Ezpeleta, and several officers and chiefs of corps, were wounded upon
this occasion; but General Mendizabal continued in the field. The
regiment _de Tiradores de Cantabria_, under the command of Colonel Leon
de Sicilia, kept its position, under the enemy’s entrenchments, until I
ordered it to retire.
In the meantime, Marshal Sir W. Beresford, with the 4th division, under
the command of Lieut.-General Sir L. Cole, and the 6th division, under
the command of Lieut.-General Sir H. Clinton, attacked and carried the
heights on the enemy’s right, and the redoubt which covered and
protected that flank; and he lodged those troops on the same height with
the enemy; who were, however, still in possession of 4 redoubts, and of
the entrenchments and fortified houses.
The badness of the roads had induced the Marshal to leave his artillery
in the village of Montblanc; and some time elapsed before it could be
brought to him, and before Lieut.-General Don M. Freyre’s corps could be
re-formed and brought back to the attack. As soon as this was effected,
the Marshal continued his movement along the ridge, and carried, with
General Pack’s brigade of the 6th division, the two principal redoubts
and fortified houses in the enemy’s centre. The enemy made a desperate
effort from the canal to regain these redoubts, but they were repulsed
with considerable loss; and the 6th division continuing its movements
along the ridge of the height, and the Spanish troops continuing a
corresponding movement upon the front, the enemy were driven from the
two redoubts and entrenchments on the left; and the whole range of
heights were in our possession. We did not gain this advantage, however,
without severe loss; particularly in the brave 6th division.
Lieut.-Colonel Coghlan of the 61st, an officer of great merit and
promise, was unfortunately killed in the attack of the heights.
Major-General Pack was wounded, but was enabled to remain in the field;
and Colonel Douglas, of the 8th Portuguese regt., lost his leg; and I am
afraid that I shall be deprived for a considerable time of his
assistance.
The 36th, 42nd, 79th, and 61st, lost considerable numbers, and were
highly distinguished throughout the day.
I cannot sufficiently applaud the ability and conduct of Marshal Sir W.
Beresford throughout the operations of the day; nor that of
Lieut.-Generals Sir L. Cole, Sir H. Clinton, Major-Generals Pack and
Lambert, and the troops under their command. Marshal Sir W. Beresford
particularly reports the good conduct of Brig.-General d’Urban, the
Quartermaster-General, and General Brito Mozinho, the Adjutant-General
to the Portuguese army.
The 4th division, although exposed on their march along the enemy’s
front to a galling fire, were not so much engaged as the 6th, and did
not suffer so much; but they conducted themselves with their usual
gallantry.
I had also every reason to be satisfied with the conduct of
Lieut.-General Don M. Freyre, Lieut.-General Don G. Mendizabal, Marisco
de Campo, Don P. Barcenas, Brig. Don J. de Ezpeleta, Mariscal de Campo
Don A. Garcas de Marcilla, and the Chief of the Staff, Don E. S.
Salvador, and the officers of the Staff of the 4th army. The officers
and troops conducted themselves well in all the attacks which they made
subsequent to their being re-formed.
The ground not having admitted of the operations of the cavalry, they
had no opportunity of charging.
While the operations above detailed were going on, on the left of the
army, Lieut.-General Sir R. Hill drove the enemy from their exterior
works in the suburb, on the left of the Garonne, within the ancient
wall. Lieut.-General Sir T. Picton likewise, with the 3rd division,
drove the enemy within the _tête de pont_ on the bridge of the canal
nearest to the Garonne; but the troops having made an effort to carry it
they were repulsed, and some loss was sustained. Major-General Brisbane
was wounded; but I hope not so as to deprive me for any length of time
of his assistance; and Lieut.-Colonel Forbes, of the 45th, an officer of
great merit, was killed.
The army being thus established on 3 sides of Toulouse, I immediately
detached our light cavalry to cut off the communication by the only road
practicable for carriages which remained to the enemy, till I should be
enabled to make arrangements to establish the troops between the canal
and the Garonne.
The enemy, however, retired last night, leaving in our hands General
Harispe, General Baurot, General St. Hilaire and 1,600 prisoners. One
piece of cannon was taken on the field of battle; and others, and large
quantities of stores of all descriptions, in the town.
Since I sent my last report, I have received an account from
Rear-Admiral Penrose of the successes in the Gironde of the boats of the
squadron under his command.
Lieut.-General the Earl of Dalhousie crossed the Garonne nearly about
the time that Admiral Penrose entered the river, and pushed the enemy’s
parties under General Lhuillier beyond the Dordogne. He then crossed the
Dordogne on the 4th, near St. André de Cubzac, with a detachment of the
troops under his command, with a view to the attack of the fort of
Blaye. His Lordship found General Lhuillier and General Desbareaux
posted near Etauliers, and made his disposition to attack them, when
they retired, leaving about 300 prisoners in his hands. I enclose the
Earl of Dalhousie’s report of this affair.
In the operations which I have now reported, I have had every reason to
be satisfied with the assistance I received from the Quartermaster and
Adjutant-General, and the officers of those departments respectively;
from Mariscal de Campo Don L. Wimpffen and the officers of the Spanish
Staff, and from Mariscal de Campo Don M. de Alava; from Colonel Dickson,
commanding the allied artillery; and from Lieut.-Colonel Lord FitzRoy
Somerset and the officers of my personal Staff.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S THANKS (1814).
=Source.=--_Diary of Lord Colchester_, 1861. Vol. ii., p. 505.
_Friday, July 1st._--At three the House of Commons went up with the
Address upon the Treaty, and returned by half-past four. Upon my return
Lord Castlereagh acquainted the House that the Duke of Wellington was
attending, according to his request of being permitted to thank the
House in person. The House was crowded in all parts. The Duke was
admitted, took his seat within the bar, in a chair placed for him, as
usual, on the left hand of the entrance. After sitting down covered, he
rose and thanked the House. When he had finished his speech, I rose, and
taking off my hat, addressed him in reply. He then withdrew; the
acclamation in the House and in the lobby and passages was loud, long,
and reiterated till his departure. He was dressed in his Field-Marshal’s
uniform, with the blue ribbon of the Garter, and another over his
shoulder, and the Golden Fleece in magnificent diamonds hanging from his
neck upon the blue ribbon. I kept on my full dress, and the Sergeant
also his collar, after we returned from Carlton House and until the
ceremony was over.
SPEECH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.
MR. SPEAKER,--I was anxious to be permitted to attend this House in
order to return my thanks in person for the honour they have done me in
deputing a Committee of Members of this House to congratulate me on my
return to this country, and this after the House had animated my
exertions by their applause upon every occasion which appeared to merit
their approbation, and after they had filled up the measure of their
favours, by conferring upon me, at the recommendation of the Prince
Regent, the noblest gift that any subject had ever received.
I hope it will not be deemed presumptuous in me to take this opportunity
of expressing my admiration of the great efforts made by this House and
the Country, at a moment of unexampled pressure and difficulty, in order
to support the great scale of operations by which the contest was
brought to so fortunate a termination.
By the wise policy of Parliament the Government were enabled to give the
necessary support to the operations which were carried on under my
direction. And I was encouraged by the confidence reposed in me by His
Majesty’s Ministers, and by the Commander-in-Chief, by the gracious
favour of H.R.H. the Prince Regent, and by the reliance which I had on
the support of my gallant friends, the General Officers of the army, and
on the bravery of the officers and troops, to carry on the operations in
such a manner as to acquire for me those marks of approbation of this
House for which I have now the honour to make my humble acknowledgments.
Sir,--It is impossible for me to express the gratitude which I feel. I
can only assure the House that I shall always be ready to serve His
Majesty in any capacity in which my services can be deemed useful, with
the same zeal for my Country which has already acquired for me the
approbation of this House.
THE SPEAKER’S REPLY.
MY LORD,--Since last I had the honour of addressing you from this place,
a series of eventful years has elapsed, but none without some mark and
note of your rising glory. The military triumph which your valour has
achieved upon the banks of the Douro and the Tagus, of the Ebro and the
Garonne, have called forth the spontaneous shouts of admiring nations.
Those triumphs it is needless on this day to recount; their names have
been written by your conquering sword in the annals of Europe, and we
shall hand them down with exultation to our children’s children.
It is not, however, the grandeur of military success which has alone
fixed our admiration, or commanded our applause. It has been that
generous and lofty spirit which inspired your troops with unbounded
confidence, and taught them to know that the day of battle was always a
day of victory; that moral courage and enduring fortitude which in
perilous times, when gloom and doubt had beset ordinary minds, stood
nevertheless unshaken, and that ascendancy of character, which, uniting
the energies of jealous and rival nations, enabled you to wield at will
the fate and fortunes of mighty empires.
For the repeated thanks and grants bestowed upon you by this House in
gratitude for your many and eminent services, you have thought fit this
day to offer us your acknowledgments. But this Nation well knows that it
is still largely your debtor. It owes to you the proud satisfaction that
amidst the constellation of great and illustrious warriors who have
recently visited our country, we could present to them a Leader of our
own, to whom all, by common acclamation, conceded the pre-eminence, and
when the will of Heaven, and the common destinies of our nature, shall
have swept away the present generation, You will have left your great
name and example as an unperishable monument exciting others to like
deeds of glory, and serving at once to adorn, defend, and perpetuate the
existence of this country among the ruling nations of the earth.
It now remains only that we congratulate your Grace upon the high and
important mission on which you are about to proceed; and We doubt not
that the same splendid talents, so conspicuous in war, will maintain
with equal authority, firmness, and temper our national honour and
interests in peace.
ODE WRITTEN DURING THE NEGOTIATIONS WITH BUONAPARTE (1814).
=Source.=--Robert Southey: _Poems_.
1. Who counsels peace at this momentous hour,
When God hath given deliverance to the oppress’d,
And to the injured power?
Who counsels peace, when Vengeance like a flood
Rolls on, no longer now to be repressed;
When innocent blood
From the four corners of the world cries out
For justice upon one accurséd head;
When Freedom hath her holy banner spread
Over all nations, now in one just cause
United; when with one sublime accord
Europe throws off the yoke abhorr’d,
And Loyalty and Faith and Ancient Laws
Follow the avenging sword?
2. Woe, woe to England! woe and endless shame,
If this heroic land,
False to her feelings and unspotted fame,
Hold out the olive to the Tyrant’s hand!
Woe to the world, if Buonaparte’s throne
Be suffer’d still to stand!
For by what names shall Right and Wrong be known?
What new and courtly phrases must we feign
For Falsehood, Murder, and all monstrous crimes,
If that perfidious Corsican maintain
Still his detested reign,
And France, who yearns even now to break her chain,
Beneath his iron rule be left to groan?
No! by the innumerable dead
Whose blood hath for his lust of power been shed,
Death only can for his foul deeds atone;
That peace which Death and Judgment can bestow,
That peace be Buonaparte’s, and that alone!
3. For sooner shall the Ethiop change his skin,
Or from the Leopard shall her spots depart,
Than this man change his old flagitious heart.
Have ye not seen him in the balance weighed,
And there found wanting?--On the stage of blood
Foremost the resolute adventurer stood;
And when, by many a battle won,
He placed upon his brow the crown,
Curbing delirious France beneath his sway,
Then, like Octavius in old time,
Fair name might he have handed down,
Effacing many a stain of former crime.
Fool! should he cast away that bright renown!
Fool! the redemption proffer’d should he lose!
When Heaven such grace vouchsafed him that the way
To Good and Evil lay
Before him, which to choose.
4. But Evil was his Good,
For all too long in blood had he been nursed,
And ne’er was earth with verier tyrant cursed.
Bold man and bad,
Remorseless, godless, full of fraud and lies,
And black with murders and with perjuries,
Himself in Hell’s whole panoply he clad;
No law but his own headstrong will he knew,
No counsellor but his own wicked heart.
From evil thus portentous strength he drew,
And trampled under foot all human ties,
All holy laws, all natural charities.
5. O France! beneath this fierce Barbarian’s sway
Disgraced thou art to all succeeding times;
Rapine, and blood, and fire have marked thy way,
All loathsome, all unutterable crimes.
A curse is on thee, France! From far and wide
It hath gone up to Heaven; all lands have cried
For vengeance upon thy detested head;
All nations curse thee, France! for wheresoe’er
In peace or war thy banner hath been spread,
All forms of human woe have followed there:
The Living and the Dead
Cry out alike against thee! They who bear,
Crouching beneath its weight, thine iron yoke,
Join in the bitterness of secret prayer
The voice of that innumerable throng
Whose slaughtered spirits day and night invoke
The everlasting Judge of right and wrong,
How long, O Lord! Holy and Just, how long!
6. A merciless oppressor hast thou been,
Thyself remorselessly oppressed meantime;
Greedy of war, when all that thou couldst gain
Was but to dye thy soul with deeper crime,
And rivet faster round thyself the chain.
O blind to honour, and to int’rest blind,
When thus in abject servitude resigned
To this barbarian upstart, thou couldst brave
God’s justice, and the heart of humankind!
Madly thou thoughtest to enslave the world,
Thyself the while a miserable slave;
Behold the flag of vengeance is unfurl’d!
The dreadful armies of the North advance;
While England, Portugal, and Spain combined
Give their triumphant banners to the wind,
And stand victorious in the fields of France.
7. One man hath been for ten long wretched years
The cause of all this blood and all these tears;
One man in this most awful point of time
Draws on thy danger, as he caused thy crime.
Wait not too long the event,
For now whole Europe comes against thee bent;
His wiles and their own strength the nations know;
Wise from past wrongs, on future peace intent,
The People and the Princes, with one mind,
From all parts move against the general foe:
One act of justice, one atoning blow,
One execrable head laid low,
Even yet, O France! averts thy punishment:
Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind;
Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!
8. France! if thou lov’st thine ancient fame,
Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame!
By the bones that bleach on Jaffa’s beach;
By the blood which on Domingo’s shore
Hath clogg’d the carrion-birds with gore;
By the flesh that gorged the wolves of Spain,
Or stiffened on the snowy plain
Of frozen Muscovy;
By the bodies that lie all open to the sky,
Tracking from Elbe to Rhine the Tyrant’s flight;
By the widow’s and the orphan’s cry,
By the childless parent’s misery,
By the lives which he hath shed,
By the ruin he hath spread,
By the prayers that rise for curses on his head,
Redeem, O France! thine ancient fame,
Revenge thy sufferings and thy shame;
Open thine eyes! Too long hast thou been blind;
Take vengeance for thyself, and for mankind!
9. By those horrors which the night
Witnessed, when the torches’ light
To the assembled murderers showed
Where the blood of Condé flowed;
By thy murdered Pichegru’s fame;
By murdered Wright (an English name);
By murdered Palm’s atrocious doom;
By murdered Hofer’s martyrdom;
Oh! by the virtuous blood thus vilely spilt,
The Villain’s own peculiar private guilt,
Open thine eyes! too long hast thou been blind!
Take vengeance for thyself and for mankind!
MAJOR VIVIAN’S INTERVIEW WITH NAPOLEON IN ELBA (JANUARY, 1815).
=Source.=--J. H. Rose: _Pitt and Napoleon_. G. Bell and Sons, 1912. Pp.
170-172, and 173, 174.
His next subject was politics;--he asked me how Congress went on. I told
him that there were plenty of fêtes, but that little progress was said
to be made in business; and I mentioned to him the _bon mot_ of the
Prince de Ligne, who said--“_Le Congrès danse, mais ne marche pas_,” at
which he smiled. I added, that Poland was understood to be a
stumbling-block; that it was said the Emperor of Russia wanted to form a
kingdom of it, but that the other Powers, it was supposed, feared
Russia’s becoming too formidable. He remarked that it was a power that
went on increasing; a very rising power. He then said that the treaty of
peace between himself and the Allies should have been signed at
Frankfort; separating Germany entirely from France, and taking Holland,
Italy, and Spain from him; but that he never could have consented to
leave France less in territory, than it was when he ascended the throne.
I asked him why he did not make peace at Dresden, when those terms were
offered to him: He said that the Allies were not sincere, and that
besides _les choses_ at that time were different; that had peace been
then made, England would have been saved some thousands of men and much
money; that he considered it very bad policy of England to appropriate
Belgium to herself;[17] that it would probably draw her into a war; for
that any other Continental Power would be sure of France as an ally, by
offering Belgium as a bribe. “Supposing,” said he, “for instance, Russia
were to say to France, ‘Do you take Belgium, and let me have
Poland.’--In short,” added he, “England cannot maintain herself as a
Power of the first rank on the Continent; Belgium must be lost on the
first _coup de canon_. The English Government should have covered and
fortified Belgium, but Antwerp is the object; for a battle fought and
lost before Brussels, which is close to the gates of Paris, would open
the road to Holland. England, with her immense colonies, instead of
being obliged to keep up a large army to cover Belgium, should withdraw
within her Island, and act when and where she chose.” He spoke of the
Dutch troops, and appeared to have but a poor opinion of them;--their
marine, he said, was much reduced. He expressed himself with much
contempt of the Austrian soldiers, who “would not fight without a belly
full.”--Referring to the campaign in France, he said that he should have
beaten the Allies, had he not been betrayed; for that the peasants were
taking arms in their rear. I asked him by whom he had been betrayed;
whether by Talleyrand, whom I had heard accused.--He answered so as to
give me to understand he had been a party; but he principally blamed
Marmont and Augereau.[18] The latter, he told me, had a fine army,
superior to the Austrians, and was to have joined him (Bonaparte) in his
last movement; but that he had made his terms with the Allies a
fortnight before, and that he had narrowly escaped being massacred by
his soldiers for his conduct.--I observed to him, that when I had passed
through Paris, I had heard there was an opinion amongst the lower orders
that he and Paris had been sold--“_que l’Empereur et Paris étoient
vendus_.” Blücher, he said, was a brave man, but not a great general;
and added, that he had lost two armies.[19] The Prussians had fought
well.--Of Schwartzenberg, as an officer, he expressed himself
favourably.--Upon my asking him if he did not consider the Duke of
Wellington a good general, he replied, “_Oui_.”--I was not satisfied
with this, but repeated the question in stronger terms, asking if he was
not a very good--an excellent general. He answered, “_Oui, oui!_” with
emphasis, but not another word.--Touching on the Corunna campaign, he
said Moore was a good general, and had saved that army. The Spaniards,
as soldiers, he held very cheap. In the mountains they had done
something, their character was obstinacy (_opiniâtreté_)--they wanted
valour. I mentioned the gallant defence they had made at Saragossa.
This, he said, was _opiniâtreté_;--they were 50,000 men within the
walls, attacked by 15,000. I observed that, at least, the Portuguese had
proved themselves very good troops. This he admitted. “But then,” added
he, “they were officered by British, and of this the national pride
[_fierté_] of the Spaniards would not admit;--besides, the Spaniards are
bigots in religion, and you know that you are heretics” (_vous savez que
vous êtes des hérétiques_), said he, laughing. The French soldiers, he
asserted, were _peu constans_; that he (Bonaparte) knew it well, and had
acted upon it in the campaign in France; that the soldiers could not
bear such a check (_secousse_). He inquired if the English soldiers,
when drunk, were not ungovernable, observing that the French, at such
times, were loving (_doux et tendres_).