[193] Unlike the many French writers who content themselves with denouncing Wellington’s inhumanity, Pelet (Masséna’s chief confidant) confesses that the English general’s plan was perfectly logical. In his _Aperçu de la Campagne de Portugal_, he writes, ‘On a critiqué sans raison son système de guerre. Il était à peu près infaillible contre un ennemi inférieur en nombre. Mais peu de généraux oseront “sauver un pays” d’une telle manière.’ The plan for defeating the enemy by the system of devastation was neither ‘dictated by the hard heart of a general trained in the atrocious wars of the East,’ as certain French authors have written, nor was it (as some of the English authors have supposed) suggested to Wellington by the measures which had been taken in 1803-4 for withdrawing all food and transport from the south coast of England, if Napoleon should be successful in crossing from Boulogne. It was an ancient Portuguese device, practised from time immemorial against the Castilian invader, which had never failed of success. Nor had it come to an end with the War of Independence of 1640, or the war of the Spanish Succession of 1704. When Spain had made her last serious assault on Portugal in 1762 (Godoy’s miserable mock-war of 1801 does not deserve to be counted), the plan had worked admirably. When the Conde d’Aranda invaded the Beira ‘the country had been “driven” in the most systematic style, and everything that could not be carried off had been destroyed, so that the Spaniard found himself in a desert, being unable to discover either provisions, cars, or peasants: the inhabitants had abandoned their villages, and carried off everything. The enemy had to be supplied with every necessary from Spain: the infantry were harassed with fatigue in remaking the roads, and the cavalry-horses destroyed in conducting provisions. At last d’Aranda retreated, leaving his sick and wounded at Castello Branco, with a letter commending them to the attention of the allies[194].’ Of this same war Dumouriez wrote: ‘As soon as the Spaniards enter Portugal the King publishes a declaration, by which he enjoins on his subjects to fall upon the invaders, and the national hatred always excites them to execute the “Ordinance.” As the Spanish army pushes on, the villages are depopulated, and the inhabitants fall back on the capital. The peasantry arrive there in crowds with wives and children, so that the king at the end of three months has 200,000 or 300,000 extra mouths to feed[195].’ [194] Continuation of Vertot’s _History of Portugal_, ii. 51. [195] Dumouriez’s _State of Portugal_, p. 21, _n._