Note 87 — Chapter XII · BUENOS AYRES.

The buildings are generally not more than two stories high, i.e., a ground floor, and one over it, unless the ‘açoteas,’ or terraces, are to be considered as a third, along which, the whole range of a ‘block’ of houses may, by climbing over the partitions or parapets, be traversed without descending into the streets. In times of siege, attacks by foreign enemies, or during internal struggles, these houses form temporary fortresses, admitting of formidable defence; and being solidly built and furnished with strong gates and doors, while the windows of the lower and ground-floors are protected by strong iron bars, it is no easy matter to take a town, or even a house, built in this way, as has been sufficiently proved on the occasion in question. Whitelock was a vain, foolish, insensible man, though not a coward, as was generally believed, and the prevalence of which belief partly led to his being disgraced on his return home. The fact is, he seems to have had a most contemptuous opinion of the Spaniards, from the circumstance of the place having been taken a short time previously, almost without resistance, by Admiral Sir Home Popham and Viscount Beresford, the armament having been fitted out, without any authority from England, at the Cape of Good Hope; and so elated was its commander by his unexpected success that he wrote home declaring all South America to be ready to receive us with open arms. So indeed, it proved in one sense, as Whitelock subsequently found to his cost on attempting to recover the city after the British garrison had been expelled; for his men were mown down with musketry and grape in scores, without being able to return the fire with any effect. It was on this occasion that the gallant Colonel Thompson, late M.P. for Bradford, was taken prisoner by General Liniers, who was shot as a rebel three years afterwards himself. The excesses Thompson saw committed under Whitelock impelled him to that denunciation of flogging, and other military abuses, which had so offended the authorities at home that he has never had his proper promotion by seniority, and is now (March, 1854) an unredressed complainant against the injustice of having been passed over in the last brevet, and told that his name shall never appear in another. As the news of the extraordinary success of Popham and Beresford at Buenos Ayres stimulated the despatch of an expedition the following year, under Sir Samuel Auchmuchty, against Monte Video, where, however the British suffered most severely, one third of the whole army being killed, though finally effecting the capture of the place, so was its evacuation caused some six months subsequently by the intelligence of the defeat of Whitelock—the withdrawal of the whole of the English force from the Plate being, indeed, the condition on which the Spaniards gave up their prisoners, and permitted the survivors of these ill-starred expeditions to withdraw in peace. The commander of the land forces of the first expedition against Buenos Ayres, Viscount Beresford, who was then taken prisoner, but escaped, and afterwards captured Madeira, which he held for some years on behalf of the crown of Portugal, in the wars of which country, especially at Albuera, he so eminently distinguished himself, died only in the course of the present year. The late Lord Holland, in his posthumous ‘Memoirs of the Whig Party during My Time,’ published a few weeks back, has a very singular chapter on the secret history of these expeditions. His lordship, who was a member of the cabinet at the time, says that Whitelock’s was but one of a series of South American expeditions, and that it was originally destined for Valparaiso. It was fortunately ‘detained by subsequent events at Buenos Ayres, and the worst part of our plan was thus concealed from the knowledge, and escaped the censure, of the public.’ Had the then minister, Lord Grenville, remained in office, he would have sent against Mexico Sir Arthur Wellesley, who, in that case, might probably never have become Duke of Wellington. Sir Arthur, however, was sent to Portugal, where the Convention of Cintra seemed to offer an augury of evil to the croakers, which his genius subsequently so gloriously falsified.