Like Moore, Sir Arthur Wellesley was to some
extent deceived by these boastings, and believed that he should obtain
material assistance in the way of transports and provisions, and that at
least valuable diversions might be made by the Spanish army.
He accepted, too, to some extent, the estimate of the Spaniards as to the
strength of the French, and believed that their fighting force in the
Peninsula did not exceed 130,000 men, whereas in reality it amounted to
over 250,000. The greatest impediment to the advance was the want of
money, for while the British government continued to pour vast sums into
Cadiz and Seville, for the use of the Spaniards, they were unable to find
money for the advance of their own army. The soldiers consequently were
unpaid, badly fed, almost in rags, and a large proportion of them
shoeless; and to meet the most urgent wants, the general was forced to
raise loans at exorbitant rates at Lisbon. And yet, while a great general
and a victorious army were nearly starving in Portugal, the British
government had landed 12,000 troops in Italy and had despatched one of the
finest expeditions that ever sailed from England, consisting of 40,000
troops and as many seamen and marines of the fleet, to Walcheren, where no
small proportion of them died of fever, and the rest returned home broken
in health and unfit for active service, without having performed a single
action worthy of merit.
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