by Foster, R E
Of more immediate concern to Wellesley, as he disembarked at Mondego Bay, was the news that General Junot’s force in Lisbon was larger than had been presumed. This was offset by tidings that an additional 15,000 men had been despatched from Britain, including Sir Hew Dalrymple, who would take overall command from Wellesley with Sir Harry Burrard as his deputy. Before they arrived, however, Wellesley gained a limited victory over part of the French army at Roliça on 17 August. Four days later, he scored an altogether more satisfying one, as Burrard looked on, when Junot attacked him at Vimeiro.
Wellesley’s success initially played well at home. The Morning Post carried an early, if idealised, account of him in action:
since landing in Portugal Sir Arthur never went under cover at night, but always slept on the ground in the open air; he was the first up and the last down of the whole camp, sleeping constantly in his clothes […] he was cheerful, affable, and easy of access – enduring every privation himself, he was attentive to the wants of all, and ever active to obviate or remedy them […] In personal bravery he has been never excelled […] he was constantly in the hottest part of the action; wherever a corps was to be led on […] Sir Arthur was on the spot to head it […] Is it wondrous that such a man should be the idol of his soldiers, and the admiration of his brother Officers?50
Further recognition came with his first appearance in caricature.51 But the caprice of press and public were never more evident than in the aftermath of Vimeiro. Sir Harry Burrard declined Wellesley’s request to pursue Junot; Dalrymple, who arrived the day after Vimeiro, endorsed his deputy’s caution. By the end of the month, they had brokered the Cintra Convention with Junot. The French agreed to leave Portugal, their transportation provided by the British. At home, this news transformed celebration into uproar. Ben Sydenham, an admirer of Wellesley, wrote that, ‘It has excited universal indignation, such a ferment has never existed.’52
Whilst it was Dalrymple who had negotiated the armistice, it was Wellesley who bore the brunt of the indignation. This was partly because his superiors had ordered him to sign the Convention – the essentials of which he endorsed – but more because he remained a member of the government. Anti-government press organs, notably the Morning Chronicle, speculated openly about his generalship, insisting that his reputation rested on the too-narrow basis of Assaye. Speaking at a county meeting in Hampshire, William Cobbett, who detested both the government and ‘that infernal family’, smelt conspiracy. Why, he wanted to know, had part of the Convention only been published in French? ‘My neighbours do not understand French; God forbid they ever should.’53 Demands for an inquiry proved irresistible. They also allowed the Opposition to continue its attack: ‘What a happy thing it is,’ fulminated The Times, ‘to possess rank and connection, and the means of patronizing friends and of serving dependants.’54 Wellesley did not cut an impressive figure at the court of inquiry: when he appeared, on 22 November, he read a narrative of his involvement ‘so rapidly […] and in so low a tone, as to be scarcely audible without the bar’.55 Much as Cobbett predicted, however, the inquiry exonerated Wellesley, Dalrymple and Burrard. Parliament then passed votes of thanks to Wellesley for his victories at Roliça and Vimeiro. These too, according to Wellesley’s and the government’s critics, were more politically expedient than merited. The Earl of Moira, for one, argued that as such votes ‘were the highest honour that could be conferred on a subject, he thought they should be reserved for great occasions, and not lavished on every trivial advantage obtained over the enemy’.56
At the start of 1809, therefore, Wellesley’s generalship, if not his personal valour, remained unproven with many. And whilst the events of 1808 had allowed him to emerge, at least briefly, from the Marquis Wellesley’s shadow, he was encumbered by the new millstone that he had, through his political connections, been promoted beyond his competence. Events unfolding whilst the Cintra inquiry deliberated did not help. Sir John Moore, Britain’s foremost soldier, popular with the Opposition, was killed on 16 January 1809 at Corunna, as the French successfully ejected his army from Spain. Less than three months previously Moore had predicted that if the French prevailed in Spain, it would be impossible to deny them Portugal too. One reason why there was remarkably little protest when, in April 1809, the government appointed Wellesley to head a new expedition to the Peninsula with the remit of defending Portugal from renewed French aggression, was the Opposition’s consequent conviction that he would fail.
Matters did not transpire as they anticipated. In May, Wellesley crossed the Douro and took Oporto. In late June he struck into Spain where, on 27–28 July his Anglo-Portuguese Army fought a successful defensive action at Talavera. Walter Scott enthused that, ‘His excellent conduct, joined to his high and undaunted courage, make him our Nelson on land.’57 For his efforts Wellesley was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Wellington. But Talavera was not a decisive battle. Though Marshals Victor and Jourdan withdrew at its close, casualties were heavy – nearly 7,000 – on both sides. Mindful that another French Army was approaching from the north under Soult, Wellington saw no option but to retreat to Badajoz on the Spanish-Portuguese border. Whilst there was some ringing of church bells in celebration when news of the battle reached home (for example in Bury St Edmunds), the ambiguous results of the battle ensured that it did not catch the popular imagination.58
Opponents latched onto the ambiguities. The Times accused Wellington ‘of a degree of inconsiderateness’ towards the wounded, even citing Le Moniteur, which predicted that, ‘If he shall long command the English armies, we may flatter ourselves with obtaining great advantages from the brilliant combinations of a General so inexperienced in the trade of war.’59 The Common Council of the City of London resolved that he ‘had exhibited in the campaign of Talavera, with equal rashness and ostentation, nothing but a useless valour’. One of its number, Robert Waithman, who was to prove one of Wellington’s most vehement and persistent critics, saw Talavera as part of an emerging picture of Wellington’s desire for personal aggrandisement: ‘his great anxiety appeared to be to gain laurels for himself’. Had the Cintra inquiry been conducted properly ‘the country would, probably, not have now to lament the loss which we have sustained in Spain, from the hasty advance and precipitate retreat of Lord Viscount Wellington’.60
Wellington’s ennoblement only added grist to the debate. What had he done to deserve it, asked the Dublin Evening Post? The answer, so far as it could see, was that he proceeded ‘rashly, suffers himself to be deceived, is ignorant of the force and condition of his antagonist, is attacked, loses every fourth man in his army, retreats, and in one day he is raised to the dignity of a Viscount’.61 The argument inevitably overspilled into Parliament when it passed a vote of thanks to Wellington for Talavera early in 1810. In the Lords, the Earl of Suffolk opposed the motion, arguing that Wellington’s lack of caution, foresight and intelligence, had ‘led to all the consequences of a defeat, instead of a victory’. There was more opposition a fortnight later when the Commons debated whether Wellington should be granted a £2,000 pension: that it was carried by 213–106 shows that Wellington was still some way from being recognised as a national hero. Not a few believed that a weak government had deliberately rewarded Wellington and talked up Talavera in an attempt to make some much-needed political capital. Though Wellington had resigned the Irish Chief Secretaryship when he left for Portugal, moreover, it was a government in which the Wellesley presence was as strong as ever: Richard, Marquis Wellesley, had become Foreign Secretary in December 1809, leaving a vacancy as ambassador to Spain, which Henry Wellesley would soon fill. Wellington himself later reflected on this stage of his career that there were even some at the Horse Guards who viewed him with suspicion owing to the fact that he had served his military apprenticeship in India, that he had political friends, and in consequence of his being ‘a sprig of nobility’.62
An assessment of military realities too, though, informed the personal and partisan criticisms. Napoleon
had scored a decisive victory over the Austrians at Wagram in July 1809. He announced that he intended going to the Peninsula in person with reinforcements during 1810. In face of such odds, The Times declared that ‘our longer continuance there can be justified upon no principle of policy or even common sense’. In February 1810, Thomas Creevey confided gleefully to his journal that Wellington’s ‘career approaches very rapidly to a conclusion’.63 Even as he wrote, however, Wellington was overseeing the construction of fortifications north of Lisbon. Taking advantage of natural topography, the three huge defensive lines of Torres Vedras caught the imagination of the British public like no other Wellingtonian position before Waterloo. As one much-reproduced eyewitness description put it:
The lines may be said to defend a triangular portion of the kingdom of Portugal; possessing peculiar importance, by containing the capital, the port, and the grand depots […] the French, even in the possession of the interior provinces, may be considered to have done nothing. Starvation is inevitable […] The few directions in which a body of men could approach, are so commanded by artillery, that an effectual slaughter would be carried on during the time occupied in the most expeditious march. Ditches, palisades, and other works, tend greatly to the inaccessibility of the place.64
For much of 1810, however, the harbingers of doom looked liked being proved right; in the summer the French seized the fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. It was not until 27 September that Wellington’s Anglo-Portuguese force of 50,000 risked confronting André Masséna’s army of 65,000 at Bussaco. Wellington’s position, astride a long ridge with a reverse slope, would be brought to the mind of those who stood with him at Mont St Jean five years later. For the moment, what mattered was that they secured an emphatic victory before retiring to Torres Vedras. When Masséna reached it in mid-October, he could only rail at his adversary’s lack of military sportsmanship: ‘Lord Wellington, not daring to wait for us in the open country, endeavours to destroy everything which might subsist our army […] no period of history furnishes an example of such barbarity.’65 Finally accepting, in March 1811, that he could not go forward, Masséna withdrew into Spain. Portugal had been saved.
The news of Bussaco reached Britain in mid-October. It made an impact far greater and more favourable than anything Wellington had thus far accomplished. In the House of Commons, Spencer Perceval, Chancellor of the Exchequer, rejoiced at this vindication of the government’s policy, adding that:
Those, on the contrary, who have entertained the desponding idea that the sun of British glory was for ever set, must now congratulate themselves and the country on the proof that our military character never stood so high as at the present moment […] We have a British army, composed of a general who has out-generalled theirs, and troops by whom their troops have been subdued.
The Lords followed suit in voting their unanimous thanks. Significantly, it was Lord Grey, reformer, and former Foreign Secretary, somebody hitherto unconvinced by Wellington’s pedigree, who seconded the motion and described him as ‘a great commander’. Though the Morning Chronicle cavilled, the press followed Parliament’s cue. An article in the British Review dared to compare Wellington to Marlborough, even suggesting ‘that his talents are, upon the whole, of greater promise; nor can we, by any exertion of philosophy, bring ourselves to despair of beholding him the instrument of as much good to prostrate Europe, as it received a century ago through the medium of his renowned predecessor’.66
Now for the first time too, anticipating genres that would follow Waterloo, widespread popular celebration of a Wellington victory is evident. Nobody caught the mood better than ‘Hafiz’ in his ‘Sonnet to Lord Wellington’:
Though foul-mouth’d Faction thy fair fame abuse,
And squinting Envy at thy merit sneer,
Candour and Truth disdain their sordid views –
To every friend of Freedom thou art dear.
Then persevere in thy sublime career,
By honour sanction’d, and by wisdom led;
And teach the foe of Europe’s peace to fear
Britannia’s bands – with Wellesley at their head:
While nations rescu’d from destruction’s jaws,
Proclaim their gratitude, and thy applause.67
Not to be outdone, Philip Astley staged a military spectacle entitled ‘Lisbon or Ruse de Guerre on the Banks of the Tagus’ in the Strand’s Pavilion Theatre. The performance included a song in which Mr Johnson declared that:
Our encampment was bristled with cannon,
To check Massena’s ruse de guerre;
Lord Wellington will give him a drubbing,
If he approaches our right, left, or rear.68
Sadly, Mr Johnson’s optimism was as misplaced as his lyrics were awful. The popular presumption that Masséna’s retreat into Spain would presage further British and Wellingtonian triumphs in 1811 proved largely illusory. Bussaco was not destined to live in the national consciousness like Waterloo. Instead, for more than a year, the war became one of costly attrition. By his own admission, Wellington only narrowly escaped defeat by Masséna at Fuentes de Oñoro in early May. Though, a few days later, he took Almeida, the only Portuguese fortress still in French hands, his forces sustained heavy losses at Albuera in defeating a French army that was attempting to relieve its countrymen in the border fortress of Badajoz. Back in Britain, old doubts resurfaced. The Liverpool Mercury complained that, ‘His Lordship seems rather to be feeling his way, than to be following any determined plan.’ A month later it added that, ‘His present position is neither threatening nor commanding.’ Sir Francis Burdett, the Radical MP who remained steadfast in his criticism of the war, insisted that, ‘There was no chance of our succeeding in driving the French out of Spain.’69
Burdett was wrong and forward momentum resumed in 1812. The Spanish border fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz fell on 19 January and 6 April respectively; the latter, however, at a cost of 5,000 casualties. In another scene that would have echoes three years later, the sight of so many bodies in so compact a space moved Wellington to tears – though this quickly turned to fury as his men took revenge for their fallen comrades in an orgy of violence and dissipation. At home, a grateful Prince Regent raised him to an earldom and Parliament once more voted its unanimous thanks. Speaking in those debates, Lord Liverpool, the Secretary for War and the Colonies, noted the large number of casualties but ‘hoped that the friends and relatives of those who so gloriously fell, would derive consolation from the fame of the illustrious dead’. The public at large certainly seems to have been more than happy to do so. By early May, Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre on Westminster Bridge was advertising a sixteen-scene adaptation of the storming of Badajoz. For those who wanted to celebrate further, Henry Barker would soon offer a panorama of the bloody action in Leicester Square.70
‘Lord Wellington has now a great game before him,’ The Times enthused, as Wellington forged into Spain. It is perhaps partly for this reason that the press generally, from this point onwards, becomes more inclined to include details of military actions in its columns, usually in the form of eyewitness letters. The change of editorial tack was certainly propitious, for on 22 July, after a protracted game of military chess, Wellington seized on a gap in Marshal Marmont’s forces to inflict a comprehensive defeat on him at Salamanca. A letter of 26 July, duly published, recalled that Wellington’s words at the critical moment before the engagement were: ‘Then, by God! We will attack them.’ It was one of the first authentic Wellingtonian utterances to appear in print.71
Salamanca was Wellington’s first major offensive victory of the war, paving the way for him to enter Madrid on 12 August. Britain was enraptured. The Duke of Clarence (the future William IV) said that only Roman history offered parallels: Salamanca should be compared with Caesar’s triumph over Pompey at Pharsalus in 48 BC. Wellington was raised to a marquisate as the nation celebrated. Three hundred gathered for dinner and entertainment in Chichester, the same number
as met in Liverpool. In Cornwall, Richard Hussey Vivian (who would be prominent at Waterloo and in the debates which followed it), was one of the cavalry officers who provided entertainment for eighty-six people at the Angel Inn in Helston.72 But it was the illuminations in London (adorning both private and public buildings) that were most fully reported. When driving out to view them on 17 August the Marquis Wellesley, now unequivocally eclipsed by his sibling, was recognised by fellow spectators, who insisted on drawing his carriage back to Apsley House, his London residence. Between its gates he had placed a picture of Wellington with the words ‘Portugal’ and ‘Spain’ to the left and right, ‘Salamanca’ below, and just in case anybody had forgotten, ‘India’ above.73
But even Salamanca, as the virtually lone voice of Sir Francis Burdett pointed out, was no Blenheim. There were still 280,000 French troops in Spain at the beginning of 1812. If expelling them was the objective, Wellington had not been sufficiently resourced. By November, he was once more retreating to Portugal. It was, observed The Times, ‘a melancholy view of the state of affairs’.74 In fact, 1812 was decisive, but not in Spain. Napoleon had begun his fateful invasion of Russia in May; by October he was retreating from Moscow. Men were soon being siphoned off from the Peninsula as reinforcements. Wellington, meanwhile, used his appointment as Generalissimo of Spanish armies to augment his forces. By early 1813 he had more than 100,000 men at his disposal. Now at last he could think in terms of a war of liberation for Spain. Confirmation that the balance of forces had changed came on 21 June. Having invaded northern Spain in mid-May, Wellington crushed Joseph Bonaparte’s army 100 miles from the French frontier at Vitoria. Incurring losses of 9,000 killed, wounded and captured, not to mention the mind-boggling riches contained in his baggage train, Joseph retreated into France.