Draft. Mr. Cooke to Lieut.-Colonel Doyle. Downing Street, August 31, 1808. Sir-Lord Castlereagh has received your letters to the 16th of [July or August]. By these it appears that, in consequence of a communication to you of a letter (written by Mr. Stuart to the Junta of the Gallicias) by General Blake, you had taken such measures as were in your power to prepare the necessary provisions and accommodations for 16,000 British troops. How such a letter could have been written by Mr. Stuart, or such an interpretation be placed upon any letter he could have written, his Majesty's Ministers are at a loss to know; and Mr. Secretary Canning has written to Mr. Stuart upon the subject. It next appears, from your letters, that, instead of endeavouring to ascertain the exact circumstances with regard to the said British corps, which was supposed to be nearly landing, having been seen off Cape Ortegal, you set off with the Duke of Infantado to Madrid, and that you had thought of taking measures for his being appointed Regent, and also to form a Council of Generals, for determining upon future operations. Upon these parts of your letters, I am to express Lord Castlereagh's disapproval, inasmuch as you appear to have exceeded the line of your Instructions, and to have entered into political relations and connexions without any authority, and by which his Majesty's Government may be possibly hereafter embarrassed. Mr. Stuart, who has been accredited to the Junta of Corunna, is the only person in the Gallicias through whom political measures are to be managed; and it must occur to you, if officers sent upon mere military commissions shall undertake to enter into political arrangements, without authority and without reference to his Majesty's Civil Residents, the utmost confusion may take place. The fullest credit is given to your military activity and zeal; and to that sphere it is wished you should confine yourself. I trust no real embarrassment will follow from the measure you have already taken; and it is hoped that the caution these suggestions will inspire will induce you to conduct yourself in such a manner that no future apprehension or feeling of embarrassment may arise from your mission. I take this opportunity of intimating to you that it may be advisable that your official letters should be confined to the relation of circumstances, the authenticity of which can be relied upon; and that all looser accounts, and all your reasonings and conjectures, of themselves very desirable and valuable, should be stated in letters marked "Private." Draft. Lord Castlereagh to Sir Arthur Wellesley. Downing Street, September 4, 1808. My dear Wellesley-You will easily believe that few events. in my life, indeed I may say none, have ever given me more gratification than the intelligence of your two splendid victories, to which I hardly know how to give the preference. That of the 21st was certainly the most important in all its results, and had certainly more the character of a great victory; but there were features in the first which I need not particularize, which render it, as a military transaction, not less deserving of applause. There was something whimsically providential in the enemy forcing upon you, at the very moment when the command was passing, indeed had formally passed, into other hands, the glory of our achievement, which your personal moderation and sense of duty had induced you not to invite by any extraordinary acceleration of your operations. You have received the reward of the principles which have governed your conduct, in an important accession of military reputation, and you have laid the foundation, I trust, of a succession of triumphs, as often as we can bring British troops on fair terms in contact with the enemy. I have not seen the King since Captain Campbell arrived. His note to me marked the sense he entertains of your services; and I understand that he listened to the details of your letters with as much interest and attention as to have got them nearly by heart. I cannot suffer any other subject to mix itself with the undivided sentiments of gratitude and admiration with which I offer to you my thanks and congratulations on the services you have rendered to the army, to the great cause in which we are engaged against France, as well as to the immediate interests of your own country; and I am persuaded that, in whatever station you may be placed in the army, your qualities as an officer will be displayed with equal zeal as while you were charged with the supreme command. I shall reserve writing on other points till another occasion. Ever, my dear Wellesley, yours most sincerely, CASTLEREAGH. Draft. Lord Castlereagh to Brigadier-General Charles Stewart. Downing Street, September 4, 1808. My dearest Charles-The tumult of our joy on Wellesley's glorious conduct and successes has been cruelly disturbed by a communication from Souza of a supposed Convention, to which, in the copy, however, Wellesley's name appears affixed; the operations of which instrument would, if carried into effect, secure to the French advantages beyond their reach under the most brilliant success, while their 10,000 men are now pressed upon by not less than 50,000 men, British and Portuguese. In the 1st place, it is a recognition, on the face of the instrument, of Buonaparte as Emperor of the French. 2. It provides for the safe retreat of an enemy's corps destitute of all other means of escape. 3. It gives France the entire grace of saving for Russia her fleet, while, in truth, she had not a remnant of power left to protect it. 4. It makes a gratuitous sacrifice of the fleet of an enemy, and, in the manner of doing it, recognises rights of neutrality on the part of Portugal towards Russia, which, if they could have ever subsisted for a moment in a port occupied by a French army, were destroyed, even in pretence, by the formal appointment of Junot as Buonaparte's Lieutenant of Portugal; and entails upon us all the encumbrance of watching with a fleet a port of our own, while we must give the enemy fortyeight hours start of us, lest we should catch him. 5. It gives France not only the immediate use of her army, which, without our active assistance, she could not have, but gives her also the plunder of Portugal, under the mask of private property. 6. It gives France all the grace of having protected those Portuguese who have betrayed their sovereign, while it entails upon us the disgrace of exposing our allies to be attacked hereafter by a fleet which France has had the authority and means to protect. Will Spain or Europe believe that this was preceded by triumphs on our part? and will not France be convinced of the reverse? 7. It lastly appears, in its general result, to be a happy contrivance, by which England shall have made a mighty effort for no other purpose than making a dependent State the protector of one of its enemies, while it becomes itself the instrument by which the other shall remove an army from a position in which it is lost, to one in which it may recommence its operations with advantage. I should feel it an injustice by Wellesley, for which I could not forgive myself, to suppose that any power on earth could have induced him to be individually a party to such an arrangement; as little can I suppose any British officer capable of it, much less those to whom we have confided the chief command of our army and navy. It is a Convention which no French officer, if put upon his honour, could in character propose as a rational arrangement between the parties, and which, as an outline even, or first projet, would require all the impudence of that nation gravely to offer for consideration. I can as little understand it as a suspension of arms; were it signed in that light, however unadvisable in policy, it would not be full of stipulations on the most important points to be treated of; in truth, leaving little beyond unimportant details to arrange. In short, it is a base forgery somewhere, and nothing can induce me to believe it genuine. God bless you, dearest C.! In haste, CASTLEREAGH. I write to Dalrymple, enclosing Souza's Note, together with Canning's answer, in which the total disbelief of the fact is stated, and the indignation of this Government, at the attempt of a power which can only be brought into existence through our means, attempting to arrogate rights which she has not, for the purpose of turning them to the protection of an enemy which has been, in fact, hers, in assisting the French to maintain themselves in Lisbon, as much as ours. The Duke of Portland to Lord Castlereagh. Bulstrode, Sunday, noon, September 4, 1808. My dear Lord-I know not how to express my astonishment and perplexity at the contents of the Paper which purports to be the Convention made by Sir A. Wellesley and Kellermann. They may be the terms proposed by the latter; and yet the expectation that they could be entertained for a moment seems to be so preposterous, that I could scarcely have supposed that a Frenchman would have possessed sufficient assurance to have proposed them. But it is impossible that any English officer could have sanctioned them. To suppose Sir A. Wellesley capable of making such a sacrifice of the interest, honour, and good faith of his country and of his own good sense, would be an act of injustice that I should not forgive myself for being guilty of towards him. I am sure I need not desire you, my |