THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON—THE MAN AND THE STRATEGIST
So much for our sources. We may now proceed to discover what we can
deduce from them. And we must inevitably begin with a consideration
of the great leader of the British army. I am not writing a life of
Wellington, still less a commentary on his campaigns—with which I
am trying to deal elsewhere. My object is rather to paint him as he
appeared to his own army, and as his acts and his writings reveal him
during the course of his Peninsular campaigns. The Arthur Wellesley of
1809 is difficult to disentangle in our own memories from the familiar
figure of Victorian reminiscences. We think of him as the “Great
Duke,” the first and most honoured subject of the crown, round whom
centre so many stories, more or less well founded, illustrating his
disinterestedness, his hatred of phrases, insincerities, sentiment, and
humbug generally, his punctiliousness, his bleak frugality, and his
occasional scathing directness of speech—for he could never “suffer
fools gladly.” He had become a legend long before he died, and it takes
an effort of mind to differentiate the old man of 1850 from the general
of 1809, who had still, in the eyes of most men, his reputation to
make. For those who understood the greatness of his Indian exploits
were few. It was not Napoleon only who thought that to call Wellesley
a “sepoy general” was sufficient to reduce his reputation to that of a
facile victor over contemptible enemies.
When he took command of the Peninsular Army in the April of that
year, Arthur Wellesley was thirty-nine: he had just reached early
middle age. He was a slight but wiry man of middle stature, well built
and erect, with a long face, an aquiline nose, and a keen but cold
grey eye. His reputation as a soldier was already high; but few save
those who had served under him in India understood the full scope of
his abilities. Many undervalued him, because he was a member of a
well-known, but ill-loved family and political group, and had owed
his early promotion and opportunities of distinguishing himself to
that fact. It was still open to critics to say that the man who had
commanded a battalion in the old Revolutionary War at the age of
twenty-three, and who had headed an army in India before he was quite
thirty, had got further to the front than he deserved by political
influence. And it was true (though the fact is so often forgotten),
that in his early years he had got much help from his connections, that
he had obtained his unique chance in India because he was the brother
of a viceroy, and that since his return from the East he had been more
of a politician than a general. Was he not, even when he won Vimeiro,
Secretary for Ireland in the Tory government of the day? It was a post
whose holder had to dabble in much dirty work, when dealing with the
needy peers, the grovelling place-mongers, and the intriguing lawyers
of Dublin. Wellesley went through with it all, and not by any means
in a conciliatory way. He passed the necessary jobs, but did not hide
from the jobbers his scorn for them. When the Secretary for Ireland
had to deal with any one whom he disliked, he showed a happy mixture
of aristocratic hauteur and cold intellectual contempt, which sent the
petitioner away in a bitter frame of mind, whether his petition had
been granted or no. Unfortunately, he carried this manner from the
Irish Secretaryship on to the Headquarters of the Peninsular Army. It
did not tend to make him loved.
[Sidenote: Wellington and the Whigs]
Fortunately for Great Britain, it does not always follow that, because
a man has been pushed rapidly to the front by political influence, he
is therefore incompetent or unworthy of the place given him. Every one
who came into personal contact with Arthur Wellesley soon recognized
that Castlereagh and the other ministers had not erred when they sent
the “Sepoy General” to Portugal in 1808, and when they, despite of all
the clamour following the Convention of Cintra, despatched him a second
time to Lisbon in 1809, this time with full control of the Peninsular
Army. From the first opening of his Vimeiro campaign the troops that he
led had the firmest confidence in him—they saw the skill with which he
handled them, and criticism very soon died away. It was left for Whig
politicians at home, carpers with not the slightest knowledge of war,
to go on asserting for a couple of years more that he was an over-rated
officer, that he was rash and reckless, and that his leadership
would end, on some not very distant day, with the expulsion of the
British army from the Peninsula. At the front there were very few such
doubters—though contemporary letters have proved to me that one or two
were to be found.[48]
To say that Wellington from the first was trusted alike by his officers
and his men, is by no means to say that he was loved by them. He did
everything that could win confidence, but little that could attract
affection. They recognized that he was marvellously capable, but that
he was without the supreme gift of sympathy for others. “The sight of
his long nose among us,” wrote one of his veterans, “was worth ten
thousand men any day of the week. I will venture to say that there was
not a heart in the army which did not beat more lightly when we heard
the joyful news of his arrival.”[49] But this does not mean that he was
regarded with an enthusiasm of the emotional and affectionate sort.
Another Light Division officer sums up the position in the coldest
words that I have ever seen applied to the relations of a great general
with his victorious army. “I know that it has been said that Wellington
was unpopular with the army. Now I can assert with respect to the
Light Division that the troops _rather liked him than otherwise_....
Although Wellington was not what may be called popular, still the
troops possessed great confidence in him, nor did I ever hear a single
individual express an opinion to the contrary.”[50]
There must, indeed, have been something to repel enthusiasm and
affection in the leader of whom, after five years of victories won and
hardships suffered in common, it could be said that his troops “rather
liked him than otherwise.” But they found that he was a hard master,
slow to praise and swift to blame and to punish. Though he knew the
military virtues of his rank and file, and acknowledged that they had
more than once “got him out of a scrape” by performing the almost
impossible, he did not love them. He has left on record unpardonable
words concerning his men. “They are the scum of the earth. English
soldiers are fellows who have enlisted for drink—that is the plain
fact: they have _all_ enlisted for drink.”[51] Quite as bad in spirit
is one of his sayings before a Royal Commission on the Army. “I have no
idea of any great effect being produced on British soldiers by anything
but the fear of immediate corporal punishment.” Naturally enough
a leader with such views never appealed to the better side of his
men: he never spoke or wrote about honour or patriotism to them, but
frequently reminded them of the lash and the firing-party, that were
the inevitable penalty for the straggler, the drunkard, the plunderer,
and the deserter. Nothing cooled the spirits of officers and men alike
more than the strength and vigour of his rebukes, as compared with the
official formality of his terms of praise. It was possible to have a
full appreciation of his marvellous powers of brain, and a complete
confidence in him as a leader, without feeling the least touch of
affection for this hard and unsympathetic figure.
[Sidenote: Wellington and his Men]
The distressing point in all this is that the Peninsular Army, though
it had its proportion of hardened sots and criminals, was full of good
soldiers who knew what honour and loyalty meant, and were perfectly
capable of answering any stirring appeal to their heart or their
brain. There are dozens of diaries and autobiographies written in the
ranks which show the existence of a vast class of well-conditioned
intelligent, sober, even religious men, who were doing their work
conscientiously, and would have valued a word of praise—they often got
it from their regimental officers—seldom from their commander-in-chief.
And we may add that if anything was calculated to brutalize an army
it was the wicked cruelty of the British military punishment code,
which Wellington to the end of his life supported. There is plenty
of authority for the fact that the man who had once received his
500 lashes for a fault which was small, or which involved no moral
guilt, was often turned thereby from a good into a bad soldier, by
losing his self-respect and having his sense of justice seared out.
Good officers knew this well enough, and did their best to avoid the
cat-of-nine-tails, and to try more rational means—more often than not
with success.[52]
It might have been expected that Wellington would at least show more
regard for the feelings of his officers, however much he might contemn
his rank and file. As a rule he did not. He had some few intimates
whom he treated with a certain familiarity, and it is clear that he
showed consideration and even kindness to his aides-de-camp and other
personal retainers. But to the great majority of his officers, even to
many of his generals and heads of departments, he bore himself very
stiffly: he would administer to them humiliating snubs or reproofs
before others, and ignore their remarks or proffered counsel in the
most marked way. A few examples may serve. Sir Thomas Picton was one
of his most distinguished lieutenants, and was specially summoned by
him to come over to Brussels to take his part in the campaign of 1815.
The moment that he arrived in the Belgian capital he sought the Duke,
who was walking in the Great Park. We have the witness of Picton’s
aide-de-camp for the following reception. “The general’s manner was
always more familiar than the Duke liked in his lieutenants, and on
this occasion he approached him in a careless sort of way, just as he
might have greeted an equal. The Duke bowed coldly to him, and said, ‘I
am glad you are come, Sir Thomas. The sooner you get on horseback the
better: no time to be lost. You will take the command of the troops in
advance.’ That was all. Picton appeared not to like the Duke’s manner,
and when he had bowed and left, he muttered words which convinced those
who were with him that he was not much pleased with his interview.”[53]
Such was the welcome vouchsafed to one of the best officers in the
army, whom Wellington had specially sent for, and whom he had not seen
for a long space of time. Another picture of Wellington’s manners may
be taken from the memoir of one of his departmental chiefs, Sir James
McGrigor. “One morning I was in his lordship’s small room, when two
officers came to request leave to go home to England. An engineer
captain first made his request: he had received letters informing him
that his wife was dangerously ill, and that the whole of his family
were sick. His lordship quickly replied, ‘No, no, sir. I cannot spare
you at this moment.’ The captain, with a mournful face, drew back. Then
a general officer, of noble family, commanding a brigade, advanced
saying, ‘My lord, I have lately been suffering much from rheumatism——’.
Without allowing him time to complete his sentence, Lord Wellington
rapidly said, ‘and you want to go to England to be cured. By all means.
Go there immediately.’ The general, surprised at his lordship’s tone
and manner, looked abashed, but to prevent his saying anything more,
his lordship turned and began to address me, enquiring about the
casualty-returns of the preceding night, and the nature of them.”[54]
An interview with the commander-in-chief was such a trying thing for
the nerves that some officers went away from it in a flood of tears—as
did Charles Stewart after one famous reproof—and others suffocating
from suppressed maledictions.
[Sidenote: Wellington and his Officers]
Wellington’s temper was tried by having to deal with some inefficient
and slack officers—foisted upon him from home—for never till the end
of the war (as he bitterly complained) was he allowed complete liberty
in choosing his subordinates. But it was not on them alone that his
thunders fell. He often raged at zealous and capable subordinates,
who had done no more than think for themselves in an urgent crisis,
when the orders that they had received seemed no longer applicable.
Sir James McGrigor, whom I have just quoted above, once moved some
commissariat stores to Salamanca, where there was a great accumulation
of sick and wounded. “When I came to inform him his lordship started
up, and in a violent manner began to repudiate what I had done. ‘I
shall be glad to know,’ he asked, ‘who commands this army—I or you? I
establish one route, one line of communication—you establish another
by ordering up supplies by it. As long as you live, sir, never do
that again. Never do _anything_ without my orders.’ I pleaded that
there had been no time to consult him, and that I had to save lives.
He peremptorily desired me ‘never again to act without his orders.’”
Three months afterwards McGrigor ventured to say, “My lord, you will
remember how much you blamed me at Madrid, for the steps that I took
when I could not consult your lordship, and acted for myself. Now, if
I had not, what would the consequences have been?” He answered, “It is
all right as it has turned out, but still I recommend you to _have my
orders for what you do_.” This was a singular feature in his lordship’s
character.
Anything that seemed to Wellington to partake of the nature of
thinking for oneself was an unpardonable sin in a subordinate. This
is why he preferred blind obedience in his lieutenants to zeal and
energy which might lead to some contravention of his own intention.
Thus it came that he preferred as lieutenants not only Hill, who was
a man of first-class brain-power notwithstanding his docility, but
Spencer and Beresford, who most certainly were not. Hence, too, his
commission of the cavalry arm throughout the war to such a mediocre
personage as Stapleton Cotton (of whom he used the most unflattering
language).[55] These men could be trusted to obey without reasoning,
while Robert Craufurd, the ablest general in the Peninsula, or Picton,
could not, but were liable to think for themselves. It may be noted
that Hill, Beresford, Graham and Craufurd, were the only officers to
whom Wellington ever condescended in his correspondence to give the why
and wherefore of a command that he issued: the others simply received
orders without any commentary. There are instances known in which a
word of reasonable explanation to a subordinate would have enabled him
to understand a situation, and to comprehend why directions otherwise
incomprehensible were given him. Tiresome results occasionally
followed. This foible of refusing information to subordinates for no
adequate reason has been shared by other great generals—_e.g._ by
Stonewall Jackson, as Colonel Henderson’s biography of that strange
genius sufficiently shows. It is a trick of the autocratic mind.
It hardly requires to be pointed out that this determination to allow
no liberty of action to his lieutenants, and to keep even small
decisions in his own hands, effectually prevented Wellington from
forming a school of generals capable of carrying out large independent
operations. He trained admirable divisional commanders, but not leaders
of armies. The springs of self-confidence were drained out of men who
had for long been subjected to his _régime_.
[Sidenote: Wellington’s Dispatches]
Probably the thing which irritated Wellington’s subordinates most
was his habit of making his official mention of names in dispatches
little more than a formal recital in order of the senior officers
present. Where grave mistakes had been committed, he still stuck
the names of the misdemeanants in the list, among those of the men
who had really done the work. A complete mystification as to their
relative merits would be produced, if we had only the dispatches to
read, and no external commentary on them. He honourably mentioned
Murray in his Oporto dispatch, Erskine in his dispatch concerning
the actions during Masséna’s retreat in 1811, Trip in his Waterloo
dispatch, though each of these officers had done his best to spoil the
operations in which he was concerned. On the other hand, he would make
the most unaccountable omissions: his Fuentes de Oñoro dispatch makes
no mention of the British artillery, which had done most brilliant
service in that battle, not merely in the matter of Norman Ramsay’s
well-known exploit, which Wellington might have thought too small a
matter to mention, but in the decisive checking of the main French
attack. There are extant heart-rending letters from the senior officers
commanding the artillery, deploring the way in which they have been
completely ignored: “to read the dispatch, there might have been no
British artillery present at all.” A similar inexplicable omission
of any record of zealous service occurs in Wellington’s dispatch
recording the fall of Badajoz, where no special praise of the services
of his engineer officers is made, though 50 per cent. of them had
been killed or wounded during the siege. “You may suppose we all feel
hurt at finding our exertions have not been deemed worthy of any sort
of eulogium,” writes John Jones, the historian of the sieges of the
Peninsula, to one of his colleagues. And Fletcher, the commanding
engineer, writes to a friend: “You will observe that Lord W. has
not mentioned the engineers in the late actions: how I hate such
capriciousness!”[56] The cold phrase in which their desperate service
was acknowledged is “the officers and men of the corps of engineers
and artillery were equally distinguished during the operations of
the siege and its close.” Fletcher would gladly have exchanged the
personal honour of a decoration, which was given him along with other
senior officers, for three lines of warm praise of the exertions of his
subordinates.
[Sidenote: Lord Roberts on Wellington]
Perhaps, however, the most astounding instance of Wellington’s
ungracious omissions is that his famous Waterloo dispatch contains
no mention whatever of the services of Colborne and the 52nd, the
battalion which gave the decisive stroke against the flank of the
Imperial Guard, during Napoleon’s last desperate assault on the British
line. Colborne, the most unselfish and generous of men, could never
forget this slight. He tried to excuse it, saying, “dispatches are
written in haste, and it is impossible for a general to do justice
to his army.” And when he heard his officers complaining that the
British Guards had been given all the credit for the final repulse of
the French column, he said, “For shame, gentlemen! One would think
that you forgot that the 52nd had ever been in battle before.” But
there was a bitter comment in the table talk of his later years. “The
Duke was occasionally not above writing in his dispatches to please
the aristocracy.... I don’t mean to say that this was peculiar to
him. It used to be a common thing with general officers.”[57] Enough,
however, of these illustrative anecdotes of the limitations of a very
great soldier and a very honourable man. They have to be mentioned in
order to explain how it came to pass that Wellington was implicitly
trusted, and never loved. But they compel me to acquiesce in the hard
judgment which Lord Roberts wrote in his _Rise of Wellington_—“the
more we go into his actions and his writings in detail, the more do
we respect and admire him as a general, and the less do we like him
as a man.” I conclude this paragraph with two quotations from two
eloquent writers who served through long years of the Peninsular
campaigns. “Thus terminated the war, and with it all remembrances
of the veteran’s services” are the last words of William Napier’s
penultimate chapter.[58] Grattan of the 88th, a forgotten writer now,
but one who wielded a descriptive pen no less vivid than Napier’s,
puts the complaint more bitterly. “In his parting General Order to
the Peninsular Army he told us that he would never cease to feel the
warmest interest for our welfare and honour. How that promise has
been kept every one knows. That the Duke of Wellington is one of the
most remarkable (perhaps the greatest) men of the present age, few
will deny. But that he neglected the interests and feelings of his
Peninsular army, as a body, is beyond all question. And were he in his
grave to-morrow, hundreds of voices that now are silent would echo what
I write.”[59]
If I have dwelt perhaps at over-great length on the limitations of
Wellington’s heart, it is only fair that full credit should be given to
his wonderful powers of brain. To comprehend the actual merit of his
military career, it is not sufficient to possess a mere knowledge of
the details of his tactics and his strategy. The conditions under which
he had to exercise his talents were exceptionally trying and difficult.
When he assumed command at Lisbon on April 22, 1809, the French were in
possession of all Northern and Central Spain, and of no inconsiderable
part of Northern Portugal also. The Spanish armies had all been
dashed to pieces—there was no single one of them which had not
suffered a crushing defeat, and some of them (such as Cuesta’s army
of Estremadura, and La Romana’s army of Galicia) were at the moment
little better than wandering bands of fugitives. The British army of
which Wellesley took command when he landed at Lisbon, though it only
mustered 19,000 men present, or 21,000 including men in hospital, was
the only solid force, in good order and intact in _morale_, on which
the allies could count in the Iberian Peninsula. The task set before
Wellesley was to see if he could defend Portugal, and co-operate in the
protection of Southern Spain, it being obvious that the French were in
vastly superior numbers, and well able to take the offensive if they
should chose to do so. There were two armies threatening Lisbon. The
one under Soult had already captured Oporto and overrun two Portuguese
provinces, shortly before Wellesley’s landing. The other, under Victor,
lay in Estremadura close to the Portuguese border, and had recently
destroyed the largest surviving Spanish army at the battle of Medellin
on March 28. Was it possible that 19,000 British troops could save
the Peninsula from conquest, or even that they could keep up the war
in Central Portugal? Never was a more unpromising task set to the
commander of a small army.
[Sidenote: Wellington’s Powers of Prescience]
Fortunately we possess three documents from Wellesley’s own hand, which
show us the way in which he surveyed the position that was before him,
and stated his views as to the future course of the Peninsular War.
He recognized that it was about to be a very long business, and that
his task was simply to keep the war going as long as possible, with
the limited resources at his disposition. Ambitious schemes for the
expulsion of the French from the whole Peninsula were in 1809 perfectly
futile. The hypothesis which he sets forth in the first of the three
documents to which I allude, his _Memorandum on the Defence of
Portugal_, laid before Castlereagh on March 7, before he had taken ship
for Lisbon, is a marvel of prophetic genius. No more prescient document
was ever written. Rejecting the decision of Sir John Moore, who had
declared that Portugal was quite indefensible, Wellesley states that
a British army of not less than 30,000 men, backed by the levies of
Portugal, ought to be able to maintain itself for an almost indefinite
period on the flank of the French army in Spain. Its presence on the
Tagus would paralyse all offensive movements of the enemy, and enable
the Spaniards to make head in the unsubdued provinces of their realm,
so long as Portugal should remain intact. The French ought, if they
were wise, to turn all their disposable forces against the British
army and Portugal, but he believed that even then, when the geography
of the country was taken into consideration, they would fail in their
attempt to overrun it. They could not succeed, as he held, unless they
were able to set aside 100,000 men for the task, and he did not see how
in the spring of 1809 they could spare such a large detachment, out of
the forces which they then possessed in the Peninsula. If they tried it
with a smaller army, he thought that he could undertake to foil them.
He believed that he could cope with Soult and Victor, the two enemies
who immediately threatened Portugal.[60]
Further forward it was impossible to look. If a war should break out
between Napoleon and Austria, as seemed likely at the moment in March,
1809, to one who (like himself) was in the secrets of the British
Cabinet, the Emperor would not be able to send reinforcements to
Spain for many a day. But, even so, the position of the French in the
Peninsula was so strong that it could only be endangered if a very
large allied force, acting in unison under the guidance of a single
general, should be brought to bear upon them. Of the collection of such
a force, and still more of the possibility of its being entrusted to
his own command, there was as yet no question. Wellesley was aware of
the jealousy of foreign interference which the Spanish Junta nurtured:
there was little probability that they would entrust him with the
supreme control over their armies. It was, indeed, only in 1812,
when he had acquired for himself a much greater reputation than he
owned in 1809, and when the Spanish Government had drunk the cup of
humiliation to the dregs, that he was finally given the position of
commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies.
This memorandum is a truly inspired document, which shows Wellesley
at his best. It is not too much to say that it predicts the whole
course of the Peninsular War—whose central point was to be invasion of
Portugal in 1810 by a French army of 65,000 instead of the required
100,000 men, and that army, as he had foreseen, Wellesley was able to
check and foil.
The second document of a prophetic sort that we have to notice is
Wellesley’s reply to Mr. Canning’s question to him as regards the
future general policy of the war, written on September 5, 1809. The
whole aspect of affairs had been much changed since March, by the fact
that Austria had tried her luck in a war against Napoleon, and had been
beaten at Wagram and forced to make peace. It was therefore certain
that the Emperor would now have his hands free again, and be able to
reinforce his armies in the Peninsula. Wellesley replies that it is
hopeless to attempt to defend both Southern Spain and Portugal also,
even if the British army were raised to 40,000 men. But Portugal can
still be defended.[61] He expresses the strongest objection to any
attempt to cover Andalusia and Seville, for to endeavour to do so must
mean that Lisbon would have to be given up.
[Sidenote: The Lines of Torres Vedras]
The third great prophetic despatch is the Memorandum of October
26, 1809, ordering the construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras.
Wellesley looks a full year ahead. He sees that Napoleon can now
reinforce his Spanish armies, but that the new troops cannot get up
till the next spring. When they appear, the British army will have to
retreat on Lisbon, where lines of such strength can be planned that
there is a good prospect of bringing the invaders to a stand. Meanwhile
the countryside shall be cleared of population and provisions, so that
the French, if they keep concentrated, must starve, and the allied
army shall so conduct its operations that the enemy will be compelled
to remain _en masse_. Then follow directions to Colonel Fletcher
(commanding the engineers) to make his plans for an immense line of
redoubts covering the Lisbon peninsula from sea to sea. What was
foreseen came to pass: the French reinforcements arrived: the invasion
of Portugal under Masséna took place in 1810. But the whole countryside
was swept clear of food, and when the marshal reached the Lines with
his half-starved army, he was completely blocked, refused to attack the
formidable positions, and, after a few weeks of endurance in front of
them, withdrew with his famished troops. It was on October 26, 1809,
that Wellington ordered the Lines to be laid out. On October 14, 1810,
Masséna appeared in front of them and was foiled: Wellington had made
his preparations exactly a year ahead!
Careful long-sighted calculation was perhaps the Duke’s strongest
point. He had an immense grasp of detail, kept intelligence officers of
picked ability out on every front, and had compiled an almost exactly
correct muster-roll of the forces opposed to him. Seldom had a general
of his time such a complete knowledge of his adversaries, and this he
owed to the pains that he took to obtain it. His great scouts Colquhoun
Grant,[62] Waters, and Rumann were always far out to the front, often
within the French lines, sending him daily information, which he
filed and dissected. In addition he had many Spanish and Portuguese
correspondents, whose information would have been more valuable if it
had not contained too much hearsay, and if they had been able to judge
numbers with the trained eye of a soldier. Once he complained that he
and Marmont were almost equally handicapped as regards information from
the natives—for if the Frenchmen got none, he himself got too much:
the proportion of it which was inaccurate spoiled the value of the
rest. But Grant or Waters never made mistakes. Part of his system was
the cross-questioning of every deserter and prisoner as to the number
and brigading of his regiment, and the amount of battalions that it
contained. By constant comparison of these reports he got to know the
exact number of units in every French corps, and their average strength.
But this was less important than his faculty for judging the individual
characters of his opponents. After a few weeks he got his fixed opinion
on Masséna or Victor, Soult or Marmont, and would lay his plans with
careful reference to their particular foibles. I think that this is
what he meant when he once observed that his own merit was, perhaps,
that he knew more of “what was going on upon the other side of the
hill,”—in the invisible ground occupied by the enemy and hidden by the
fog of war—than most men.
[Sidenote: Wellington’s Insight into Character]
This insight into the enemy’s probable move, when their strength, their
object, and the personal tendencies of their leader were known, was
a most valuable part of Wellesley’s mental equipment. The best known
instance where it came into play was on the day of Sorauren. In the
midst of the battles of the Pyrenees, when the British army had taken
up its fighting position, though its numbers were as yet by no means
complete, and two divisions were still marching up, Wellington arrived
from the west to assume command. He could see Soult on the opposite
hill surrounded by his staff, and it was equally certain that Soult
could see him, and knew the reason of the cheer which ran along the
front of the allied army as he rode up. Wellington judged, and rightly,
that the news of his arrival, and the sight of him in position, would
cause the marshal to delay his attack till the last of the French
reserves had come on the field. “I had an excellent glass: I saw him
spying at us—then write and send off a letter: _I knew what he would
be writing_, and gave my orders accordingly.”[63] Wellington judged
Soult a cautious general, knew that his own presence would redouble
his caution, and so judged that the order given by the marshal would
be for the checking of a threatened attack, which would have been very
dangerous at the moment, if it had been pressed. “The 6th Division will
have time to come up, and we shall beat him,” is said to have been his
comment, when he saw Soult hurriedly write and dispatch an order to his
front line.
Wellington played off a similar piece of bluff on Marmont at Fuente
Guinaldo in September, 1811, when he drew up in a position strong
indeed, but over-great for the numbers that he had in hand, and seemed
to offer battle. He was aware that his own reputation for caution was
so great that, if the enemy saw him halt and take up his ground, they
would judge that he had concentrated his whole force, and would not
attack him till their own reserves were near. He absconded unmolested
in the night, while Marmont’s rear columns were toiling up for the
expected battle of the next day.
For a long time in 1809–10 Wellesley had to assume a defensive
attitude. It was not till 1811 that it at last became possible for him
to think of taking the offensive, nor was it till 1812, the glorious
year of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and Salamanca, that the dream reached
its realization. Hence came it that for a long time he was regarded
only as a cautious and calculating general, a master of defensive
warfare. This conception of him was wrong; as events showed, in
1812–1813, that he could be a very thunderbolt of war, when propitious
chance gave him the opportunity, could strike the boldest blows, and
launch his army upon the enemy with the most ruthless energy. But, in
the earlier years of his command, he was always hopelessly outnumbered,
and forced to parry rather than to strike. He had to run no risks with
his precious little army, the 30,000 British troops on whom the whole
defence of the Peninsula really depended: because if it were destroyed
it could not be replaced. With these 30,000 men he had covenanted, in
his agreement with Castlereagh, when first he sailed to take command at
Lisbon, that he would keep up the war indefinitely. If by taking some
great risk he had lost 15,000 or even 10,000 men, the government would
have called him home, and would have given up the struggle. Thus he
had to fight with the consciousness that a single disaster might ruin
not only his own plans, but the whole cause of the allies in Spain.
No wonder that his actions seem cautious! Yet even in 1810–1811 he
took some serious risks, such as the offering of battle at Bussaco and
Fuentes de Oñoro. When even a partial defeat would mean his own recall,
and the evacuation of Portugal, it required no small resolution even
to face such chances as these. But his serene and equable temper could
draw the exact line between legitimate and over-rash enterprise, and
never betrayed him.
[Sidenote: Wellington on the Offensive]
All the more striking, therefore, was the sudden development into a
bold offensive policy which marked the commencement of that year of
victories 1812. The chance had at last come: Napoleon was ceasing to
pour reinforcements into Spain—the Russian War was beginning to loom
near at hand. The French no longer possessed their former overwhelming
superiority: in order to hold in check Wellington’s army, now at last
increased by troops from home to 40,000 British sabres and bayonets,
they had to concentrate from every quarter, and risk their hold on
many provinces in order to collect a force so large that the British
general could not dare to face it. At last, in the winter of 1811–1812,
Napoleon himself intervened as Wellington’s helper, by dispersing
his armies too broadcast. The actually fatal move was the sending of
15,000 of Marmont’s “Army of Portugal,” the immediate adversary of
the Anglo-Portuguese host, for a distant expedition to the coast of
the Mediterranean in aid of Marshal Suchet. It was the absence of
this great detachment, which could not return for many weeks, that
emboldened Wellington to make his first great offensive stroke, the
storming of Ciudad Rodrigo on January 19, 1812, after a siege of only
twelve days.
Following on this first success came the dear-bought but decisive
success of the storming of Badajoz on April 7; this was a costly
business, because Wellington had to operate “against time,” since, if
he lingered over-long, the French armies from north and south would
combine, outnumber him, and drive him back into Portugal. Badajoz had
to be stormed by sheer force, before all the arts of the engineer and
artillerist had worked their full effect. The fire of the besieged had
not been subdued, nor had the approaches of the assailants been pushed
close up to the walls, as science would have dictated. But by making
three simultaneous attacks on different points of the fortress, and
succeeding at two of them, Wellington achieved his object and solved
his “time problem.” He showed here, for the first time, that he could,
if it was necessary, spend the lives of his men remorselessly, in order
to finish in a few days a task which, if much longer delayed, would
have had to be abandoned. This was to his French enemies a revelation
of a new side of his character. He had been esteemed one who refused
risks and would not accept losses. If they had known of the details of
his old Indian victory of Assaye, they would have judged his character
more truly.
But Salamanca was the real revelation of Wellington’s full powers. It
was a lightning stroke, a sudden offensive movement made at a crisis of
momentary opportunity, which would have ceased if the hour had not been
seized with all promptitude. Wellington hurled his army unexpectedly
at the enemy, who was manœuvring in full confidence and tranquillity
in front of his line, thinking that he had to deal with an adversary
who might accept a battle (as at Vimeiro, Talavera, or Bussaco), but
might be trusted not to force one on. Salamanca surprised and dismayed
the more sagacious of the French officers. Foy, the most intelligent
observer among them, put down in his diary six days later, “This battle
is the most cleverly fought, the largest in scale, the most important
in results, of any that the English have won in recent times. It
brings up Lord Wellington’s reputation almost to the level of that of
Marlborough. Up to this day we knew his prudence, his eye for choosing
good positions, and the skill with which he used them. But at Salamanca
he has shown himself a great and able master of manœuvring. He kept
his dispositions hidden nearly the whole day: he allowed us to develop
our movement before he pronounced his own: he played a close game; he
utilized the “oblique order” in the style of Frederick the Great....
The catastrophe of the Spanish War has come—for six months we ought to
have seen that it was quite probable.”[64]
This is one of the most striking and handsome compliments ever paid
by a general of a beaten army to the commander of the victorious
adversaries. It is perfectly true, and it reflects the greatest credit
on Foy’s fair-mindedness and readiness to see facts as they were. The
conqueror of Salamanca was for the future a much more terrifying enemy
than the victor of Bussaco or Talavera had been. It is one thing to be
repulsed—that had often happened to the French before—another to be
suddenly assailed, scattered, and driven off the field with crushing
losses and in hopeless disorder, as happened to Wellington’s enemies
under the shadow of the Arapiles on July 22, 1812.
Wellington as a great master of the offensive came into prominence
in 1812, and for the rest of the war it is this side of him which is
most frequently visible, though the retreat from Burgos shows that his
prudence was as much alive as ever. During the few days that preceded
that retreat there was very great temptation to try a hard stroke at
one of the French armies that were converging on the two halves of his
own force. Napoleon would undoubtedly have made the attempt. But,
Wellington, knowing that his own total numbers were much inferior to
those of the enemy, and that to concentrate in front of either Soult or
Souham would be to take a terrible risk on the other flank, preferred
a concentric retreat towards his base on the frontier of Portugal, to
a battle in the plains of Castille, where he was far from home and
support, and where a defeat might lead to absolute ruin.
[Sidenote: The Campaigns of 1813–1814]
This was the last time that he was outnumbered and forced back upon
his old methods. In 1813, owing to Napoleon’s drafts from the army
of Spain, which were called off to replace the troops lost in the
Moscow campaign, the allies had at last a superiority in numbers,
though that superiority consisted entirely in Spanish troops of
doubtful solidity. But even these were conditions far more favourable
than Wellington had ever enjoyed before—he knew how to use his newly
joined Spanish divisions in a useful fashion, without placing them in
the more dangerous and responsible positions. The campaigns of 1813
and 1814 are both essentially offensive in character, though they
contain one or two episodes when Wellington was, for the moment, on
the defensive in his old style, notably the early part of the battles
of the Pyrenees, where, till his reserves came up, he was fending off
Soult by the use of his more advanced divisions. But the moment that
his army was assembled he struck hard, and chased the enemy over the
frontier, again in the series of operations that begun on the last day
of Sorauren. There was a very similar episode during the operations
that are generally known as the battle of the Nive, where Wellington
had twice to stand for a movement in position, while one of his wings
was assailed by Soult’s main body. But this was distinctly what we may
call defensive tactical detail, in a campaign that was essentially
offensive on the whole. The main character of the operations of 1813–14
may be described as the clearing out of the enemy from a series of
positions—generally heavily fortified—by successful breaking through of
the lines which Soult on each occasion failed to hold. Invariably the
French army was nailed down to the position which it had taken up, by
demonstrations all along its front, while the decisive blow was given
at selected points by a mass of troops collected for the main stroke.