reflected the three nations involved: Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Trant, St António Rodrigues de Oliveira and a Monsieur Duplier, commissaire de guerres.68 On 10 September, the Committee published a proclamation under the names of the three commissioners informing the inhabitants of Lisbon of their right to claim restoration. On 11 September, Beresford and Proby reported that this committee had given general satisfaction at its initial sittings.69
However the French, including Junot, were continuing to play for time hoping that they would get away from Lisbon without having to make further concessions with which they might have to comply. The first division of the French army, it will be recalled, was reportedly ready to sail on 3 September, but ultimately did not do so until over a week later. The rows went on, delaying the departure of the French. Junot had allegedly appropriated ten chestnut horses from the royal stables, but he was able to convince the commissioners they were his own which he had stabled there.70 Fifty-three boxes of indigo reportedly worth about £5,000 were found on board a vessel destined to receive the baggage of the French Commander in Chief. He disclaimed all knowledge of the boxes, which were seized on behalf of the commissioners. Beresford and Proby felt they had done their best. Nevertheless, in their report to Dalrymple of 18 September they made their disquiet known:
We will conclude this report by stating that the conduct of the French had been marked by the most shameful disregard to honor [sic] and probity, publicly evincing their intentions of carrying off their plundered booty and leaving acknowledged debts unpaid; and finally they have only paid what they were obliged to disgorge, and were not permitted to carry off, though the British Commissioners represented to General Kellerman, that whatever their words, it could never be the spirit of any convention that an army would, as a military chest, or otherwise, carry off public money, leaving public debts unpaid; and called upon him, for the honour of the French army and nation, to act justly; and yet, unmindful of any tie of honour or of justice, the French army has taken a considerable sum in the military chest, leaving its debts unpaid to a very large amount.71
On 15 September most of the French were embarked at Cais do Sodré (Lisbon). In the first two weeks of September they had led an uncomfortable existence in Lisbon, running the gauntlet of Portuguese intent on revenge.72 On 18 September Junot went on board the vessel intended to carry him to France without repaying the monies taken from the Depósito Público, as a result of which Beresford and Proby applied successfully to Admiral Cotton to detain the second division of the French army as well as Junot. Only when £40,000 had been transferred by the French Payeur General to cover these monies and other items extracted from the public magazines (stores) were the French allowed to leave the Tagus. In addition, chests of natural history exhibits from the royal museum were restored along with a quantity of books.73
By 21 September the French force, together with a number of followers, was largely embarked and it sailed a week later.74 The exceptions were the garrisons of Almeida and Elvas, which were transported afterwards to France.75 Beresford and Proby’s job as commissioners was complete and Dalrymple praised their conduct to Castlereagh saying they had ‘performed their duty in a most firm and honourable manner’.76 Dalrymple was to state at a later stage that the French had got away with a very small amount of plunder due to the work of the commissioners. While he had a vested interest in pursuing this line, it is of note that Kellerman also gets a measure of approbation from another source for having acted in a gentlemanly manner in interpreting the convention.77
Beresford’s role in dealing with the fallout from the Convention of Cintra was not yet at an end. It will be recalled that on the occurrence of the risings in Spain, Junot had disarmed and imprisoned the Spanish division of General Carafa in Lisbon. The Convention provided for the repatriation of those troops amounting to some 5,000 men. With a view to sending them home, Beresford liaised with the Portuguese to ensure the troops were reissued with arms and their officers given back the horses taken by the French.78 Before they were sent home Beresford reviewed them at the Campo d’Ourique, presenting their general with a ceremonial sword. He took the opportunity to address the troops in an emotional address designed no doubt to fire their ardour and encourage them to maintain the struggle against the French forces of occupation:
In an animated speech [Beresford] requested that the latter [the Spanish troops] would again accept their arms from the King of England, never to lay them down till the cause of Ferdinand VII, of Europe, and of humanity had triumphed. This address which was forcibly and well delivered, had not yet come to a close, when it was drowned in the reiterated vivas of soldiers and inhabitants, whilst the roar of cannon, and the braying of trumpets, echoed from one end of Lisbon to the other.79
One wonders what the Spanish made of the representative of their historical foe urging them to accept their arms from the King of England.
Dalrymple also gave Beresford a liaison role with the reconstituted Portuguese Regency Council, with a view to restoring order in Lisbon and improving relations with the Portuguese.80 Order had partially broken down in the run up to the departure of the French and a number of Portuguese had demonstrated hostility not only towards the French but also to their liberators. Lieutenant General John Hope had been Dalrymple’s original appointee to the post of Commandant of Lisbon, but Beresford was given this command when Hope was sent into the Alentejo to enforce the terms of the Convention.81 The appointment of Beresford to this role is probably significant as it required liaison with the Portuguese authorities. It may reflect not only his grasp of and interest in Portuguese affairs, but also a recognition of his growing reputation as an able administrator. He had clearly achieved a degree of approval for his role as a commissioner under the Convention. To the post of Commandant of Alexandria, Governor of Buenos Aires, Governor of Madeira was now added, albeit for a short period, responsibility for Lisbon. By 22 September he was able to tell Dom Miguel Pereira Forjaz, the Portuguese Secretary for War and Foreign Affairs of the Regency Council, that he was returning responsibility for Lisbon to the Portuguese government.82
The news of the British victory over the French at Vimeiro reached England on 1 September and resulted in much celebration, as it was presented as a complete victory.83 The content of the definitive Convention arrived in England with Dalrymple’s letter of 3 September 1808 headed ‘Cintra’ on 15 September.84 Church bells were again rung and cannon fired but jubilation soon turned to anger and recrimination. Dalrymple gave his reasons for entering into the Convention rather than continuing hostilities. These were: first, the time of year and the ability of the enemy to consume much time in the defence of strong places in the absence of a convention, and secondly, when terms had been agreed for the armistice Sir John Moore had not arrived with his army, and he had doubts about the ability to land such a large army on an open and dangerous beach. While of course Dalrymple did not at the time of negotiating the Convention possess either Lisbon or the Tagus Estuary, Wellesley had already landed an army at least as big as that of Moore on the beaches about the Mondego estuary.
A storm of protest was launched by the Whig opposition in parliament, and in the media, where Whig publications were perhaps surprisingly joined by their Tory counterparts. Within days of the news becoming widespread, condemnatory editorials were joined by satirical poems and commentary of a highly critical nature. Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Wordsworth’s tract Concerning the Convention of Cintra will forever live in the minds of English-speaking peoples interested in the topic because of who they were and the quality of their writing, but the daily and weekly press contained a plethora of amusing and sometimes vicious poetry, prose and caricatures, of which it is noticeable featured Wellesley as much as Burrard and Dalrymple.85 This may well have been because Wellesley’s brother, Richard, was part of the government and thus an objective to attack by opposition supporters.86
Part of the responsibility for the build up of public anger may have been that not only of Arthur Wellesley but also politicians at home ‘over egging’ the nature of the victory at Vimeiro. Newspaper reports were full of statements to the effect that this was the end of Napoleonic tyranny in Portugal and Spain and that the battle was more significant than that of Trafalgar, in that it had shown French troops were not invincible.87 Some eleven days before the arrival of Dalrymple’s
