Book 1 — CHAPTER XIII. THE PENINSULAR WAR (continued 2)

NAPIER’S ACCOUNT OF THE RETREAT

Drunkenness and insubordination were exhibited at Torquemada, where the great wine-vaults were invaded, and twelve thousand men were at one time in a state of helpless inebriety. The negligence of many medical and escorting officers conducting the convoys of the sick, and the consequent bad conduct of the soldiers (for where the officers are careless the soldiers will be licentious) produced the worst effects. Outrages were perpetrated on the inhabitants along the whole line of march, terror was everywhere predominant, the ill-used drivers and muleteers deserted, some with, some without their cattle. The commissariat lost nearly all the animals and carriages employed, the villages were abandoned, and the under-commissaries were bewildered or paralysed by the terrible disorder thus spread along the line.

The rest of the retreat being unmolested was made with more regularity, but the excesses still committed furnished glaring evidence that the moral conduct of a general cannot be fairly judged by following in the wake of a retreating army. There was no want of provisions, no hardships to exasperate the men, and yet the author of this history counted on the first day’s march from Madrid seventeen bodies of murdered peasants; by whom killed, or for what, whether by English or Germans, by Spaniards, or Portuguese, in dispute, in robbery, or in wanton villany was unknown; but their bodies were in the ditches, and a shallow observer might thence have drawn foul and false conclusions against the English general and nation. The Spaniards, civil and military, evinced hatred of the British. Daily did they attempt or perpetrate murder. The civil authorities, not less savage, were more insolent than the military, treating every British person with an intolerable arrogance. The whole loss of the double retreat cannot be set down at less than nine thousand, including the loss in the siege.

When the campaign terminated, Wellington, exasperated by the conduct of the army and the many crossings he had experienced during the campaign, gave vent to his indignation in a circular letter addressed to the superior officers. In substance it declared that discipline had deteriorated during the campaign in a greater degree than he had ever witnessed or ever read of in any army, and this without any disaster, any unusual privation or hardship save that of inclement weather; that the officers had lost all command over their men, and excesses, outrages of all kinds and inexcusable losses had occurred; that no army had ever made shorter marches in retreat or had longer rests—no army had ever been so little pressed by a pursuing enemy; and this unhappy state of affairs was to be traced to the habitual neglect of duty by the regimental officers.b

AFFAIRS OF 1812-1813

[1812-1813 A.D.]

The year 1812 saw everywhere the beginning of the reverses which overthrew the colossal empire of Bonaparte. There was nothing to counterbalance the exultation excited in Spain by these frightful reverses of her unrelenting foe, except the continuance of the dissensions with the colonies. The prince of Brazil, who had previously created Lord Wellington count of Vimeiro and marquis of Torres Vedras, now conferred upon him the title of duke of Victoria, in commemoration of his many victories; and it might also have seemed in anticipation of the most decisive of his peninsular battles. The allied armies were now, for the first time, about to take the field under favourable circumstances; and he, whose genius had hitherto been severely tried in contending with and surmounting every species of obstacle, might hope to pursue that more dazzling career of glory which silences the cavils of envy and of ignorance. The resources of the peninsula, such as they were, were placed at his disposal. What was of more consequence, the French emperor, instead of constantly pouring reinforcements into Spain in numbers that almost seemed to render Lord Wellington’s victories barren triumphs, was compelled to withdraw thence many troops. Soult, with thirty thousand veterans, was recalled from Spain.

The complicated arrangements requisite to bring so variously composed an army into activity, delayed Lord Wellington’s opening the campaign until the middle of May; when he took the field at the head of nearly seventy thousand men, English and Portuguese, independently of the Spanish army of Galicia under Castaños on his left, and another on his right under Don Carlos de España. The French had still 160,000 men in Spain; and as many of these as were not engaged in the eastern provinces under Suchet, or employed in garrison duty, were stationed around Madrid and between the capital and the Douro.

Lord Wellington ordered General Murray to remove his troops by sea to Catalonia, in order both to relieve Valencia by drawing Suchet northwards, and to be nearer the scene of the principal operations, and sent Sir Thomas Graham, with the left wing of the army, to cross the Douro within the limits of Portugal, and thus turn a perhaps impregnable position, whilst he himself with the centre, and Sir Rowland Hill with the right, advanced towards it in front, driving before them all detachments from the army of Portugal, as it was still termed, that were stationed south of the Douro. The manœuvre seems to have confounded the enemy. The army of Portugal retreated. Joseph and Jourdan collected the army of the centre, and evacuating Madrid, hastened to join the army of Portugal near Burgos. Joseph fell back to Vitoria, the principal depot of the French in the northern provinces; there he halted, drew up his army in battle array, and prepared to make a last struggle for his crown. It is said that the French occupied the very ground on which, in the fourteenth century, the Black Prince had defeated Du Guesclin and recovered the Castilian crown for Don Pedro.

Lord Wellington on the 21st of June, 1813, attacked. The Spaniards fought with a courage that proved their former panics and failures to have been mainly attributable to want of confidence in their commanders and their comrades. The French wings were first assailed and driven back. Then, when their formidably posted centre had been weakened to support the wings, and was, besides, threatened on the flanks, that too was assailed and carried. The French had never before been so utterly routed. The whole army dispersed and fled; Joseph narrowly escaped being taken prisoner; artillery, baggage, everything upon which the existence of an army depends fell into the hands of the victors, as well as the wives of many of the French superior officers, and the marshal’s staff of Jourdan. The victory was actively followed up; most of the French garrisons were taken, or surrendered upon being summoned; the remaining French detachments, by a series of nearly bloodless manœuvres, were driven across the Pyrenees; and by the 7th of July no part of Joseph’s army remained in Spain except the garrisons of Pamplona and San Sebastian.

Suchet’s was now the only French army in Spain, and his force remained unbroken in the eastern provinces, opposed to Sir John Murray. That general was conveyed with his troops by a British fleet from Alicante to the Catalan coast, and landing, on the 3rd of June, near Tarragona, immediately invested that town. He had made little progress with the siege when Suchet’s advance from Valencia was announced. Murray re-embarked his troops with such precipitation, although Suchet was some marches distant, that he left his artillery and stores behind. But the news of the battle of Vitoria and its consequences determined Suchet to abandon that province and concentrate his troops in Catalonia. Aragon was freed, and Mina had the gratification of recovering the heroic Saragossa from her conquerors.

When Napoleon received the tidings of the battle of Vitoria and its disastrous results to his brother’s hopes, he sent back Soult to resume the command from which he had taken him; to collect reinforcements, reorganise the fugitive army, raise the sieges of Pamplona and San Sebastian, and, in conjunction with Suchet, drive the British out of Spain. To enable him to effect these objects, he named him imperial lieutenant in Spain, giving him authority far beyond what had ever before been intrusted to any marshal. Soult took the field at the head of nearly one hundred thousand men, endeavouring to break through the extremity of the British line, in order to relieve Pamplona. The French marshal’s first measures seemed to promise him success. On the 25th of July, 1813, with about fifty thousand men, he attacked two separate posts held by divisions of the right wing under Sir Rowland Hill. The allies fought obstinately, but were obliged to give way. On the 26th Lord Wellington arrived on the scene of action, immediately resolving to give battle for the protection of the blockade of Pamplona. The French were defeated in two successive engagements on the 30th and 31st, after which Soult retreated into France. On the 1st of August the allied troops resumed their former positions amidst the Pyrenees.

The two sieges proceeded; but the provisions in Pamplona still held out: the fortifications of San Sebastian were admirable, the approaches difficult, and the garrison defended itself pertinaciously. When the town was taken (August 31), the siege, and especially the assault, had cost great numbers of lives—nearly four thousand; and the troops, infuriated by the loss of their comrades and their own danger, could not be restrained by the few surviving officers of the storming party, or even taught to discriminate between friends and foes, Spaniards and French. Greater outrages are said to have been committed upon the inhabitants of San Sebastian than in any other town taken by the allies; and it was longer ere the generals could restore order.[123]

The surrender of Pamplona set the allied forces at liberty, and Lord Wellington immediately determined to advance into France, leaving Suchet and his corps to the care of the Catalans, assisted by the Anglo-Sicilian army. In beginning his operations upon the enemy’s territory, one of the first cares of the British commander was to repress the ferociously vindictive temper of his Spanish and Portuguese troops, who longed to retaliate upon the French nation the injuries and outrages they had suffered from the French soldiery. At first it was found impossible altogether to control this disposition, in which the native officers but too much sympathised with their men. But the firmness and severity with which such offences were punished soon introduced a better temper.

On the 10th of November, 1813, Soult’s line of defence was attacked, and notwithstanding the great pains bestowed upon strengthening it, was forced; fifteen hundred prisoners and fifty guns fell into the victor’s hands, besides quantities of stores. On the 9th of December hostilities were renewed. The allied armies drove the French back into the intrenched camp they had prepared close to Bayonne, and Soult, by attacking, after five days of almost incessant fighting, in which the loss was necessarily great (five thousand of the allies, and far more of the French were killed or wounded), retreated into his intrenched camp. The weather was still very severe, and Lord Wellington therefore again cantoned his troops, but upon a more advanced line, and both armies passed the remainder of the month in repose.

Whilst Lord Wellington, with those forces, for whom, as for their leader, Napoleon had professed such superlative disdain, was thus penetrating into France, the situation of the French emperor had undergone many changes. It was at Leipsic, October 16th, 1813, that the battle, fatal to his hopes of maintaining his sovereignty over Germany, was fought. Every German state, including the whole Confederation of the Rhine, had now thrown off allegiance to Napoleon. The allied sovereigns advanced to the banks of the Rhine. There they halted for the remainder of the year, satisfied with their achievements, and willing to give Napoleon, whom they still feared, an opportunity for negotiation. Wellington and his army alone, of the hostile forces, wintered in France.

RETURN OF THE BOURBONS

Napoleon saw that to recover all he had lost, or even to keep all he yet retained, was, for the moment at least, impossible; and he resolved to relax his grasp in that quarter, where renunciation of his now vain pretensions need not induce the abandonment of real power. He opened a negotiation with the prince to whom, as he believed, he could still dictate the terms of the treaty to be concluded—namely, the captive of Valençay, Ferdinand VII.

Since the seizure of the Spanish royal family at Bayonne, they had pretty much vanished from public view. The old king and queen, with their favourite, Godoy, had been transferred to Rome, where they vegetated contentedly upon the ample pension assigned them. The queen of Etruria, whose feelings appear to have been somewhat livelier than those of her kindred, had incurred Napoleon’s anger by an abortive attempt at escaping to England, and was strictly immured in a convent at Rome, with her daughter; her son, the dethroned king, being taken from her, and committed to the care of her parents. Ferdinand remained at Valençay. He had written a letter of congratulation to Joseph Bonaparte upon his accession to the Spanish throne. He repeatedly addressed to Napoleon congratulations on his victories. When a scheme for his liberation was devised by the British cabinet—partly through compassion but chiefly under an idea that the presence of an acknowledged king would put an end to the factions and jealousies that distracted the Spanish councils, thwarted Lord Wellington’s designs, and impeded his progress—Ferdinand not only refused to escape, but denounced the attempt to Napoleon, and took the opportunity to renew his often rejected request that he might be adopted into the imperial family, by receiving the hand of a Bonaparte princess. He was further said to employ his time in embroidering a robe for some image of the Virgin. But the stories were regarded as calumnious inventions, propagated for the purpose of lowering Ferdinand’s character in general estimation; and the imprisoned king remained as before an object of loyal veneration, of esteem, and pity.

[1813-1814 A.D.]

Immediately on reaching Paris, after his calamitous retreat from Leipsic, Napoleon addressed a letter to Ferdinand, telling him that England was endeavouring to overthrow the monarchy and nobility of Spain, in order to establish a republic in that country, and offering him his liberty, together with the alliance of France, that he might return to Spain, and put an end to the disorders now convulsing the kingdom and further menacing it. After a little delay and negotiation Ferdinand yielded. On the 11th of December, 1813, a treaty was signed at Valençay, by which he was recognised as king of Spain and the Indies, all old treaties and alliances between France and Spain were revived and confirmed, and Ferdinand undertook for the immediate evacuation of Spain and her dependencies by the English. Even this treaty, however, Ferdinand referred to the approbation and sanction of the regency and the cortes; and San Carlos was despatched with a copy of it to Madrid, whither the seat of government was now transferred from Cadiz.

On the 8th of January, 1814, the regency through its president, the cardinal de Bourbon, addressed a respectful answer to the king, in which they assured him of their joy at the prospect of his majesty’s approaching liberation, but returned the treaty unratified, and transmitted copies of the law, and of the treaty with England, which prevented its ratification.

Towards the middle of February, 1814, the weather improved, and Lord Wellington drew his troops from their cantonments. By a series of able manœuvres, and of engagements ending with the well-contested and brilliant victory of Orthez, gained on the 27th of February, he drove Soult successively from post to post, through a country of peculiar difficulty, and abounding in strong defensive positions, of which the French marshal skilfully endeavoured to avail himself, but was uniformly foiled by the superior skill of his British competitor. Sir John Hope lay before Bayonne with the left wing. By the help of an English squadron, under Admiral Penrose, the close investment of Bayonne laid open the direct road to Bordeaux, and on the 8th of March Wellington sent Beresford with fifteen thousand men to make himself master of that town. Beresford was accompanied by the duke of Angoulême, as a royalist party with the mayor at their head were well known to be anxiously expecting the prince. The French garrison evacuated the town as the allied troops approached, and the inhabitants, assuming the white cockade, and receiving the prince with enthusiastic loyalty, proclaimed Louis XVIII. Lord Wellington, recalling Beresford, recommenced his operations against Soult. On the 18th they began their movement up the Adour, the French retiring before them. On the 19th, Soult was driven from Vic-en-Bigorre, and on the 20th from Tarbes, when he retreated upon Toulouse.

Whilst Ferdinand’s allies and subjects were thus progressively triumphing over his oppressor, the captive prince had regained his liberty. Napoleon, finding that no treaty concluded with the king of Spain, whilst his prisoner, would be acknowledged by the nation as valid, on the 14th of March released him unconditionally, as the only remaining chance of detaching Spain from England, and recovering his former influence over that country. Ferdinand was conducted to Perpignan, and there, on the 19th of March, delivered over to the care of Suchet, who was to make arrangements, under the royal guarantee, for the safe return of the different French garrisons, spread over the eastern coast of Spain, to his army, upon their surrendering to the king the fortresses they still held. Ferdinand, on the 24th, was received by Copons and throngs of his native subjects, who had flocked from every place within reach, to greet the return of their beloved sovereign. Ferdinand’s signature having, however, by the then law of the land, no authority until he should have taken the oath prescribed by the constitution, Suchet’s object was unattained. The surrender of the fortresses, and the safe passage of the garrisons still remained to be negotiated betwixt him and Copons; and before they had brought it to a conclusion, the progress of events in France rendered all arrangements of the kind unnecessary.

Lord Wellington had not allowed Soult time to receive the accession of strength he expected from the result of Suchet’s negotiations. He followed him to Toulouse, forced the passage of the Garonne, and on the 10th of April, 1814, under the walls of the city, gained the last victory of this war, in the battle of Toulouse. Soult retired into the town, which, upon Wellington’s preparing to invest it, he evacuated on the night of the 12th, the allied army permitting him to withdraw unmolested. The next day they took possession of the city, where they were received with every demonstration of joy, and the inhabitants proclaimed Louis XVIII. It was the last occasion upon which the act could have the grace of a spontaneous impulse of the people.

The allied armies appeared before the French capital. Maria Louisa, with her son, and the ministry, had fled to Blois. Joseph followed the empress, and Paris capitulated. On the 31st of March Alexander and Frederick William had entered the city at the head of their troops. Napoleon gave way; and abdicated unconditionally. The title and rank of emperor were, in return, confirmed to him, although his empire was limited to the tiny island of Elba. The Bourbons were now restored to their long lost throne; and peace was re-established throughout Europe. Lord Wellington, like the rest of the allies, now of course evacuated the French territory, and dissolved his mixed army, the British, Spanish, and Portuguese.c

ENGLAND’S SHARE IN THE WAR

Napoleon’s enormous armies had been so wonderfully organised that they existed and fought in Spain for six years, and without cessation; for to them winters and summers were alike; they endured incredible toils and privations, yet were not starved out, nor were their small armies beaten by the Spaniards. And for their daring and resource a single fact recorded by Wellington will suffice. They captured more than one strong place in Spain without any provision of bullets save those fired at them by their enemies, having trusted to that chance when they formed the siege! Before the British troops they fell; but how horrible was the struggle, how many defeats they recovered from, how many brave men they slew; what changes and interpositions of fortune occurred before they could be rolled back upon their own frontiers! And this is the glory of England, that her soldiers and hers only were capable of overthrowing them in equal battle. What battle except Baylen did the peninsulars win? What fortress did they take by siege? What place defend? Sir Arthur Wellesley twice delivered Portugal. Sir John Moore’s march to Sahagun saved Andalusia and Lisbon from invasion at a critical moment. Sir Arthur’s march to Talavera delivered Galicia. Graham saved Cadiz. Smith saved Tarifa. Wellington recaptured Ciudad and Badajoz, rescued Andalusia from Soult and Valencia from Suchet; the Anglo-Sicilian army preserved Alicante, and finally recovered Tarragona and Barcelona under the influence of the northern operations, which at the same time reduced Pamplona and San Sebastian. England indeed could not alone have triumphed in the struggle, but for her share let this brief summary speak:

She expended more than £100,000,000 [$500,000,000] on her own operations, she subsidised both Spain and Portugal, and with her supplies of clothing, arms, and ammunition maintained the armies of each, even to the guerillas. From thirty up to seventy thousand British troops were employed by her; and while her naval squadrons harassed the French with descents upon the coasts, and supplied the Spaniards with arms and stores and money after every defeat, her land-forces fought and won nineteen pitched battles and innumerable combats, made or sustained ten sieges, took four great fortresses, twice expelled the French from Portugal, preserved Alicante, Cartagena, Tarifa, Cadiz, Lisbon; they killed, wounded, and took two hundred thousand enemies. And the bones of forty thousand British soldiers lie scattered on the plains and mountains of the peninsula. For Portugal she reorganised a native army and supplied officers who led it to victory; and to the whole peninsula she gave a general whose like has seldom gone forth to conquer. And all this and more was necessary to redeem that land from France!

NAPIER’S ESTIMATE OF WELLINGTON

Wellington met the peculiar difficulties which attend generals controlled by politicians. An English commander dare not risk much, when one disaster will be his ruin at home; his measures must be subordinate to his primary consideration. Wellington’s caution, springing from that source, had led friends and foes alike into wrong conclusions as to his system of war: the French call it want of enterprise, timidity; the English have denominated it the Fabian system. These are mere phrases. His system was the same as that of all great generals. He held his army in hand, keeping it with unmitigated labour always in a fit state to march or to fight, and acted indifferently as occasion offered on the offensive or defensive, displaying in both a complete mastery of his art. That he was less vast in his designs, less daring in execution, neither so rapid nor so original a commander as Napoleon, must be admitted; and being later in the field of glory it is presumed he learned something of the art from the greatest of all masters. Yet something besides the difference of genius must be allowed for the difference of situation; Napoleon was never, even in his first campaign of Italy, so harassed by the French as Wellington was by the English, Spanish, and Portuguese governments; their systems of war were however alike in principle, their operations being only modified by their different political positions. Great bodily exertion, unceasing watchfulness, exact combinations to protect their flanks and communications without scattering their forces—these were common to both; in defence firm, cool, enduring, in attack fierce and obstinate; daring when daring was politic, yet always operating by the flanks in preference to the front; in these things they were alike: in following up a victory the English general fell short of the French emperor. The battle of Wellington was the stroke of a battering-ram—down went the wall in ruins; the battle of Napoleon was the swell and dash of a mighty wave before which the barrier yielded and the roaring flood poured onwards covering all.

But there was nothing of timidity or natural want of enterprise to be discerned in the English general’s campaigns. Neither was he of the Fabian school. He recommended that commander’s system to the Spaniards, he did not follow it himself; his military policy more resembled that of Scipio Africanus. Wellington was never loath to fight when there was any equality of numbers. Slight therefore is the resemblance to the Fabian warfare. And for the Englishman’s hardiness and enterprise, bear witness the passage of the Douro at Oporto, the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, the storming of Badajoz, the surprise of the forts at Mirabete, the march to Vitoria, the passage of the Bidassoa, the victory of the Nivelle, the passage of the Adour below Bayonne, the fight of Orthez, the crowning battle of Toulouse! To say that he committed faults is only to say that he made war; to deny him the qualities of a great commander is to rail against the clear midday sun for want of light. Iron hardihood of body, a quick and sure vision, a grasping mind, untiring power of thought, and the habit of laborious minute investigation and arrangement—all these qualities he possessed, and with them that most rare faculty of coming to prompt and sure conclusions on sudden emergencies. This is the certain mark of a master-spirit in war.b

FOOTNOTES