The Political History of England – Vol XI

The spirit in which Napoleon had entered upon this contest is well illustrated in two sentences of his address to the citizens of Madrid. "The Bourbons," he said, "can no longer reign in Europe," and "No power under the influence of England can exist on the continent". The counter-proclamations of Spanish juntas were more prolix and equally arrogant, but one of them reveals the secret of national strength when it asserts that "a whole people is more powerful than disciplined armies". The British estimate of Napoleon's Spanish policy was tersely expressed by the Marquis Wellesley in the house of lords, "To him force and fraud were alike; force, that would stoop to all the base artifices of fraud; and fraud, that would come armed with all the fierce violence of force".

WELLESLEY TAKES COMMAND.

For three months after the battle of Coruña, the Peninsular war, as regards the action of Great Britain, was all but suspended. Two days before that battle, a formal treaty of peace and alliance between Great Britain and the Spanish junta, which had withdrawn to Seville, was signed at London. Sir John Cradock was in command of the British troops at Lisbon, and took up a defensive position there, with reinforcements from Cadiz, awaiting the approach of Soult, who had captured Oporto by storm, and of Victor, who was in the valley of the Tagus. At the request of the Portuguese, Beresford had been sent out to organise and command their army. Early in 1809 the Spaniards were defeated with great slaughter at Ucles, Ciudad Real, and Medellin; Zaragoza was taken after another siege, and still more obstinate defence; and the national cause seemed more desperate than ever. On April 2, however, Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had returned home after the convention of Cintra, was appointed to the command-in-chief of our forces in the Peninsula. Before leaving England, he left with the ministers a memorandum on the conduct of the war which, viewed by the light of later events, must be accounted a masterpiece of foresight and sagacity. When it was laid before George III., his natural shrewdness at once discerned its true value, and he desired its author to be informed of the strong impression which it had produced on his mind.

Wellesley, indeed, could not estimate beforehand the vast numerical superiority of the French while the rest of Europe was at peace, or the impotent vacillations of Spanish juntas, or the "mulish obstinacy" of Spanish generals, which so often wrecked his plans and spoiled his victories. Nor could he foresee the advantages which he would derive from the resources of guerilla warfare, the mutual jealousies of the French marshals, and the sudden recall of the best French troops for service in Germany and Russia. But his prescient and practical mind firmly grasped the dominant facts of the position – that Portugal, guarded by the ocean on the west and by mountain ranges on the east, was far more accessible to the British navy than to the French army; that, under British officers, its troops might be trained into an effective force; and that, with it as a basis, Great Britain might ultimately liberate the whole Peninsula. "I have always been of opinion," Wellesley said in this memorandum, "that Portugal might be defended, whatever might be the result of the contest in Spain; and that in the meantime the measures adopted for the defence of Portugal would be highly useful to the Spaniards in their contest with the French." On this simple principle all his detailed recommendations were founded, and he expressed a deliberate belief that, if 30,000 British troops were supported by an equal number of Portuguese regulars, and a reserve of militia was provided, "the French would not be able to overrun Portugal with less than 100,000 men". This forecast was verified, and upon its essential wisdom the fate of the Peninsular war, with all its consequences, may be said to have depended.[44 - Wellington, Dispatches, iv., 261-63 (March 7, 1809).]

Wellesley landed at Lisbon on April 22, and was received with the utmost demonstrations of joy and confidence. He found not only the capital but the whole country in a state of tumult, if not of anarchy, due to a growing despair of the national cause. His arrival rekindled the embers of patriotism, and on May 5 he reviewed at Coimbra a body of troops consisting of 17,000 British and Germans, with about 8,000 Portuguese. The next day he marched towards the Douro, and on the 14th he effected the passage of that river in the face of the French army occupying Oporto, which the British forthwith recaptured. Soult beat a hasty and disorderly retreat into Galicia. Having driven Soult out of Portugal, the British general was encouraged to undertake a further advance into Spain, where Joseph with Victor and Sébastiani had collected a much larger army to bar the approaches to Madrid than Wellesley, relying on Spanish intelligence, had been led to expect. During June and the first days of July, he moved by Abrantes and the Tagus valley as far as Plasencia, little knowing that Soult was about to sweep round his rear, with 50,000 men, and intercept his communications with Lisbon. On July 10 he held a conference with the Spanish general Cuesta, who insisted on making an aggressive movement with his own troops only, and met with a repulse.

THE TALAVERA CAMPAIGN.

On the 27th, the combined armies of Wellesley and Cuesta, numbering respectively about 20,000 British and 35,000 Spanish, confronted 46,000 French troops, under Victor, in a strong position behind Talavera.[45 - For the exact figures see Oman, Peninsular War, ii., 645-48.] The Spanish forces occupied the right and the British the left of this position. Joseph was present, and disregarding the counsels of Jourdan, his proper military adviser, authorised Victor to assume the offensive. He failed in two preliminary attacks on the 27th, but renewed them on the 28th, when a general engagement ensued. The whole brunt of the battle fell upon the British troops, who gallantly withstood a desperate onset, first on their left and then on their centre and right, until the French quitted the field in confusion. The Spaniards, posted in entrenchments nearer Talavera itself, did and suffered comparatively little. Some of their regiments fled disgracefully, but the rest held their ground, and Wellesley in his despatch spoke favourably of their behaviour.[46 - Wellington, Dispatches, iv., 536 (July 29, 1809).] Perhaps the part which they played may be roughly estimated by their losses, amounting to 1,200, as compared with 6,268 British and nearly 9,000 French. Wellesley, after further experience of Spanish co-operation, made up his mind to dispense with it altogether in future.

The victory of Talavera won for Wellesley the rank of viscount, to which he was raised on September 4, with the title of Wellington. Although the victory revived the respect of foreign nations for the prowess of British arms, it was otherwise fruitless, and its sequel was fairly open to criticism. Wellesley found that Soult, with Ney and Mortier, had circumvented him, and that he must retreat through Esdremadura, on the south of the Tagus, upon Badajoz. Cuesta, who had advocated bolder counsels, undertook to guard the rear, and to protect the British wounded at Talavera. But he soon found it necessary to abandon that position. Fifteen hundred of the wounded were left behind, and were humanely treated by the French generals. Wellesley's retreat over the mountains was attended with great hardship and loss, for want of supplies either from Spain or from the coast, and his long encampment in the malarious valley of the Guadiana about Badajoz swelled the number of his sick to a frightful extent. It was not until December, when it got into better cantonments on Portuguese soil, that the British army, triumphant at Talavera, recovered either its health or its moral. Napoleon boasted, in a memorandum to be inserted in the Paris journals, that Wellington had really been beaten in Spain, and that "if affairs there had been properly conducted not an Englishman would have escaped". Without going quite so far as this, the parliamentary opposition in England made the least of the victory and the most of the retreat, which unfortunately coincided in time with the wreck of the Walcheren expedition. Even Wellington's best friends in England began to lose heart, as did many of his own officers. He remained undaunted, and having established his headquarters on the high ground between the Tagus and the Douro, meditated designs which, slowly matured, bore good fruit in later years.

It is difficult to understand the inaction of Wellington for so many months after the Talavera campaign, without taking into account not only the difficulty of obtaining sufficient recruits and stores from England after the waste of both at the mouth of the Scheldt, but the greatly increased strength of the French in Spain during the long interval between the Wagram campaign and the Russian expedition. At the close of 1809 all the fortresses of Spain had fallen into the enemy's hands, and all her principal armies had been defeated and dispersed in successive battles of which the greatest was that of Ocaña in the month of November. Suchet was master of Aragon and the east of Spain, nor was he dislodged from it until the end of the war; Andalusia was nearly conquered; Cadiz was only saved by the self-reliant courage of the Duc d'Albuquerque, baffling the intrigues and treachery of the supreme junta there assembled; and Napoleon was preparing a fresh army to overrun Portugal, under the command of Masséna. The Perceval ministry, in which Liverpool had taken Castlereagh's post of secretary for war and the colonies, adopting an optimistic tone at home, practically told Wellington that he must shift for himself; and he braced himself up to do so with extraordinary fortitude.

He remained watching the gathering storm from the heights of Guarda, south-west of Almeida, and commanding two great roads from Spain into Portugal, but his thoughts were equally fixed upon the vast and famous lines of Torres Vedras, which he was constructing for the defence of Lisbon. His force, including the Portuguese regulars, did not exceed 50,000 men; that of the French under Ney, Reynier, and Junot consisted of about 70,000, but they were not equally capable of being concentrated on a single point. The Portuguese militia, too, were being gradually disciplined, and the Portuguese civil authorities were being gradually schooled into the new lesson of sweeping their own country bare of all supplies before the coming French invasion. Wellington did not even strike a blow to save Ciudad Rodrigo, which Masséna took on July 10, 1810. But it was no part of his plan that Almeida should capitulate, as it did shortly afterwards, partly owing to the accidental explosion of a magazine, and partly as was suspected, to an act of treachery. Still, Masséna delayed until urged by Napoleon, and deceived by false intelligence, he launched forth, at the beginning of September, on an enterprise which proved fatal to his reputation. Both he and Wellington issued appeals to the Portuguese nation, the contrast between which is significant. The French marshal, echoing the prevailing note of his master's proclamation, denounced Great Britain as the enemy of all Europe; Wellington called upon the Portuguese to remember their actual experience of French rapacity and outrage.

BUSSACO AND TORRES VEDRAS.

The object of Masséna was to reach Coimbra before Wellington. His manœuvres to outflank Wellington's left were skilfully devised, but the British army marched steadily down the valley of the Mondego, carrying with it the population of the district, and took its stand on the ridge of Bussaco, north of Coimbra, barring Masséna's progress. There was fought, on September 27, 1810, a battle as deadly as that of Talavera, and more decisive in its consequences. The French, as usual, were the assailants; the English and the Portuguese stood at bay. Never, in any of their brilliant victories, did French troops show more heroic daring than in this assault under Reynier on the British right, and under Ney on the British left. Both columns forced their way up bare heath-clad slopes, and reached the summit, whence they were only driven back after repeated charges. Their loss in killed and wounded exceeded 4,500, that of the allies was about 1,300. The French generals threw the blame of defeat upon each other, but, in fact, the skill of Masséna converted a defeat into an episode in his victorious advance. On the following day, he again found a way of turning Wellington's left, and, in an intercepted despatch, he naturally treated this as a compensation for the repulse at Bussaco, which he did not disguise. Compelled to retire once more with a vast drove of encumbered, panic-stricken, and famishing Portuguese fugitives, and conscious that no reserves awaited him, Wellington knew, nevertheless, that he was drawing Masséna further and further away from his base, to encounter a terrible surprise. For, so useless had been the French scouts, and so worthless the information received from Portuguese sources, that no adequate conception of the obstacle presented by the lines of Torres Vedras had entered the mind of that experienced strategist.

These elaborate works had been constructed in the course of a year by thousands of Portuguese labourers, directed by Colonel Fletcher of the royal engineers, upon a plan carefully thought out and laid down by Wellington himself. The first and principal chain of fortifications stretched for nearly thirty miles across the whole promontory between the river Tagus and the sea, about twenty-five miles north of Lisbon. The summits of hills were crowned with forts, their sides were escarped and protected with earthworks, their gorges were blocked with redoubts, a small river at the foot of them was made impassable by dams; in short, the utmost advantage was taken of the defences provided by nature, and these were supplemented by artificial entrenchments. Portuguese garrisons manned the greater part of the batteries, armed with guns from the arsenals of Lisbon; British troops were to occupy the most vulnerable points of attack. There was a second and third range of fortifications behind the first, in case these should be forced, but no such emergency arose. When Masséna had carefully inspected the stupendous barrier reared in front of him, his well-trained eye recognised it as impregnable: he paused for some weeks under semblance of blockading the British forces, while he was really scouring the country for the means of feeding his own; but in November he began to retreat upon Santarem, Almeida, and Ciudad Rodrigo, with a half-starved and dispirited army, greatly reduced in numbers during the campaign.[47 - For Masséna's lines of march see T. J. Andrews in English Historical Review, xvi. (1901), 474-92.]

The year 1811 was perhaps the least interesting, yet the most critical in the history of the Peninsular war. Wellington had not escaped criticism at home for allowing Masséna to remain so long unmolested near Santarem. He described himself in a private letter, written in December, 1810, as "safe for the winter at all events". More he could not have said, knowing, as he did, that Soult was in force before Cadiz, and might at any moment join Masséna. This, in fact, he did; leaving his fields of plunder in Andalusia under the positive orders of Napoleon, he defeated the Spaniards at the Gebora on February 19, and captured Badajoz, as well as Olivenza. In his absence, Sir Thomas Graham, who commanded the British troops at Cadiz, sailed thence with La Peña, the Spanish commander, and a combined force of about 12,000 men, to make a flank march, and attack the French besiegers, under Victor, in the rear. A brisk action followed at Barrosa, in which Graham obtained a complete victory, but the Spanish troops, as usual, remained almost passive; the beaten army was not pursued, and the siege of Cadiz was not raised. This city was still the seat of the Spanish national government, but the feeble junta had been superseded by a national cortes, fairly representative of the nation, which passed some liberal measures, and dissolved the so-called regency which assumed to represent Ferdinand.

FUENTES D'ONORO AND ALBUERA.

The two great frontier fortresses of Spain, Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, were now in the hands of the French. Masséna had regained the Spanish frontier in March, after frequent combats with the pursuing enemy, and with heavy losses in men and horses, though he saved every gun except one. This retreat involved the evacuation of every place in Portugal except the fortress of Almeida. Wellington's pursuit would have been still more vigorous, but that his Portuguese troops were half-starved, and had lost discipline under intolerable privations. His next design seems to have been the recapture of the fortresses, but he was not without ulterior hopes – all too premature – of afterwards pushing on to Madrid and operating in the eastern provinces of Spain. He first invested Almeida, and, leaving General Spencer to continue the blockade, proceeded to Elvas in order to concert measures with Beresford for the siege of Badajoz. Thence he was suddenly recalled northward to repel a fresh advance of Masséna, strongly reinforced, for the relief of Almeida. The battle which followed at Fuentes d'Oñoro, south-east of Almeida, was among the most hardly contested struggles in the whole Peninsular war. It began on May 3, and, with a day's interval, concluded on the 5th. The British remained masters of the field, and claimed a somewhat doubtful victory, which at least secured the evacuation of Almeida. The garrison of that fortress blew it up by night, and succeeded, by masterly tactics, in joining the main French army with little sacrifice of life.

Wellington returned to Badajoz, only to meet with disappointment. General Cole, acting under Beresford, had retaken Olivenza; but Soult, with a force of 23,000 men, was marching to succour Badajoz, when he was encountered by Beresford at Albuera. Beresford's force was numerically stronger than Soult's, but only 7,000 men were English, the rest being mostly Spanish. Measured by the proportion of losses to men engaged on both sides, this fight on May 16, 1811, must rank among the bloodiest on record. In four hours nearly 7,000 of the allies and 8,000 French were struck down. The decisive charge of the reserve was inspired and led by Hardinge, afterwards Governor-General of India; the French were routed, and Soult was checked, but little was gained by the victors.[48 - The battle is picturesquely described by Napier, Peninsular War, iii., 536-66. See also ibid., pp. xxxv. – li.] The siege of Badajoz, indeed, was renewed, but its progress was slow for want of proper engines and artillery, and it was abandoned, after two futile attempts, on June 11. By this time, Marmont had succeeded Masséna, and was carrying out Napoleon's grand plan for a junction with Soult's army and a fresh irruption into Portugal. With marvellous audacity, Wellington offered battle to both marshals, who, happily ignorant of his weakness, declined it more than once. In truth, he was never more nearly at the end of his resources than when he went into winter quarters at the close of 1811, having failed to prevent Marmont from provisioning Ciudad Rodrigo, and having narrowly escaped being overwhelmed by a much superior force. His army was greatly reduced by sickness, he was very ill-supplied from England, and he received no loyal support from the Portuguese government. Moreover, the French had apparently extended their hold on Spain, both in the eastern and northern provinces, while it was reported that Napoleon himself, not content with dictating orders from afar, would return to complete the conquest of the Peninsula.

At this juncture, he must have been cheered by the arrival of so able a lieutenant as Graham from Cadiz, and by the brilliant success of Hill against a detached body of Marmont's army south of the Tagus. There were other tendencies also secretly working in favour of the British and their allies. Joseph Bonaparte, as King of Spain, openly protested against the extortions which he was enjoined to practise on his subjects, and went so far as to resign his crown at Paris, though he was induced to resume it. Again the broken armies of the Spanish had reappeared in the form of guerilla bands under leaders such as Mina; they could not be dispersed, since they had no cohesion, and were more formidable through their extreme mobility than organised battalions. Above all, the domination of France over Europe was already undermined and tottering invisibly to its fall. The Tsar Alexander had, as we have seen, been deeply offended by the preference of an Austrian to a Russian princess, as the consort of Napoleon, and still more by his imperious annexation of Oldenburg. Sweden, following the example of Russia, had begun to rebel against the continental system. A series of internal reforms had aroused a national spirit, and stealthily created the basis of a national army in Prussia, and the intense hostility of all North Germany to France was thinly disguised by the unwilling servility of the Prussian court. Napoleon, who seldom laboured under the illusions propagated by his own manifestoes and bulletins, well knew what he was doing when, in August, 1811, he allowed himself to burst into a storm of indignation against the Russian ambassador at the Tuileries. From that moment he clearly premeditated a rupture with Russia, and soon he withdrew 60,000 of his best troops from Spain, to be employed in that fatal enterprise of 1812 which proved to be his doom.

CAPTURE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO AND BADAJOZ.

The winter of 1811-12 was spent by Wellington in preparing, with the utmost secrecy, for the sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, as the first steps in an offensive campaign. In January, 1812, he struck a sudden blow against the former, and captured it by an assault, attended with great carnage, on the 19th of that month. In this furious conflict, lasting but half an hour, Craufurd, the renowned leader of the light division, fell mortally wounded. Shameful excesses sullied the glory of a splendid exploit. Marmont immediately drew in his troops towards Salamanca, leaving Soult in the valley of the Tagus; and Hill, with his southern army, moved northward. Wellington, who was created an earl in February, transferred the greater part of his troops to Badajoz, and began a regular siege, but with very imperfect materials, no organised corps of sappers and miners, and very few officers skilled in the art of taking fortified towns. He was greatly delayed on the route by the lack of transport, and the vexatious obstinacy of the Portuguese authorities, while time was of the utmost consequence lest any or all of three French armies should come to raise the siege. Hence the extreme rapidity of his final operations.

After the capture of an outlying fort, three breaches were made in the walls, and on the night of April 6, under the cover of thick darkness, two divisions of British troops descended into the ditch, many carrying ladders or sacks of hay, and advanced to the foot of the glacis. Here they were almost overwhelmed with a hurricane of fiery missiles, and in mounting the breaches they had to face not only hand-grenades, trains of powder, and bursting shells, but a chevaux-de-frise of sabre-blades crowning the summit. None of these attacks was successful; but another division under Picton scaled the castle, and a brigade under Walker effected an entrance elsewhere. After this, the French abandoned the breaches; the resistance waxed fainter, and at six in the morning, Philippon, the governor, with his brave garrison, surrendered unconditionally. The loss of the British and Portuguese in killed and wounded was stated at the enormous figure of 4,885, and it was avenged by atrocities prolonged for two days and nights, worse than had followed the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington ordered the provost marshal to execute any soldiers found in the act of plunder, but officers vainly attempted to check their men at the peril of their own lives.

SALAMANCA.

It had been the intention of Wellington to operate next against Soult, and drive him, if possible, from Esdremadura and Andalusia. But, as appears from one of his despatches to Lord Liverpool, he was ill satisfied with the conduct of his allies guarding Ciudad Rodrigo, and returned to resume command in that region. In the same despatch he complains bitterly of the niggardly policy of his government in regard to money and supplies. The same timidity on the part of ministers at home appears in a letter from Liverpool, almost forbidding him to accept the command-in-chief of the Spanish armies, which, however, was conferred upon him later in this year.[49 - Wellington, Supplementary Dispatches, vii., 318-19.] At present, he decided to march against Marmont in the plains of Leon. This movement was facilitated by the success of Hill in surprising a body of French troops, and seizing the important bridge of Almaraz over the Tagus on May 19, thereby breaking the French lines of communication and isolating Marmont's army for a time. Soon afterwards, Salamanca and its forts were captured by Wellington, but Marmont proved a very formidable opponent, and, having behind him another army under King Joseph, threatened the British lines of communication. In the series of manœuvres which ensued, Wellington's forces met with more than one reverse, but the French marshal was determined to win a victory on a large scale. Wellington had no wish to risk a battle, unless Salamanca or his own rear should be seriously threatened, and he stood on the defensive, a little south of Salamanca, with Marmont's army encamped in front of him.

Early on July 22, the French seized one of two hills called the Arapiles which formed the key of the position and commanded the road to Ciudad Rodrigo. Marmont then organised complicated evolutions, of which the ultimate object was to envelop the British right and cut off its expected retreat. To accomplish this, he extended his own left so far that it became separated by a gap from his centre. No sooner did Wellington, with a flash of military insight, perceive the advantage thus offered than he flung half of his troops upon the French left wing, and made a vigorous attack with the rest upon the French centre. It was too late for Marmont, himself wounded, to repair the mistake, the centre was driven in, and, as was said, 40,000 men were beaten in forty minutes. General Clausel, who took Marmont's place, showed great ability in the retreat, but the French army could scarcely have escaped destruction had not the Spaniards, who were entrusted with a post on the river Tormes, left the passage open for the flying enemy. Nevertheless, the battle of Salamanca was the greatest and most decisive yet fought by the British in the Peninsula; it established the reputation of our army, and placed Wellington in the first rank of generals. Three weeks later he entered Madrid in triumph, and was received with the wildest popular acclamations. Joseph once more abandoned his capital, joined Suchet in Valencia, and ordered Soult against his will to withdraw from Andalusia and move in the same direction. This concentration relieved Wellington from immediate anxieties, but exposed him to a serious danger of being confronted before long by forces thrice as great as his own. He also needed reinforcements, and was in still greater want of money.

To students of military history it may seem a very doubtful question whether, under such circumstances, it was prudent to advance farther into Spain from his strongholds on the Portuguese frontier. But Wellington, who had been created a marquis on August 18, judged it necessary to crush if possible the remainder of Marmont's army which had retired northward under Clausel. He therefore left Hill with a detachment to cover Madrid, and marching through Valladolid occupied the town of Burgos. The castle of that place remained in the hands of a French garrison 2,000 strong and had been carefully fortified. Here again we may be permitted to doubt whether, after the experience gained at Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, Wellington did wisely in resolving to invest and storm a fortress so formidable, without an adequate siege-train, and with the knowledge that Clausel might rally his forces in time to relieve it. Wellington himself afterwards admitted to Liverpool that he had erred in not taking with him the best of his own troops, and that he did not possess the means of transporting ordnance and military stores from Madrid and Santander, where there was abundance of them. The siege lasted a month, from September 19 to October 18; the garrison offered a most obstinate resistance, inflicting great loss on the besiegers by sorties, and in the end the attack failed. Souham, with Clausel, was closing in upon Wellington from the north, Soult from the south-east; Hill's position at Madrid was untenable, and another retreat became inevitable. It was the last and most trying in Wellington's military career. The army which had behaved nobly at Salamanca broke down under the strain of suffering and depression, like that of Sir John Moore before Coruña. The enemy was driven back in various rear-guard actions, but on the march the sense of discipline vanished and shameful disorders occurred. A scathing reprimand from Wellington, which might have been written by a French critic and which ought never to have been made public, threw all the blame of this disorganisation on the regimental officers, and denied that any scarcity of provisions could be pleaded in excuse of it.

MILITARY REFORMS.

By the middle of November the campaign ended, and Wellington's headquarters were at Ciudad Rodrigo. For the present, Spain was still dominated by the French, but its southern provinces were clear of the invaders, and elsewhere the tide was already on the turn. The Russian war cast its shadow beforehand on the Spanish peninsula; the French army was constantly weakened in numbers and still more in quality, as conscripts were substituted for veterans, and inferior generals succeeded to high commands; the Portuguese and Spanish contingents of the British army were stronger and better disciplined. Wellington himself, tenacious of his purpose as ever, received heartier support from home, where Liverpool had become prime minister in June, and had been succeeded by Bathurst as secretary for war and the colonies; and though the Marquis Wellesley, no longer in the government, complained that his brother's operations had been crippled by ministerial apathy, the Peninsular war, on the eve of its completion, was adopted with pride and sympathy by the nation.

The last chapter of the Peninsular war opens with the operations culminating in the battle of Vitoria, and closes with the battle of Toulouse. Having accepted the office of generalissimo of the Spanish armies, Wellington repaired to Cadiz during the winter of 1812-13, and formed the lowest estimate of the make-shift government there carried on under the dual control of the cortes and the regency. He failed to obtain a reform of this system, but succeeded in effecting a reorganisation of the Spanish army, to be in future under his own command. He next addressed himself, with the aid of Beresford and the British minister at Lisbon, to amend the monstrous abuses, civil and military, of Portuguese administration. By the beginning of May, 1813, a great improvement was visible in the equipment and moral of the Spanish and Portuguese troops; a vigorous insurrection against the French occupation had broken out in the province of Biscay, endangering the great road into Spain; and an Anglo-Sicilian army of 16,000 men, under Sir John Murray, had repulsed Suchet, hitherto undefeated, at Castalla on the Valencian coast, without, however, completing their victory, or capturing any of the French guns in the narrow defile by which the enemy fled. The want of unity in the command of the French army, and of harmony between its generals, was more felt than ever now that Napoleon's master-mind was engrossed in retrieving the awful ruin of the Russian expedition.

Yet Napoleon's instructions to Joseph show that he had fully grasped the critical nature of the situation. He enjoined Joseph to mass all his forces round Valladolid, and imperatively directed that at all hazards the communications with France should be maintained. The Spanish guerillas had long rendered communications so insecure that couriers with despatches had to be escorted by bodies of 250 cavalry or 500 infantry; they were now so effectually intercepted that Napoleon's own despatch reached Joseph more than two months late, by way of Barcelona and Valencia. Meanwhile, Joseph was openly accusing Soult, in a letter to his brother, of criminal ambition – a charge to which he laid himself open before in Portugal – and did not hesitate to add, "the Duke of Dalmatia or myself must quit Spain". In England, on the contrary, parties were at last united in the desire to bring the war to a triumphant end, and parliament grudged neither men nor money to aid Wellington's plan of campaign. It was, then, under happier auspices than in former years that he broke up from his cantonments then stationed on the Coa, a little to the north-west of Ciudad Rodrigo, and set forward with 70,000 British and Portuguese troops, besides 20,000 Spaniards, to drive the French out of Spain. So confident was he of success that, as Napier relates, he waved his hand in crossing the frontier on May 22, and exclaimed, "Farewell, Portugal".[50 - Napier, Peninsular War (first edition), v., 513.]

VITORIA.

He advanced by the valley of the Douro; then, turning to the north-east, he compelled the French to evacuate Burgos, and passed the Ebro on June 13. Graham in command of his left wing there joined him, after forcing his way by immense efforts across the mountains of the Portuguese frontier. Hill, commanding the right wing of his composite but united army, was already with him. A depot for his commissariat and a military hospital were established at Santander, where a British fleet was lying, and whence he could draw his supplies direct from home. The French army, under Joseph and Marshal Jourdan, fell back before him by a forced night march on the 19th and took up its position in front of Vitoria, in the province of Biscay. Here, on the plain of the river Zadorra, was fought on the 21st the greatest battle of the Peninsular war. Wellington had encountered serious physical difficulties in his passage from the valley of the Ebro to that of the Zadorra; but for once his plans had been executed with admirable precision, and all his troops arrived at the appointed time on the field of battle. The French, conscious of their impending expulsion from Spain, were encumbered by enormous baggage-trains containing the fruits of five years' merciless spoliation "not of a province but of a kingdom," including treasures of art from Madrid and all the provincial capitals, with no less than 5,500,000 dollars in hard cash, besides two years' arrears of pay which Napoleon had sent to fill the military chest of Joseph's army. A vast number of vehicles, loaded with the whole imperial and royal treasure, overspread the plain and choked the great road behind the French position, by which alone such a mass of waggons could find its way into France.

The French army consisted of about 60,000 men, with 150 pieces of cannon, but strong detachments, under Foy and Clausel respectively, had been sent away to guard the roads to Bilbao and Pamplona. The British army numbered nearly 80,000, inclusive of Portuguese and Spanish, with 90 guns. The French were posted on strong ground, and held the bridges across the river. Graham, with the left column of the British, made a circuit in the direction of Bilbao, working round to cut off the French rear on the Bayonne road. Hill, with the right column, forced the pass of Puebla, in the latter direction, carried the ridge above it after much hard fighting, and made good his position on the left flank of the French. Wellington himself, in the centre, under the guidance of a Spanish peasant, pushed a brigade across one of the bridges in his front, weakly guarded, and thus mastered the others; his force then expanded itself on the plain and bore down all opposition. Graham had met with a more obstinate resistance from the French right, under Reille, but at last got possession of the great Bayonne road. Thenceforward a retreat of the French army, partly encircled, became inevitable, but it was conducted at first in good order and with frequent halts at defensible points. The only outlet left open was the mountain road to Pamplona, and this was not only impracticable for heavy traffic but obstructed by an overturned waggon. The orderly retreat was soon converted into a rout; the flying throng made its way across country and over mountains towards Pamplona, leaving all the artillery, military stores, and accumulated spoils as trophies of the British victory.

The value of these was prodigious, but the great mass of booty, except munitions of war, fell into the hands of private soldiers and camp-followers. Wellington reported to Bathurst that nearly a million sterling in money had been appropriated by the rank and file of the army, and, still worse, that so dazzling a triumph had "totally annihilated all order and discipline".[51 - Wellington, Dispatches, x., 473 (June 29, 1813).] The loss in the battle had been about 5,000, but Wellington stated that on July 8 "we had 12,500 men less under arms than we had on the day before the battle". He supposed the missing 7,500, nearly half of whom were British, to be mostly concealed in the mountain villages.[52 - Ibid., x., 519 (July 9, 1813).] A large number of stragglers afterwards rejoined their colours, but too late to aid in an effectual pursuit of the enemy. The immediate consequence of this great victory was the evacuation by the French of all Spain south of the Ebro. Even Suchet abandoned Valencia and distributed his forces between Tarragona and Tortosa. To his great credit, Wellington addressed to the cortes an earnest protest against wreaking vengeance on the French party in Spain, many of whom might have been driven into acceptance of a foreign yoke "by terror, by distress, or by despair". At the same time, he vigorously followed up his success by chasing and nearly surrounding Clausel's division, while Hill invested Pamplona, and Graham drove Foy across the Bidassoa, in his advance upon the fortress of St. Sebastian.

THE BATTLE OF THE PYRENEES.

The fortifications of St. Sebastian were in a very imperfect condition, but the governor, Emmanuel Rey, was nevertheless able to defend the place with success. Wellington, after laying siege to it, sanctioned a premature attempt to scale the breaches which cost Graham's force a loss of more than 500 men. This check was succeeded by another, still more serious, in the historic pass of Roncesvalles. Napoleon, hearing at Dresden of the battle of Vitoria, and instantly fathoming its momentous import, despatched Soult, as "lieutenant of the emperor," to assume command of all the French armies at Bayonne and on the Spanish frontier, still amounting nominally to 114,000 men, besides 66,000 under Suchet in Catalonia. Soult reached Bayonne on July 13, fortified it strongly, and reorganised his troops with amazing energy, inspiriting them with a warlike address in the well-known style of Napoleon's proclamations. On the 25th he set his forces in motion, with the intention of crushing the British right by a sudden irruption, and relieving Pamplona. He all but achieved his object, for, by well-concerted and well-concealed movements, he actually carried the passes of Roncesvalles and Maya, in spite of a gallant resistance and the French troops were on the point of pouring down the Pyrenees on the Spanish side, when Wellington arrived at full speed from his position before St. Sebastian.

He was opportunely reinforced, and gave battle on the rugged heights in front of Pamplona to a force numerically superior, but for the most part charging uphill. Never, even at Bussaco, did the French show greater ardour and élan in attack, and it was only after a series of bloody hand-to-hand combats on the summits and sides of the mountains that they were compelled to recoil and rolled backward down the ridge. Baffled in his attempt to relieve Pamplona, Soult turned westwards towards St. Sebastian, but was anticipated by Wellington, and faced by three divisions of Hill on his right. A second engagement followed, in which the Portuguese earned the chief honours, and 3,000 prisoners were taken. At last Soult gave orders for a retreat, and in the course of it was all but entrapped in a narrow valley where he could not have escaped the necessity of surrender. It is said that he was warned just in time by the sudden intrusion of three British marauders in uniform; at all events, he instantly changed his line of march, and ultimately led his broken army back to France, but in the utmost confusion, and not without fresh disasters. One of these befell Reille's division in the gorge of Yanzi, and another the French rear-guard under Clausel, which defended itself valiantly, but was driven headlong down the northern side of the Pyrenees from which this series of battles derives its name.

The siege of St. Sebastian was immediately renewed with a far more powerful battering train, but its defences had also been strengthened by the indefatigable governor. The final assault took place on August 31, and rivalled the storming of Badajoz in the murderous ferocity of the melée at the breaches, as well as in the horrors practised on the inhabitants by the victorious assailants, which Wellington and Graham vainly endeavoured to check. So desperate was the defence, and so insuperable appeared the obstacles to an entrance by the breaches, that Graham adopted the heroic expedient of causing his artillery to fire a few feet only over the heads of the forlorn hope, until a clear opening had been made, and deadly piles of combustibles had been exploded behind the main breach, blowing into the air 300 of the garrison. A hideous conflagration destroyed the greater part of the town. A few days later the castle, to which the governor had retired, yielded to an irresistible cannonade, and he surrendered at discretion with about 1,200 men. Several hundred wounded, including a large number of British prisoners, were found there in the hospitals.

On the 30th, the day before St. Sebastian was stormed, Soult attempted a diversion for its relief by crossing the Bidassoa, and on the following day he engaged a large body of Spaniards at St. Marcial. On this occasion Wellington held the British troops in reserve, and the Spaniards without their aid defeated the French with great slaughter. So ended a well-planned and well-executed effort to reconquer the Spanish frontier. Pamplona was still untaken, and Suchet was still in Catalonia, but no further offensive movement was undertaken by the French against Spain. Both Soult and Wellington had shown remarkable powers of generalship, and there was a moment when Soult might have snatched the prize of victory by raising the siege of Pamplona. But his ultimate success was hopeless, and his failure was complete. Before the fall of St. Sebastian and the battle of St. Marcial, Wellington estimated the French losses at 15,000 men, who could ill be spared in the interval between Napoleon's last gleam of victory at Dresden and on his signal defeat at Leipzig.

WELLINGTON ENTERS FRANCE.

But the Peninsular war, in the historical sense, was not yet over. During the summer of 1813 a mixed force of British, Germans, Spaniards, and Sicilians had been carrying on an intermittent war against the French under Suchet in the eastern provinces. Their commander, Sir John Murray, who had allowed the beaten enemy to escape at Castalla, proved equally irresolute in an attempt to capture Tarragona, countermanded the assault, and re-embarked his troops on the approach of Suchet. Soon afterwards he was superseded by Lord William Bentinck, and Suchet after the battle of Vitoria was compelled to retire behind the Ebro. Bentinck renewed the investment of Tarragona, but permitted Suchet without a battle to relieve it, demolish its fortifications, and withdraw its garrison at the end of August. An ill-judged advance of the British general into Catalonia brought about another misfortune, and, upon the whole, the series of operations conducted against Suchet were by no means glorious to British arms or generalship, however important their effect in preventing a large body of French veterans from reinforcing Soult's army at a critical time in the Western Pyrenees. Wellington himself inclined to complete the deliverance of Spain by clearing the province of Catalonia of the invaders, but the British government, having in view the prospect of crushing Napoleon in Germany, urged him to undertake an immediate invasion of France. Accordingly he moved forward on October 7, leaving Pamplona closely blockaded, threw his army across the Bidassoa on the 8th by a stroke of masterly tactics, forced the strong French lines on the north side of it, and established himself on the enemy's soil. Before entering France he issued the most stringent proclamations against plundering, which he enforced by the sternest measures, and announced that he would not suffer the peaceful inhabitants of France to be punished for the ambition of their ruler. On the 31st the French garrison of Pamplona, despairing of relief, surrendered as prisoners of war.

The prolonged defence of Pamplona gave Soult time to strengthen his position on the Nivelle. The lines which he constructed rivalled those of Torres Vedras, and the several actions by which they were at last forced and turned were among the most desperate of the whole war. The first was fought in the early part of November, and resulted in the occupation by Wellington's army of the great mountain-barrier south of Bayonne, with six miles of entrenchments along the Nivelle, and of the port of St. Jean de Luz. A month later Wellington became anxious to establish his winter-cantonments between the Nive and the Adour, partly for strategical reasons, and partly in order to command a larger and more fertile area for his supplies. On December 9, therefore, Hill with the right wing forded the Nive and drove back the French left upon their camp in front of Bayonne. Then followed three most obstinate combats on the 10th, 11th and 13th, in which Soult took the offensive, with Bayonne as the centre of his operations, and with the advantage of always moving upon interior lines resting upon a strong fortress. In the first of these attacks, he surprised and nearly succeeded in overwhelming the British left, under Hope, now Sir John, before Wellington could bring other divisions to its support. In the second, he fell suddenly on the same troops, exhausted by fatigue, and still more or less isolated, but they were rallied by Hope and Wellington in person, and remained masters of the field. In the third he concentrated his whole strength upon the British right under Hill, aided by a thick mist, and by a flood upon the Nive, which swept away a bridge of boats, and separated Hill from the rest of the army. Nevertheless, that able general, emulating the noble example of Hope in the earlier encounters, succeeded in repelling assault after assault, until Wellington himself appeared with reinforcements of imposing strength, and converted a stubborn defence into a victory.

The loss of the allies since crossing the Nive had exceeded 5,000; that of the French was 6,000, besides 2,400 Germans who deserted to the British during the night of the 9th in obedience to orders from home. Ever since he assumed the command Soult had shown military ability of a rare order. Bayonne, the base of all his operations, was indefensible before he fortified it. A great proportion of his troops were raw conscripts, or demoralised by defeat, before he inspired them with his own courage and vigour. He was practically dependent for subsistence in his own country on the very system of pillage which had roused a patriotic frenzy of resentment in Spain and other lands ravaged by French armies. He now stood at bay in the south of France, as Wellington had so long stood at bay in Portugal, and continued there during the early part of 1814 a defensive campaign not unworthy of comparison with the prodigious exploits of Napoleon himself against the invaders of his eastern provinces.

THE INVESTMENT OF BAYONNE.

A respite of two months succeeded the battles on the Nive. During this interval Wellington's difficulty in paying his troops was great, owing to the enormous drain of specie from England into Central Europe. He was further embarrassed by the appearance of the Duke of Angoulême, elder son of Charles, Count of Artois, afterwards Charles X., at his headquarters. The British government was by no means committed to a restoration of the Bourbons, and Wellington deprecated the duke's appearance as at least premature. He therefore insisted upon his remaining incognito and as a non-combatant at St. Jean de Luz. Soult was in great straits, not only because he was compelled to "make war support war" by exorbitant requisitions upon the French peasantry, but also because the exigencies of Napoleon were such that large drafts of the best troops were drawn from the army of the south. When hostilities were resumed in the middle of February, 1814, the Anglo-Portuguese and Spanish force combined outnumbered the French by nearly five to three, but Soult retained the decisive advantage of having a strong point d'appui in Bayonne at the confluence of the Nive and Adour. Careful preparations were made by Wellington for throwing a large force across the Lower Adour below Bayonne, in concert with a British fleet. Contrary winds and a violent surf delayed the arrival of the British gunboats, but on February 23 Hope sent over a body of his men on a raft of pontoons in the face of the enemy's flotilla, with the aid of a brigade armed with Congreve rockets, which had been first used at Leipzig, and produced the utmost consternation in the French ranks. The gunboats soon followed, but with the loss of one wrecked and others stranded in crossing the bar. By the joint exertions of soldiers and sailors a bridge was then constructed, by which Hope's entire army with artillery passed over the river, and, two days afterwards, began the investment of Bayonne.

Meanwhile, the centre and right wing, under the command of Wellington, had forced a passage across the Upper Adour and threatened Bayonne on the other side. Leaving a garrison of 6,000 men in Bayonne, Soult took his stand at Orthez, with an army of about 40,000 men, on the summit of a formidable ridge. Wellington attacked this ridge on the 27th, with a force of nearly equal strength in three columns so disposed as to converge from points several miles distant from each other. The veterans of the French army, admirably handled, fought with tenacity, and all but succeeded in foiling the attack before Wellington could bring up his reserves. The conscripts, however, were not equally steady, and when Hill, advancing from the extreme right, pressed upon the French left, Soult's orderly retreat became a precipitate flight. The French loss greatly exceeded the British, and was soon afterwards swelled by wholesale desertions; the road to Bordeaux was thrown open, and the royalist reaction against Napoleon, stimulated by the depredation of the French troops, ripened into a general revolt.

Meanwhile, Napoleon had lost Germany by the battle of Leipzig; early in 1814 the allied armies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia had entered France, and a congress was being held at Châtillon-sur-Seine, to formulate, if possible, terms of peace. The city of Bordeaux was the first to declare itself openly in favour of the Bourbons. Wellington sent a large detachment to preserve order, with strict instructions to Beresford, who commanded it, to remain neutral, in the event of Louis XVIII. being proclaimed, pending the negotiations with Napoleon at Châtillon. But the excitement of the people could not be restrained, and the arrival of the Duke of Angoulême evoked a burst of royalist enthusiasm which anticipated by a few weeks only the abdication of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. The defection of Bordeaux forced Soult to fall back rapidly on a very formidable position in front of Toulouse. The British army followed in pursuit, encumbered with a great artillery and pontoon train. After a lively action at Tarbes, it arrived in front of Toulouse on March 27, to find the Garonne in flood, and the French army strongly entrenched around the town, with a prospect of being joined by 20,000 or 30,000 veterans, under Suchet, from Catalonia.

THE BATTLE OF TOULOUSE.

The dispositions of Wellington, ending in the battle of Toulouse, on April 10, have not escaped criticism. Hill, with two divisions and a Spanish contingent, threw a bridge across the Garonne below Toulouse, but discovered that he could make no progress in that direction, owing to the impassable state of the roads. Beresford crossed the river with 18,000 men at another point, but a sudden flood broke up the pontoon bridge in his rear, and he remained isolated for no less than four days, exposed to an attack from Soult's whole army. Having missed this rare opportunity, Soult calmly awaited the attack, with a force numerically inferior, but with every advantage of position. On the 10th Wellington's troops advanced in two columns, separated from each other by a perilous interval of two miles. One of these, including Freyre's Spaniards and Picton's division, was fairly driven back after furious attempts to storm the ramparts of the fortified ridge held by the French. Beresford, however, who in this battle combined generalship with brilliant courage, restored the fortunes of the day by a dashing advance against the redoubts on the French right. Having carried these he swept along the ridge, which became untenable, and Soult withdrew his army within his second line of defences. Two days later, seeing that Hill menaced Toulouse on the other side, and fearing that if defeated again he would lose his only line of retreat along the Carcassonne road, he evacuated Toulouse by that route, leaving his magazines and hospitals in the hands of the British army. By so doing he left to Wellington the honour and prize of victory, but few victories have been so dearly bought, and the loss in killed and wounded was actually greater on the side of the victors than on that of the vanquished.

Toulouse received Wellington on the 12th with open arms, and as news reached him on the same day announcing the proclamation of Louis XVIII. at Paris, he no longer hesitated to assume the white cockade. Soult loyally declined to accept the intelligence until it was officially confirmed, when a military convention was made on the 18th, whereby a boundary line was established between the two armies. Suchet had already withdrawn from Spain, and at last recalled the garrisons from those Spanish fortresses in which Napoleon had so obstinately locked up picked troops which he sorely needed in his dire extremity. But on the 14th, a week after Napoleon's abdication, the famous "sortie from Bayonne" took place, in which each side lost 800 or 900 men, and Hope, wounded in two places, was made prisoner. For this waste of life the governor of Bayonne must be held responsible, since he was informed of the events at Paris by Hope, and instead of awaiting official confirmation, like Soult, chose to risk the issue of a night combat, which must needs be deadly and could not be decisive.

Thus ended the Peninsular war. This war on the British side has seldom been surpassed in the steady adherence to a settled purpose, through years of discouragement and failure, maintained by the general whose name it has made immortal. Neither his strategy nor his tactical skill was always faultless; and afterwards in comparing himself with Soult, he is reported to have said, that he often got into scrapes, but was extricated by the valour of his army, whereas Soult, when he got into a scrape, had no such men to get him out of it. However this might be, Wellington's foresight in appreciating the place to be filled by the Peninsular war in the overthrow of Napoleon's domination, and his truly heroic constancy in striving to realise his own idea will ever constitute his best claim to greatness. No other man in England or in Europe discerned as he did, that with Portugal independent and guarded by the power of Great Britain on its western coast and its eastern frontier, the permanent conquest of Spain by the French would become impossible. No one else saw beforehand, what Napoleon discovered too late, that a war in Portugal and Spain would drain the life-blood of his invincible hosts, and at length help towards the invasion of France itself. No other general would have shown equal statesmanship in managing Spanish juntas and controlling even Spanish guerillas, or equal forbearance in sparing the French people the evils which a victorious army might have inflicted upon them.