6

SITUATION OF THE BRITISH ARMY

CHAP. I. and Hope to close on that city with their divisions.

1808. -November.

Every day brought with it intelligence of fresh disasters. By the battle of Espinosa, Blake's army had been dispersed. The whole left wing of the Spanish army, which occupied a line reaching from Bilboa to Burgos, had thus been annihilated; and the flank of the centre, under Castanos, was laid open to the enemy.

The situation of Sir John Moore at Salamanca, with respect to the Spanish armies, was very extraordinary. He was at the vertex of a triangle, the base of which, at the distance of between two hundred and fifty, and three hundred miles, was the French position, the points at the extremities of the base, that is the French flanks, were the positions of the Spanish armies.

The army of Castanos was, at this period, posted in the neighbourhood of Tudela, but on the opposite or north side of the Ebro, and about three hundred miles to the north-east of Salamanca. The French were thus completely interposed between the Spanish and British armies; and might, at any moment, advance on the latter in overwhelming force. For this state of things, Sir John Moore was unpre

AT SALAMANCA.

7

1808.

pared. All his arrangements had been framed CHAP. I. on the assurance that the assembling of his forces would be protected by the Spanish ar- November. mies. To effect the union of his isolated divisions had now become an operation of danger and difficulty. The position of these bodies was such as to prevent the possibility of immediate action. He was placed as a central point between the two wings of his army, and found it impracticable to approach the one, without hazarding the safety of the other.

Thus compelled to remain inactive at Salamanca, Sir John Moore endeavoured to stimulate the local authorities into the adoption of such measures of promptitude and vigour as were suited to the exigence of the crisis. In this effort he failed. The Spanish people, though still influenced by fierce and unmitigated hatred towards their invaders, were no longer animated by that uncalculating and convulsive energy which in the commencement of the struggle, had goaded them like madness into furious resistance. The fierceness of the paroxysm had passed; and though, in the cause of their country, the hand of every Spaniard was prepared to gripe the sword, the blows it dealt

8

SIR JOHN MOORE IS DECEIVED

CHAP. I. were directed with an erring aim, and by a feebler arm. Their detestation of a foreign

1808.

November. yoke was undiminished; but it had become a fixed and inert sentiment, rather than a fierce, uncontrollable, and all-pervading impulse.

Before entering Spain, every thing had contributed to conceal the real state of the Peninsula from the penetrating vision of Sir John Moore. The British government, itself deceived, had become, in its turn, the involuntary propagator of deception. At the commencement of the struggle, it had despatched military agents to the head-quarters of the different Spanish generals, to act as organs of communication, and transmit authentic intelligence of the progress of events in the seat of war. The persons selected for this service were, generally, officers undistinguished by talent or experience, and therefore little suited to discharge, with benefit, the duties of an office so delicate and important. They seem generally to have become the dupes of the unwarranted confidence and inflated boasting of those by whom they were surrounded; and their reports were framed in a strain of blind and sanguine anticipation, not deducible from any enlarged or rational view of the prospects

IN HIS EXPECTATIONS OF ASSISTANCE.

9

1808.

November.

or condition of the people. Instead of true re- CHAP. I. presentations of the numbers, character, and state of efficiency of the armies, they were deluded into adopting the extravagant hyperboles of rash and vain-glorious men, and contributed what in them lay to propagate false and exaggerated notions of the military power of the Spanish nation. They did not venture to obtrude on the British Cabinet the unpalatable truth that the national army was, in effect, nothing more than a congregation of separate and independent bands, miserably armed, possessing but a scanty and illserved artillery, and almost destitute of cavalry. Had they done so; and had they stated likewise, that this army was without magazines of any kind, without generals of talent or experience, without officers sufficiently versed in the details of war, to instruct and discipline the raw levies which constituted the greater part of its numerical strength; and, further, that the different leaders were prevented, by frivolous jealousies, and discordance of opinion, from cordially uniting in the execution of any great operation, the calamitous events on the Ebro would probably not have come like a thunderbolt to crush and stultify the combinations of a government, which was

10

THE DIFFICULTIES BY WHICH SIR JOHN

CHAP. I. at least sincerely anxious to co-operate in the cause of freedom.

1808. November.

England had furnished Spain, with supplies; she had poured arms and munitions into the country with a profuse hand; but she had taken no efficacious measures for their judicious application. She exercised little influence on the counsels of the Spanish government; and even while providing the very thews and sinews of the war, her voice was seldom listened to with obedience or respect. Arms, placed at the disposal of men swayed by petty views and local interests, were wasted and misapplied; and the supplies of money, clothing, and ammunition, so liberally afforded, became a bone of contention and of petty jealousy to the rival authorities. In truth, the provincial governors were actuated by no liberal and enlarged views of the public benefit. Supine in danger, and vain-glorious in prosperity, at once untalented and unenlightened, no men could be more unfitted to direct the resources of a nation with vigour and effect.

In such men Sir John Moore could place no trust. His expectations had been deceived. He found supineness where he expected energy; a people not filled with an active spirit-stirring