Napoleon and his court

by C. S. Forester

Junot was in a serious position. With four hundred men he had to rule a large town simmering with rebellion, but he succeeded, and held the country down while the rest of his army trailed disconsolately into Lisbon. His astonishing march had not achieved its object, and the marshal’s bâton was therefore withheld. Napoleon offered some sort of consolation by creating Junot Duke of Abrantès, but there is no doubt that the disappointment weighed heavily upon him. Napoleon had meditated making Junot Duke of Nazareth, in memory of his victory during the Syrian campaign, but he had decided that it would be inadvisable, as the soldiers would call him “Junot of Nazareth.”

Napoleon was not quite so far-sighted when at the same time he made Victor, at the suggestion of one of the wits of his court, Duke of Belluno. Victor was commonly called the Beau Soleil of the French Army. Napoleon’s investiture made him Duke of Belle Lune.

Immediately afterwards the Spanish war broke out, and Junot found himself isolated at Lisbon. He gathered his forces together, and without any help whatever from France he maintained them and re-equipped them at the cost of unfortunate Portugal. But it was not to last long, for Wellington landed in Mondego bay, and Junot, furiously attacking him, was badly beaten at Vimiero. There followed the Convention of Cintra. By it Junot and his men were transported back to France with their arms, baggage and plunder; all that the English gained was a bloodless occupation of Portugal. It is difficult now to decide who had the best of this agreement. Certainly Napoleon thought that Junot had made a good bargain, and equally certainly the English public thought that Wellington had blundered badly.

If the Convention had not been concluded, the English would have cut Junot off from France (two hundred thousand Spanish insurgents had done that already) and would have shut him up in Lisbon. Without a doubt, Junot would have made a desperate resistance there. Masséna’s holding of Genoa in 1800 might have been re-enacted, and the wretched Portuguese might have starved while Junot held out. In this event the hands of the English would have been so full that no help could have been offered to the Spanish armies; Moore’s skilful thrust at Sahagun could never have been made, and the Spaniards might have met with utter annihilation. By the Convention of Cintra, France gained an immediate benefit, but England eventually gained even more.

After Vimiero, Junot’s military career is one of continued failure—failure under Masséna in the Busaco campaign, failure under Napoleon in the Russian campaign, until at last the Duke of Abrantès was sent into comparative exile as Governor of Illyria. Here his troubles, his wounds and his disappointments bore too heavily upon him. He went raving mad, and performed all sorts of lunatic actions in his Illyrian province until he was removed to France. At Dijon he flung himself from a window and killed himself. Junot is one more example of those whom Napoleon favoured, who met with horrible ends.

But Marshals and Generals alike, Napoleon’s superior officers were nearly all distinguished by one common failing—a dread of responsibility and a hopeless irresolution when compelled to act on their own initiative. The examples of this are almost too numerous to mention; the most striking perhaps is Berthier’s failure during the early period of the campaign of 1809. There are many others which had much more important results, although at first they seem trivial in comparison. Thus, Dupont’s surrender at Baylen, although it only involved twenty thousand men, was one of the principal causes of the prolongation of the Peninsular War. Dupont surrendered with twenty thousand men; his action necessitated the employment in the Peninsula of three hundred thousand men for six years afterwards.

Another incident of the same type was Vandamme’s disaster at Kulm. Vandamme was a burly, heavy-jawed soldier of the furious and thoughtless kind, who had learnt his trade thoroughly well by rule of thumb, and who had made his name a byword throughout Germany on account of his dreadful depredations. His boast was that he feared neither God nor devil, and Napoleon referred to this once when he said that Vandamme was the most valuable of all his soldiers because he was the only one he could employ in a war against the Infernal regions, should such a contingency arise.

In July, 1813, the Armistice of Pleisswitz had come to an end, and Austria had joined the ranks of Napoleon’s enemies. The Grand Army was in Silesia when the news arrived that the Austrians were marching on Dresden. Napoleon turned back without hesitation, marched a hundred and twenty miles in four days, and by what was almost his last victory he saved the town. At the commencement of his march he had detached Vandamme with twenty thousand men to hold the passes of the Erz Gebirge against the retreating forces. The beaten Austrian army came reeling back towards them. The Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia were present in its ranks, and it seemed as if nothing could save them from surrender. Fortunately, perhaps, for Europe, Napoleon was unwell and did not press the pursuit as closely as he might have done, and Vandamme, who rushed into peril like a bull into the ring, without outposts, without flank guards, without any reasonable protection, was overwhelmed by forces outnumbering his by four to one, and was forced to surrender. Vandamme may have feared neither God nor devil, but he had not the brains for a command in chief, even against men.

His own honour he redeemed from all possible accusations of cowardice, when, a prisoner in Austrian hands, with all the possibilities before him of condemnation to slow death in a salt-mine or speedy death on the spot, he was led before the Czar, and he did not quail. Alexander rated him for his excesses in Prussia, and Vandamme hit back at Alexander’s tender spot—his conscience. “At least I did not kill my own father,” said Vandamme.

Indecision characterizes the actions of many French generals during the Empire. The most discussed case perhaps was Grouchy’s hesitation at Wavre during the Waterloo campaign, and this, curiously enough, was not really hesitation. The sole military crime of which Grouchy was guilty was a too pedantic obedience to orders. Grouchy has been blamed for misreading the situation and for not marching from Wavre on Waterloo, but Napoleon misread the situation just as badly, as his orders to Grouchy clearly prove. Moreover, once Grouchy’s hands had been freed by the destruction of the main French army, his actions were exceedingly bold and competent. His retreat across the Allies’ rear and his capture of Namur were manœuvres of sound military skill.