SPOTS IN THE SUN
IT was Napoleon’s fate, during his lifetime and for some time after, to
have his worst mistakes overlooked, and to have various strokes of
policy violently condemned as shocking errors. Everyone has heard the
execution of the Duc d’Enghien spoken of as “worse than a crime—it was
a blunder.” It is difficult to see why. Perhaps Fouché, to whom the
remark is attributed, did not see why either. If a man should happen to
think of an epigram of that brilliancy, it is hard to condemn him for
using it without troubling much as to its truth. But whether launched in
good faith or not, that shaft of wit sped most accurately to its mark,
and proved so efficiently barbed that it has stuck ever since.
The real point was that France was at war with England at the time, and
that Napoleon was so universally dreaded that any stick was considered
good enough to beat him with. Consequently a storm of indignation arose,
diligently fostered by those who benefited, and soon all Europe was
furious that a poor dear Bourbon had been shot. If nowadays the
President of the German Republic were to lay hold of a young
Hohenzollern and shoot him on a charge of conspiracy, it is doubtful
whether it would cause any similar stir. Europe is not fond of
Hohenzollerns, and the principle of Legitimacy is so far discredited
that it is not considered blasphemy to treat the descendant of an
autocrat with violence.
Undoubtedly it was a crime for Napoleon to shoot the Duke, but it was
hardly a blunder. It was contrary to international law for him to send
the expedition to Ettenheim which arrested d’Enghien; it was contrary to
statutory law to try him without allowing him to make any defence; it
was contrary to moral law to shoot him for an offence of which he was
not guilty. For all this Napoleon deserves the utmost possible
censure—but without doubt he profited largely. Everywhere among
Napoleon’s enemies arose a weeping and wailing; the English poured out
indignant seas of ink (in 1914 they wrote in much the same fashion about
Wilhelm of Germany’s withered arm). Alexander of Russia put his Court in
mourning (only three years before he had been cognisant of the plot
which brought about the murder of his own father); the King of Sweden
tried to organize a crusade of revenge; but a month after d’Enghien died
the Senate begged Napoleon to assume the Imperial title. It is curious,
indeed, that so much notice should have been taken of one more murder by
a generation which witnessed, without one quarter so much emotion, the
partition of Poland, the storming of Praga, the sack of Badajoz, the
shooting of Ney, and Wellington’s devastation of the Tagus Valley. The
art of propaganda was at quite a high level even more than a century
ago.
Once again, the execution of d’Enghien was a crime and not a mistake. By
it Napoleon showed that he was no mere Monk dallying with the idea of
restoring the Bourbons. He brought to his support all the most
determined of the irreconcilables. He showed the monarchs of Europe that
he was a man to be reckoned with. Murat, Savary, everyone implicated was
cut off from all possible communication with the Bourbons. The deed
cowed the Pope into submission at a vitally important moment, while the
mere mention of it later was sufficient to frighten the wretched
Ferdinand of Spain into abject obedience at that strange conference at
Bayonne, when an idiotic father and a craven son handed the crown of
Charles V. to an incompetent upstart. But Napoleon would have met with
no more than he deserved had he had dealt out to him at Fontainebleau in
1814 the same tender mercy which Condé’s heir received at Vincennes ten
years before—ten years almost to the day.
If Enghien’s execution were a crime but not a mistake, there are several
incidents, most of them occurring about the same time, which undoubtedly
indicated mistakes, even if they were not crimes. Thus Pichegru was
found dead in prison. Pichegru was one of the generals of the Republic,
almost worthy of ranking with Hoch and Kléber. He had conquered Holland,
and was credited with the mythical exploit of capturing the frozen-in
Dutch fleet with a squadron of Hussars. (The Dutch had obligingly
forestalled this achievement by surrendering some time previously.)
Later he had been found to be parleying with the Bourbons, and had been
disgraced and exiled. Returning at the time of Cadoudal’s conspiracy, he
had been arrested, imprisoned—and was found one morning dead, with a
handkerchief round his neck which had been twisted tight by means of a
stick. Paris gossip credited Napoleon with the guilt of his death, and
darkly hinted that his confidential Mamelukes had revived the Oriental
process of bowstringing. It is hard to believe that Napoleon really was
guilty, for he could have secured Pichegru’s death by legal methods had
he wished, while if he wanted to kill Pichegru quietly he could have
adopted more subtle means. The blunder lay in his allowing the
circumstances to become known; with his power he could have arranged a
much more satisfactory announcement which would leave no doubt in men’s
minds that Pichegru really had committed suicide. In consequence of his
carelessness Napoleon was also charged with the murder, a year later, of
an English naval officer, Captain Wright, who also committed suicide in
prison.
A more terrible mystery surrounds the death of Villeneuve. This
unfortunate man had been in command at Trafalgar; he had been wounded
and taken prisoner, and had subsequently been sent back to France. As
soon as he landed he found that Napoleon was furious with him as a
consequence of his defeat, and he was found dead in his room at Rennes,
with half a dozen knife-stabs in his body. It was announced that he had
committed suicide, but there are several unpleasant facts in connection
with his death which point to another conclusion. Letters from him to
his wife and from his wife to him had disappeared in the post; the
manner of death was strange, for the knife-thrusts were numerous and one
of them was so situated that it could hardly have been self-inflicted.
Perhaps Napoleon had Villeneuve killed; perhaps the crime was committed
by over-zealous underlings; however it was, it was a serious error on
Napoleon’s part to have allowed any room for gossip whatever. A possible
motive for the crime (if it was one) lies in the fact that Napoleon was
terribly anxious to keep secret the news of Trafalgar; not until the
Restoration was the general French public acquainted with the fact that
the French fleet had been destroyed—Napoleon had never admitted more
than the loss of one or two ships.
It was incidents of this nature which caused the feeling of distrust
which gradually arose in the minds of the French people. Broken treaties
and international bad faith did not move them so much, partly because
they were never in possession of the true facts, partly because a series
of brilliant victories wiped off the smudges from the slate, and partly
because international morality was at its usual low ebb; but tales of
official murder and of unsavoury scandals in high places constitute the
ideal food for gossip, and rumours spread and were distorted in the way
rumours are, until a large section of the public had lost its faith in
the Emperor. As long as Napoleon was successful in the field this
defection was unimportant, but as soon as his power began to ebb it
became decidedly noticeable, and, as much as anything else, helped to
reconcile the mass of the people to the return of the Bourbons.
It has been well said that the man who never makes any mistakes never
makes anything else, and allied to this statement is Wellington’s famous
dictum (which applies equally well to all kinds of endeavour) that the
best general is not the one who makes fewest mistakes, but the one who
takes most advantage of the mistakes of his opponent. On examining
Napoleon’s career one finds mistakes innumerable—and the successes are
more numerous still. In military matters the explanation lies in the
extreme and elaborate care Napoleon devoted to his strategic
arrangements. His movements were so planned that no tactical check could
derange them. His _bataillon carré_ of a hundred thousand men, with
Lannes the incomparable at the head of the advanced guard, could take
care of itself whatever happened. The advanced guard caught the enemy
and pinned him to his ground, providing that fixed point which Napoleon
always desired as a pivot, and then the massed army could be wheeled
with ease against whatever part of the enemy’s line Napoleon selected.
If victory was the result, then the pursuit was relentless; if perhaps a
check was experienced, then the previous strategy had been such that the
damage done was minimized. It was this system which saved him at Eylau
and which was so marvellously successful at Friedland.
The occasions when danger threatened or when disaster occurred were
those when Napoleon did not act on these lines. The campaign of 1796,
indeed, shows no trace of the “Napoleonic system.” The principles which
Napoleon followed were only those of the other generals of the period,
but they were acted upon with such vigour and with such a clarity of
vision that they were successful against all the odds which the Aulic
Council brought to bear. At Marengo, on the other hand, the conditions
were different and more exacting. This victory had to be as gratifying
as possible to the French nation—it had to be gained by extraordinary
means; it had to be as unlooked-for as a thunderbolt, as startling as it
was successful, and it must bring prodigious results. Also (for
Napoleon’s own sake) it had to be gained as quickly as possible, so that
he could return to Paris to overcome his enemies.
The Austrians had overrun Italy, were besieging Genoa, and had advanced
to the Var. No mere frontal attack upon them would fulfil all the
onerous conditions imposed upon the First Consul. A series of successes
painfully gained, resulting in the slow driving of the Austrians from
one river line to another, might be safe, but it would not be dramatic
nor unexpected, and, worst of all, it would not be rapid. Napoleon took
an enormous risk, and led his Army of Reserve over the Alps. He had
satisfied the need for drama; now he had to justify himself by a speedy
victory. Defeat, with an impassable defile in his rear, meant nothing
less than disaster; but delay, with his enemies gradually rallying at
Paris, meant similar disaster. The strain became unbearable, and
Napoleon scattered his army far and wide in his endeavour to come to
grips with the Austrians. The risk he ran was appalling, and was almost
fatal, for the fraction of the army which he still retained under his
own hand was suddenly attacked by the combined Austrians, and driven
back. Napoleon flung himself into the battle; somehow he kept his
battered battalions together until three undeserved strokes of luck
occurred simultaneously. Desaix arrived with his stray division; Zach
unduly extended the Austrian line; and Kellermann was afforded an
opportunity for a decisive charge. In ten minutes the whole situation
was changed. Marengo was won; it was the Austrians who were defeated
without an avenue of retreat; and Napoleon was free to enjoy the
intoxication of supreme power—and to meditate on the destiny which had
saved him from indescribable disgrace.
The errors into which Napoleon fell during the campaign of 1805 were
mainly the result of his overestimation of his adversaries’ talents. No
one could possibly have imagined that Mack would have been such a
spiritless fool as to stay in Ulm and allow himself to be surrounded by
an army three times his strength. Napoleon certainly did not expect him
to, and made his dispositions on the supposition that Mack would
endeavour to fight his way through to Bohemia or Tyrol. But Mack
remained paralysed; the one gap left open was closed to him by Ney’s
dashing victory at Elchingen, and all that remained to be done was for
Napoleon to receive the timid surrender of thirty thousand men and for
Murat to hunt down whatever fragments were still at large. Five weeks
later the Russians were destroyed at Austerlitz. There is no manœuvre of
Napoleon’s during these five weeks at which anyone can reasonably cavil;
the faint criticism that Napoleon ought not to have advanced as far as
he did into Moravia is easily falsified by the fact that by this means
he was able to find room for his retreat on Austerlitz which gave so
much heart to the Russians and which induced them to make their ruinous
attack on his right wing.
The mistakes which Napoleon made during the Jena campaign have already
been fully discussed. He made several gross miscalculations, and his
only justification is his final success. As the war went on, however,
and the French advanced into Poland, we find Napoleon at his very best
strategically. At Eylau he blundered in sending forward Augereau’s corps
in their mad rush at the powerful Russian line, but once again he was
able to extricate himself from his difficulties, and Friedland settled
the matter.
It is now that we come to the most disastrous adventure of all—the
Spanish affair. The remark has been made that until 1808 Napoleon had
only fought kings, and never a people. He plunged into the involved
politics of Spain expecting as easy a victory as Masséna’s conquest of
Naples in 1806, or Junot’s conquest of Portugal in 1807. He was sadly
mistaken. And yet one can find traces indicating that he was taking all
possible precautions. His instructions to his representatives at Madrid
certainly suggest that he was trying to frighten the Spanish royal
family out of the country, and that only when this scheme had been upset
by the abdication of Charles at Aranjuez (which could not possibly have
been foreseen) did he call the suicidal conference of Bayonne. The
Portuguese royal family had fled from Junot; the Neapolitan Bourbons had
fled from Masséna; it might have been expected that the Spanish Bourbons
would have fled from Murat, especially as they had rich American
dependencies in which to settle. The Spaniards would not have fought
half so hard for a craven King in America as they did for one who was
pictured to them as suffering a martyr’s torments in a French prison. So
far Napoleon’s methods are perhaps justified in every way except
morally. But from this time onward he made mistake after mistake. He
entrusted the conquest of Spain to officers and troops of poor
quality—generals like Savary, Dupont and Duhesme, with mere provisional
regiments formed from the sweepings of the depôts. The capitulation of
Baylen and the loss of Madrid were the natural consequence. In wrath
Napoleon called upon the Grand Army. He plunged into Spain, routed the
wretched Spanish levies, pressed on to conquer all Spain and—was forced
to wheel back to counter Moore’s swift thrust at his rear.
Napoleon never returned to the Peninsula. It was not central enough; he
could not from there keep an eye on the rest of Europe. He endeavoured
instead to direct affairs from Paris, with the result that what little
order remained dissolved into chaos. His despatches arrived six weeks
late, and co-ordination was impossible. The best course left open to him
was to entrust the supreme command in Spain to the most capable of his
subordinates, someone who could make his plans on the spot and see that
they were carried out. But there Napoleon stopped short. Give to another
Frenchman the command of three hundred thousand men and all the
resources of a vast kingdom? Unthinkable! So matters drifted from bad to
worse while the Marshals quarrelled among themselves, while Joseph and
Jourdan tried to make their authority felt, and while Napoleon blindly
stirred up still further trouble among them.
Worse than this; Napoleon entirely misread the character of the Spanish
war. Despite his own experiences there, he did not realize the enormous
difficulties with which the French armies had to contend. He set three
hundred thousand men a task which would have kept half a million fully
occupied, and he further hampered them by the niggardly nature of their
allowances of money and material. He under-estimated the fighting power
of the guerillas, of the Portuguese levies, and (worst of all) of the
English army. He over-estimated the power of his name among the
unlettered Spanish peasants. He left entirely out of account the
impossibility of communication and of supply. In a word, there was no
error open to him into which he did not fall.
The Spanish trouble had hardly assumed serious dimensions when in 1809
Austria made one more bid for freedom and commenced hostilities against
him. As busy as he could possibly be with Spanish affairs, with troubles
in Paris, and with ruling the rest of Europe, Napoleon delayed before
going in person to the seat of war. He miscalculated the time necessary
to Austria to mobilize, and he entrusted the temporary command to
Berthier—two grave errors. Only Davout’s skill and his own
unconquerable energy staved off a serious disaster and snatched a
victory from the jaws of defeat. The French pressed on to Vienna. This
time there was no Auersperg to be cozened out of his command of the
Danube bridge; the crossings were all broken down, and Napoleon was
compelled to force a passage in face of a hostile army of equal
strength—the most delicate operation known to military science.
Napoleon’s first attempt was rash to the verge of madness. It was simply
a blind thrust at the heart of the opposing army; the bridges provided
were insufficient, and broke down through enemy action at the crisis of
the battle; the staff work and the arrangements generally appear to have
been defective. Thirty-six hours of fierce fighting saw the French
hurled back again; Masséna’s tenacity and Lannes’ daring saved the army
from destruction, but the cost of defeat amounted to twenty thousand
men—among them was Lannes, the hero of Montebello, of Saalfeld, of
Friedland, of Saragossa; one of the few who dared to say what they
thought to the Emperor, and one of the few who enjoyed his trust and
friendship.
To point the moral, Napoleon contrived soon afterwards to bring up huge
reinforcements, and then to cross the Danube without opposition. The
movement was carefully planned and carried out, and the results were the
victory of Wagram, the armistice of Znaim, and the dismemberment of
Austria. If, after experiencing a severe defeat, Napoleon could succeed
in bringing up the Army of Italy and crossing the Danube without
opposition, he could surely have done so at the first attempt. The
battle of Aspern is typical of Napoleon’s reckless methods and of his
under-estimation of the enemy.
In this campaign of 1809 Napoleon’s fall was nearly anticipated. Had the
forty thousand men whom England sent to Walcheren, too late, been
despatched a little earlier, under a competent general; had Prussia
flung her weight into the scale at the same time, it is hard to see how
Napoleon could have recovered himself. Germany was already prepared to
revolt, Tyrol was ablaze with insurrection, Wellington was marching into
the heart of Spain, Russia was ready to change sides at a moment’s
notice. What saved Napoleon was the fact that three of his enemies were
timid and incompetent. Chatham could achieve nothing in the Netherlands;
Frederick William III. hesitated in Prussia, and Francis of Austria,
although Wagram was not in the least a crushing defeat, decided that he
could not continue the struggle.
We have already dealt in part with 1812 and 1813. There are mistakes in
plenty here, although now they were accentuated by the worst of ill
luck. The whole advance into Russia was one gigantic error; not even
Napoleon’s tremendous efforts could counter-balance the handicaps which
he encountered, and which he ought to have foreseen. As far back as 1807
he had commented bitterly on the horrible Polish roads and on the
clinging black mud of that district; he should have realized that it was
impossible for him to feed an army five hundred thousand strong by road
transport under such conditions. Nevertheless, he nearly succeeded at
Smolensk in countering a strategic disadvantage by a tactical victory,
in the same manner as he had done twelve years before at Marengo. Even
after utter ruin had descended upon him, he contrived by his gigantic
labours to raise a new army and to enter afresh into the field in 1813
before his enemies were ready for him. The early movements in the
campaign are practically perfect; until after Bautzen he showed all his
old brilliancy and skill—negatived this time by the mistakes of
subordinates. But from Bautzen onwards we find repeated errors both in
policy and in the field. It was a mistake to enter into the armistice of
Pleisswitz; it was a mistake not to secure the neutrality of Austria,
even if it had cost him the whole Kingdom of Italy; it was a mistake not
to accept the Allies’ offers of peace; it was a mistake not to send back
Ferdinand to Spain and extricate himself somehow from the tangle of the
Peninsular War; it was a mistake to send Oudinot and Ney against Berlin;
it was a mistake to try to hold the line of the Elbe; it was a mistake
to fight at Leipzig; and, having decided to fight, it was a mistake not
to see that there was a satisfactory line of retreat over the Elster.
It is clear that Napoleon was not the man he once was. And yet—and yet
he nearly saved the whole situation at Dresden! Three days’ fighting
there nearly counter-balanced all the disasters of the previous eighteen
months. Smolensk, Bautzen and Dresden—three times he almost made up for
all his defeats. The conclusion is forced upon one that all through the
years of victory Napoleon was on the verge of defeat, and all through
the years of defeat he was on the verge of victory. For twenty years the
fate of Europe hung balanced upon a razor edge.
Napoleon’s good luck is very evident; his bad luck was an equally potent
factor in his career. On striking a balance and considering what
enormous success was his for a time, the resultant inference is
unavoidable. He was vastly superior to all the other men of his time;
his superiority was such that individual differences between others fade
into insignificance when contrasted with the difference between him and
anyone else who may be selected for comparison. He was superior not
merely in mental capacity, but in all other qualities necessary for
success in any sphere of business. His moral courage was enormous; his
finesse and rapidity of thought were unequalled. He hardly knew what it
was to despair. His adaptability and his fertility of resource were
amazing.
In spite of this (or perhaps because of this) it is very easy to detract
from any of his achievements. The Code Napoleon, his most enduring
monument, was not his own work, nor, of course, can much credit be given
to his assistants. Codification of laws is in no way a new idea—it is
almost contemporary with laws themselves. Napoleon’s German policy was
much the same as that of Louis XIV.; his Italian policy is reminiscent
of Charles VIII.’s or even earlier; the germ of his Oriental policy can
be found in that of Louis IX.; his Spanish policy was similar to, but
more unsuccessful than that of his predecessors. Even the Continental
system was only the development of previous schemes to their logical
climax. In his Court arrangements Napoleon brought no new idea into
play; most of his regulations were elaborated from the ceremony which
surrounded the Soleil Monarque, while others were borrowed from the
etiquette of the courts of Vienna and Madrid. Any approaching ceremony
called for an anxious examination of precedents; if Napoleon could find
a parallel far back stamped with the approval of a Valois or an
Orléans-Angoulême the matter was settled on the same lines, no matter
what inconveniences resulted. Similarly in purely Imperial concerns he
was always harking back to Charlemagne or to the Empire of Rome. It is
exceedingly probable that his annexation of Spain north of the Ebro in
1812, which excited roars of derision all over Europe because
three-quarters of the district was aflame with guerillas who shot on
sight any Frenchman they met, was directly inspired by Charlemagne’s
action a thousand years before. Charlemagne’s Spanish campaign, even if
it added the Spanish March to his dominions, cost him his rearguard and
all his Paladins; Napoleon might well have taken warning. The references
to Imperial Rome, from the design of his coinage and the plan of the Arc
de Triomphe to the “cohorts” of the National Guard and his adoption of
Eugène, are too numerous to mention. We even find him going back farther
still, and complaining that he could not, like Alexander, announce
himself as of divine birth and the son of Jupiter.
In military matters an equally well (or ill) founded charge of
unoriginality can be brought against Napoleon’s methods. To those of us
who saw a short time ago what changes four years of war wrought in the
weapons and tactics employed, it seems amazing that at the end of twenty
years of life and death struggles the soldiers were still armed with the
smooth bore flintlock musket which had already been in use for a
century. Only two important new weapons were evolved, and neither of
them attained any great popularity. They were shrapnel shell and
military rockets, and the latter, at least, Napoleon never employed. The
rifle never attained any popularity with him, although to us it seems
obvious that it was the weapon of the future. Fulton offered Napoleon
his steamboat invention, and was treated as a wild dreamer—at the very
time when Napoleon was most preoccupied with the problem of sending an
army across the Channel. As an irresponsible autocrat, Napoleon had
boundless opportunities of testing and employing any new invention which
might be suggested, but he made no use of them. In this respect he
compares unfavourably with his far less gifted nephew. Napoleon III.’s
system of “sausages and champagne” certainly finds a parallel in his
uncle’s treatment of his troops when not on active service. When
Napoleon’s armies returned victorious they were received with fêtes and
salutes innumerable; an ignorant observer might well have believed them
to be demigods, to whom ceremonies and sacrifices were peculiarly
acceptable. The arrangement had a double effect; it is certainly good
for an army’s esprit de corps for the men to be considered demigods; and
it is certainly useful for an autocrat whose rule is based on his army
to have his subjects believe that that army is semi-divine. But for the
little personal comforts of his men Napoleon took small notice. They
were not relieved of the cumbersome features of their uniforms; even if
they were not worried by petty details of pipeclay and brass polish as
were the English, they were still forced to wear the horrible stock and
tunic which Frederick the Great had set in fashion. The French army
slang term “bleu” for recruit has its origin in the fact that the
recruits for the old army used to go black and blue in the face owing to
the unaccustomed restriction of the Napoleonic stock. The French helmets
may have been imposing, but they were terribly uncomfortable to wear.
The gain in efficiency resulting from a radical change in these matters
must have counter-balanced any possible loss in esprit de corps had
Napoleon seen fit to bring this change about.
It is with trembling and delicacy that one approaches the realm in which
Napoleon apparently reigns supreme—that of tactics. It is a rash act to
say that the winner of sixty battles won them badly. Yet one cannot help
making a few cautious comments. When Napoleon attained supreme power the
line and the column were almost equally in favour in the French army.
The most usual formation in action was the line, backed at intervals by
the column. At Marengo this arrangement was largely employed, and was
successful. As time went on, however, we find that the line disappeared,
its place was taken by additional skirmishers, and the columns became
heavier and heavier. The system was altogether vicious; the column is
both untrustworthy and expensive. French columns might be successful
when pitted against any other columns, but they failed against
disciplined infantry formed in line. Every battle and combat fought by
the English, from Alexandria and Maida to Vittoria, proved this, but
Napoleon and his officers never learnt the lesson. The Emperor’s letters
to his generals in Spain give repeated examples of his contempt for the
English and Portuguese troops; it was hardly a contempt that was
justified. And despite all these warnings, despite (so it is reported)
Soult’s and Foy’s pleadings, the first grand attack at Waterloo was made
by twenty thousand infantry herded together twenty-four deep. This
clumsy mass was easily held up, outflanked and forced back by six
thousand English and Hanoverians under Picton. It was not the first
example which had been forced upon Napoleon’s notice of the uselessness
of the column. At Wagram he had sent Macdonald’s corps, some twenty
thousand strong, against the Austrian centre, massed in a gigantic
hollow square, which can be considered as forming two columns each about
thirty-five deep. Macdonald reached his objective, but by the time he
arrived his men were so jostled together, ploughed up by artillery, and
generally demoralized that they could effect nothing. One lesson such as
this ought to have convinced Napoleon, but it did not. He continued to
use columns—and he was beaten at Waterloo. It is frequently urged in
his defence that the column was the “natural” formation in the French
army, that tradition had grown up around it, so that it was unsafe to
meddle with it, that French troops fight better in column than in line,
and that his troops were of necessity so raw that they could not be
trusted in line. These arguments seem completely nullified by the facts
that the line was actually employed early in Napoleon’s career, that
both before and after Waterloo French troops fought well in line, and
that at Waterloo, at any rate, the French troops were all well-trained,
while Picton’s men were largely new recruits.
The employment of cavalry in the Imperial armies might similarly be
condemned as extravagant and inefficient. The system of Seidlitz under
Frederick the Great was forgotten. Napoleon had uprooted the triumphal
memorial erected at Rossbach, and with it it seemed he had uprooted the
memory of the charges with which Seidlitz’ hard-welded squadrons had
routed the army of France fifty years before. Murat’s famous charges
were not pressed home in the hard, utterly logical fashion of
Frederick’s cavalry. If the opposing infantry stood firm at the approach
of the cavalry, then the latter parted and drifted away down each flank.
If (as must be admitted was much more usual) the infantry broke at the
sight of the horsemen tearing down on them, then the pursuit was pushed
home remorselessly, but never do we find the perfect charge, in few
ranks, packed close together and held together like a steel chain, which
must overturn everything in its way. Under Napoleon the French cavalry
never charged home; at Waterloo we find the great cavalry charges, which
Ney directed against the English squares, made at a trot, and the
horsemen, swerving from the steel-rimmed, fire-spouting squares,
wandering idly about on the flanks, while a few of the more enterprising
cut feebly at the bayonets with their sabres. Wellington’s description
of them riding about as if they owned the place argues powerfully
against their ever having flung themselves upon the bayonet points, as
good cavalry should do if sent against unbroken infantry.
In fact, both the French infantry and the French cavalry relied upon the
moral effect of their advance rather than upon their capacity for doing
damage when they made their charges. It is perfectly true that they were
generally successful; Napoleon’s dictum that the moral is to the
physical as three to one was borne out in a hundred battles from Arcola
to Dresden; but it was found wanting at Vimiero, at Busaco, at Borodino,
at Waterloo, everywhere in fact, where the enemy was too stubborn or
well-disciplined to flinch from the waving sabres or the grenadiers’
gigantic head-dresses.
In the wider field of strategy it cannot be denied that Napoleon made
use of original devices and brought about revolutionary changes in the
whole system. They do not appear in the Italian campaign of 1796 nor in
the campaigns of Egypt and Marengo, but in 1805 we find the cavalry
screen completely contrived and in efficient working order; in 1806 the
strategic advanced guard; and in 1807 the perfect combination of the
two. The curious part is that Napoleon himself did not seem to realize
the importance of his own inventions; time and again in 1812 and 1813 he
did not employ them, with invariably disastrous results. It seems a
mistake on Napoleon’s part not to have made use of the new devices on
these occasions, but it is unwise to condemn him offhand, because it
seems inconceivable that he of all persons did not appreciate the
magnitude and efficiency of his own discoveries; there must have been
some reason not now apparent for these actions.
It is very nearly impossible to discover any action of Napoleon’s which
was not faulty in some way, or which could not be improved upon. But
since he met with unprecedented success the only conclusion is that,
although his mistakes were many, they were far fewer than would have
been the average man’s. Furthermore, since his schemes were all so
direct and simple (a comparison between his plan and Moreau’s for the
crossing of the Rhine at Schaffhausen in 1800 is very illuminating on
this point), no one can help feeling a sneaking suspicion, when reading
of Napoleon’s achievements, that he could not have done the same—only
just a little better. Thiers’ long-drawn panegyric grows ineffably
wearisome simply on this account; the writer’s efforts to minimize his
hero’s errors are so obvious and so ineffective that the reader is
irritated by them, while the continued superlatives seem to be given
with gross unfairness to a man whose blunders are so difficult to
conceal. It is far easier to write a panegyric on a man who has done
nothing whatever than on a man whose whole life was spent in productive
activity.
Of what has sometimes been termed Napoleon’s cardinal error, the
Continental System, I have not ventured to speak. As originally
conceived it was undoubtedly a wise move. If France could exist without
English products, then obviously it was a sound proceeding to deprive
England of so rich a market for her goods. The complications make the
question much more difficult. Certainly the effort to close the whole of
Europe to British trade led Napoleon into damaging annexations and
disastrous wars, while the fact that the countries involved, Russia, for
instance, preferred to fight rather than to continue to enforce the
system, seems to indicate that it was impossible to enforce—that the
country (or at least its Government) could not continue to exist without
British trade. This is the simplest complication of all. It is when we
come to consider Napoleon’s juggling with permits and licenses that we
become involved in the fog which surrounds all tariff questions. The
only certain points are that Napoleon derived a large revenue from his
licenses, that the British Government was frequently severely
embarrassed for want of money (the difficulties involved in collecting
sufficient gold to pay subsidies and the expenses of armies in the field
led to unfortunate delays), and that the discontent of the Continent was
great and general. It is a purely arbitrary matter, dependent on the
personal equation, to come to any decision as to the balance of these
conclusions.
Taking the career of Napoleon as a whole, it is easy to see how
frequently he was guilty of errors; what should also be obvious is that
it was almost inevitable that he should fall into these errors. If the
Austrian marriage was a mistake, then it was a mistake Napoleon could
not help making; undoubtedly he did the best he could for himself in the
prevailing circumstances. If the advance into Russia was a mistake, it
is impossible to indicate what alternative could have been chosen, for
Napoleon, at war with Russia, could not safely remain at war without
gaining a decision; he could hardly maintain an army on the Russian
frontier awaiting Alexander’s pleasure.
If it was a mistake to advance into Belgium in June, 1815, it would have
been a far worse one not to have advanced. The greatest mistake of those
into which he was _not_ driven by circumstances was his theft of the
throne of Spain—and it was that which ruined him.
[Illustration: MASSENA
(PRINCE D’ESSLING AND DUC DE RIVOLI)]