The Snare | Page 4

capital out of
the affair, thereby increasing the difficulties with which Lord
Wellington was already contending as a result of incompetence and
deliberate malice on the part both of the ministry at home and of the
administration in Lisbon.
Indeed, but for these factors it is unlikely that the affair could ever have
taken place at all. 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."
A heart less stout might have been broken, a genius less mighty stifled
in this evil tangle of stupidity, incompetence and malignity that sprang
up and flourished about him can every hand. A man less single-minded
must have succumbed to exasperation, thrown up his command and
taken ship for home, inviting some of his innumerable critics to take his
place at the head of the troops, and give free rein to the military genius
that inspired their critical dissertations. Wellington, however, has been
rightly termed of iron, and never did he show himself more of iron than
in those trying days of 1810. Stern, but with a passionless sternness, he
pursued his way towards the goal he had set himself, allowing no

criticism, no censure, no invective so much as to give him pause in his
majestic progress.
Unfortunately the lofty calm of the Commander-in-Chief was not
shared by his lieutenants. The Light Division was quartered along the
River Agueda, watching the Spanish frontier, beyond which Marshal
Ney was demonstrating against Ciudad Rodrigo, and for lack of funds
its fiery-tempered commander, Sir Robert Craufurd, found himself at
last unable to feed his troops. Exasperated by these circumstances, Sir
Robert was betrayed into an act of rashness. He seized some church
plate at Pinhel that he might convert it into rations. It was an act which,
considering the general state of public feeling in the country at the time,
might have had the gravest consequences, and Sir Robert was
subsequently forced to do penance and afford redress. That, however, is
another story. I but mention the incident here because the affair of
Tavora with which I am concerned may be taken to have arisen directly
out of it, and Sir Robert's behaviour may be construed as setting an
example and thus as affording yet another extenuation of Lieutenant
Butler's offence.
Our lieutenant was sent upon a foraging expedition into the valley of
the Upper Douro, at the head of a half-troop of the 8th Dragoons, two
squadrons of which were attached at the time to the Light Division. To
be more precise, he was to purchase and bring into Pinhel a hundred
head of cattle, intended some for slaughter and some for draught. His
instructions were to proceed as far as Regoa and there report himself to
one Bartholomew Bearsley, a prosperous and influential English
wine-grower, whose father had acquired considerable vineyards in the
Douro. He was reminded of the almost hostile disposition of the
peasantry in certain districts; warned to handle