secure. By the end of I8IO London was increasingly pessimistic about the
prospects of being able to stay in the Iberian peninsula in force and toyed
instead with the idea of converting Cadiz into a second Gibraltar, making
it a heavily garrisoned enclave which would command the trade of Latin
America. The problem was money. London had gambled its sterling
reserves on a quick victory, but the gamble failed, and thereafter the
problem loomed: how to get specie to Wellington? He needed ready cash
precisely because he was in a friendly country and therefore could not live
off the land. But this was at a time when the Bank of England's hard
currency reserves were draining away; they sank from £6.4 million in
I8o8 to £2.2 million in I8I4. The British were forced into increasingly
desperate measures to obtain bullion from India, China and Mexico.
Wellington, who did not understand economics, began to complain
vociferously to London about 'sabotage' and spoke in a quasi-paranoid
way of deliberate treachery; these complaints reached a peak in I8I r. But
he had not grasped the scale of the problem. To keep an Army overseas
was the most expensive option London could exercise; the costs of the
Navy were far less, for sailors were virtually prisoners of war inside their
wooden world and, on leaving the ships, were paid off in a British port.
Maintaining an Army in Spain cost three times that of maintaining the
same Army in Britain, for in the United Kingdom suppliers did not
demand payment in bullion and troops could be paid in paper money.
The financial drain of the Peninsular War did not end there. In I8I I
6o% of grain imports from the U.S.A. went to the Peninsula. As far as
possible the British tried to victual Wellington's army from the
homeland: in I8o8 4·4 million pounds ofbeef, 2.5 million pounds of pork,
3·3 million pounds of flour, 7·7 million pounds of bread and 336,ooo
gallons of spirit were sent out. By I8I3 the average daily consumption in
Wellington's army was Ioo,ooo pounds of biscuit, 2oo,ooo pounds of
forage corn and 300 cattle; at Lisbon there was always a seven months'
food supply. But to meet local expenses and Spanish demands to be paid
in silver, Britain became a major arms dealer: by I8I I a total of 336,ooo
muskets, 6o million cartridges, 348 pieces of artillery, Ioo,ooo swords and
I2,ooo pistols had been exported to Spain, and by I8I3 the British began
diversifying in the market for arms in Russia, Prussia, Austria and
Sweden.
None the less, for a while the financial fate of Wellington's
expeditionary force hung in the balance. By I8I2 London could not meet
his pay bills, troops had not been paid for five months and muleteers for
thirteen, and the inevitable result was looting and alienation of the local
population. London was reduced to borrowing cash from shady Maltese
marcin
(Marcin)
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