon had eight ships of the line in excellent condition ready for sea, and the Russians had twelve in the Adriatic; while the flotilla at Boulogne was still capable of transporting 80,000 men, with all their guns and equipments, across the Channel. In addition to these considerable naval forces, orders were given for the construction, with the utmost possible expedition, of thirty-five more in the various harbours from the Sound to the Texel. In this way he hoped to have a hundred and thirty-one ships of the line ready for sea before the end of the year, which were to be increased annually by twenty-five or thirty more, till they acquired a decided preponderance over the British navy. Three hundred thousand land troops were to be stationed in the neighbourhood of the principal harbours from Copenhagen to Venice, ready to embark at a moment's warning on board their various squadrons, and either by a concentrated effort menace at once the independence of Great Britain, or distract its fleets by threatening its numerous colonial dependencies. Such were the designs of Napoleon, and such the means at his disposal, when the Peninsular war arose; and England, under the guidance of Wellington, began on the fields of Spain to contend hand to hand with the conqueror of continental Europe, and the descendants of those who conquered at Hastings met the sons of those who triumphed at Cressy and Azincour!1 1 Thiers, viii. 644, 645. |