Loe raamatut: «The Story of Wellington», lehekülg 12
By sunset Soult’s attacks had waned, and on the following morning he began to retreat, although he received reinforcements to the number of 18,000 troops. On the 30th he attacked Hill to no good effect, and Wellington forced the French to retire from a strong position they had taken up. The pursuit continued until the 1st August, when it was discontinued, for the Allies were in possession of the passes and the arduous exertion of the troops was beginning to tell upon them.
Wellington again took up his headquarters at Lesaca. Writing to Graham he says, “I hope that Soult will not feel any inclination to renew his expedition. The French army must have suffered greatly. Between the 25th of last month and 2nd of this, they were engaged seriously not less than ten times; on many occasions in attacking very strong positions, in others beat from them or pursued. I understand that their officers say that they have lost 15,000 men. I thought so; but as they say so, I now think more. It is strange enough that our diminution of strength to the 31st does not exceed 1500 men, although, I believe, our casualties are 6000.” It was on the 31st that San Sebastian fell, the castle capitulating shortly afterwards, and the day is also noteworthy for Soult’s attack on San Marcial, which was repulsed by Spanish troops, the enemy retiring across the Bidassoa. Unfortunately, Sir John Murray made no headway against Suchet in the east of Spain, and was superseded by Lord William Bentinck, who besieged Tarragona, which his predecessor had evacuated. Although he was compelled to retire on the approach of the French Marshal, the city was eventually occupied by the British troops. Their entry into Villa Franca was marred by the rout of the advanced guard in the pass of Ordal, necessitating their retreat towards Tarragona.
It is obviously impossible to unravel with any approach to detail the tangled skein of complicated manœuvres which took place at this period, perhaps the most trying and exacting of the war in the Peninsula. Gleig, however, gives one picturesque touch to an involved picture which reveals more of the personality of the great General than many pages of military movements, and is infinitely more valuable for the purposes of a life story. “Lord Wellington,” he records, “after directing a Spanish column to move up a glen towards a specific point, looked at his watch, and observed to those about him that it would take the men so much time to perform the journey. He added that he was tired, and dismounting from his horse, wrapped himself in his cloak and went to sleep. A crowd of officers stood round him, and among others some Spanish generals, whose astonishment at the coolness of their chief was expressed in audible whispers. For the very crisis of the struggle was impending, and the French being in greater strength upon the spot, seemed to have the ball at their foot. Now, among the officers of the headquarters’ staff, there were several who had never approved the passage of the Ebro. These began to speak their minds freely, and one, the bravest of the brave, the gallant Colonel Gordon, exclaimed, ‘I always thought it would come to this. I was sure we should make a mess of it, if we got entangled among the Pyrenees, and now see if my words don’t come true.’ Lord Wellington happened to awake just as Gordon thus unburdened his conscience. He sat up, and without addressing himself to anyone in particular, extended his right hand open, and said, as he closed it, ‘I have them all in my hand, just like that.’ Not another word was spoken. The Spaniards had reached the top of the glen; Lord Wellington and his attendants remounted their horses, and the battle was renewed.”
On the 7th October 1813 Wellington passed the Bidassoa with the left of his army. Soult was attacked and driven back with the loss of eight pieces of cannon, taken by the Allies in the captured redoubts and batteries. The fighting was continued on the following day, after the fog which obscured the enemy’s position had lifted, when a rock occupied by the French to the right of their position was carried “in the most gallant style” by the Spaniards, who immediately afterwards distinguished themselves by carrying an entrenchment on a hill which protected the right of the camp of Sarre. Soult withdrew during the following night, and took up a series of entrenched positions behind the Nivelle, leaving, as Alison so eloquently puts it, “a vast hostile army, for the first time since the Revolution, permanently encamped within the territory of France. And thus was England, which throughout the contest had been the most persevering and resolute of all the opponents of the Revolution, and whose government had never yet either yielded to the victories or acknowledged the chiefs which it had placed at the head of affairs, the first of all the forces of Europe who succeeded in planting its victorious standards on the soil of France.”
On the 10th November, a little over a week after the surrender of Pampeluna through starvation, for the fall of which he had waited before resuming offensive operations, Wellington, with an army of about 90,000 men, attacked the enemy’s position, an exceedingly strong one, the right extending from the sea to St Jean de Luz, the left from Bidarray to St Jean Pied de Port, the centre between Amotz and Ascain. The enemy were driven out of the lines and followed over the river, with a loss of 4200 men and no fewer than 51 guns, the Allies losing about 2500 killed and wounded.
“Our loss,” says Wellington, “although severe, has not been so great as might have been expected, considering the strength of the positions attacked, and the length of time, from daylight in the morning till night, during which the troops were engaged.” The disorders which followed the battle were so great that with the exception of a single division Wellington sent the whole of the Spaniards—some 25,000—back to the Peninsula.
On the 12th the Marshal was in the entrenched camp at Bayonne, and six days later the victorious army went into cantonments, where it remained until the 9th December, when it was ordered to march towards Bayonne. It forced the passage of the Nive, and a series of engagements was fought until the 13th, on which date Hill, with one British and one Portuguese division, fought and won the battle of Saint Pierre. Wellington came up but refrained from interfering, and when he saw that his brave colleague had proved victorious, he wrung his hand in a hearty grip and exclaimed, “Hill, the day is entirely your own.”
In the battles of the Nive the French lost 5800 killed and wounded, and three German regiments by desertion to the Allies, whose losses totalled 4600. Soult had now one of two alternatives, either to be hemmed in at Bayonne or to retreat. He chose the latter, and marched in the direction of Toulouse with less than 40,000 troops, Napoleon, now in desperate plight, having withdrawn 10,000 for the defence of the eastern frontier of France.
Leaving Sir John Hope to blockade Bayonne, Wellington followed Soult, who took up a position at Orthez, on the right bank of the Gave de Pau. Early on the morning of the 27th February the battle opened by Beresford turning the enemy’s right, but he was driven back, as was Picton, who attacked the enemy’s centre. “Enfin je le tiens!—At last I have him!” exclaimed Soult, but Wellington changed his plan, and at once sent Hill to cross the river by the ford above Souars and cut off the Marshal’s retreat by the great road to Pau. At the same time he ordered two divisions against the right of the enemy’s centre, and Colborne cut off the division which had checkmated Beresford. The French under Reille were driven from the heights, and at first retired, in good order, but Cotton and Lord Edward Somerset charged and spread considerable confusion in the ranks, while Hill marched on Aire and attacked Clausel. The Portuguese were repulsed, but the British drove the enemy from the town with great loss.
Wellington was wounded almost at the end of the battle, which is perhaps one reason why the pursuit was not so rapid as it might otherwise have been. However, Beresford was sent with two divisions to Bordeaux, whose citizens bade them enter, and thereupon proclaimed the Duc d’Angoulême, eldest nephew of Louis XVIII, who was now with the British army, as Prince Regent.
The last battle of the Peninsular War was fought on Easter Sunday, the 10th April 1814, at Toulouse, on which Soult’s army had concentrated.
A mistake on the part of an engineer as to the breadth of the Garonne above Toulouse prevented Wellington from crossing at the spot he had selected because there were not sufficient pontoons. This caused considerable delay and a march to a narrower but more difficult place below the town. Sir George Napier says that he never saw the Commander-in-Chief in such a rage—he was “furious.” On the completion of the gangway, Beresford, with a portion of the army, passed over, drove in the French outposts, and remained in front of the enemy. There they stopped for three days, cut off from the main force and liable to attack any moment. This unexpected situation was brought about by a storm which flooded the river and swept away the pontoons.
Soult is stated to have given this reason for failing to assail Beresford’s force: “You do not know what stuff two British divisions are made of; they would not be conquered as long as there was a man of them left to stand, and I cannot afford to lose men now.”
When the new bridge was available no time was lost in crossing the river, and on the 10th Soult was attacked. An eye-witness thus records the event78:
“The 4th, 6th, and a Portuguese division under Marshal Beresford’s orders, attacked the great fort on the right of the French, and here was the brunt of the battle, for the enemy was strongly posted and flanked by works, with trenches in their front, and their best troops opposed to ours. But nothing could damp the courage of this column; the enemy’s guns poured a torrent of fire upon it; still it moved onward, when column upon column appeared, crowning the hill and forming lines in front and on the flanks of our brave fellows who were near the top; and then such a roll of musketry accompanied by peals of cannon and the shouts of the enemy commenced, that our soldiers were fairly forced to give way and were driven down again. This attack was twice renewed, and twice were our gallant fellows forced to retire, when, being got into order again and under a tremendous fire of all arms from the enemy, they once more marched onward determined ‘to do or die’ (for they were nearly all Scotch) and, having gained the summit of the position, they charged with the bayonet, and in spite of every effort of the enemy, drove all before them and entered every redoubt and fort with such a courage as I never saw before. The enemy lay in heaps, dead and dying! few, very few, escaped the slaughter of that day; but ‘victory’ was heard shouted from post to post as that gallant band moved along the crown of the enemy’s position taking every work at the point of the bayonet.
“While the work of death was going on here, the centre of the French position was attacked by the Spanish column of 8000 men, under General Freyre, who had demanded in rather a haughty tone that Lord Wellington should give the Spaniards the post of honour in the battle. He acceded, but took special care to have the Light Division in reserve to support them in case of accidents. Old Freyre placed himself at the head of his column, surrounded by his staff, and marched boldly up the hollow way, or road, which led right up to the enemy, under a heavy and destructive fire of cannon shot, which plunging into the head of his column made great havoc among his men; still they went steadily and boldly on, to my astonishment and delight to see them behave so gallantly, and I could not help expressing my delight to Colonel Colborne. But, alas! he knew them too well, and said to me, ‘Gently, my friend; don’t praise them too soon; look at yonder brigade of French Light Infantry, ready to attack them as soon as the head of their column enters the open ground. One moment more and we shall see the Spaniards fly! Gallop off, you, and throw the 52nd Regiment (which was in line) into open column of companies, and let these fellows pass through, or they will carry the regiment off with them.’ He had scarcely finished the words when a well-directed fire from the French Infantry opened upon the Spanish column, and instantly the words ‘Vive l’Empereur! En avant! en avant!’ accompanied by a charge, put the Spaniards to flight, and down they came upon the 52nd Regiment, and I had but just time to throw it into open column of companies when they rushed through the intervals like a torrent and never stopped till they arrived at the river some miles in the rear. As soon as they had passed, and I had formed the regiment into line again, we moved up and took the Spaniards’ place, driving before us the enemy’s brigade, who, being by this time completely beaten on the right and all his forts and trenches carried by Beresford’s troops, had retreated into the town; so that we found the fort on that part of the position which we attacked quite abandoned, and we entered it without loss.
“On our right the 3rd Division, under General Picton, was ordered to make a false attack on the canal bridge, which was strongly fortified and formed an impracticable barrier to that part of the town; but General Picton (who never hesitated at disobeying his orders) thought proper to change this false attack into a real one, and after repeated and useless attempts to carry it was forced to give it up, with an immense loss of officers and men. To our extreme right and on the opposite side of the river General Hill was stationed with his corps in order to watch the bridge and gates of the town, and either prevent any attempt of the enemy to pass over a body of troops during the action to cut off our communications with the rear, or, should he show any design of retreating that way, to impede him. However, all was quiet on that side, and now that every man of the enemy’s army had been chased from the position the battle was won, and the roar of cannon, the fire of the musketry, and the shouts of the victors ceased. All was still; the pickets placed; the sentinels set; and the greatest part of the army sleeping in groups round the fires of the bivouac.”
Soult had only been able to bring some 39,000 men into the field, to so great an extent had his forces been depleted, while Wellington had less than 50,000 available troops. Of the French, 3200 were killed or wounded, of the Allies 4600. On the 12th April Soult evacuated Toulouse, six days after Napoleon the Great had snatched up a pen and scrawled his formal abdication. A moment before he had been full of fight, had wanted to rally the corps of Augereau, Suchet and Soult. A year later he won back more than these. Wellington entered Toulouse on the day Soult left it, and within a few hours of the receipt of the news from Paris of the proclamation of Louis XVIII, a monarch as incompetent as the fallen Emperor was great. History is oftentimes ironic, and Time’s see-saw seldom maintains an even balance for any lengthy period.
CHAPTER XVII
The Prelude to the Waterloo Campaign
(1814–15)
“I work as hard as I can in every way in order to succeed.”
Wellington.
“I march to-morrow to follow Marshal Soult, and to prevent his army from becoming the noyau of a civil war in France.” Thus writes Wellington to Sir John Hope on the 16th April 1814, when the white flag of the Bourbons was flying at Toulouse, and forty-eight hours after Hope had been made a prisoner during a sortie on the part of the French garrison of Bayonne. Soult extended no right hand of welcome to Louis XVIII, and positively refused to submit to the new regime until he had received trustworthy information from some of Napoleon’s ministers. However, he was speedily convinced of the fall of his former master, and both he and Suchet acknowledged the Provisional Government. On the 19th April a Convention was signed by each party and Wellington for the cessation of hostilities and the evacuation of Spain. The British infantry were sent either to the homeland or on foreign service; the cavalry traversed France and crossed to England from Calais.
Wellington’s work was not yet over, although his military career was closed for a time. He was appointed British Ambassador at Paris, and while he wrote to a correspondent that recent political and military events promised “to restore the blessings of peace permanently to the world,” we must not suppose that he believed the abdication of Napoleon to be the herald of the millennium. When Castlereagh proposed the diplomatic post to him Wellington would have been perfectly justified in declining it, but sufficient of his story has been told for the reader to appreciate the fact that the Hero of the Peninsula was as keenly devoted to the service of his king and country as the Hero of Trafalgar. Whatever egotism he possessed was certainly not carried to excess. He says that he should never have thought himself qualified for the work. “I hope, however,” he adds, and here the sterling qualities of the man are revealed, “that the Prince Regent, his Government, and your Lordship, are convinced that I am ready to serve him in any situation in which it may be thought that I can be of any service. Although I have been so long absent from England, I should have remained as much longer if it had been necessary; and I feel no objection to another absence in the public service, if it be necessary or desirable.” He says much the same thing to his brother Henry: “I must serve the public in some manner or other; and, as under existing circumstances I could not well do so at home, I must do so abroad.”
Those who accuse Wellington of lack of heart will do well to remember that before leaving Toulouse for Paris he wrote an appealing letter to Earl Bathurst in behalf of Sir Rowland Hill and Sir Robert Kennedy, the latter of whom had exerted himself to the utmost in keeping the army well supplied with provisions, and to write a letter of condolence to Hope, who was a prisoner and wounded.
But he found time to join in a few fêtes in honour of the Restoration, including a magnificent ball given by Sir Charles Stewart, the British Commissioner to the Army of the Allies, where monarchs were plentiful and Society beauties abundant. “It was in the midst of this ball,” the Comtesse de Boigne relates, “that the Duke of Wellington appeared for the first time in Paris. I can see him now entering the room with his two nieces, Lady Burgers79 and Miss Pole, hanging on his arms. There were no eyes for any one else, and at this ball, where grandeur abounded, everything gave way to military glory. That of the Duke of Wellington was brilliant and unalloyed, and a lustre was added to it by the interest that had long been felt in the cause of the Spanish nation.”
He had only been in Paris six days before he set out for Madrid, viâ Toulouse, “in order to try whether I cannot prevail upon all parties to be more moderate, and to adopt a constitution more likely to be practicable and to contribute to the peace and happiness of the nation.” He had made the proposal, and the Allies had eagerly accepted it. When he started on his journey he was the Duke of Wellington,80 and it was additional cause of satisfaction to him to know that peerages had been conferred on Beresford, Hill, Cotton, Hope, and Graham, “my gallant coadjutors.” He stayed at Toulouse for a couple of days, attending to details connected with the army, and again continued his journey, writing dispatches, notes of condolence, a letter requesting permission to accept the Grand Cross of the Order of St George from the Czar, and so on.
Napoleon had released Ferdinand VII on the 13th of the previous March, and the king was now back in his capital. “I entertain a very favourable opinion of the King from what I have seen of him,” Wellington writes from Madrid on the 25th May 1814, “but not of his Ministers.” This opinion of Ferdinand must be taken as referring to the man and not to his methods, for he had already assumed the part of a despot to so alarming an extent that civil war was feared, hence the Duke’s journey. “I have accomplished my object in coming here”; he says in the same letter, “that is, I think there will certainly be no civil war at present.” But seven days later he communicates with Castlereagh in a minor key: “I have been well received by the King and his Ministers; but I fear that I have done but little good.”
He left a lengthy memorandum in the hands of his Catholic Majesty, full of excellent advice, and bereft, as he said, of “all national partialities and prejudices.” Commerce, the colonies, domestic interests, and finance are all touched upon in a sane, straightforward way, obviously with the intention of promoting “a good understanding and cementing the alliance with Great Britain,” but valuable quite apart from any motive that might be construed as selfish. As Wellington says in the preamble, “The Spanish nation having been engaged for six years in one of the most terrible and disastrous contests by which any nation was ever afflicted, its territory having been entirely occupied by the enemy, the country torn to pieces by internal divisions, its ancient constitution having been destroyed, and vain attempts made to establish a new one; its marine, its commerce, and revenue entirely annihilated; its colonies in a state of rebellion, and nearly lost to the mother country; it becomes a question for serious consideration, what line of policy should be adopted by His Majesty upon his happy restoration to his throne and authority.” Had Ferdinand taken Wellington’s well-intentioned advice to heart, Spain might have risen from her ashes. The old abuses cropped up, the Inquisition was re-established in a milder form, and troops were sent across the seas to perish in a futile endeavour to recover the Transatlantic colonies of a once glorious empire.
After returning to Paris to make arrangements for the embarkation of the British cavalry at Calais, the Duke sailed for England. When he landed at Dover on the 23rd June 1814, a salute from the batteries of the Castle welcomed him home. “About five o’clock this morning,” says a contemporary writer, “his majesty’s sloop-of-war, the Rosario, arrived in the roads, and fired a salute. Shortly afterwards, the yards of the different vessels of war were manned; a salute took place throughout the squadron, and the launch of the Nymphen frigate was seen advancing towards the harbour, with the Duke of Wellington; at this time the guns upon the heights and from the batteries commenced their thunder upon the boat leaving the ship; and on passing the pier-heads his Lordship was greeted with three distinct rounds of cheers from those assembled; but upon his landing at the Crosswall, nothing could exceed the rapture with which his Lordship was received by at least ten thousand persons; and notwithstanding it was so early, parties continued to arrive from town and country every minute. The instant his Lordship set foot on shore, a proposition was made, and instantly adopted, to carry him to the Ship Inn: he was borne on the shoulders of our townsmen, amidst the reiterated cheers of the populace.”
London went wild with excitement when he arrived, and at Westminster Bridge the mob took the horses from his carriage and dragged it along in triumph. On the 28th he took his seat for the first time in the House of Lords. He must have appeared a fine figure as, clad in his Field Marshal’s uniform under a peer’s robes, he was introduced by the Dukes of Beaufort and Richmond. The Lord Chancellor expressed the sentiments of the House, but refrained from attempting to state the “eminent merits” of his military character, “to represent those brilliant actions, those illustrious achievements, which have attached immortality to the name of Wellington, and which have given to this country a degree of glory unexampled in the annals of this kingdom. In thus acting, I believe I best consult the feelings which evince your Grace’s title to the character of a truly great and illustrious man”; and the Duke replied, in a short speech, attributing his success to his troops and general officers. A little later a deputation from the Lower House waited upon Wellington to offer him the congratulations of the Commons, and he attended in person to return thanks. The whole House rose as he entered. After a short speech the Speaker made an eloquent and touching address.
“It is not … the grandeur of military success,” he said, “which has alone fixed our admiration or commanded our applause; it has been that generous and lofty spirit which inspired your troops with unbounded confidence, and taught them to know that the day of battle was always a day of victory; that moral courage and enduring fortitude which, in perilous times, when gloom and doubt had beset ordinary minds, stood nevertheless unshaken; and that ascendancy of character which, uniting the energies of jealous and rival nations, enabled you to wield at will the fate and fortunes of mighty empires....
“It now remains only that we congratulate your Grace upon the high and important mission on which you are about to proceed, and we doubt not that the same splendid talents, so conspicuous in war, will maintain, with equal authority, firmness, and temper, our national honour and interests in peace.”
Wellington was made a Doctor of Laws by the University of Oxford, as Nelson had been before him,81 he received the freedom of the City of London in a gold casket, and a magnificent sword—in a word, he was the country’s Hero.
The time at his disposal was short and fully occupied, for he left London on the 8th August for Paris, travelling by way of the Netherlands, where he inspected the frontier from Liège along the Meuse and the Sambre to Namur and Charleroi, and thence by Mons to Tournay and the sea with a view to determining how Holland and Belgium, now united into one kingdom, could be placed in an adequate state of defence for future service should circumstances dictate. He also noted some of the most advantageous positions, including “the entrance of the forêt de Soignes by the high road which leads to Brussels from Binch, Charleroi, and Namur,”—in one word, Waterloo. He realized that there were more disadvantages than advantages, but “this country must be defended in the best manner that is possible,” even though it “affords no features upon which reliance can be placed to establish any defensive system.”82
Wellington had no hours of luxurious ease in Paris. The abolition of the slave trade, on which Great Britain had at last determined, occupied much of his attention, and one has only to refer to his dispatches at this period to understand the many difficulties he had to contend with in this one particular. Then there were questions of compensation for private property destroyed or damaged in the late war to be considered, of American vessels of war and privateers fitted out in French ports, and what was most important of all, a diagnosis of the increasing restlessness in Paris to be made. He believed that the sentiments of the people were favourable to the Bourbon king, “but the danger is not in that quarter, but among the discontented officers of the army, and others, heretofore in the civil departments of the service, now without employment.”
It would be incorrect to state that Wellington was popular in Paris, for not a few prominent military men regarded the presence of the General who had played no small part in tarnishing the glory of France as a perpetual reminder of the country’s misfortunes. The people even went so far as to resent his coat of arms, in which there was a lion or leopard bearing a tricoloured flag. This was construed as the British lion trampling on the French national flag. There was an eagle on the Duchess’s arms, which was another cause of offence. “My coach was in danger of being torn to pieces,” says the Duke, and he was obliged to have the innocent bird painted out.
The Congress of Vienna was now sitting, bent on undoing the work of the Revolution so far as was possible with a view to upholding the Divine right of kings. This is not to be wondered at considering the members of the solemn conclave, which included the Czar, the Kings of Prussia, Bavaria, Denmark and Würtemberg, the Grand Duke Charles of Baden, the Elector William of Hesse, the Hereditary Grand Duke George of Hesse-Darmstadt, the Duke of Weimar, and Prince Eugene Beauharnais (Napoleon’s step-son). The President was Metternich, the Emperor of Austria’s right-hand man, the first representative of France was the wily Talleyrand, of Great Britain Castlereagh. A host of plenipotentiaries came to put their fingers into the political pie, including those of Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Switzerland, Italy, the Pope, the Netherlands, and the smaller German States.
What with talk of projected attempts on his life and the far from pacific doings at Vienna, the Earl of Liverpool was of opinion that it would be advisable to get Wellington out of France as soon as possible. With this idea in view he was offered the command of the troops in North America, an offer he bitterly resented. However, Castlereagh solved the difficulty by asking the Duke to take his place at Vienna. The proposition was made by the Foreign Secretary in a letter dated the 18th December 1814. “I do not hesitate to comply with your desire,” the Duke replies. “As I mean to serve the King’s Government in any situation which may be thought desirable, it is a matter of indifference to me in what stage I find your proceedings.”
