French affairs in Spain, Suchet would neither have had time nor inclination to carry on a protracted and hazardous warfare in that part of the country.'-Now, without giving Sir John Murray too much credit, it may be assumed, that if there had been such good positions a little to the eastward,' if he had thought he would have been joined by thousands of Catalonians, and if Eroles and Manso could have stopped the Barcelona force, he would not have re-embarked. But" in the critical situation of the French affairs, Suchet could not have spared time to carry on a protracted warfare in that part of the country." Let us recollect, however, that when Sir John Murray embarked, the great battle of Vittoria had not been gained. Reference was on this subject made to the official accounts by Suchet, which appeared in the French papers, and in which it was stated that on the 10th June troops had been col lected at Barcelona; and on the same day a strong corps had arrived at Tortosa. Thus were the French upon the 10th within 20 miles of both flanks of the allied army, and in very superior numbers. On the 11th, Suchet, by his own account, had a partial engagement with the English dragoons near Perello, between the Coll de Ballaguer and the sea. On the 12th his fires on the top of the mountains could be seen by the garrison of Tarragona; and on the 13th his troops approached the place. Meanwhile General Mathieu with the troops from Barcelona had reached Arbos and Vendrill, on the northern side of Tarragona. These circumstances stated by Suchet are sufficient, it was said, to rescue the allied army from the charge of having embarked with precipitation upon receiving intelligence that the enemy was approaching. Before the troops did embark, the columns both from Barcelona and Valencia were almost within

sight of the besieged fortress. The embarkation of the army on the 13th became a measure of necessity, Tarra gona not having been reduced, and the allied troops being placed between two armies, one of which was certainly superior, and the other probably equal in numerical strength to themselves.— But why then, it might be asked, attack Tarragona at all, if the enemy could send this superior force against us? To this it was replied, that hopes were reasonably entertained of taking it before the enemy approached to its relief; particularly as a Spanish army under the Duke del Parque and general Elio had been left at Valencia. The expedition had been ordered by Lord Wellington himself, and the Marquis Wellesley stated, that "the force at Alicant had been embarked by Lord Wellington's orders, and had landed near Tarragona, precisely according to that noble lord's plan." It were superfluous to say any thing more to prove the wisdom of the plan. Does any unnecessary delay appear to have taken place in the operations? On the 31st of May the army embarked, -on the 3d of June it landed near Salon; the Coll de Ballaguer and Tarragona were immediately invested, and the former was taken in four days. Suchet himself could not censure his antagonist, but by inventing a story that the fortifications of Tarragona had been razed. Had this been true, what necessity could there have been for investing Tarragona in the same manner as all other fortified places are

invested?

"I deny," said Sir John Murray, in the close of the defence which he made before the court of enquiry appointed to investigate his conduct," that any evidence exists to prove that I ever considered the capture of Tarragona as impracticable, till the hour I gave the orders to raise the siege. I have endeavoured to prove this fact by the

continued operations which we carried on, by the disposition for attacking the out-works on the night of the 11th, and the arrangements made for the reception of the enemy on the 12th. I have attempted to prove, that a perseverance in the siege was my positive and prescribed duty, according to the spirit of my instructions, and that a departure from that line would, in all probability, nay, I may say to a certainty, have occasioned the most fatal consequences to the allied armies on the eastern coast of Spain. It would have enabled Marshal Suchet to re-occupy the entrenched position on the Xucar, and, probably, to crush the Duque del Parque before there was a possibility that I could have come to his assistance. I have shewn what the probable consequences might have been to any division of marines and seamen which Lord Exmouth might have landed near the Bay of Rosas; and I have endeavooured to prove, that the siege of Tarragona, and not merely a feint upon it, was in the contemplation of the commander-in-chief.

"I do not pretend to say, that in the line of conduct I prescribed to myself no risk was incurred: I knew, when I decided on continuing the siege after the 8th, that I did run a very considerable risk; and what military operation, may I ask, is free from it? Every battle which is fought is a risk, the whole expedition itself was a risk. No one will surely assert, that in war nothing is to be hazarded; on the contrary, the first quality of a commander appears to be, to risk with judgment, and he does his best when he takes care that the nature of the risk is inferior to the importance of the object. I may apply this axiom to the present case: I risked a few pieces of iron cannon, and some stores-for what? for the contingent benefit, that I might by this risk possibly succeed in the capture of the place, or ensure the success

of two of the objects pointed out by the Duke of Wellington; but, at all events, on the certainty of drawing the French armies to me, and occasioning them a long and harassing march, from which they did, accordingly, most materially suffer; and of ensuring a certain time to the co-operating Spanish armies for the execution of their part of the general plan, which, after all, was the most essential of the whole. I did incur this risk, whether with judgement or not will rest with the court to decide; but, at least, I can affirm, that it was done in the best exercise of my abilities, and with that due deliberation which the importance of the proceeding required. I was not blind to the consequences which would probably arise to myself in the first instance; but if I had permitted so weak a consideration to seduce me from what my judgement told me was for the advantage of my king and country, I should richly have deserved the most severe sentence which could be pronounced against me. Such was the view I took of the case, and the line of conduct which it appeared to me right to adopt. It was founded, in my humble opinion, less with a view to the object itself, than to the general plan of Lord Wellington's operations; and I contend, therefore, that my conduct was no way unmilitary, and so far from being in opposition to the spirit of my instructions, that it was in strict unison with the letter itself. I deny this charge, therefore, both in its principle and its application. In its principle, because I had in my possession no express written orders which directed my return to Valencia, in a language so decisive as to deprive me of all discretion as to the period of re-embarkation; and in its application, because, admitting such order to have existed with a view to securing the acquisitions of the Duke del Parque, I contend, that, in the relative position of the hostile armies,

these acquisitions were in no degree endangered by my absence: on the contrary, I maintain that the line of conduct I pursued, was the best calculated to promote their extension and their safety; and that my secondary operations (if secondary they can be called) were in no respect contrary to the letter, while they were in direct unison with the spirit of my instructions. But to call them secondary operations is to lose sight of the first principle that produced them, and of the ultimate object they had in view. Their first principle was the army's safety, and their ultimate object its entire re-embarkation; that re-embark ation which I am accused of unnécessarily delaying, which was decided on the moment it was determined to raise the siege of Tarragona, and which every effort was exerted to carry into effect. Imperious circumstances interrupted the operation. It was only when these ceased that it could be completed with safety; but the principle and the end remained the same. In point of fact, I might assert that the siege of Tarragona could never be said to be raised till the whole army was embarked-for it was the embark ation of the army which constituted the raising of the siege, and if the succeeding operations growing out of circumstances which I could not controul, have been satisfactorily accounted for, then am I accused of not doing that, which every hour after I determined to raise the siege, was consumed in the anxious attempt to ac complish. It is one thing to linger unnecessarily in the execution of public duty, and it is another wisely to ex tend the period of active operation for the accomplishment of an important object, which falls within the sphere of rational and duly regulated discretion, a discretion which exists within the breast of every officer, and the limits of every command, unless ex.

pressly disallowed by superior orders. In the instructions of Lord Welling- 1 ton, now before the court, beg leave to express my firm, but humble con viction, there was no such limitation.

"From what has been said, I trust the court will be convinced (if argument on the subject were necessary) of the great imprudence, nay, the palpable error I should have committed (being resolved to re embark), had I delayed the operation till the enemy should have an opportunity of attacking me during its progress. If I have been fortunate enough to satisfy the court, that the allied army was neither from its numbers, composition, or equipments, equal to contend with that of the enemy, it follows that whatever should have exposed it to the unequal contest, must have been injudicious and culpable, as militating against my or ders; and on these grounds I contend, that any measure which should have brought me into contact with the enemy after the 11th at night, would have been so much the more censurable, as I should myself have sought the situation which it was my duty to avoid. I allude to the different plans, either of marching to oppose General De Caen, or to arrest the progress of Marshal Suchet. To both these I answer, that my force was unequal to the contest; and that the portion of it which might have been left before Tarragona, must have fallen a sacrifice to the one or the other of these generals. I shall avoid all calculation on this point, the strength of the contending armies being already before the court I may be permitted, however, to observe, that delay, in what way soever produced, must ultimately have brought me in presence of the united columns of the enemy: with the small divided force under my command, what termination could then have been expected? The gallantry of the troops might indeed have forced the enemy's ranks, and

enabled them to reach the beach; but what courage, what discipline, what arrangements, could have enabled them to advance a step further? A death, glorious indeed to themselves, but unprofitable to their country, or certain captivity, would alone have remained to them. No man can regret more than I do, the cannon and stores which were left in the hands of the enemy, or that he, as might be expected, should boast of them as trophies. But he could not boast of them as useful trophies, he could not boast that the possession of them altered theaspect of the campaign, or that the loss of the stores crippled in any degree an army, which subsequently kept in check so large a portion of the troops of the enemy. That army was still entire: it did not lose by this embarkation one man, one horse, or one piece of field-artillery. It was not even disabled from undertaking a siege in any material degree, for it lost only seventeen serviceable and one unserviceable out of 91 pieces of cannon. But, would not the enemy have been enabled to boast of the importance as well as the possession of trophies, if, instead of the spiked and useless cannon, which he is so minutely represented as conveying into Tarragona, he could have proclaimed the removal of all our field train, and its equipments, into the fortress? Would the lifeless bodies of some thousand soldiers, who had died unprofitably, or the carcases of many hundred animals slaughtered upon the beach unnecessarily; would these, I ask, have been less a trophy than a few unserviceable and dismounted cannon? Would the capture of our standards, and the captivity of some thousands of our countrymen, have been less a subject of triumph for the pen of Marshal Suchet? Would these have been no trophies? They would have been great trophies, and incontestible proofs, at the same time, not only of the destruction and defeat of

VOL. VI. PART I.

the allied army, and the incapacity of its commander, but trophies, which would have foretold to the world the inutility of all the efforts to be made to bring the war in Spain to a successful termination, during the course of the campaign which was then about to commence. An event, such as I describe, while it must have darkened the bright prospects then opening to the British nation and to Europe, and blasted every hope which the victories of Lord Wellington encouraged us to cherish, must have brought down well merited condemnation on the head of the unfortunate commander. I do not paint this scene too strongly: I had every reason to expect that such would have been our fate, had I listened to the voice which counselled delay at such a

moment."

Such was the defence of Sir John Murray;-but a very different view of these operations was deduced by many, even from the information which the general was pleased to furnish in his own dispatches. From General Murray's statements it appears, that on the 9th or 10th of June, he was ac quainted with the arrival of Marshal Suchet at Valencia, with 9000 menintelligence having been previously received of the arrival of a French force at Tortosa, and another at Lerida. From the comparative statement given of the strength of the allies, and of the enemy, it seems to have been the opinion of General Murray, that Marshal Suchet could bring above 20,000 of the best French troops into the field, and might have attacked the allies with that force in the course of four or five days. It appears also, that from the arrangements which must necessarily have been made, the force of the allies in the field would have amounted only to about 16,000 British, Germans, Sicilians, and Spaniards; and that of this number, nearly 13,000 were considered as of a description to be relied