504 SIR JOHN MOORE MARCHES INTO SPAIN. [1808. Neither of the two "great generals was again employed. One advantage was gained by the Convention. The Russian fleet in the Tagus was delivered up to the British. Sir John Moore, late in October, began his march into Spain, "to cooperate," as his instructions set forth, "with the Spanish armies in the expulsion of the French." He was to lead the British forces in Portugal; and to be joined by sir David Baird, with ten thousand men, to be landed at Corunna. On the 11th of November, Moore had crossed the boundary between Portugal and Spain, and his advanced guard had reached Ciudad Rodrigo. Two days after, he was at Salamanca. Instead of finding Spanish armies to co-operate with, he learnt that the French had routed and dispersed them. Napoleon had himself come to command his troops; and had arrived at Bayonne on the 3rd of November. Moore was separated from Baird by a wide tract of country. He had divided his own army, having received false information that the direct northern road was impassable for artillery, and having consequently sent sir John Hope by a circuitous route. He remained for some time at Salamanca, inactive and uncertain. Mr. Frere, the British ambassador, urged Moore to advance to Madrid. The clever schoolfellow of Canning, who wrote admirable burlesque, was not the best judge of a military operation, and took a sanguine view of what popular enthusiasm might effect in Spain. The people were ignorant and presumptuous; their rulers were either imbecile or treacherous. Madrid was soon in the hands of the French; and the delusion of Mr. Frere that the capital could be preserved was at an end, before Moore completely felt how hopeless an advance would be. He made a forward movement against the advanced corps of Soult; and then, learning that the French armies were gathering all around him, he determined to retreat. Some partial successes had attended the British general's advance; but an intercepted letter from Napoleon convinced him that he could only save the army by retiring. Sir David Baird had previously joined him. Moore had abandoned all hopes of defending Portugal, and had directed his march towards Corunna. He commenced his retreat from Sahagun on the evening of the 24th of December. On the 27th Napoleon wrote to Joseph, "If the 1808.] NAPOLEON TAKES THE COMMAND OF HIS ARMY. 505 English have not already retreated, they are lost; and if they retire, they will be pursued so vigorously to their ships that half of them will never re-embark." On the 31st he wrote from Benevento, "The English are running away as fast as they can."+ Running away is not exactly the term for a retreat during which the retiring army constantly turned upon the pursuers, always defeating them, and on one occasion capturing general Lefebvre. This exploit was one of several brilliant efforts in which lord Paget, afterwards the marquis of Anglesey, distinguished himself. But there were other dangers than that of the pursuing enemy. The winter had set in with terrible severity; the sufferings of the troops were excessive; disorganization, the common consequence of a retreat, added to their danger. Moore saved his army from destruction by an overwhelming force when he carried it. across the Esla. The troops effectually destroyed the bridge by which they passed the swollen stream; at which foresight Napoleon affected great indignation: "The English have not only cut the bridges, but have undermined and blown up the arches; a barbarous and unusual use of the rights of war, as it ruins the country to no purpose." The destruction of the bridge of Castro Gonzalo delayed the advance of the French for two days. Moore thus saved his army from the attacks of fifty thousand French under Napoleon, who were hastening to overpower a force less than one third of the number which he led. But Moore could not save his men from their own excesses, which made enemies of the inhabitants of every place through which they passed. They murmured and were disobedient. The general, in his Orders, said, that "the situation of the army being arduous, called for the exertion of qualities most rare in military men. These are not bravery alone, but patience and constancy under fatigue and hardship; obedience to command; sobriety and firmness in every situation in which they may be placed." § Despondency had taken possession of the troops. At Astorga, Napoleon writes on the 2nd of January, "It is probable that more than half of the British army will be in our power; the English themselves think so." || Some of the newspapers of London, having experience of the failure of many warlike enterprizes against the French, had become the most confiding believers that resistance to Napoleon and to his invincible armies was altogether vain. This was long the creed of Whig orators and writers-rational enough at first, but betraying a factious and petty jealousy when the bulk of the people had warmed into hope and confidence. Francis Jeffrey, in December, wrote to Horner, "Murray tells me that you have still hopes of Spain. I have despaired utterly, from the beginning; and do not expect that we are ever to see ten thousand of our men back again-probably not five thousand."¶ The evil foreboding was not far from being realized. The French historians believe that the British army would have been wholly destroyed, if the emperor had remained to strike the final blow. At Astorga he received despatches which indicated that war with Austria was close at hand. He gave up the pursuit of Moore to Soult. At Lugo, on the 7th of January, the British general halted his exhausted * "Correspondence with Joseph," vol. i. p. 387. +Ibid., p. 388. Ibid., vol. i. p. 388. § "Life of Moore," vol. ii. p. 188. "Correspondence with Joseph,” vol. ii. p. 3. VOL. VII. LL 506 MOORE'S RETREAT-BATTLE OF CORUNNA. ... [1809. troops, determined to give battle to Soult. The conflict was declined; and on the British marched to Corunna. On the 11th, when they had ascended the heights from which Corunna was visible, there was the sea, but there were no transports in the bay. The troops met with a kind reception in the town; and their general applied himself to make his position as strong as possible, to resist the enemy that was approaching. On the 13th Moore wrote his last despatch to lord Castlereagh. The French, he says, come up with us; the transports are not arrived; my position in front of this place is a very bad one. . . . . It has been recommended to me to make a proposal to the enemy, to induce him to allow us to embark quietly. I am averse to make any such proposal, and am exceedingly doubtful if it would be attended with any good effect." On the evening of the 14th the transports arrived. The sick and wounded were got on board; and a great part of the artillery. Cavalry would have been useless on the broken ground where Moore took his position, so the men were dismounted, and the horses were killed. Fourteen thousand British remained to fight, if their embarkation were molested. The battle of Corunna began at two o'clock on the 16th of January. Soult had twenty thousand veterans, with numerous field-guns; and he had planted a formidable battery on the rocks commanding the valley and the lower ridge of hills. Columns of French infantry descended from the higher ridge; and there was soon a close trial of strength between the combatants. From the lower ridge Moore beheld the 42nd and 50th driving the enemy before them through the village of Elvina. He sent a battalion of the Guards to support them; but through a misconception the 42nd retired. Moore immediately dashed into the fight; exclaimed "Fortysecond, remember Egypt," and sent them back to the village. Meanwhile, major Napier, who commanded the 50th, was taken prisoner. He, who was to be the conqueror of Scinde, would there have ended his career, had not a French drummer rescued him from the barbarity of the enemies who denied him quarter, after he had received five wounds. The British held their ground or drove off their assailants; and victory was certain under the skilful direction of the heroic commander, when a shot from the rock battery struck him on the left breast and shoulder, tearing away the flesh and breaking the ribs. He was dashed to the earth; but he continued calmly sitting surveying the battle at Elvina, until he was assured that his brave fellows were triumphant. Sir David Baird, the second in command, had also been carried off. Moore was placed in a blanket. His sword-hilt crushed against his terrible wound, and it was attempted to be removed; but he said that he would not part with his sword in the field. He was carried into Corunna; and endured several hours of extreme torture before he yielded up his great spirit. But he had the consolation of knowing that the battle was won, and he died expressing a hope that his country would do him justice. The command had devolved upon general Hope, who thought that his first duty was now to embark the troops. Had he known that the ammunition of the French was exhausted, the victory might have been more complete. Darkness came on. The troops were returning from the scene of conflict to be embarked that night. The sound of a few distant guns was heard as their commander was laid in his grave, hastily dug, on the ramparts of Corunna. The noblest dirge that ever was written says— 1809.] DEATH OF SIR JOHN MOORE-SUFFERINGS OF HIS ARMY. 507 "We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, Marshal Soult paid the tribute of a soldier to a soldier, and raised a plain monument on the spot where the English general had been killed. It bore this inscription: "Hic cecidit Johannes Moore, dux exercitus, in pugnâ Januarii XVI. MDCCCIX. contra Gallos, a Duce Dalmatia ductos." Soult paid a more ample testimony to the merit of his adversary. He said, in a letter to colonel Napier, of the 15th November, 1824, that sir John Moore knew how to profit everywhere by the advantages which the country offered him to oppose an active and vigorous resistance, and ended by sinking in a combat which ought for ever to honour his memory. Jomini, a military historian generally impartial, has described the retreat of Moore as nothing more than a flight. A later military historian, who recognizes the greatness of our country's heroes in this crisis of her fate, protests against this assertion. An army composed of young soldiers, commanded by officers without experience, and which, during eleven days, sustained without being shaken the pursuit of an army superior in numbers, composed of veteran troops, and led by such chiefs as Soult and Ney,-which, in spite of the eagerness of this pursuit, marched fifty-six leagues in eleven days, of which three were days of rest,-which, having reached the end of its march, maintained an obstinate fight and embarked in the presence of a superior enemy, -which, in fact, from the commencement of the campaign, had only lost, and left behind, 4033 men-such an army does not fly; it does not even make a precipitate retreat.† Happier was the lot of Moore than if he had returned to England, to be a mark for party virulence; to be the subject of a fierce controversy whether he ought to have marched to destruction under the advice of Mr. Frere, or tried to save his army by a retreat. The miseries of that retreat were in some degree a necessary consequence of the absence of that prevision which Moore had not the materials for forming. The great captain of the Peninsular war said he could only see one error in Moore's campaign-he should have considered his advance against Soult as a movement of retreat, and have sent officers to the rear to mark and prepare the halting-places for every brigade. "But," says the duke of Wellington, "this opinion I have formed after long experience of war, and especially of the peculiarities of a Spanish war, which must be seen to be understood." Canning, in Parliament, spoke of the retreat and its precipitancy as a matter of deep regret. In private, he used stronger and less generous language. "Sir John Moore ought never to have been held up as an approved military authority for all he had done in Spain; for, if he had found the transports at Corunna, and returned without a battle, he must have been tried, and ought to have been disgraced." Want of accurate information of the disposition of the people, of the geographical features of the country, of the means of communication, of the power of Alison says that the tomb, since enlarged, bears this inscription: "John Moore, Leader of the English armies, slain in battle, 1809." Brialmont, "Histoire du Duc de Wellington," tom. i. p. 218. Lord Colchester's "Diary," vol. ii. p. 179. 508 NATIONAL GLOOM-CHARGES AGAINST THE DUKE OF YORK. [1809. obtaining supplies, produced the indecision of the advance and the calamities of the retreat. But how much more reprehensible was the ignorance of the government at home-" Why," said Canning, "should government be ashamed to say they wanted that knowledge of the interior of Spain, which they found no one possessed? With every other part of the continent we had had more intercourse: of the situation of Spain we had every thing to learn."* This confession of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was heard, says Southey, "with astonishment by the thoughtful part of the people, and not without indignation." The people, whether thoughtful or careless, felt the deepest commiseration for the sufferers in Moore's campaign, who came home to show what war was. There were nine hundred women landed at Plymouth who had followed the army. On board the transports they were separated from their husbands, and for the most part they were ignorant of their fate. The hospitals were filled with wounded and sick; and some of the troops brought back a pestilential fever. In their sorrow and pity the people forgot their indignation at what they were told had been the conduct of the campaign by the government; and whilst they gave a tear to the memory of the brave general who died at Corunna, they despised the attempts of some journals to load his character with obloquy. "The newspapers sounded the pulse of the public as to laying all blame on sir John Moore, but that nail would not drive."† The Convention of Cintra and the Retreat to Corunna produced a national gloom and despondency proportioned to the sanguine hopes with which the first great popular resistance to Napoleon had been hailed. There was little public confidence in further operations in the same direction. And yet the Opposition in Parliament had no public support when they proposed to abandon Spain and Portugal to their fate; and to keep our troops at home to resist a probable invasion. The reasonable doubts of the success of any future military enterprize were carried to their height, when the country was suddenly startled by charges against the duke of York, which not only laid bare the vices and follies of his private character, but involved the certainty that he had unworthily bestowed his patronage at the Horse Guards. On the 27th of January, colonel Wardle's motion for an inquiry into the conduct of the Commander-in-chief with regard to promotions, exchanges, and appointments to commissions in the army, and in raising levies for the army, was referred to a Committee of the whole House. From the 1st of February to the 20th of March the almost undivided attention of the House of Commons, and of the country, was bestowed upon the contemptible details of the degradation of the king's second son, filling one of the most important offices of the State, in being the dupe of the artifices of an abandoned woman, Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke. The evidence that was given at the bar of the House of Commons occupies hundreds of pages in Hansard's Debates. It was a source of amusement in every society, from the saloons of St. James's to the pot-houses of St. Giles's. It was an occasion of disgust to every well-regulated mind. Wilberforce writes in his Diary, "This melancholy business will do irreparable mischief to public morals, by accustoming the public to hear * Debate of May 9-quoted in Southey's "Peninsular War," vol. iii. p. 378. Lord Bulkeley to the marquis of Buckingham-"Court and Cabinets," &c., vol. iv. p. 311. |