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ABSTRACT
The brief war that took place between Spain and Portugal in 1762 is one of the least known episodes in the latter’s military history, whereas, thanks to Wellington’s construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras, the French invasion of 1810–11 is right at the other end of the spectrum. Yet the two episodes are closely linked to one another. At the very least, they are uncannily reminiscent in terms of their details – in both cases substantial foreign armies were vanquished through a combination of irregular resistance, scorched-earth tactics and the clever use of field fortifications – and the article therefore argues that Wellington based the plan that defeated the forces of Marshal Massena on the strategy used by the Portuguese half a century earlier.
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Notes
1. Even in Portuguese, there is only one recent work on the subject, namely A. Barrento, Guerra fantástica, 1762; Portugal e o Conde de Lippe e a Guerra de Siete Anhos. Lisbon, 2006.
2. Choiseul’s explanation of events is laid out in the preamble to the declaration of war, viz. Ordonnance du roi portent declaration de guerre contre le roi de Portugal du 20 de juin de 1762. Paris: 1762.
3. J. F. De Bourgoing, ed. Voyage du ci-devant Duc de Chatelet en Portugal ou se trouvent des détailles intérressans sur ses colonies. Paris, 1798. 1–2.
4. Costigan, Sketches of Society and Manners in Portugal, 178–9. Another observer was the Italian traveller, Giuseppe Baretti. Herewith, for example, his reaction on seeing the garrison of Estremoz: ‘Military poverty … shines forth through the ragged coats of this wretched infantry. Indeed, the poor fellows have nothing about them that may be called good except their whiskers: if they were better dressed, such bushy and curled scare-crows would have a fine effect … I am told that the troops kept up in this kingdom amount to no more than 8,000, and if the private men are all like those which I have in Estremoz and Lisbon, there is nowhere in Europe an equal number which look so wretchedly. The greatest part of them are absolutely in rags and patches, and in Lisbon many of them asked my charity not only in the streets, but even when they stood sentinel.’ Baretti, A Journey from London to Genoa, 36–7.
5. This incident is, of course, highly reminiscent of the similar fate which befell Almeida in 1810. However, unlike Almeida, the town fell without a shot being fired: although the Spaniards were before the walls of Miranda de Douro when the explosion occurred, the fire broke out whilst they were still readying their guns. According to contemporary reports, meanwhile, the death toll may have been as high as 500. See The British Magazine, June 1762, 329–30 .
6. For this last, see Razón de entrar en Portugal como amigos, y sin razón de recibirlos como enemigos, manifiesto reducido a las memorias presentadas parte a parte. Madrid: 1762.
7. As later critics observed, the whole idea of the campaign was deeply flawed. Thus: ‘Fortunately for the Portuguese, nature itself has taken care to protect them from invasion and give them neighbours who are supremely ill-informed of the regions in which they might have to fight. Of this last the Spaniards gave full proof in the war of 1762. So ill-informed were they … that they thought … to march on Oporto via the province of Tras-os-Montes or in other words to commit an entire army to roads so dreadful that they can barely be navigated even by the inhabitants of that territory.’ De Bourgoing, ed. Voyage du ci-devant Duc du Chatelet, II, p. 17. Not the least of the problems was that at this time hardly any Spanish travellers had published accounts of travels in Portugal. See Chinchilla, “Viajeros españoles en Portugal en el siglo XVIII,” 302–26. That said, April 1762 had seen the publication of Pedro Rodríguez Campomanes’ Noticia geográfíca del reino y caninos de Portugal, and, with it, an assessment of Tras-os-Montes that should have rung many alarm bells in the ears of the Spanish commanders. Thus: ‘Tras-os-Montes is the most mountainous province in Portugal, and is but little populated compared to Entre-Duero-e-Minho. Its inhabitants are robust tillers of the soil and its accent the thickest in the entire kingdom … The terrain is arid and very rough.’ Ibid., 17–18.
8. Looking back from the perspective of the Peninsular War, British writers made much of the impact of the long period of peace that Portugal enjoyed following the end of the War of the Spanish Succession on the martial traditions of the populace. As the Scottish commentator, Andrew Halliday, wrote for example: ‘On the 31 July 1750, Joseph I succeeded his father on the throne of Portugal. The first twelve years of his reign offer nothing to the military reader, and … forty-seven years’ peace had in a great measure changed the very nature of the people.’ Halliday, The Present State of Portugal and the Portuguese Army, 91. Much the same view, meanwhile, was taken by an anonymous epistlelist in a letter written in 1777. Thus: ‘A long peace had entirely destroyed all military spirit and annihilated every system of discipline.’ Anon, Letters from Portugal on the Late, 29. However, the martial traditions alluded to in such remarks were little more than invention: in the pre-industrial world, common soldiers were invariably men who had either been pressed or driven to enlist by sheer desperation. Indeed, at least one writer writing in 1759 goes so far as in effect to deny that it ever existed. Thus: ‘The spirit of the Portuguese seems never to have been thoroughly roused from the lethargy under which it sunk during those years when it was a despised province of Spain. They joined with us … against the succession of Phillip V, but they and their allies were routed at Almansa after which time they have played no active role in Europe.’ Hervey, Letters from Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany, 127–8.
9. It is, perhaps, a mistake to push revisionist arguments too far here. Nationalism in the modern sense was a trait that was far from strong in the popular mentality in either Spain or Portugal in the mid-eighteenth century, but the bloody Portuguese war of independence was recent enough to ensure that anti-Spanish feeling remained rife, whilst the remote nature of many towns and villages was inclined to result in strong suspicion of all outsiders whatsoever. ‘Amongst the Portuguese’, wrote the Duc du Chapelet, ‘hatred of all those who do not come from their country is in truth an innate vice.’ De Bourgoing, ed. Voyage du ci-devant Duc du Chatelet, II, 4.
10. See Halliday, Observations on the Present State of the Portuguese Army, 54–5. According to the Duc de Chatelet, the ordenança were ‘an utterly miserable assembly’, but he admitted that ‘their hatred of the Spaniards caused them to take up arms with the utmost joy’. De Bourgoing, ed. Voyage du ci-devant Duc du Chatelet, II, 6.
11. Dumouriez, “Introductory memoir on the military topography of Portugal”. Setting aside the reverse at the crossing of the Douro, the advance of the Spanish column involved had given an insight into another major problem facing the invaders, namely want of intelligence and a lack of accurate maps. Thus: ‘The corregidoria of Torre do Moncorvo contains twenty-six boroughs and 45,000 inhabitants … As [the Spaniards] marched to attack it, they took it for granted they were to meet with a fortified town, and it was said that a corps of 8,000 Portuguese were to defend it. The astonishment of the Spaniards equalled their ignorance when they found Moncorvo was but a sorry village that for the last hundred years had neither wall nor gate, nor had it seen a soldier stationed there during all that time.’ Ibid., iv.
12. This force does not appear to have been very impressive. Chatelet, for example, describes the troops concerned as being ‘more of a threat than they were a source of strength’. De Bourgoing, ed. Voyage du ci-devant Duc du Chatelet, II, 18.
13. The weakness of the Portuguese army was not just a matter of manpower. According to some accounts, indeed, the miserable quality of the defending forces was undermined still further by the coming of war. Thus: ‘When the moment came to go on campaign in 1762, nothing was ready: even officers were lacking, the consequence being that it was necessary to look for them in every conceivable place without the slightest regard for cost, anyone who would enlist being offered double-pay. The Portuguese chargé d’affaires in London, M. Pinto, became the chief recruiter for his country, and in this capacity he sent over a whole crowd of individuals of every sort and every nation … The Portuguese having much need of new recruits, they took everyone who came their way, and that despite the fact that the new arrivals included all sorts of adventurers. Ne’er-do-wells, rogues, men on the run from some fraud, were over-night transformed into officers, and that on the flimsiest of recommendations.’ De Bourgoing, ed. Voyage du ci-devant Duc du Chatelet, II, pp. 5–6.
14. Many of the fortifications that protected the road from Castelo Branco have recently been excavated and restored by a local cultural association entitled the Asociacion do Estudios do Alto-Tejo. See < http://www.altotejo.org/noticias/default.asp?IDN=319&op=2 >, accessed 18 September 2017.
15. By far the best account of the campaign is that contained in Schaumburg-Lippe’s own account of the campaign, viz. Schaumburg-Lippe, Mémoire de la campagne de Portugal de 1762. Also very helpful, particularly with regard to the role of the British expeditionary force and its relations with the Portuguese is Speelman, “Strategic illusions and the Iberian war of 1762”.
16. De Bourgoing, ed. Voyage du ci-devant Duc du Chatelet, II, 25.
17. Foy, History of the War in the Peninsula under Napoleon, II, 20–1.
18. Ibid.,21–2.
19. Dumouriez, An Account of Portugal as it appeared in 1766 to Dumouriez, 24–5.
20. Ibid., 30.
21. Ibid., 248–9.
22. Ibid., 249.
23. Ibid., 20.
24. Ibid., 53–4.
25. Ibid., 120–1.
26. Ibid., 134.
27. Ibid., 155–6. Dumouriez was not entirely wrong to claim that the British were not popular in Portugal: with the British troops left desperately short of food, there were a number of clashes with angry inhabitants that left more than twenty soldiers dead. See Speelman, ‘Strategic illusions’, 455–6.
28. In fairness to Moore, it seems that the campaign was not accorded much attention when it came to archiving its details. To quote Speelman, ‘When the army searched for information on Portugal during the Napoleonic invasion, the War Office possessed just a few notes and letters left there by Townsend.’ Ibid., 458.
29. It is worth noting here that, just as there were strong parallels in the manner in which the two campaigns were conducted, there were strong parallels in the manner in which they were remembered. Here, for example, is how an anonymous British observer looked back on the campaign of 1762: ‘England sent to Portugal officers, troops, artillery, stores and money with everything that could enable Portugal to exert her own natural strength and to supply the want of it where it was deficient. The activity of the English, assisted by the Portuguese, soon drove the Spaniards back from some advantages they had gained on the frontiers … and in one campaign put the future of the country quite out of doubt.’ Anon, Letters from Portugal, 31.
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Charles Esdaile
Charles Esdaile was born in August 1959 in Epsom, Surrey. He was a student at the University of Lancaster where he obtained, first, a First-Class Honours Degree in History, and, second, a Ph.D., the subject of his thesis being the Spanish army in the period 1788–1814. He has occupied a series of academic posts, and currently holds a personal chair in the Department of History of the University of Liverpool. Professor Esdaile has written extensively on the Napoleonic period, and from 2008 to 2015 was Academic Vice-President of Peninsular War 200, the official commission established by the Ministry of Defence to co-ordinate Britain’s part in the commemoration of the bicentenary of the Peninsular War.