Part 7 (1/2)

_Dispatch, Aug. 22, 1806._

_Distinction between Civil and Military Responsibility._

There is a great distinction of duty between military and civil inferior situations. If, in a civil officer, the inferior differs materially from the superior, he ought to resign, but in military appointments, it is the duty of the inferior officer to a.s.sist his commander in the mode in which that commander may deem his services most advantageous.

_Defence of his conduct with regard to the Convention of Cintra. House of Commons, Feb. 21, 1809._

_Rapidity of the French Retreats accounted for._

It is obvious, that if an army throws away all its cannon, equipments, and baggage, and everything which can strengthen it, and can enable it to act together as a body; and abandons all those who are ent.i.tled to its protection, but add to its weight and impede its progress;[4] it must be able to march by roads through which it cannot be followed, with any prospect of being overtaken by an army which has not made the same sacrifice.

[Footnote 4: Alluding to the rapidity of the French retreat.]

_Dispatch, May 18, 1809._

I have long been of opinion that a British army could bear neither success nor failure.[5]

[Footnote 5: Referring to their habits of plunder.]

_Dispatch, May 31, 1809._

_Inefficiency of Spanish Officers._

Nothing can be worse than the officers of the Spanish army, and it is extraordinary that when a nation has devoted itself to war, as this nation has by the measures which it has adopted in the last two years, so little progress has been made in any one branch of the military profession by any individual, and that the business of an army should be so little understood. They are really children in the art of war, and I cannot say they do anything as it ought to be done, with the exception of running away, and a.s.sembling again in a state of nature.

_Dispatch, Aug. 1809._

_Terrorism and Force, not Enthusiasm, enabled the French Revolutionary Armies to conquer._

People are very apt to believe that enthusiasm carried the French through their revolution, and was the parent of those exertions which have nearly conquered the world; but if the subject is nicely examined, it will be found that enthusiasm was the name only, but that force was the instrument which brought forward those great resources under the system of terror which first stopped the allies; and that a perseverance in the same system of applying every individual and every description of property to the service of the army, by force, has since conquered Europe.

_Dispatch, Aug. 25, 1809._

_The Spaniards and Portuguese want the true spirit of Soldiers._

We are mistaken if we believe that what these Portuguese and Spanish armies require is discipline, properly so called. They want the habits and spirit of soldiers--the habits of command on one side, and of obedience on the other--mutual confidence between officers and men; and above all, a determination in superiors to obey the spirit of the orders they receive, let what will be the consequence, and the spirit to tell the true cause if they do not.

_Dispatch, Sept. 8, 1809._