II. 1808. BOOK which it was the object of his expedition to create; and the credulity of the nation that produced the Sebastianists was not easily shocked. The Portuguese eagerly listened to tales so derogatory to their enemies and congenial to their own revengeful disposition. The anecdotes of French barbarity current for two years after the convention of Cintra, were notoriously false. The same story being related by persons remote from each other, is no argument of their truth. The reports that Loison was captured on his march from Almeida, reached Junot through Thiebault. fifty different channels; there were men to declare that they had beheld him bound with cords, others to tell how he had been entrapped, some named the places he had been carried through in triumph, and his habitual and characteristic expressions were quoted. The story was complete and the parts were consistent; yet the whole was not only false, but the rumour had not even the slightest foundation of truth. 2o. The Portuguese accounts of the events of this period are but angry amplifications of every real or pretended act of French barbarity and injustice, and the crimes of individuals are made matter of accusation against the whole army. The French accounts are more plausible, but scarcely more safe as authorities, seeing that they are written by men, who being for the most part actors in the scenes they describe, are naturally concerned to defend their own characters: their military vanity also has had its share in disguising the simple facts of the insurrection; for willing to enhance the merit of the troops, they have exaggerated the number of the insurgents, the obstinacy of the combats, and the loss of the patriots. English party writers, greedily fixing upon II. such relations, have changed the name of battle into CHAP. massacre; and thus prejudice, conceit, and clamour, have combined, to violate the decorum of history, and to perpetuate error. 1808. in Las 3o. It would, however, be an egregious mistake to suppose, that because the French were not monsters, there existed no cause for the acrimony with which their conduct has been assailed. The duke of Abrantes, although not cruel, nor personally obnoxious to the Portuguese, was a sensual and violent person, and his habits were expensive; such a man Napoleon is always rapacious, and as the character of the chief Casas. influences the manners of those under his command, it may be safely assumed that his vices were aped by many of his followers. Now the virtuous general Travot was esteemed, and his person respected, even in the midst of tumult, by the Portuguese, while Loison was scarcely safe from their vengeance when surrounded by his troops. The execrations poured forth at the mere mention of " the bloody Maneta,” as, from the loss of his hand, he was called, proves that he must have committed many heinous acts; and Kellerman appears to have been as justly stigmatised for rapacity, as Loison was for violence. 4°. It has been made a charge against the French generals, that they repressed the hostility of the Portuguese and Spanish peasants by military executions; but in doing so they only followed the custom of war, and they are not justly liable to reproof, save where they may have carried their punishments to excess, and displayed a wanton spirit of cruelty. All armies have an undoubted right to protect themselves when engaged in hostilities. An insurrection of armed peasants is a military anarchy. Men in such circumstances cannot be restrained within the bounds of II. 1808. BOOK civilised warfare; they will murder stragglers, torture prisoners, destroy hospitals, poison wells, and break down all the usages that soften the enmities of modern nations. They wear no badge of an enemy, and their devices cannot, therefore, be guarded against in the ordinary mode. Their war is one of extermination, and it must be repressed by terrible examples, or the civilized customs of modern warfare must be discarded, and the devastating system of the ancients revived. Hence, the usage of refusing quarter to an armed peasantry, and burning their villages, however unjust and barbarous it may appear at first view, is founded upon a principle of necessity, and is in reality a vigorous infliction of a partial evil, to prevent universal calamity. But however justifiable it may be in theory, no wise man will hastily resort to it, and no good man will carry it to any extent. CHAPTER III. III. 1808. mentary THE subjugation of Portugal was neither a recent CHAP. nor a secret project of Napoleon's. His intentions with respect to the house of Braganza were known in 1806 to Mr. Fox, who sent lord Roslyn, lord St. Vincent, and general Simcoe on a politico-military Parlia mission to Lisbon, instructing them not only to warn Papers, the court that a French force destined to invade 1809. Portugal was assembling at Bayonne, but to offer the assistance of an English army to repel the danger. The cabinet of Lisbon affected to disbelieve the information, Mr. Fox died during the negotiation, and the war with Prussia diverting Napoleon's attention to more important objects, he withdrew his troops from Bayonne. The tory administration, which soon after overturned the Grenville party, thought no further of the affair, or at least did not evince as much foresight and ready zeal as their predecessors. They kept, indeed, a naval force off Lisbon, under the command of sir Sydney Smith; but their views seem to have been confined to the emigration of the royal family, and they intrusted the conduct of the negotiations to lord Strangford, a young man of no solid influence or experience. Suddenly, the Russian squadron, under admiral Siniavin, took refuge in the Tagus, and this unexpected event produced in the British cabinet an activity which the danger of Portugal had not been able to excite. It was supposed, that as Russia and England were II. 1808. Parlia mentary Papers, 1809. BOOK in a state of hostility, the presence of the Russian ships would intimidate the prince regent, and prevent him from passing to the Brazils, wherefore sir Charles Cotton, an admiral of higher rank than sir Sydney Smith, was sent out with instructions to force the entrance of the Tagus, and to attack admiral Siniavin. To ensure success, general Spencer, then upon the point of sailing with five thousand men upon a secret expedition, was ordered to touch at Lisbon, and sir John Moore, with ten thousand men, was withdrawn from Sicily, and directed to aid the enterprise; but before the instructions for the commanders were even written, the prince regent was on his voyage to the Brazils, and Junot ruled in Lisbon. Sir John Moore's Journal, MS. Sir John Moore, however, arrived at Gibraltar, but hearing nothing of sir Sydney Smith, nor of general Spencer, proceeded to England, and reached Spithead the 31st of December, from whence, after a detention of four months, he was despatched upon that wellknown and eminently foolish expedition to Sweden, which ended in such an extraordinary manner, and which seems from the first to have had no other object than to keep an excellent general and a superb division of troops at a distance from the only country where their services were really required. Meanwhile, general Spencer's armament, long baffled by contrary winds, and once forced back to port, was finally dispersed in a storm, and a part arrived at Gibraltar by single ships the latter end of January. Sir Hew Dalrymple, the governor of that fortress, being informed, on the 5th of February, that a French fleet had just passed the strait, and run up the Mediterranean, became alarmed for Sicily, then scantily furnished with troops, and caused the first comers to proceed to that island the 11th. General |