Note 97 — SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER III

Mr. Fortescue writes: ‘This was unfair. Perceval and Liverpool had deliberately turned their backs upon Pitt’s old policy of spasmodic efforts all over the world, in favour of a steady and persistent feeding of the war in one quarter—the Peninsula. Wellington himself had approved the change in his letters of 1810, had named the amount of money that he wanted, and fixed the figure of the reinforcements that he asked. But in 1811 he never ceased to ask for more men and more money, till Liverpool was obliged to remind him very gently, that he was going far beyond his own estimates.’ He had got to the stage of writing that Government having embarked on the contest, and chosen the best officer they could find, must give him the largest army they could collect, and reinforce it to the utmost, without asking precisely how many men were wanted, and for what precise objects. It was Mr. Fortescue who indicated to me two important passages about Liverpool which are omitted from the printed version of Wellington’s letters to Pole of January 11 and March 31, 1811, in Supplementary Dispatches, vii. pp. 40-3 and 93.