But while the whole of northern and central Spain was full of punitory

raids and executions, there was one region where the trouble passed

the limit of unrest, and could only be called insurrection, where the

French garrisons were practically blockaded in their cantonments,

and where the open country was completely out of hand. This was the

sub-Pyrenean district comprising Navarre, the three Basque provinces,

and the mountainous lands between Santander and Burgos. And from

the strategical point of view this was the most important tract in

all Spain, since the main communication with France lay through its

midst, by the great road from Madrid to Bayonne through Valladolid,

Vittoria, and Tolosa. We have seen in earlier pages that trouble had

been endemic in these lands ever since Mina’s appearance in 1810, and

the permanent establishment of those active partisans, Porlier and

Longa, on the Cantabrian coast-line. The creation of Reille’s ‘Army

of the Ebro’ in 1811 for the special purpose of making an end of the

northern bands had failed in its purpose. But things only came to a

crisis in the summer of 1812, when Sir Home Popham’s operations on the

Biscay coast cleared the French out of most of the smaller ports, and

gave the insurgents for the first time free communication with the

sea, and the inexhaustible supplies of Britain. We have seen in the

last volume[263] how the co-operation of Caffarelli with Marmont in

the Salamanca campaign was completely prevented by this diversion, how

Longa and Mendizabal retook Santander and for a space Bilbao, and how

Mina held the Governor of Pampeluna blockaded in the strongest fortress

of northern Spain. Caffarelli had recovered Bilbao in August; but when

Wellington marched on Burgos in September, and the Army of the North

was compelled to abandon all other operations, in order to succour

the retreating Army of Portugal, the capital of Biscay and all the

surrounding district passed back into the power of the Spaniards. In

the whole region nothing remained in the hands of the French save the

ports of Santoña, Guetaria, and San Sebastian, and a line of fortified

posts along the high road from the Bidassoa to the Ebro. And in Navarre

Mina held full possession of the open country, raised the taxes,

established courts of justice, and (what appears more strange) set up

custom-houses on the French frontier, at which he allowed non-military

goods to pass into Spain on the payment of regular dues[264]. He had

raised his original _partida_ to a strength of nine battalions of

infantry and two regiments of cavalry, possessed cannon, and had a

munition factory working at the head of the Pyrenean valley of Roncal.

Before Wellington commenced his retreat from the Douro to the

Portuguese frontier, or the armies of Soult and of Souham had joined,

to bring their overpowering force against the Anglo-Portuguese,

Souham, as we have already seen, had released the troops of the Army

of the North, and sent them back by Burgos to the Ebro, in order that

Caffarelli might reoccupy the lost districts, and make safe once

more the high road from Bayonne to Miranda, and the almost equally

important route along the Ebro from Miranda to Saragossa, by which

he had to keep up his connexion with Suchet and the East Coast.

Turning back from Valladolid on November 1st, the commander of the

Army of the North spent some time in opening up the high road, on

which many convoys were lying blockaded in the garrisons and unable

to move, and not till December was come did he clear Bilbao, and

drive the coast-land guerrilleros out of all the Biscayan harbour

towns save Castro-Urdiales, which had been fortified and was firmly

held. Putting off its siege for a time, he then pushed along the

coast to relieve Santoña, which had been blockaded for many months by

Mendizabal and Longa. He cut his way thither, and threw in a convoy

and reinforcements; but as soon as he was gone the Cantabrians came

back and resumed their former positions around the place. By the end

of the year Caffarelli had done nothing conclusive--some shadow of

occupation had been restored in Biscay, but when this was completed

the new garrisons had reduced his troops available for active service

to a very modest figure. And on January 7 he had to part with the best

unit of them--the brigade of the Young Guard under Dumoustier, which

had been left in Spain when all the rest of the Guards went off for

the Russian campaign in the preceding year. He was also directed to

give up to their proper owners three provisional regiments composed

of drafts for the armies of Portugal and the South, which had been

intercepted on their way to Valladolid, and used to stop gaps in the

line of communication. In return for these deductions he was told that

he should be given Palombini’s Italian Division, taken from the Army of

the Centre, three depleted regiments from the Army of Portugal,[265]

and one from Soult’s Army,[266] which he might fill up with drafts

from the Bayonne reserve. But it took some time to move these units

northward, and meanwhile Caffarelli was left with no more than 10,000

movable troops--though the Army of the North was theoretically about

40,000 strong. The Bayonne _chaussée_ was again out of control--so much

so that in January and February there were two complete breaks of some

weeks, during which neither convoys nor couriers could get through

from Tolosa to Burgos. Bitter complaints about this interruption of

communications are to be found in the correspondence of Napoleon and

King Joseph. The famous ‘29th Bulletin’ sent off from Paris on December

4th only reached Madrid on January 6th--the Emperor’s order for the

reorganization of the Spanish armies, dispatched on January 4th, came

to hand only on February 16th; and the reply acknowledging its receipt

was not received in Paris till March 18th![267] It had travelled by the

circuitous route of Valencia and Barcelona.

This was intolerable to both parties, and they joined in placing the

blame for delay on the shoulders of Caffarelli, who was denounced as

dilatory and wanting in energy. Jourdan accused him of deliberate

disregard of all military obedience. ‘He was ostensibly under the

orders of the King, but rarely corresponded with Madrid. When he did

send a report, he seemed to do so rather as a matter of politeness than

as the duty of a subordinate towards his hierarchical superior[268].’

On January 14th the Emperor ordered him to quit the command of the

Army of the North and return to Paris. Transmitting this welcome piece

of news to Joseph, the Minister of War remarked that Caffarelli had

insufficient numbers, but that ‘with more activity, continuity, and

method in his operations he might have been much more successful[269].’

In his place the Emperor nominated Clausel, who was on sick-leave

in France, but was able to rejoin almost at once. This choice was

generally approved, as his operations with the Army of Portugal after

the battle of Salamanca had won him a well-deserved reputation. But

all concerned, from Paris to Madrid, were destined to discover that it

was not Caffarelli’s incapacity, but the difficulty of the problem,

that was responsible for the unsatisfactory condition of affairs in

Biscay and Navarre. The capable Clausel made little more of the game

than the short-sighted and mediocre officer whom he superseded. But

this could hardly have been foreseen at midwinter; the fact was not

obvious till May, when (as we shall see) Clausel, though he had been

lent many thousands of troops much wanted elsewhere, had to confess

that his task was not completed, despite of four months of energetic

effort, countless marches and counter-marches, and a dozen bloody but

inconclusive defeats inflicted on the Northern insurgents.

SECTION XXXV: CHAPTER II

THE TROUBLES OF A GENERALISSIMO. WELLINGTON AT CADIZ AND FRENEDA

Having sent his war-worn divisions into winter quarters, where they

were to remain with little change of billets till the next April,

Wellington could turn to the consideration of many political and

military problems for which he had been granted little leisure during

the long stress of the autumn campaign. He fixed himself down at his

old frontier head-quarters of 1811 and 1812, the village of Freneda

near the Coa, between Almeida and Fuentes de Oñoro. It was a small and

bleak place: observers often wondered why, with the whole of Portugal

before him, he chose it for month-long residence in the worst time

of the year. But in the winter of 1812-13 he remained stationary

there from the end of November to the latter half of May--save for

one rapid excursion to Cadiz and Lisbon, which took him away from

December 12th to January 25th--an odd time for cross-country travelling

in the Peninsula. Freneda had no amenities of any kind--save indeed

that it was in the midst of a good fox-hunting country, a rare thing

in Portugal. The Commander-in-Chief, on returning to his old base of

operations, picked up his pack of hounds, and treated himself not

infrequently to the one sort of field-sport in which he had a real

delight. In other respects the village was dull and inconvenient--it

could only just house his very small general staff; it was by no

means a central point among the cantonments of his army; and its

remoteness from Lisbon caused a delay of two or three days in all his

correspondence to and from home. The only things to be said in its

favour were that it was so close to the front line of the army on the

Agueda that there would be no possibility of missing any information

as to hostile movements, and that its remoteness and inaccessibility

preserved the Commander-in-Chief from many interviews with useless and

inconvenient visitors, who would have thronged around him if he had

lodged in Lisbon. The intriguer, the man with a grievance, or the man

with a job in hand, could not easily get to windy Freneda.

Only a steady perusal of Wellington’s Original and Supplementary

Dispatches can give the chronicler an idea of the varied nature of his

troubles and worries, during the winter that followed the Salamanca

campaign. They were not merely those of an ordinary general in command

of an army: his political position had now grown so important that not

only did all happenings in the Peninsula fall within his sphere, but

the Cabinet at home was continually consulting him on questions of

general European importance. And in the months after Napoleon’s Russian

_débâcle_ the politics of Europe came to a crisis, such as had never

been seen since first he assumed the Imperial crown. His domination

was breaking up: his prestige had received a mortal wound: alliances

were shifting: the wildest enterprises were advocated. There were those

at home who proposed that Wellington should take his Peninsula army

to Germany--or to La Vendée--and others who wanted to saddle him with

a large Russian auxiliary force to be brought by sea from Reval or

Odessa. On every scheme, however wild, he had to give his opinion.

But, placing in order of importance the many worries that beset

Head-Quarters at Freneda, it would seem that the most constant and

prolific source of trouble was a circumstance which ought rather to

have lessened than increased Wellington’s military difficulties--if

only men had been other than they were. It will be remembered that

as early as 1809 the project of making him Generalissimo of all the

Spanish armies had been mooted and rejected[270]. He had expressed his

opinion that Spanish national pride made it impossible. ‘I am much

flattered,’ he had written to the British Minister, ‘by the notion

entertained by some of the people in authority at Seville of appointing

me to the command of the Spanish Armies. I believe it was considered

an object of great importance in England that the Commander-in-Chief

of the British troops should have that situation. But it is one more

likely to be attained by refraining from pressing it, and leaving

it to the Spaniards themselves to discover the expediency of the

arrangement, than by any suggestion on our parts.’

Much water had flowed under the bridge since 1809. The appointment had

not come after Talavera or Bussaco, nor after the horrible disasters of

Ocaña, the Sierra Morena, and the surrender of Valencia. But the summer

campaign of 1812 had at last convinced the Cortes that the British

general, who had so often been criticized and accused of selfishness

and reluctance to risk anything for the common cause of the Allies,

was the inevitable man. In the full flush of joy and confidence that

followed the battle of Salamanca and the triumphal entry into Madrid, a

bill was laid before the Assembly to appoint Wellington generalissimo

of all the Spanish forces. It was supported by most of the leading

men of the ‘Liberal’ party, introduced by the ex-regent Cisgar, and

barely opposed by the ‘Serviles’, though one clerical member--Creux,

afterwards Archbishop of Tarragona--raised objections to giving such

a command to any foreigner, and expatiated on the selfish character

of British commercial policy. Despite of such murmurs, the motion

was carried by an immense majority, and the President of the Cortes

was authorized to direct the Council of Regency to make the offer to

Wellington. The form of words ran that considering the advantages of

unity in command, and the urgent necessity for utilizing to the full

the recent glorious triumphs of the allied arms, it was decreed that

as long as the allied forces were co-operating in the defence of the

Peninsula ‘Captain-General the Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo’ should have

conferred upon him the supreme command of all of them, to be exercised

in accordance with general orders, his authority to extend over all the

provinces of the Peninsula. And the ‘illustrious chief’ was directed to

correspond with the National Government through the Secretary of the

War Office[271].

This decree reached Wellington on October 2, while he lay at Villatoro,

conducting the siege of Burgos. He resolved to take up the long-delayed

commission, provided that he should receive the permission of the

Prince Regent to do so, and sent, through his brother at Cadiz, a

letter of conditional acceptance. His consent to serve was not couched

in very enthusiastic terms: being anxious to do all that could be

done to support the legitimate quarrel of the Spanish nation with

France, he had no objection to taking upon himself the additional

labour and responsibility of commanding the Spanish armies. The delay

which must be required, for getting leave from the Prince Regent to

make a formal acceptance of the offer, seemed to him of secondary

importance, because he was already in the habit of communicating his

general views on operations to the Spanish generals, and of making

suggestions to them, which always received the utmost attention. ‘I am

convinced they will continue the same practice, even though I am not

invested with the supreme command.’ These phrases look like deliberate

sarcasm, considering Wellington’s former relations with Cuesta, Del

Parque, Blake, and Mendizabal. But they probably mean no more than that

the present commanders of the forces which were actually co-operating

with him in 1812, Castaños, Morillo, and Carlos de España, had been

loyal and obliging. Finally, ‘he hopes that in the new and prominent

situation in which he is to be placed, he will have not only the full

support but the confidence of the Spanish Government, Cortes, and

nation[272].’

The inner meaning of these somewhat double-edged phrases is explained

in a memorandum for Lord Bathurst, the British Secretary of State

for War, which was sent home under the same cover as the Cadiz

document[273]. It was eminently not a letter to be shown to Spaniards,

and contained some of the most bitter expressions concerning them which

Wellington ever penned. No use could be got out of their armies, he

wrote, unless they were under his control. They had lost nearly all

their guns and cavalry, and generally could not act in bodies separate

from the Allied Army. Their discipline, equipment, and organization

was as bad as ever: yet if put in line with his own troops they might

behave quite well. He would prevent by good management repetitions

of those terrible disasters to individual armies which had so often

happened in past years. But his power over them must be made real,

and for that purpose he intended to apply the financial screw. All

subsidies advanced by the British Government to Spain must for the

future be expended wholly on such Spanish troops as were actually

employed in co-operation with the Anglo-Portuguese army, or else those

troops would become a fresh burden on the military chest. And in his

letter to Cadiz he had been careful to show that he did not intend

to allow the Spanish Government to dictate a military policy to him,

because they had placed their troops at his disposition.

These letters, sent off from the camp before Burgos on October 5,

got to London on October 20, and the Prince Regent’s approbation of

Wellington’s acceptance of the offer from the Cortes was granted at

once[274]. The dispatch conveying it was delivered at Cadiz on the 17th

of November, and on the 20th the Cortes confirmed its former decree,

and sent off a formal warrant of appointment to the new generalissimo,

which reached him at Freneda on December 4th. The confirmation was

not made with such general approval as the original appointment--and

for good reason. By this time it had become evident that Wellington

was not about to drive the French over the Pyrenees: he had raised

the siege of Burgos, and when the Cortes repeated their vote, was

known to be in full retreat for Salamanca. Hopes from his success

were no longer so high as they had been in September, and a nasty jar

had been given to the whole arrangement by the mutinous conduct of

Ballasteros, who (as has been shown in an earlier chapter) had issued a

manifesto against all submission to foreign generals, and had refused

to obey Wellington’s directions at a critical moment. It is true that

Ballasteros had been arrested and imprisoned, without any consequent

trouble[275]; but it was known that there were other Spanish generals

who were not without sympathy with his views.

Having received his formal nomination as generalissimo, Wellington

wrote to Carvajal, the Minister of War, on December 4th, one of the

most stringent letters that any secretary of state has ever received.

It reminds the reader of one of Napoleon’s epistles to Clarke or King

Joseph. The Spanish Government, he said, had now a right to expect from

him an accurate representation of facts, and he was going to perform

this duty. The discipline of the Spanish armies was in the very lowest

state; their efficiency was much deteriorated. How could any army be

expected to keep order when neither officers nor men had received

any pay for months--or even for years? But it was not financial

arrears that explained all defects: even in corps--like those of the

Galician and Estremaduran armies--which had recently been re-clothed

and regularly paid by Wellington’s own exertions, insubordination and

indiscipline were rife: they were as little to be depended upon in

the field as the rest. The officers, with some few exceptions, were

absolutely slack and careless: the desertion from the ranks immense.

He had hesitated at accepting the command, when he thought of what he

had seen of the Spanish troops of late. But having undertaken it, he

would not relinquish the task because it was laborious and of doubtful

success. There were four demands which he must make as a preliminary

condition: the Government must give him power--

(1) To have under his control all promotions and appointments to

command;

(2) To dismiss from the service any officer whom he thought deserving

of such punishment;

(3) To apply the whole war-budget to such services as he might choose;

(4) To appoint to his head-quarters a Spanish chief-of-the-staff, to

whom all military reports from the whole kingdom should be sent: so

that nothing should take place without his knowledge. Through this

officer he would correspond with the Regency, and send them regular

reports.

He then proceeded to definite demands as to administration. The

present state of military organization was absurd, burdensome, and

expensive. The realm was overrun with unnecessary army-commanders

and captain-generals, with immense and useless staffs. ‘For example,

General Castaños is most usefully employed as commander of the 5th

Army, whose territory consists of Estremadura and Castile. But there

is a captain-general and a large staff in each of these provinces,

though the troops in the former are not enough to make a full garrison

for Badajoz, or those in the latter to make a full garrison for Ciudad

Rodrigo[276].’ The captain-generals and their staffs have nothing to

administer, are quite useless, and absorb money which should go to the

army. In the same way the 2nd (Valencian) and 3rd (Murcian) Armies,

together have a strength equivalent to two divisions, yet have each the

full military and civil staff of a complete army[277]. So has the 9th

(Cantabrian) Army, which is composed entirely of guerrillero bands.

Only the Andalusian and Galician troops are sufficiently numerous to be

worth calling armies at all.

The first thing to do is to cut down unnecessary commanders-in-chief

and staffs. The Galician, Castilian, and Estremaduran commands

should be at once amalgamated, and put under Castaños, with one

single staff for all three. Probably the same should be done with

the Andalusian, Murcian, and Valencian commands. An immense body of

superfluous staff-officers must be sent back to Cadiz at once. As a

second step he would have to revise the organization of the country

into captain-generalships and intendancies. Captain-generals often

hampered army-commanders; intendants must probably be put under

military authority. This was no doubt wrong in principle. But the civil

intendant was powerless, in a country just liberated from the enemy

and full of trouble and disorder. He could not exert authority unless

he were lent military assistance: yet he would probably fall out with

the military chief, because their ends would be divergent[278]. ‘When

the enemy is still in the country that must be done which tends most

directly to drive him out--whatever constitutional principles may be

violated in the process[279].’

Finally, Wellington resolved that he must come down to Cadiz in

person to urge his schemes of reorganization on the Regency and the

Cortes--obviously a most invidious task, since no nation likes to have

administrative reforms thrust upon it by a foreigner--more especially

by a foreigner whose tone is dictatorial and whose phrases seem almost

deliberately worded so as to wound national pride.

On December 12th he started out to deal with the Cadiz bureaucrats,

planning to cover the whole 300 miles from Freneda in six days. As

a matter of fact he took eleven, partly because he was smitten with

lumbago, which made riding painful, partly because he was delayed

one night in the Pass of Perales, and two at Albuquerque, by floods,

which made mountain-streams impassable for many hours. Immediately on

reaching the seat of government, where he was received with great state

if with little real cordiality, he started on his campaign against the

Regency, the Cortes, and the Minister of War. It is much to the credit

of the Spaniards that, though many of his demands were unpalatable, the

greater part of them were conceded with slight variation of terms. It

is curious to note the points on which the Regency proved recalcitrant

and started argument. Of the four great preliminary conditions which

Wellington exacted, they granted at once that which seemed the most

important of all--the creation of a Spanish chief-of-the-staff to be

attached to Wellington’s head-quarters, and conceded that all military

correspondence should pass through his hands. The person selected was

General Wimpffen, a Spanish-Swiss officer, of whom we have had to speak

occasionally in dealing with Catalonian affairs--he had been Henry

O’Donnell’s adjutant-general in 1810. He was a non-political soldier

of good abilities, and Wellington found him laborious and obliging:

there seems never to have been any friction between them. Secondly, the

Regency granted the great point that the whole British subsidy should

be applied to such military expenses as Wellington should designate:

and they afterwards went so far as to order that in the recovered

provinces nine-tenths of the taxes raised should be devoted to military

purposes. But they haggled on the two conditions dealing with military

patronage. Instead of giving the generalissimo power to revise all

appointments, they proposed that ‘no officer should be promoted to

a chief command, or the command of a division, or any extraordinary

command, except at the recommendation of the general-in-chief. With

regard to other promotions the rules of the Spanish service shall

be strictly observed.’ This left all patronage from the rank of

brigadier-general downward in the hands of the Minister of War and the

Cortes. And whereas Wellington had proposed, as his second condition,

that he should have power to cashier any officer whom he considered

deserving of such punishment, the Regents offered him only the right of

suspending and sending away from the army in the field officers guilty

of grave misconduct[280].

It is clear that these variations on the original proposals had two

main objects. The Spaniards evidently thought that if Wellington

had every officer down to the lowest under his thumb, liable to be

cashiered without any appeal, he might use this tremendous power to

stock the whole army with men of one political colour, and make it into

a machine quite independent of the Government, and capable of being

turned against it. And similarly there was a great difference between

the right to send an officer away from the front, and the right to

drive him out of the army. To be put on half-pay, or on administrative

duty in some office at Cadiz, was a much less terrible fate than

cashiering.

It must be remembered that many Spaniards thought Wellington capable

of aiming at a military dictatorship, to which he might be helped by

generals who were considered Anglophils, such as Castaños, his nephew

and chief-of-the-staff Giron, or Morillo. And others believed that

British policy secretly desired the seizure of Cadiz and Minorca and

the reduction of Spain to a Protectorate. Now if there had been any

truth in these absurd suspicions, there is no doubt that the powers

which Wellington demanded would have given him the chance of carrying

out such designs. And there were an infinite number of Spanish

officers, from generals like La Peña down to petty governors and

members of provincial staffs, who had come into direct contact with

Wellington, and knew his unflattering opinion of them. All these men in

disgrace, or disgruntled placemen, thought that the new generalissimo

would start his career by a general cashiering of those against whom he

had an old grudge.

Hence pressure was brought to bear upon the Regents and the Cortes

from many and diverse quarters, with the common plea that there must

be no British military dictatorship, and that Spanish officers must be

protected from possible persecution and oppression. The underlying idea

was that if the mass of the middle and lower grades in the army were

out of Wellington’s supervision, it did not matter so much who held

the post of army-commander or captain-general. For the chiefs, though

in influential posts, were few, and would not be able to carry their

subordinates with them in any unpopular movement dictated to them by

the generalissimo.

After much discussion, and with reluctance[281], Wellington accepted

the modifications--thinking that the other things conceded gave him

practically all that he needed. He was to find out his error in

the year that followed. He had not guarded himself against seeing

officers with whom he was satisfied removed from his field-army under

the pretence of promotion, or of transference to other duties, or of

political offences. He had forgotten to demand that he should have

the power of _retaining_ as much as that of _dismissing_ generals. In

this way he was deprived of the services of Castaños and afterwards

of Giron, both of whom he was anxious to keep. Successors technically

unobjectionable, whom he had no wish to ‘blackball,’ were substituted

for them, to his deep regret. And another evasion of his intention

was that officers whom he had intended to disgrace, and had removed

from the front, were given posts elsewhere which could not be called

‘divisional’ or ‘separate’ commands, but were quite desirable; and so

while the letter of the bargain was kept, the purpose of inflicting

punishment on such people was foiled.

Another long controversy was provoked by Wellington’s proposal

that the small armies should be amalgamated, and that unnecessary

captain-generals with their staffs should be got rid of. Much but

not all of what he asked was conceded. The Murcian and Valencian

armies were consolidated, and given the new name of the ‘Second

Army’--the Catalan army being still the ‘First Army’. But they were

not amalgamated with the Andalusian command (now the ‘Third Army’),

as Wellington suggested. And similarly the Estremaduran, Castilian,

and Galician armies, with the outlying Cantabrian division, ceased to

be the 5th, 6th, and 7th Armies, and took the new name of the Fourth.

And a great reduction of staffs and removal of contending military

authorities was procured, by nominating Elio, commander of the new 2nd

Army, to be Captain-General of Murcia and Valencia, Del Parque of the

3rd Army to be Captain-General of Granada and Jaen, and Castaños to be

Captain-General alike of Estremadura, Galicia, and Castile. This was

all to the good, but the Cortes refused Wellington’s other proposal,

that the civil government in each province should be placed under the

control of the army-commanders. Declaring that it was constitutionally

impossible to abolish the independence of the civil power, the Cortes

yet conceded that the _jefe político_ (or provincial prefect) and the

Intendant should obey the Captain-General ‘in all matters relating to

the Army[282],’ also that nine-tenths of the revenue in each province

should be allocated to the military budget. This would have worked

if all parties concerned had been both willing and competent; but

it remained a melancholy fact throughout the next campaign that the

army-commanders could seldom get either money or food from the civil

authorities, and that most essential operations were delayed by the

absolute impossibility of moving large bodies of men without adequate

magazines or a fair supply of money. The only regular income of the

army was that drawn from the British subsidy.

But the worst of Wellington’s troubles were yet some months ahead.

The Regency with which he had made his bargain[283] was displaced in

March 1813, and succeeded by another. The Cortes was jealous of the

Executive, and had determined to make for itself a supreme authority

which should have neither brains nor energy. The subject of quarrel

chosen was the old Regency’s alleged slackness in carrying out a recent

Act which had abolished that moribund abuse the Inquisition[284].

After an all-night sitting and a vote of censure, the Regents were

dismissed, and replaced by a group appointed under an absurd principle

borrowed from the old régime, which was applied because it suited the

desires of the assembly for the moment. It was composed of the three

senior members of the Council of State--senility and weakness being

desired. These were the Cardinal Bourbon--Archbishop of Toledo--an

aged scion of the royal house, and the Councillors Pedro Agar and

Gabriel Cisgar, who had been Regents before, but had been got rid of

for incompetence. Thus all real power went to the Chamber itself--the

Regency having become a negligible quantity. Wellington’s position was

decidedly impaired by the change--largely because a new minister-of-war

had come into office, General Juan O’Donoju, of whom he had an evil

memory as Cuesta’s chief-of-the-staff during the Talavera campaign.

This clever, shifty, and contentious Irish-Spanish officer broached

the theory that the agreement of December 1812 did not bind the new

Regents, because they had never assented to it, and because it was

contrary to the spirit of the Constitution that a foreigner should have

the power to appoint or dismiss Spanish generals.

When Henry Wellesley at Cadiz, instructed by his brother, turned his

heaviest diplomatic batteries[285] upon the Regents, and privately

warned the leading members of the Cortes of the awkward results that

would follow the repudiation of the agreement, O’Donoju was disavowed

but not displaced. He continued to give perpetual trouble through the

following summer by his persistent intrigues. Wellington was by no

means satisfied with the attempts that were made to propitiate him,

by the formal recognition of his status as generalissimo by the new

Regents, and the gift of a great estate in Granada, the royal domain of

Soto de Roma, which had been usurped by Godoy. He did not want grants

but real authority. Of his future troubles we shall have to speak in

their proper place.

The most enduring of them was provincial maladministration, which

rendered so many of his orders futile. For usually when he directed

a division to move, he was informed that it was destitute of both

munitions and transport[286]. And changes of organization were often

made against his protests--e. g. a new army regulation cut down all

regimental formations to a single battalion of very heavy strength

(1,200 bayonets). Wellington would have preferred a two-battalion

formation, in which the second unit should act as a dépôt and feeder

to the first[287]. He complained that if a regiment was badly cut

up in action, there would be no machinery for keeping it up to a

decent average. The experience of the British army with regard to

single-battalion corps had been conclusive against the system for

the last five years of Peninsular service. But his protests were

vain--internal organization of units did not come within the wording of

his powers as generalissimo, and the new organization continued, dozens

of second battalions being scrapped.

The net result was that, when Wellington took the field in May 1813,

he only had with him two of Castaños’s divisions and three of those

of the Army of Galicia--less than 25,000 men. The Andalusian ‘Army of

Reserve,’ which had been promised to him, started late for want of

organization, moved slowly for want of magazines, and only reached the

front when the battle of Vittoria had been won and the French had been

expelled from Spain[288]. The Cortes had at least 160,000 men under

arms; not a sixth part of them were available during the decisive

operations. But of this more in its proper place.

Portugal, as usual, contributed its share to the troubles of the

Commander-in-Chief, though they were but trifling compared to the

Spanish problems. The Prince Regent at Rio de Janeiro was an expensive

person, who actually at the worst of the war drew money out of Portugal

from the Braganza private domains, though he had all the revenues of

Brazil to play with[289]. Moreover, he had a tiresome habit of sending

incompetent hangers-on to Europe, with a request that berths might

be found for them. But he was not actively noxious--the same could

not be said of his wife, the Spanish princess Carlotta, who was still

harping on her natural claim to be Regent of Spain on behalf of her

imprisoned brother Ferdinand, and still interfered from time to time

at Cadiz, by ordering the small knot of deputies who depended on her

to attack the existing regency, or to vote in incalculable ways on

questions of domestic politics. Fortunately she was so great a clerical

and reactionary that the ‘Liberal’ majority in the Cortes had secretly

resolved that she should never get into power. When the old regency was

evicted in March 1813, it was suspected that the Cardinal Bourbon was

put at the head of the succeeding body mainly because the presence of a

prince of the blood in the Executive seemed to make it unnecessary to

import another member of the royal house. For this small mercy Henry

Wellesley wrote a letter of thanksgiving to his brother at the front.

It was fortunate that the Prince Regent himself gave no encouragement

to his wife’s ambitions, being as indolent as she was active, and very

jealous of her secret intrigues with foreigners. At one time during

the winter of 1812-13 she showed an intention of departing for Europe,

but with the assistance of the British ambassador João succeeded in

frustrating her scheme for appearing at Cadiz in person to claim her

supposed rights.

Meanwhile the civil government of Portugal continued to be directed by

the existing Council of Regency, of whom the majority were honest if

not always well-advised. It is true that Wellington’s old enemies[290]

the Patriarch of Lisbon and the Principal Sousa still remained members

of it: the determination to evict them which he had declared in 1810

was never carried out--the one was so powerful from his position in

the Church, the other from the influence of the widespread Sousa

family, that in the end he left them undisturbed. They were perhaps

less dangerous in the Regency than out of it, with their hysterical

appeals to narrow national sentiment, protests against the doings of

their colleagues, and perpetual intrigues. A _frondeur_ is partly

muzzled when he holds office. And in practical administration they

were steadily voted down by the majority of the Regency, consisting

of the Marquis of Olhão, the Conde de Redondo[291], Dr. Nogueira, and

last but not least the British Minister Sir Charles Stuart, whose

presence on the board was perhaps necessary, but certainly very trying

to Portuguese _amour-propre_. The three native regents were genuine

patriots, and good friends of the alliance, but a little antiquated in

their views as to administration and finance. The Secretary of State,

Miguel Forjaz, to whom so many of Wellington’s letters are addressed,

was a much more modern personage with a broader intelligence: indeed,

Wellington considered him on the whole the most capable statesman in

the Peninsula.

There were two standing sources of friction between the British army

and the Portuguese Regency--both inevitable, and both tiresome from the

point of view of the necessary _entente_ between two allied nations.

The more irritating but less important was trouble caused by the daily

movement of troops, especially troops in small bodies, or individual

officers. A perusal of the records of many scores of courts martial,

as well as of the correspondence of Wellington and Beresford, leads

to the conclusion that there were grave faults on both sides. Parties

of British soldiers on the march, when unaccompanied by an officer,

were given to the illegal ‘embargoing’ of carts or mules, to the

extortion of food by force or threats, to mishandling of the peasantry

when denied what they asked: occasionally they went so far as acts

of murder or arson[292]. And it cannot be denied that individual

officers of unsatisfactory type were occasionally guilty of gross

misconduct--drunken orgies, wanton disregard of legal authority in

requisitions, even acts of insult or assault on local magistrates[293].

On the other hand, the provocation was often considerable--there were

plenty of cases established of the denial of legal billets, which

kept parties waiting in the rain for hours, of wanton incivility,

of attempts at extortion in prices, of actual highway robbery[294],

and false accusations brought up to cover neglect of duty. One

of Wellington’s main complaints was that he had to waste time in

investigating imaginary outrages, which, on inquiry, turned out to

have been invented to serve as countercharges against accusations of

slackness or misfeasance. He was determined that outrages by the army

should cease--indeed, he hanged, first and last, some fifty soldiers

for plunder accompanied with violence, an offence which he would never

pardon. But the Portuguese magistrates were prone to make accusations,

and then to protest against having to support them by evidence. By a

curious turn of official pride many of them refused to testify before

courts martial, or even to send witnesses to appear before such bodies,

standing to the theory that it was beneath the dignity of a magistrate

to come with evidence before a foreign military tribunal[295]. The

result of this was that offenders brought up for trial, and often

probably guilty, had to be acquitted for lack of proof. On the other

hand, accusations, made and supported, were sometimes found to be

entirely groundless--in one supposed murder case, the alleged corpse

was discovered in perfect health; in another, a magistrate who accused

a British officer of assault was found to have been dining with him and

frequenting his quarters, long after the supposed offence[296].

The Portuguese Regency was bound to stand up in defence of its

magistrates--Wellington, though always ready to punish proved crimes,

was determined not to take accusation as equivalent to conviction,

merely because it was preferred by a constituted authority. Hence

came perpetual friction and recrimination; that things were no worse

was certainly due to the fact that the commander-in-chief’s iron

discipline, and rigorous dealing with his own people, could not fail to

impress the Portuguese with the fact that he was always trying to be

just.

The other and more fundamentally dangerous source of wrangling in

Portugal was finance. There could be no disputing the fact that the

part of the army which was not directly maintained from the British

subsidy was often six months in arrears of pay, and still more often

on the edge of starvation. Portuguese paper money, in which many

transactions had to take place, and which could be legally used

for a certain percentage of all army payments, was not only at a

habitual discount of at least 25 percent., but also fluctuating in

exchange-value from day to day. Hence came all manner of illicit

speculations by merchants, both British and Portuguese, who were always

trying to buy Government paper at under its quotation for the day, and

to put it off on others at an exaggerated estimate. The same took place

with Commissariat Warrants, which unscrupulous brokers bought from

the ignorant peasantry for a mere song, after setting rumours about

concerning impending bankruptcy of the state, and then cashed at full

face-value in Lisbon or London.

The Regency maintained that all the trouble came from the simple fact

that the war had placed upon the back of Portugal, a small country,

half of whose territory had been wasted by Soult and Masséna in 1809

and 1810, a much greater burden than could be borne. The armed forces

alone--some 50,000 regular troops, and often as many militia in the

garrisons--were so many hands taken away from agriculture, the only

staple industry of the land. Money was going out of the realm year by

year to purchase wheat, because the people could not produce enough to

maintain their existence. Prices had risen to heights that terrified

those who remembered pre-war days: the pay of the army was enormous

compared to the rates before 1808, and much of it was going, under

Marshal Beresford’s system, to the British officers who were now

holding a clear majority of all the senior ranks and commands. All

available money went to the army, and the civil administration was

starved. The Regency acknowledged the deplorable state of its finances,

but could only suggest remedies which had grave inconveniences. Another

British loan was asked for; but considering the heavy subsidy that

Portugal was receiving already, the British Government gave little

encouragement to such an idea[297]. The Portuguese minister in London

(the Conde de Funchal, one of the Sousas) suggested a large measure

of confiscation of Church and Crown lands--which could then be sold.

But this would involve a quarrel with the Church party in Portugal,

who had been loyal supporters of the British alliance, and probably

with the Prince Regent also, since he was drawing a private income

from the Braganza estates. It might also produce a general shock to

national credit, for it would deal a blow to the general stability of

society, and terrify all landholders. Moreover, it appeared doubtful if

purchasers of Church lands would present themselves: and Crown lands

were largely uncultivated and worthless tracts in the Alemtejo[298].

The measure was carried out, indeed, many years later, during the civil

wars of Miguel and Maria; but then it came as a consequence of a purely

domestic struggle, in which the Church party had taken the beaten side.

The circumstances of 1813 were entirely different. A third expedient

suggested was the establishment of a National Bank, after the model

of the Bank of England, which should take over the management of the

public debt and currency. But credit and guarantees must be at the back

of any such association, and unless the British Government were ready

to become the guarantor (which was impossible) it was hard to see what

new securities could be found.

Wellington’s panacea for financial distress was not heroic measures

but careful and honest administration of details. He held that there

was great slackness and partiality in the raising and collection of

taxes, and that the amount received could be very largely increased by

the abolition of abuses. In a very long memorandum, addressed to the

Prince Regent João in April 1813, he launched out into an indictment

of the whole financial system of the realm. ‘The great cities and

even some of the smaller places of the kingdom have gained by the

war: the mercantile class generally has enriched itself by the great

disbursements which the army makes in cash: there are individuals in

Lisbon and Oporto who have amassed immense sums. The fact is not

denied that the “tributes” regularly established at Lisbon and Oporto,

and the contribution of ten per cent. on the profits of the mercantile

class are not really paid to the state.... I have recommended the

adoption of methods by which the taxes might be really and actually

collected, and merchants and capitalists really pay the tenth of

their annual profits as an extraordinary contribution for the war....

It remains for the Government to explain to your Royal Highness the

reasons why it will not put them in practice--or some other expedient

which might render the revenue of the state equal to its expenses.’

He then proceeds to urge supervision of a Custom House notorious for

letting off powerful importers overlightly, and of the collectors of

land-revenue, who were allowed to keep state balances in their hands

for months without paying them in to the Treasury[299].

In letters to Charles Stuart[300] as a member of the Regency Wellington

let out in much more unguarded terms. The root of corruption was in

the mercantile community, who had squared the minor bureaucracy.

The army and state would have been ruined long ago, but for his own

protests and insistence, by the jobbers of Lisbon, not only Portuguese,

Jews, cosmopolitans of all sorts, but ‘sharks calling themselves

British merchants.’ The Government is ‘teased into disapprobation of

good measures by the merchants, who are interested in their being

discontinued. But when it is necessary to carry on an expensive system

of war with one-sixth of the money in specie necessary, we must

consider questions and adopt measures of this description, and we ought

to have the support and confidence of your Government in adopting them.’

Making allowance alike for the difficulties of the Regency, and the

irritation of the much-worried general, it seems fair to say that on

the one hand Wellington was right in denouncing jobbery and urging

administrative reforms, but that on the other hand no such reforms,

however sweeping, would have sufficed to make both ends balance in

the revenue of the exhausted kingdom of Portugal. The task was too

heavy--but the eighteenth-century slackness and corruption, which

still survived in too many corners of the bureaucracy, made it even

heavier than it need have been. It is probable that Wellington’s

palliatives would have failed to make receipts meet expenditure,

however hardly the screw might have been turned. But a levy of 10 per

cent. on commercial profits does not look very heavy to the taxpayer of

1921!

This is a military not an economic or a financial history; it is

unnecessary to go further into Portuguese problems. The main thing to

be remembered is that they bulked large in the correspondence of the

harassed chief, who sat writing minutes on all topics, civil no less

than strategical, in his desolate head-quarters at Freneda.

SECTION XXXV: CHAPTER III

WELLINGTON AND WHITEHALL

The position which Wellington had won himself by five years of

successful campaigning in the Peninsula was such as no British

commander since Marlborough had enjoyed. His reputation was now

European; his views, not merely on the Spanish struggle but on the

general politics of the Continent, had to be taken into consideration

by the Ministry. He was no longer an officer to whom orders could be

sent, to be carried out whether he liked them or not. He had become

a political personage, whose views must be ascertained before any

wide-reaching decision as to the struggle with Napoleon was taken.

In 1813 it is not too much to say that he exercised a determining

influence not only on the military policy of Britain, but on the whole

course of the Great War: as we shall presently see, the triumph of

Vittoria had the most marked and direct effect on the action of Russia,

Prussia, and Austria. But even before Vittoria he had asserted his will

in many ways--he had stopped some projects and approved others. The

factious resignation of his brother Lord Wellesley from the Perceval

Cabinet had not impaired his position, nor had the coming into office

of Lord Liverpool, when Perceval perished by the bullet of a crazy

assassin a month after the fall of Badajoz. Wellington’s correspondence

with the War Minister, Lord Bathurst, in 1813, is as confidential

and amicable on both sides as had been the case when the domineering

Wellesley had been in power: with the new Prime Minister, Liverpool,

there is no trace of any friction whatever--rather every sign of

reciprocal respect.

But the position which Wellington had achieved had its drawbacks as

well as its advantages. Since it had become habitual for the Cabinet

to ask his opinion on high military matters not connected with the

Peninsula, an endless vista of troubles was opened up before him, for

(as always happens in times of exceptional crisis) the Ministry at home

was being plagued with all manner of solicitations from every quarter

of Europe, to which answers were required.

While Wellington had been trailing back reluctantly from Burgos to

Ciudad Rodrigo, Napoleon had been conducting a retreat of a very

different kind from Moscow to the Berezina, a retreat whose character

and consequences were not known in London or in Spain for some weeks

later. He had left Moscow on October 19th, had dictated the famous

29th Bulletin, acknowledging the wreck of his project and the ruin

of his army, at Molodetchno on December 3rd, and had started on his

headlong flight to Paris on December 5th, leaving the small remnant of

his host to perish in the snow. He reached the Tuileries on the night

of December 18th, on the heels of the disastrous bulletin, which his

ministers had only received thirty-six hours before, on the preceding

day[301]. In London the fact that the Russian expedition had failed was

well known by the end of November, but the extent of the failure was

only realized when the 29th Bulletin got to Lord Liverpool’s hands, by

the usual smugglers’ route, on December 21st, rather less than five

days after its arrival in Paris[302].

The Prime Minister sat down next morning to communicate the fact to

Wellington, and to consult him upon the logical consequences. ‘There

has been,’ he wrote, ‘no example within the last twenty years, among

all the extraordinary events of the French Revolution, of such a

change of fortune as Bonaparte has experienced during the last five

months. The most formidable army ever collected by Bonaparte has been

substantially destroyed. It only remains to be ascertained whether he

will succeed in escaping himself--and with what remnant of an army....

Under these circumstances the question naturally occurs whether he

will leave the French army in Spain? We have a report that he has

already ordered 40,000 men from that country to rejoin him--but it is

only a report. I am inclined, however, to be of opinion that he will

withdraw the greater part of his forces from Spain. The only efficient

French Army at the present moment in existence is that under Soult:

and whatever it may cost Bonaparte to abandon Spain, I think he will

prefer that alternative to the loss of Germany. I may be wrong in this

speculation, but give you my reasons, and I am particularly desirous

of calling your attention to this view of the subject, in order that

you may take the necessary means for obtaining early information of the

movements of any French divisions toward the frontier, and that you may

consider what measures may be proper to be adopted if my conjecture

should be realized[303].’

Thus on the first day after the arrival of the epoch-making bulletin,

and before it was known that Napoleon himself had reached Paris, the

great strategical question of the winter of 1812-13 was formulated, and

put before Wellington. Will the French evacuate Spain? and, if so, what

should be done with the British Army in the Peninsula? There were three

possible contingencies--(1) the Emperor might abandon Spain altogether,

in order to have the nucleus of an army ready for the campaign of 1813

in Germany, or (2) he might not evacuate Spain altogether, but might

cut down his forces there, and order them to stand on the defensive

only, or (3) he might value his prestige so highly that he would

take little or nothing in the way of troops from the Peninsula, and

endeavour to make head against the Russians with whatever remnant of an

army might be left him in the North, with the conscripts of 1813, and

the levies of the German States--if the latter should remain obedient

to him[304].

At first it seemed as if the third and least likely of these three

hypotheses was the correct one. For strange as it might appear,

considering what had happened in Russia, Wellington could detect no

signs of any great body of French troops being moved towards the

Pyrenees. So far was this from being the case, that the cantonments

adopted by the enemy in December were so widely spread to the South,

that the only possible deduction that could be made was that the whole

of the armies of 1812 were being kept in Spain. We now know that the

reason for this was that the communications between Madrid and Paris

were so bad, that Napoleon’s orders to his brother to draw in towards

the North, and send large drafts and detachments to France, only

reached their destination in February. For many weeks Wellington could

report no such movements as Lord Liverpool had expected.

It was not till March 10th that the much-desired news began to come

to hand[305], time having elapsed sufficient to allow of King Joseph

beginning to carry out the Emperor’s orders. On that day Wellington

was able to send Lord Bathurst intelligence which seemed to prove that

the second hypothesis, not the third, was going to prove the correct

one: i. e. there was about to be a certain deduction from the French

armies in Spain, which would make it unlikely that they would take the

offensive, but nevertheless the main body of them was still to be left

in the Peninsula. Though the enemy had made no move of importance, it

was certain that Soult and Caffarelli had been recalled to France--the

latter taking with him the troops of the Imperial Guard, which had

hitherto formed part of the Army of the North. To replace the latter

Palombini’s division had been moved from near Madrid to Biscay. A

large draft of artillery had been sent back to France, and twelve (it

was really twenty-five) picked men for the Imperial Guard from each

battalion of the Army of Spain. On the other hand, a body of 4,000

men--probably convalescents or conscripts--had come down from Bayonne

to Burgos[306]. Seven days later a more important general move could

be detected: not only had Soult gone towards France with a heavy

column of drafts, but the French had evacuated La Mancha, the troops

formerly there having retired north to the province of Avila[307].

Again, a week later, on March 24th, it became known[308] that the Army

of the Centre had moved up towards the Douro, and that King Joseph

and his Court were about to quit Madrid. A little later this move was

found to have taken place: the enemy had evacuated a broad stretch of

territory, and ‘concentrated very much toward the Douro[309].’ On the

same day an intercepted letter, from General Lucotte at Paris to King

Joseph, let Wellington into the main secrets of the enemy: the General

reported to his master that the Emperor’s affairs were in a bad way,

that there would be no men and very little money for Spain, and that he

must make the best of what resources he had. His Imperial Majesty was

in a captious and petulant mood, blaming everything done by everybody

beyond the Pyrenees, but more especially his brother’s neglect to

keep open the communication with France and to hunt down the northern

insurgents[310].

This useful glimpse into the mentality of the enemy made it abundantly

clear that Lord Liverpool’s original theory, that Napoleon would

withdraw his whole army from Spain in order to hold down Germany, was

perfectly erroneous. At the same time, Lucotte’s report coincided

with all the other indications, in showing that the enemy had been

perceptibly weakened, could count on no further reinforcements, and

must stand on the defensive during the campaign that was to come.

But while it was still thought in Whitehall that the Emperor might

evacuate Spain altogether, various projects for turning the Russian

_débâcle_ to account began to be laid before Wellington. The first

was a scheme for fostering a possible insurrection in Holland, where

grave discontent was said to be brewing. Would it be wise for the

Prince of Orange, now serving as an aide-de-camp on the head-quarters

staff, to be sent home, so that he might put himself at the head of a

rising? Wellington replied that he no more believed in an immediate

insurrection in Holland than in one in France. ‘Unless I should hear of

an insurrection in France or in Holland, or should receive an order to

send him, I shall say nothing on the subject to the Prince[311].’ He

was undoubtedly right in his decision: the Dutch required the news of

Leipzig, still nine months ahead, to make them stir: an expedition to

Holland in the early spring would have been hopelessly premature.

A little later came a much more plausible proposition, which met with

an equally strong negative from Wellington. The ever-loyal Electorate

of Hanover was prepared to rise: to start the movement it would be only

necessary to land a nucleus of British-German troops somewhere on the

Frisian coast. Could Wellington spare the three cavalry regiments, five

infantry battalions, and one battery of the King’s German Legion which

were serving with him? After Tettenborn’s March raid to Hamburg the

insurrection actually broke out, and Bathurst suggested[312] that the

time had come to throw a considerable force ashore in the electorate.

He asked whether the Hanoverian officers in Spain were beginning to

chafe at being kept so far from their homes at the critical moment.

Again Wellington put in a strong negative. He had been to consult

General Charles Alten, ‘by far the best of the Hanoverian officers,’

as to the expedience of sending the Legion to Germany. Alten held that

‘the best thing for England, for Germany, and the world, is to make

the greatest possible effort _here_:’ the services of a few thousand

veteran troops would be important in the narrower field in Spain--they

would be lost in the multitudes assembling on the Elbe. If a large

body of loyal levies were collected in Hanover it might ultimately be

well to send a part of the Legion thither: but not at present[313].

This was the policy which the Ministry followed: in the spring they

dispatched to North Germany only cadres from the dépôts of the Legion

at Bexhill--500 men in all, including some experienced cavalry and

artillery officers. In July the 3rd Hussars went across to Stralsund,

in August two batteries of Horse Artillery, all from England[314]. But

no deduction of units was made from Wellington’s Spanish army--only a

few officers were permitted to sail, at their own request. The senior

of them, General Bock of the Heavy Dragoons, unfortunately perished by

shipwreck with his three aides-de-camp off the coast of Brittany in the

winter that followed Vittoria.

Bathurst was so far right that many of the Hanoverian officers

regretted their stay in the Peninsula: on the other hand, Wellington

was not merely trying to keep his own army strong, when he refused to

listen to the suggestions made him. It was perfectly true that 4,000

good soldiers were an appreciable unit in a Spanish battle--while they

would be ‘entirely thrown away,’ as he put it, in Germany. The margin

of strength was so narrow in the Peninsular Army that it was not safe

to decrease it.

The same question that arose about the King’s German Legion also came

up during the spring of 1813 with regard to the Brunswickers. Many

officers of the Brunswick-Oels battalion in the 7th Division were fired

with the idea of liberating Germany--they wrote to their duke, then in

England, begging him to have the battalion ordered home. He replied

that he had tried to get the War Office to let him go to the Elbe, even

with a small cadre, a few hundred men, but had been refused[315]. It is

much more surprising that this corps was not spared from the Peninsula:

Wellington had a bad mark against it, for its terrible propensity to

desertion, and a worse for the behaviour of one of its companies at

Tordesillas in the recent campaign. Probably he thought that, if he

surrendered the Brunswickers, he would have to give up the German

Legion also.

It is odd to find that among Wellington’s troubles were not only the

proposed subtraction of troops whom he did not want to lose, but the

proposed addition of troops whom he was not at all anxious to see in

the Peninsula. The story is one which illustrates the casual methods

of Russian officers. In February there came to Freneda a well-known

British secret agent, Mackenzie, the man who had organized the

successful evasion of La Romana’s Spaniards from Denmark in 1808[316].

He brought letters from Admiral Greig, commanding the Russian Black

Sea fleet, to the effect that there was a surplus of troops from

Tchitchagoff’s Army of the Danube, which could not be utilized in

Germany for want of transport and supplies. There were 15,000 men who

could be collected at Odessa and shipped to Spain, to be placed in the

Allied Army, if Wellington would accept them. The memory of Russian

co-operation in Holland in 1799 was not a very happy one: but it seemed

unwise to offend the Tsar, on whose goodwill the future of Europe now

depended. Wherefore the answer given was that they might come if the

British Cabinet approved, and if the Spanish and Portuguese governments

saw no objection. ‘One would think that the Emperor had demands enough

for his men,’ wrote Wellington to Charles Stuart, ‘but Mackenzie says

that they have more men than they can support in the field, which is

not improbable. The admission of Russians into the Peninsula, however,

is quite a new feature of the war: and it is absolutely necessary

that the allied Governments should consent to the measure[317].’ The

correspondence with Cadiz and London ended in the most tiresome and

ridiculous fashion--the Spanish Regency was at the moment in a state

of diplomatic tension with Russia, on some questions of precedence and

courtesy. It answered in the most downright fashion that the presence

of Russian troops in Spain would be neither helpful nor welcome. The

British ambassador at Cadiz was shocked at the language used, which

would be most offensive to the Tsar[318]. But the whole project

suddenly collapsed on news received from London. Count Lieven, the

Russian representative at the Court of St. James’s, declared that he

had never heard of the offer, that he was sure that no such scheme

would be approved by the Tsar, and that there was certainly no Russian

corps now available for service in the Mediterranean. Admiral Greig

had once communicated to him a scheme for a Russian auxiliary force

to be used in Italy--but this was a plan completely out of date, when

the whole Russian army was wanted for Germany[319]. Wellington had

therefore to explain to the Spanish and Portuguese Governments that his

proposals to them had been made under a complete misapprehension: his

_amour-propre_ was naturally hurt--Greig and Mackenzie had put him in

an absurd position.

Prince Lieven’s mention of Italy takes us to another of Wellington’s

worries. It has been mentioned in the preceding volume that Lord

William Bentinck, commanding the British Army in Sicily, had already

in 1812 been planning descents on Italy, where he rightly thought the

French military strength was low, after the departure of the whole of

the Viceroy’s contingent for the Russian War, and of many of Murat’s

Neapolitans also. So set had he been on expeditions to Calabria or

Tuscany, that he had made great difficulties when ordered to send out

the Alicante expedition to favour Wellington’s Salamanca campaign[320].

The news of the Russian disaster had filled Bentinck’s mind with new

Italian schemes--the conditions were even more favourable than in

1812. He was now dreaming of invading Italy with all the men he could

muster, and proposed on February 24th to the British War Minister that

he should be allowed to withdraw all or some of the Anglo-Sicilian

troops from Alicante. He had also seen Admiral Greig, and put in a

claim for the hypothetical 15,000 Russians who had caused Wellington so

much trouble. Knowing how much importance the latter attached to the

Alicante Army, as the real nucleus of resistance to Suchet in Eastern

Spain, he had the grace to send copies of his February dispatch to

Freneda.

This was a most irritating interruption to Wellington’s arrangements

for the next campaign: the Alicante force was a valuable piece in the

great game which he was working out. To see it taken off the board

would disarrange all his plan. Accordingly he made the strongest

protest to Lord Bathurst against the Italian expedition being

permitted. To make any head in Italy, he said, at least 30,000 or

40,000 men would be needed. No doubt many Italians were discontented

with the Napoleonic régime, but they would not commit themselves to

rebellion unless a very large force came to their help. If only a small

army were landed, they would show passive or even active loyalty to

their existing government. They might prefer a British to a French or

an Austrian domination in their peninsula, because it would be more

liberal and less extortionate. But they would want everything found for

them--arms, equipment, a subsidy. Unless the Government were prepared

to start a new war on a very large scale, to raise, clothe, and equip a

great mass of Italian troops, and to persevere to the last in a venture

as big as that in Spain, the plan would fail, and any landing force

would be compelled to re-embark with loss and disgrace[321].

On the whole Wellington’s protest proved successful: Lord William was

forced to leave a large body of his Anglo-Sicilians in Spain, though

he withdrew 2,000 men from Alicante early in April, when it was most

needful that the Allied force on the East Coast should be strong.

The remainder, despite (as we shall see) of very bad handling by Sir

John Murray, proved sufficient to keep Suchet employed. No Italian

expedition was permitted during the campaigning season of 1813, though

Lord William sent out a small foreign expeditionary force for a raid on

Tuscany, which much terrified the Grand Duchess Eliza[322]. Next year

only, when the whole Napoleonic system was crumbling, did he collect a

heterogeneous army of doubtful value, invade Liguria, and capture Genoa

from a skeleton enemy. But by that time the French were out of Spain,

and Wellington’s plans could not be ruined by the distraction of troops

on such an escapade. In May 1813 the Italian expedition, if permitted,

might have wrecked the whole campaign of Vittoria, by leaving Suchet

free to join the main French army. How it would have fared may be

judged from the fact that the Viceroy Eugène made head all through the

autumn against 80,000 men of the Austrian Army of Italy.

So much may suffice to explain Wellington’s dealings during the winter

and spring of 1813 with the British Cabinet. His advice, as we have

seen, was always asked, and generally settled the problem in the way

that he desired. So much cannot be said for his dealings with the

Commander-in-Chief at the Horse Guards: the Duke of York seems to have

been the last person in Whitehall to recognize the commanding intellect

of the great general. Though he always wrote with perfect courtesy, he

evidently considered that his own views on the organization, personnel,

and management of the British Army were far more important than those

of the victor of Salamanca. The correspondence of Wellington with the

Duke and his Military Secretary, Colonel Henry Torrens, occupies an

enormous number of pages in the volumes of Dispatches and Supplementary

Dispatches. Torrens, an obliging man, seems to have tried to make

himself a buffer between the two contending wills, and Wellington was

conscious of the fact that he was no enemy. The subjects of contention

were many.

One of the most important was patronage. Now that he had reached the

fifth year of his command in the Peninsula, Wellington considered that

he had won the right to choose his own chief subordinates. But still

he could not get officers of tried incapacity removed from the front,

nor prevent others, against whom he had a bad mark, from being sent out

to him. When he asked for removals, he was told of ‘the difficulty of

setting aside general officers who have creditably risen to high rank’

on the mere ground that they have been proved incapable, and unfit for

their situations. But it was far worse that when he had requested that

certain generals should not be sent out, they came to him nevertheless,

despite of his definite protest; and then, when he requested that

they might be removed, he was told that he would incur odium and

responsibility for their removal. ‘What a situation then is mine! It is

impossible to prevent incapable men from being sent to the army; and

then when I complain that they have been sent, I am to be responsible!

Surely the “odium” ought not to attach to the person who officially

represents that they are not capable of filling their situations’--but

(the aposiopesis may be filled up) to the Horse Guards for sending them

out. Yet Wellington’s pen did not add the words which are necessary to

complete the sense.

The most tiresome case in 1812-13 was that of Colonel James Willoughby

Gordon, who had come out as Quartermaster-General in 1812, when

Wellington’s first and most trusted quarter-master, George Murray, was

removed (quite without his desire) to a post in Ireland. Gordon was

sent by the Duke of York’s personal choice[323], without any previous

consultation with the Commander-in-Chief in Spain as to whether he

would be acceptable. The atrocity of this appointment was not only that

Gordon was incapable, but that he was a political intriguer, who was

in close touch with the Whig Opposition at home, and before he went

out had promised to send confidential letters on the campaign to Lord

Grey. This he actually did: the malicious Creevey had a privileged

peep at them, and found that ‘his accounts are of the most desponding

cast. He considers our ultimate discomfiture as a question purely of

time, and that it may happen any day, however early: and that our

pecuniary resources are utterly exhausted. The skill of the French in

recovering from their difficulties is inexhaustible: Lord W. himself

owns that the resurrection of Marmont’s broken troops after Salamanca

was an absolute miracle of war. In short, Gordon considers that Lord

W. is in very considerable danger[324].’ The writer was holding the

most important post on Wellington’s staff, and using the information

that he obtained for the benefit of the Parliamentary Opposition; he

should have been court-martialled for the abuse of his position for

personal ends. Wellington at last detected his mischief-making, by

the appearance in the Whig papers of definite facts that could only

have been known to three people--Wellington himself, his secretary

Fitzroy Somerset, and the Quartermaster-General. ‘I showed him,’ writes

Wellington to Bathurst, ‘my dispatch to your Lordship of August 3, as

the shortest way of making him acquainted with the state of affairs....

The topics of this dispatch find their way into the _Morning

Chronicle_, distorted into arguments against the Government. I am quite

certain that the arguments in the _Morning Chronicle_ are drawn from a

perusal of my dispatches, and that no one saw them here excepting the

Quartermaster-General and Lord Fitzroy. Even your Lordship had not yet

received this dispatch, when the topics it contained were used against

the Government in the newspapers.... For the future he shall not see

what I write--it would be no great loss to the Army if he were recalled

to England. I cypher part of this letter in the cypher you sent me to

be used for General Maitland[325].’

It was four months before this traitor was got rid of, though Lord

Bathurst had been shocked by the news, and corroborated it by his

own observation: he had seen mischievous letters from Gordon to the

Horse Guards, and if he wrote such stuff to the Duke it was easy

to guess what he might write to Lord Grey or Whitbread. Certain of

the newspaper paragraphs _must_ have come ‘from some intelligent

person with you[326].’ The strange way in which the removal was

accomplished was not by a demand for his degradation for misuse of his

office[327], but by a formal report to the Horse Guards that ‘Colonel

Gordon does not turn his mind to the duties to be performed by the

Quartermaster-General of an Army such as this, actively employed in

the field: notwithstanding his zeal and acknowledged talent, he has

never performed them, and I do not believe he ever will or can perform

them. I give this opinion with regret, and I hope His Royal Highness

will believe that I have not formed it hastily of an officer respecting

whose talents I, equally with His Royal Highness, had entertained a

favourable opinion[328].’ Three weeks later the Military Secretary

at the Horse Guards writes that Wellington shall have back his old

Quartermaster-General George Murray--and Gordon is recalled[329]. But

why had Gordon ever been sent? The Duke of York alone could say. The

impression which he had left as a soldier upon men at the front, who

knew nothing of his political intrigues, was exceedingly poor[330].

This was the worst trick which was played on Wellington from the

Horse Guards. Another was the refusal to relieve him of the gallant

but muddle-headed and disobedient William Stewart, who despite of

his awful error at Albuera was allowed to come out to the Peninsula

again in 1812, and committed other terrible blunders: it was he who

got the three divisions into a marshy deadlock on the retreat from

Salamanca, by deliberate and wilful neglect of directions[331]. ‘With

the utmost zeal and good intentions he _cannot_ obey an order,’ wrote

Wellington on December 6, 1812--yet Stewart was still commanding the

Second Division in 1814[332]. In letters sent to the Horse Guards

in December 1812 the Commander-in-Chief in Spain petitioned for the

departure of five out of his seven cavalry generals--which seems a

large clearance--and of ten infantry divisional and brigade commanders.

About half of them were ultimately brought home, but several were

left with him for another campaign. He had also asked that he might

have no more generals who were new to the Peninsula inflicted upon

him, because their arrival blocked promotion for deserving colonels,

to whom he was anxious to give brigades. ‘I hope I shall have no more

new Generals: they really do but little good, and they take the places

of officers who would be of real use. And then they are all desirous

of returning to England[333].’ The appeal was in vain--several raw

major-generals were sent out for the spring campaign of 1813, and we

have letters of Wellington making apologies to Peninsula veterans, to

whom he had promised promotion, for the fact that the commands which

he had been intending for them had been filled up against his wishes

by the nominees of the Horse Guards. Things went a little better after

Vittoria, when several undesired officers went home, and several

deferred promotions took place--the news of that victory had had its

effect even in Whitehall.

It is more difficult to sympathize with Wellington’s judgement--though

not with his grievance--in another matter of high debate during this

winter. Like most men he disliked talking about his own coffin, i.

e. making elaborate arrangements for what was to happen in the event

of his becoming a casualty, like Sir John Moore. He loathed the idea

of ‘seconds in command’, arguing that they were either useless or

tiresome. He did not want an officer at his elbow who would have a sort

of right to be consulted, as in the bad old days of ‘councils of war’;

nor did he wish to have to find a separate command for such a person

to keep him employed[334]. It was true that he often trusted Hill

with an independent corps in Estremadura; but frequently he called in

Hill’s column and it became part of the main army--as on the Caya in

1811, in the Salamanca retreat in 1812, and at Vittoria in 1813. In the

winter of 1812-13 a point which might have been of high importance was

raised: who would be his successor in case of a regrettable accident?

Wellington decided that Beresford was the proper choice--despite of

Albuera. ‘All that I can tell you is that the ablest man I have yet

seen with the army, and the one having the largest views, is Beresford.

They tell me that, when I am not present, he wants decision: and he

certainly embarrassed me a little with his doubts when he commanded in

Estremadura: but I am quite certain that he is the only person capable

of conducting a large concern[335].’ He also held that Beresford’s

position as a marshal in the Portuguese Army gave him a seniority in

the Allied Army over British lieutenant-generals.

This judgement of Wellington’s is surprising: Beresford was courageous,

a good organizer, a terror to shirkers and jobbers, and accustomed

to command. Yet one would have thought that his record of 1811, when

he displayed almost every possible fault alike of strategy and of

morale in Estremadura, would have ruled him out. Wellington thought,

as it would appear, that he had a better conception of the war as a

whole--‘the large concern’--than any of the other generals in the

Peninsula, and had every opportunity of knowing. On this most critical

point Wellington and the Duke of York fell out at once: it was not that

the Duke wanted to rule out Beresford because he was undecided in the

field, unpopular with his colleagues, self-assertive or arrogant. He

had a simple Horse Guards rule which in his view excluded Beresford

from consideration at once. ‘According to the general received opinion

of the Service no officer in the British Army above the rank of

lieutenant-colonel is ever expected to serve under an officer junior to

himself, even though he may possess a superior local commission.’ He

then proceeded to recall the fact that in 1794, when Lord Moira came

to Flanders with the local rank of general, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and

a number of other general officers with commissions of senior date,

refused to serve under him: in consequence of which Lord Moira had to

resign and to return to England. There were many similar examples

in the past. The right of officers to refuse to serve under a junior

being established, it could not be argued that higher rank acquired

by that junior in a foreign service had any weight. Beresford might

be a Portuguese field-marshal, but from the British point of view he

was junior to Sir Thomas Graham, Sir Stapleton Cotton, and Sir Rowland

Hill. If by some deplorable accident Lord Wellington were incapacitated

from command at the present moment, Sir Thomas Graham, if with the

Army, would succeed. If Sir Thomas were on sick leave, Sir Stapleton

Cotton would be the senior officer in the Peninsula, and the command of

the Army would automatically devolve on him: if Sir Stapleton were also

on leave, it would go to General Hill.

‘It appears impossible to expect that British generals senior to

Marshal Beresford will submit to serve under him. It appears to the

Commander-in-Chief, therefore, that there remains but one of two

alternatives--the one to recall Marshal Beresford from the Peninsula in

case he should persist in his claim; the other, in case Lord Wellington

still prefers that officer as his second in command, to recall all the

British lieutenant-generals senior to him in our own Army[336].’

This was a maddening reply, for though Wellington liked Stapleton

Cotton he had no delusions about his intellectual capacity. The best

he could say about him during the controversy was that ‘he commands

our cavalry very well; I am certain much better than many who might

be sent out to us, and who might be supposed much cleverer than he

is.’ As a matter of fact, Graham was on sick leave, with an affliction

of eyesight, which was supposed to be likely to result in permanent

incapacity. Cotton was also on short leave to England on ‘urgent

personal affairs[337],’ but expected back shortly. Therefore the Duke’s

letter was a proposal to consign the fate of the British Army in the

Peninsula to a gallant officer with the mental capacity of a cavalry

brigadier, who had never commanded a force of all arms, and who was the

cause of much quiet amusement to his comrades, from his ostentatious

dress and unconcealed admiration for his own perfections.

Lord Bathurst tried to smooth matters, by asking Graham whether he

felt inclined to surrender any claim to take over the Peninsular

Army on account of his bad health. Sir Thomas replied that he should

decline the responsibility for that reason: that he hoped to cause no

difficulties, but that he could not agree that Beresford had any claim,

‘his obligation to the service bound him not to sacrifice the rights of

British officers from a purely personal spirit of accommodation.’ To

which Bathurst replied that if he waived his rights as a consequence

of his ill health, while making no concession on grounds of principle,

perhaps Hill and Cotton might do the same. To this the victor of

Barrosa answered that he might consent, on the distinct understanding

that no precedent was created, and that the arrangement was

temporary[338].

His compliance proved useful: Stapleton Cotton arrived in London

shortly after and ‘expressed himself decidedly against Sir William

Beresford’s claims, and with some warmth.’ Lord Bathurst explained to

him that Graham’s consent to the ‘temporary arrangement’ must govern

his own, and tried to put him off the idea that he himself would

undoubtedly become Wellington’s destined successor, if Graham refused

the post, by hinting that after all Graham might recover his eyesight,

and be able to take over the command. After showing much soreness,

Cotton reluctantly acquiesced. The War Minister, writing an account of

the interview to Wellington, ends with ‘I think it necessary to have

this explained beforehand, that you might not have any doubt whether

you were, after what has passed, to consider Sir Thomas Graham or Sir

Stapleton Cotton as the person who was to exercise the command in case

of your personal indisposition[339].’ So Beresford’s nomination was

passed, as Wellington desired, and contrary to the Duke of York’s views

as to the inevitable power of old precedent. But it was only passed by

the consent of the other parties concerned, however reluctantly given.

Fortunately Wellington preserved his usual splendid health, and the

experiment of trusting the whole Allied Army in the Peninsula to the

victor of Albuera was never made.

On another great controversy which (since Wellington never went off

duty for a day) was of more practical importance than that of the right

of succession, the Duke of York was partly successful in discomfiting

the Commander-in-Chief in Spain. This was a question on which there had

been much argument at the end of each Peninsular campaign, but never

so much as in 1812-13. The exceptionally heavy casualty lists of the

storming of Badajoz, the battle of Salamanca, and the retreat from

Burgos had brought a great number of units, both cavalry and infantry,

to very low figures. There were (as has been mentioned in a previous

chapter) twelve battalions which had at the end of the retreat less

than 300 bayonets effective, thirteen which had more sick than men

present with the colours. For some of these the difficulty was only

a momentary one--there was a large draft on the way to reinforce the

unit, or at least a good number of trained recruits in Great Britain

ready to be sent out. But this was not the case with all of them: the

reason of this was to be sought in the organization of the Army in

1812: the majority of infantry regiments had two battalions; if the

second unit was on home service, it regularly found drafts for the

one at the front. But if the regiment was a single-battalion corps

(and there were seven such with Wellington[340]), or if it chanced to

have both units abroad and none at home (as was the case with fifteen

other corps[341]), there was only a dépôt in Great Britain, and this

had to feed two battalions both on active service overseas, and often

could not discharge the double task effectively. There were of course

regiments so popular, or recruited with such zeal and efficiency, that

they succeeded in keeping two units abroad with adequate numbers: but

this was exceptional.

What was to be done if a Peninsular battalion had got very low in

numbers, had no sister-unit at home to feed it, and had few or no

recruits at its British dépôt ready to be sent out? This was the case

in December 1812 with twelve good old battalions of the Peninsular

Army[342]. The Duke of York maintained that since they all showed under

350 effectives present (one was as low as 149 rank and file), and

since there was no immediate prospect of working them up to even a low

battalion strength of 450 or 500 men, they must come home at once, and

take a long turn of British service, in which they could be brought up

gradually to their proper establishment. He had carried out this plan

in earlier years with some very fine but wasted battalions, such as the

29th and 97th. To replace the depleted veteran corps, there should come

out new battalions from home, recently brought up to full strength. The

same ought to be done with four or five cavalry regiments, which could

show only about 250 horses effective.

But Wellington had other views, and had begun to carry them out on his

own responsibility. He held that a well-tried battalion acclimatized

to Peninsular service was such a precious thing, and a raw battalion

such a comparatively worthless one, that it would be best to combine

the wasted units in pairs as ‘Provisional Battalions’ of 600 or 700

bayonets, each sending home the cadres of four or five companies to

its dépôt, and keeping six or five at the front. The returning cadres

would work up to full strength by degrees, and could then come out

again to join the service companies. On December 6th, 1812, he issued

orders to constitute three Provisional Battalions[343]: he intended to

carry out the same system for several more pairs of battalions[344],

and it was put into practice for the 2/31st and 2/66th as from December

20. So with the cavalry, he intended to reduce four regiments to a

two-squadron establishment, sending home the cadres of their other

squadrons to be filled up at leisure.

On January 13th the Duke of York sent out a memorandum entirely

disapproving of the system. He regretted to differ in principle from

the Commander-in-Chief in Spain, but could not possibly concur in the

arrangement. All depleted battalions for which no drafts could be

found must come home at once. ‘Experience has shown that a skeleton

battalion composed of officers, non-commissioned officers, and a

certain foundation of old and experienced soldiers can be re-formed

for any service in a short time: but if a corps reduced in numbers be

broken up by the division of its establishment, such an interruption

is occasioned in its interior economy and _esprit de corps_, that

its speedy recompletion and reorganization for foreign service is

effectually prevented. The experiment now suggested has once been

tried, and has resulted in a degree of irregularity, contention, and

indiscipline in the regiment concerned, which had made necessary the

strongest measures.’ (Many court martials, and the removal of the

whole of the officers into other battalions.) It was justly urged that

seasoned men are more valuable than men fresh from England, but for

the sake of a present and comparatively trifling advantage the general

efficiency of the whole British Army must not be impaired. All the

depleted battalions should be sent home at once[345].

Wellington was deeply vexed at this decision. He replied that orders,

if definitely given, would of course be obeyed; but if left to act on

his own responsibility, he could only say that the service in America

or Sicily or at home was not his concern, and that he was bound to

state what was best for the Peninsular Army. One old soldier who has

served two years in Spain was more effective than two, or even three,

who had not. Raw battalions fill the hospitals, straggle, maraud, and

starve. He never would part with the Provisional Battalions as long as

it was left to his discretion: and the same with cavalry. He had four

depleted cavalry regiments much under-horsed: he would like to have

the horses of the four hussar regiments which were being sent to him

from England to give to his old Peninsula troopers, rather than the

regiments themselves. But orders are orders and must be obeyed[346].

The Duke replied that for his part he had to take into consideration

not only the Peninsula but the British service all over the world.

Drafting of one corps into another was hurtful to the service and

depressed the spirits of corps: it was even deemed illegal. Though

the last person in the world to wish to diminish the Army in Spain or

cripple its general’s exertions, he was compelled to persevere in his

direction from necessity[347].

On March 13th Wellington reluctantly carried out the orders from

the Horse Guards as regards his depleted cavalry regiments: the 4th

Dragoon Guards, 9th and 11th Light Dragoons, and 2nd Hussars of the

German Legion were ordered to make over their effective horses to

other regiments, and to prepare to embark at Lisbon. A paragraph in

the General Orders expressed Wellington’s regret at losing any of his

brave old troops, and his hope that he might yet see them again at the

front[348].

As to the infantry, the Duke repeating his general precept that

depleted battalions must come home, but not giving definite orders for

them by name and number, a curious compromise took place. Wellington

sent back to England the two weakest units, which were still in April

well under 300 bayonets apiece[349]: he had already drafted a third

into the senior battalion of its own regiment, which was also in the

Peninsula. Four more of the war-worn battalions had been worked up to

about 400 of all ranks, by the return of convalescents and the arrival

of small drafts--Wellington ventured to keep them, and to report them

as efficient battalions, if small ones[350]. The challenge to Home

authority lay with the remaining six[351]: though five of them were

well under 400 strong he nevertheless stuck to his original plan and

formed three provisional battalions out of them. If the Duke of York

wanted them, he must ask for them by name: he did not, and they kept

the field till the end of the war, and were repeatedly mentioned by

Wellington as among the most efficient units that he owned. Presumably

Vittoria put his arrangements beyond criticism--at any rate, the

controversy was dropped at the Duke’s end. The net result was that

Wellington lost three depleted infantry units and four depleted

cavalry units of the old stock--about 2,000 veteran sabres and

bayonets. In return he received before or during the campaign of 1813

four new cavalry regiments--all hussars[352]--and six new infantry

battalions[353] all much stronger than the units they replaced, and

making up about 1,600 sabres and 3,000 bayonets. He would probably have

said that his real strength was not appreciably changed by getting

4,500 new hands instead of 2,000 old ones. Certainly, considering

the effort that was required from the Peninsula Army in 1813, it is

sufficiently surprising that its strength was, on balance, only four

infantry units to the good--the cavalry regiments remaining the same in

number as in 1812.

There were plenty of small administrative problems to be settled during

the winter-rest of 1812-13, which worried Wellington but need not

worry the modern student of history, being in themselves trivial. It

is well, however, to note that in the spring of 1813 his old complaint

about the impossibility of extracting hard cash from the Government,

instead of the bank-notes and bills which the Spanish and Portuguese

peasantry refused to regard as real money, came practically to an

end. By heroic exertions the Chancellor of the Exchequer was scraping

together gold enough to send £100,000 a month to Lisbon. A large sum

in pagodas had been brought all the way from Madras, and the Mint was

busy all the year in melting them down and recoining them as guineas.

It was the first time since the ‘Suspension of Cash Payments Act’ of

1797 that any gold of this size had been struck and issued. As the

whole output went straight to the Peninsula for the Army, the new coin

was generally known as the ‘military guinea.’ Considering that gold was

so much sought for in England at the time that a guinea could command

27_s._ in paper, it was no small feat to procure the Indian gold, and

to see that the much wanted commodity went abroad without diminution.

Wellington could have done with much more gold--six times as much he

once observed--but at least he was no longer in the state of absolute

bankruptcy in which he had opened the campaign of the preceding

year--nor obliged to depend for a few thousand dollars on profits to

be made on Egyptian corn which he sold in Lisbon, or impositions of

doubtful legality made upon speculators in Commissariat Bonds. The

Portuguese troops had their pay still in arrears--but that was not

Wellington’s responsibility. The muleteers of the transport train

were suffering from being paid in _vales_, which they sold to Lisbon

sharks, rather than in the _cruzados novos_ or Pillar Dollars which

they craved, and sometimes deserted in not unnatural disgust. But, at

the worst, it could not be denied that finance looked a good deal more

promising than it had in 1812[354].

There had been much reorganization since the end of the Burgos retreat.

In uniforms especially the change was greater than in any other year of

the war: this was the first campaign in which the British heavy cavalry

showed the new brass helmet, discarding the antiquated cocked hat--the

light dragoons had gone into shakos, relinquishing the black japanned

leather helmet with bearskin crest. Infantry officers for the first

time appeared in shakos resembling those of the rank and file--the

unwise custom by which they had up till now worn cocked hats, which

made them easy marks for the enemy’s snipers, being at last officially

condemned. Another much needed improvement was the substitution of

small tin camp kettles, to be carried by the men, for the large iron

Flanders cooking-pots, four to each company and carried on mules, which

had hitherto been employed. They had always been a nuisance; partly

because the mules could never be relied upon to keep up with the unit,

partly because their capacity was so large that it took much firewood

and a long space of time to cook their contents. Nothing is more common

in personal diaries of 1808-12 than complaints about rations that had

to be eaten half-cooked, or were not eaten at all, because the order to

move on arrived before the cauldrons had even begun to get warm.

A more doubtful expedient was that of putting the great-coats of the

whole of the infantry into store before the march began. Wellington

opined that the weight of coat and blanket combined was more than the

soldier could be expected to carry. One or other must be abandoned,

and after much consideration it was concluded that the blanket was more

essential. ‘Soldiers while in exercise during the day seldom wear their

great-coats, which are worn by them only at night, together with the

blanket: but as the Commander of the forces has now caused the army to

be provided with tents, the necessity for the great-coat for night use

is superseded[355].’ And tents, as a matter of fact, were provided for

the first time during this campaign. The expedient worked well enough

during the summer and autumn, when the weather was usually fine, in

spite of some spells of rainy weather in June. But in the Pyrenees,

from October onward, the tents proved inadequate protection both from

sudden hurricanes and from continuous snowfall. And bad though the

plight of men huddled in tents frozen stiff by the north wind might be,

it was nothing to that of the sentry on some mountain defile, trying

to keep a blanket round his shoulders in December blizzards. Yet the

tents, with all their defects, were a decided boon--it would have been

impossible indeed to hold the Pyrenean passes at all, if some shelter

had not been provided for the battalions of the front line. Villages

available for billeting were few and always in the hollows to the

rear, not on the crests where the line of defence lay. It would seem

that the experiment of dispensing with the great-coats was dropped,

and that they were brought round by sea to Pasages or St. Sebastian,

for personal diaries mention them as in use again, in at least some

regiments, by December. Oddly enough, there appears to be no official

record of the revocation of the order given in May.

Another innovation of the period was the introduction of a new unit

into the British Army--called (after the idiotic system of nomenclature

used at the Horse Guards) the ‘Staff Corps Cavalry.’ They were really

military mounted police, picked from the best and steadiest men in

the cavalry regiments, and placed under the command of Major Scovell,

the cypher-secretary on Wellington’s head-quarters staff, of whose

activities much has been said in the last volume. There were two troops

of them, soon raised to four, with a total strength of about 300 of all

ranks[356]. The object of the creation of the corps was to make more

effectual the restraint on marauding, and other crimes with which the

Provost-Marshal and his assistants were too few to deal. Wellington had

railed with almost exaggerated emphasis on the straggling, disorder,

and looting which had distinguished the Burgos retreat, and the Duke

of York had licensed the formation of this police-cavalry as the best

remedy for the disease. They had plenty to do after Vittoria, when

the British Army had the greatest orgy of plunder that ever fell to

its lot during the war. Wellington’s own view was that the slackness

of discipline in certain regiments, rather than privations or casual

opportunity, was the main source of all evil. But he welcomed any

machinery that would deal with the symptoms of indiscipline, even

if it did not strike at the roots of the disease. Over-leniency by

courts martial was another cause of misconduct according to his

theory--with this he strove to cope by getting from home a civilian

Judge-Advocate-General, whose task was to revise the proceedings of

such bodies, and disallow illegal proceedings and decisions. The

first and only holder of this office, Francis Larpent, has left an

interesting and not always discreet account of his busy life at

Head-Quarters, which included a strange episode of captivity in the

French lines on the Bidassoa[357].

SECTION XXXV: CHAPTER IV

THE PERPLEXITIES OF KING JOSEPH. FEBRUARY-MARCH 1813

We have seen, when dealing with the last month of 1812 and the

distribution of the French army into winter quarters, that all the

arrangements made by King Joseph, Jourdan, and Soult were settled

before any knowledge of the meaning of the Moscow Retreat had come to

hand. The famous ‘29th Bulletin’ did not reach Madrid till January

6th, 1813; this was a long delay: but the Emperor’s return to Paris on

December 16th, though he arrived at the Tuileries only thirty-six hours

after the Bulletin had come to hand, was not known to Joseph or Jourdan

till February 14th--which was a vastly longer delay. The road had been

blocked between Vittoria and Burgos for over five weeks--and couriers

and dispatches were accumulating at both these places--one set unable

to get south, the other to get north. The Minister of War at Paris

received Joseph’s dispatches of the 9th, 20th, and 24th of December all

in one delivery on January 29th[358]. The King, still more unlucky,

got the Paris dispatches of all the dates between December 18th and

January 4th on February 14th to 16th by several couriers who came

through almost simultaneously[359]. It was not till Palombini’s Italian

division--in a series of fights lasting from January 25 to February

13--had cleared away Longa and Mendizabal from the high-road between

Burgos and Vittoria, that quicker communication between those cities

became possible.

Long as it had taken in 1812 to get a letter from Paris to Madrid,

there had never been such a monstrous gap in correspondence as that

which took place in January 1813. Hence came the strange fact that

when Napoleon had returned to France, and started on his old system

of giving strategical orders for the Army of Spain once more, these

orders[360]--one on top of another--accumulated at Vittoria, and came

in one overwhelming mass, to upset all the plans which Joseph and

Jourdan had been carrying out since the New Year.

The King had received the 29th Bulletin on January 6th: he had gathered

from it that matters were going badly with the army in Russia, but had

no conception of the absolute ruin that had befallen his brother’s

host. Hence he had kept his troops spread in the wide cantonments

taken in December, and had sent Daricau’s to the province of Cuenca,

to reopen the way to Suchet at Valencia. The great convoy of Spanish

and French administrators, courtiers, and refugees, which had been left

in Suchet’s care, retraced its way to Madrid under escort of some of

Daricau’s troops in the last days of January. Meanwhile Pierre Soult’s

cavalry continued to sweep La Mancha, imposing contributions and

shooting guerrilleros, and the Army of the Centre cleared the greater

part of the country east and north of Madrid of strong parties of the

Medico’s and the Empecinado’s men. Caffarelli, as Jourdan complained,

ought to have been making more head in the North--but his dispatches

were so infrequent that his position could not be fully judged--it was

only certain that he could not keep the Burgos-Bayonne road open for

couriers.

There was only one touch during the winter with Wellington’s army,

whose cantonments, save those of the Light Division, were far back,

behind the ‘no man’s land’ which encircled the French armies. This

single contact was due to an adventurous reconnaissance by Foy, who

at his head-quarters at Avila had conceived a project for surprising

Hill’s most outlying detachment, the 50th regiment, which was billeted

at Bejar, in the passes in front of Coria. On false news that no good

look-out was being kept around Bejar, he started on the 19th February

from Piedrahita with a column of three very weak infantry battalions

and 80 horse--about 1,500 men in all, and marching day and night fell

upon the cantonments of the 50th at dawn on the morning of the 20th.

The surprise did not come off. Colonel Harrison of the 50th was a

cautious officer, who had barricaded the ruined gates of the town,

and patched its crumbling walls--He had picquets far out, and was

accustomed to keep several companies under arms from 2 o’clock till

daylight every night. Moreover Hill, thinking the position exposed,

had lately reinforced him with the 6th Caçadores, from Ashworth’s

brigade. Foy, charging in on the town in the dusk, dislodged the

outlying picquets after a sharp skirmish; but his advanced guard of 300

voltigeurs met such a storm of fire from the gate and walls, which were

fully manned, that it swerved off when 30 yards from the entrance. Foy

ordered a general retreat, since he saw the enemy ready for him, and

marched off as quickly as he had come, pursued for some distance by the

Caçadores[361]. He says in his dispatch to Reille that he only lost two

men killed and five wounded, that he could have carried the town had he

pleased, and that he only retired because he was warned that the 71st

and 92nd, the other regiments of Cadogan’s brigade, were marching up

from Baños, seven miles away[362]. This those may believe who please:

it is certain that he made off the moment that he saw that his surprise

had failed, and that he was committed to an attack on a barricaded

town. Hill expected more raids of this sort, but the attempt was never

repeated.

It was on the 14th of February, five days before Foy’s adventure,

that King Joseph received his first Paris mail. Its portentous and

appalling contents were far worse than anything that he had expected.

The most illuminating item was a letter from Colonel Desprez, his

aide-de-camp, who had made the Moscow retreat, and was able to give

him the whole truth concerning Russia. ‘We lost prisoners by the tens

of thousands--but, however many the prisoners, the dead are many more.

Every nightly bivouac left hundreds of frozen corpses behind. The

situation may be summed up by saying that the army is _dead_. The Young

Guard, to which I was attached, quitted Moscow 8,000 strong; there

were 400 left at Wilna. All the other corps have suffered on the same

scale; I am convinced that not 20,000 men recrossed the Vistula. If

your Majesty asks me where the retreat will stop, I can only reply that

the Russians will settle that point. I cannot think that the Prussians

will resist: the King and his ministers are favourably disposed--not

so the people--riots are breaking out in Berlin: crossing Prussia I

had evidence that we can hardly count on these allies. And it seems

that in the Austrian army the officers are making public demonstrations

against continuing the war. This is a sad picture--but I think there is

no exaggeration in it. On returning to Paris and thinking all over in

cold blood, my judgement on the situation is as gloomy as it was at the

theatre of war[363].’

Napoleon had spent several days at the Tuileries, busy with grandiose

schemes for the organization of a new _Grande Armée_, to replace that

which he had sacrificed in Russia, and with financial and diplomatic

problems of absorbing interest, before he found a moment in which to

dictate to Clarke his orders for the King of Spain. The note was very

short and full of reticences[364]: it left much unsaid that had to be

supplied by the recipient’s intelligence. ‘The King must have received

by now the 29th Bulletin, which would show him the state of affairs in

the North; they were absorbing the Emperor’s care and attention. Things

being as they were, he ought to move his head-quarters to Valladolid,

holding Madrid only as the extreme point of occupation of his southern

wing. He should turn his attention to the pacification of Biscay and

Navarre while the English were inactive. Soult had been sent orders to

come back to France--as the King had repeatedly requested; his Army

of the South might be given over to Marshal Jourdan or to Gazan.’ If

Joseph had owned no independent sources of information such a statement

would have left him much in the dark, both as to the actual state of

the Emperor’s resources, and as to his intentions with regard to Spain.

The Emperor did not say that he had lost his army and must create

another, nor did he intimate how far he intended to give up his Spanish

venture. But the order to draw back to Valladolid and hold Madrid

lightly, could only be interpreted as a warning that there would be no

more reinforcements available for Spain, so that the area of occupation

would have to be contracted.

The recall of Soult was what Joseph had eagerly petitioned for in 1812,

when he had come upon the curious letter in which the Marshal accused

him before the Emperor of treason to the French cause[365]. But the

Marshal was not brought home in disgrace; rather he was sent for in the

hour of danger, as one who could be useful to the new _Grande Armée_.

It must have been irritating to the King to know, from a passage in the

already-cited letter of Colonel Desprez, that Napoleon had called the

Duke of Dalmatia ‘the only military brain in the Peninsula’, that he

stigmatized the King’s denunciations of him as _des pauvretés_ to which

he attached no importance, and that he had added that half the generals

in Spain had shared Soult’s suspicions. The Marshal left, in triumph

rather than in disgrace, with a large staff and escort, and a long

train of _fourgons_ carrying his Andalusian plunder, more especially

his splendid gallery of Murillos robbed from Seville churches[366].

Dated one day later than the Emperor’s first rough notes, we find

the formal dispatch from the war-minister Clarke, which made things

a little clearer. Setting forth his master’s ideas in a more verbose

style, Clarke explained that the affairs of Spain must be subordinated

to those of the North. The move to Valladolid would make communication

with Paris shorter and safer, and provide a larger force to hold down

Northern Spain. Caffarelli was not strong enough both to hunt down the

guerrilleros and at the same time to provide garrisons on the great

roads and the coast. The King would have to lend him a hand in the task.

There were other dispatches for Joseph and Jourdan dated on the 4th

of January, but only one more of importance: this was an order for

wholesale drafts to be made from the Army of Spain, for the benefit

of the new Army of Germany. But large as they were, the limited

scale of them showed that the Emperor had not the least intention of

surrendering his hold on the Peninsula, or of drawing back to the line

of the Ebro or the Pyrenees, as Lord Liverpool had expected[367]. All

the six Armies of Spain--those of the North, Portugal, the Centre, the

South, Aragon, and Catalonia--were to continue in existence, and the

total number of men to be drawn from any one of them did not amount to

a fourth of its numbers. There were still to be 200,000 men left in the

Peninsula.

The first demand was for twenty-five picked men from each battalion

of infantry or regiment of cavalry, and ten from each battery of

artillery, to reconstitute the Imperial Guard, reduced practically

to nothing in Russia. Putting aside foreign regiments (Italian,

Neapolitan, German, Swiss) there were some 220 French battalions in

Spain in January 1813, and some 35 regiments of cavalry. The call was

therefore for 5,500 bayonets and 875 sabres--no great amount from an

army which had 260,000 men on its rolls, and 212,000 actually under the

colours.

But this was only a commencement. It was more important that the Armies

of the South and Catalonia were to contribute a large number of cadres

to the new _Grande Armée_. Those of Portugal, Aragon, the Centre, and

the North were at first less in question, because their regiments were,

on the average, not so strong as those of the other two. The Army of

the South was specially affected, because its units were (and always

had been) very large regiments. In 1812 Soult’s infantry corps nearly

all had three battalions--a few four. Similarly with the cavalry,

many regiments had four squadrons, none less than three. The edict of

January 4th ordered that each infantry regiment should send back to

France the full cadre of officers and non-commissioned officers for one

battalion, with a skeleton cadre of men, cutting down the number of

battalions present with the eagle by one, and drafting the surplus rank

and file of the subtracted battalion into those remaining in Spain. The

cadre was roughly calculated out to 120 of all ranks. When, therefore,

the system was applied to the Army of the South, it was cut down from

57 battalions to 36 in its 19 regiments[368]. The 21 cadres took off to

France 2,500 officers and men. Similarly 15 cavalry regiments, in 50

squadrons, were to send 12 squadron-cadres to France, some 600 sabres.

The small Army of Catalonia was to contribute a battalion-cadre

from each of those of its regiments which had three or more

battalions--which would give six more cadres for Germany.

The Armies of Portugal, Aragon, and the Centre were mainly composed

of regiments having only two battalions--they were therefore for the

present left comparatively untouched. The first named was only ordered

to give up one battalion-cadre, the second two, the third three (all

from Palombini’s Italian division). Of cavalry the Army of Portugal

only gave up one squadron-cadre, the Army of the Centre three.

In addition, the small number of foreign auxiliary troops still left

in Spain were ordered back to France, save the remnant of Palombini’s

and Severoli’s Italians and the Rheinbund units[369] in the Army of

the Centre, viz. the 7th Polish Lancers (the last regiment of troops

of this nationality left south of the Pyrenees), the Westphalian horse

in the Army of the Centre, and the Berg and Westphalian infantry in

Catalonia. Moreover, the brigade of the Young Guard in the Army of the

North (that of Dumoustier) and the three naval battalions from Cadiz,

which had served so long in the Army of the South, were to come home,

also four batteries of French horse-artillery and two of Westphalian

field artillery. Lastly, cadres being as necessary for the military

train as for any other branch of the service, all the armies were

to send home every dismounted man of this corps. The same rule was

applied to the _Équipages militaires_ and the Artillery Park. This

whole deduction from the Army of Spain under these heads came to nearly

12,000 soldiers of all arms, over and above these cadres.

There was an elaborate clause as to reorganizing the Army of the

North: in return for giving up four provisional regiments of drafts to

the Armies of Portugal and the South, it was to get three regiments

made over to it from the former, and one from the latter. Napoleon

calculated that it would lose nothing in numbers from the exchange,

but as a matter of fact it did. The drafts to be returned to their

proper corps ran to over 8,000 men. But General Reille, being told to

contribute three regiments to the Army of the North, selected the three

depleted units which had composed Thomières’ unlucky division at the

battle of Salamanca (the 1st, 62nd, and 101st), which together did

not make up 3,000 bayonets[370], though Gazan chose to make over the

64th, a three-battalion regiment with 1,600 men. The Army of the North,

therefore, lost nearly 3,000 men on the balance of the exchange, though

the Emperor was aware that it was already too weak for the task set it.

But he probably considered that Palombini’s Italians, detached (as we

have already seen[371]) from the Army of the Centre, would make up the

difference.

In addition to the squadron-cadres which he requisitioned on January

4th, the Emperor had a further intention of bringing back to Central

Europe some complete units of heavy cavalry, to furnish the host now

collecting in Germany with the horsemen in which it was so notoriously

deficient. The whole of the dragoon-division of Boyer in the Army of

Portugal is marked in the March returns with _ordre de rentrer en

France_; so are several dragoon regiments in the Army of the South. But

as a matter of fact hardly one of them had started for the Pyrenees

by May[372], so that both in the Army of Portugal and the Army of the

South the cavalry total was only a few hundreds smaller at the time of

the opening of the campaign of Vittoria than it had been at the New

Year--the shrinkage amounting to no more than the squadron-cadres and

the few men for the Imperial Guard.

The Emperor’s intentions, therefore, as they became known to King

Joseph and Jourdan on February 16th, left the three armies opposed to

Wellington some 15,000 men smaller than they had been at the time of

the Burgos retreat; but this was a very modest deduction considering

their size, and still kept nearly 100,000 men in Castile and Leon, over

and above the Army of the North, which might be considered as tied

down to its own duty of suppressing the rising in Biscay and Navarre,

and incapable of sparing any help to its neighbours. When we reflect

on the scale of the Russian disaster, the demand made upon the Army of

Spain seems very moderate. But there were two ominous doubts. Would

the Emperor be content with his original requisitions in men and horses

from the armies of Spain? And what exactly did he mean by the phrase

that the King would have to lend _appui et secours_ to the Army of

the North, for the destruction of the rebels beyond the Ebro? If this

signified the distraction of any large body of men from the forces left

opposed to Wellington, the situation would be uncomfortable. Both these

doubts soon developed into sinister certainties.

On receiving the Emperor’s original orders King Joseph hastened to

obey, though the removal of his court from Madrid to Valladolid looked

to him like the abandonment of his pose as King of Spain. He ordered

Soult’s successor, Gazan, to evacuate La Mancha, and to draw back to

the neighbourhood of Madrid, leaving a small detachment of light troops

about Toledo. The Army of the South also took over the province of

Avila from the Army of Portugal, and it was intended that it should

soon relieve the Army of the Centre in the province of Segovia. For

Joseph had made up his mind that any help which he must give against

the northern rebels should be furnished by D’Erlon’s little army, which

he would stretch out from Segovia towards Burgos and the Ebro[373], and

so take Mina and the insurgents of Navarre in the rear. Early in March

all these movements were in progress, and (as we have seen in the last

chapter) were beginning to be reported to Wellington, who made many

deductions from them. Joseph himself transferred his head-quarters to

Valladolid on March 23rd, by which time the greater part of the other

changes had been carried out. The Emperor afterwards criticized his

brother’s delay of a whole month between the receipt of his orders to

decamp and his actual arrival at Valladolid. To this Jourdan made the

reply that it was useless to move the head-quarters till the drawing

in of the Army of the South had been completed, and that the bringing

in of such outlying units as Daricau’s division from the province of

Cuenca, and the transference of the Army of the Centre northward, took

much time[374]. Evacuations cannot be carried out at a day’s notice,

when they involve the moving of magazines and the calling in of a civil

administration.

On March 12th, while all the movements were in progress, another batch

of orders from Paris came to hand. They contained details which upset

the arrangements which the King was carrying out, for the Emperor

decided that the succour which was to be given to the Army of the North

was to be drawn from Reille’s Army, and not from D’Erlon’s, so that a

new series of counter-marches would have to be carried out. And--what

was more ominous for the future--Napoleon had dropped once more into

his old habit of sending orders directly to subordinate generals,

without passing them through the head-quarters of the Army of Spain.

For Clarke, in his dispatch of February 3rd, informed the King that

the Emperor had sent Reille directions to detach a division to Navarre

at once, ‘a disposition which cannot conflict with any orders which

your Majesty may give to the Army of Portugal, for the common end of

reducing to submission the provinces of the North[375].’ Unfortunately

this was precisely what such an order did accomplish, for Joseph had

sent D’Erlon in the direction to which he now found that Reille had

simultaneously detached Barbot’s division of the Army of Portugal,

without any knowledge that D’Erlon had already been detailed for the

job.

The Emperor was falling back into the practice by which he had in the

preceding year ruined Marmont--the issuing of detailed orders for the

movement of troops, based on information a month old, it being certain

that the execution of these orders would take place an additional three

weeks after they had been formulated. As we shall presently see, the

initial successes of Wellington in his Vittoria campaign were entirely

due to the position in which the Army of Portugal had placed itself, in

obedience to Napoleon’s direct instructions.

Meanwhile Clarke’s dispatch of February 2nd, conveying these orders,

arrived at the same moment as two others dated ten days later[376],

which were most unpleasant reading. The first contained an absolutely

insulting message to the King from his brother: ‘his Imperial Majesty

bids me say,’ wrote Clarke, ‘with regard to the money for which

you have asked in several recent letters, that all funds necessary

for the armies of Spain could have been got out of the rich and

fertile provinces which are being devastated by the insurgent bands.

By employing the activity and vigour needed to establish order and

tranquillity, the resources which they still possess can be utilized.

This is an additional motive for inducing your Majesty to put an end

to this war in the interior, which troubles peaceful inhabitants,

ruins the countryside, exhausts your armies, and deprives them of

the resources which they could enjoy if these fine regions were in a

peaceful state. Aragon and Navarre are to-day under Mina’s law, and

maintain this disastrous struggle with their food and money. It is time

to put an end to this state of affairs.’

Written apparently a few hours later than the dispatch quoted above

came another[377], setting forth the policy which was to be the ruin

of the French cause in Spain three months later. It is composed of a

series of wild miscalculations. When the head-quarters of the Army of

Spain should have been moved to Valladolid, it would be possible to

send the whole Army of Portugal to help the Army of the North beyond

the Ebro. ‘The Armies of the Centre and South, occupying Salamanca and

Valladolid, have sufficient strength to keep the English in check,

while waiting on events. Madrid and even Valencia are of secondary

importance. Valladolid and Salamanca have become the essential points,

between which there should be distributed forces ready to take the

offensive against the English, and to wreck their plans. The Emperor

is informed that they have been reinforced in Portugal, and that they

seem to have two alternative schemes--either to make a push into Spain,

or to send out from the port of Lisbon an expedition of 25,000 men,

partly English, partly Spanish, which is to land somewhere on the

French coast, when the campaign shall have begun in Germany. To prevent

them engaging in this expedition, you must always be in a position to

march forward and to threaten to overrun Portugal and take Lisbon. At

the same time you must make the communications with France safe and

easy, by using the time of the English inactivity to subdue Biscay and

Navarre.... If the French armies in Spain remain idle, and permit the

English to send expeditions against our coast, the tranquillity of

France will be compromised, and the ruin of our cause in Spain will

infallibly follow.’

A supplementary letter to Jourdan of the same day recapitulates all the

above points, adding that the Army of Portugal must send to Clausel,

now Caffarelli’s successor in the North, as many troops as are needed

there, but that the King at the same time must menace Portugal, so that

Wellington shall not be able to detach men from his Peninsular Army.

The fundamental error in all this is that, underrating Wellington’s

strength, Napoleon judged that the Armies of the South and Centre

could keep him in check. They were at this moment under 60,000 of

all arms: if the Army of Portugal were out of the way, they were

absolutely insufficient for the task set them. As to their menacing

Lisbon, Wellington would have liked nothing better than an advance by

them into Portugal, where he would have outnumbered them hopelessly.

The hypothesis that Wellington was about to send 25,000 men by sea for

a landing inside the French Empire, on which Napoleon lays so much

stress, seems to have been formed on erroneous information from French

spies in London, who had heard the rumour that a raid on Holland or

Hanover was likely, or perhaps even one aimed at La Vendée. For the

royalist _émigrés_ in England had certainly been talking of such a

plan, and pressing it upon Lord Liverpool, as the dispatches of the

latter to Wellington show[378]. The Emperor did not know that all such

schemes would be scouted by the British Commander in Spain, and that he

now possessed influence enough with the Cabinet to stop them.

It would appear that the Emperor’s intelligence from England misled him

in other ways: he was duly informed of the departure from Lisbon of the

depleted cavalry and infantry units, about which Wellington disputed

so much with the Duke of York, and the deduction drawn was that the

Peninsular Army was being decreased. The exaggerated impression of the

losses in the Burgos retreat, which could be gathered from the Whig

newspapers, led to an underrating of the strength that the British Army

would have in the spring. Traitors from Cadiz wrote to Madrid that the

friction between the Regency and Wellington was so great, that it was

doubtful whether the new Generalissimo would have any real control

over the Spanish armies. And the sickness in both the British and the

Portuguese armies--bad as it was--was exaggerated by spies, so wildly

that the Emperor was under the delusion that Wellington could not count

on more than 30,000 British or 20,000 Portuguese troops in the coming

campaign. It may be worth while to quote at this point the official

view at Paris of the British army in Portugal, though the words were

written some time later, and only just before the news of Wellington’s

sudden advance on the Douro had come to hand:

‘In the position in which the enemy found himself there was no reason

to fear that he would take the offensive: his remoteness, his lack of

transport, his constant and timid caution in all operations out of the

ordinary line, all announced that we had complete liberty to act as

suited us best, without worry or inconvenience. I may add that the ill

feeling between English and Spaniards, the voyage of Lord Wellington

to Cadiz, the changes in his army, of which many regiments have been

sent back to England, were all favourable circumstances allowing us to

carry out fearlessly every movement that the Emperor’s orders might

dictate[379].’

It is only necessary to observe that Wellington was not more remote

from the French than they were from him: that he had excellent

transport--far better than his enemies ever enjoyed: that timid caution

was hardly the policy which stormed Badajoz or won Salamanca: that his

rapid and triumphant offensive was just starting when the Minister of

War wrote the egregious paragraph which we have just cited. Persistent

undervaluing of the resources and energy of Wellington by Head-quarters

at Paris--i.e. by the Emperor when present, by the Minister of War in

his absence--was at the roots of the impending disaster.

Leaving the King newly established at Valladolid, the Army of the South

redistributing itself between Madrid and the Douro, the Army of the

Centre turning back from its projected march to Burgos in order to

reoccupy the province of Segovia, and the Army of Portugal beginning to

draw off from in front of Wellington troops to be sent to the North,

we must turn for a moment to explain the crisis in Navarre and Biscay

which was engrossing so much of Napoleon’s attention.

SECTION XXXV: CHAPTER V

THE NORTHERN INSURRECTION. FEBRUARY-MAY 1813

It has been explained in an earlier chapter that ever since General

Caffarelli concentrated all the available troops of the Army of

the North, in order to join Souham in driving away Wellington from

the siege of Burgos, the three Basque provinces, Navarre, and the

coast-land of Santander had been out of hand[380]. The outward

and visible sign of that fact was the intermittent stoppage of

communication between Bayonne and Madrid, which had so much irritated

Napoleon on his return from Russia. It was undoubtedly a just cause

of anger that important dispatches should be hung up at Tolosa,

or Vittoria, or Burgos, because the bands of Mina or Mendizabal

or Longa were holding the defile of Salinas--the grave of so many

convoy-escorts--or the pass of Pancorbo. It had been calculated in

1811 that it might often require a small column of 250 men to bring an

imperial courier safely through either of those perilous narrows. But

in the winter of 1812-13 things had grown far worse. ‘The insurgents

of Guipuzcoa, Navarre, and Aragon,’ as Clarke wrote to Jourdan with

perfect truth[381], ‘have had six months to organize and train

themselves: their progress has been prodigious: they have formed many

formidable corps, which no longer fear to face our troops when numbers

are equal. They have called in the English, and receive every day arms,

munitions, and even cannon on the coast. They have actually begun

to conduct regular sieges.’ Yet it was three months and more since

the King had sent back Caffarelli and the field-force of the Army of

the North from Valladolid, to restore order in the regions which had

slipped out of hand during the great concentration of the French armies

in November.