Victory and Retribution, January–June 1814

Abstract

Whatever the actual state of Anglo-Spanish relations at the end of 1813, Wellington himself was beset by a feeling of crisis. Writing to Lord Bathurst on 27 November, he remarked, ‘Matters are becoming so serious between us and the Spaniards that I think it necessary to draw your attention seriously to the subject.’ The Spanish government, he continued, had been responsible for the ‘libels’ that had been occasioned by the storm of San Sebastián, and had taken advantage of the impression which these had produced ‘to circulate others in which the old stories are repeated about the outrages committed by Sir John Moore’s army in Galicia’, and otherwise ‘to irritate the public mind against Great Britain’. Although this campaign had not yet made any impression upon the mass of the population, it had certainly persuaded many civilian officials and army officers that ‘we are odious to the government’: hence the hostile behaviour of Morillo, Freyre and the local authorities. Nor was there any guarantee that the problem would not spread: ‘If the spirit is not checked… if we do not show that we are sensible of the injury done to our characters, and of the injustice and unfriendly nature of such proceedings, we must expect that the people at large will soon behave towards us in the same manner, and that we shall have no friends, or none who will dare avow himself as such.’