William Francis Patrick Napier

“ Was it consistent with reason to march two hundred miles in search of a combat, which the very state of Oporto would render it almost impossible to gain, and for an object perhaps already lost? Suspicion was alive all over the country: if Oporto was already taken, the army must come back; that would be the signal for fresh tumults—for renewed cries that the country was to be abandoned; Lisbon would instantly be in a state of insurrection, and would be even more formidable to the British than the enemy; besides, it was impossible to reckon upon Cuesta’s aid in keeping Victor employed. ”

“ Allow me to conclude, with the solemn expression of my own conviction, that nothing will give so much chance of a prosperous result to the arduous scene in which we are engaged (either as to reality or view) as the knowledge to the enemy, that, before he conquers Portugal, he must defeat an army of some magnitude, determined to fight him, and awaiting his approach, unbroken and not exposed to the danger of a false movement. Such a conquest cannot be an easy one, and must prove, if he pursue it, a powerful diversion in favour of Spain. ”

“ Napoleon once declared that a nation resolved to be free could not be conquered; and the Spaniards re-echoed the sentiment in their manifestos, as if to say it was all that was necessary. But Napoleon contemplated a nation, like the Portuguese, making use of every means of defence, whether derived from themselves or their alliances; not a people puffed with conceit, and lavish of sounding-phrases, such as “perishing under the ruins of the last wall,” yet beaten with a facility that rendered them the derision of the world; a people unable to guide themselves yet arrogantly refusing all advice. ”

“ That so able a commander should engage himself in the narrow valley of the Tagus with twenty thousand British and forty thousand Spanish troops, when fifty thousand French were waiting for him at the further end, and above fifty thousand more were hanging on his flank and rear, shews that the greatest masters of the art may err. He who wars walks in a mist through which the keenest eyes cannot always discern the right path. ”

“ The king, with equal judgement and activity, then united all his own forces near Toledo, separated Venegas from Cuesta, pushed back the latter upon the English army, and obliged both to stand on the defensive, with eyes attentively directed to their front, when the real point of danger was in the rear. This was skilful; but the battle of Talavera which followed was a palpable, an enormous, fault. The allies could neither move forward nor backward, without being infinitely worse situated for success than in that strong position, which seemed marked out by fortune herself for their security. ”

“ The French army, no longer a compact body, terrible alike from its massive strength, and its flexible activity, became a collection of independent bands, each formidable in itself, but, from the disunion of the generals, slow to combine for any great object; and plainly discovering, by irregularities and insubordination, that they knew when a warrior, and when a voluptuous monarch was at their head; but these evils were only felt at a later period; and the distribution of the troops, when Napoleon quitted Valladolid, still bore the impress of his genius. ”

“ Those issues, the extravagant succours given to Spain, together with subsidies to Austria, made it impossible to supply the army in Portugal with specie, otherwise than by raising cash, in every quarter of the globe, on treasury-bills, and at a most enormous loss; an evil great in itself, opening a wide door to fraud and villany, and rendered the war between France and England not so much a glorious contest of arms as a struggle between public credit and military force, in which even victory was sure to be fatal to the former. ”

“ The further progress of the allies was thus barred in front; the Tagus was on their left; impassable mountains on their right; and it was certain that Cuesta’s retreat would immediately bring the king and Victor down upon their rear. The peril of this situation was apparent to every soldier in the British ranks, and produced a general inquietude. No man felt the slightest confidence in the Spaniards, and the recollection of the stern conflict at Talavera, aided by a sense of exhaustion from long abstinence, depressed the spirits of men and officers. ”

“ The hardy, enduring English infantry might, indeed, have held their ground in one battle, but could they have fought a second? Would not a movement of the first corps by Guadalupe, would not famine alone, have forced the ten or twelve thousand men remaining (if, indeed, so many were left) to abandon the banks of the Tagus, to abandon, also, their parcs of ammunition and their wounded men, and to retreat towards Portugal; and to retreat, also, with little hope, harassed, as they would have been, by six thousand horsemen, for Soult had eighteen regiments of cavalry? ”

“ The regency immediately nominated him marshal-general of their troops. The people, always fond of novelty, hailed his presence with enthusiasm; and all those persons, whether Portuguese or British, who had blamed sir John Cradock’s prudent caution, now anticipating a change of system, spake largely and confidently of the future operations: in truth, all classes were greatly excited, and an undefined yet powerful sentiment that something great would soon be achieved pervaded the public mind. ”

“ Sir Arthur Wellesley might have had above eighty thousand British troops on the frontiers of Portugal, and he was a general capable of wielding them. He was forced to commence a campaign, upon which the fate of the Peninsula, a quick triumph or a long-protracted agony of twelve millions of people depended, with only twenty-two thousand; while sixty thousand fighting men, and ships numerous enough to darken all the coasts of Spain, were waiting, in Sicily and England, for orders which were to doom them, one part to scorn, and the other to an inglorious and miserable fate. ”

“ If, instead of advancing in one long and weak line, without a reserve, Cuesta had held the greatest part of his troops in solid columns, and thrust them between Lassalle and Latour Maubourg’s divisions, which were pushed out like horns from the main body of the French, those generals would have been cut off, and the battle commenced by dividing the French army into three unconnected masses, while the Spaniards would have been compact, well in hand, and masters of the general movements. ”

“ On the other hand, the duke of Dalmatia had conquered a large and rich city: he had gained the military command of a very fertile country, from whence the principal supplies of the British army and of Lisbon were derived: he had obtained a secure base of operations and a prominent station in the kingdom; and if the people’s fierceness was not yet quelled, they had learned to dread his talents, and to be sensible of their own inferiority in battle. ”

“ The regular troops that fled from Tudela, being joined by two small divisions, which retreated, at the same time, from Sanguessa and Caparosa, formed a garrison of thirty thousand men, and, together with the inhabitants and peasantry, presented a mass of fifty thousand combatants, who, with passions excited almost to phrensy, awaited an assault amidst those mighty entrenchments, where each man’s home was a fortress and his family a garrison. To besiege, with only thirty-five thousand men, a city so prepared was truly a gigantic undertaking! ”

“ The members of the junta, become more powerful from the cessation of regular warfare, with redoubled activity and energy urged the defence, but increased the horrors of the siege by a ferocity pushed to the very verge of phrenzy. Every person, without regard to rank or age, who excited the suspicions of these furious men, or of those immediately about them, was instantly put to death; and amidst the noble bulwarks of war, a horrid Cavalhero. ”

“ If the British army sets out with the declared object to succour Oporto, or expel the enemy, the impression on the public mind is the same; nothing but the accomplishment will suit the English character; and I [516] confess that the best reasoning of my judgement, upon every public and private principle, for the credit of the British army, and the hope of any effectual assistance from the Portuguese nation is, that the British troops should never make one retrograde step: from that moment I will date the extinction of all Portuguese aid, military as well as civil. ”

“ Every street and house now rung with the noise of the combatants and the shrieks of distress; for the French soldiers, exasperated by long hardships, and prone like all soldiers to ferocity and violence during an assault, became frantic with fury, when, in one of the principal squares, they found several of their comrades who had been made prisoners, fastened upright, and living, but with their eyes bursted, their tongues torn out, and their other members mutilated and gashed. Those that beheld the sight spared none who fell in their way. ”

“ He could not hope, with twenty-four thousand men, to beat a whole people in arms, assisted by an auxiliary army of as high reputation, and nearly as numerous as his own; and, moreover, there were discontents and conspiracy in his camp; and of this sir Arthur was aware.
Soult alone, then, was no longer formidable to the capital; but that which weakened him increased the offensive power of Victor, who was now at the head of thirty thousand men, and might march straight upon Lisbon, and through an open country, the only barrier being the Tagus, a river fordable in almost all seasons. ”

“ Following general Semelé’s journal, [4] the French loss did not exceed three hundred men, a number so utterly disproportionate to that of the vanquished as to be scarcely credible, and, if correct, discovering a savage rigour in the pursuit by no means commendable; for it does not appear that any previous cruelties were perpetrated by the Spaniards to irritate the French soldiers. The right to slaughter an enemy in battle can neither be disputed nor limited; but a brave soldier should always have regard to the character of his country, and be sparing of the sword towards beaten men. ”

“ Valencia had written her pretensions to patriotism in the bloody characters of assassination; but, were it not for the force under Llamas which, after the defeat of Tudela, helped to defend Zaragoza, Valencia and Murcia might have been swallowed up by the ocean without any sensible effect upon the general cause. Those countries were, however, admirably situated to serve as a support to Aragon, Catalonia, Andalusia, and La Mancha, and they could, at this time, have paralyzed a large French force, by marching an army to San Clemente. ”

“ The difficulties of the French were indeed fast increasing, for while enclosing Zaragoza they were themselves encircled by insurrections, and their supplies so straightened that famine was felt in their camp. Disputes amongst the generals also diminished the vigour of the operations, and the bonds of discipline being relaxed, the military ardour of the troops naturally became depressed. The soldiers reasoned openly upon the chances of success, which, in times of danger, is only one degree removed from mutiny. ”

“ There was no longer a Spanish army in the field; and in Tarragona, where some eight or nine thousand of the Spanish fugitives, from this and the former battle, had taken refuge, there was terrible disorder. Cabanes. The people rose tumultuously, broke open the public stores, and laying hands on all the weapons they could find, rushed from place to place, as if searching for something to vent their fury upon. The head of Vives was called for; and to save his life, he was cast into prison by Reding, who was proclaimed general-in-chief. ”

“ In La Mancha the beaten army must have fallen back upon Seville: but in Estremadura it might retire upon Badajos. But, the latter place being to the Spaniards of infinitely less importance than Madrid was to their opponents, the lead in the campaign must always have belonged to the army of La Mancha, which could, at any time, have obliged the French to fight a battle in defence of the capital. ”

“ Sir David Baird’s division, in its advance, paid for the necessary supplies, and it was regarded with jealousy and defrauded. Soult’s and Moore’s armies, passing like a whirlwind, were beheld with terror, and the people fled from both. The British and German troops that marched to Vigo were commanded without judgement, and licentious, and their stragglers were often murdered; their numbers were small, and the people showed their natural hatred of strangers without disguise. ”

“ Indignant at this shameful scene, the troops hastened, rather than slackened, the impetuosity of their pace; and, leaving only seventeen stragglers behind, in twenty-six hours they had crossed the field of battle in a close and compact body, having, in that time, passed over sixty-two English miles, and in the hottest season of the year, each man carrying from fifty to sixty pounds weight upon his shoulders. Had the historian Gibbon known of such a march, he would have spared his sneer about the “delicacy of modern soldiers!” ”

“ The government provided, by their orders, for the troops only while on their passage through the towns; relying upon their immediate success, and making no provision for the collection of one body, of not less than fifty thousand men, even for one day. At the same time that they were guilty of this unpardonable omission, which paralyzed all our efforts, they rendered that success doubtful, by countermanding the orders given to general Venegas by general Cuesta, and thus exposing the combined armies to a general action with the enemy’s concentrated force. ”

“ It was not considered that the want of unity, checking the course of conquest, would cease when the French army was driven to the defensive; neither was the might of France duly weighed, while the strength of Austria was unduly exalted. The disasters at Ucles, at Almaraz, at Zaragoza, Rosas, Cardadeu, Valls, at Ciudad Real, Medellin, Braga, and Oporto, and in the Asturias, were all forgotten. The French had been repulsed from Portugal, and they had not taken Seville. This, to the Spaniards, was sufficient evidence of their weakness ”

“ While the French generals were engaged in council, the troops on both sides took some rest, and the English wounded were carried to the rear; but the soldiers were suffering from hunger; the regular service of provisions had ceased for several days, and a few ounces of wheat, in the grain, formed the whole subsistence of men who had fought, and who were yet to fight, so hardly. The Spanish camp was full of confusion and distrust. Cuesta inspired terror, but no confidence ”

“ The hussars, received with grape and a pelting fire of musketry, and charged in flank by some dragoons, were beaten at once, but the Spanish infantry, closely followed by the rest of their own cavalry, came boldly up to Latour Maubourg’s horsemen, and, with a rough discharge, forced them back in disorder. The French, however, soon rallied, and smashing the Spanish ranks with artillery, and fighting all together, broke in and overthrew their enemies, man and horse. ”

“ The latter desired to have an English officer sent to them, to arrange the execution of a plan, which was to be commenced by seizing their general, and giving him over to the British outposts: a detestable project, for it is not in the field, and with a foreign enemy, that soldiers should concert the overthrow of their country’s institutions, and although it would be idle and impertinent in a foreigner to say how much and how long men shall bear with what they deem an oppressive government, there is a distinct and especial loyalty due from a soldier to his general in the field ”