WELLINGTON.
Arthur Wellesley was born in 1769, a few weeks before the birth of
Napoleon. His family belonged to “the English in Ireland”--a happy
expression of Mr. Froude; and the future soldier and statesman in his
great career displayed many of the distinctive qualities of a ruling
caste which, though of late decried by traders in faction for selfish
purposes, has nevertheless given more than a due proportion of eminent
men to the service of England. The ancient seat of the Wellesleys has
been long a ruin; the traditions of Meath yield few records concerning
a House which produced two of the most illustrious names in our
eventful history, and all that is really known about the first years
of Arthur is that he was a sickly child, overlooked by his parents.
At Eton the boy showed none of the brilliancy of his elder brother
Richard, a precocious genius; he was unnoticed at the military school
of Angers, and no one who saw the two youths in these years would have
thought that the fame of “the Wellesley of Assaye” would eclipse that
of “the Wellesley of Mysore.”
[Illustration: WELLINGTON.]
Arthur obtained his first commission in 1787; passed rapidly
through the intermediate grades, after the bad fashion of that age
of privilege, and was placed, through interest, at the head of the
Thirty-third, just as the Great War with France had begun. During the
intervening period he had held a seat for the borough of Trim in the
Irish Parliament, and had been on the staff of the Lord Lieutenant
Camden; and some faint memories of his life in those days have survived
down to the present time. Passing by idle gossip, the young member
spoke on the Catholic Relief Bill of 1798; the speech, though dry and
blunt, goes straight to the point, and is characteristic in many ways;
and an old house on the quays of Dublin which commands the Liffey and
the adjoining streets, and which, it is said, he urged the Government
to buy, remains to this day to prove that Wellington had in early youth
a true military eye. It is impossible to doubt that, even in these
years, Arthur had studied and read a great deal, and was well-versed
in his professional work. He had acquired a command of the English
and French tongues which made him the master of a vigorous style, not
brilliant or striking, but clear and solid; his writings nearly of
this date give proof of thorough information on many subjects, and of
singularly ripe and disciplined thought; and from the first moment that
he obtained a regiment, he made his mark as a most promising officer.
Like Turenne, Wellesley addressed himself with untiring industry to
the care of his men; he enforced discipline with a steady hand, and
showed that he had the faculty of command; and, like Turenne, he was
soon able to boast that his corps was well-ordered and very efficient.
The occasion quickly came when the young colonel was to show that he
possessed qualities above those of the common herd of men.
In the unfortunate campaign of 1794 the Thirty-third formed part of
the British army, which, under the command of the Duke of York, had
been separated from the main allied force retreating on a divergent
line to the Meuse, and which, hardly pressed by the Republican levies,
advancing upon the flood-tide of victory, was endeavouring to make its
way into Holland. Wellesley distinguished himself in several rearguard
actions, displaying from the first the skill in defence, the resource
in danger, and the perfect self-reliance, which were peculiar gifts of
the future chief; and it is significant that he was chosen to cover the
retreat, a task he performed with marked ability. These experiences
made a profound impression on a remarkably penetrating and sagacious
mind; they seem to have led him to observe carefully, and to form an
admirably just estimate of what he called “the new methods” of French
warfare, and of what was good and defective in them; they enabled him
to realise the immense abuses then prevalent in the Continental armies,
and to a considerable extent in our own; and, unquestionably, they
were of the greatest use as a preparation for the Peninsular War. It
is remarkable that, after this first essay in arms, most honourable
as it had been to him, Wellesley tried to give up a military career,
and actually applied for a post in the Civil Service; the reason he
assigned was that he saw little chance of advancement through merit
in the British army, to the shortcomings of which he had become fully
alive.
Fate happily disregarded Wellesley’s prayers; and having escaped exile
to the West Indies, he was sent off to Calcutta in 1797. A short time
afterwards, his brother Richard, the Marquis Wellesley of a later day,
arrived in India as Governor-General, and the real career of Arthur
may be said to have opened. Much of his correspondence of this period
remains, and it bears the marks of the prudent forethought, of the
clear insight into men and things, and, above all, of the moderation of
view, which distinguished Wellington when at the summit of fame. He was
often consulted by the Governor-General, and it is interesting to note
how the ambitious statesman,[26] a more brilliant but a less scrupulous
man, was more than once restrained by the calm-minded soldier. Arthur
Wellesley’s judgments on Indian affairs were such as Marcus Aurelius
might have made had he been a Pro-consul in a province of Rome; he was
the constant advocate of peace with honour, of keeping the strictest
faith with the Princes of Hindustan, of no undue extension of our
growing Empire; and yet he thoroughly understood the true nature of
that wonderful domination which, in spite of itself, was winning its
way to supremacy in the East, in virtue partly of its own force, and
in part of the decay of all powers around it, and of the jealousies
and discords of its numerous foes. Another characteristic of these
papers is this: they show that the writer had admirable views on
military and civil administration alike; and the remarks on the whole
system of our Indian Government, which repeatedly occur, are profound
and striking. Peace in India at this time had become impossible; the
inglorious satrapy of Sir John Shore had only encouraged the hopes of
our enemies; and the news of Napoleon’s descent on Egypt, and of his
avowed project to march to the Indus, had animated Tippoo Sahib to
endeavour to break the settlement made by Cornwallis in 1793. I shall
not repeat the often-told tale of the dealings of “citizen Tippoo” with
the Directory of France; of the assistance he received from French
soldiers of fortune; of the siege of Seringapatam, and his death; this
scarcely belongs to Wellesley’s career, who was a subordinate only in
the attack on the fortress, and who, in these operations, happened to
meet one of the few reverses he met through life. He was made Governor
of Seringapatam, and afterwards of Mysore; and in this position he
first gave proof not only of great administrative powers, but of that
capacity for ruling alien races--for reconciling the ascendency of
the English name with the obedience of people completely different--a
gift partly due, perhaps,[27] to his Irish experience, and partly to
firmness, patience, and a strict regard to justice, which stood him in
good stead in Spain and Portugal. Ere long Wellesley, now raised to the
rank of General, had an opportunity to show what he was in command.
He had distinguished himself, when at Mysore, in putting down a
Mahratta partisan who had ravaged the country with part of Tippoo’s
forces; and when Scindiah and Holkar in 1803 made a determined
effort to destroy our Empire, Wellesley was placed at the head of an
independent army, and advanced from Madras into the Central Provinces.
I pass over his forced march to Poona, considered in those days a
remarkable feat, and his rapid operations in the Deccan; and I proceed
at once to the really grand exploit which gave him, for the first time,
a great name in India. Wellesley and Stevenson, in September 1803, were
near the Kaitna, one of the Godavery’s streams, at the head of about
16,000 men; Scindiah’s army, 50,000 strong, commanded and organized
by French officers, was in camp at no great distance; and the two
Englishmen agreed to attack it, on lines divided by a wide range of
hills, strategy which, even in the case of Indian warfare, was too
hazardous, and cannot be justified. Wellesley came up with the enemy
at Assaye, his colleague being still far away; and, as more than once
was seen in his career, his boldness on the ground and his quickness in
action made more than amends for a strategic error. Disregarding all
odds, like Clive at Plassey, he instantly fell on the masses before
him; and though the issue of the battle was doubtful for a time,
nothing could stand against his British foot and horsemen, and in a
few hours he gained a complete victory. Stevenson arrived before long,
and the campaign ended in the easy triumph of Wellesley’s arms, and
in a large increase of our Indian dominions. Yet Assaye had, perhaps,
other results; the strategy of Wellesley was, no doubt, faulty; and the
battle probably gave Napoleon, who let nothing escape him in war, that
first false impression of the “Sepoy general,” which caused him greatly
to undervalue Wellington, with fatal consequences to France in the
Peninsular contest.
Wellington always looked back on India with pride; and nearly two
generations after Assaye, when he had been for many years the first of
living Englishmen, he actually proposed to set off for the East, when
danger threatened our power on the Indus. An attentive observer will,
indeed, perceive that his career in Hindustan foreshadows, in part, his
more renowned career in Portugal and Spain; we see in both the same
sober wisdom, the same administrative gifts, the same intrepid conduct,
if Wellesley had no opportunity to display his skill in defence
in Asiatic warfare. He was back in England a few weeks before the
memorable events of Ulm and Trafalgar; but he was relegated at first to
a civil post, and he became Chief Secretary for Ireland under the Duke
of Richmond.
The state of the island was very critical; the fires of 1798 were still
smouldering, and the unpopularity of the Union strengthened the hands
of the remains of the rebel Irish faction, which continually looked
to France for aid, though, characteristically, scorned by Napoleon.
Wellesley ruled after the fashion of those days: that is, he kept
Celtic discontent down and threw bribes and places to greedy seekers of
both, in order to extend ministerial influence; but he was perfectly
aware of the many abuses then prevalent in the social condition of
Ireland, and his warnings on the subject now appear prophetic. He was
at the bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807; was chosen by Lord Cathcart
to arrange the terms of the surrender of the fleet with the Danish
commander; and won golden opinions in this delicate task from brave
enemies, whom he seems to have pitied. At last, in the summer of 1808,
fortune found for him a place on the theatre of the great events
which were stirring the Continent especially adapted to his peculiar
genius, and launched him on the career which has made him famous. By
this time Napoleon’s first invasion of Spain was ending in calamitous
failure; the French armies were falling back at all points, and the
British Government resolved to strike a blow at Junot and his corps,
isolated in the midst of Portugal. Wellesley set off from Cork in the
middle of July, at the head of about 10,000 men; and a remark he made
to his friend Croker, when leaving, shows the character of the man
and his strong nature. “The French armies,” he said, “have beaten all
the Continent. They have, it seems, adopted a new system; they have
out-manœuvred every enemy they have met, but I do not think they will
outmanœuvre me, though, as a matter of course, I may be outnumbered.”
Wellesley had landed at Mondego Bay in the first week of August; he was
soon joined by about 5,000 men under General Spencer, from the south
of Spain, and he ultimately had nearly 20,000 troops, by the addition
of a British division and some Portuguese auxiliaries. The effect of
the descent was to throw a superior hostile force on the communications
of Junot’s army, and to place it in grave peril, for it was split in
fractions; and Wellesley hoped to cut it off from Lisbon, and, should
a detachment under Sir John Moore co-operate, even to intercept its
retreat on Elvas, and so to cause its complete ruin. This able plan
was frustrated by a series of accidents, though it led to a brilliant
if not a decisive victory. Wellesley attacked and defeated a French
division at Roliça on the 17th of August; and he was in turn assailed
when on the march to Lisbon, at Vimeiro, not far from the coast, by
Junot, who had assumed the offensive with from 14,000 to 16,000 men.
The efforts of the French completely failed; and as their defeated
columns drew off, Wellesley eagerly tried to follow up his success, and
to force Junot against the Tagus, where, even without the aid of Moore,
he might destroy the Marshal. This bold and brilliant stroke was,
however, prevented by the interference of Sir Harry Burrard, a veteran
of the old school, who had come from England, unluckily, to take the
chief command, and the French army escaped unmolested. The Convention
of Cintra soon followed; and though a storm of indignation arose at the
time, because Junot and his troops were landed in France, it is but
fair to remark that as Moore did not complete the operation laid out
for him, the French would probably have made good their retreat. The
one real opportunity was lost at Vimeiro, owing to a change of leaders
at a critical moment.
[Illustration: Theatre, of the
PENINSULAR WAR.]
This short campaign brought out one of the gifts of Wellesley, capacity
for bold offensive movements, not on a grand scale but within limits
where readiness and vigour are of special value. His ability was
recognized at the inquiry held in England, after the affair of Cintra;
and he returned to Portugal in the spring of 1809 in supreme command of
a mixed force of British and of Portuguese troops, perhaps altogether
40,000 strong, which had been assembled for the defence of Lisbon,
and had been organized by Generals Cradock and Beresford. Affairs in
the Peninsula had, by this time, completely changed since the year
before; and it was universally believed in Europe that the whole
country would in a few months become a vassal province of the French
Empire. Napoleon had invaded Spain for the second time, at the head of
forces that nothing could resist; he had swept aside the rude levies
that crossed his path. Saragossa had fallen; a British army, led by
Moore, had narrowly escaped destruction; the national insurrection
seemed, for the moment, crushed; and fully 300,000 veteran soldiers,
commanded by skilful and successful chiefs, were gathered round the
eagles for a march of conquest from the Ebro to the mouth of the Tagus.
Yet Wellesley, with deep sagacity and grand strength of character,
refused, in this state of things, to despair; and he drew elements
of hope from the peculiar nature of a theatre of operations he had
carefully scanned, and from the conditions of French invasion in Spain
and Portugal. Portugal, open to England through the command of the sea,
and scarcely accessible from the Spanish frontier, the only avenue open
to the French armies, could, he insisted, be defended with success, by
a small British force if well supported by the national militia and the
Portuguese Government; and he relied greatly on the immense impediments
which would necessarily beset the French in Spain, owing partly to
the ubiquitous guerrilla risings, partly to the intricacies of a
region of mountains and defiles, partly to the exposed state of the
communications with France, assailable along a vast line, and partly
to the extreme difficulty of concentrating and supporting large forces
which, upon Napoleon’s principles of war, would be compelled to subsist
in a poor and barren country on resources principally drawn from the
spot. These admirable views, set out in detail before Wellesley reached
Portugal in 1809, anticipate the course of the Peninsular war, and in a
great measure foreshadow its event; and if they do not equal Napoleon’s
conceptions in splendour, science, and imaginative force, they indicate
real genius for defence and military wisdom of the highest order.
Wellesley’s first operations were of happy augury, and realised his
predictions with full completeness. Napoleon, before he set off for
Wagram, had made preparations to invade Portugal on what he considered
a sufficient scale, while he continued to extend his power in Spain;
and for this purpose he had directed Soult to march on Lisbon with an
army supposed to be at least 40,000 strong, while Victor was to second
the movement by the valley of the Tagus with about an equal force.
Soult, however, pursued by swarms of guerrillas and making his way
with extreme difficulty, reached Oporto with less than 25,000 men;
though Victor routed a Spanish army, he never approached the Portuguese
frontier; and when Wellesley arrived in Lisbon the two Marshals were
far from each other, unable to co-operate, nay, perhaps, unwilling, and
not in sufficient force to subdue Portugal. Wellesley, rightly aiming
at his nearest foe, marched against Soult with about 30,000 men; and
the operations that followed were very brilliant.
Soult, dreaming of a throne for himself in Portugal, and a somewhat
indolent though a very able man, was surprised and assailed by his
bold adversary; the Douro was crossed by the British army, under the
eyes of a powerful hostile force, by a movement of singular daring and
skill; and a detachment ably sent off by Wellesley all but cut off the
Marshal’s retreat, and nearly involved him in utter ruin. In fact,
Soult only contrived to escape by abandoning his _impedimenta_,
and crossing the ranges that lead into Spain with the wreck of an army,
and the invasion of Portugal ignominiously failed.
The passage of the Douro in the face of Soult is another instance
of the skill of Wellesley in offensive movements upon a contracted
theatre. He now turned his attention towards Victor, far off, yet in
the lowlands of the Tagus; but a long pause in the operations took
place, due, partly, to the maladministration of the British army,
partly to disputes with the dullard Cuesta, in command of the Spanish
army of the west, and partly, too, perhaps, because the English general
had not the fierce energy, in a situation like this, of the warrior
of the campaign of Italy. Wellesley had defeated Soult by the middle
of May; he did not even attempt to advance against Victor until the
last days of June, and it was the third week of July before his army,
having effected its junction with that of Cuesta, was in the valley of
the Upper Tagus, marching in pursuit of the French Marshal. The allied
chiefs were now at the head of about 20,000 British troops and 40,000
Spaniards, mostly new levies; their purpose was to attack Victor,
falling back leisurely towards Talavera; and they moved up the Tagus,
not without hope that they might ultimately reach the Spanish capital,
for they expected aid from a Spanish army in the south.
The long delay which had occurred, however, had enabled the French
armies in the Peninsula to draw towards each other in formidable
strength; the corps of Soult, reorganized and recruited, that of Ney,
and that of Mortier were but a few marches off, behind the screen of
the Avila range. King Joseph at Madrid had a considerable force, which
might easily join hands with Victor; and Wellesley and Cuesta were
in fact moving into the midst of immensely superior foes, strategy
difficult to understand and not to be justified. In the operations that
followed, the French lost one of the best opportunities they ever had
to destroy our power in Portugal and Spain; and the glitter of success
ought not to blind us to the perils incurred by the British commander,
from which he only escaped by accident. In the last days of July Joseph
had come into line with Victor, who had been well-nigh caught. Their
united armies were near Talavera, at least 45,000 strong; and pressing
orders had been given to Soult, to fall on the flank of the allied
army, with the corps of Ney, of Mortier, and his own, 60,000 excellent
troops at least; a movement not in any way difficult, for it only
required a short march, and the passes from the hills were but weakly
guarded. These dispositions were by no means perfect, but they promised
brilliant and decisive success; and they failed only through a series
of mishaps and errors. On the 27th of July Victor attacked the Allies,
in position at Talavera, between the Tagus on their right and a set
of knolls and low hills on the left; and his first effort altogether
failed, though he concentrated his main strength against the British
troops.
The attack was premature and imprudent, for obviously it was the
true course of the French to wait until the advance of Soult would
enable them to assail the Allies, in front and flank, in overwhelming
strength; but Victor, jealous perhaps of his colleague, and eager to
win on his own account, insisted on renewing the fight on the 28th.
The battle raged furiously for several hours; all the attacks on the
British left were baffled; but the intrepidity and skill of Wellesley
were taxed to the utmost to save the centre, and though he undoubtedly
gained the day, the French army drew off unbroken. Ere long, however,
the advanced guard of Soult made its appearance in the plains of the
Tagus; the defeated army resumed the offensive, and in the first days
of August a great French host, from 85,000 to 100,000 strong, was
menacing the Allies in front and rear, and seemed as if on the verge of
a splendid triumph. Had the counsels of Soult, to press on and attack,
prevailed at this juncture, it is difficult to see how Wellesley and
Cuesta could have escaped; and in that event the combined French armies
would not improbably have overrun Portugal, and, perhaps, have even
attained Lisbon. The danger, however, passed away; the French chiefs
separated, and did nothing; and Wellesley, placing the Tagus between
himself and his foes, made good his retreat across the frontier, though
unsupported by his worthless ally, whose conduct, it has been thought,
was not free from treachery.
[Illustration: WELLINGTON AT TALAVERA.]
Wellesley received a peerage for Talavera, and the battle is honourable
to the British army and its chief. The attacks of Victor were ill
conducted, but fully 35,000 French soldiers were opposed to less than
20,000 Englishmen; and yet they retired from the field, defeated.
Talavera, indeed, like Vimeiro before, had proved that the modern
French tactics were not calculated to achieve success against those
long in use in the British service, as regards defensive battles at
least; columns and skirmishers failed to make an impression on the
formidable line of the British infantry, a result which was seen two
thousand years ago in the inferiority of the Greek phalanx to the Roman
legion. Wellesley’s first dispositions were not very good; he did not
occupy the ground in force on his left; but he displayed great resource
and skill on the 28th, and he deserved the victory he fairly won. His
strategy, however, in this campaign was ill conceived, and, indeed,
bad; and it can be explained, perhaps, on the supposition only that he
had no idea what a great hostile force was ready to descend through
the hills on his flank, as he marched in fancied security up the
Tagus. As for the French operations, the plan of the double movement
of Victor and Soult was not ill designed; but it was frustrated by the
inconsiderate haste of Victor, who attacked before the approach of his
colleague; and Napoleon truly observed that combinations like these are
ever liable to mischance and failure, and that Wellesley ought to have
been allowed to advance until the net was made certain to close around
him. Wellesley, however, as it was, only just escaped. The wrath of
Napoleon[28] knew no bounds, for a great opportunity had no doubt been
lost; and the mistake of the English commander confirmed the Emperor in
the low estimate he had formed of an enemy, who was anything but “the
presumptuous, rash sciolist” he held up to ridicule after this campaign.
By this time Wagram had been fought. After the defeat of Austria,
the whole Continent was more than ever under the yoke of Napoleon;
Spain and Portugal were the only points where there was even a show
of resistance to that colossal force; and as the Emperor poured fresh
masses of troops into Spain, and announced that he would march on
Lisbon in person, even the British Government, injured at home by the
calamitous issue of the descent on Walcheren, began to quail and to
wish to give up the contest. Yet Wellington--we now use the revered
name--retained his calm and unbroken confidence; and though the
subjugation of Spain seemed imminent--for three Spanish armies had been
completely routed, and Andalusia was being overrun--he still contended
that the defence of Portugal could be successfully maintained even
in existing circumstances. After his retreat from the Tagus, he had
returned to Lisbon; and, in the autumn of 1809, despite of the fears of
ministers at home, and of the reluctant aid afforded by the Portuguese
Regency--a corrupt and incapable body of men--he made preparations for
the memorable stand in Portugal which has gained him enduring renown.
His own army was now about 30,000 strong; the Portuguese army, drilled
and led by Englishmen, had become a trustworthy force of about equal
strength; and the addition of other Peninsular levies had placed him
in command of more than 100,000 men. Such arrays, however, Wellington
clearly saw could not hope to contend, even in Portugal, against the
masses of which Napoleon disposed, unless means were taken to place
a barrier in the way of the invaders, behind which the forces of the
defence could be securely rallied. For this purpose he chose a position
between the Atlantic and the mouths of the Tagus, covered in front by
a succession of heights, and most difficult to turn on either flank;
and thousands of labourers were quietly employed, with a secrecy which
appears surprising, in constructing the famous Lines which will make
the name of Torres Vedras long live in history. These great works
formed a triple range of entrenchments, thirty miles in length on
their exterior face and about eight in their second extension; the
third was a vast fortified camp, from which the army, if forced, could
embark; and the whole were protected by all the means available to the
art of the engineer, redoubts, inundations, stockades, escarpments,
and formidable batteries commanding vulnerable points. In this
“impregnable citadel,” as has well been said, Wellington “deposited
the independence” of Portugal at first, and ultimately, as it turned
out, of Spain; and clinging to a rock on the verge of the ocean, while
all was fear and mistrust around, he steadily confronted the might of
Napoleon, the undisputed lord of a vanquished Continent. History has no
grander instance of heroic constancy, and of self-reliance justified by
the event.
By the early summer of 1810, the French armies in Spain had reached
the enormous number of 350,000 fighting men, and Napoleon believed the
whole Peninsula to be within his grasp. Engrossed, however, with his
overgrown Empire, and meditating already the invasion of Russia, he
had renounced the idea of crossing the Pyrenees, and conducting the
approaching campaign himself; and this was one of the greatest mistakes
of his life. The Emperor, shut out from the sea by England, and unable
to procure intelligence in Spain, had not the least notion, strange as
it may appear, of the real force in the hands of Wellington, still less
of the Lines of Torres Vedras, and his plan for the contest, formed
without knowledge, was misconceived and false to his own strategy.
He believed that the British army was not 25,000 strong; he took no
account of the Portuguese forces; he thought that the way to Lisbon was
open, or barred only by natural obstacles; and instead of concentrating
200,000 men, in order to overpower Wellington and to turn the Lines on
the landward side, at the verge of the mouth of the Tagus--a difficult
but a possible enterprise--he disposed his armies in such a fashion
that, as the event proved, they were largely wasted and were not strong
enough on the decisive point on the theatre. Reasoning on his false
data, he left Macdonald and Suchet to reduce the east of Spain; he
allowed Soult to remain in the south with a great army, to no useful
purpose, and calculating that this force would be more than sufficient,
he placed 70,000 men in the hands of Masséna, by far the first of
the imperial marshals, with orders to besiege the north-eastern
frontier fortresses, and to “drive the English into their ships from
Lisbon.” This dissemination of his military strength, so contrary to
the principles of war, was due not to wilfulness or over-confidence,
but simply to ignorance of the real facts; the Emperor knew that the
British army was the one enemy he should first dispose of, and he
conceived that he had made this result certain; but his reckonings and
previsions were wholly wrong, and his projects were based on disastrous
errors. The remarkable campaign of 1810 was to illustrate this in
a most striking way, and forms Wellington’s true title to glory in
war. Masséna began operations in the first days of June by investing
Ciudad Rodrigo, a famous stronghold and the key of Portugal from the
west of Spain, and as he was not to advance until after the summer
heats, he conducted the siege in a leisurely manner, though disease
and want had begun to prey on his army. Wellington, who had approached
the beleaguered fortress at the head of about 30,000 men, when made
aware of the strength of the French merely observed the enemy from
secure positions; and all the devices of Masséna to tempt him to fight
were fruitless against his steadfast prudence. Ciudad had fallen by
the middle of July; Almeida, a neighbouring stronghold, met the same
fate, and Masséna had set his army in motion--it numbered about 60,000
men--to invade Portugal in the third week of September, the Marshal
advancing along the Mondego, and the British commander falling back
before him. By the 27th the French had entered a region of mountains
and defiles between the great ranges of the Sierra Alcoba and the
Sierra Estrella, and they found Wellington and his troops in position
on the ridge of Busaco, awaiting their enemy. Masséna did not hesitate
to attack, for he had a great superiority of force; but once more the
column was repulsed by the line, and the assailants only reached the
well-defended heights to be smitten down by the steady British footmen.
The Marshal, bold and persevering, now discovered a track which enabled
him to move his army and turn Wellington’s left. This was not the fault
of the English chief, for he had given directions to secure the pass;
but his position had become no longer tenable, and the French entered
Coimbra in high heart, and confident that they would soon attain Lisbon.
Masséna, utterly ignorant of what was before him, shared this hope with
Ney and Junot, his chief lieutenants; and leaving his wounded and sick
men at Coimbra, spite of a guerrilla warfare gathering on his path,
“the spoiled child of victory” pressed boldly forward, making for the
Lower Tagus and the Portuguese capital. To his great astonishment, the
hostile army, which had retreated slowly and made scarcely a sign,
seemed suddenly to disappear from his view; and Masséna only discovered
the cause when, in the middle of October, he saw the Lines of Torres
Vedras rising in formidable strength, and his enemy, he knew, was
entrenched behind them.
Masséna’s army had, by this time, been reduced to about 50,000 men, and
his adversary had fully 100,000, within lines not to be attacked in
front. Ney and Junot were for an immediate retreat, but the warrior of
Zürich, of Genoa, of Essling, whose great merit was tenacious boldness,
refused to listen to these desponding counsels. He searched the barrier
before him at every point, and only fell back when the state of his
troops had warned him that a further stay was impossible. In his
march from Busaco, Wellington had given orders to ravage the country,
and to destroy its harvests; and though we may, perhaps, regret that
he had recourse to a barbarous and obsolete mode of warfare, it was
very efficacious against invaders who had no magazines when they
left the frontier, and relied for supplies on organized plunder.
Within a few weeks after it had reached the Lines, Masséna’s army,
practised as it was in extortion and rapine, was half-famished; and
the Marshal recoiled from Torres Vedras baffled and indignant, but not
disheartened. Concealing the movement with great skill, he established
his troops in strong positions round Santarem, on the Lower Tagus,
where he was almost inaccessible to attack, and where, at the same
time, he had several lines of retreat, and he might receive aid from
the French army in the South should it advance to the opposite bank
of the river. Here the Marshal made a determined stand, disregarding
the murmurs of inferior men; he sent flying columns through the
surrounding region to obtain means of subsistence by force or terror;
he constructed bridges to cross the Tagus, and he despatched Foy, a
very able man, to Paris, to ask for reinforcements and to inform the
Emperor of the critical state of affairs in Portugal.
Napoleon saw his messenger before the end of November, and it might
have been supposed that the first of strategists would have sent
every available man, as quickly as possible, to Masséna’s aid, for
everything, it had become manifest, depended on the course of events
on the Tagus. But the Emperor was not pleased with the Marshal, on
account of Busaco and the march from Coimbra. He persisted in holding
Wellington cheap; he refused to believe in the strength of the Lines;
he would see no foes but the British army, and the measures he adopted
were quite inadequate to meet a situation already of peril. He ordered
a detachment to be sent from the North of Spain, and to join hands with
Masséna’s army; and he directed Soult to the Tagus from Andalusia, a
distance requiring a long and arduous march, giving his lieutenant,
besides, a dangerous latitude. The results, due partly to want of
knowledge, but principally to obstinacy and unwise arrogance, proved
most disastrous to the Imperial arms.
The detachment from the north reached Masséna’s camp, but instead
of being 20,000 strong, as had been promised, it was not 10,000,
a reinforcement of little worth; and Soult never approached the
Marshal, either because the difficulties in his way were immense
or because, as has often happened with French commanders, and was
conspicuously seen in the Peninsular War, he was selfishly jealous
of a superior colleague. Yet Masséna clung to his positions to the
last. In this unfortunate campaign he showed the great qualities which
have deservedly given him renown in history; and it was not until the
whole adjoining country had been turned into a desolate waste that he
reluctantly yielded to dire necessity. He broke up from Santarem in
March 1811, having, to Wellington’s amazement, contrived to live for
nearly four months on the tracts around him; and his retreat was one
of extreme difficulty, for the British army was soon pressing on his
rear; Coimbra had been taken, and swarms of partisans were gathering
around on every side. The Marshal, however, proved equal to himself;
he conducted the movement with the greatest skill; Ney distinguished
himself in more than one action; and the French army ultimately
recrossed the frontier, having saved its honour, it may be truly said,
but having injured its fair fame by atrocious excesses. It had been
reduced to 40,000 men, in miserable plight and greatly demoralized;
a quarrel between Masséna and Ney increased disorder and destroyed
discipline; and Portugal had been set free, and, as time was to show,
was not to be invaded by Frenchmen again.
Torres Vedras is Wellington’s crown of fame, and gives him his true
place among great commanders. The Lines might have, perhaps, been
turned, had Napoleon put forth his whole strength; but they baffled the
force believed by the Emperor to be sufficient to conquer Portugal and
to drive Wellington out of the entire Peninsula. The conception of the
defence was very fine, for Torres Vedras was all but impregnable; but
the conception was nothing to the moral grandeur of the attitude of
the heroic soldier, who from this rocky nook defied the mighty hosts
which certainly might have been arrayed against him. It adds, too,
to the just renown of Wellington that he met a foeman worthy of his
steel. Masséna possibly made mistakes; he ought not to have fought at
Busaco; it is astonishing that he was not informed of the Lines when
he reached Coimbra, a few marches distant; and he ought not, perhaps,
to have quitted that place, leaving thousands of enemies gathering on
his rear. But the Marshal gave proof of powers of a very high order;
he stood before Torres Vedras to the last moment, surrounded by,
but overcoming danger; his choice of his positions at Santarem may
almost be called a stroke of genius; and he conducted the retreat with
consummate judgment. Apart, indeed, from the decisive effects caused
by Wellington’s masterly defence, the failure of the campaign should
be ascribed, not to Masséna, but to the French Emperor. Napoleon,
ignorant of the real state of affairs, did not give his lieutenant a
sufficient army; when made aware of the existence of the Lines, and
of the strength of his enemy’s forces, he took half measures, which
proved abortive; and the condemnation he passed on his greatest Marshal
was simply a device to screen his own errors, want of real knowledge,
contempt of his foes, and directing war at a distance from the scene.
The results of Torres Vedras were immense; the glory of the French arms
was deeply tarnished; a great general had suddenly appeared, who had
baffled completely the Imperial legions. Continental soldiers began
to study the methods of Wellington with eager hope; the fears of the
Government at home vanished, and it resolved to prosecute the war with
vigour; the complaints of the Junta at Lisbon were silenced; and,
above all, Wellington had been confirmed in the accuracy of his views
respecting the contest, and became the master of largely increased
resources. Secure for the present from attack in Portugal, he began
to make preparations to resist the French along the western frontier
of Spain; and he already hoped that the day was at hand when he might
carry the war into Castile and Leon.
The campaign of 1811 was a prelude to operations he had already
planned; but it was one of many vicissitudes, and of doubtful fortune.
Wellington commanding the resources of England from the sea, really
wielding the power of the Portuguese Government, and turning to account
the great advantage afforded him by a central position between enemies
divided and scattered, besieged Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz,
which, with Napoleon, he correctly judged should be mastered to make
Portugal secure, and to open an avenue to enter Spain. He failed,
however, against the two last strongholds; and though Barrosa and
Albuera shed splendid lustre on the British arms, the campaign had no
marked results, and Wellington was, more than once, in the gravest
peril. The power of Napoleon, though diminished by drafts from Spain
for the invasion of Russia, was, in fact, still prodigiously strong;
and had the Emperor directed it, he would, humanly speaking, have even
now subjugated Spain and Portugal. Masséna, having reinforced his army,
attacked Wellington at Fuentes de Onoro; the English only just escaped
defeat, owing to a dispute between two French chiefs; and Wellington,
indeed, has fairly acknowledged that “had Boney been in command” he
would have lost the battle. On two occasions, moreover, the British
commander might have been overwhelmed if ably assailed. Marmont--who
replaced Masséna, unjustly disgraced--and Soult assembled a great army
to relieve Badajoz, and ought to have won a real victory had they
fallen on Wellington; and Marmont might soon afterwards have attacked
his enemy at Fuentes Guinaldos with fourfold numbers. But the tide
in the affairs of men was setting against Napoleon, and was leading
his sagacious foe to fortune. The conditions of the war, which he had
clearly foreseen, made the dangers of Wellington less than they seemed;
the French Marshals, far apart from each other, and unable to feed
their troops in a wasted country, could not draw together their divided
forces for anything like a well-combined movement; and their increasing
discords, the neglect of their master to examine thoroughly the
situation in Spain, and, above all, the ascendency of success already
gained by the British army and its chief, told with powerful effect on
the course of events.
During the last months of 1811, the British chief made great
preparations to renew his efforts against Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz.
He had secretly brought up a powerful siege train to the frontier
without the enemy’s knowledge; he had made his communications with
the sea easy, by opening the navigation of the Upper Douro; and the
position of the French armies on the theatre of war remarkably favoured
his audacious enterprize. The forces of Napoleon in Spain still
numbered at least 250,000 men; but part of Marmont’s army had been
detached to the East; Soult was in cantonments around Seville; no other
French army was near Portugal; and the fortresses had been left almost
uncovered, for the Emperor had not the least idea that Wellington had
the means to besiege and take them. The English commander first pounced
on Ciudad, and captured it, after a furious assault, in the first days
of January of 1812; and in a few weeks he had triumphed at Badajoz,
the heroism of the attack and the skill of the defence forming a grand
episode of the Peninsular War. His troops suffered enormous losses, and
the British engineers were not, perhaps, as experienced as the French,
in this part of the craft; but Wellington’s only chance was to hurry on
the attack; two relieving armies were not distant; and he properly made
sacrifices for a great object. The fall of the two strongholds incensed
Napoleon; but here again he had himself to blame; Marmont had fairly
warned him of the danger at hand; and this is another striking instance
of his ignorance of what was going on in Spain, and of the mischief of
regulating its affairs from Paris. The success of the British chief at
Ciudad and Badajoz laid open the Spanish frontier from Portugal, and
he resolved to carry out his project of entering Spain; for though his
army was very inferior in force to those of Marmont and Soult combined,
the conditions of the war remained in his favour.
The marshals, as in 1811, were widely apart; they could hardly unite
their armies in a ruined country; and their enemy held a position
between them with an army whose wants were well supplied, and with
little apprehension that the hostile forces in his front could be
largely increased. The first care of Wellington was to seize the
passages on the Tagus which enabled Soult and Marmont to communicate
with each other by a short line; and then, leaving a detachment to
observe Soult, he crossed the frontier in the second week of June
and marched against Marmont with about 40,000 men. The marshal fell
back behind the Douro, in order to collect his scattered forces,
abandoning works which he had constructed as a centre of defence, in
the place of Ciudad; but he was a brilliant, if not a great chief; and
he quickly showed that he had no notion of abandoning the initiative
to the British general. Marmont recrossed the Douro on the 16th of
July, about equal in force to Wellington, but the passage was only a
feint; he crossed the river once more, and made for Tordesillas, an
able movement which brought him near to reinforcements coming from
Madrid, and threatened his adversary’s right and communications with
Portugal. A series of fine manœuvres followed, the French chief ever
trying to outflank his enemy, and the English seeking to cover his line
of retreat; and there can be no doubt that in this game of marches,
the French army was the more agile of the two, and Marmont gained a
distinct advantage. By the 22nd, the marshal had nearly reached the
road from Salamanca to Ciudad Rodrigo, the main communication of his
foe with the frontier; and Wellington was about to decamp as he best
could, when a single false movement gave him a chance and enabled
him to win a glorious victory. Marmont, eager and impetuous, and
perhaps jealous that Jourdan, the leader of the succours at hand,
would claim a share in the hoped-for triumph, incautiously extended
his left too far, in order to cut off the retreat of his enemy. A gap
was thus made in the French line; Wellington seized the occasion with
his accustomed promptness, and he instantly directed a fierce attack
against his antagonist’s left and exposed centre. The marshal at this
moment fell wounded, but his fall could not have changed the event;
his able lieutenant, Clausel, made a fine effort to reform the French
on a new position, and even assumed an offensive attitude, but the
error had been made, and been turned to account; and though the French
made a really gallant stand, their weakened line was pierced through
and through, and they were forced to abandon the fatal field, where
Marmont had hoped to avenge his countrymen for a long succession of
repeated defeats.
Salamanca and the operations before it are characteristic of Wellington
as a chief. He was certainly out-generalled in the first movements,
mainly because the French marched better than the British army; but
probably he would have escaped unscathed, though Marmont had gained a
position on his flank, had he been allowed to retreat unmolested. He
was, however, unwisely attacked and in a reckless fashion; he instantly
fell on the enemy’s centre, with the quickness and daring which marked
his offensive movements on the ground, and he made the French general
pay dearly for venturing on a flank march within reach of his enemy.
Salamanca, in fact, has a strong resemblance to Austerlitz up to a
certain point, but it wants the grandeur and effect of Austerlitz;
and in this, as in all instances, Wellington showed that he could not
follow up a victory with the energy and wonderful art of Napoleon.
As for Marmont, he was at first dexterous, but he made an immense
mistake in extending his left. Like Victor at Talavera, he should have
waited until his reinforcements had come into line; and this, no doubt,
is another example how[29] the characteristic envy of French commanders
had the worst effects in the Peninsular War. The results of Salamanca
were very great, though Clausel rallied the beaten army with an ability
deserving of high praise, and was soon out of the reach of pursuit; the
battle exposed the long line of the communications of the French with
Madrid, and the prospect of a formidable attack on this vital point, as
Wellington had foreseen from the first--and this, too, was Napoleon’s
judgment--placed the entire fabric of the Emperor’s power in the
Peninsula in no small danger.
Napoleon was now far away in the wilds of Russia; and in his absence
the conduct of the French chiefs was marked by precipitate fear and
haste, which, critical as the situation was, was unwarranted, and does
them no small discredit. Joseph fled in inglorious haste from Madrid;
the forces of Clausel and those in the north were drawn together to
hold and guard the communications between Bayonne and Castile; Suchet
in the far east was directed to move; and Soult, in the south, received
positive orders to evacuate Andalusia and to join the King, though
the Marshal was pressing the siege of Cadiz and had matured projects,
not ill-designed, for invading Portugal while Wellington was away. A
single well-aimed stroke had, in short, imperilled the whole position
of the French in Spain, and their operations were so faulty that their
domination seemed about to collapse.
In this state of affairs a single incident caused, for a time, a turn
in the tide of fortune, and even placed Wellington in such straits that
he would have been, not improbably, crushed had Napoleon commanded
the French armies. He had entered Madrid in triumph in the middle of
August, but he was soon on the track of the retreating enemy; and
having driven Clausel’s army before him, he sat down before Burgos
towards the close of September, hoping to master the great avenue from
France into Spain. The fortress was small, but had an able commandant;
the British chief had scarcely a heavy gun; the garrison made a stern
resistance, and after fierce efforts and very great losses, the
assailants were compelled to raise the siege and to fall back before a
host of enemies.
The annals of war present few such examples of the value of a
well-defended stronghold at a critical juncture. Burgos had held out
for a whole month. The time thus gained enabled Soult to come into
line with the other French armies being collected in Castile and the
north, and Wellington had no choice but to retreat at once before the
huge masses directed against him. He conducted the movement with real
ability, but his troops were to a great extent demoralized, and on
one occasion the English commander was saved by a mere chance from
the gravest danger. His army had reached Salamanca by the middle of
November; it was within easy reach of the united French armies, twofold
probably, at least, in strength, and had the French generals fallen
boldly on they ought to have gained a decisive victory. Jourdan eagerly
counselled the true course, but Soult, by nature rather a thoughtful
strategist than an energetic and determined soldier, and borne down
by the ascendency of the British arms, insisted on merely pressing
the retreat, and Wellington was soon across the Spanish frontier. The
Marshals had lost another of the great occasions afforded them in the
Peninsular War.
The campaign of 1812, notwithstanding the disastrous retreat from
Burgos, was nevertheless ruinous in its effects to the French.
Salamanca had been a decisive defeat; the Imperial commanders had
not attacked Wellington, falling back with a much weaker force; the
invaders had permanently quitted the south; above all, the precarious
nature of Napoleon’s power in the Peninsula had been clearly
established. In this position of affairs, the tremendous tale of the
destruction of the Grand Army in Russia fell with immense effect on
the minds of men; it raised the hopes of Wellington to the highest
pitch--he had always foretold that some catastrophe would befall
Napoleon in his career of conquest--it animated his troops with fresh
confidence; it sent a thrill of exultation through Spain and Portugal;
it awed and paralyzed the leaders of the French armies. By this time
Wellington had all England at his back; he was supreme in Portugal,
and swayed the Regency by the glory of success, by his administrative
power, by his impartial justice to the Portuguese race; and he was made
Commander-in-Chief of the Spanish armies, and disposed for the first
time of the military strength of Spain, in spite of the clamour of
factions in the distracted Cortes against a “heretic and domineering
foreigner.” He was now able to place in the field forces nearly
equal in numbers to his foes, and in the spring of 1813 he had his
preparations made for a great effort to set the Peninsula free. The
Imperial armies, however, were still formidably strong, from 190,000 to
200,000 men; they were superior to the Spanish and Portuguese levies,
and as we look back at the course of events, we see that even now, had
they been ably led, they possibly might have achieved success, and
certainly might have avoided disaster. But they were ill-distributed
on the theatre of war; Suchet, in the east, had by far too large a
force; Soult had left Spain, deprived of his command; Jourdan and
Joseph were very inferior men; the strength of the army confronting
Wellington on the frontier was by no means sufficient; the guerrilla
rising was more fierce than ever; and the French commanders had lost
hope and confidence. The general plan of Wellington was to assail the
enemy from many points, in order to distract and detain his forces, and
at the same time to fall in great strength on the exposed line of the
communications of the French; and though faults may, perhaps, be found
in his strategy, the conception was fine, and was admirably carried
out. Suchet was held in check by Murray with a small body of men;
Joseph, who had returned to Madrid, was menaced from the south; a large
Spanish army was assembled in the north; and, meanwhile, Wellington
prepared the master stroke on which he relied for final success. His
army, now about 90,000 strong, advanced from the frontier in the last
days of May, divided into three great masses on a wide front, with
hill ranges between; its chief gave an opportunity, perhaps, but there
was no great warrior to cross his path. It had soon mastered the
line of the Douro, driving before it foes much weaker in numbers; it
gradually united, joined hands with the levies of the north, and found
a new base on the Biscayan seaboard in the English fleet; and then it
seized the main avenues between France and Spain, and sped in full
force to the Upper Ebro. This formidable movement compelled Joseph to
evacuate Madrid, and to draw together all available troops to attempt
a defence; and the French armies in Castile were ere long concentrated
around Vitoria upon the Zadorra--confused masses, already disheartened,
and burdened by _impedimenta_ such as never before weighed down
unlucky troops in retreat. The battle that followed, fought on the 21st
of June, was of enormous importance in its results, but has little
interest for the student of war. The French were, perhaps, 70,000
strong; but 15,000 men had been detached to guard convoys, and to
secure a retreat; the English commander had about 80,000, and the event
was never for a moment doubtful. Nothing could stand against the onset
of the British troops, superior in numbers, and flushed with success;
their foes fought well, as they always did, and Reille, the descendant
of an Irish exile, distinguished himself by skill and valour; but the
main road to Bayonne was lost, and the French were gradually thrown
back on the mountain roads that extend to the frontier. The beaten
army, however, was not hardly pressed; it effected its retreat in fair
order, but it lost nearly all its guns and _matériel_, and it left
behind the spoils of a ravaged country, accumulated through years of
unscrupulous plunder, and strewn over the field in immense profusion.
Vitoria, fitly called the Leipsic of the south, drove all the French
armies out of Spain, with the exception of Suchet’s force in the east,
and the garrisons of Pampeluna and San Sebastian, reinforced by Joseph
before he crossed the Pyrenees. Napoleon, by this time, had made a
prodigious effort to retrieve the disasters of the campaign in Russia;
France had answered his summons to the field with energy; and he had
won great victories at Lützen and Bautzen, followed by the suspension
of arms at Pleistwitz. Austria now held the balance between the
belligerent Powers; she had long inclined to the allied cause, but she
dreaded Napoleon, and held aloof until Vitoria determined her purpose
and she threw in her lot with the Coalition which, in a few months,
overthrew the Emperor. The campaign of 1813 in Spain, therefore,
was really of supreme importance, and a word of comment should be
pronounced upon it. The general plan of Wellington was, perhaps, to
be justified, as affairs stood; it was his only offensive combination
on a grand scale; it was perfectly executed, and it was completely
successful. Yet it was no masterpiece of science or genius. The
movements by which the old base of Portugal was thrown off, and a new
base acquired, and by which the French armies were ever outflanked and
their communications threatened and seized, and the march on Vitoria,
have been justly admired; but the wide dislocation of Wellington’s
forces as they left the frontier was, in theory, a fault, and it would
have given Turenne or Napoleon an immense chance, which they would have
turned to such advantage that the course of events might have been
changed at the outset. The splendour of the result cannot conceal the
fact that the issue of the campaign was rather due to the incapacity
and the demoralization of the French commanders than to conspicuous
excellence in the strategy of their foe. Could they have defended the
line of the Douro, as Bonaparte had defended the line of the Adige,
nay, had they fallen back on the Ebro in time, and concentrated their
still fine armies for a decisive battle on equal terms, they might even
yet have repulsed Wellington, and assuredly they would not have lost
Spain. This was Napoleon’s judgment, and, in this instance, I think it
certainly was correct; his views on the military situation in Spain in
1813 are worthy of him; and here, again, had he been in command, events
would probably have taken a different turn. He was naturally indignant
at the rout of Vitoria; and having summarily got rid of Joseph and
Jourdan, he sent Soult, with extensive powers, to the Pyrenees, to
take the command of his shattered forces, and to endeavour at least
to defend the frontier. The next phase of the contest is of extreme
interest, and deserves careful and impartial study. Soult found the
French army--a confused wreck of armies--in a pitiable state of want
and despondency; and his first care was to secure a base at Bayonne,
and to reorganize and restore his defeated forces. He effected a great
deal in a few weeks, for he was an administrator of no ordinary powers;
and by the close of July he had his preparations made to assume the
offensive with happy promise.
At this time the forces of Wellington--altogether about 70,000
strong--were before Pampeluna and San Sebastian, and along the range
of the western Pyrenees; and this gave Soult--he was about equal in
force--an extremely favourable opportunity to attack, for he commanded
the passes which led from the plains. He concentrated a very superior
force against his adversary’s right, concealing the movement with great
skill; and his first operations had real success; he fairly bore back
the weak hostile wing, and he nearly reached Pampeluna and relieved
the garrison. But Wellington, always ready on the ground, was too
quick for an enemy able in thought but in execution rather dull and
weak; he raised the siege of San Sebastian and reinforced his right;
Soult attacked at Sauroren, and was repulsed, one of his lieutenants,
D’Erlon, being not up in time, on this as on a far greater occasion;
the ascendency of unbroken success did the rest, and in a subsequent
effort the French Marshal was nearly surrounded at the head of his
troops. He recrossed the frontier, a well-designed plan having ended in
heavy loss and discomfiture.
The English commander, free from attack for a time, now resolved to
take Pampeluna and San Sebastian before attempting to invade France.
This conduct has been described as timid, and it enabled Soult to
prepare large means of defence, but obviously it was judicious and
right; the issue of the war in Saxony was still uncertain, and should
Soult be joined by Suchet they would be in great strength. San
Sebastian made a protracted resistance, but the place was stormed in
the second week of September, Soult having tried in vain to relieve
it, and Pampeluna fell at the close of October. Wellington had invaded
France a short time previously, and it should be observed that he
crossed the frontier before Leipsic, and months before the Allies were
on the Rhine. The time spent in the sieges had, nevertheless, given
Soult opportunities which he had made the most of; he had constructed
lines on the Bidassoa and Nivelle, the last almost as strong as those
of Torres Vedras, and he awaited his enemy in a situation like that of
Villars in 1710–11. His army, however, had lost heart, and was crowded
with rude levies and mutinous Germans; he had not the inspiration of
the renowned Villars, and nothing could stand against the overpowering
force of the British soldiery in the full pride of victory. Wellington
carried the lines in the second week of November, displaying great
skill in his dispositions for the attack, and before long he had
approached Bayonne, on the confluence of the Nive and the Adour, where
Soult had entrenched himself in very strong positions. The British
commander, perhaps over confident, perhaps from the want of strategic
genius--this undoubtedly was characteristic of him--escaped narrowly
a severe reverse; he had divided his army upon the Nive, and Soult,
availing himself of his command of the rivers, and of the interior line
he possessed, fell on his adversary with skill in design, and tried
to overwhelm his separated foes. The peril of Wellington was great
for a time, but Soult had the manner of Napoleon, not his masterly
power; he did not press the attack home, and his troops were beaten
by the tenacity of the British footmen. A pause in the operations
followed, and had the Emperor, even at this supreme crisis, ordered
Suchet to come into line with Soult, abandoning Spain, now really
lost, the French would have been superior in force to Wellington, and
affairs might have taken a different aspect. But Napoleon would strike
for his whole Empire, a false conception which mars the splendour of
the memorable campaign of 1814; he left Suchet in Catalonia, holding
the fortresses; the two marshals, besides, did not agree, with the
usual tendencies of French commanders; the organized plunder of the
French army, in marked contrast with that of the Allies, exasperated
the populations of the south against it; the Royalist party began
to lift its head after the first defeats of Napoleon in Champagne,
and Soult was left isolated to resist Wellington amidst the ruin
and crash of a perishing Empire. The British general resumed the
offensive in the early spring of 1814; he had won golden opinions,
even from the invaded Gascons, for the strict discipline he made his
troops observe, for the exactness with which he paid for supplies, for
his humane government of the country he held, and though he was not
without real difficulties of his own--he was condemned in the Cortes
and denounced in Portugal, and he actually sent back a large Spanish
detachment because he could not control their excesses--still he was
greatly superior in strength to his foe, and his arms were obviously
on the verge of triumph. Nevertheless, Soult made an admirable stand;
his army was being constantly weakened by drafts for the army on the
Marne and Seine; it was oppressed by the prospect of coming defeat,
and yet the Marshal proved that he was a real chief, and this is the
best part of his chequered career. He disputed stubbornly every inch
of the country between the lines of the Adour and the Garonne; he
kept Wellington many weeks in check, and though ultimately repulsed
with loss, he very nearly won a battle at Orthez, and at last he took
a formidable position at Toulouse, still doggedly contending against
adverse fortune. The battle was fought on the 10th of April, unhappily
after peace had been made; superiority in numbers and the moral power
of success explain, and partly justify, Wellington’s tactics; but he
risked a flank march of peculiar danger, under the eye of an enemy
watching to strike, and had Soult struck home at the decisive moment
he probably would have won a victory. The Marshal, however, as was his
wont, was remiss in action; the French army was unequal to itself,
and Wellington forced his adversary to leave Toulouse, though the
battle was really nearly drawn. Toulouse, indeed, adds nothing to his
renown as a warrior; his true titles to fame in this campaign are his
administrative virtues, and the most significant fact that he detained
forces in the south which might have turned the scales of fortune in
the struggle in Champagne.
Wellington was back in England in 1814, justly greeted by the acclaim
of the nation, raised to the highest honour the Peerage can give,
and ever since known as “the Duke” to his countrymen. His exploits,
indeed, had been truly great; with an army, swelled no doubt by
auxiliaries, but seldom numbering more than 30,000 British troops, he
had destroyed the power of Napoleon in Spain and Portugal, backed by
300,000 French veterans, had defeated the best Marshals of France one
after the other, had fought his way from the Tagus to the Garonne, had
thrown his sword, with effect, into the balance of events trembling
in the east of France, had ruled the Peninsula with a far-sighted
wisdom, spite of the passions of faction, admired everywhere. The
fame of Wellington as a commander depends, beyond question, on his
direction of the Peninsular war; and an impartial judgment should
be pronounced upon it. We may pass by enthusiasts who ascribe his
success to genius never approached in his day, and the notion current
seventy years ago that an English soldier can beat three Frenchmen;
and we may equally reject the French delusion that Wellington owed
everything to the freaks of Fortune. It must be recognized that in
the war, small as his force was compared to his foes, he had certain
advantages of peculiar value; he had the command of the sea, and of
the resources of England; his position in Portugal was formidably
strong; he was supported by a vast national rising; he stood in the
centre of divided enemies; whereas the French armies, large as they
were, had most vulnerable communications to guard, were exposed to
swarms of destructive guerrillas, were necessarily separated by vast
hill ranges, and, owing mainly to the Napoleonic system of warfare,
were unable to muster for any time in strength because they could not
subsist in a barren country. These conditions of the strife were all
in favour of the British chief, and told powerfully; but this does
not in the least detract from his merits; he anticipated them with
prophetic insight, and they simply made his defence possible; just as
Napoleon’s choice of the Adige enabled him to baffle the whole power
of Austria. It should be admitted, too, that throughout the contest he
was greatly seconded by the shortcomings of his foes; more than once
he ought to have been overwhelmed or crushed, but for the miserable
discords of the French marshals; and Napoleon himself played into his
hands by his ignorance of events, by his lust of conquest, by the
false system of directing war from an immense distance; above all, by
his contemptuous disregard of an adversary most unwisely scorned. Yet
this, the only meaning of what has been called the “good fortune that
attended Wellington,” does not lessen his title to fame; I certainly
think, had he had to encounter Napoleon with all the Peninsular armies
he would have been forced out of Spain and Portugal, nay, he might
have been beaten in 1811, 1812, and 1813; but, tried by this test,
we might just as well deny Napoleon genius in war; he would not have
won Rivoli, Jena, Austerlitz, had he been opposed to really great
captains. Undoubtedly, moreover, in these campaigns the generalship
of Wellington was not of as high an order as some eulogists have made
it out to be; he committed grave strategic mistakes; his plan for the
offensive on a great scale, and at a distance, is not very striking--I
refer especially to 1813; his tactics were sometimes far from perfect;
he was not masterly in following up success; there is something narrow
and contracted in some of his movements. But when this has been said,
he gave proof of genius in defence of the rarest kind; his campaign of
Torres Vedras reaches the sublime, in conception and execution alike;
he was admirable in rapid and bold attack; he was almost always great
on the field; his tenacity and judgment are above praise. Add his
most remarkable administrative powers, his capacity for ruling foreign
races, and his moderation in the hour of success, resembling in this
the great warriors of Rome, and we shall understand how he will live
in history. A word, too, should be said on his British troops; that
army--largely his own creation--which he said--and Wellington was no
boaster--“could go anywhere and do anything.” From the first moment his
soldiery showed the high qualities of their race, endurance, vigour,
fierceness in attack, perseverance in defence, and the skill in the
use of their arms of the archers of Crecy. The army, however, was for
a time ill-organized; its movements were slow, and it was overburdened
with camp-followers and _impedimenta_; its officers, heroes in the
fight, were seldom skilful; in short, it was an imperfect instrument
of war. It is one of Wellington’s distinctive merits that he made that
army, always superior to the French in discipline, fortitude, and
steadiness in the field--and this, indeed, is the true reason why its
line was able to defeat their columns--equal to the best of Napoleon’s
armies--the Emperor has made the admission himself--in readiness, in
training, in skill in manœuvring; though Salamanca tends to show that
in the power of movement it was not the equal of its most agile foes.
Great as a soldier, but certainly greater as a man, it was the destiny
of Wellington in 1815 to meet the most perfect master of modern war.
The campaign of Waterloo belongs to the career of Napoleon, and in a
sketch of his extraordinary deeds I have endeavoured to retrace its
main features. Idle flatterers and the idolaters of success have given
Wellington the palm in this mighty conflict, but he knew that he was
out-manœuvred, and he did not claim it; and he disliked the subject,
when all the facts were known, though he wrote on it in extreme old
age. The simple truth is that Blücher and Wellington, considering the
enormous hosts being arrayed against him, did not think that Napoleon
would spring on Belgium; even their own forces, they well knew, were
nearly double those of their foe; and though they made dispositions on
the supposition of an attack, these were ill-conceived and essentially
faulty. Their armies, in the first place, were spread along an immense
line, with divergent bases; in the second, they were scattered up and
down Belgium; in the third, they were far too near the frontier, at the
points of concentration marked out for them; and in the fourth, the two
chiefs were too far from each other, and could not communicate without
perilous delays.
Availing himself of these palpable mistakes, Napoleon broke in on the
exposed centre of his adversaries with a grandeur of design and a skill
in execution never surpassed; he was close to their weak line on the
15th of June, and a single march had placed them in extreme danger.
Then came the confusion and the divided counsels common with allied
chiefs, and foreseen by their foe. Blücher rushed hastily to confront
the Emperor before his army had been drawn together; Wellington,
misconceiving the real state of affairs, stopped, hesitated, and left
a wide gap open; and an opportunity was afforded to the General of
1796, as favourable as ever was won by genius. But for a series of
misadventures I have noticed elsewhere, he ought to have overwhelmed
Blücher with ease on the 16th; and, in that event, nothing could
have saved Wellington, though the French were only 128,000 against
224,000[30] men. Strategy had only just missed one of its grandest
triumphs; in fact, the allied chiefs were all but checkmated, though
Wellington made an able stand at Quatre Bras, and this went some way
to baffle the Emperor. Napoleon was given another chance on the 17th,
by the double retreat on Wavre and Waterloo, which might have proved
fatal to both his adversaries; but he was not well, and his lieutenants
failed him. Soult, always indolent, was greatly to blame; the retreat
of the Prussians was not followed up; Grouchy was detached late to hold
Blücher in check; and when Napoleon, true to the principles of the art,
turned against Wellington and attained Waterloo, he was not aware that
the Prussians were near and were ready to unite with the Duke, mainly
owing to the faults of the incapable Grouchy.
The morning of the 18th saw Napoleon and Wellington confronting each
other for the first time; the state of the weather, no doubt, gave the
British chief an unforeseen advantage. The Emperor’s plan of attack
was perfect; but Wellington’s dispositions were also excellent, except
that he made the strategic error of leaving a large detachment behind
at Hal. In the great battle that followed Napoleon was ill, and the
tactics of the French were incoherent and bad; the genius of Wellington
in defence reappeared, and shone out with conspicuous lustre; and this
great quality largely redeemed his shortcomings in this memorable
campaign. He fought Waterloo on the assumption that Blücher would
join him early with the whole Prussian army; no aid reached him until
nearly 5 P.M.; Ziethen and Pirch, who decided the result of
the day, were not on the field until after 8 P.M.; and yet
Wellington, with a very inferior army, contrived, during seven long
hours, to resist successfully the Imperial host, and he had fairly
repulsed the attack of the Guard before Ziethen and Pirch dealt the
final stroke. His intrepidity, his tenacity, his tactical power on
that memorable day were worthy of him; no other general on the allied
side, it may confidently be said, would have made such a stand; and
though he would almost certainly have lost the battle but for the
arrival of Bülow in the early afternoon, still the defeat would not, I
think, have been crushing, and Napoleon must have at last succumbed.
Nevertheless, Waterloo, as I have endeavoured to prove, was decided by
operations outside the field. Had Grouchy been equal to his appointed
task, Blücher ought not to have been able to reach his colleague; the
strategy of Napoleon throughout the campaign, spite of mistakes and
failures, well-nigh triumphed; and the one merit of Wellington--and it
was immense--was the masterly defence he made at Waterloo.
The Duke commanded the Army of Occupation in France, after the second
fall of Napoleon and the return of the Bourbons, and he admirably
fulfilled a most arduous mission. He has been condemned for not saving
Ney; but he had no right to interfere with the Government of France,
and he showed characteristic tact and clemency in his relations with
the French army, the Court, and the nation. His grand civil career
begins at this point; but I must pass from it with scarcely a word of
comment. He was a representative of England at the great Congress which
met at Vienna to resettle Europe; and he was engaged in other important
missions of the kind. In these diplomatic duties he was, no doubt,
inferior to Marlborough in suavity and delicate art; he was sometimes,
indeed, outspoken and blunt, but his simplicity, his candour, his ripe
judgment, made him a negotiator of a very high order. His position as
a statesman was noble and striking. His nature and profession drew him
to the Tory Party, and he was for years its acknowledged head; his
ideal was a strong aristocratic government; he detested modern Radical
cant and theory; and though he was a Constitutional politician in the
broadest sense, he did not understand the play and tendency of popular
forces. But he had no sympathy with extreme Toryism; he ridiculed the
Holy Alliance and its dreams; he knew how to make concessions in time;
no reformer more sternly put down abuses; he was always Conservative,
but wise and moderate. He commanded the army for some years; in this
high office, unlike Turenne, with whom he had certain points in common,
he was not in advance of the ideas of his time; he was rather obstinate
and narrow in his views; but one great work he at least prepared; he
urged the necessity for assuring the defence of England, and this
generation at last has accepted his teaching. He spoke very often in
the House of Lords; as an orator he had no accomplishments, but it
was said he always “hit the nail on the head,” and his sagacity was,
perhaps, the more noted because it was not set off by eloquence. As
he grew old, he became the national mentor; his counsels were felt to
be words of wisdom, and his place in the State was one of commanding
dignity.
He passed quietly away in 1852; England mourned him as her foremost
citizen, and she justly regards him as the most illustrious of
her worthies of the nineteenth century. It ought to be possible
to pronounce a sound judgment on his military career, after all
these years, and yet impartiality is still difficult. Wellington
was endowed by nature with real wisdom, with strength of character
seldom equalled, with singular moderation and calmness of thought,
and yet with a rapid intelligence and clear insight. She denied him
imagination, passion, and, in some measure, sympathy; and we see these
excellences and defects in his life as a warrior. As a strategist,
on the offensive, he stands low; for strategy, in this aspect, must
see into the unknown, and requires a fiery energy he did not possess;
and he was incapable of such exploits as the campaign of Marengo. In
defensive strategy, however, he has been never excelled; for here the
elements of the problem are easier to ascertain, and sagacity and
firmness are most effective; and his campaign of Torres Vedras is,
beyond comparison, the finest specimen of defence, in the strict sense
of the word, that was seen in the Great War with France. As a tactician
he was admirable in attack and defence, for when the field was before
him, his promptness, his coolness, his constancy, stood him in good
stead; but he was, on the whole, better in defence than attack; his
Salamanca falls short of his Waterloo; and he was inferior to some
tacticians in his arrangements on the ground, and, conspicuously, in
following up a victory. Though there was something contracted in his
exhibitions of the art, he has no doubtful place among great captains;
and yet Wellington was greatest, perhaps, as a citizen, by reason of
his profound wisdom, his administrative powers, his statesmanlike
views, and, above all, his capacity for ruling alien races. In one
quality of a chief he was, no doubt, deficient. He was respected, but
not beloved, by his officers and men; he could not command their hearts
like Napoleon or Condé, and this was largely due to the Spartan turn
of character which distinguishes the aristocratic caste of Ireland.
Taken altogether, he was one of the most illustrious men who have ever
appeared on the stage of History; his grand life justified the poet’s
epitaph: “O Tower full square to all the winds that blew!”
[Illustration]