If there had been more energy on the
part of Mr. Perceval and the members of the Cabinet, if there had
been less bad faith and self-seeking on the part of the Opposition,
Lord Wellington's campaign would not have been starved as it was;
and if there had been less bad faith and self-seeking of an even
more stupid and flagrant kind on the part of the Portuguese Council
of Regency, the British Expeditionary Force would not have been
left without the stipulated supplies and otherwise hindered at
every step.
Lord Wellington might have experienced the mental agony of Sir John
Moore under similar circumstances fifteen months earlier. That he
did suffer, and was to suffer yet more, his correspondence shows.
But his iron will prevented that suffering from disturbing the
equanimity of his mind. The Council of Regency, in its concern to
court popularity with the aristocracy of Portugal, might balk his
measures by its deliberate supineness; echoes might reach him of
the voices at St. Stephen's that loudly dubbed his dispositions rash,
presumptuous and silly; catch-halfpenny journalists at home and men
of the stamp of Lord Grey might exploit their abysmal military
ignorance in reckless criticism and censure of his operations; he
knew what a passionate storm of anger and denunciation had arisen
from the Opposition when he had been raised to the peerage some
months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera, and how,
that victory notwithstanding, it had been proclaimed that his
conduct of the campaign was so incompetent as to deserve, not reward,
but punishment; and he was aware of the growing unpopularity of the
war in England, knew that the Government - ignorant of what he was
so laboriously preparing - was chafing at his inactivity of the
past few months, so that a member of the Cabinet wrote to him
exasperatedly, incredibly and fatuously -- "for God's sake do
something -- anything so that blood be spilt.
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