feelings in a remarkable manner; they refused to sell any provisions, or to deal in any manner with the French; they sung songs of triumph in their hearing, and in their sight fabricated thousands of small lamps for the avowed purpose of illuminating the streets at their departure; the doors of many of the houses occupied by the troops were marked in one night; men were observed bearing in their hats lists of Portuguese or Frenchmen designed for slaughter, and the quarters of Loison were threatened with a serious attack. Yet amidst all this disorder and violence, General Travot, and some others of the French army, fearlessly and safely traversed the streets, unguarded save by the reputation of their just and liberal conduct when in power, a fact extremely honourable to the Portuguese, and conclusive of the misconduct of Loison. Junot himself was menaced by an assassin, but he treated the affair with magnanimity, and in general he was respected, although in a far less degree than Travot.*

The dread of an explosion, which would have compromised at once the safety of his army and of the city, induced the French general to hasten the period when an English division was to occupy the citadel and take charge of the public tranquillity. Meanwhile emissaries from the junta of Oporto fomented the disposition of the populace to commit themselves by an attack upon the French, the convention was reprobated, and endeavours were fruitlessly made to turn the tide of indignation even against the English, as abettors of the invaders. The judge of the people, an energetic, but turbulent fellow, issued an inflammatory address, in which, calling for a suspension of the treaty, he designated the French as robbers and insulters of religion; the Monteiro Mor, who commanded a rabble of peasantry, which he dignified with the title of an army, took possession of the south bank of the Tagus, and from his quarters issued a protest against the convention, the execution of which he had the audacity to call upon Sir Charles Cotton to interrupt; the latter sent his communications to Sir Hew Dalrymple, who treated them with the contemptuous indignation they merited.

Sir John Hope being appointed English commandant of Lisbon, took possession of the castle of Belem on the 10th, and of the citadel the 12th; and, by his firm and vigorous conduct, reduced the effervescence of the public mind, and repressed the disorders which had risen to a height that gave opportunity for the commission of any villany. The Duke of Abrantes, with his staff, embarked the 13th. The first division of his army sailed the 15th; it was followed by the second and third divisions; and on the 30th, all the French, except the garrisons of Elvas and Almeida, were out of Portugal.

But the execution of the convention had not been carried on thus far without much trouble and contestation. Lord Proby, the English commissioner appointed to carry the articles of the treaty into effect, was joined by Major-General Beresford on the 5th, and their united labours were scarcely sufficient to meet the exigences of a task, in the prosecution of which disputes hourly arose. Anger, the cupidity of individuals, and opportunity, combined to push the French beyond the bounds of honour and decency, and several gross attempts were made to appropriate property which no interpretation of the stipulations should give a colour to amongst the most odious were the abstraction of manuscripts,

*Thiebault.

and rare specimens of natural history, from the national museum; and the invasion of the deposito publico, or funds of money awaiting legal decision for their final appropriation. Those dishonest attempts were met and checked with a strong hand, and at last a committee, consisting of an individual of each of the three nations, was appointed by the commissioners on both sides. Their office was to receive reclamations, to investigate them, and to do justice by seizing upon all contraband baggage embarked by the French; a measure attended with excellent effect. It must, however, be observed, that the loud complaints and violence of the Portuguese, and the machinations of the Bishop of Oporto, seem to have excited the suspicions of the British and influenced their acts, more than the real facts warranted; for the national character of the Portuguese was not then understood, nor the extent to which they supplied the place of true reports by the fabrication of false ones, generally known.

Party writers have not been wanting since to exaggerate the grounds of complaint. The English have imputed fraud and evasions of the most dishonourable kind to the French, and the latter have retorted by accusations of gratuitous insult, and breach of faith, inasmuch as their soldiers, when on board the British ships, were treated with cruelty in order to induce them to desert. It would be too much to affirm that all the error was on one side, but it does appear reasonable and consonant to justice to decide, that as the French were originally aggressors and acting for their own interest, and that the British were interfering for the protection of the Portuguese, an indecorous zeal on the part of the latter, if not commendable, was certainly more excusable than in their opponents. Upon the ground of its being impossible for Junot to know what was doing in his name, the British commissioners acquitted him of any personal impropriety of conduct, and his public orders, which denounced severe punishments for such malpractices, corroborated this testimony; yet Kellerman, in his communications with Sir Hew Dalrymple, did not scruple to insinuate matters to the duke's disadvantage. But, amidst all these conflicting accusations, the British commander's personal good faith and scrupulous adherence to justice has never been called in question.*

To define the exact extent to which each party should have pushed their claims is not an easy task, yet an impartial investigator would begin by carefully separating the original rights of the French, from those rights which they acquired by the convention; and much of the subsequent clamour in England against the authors of that treaty sprung from the error of confounding these essentially distinct grounds of argument. Conquest being the sole foundation of the first, defeat, if complete, extinguished them; if incomplete, nullified a part only. Now the issue of the appeal to arms not having been answerable to the justice of the cause, an agreement ensued, by which a part was sacrificed for the sake of the remainder, and upon the terms of that agreement the whole question of right hinges. If the French were not prisoners of war, it follows that they had not forfeited their claims, founded on the right of conquest, but they were willing to exchange an insecure tenure of the whole, for a secure tenure of a part. The difficulty consisted in defining exactly what was conceded, and what should be recovered from them. With respect to the latter, the restitution of plunder acquired anterior to

Sir Hew Dalrymple's Narrative; Court of Inquiry.

the convention was clearly out of the question; if officially obtained, it was part of the rights bargained for; if individually, to what tribunal could the innumerable claims which would follow such an article be referred? Abstract notions of right in such matters are misplaced. If an army surrenders at discretion, the victors may say with Brennus, "Wo to the vanquished!" but a convention implies some weakness, and must be weighed in the scales of prudence, not in those of justice.

CHAPTER VI.

The bishop and junta of Oporto aim at the supreme power; wish to establish the seat of government at Oporto; their intrigues; strange proceedings of General Decken; reflections thereupon-Clamour raised against the convention in England and in Portugal; soon ceases in Portugal-The Spanish general Galluzzo refuses to acknowledge the convention; invests Fort La Lippe; his proceedings absurd and unjustifiable-Sir John Hope marches against him; he alters his conduct-Garrison of La Lippe-March to Lisbon-Embarked-Garrison of Almeida; march to Oporto; attacked and plundered by the Portuguese-Sir Hew Dalrymple and Sir Harry Burrard recalled to England-Vile conduct of the daily press-Violence of public feeling-Convention, improperly called, of Cintra-Observations-On the action of Roriça-on the battle of Vimiero-On the convention.

THE interview that took place at Vimiero, between Don Bernardin Freire de Andrada and Sir Hew Dalrymple, has been already noticed as the commencement of an intrigue of some consequence. The Portuguese chief objected at the time to the armistice concluded with Kellerman, ostensibly upon general grounds, but really, as it appeared to Sir Hew, because the bishop and junta of Oporto were not named in the instrument. At the desire of Freire, one Ayres Pinto de Souza was received at the English head-quarters as the protector of Portuguese interests during the subsequent negotiation, and he was soon apprised that a treaty for a definitive convention was on foot, himself and his general being invited to state their views and wishes before any further steps were taken. Neither of them took any notice of this invitation, but when the treaty was concluded, clamoured loudly against it. The British army was, they said, an auxiliary force, and should only act as such, nevertheless, it had assumed the right of treating with the French for Portuguese interests, and a convention had been concluded which protected the enemy from the punishment due to his rapine and cruelty; it was more favourable than the strength of the relative parties warranted, and no notice had been taken of the Portuguese government, or of the native army in the Alemtejo; men who were obnoxious to their countrymen, for having aided the invaders, were protected from a just vengeance; finally the fortresses were bargained for, as acquisitions appertaining to the British army a circumstance which must inevitably excite great jealousy both in Portugal and Spain, and injure the general cause, by affording an opportunity for the French emissaries to create disunion among the allied nations. They dwelt also upon the importance of the native forces, the strength of the insurrection, and insinuated that separate operations were likely to be carried on notwithstanding the treaty.

Noble words often cover pitiful deeds; this remonstrance, apparently springing from the feelings of a patriot whose heart was ulcerated by the wrongs his country had sustained, was but a cloak for a miserable

interested intrigue. The Bishop of Oporto, a meddling ambitious priest, had early conceived the project of placing himself at the head of the insurrectional authorities, and transferring the seat of government from Lisbon to Oporto. He was aware that he should encounter great opposition, and he hoped that by inveigling the English general to countenance these pretensions, he might, with the aid of Freire's force, and his own influence, succeed in the object of his wishes. With this view he wrote a letter to Sir Charles Cotton, dated the 4th of August, in which was enclosed, as the letter describes it, "The form of government with which they, the junta of Oporto, meant to govern Portugal when the city of Lisbon should be free from the French; and this letter, together with its enclosure, being transmitted to Sir Arthur Wellesley, he placed them among other public documents in the hands of Sir Hew Dalrymple when the latter first landed at Maceira. In the document itself it was declared that "The body of government had taken the glorious resolution of restoring the Portuguese monarchy in all its extent, and of recovering the crown of Portugal for its lawful sovereign, Don Juan VI., their prince." But this "glorious resolution" was burdened with many forms and restrictions; and although the junta professed the intention of re-establishing a regency, they declared, "that if this new regency should be interrupted by a new invasion of the French, or by any other thing, the junta would imme diately take the government on itself, and exercise the authority and jurisdiction which it had done ever since its institution.

Thus prepared for some cabal, Sir Hew Dalrymple was at no loss for an answer to Freire's remonstrance. He observed, that if the government of Portugal had not been mentioned in the treaty, neither had that of England, nor that of France. The convention was purely military, and for the present concerned only the commanders in the field. With regard to the occupation of the fortresses, and the fact of the British army being an auxiliary force, the first was merely a measure of military precaution absolutely necessary, and the latter was in no way rendered doubtful by any act which had been committed; he Sir Hew was instructed by his government to assist in restoring the prince regent of Portugal to his lawful rights, without any secret or interested motives; finally, the Portuguese general had been invited to assist in the negotiations, and if he had not done so, the blame rested with himself. To this Sir Hew might have justly added, that the conduct of Freire in withdrawing his troops at the most critical moment of the campaign, by no means entitled him to assume a high tone towards those whom he had so disgracefully deserted in the hour of danger.

The Portuguese general was silenced by this plain and decided answer; yet the English general was quickly convinced that the bishop and his coadjutors, however incapable of conducting great affairs, were experienced plotters. In his first interview with Andrada, Sir Hew Dalrymple had taken occasion to observe, that "no government lawfully representing the prince regent actually existed in Portugal:" in fact, a junta, calling itself independent, was likewise established in Algarve, and the members of the regency legally invested by the prince with supreme authority were dispersed, and part of them in the power of the French. This observation, so adverse to the prelate's views, was transmitted to him by Freire, together with a copy of the armistice; and he was well aware that a definite convention, differing materially from the armistice, was upon the point of being concluded, the refusal of Sir Charles Cotton

to concur in the latter, having rendered it null and void. Nevertheless, preserving silence on that point, the bishop forwarded the copy of the armistice to the Chevalier Da Souza, Portuguese minister in London, accompanied by a letter filled with invectives and misrepresentations of its provisions; the chevalier placed this letter with its enclosures in the hands of Mr. Canning, the English secretary of state for foreign affairs, and at the same time delivering to him an official note, in which, adopting the style of the prelate and junta, he spoke of them as the representatives of his sovereign, and the possessors of the supreme power in Portugal.

Nor were the efforts of the party confined to formal communications with the ministers, the daily press teemed with invectives against the English general's conduct; ex-parte statements, founded on the provisions of an armistice that was never concluded, being thus palmed upon a public, always hasty in judging of such matters, a prejudice against the convention was raised before either the terms of, or the events which led to it, were known. For Sir Hew, forgetting the ordinary forms of official intercourse, had neglected to transmit information to his government until fifteen days after the commencement of the treaty, and the ministers, unable to contradict or explain any of Souza's assertions, were thus placed in a mortifying situation, by which their minds were irritated and disposed to take a prejudiced view of the real treaty. Meanwhile the bishop pretended to know nothing of the convention, hence the silence of Freire during the negotiation; but that once concluded, a clamour was, by the party, raised in Portugal, similar to what had already been excited in England; thus both nations appeared to be equally indignant at the conduct of the general, when, in fact, his proceedings were unknown to either.

It would appear that the bishop had other than Portuguese coadjutors. The Baron Von Decken, a Hanoverian officer, was appointed one of the military agents at Oporto; he was subject to Sir Hew Dalrymple's orders, but as his mission was of a detached nature, he was also to communicate directly with the Secretary of State in England. Von Decken arrived at Oporto upon the 17th August, and the same evening, in concert with the bishop, concocted a project admirably adapted to forward the view of the latter; they agreed that the prelate was the fittest person to be at the head of the government, and that as he could not, or pretended he could not, quit Oporto, the seat of government ought to be transferred to that city.

Two obstacles to this arrangement were foreseen: first, the prince regent at his departure had nominated a regency, and left full instructions for the filling up of vacancies arising from death or other causes; secondly, the people of Lisbon and of the southern' provinces would certainly resist any plan for changing the seat of government: hence, to obviate these difficulties, Von Decken wrote largely in commendation of the proposed arrangement, vilifying the conduct of the regency, and urging Sir Hew not only to give his sanction to the ambitious project, but to employ the British troops in controlling the people of Lisbon, should they attempt to frustrate the bishop's plans.* To conciliate the members of the regency, it was proposed to admit a portion of them into the newg overnment, and Francisco Noronha, Francisco da Cunha, the

* Appendix, No. XI.