Iberia Won 1

Iberia Won 1

Iberia Won

A poem descriptive of the Peninsular War

 

Author: Terence McMahon Hughes

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

Preface iii

 

Introduction 1

 

CANTO I 43

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto I 59

 

CANTO II 69

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto II 87

 

CANTO III 99

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto III 117

 

CANTO IV 127

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto IV 144

 

CANTO V 149

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto V 165

 

CANTO VI 173

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto VI 190

 

CANTO VII 199

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto VII 216

 

CANTO VIII 231

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto VIII 247

 

CANTO IX 259

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto IX 276

 

CANTO X 283

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto X 299

 

CANTO XI 305

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto XI 322

 

CANTO XII 327

Historical and Illustrative Notes to Canto XII 344

 

 

 

 

PREFACE.

 

 

The following work is the result of six years’ residence in the

Peninsula, devoted to literary pursuits. It contains the fruits

(be they mature or otherwise) of many excursions through Spain

and Portugal, of considerable opportunities of observation,

and much familiarity with localities and people, as well as of

meditative habits in an isolated life, which during the last three

years especially has been compelled by severe sickness. Love and

admiration of the British Islands, whose climate would be fatal to

me, except during two or three summer months, have been fostered by

constrained absence; and my attention having been strongly turned

to the great Peninsular struggle, I have consulted every accessible

work, and every surviving authority within my reach, that could

illustrate a theme with which my mind has been filled for years.

While I have endeavoured to sustain the glory of England, I

have striven to award a meed of truthful but generous justice to

her Allies, and have not thought it requisite to depreciate the

well-earned fame of France. Yet, even while celebrating the most

splendid military achievements, it has been my aim to inculcate a

horror of the bloody arbitrament of War.

 

Determined to perfect the work, so far as in me lay, I last year

traversed the whole Peninsula from East to West, at the constant

risk of a very precarious life (which might thus, perhaps, become

not utterly valueless), and acquired the advantages to be derived

to my labours from visiting the following battle-grounds:--Bayonne

and the Adour, the Nive, St. Pierre, the Nivelle, the Bidasoa,

San Marcial, Vera, Sauroren, San Sebastian, Vitoria, Talavera,

Almaraz, Albuera, and Badajoz, having previously visited most of

the battle-fields in Portugal and in Northern and Southern Spain.

 

The task which I have undertaken, and accomplished according to my

means, was an ambitious one, yet honourable. I scarcely dare to

hope for success. I feel the full force of the immortal Scott’s

address to the illustrious Wellington, in the Introduction to his

_Vision of Don Roderick_:--

 

But we weak minstrels of a laggard day,

Skilled but to imitate an elder page,

Timid and raptureless, can we repay

The debt thou claim’st in this exhausted age?

Thou giv’st our lyres a theme, that might engage

Those that could send thy name o’er sea and land,

While sea and land shall last; for Homer’s rage

A theme; a theme for Milton’s mighty hand--

How much unmeet for us, a faint degenerate band!

 

But, while I regard with befitting humility the result of this

labour of love, I trust that the spirit in which I have conceived

and written has at least been pure and irreproachable.

 

It is with feelings of the utmost satisfaction and pride that I

notice, contemporaneously with the appearance of this work, the

concession of a medal to our Peninsular veterans by the high-minded

Sovereign of England, whose propitious name and reign are

identified with victory:--

 

Ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἁ μεγαλώνυμος ἦλθε Νίκα.

Soph. _Antig._ 148.

 

VICTORIA came with mighty name and glory.

 

With equal pain have I witnessed, having traversed Spain at the

period, the recent success of French intrigue and the spectacle

of renewed subserviency. The wedding-ring may replace the sword,

but the instrument, because less bloody, is not less fatal to

Liberty; and the words of Byron, at the close of the first Canto

of _Childe Harold_, become invested with prophetic and appalling

truthfulness:--

 

Not all the blood at Talavera shed,

Not all the marvels of Barosa’s fight,

Not Albuera lavish of the dead,

Have won for Spain her well asserted right.

When shall her Olive-Branch be free from blight?

When shall she breathe her from the blushing toil?

How many a doubtful day shall sink in night,

Ere the Frank robber turn him from his spoil,

And Freedom’s stranger-tree grow native of the soil!

 

 

_Lisbon, 1st March, 1847._

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION.

 

 

Of all the great achievements which make up the sum of British

glory, the Peninsular War and its results form one of the grandest,

brightest, and most unimpeachable. These gigantic efforts were made

in the holy cause of Freedom; they were disinterested in a high

and unparalleled degree; their success was uniform, brilliant, and

startling; and their guerdon was the liberation and advancement of

mankind.

 

For six years England had constantly employed in the Spanish

Peninsula from thirty to seventy thousand of her troops, who

besides sustaining combats innumerable, took four great fortresses,

attacked or defended in ten important sieges, and were decisively

victorious in nineteen pitched battles, killing, wounding, or

making prisoners, two hundred thousand of the enemy. She liberally

subsidized Spain and Portugal, and maintained the troops of both

countries, regular and irregular, with supplies of ammunition,

clothing, and arms, while upon her own military operations she

expended upwards of one hundred millions sterling. Twice she

expelled the French from Portugal, and finally drove them from

Spain besides, surmounting and winning step by step the terrific

bulwark of the Pyrenees. With her naval squadrons she repeatedly

harassed the Invader by well-combined descents upon the coasts, and

rescued or preserved Lisbon and Cadiz, Alicante and Carthagena.

Her land forces tracked the enemy from Vimieiro to Busaco, from

Busaco to Navarre, over some of the most frightfully broken ground

in Europe, signally defeating them wherever they came in collision,

and sweeping them at times like a wreck before the ocean-wave; and

forty thousand of her children fell in the Peninsula to attest her

devotion to the cause of Freedom.

 

In this most memorable liberation of Spain from the French invader,

it is the glory of England to have realized with singular exactness

the splendid encomium of Livy: “Esse aliquam in terris gentem quæ

suâ impensâ, suo labore ac periculo, bella gerat pro libertate

aliorum. Nec hoc finitimis, aut propinquæ vicinitatis hominibus,

aut terris continenti junctis præstet. Maria trajiciat: ne quod

toto orbe terrarum injustum imperium sit, et ubique jus, fas, lex,

potentissima sint.”--_Hist. lib._ xxxiii.

 

The pre-eminent importance of the War of Independence in Spain,

and of the part which England took in that struggle, has been