3825. Robert Southey to Hew Dalrymple, 12 April 1822

Address: To/ Sir Hew Dalrymple. Bart/ &c &c &c/ Upper Wimpole Street/ London
Stamped: KESWICK/ 298
Postmark: E/ 15 AP 15/ 1822
Seal: red wax; arm raising aloft cross of Lorraine
Endorsement: 1822. April 12/ Robert Southey
MS: National War Museum, Edinburgh, Dalrymple-White Collection, 1.12.1. ALS; 3p.
Unpublished.

Keswick. 12 Apr. 1822

Dear Sir

I was this day preparing to return your papers,

⁽¹⁾

when I perceived that your address as given in your letter did not specify the number of your house. And it seems better to retain them till you have the goodness to let me know this, than to dispatch them with an imperfect direction

These papers have given me great light; upon some points they have confirmed the opinion which I had previously been led to entertain, – upon others they have imparted information altogether new to me. Unfortunately the chapter in which the first transactions in Andalusia are comprized was printed before I received them. They will render it necessary to alter a few passages, & to add others;

⁽²⁾

– & these in such scattered places that all cannot be done, as I should wish, by reprinting part of the chapter. What cannot be done in this way, must be inserted as corrections at the end of the volume.

Till I perused these papers I did not know, indeed it was not possible that I could, how great the service was which you had performed at Gibraltar,

⁽³⁾

under circumstances wherein you were left wholly to act upon your own judgement, & on your own responsibility.

With regard to the subsequent campaign I believe that if you had landed a few hours sooner, the defeat of the French would have been followed up & compleated.

⁽⁴⁾

And that if Elvas & Almeida had been not been recovered by the Convention, they would have held out till December, when the object of relieving them would have brought the enemy to Portugal, & led to their possession of Lisbon.

⁽⁵⁾

Nothing could have been of so much consequence as the recovery of Elvas at that time.

These things I have endeavoured to place in their proper light.

⁽⁶⁾

And in expressing a wish that the same high feeling of honour which was shown in all other points throughout these transactions, had been manifested toward the French, by shunning all intercourse with them except beyond what the necessities of business required,

⁽⁷⁾

I am sure I shall have offended none but Buonapartes

⁽⁸⁾

officers, & those persons who admire or excuse the system of his policy

I have the honour to remain
Sir Hew
with sincere respect
your obliged & obedient servant
Robert Southey.

Notes

1. Dalrymple had sent his papers to help with Southey’s History of the Peninsular War (1823–1832). He lived at 23 Upper Wimpole Street.[back]

2. Southey dealt with the Battle of Bailén in Andalusia, 16–19 July 1808, the first great success of Spanish forces in the Peninsular War, in his History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, pp. 382–386. On pp. 389–390, Southey inserted material concerning Dalrymple’s role in the attempts of Spanish commanders to change the terms of surrender of the French army, but it did not have to appear as ‘Corrections’.[back]

3. Dalrymple was Acting Governor of Gibraltar 1806–1808.[back]

4. Dalrymple was appointed to command British troops in Portugal and landed there on 22 August 1808, the day following the defeat of the French at Vimeiro. He stopped any pursuit of the French army and negotiated the Convention of Cintra on 31 August, which allowed the French to evacuate Portugal with their arms and plunder.[back]

5. As part of the Convention of Cintra, the French evacuated the fortresses of Elvas and Almeida. Southey here argues that if they had held out, this would have allowed French armies in northern Spain to invade Portugal and capture Lisbon in December 1808–January 1809.[back]

6. Edinburgh Annual Register, for 1808, 1.1 (1810), 365–378, had declared the Convention of Cintra (1808), which Dalrymple negotiated with the defeated French forces in Portugal, to be ‘scandalous’ (p. 366). Southey’s treatment of the matter in History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, pp. 566–594, was much more circumspect, pointing out the Convention’s military advantages, but declaring it contained ‘some political errors’ (p. 577).[back]

7. History of the Peninsular War, 3 vols (London, 1823–1832), I, p. 583, in which Southey had condemned British officers for socialising with their French counterparts after the Convention of Cintra (1808). Given the war crimes that the French had perpetrated in Portugal, this was, to Southey, ‘a moral fault, as well as a political error’.[back]

8. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821; Emperor of the French 1804–1814, 1815).[back]

TEI Link

TEI

Volume Editor(s)

Lynda Pratt

Ian Packer

The Collected Letters of Robert Southey: Part Seven