rrass the
general charged with the conduct of the war. "A narrow jealousy had
long ruled their conduct, and the spirit of captious discontent had
now reached the inferior magistracy, who endeavored to excite the
people against the military generally. Complaints came in from all
quarters, of outrages on the part of the troops, some too true, but
many of them false or frivolous; and when Wellington ordered
courts-martial for the trial of the accused, the magistrates refused
to attend as witnesses, because Portuguese custom rendered such
attendance degrading, and by Portuguese law a magistrate's written
testimony was efficient in courts-martial. Wellington in vain assured
them that English law would not suffer him to punish men on such
testimony; in vain he pointed out the mischief which must infallibly
overwhelm the country, if the soldiers discovered that they might thus
do evil with impunity. He offered to send, in each case, lists of
Portuguese witnesses required, that they might be summoned by the
native authorities; but nothing could overcome the obstinacy of the
magistrates; they answered that his method was insolent; and with
sullen malignity continued to accumulate charges against the troops,
to refuse attendance in the courts, and to call the soldiers, their
own as well as the British, 'licensed spoliators of the community.'"

"For a time the generous nature of the poor people resisted all these
combined causes of discontent, * * * * * yet by degrees the affection
for the British cooled, and Wellington expressed his fears that a
civil war would commence between the Portuguese people on the one
hand, and the troops of both nations on the other. Wherefore his
activity to draw all military strength to a head, and make such an
irruption into Spain, as would establish a new base of operations
beyond the power of such fatal dissensions."

Throughout the war this great captain's hardest tasks had been to
conciliate the jealous, vain-glorious Spaniard, to stimulate the
laggard suspicious Portuguese, to enlighten the invincible ignorance
of Regency and _Juntas_, in order to draw out and combine the
resources of both countries with the scanty means afforded him by his
own blundering government. He was required to do great things with
small means, without offending one tittle against the laws, customs
and prejudices of three dissimilar nations. He might toil, fret and
fume, wearing himself to the bone, but could never get