1809.] THE MARSH-FEVER-FATAL TERMINATION OF THE EXPEDITION. 521 * had begun, and statesmanship at last had taken counsel of science,—that, independent of the existing records of the unhealthiness of Zealand, every feature of the country exhibited it in the most forcible manner;-the canals communicating with the sea, covered with the most noisome ooze; every ditch loaded with matter in a state of putrefaction; the whole island little better than a swamp; scarcely a place where water of a tolerable quality could be procured; the children sickly, and many of the adults deformed. The endemic diseases of the country, remittent and intermittent fevers, says the Inspector, begin to appear about the middle of August, and continue to prevail until the commencement of frosty weather. He adds one important fact, after describing how the disease had spread in the army with a rapidity almost unexampled in the history of any military operation, that "those men who may be attacked with fever, and recover from it, will have their constitutions so affected by the shock, that their physical powers, when called into action hereafter, will be very materially diminished." The "Journal of an Officer" describes what was endured by thousands of the sick. After a month's suffering he was carried to Flushing; shipped on board of a frigate; when in the Downs, the ship was telegraphed that the hospitals were full; went on to Spithead; and was borne ashore fainting. "My recovery was long doubtful, and when it at last commenced, it was long imperfect. The venom of the marsh-fever had a singular power of permeating the whole human frame. It unstrung every muscle, penetrated every bone, and seemed to search and enfeeble all the sources of mental and bodily life. I dragged it about with me for years." Such was the end of the great Armada that sailed from the Downs on the 28th of July, with a pomp and power that had never been equalled since another Armada came to a like fatal termination of vain hopes and blind confidence. The calamity which England had sustained had a most serious effect upon the progress of the war in Spain and Portugal. In the summer of 1810, the operations of lord Wellington were fatally crippled by the want of men to supply his losses. His earnest request for more aid from home was thus answered by lord Liverpool on the 2nd of August: "Now, with respect to reinforcements to your army, I am under the painful necessity of informing you that the effects of the fever contracted by our army last year in Walcheren are still of that nature that, by a late inspection, we have not at this time a single battalion of infantry, in Great Britain and Ireland, reported fit for service in the field, with the exception of the infantry of the duke of Brunswick's corps." + Walcheren was evacuated on the 23rd of December. Then came inquiries in Parliament. The ministry made every effort to screen lord Chatham from a vote of censure, which was prevented only by very small majorities. The character of the army and navy was not injured. The disgrace rested with the commander; with the Secretaryat-War; and with the members of the Cabinet, who believed him incapable, and had not the courage to enforce their belief. After the retreat of Soult from Oporto, sir Arthur Wellesley, at the beginning of July, entered Spain. On the 20th, he made a junction with the Spanish army under Cuesta, at Oropesa. Marshal Victor was in position at 522 THE BATTLE OF TALAVERA. [1809. Talavera. His outposts were attacked on the 22nd by the Spanish and British; and Victor, retiring to Torrijos, was joined by Sebastiani, and afterwards by king Joseph. Cuesta was obstinate and conceited. Taking his own counsel, he pushed on alone to attack the French, and was driven back to the British army, on the Alberche. With the greatest difficulty he was persuaded not to fight in a position where he would have been destroyed. In a sulky mood, he left to sir Arthur Wellesley the command of the two armies. The British general retired six miles to Talavera, where he had previously chosen his field of battle, and which he had strengthened by some earthworks. On the 27th, the French crossed the Alberche, and there was a partial contest, in which they were repulsed. On the 28th, the French renewed the attack. From nine o'clock of that morning till noon, the two armies reposed. It was the calm before the storm. The heat was excessive, and the French and English soldiers quitted their ranks, and assuaged their thirst in the little stream that separated their several positions. The scene was suddenly changed The French drums beat the rappel; the eagles were uplifted; the columns formed, and the battle commenced. They first attacked the left, which was weak; then fell upon the right; and later in the day threw their force upon the centre of the line. A formidable battery was making fearful havoc. The centre was giving way, when sir Arthur Wellesley ordered the 48th regiment to descend from the height which they occupied, and meet the brunt of the fight. The scattered masses rallied. The English general hurled a charge of cavalry upon the French columns; and the victory was won. In writing to a friend in India, sir Arthur Wellesley said, "The battle of Talavera was the hardest fought of modern times. The fire at Assaye was heavier, while it lasted; but the battle of Talavera lasted for two days and a night. Each party engaged lost a fourth of their numbers." * To another friend he writes, "We had certainly a most fierce contest at Talavera, and the victory which we gained, although from circumstances it has not been followed by all the good consequences which we might have expected from it, has at least added to the military reputation of the country, and has convinced the French that their title to be called the first military nation in Europe will be disputed, not unsuccessfully."+"This battle," says Jomini, "recovered the glory of the successors of Marlborough, which for a century had declined. It was felt that the English infantry could contend with the best in Europe." Very few Spaniards were engaged. Sixteen thousand English, of which number many had been recently taken from the militia, repulsed thirty thousand French veterans. Napoleon was furious at the results of the battle of Talavera. He wrote from Schönbrunn to general Clarke, that he should express to marshal Jourdan the emperor's extreme displeasure at the inaccuracies and falsehoods in his report. "He says that on the 28th we were in possession of the British army's field of battle-that is to say, of Talavera, and of the table land on which their left flank rested; whilst his subsequent reports, and those of other officers, say the exact contrary, and that we were repulsed during the whole day. . Tell "Supplementary Despatches," vol. vi. p. 431. +Ibid., p. 387. 1809.] THE BATTLE OF TALAVERA. 523 him that he might have put what he pleased into the Madrid newspapers, but that he had no right to disguise the truth to government." The next day the emperor wrote to his Minister of Police a memorandum, to be expanded into articles in the Journals: "Lord Wellesley is beaten in Spain. Surrounded in his rout, he seeks his safety in a precipitate flight under excessive heat. In quitting Talavera, he has recommended to the duke of Belluno five thousand sick and wounded that he was obliged to leave there. If affairs had been properly conducted in Spain, not an Englishman would have escaped ; but nevertheless they are beaten. Comment on these ideas in the journals. Demonstrate the extravagance of the ministers in exposing thirty thousand English, in the heart of Spain, against a hundred and twenty thousand French, the best troops in the world, while at the same time they sent twenty-five thousand others to come to grief (se casser le nez) in the marshes of Holland." In these hints for his journalists of Paris, Napoleon exaggerated the painful facts which the English general readily admitted. He was obliged to retreat, for Soult had suddenly appeared with fifty thousand men. He was surrounded by immense armies; he did leave, to be guarded by Cuesta, fifteen hundred of his sick and wounded; when Cuesta marched away and left his charge, sir Arthur did recommend them to the humanity of the French generals, who acted generously towards them, as sir Arthur Wellesley had acted towards the French at Oporto. He had confided too much in Spanish generals and in Spanish troops. He had trusted too much to the zeal and activity of the commissariat to furnish him supplies. Admiral Berkeley, who commanded in the Tagus, says: "Twice has the army been stopped for money, and twice for provisions. The horses starved, while ships, loaded with hay and oats from England, enough to furnish all the cavalry, were rotting and spoiling in the Tagus. The medical staff is as bad: as our army were dying away for want of medicines, while more than sufficient were in ships in the river." Nearly half a century was to slide on before such results of "ignorance and delay" were to be counted as monstrous things, that could never again shake the public confidence in official sagacity. The experience of one campaign taught sir Arthur Wellesley great lessons. In India he had acquired the power of regulating the commissariat upon the largest scale; in providing not only for men and horses, but for elephants and bullocks, and all the gorgeous cavalcades of an oriental camp. In his first campaign in Portugal, he had somewhat too much relied upon the War Office, and the Victualling Office, and the Transport Office. Each department did its own work in parallel lines, and never thought that the Division of Labour was worthless without the Union of Forces. He soon came to look sharply after the most apparently trifling details. But he also came to rely upon himself, and to leave the Spanish generals to their jealousies, and the Spanish juntas to their own conceits. His brother, the marquis (then ambassador in Spain), seeing that he could not bring the native authorities to act "with common spirit, honesty, or decency," advised him to return home.§ * "Correspondence with King Joseph," vol. ii. p. 66, August 21. + " Court, &c. of George III. ' vol. iv. p. 359. 66 Supplementary Despatches," vol. vi. p. 372. 524 ALARM IN ENGLAND-DISQUIET OF MINISTERS. [1809. He remained to show how a resolute will and a clear head can surmount every difficulty. The battle of Talavera won for sir Arthur Wellesley the name by which we shall henceforth speak of him-Wellington: first Viscount, then Earl, then Marquis, then Duke. By what name he was to be called was almost a matter of chance. "Talavera" was thought of. Of" Wellesley" his brother wore the honours. "Wellington" was chosen-the household word for all time. In December the British army had crossed the Tagus at Abrantes. When his head-quarters were at Badajoz, in October, lord Wellington had gone to Lisbon, "to arrange finally for the defence of Portugal." He had conceived the grand project of the lines of Torres Védras. In January, 1810, his head-quarters were at Viseu; and he was in constant communication with lieutenant-colonel Fletcher, an officer of engineers, on the execution of this gigantic work. The scheme was not to be paraded before the world. It was to be proceeded with steadily and unostentatiously. He would claim no merit with the English government, or the English people, for preparing a stronghold, from which he might go forth to do battle with armies four times as strong as his own, and retire thither on any emergency, to laugh at their efforts to dislodge him. During the spring of 1810 he steadily devoted himself to the organization of the British and Portuguese armies. He was wholly left to his own resources. The government at home could send him no reinforcements. He had no support in their confidence that he would surmount the difficulties by which he was encompassed. At the end of October, four questions were put to him by lord Liverpool,† which required all his prudence and sagacity to answer upon his own responsibility. Wellington thought:-1. That if the Spaniards were commonly prudent, the enemy would require a very large reinforcement before they could subjugate the country: 2. He thought that if the French did not make an immediate attack upon Portugal, they would require an army of seventy or eighty thousand men to succeed, but he believed they would make the attack: 3. He thought that if they made the attack at once they would be successfully resisted: 4. He was convinced that if defeated his army could embark At the end of 1809 intelligence had arrived of the defeat of two Spanish armies; and then lord Liverpool talks as if all the efforts of the British and Portuguese armies for the defence of Portugal would be unavailing.§ In March, lord Liverpool apprises lord Wellington, "That a very considerable degree of alarm exists in this country respecting the safety of the British army in Portugal;" and that he "would rather be excused for bringing away the army a little too soon, than, by remaining in Portugal a little too long, exposing it to those risks from which no military operations can be wholly exempt." He could not " recommend any attempt at what may be called desperate resistance." It must have been a satisfaction to Wellington, who cared very little for "alarm in England," and was not easily depressed by ministerial timidity, to have received the encouragement of the stout-hearted old king to persevere in the course which appeared right and "Supplementary Despatches," vol. vi. p. 361. +Ibid., vol. vi. p. 412. 1809.] DUEL BETWEEN CASTLEREAGH AND CANNING. 525 safe in his own judgment. Colonel Herbert Taylor was then the official secretary to George III., who was nearly or totally blind. He had read to the king a private letter from lord Wellington to lord Liverpool; and he conveys to the minister his sovereign's sentiments upon the correspondence which had taken place. This letter of colonel Taylor, dated April 21, lord Liverpool forwards to lord Wellington. It contains the following passage: "The king observed that the arguments and remarks which this letter contains, the general style and spirit in which it is written, and the clearness with which the state of the question and of prospects in Portugal is exposed, have given his majesty a very high opinion of lord Wellington's sense, and of the resources of his mind as a soldier; and that as he appears to have weighed the whole of his situation so coolly and maturely, and to have considered so fully every contingency under which he may be placed, not omitting any necessary preparation, his majesty trusted that his ministers would feel with him the advantage of suffering him to proceed according to his judg ment and discretion in the adherence to the principles which he has laid down, unfettered by any particular instructions which might embarrass him in the execution of his general plan of operations." The worry from Downing-street continued, especially from the Treasury. In June, Wellington asks this question of the ministry-" Are we at war with France for the existence and independence of the country? and is it advisable to maintain the contest as long as possible at a distance from home? . . . I see more, and must know more, of what is going on here than others; and I certainly have no prejudice in favour of the continuance of our exertions here, founded upon any partiality for the business of guiding them. But I sincerely feel what I write that if the resources of Great Britain were fairly applied to this contest, as they have been to any other in which the country has been engaged, the French would yet repent the invasion of Spain."+ When two Cabinet Ministers meet to fight a duel, and one is wounded, the natural consequence is, that the house divided against itself must fall. Lord Castlereagh, the Secretary at War, challenged Mr. Canning, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and they had a hostile meeting on Wimbledon Common on the 22nd of September. Canning was slightly wounded. It is scarcely possible to investigate the causes of this transaction without encountering the difficulties that arise from the partizanship of contemporary narratives. After the lapse of half a century the subject is scarcely worth investigation by a writer who has only to present a rapid view of the more important public affairs. Upon the surface it might appear that Canning had been intriguing for six months to remove Castlereagh from office for some motive of personal ambition. He "was much and unjustly blamed at the time." The duke of Portland, the Prime Minister, wrote to the Chancellor in June, "The great object, and indeed the sine quâ non with Canning, is to take from lord Castlereagh the conduct of the war." Lord Castlereagh, in his letter of challenge, complained that Mr. Canning, after receiving a promise that the seals of the War Office should be transferred from their holder, continued to act with him as his colleague, and permitted him to originate the * "Supplementary Despatches," p. 515. Ibid., vol. vi. p. 531. |