Settlers on the Edge Identity and Modernization

on Russia s Arctic Frontier 1st Edition Niobe

Thompson pdf download

https://ebookfinal.com/download/settlers-on-the-edge-identity-
and-modernization-on-russia-s-arctic-frontier-1st-edition-niobe-
thompson/

Explore and download more ebooks or textbooks

at ebookfinal.com
We have selected some products that you may be interested in
Click the link to download now or visit ebookfinal.com
for more options!.

Future Arctic Field Notes from a World on the Edge 2nd

Edition Edward Struzik

https://ebookfinal.com/download/future-arctic-field-notes-from-a-
world-on-the-edge-2nd-edition-edward-struzik/

Landscapes on the Edge New Horizons for Research on Earth

s Surface 1st Edition National Research Council

https://ebookfinal.com/download/landscapes-on-the-edge-new-horizons-
for-research-on-earth-s-surface-1st-edition-national-research-council/

On the edge Mapping North America s Coasts 1st Edition

Roger M. Mccoy

https://ebookfinal.com/download/on-the-edge-mapping-north-america-s-
coasts-1st-edition-roger-m-mccoy/

Life on the Edge Second edition Judy Horacek

https://ebookfinal.com/download/life-on-the-edge-second-edition-judy-
horacek/
On The Edge The State and Fate Of the World s Tropical
Rainforests Claude Martin

https://ebookfinal.com/download/on-the-edge-the-state-and-fate-of-the-
world-s-tropical-rainforests-claude-martin/

On a Knife s Edge The Ukraine November 1942 March 1943 1st

Edition Prit Buttar

https://ebookfinal.com/download/on-a-knife-s-edge-the-ukraine-
november-1942-march-1943-1st-edition-prit-buttar/

The enigmas of Easter Island island on the edge Bahn

https://ebookfinal.com/download/the-enigmas-of-easter-island-island-
on-the-edge-bahn/

Lens on the Texas Frontier 1st Edition Lawrence T. Jones

Iii

https://ebookfinal.com/download/lens-on-the-texas-frontier-1st-
edition-lawrence-t-jones-iii/

Constance Lindsay Skinner Writing on the Frontier 1st

Edition Jean Barman

https://ebookfinal.com/download/constance-lindsay-skinner-writing-on-
the-frontier-1st-edition-jean-barman/
Settlers on the Edge Identity and Modernization on
Russia s Arctic Frontier 1st Edition Niobe Thompson
Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Niobe Thompson
ISBN(s): 9780774814683, 0774814683
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 4.93 MB
Year: 2009
Language: english
Praise for Settlers on the Edge:

This highly original work rises brilliantly to the challenge of an extraordinary historical
moment in the harshest and most inaccessible region of the Russian North. Niobe Thompson’s
analysis of social identity, self, agency, and moral economy reveals how successive changes of
regime have engendered an accumulation of distinctive identities in which each identity is
reinforced by differences of origin, generation, and class.
Among many powerful insights, the author shows how white settlers have used their
practical and spiritual engagement with the local landscape to appropriate the widespread
northern Native identity marker of belonging, thereby explaining their resistance to programs
of resettlement to the south. By following resettled northerners back to their apartment blocks
in Central Russia, he shows how, even here, their strategy of survival involves recreating
their northern sense of belonging.
This book is a landmark in the anthropology of Russia, of the circumpolar Arctic, and
of migration studies.
Piers Vitebsky, author of Reindeer People:
Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia

N iobe Thompson examines a dynamic period in northeast Russia, spanning its abrupt
decline immediately following the break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent period
of massive investment under a new governor. This is a groundbreaking study done with great
insight into the phenomenal changes in Arctic Russia in recent decades. It makes a major,
novel contribution to our understanding of identity formation by looking at the region’s
non-indigenous population.
Gail Fondahl, author of Gaining Ground?
Evenkis, Land and Reform in Southeastern Siberia

A n impressive achievement – among this book’s greatest strengths are its solid ethnographic
grounding, its thorough grasp of historical process, its lucid and incisive presentation, and
its near-seamless integration of description and analysis. It gives a fascinating account of a
virtually unknown social world in a sophisticated, yet unpretentious, style.
Finn Sivert Nielsen, author of
The Eye of the Whirlwind, Russian Identity
and Soviet Nation-Building
This page intentionally left blank
Settlers on the Edge
Identity and Modernization
on Russia’s Arctic Frontier

Niobe Thompson
© UBC Press 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the
publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence
from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), www.accesscopyright.ca.
16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 54321
Printed in Canada on ancient-forest-free paper (100% post-consumer recycled) that is
processed chlorine- and acid-free, with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Thompson, Niobe, 1973-
Settlers on the edge: identity and modernization of Russia’s arctic frontier /
Niobe Thompson.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7748-1467-6 (bound); ISBN 978-0-7748-1468-3 (pbk.)
1. Chukchi Peninsula (Russia) – History – 20th century. 2. Migrant labor – Russia
(Federation) – Chukchi Peninsula – History. 3. Migration, Internal – Russia – History – 20th
century. 4. Acculturation – Russia (Federation) – Chukchi Peninsula. 5. Chukchi Peninsula
(Russia) – Population – History – 20th century. 6. Ethnology – Russia (Federation) – Chukchi
Peninsula. I. Title.
DK771.C4T48 2008 957'.7 C2008-901772-2

UBC Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for our publishing program of
the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program
(BPIDP), and of the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the
Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using
funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
UBC Press
The University of British Columbia
2029 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
604-822-5959 / Fax: 604-822-6083
www.ubcpress.ca
To Linda
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Illustrations / ix
Preface / xi
Acknowledgments / xiii

1 Introduction / 3

Part 1: The Soviet Years, 1955-91

2 Northern Settlement and the Late-Soviet State / 37

3 Arctic Idyll: Living in Soviet Chukotka / 60

Part 2: Transition to Crisis, 1991-2000

4 Idyll Destroyed / 91
5 Surviving without the State / 113

Part 3: Reconstruction, 2001-5

6 Modernization Again: The State Returns / 145

7 Two Solitudes / 178
8 Conclusion: Practices of Belonging / 208
9 Afterword / 240

Appendices
1 List of Informants / 248
2 Glossary of Russian Terms / 251

Notes / 254
References / 273
Index / 283
This page intentionally left blank
 Illustrations

Figures
1.1 Map of Chukotka (Chukchi Autonomous Okrug) / 2
1.2 Total population of Chukotka, 1930-2007 / 4
1.3 Settlers as a percentage of total population, 1887-2003 / 5
1.4 Map of the Soviet Far North / 17
1.5 Map showing net migration by region in Russia, 1989-2002 / 18

Photographs
Anadyr in winter, 1970s / 41
Late-Soviet Anadyr, showing Arktika apartment buildings, 1980s / 56
Vstrecha (The Meeting), depicting a stylized encounter between the Russian
artist and Chukotka’s native Chukchi / 66
Geologist on summer expedition carrying a stack of Russian-style wooden gold
pans, 1970s / 69
Geologists playing chess in the field, 1970s / 71
Atomka, depicting the Soviet-era slogan “from the oil lamp to atomic power” / 78
Governor Aleksandr Nazarov, with school graduates, mid-1990s / 97
Governor Aleksandr Nazarov visiting a native village, mid-1990s / 107
The abandoned mining town of Iul’tin, 2003 / 119
Former underground miner from Iul’tin, living alone on the Amguema
River, 2003 / 120
Long-time settler and tundra driver leaning on his vehicle, a Soviet-era vezdekhod,
Amguema tundra, 2003 / 128
Two generations of settlers, Vaegi, 2002 / 130
Avialesokhrana riverboat unloading supplies in Vaegi, 2005 / 133
A Russian-Chukchi couple in Vaegi, 2005 / 141
Governor Roman Abramovich, 2002 / 146
Post-Soviet Anadyr before modernization, 2002 / 150
Anadyr after modernization, showing the new cultural centre at left and the new
Holy Trinity Cathedral, 2005 / 150
x Illustrations

Coastal village of Vankarem before reconstruction, 2003 / 152

Village of Vaegi rebuilt, 2005 / 153
Soviet-style reporting in the modernized regional newspaper Krainyi Sever / 195
Imported technology adapted to local conditions – a Zaporozhits rebuilt for
northern conditions / 202
Statue of Saint Nikolai the Miraculous looking over the Gulf of Anadyr, 2005 / 209
Otke Street in Abramovich’s new Anadyr, 2005 / 210
Memorial to a lost friend on the tundra near Krasneno, 2003 / 216
Nikolai Bogorev, younger brother of the “Prince of Vaegi,” Viktor, on the Main
River, 2005 / 233
The Russian graveyard in Vaegi after the Day of the Ancestors, 2002 / 235
Viktor Bogorev and his Chukchi wife, waiting for the Avialesokhrana helicopter
in Vaegi, 2005 / 239
Anadyr’s old Communist Party Headquarters with statue of Lenin, 1980s / 244
Restoring the Party headquarter’s statue of Lenin in front of a renovated
children’s leisure centre, 2003 / 245
Preface

Two aspects of the editorial method used in the book require clarification: the trans-
literation of Russian names and terms and the protection of informants’ identities.
This book employs the US Library of Congress system for the transliteration of
Russian names and terms, with some exceptions. Where the spelling of a word is
already established in popular media and other accounts, I have opted to violate
the transliteration system. Thus Boris E’ltin is Boris Yeltsin, a Koriak is a Koryak,
and the city of Anadyr’ is Anadyr (without the soft sign). When using a Russian
term transliterated in the plural, I opt to reproduce the plural endings as they are
used in Russian. Thus, a single vezdekhod becomes several vezdekhody, and a single
muzhik sits down to drink with a few muzhiki. (For a glossary of Russian words,
see Appendix 2.)
The identity of many of my informants has been protected using a coding sys-
tem, in which individuals quoted or cited in the text are assigned the numbers [1]
through [66] corresponding to brief descriptions of their gender, approximate
age, ethnicity, length of time in the North, and profession (see Appendix 1 for a list
of the informants). When the narratives of certain people provide the basis for
extended textual descriptions, as, for example, in Chapter 5, surrogate names rather
than number codes have been used for stylistic purposes. In certain cases, how-
ever, the actual names of informants are preserved in the text, reflecting their sta-
tus as public figures: elected officials, senior public servants, and well-known media
personalities. Furthermore, the names of settlements and towns mentioned in the
text have not been changed.
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to the many people in Chukotka and central Russia who opened
their doors and, with abundant patience and generosity, shared their knowledge of
a world to which I was five years ago a stranger. From the warmth and enthusiasm
I met almost without fail, and a great deal of practical assistance given without
hesitation, I know that the “law of the North” of which northerners are so proud
thrives today. In a part of Russia very difficult to access, I consider the freedom I
was given to travel and ask questions without hindrance or conditions little short
of miraculous. For this I extend heartfelt thanks and admiration to the administra-
tion of the Chukchi Autonomous Okrug and Governor Roman Abramovich, to
the governor’s special advisors John Tichotsky and Aleksandr Borodin, former
deputy governor Sergei Kapkov, and his assistants Aleksandr Eidelshtein, Natal’ia
Rakaeva, and Sergei Shuvalov. I am also grateful to the staff of the Chukotka
branch of the Russian Red Cross, and in particular its director Ida Ruchina, as well
as to the Chukotka branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and its scientific
director Tat’iana Godovykh.
Ultimately, in carrying out this research and making a life in Chukotka, my wife
and I came to rely not on institutions, but on the friendships we made with local
people, and I regard these friends with great fondness and everlasting gratitude.
There would not be much of a story to tell if my fellow parashiutisty (firefighters)
at Avialesokhrana had not taken us under their (literal) wings, making many jour-
neys possible. In particular, I thank one of Chukotka’s most incandescent person-
alities, a true severnyi muzhik, the director of Avialesokhrana Albert Klimentiev
(you owe me a liver). Of all the many people in Chukotka who befriended and
helped us, I wish to especially thank Vladimir Sirtun and his family, and all the
children of his Shkola Strantsvii, Aleksandr and Galina Ganze, Vladilen Kavry,
Zoia Tagryn’a, Aleksandr and Nina Mosolov, Vasilii Yakovlev, Petr Klimov,
Liudmila Ershova, Vladimir Pereladov, and Pavel and Irina Apletin. I reserve par-
ticular gratitude for the people of Vaegi, my adopted home in Chukotka. I also
have all the brothers Bogorev, and in particular Viktor – mayor of Vaegi, para-
shiutist, and riverboat captain – to thank for saving my life more than once, al-
though I’ve asked myself why it so often needed saving when I was travelling in
their company.
In central Russia, the difficult task of tracking down resettled former residents
of Chukotka was made possible only through the kind assistance of Teodor Zvizda
xiv Acknowledgments

(in Anadyr), and Vladimir Zakharov (Lipetsk), Stanislav Zhukov (Smolensk), and
Mikhail Ivanov (Voronezh).
This book was born thanks to the collective effort and insight of many wonder-
ful colleagues at the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Department of Social
Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and I thank them all. I owe a deep
debt of gratitude to Piers Vitebsky, whose intelligence and dedication was a guid-
ing inspiration for this project from its inception, and whose passionate support is
very much the reason for its final success.
For their sensitive and insightful comments, I also wish to particularly acknowl-
edge Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, Bruce Grant, Nikolai Vakhtin, Patty Gray, Mark
Nuttall, Susan Crate, Finn Sivert Nielsen, Sarah Radcliffe, Emma Wilson, Elena
Khlinovskaya-Rockhill, Gail Fondahl, and Marilyn Strathern.
In conducting field research and writing for this project over the past five years,
I was supported by two Wenner Gren research grants, a Commonwealth Fellow-
ship, and funding from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council. I was free to concentrate on writing this book thanks to a Killam Post-
doctoral Fellowship at the University of Alberta. In Cambridge, the Scott Polar
Research Institute provided a splendid setting in which to base my research over
the years, affording informed critique, unparalleled resources, and the collegiality
of afternoon tea in equal measure. I also thank Jesus College for numerous small
research grants and for providing a home.
I reserve my deepest gratitude for three people. My mother and father took me
with them to a little community in the Canadian North in 1979, where I spent the
next seven years falling out of trees, tipping canoes on the lake, leaving my gumboots
stuck in the mud, and wishing I were Cree like all my friends. We were newcomers
there, but to my great fortune my parents chose to live outside the white cliques
and their government-built compounds, and although they would probably not
admit it, they inspired many by the way they invested their lives in their adopted
home. The concerns at the heart of my research, and the original impulse to go to
the Russian North, originate in the northern experiences my parents gave me as
a child.
Finally, when my wife married me in 2001, she may not have seen coming a year
of life in a struggling industrial town in the Russian Far North. But her patience,
love, humour, and forbearance through blizzards, winter darkness, tundra mos-
quitoes, and my awful vezdekhod driving got me through it all. The work of re-
search and writing was hers as much as mine, and so this book is dedicated to her.
Settlers on the Edge
Figure 1.1 Chukotka (Chukchi Autonomous Okrug)
1
Introduction

One of the great untold stories of the Russian North lies concealed behind the
unexamined belief that we understand who in these regions is native and who is
only visiting. This book is about the people who went to live in Russia’s most
remote northeast region – Chukotka – as willing participants in the Soviet cam-
paign to master the North, and who to this day constitute its majority population.
Although Settlers on the Edge is far from unique in choosing the post-Soviet North
as a setting, it is the first research to focus entirely on this population and to place
in question the assumptions of transience and rootlessness that cling to the north-
ern non-native.1 The terms normally attached to this figure – priezzhii or prishedshii,
variously translated as either “newcomer” or “incomer” – hardly suggest the depth
of history Soviet-era migrants now possess in the North, even in those regions
most recently settled by Russians.2 In fact, the experiences of migration have with
time yielded palpable senses of belonging in place, and the “newcomer” of an ear-
lier period has become the “settler” of the present day. Migrant workers who ar-
rived with an expectation of their own transience in the North, but who remained
there decades later, gradually responded to the opportunities and challenges of
northern life by putting down roots.3 Not all the original migrants to the North
underwent such transformations; in fact, staying only briefly was more common.
But the point, for those who might attach a stigma of eternal outsiderness to the
“newcomer,” is that though dislocation and rootlessness were common to all north-
ern migrants, they were almost never an aspiration. Indeed, migrants, whether
they left after a short stay or remained to build a life, were almost universally in
search of that most elusive quality in Soviet life: a secure and settled existence.
In its final three decades of power, the Soviet state engineered a remarkable
project of voluntary mass settlement in the Russian Far North. For migrants to
these regions, the conditions of life were exceptional not only in the sense one
might expect, beset by isolation and a harsh climate, but also, in the era after Stalin’s
death in 1953, the lives of northern settlers were exceptionally privileged. A regime
whose ostensible purpose in building communism was to efface class antagonisms
and eventually to eliminate class distinctions altogether, in fact created in the North
a new formation of class privilege. Having turned its back on the prison-labour
system, that regime found material incentives to be a much more powerful instru-
ment than coercion for driving the settlement and development of the country’s
North. While the average citizen fought a losing struggle with chronic shortage
4 Introduction

and meagre income during the years of “stagnation” (roughly 1965-85), newcomers
to the North were protected by an excellent system of supply and were awarded a
range of special benefits. In fact, by construing life in the North as a kind of sacri-
fice, the state could privilege northern workers twice over. Not only were they
publicly celebrated as the avant-garde of socialist construction – civilizers and
modernizers on the natural and cultural frontier – their purported sacrifices re-
moved their material entitlements from scrutiny. Northerners thus enjoyed luxu-
ries normally reserved for the Soviet nomenclatura: living in the “cognac zone,”
they flew to Moscow to shop for furs and perfume, took their holidays on the
Bulgarian coast, and retired in their fifties to custom-built colonies in the Baltics.4
The farther from the Soviet metropolis northern workers settled, the greater
the privileges that accrued. So it was that in Chukotka, a region on the farthest
northeast periphery of Soviet territory, settler prosperity reached a fabled ex-
treme. Isolation and distance in this place – as far as one can travel from Moscow
and remain in Russia – have always shaped the experience of settling there in
extraordinary ways. So remote is Chukotka that it remained outside the effective
control of the tsarist state, and the organization of its indigenous reindeer herd-
ers into state farms was completed only in the 1950s, two decades after Soviet
collectivization began (Znamenski 1999). Unlike in more accessible regions of
the North, settlement there did not take the form of a gradual history. As late as
1930, 96 percent of those living in Chukotka were indigenous, most of them

180

160

140
Population in thousands

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
1930 1934 1939 1944 1949 1954 1959 1965 1970 1976 1979 1986 1989 1995 2000 2003 2007
Year

Figure 1.2 Total population in Chukotka, 1930-2007

Sources: Goskomstat CAO (1998); Goskomstat CAO (2001); Kotov et al. (1995); interviews with CAO
administration officials, 2003
 Introduction 5

Chukchi. Only post-war mass settlement shifted the balance. Between 1959 and
1970, Chukotka boasted the highest rate of in-migration of any region in the So-
viet Union (Kaiser 1994, 176-77), and by the time Soviet power collapsed in the late
1980s, native people comprised only 10 percent of the population (FSGS 2004)
(see Figures 1.2 and 1.3). Underpinning this exceptionally concentrated wave of
settlement was Chukotka’s status as a kind of ultimate northern territory. Not
only did it fall into the highest echelon in the Soviet ranking of north remoteness,
which the state used to calculate the generosity of northern pay and other ben-
efits, Chukotka’s position on the very edge of the Soviet space, within sight of
America, lent this place a particularly intoxicating aura of romance.
The Soviet state fell apart in 1991. The experience of daily life in post-Soviet
Chukotka was so grimly in contrast to that of the years before this sudden fracture
that we might think of this territory as preternaturally fated to extremes. The
Soviet collapse extinguished the regime’s belief in (and its capacity to support)
mass settlement, and the exaggerated privileges of the newcomer were liquidated
with merciless symmetry thereafter. In Russia’s “era of transition,” there was little
sense of transition in Chukotka. Instead, the end of Soviet power seemed a con-
clusion. The entire edifice of modern industrial life fell apart, towns were aban-
doned, the northern supply system disintegrated, and people began, quite literally,
to starve. The majority of the population fled to central Russia, so that now
Chukotka had the highest rate of out-migration in the country. For a people whose

100

80

Indigenous
Percent settlers

60

40

Settler

20

0
1887 1926 1939 1959 1970 1979 1989 1996 2003
Year

Figure 1.3 Settlers as a percentage of total population, 1887-2003

Source: Kotov et al. (1995); Gray (2005); interviews with CAO administration officials, 2003
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 present system, just so long as Buonaparte thought
proper. The administration of these men had been
marked by the annihilation of every foreign hope, and
the reduction of every domestic resource; they who
vaunted of their resolution and power to protect and
liberate the Continent, had only succeeded in bringing
danger close to our own shores? And why? because
they sacrificed the interests of the nation, and
violated every principle of public duty, to gratify their
personal ambition and personal cupidity. He was
speaking the language of ninety men out of a
hundred of the whole population of the country, when
he asserted, that they deserved marked reprobation,
and exemplary punishment.”
Lord Sidmouth; Viscount Sidmouth regretted the opportunities
which had been lost, but, with his English feeling and
his usual fairness, insisted that it was incumbent upon
us to stand by our allies to the uttermost. The
Marquis of Lansdown objected to the measures of
ministry more temperately than his colleagues in
opposition, maintaining that it was bad policy to
Lord, Erskine; become a principal in a continental war. Lord Erskine
spoke in a strain of acrimonious contempt, mingled
with irrelevant accusations and unbecoming levity.
“There really,” said he, “seems to be a sort of
predestination, which I will leave the reverend bench
to explain, that whenever the French take any
country, or any prisoners, they shall have some of our
money also. I can hardly account for the infatuation
which possesses those men, who suppose they can
defend Portugal by sending a supply of British money
there. It might as well be expected to accomplish that
by sending over the woolsack, with my noble and
learned friend upon it.”
 The ministers must have been well pleased with
the conduct of their opponents; they could not have
desired any thing more favourable to themselves than
the intemperance which had been displayed, and the
rash assertions and more rash predictions, which had
Lord Holland. been so boldly hazarded against them. Lord Holland
upon this occasion made a remarkable speech,
observing, in allusion to Lords Sidmouth and
Buckinghamshire, that “he could not understand how
these lords could give their confidence to ministers
without being assured that their confidence was
deserved. We were obliged in honour,” he said, “to do
what we could for Portugal, without injury to
ourselves, ... in honour, ... for that was the only
motive that ought to interest the feelings, or excite
the hearts of this or any other nation. But if we were
to embark in the cause of that sinking people, we
were not to load them with our imbecility, in addition
to their own weakness. A great plan was necessary;
nothing neutral or narrow, nothing minute, nothing
temporary, could enter into it; but for this qualities
were requisite which no man could hope for in the
present ministry. Where was the address, the ability,
the knowledge, the public spirit, that were the soul of
success in such a cause? He found them shifting from
object to object, and hanging their hope on every
weak and bending support, that failed them in the
first moment of pressure. He thought, that for
defence no government could be too free; by that he
meant too democratic; the words might not be
synonymous, but it was in such governments that
men felt of what they were capable. There was then
the full stretch of all the powers. There was a great
struggle, a great allay of the baser passions; but there
rose from them a spirit vigorous, subtilized, and pure;
there was the triumph of all the vehement principles
of the nation; the rapid intelligence, the bold decision,
the daring courage, the stern love of country. It was
in the hour of struggle that men started up among the
ranks of the people; those bright shapes of valour and
virtue that gave a new life to the people; those
surpassing forms of dignity and splendour that
suddenly rose up, as if by miracle, among the host,
rushed to the front of the battle, and, as in the days
of old, by their sole appearance turned the victory.
But where was the symptom of a love for free
government in the conduct of the ministry? The
government of Portugal had been absolutely in their
hands; had they disburdened it of its obstructions to
freedom? Had they pointed its aspect towards
democracy? Then as if the cause had been rendered
desperate because the British ministry had not
introduced democratic principles into the governments
of Spain and Portugal, he supported the opinion of his
party, and maintained that it would be criminal to
force a nation to a defence which might draw down
ruin on them. But if we were to withdraw from the
contest, it was possible for us to do so without
degrading the country by any base avidity for little
gains, by seizing upon any of those little pieces of
plunder, which were so tempting, and apt to
overpower our resistance to the temptation. We might
leave the country of our ally with the spirit of
friendship and the purity of honour. It was of great
moment to us, in even that meanest and lowest view
of policy, to leave the people of the Peninsula our
friends; but we must be actuated by a higher
principle, and be regretted and revered by those
whom we were forced to abandon. He could not
expect this from his majesty’s ministers, and therefore
could not think their hands fit to wield the resources,
or sustain the character of the British empire.” Lord
 Holland therefore voted for the amendment, the
object of which was, that the cause of the Peninsula
should be given up as hopeless.
March 9. The debate was not less interesting in the Lower
Mr. Perceval; House, when Mr. Perceval moved for a sum not
exceeding 980,000l. for the defence of Portugal; “a
vote,” he said “so consistent with the feelings which
the house had professed on former occasions, that he
should not have expected any opposition to it. He
reminded the house how those who opposed it had
been always of opinion that it was impossible for
Spain to hold out so long; that if she succeeded at all,
she must succeed at once; but that she could never
maintain a protracted contest against the disciplined
armies and enormous resources of France. This was
their declared and recorded opinion; but what was the
fact? Spain had continued the struggle. France might
occupy the country with an army, but her power
would be confined within the limits of her military
posts, and it would require nearly as large an army to
keep possession of it as to make the conquest. There
never had existed a military power capable of
subduing a population possessing the mind, and
heart, and soul of the Spaniards. The very victories of
their enemies would teach them discipline, and infuse
into them a spirit which would ultimately be the ruin
of their oppressors. Under these circumstances, would
it be wise to abandon Portugal? The last Austrian war
had arisen in great measure out of the contest in the
Peninsula; and during the progress of that war,
however calamitous the result had proved, it would be
in the recollection of the house, that one other day’s
successful resistance of the French by the Austrians
might have overthrown the accumulated power of the
enemy. Such events might again take place, for no
 man could anticipate, in the present state of the
world, what might arise in the course of a short time;
but be that as it might, as long as the contest was, or
could be, maintained in the Peninsula, the best policy
of this country was to support it.”
Sir J. Newport; To this Sir John Newport replied, “if any question
could provoke opposition, it must be that which would
make them continue efforts in a cause which every
one but the ministers considered hopeless. As for the
recorded opinion of parliament, parliament was
pledged to support the Spaniards while they were true
to themselves; but that they had been true to
themselves he denied.” Then assuming that the
French must necessarily drive us out of Portugal, he
asked what was to be done with the 30,000
Portugueze soldiers? “Were they to be brought to this
country, and added to the already enormous foreign
army in its service? Or were they to be sent to Brazil?
Or to be left fully equipped, and ready to add to the
military force of Buonaparte?” In the course of his
speech Sir John Newport endeavoured to show that
Mr. Villiers; the Portugueze levies had not been expedited as they
ought to have been. Mr. Villiers, who had been our
minister in Portugal, made answer, “that the
government there was administered with great
vigour; large supplies of money had been raised to
meet the public exigencies; the old military
constitution of the country had been restored: the
finances were ably administered and well collected;
and the war department conducted with energy and
ability. If Spain,” he said, “had done its duty equally
with Portugal, in supporting the efforts of Great
Britain, its cause would already have triumphed, and
there would not now have been a Frenchman upon
the Spanish territory.”
Mr. Curwen; Mr. Curwen said, “that as the Portugueze people
had suffered a French army to overrun their country
without any resistance, he was not for placing much
reliance upon the Portugueze troops. If the enemy
could point out what he would wish that we should
undertake, his first wish would be, that we should
attempt to defend Portugal. Buonaparte,” he said,
“could not receive more cheering hopes of ultimate
success, than he would derive from learning that the
present ministers were to continue in office, and that
the House of Commons still persisted in placing a
blind confidence in them, and enabling them to enter
upon measures which, in their inevitable result, could
not fail to answer all his purposes. The vote of the
house this night, if it should decide against attempting
the defence of Portugal, would be more important
than if we were to take half the French army
prisoners.”
Mr. Leslie Mr. Leslie Foster then rose, and his speech, in the
Foster; spirit which it breathed, and the knowledge which it
displayed, formed a singular contrast to the
harangues of the opposition. “The present proposition
of his majesty,” said he, “is partly connected with his
past conduct towards the Peninsula; it is but a
continuance and extension of the same spirit of British
resistance. It is now, however, open to the
reprehension of two classes of politicians; those who
think we never ought to have committed ourselves for
the salvation of Portugal and Spain; and those who,
having approved of that committal while the event
appeared doubtful, think that the overwhelming
power of France has at length brought this tragedy so
nearly to a close, that nothing is left for us, but to
escape if possible from being sharers in its
catastrophe. Hope, they contend, has vanished; there
is no longer room for prediction; history has already
recorded, in letters of blood, the fate that awaits our
perseverance. To me the aspect of the Peninsula
appears an enigma, which it is no reflection on any
ministers not perfectly to have understood; a
revolution bursting out at a period the least expected,
exhibiting events in its progress the most singularly
contradictory, and pregnant with results which I still
think no man living can foresee. If, on the one hand,
we are referred to the apathy of Gallicia during the
retreat of Sir John Moore, ... if we are desired to
remember Ocaña and Tudela, and all the other
defeats which the Spaniards have endured, and
endured without despondency, ... must we not in
candour remember that there was a battle of Baylen?
Are we to shut our eyes to the extraordinary
phenomenon, that in Catalonia, the very next province
to France, the French, at this hour, appear to be as
often the besieged as the besiegers? and can we
forget Zaragoza and Gerona? But above all, shall we
not do justice to that singular obstinacy, to give it no
more glorious a character, which has sustained their
spirit under two hundred defeats, and which, in every
period of the history of Spain, has formed its
distinguishing characteristic? The expulsion of the
Moors was the fruit of seven centuries of fighting
uninterrupted, and of 3600 battles, in many of which
the Spaniards had been defeated. In the beaten but
persevering Spaniards of these days we may trace the
descendants of those warriors, as easily as we
recognize the sons of the conquerors of Cressy and of
Agincourt in the English who fought at Talavera. We
may trace the same fortitude and patience, the same
enthusiastic superstition, the same persevering
insensibility of failure, and, I will add, the same
absolute indifference as to liberty, constitution, or
cortes, that distinguished the expellers of the Moors.
Because we feel that freedom is the first of blessings,
it is too much to say that other nations are to be
raised in arms by no other motives than its influence.
History should have taught us, that there is another
spirit prompting men to war, and which once poured
all Europe forth in the Crusades; and however we may
pronounce on the motives of our ancestors, the fact
we cannot deny, that the greatest spectacle of
embattled nations ever exhibited on the theatre of
war was under governments and systems which
indeed were not worth the defending. I believe we
may consider the inhabitants of the Peninsula, first, as
a multitude of hardy and patient peasantry, buried in
ignorance and superstition, and accustomed from
their cradles, by the traditions and the songs of their
ancestors, to consider the sword as the natural
companion of the cross; and almost inseparably to
connect in idea the defence of their religion with the
slaughter of their enemies; and with these
predispositions goaded into madness by ecclesiastics,
as ignorant almost as their flocks; but without an idea
or a wish for freedom; with Fernando Settimo in their
mouths, as a watch-word, and fighting, if you will, for
the continuance of the Inquisition. And with these
qualifications it is my most firm conviction, that they
would have overwhelmed all the armies of France, but
that it was their misfortune to be cursed with a
nobility in all respects the opposite of the peasantry,
differing from them, not merely in their moral
qualities, but even in their physical appearance; a
nobility of various degrees of worthlessness, but with
a few brilliant exceptions, generally proportioned to
the rank of their nobility; and further cursed by a
government (I speak not of their kings but of the
Junta) both in its form and in its substance the most
abominable that ever repressed or betrayed the
energies of a nation; hence desperate from repeated
treason, destitute of confidence, not in themselves
but in their commanders, unable to stand before the
French in battle, but still more unable to abstain from
fighting. One rare and unquestionable feature they
presented, ... a nation that would fight with France;
and certain I am, that if we had not tried the
experiment of fighting by their side, these very men,
who now most loudly condemn the course we have
pursued, would be calling for the impeachment of
these ministers, who had neglected such glorious
opportunities; who, in the crisis of the fate of France,
had shrunk from the only field where there was a
prospect of contending with success; who had coldly
refused our aid to the only allies who were ever
worthy of British co-operation. It is too much a habit
to call for the fruits of our battles, tacitly assuming
that nothing but the absolute and complete
attainment of our object can justify having fought
them. I never can agree to measure the justification
of a battle by the mere fruits of victory! yet even on
this ground I must contend, that never were there
laurels the more opposite of barren, than those which
have been reaped by our countrymen in Spain. We,
indeed, wanted not to be convinced that our army,
like our navy, equalled in science, and exceeded in
courage, that of any other nation in the world: but if
we have any anxiety for our character with other
armies, if reputation is strength, and if the reputation
of a nation, as well as of an individual, consists not in
the estimation in which it holds itself, but in the
estimation in which it is held by others, it is a false
vanity that causes us to shut our eyes and ears to the
opinions of other nations. Spain at least had been
convinced by the exertions of her government,
misrepresenting our failure at Buenos Ayres, and
other scenes of our misfortunes, that Great Britain,
omnipotent by sea, was even ridiculous on land. So
much so, that when the army of General Spencer was
landed near Cadiz, than which a finer army never left
the English shore, it was the wonder as well as the
pity of the Spaniards, that such noble-looking soldiers
should be so absolutely incapable of fighting. The
‘beautiful’ army was even the emphatic denomination
by which the British forces were distinguished; and
when Sir John Moore was known to be at length on
his march, that the beautiful army, the ‘hermoso
exercito,’ was actually advancing, was a subject of
Spanish surprise, at least as much as of Spanish
exultation; but when that army had commenced its
retreat, old impressions were revived with tenfold
force, ‘hermoso’ was no longer the epithet bestowed
on it, but one which it is impossible for me to repeat.
Nor let it be said that Coruña was a full vindication of
its fame! We indeed know that British heroism never
shone more conspicuous than on that day; but the ray
of glory which illuminated that last scene of our
retreat, was but feebly reflected through the rest of
Spain from that distant part of the Peninsula. The
French returned in triumph to Madrid, and boasted
that they had driven us into the sea; ... it was certain
we were no longer on the land; ... and under such
circumstances it is not surprising that Spain should
have declined to have given to us all the credit which
we really deserved. Some gentlemen, I see, are of
opinion that it is no great matter what the Spaniards
thought about us; but are we equally indifferent to
the opinions of the French? Let us not too hastily
conclude that they did full justice to our merits. We
are told, indeed, that at Maida and in Egypt we had
set that point at rest. Of Maida, I shall only say, that
within the last month it has been, for the first time,
mentioned in any newspaper of France, and that I
believe nine-tenths of the French soldiers have never
heard either of the battle, or of the existence of such
a place; and as to Egypt, their opinion is universally
that which General Regnier, in his most able, but
untrue representation, of those events, has laboured
to impress, namely, that the treachery of Menou, and
the detestation in which the army held the service in
Egypt, and their anxiety to return to France, were the
real causes of their expulsion; and that an
overwhelming force of ninety thousand men, of
English, Turks, and Indians, which he says, and which
they believe, we brought against them, furnished a
decent excuse for their surrender. Let us remember
too, that it was after these proofs of British military
excellence, that Buonaparte, on the heights of
Boulogne, parcelled out in promise to his soldiers the
estates of the ‘nation boutiquiere:’ let us remember
also our own opinions in those days, how general
engagements were to be avoided; ... how a system of
bush-fighting was to be adopted in Kent; ... and our
hopes that England might be saved after London
might be lost, ... or what inundations we should make
to protect it. Such language was then termed
‘caution:’ but on the proud eminence on which we are
now placed, we may afford to acknowledge there was
in it some mixture of distrust in the good old bayonet
of Britain. Where are the promises of Buonaparte
now? The very ridicule of such assertions would
render it impossible for him to repeat them. It is these
guilty ministers who have taught to him, and what I
think of much more consequence, have taught to
England, another style of conversation. They have
fairly tried that point, so carefully avoided by their
predecessors; they have brought our armies to a
meeting with the finest armies of France; and have
added more to our strength, as well as to our glory,
by fighting in Spain, than their predecessors by
abstaining from it in Poland.... Such is the view which
I take of what is past: With respect to the second
point, whether the time is indeed come, when our
further assistance can only be destruction to
ourselves, without being serviceable to our allies, a
very little time must show us that; and if there are
indeed good grounds of hope, any premature
expression of our despondency will certainly
extinguish them. The Junta is at length demolished.
The French are again dispersed over every part of the
Peninsula: the people are still every where in arms.
Let us not damp that spirit which may effect much,
and which must effect something, ... which must at
least give long employment to the forces of our
enemy. If, indeed, it depended solely upon us,
whether our allies should continue that sacrifice of
blood which they have so profusely shed, I should not
think us justifiable in purchasing our quiet at such a
price: but convinced as I am, that whether we stand
by them, or forsake them, those gallant nations will
still continue to bleed at every pore, our assistance
assumes a new character; and independent of the
advantages to be derived to ourselves, ...
independent of 200,000 Frenchmen already fallen, ...
independent of not less than 300,000 more required
even to preserve existence in the Peninsula, ...
independent of Brazil and South America, for ever
severed from our enemies, ... and independent of the
fleets of the Peninsula, I trust, rescued from their
grasp, ... independent of these gains to ourselves,
there is another feeling binding upon a nation, as well
as upon an individual, not to forsake our friend
because he is in his greatest danger!... Still, however,
 I acknowledge a limit there must be, beyond which
we cannot go, and whenever we can agree in
declaring that

Funditus occidimus, neque habet Fortuna regressum,

then, indeed, the first laws of self-preservation will

call on us to discontinue the contest. But surely Great
Britain will not utter such a sentiment until her allies
shall be disposed to join in it. They do not despair,
and I will never despair of them so long as they do
not despair of themselves, ... so long as I should
leave it in their power to say to us at a future day,
‘Whence these chains?... If you had stood firm a little
longer, ... if you had not so soon fainted, ... we should
not at this day be in the power of our enemies!’”
General General Ferguson was the first person who rose
Ferguson; after Mr. Leslie Foster had concluded this able and
manly speech. “He had been in Portugal,” he said, and
“he did not think there were 30,000 soldiers in that
country; those that were there had certainly, through
the exertions of General Beresford and other British
officers, attained an appearance of discipline: but he
feared that an army adequate to the task of defending
Portugal must be able to make a stand in the first
instance; and if obliged to retreat, must still, as
opportunity offered, return to the charge; and thus
make resistance after resistance. Now he was
decidedly of opinion, from what he had seen and
heard of them, that on the very first defeat the little
discipline of the Portugueze army would vanish, and a
dispersion be the consequence.”
Mr. Fitzgerald; Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether ministers had
employed transports to bring away our cavalry from
Portugal? in this service, he said, our money would be
 best employed. He had never heard of any
achievement performed by the Portugueze, except,
indeed, that 2000 of them, with the Bishop of Porto at
their head, had entered Porto, and taken twenty-four
Lord Milton; Frenchmen prisoners. Lord Milton repeated the
erroneous proposition of the Marquis of Lansdowne,
that it was highly improper to act as principals in a
foreign country, instead of as auxiliaries. “No
reasonable man,” he affirmed, “could vote a million of
the public money for such a purpose, when the
French were under the walls of Cadiz. It had often
been the practice to subsidize foreign troops, but he
believed it had never before entered the head of any
English statesman to grant subsidies to the
Portugueze, ... to those, in fact, among whom the
Mr. Bankes; materials for an army could not be found.” Mr. Bankes
talked of the money: “We had it not to spare, and if
we had, even then we ought not to spare it. Too
much had already been furnished to the Spaniards.
Where were we to find more? specie we had not, and
paper would not answer. The enemy were now
perhaps in possession of Cadiz, which had escaped
immediate capture only through an accident. The
Cortes had not even a town in Spain to meet in. It
was quite romantic to expect that a British army, of
20,000 or 25,000 men, even with whatever co-
operation Portugal could give, would be able to
maintain the war there as a principal against France.
He must oppose the motion, and recommend that the
resources of the country should be husbanded for our
defence.”
Mr. Jacob; Upon this, Mr. Jacob, who had recently returned
from Spain, denied that France had any complete
occupation of that country, either civil or military. In
Catalonia, he said, it would be difficult to say, whether
there were at that moment more Spanish towns
besieged by the French, or towns occupied by French
troops besieged by the Spaniards; and the
communications were so completely cut off, that the
French could not send a letter from Barcelona to
Gerona, without an escort of at least 500 cavalry to
protect it. Generally speaking, throughout the whole
of Spain, those towns only were surrendered which
were under the influence of the nobility and gentry of
large estates; but the mass of the people were
patriotic, and the villages were defended after the
towns had been betrayed. And not only the villages,
but the mountains, were still obstinately defended. He
believed, that among the nobility and gentry, where
there were two brothers, the man of great
possessions was always for submitting to the enemy,
while the other joined the patriotic standard. We had
been accustomed to consider civil wars as the most
horrible of all kinds of hostilities, but never was any
civil war so horrible as that which was now raging in
Spain. The massacre, the pillage, and the violence
offered to women, were unparalleled. He had lately
been witness to some of these atrocities. The town of
Puerto Real had surrendered upon terms, and Victor,
upon entering it, published a proclamation, promising
the most perfect security to all the inhabitants.
Nevertheless, he had hardly taken possession before
he ordered the men, who were mostly artificers at the
docks in Cadiz, to be imprisoned, and the females
were marched down to St. Mary’s, to be violated by
his army.
It might have been thought that such a statement
as this could have produced but one effect, or at least
that no man could have been found who would
attempt to weaken its effect, by recriminating upon
Mr. his own country. Mr. Whitbread, however, after
Whitbread; observing that he believed Mr. Jacob had gone to
Spain upon a mission, half commercial, half
diplomatic, demanded of him whether he had been an
eye-witness of these atrocities; and if he were, or if
he were not, why he had detailed them, unless it was
to inflame the house upon a question where their
judgement only ought to decide? “Abuses, no doubt,”
he said, “must have prevailed; but were gentlemen
aware of none committed under circumstances of less
provocation, when the clergy received the mandates
of power to ascend their pulpits, and issue from them
falsehoods not more rank than they were notorious?”
Such is the language which Mr. Whitbread is reported
to have uttered upon this occasion. He proceeded to
ask, “Where was the spirit of the Spaniards? where
were its effects? were they seen in suffering the
French to pass over the face of their country, like light
through an unresisting medium? We were gravely told
that the post could not pass unmolested; no doubt
this was a most serious calamity, and a conclusive
proof of the energy of the popular spirit, ... only,
unfortunately, we had the same proof in Ireland!
Spain,” he averred, “had not done its duty ... no
matter from what cause; the people had, however,
some excuse, they had been under the selfish sway of
an aristocracy, that only wanted to use them as an
instrument for effecting their own narrow purposes;
their implicit confidence had been abused by the blind
bigotry of an intolerant priesthood, ... a priesthood
that, whatever it preached, practised not the gospel;
they had had the sword in their hands as often as the
crosier, and they had had, he feared, in their hearts
any thing but the meekness, humility, charity, and
peace, that their blessed Master had inculcated by his
pure precepts, enforced by the example of his
 spotless life, and sealed by the last sufferings of his
all-atoning death. While,” said Mr. Whitbread, “I value
those precepts and that example, I never can take
pleasure in setting man against his fellow-man in a
hopeless struggle. I think the present cause hopeless,
and as such I never will consent to its being uselessly
and cruelly protracted.”
Mr. Huskisson and Mr. Bathurst spoke like men in
whom the principle of opposition was not the pole star
Mr. Huskisson; of their political course. The question, Mr. Huskisson
said, was, whether we were to withhold from his
majesty’s ministers the means by which the contest
Mr. Bathurst. might be rendered more likely to be successful. Mr.
Bathurst said, it was enough for him to know that an
alliance with Portugal had been concluded, and that
Portugal, in virtue of that alliance, demanded our
assistance. An amendment was moved by Mr. Tierney,
tending to refuse the grant, and 142 members voted
for it, over whom ministers had a majority of sixty-
two. In the Lords, the numbers had been 94, and
124.
To comment upon the language of the opposition
in these debates would be superfluous. The ignorance
which they displayed of the national character of the
Spaniards and Portugueze, and of the nature of the
seat of war, the contemptuous superiority which they
assumed, and the tone in which they ridiculed and
reviled our allies, were of little moment; but the
debate was of main importance, because the party
committed themselves completely upon the defence
of Portugal, declaring, in the most confident and
positive terms, that it was hopeless, and ought not to
be attempted. Their journalists took up the subject in
the same strain, and followed the unhappy pattern of
prediction which had been set them. One of two
 things, they said, must necessarily happen to these
30,000 Portugueze troops; either they must fall into
the hands of the French, or we must bring them out
of Portugal. The possibility that, with a British army,
they might be able successfully to defend their
country, these men had neither wisdom, nor
knowledge, nor virtue to contemplate. Could it be
doubted for a moment, they said, that Spain would be
subdued, from one extremity to the other, before the
end of six months? They copied, too, as faithfully, the
false and slanderous representations which were
made of the Portugueze. A thousand Portugueze, they
said, would fly before a single French company, just
as so many gipsies would run away from a constable.
We might raise a better legion in Norwood. Was there
an English colonel who would give five shillings a
dozen for such recruits, or a serjeant who would be at
the expense of a bowl of punch for fourscore of them?
The French and their partizans did not fail to make
due use of what was thus advanced in their favour;
but the Portugueze were too well acquainted with the
real character and feelings of this nation to have their
faith in British friendship shaken by the gross
misrepresentations of a virulent party: and they knew,
perhaps, that statesmen who take part against the
government and against the allies of their country,
and writers who pervert to the most wicked and
perilous purposes the freedom of the press, are the
concomitant evils of a free constitution like ours,
under which both public and private libellers breed
like vermin in a genial climate.
Reform of the Meantime the Portugueze army, which, under a
Portuguese system of complicated abuses, had been reduced to
army. the lowest possible state of degradation, was
reformed in all its branches by the indefatigable
exertions of Marshal Beresford. He had to contend not
only with the inveterate evils which had grown up
during the long perversion of government, but with
that spirit of insubordination which, at the outbreak of
these troubles, the general anarchy had produced.
The soldiers had begun to claim and exert the power
of choosing their own officers; an end was
immediately put to this ruinous license, and at the
same time means were taken for removing the cause
of complaint wherever it had originated, by recalling
the officers as well as the men to a sense of their
duty, and by introducing British officers in sufficient
number to give the army consistence and effect till
they might gradually be replaced by native
Portugueze. Equal justice, which in that country had
been as little known as liberty of conscience, was
promised and administered; the troops were told that
the Marshal was at all times ready to hear their
complaints, through the proper channel; and that if
any officer excused himself from forwarding the
complaint of a soldier, the soldier might address it
directly to the commander-in-chief. But the Marshal
said it was his duty to be impartial, and the officers
had as much right to justice as the soldiers. Severe
penalties had been denounced against desertion, but
with so little effect, that nearly seven hundred cases
occurred during the month of April in this year; the
punishment of death was then inflicted on one
offender, and two others were degraded to Angola. At
the same time the officers were not allowed to absent
themselves from their duty under pretext of illness;
certificates to this effect had been so greatly abused,
that they were no longer to be regarded without such
actual inspection as the Marshal might appoint; and
one person of high family was dismissed the service
for a subterfuge of this kind. Courts-martial were
made to understand their proper functions by being
reprimanded in general orders; and the Misericordia
which had interfered to suspend the execution of an
officer who had received money from the French, and
entered their service, was informed that its privileges
did not extend to these cases, and that the sentence
must be carried into effect.
It was necessary to raise the military character in
the opinion of the soldiers themselves, as well as of
the nation. But before this could be done, the sense
of cleanliness and decency was to be restored: for the
troops, in that sullen state of self-neglect which
discomfort and hopelessness produce, had well-nigh
lost all sense of either. The Commander-in-chief told
them that many of the evils which the army suffered
were occasioned by the want of cleanliness; that
health could not be preserved without it, that the
soldiers must wash themselves frequently, and that it
grieved him to say, he must require the officers to set
them an example; that fatigue was no excuse for
neglecting this essential duty, for after a long march
nothing was so refreshing; that every officer must be
responsible for the cleanliness of the men under his
command, and that he himself would never excuse
any officer whom he should see dirty. He gave orders
that the men should be provided with soap, brushes,
and combs; that they should brush their clothes and
clean their shoes every day, and be punished if they
neglected this; and as the summer approached, he
required the officers, whenever an opportunity
occurred, to make the men bathe by companies. The
Portugueze soldiers, it was said, like those of every
other country, desired to appear with a military air,
and with that propriety which belongs to the military
character, and the men who most affected this
appearance were always the best soldiers; it was the
business of the officers, therefore, to see that they
were provided with every thing necessary for
maintaining it. While this indispensable attention to
cleanliness was exacted, every possible provision was
11
made both for their health and comfort. A
dispensation was obtained from the Pope’s Legate,
allowing the troops the use of meat while on service,
every day in the year, except on Ash-Wednesday and
Good-Friday. The huge regimental kettles, which, after
the Mahommedan custom, were still used in the
Portugueze army, and which, from the inconvenience
of carrying them, frequently did not come up with the
troops till long after they were wanted, were laid
aside, and light tin vessels substituted, which might
be always at hand. An injurious custom of marching in
their cloaks when it rained, and even using the
blanket at such times as an additional covering, was
prohibited; the men, they were told, knew by
experience, that no clothing could protect them
against the rain during a wet march, and therefore
they were ordered to keep cloak and blanket dry for
their own comfort when they reached the journey’s
end. The officers and non-commissioned officers were
in the habit of kicking and striking the soldiers;
wherever British officers commanded this was
immediately forbidden, and their example, with the
decided opinion of Marshal Beresford, nearly, or
altogether, put a stop to the unmanly practice. The
ordinary punishment, though less disgraceful and
severe than the abominable system of flogging,
proved more frequently fatal; it consisted in striking
the soldier on the back, across the shoulders, with the
broad side of a sword. The number of strokes, or
pancadas, never exceeded fifty; but men have not
unfrequently been known to drop down dead after
receiving thirty, from a rupture of the aorta. Marshal
Beresford ordered a small cane to be used instead of
the sword; and thus, without altering the national
manner of punishment, rendered it no longer
dangerous.
There were other evils which were beyond his
power. When the troops of the line were recruited, it
was neither done by ballot nor by bounty: a certain
number were demanded from each district; the
captain of that district picked whom he chose, sent
them to prison till he had collected the whole number,
then marched them to join their regiment. The
Marshal introduced the easy improvement of sending
them to a recruiting depôt, to be drilled before they
joined; but he fixed upon the peninsula of Peniche, a
swampy and unwholesome spot, which proved fatal to
many, acting with double effect upon the depressed,
half-starved, and ill-treated peasants, who were sent
thither. The sick, the lame, and the lazy, were
crowded into the same dungeon when recruited by
the Capitam Mor; contagion was thus generated, and
very often those, and those especially, who were fit
for the service, were carried off by disease. The depôt
was afterwards removed to Mafra, which is a healthy
situation.
Over the method of levying troops Marshal
Beresford had no control. But the hospitals, which
were infinitely more destructive to the army than the
sword of the enemy, and would have destroyed it
much faster than it could have been recruited, were
greatly improved under a British inspector, though the
government would not permit his regulations to be
carried into effect to their full extent. Still a great and
material improvement was accomplished. The
commissariat had been so conducted, as to be at
once inefficient for the army, and oppressive for the
people. A board of administration at Lisbon had its
intendants in every province, and its factors in every
town. Government contracted for provisions and
forage, at fixed prices, with the board, and the board
directed its agents to purchase what might be
required for the troops on the spot. Payment was
made by bills upon the board, which in the best times
were seldom taken up till twelve months after they
became due, and in the present state of things were
considered to be worth nothing. The farmer,
therefore, naturally concealed his grain; it was seldom
that magazines were formed, or any provision made
against scarcity; and what the farmer could not or
would not sell at the disadvantageous rate which the
factors offered, was usually taken, when it could be
found, by force. Marshal Beresford got commissaries
appointed to the different brigades, but he could not
get money for them, and therefore they were of little
use. To reform the civil establishments of the army
was almost as difficult as it would have been to
reform the government; the utmost exertions of the
Marshal, aided as they were by Lord Wellington’s
interference, availed nothing, ... being opposed by
every species of low cunning and court intrigue. For
the old corruptions existed in full vigour,
notwithstanding the removal of the court to Brazil;
and the body politic continued to suffer under its
inveterate disease, a morbus pediculosus, from which
nothing but a system of reform, wisely, temperately,
firmly, and constitutionally pursued, could purify it,
and restore it to health and strength.
Much, however, was done for Portugal, ... enough
to be ever remembered by that country with
gratitude, and by Great Britain with a generous and
ennobling pride. An English commissariat,
scrupulously exact in all its dealings, relieved the
farmers in great measure from the oppression of their
own government. The soldiers learnt to respect their
officers and themselves; they rapidly improved in
discipline; they acquired confidence, and became
proud of their profession. The government itself found
it necessary to alter its old system of secrecy and
delusion; the dispatches of Lord Wellington and
Marshal Beresford were published in the Lisbon
Gazette, and the people of Portugal were officially
informed of the real circumstances of the war, as fairly
and as fully as they had been in the War of the
Acclamation.
 CHAPTER XXX.
SIEGE OF HOSTALRICH. ATTEMPT UPON
VALENCIA. CAPTURE OF LERIDA. OPERATIONS
BEFORE CADIZ.

1810. If proof had been wanting that men of any country

may be made good soldiers under good discipline, it
might have been seen at this time in Buonaparte’s
armies, where the Italians, who in their own country
ran like sheep before the French, were now embodied
with them, and approved themselves in every respect
equal to their former conquerors. These men, who
were taken by the conscription to bear part in a war
wherein they had no concern, who had no national
character to support, nothing but the spirit of their
profession to animate them, were nevertheless equal
to any service required from them, and needed no
other excitement than that they were fighting for pay,
and plunder, and life. Was it then to be doubted, that
if the same care were bestowed in training, the same
results would be seen in the Spaniards and
Portugueze, who were under the influence of every
passion and every principle which can strengthen and
elevate the heart of man, ... both people too being
alike remarkable for national feeling, and for patience
under difficulties and privations, docility to their
superiors, and faithful attachment to those in whom
they trust? It was not indeed to be expected that the
Spaniards would so far acknowledge their military
degradation as to put themselves under the tuition of
an ally; Spain had not abated sufficiently of its old
pretensions, thus to humiliate itself. Neither indeed
was that degradation so complete as it had been in
Portugal. The Spanish artillery was most respectable;
and there were officers in the army who had studied
their profession, and whose talents might have raised
them to distinction in the proudest age of Spanish
history. But the Portugueze were conscious of their
weakness, and in this knowledge they found their
strength: for when that brave and generous people, in
the extremity of their fortune, submitted implicitly to
the direction of their old hereditary ally, ... when they
offered hands and hearts for the common cause, and
asked for assistance and instruction, the ultimate
success of that cause became as certain as any thing
can possibly be deemed by human foresight. With
Portugal for the scene of action, and her population
ready for every sacrifice that duty might require, it
remained only for Great Britain to feel and understand
its own strength, and employ its inexhaustible
resources in exertions adequate to the occasion.
But Great Britain as yet hardly understood its
strength. The cold poison which was continually
instilled by party writers into the public ear had
produced some effect even upon the sound part of
the nation. From the commencement of the war it had
been proclaimed as a truth too certain to be disputed,
that England could no longer as a military power
compete with France, consequently that we must rely
upon our insular situation, and husband our
resources. These opinions had been so long repeated,
that they had acquired something like the authority of
prescription; the government itself seemed to distrust
the national power, and in the fear of hazarding too
 much, apportioned always for every service the
smallest possible force that could be supposed
adequate to the object, instead of placing at the
general’s disposal such ample means as might ensure
success. The first departure from this over-cautious
system was in the expedition to Walcheren, where a
great armament was worse than wasted. That
miserable enterprise weakened the government, and
in some degree disheartened it; and Lord Wellington,
in addition to the other difficulties of his situation, had
long to struggle with insufficient means. But the
exertions and the experience of the last year had not
been lost: the British army had acquired a reputation
which, however successfully Buonaparte concealed it
from the French people, was felt by his soldiers and
his generals: time had been gained for training the
Portugueze troops, and preparing for the defence of
Portugal; and the British Commander having proved
both his enemies and his allies, had clearly foreseen
the course which the war would take, and determined
upon his own measures with the calmness of a mind
that knew how to make the best advantage of the
events it could not control.
O’Donnell While both parties were preparing for a campaign
appointed to in Portugal, in which the enemy expected to complete
the command the conquest of the Peninsula, and Lord Wellington
in Catalonia.
felt assured that the tide of their fortune would be
turned; while the war before Cadiz was pursued with
little exertion or enterprise on either side, and the
cities of Andalusia were occupied without a struggle
by the invaders; in Catalonia the contest was carried
on with renewed vigour. The fall of Gerona enabled
the besieging army to undertake farther operations;
but the Catalans, as well as the French, had changed
their commander. Upon Blake’s recall to the south, D.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookfinal.com