of the beach where sailors, the white surf frothing round their thighs, stood naked at the water’s edge, watching the boats sweep forward through the spray. In the instant that the waters rushed back under the foam of a broken wave, the sailors ran out towards the boats to hurl a rope to them.
On shore piles of food and ammunition, equipment and forage lay waiting for transport to take them inland. A harassed German commissary, scribbling an inventory in his notebook, looked in consternation at the guns and wagons, ‘the mountains of ships’ biscuits, haversacks, trusses of hay, barrels of meat and rum, tents’, and all the impedimenta of an invading army. Around him officers shouted orders, sergeants sweated and cursed, soldiers picked about in the wreckage of splintered boats, orderlies looked around for suitable sites for tents, aides-de-camp with nothing better to do paddled barefoot in the surf, while frightened horses, released from weeks of confinement in the dark and stuffy holds of ships, galloped wildly along the shore, snorting, panting, neighing, biting one another, and rolling over in the sand, as dragoons chased after them, bridles in hand.
Brown-skinned peasants, their long hair falling to their shoulders beneath enormous three-cornered hats, carrying goads six feet long, led the Bishop’s bullock carts through the din and muddle, making a fearful screeching noise of their own, a squealing of axles so cacophonous that the German commissary thought the scratching of a knife on a pewter plate was like ‘the sweet sound of a flute’ beside it. Watched by scores of monks and friars carrying huge and luridly coloured umbrellas, the peasants offered pumpkins and figs, grapes and melons, wine and apples for sale to the thirsty troops.
Two days after landing Sir Arthur Wellesley was riding down the road to Leiria in what one of his aides-de-camp noticed was a disconsolate mood. He had received dispatches from London informing him that he was not to command the army after all. It transpired that Lord Castlereagh, and those other Ministers who had supported his claims, had been overborne by the Duke of York and senior officers at the Horse Guards who – with the approval of the King who ‘always stood up for old Generals & disliked aspiring young ones’14 – demanded that a more senior officer be appointed. Wellesley was, after all, they argued, a very recently promoted lieutenant-general, not yet forty, most of whose experience had been in India. There were numerous other names on the Army List more senior to his. One, indeed, was already in the Peninsula as Governor of Gibraltar. This was Sir Hew Dalrymple, fifty-seven years old, a grandson of Viscount Stair and son of a distinguished Scottish lawyer, a Guards officer who had been promoted major-general as long ago as 1794, though he had only once been on active service. Then there was another veteran Guards officer whose claims to high command could likewise not be ignored, Sir Harry Burrard, who was also in his fifties and had been a reliably Tory Member of Parliament for Lymington for several years as his uncle and grandfather had before him. The appointment of Dalrymple and Burrard to the army in Portugal was not, however, so much to prevent the young Wellesley being given the credit for winning what might prove to be an important battle, as to prevent the command passing into the hands of a man the Government had good cause both to dislike and to fear. This was Sir John Moore, a particularly handsome, upright and tactless man of Whiggish persuasions, somewhat haughty in manner and given to expressing disturbing criticisms of the Government and particularly of the Foreign Office. Moore had been sent to Sweden to help King Gustavus who was threatened not only by France but also by Denmark and Russia. He had quarrelled with the King whose sanity was questionable and had brought his army home. He was now ready to command some other enterprise. It was hoped that if he were told that his services would be welcome in Spain as a subordinate to two other officers whose names would be almost unknown to him he would feel compelled to refuse the opportunity. But this was to reckon without regard to Moore’s strong sense of duty. After a frosty interview with Lord Castlereagh, he agreed to serve under the two Guards officers both of whom were, indeed, senior to him but neither of whom had even a small share of his presence or talent.
Before Moore arrived in the Peninsula, however, and before either of his two superiors reached Portugal, General Wellesley, advancing with six British and one Portuguese brigade, had come across the French near the village of Obidos, on either side of the road to Lisbon. Here his eager skirmishers charged forward with such impulsive excitement that many of them were killed before the enemy, commanded by the astute General Henri François, Comte de Delaborde, choosing not to make a stand, sensibly fell back to a stronger position at Roliça. Anxious to waste no further lives unnecessarily, Wellesley ordered a cautious flanking movement; but his centre, with the impetuosity his skirmishers had shown near Obidos, surged forward before the outflanking manoeuvre had developed. Delaborde withdrew once more, having not only gained valuable time for Junot to concentrate and regroup his forces but also having inflicted nearly 500 casualties on the British army which outnumbered his own almost four to one.
When Wellesley reached Vimeiro, fifteen miles nearer Lisbon, he had been reinforced by about 4,000 British troops who had just landed in the sandy estuary of the river Maceira and thus commanded an army quite capable of beating the one which Junot was marching towards him. He was anxious to attack at once; and he rode down the coast to seek permission to do so from Sir Harry Burrard who had just arrived in the sloop Brazen. Sir Harry demurred; better to wait, he said, until Moore arrived with his 2,000 additional men. He would not himself go ashore for the moment as he had letters to write. ‘I only wish Sir Harry had landed,’ Wellesley gloomily reported to Castlereagh, and had seen things with his own eyes.’15
His gloom, however, was soon dispelled. The French moved forward that night, and the next day, 21 August, in their white summer uniforms they marched up the hill towards the British line ‘with more confidence’, so Wellesley recalled years later, smiling with satisfaction, ‘seeming to feel their way less than I always found them to do afterwards’. ‘I received them in line,’ he added, ‘which they were not accustomed to.’16 And after two and a half hours’ bitter fighting, the British victory was complete: the French, who had suffered nearly 2,000 casualties, were everywhere in full retreat.17 Wellesley, whose own losses were just over 700, turned in his saddle to Sir Harry Burrard, who had come up from the Brazen but had not interfered with his subordinate’s conduct of the battle, having been, as he generously reported to London, ‘perfectly satisfied’ with General Wellesley’s dispositions and ‘the means he proposed to repulse the enemy’.18 ‘Sir Harry,’ Wellesley said in a loud voice, ‘now is your time to advance. The enemy are completely beaten and we shall be in Lisbon in three days.’19
Once again Sir Harry demurred. Excessively wary by temperament, he had been made more cautious still by the uniformly unsuccessful expeditions in which he had previously been engaged. Believing that Junot had a stronger force in reserve than Wellesley supposed, he ordered the return of Sir Ronald Ferguson’s brigade which had already been sent in pursuit. Annoyed beyond measure, Wellesley remarked to his staff as he rode away that they might just as well go off to shoot partridge. The next day ‘Dowager’ Dalrymple, as his subordinate was to refer to him, came from Gibraltar to approve of the action that ‘Betty’ Burrard had taken.20
Wellesley’s position, as he told Lord Castlereagh, was now a ‘very delicate one’. He had never met Dalrymple before and it was ‘not a very easy task to advise any man on the first day one meets him’.21 It was particularly difficult to offer an opinion to Sir Hew who showed himself not merely unwilling to listen to advice but resentful of its even being offered, especially by a young Irish general of no ingratiating manner. He certainly did not welcome Wellesley’s tart comments during his negotiations with the French General François-Etienne Kellerman, the extraordinarily ugly son of Marshal Kellerman, who rode into the British lines on 22 August, escorted by two squadrons of dragoons carrying white flags, his face patched with bits of black sticking-plaster.22
The discussions lasted ‘from about half past two till near nine at night, with the exception of a short time [they] sat at dinner’; and Wellesley, by his own account, said little. ‘I beg you will not believe that I had any hand in wording [the armistice],’ he told Lord Castlereagh. ‘It was negotiated by the General himself in my presence and that of Sir Harry Burrard; and after it had been drawn out by Kellerman himself, Sir Hew Dalrymple desired me to sign it.’23
Wellesley