[Sidenote: 1813.]
In war it is not so much the positive strength, as the relative
situations of the hostile parties, which gives the victory. Joseph’s
position, thus judged, was one of great weakness, principally because
he was incapable of combining the materials at his disposal, or of
wielding them when combined by others. France had been suddenly
thrown by her failure in Russia, into a new and embarrassing
attitude, more embarrassing even than it appeared to her enemies,
or than her robust warlike proportions, nourished by twelve years
of victory, indicated. Napoleon, the most indefatigable and active
of mankind, turned his enemy’s ignorance on this head to profit;
for scarcely was it known that he had reached Paris by that wise,
that rapid journey, from Smorghoni, which, baffling all his enemies’
hopes, left them only the power of foolish abuse; scarcely I say,
was his arrival at Paris known to the world, than a new and enormous
army, the constituent parts of which he had with his usual foresight
created while yet in the midst of victory, was in march from all
parts to unite in the heart of Germany.
On this magical rapidity he rested his hopes to support the tottering
fabric of his empire; but well aware of the critical state of his
affairs, his design was, while presenting a menacing front on every
side, so to conduct his operations that if he failed in his first
stroke, he might still contract his system gradually and without any
violent concussion. And good reason for hope he had. His military
power was rather broken and divided than lessened, for it is certain
that the number of men employed in 1813 was infinitely greater than
in 1812; in the latter four hundred thousand, but in the former more
than seven hundred thousand men, and twelve hundred field-pieces were
engaged on different points, exclusive of the armies in Spain. Then
on the Vistula, on the Oder, on the Elbe, he had powerful fortresses,
and numerous garrisons, or rather armies, of strength and goodness
to re-establish his ascendancy in Europe, if he could reunite them
in one system by placing a new host victoriously in the centre of
Germany. And thus also he could renew the adhesive qualities of
those allies, who still clung to him though evidently feeling the
attraction of his enemies’ success.
But this was a gigantic contest, for his enemies, by deceiving their
subjects with false promises of liberty, had brought whole nations
against him. More than eight hundred thousand men were in arms in
Germany alone; secret societies were in full activity all over the
continent; and in France a conspiracy was commenced by men who
desired rather to see their country a prey to foreigners and degraded
with a Bourbon king, than have it independent and glorious under
Napoleon. Wherefore that great monarch had now to make application,
on an immense scale, of the maxim which prescribes a skilful
offensive as the best defence, and he had to sustain two systems of
operation not always compatible; the one depending upon moral force
to hold the vast fabric of his former policy together, the other to
meet the actual exigencies of the war. The first was infinitely more
important than the last, and as Germany and France were the proper
theatres for its display, the Spanish contest sunk at once from
a principal into an accessary war. Yet this delicate conjuncture
of affairs made it of vital importance, that Napoleon should have
constant and rapid intelligence from Spain, because the ascendancy,
which he yet maintained over the world by his astounding genius,
might have been broken down in a moment if Wellington, overstepping
the ordinary rules of military art, had suddenly abandoned the
Peninsula, and thrown his army, or a part of it into France. For then
would have been deranged all the emperor’s calculations; then would
the defection of all his allies have ensued; then would he have been
obliged to concentrate both his new forces and his Spanish troops for
the defence of his own country, abandoning all his fortresses and his
still vast though scattered veteran armies in Germany and Poland, to
the unrestrained efforts of his enemies beyond the Rhine. Nothing
could have been more destructive to Napoleon’s moral power, than to
have an insult offered and commotions raised on his own threshold at
the moment when he was assuming the front of a conqueror in Germany.
To obviate this danger or to meet it, alike required that the armies
in the Peninsula should adopt a new and vigorous system, under which,
relinquishing all real permanent offensive movements, they should
yet appear to be daring and enterprising, even while they prepared
to abandon their former conquests. But the emperor wanted old
officers and non-commissioned officers, and experienced soldiers,
to give consistency to the young levies with which he was preparing
to take the field, and he could only supply this want by drawing
from the veterans of the Peninsula; wherefore he resolved to recal
the division of the young guard, and with it many thousand men and
officers of the line most remarkable for courage and conduct. In lieu
he sent the reserve at Bayonne into Spain, replacing it with another,
which was again to be replaced in May by further levies; and besides
this succour, twenty thousand conscripts were appropriated for the
Peninsula.
The armies thus weakened in numbers, and considerably so during the
transit of the troops, were also in quality greatly deteriorated, and
at a very critical time, for not only was Wellington being powerfully
reinforced, but the audacity, the spirit, the organization, the
discipline, and the numbers of the Partidas, were greatly increased
by English supplies, liberally, and now usefully dealt out. And
the guerilla operations in the northern parts, being combined with
the British naval squadrons, had, during the absence of the French
armies, employed to drive the allies back to Portugal, aroused
anew the spirit of insurrection in Navarre and Biscay; a spirit
exacerbated by some recent gross abuses of military authority
perpetrated by some of the French local commanders.
[Sidenote: Duke of Feltre’s official correspondence, MSS.]
The position of the invading armies was indeed become more
complicated than ever. They had only been relieved from the
crushing pressure of lord Wellington’s grand operations to struggle
in the meshes of the Guerilla and insurrectional warfare of the
Spaniards. Nor was the importance of these now to be measured by
former efforts. The Partida chiefs had become more experienced
and more docile to the suggestions of the British chief; they had
free communication with, and were constantly supplied with arms,
ammunition, and money from the squadrons on the coast; they possessed
several fortified posts and harbours, their bands were swelling to
the size of armies, and their military knowledge of the country and
of the French system of invasion was more matured; their own dépôts
were better hidden, and they could, and at times did, bear the shock
of battle on nearly equal terms. Finally, new and large bands of
another and far more respectable and influential nature, were formed
or forming both in Navarre and Biscay, where insurrectional juntas
were organized, and where men of the best families had enrolled
numerous volunteers from the villages and towns.
These volunteers were well and willingly supplied by the country,
and of course not obnoxious, like the Partidas, from their
rapine and violence. In Biscay alone several battalions of this
description, each mustering a thousand men, were in the field, and
the communication with France was so completely interrupted, that
the French minister of war only heard that Joseph had received his
dispatches of the 4th of January, on the 18th of March, and then
through the medium of Suchet! The contributions could no longer be
collected, the magazines could not be filled, the fortresses were
endangered, the armies had no base of operations, the insurrection
was spreading to Aragon, and the bands of the interior were also
increasing in numbers and activity. The French armies, sorely pressed
for provisions, were widely disseminated, and every where occupied,
and each general was averse either to concentrate his own forces
or to aid his neighbour. In fine the problem of the operations was
become extremely complicated, and Napoleon only seems to have seized
the true solution.
When informed by Caffarelli of the state of affairs in the north, he
thus wrote to the king, “Hold Madrid only as a point of observation;
fix your quarters not as monarch, but as general of the French forces
at Valladolid; concentrate the armies of the south, of the centre,
and of Portugal around you; the allies will not and indeed cannot
make any serious offensive movement for several months; wherefore it
is your business to profit from their forced inactivity, to put down
the insurrection in the northern provinces, to free the communication
with France, and to re-establish a good base of operations before
the commencement of another campaign, that the French army may be in
condition to fight the allies if the latter advance towards France.”
Very important indeed did Napoleon deem this object, and so earnest
was he to have constant and rapid intelligence from his armies in
the Peninsula, that the couriers and their escorts were directed to
be dispatched twice a week, travelling day and night at the rate
of a league an hour. He commanded also that the army of the north
should be reinforced even by the whole army of Portugal, if it was
necessary to effect the immediate pacification of Biscay and Navarre;
and while this pacification was in progress, Joseph was to hold the
rest of his forces in a position offensive towards Portugal, making
Wellington feel that his whole power was required on the frontier,
and that neither his main body nor even any considerable detachment
could safely embark to disturb France. In short that he must cover
Lisbon strongly, and on the frontier, or expect to see the French
army menacing that capital. These instructions well understood, and
vigorously executed, would certainly have put down the insurrection
in the rear of the king’s position, and the spring would have seen
that monarch at the head of ninety thousand men, having their retreat
upon France clear of all impediments, and consequently free to fight
the allies on the Tormes, the Duero, the Pisuerga, and the Ebro; and
with several supporting fortresses in a good state.
[Sidenote: King’s correspondence, MSS.]
Joseph was quite unable to view the matter in this common-sense
point of view. He could not make his kingly notions subservient
to military science, nor his military movements subservient to an
enlarged policy. Neither did he perceive that his beneficent notions
of government were misplaced amidst the din of arms. Napoleon’s
orders were imperative, but the principle of them, Joseph could
not previously conceive himself nor execute the details after his
brother’s conception. He was not even acquainted with the true state
of the northern provinces, nor would he at first credit it when
told to him. Hence while his thoughts were intent upon his Spanish
political projects, and the secret negociations with Del Parque’s
army, the northern partidas and insurgents became masters of all his
lines of communication in the north; the Emperor’s orders dispatched
early in January, and reiterated week after week, only reached the
king in the end of February; their execution did not take place
until the end of March, and then imperfectly. The time thus lost was
irreparable; and yet as the emperor reproachfully observed, the
bulletin which revealed the extent of his disasters in Russia might
alone have taught the king what to do.
Joseph was nearly as immoveable in his resolutions as his brother,
the firmness of the one being however founded upon extraordinary
sagacity, and of the other upon the want of that quality. Regarding
opposition to his views as the result of a disloyal malevolence,
he judged the refractory generals to be enemies to the emperor, as
well as to himself. Reille, Caffarelli, Suchet, alike incurred his
displeasure, and the duke of Feltre French minister of war also,
because of a letter in which, evidently by the orders of the emperor,
he rebuked the king for having removed Souham from the command of the
army of Portugal.
[Sidenote: King’s correspondence, MSS.]
Feltre’s style, addressed to a monarch was very offensive, and Joseph
attributed it to the influence of Soult, for his hatred of the latter
was violent and implacable even to absurdity. “The duke of Dalmatia
or himself,” he wrote to the Emperor, “must quit Spain. At Valencia
he had forgotten his own injuries, he had suppressed his just
indignation, and instead of sending marshal Soult to France had given
him the direction of the operations against the allies, but it was in
the hope that shame for the past combined with his avidity for glory,
would urge him to extraordinary exertions; nothing of the kind had
happened; Soult was a man not to be trusted. Restless, intriguing,
ambitious, he would sacrifice every thing to his own advancement,
and possessed just that sort of talent which would lead him to mount
a scaffold when he thought he was ascending the steps of a throne,
because he would want the courage to strike when the crisis arrived.”
He acquitted him, he said, with a coarse sarcasm, “of treachery at
the passage of the Tormes, because there fear alone operated to
prevent him from bringing the allies to a decisive action, but he was
nevertheless treacherous to the emperor, and his proceedings in Spain
were probably connected with the conspiracy of Malet at Paris.”
Such was the language with which Joseph in his anger assailed one of
the greatest commanders and most faithful servants of his brother;
and such the greetings which awaited Napoleon on his arrival at Paris
after the disasters of Russia. In the most calm and prosperous state
of affairs, coming from this source, the charges might well have
excited the jealous wrath of the strongest mind; but in the actual
crisis, when the emperor had just lost his great army, and found the
smoking embers of a suppressed conspiracy at his very palace-gates,
when his friends were failing, and his enemies accumulating, it
seemed scarcely possible that these accusations should not have
proved the ruin of Soult. Yet they did not even ruffle the temper of
Napoleon. Magnanimous as he was sagacious, he smiled at the weakness
of Joseph, and though he removed Soult from Spain, because the feud
between him and the king would not permit them to serve beneficially
together, it was only to make him the commander of the imperial
guard; and that no mark of his confidence might be wanting, he
afterwards chose him, from amongst all his generals, to retrieve the
affairs of the Peninsula when Joseph was driven from that country, an
event the immediate causes of which were now being laid.
It has been already shown, that when Wellington took his
winter-quarters, the French armies occupied a line stretching from
the sea-coast at Valencia to the foot of the Gallician mountains. In
these positions Suchet on the extreme left was opposed by the allies
at Alicant. Soult, commanding the centre, had his head-quarters at
Toledo, with one detachment at the foot of the Sierra Morena to
watch the army of Del Parque, and two others in the valley of the
Tagus. Of these last one was at Talavera and one on the Tietar. The
first observed Morillo and Penne Villemur, who from Estremadura
were constantly advancing towards the bridges on the Tagus, and
menacing the rear of the French detachment which was on the Tietar
in observation of general Hill then at Coria. Soult’s advanced post
in the valley of the Tagus communicated by the Gredos mountains with
Avila, where Foy’s division of the army of Portugal was posted partly
for the sake of food, partly to watch Bejar and the Upper Tormes,
because the allies, possessing the pass of Bejar, might have suddenly
united north of the mountains, and breaking the French line have
fallen on Madrid.
On the right of Foy, the remainder of the army of Portugal occupied
Salamanca, Ledesma, and Alba on the Lower Tormes; Valladolid, Toro,
and Tordesillas on the Duero; Benevente, Leon, and other points on
the Esla, Astorga being, as I have before observed, dismantled by the
Spaniards. Behind the right of this great line, the army of the north
had retaken its old positions, and the army of the centre was fixed
as before in and around Madrid, its operations being bounded on the
right bank of the Tagus by the mountains which invest that capital,
and on the left bank of the Tagus by the districts of Aranjuez,
Tarancon, and Cuenca.
[Sidenote: King’s correspondence, MSS.]
Joseph while disposing his troops in this manner, issued a royal
regulation marking the extent of country which each army was to
forage, requiring at the same time a certain and considerable
revenue to be collected by his Spanish civil authorities for the
support of his court. The subsistence of the French armies was
thus made secondary to the revenue of the crown, and he would have
had the soldiers in a time of war, of insurrectional war, yield to
the authority of the Spanish civilians; an absurdity heightened by
the peculiarly active, vigorous, and prompt military method of the
French, as contrasted with the dilatory improvident promise-breaking
and visionary system of the Spaniards. Hence scarcely was the royal
regulation issued when the generals broke through it in a variety of
ways, and the king was, as usual, involved in the most acrimonious
disputes with all the emperor’s lieutenants. If he ordered one
commander to detach troops to the assistance of another commander, he
was told that he should rather send additional troops to the first.
If he reprimanded a general for raising contributions contrary to
the regulations, he was answered that the soldiers were starving
and must be fed. At all times also the authority of the prefects
and intendants was disregarded by all the generals; and this was in
pursuance of Napoleon’s order; for that monarch continually reminded
his brother, that as the war was carried on by the French armies
their interests were paramount; that the king of Spain could have no
authority over them, and must never use his military authority as
lieutenant of the empire, in aid of his kingly views, for with those
the French soldiers could have nothing to do; their welfare could
not be confided to Spanish ministers whose capacity was by no means
apparent and of whose fidelity the emperor had no security.
Nothing could be clearer or wiser than these instructions, but
Joseph would not see this distinction between his military and his
monarchical duties, and continually defended his conduct by reference
to what he owed his subjects as king of Spain. His sentiments,
explained with great force of feeling, and great beneficence of
design, were worthy of all praise if viewed abstractedly, but totally
inapplicable to the real state of affairs, because the Spaniards were
not his faithful and attached subjects, they were his inveterate
enemies; and it was quite impossible to unite the vigour of a war
of conquest with the soft and benevolent government of a paternal
monarch. Thus one constant error vitiated all the king’s political
proceedings, an error apparently arising from an inability to view
his situation as a whole instead of by parts, for his military
operations were vitiated in the same manner.
As a man of state and of war he seems to have been acute, courageous,
and industrious, with respect to any single feature presented for his
consideration, but always unable to look steadily on the whole and
consequently always working in the dark. Men of his character being
conscious of the merit of labour and good intentions, are commonly
obstinate; and those qualities, which render them so useful under
the direction of an able chief, lead only to mischief when they
become chiefs themselves. For in matters of great moment, and in war
especially, it is not the actual importance but the comparative
importance of the operations which should determine the choice
of measures; and when all are very important this choice demands
judgment of the highest kind, judgment which no man ever possessed
more largely than Napoleon, and which Joseph did not possess at all.
He was never able to comprehend the instructions of his brother, and
never would accept the advice of those commanders whose capacity
approached in some degree to that of the emperor. When he found that
every general complained of insufficient means, instead of combining
their forces so as to press with the principal mass against the most
important point, he disputed with each, and turned to demand from
the emperor additional succours for all; at the same time unwisely
repeating and urging his own schemes upon a man so infinitely his
superior in intellect. The insurrection in the northern provinces he
treated not as a military but a political question, attributing it
to the anger of the people at seeing the ancient supreme council of
Navarre unceremoniously dismissed and some of the members imprisoned
by a French general, a cause very inadequate to the effect. Neither
was his judgment truer with respect to the fitness of time. He
proposed, if a continuation of the Russian war should prevent the
emperor from sending more men to Spain, to make Burgos the royal
residence, to transport there the archives, and all that constituted
a capital; then to have all the provinces behind the Ebro, Catalonia
excepted, governed by himself through the medium of his Spanish
ministers and as a country at peace, while those beyond the Ebro
should be given up to the generals as a country at war.
In this state his civil administration would he said remedy the evils
inflicted by the armies, would conciliate the people by keeping all
the Spanish families and authorities in safety and comfort, would
draw all those who favoured his cause from all parts of Spain, and
would encourage the display of that attachment to his person which he
believed so many Spaniards to entertain. And while he declared the
violence and injustice of the French armies to be the sole cause of
the protracted resistance of the Spaniards, a declaration false in
fact, that violence being only one of many causes, he was continually
urging the propriety of beating the English first and then pacifying
the people by just and benevolent measures. As if it were possible,
off-hand, to beat Wellington and his veterans, embedded as they were
in the strong country of Portugal, and having British fleets with
troops and succours of all kinds, hovering on the flanks of the
French, and feeding and sustaining the insurrection of the Spaniards
in their rear.
Napoleon was quite as willing and anxious as Joseph could be to drive
the English from the Peninsula, and to tranquillize the people by a
regular government; but with a more profound knowledge of war, of
politics and of human nature, he judged that the first could only
be done by a methodical combination, in unison with that rule of
art which prescribes the establishment and security of the base of
operations, security which could not be obtained if the benevolent
but weak and visionary schemes of the king, were to supersede
military vigour in the field. The emperor laughed in scorn when
his brother assured him that the Peninsulars with all their fiery
passions, their fanaticism and their ignorance, would receive an
equable government as a benefit from the hands of an intrusive
monarch before they had lost all hope of resistance by arms.
Yet it is not to be concluded that Joseph was totally devoid of
grounds for his opinions; he was surrounded by difficulties and
deeply affected by the misery which he witnessed, his Spanish
ministers were earnest and importunate, and many of the French
generals gave him but too much reason to complain of their violence.
The length and mutations of the war had certainly created a large
party willing enough to obtain tranquillity at the price of
submission, while others were, as we have seen, not indisposed, if he
would hold the crown on their terms, to accept his dynasty, as one
essentially springing from democracy, in preference to the despotic,
base, and superstitious family which the nation was called upon to
uphold. It was not unnatural therefore for Joseph to desire to retain
his capital while the negociations with Del Parque’s army were still
in existence, it was not strange that he should be displeased with
Soult after reading that marshal’s honest but offensive letter, and
certainly it was highly creditable to his character as a man and as a
king that he would not silently suffer his subjects to be oppressed
by the generals.
“I am in distress for money,” he often exclaimed to Napoleon, “such
distress as no king ever endured before, my plate is sold, and on
state occasions the appearance of magnificence is supported by false
metal. My ministers and household are actually starving, misery is
on every face, and men, otherwise willing, are thus deterred from
joining a king so little able to support them. My revenue is seized
by the generals for the supply of their troops, and I cannot as a
king of Spain without dishonour partake of the resources thus torn
by rapine from my subjects whom I have sworn to protect; I cannot
in fine be at once king of Spain and general of the French; let me
resign both and live peaceably in France. Your majesty does not know
what scenes are enacted, you will shudder to hear that men formerly
rich and devoted to our cause have been driven out of Zaragoza and
denied even a ration of food. The marquis Cavallero, a councillor of
state, minister of justice, and known personally to your majesty,
has been thus used. He has been seen actually begging for a piece of
bread!”
[Sidenote: Jourdan’s Official correspondence, MSS.]
If this Caballero was the old minister to Charles the IVth, no
misery was too great a punishment for his tyrannical rule under
that monarch, yet it was not from the hands of the French it should
have come; and Joseph’s distress for money must certainly have been
great, since that brave and honest man Jourdan, a marshal of France,
major-general of the armies, and a personal favourite of the king’s,
complained that the non-payment of his appointments had reduced
him to absolute penury, and after borrowing until his credit was
exhausted he could with difficulty procure subsistence. It is now
time to describe the secondary operations of the war, but as these
were spread over two-thirds of Spain, and were simultaneous, to avoid
complexity it will be necessary to class them under two great heads,
namely those which took place north and those which took place south
of the Tagus.