CHAP.

III.

1808.

munication with him for some time past, as already mentioned, as to the best means of counteracting the views of Napoleon against Spanish South America. He had destined him for the command of any expedition employed on that service. He accordingly at once suggested him for the command; and in order to hold it, he had, on the 28th April preceding, been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General. But there were many other lieutenantgenerals and full generals of much longer standing in the service; and the authorities in the Horse Guards, wedded to the system of seniority, and pressed by political or family interest at home, objected to so young an officer being put at the head of the whole army, as it would prevent so many other officers of merit, but older standing, from serving in its ranks. It could not be denied that there was much force in the last objection, especially as an officer of the highest merit, Sir John Moore, stood in that situation; and the force which he commanded in Sweden was intended to join in the Peninsular operations. The utmost, accordingly, which Lord Castlereagh could effect was to obtain for Sir Arthur the command of the expedition which was to sail from Cork, and formed the vanguard of the whole, until he was superseded by senior officers arriving with the second and third divisions coming from Great Britain and Sweden. He got the command, accordingly, of the first detachment, consisting of thirteen regiments, for the most part embarked from Cork, on the 14th June; but he was only fourth in command of the whole. Sir Hew Dalrymple, Sir Harry Burrard, and Sir John Moore, who also had command, were his superior officers. Some of his friends having expressed to Sir Arthur surprise that he who had commanded great armies in India, received the thanks of tlereagh to Parliament, and been second in command in Zealand, rymple, should now accept service in so subordinate a situation, July 15, 1808; he made the memorable reply, "I was nimukwallah, as we say in the East, I have ate of the King's salt,1 and therefore I consider it my duty to serve with zeal and

June 14.

1 Lord Cas

Sir H. Dal

Gurw. iv. 18.

promptitude when or wherever the King, or his Government, may think it proper to employ me.'

CHAP.

III.

Landing of

tion, and

Vimeira.

Although Lord Castlereagh failed in obtaining for Sir 1808. Arthur the chief command, yet he wrote a confidential 32. letter to Sir H. Dalrymple, strongly recommending him the expedi for any service or situation which required particular battle of vigour, judgment, and ability. But Sir Arthur had gained great success, and commenced his immortal career, before he was superseded in the command by that officer. The expedition which he commanded, mustering not quite 10,000 sabres and bayonets, set sail from Cork on the 12th July, and disembarked in Mondego July 12. Bay on the 31st. The division under General Spencer, July 31. from Cadiz, came up, 5000 strong, on the 5th, and the united force, consisting of 13,000 effective men, set out towards Lisbon. On the 19th August they were reinforced by Anstruther's brigade, and on the 20th by Ackland's, which augmented his force to 16,000 men, with 18 guns, and 180 horse; and Junot, having concentrated 14,000 men, including 1200 horse, and 26 guns, advanced to the encounter. The advanced guard

* "I have received your private letter of the 21st of July, for which I am much obliged to you. I shall be the junior of the Lieutenant-Generals; however, I am ready to serve the Government wherever, and as they please."— SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY to LORD CASTLEREAGH, August 8, 1808; GURWOOD, iv. 59.

+"Permit me to recommend to your particular confidence Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley. His high reputation in the service as an officer would in itself dispose you, I am persuaded, to select him for any service that required great prudence and temper, combined with much military experi ence. The degree, however, to which he has been for a length of time past in the closest habits of communication with his Majesty's Ministers with respect to the affairs of Spain, having been destined to command any operation that circumstances might render necessary for counteracting the views of France against the Spanish dominions in South America, will, I am sure, point him out to you as an officer of whom it is desirable for you, on all accounts, to make the most prominent use which the rules of the service will permit."— LORD CASTLEREAGH to SIR HEW DALRYMPLE, July 15, 1808; GURWOOD, iv. 18.

In this march the same difficulties which were afterwards so severely experienced in the Crimea were at once felt. Sir Arthur wrote to Lord Castlereagh on the 8th August-"I have had the greatest difficulty in organising my commissariat for the march, and that department is very incompetent, notwithstanding the arrangements which I made with Huskisson upon

CHAP.

III.

1803. Aug. 21.

of the two armies met at Rolica on the 17th, and at Vimeira on the 21st, on both of which occasions the French, after a fierce struggle, were overthrown, and on the last, 13 guns and 400 prisoners were taken. As soon as this success was achieved, Sir Arthur proposed to move, the same evening, with the part of his army which had been least engaged, 9000 strong, direct on Torres Vedras, destined to celebrity in after days, by which means he would have cut off Junot's retreat to Lisbon, and driven him to a disastrous and eccentric retreat to Abrantes or Badajoz, in the course of which half, if not the whole of his army would have perished. But Sir H. Burrard, who had come up and assumed the command after the battle, deemed this movement too hazardous, and the troops were ordered to bivouac on the field of battle. The consequence was, that Junot, by a Lord Castle night march, regained the Lisbon road, and fell back to that capital without further molestation, but weakened by 3000 men, and half his artillery, in the two disastrous battles he had sustained.1

1 Sir A. Wellesley to

reagh, Gurw, iv. 93-98.

1*

This opportunity having been lost by the undue pru

the subject. This department deserves your serious attention. The existence of the army depends upon it; and yet the people who manage it are incapable of managing anything out of a counting-house. I shall be obliged to leave Spencer's guns behind for want of means of moving them; and I should have been obliged to leave my own if it were not for the horses of the Irish Commissariat. Let nobody ever prevail upon you to send a corps to any part of Europe without horses to draw their guns. It is not true that horses lose their condition at sea."-SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY to LORD CASTLEREAGH; Lavaos, August 8, 1808; GURWOOD, iv. 59.

* "I recollect that on the 21st August Sir A. Wellesley urged Sir H. Burrard to advance, giving, as a reason, that his right was some miles nearer to Torres Vedras than the enemy; that he had four brigades that had not been engaged; and that Torres Vedras was the pass by which the enemy must retire to Lisbon; and that, in his opinion, by that movement no part of the French army would reach Lisbon."-LORD BURGHERSH's Evidence before Committee of Inquiry; GURWOOD, iv. 214.

"About the close of the action, when it was evident that the enemy must be everywhere repulsed, Sir Arthur came up to me and proposed to advance : I understood he meant the movement to be from our right, and towards Torres Vedras. I answered that I saw no reason for altering my former resolution of not advancing."-SIR HARRY BURRARD's Evidence before Court of Inquiry; GURWOOD, iv. 205.

CHAP.

III.

33.

which, in

stances, was

dence of the second in command, nothing remained but to accede to the proposal for an armistice, to be followed by the evacuation of the country, which was 1808. shortly after made by Marshal Junot. It was concluded Convention accordingly on the 30th August, and immediately after of Cintra, followed by the entire evacuation of the country by the the circumFrench troops. This convention, which acquired an un- expedient. enviable celebrity under the name of the "Convention of Cintra," excited the most violent discontent in Great Britain, where the previous victory, and the surrender of Dupont in the defiles of the Sierra Morena to Castanos, had excited unbounded enthusiasm and the most extravagant expectations. A Court of Inquiry was in consequence appointed to sit on the subject. Sir Arthur, who found his situation uncomfortable under generals who were obviously not equal to the crisis, was not sorry when he was summoned home to give evidence before the Court; and, by doing so, he avoided the disasters of the Corunna retreat. From the very first, however, he entirely approved, except in some subordinate details regarding the French plunder, of the Convention, and his reasons, which were afterwards stated at length before the Court of Inquiry, were early given in a long letter to Lord Castlereagh, which presented them with irresistible force.* The view he took was obviously well

"I think it but just to inform your Lordship that I concurred with the Commander of the Forces in thinking it expedient, on the 22d of August, that the French army in Portugal should be allowed to evacuate that kingdom with their arms and baggage, and that every facility for this purpose should be afforded to them.

"I deemed this to be expedient in the relative state of the two armies on the evening of the 22d, considering that the French army had then resumed a formidable position between us and Lisbon; that they had the means of retiring from that position to others in front of that city, and, finally, of crossing the Tagus into Alentejo, with a view to the occupation in strength of the forts of Elvas, La Lippe, and, eventually, Almeida. As LieutenantGeneral Sir John Moore's corps had been diverted from the occupation of the position at Santarem, which had been proposed for them, there were no means to prevent, and no increase of numbers could have prevented, the French army from effecting these objects.

"The British army, after waiting for and receiving its reinforcements,

СНАР.

III.

1808.

founded. By the Convention the British got immediate possession of the forts, arsenals, and dockyards of Lisbon, with all the fortresses in the kingdom occupied by the French troops; twelve Russian sail of the line fell into our hands; the troops who capitulated were to be transported to Rochefort, a long way from the Peninsular field of action; the immense moral advantage was gained of exhibiting a French Marshal and corps entering into a capitulation, and an entire kingdom liberated from their arms by a single victory. Add to this, that the British army was, by the Convention, immediately put in possession of the capital, containing ample supplies, of which it stood much in need, and a strong fortified position and harbour, forming the best possible would thus have been precluded from the use of the Tagus for some time longer; and, as it depended for its supplies of provisions and ammunition upon its communication with the fleet, which, in the end of August, would have become most precarious by the coast, it would have been involved in difficulties for the want of necessaries, which would have been aggravated by the increase of its numbers. To these circumstances, which affected the immediate situation of the army and its existence in Portugal, there were other considerations to be added respecting its future operations. I considered it most important that the British army in Portugal should be at liberty, at an early period, to march into Spain. Not only no arrangements for the march into Spain could be made till the French had evacuated Elvas and Almeida, and we should have possession of the Tagus and the Douro, but the army must have attacked and taken these places by regular sieges, before his Majesty could have restored the government of his ally, or could have moved his troops to the assistance of the Spaniards. I need not point out to your Lordship the difficulties of these operations, their increase in the season in which they would have been undertaken, or the time which they would have lasted. These circumstances, affecting the situation, the objects, and the future operations of the army, were to be attributed to the fact that the enemy occupied, in a military point of view, the whole of Portugal, having every stronghold in their hands; that their situation on the evening of the 22d of August enabled them still to avail themselves of these possessions, and to strengthen them as they might think proper; and I conceived that an army, whose retreat was open, and which possessed such advantages, had a fair claim to be allowed to have the facility of withdrawing from the country."-SIR ARTHUR WELLESLEY to LORD CASTLEREAGH, London, October 6, 1808; GURWOOD, iv. 148, 149. These considerations are so important and obviously well founded, that they render it doubtful whether the cause of the Peninsula would have been as much benefited even by the successful march of Sir Arthur Wellesley to Torres Vedras, and consequent cutting off of Junot from the capital, and forcing him back to Almeida or Elvas, as it was by the subsequent capitulation which at once put the whole resources of Portugal at his disposal, and rendered it the basis of all his future operations.