survivors of the hardships and miseries they had undergone. These gloomy narratives riveted every mind by a painful but enchaining interest: they speedily made their way into the public newspapers, and were devoured with unceasing interest by the whole people. The fate of these gallant men became a general subject of commiseration; and the old cry, raised for factious purposes, began to resound through the land, that England could never contend on the Continent with France, and that the only rational policy for the prosecution of the war was to withdraw entirely behind our wooden walls.1 checkered, whole eminently unfa France. And yet, to a dispassionate observer, it could not but be manifest, that though the campaign had to both 64. parties been deeply checkered by misfortune, it had in Reflections reality been far more calamitous to the French than the on the cam paign; its Allies; and that the power of Napoleon had received character a shock ruder than any which it had yet received since but on the his accession to the supreme authority. The Spanish armies, it is true, had been dispersed on the Ebro, the Somo- vourable to sierra forced, Madrid taken, and the British, after a calamitous retreat, driven to their ships. But the Peninsula was still unsubdued. Saragossa was fortifying its bloodstained battlements: Catalonia was in arms: Valencia and Andalusia were recruiting their forces: Portugal was untouched, and the British troops, though in diminished strength, still held the towers of Lisbon. No submission or subjugation had followed the irruption of three hundred thousand men into the Peninsula. Driven from their capital, the Spaniards, like their ancestors in the Roman and Moorish wars, were preparing in the provinces to maintain a separate warfare; while the number of their fortresses and chains of mountains, joined to the aid of England, promised them the means of there prolonging a desperate resistance. And what had happened in the same campaign to the hitherto invincible arms of France? One whole corps had laid down its arms with unheard-of disgrace; another had capitulated, and surrendered a kingdom to purchase its retreat; foiled in more than one provincial expedition, the imperial arms had been driven from the capital behind the Ebro, and only regained their lost ground by denuding Germany of its defenders, and exposing for the Peninsular thrones the LV. 1809. : CHAP. Rhine itself to invasion. The spell which held the world enchained had been broken; the dangerous secret had been disclosed that the French armies were not invincible. Already the effects of the discovery had become manifest Europe had been shaken from one extremity to the other by the Peninsular disasters, and Austria, which beheld unmoved the desperate strife of Pultusk and Eylau, encouraged by the immersion of the best French armies in the Peninsula, was preparing to renew the struggle on a scale of unprecedented magnitude. 65. on the cam John Moore's The movement in advance by Sir John Moore to Sahagun, his rapid subsequent retreat, when surrounded Reflections by superior forces, to Benevente, the skill with which he paign, and reorganised his shattered army at Lugo, and the firmeffect of Sir ness with which, disdaining every proposal for a capitumovement. lation, he boldly fronted the enemy at Corunna, and met a glorious death on the field of victory, are worthy of the highest admiration, and will for ever secure him a place in the temple of British heroes. Nor is it merely the fond partiality of national gratitude, often mistaken or exaggerated in its opinions, which has secured this distinction: a calm consideration of the consequences of his campaign must, with all impartial observers, lead to the same result. In the whole annals of the Revolutionary war, there is not to be found a single movement more ably conceived, or attended with more important consequences. Levelled against the vital line of the enemy's communications, based on the principles which, unknown to the English general, Napoleon had so emphatically unfolded six months before in his secret despatch to Savary, it had literally paralysed every hostile army in Spain; snatched the Spanish monarchy from the verge of destruction, when its own resources were exhausted; and by drawing Napoleon himself, with his terrible legions, into the northern extremity of the Peninsula, it both gave time to the southern provinces to restore their armies and arm their fortresses, and averted the war from Portugal, till 1 Ante, c. liii. § 17, note. *It was seriously pressed upon his consideration by several officers, when the absence of the transports on the first arrival at Corunna rendered it evident that a battle must be fought for the embarkation, but he indignantly rejected the proposal.-NAPIER, i. 492, 493; SOUTHEY, ii. 520. an opportunity of organising fresh means of resistance within its frontiers was afforded. But for this bold and well-conceived advance, Andalusia would have been overrun, Valencia taken, Saragossa subdued, within a few weeks; and before the Emperor was recalled from the theatre of Peninsular warfare by the Austrian preparations, he would have realised his favourite threat of planting the French eagles on the towers of Lisbon. These great results, however, were attended with proportional dangers: Napoleon, with seventy thousand chosen troops, was speedily sweeping round the audacious enemy who had thus interrupted his designs, and but for the celerity and skill of the retreat to Astorga, the army which achieved them must certainly have been consigned to destruction.* CHAP. LV. 1809. he com But if, in these particulars, the conduct of Sir John Moore was worthy of unqualified admiration, there are 66. others in which the impartial voice of history must Errors which deal out a different measure of eulogium. Admitting mitted. that the celerity of the retreat to Astorga was unavoidable, and saved the army from destruction, where was the necessity for the subsequent forced marches to Lugo, when Napoleon had retired with his Guards from the pursuit, in dreadful weather, attended as it was with such ruinous effects upon the discipline and spirit of his troops ? His ablest defenders admit that there were in the magazines of Villa Franca and Lugo provisions for fourteen days' consumption ;1 and even if there had been nothing1 Nap. i. 474. but the resources of the country to be had, subsequent events proved that they were sufficient for the maintenance of the army; for the French found wherewithal to live on and advance through it, even when following in the rear of the British soldiers. There was no necessity for hurrying on from the danger of being turned in flank, for Ney's corps was several days' march behind Soult's in the defile, and the rugged nature of the country rendered it totally impossible for his troops, worn out by a march of unexampled hardship and rapidity from Madrid, to attempt any threatening movement against the British flank. * Napoleon subsequently said, at St Helena, that nothing but the talents and firmness of Sir John Moore saved his army from destruction.-O'MEARA, i. 55. СПАР. 1809. 67. Especially in the undue rapidity of 1 Lond. i 260, 261. Every thing, then, counselled deliberation and order in the retreating columns, and the nature of the road through which they passed, consisting of an ascent several leagues in length, up a bare slope, followed by tremendous passes, continuing for several days' journey, shut in on every the retreat. side by steep or forest-clad mountains, offered the most favourable opportunities for stopping, by a vigorous resistance on the part of the rearguard, the active pursuit of the enemy.1 The rapid restoration of discipline and order, when battle was offered at Lugo, and the issue of the fight at Corunna, leave no room for doubt as to what would have been the result of such a conflict; and the example of Moreau's retreat through the Black Forest, in 1796, was not required to show how effectually such a fierce aspect on the part of the retiring force saves the blood and secures the safety of the remainder of the army.2 The luminous fact, that the losses sustained by the rearguard when they arrived at Corunna, notwithstanding all the combats they had undergone, were less than those of any other division of equal number in the 3 Nap. i. 488. army,3 affords a decisive proof how much would have been gained upon the whole by fighting at an earlier period, when the strength and discipline of the army were still comparatively unbroken. 2 Ante, c. xxi. §§ 56, 57. 68. But most of all, the step adopted by Sir David Baird, though a most gallant officer, in unison with Sir John Errors of Sir Moore, in counselling the British government, instead of David Baird. sending out the strong reinforcements which they pro jected, and had in preparation, to Galicia, to forward empty transports to bring away the troops, appears to have been unhappy in its consequences. These despatches were sent off in the course of December, and they were not acted upon by the British government without the most severe regret; but at their distance from the scene of action, they had no alternative but acquiescence.* But "The troops which had been embarked on board the transports in England to reinforce Sir John Moore's army," said Mr Canning, then Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in his place in parliament, "were disembarked in consequence of a distinct requisition from Sir David Baird, that he wanted a certain number of transports; and the transports from which these troops had been disembarked were sent out, pursuant to that requisition. It was an afflicting circumstance that it had become necessary to retard these troops, and send out empty, for the purpose of bringing off the British army, those transports which had been fitted for the purpose of reinforcement and assault. But at this distance from the scene of action, ministers could not venture to refuse to send out these for this fatal step, the English army, upon their retreat to the sea-coast, would have found, instead of transports to bring them off, thirteen thousand fresh troops, sufficient to have enabled them to hold out these important fortresses against the enemy, and possibly take a bloody revenge on their pursuers. Ney and Soult would have been retained in Galicia by the presence of thirty thousand men, intrenched in fortified sea-ports on its coast; the incursion of Soult to Oporto would have been prevented, the battle of Talavera have proved a decisive victory, and the march of Wellington to the Alberche, unmenaced by the descent of Soult, Ney, and Mortier in his rear, might have led him in triumph to Madrid. If the British could not have maintained their ground behind the strong battlements of Ferrol, or the weaker fortifications of Corunna, that might have afforded a good reason for bringing the troops round to Lisbon or Cadiz ; but it was none for setting sail to England with the whole expedition, abandoning the contest in the Peninsula as hopeless, when the south was still unsubdued, and leaving ten thousand English soldiers, still in Portugal, to their fate.* In truth, this desponding conduct on the part of such able and gallant officers affords decisive proof that it was a much deeper and more general cause which was in operation, and that England was now paying the penalty, transports. The sending them out empty cost government a severe pang: no resolution ever gave him more pain. Every dictate of the head was tortured, every feeling of the heart wrung by it; but ministers had no alternative, they were compelled to submit to the hard necessity." The troops so embarked, or in course of embarkation, were 13,000 men. What might not they have achieved, joined to the 17,000 whom Moore led back to Lugo and Corunna!-See Parl. Deb. xii. 1089, 1100. Sir John Moore also concurred in the propriety of withholding the reinforcements, and sending out the transports empty.-See SOUTHEY, ii. 519. *"The road from Astorga to Corunna," says General Jomini, “traverses a long defile of thirty leagues, bounded by high mountains on either side. A slender rearguard would have sufficed to defend that chaussée. And it was impracticable to manœuvre on either flank of it. That rendered it impossible for Soult to get at the enemy; and Ney, entangled behind him in the defile, could do nothing. This was the more unfortunate, as the English army, having prepared nothing on that line, stood in want of every thing, and was in a frightful state of disorder, in consequence of the forced marches which it took for no conceivable reason. They cut the traces of their horses, and abandoned three or four thousand stragglers or dying men, when their line of operations was never menaced. It is impossible to conceive why the English did not defend Corunna. It is not, indeed, a Gibraltar; but against an enemy who had nothing but fieldpieces, it surely could have been maintained for some time, the more especially as they could, at any time, throw in succours by sea. I never could understand their haste on that occasion, which the nation, it is true, has well wiped off in subsequent times.-JONINI, Vie de Napoleon, iii. p. 115. VOL. XII. N CHAP. LV. 1809. |