HISTORICAL NOTE
`The material captured,’ wrote Charles Oman in his great History of the Peninsular War, `was such as no European army had ever laid hands on. since Alexander’s Macedonians plundered the camp of the Persian king after the battle of Issus.’
`Many of our men,’ wrote Commissary Schaumann, `and particularly those who found diamonds, became rich people that day.’
Edward Costello, a Rifleman, reckoned that he made about a thousand pounds on the evening of the battle, helped by a `few whacks of my rifle’.
The plunder of Vitoria was truly spectacular. In military terms it was stunning; ail the French guns save two, a hundred and fifty-one in all, and of the two guns the French did manage to salvage, one was lost during the retreat. But it was not the guns that the soldiers were interested in acquiring.
No one truly knows the value of the plunder. I suspect the figure of five million pounds is a low estimate, and it could well have been seven million. In today’s money that translates to something like œ154,000,000 ($234,000,000). Much of it was in such `non-negotiable’ items as paintings by Rubens, though even those had their uses as tarpaulins. Eventually the paintings were recovered and some of them, presented to Wellington by the restored King Ferdinand VII, can be seen at Stratfield Saye or at Apsley House in London. One object that was never recovered was the Crown of Spain.
Some of the plunder was extremely negotiable, and not just the gold. Schaumann, a German officer in Wellington’s army, who was one of the men who enjoyed the victory feast in the hotel, particularly noted the number of captured women, many of them dressed in specially tailored cavalry uniforms. Schaumann, who had a particular and discriminating eye for women during the campaign, noted how, in the plunder, the French women instinctively found one enemy soldier to whom, in exchange for protection, they offered their allegiance. Those who, like the Marquesa, wanted to return to France with their belongings, were given safe conduct and an escort. The words, `we are a walking brothel’ were spoken to Wellington by a captured French officer.
Wellington himself reckons that the British soldiers took one million pounds worth of gold coin (and they were third into the baggage-park after the fleeing French and the citizens of Vitoria), while he, for the military chest, received only one hundred thousand silver dollars. Among the other trophies were King Joseph’s silver chamberpot (still used, though for drinking purposes, by the cavalry regiment that captured it), and also Marshal Jourdan’s baton which Wellington sent to the Prince Regent. The Prince returned the compliment, `you have sent me the staff of a French Marshal, and I send you in return that of England’. Except, that no such English staff existed, one had to be designed, and thus Wellington became a Field Marshal.
An extremely unhappy Field Marshal after his victory. He was furious with the men for plundering the baggage, describing them in a phrase for which he has been attacked ever since; `the scum of the earth’. Many of his soldiers doubtless were (but by no means all) and those people who cite the phrase as evidence that Wellington despised the men who fought for him usually forget that he was fond of adding, `but it is wonderful what fine fellows we have made of them’. Wellington had cause to be angry (he was hoping to use the French treasure to pay for the campaign), but in defence of the `scum’ it is very hard to see how any soldier, paid a shilling a day, could resist the field of gold that waited for them to the east of Vitoria. Yet many did; some regiments kept their order and marched straight through it, so I have no excuses to offer for Sharpe and Harper.
The Inquisition was banned by the Spanish Junta, and reinstated by King Ferdinand in 1814. I have no evidence that the Inquisition was involved in the politics that accompanied the restoration of Ferdinand, but it seemed a fitting idea. The Spanish Inquisition was finally dissolved in 1834.
The thought that a restored Ferdinand VII might make peace with France and expel the British is not fiction. It formed the basis of the Treaty of Valencay, signed by Ferdinand and Napoleon, and there was support for it among those Spaniards who wished to restore their Empire and defeat the new liberals. In the end the treaty was never fulfilled. Napoleon kept his side of the bargain (by restoring Ferdinand and releasing all Spanish prisoners), but Ferdinand VII was prevented (by public opinion as much as anything else) from making the peace with France that would have expelled Wellington’s army and allowed his own to reconquer the Spanish empire abroad.