The Prelude to the Waterloo Campaign
(1814-15)
“_I work as hard as I can in every way in order to succeed._”
WELLINGTON.
“I march to-morrow to follow Marshal Soult, and to prevent his army
from becoming the _noyau_ of a civil war in France.” Thus writes
Wellington to Sir John Hope on the 16th April 1814, when the white flag
of the Bourbons was flying at Toulouse, and forty-eight hours after
Hope had been made a prisoner during a sortie on the part of the French
garrison of Bayonne. Soult extended no right hand of welcome to Louis
XVIII, and positively refused to submit to the new _regime_ until he
had received trustworthy information from some of Napoleon’s ministers.
However, he was speedily convinced of the fall of his former master,
and both he and Suchet acknowledged the Provisional Government. On the
19th April a Convention was signed by each party and Wellington for
the cessation of hostilities and the evacuation of Spain. The British
infantry were sent either to the homeland or on foreign service; the
cavalry traversed France and crossed to England from Calais.
Wellington’s work was not yet over, although his military career was
closed for a time. He was appointed British Ambassador at Paris, and
while he wrote to a correspondent that recent political and military
events promised “to restore the blessings of peace permanently to
the world,” we must not suppose that he believed the abdication of
Napoleon to be the herald of the millennium. When Castlereagh proposed
the diplomatic post to him Wellington would have been perfectly
justified in declining it, but sufficient of his story has been told
for the reader to appreciate the fact that the Hero of the Peninsula
was as keenly devoted to the service of his king and country as the
Hero of Trafalgar. Whatever egotism he possessed was certainly not
carried to excess. He says that he should never have thought himself
qualified for the work. “I hope, however,” he adds, and here the
sterling qualities of the man are revealed, “that the Prince Regent,
his Government, and your Lordship, are convinced that I am ready to
serve him in any situation in which it may be thought that I can be of
any service. Although I have been so long absent from England, I should
have remained as much longer if it had been necessary; and I feel no
objection to another absence in the public service, if it be necessary
or desirable.” He says much the same thing to his brother Henry: “I
must serve the public in some manner or other; and, as under existing
circumstances I could not well do so at home, I must do so abroad.”
Those who accuse Wellington of lack of heart will do well to remember
that before leaving Toulouse for Paris he wrote an appealing letter to
Earl Bathurst in behalf of Sir Rowland Hill and Sir Robert Kennedy, the
latter of whom had exerted himself to the utmost in keeping the army
well supplied with provisions, and to write a letter of condolence to
Hope, who was a prisoner and wounded.
But he found time to join in a few _fêtes_ in honour of the
Restoration, including a magnificent ball given by Sir Charles Stewart,
the British Commissioner to the Army of the Allies, where monarchs were
plentiful and Society beauties abundant. “It was in the midst of this
ball,” the Comtesse de Boigne relates, “that the Duke of Wellington
appeared for the first time in Paris. I can see him now entering the
room with his two nieces, Lady Burgers[79] and Miss Pole, hanging on
his arms. There were no eyes for any one else, and at this ball, where
grandeur abounded, everything gave way to military glory. That of the
Duke of Wellington was brilliant and unalloyed, and a lustre was added
to it by the interest that had long been felt in the cause of the
Spanish nation.”
He had only been in Paris six days before he set out for Madrid, viâ
Toulouse, “in order to try whether I cannot prevail upon all parties
to be more moderate, and to adopt a constitution more likely to be
practicable and to contribute to the peace and happiness of the
nation.” He had made the proposal, and the Allies had eagerly accepted
it. When he started on his journey he was the Duke of Wellington,[80]
and it was additional cause of satisfaction to him to know that
peerages had been conferred on Beresford, Hill, Cotton, Hope, and
Graham, “my gallant coadjutors.” He stayed at Toulouse for a couple of
days, attending to details connected with the army, and again continued
his journey, writing dispatches, notes of condolence, a letter
requesting permission to accept the Grand Cross of the Order of St
George from the Czar, and so on.
Napoleon had released Ferdinand VII on the 13th of the previous
March, and the king was now back in his capital. “I entertain a
very favourable opinion of the King from what I have seen of him,”
Wellington writes from Madrid on the 25th May 1814, “but not of his
Ministers.” This opinion of Ferdinand must be taken as referring to
the man and not to his methods, for he had already assumed the part
of a despot to so alarming an extent that civil war was feared, hence
the Duke’s journey. “I have accomplished my object in coming here”; he
says in the same letter, “that is, I think there will certainly be
no civil war at present.” But seven days later he communicates with
Castlereagh in a minor key: “I have been well received by the King and
his Ministers; but I fear that I have done but little good.”
He left a lengthy memorandum in the hands of his Catholic Majesty,
full of excellent advice, and bereft, as he said, of “all national
partialities and prejudices.” Commerce, the colonies, domestic
interests, and finance are all touched upon in a sane, straightforward
way, obviously with the intention of promoting “a good understanding
and cementing the alliance with Great Britain,” but valuable quite
apart from any motive that might be construed as selfish. As Wellington
says in the preamble, “The Spanish nation having been engaged for six
years in one of the most terrible and disastrous contests by which any
nation was ever afflicted, its territory having been entirely occupied
by the enemy, the country torn to pieces by internal divisions,
its ancient constitution having been destroyed, and vain attempts
made to establish a new one; its marine, its commerce, and revenue
entirely annihilated; its colonies in a state of rebellion, and
nearly lost to the mother country; it becomes a question for serious
consideration, what line of policy should be adopted by His Majesty
upon his happy restoration to his throne and authority.” Had Ferdinand
taken Wellington’s well-intentioned advice to heart, Spain might have
risen from her ashes. The old abuses cropped up, the Inquisition was
re-established in a milder form, and troops were sent across the seas
to perish in a futile endeavour to recover the Transatlantic colonies
of a once glorious empire.
After returning to Paris to make arrangements for the embarkation of
the British cavalry at Calais, the Duke sailed for England. When he
landed at Dover on the 23rd June 1814, a salute from the batteries of
the Castle welcomed him home. “About five o’clock this morning,” says
a contemporary writer, “his majesty’s sloop-of-war, the _Rosario_,
arrived in the roads, and fired a salute. Shortly afterwards, the
yards of the different vessels of war were manned; a salute took place
throughout the squadron, and the launch of the _Nymphen_ frigate was
seen advancing towards the harbour, with the Duke of Wellington; at
this time the guns upon the heights and from the batteries commenced
their thunder upon the boat leaving the ship; and on passing the
pier-heads his Lordship was greeted with three distinct rounds of
cheers from those assembled; but upon his landing at the Crosswall,
nothing could exceed the rapture with which his Lordship was received
by at least ten thousand persons; and notwithstanding it was so early,
parties continued to arrive from town and country every minute. The
instant his Lordship set foot on shore, a proposition was made, and
instantly adopted, to carry him to the Ship Inn: he was borne on
the shoulders of our townsmen, amidst the reiterated cheers of the
populace.”
London went wild with excitement when he arrived, and at Westminster
Bridge the mob took the horses from his carriage and dragged it along
in triumph. On the 28th he took his seat for the first time in the
House of Lords. He must have appeared a fine figure as, clad in his
Field Marshal’s uniform under a peer’s robes, he was introduced by
the Dukes of Beaufort and Richmond. The Lord Chancellor expressed
the sentiments of the House, but refrained from attempting to state
the “eminent merits” of his military character, “to represent those
brilliant actions, those illustrious achievements, which have attached
immortality to the name of Wellington, and which have given to this
country a degree of glory unexampled in the annals of this kingdom. In
thus acting, I believe I best consult the feelings which evince your
Grace’s title to the character of a truly great and illustrious man”;
and the Duke replied, in a short speech, attributing his success to his
troops and general officers. A little later a deputation from the Lower
House waited upon Wellington to offer him the congratulations of the
Commons, and he attended in person to return thanks. The whole House
rose as he entered. After a short speech the Speaker made an eloquent
and touching address.
“It is not ... the grandeur of military success,” he said, “which has
alone fixed our admiration or commanded our applause; it has been that
generous and lofty spirit which inspired your troops with unbounded
confidence, and taught them to know that the day of battle was always
a day of victory; that moral courage and enduring fortitude which, in
perilous times, when gloom and doubt had beset ordinary minds, stood
nevertheless unshaken; and that ascendancy of character which, uniting
the energies of jealous and rival nations, enabled you to wield at will
the fate and fortunes of mighty empires....
“It now remains only that we congratulate your Grace upon the high and
important mission on which you are about to proceed, and we doubt not
that the same splendid talents, so conspicuous in war, will maintain,
with equal authority, firmness, and temper, our national honour and
interests in peace.”
Wellington was made a Doctor of Laws by the University of Oxford, as
Nelson had been before him,[81] he received the freedom of the City of
London in a gold casket, and a magnificent sword--in a word, he was the
country’s Hero.
The time at his disposal was short and fully occupied, for he
left London on the 8th August for Paris, travelling by way of the
Netherlands, where he inspected the frontier from Liège along the
Meuse and the Sambre to Namur and Charleroi, and thence by Mons to
Tournay and the sea with a view to determining how Holland and Belgium,
now united into one kingdom, could be placed in an adequate state of
defence for future service should circumstances dictate. He also noted
some of the most advantageous positions, including “the entrance of
the _forêt_ de Soignes by the high road which leads to Brussels from
Binch, Charleroi, and Namur,”--in one word, Waterloo. He realized
that there were more disadvantages than advantages, but “this country
must be defended in the best manner that is possible,” even though it
“affords no features upon which reliance can be placed to establish any
defensive system.”[82]
Wellington had no hours of luxurious ease in Paris. The abolition
of the slave trade, on which Great Britain had at last determined,
occupied much of his attention, and one has only to refer to his
dispatches at this period to understand the many difficulties he had
to contend with in this one particular. Then there were questions of
compensation for private property destroyed or damaged in the late war
to be considered, of American vessels of war and privateers fitted
out in French ports, and what was most important of all, a diagnosis
of the increasing restlessness in Paris to be made. He believed that
the sentiments of the people were favourable to the Bourbon king, “but
the danger is not in that quarter, but among the discontented officers
of the army, and others, heretofore in the civil departments of the
service, now without employment.”
It would be incorrect to state that Wellington was popular in Paris,
for not a few prominent military men regarded the presence of the
General who had played no small part in tarnishing the glory of France
as a perpetual reminder of the country’s misfortunes. The people even
went so far as to resent his coat of arms, in which there was a lion or
leopard bearing a tricoloured flag. This was construed as the British
lion trampling on the French national flag. There was an eagle on the
Duchess’s arms, which was another cause of offence. “My coach was in
danger of being torn to pieces,” says the Duke, and he was obliged to
have the innocent bird painted out.
The Congress of Vienna was now sitting, bent on undoing the work of
the Revolution so far as was possible with a view to upholding the
Divine right of kings. This is not to be wondered at considering the
members of the solemn conclave, which included the Czar, the Kings
of Prussia, Bavaria, Denmark and Würtemberg, the Grand Duke Charles
of Baden, the Elector William of Hesse, the Hereditary Grand Duke
George of Hesse-Darmstadt, the Duke of Weimar, and Prince Eugene
Beauharnais (Napoleon’s step-son). The President was Metternich, the
Emperor of Austria’s right-hand man, the first representative of
France was the wily Talleyrand, of Great Britain Castlereagh. A host
of plenipotentiaries came to put their fingers into the political
pie, including those of Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, France,
Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Switzerland, Italy, the Pope, the
Netherlands, and the smaller German States.
What with talk of projected attempts on his life and the far from
pacific doings at Vienna, the Earl of Liverpool was of opinion that it
would be advisable to get Wellington out of France as soon as possible.
With this idea in view he was offered the command of the troops in
North America, an offer he bitterly resented. However, Castlereagh
solved the difficulty by asking the Duke to take his place at Vienna.
The proposition was made by the Foreign Secretary in a letter dated
the 18th December 1814. “I do not hesitate to comply with your
desire,” the Duke replies. “As I mean to serve the King’s Government
in any situation which may be thought desirable, it is a matter of
indifference to me in what stage I find your proceedings.”
When Wellington reached the Austrian capital in January 1815--destined
to be the greatest year in modern European history--he found that the
wolves in sheep’s clothing had almost concluded their deliberations.
Russia, supported by Prussia, was intent upon securing Poland, a plan
bitterly opposed by Great Britain and Austria. France was wishful for
Holland and Belgium. The quarrelling suddenly ceased when, on the 7th
March, Metternich received the most astounding news. Napoleon, King of
Elba, had left his little island state, landed on the French coast, and
was marching in the direction of Paris! Wellington heard on the same
day from another source, and immediately communicated the scanty news
detailed to him by Lord Burghersh to the Emperor of Austria and the
Czar.
“I do not entertain the smallest doubt that, if unfortunately it
should be possible for Buonaparte to hold at all against the King
of France, he must fall under the cordially united efforts of the
Sovereigns of Europe.” Thus writes the Duke to Castlereagh, but in a
dispatch of the same date, namely the 12th March, he shows that he
entirely failed to appreciate the fascination still exercised by the
name “Napoleon.” “It is my opinion,” he writes, “that Buonaparte has
acted upon false or no information, and that the King will destroy him
without difficulty, and in a short time.” We know that the ex-Emperor’s
reception was at first somewhat lukewarm, but as he marched towards the
capital it assumed the form of a triumphal procession, with Ney and the
6000 men who were “to bring him back in an iron cage” as enthusiastic
followers. The inhabitants of the south alone refused to recognize the
former Emperor of the French.
Far from Louis XVIII destroying Napoleon “without difficulty,” that
brave monarch left France to its own devices on the 19th March, the
day before his predecessor and successor reached the Tuileries. “What
did he do in the midst of the general consternation of Paris?” asks
the Baron de Frénilly. “He acted. A great crowd saw him in the morning
proceeding in pomp with Monsieur to the Chamber of Deputies; he was
seen to enter and throw himself into his brother’s arms, with the
solemn promise to remain in Paris and be buried under the ruins of the
monarchy; and on the following day the population learnt that he had
fled in the night by the road to Flanders!” Soult, now Minister of
War, apparently under the impression that an Army Order would tend to
dispel any affection the soldiers might feel towards their former Head,
issued the most stupid of nonsensical proclamations. “Bonaparte,” it
reads in part, “mistakes us so far as to believe that we are capable
of abandoning a legitimate and beloved sovereign in order to share the
fortunes of one who is nothing more than an adventurer. He believes
this--the idiot!--and his last act of folly is a convincing proof that
he does so.”
Without loss of time the Fifth Coalition was formed, Great Britain,
Russia, Austria and Prussia entering into a treaty on the 17th March,
whereby each of them guaranteed to put 150,000 men in the field against
“the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world,” Great Britain,
as usual, financing the Allies, this time to the enormous extent of
£5,000,000.
With commendable dispatch Napoleon formed a new ministry and began to
marshal his troops, which at first numbered 200,000 and eventually
284,000, excluding a quarter of a million of men for internal defence.
“It was the finest army,” writes Professor Oman, “that Napoleon had
commanded since Friedland, for it was purely French, and was composed
almost entirely of veterans; but it was too small for its purpose.”[83]
Murat, king of Naples, precipitated matters by invading the Papal
States, and failed at the hands of Austria, thereby robbing his
brother-in-law of his only possible ally. But this was finished by the
beginning of May, over a month before Napoleon started for the front,
leaving 10,000 of his none-too-numerous troops to quell an outburst of
royalist enthusiasm in La Vendée, ever the most warlike province of
France and apt to flame into insurrection on the slightest provocation.