Peninsula Campaign

“ Not a man could lie uncared for nor unfed. I thought of the Peninsula in McClellan’s campaign, of Pittsburg Landing, Cedar Mountain, and second Bull Run, Antietam, Old Fredericksburg, with its acres of snow-covered and gun-covered glacée, and its fourth-day flag of truce; of its dead, and starving wounded, frozen to the ground, and our commission and their supplies in Washington, with no effective organization to get beyond; of the Petersburg mine, with its four thousand dead and wounded and no flag of truce, the wounded broiling in a July sun, dying and rotting where they fell. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They show sufficiently how little we have here to do with a transformation effected at one blow, like the result of a fortunate campaign. After the races had long wandered up and down in a varying series of territorial disputes and mutual agreements, the fate of the peninsula was gradually decided. Only when men had forgotten the tedious period of unrest and ferment, which memory can adorn with no incidents, could the reconstitution of the peninsula be regarded as a sudden turn of events by which the Peloponnesus had become Dorian. ”

“ Before the opening of the following campaign the French army in the Peninsula was considerably reinforced; fresh troops, flushed with their recent German victories, were crowding into Spain, to the amount of nearly 100,000 men; and in the spring of 1810 the enemy's force in the Peninsula exceeded 300,000 men. The British commander could no longer calculate upon offensive operations: he, however, resolved to attempt the preservation of Portugal, and made his admirable arrangements accordingly. ”

“ About half of them were ultimately brought home, but several were left with him for another campaign. He had also asked that he might have no more generals who were new to the Peninsula inflicted upon him, because their arrival blocked promotion for deserving colonels, to whom he was anxious to give brigades. ‘I hope I shall have no more new Generals: they really do but little good, and they take the places of officers who would be of real use. ”

“ While the British force in the Peninsula was increased, and the Spanish rendered more available than it had been in any former campaign, that of the French was weakened; the enormous loss which Buonaparte had suffered in Russia, and the obstinate ambition with which he kept large garrisons in the north of Germany, rendering it necessary for him to withdraw138 troops from Spain. From 10 to 20,000 repassed the Pyrenees; not fewer than 140,000 were still left, ... good troops, well-officered, and under commanders of high reputation and approved skill. ”

“ Lord Wellington, after two campaigns in the country; after the termination of the anarchy, which prevailed during sir John Cradock’s time; after immense subsidies had been granted to Portugal, her whole military force re-organized, and her regular troops disciplined, paid, and officered by England; after the war in Germany had cost Napoleon fifty thousand men, the campaign in the Peninsula at least fifty thousand more; in fine, after mature consideration, and when Spain was still fighting, when Andalusia, Catalonia, Murcia, Valencia, Gallicia, and the Asturias, were still uninvaded ”

“ I entreat the government to advert to the circumstances of the commencement and of the different stages of this eventful contest, and to the numerous occasions in which all men must have imagined that it was impossible for the powers of the Peninsula, although aided by Great Britain, to withstand the colossal power by which they were assailed and nearly overcome. ”

“ That a kingdom would be liberated, with all its fortresses, arsenals, &c., and that the excited population of the Peninsula might then be pushed forward in the career of opposition to France, under the most favourable circumstances. ”

“ Every treasury newspaper teemed with accounts of battles which were never fought, plans which were never arranged, places taken which were never attacked, and victories gained where no armies were. The plains of the Peninsula could scarcely contain the innumerable forces of the Spaniards and Portuguese ”

“ Money, arms, and troops, were withdrawn from the Peninsula, to subdue the so-called rebellious colonists; nor was any reflection made on the inconsistency, of expecting Napoleon’s innumerable hosts to be beaten close to their own doors, by Guerilla operations, and yet attempting, with a few divisions, [246] to crush whole nations, acting in the same manner, at three thousand miles distance. Such being the state of French and Spanish affairs, it remains to examine the condition of England and Portugal, as affecting the war in the Peninsula. ”

“ Six months had now elapsed, since the French resuming the plan of conquest interrupted by the Austrian war and by the operations of sir Arthur Wellesley, had retaken the offensive. Battle after battle they had gained, fortress after fortress they had taken, and sent the Spanish forces, broken and scattered, to seek for refuge in the most obscure parts: solid resistance there was none; and the only hope of deliverance for the Peninsula rested upon the British general. ”

“ The consequence is therefore that a foreign regiment cannot be placed in a situation in which the soldiers can desert from it, that they do not go off in hundreds; and in the Peninsula they convey to the enemy the only intelligence which he can acquire. ”

“ When the first news arrived that the French were breaking up from their position, they cautioned the public against extravagant expectations; “such accounts,” they said, “have come too often to raise enthusiasm in any but simpletons and stock-jobbers; and there seems no reason for altering the opinion which we have so often expressed, that, happen what may partially, the ultimate loss of the Peninsula is as certain as ever it was, and that we are only delaying the catastrophe by needless proofs of a valour, which our enemies admire much more than our allies. ”

“ To me the aspect of the Peninsula appears an enigma, which it is no reflection on any ministers not perfectly to have understood; a revolution bursting out at a period the least expected, exhibiting events in its progress the most singularly contradictory, and pregnant with results which I still think no man living can foresee. ”

“ The enemy have certainly received great reinforcements during the course of the year, but even these (say 40,000 men) have not covered the casualties and losses of men in their armies, which are evidently much reduced. I have no reason to alter my opinion about the Spaniards. You know what it is, and I do not expect more from them than I did, and, if Russia [212] does not in the spring declare against Napoleon, the fate of the Peninsula is in my opinion still very doubtful. ”

“ Upon this beautiful ground it was that the British troops were first to be tried against the soldiers of Buonaparte in the Peninsula. The strength of the enemy’s position fully compensated for their inferiority in numbers. The way by which the assailants had to ascend was up ravines, rather than paths, more practicable for goats than men, so steep, that in many parts a slip of the foot would have been fatal, in some parts overgrown with briars, and in others impeded by fragments of rock. ”

“ Yet these are the soldiers who are to beat the French out of the Peninsula!!!!
‘There is no remedy for these evils excepting a vigorous system of government, by which a revenue of some kind or other can be raised to pay and find resources for an army in which discipline can be established. It is nonsense to talk of rooting out the French, or of carrying on the war in any other manner. ”

“ We might leave the country of our ally with the spirit of friendship and the purity of honour. It was of great moment to us, in even that meanest and lowest view of policy, to leave the people of the Peninsula our friends; but we must be actuated by a higher principle, and be regretted and revered by those whom we were forced to abandon. He could not expect this from his majesty’s ministers, and therefore could not think their hands fit to wield the resources, or sustain the character of the British empire. ”

“ My lord, you only fatigue yourself and your readers by your unwieldy floundering, you are heavy and throw much mud about; like one of those fine Andalusian horses so much admired in the Peninsula, you prance and curvet and foam and labour in your paces but you never get on. At Campo Mayor you had an enormous superiority of troops, the enemy were taken by surprize, they were in a plain, their cavalry were beaten, their artillery-drivers cut down, their infantry, hemmed in by your horsemen and under the play of your guns, were ready to surrender ”

“ When victory actually sprung from the bosom of retreat, why was the glorious victor compelled to relapse into his retrogression? Why has it happened that we have seen the great conqueror who chased the French armies from130 the plains of Salamanca, pursued in his turn, by those whom he had conquered, over those plains which had been the scene of his former triumphs? Why, in conclusion, has a system of offence shrunk into a system of defence, and what is the reason that our military operations in the Peninsula have ended where they began? ”

“ It was by the national spirit which had first shown itself in the Peninsula, by the persevering efforts of Great Britain446 in the peninsular war, the courage of her troops, and the skill of her great commander, that Buonaparte’s fortune had been checked at its height, and successfully resisted, till other governments were encouraged, and other nations roused by the example; and that power, the most formidable which had ever been known in the civilized world, was then beaten down. The independence of Spain and Portugal had been triumphantly vindicated and secured ”

“ Who is there mad enough to expect that we shall be able to put the French out of the Peninsula, either by arms, or by negotiation? Where is the man, in his senses, who believes, or will say that he believes, that we shall be able to accomplish this? Suppose peace were to become the subject of discussion, does any one believe that Napoleon would enter into negotiations about Spain and Portugal? Does any one believe that we must not leave them to their fate? ”

“ Captain Codrington to sir E. Pellew.
“Arens de Mar, August 23, 1811.
“I have numberless complaints of the Spanish privateers that come upon the coast, and I am sure it would be a benefit to the country if they were all deprived of their commission. They do nothing but plunder the inhabitants of those places which are occasionally overrun by the French armies, and who embrace the opportunity of their absence to carry on a little trade with other parts of the Peninsula.” ”

“ The French, indeed, as soon as they apprehended that their own country must soon become the seat of war, spoke with horror of what might be expected from the Portugueze and Spaniards, remembering then with uneasiness, if not with shame and remorse, the atrocities which they themselves had committed. Their hope was that the peasantry would rise, and carry on that kind of war which within the Peninsula had been found so destructive to the invaders ”

“ Nevertheless the advantage of such an institution was considerable; men were to be had in abundance: and as the greatest difficulty in a sudden crisis is to prepare the frame-work of order, it was no small resource to find a plan of service ready, the principle of which was understood by the people.
The French army in the Peninsula about the same period, although amounting to eighty thousand men, exclusive of those under Junot in Portugal, had not more than seventy thousand capable of active operations; the remainder were sick or in depôts. ”

“ This general comparative statement, so favourable to France, would however be a false criterion of the relative strength of the belligerents, with regard to the approaching struggle in the Peninsula. A cause manifestly unjust is a heavy weight upon the operations of a general: it reconciles men to desertion—it sanctifies want of zeal—is a pretext for cowardice—renders hardships more irksome, dangers more obnoxious, and glory less satisfactory to the mind of the soldier. ”

“ It was not a very promising instrument with which to achieve the liberation of the Peninsula, or to resist the greatest general in Europe. Considered as a government of national defence, it had far too little military knowledge: a haphazard assembly of priests, politicians, and grandees is not adapted for the conduct of a war of independence. Hence came the incredible blindness which led it to refuse to appoint a single commander-in-chief, and the obstinacy with which it buried itself in constitutional debates of the most futile sort when Napoleon was thundering at the gates of Spain. ”