LV. 1809. CHAP. jected, and had in preparation, to Galicia, to forward empty transports, to bring away the troops, appears to have been unhappy in its consequences. These despatches were sent off in the course of December, and they were not acted upon by the British government without the most severe regret; but at their distance from the scene of action, they had no alternative but acquiescence.* But for this fatal step, the English army, upon their retreat to the sea-coast, would have found, instead of transports to bring them off, thirteen thousand fresh troops, sufficient to have enabled them to hold out these important fortresses against the enemy, and possibly take a bloody revenge on their pursuers. Ney and Soult would have been retained in Galicia by the presence of thirty thousand men, intrenched in fortified seaports on its coast the incursion of Soult to Oporto would have been prevented, the battle of Talavera have proved a decisive victory, and the march of Wellington to the Alberche, unmenaced by the descent of Soult, Ney, and Mortier in his rear, might have led him in triumph to Madrid. If the British could not have maintained their ground behind the strong battlements of Ferrol, or the weaker fortifications of Corunna, that might have afforded a good reason for bringing the troops round to Lisbon or Cadiz; but it was none for setting sail to England with the whole expedition, abandoning the contest in the Peninsula as hopeless, when the south was still unsubsea. I never could understand their haste on that occasion, which the nation it is true, has well wiped off in subsequent times."-JOMINI, Vie de Napoléon, iii. p. 115. "The troops which had been embarked on board the transports in England to reinforce Sir John Moore's army," said Mr Canning, then Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in his place in parliament, "were disembarked in consequence of a distinct requisition from Sir David Baird, that he wanted a certain number of transports; and the transports from which these troops had been disembarked were sent out pursuant to that requisition. It was an afflicting circumstance that it had become necessary to retard these troops, and send out empty, for the purpose of bringing off the British army, those transports which had been fitted for the purpose of reinforcement and assault. But at this distance from the scene of action, ministers could not venture to refuse to send out these transports. The sending them out empty cost government a severe dued, and leaving ten thousand English soldiers, still CHAP. in Portugal, to their fate. LV. 1809. 69. lic opinion really to In truth, this desponding conduct on the part of such able and gallant officers affords decisive proof that it It was pubwas a much deeper and more general cause which was which was in operation, and that England was now paying the blame. penalty, not of the incapacity of its generals, but of the long-established, and, till the Peninsular war opened, discreditable timidity in military transactions of its government. Accustomed only to land on the Continent for transient expeditions, and to look always, not to their guns and bayonets, but to their ships, as their ultimate refuge, the whole English nation were ignorant of the incalculable effects of tenacity of purpose upon public undertakings. They regarded the strength of the state as consisting chiefly in its naval power, when in reality it possessed a military force capable of contending, with fair chances of success, even against the conqueror of continental Europe. Like the bulk of mankind in all ages, they judged of the future by the past, and were unaware of those important modifications of the lessons of experience which the rapid whirl of events in which they were placed was every hour bringing into action. In Sir John Moore's case, this universal, and perhaps unavoidable error, was greatly enhanced by his intimacy with some members of the Opposition party, by whom the military strength of England had been always underrated, the system of Continental operations uniformly decried, and the power and capacity of the French Emperor, great as they were, unworthily magnified.* pang: no resolution ever gave him more pain. Every dictate of the head was tortured, every feeling of the heart wrung by it; but ministers had no alternative, they were compelled to submit to the hard necessity." The troops so embarked, or in course of embarkation, were 13,000 men. What might not they have achieved, joined to the 17,000 whom Moore led back to Lugo and Corunna !-See Parl. Deb. xii. 1089, 1100. Sir John Moore also concurred in the propriety of withholding the reinforcements, and sending out the transports empty. See SOUTHEY, ii. 519. * This has been vehemently denied by Col. Napier.-Penin. War, vi. Just. CHAP. 1809. 70. sponding regard to Almost all his despatches, in the later stages of the campaign, evince in the clearest colours the influence of this depressing feeling, to which the false exaggerations Moore's de- and real disasters of the Spaniards afforded at the time views with too much confirmation. Instead, therefore, of casting a the contest. shade on the memory of any of the gallant officers intrusted with the direction of the campaign, let us regard its calamitous issue as the forfeit paid by the nation for the undue circumspection of former years, which had become so universal as to have penetrated the breast and chilled the hopes even of its most intrepid Notes, 2.-It is sufficient to say, therefore, that Moore's correspondence affords decisive evidence of its truth. On 16th August 1795, he wrote to his brother, "I have written to the Duke of Hamilton, and I make no doubt but, in case of a dissolution, he will bring me into parliament if he can ;" and on the 27th March 1806, when the Whigs were in power, he wrote to his mother, “I have lately turned my thoughts to India, as the greatest and most important command that could fall to a British officer. The Duke of York has communicated my wishes to ministers, and the principal objection which has been made is flattering that they do not wish me to go so far from this country. Lord Lauder dale's appointment has been an additional inducement for me to wish to go to India." It is needless to say, that Sir John Moore was a man of too much honour to endeavour to get into parliament under the auspices of the leading Whig noblemen in Scotland, or to India under those of a Whig governor-general, if his political principles had been at variance with those of these noblemen. -See MOORE's Life, 307, 392. But it is of little consequence to history whether a gallant officer like Sir John Moore was a Whig or a Tory; for the annals of England can boast of many illustrious commanders who belonged to both parties in politics, beginning with Marlborough on the one side, and Wellington on the other. It is more material to observe that Sir John's correspondence when in command of the army, both official and private, demonstrates that he was so deeply imbued with those desponding views which the Opposition for fifteen years had been incessantly promulgating, as to the impossibility of the English resisting the power of France on the continent of Europe, that he regarded the contest, not only in Spain, but in Portugal, as utterly desperate, and strongly recommended government to abandon the latter country as well as the former, as soon as it could be done with safety to the British troops in it. To Lord William Bentinck he wrote in private, on 14th November 1808, from Salamanca, before the campaign commenced :-"I differ with you in one point when you say the chief and great resistance to the French will be afforded by the English army; if that be so, Spain is lost. The English army, I hope, will do all which can be expected from its numbers; but the safety of Spain depends upon the union of its inhabitants, their enthusiasm in the cause, and their firm determination to die rather than submit to the French. Nothing short of this will enable them to resist the formidable attack about to be made upon them. If they will adhere, our aid can be of the greatest use to them; but if not, we shall soon be outnumbered were our forces quadrupled. I am, therefore, much more anxious to see exertion and energy in the government, and enthusiasm in their armies, than to have my force augmented. The " LV. 1809. defenders, and inspired them with that disquietude for CHAP. their country's safety which they would never have felt for their own. Nations, like individuals, never yet withdrew from the ways of error, but by the path of suffering; the sins of the fathers are still visited upon the children. The retreat of Sir John Moore was the transition from the paralysed timidity which refused succours to the Russians after Eylau, to the invincible tenacity which gave durable success to Wellington's campaigns. Happy the nation which can purchase absolution for past errors by so trivial a sacrifice-which can span the gulf from moment is a critical one-my own situation is peculiarly so-I have never seen it otherwise; but I have pushed into Spain at all hazards. This was the order of my government, and it was the will of the people of England. I shall endeavour to do my best, hoping that all the bad that may happen will not happen, but that with a share of bad we shall also have a portion of good fortune."- Every effort," he says, writing to Lord Castlereagh on the 24th of November," shall be exerted on my part, and that of the officers with me, to unite the army; but your Lordship must be prepared to hear that we have failed: for, situated as we are, success cannot be commanded by any efforts we can make if the enemy are prepared to oppose us." To add to all his other grounds of despondency, he considered Portugal as utterly indefensible by any force England could send thither. "If the French succeed in Spain, it will be in vain," he says, in another letter to Lord Castlereagh, "to attempt to resist them in Portugal. The Portuguese are without a military force, and, from the experience of their conduct under Sir Arthur Wellesley, no dependence is to be placed on any aid they can give. The British must, in that event, I conceive, immediately take steps to evacuate the country. Lisbon is the only port, and therefore the only place whence the army with its stores can embark. Elvas and Almeida are the only fortresses on the frontiers. The first is, I am told, a respectable work. Almeida is defective, and could not hold out beyond ten days against a regular attack. I have ordered a depot of provisions for a short consumption to be formed there, in case this army should be obliged to fall back; perhaps the same should be done at Elvas. In this case, we might retard the progress of the enemy while the stores were embarking, and arrangements were made for taking off the army. Beyond this, the defence of Lisbon or of Portugal should not be thought of."-CHAMBERS' Scottish Biography, iv. 32, 33. Contrast this with the memorandum of Wellington a few months after, on 9th March 1809, in which he expressed a decided opinion, that "Portugal might be successfully defended even against any force the French could bring against it, and that the maintenance of that position by the British would be the greatest support to the common cause in Spain;" and observe the difference between an able, but not original, mind, which receives its impressions from the current doctrines of the day, and those great intellects which, taking counsel only of their own inspiration, at once break off from general opinion, and for good or for evil determine the fate of nations.- See WELLINGTON's Memorandum on the defence of Portugal, 9th March 1809; GURWOOD, iv. 261, quoted infra, Chap. LXII. § 19, note; and his Despatches to LORD CASTLEREAGH, 2d April 1810; GURWOOD, vi. 5. LV. 1809. CHAP disaster to victory with no greater losses than those sustained in the Corunna retreat, and to whom the path of the necessary suffering, commencing by the gift of a momentous benefit, is terminated by a ray of imperishable glory! 71. The peculiar character of the British and French Reflections troops had already clearly manifested itself in the course on the cha- of this brief but active campaign. racter of the British in fighting. In every regular and French engagement from first to last, the English had proved periority of successful; they had triumphed equally over the conthe former scripts of Junot and the Imperial Guard of Bessières; the heroes of Austerlitz and Friedland had quailed and sunk beneath their steel. Considering how inexperienced almost all the English regiments were, and that most of the troops engaged at Roliça, Vimeira, and Corunna, there saw a shot fired for the first time in anger, these successes were extremely remarkable, achieved, as they were, sometimes over veteran troops of the enemy, always over those who had the discipline and experience gained by fifteen years of victory to direct their organisation and animate their spirits. They point evidently to what subsequent experience so clearly verified, a greater degree of courage at the decisive moment, arising either from some inherent peculiarity of race, or the animating influence of a free constitution and a long course of historic glory. All the great defeats of France at land have come from England. Tenchebray, Cressy, Poitiers, Verneuil, Azincour, Blenheim, Ramilies, Oudenarde, Minden, Quebec, Dettingen, Alexandria, Talavera, Salamanca, Vitoria, Waterloo, were all won by the surpassing valour of British soldiers, often against overwhelming odds of their Continental rivals. Even at Fontenoy, the only great victory since the battle of Hastings which the French have gained over the English, the British were entirely successful: the "terrible English column" penetrated through the French centre, and drove back Louis XV. from his station, after having |