Note 227 — SECTION XXIV: CHAPTER II
Reading edition
Foy to Masséna, April 8, 1811: ‘J’ai dit à Sa Majesté que vous paraissiez être dans l’intention de porter votre quartier général à Guarda, mais que (ne pouvant pas vivre dans cette position) vous seriez probablement obligé de descendre jusqu’à Alcantara. Cette position a paru à l’Empereur propre à protéger également le midi et le nord de l’Espagne.’
Some parts of this interview of Foy with Napoleon, related in his usual vivid style, are too good to omit. ‘Did Masséna really intend to force the passage of the Tagus? He did? Well then, he would have destroyed his army if he had tried. But I was not worried about it; I knew he would never try to cross. Would Masséna pass the Tagus, he who in the Isle of Lobau [Wagram campaign of 1809] would not try to pass a mere brook! The moment you told me that he had returned from in front of Torres Vedras I knew that he would come back, and refuse to risk a general engagement.... Wellington is a cleverer man than Masséna: he kept his eye fixed on Claparéde’s division; if Claparéde had been brought forward, the English would have expected to be attacked, would have gone back into their Lines.... Portugal is too far off—I can’t go there myself. The business would take six months, and in that six months everything would be hung up in Europe,’ &c. See Foy’s Vie Militaire, pp. 139-40.