Beresford

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Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Karl Marx
Written 9 April 1858


First published in The New American Cyclopaedia, Vol. III, 1858
Reproduced from The New American Cyclopaedia
Source : Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 18
Collection(s): New American Cyclopaedia
Keywords : Army, United Kingdom

Marx and Engels had agreed that Engels would write about Beresford’s military activity while Marx was to elucidate other aspects of his life (see Marx’s letter to Engels of February 22, 1858). On March 11 Engels sent his version of the article to London, telling Marx that he could not find anything about Beresford’s expedition to Buenos Aires in 1806 and other important aspects of his career.

Engels’ version was substantially supplemented by Marx and dispatched to New York on April 9, 1858, according to an entry in Marx’s notebook. For this article Engels mainly used Napier’s History of the War in the Peninsula, and Marx used reference books and encyclopaedias (in particular, he made excerpts from the article “Beresford” in The English Cyclopaedia, London, Vol. V).

Beresford, William Carr, viscount, British general, born in Ireland, Oct. 2, 1768, died in Kent, Jan. 8, 1854. The illegitimate son of George, 1st marquis of Waterford, he entered the army at the age of 16, and served in Nova Scotia until 1790. During this period, he lost one of his eyes from an accidental shot by a brother officer. He served at Toulon, Corsica, the West Indies (under Abercromby), the East Indies, and Egypt, under Baird. On his return, in 1800, he was made colonel by brevet. He subsequently was employed in Ireland, at the conquest of the Cape of Good Hope, and (as brigadier-general) against Buenos Ayres, in 1806, where he was compelled to surrender, but finally escaped. In 1807 he commanded the forces which captured Madeira, and was made governor of that island.[1]In 1808 he became major-general, and, having arrived in Portugal with the English forces, was intrusted with the whole organization of the Portuguese army, including the militia. He was one of the commissioners for adjusting the terms of the celebrated convention of Cintra; was present during the retreat on, and battle of, Corufia, where he covered the embarkation of Sir John Moore’s troops[2]; and, in March, 1809, was appointed marshal and generalissimo of the Portuguese army, soon raised by him into an excellent force, whether of attack or defence. He fought all through the Peninsular war, until its close in 1814, vigorously supporting Wellington. On the only considerable occasion, however, when he held the chief command, at the battle of Albuera, in 1811, he displayed very poor generalship, and the day would have been lost but for the act of a subaltern[3] in disobedience of his orders.[4]He took part in the victories of Salamanca, Vittoria, Bayonne, Orthes, and Toulouse.[5]

For these services he was created a field-marshal of Portugal, duke of Elvas, and marquis of Santo Campo. In 1810 he was chosen member of parliament for the county of Waterford (he never took his seat), and, in 1814, was created Baron Beresford of Albuera and Dungannon; in 1823 he was advanced to the dignity of viscount.

In 1814 he went on a diplomatic mission to Brazil, where, in 1817, he repressed a conspiracy.[6]On his return, he successively became lieutenant-general of the ordnance, general of the army, and (from 1828 to 1830) master-general of the ordnance. Having assisted Don Miguel, in 1823[7] , he was deprived of his baton as field-marshal of Portugal. In politics, he was actively, though silently, a decided tory. His military efficiency chiefly consisted in his successful reorganization of the Portuguese troops, whom, by great skill and unwearied exertions, he finally rendered sufficiently firm and well disciplined to cope even with the French. In 1832 he married his cousin, Louisa, daughter of the archbishop of Tuam, and widow of Thomas Hope, the millionaire banker, and author of “Anastasius.” He left no children, and the title became extinct at his death.

  1. ↑ Here Marx and Engels mention some colonial expeditions in which Beresford took part. In 1806 the British took advantage of the uprising of the Boer colonists against the Dutch colonial authorities and seized South African lands around the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Colony) under the pretext that Holland, being a Notes 593 vassal of Napoleon, was taking part in his wars against Britain. Officially the Cape Colony was annexed to Britain after the end of the Napoleonic wars. In the same year a British expedition was sent to take possession of Buenos Aires, which belonged to Spain, then an ally of Napoleonic France. Meeting with no serious resistance from the Spanish colonial authorities, Beresford’s detachment seized Buenos Aires but was surrounded and compelled to surrender by the Argentine patriots. A new British expedition to the Rio de la Plata in 1807 also failed. The Portuguese island of Madeira was seized by Beresford’s troops at the end of 1807 under the pretext of defending it against the French. It remained in the hands of the British until 1814.
  2. ↑ The Convention of Cintra (Portugal) was signed on August 30, 1808 by Dalrymple and Junot, commanders-in-chief of the British and French armies in Portugal. It was the result of the defeat of French troops by the AngloPortuguese army, and of the popular uprising in the Peninsula against Napoleon’s rule. The French agreed to evacuate Portugal (where they had been since autumn 1807), and the British undertook to ship Junot’s troops to France where they were included by Napoleon in the 200,000-strong army with which he invaded the Peninsula for the second time in November 1808. At the battle of Coruna (Spain) on January 16, 1809, the retreating British army of General Sir John Moore repulsed attacks by Marshal Soult’s French army and on January 17 and 18, covered by Beresford’s division, it embarked at Coruna for Britain.
  3. ↑ Henry Hardinge.— Ed.
  4. ↑ See this volume, pp. 10-11.— Ed
  5. ↑ At the battle of Salamanca on July 22, 1812, the allied armies of Britain, Spain and Portugal under Wellington repulsed the French army of Marshal Marmont, which suffered heavy losses. As the result of the battle of Vittoria on June 21, 1813 (see Note 321) the main French forces were pushed back to the Pyrenees and by the end of 1813 the war had been carried onto French territory. At Bayonne (Southwestern France), on December 9-13, 1813, Wellington’s troops mounted an offensive against the entrenched camp of Marshal Soult’s army and pressed it hard. In 1814, during a general offensive of the armies of the sixth anti-French coalition in France, Wellington’s advancing army won victories over Soult’s army (on February 27 at Orthes and on April 10 at Toulouse). On April 18, after Napoleon’s abdication, Soult concluded an armistice with Wellington.
  6. ↑ A reference to Beresford's participation in suppressing the national liberation uprising against the Portuguese colonialists that began in 1817 in the Northeastern Brazilian province of Pernambuco under the slogan of the struggle for an independent republic. The movement for separation from Portugal was subsequently led by local landowners and aristocrats, who succeeded in proclaiming Brazil an empire in 1822.
  7. ↑ Beresford supported the feudal-clerical party of absolutists, headed by Prince Dom Miguel, which crushed the Portuguese bourgeois revolution of 1820-23 and restored absolutism. But Dom Miguel did not succeed in holding power and was forced to emigrate in 1824. In 1828 he seized the Portuguese throne, and this led to the resumption of the civil war, which lasted until 1834 (see Note 157).
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