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that his genius was eminently aggressive... that he never fought a defensive battle without apologising for it.' It is this which makes Wellington's self-control in 1810 so wonderful. A man so steeped in the instinct of the offensive must have often been tempted to try a sudden stroke, must have found it difficult not to respond to gallant old Herrasti's appeal to do something for Ciudad Rodrigo. But, like Moore before him, he knew that he commanded not a British army but the British army; that he could not afford any serious reverse, lest the Ministry at home, yielding to the clamour of an Opposition as factious as it was ignorant, should be frightened into abandoning the Peninsula. Mr Fortescue takes up the cudgels on behalf of the Liverpool Ministry with characteristic vehemence and no small success. He considers Wellington's distrust of them unreasonable (pp. 435-50). They gave him all that was possible in the way of financial support, and considering what a legacy of sickly and inefficient battalions the Walcheren expedition had left, they kept him tolerably supplied with reinforce

Of Liverpool he speaks warmly: the Premier, he says, showed 'more foresight than any previous British Minister of War,' and 'cast away completely the frittering traditions of Pitt's régime' (p. 448), which Mr Fortescue has so convincingly denounced in his earlier volumes. In a word, the Arch-Mediocrity' has at last found a friend and is triumphantly vindicated against the hardly less than libellous misrepresentations of Napier and other political adversaries. Prof. Oman, though less enthusiastic about the Ministry, nevertheless defends them vigorously. He represents them as leaning on Wellington for encouragement-'it required all Wellington's robust self-confidence to keep the Ministers reassured '—and certainly one feels that it was mainly because Wellington was resolved to risk nothing and to avoid the chance of any 'regrettable incidents' that he refrained from utilising such a chance as the brigade of Ferey and Maucune offered him when late in April they were pushed up close to Ciudad Rodrigo. The advantages of crushing 7000 men could not lure Wellington into running unnecessary risks.

Until September 1810 only Craufurd's Light Division and attached cavalry came into contact with the French.

Mr Oman describes in vivid language how admirably Craufurd and his men discharged the outpost work of the army. In constant and daily touch with Ney's corps, he was never surprised absolutely and never thrust back, save by overwhelming strength: he never lost a detachment, never failed to detect every move of the enemy, and never sent his commander false intelligence.' But this brilliant performance narrowly escaped a disastrous termination. Craufurd let himself be caught beyond the Coa and only escaped thanks to his officers and men and to Ney's quite uncalled-for attack on the bridge, made for the satisfaction of ending the day with a sharp blow at the enemy. Mr Fortescue is more severe. A great trainer of troops and without an equal as a commander of outposts, Craufurd was too excitable to shine in action, and the combat on the Coa was no less ill-managed than unnecessary (pp. 483 ff., cf. p. 459). This incident at the Coa followed the fall of Ciudad (July 10) and preceded the siege of Almeida. Here Wellington had hoped to delay Masséna considerably, but on the third day of the siege a stray shell exploded the main magazine and laid the town in ruins; and Masséna, this obstacle unexpectedly removed, quickly pushed forward down the Mondego. By taking the worst road in Portugal he avoided the position carefully prepared by Wellington on the Alva, only to meet with great hardships and finally to be confronted with the even more formidable hillside of Bussaco.

Prof. Oman has little difficulty in refuting Napier's assertion that the British were in a perilous position at Bussaco on the evening of September 25, that if the French had attacked at once they would have found half the defenders not yet in position. Nearly all Wellington's troops were already up, and the French had only a weak advance-guard. Had Ney attacked sooner, there is no reason to suppose he would have fared any better han he did on the 27th. Masséna's dispositions for the attack are severely criticised by both writers; he underrated his enemy, and, mistaking Picton's division, actually the right centre of the British, for the extreme right wing, was completely deceived by Wellington. One of the chief controversies of the battle turns on the respective aims of Picton and Leith to the credit for the repuse of Reynier's corps. Prof. Oman and Mr Fortescue differ on

some details but are in substantial agreement. The first attacks, by Merle and Heudelet, were repulsed by Picton only, but that general was wrong in representing Leith's doings as unimportant, for it certainly was Leith who defeated the second great attack-that of Foy.

Mr Fortescue believes Wellington had hoped to check the French definitely at Bussaco, that he had counted on Trant's Portuguese blocking the Sardao road by which Masséna turned his position and so compelled him to retire on Lisbon. But, even so, Wellington had ample reasons for satisfaction. The Portuguese had been tried and not found wanting: moreover, the confidence of the French in themselves and their commander had been roughly shaken : the first lesson of Bussaco was that when the British offered battle in a position of their own choosing, it was best to refuse it.

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Wellington's retreat on Lisbon was never seriously pressed, thanks largely to the skill with which the cavalry covered the retirement of the infantry. But the extraordinary thing is that not till Masséna was within fifty miles of Torres Vedras did he even hear of the existence of the Lines. Japanese press-censors never did better work than this. The French,' says Colonel Henderson, had never encountered so mysterious an enemy' as Wellington ('Science of War,' p. 103), and it was the rudest of shocks which this master of surprise administered to Masséna at Torres Vedras. The Marshal saw at once that an attack was out of the question; Bussaco was too fresh in his memory, and it says volumes for his staunchness and resolution that he held his ground before the Lines for a month before falling back to Santarem, where, despite almost unexampled difficulties and privations, he maintained his position for nearly five months more. It was a contest of endurance, but a contest to which there could be but one termination. Of course, the Lines alone did not check Masséna: behind the garrisons of these formidable entrenchments there lay a field army little inferior to his in numbers and ready for a counter-stroke. But to argue, as a distinguished military critic has done ('Imperial Strategy,' pp. 170-1), that the Lines were of no value to Wellington is not merely par adoxical, but almost too ridiculous to need refutation; at any rate, neither Prof. Oman nor Mr Fortescue has cared to refute it. WelVol. 219.-No. 436.

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lington has been criticised for missing opportunities of falling on isolated detachments of the French during this period: he might, for example, have destroyed Junot at Sobral, but he knew Masséna was as anxious to be attacked as he himself had been to see Masséna run his head against the Lines. Cut off from all communication with Spain-Trant's militia re-occupied Coimbra and captured 5000 French sick and wounded three days after Masséna moved forward thence, and the only messengers who got through had to be escorted by whole battalions -in ever greater straits for food, unsupported by any of his colleagues, Masséna's only hope lay in inducing Wellington to attack his well-chosen position. But Wellington knew that a merely partial success would not be worth the cost, since, if he waited, starvation would achieve his purpose; he calculated that a real success would mean 10,000 casualties, a higher price than he was prepared to pay, especially as, in Mr Fortescue's words, 'success would probably have meant the raising of the siege of Cadiz and the transfer of Soult's army to Portugal.' Prof. Oman takes much the same view. Though criticising Wellington's conduct of the pursuit to Santarem, he admits that the destruction of a French corps or division would not have fitted in with Wellington's plan of letting the Portuguese winter do his work for him. As Mr Fortescue suggests, a defeat which caused the French to evacuate Portugal in November. would have harmed them infinitely less than did their long endurance at Santarem.

With Masséna's retreat to Santarem Mr Fortescue's narrative ceases for the present, so that for the campaign of 1811 one has not the advantage of comparing his version with Prof. Oman's latest volume, which covers the events of that year. In this volume Prof. Oman surpasses his own high standard. He handles his material even more skilfully; his criticisms and conclusions are even more convincing; and the narrative moves on no less lucidly or briskly. Barrosa, Fuentes de Oñoro and Albuera give him a splendid theme: his treatment is worthy of it.

Masséna's tenacity in unexpectedly remaining at Santarem till March 1811 must have given Wellington some anxious moments before it finally broke down. There

was always the fear that reinforcements might come through, and had Wellington been more fully informed that one general action must empty the French cartridgeboxes, he might well have struck sooner. But he was waiting for the reinforcements which enabled him to complete the new division which he had formed in October and to add yet another, and he was actually planning an offensive when Masséna withdrew. Indeed, it was because he was thus occupied that the pursuit was at first a trifle slow. Of the closing stages of Masséna's stay at Santarem, the alternatives before him, and his reasons for retiring by the line of his advance, Prof. Oman gives an excellent description (iv, 77 ff.). To cross the Tagus and retire through the undevastated Alemtejo seemed preferable; but, with Wellington ready to meet it, the attempt to cross would probably have produced disaster, and, even had the French been so lucky as to get across, they would have been losing their communications. Moreover, Masséna certainly intended to stand on the Lower Mondego; he never expected to be pursued so closely as to have to retire directly to the frontier. Wellington's pursuit has been criticised as over-cautious, but it kept Masséna on the move till he reached Celorico, and it left his army in a sorry plight. Moreover, Wellington had little numerical superiority, and there was nothing to be gained by premature attacks on well-posted rear-guards. Prof. Oman analyses in masterly fashion the actions which accompanied the retreat. The French thought of them as a series of successful checks to the pursuers; English writers represent them as the hunting of the whole French army from position to position by the unaided advance-guard of the British. But, as Prof. Oman says, 'all rear-guard actions begin with a check to the pursuers, they end with the retreat of the defenders. Ney's handling of the rear-guard covered him with credit, while the Light Division added to their laurels in every engagement, even if their temporary commander, Erskine, was less fortunate. His maladroitness was most conspicuous in the combat of Sabugal, where, but for his blundering, Reynier's corps might have been destroyed.

With Masséna's retreat from Sabugal, which left Wellington free to blockade Almeida, the invasion of Portugal ended. The responsibility for its failure does

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