Note 243 — SECTION XIII: CHAPTER III

All authorities agree as to the inferior character and status of a great part of the Portuguese officers. Dumouriez remarks [1766] that ‘their pay does not enable them to live better than the common soldiers, whose comrades and relatives they often are. The subaltern ranks are filled from the inferior classes, and their hatred of foreigners prevents their association with, or receiving any improvement from, them: hence it is that they remain in such ignorance and wretchedness’ (p. 17). Halliday remarks (p. 106) that ‘even captains had not the rank of gentlemen.’ Compare with this Patterson’s curious note (vol. i. p. 250), ‘The familiarity that subsists between the native officers and their men renders ineffective all the authority of the former, at the same time defeating the object to be attained by discipline. They eat, gamble, and drink together. I have even seen them waltzing and figuring off in the contra-danza, captains with corporals, majors with drumboys—all Jack-fellows well met, and excellent boon companions. They will not of themselves do anything, their good qualities must be elicited by strangers. I know of nothing that stamps the character of Lord Beresford as a man of energy and perseverance, more than the way in which he has organized them, and from a miserable undisciplined rabble produced, in course of time, a fair body of fighting troops, who performed (encouraged by their English officers) some spirited service during the war.’