History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 6

by William Francis Patrick Napier

CHAPTER V.

The force and energy of Napoleon’s system of1813. government was evinced in a marvellous manner by the rapidity with which he returned to Germany, at the head of an enormous army, before his enemies had time even to understand the extent of his misfortunes in the Russian campaign. The victories of Lutzen and Bautzen then seemed to reinstate him as the arbiter of Europe. But those battles were fought with the heads of columns the rear of which were still filing out of France. They were fought also with young troops. Wherefore the emperor when he had given himself a fixed and menacing position in Germany more readily listened to the fraudful negociations of his trembling opponents, partly in hopes of attaining his object without further appeal to arms, partly to obtain time to organize and discipline his soldiers, confident in his own unmatched skill in directing them if war was finally to decide his fate. He counted also upon the family ties between him and Austria, and believed that power willing to mediate sincerely. Not that he was so weak as to imagine the hope of regaining some of its former power and possessions was not uppermost, nor was he unprepared to make concessions; but he seems to have been quite unsuspecting of the long course of treachery and deceit followed by the Austrian politicians.

It has been already shewn that while negociating with France an offensive and defensive treaty inVol. v. p. 49 1812, the Austrian cabinet was cognizant of, and secretly aiding the plan of a vast insurrection extending from the Tyrol to Calabria and the Illyrian provinces. The management of this scheme was entrusted by the English cabinet to general Nugent and Mr. King who were at Vienna; their agents went from thence to Italy and the Illyrian coast, many Austrian officers were engaged in the project; and Italians of great families entered into commercial[Appendix, No. 1.] houses to enable them with more facility to carry on this plan. Moreover Austria while actually signing the treaty with Napoleon was with unceasing importunity urging Prussia to join the Russians in opposition to him. The feeble operations of Prince Swartzenberg, the manner in which he uncovered the emperor’s right flank and permitted Tchitchagoff to move to the Beresina in the Russian campaign, were but continuations of this deceitful policy. And it was openly advanced as a merit by the Austrian cabinet that her offer of mediation after the battle of Bautzen was made solely with the view of gaining time to organize the army which was to join the Russians and Prussians. Finally the armistice itself was violated, hostilities being commenced before its termination, to enable the Russian troops safely to join the Austrians in Bohemia.

Nevertheless Napoleon’s genius triumphed at Dresden over the unskilful operations of the allies, directed by Swartzenberg, whose incapacity as a commander was made manifest in this campaign. Nor would the after misfortunes of Vandamme and Marshal Macdonald, or the defeat of Oudinot and Ney have prevented the emperor’s final success but for the continuation of a treachery, which seemed at the time to be considered a virtue by sovereigns who were unceasingly accusing their more noble adversary of the very baseness that they were practising so unblushingly. He had conceived a project so vast so original so hardy, so far above the imaginations of his contemporary generals, that even Wellington’s sagacity failed to pierce it, and he censured the emperor’s long stay on the Elbe as an obstinacy unwarranted by the rules of art. But Napoleon had more profoundly judged his own situation. The large forces he left at Dresden at Torgau, and Wittemberg, for which he has been so much blamed by shallow military critics as lessening his numbers on the field of Leipsic, were essential parts of his gigantic plan. He quitted Dresden, apparently in retreat, to deceive his enemies, but with the intention of marching down the Elbe, recrossing that river and throwing his opponents into a false position. Then he would have seized Berlin and reopening his communications with his garrisons both on the Elbe and the Oder have operated between those rivers; and with an army much augmented in power, because he would have recovered many thousand old soldiers cooped up in the garrisons; an army more compact and firmly established also, because he would have been in direct communication with the Danes and with Davoust’s force at Hamburgh, and both his flanks would have been secured by his chains of fortresses on the two rivers. Already had Blucher and the Swedes felt his first stroke, the next would have taught the allies that the lion was still abroad in his strength, if at the very moment of execution without any previous declaration the Bavarians, upon whose operations he depended for keeping the Austrians in the valley of the Danube in check, had not formed common cause with his opponents and the whole marched together towards the Rhine. The battle of Leipsic followed, the well-known treason of the Saxon troops led to the victory gained there by the allies, and Napoleon, now the prey of misfortune, reached France with only one-third of his army, having on the way however trampled in the dust the Bavarian Wrede who attempted to stop his passage at Hannau.

Meanwhile the allied sovereigns, by giving hopes to their subjects that constitutional liberty would be the reward of the prodigious popular exertions against France, hopes which with the most detestable baseness they had previously resolved to defraud, assembled greater forces than they were able to wield, and prepared to pass the Rhine. But distrusting even their immense superiority of numbers they still pursued their faithless system. When Napoleon in consequence of the Bavarian defection marched to Leipsic, he sent orders to Gouvion St. Cyr to abandon Dresden and unite with the garrisons on the Lower Elbe, the messengers were intercepted, and St. Cyr, too little enterprising to execute such a plan of his own accord, surrendered on condition of being allowed to regain France. The capitulation was broken and general and soldiers remained prisoners.

After the Leipsic battle, Napoleon’s adherents fell away by nations. Murat the husband of his sister joined Austria and thus forced prince Eugene to abandon his position on the Adige. A successful insurrection in favour of the prince of Orange broke out in Holland. The neutrality of Switzerland was violated, and more than half a million of armed men were poured across the frontiers of France in all the violence of brute force, for their military combinations were contemptible and their course marked by murder and devastation. But previous to this the allies gave one more notable example of their faithless cunning.

St. Aignan the French resident minister at Gotha had been taken at Leipsic and treated at first as a prisoner of war. He remonstrated and being known to entertain a desire for peace was judged a good tool with which to practise deception. Napoleon had offered on the field of battle at Leipsic to negociate, no notice was taken of it at the time, but now the Austrian Metternich and the Russian Nesselrode had an interview with St. Aignan at Frankfort, and they assured him the Prussian minister agreed in all things with them. They had previously arranged that lord Aberdeen should come in during the conference as if by accident; nothing was put down in writing, yet St. Aignan was suffered to make minutes of their proposals in reply to the emperor’s offer to negociate. These were generally that the alliance of the sovereigns was indissoluble—that they would have only a general peace—that France was to be confined to her naturalDiplomatic Correspondence, MSS. limits, viz. the Alps the Rhine and the Pyrenees—that the independence of Germany was a thing not to be disputed—that the Spanish Peninsula should be free and the Bourbon dynasty be restored—that Austria must have a frontier in Italy the line of which could be afterwards discussed, but Italy itself was to be independent of any preponderating power—that Holland was also to be independent and her frontier to be matter for after discussion—that England was ready to make great sacrifices for peace upon these bases and would acknowledge that freedom of commerce and of navigation which France had a right to pretend to. St. Aignan here observed that Napoleon believed England was resolved to restrict France to the possession of thirty sail of the line, lord Aberdeen replied that it was not true.

This conference had place at the emperor of Austria’s head-quarters on the 10th of November, and lord Aberdeen inclosed the account of it in a despatch dated at Smalcalde the 16th of November. He had objected verbally to the passage relating to the maritime question with England, nevertheless he permitted it to remain in St. Aignan’s minutes. It was decided also that the military operations should go on notwithstanding the negociation, and in truth the allies had not the slightest design to make peace. They thought Napoleon would refuse the basis proposed, which would give them an opportunity to declare he was opposed to all reasonable modes of putting an end to the war and thus work upon the French people. This is proved by what followed. For when contrary to their expectations the emperor’s minister signified, on the 16th of November, that he accepted the propositions, observing that the independence of all nations at sea as well as by land had been always Napoleon’s object, Metternich in his reply, on the 25th of November, pretended to consider this answer as avoiding the acceptation of the basis. The emperor however put that obstacle aside, on the 2d of December, by accepting explicitly the basis, generally and summarily, such as it had been presented to him, adding, that France would make great sacrifices but the emperor was content if by like sacrifices on the part of England, that general peace which was the declared object of the allies could be obtained. Metternich thus driven from his subterfuge required Napoleon to send a like declaration to each of the allies separately when negociations might, he said, commence.

Meanwhile lord Aberdeen, who had permitted St. Aignan to retain the article relating to maritime rights in his minutes of conference, presented to Metternich on the 27th of November a note declaring that England would not admit the turn given by France to her share of the negociation; that she was ready to yield all the rights of commerce and navigation which France had a right to pretend to, but the question would turn upon what that right was. England would never permit her navigation laws to be discussed at a congress, it was a matter essentially foreign to the object of such an assembly, and England would never depart from the great principle thereby announced as to her maritime rights. Metternich approved of lord Aberdeen’s views, saying they were his own and those of his court, thus proving that the negociation had been a deceit from the beginning. This fact was however placed beyond doubt by lord Castlereagh’s simultaneous proceedings in London.

In a note dated the 30th November that minister told lord Aberdeen England admitted as a basis, that the Alps the Rhine and the Pyrenees should be the frontier of France, subject to such modifications as might be necessary to give a secure frontier to Holland, and to Switzerland also, although the latter had not been mentioned in the proposals given by St. Aignan. He applauded the resolution to pursue military operations notwithstanding the negociations, and he approved of demanding nothing but what they were resolved to have. Nevertheless he said that any sacrifice to be made by England was only to secure the independence of Holland and Switzerland, and the former having already declared for the house of Nassau was now out of the pale of discussion. Finally he recommended that any unnecessary delay or equivocation on the part of the enemy should be considered as tantamount to a rejection of the basis, and that the allies should then put forward the offer of peace to show that it was not they but France that opposed an honourable termination of the war. Having thus thrown fresh obstacles in the way of that peace which the allies pretended to have so much at heart, he, on the 21st December, sent notes to the different ambassadors of the allied powers then in London demanding explicit answers about the intentions of their courts as to England’s maritime code. To this they all responded that their cabinets would not suffer any question relative to that code to be entertained at a congress in which England was represented, and this on the express ground that it would mar the great object of peace.

Lord Castlereagh thus provided, declared that France should be informed of their resolutions before negociations commenced, but twenty days before this Napoleon having decreed a fresh levy of three hundred thousand conscripts the allies had published a manifesto treating this measure, so essentially a defensive one since they would not suspend their military operations, as a fresh provocation on his part, because the motives assigned for the conscription contained a just and powerful description of their past deceits and violence with a view to rouse the national spirit of France. Thus having first by a pretended desire for peace and a willingness on the part of England to consent to an arrangement about her maritime code, inveigled the French emperor into negociations and thereby ascertained that the maritime question was uppermost in his mind and the only obstacle to peace, they declared that vital question should not even be discussed. And when by this subtlety they had rendered peace impossible proclaimed that Napoleon alone resisted the desire of the world for tranquillity. And at this very moment Austria was secretly endeavouring to obtain England’s consent to her seizing upon Alsace a project which was stopped by lord Wellington who forcibly pointed out the danger of rousing France to a general insurrection by such a proceeding.

The contrast between these wiles to gain a momentary advantage, and the manly, vigorous policy of lord Wellington must make honest men of all nations blush for the cunning which diplomatists call policy. On one side the arts of guileful negociation masked with fair protestations but accompanied by a savage and revolting system of warfare; on the other a broad open hostility declared on manly and just grounds followed up with a strict regard to humanity and good faith; nothing put forward with an equivocal meaning and the actions true to the word. On the eastern frontier the Cossack let loose to ravage with all the barbarity of Asiatic warfare. On the western frontier the Spaniards turned back into their own country in the very midst of triumph, for daring to pass the bounds of discipline prescribed by the wise and generous policy of their commander. Terror and desolation and the insurrection of a people rendered frantic by the cruelty of the invaders marked the progress of the ferocious multitudes who crossed the Rhine. Order and tranquillity, profound even on the very edge of the battle-field, attended the march of the civilized army which passed the Bidassoa. And what were the military actions? Napoleon rising even above himself hurtled against the armed myriads opposed to him with such a terrible energy that though ten times his number they were rolled back on every side in confusion and dismay. But Wellington advanced without a check, victorious in every battle, although one half of the veterans opposed to him would have decided the campaign on the eastern frontier. Nor can this be gainsaid, since Napoleon’s career in this campaign was only stayed by the defection of his brother-in-law Murat, and by the sickening treachery of two marshals to whom he had been prodigal of benefits. It is undeniable that lord Wellington with sixty thousand Anglo-Portuguese acting in the south, effected more than half a million of the allies were able to effect on the opposite side of France; and yet Soult’s army on the 10th of November was stronger than that with which Napoleon fought the battle of Brienne.

That great man was never personally deceived by the allies’ pretended negociations. He joined issue with them to satisfy the French people that he was not averse to peace, but his instructions dated the 4th of January and addressed to Caulaincourt prove at once his sagacity and firmness. “I think,” he said, “that both the allies good faith and the wish of England to make peace is doubtful; for my part I desire peace but it must be solid and honourable. I have accepted the basis proposed at Frankfort yet it is more than probable the allies have other notions. These propositions are but a mask, the negociations are placed under the influence of the military operations and it is easy to foresee what the consequences of such a system must be. It is necessary therefore to listen to and observe every thing. It is not certain even that you will be admitted to the head-quarters of the allies. The Russians and the English watch to prevent any opening for explanation and reconciliation with the emperor of Austria. You must therefore endeavour to ascertain the real views of the allies and let me know day by day what you learn that I may frame instructions for which at present I have no sure grounds.”

The internal state of France was more disquieting to his mind than foreign negociations or the number of invaders. The sincere republicans were naturally averse to him as the restorer of monarchy, yet they should have felt that the sovereign whose ruin was so eagerly sought by the legitimate kings and nobles of Europe could not be really opposed to liberty. Meanwhile the advocates of legitimacy shrunk from him as an usurper, and all those tired of war, and they were a majority of the nation, judging from the stupendous power of his genius that he had only to will peace to attain it with security, blamed his tardiness in negociation. An unexpected opposition to his wishes was also displayed in the legislative body, and the partizans of the Bourbons were endeavouring to form a great conspiracy in favour of that house. There were many traitors likewise to him and to their country, men devoid of principle, patriotism, or honour, who with instinctive hatred of a failing cause plotted to thwart his projects for the defence of the nation. In fine the men of action and the men of theories were alike combined for mischief. Nor is this outbreak of passion to be wondered at when it is considered how recently Napoleon had stopped the anarchy of the revolution and rebuilt the social and political structure in France. But of all who by their untimely opposition to the emperor hurt their country, the most pernicious were those silly politicians, whom he so felicitously described as “discussing abstract systems of government when the battering ram was at the gates.”

Such however has been in all ages the conduct of excited and disturbed nations, and it seems to be inherent in human nature, because a saving policy can only be understood and worked to good by master-spirits, and they are few and far between, their time on earth short, their task immense. They have not time to teach, they must command although they know that pride and ignorance and even honesty will carp at the despotism which brings general safety. It was this vain short-sighted impatience that drove Hannibal into exile, caused the assassination of Cæsar, and strewed thorns beneath the gigantic footsteps of Oliver Cromwell. It raged fiercely in Spain against lord Wellington, and in France against Napoleon, and always with the most grievous injury to the several nations. Time only hallows human institutions. Under that guarantee men will yield implicit obedience and respect to the wildest caprices of the most stupid tyrant that ever disgraced a throne, and wanting it they will cavil at and reject the wisest measures of the most sublime genius. The painful notion is thus excited, that if governments are conducted with just the degree of stability and tranquillity which they deserve and no more, the people of all nations, much as they may be oppressed, enjoy upon an average of years precisely the degree of liberty they are fitted for. National discontents mark, according to their bitterness and constancy, not so much the oppression of the rulers as the real progress of the ruled in civilization and its attendant political knowledge. When from peculiar circumstances those discontents explode in violent revolutions, shattering the fabric of society and giving free vent and activity to all the passions and follies of mankind, fortunate is the nation which possesses a Napoleon or an Oliver Cromwell “to step into their state of dominion with spirit to controul and capacity to subdue the factions of the hour and reconstruct the frame of reasonable government.”

For great as these two men were in the field of battle, especially the former, they were infinitely greater when they placed themselves in the seat of power, and put forth the gigantic despotism of genius essential to the completion of their holy work. Nor do I hold the conduct of Washington to be comparable to either of those men. His situation was one of infinitely less difficulty, and there is no reason to believe that his capacity would have been equal to the emergencies of a more formidable crisis than he had to deal with. Washington could not have made himself master of all had it been necessary and he so inclined, for he was neither the foremost general nor the foremost statesman of his nation. His forbearance was a matter of necessity, and his love of liberty did not prevent him from bequeathing his black slaves to his widow.

Such was Napoleon’s situation, and as he read the signs of the times truly he knew that in his military skill and the rage of the peasants at the ravages of the enemy he must find the means to extricate himself from his difficulties, or rather to extricate his country, for self had no place in his policy save as his personal glory was identified with France and her prosperity. Never before did the world see a man, soaring so high and devoid of all selfish ambition. Let those who honestly seeking truth doubt this, study Napoleon carefully; let them read the record of his second abdication published by his brother Lucien, that stern republican who refused kingdoms as the price of his principles, and they will doubt no longer. It is not however with these matters that this History has to deal but with the emperor’s measures affecting his lieutenants on the Spanish frontier of France. There disaffection to his government was extensive but principally from local causes. The conscription was peculiarly hateful to the wild mountaineers, who like most borderers cherish very independent notions. The war with England had ruined the foreign commerce of their great towns, and the advantage of increased traffic by land on the east was less directly felt in the south. There also the recollection of the Vendean struggle still lingered and the partizans of the Bourbons had many connections. But the chief danger arose from the just and politic conduct of lord Wellington which, offering no cause of anger and very much of private advantage to the people, gave little or no hope of insurrection from sufferings.

While France was in this state England presented a scene of universal exultation. Tory politics were triumphant, opposition in the parliament was nearly crushed by events, the press was either subdued by persecution or in the pay of the ministers, and the latter with undisguised joy hailed the coming moment when aristocratic tyranny was to be firmly established in England. The most enormous subsidies and military supplies were poured into the continent, and an act was passed to enable three-fourths of the militia to serve abroad. They were not however very forward to volunteer, and a new army which ought to have reinforced Wellington was sent, under the command of general Graham, to support the insurrection of Holland, where it was of necessity engaged in trifling or unsuccessful operations in no manner affecting the great objects of the war. Meanwhile the importance of lord Wellington’s army and views was quite overlooked or misunderstood. The ministers persevered in the foolish plan of removing him to another quarter of Europe, and at the same time, instigated by the ambassadors of the allied sovereigns, were continually urging him to push his operations with more vigour in France. As if he was the man who had done least!

His letters were filled with strong and well-founded complaints that his army was neglected. Let his real position be borne in mind. He had, not as a military man but with a political view and to meet the wishes of the allied sovereigns backed by the importunities of his own government, placed himself in a confined and difficult district of France, where his operations were cramped by rivers and fortresses and by a powerful army occupying strong positions on his front and flanks. In this situation, unable to act at all in wet weather, he was necessarily dependent upon the ocean for supplies and reinforcements, and upon the Spanish authorities for his hospitals, depôts, and communications. Numbers were requisite to balance the advantages derived by the enemy from the peculiar conformation of the country and the position of the fortresses. Money also was wanted to procure supplies which he could not carry with him, and must pay for exactly, if he would avoid a general insurrection and the consequent ruin of the political object for which he had adopted such critical military operations. But though he had undertaken the invasion of France at the express desire of the government the latter seemed to be alike ignorant of its importance and of the means to accomplish it, at one moment urging progress beyond reason, at another ready to change lightly what they had proposed ignorantly. Their unsettled policy proved their incapacity even to comprehend the nature of the great tide of events on which they floated rather than sailed. Lord Wellington was forced day by day to teach them the value of their own schemes, and to show them how small their knowledge was of the true bearing of the political and military affairs they pretended to direct.

“Assure,” he wrote on the 21st of December to lord Bathurst, in reply to one of their ill-founded remonstrances, “Assure the Russian ambassador there is nothing I can do to forward the general interest that I will not do. What do they require? I am already further advanced on the French territory than any of the allied powers, and better prepared to take advantage of any opportunities which might offer as a consequence of my own situation or of their proceedings.”—“In military operations there are some things which can not be done, and one is to move troops in this country during or immediately after a violent fall of rain. To attempt it will be to lose more men than can be replaced, a guilty waste of life.”

“The proper scene of action for the army was undoubtedly a question for the government to decide, but with thirty thousand men in the Peninsula, he had for five years held two hundred thousand of Napoleon’s best soldiers in check, since it was ridiculous to suppose that the Spaniards and Portuguese could have resisted for a moment if the British troops had been withdrawn. The French armies actually employed against him could not be less than one hundred thousand men, more if he included garrisons, and the French newspapers spoke of orders to form a fresh reserve of one hundred thousand at Bordeaux. Was there any man weak enough to suppose one-third of the number first mentioned would be employed against the Spaniards and Portuguese if the British were withdrawn? They would if it were an object with Buonaparte to conquer the Peninsula and he would in that case succeed; but he was more likely to give peace to the Peninsula and turn against the allied sovereigns his two hundred thousand men of which one hundred thousand were such troops as their armies had not yet dealt with. The war every day offered a crisis the result of which might affect the world for ages, and to change the scene of operations for the British army would render it incapable of fighting for four months, even if the scene were Holland, and it would even then be a deteriorated machine.”

“The ministers might reasonably ask how by remaining where he was he could induce Napoleon to make peace. The answer was ready. He held a commanding situation on the most vulnerable frontier of France, probably the only vulnerable one, and if he could put twenty thousand Spaniards in activity, and he could do it if he had money and was properly supported by the fleet, Bayonne the only fortress on the frontier, if it could be called a fortress, would fall to him in a short time. If he could put forty thousand Spaniards in motion his posts would soon be on the Garonne, and did any man believe that Napoleon would not feel an army in such a position more than he would feel thirty or forty thousand British troops laying siege to one of his fortresses in Holland? The resources in men and money of which the emperor would be thus deprived, and the loss of reputation would do ten times more to procure peace than ten armies on the side of Flanders. But if he was right in believing a strong Bourbon party existed in France and that it preponderated in the south, what mischief would not an advance to the Garonne do Napoleon! What sacrifices would he not make to get rid of the danger!”

“It was for the government not for him to dispose of the nation’s resources, he had no right to give an opinion upon the subject, but military operations in Holland and in the Peninsula could not be maintained at the same time with British troops; one or other must be given up, the British military establishment was not equal to maintain two armies in the field. He had begun the recent campaign with seventy thousand Anglo-Portuguese, and if the men got from the English militia, and the Portuguese recruits which he expected, had been added to his force, even though the Germans were removed from his army according to the ministers’ plan, he might have taken the field early in 1814 with eighty thousand men. That was now impossible. The formation of a Hanoverian army was the most reasonable plan of acting on the continent but the withdrawal of the Germans would reduce his force to fifty thousand men unless he received real and efficient assistance to bring up the Portuguese recruits. This would increase his numbers to fifty-five or even sixty thousand if his own wounded recovered well and he had no more battles, but he would even then be twenty thousand less than he had calculated upon, and it was certain that if the government extended their operations to other countries new means must be put in activity or the war must be stinted on the old stage. He did not desire to complain but every branch of the service in the Peninsula was already stinted especially in what concerned the navy and the supplies which came directly from England!”

While thus combating the false views of the English cabinet as to the general state of affairs he had also to struggle with its negligence and even opposition to his measures in details.

The general clothing of the Spanish troops and the great coats of the British soldiers for 1813, were not ready in January 1814, because the inferior departments could not comprehend that the opening of new scenes of exertion required new means, and the soldiers had to brave the winter half naked, first on the snowy mountains, then in the more chilling damps of the low country about Bayonne. The clothing of the British soldiers for 1814 should have arrived in the end of 1813 when the army lying inactive near the coast by reason of the bad weather could have received and fitted it without difficulty. It did not however arrive until the troops were in progress towards the interior of France, wherefore, there being no means of transporting it by land, many of the best regiments were obliged to return to the coast to receive it, and the army as we shall find had to fight a critical battle without them.

He had upon commencing the invasion of France issued a proclamation promising protection to persons and property. This was construed by the French to cover their vessels in the Nivelle when the battle of that name gave the allies St. Jean de Luz. Lord Wellington sacrificing personal profit to the good of the service admitted this claim as tending to render the people amicable, but it clashed with the prize-money pretensions of lord Keith who commanded the fleet of which Collier’s squadron formed a detached portion. The serious evils endured by the army in default of sufficient naval assistance had been treated as of very slight importance, the object of a trifling personal gain for the navy excited a marvellous activity, and vigorous interference on the part of the government. Upon these subjects, and others of a like vexatious nature affecting his operations, lord Wellington repeatedly and forcibly declared his discontent during the months of December, January, and February.

“As to the naval affairs,” he said, “the reports of the number of ships on the stations striking off those coming out and going home would shew whether he had just ground of complaint, and whatever their numbers there remained the right of complaint because they did not perform the service required. The French had recommenced their coast navigation from Bordeaux to Bayonne, and if the blockade of Santona had been maintained the place would have been forced to surrender at an early period. The proclamation of protection which he had issued, and the licenses which he had granted to French vessels, every act of that description, and two-thirds of the acts which he performed every day could not he knew be considered of any avail as affecting the king’s government, unless approved of and confirmed by the prince regent; and he knew that no power short of the regent’s could save the property of French subjects on the seas from the British navy. For that reason he had requested the sanction of the government to the sea passports which he had granted. His proclamation of protection had been construed whether rightfully or wrongfully to protect the French ships in the rivers; his personal interest, greater than others, would lead him to deny this, but he sacrificed his profit to the general good.

“Were lord Keith and sir George Collier because the latter happened to have a brig or two cruizing off the coast, to claim as prizes all the vessels lying in every river which the army might pass in its operations? and this to the detriment of the cause which required the strictest respect for private property. For the last five years he had been acting in the confidence that his conduct would be approved of and supported, and he concluded it would be so still; but he was placed in a novel situation and asked for legal advice to determine, whether lord Keith and the channel fleet, were to be considered as engaged in a conjoint expedition with the army under his command against the subjects of France, neither having any specific instructions from government, and the fleet having nothing to do with the operations by land. He only required that fleet to give him a free communication with the coast of Spain, and prevent the enemy’s sea communication between the Garonne and the Adour, and this last was a part of its duty before the army arrived. Was his proclamation of protection to hold good as regarded the ships in the rivers? He desired to have it sanctioned by the prince regent, or that he might be permitted to issue another declaring that it was of no value.”

This remonstrance produced so much effect that lord Keith relinquished his claims, and admiral Penrose was sent to command upon the station instead of sir George Collier. The immediate intercourse of lord Wellington with the navy was thus ameliorated by the superior power of this officer, who was remarkable for his suavity. Yet the licenses given to French vessels were strongly condemned by the government, and rendered null, for we find him again complaining that “he had granted them only in hopes of drawing money and supplies from France, and of interesting the French mercantile men to aid the army; but he feared the government were not aware of, and did not feel the difficulties in which he was placed at all times for want of money, and judged his measures without adverting to the necessity which occasioned them; hence their frequent disapprobation of what he did.”

Strange this may sound to those who seeing the duke of Wellington in the fulness of his glory have been accustomed to regard him as the star of England’s greatness; but those who at that period frequented the society of ministers know well that he was then looked upon by those self-sufficient men as a person whose views were wild and visionary, requiring the corroboration of older and wiser heads before they could be assented to. Yea! even thus at the eleventh hour was the giant Wellington measured by the political dwarfs.

Although he gained something by making San Jean de Luz a free port for all nations not at war with France, his financial situation was nearly intolerable, and at the moment of greatest pressure colonel Bunbury, under-secretary of state, was sent out to protest against his expenses. One hundred thousand pounds a month was the maximum in specie which the government would consent to supply, a sum quite inadequate to his wants. And this remonstrance was addressed to this victorious commander at the very crisis of his stupendous struggle, when he was overwhelmed with debts and could scarcely stir out of his quarters on account of the multitude of creditors waiting at his door for payment of just claims.

“Some of his muleteers he said were twenty-sixWellington’s Despatches. months in arrears, and recently, instigated by British merchants, they had become so clamorous that rather than lose their services he had given them bills on the treasury for a part of their claims, though he knew they would sell these bills at a discount to the sharks, who had urged them to be thus importunate and who were waiting at the ports to take advantage of the public distresses. A dangerous measure which he desired not to repeat.

“It might be true that the supply of one hundred thousand pounds a month had been even exceeded for some time past, but it was incontestible that the English army and all its departments, and the Spanish and Portuguese armies were at the moment paralyzed for want of money. The arrears of pay to the soldiers was entering the seventh month, the debt was immense, and the king’s engagements with the Spanish and Portuguese governments were not fulfilled. Indebted in every part of Spain he was becoming so in France, the price of all commodities was increasing in proportion to the delay of payment, to the difficulty of getting food at all, and the want of credit into which all the departments of the army had fallen. Of two hundred thousand dollars given to marshal Beresford for the pay of his troops on account of the Portuguese subsidy he had been forced to take back fifty thousand to keep the Spaniards together, and was even then forced to withhold ten thousand to prevent the British cavalry from perishing. Money to pay the Spaniards had sailed from Cadiz, but the vessel conveying it, and another containing the soldiers’ great coats, were by the admiralty arrangements obliged to go first to Corunna, and neither had arrived there in January although the money had been ready in October. But the ship of war designed to carry it did not arrive at Cadiz until the end of December. Sixteen thousand Spanish troops were thus rendered useless because without pay they could not be trusted in France.”

“The commissary-in-chief in England had been regularly informed of the state of the supplies of the military chest and of the wants and prospects of the army, but those wants were not attended to. The monthly hundred thousand pounds spoken of as the maximum, even if it had been given regularly, would not cover the ordinary expenses of the troops, and there were besides the subsidies other outlays requiring ready money, such as meat for the soldiers, hospital expenses, commissariat labourers, and a variety of minor engagements. The Portuguese government had been reduced to a monthly sum of two hundred thousand dollars out of a subsidy of two millions sterling. The Spanish government got what they could out of a subsidy of one million. And when money was obtained for the government in the markets of Lisbon and Cadiz, it came not in due time, because, such were the admiralty arrangements, there were no ships to convey the treasure to the north coast of Spain. The whole sum which had passed through the military chest during the past year was scarcely more than two millions four hundred thousand pounds, out of which part of the subsidies had been paid. This was quite inadequate, the Government had desired him to push his operations to the Garonne during the winter, he was prepared to do so in every point excepting money, and he knew the greatest advantages would accrue from such a movement but he could not stir. His posts were already so distant from the coast that his means of transport were daily destroyed by the journeys, he had not a shilling to pay for any thing in the country and his credit was gone. He had been obliged privately to borrow the expense of a single courier sent to general Clinton. It was not his duty to suggest the fitting measures for relief, but it was obvious that an immediate and large supply from England was necessary and that ships should be provided to convey that which was obtained at Lisbon and Cadiz to the army.”

Such was the denuded state of the victorious Wellington at a time when millions, and the worth of more millions were being poured by the English ministers into the continent; when every petty German sovereign, partizan, or robber, who raised a band, or a cry against Napoleon, was supplied to satiety. And all this time there was not in England one public salary reduced, one contract checked, one abuse corrected, one public servant rebuked for negligence; not a writer dared to expose the mischief lest he should be crushed by persecution; no minister ceased to claim and to receive the boasting congratulations of the tories, no whig had sense to discover or spirit to denounce the iniquitous system, no voice of reprehension was heard from that selfish faction unless it were in sneering contempt of the general whose mighty genius sustained England under this load of folly.

Nor were these difficulties all that lord Wellington had to contend with. We have seen that the Portuguese regency withheld his reinforcements even when he had provided transports for their conveyance. The duke of York meanwhile insisted upon withdrawing his provisional battalions, which being all composed of old soldiers, the remains of regiments reduced by the casualties of war, were of more value in a winter campaign than three times their numbers of new men. With respect to the English militia regiments, he had no desire for them, because they possessed, he said, all the worst faults of the regulars and some peculiar to themselves besides. What he desired was that eight or ten thousand men should be drafted from them to fill up his ranks, he could then without much injury let his foreign battalions be taken away to reform a Hanoverian army on the continent; and this plan he was inclined to, because the Germans, brave and strong soldiers, were yet extremely addicted to desertion and in that particular set a bad example to the British: this suggestion was however disregarded, and other reinforcements were promised to him.

But the most serious of all the secondary vexations he endured sprung from the conduct of the Spanish authorities. His hospitals and depôts were for the most part necessarily in the Spanish territories and principally at Santander. To avoid inconvenience to the inhabitants he had caused portable wooden houses to be brought from England in which to shelter his sick and wounded men; and he paid extravagantly and regularly for every aid demanded from the natives. Nevertheless the natural arrogance or ill-will which produced the libels about St. Sebastian the insolence of the minister of war and the sullen insubordination of Morillo and other generals broke out here also. After much underhand and irritating conduct at different times, the municipality, resolute to drive the hospitals from their town, suddenly, and under the false pretext that there was a contagious fever, placed all the British hospitals with their officers and attendants under quarantine. This was in the middle of January. Thirty thousand men had been wounded since June in the service of Spain, and the return was to make those wounded men close prisoners and drive their general to the necessity of fixing his hospitals in England. Vessels coming from Santander were thus rendered objects of dread, and the municipalities of the other ports, either really fearing or pretending to fear the contagion, would not suffer them to enter their waters. To such a height did this cowardice and villainy attain that the political chief of Guipuscoa, without giving any notice to lord Wellington, shut all the ports of that province against vessels coming from Santander, and the alcalde of Fuenterabia endeavoured to prevent a Portuguese military officer from assisting an English vessel which was about to be and was afterwards actually cast away, because she came from Santander.

Now in consequence of the difficulties and dangers of navigating the Bay of Biscay in the winter and the badness of the ports near the positions of the army, all the stores and provisions coming by sea went in the first instance to Santander, the only good port, there to wait until favourable opportunities occurred for reaching the more eastern harbours. Moreover all the provision magazines of the Spanish army were there, but this blow cut them off, the army was reduced to the smaller magazines at Passages which could only last for a few days, and when that supply was expended lord Wellington would have had no resource but to withdraw across the Pyrenees! “Here,” he exclaimed, “here are the consequences of the system by which these provinces are governed! Duties of the highest description, military operations, political interests, and the salvation of the state, are made to depend upon the caprices of a few ignorant individuals, who have adopted a measure unnecessary and harsh without adverting to its objects or consequences, and merely with a view to their personal interests and convenience.”

They carried it into execution also with the utmost hardness caprice and injustice, regardless of the loss of ships and lives which must follow, and finally desired lord Wellington to relinquish the harbour and town of Santander altogether as a depôt! However his vigorous remonstrances stopped this nefarious proceeding in time to avert the danger which it menaced.

Be it remembered now, that these dangers and difficulties, and vexations, although related in succession, happened, not one after another, but altogether; that it was when crossing the Bidassoa, breaking through the mountain fortifications of Soult, passing the Nive, fighting the battles in front of Bayonne, and when still greater and more intricate combinations were to be arranged, that all these vials of folly and enmity were poured upon his head. Who then shall refuse to admire the undaunted firmness, the unwearied temper and vigilance, the piercing judgement with which he steered his gallant vessel and with a flowing sail, unhurt through this howling storm of passion this tumultuous sea of folly.