[184] Wellesley to Castlereagh, from Corunna, July 21 (_Well. Disp._, vi. 23-5).
[185] Napier’s statement that Wellesley found the Supreme Junta in an extravagant and irrational frame of mind is by no means borne out by the dispatches which he sent off from Oporto on July 25. They rather represent the Portuguese as in a state of pronounced depression of spirits.
As to the Portuguese troops, the Supreme Junta agreed that Bernardino Freire and his 5,000 men should go forward with the British army, while the new levies should blockade Almeida, and guard the frontier along the Douro against any possible advance on the part of Marshal Bessières from Castile. The Junta calculated that, if supplied with arms, they could put into the field from the three northern provinces of Portugal 38,000 foot and 8,000 horse--a liberal estimate, as they had, including their peasant levies, no more than 19,000 collected on July 25. They asked for weapons and clothing for the whole mass, and for a loan of 300,000 Cruzado Novas (about £35,000)--no very large sum considering the grants that were being made to the Spaniards at this time. Wellesley would only promise that he would arm the militia and peasantry who were lying along the Mondego in company with Freire’s regulars, ‘if he found them worth it[186].’ The Bishop undertook to forward from Oporto all the remounts for cavalry and all the draught-mules for commissariat purposes that he could get together. He thought that he could procure 150 of the former and 500 of the latter in six days.
[186] Wellesley to Castlereagh, from Oporto, July 25 (_Well. Disp._, vi. 31).
On August 1, 1808, the disembarkation in Mondego Bay began, in the face of a heavy surf which rendered landing very dangerous, especially for the horses, guns, and stores. Many boats were upset and a few lives lost[187]; but the troops and their commander were in good spirits, for the news of the surrender of Dupont at Baylen on July 20 had reached them the day before the disembarkation began. Wellesley was convinced that General Spencer would have sailed from Andalusia to join him, the moment that this great victory made the presence of British troops in the south unnecessary. He was right, for Spencer, before receiving any orders to that effect, had embarked his men for Portugal and came into Mondego Bay on August 5, just as the last of the division from Cork had been placed on shore. It was therefore with some 13,000 men that Wellesley began his march on Lisbon[188]. But to his bitter disappointment the young lieutenant-general had just learnt that three commanders had been placed over his head, and that he might soon expect Dalrymple to arrive and assume charge of the army. Castlereagh’s dispatch of July 15, containing this unwelcome news, was delivered to Wellesley as he lay in Mondego Bay on the thirtieth, and he had to make all his arrangements for disembarkation while suffering under this unexpected slight. Many men would have resigned under such a blow, and Wellesley with his unbounded ambition, his strong sense of his deserts, and his well-marked tendency to take offence[189] must have been boiling over with suppressed indignation. But he felt that to ask to be recalled, because he had been degraded from a commander-in-chief to a mere general of division, would be an unsoldierly act. To Castlereagh he merely wrote that ‘whether he was to command the army or to quit it, he would do his best to ensure its success, and would not hurry operations one moment in order to acquire credit before the arrival of his superiors[190].’