“All of us have read of what occurred during that interval. The tale is in every Englishman’s mouth; and you and I who were children when the great battle was won and lost, are never tired of hearing and recounting the history of that famous action. Its remembrance rankles still in the bosoms of millions of the countrymen of those brave men who lost the day. They pant for an opportunity of revenging that humiliation; and if a contest, ending in a victory on their part, should ensue, elating them in their turn, and leaving the cursed legacy of hatred and rage behind to us, there is no end to the so-called glory and shame, and to the alternation of successful and unsuccessful murder, in which two high-spirited nations might engage. Centuries hence we Frenchmen and Englishmen might be boasting and killing each other still, carrying out bravely the devil’s code of honour.” No one who lives now but must most fervently hope that the remembrance of that evil heritage may be buried so deep as never to rise again!
CHAPTER XII
THE ARMY IN THE NETHERLANDS—WATERLOO, 1815
The Peninsular campaigns had, by the process of constantly “pegging away,” to use Abraham Lincoln’s expression during the American Civil War, resulted in sapping the strength of France, and led to the emperor’s deposition. Perhaps it was not the main cause of his fall after all; but it was the one open wound that bled the French to death, when all other districts of Europe were in awe-full peace. The kingdoms and empires of Europe had either successively fallen, or been cowed by the mighty genius of Napoleon. Spain and Portugal, almost the least of these European peoples, had been the only nations who continuously and persistently stood out against his usurpation. It is more than probable that, without England’s aid, even their patriotic stubbornness might have broken down. They wanted active help, practical sympathy, and money. All these England provided, taking the fact that she was not then very rich and populous, without stint. How her efforts to aid in the great aim of crushing the dominance of France, doubtless through motives that were based on natural and national selfishness, were responded to, the whole of the history of the Peninsular War clearly shows. There were only barren honours to the chiefs, utter and cruel ingratitude throughout to the men who, ill fed and scornfully treated, fought the battles of Spanish generals and soldiers, who were hardly worth fighting with or for. Omit England’s part in the great Peninsular struggle, and there is scarcely a single case in which the Spanish or the Portuguese either fought a good fight or played a straight game. In both countries France had friends, and in both countries, therefore, were traitors to their own cause, and still more to that of their British allies.
Whatever was the result of the hard work and fighting in the Peninsula from 1808 to 1814, the British certainly owe no debt of gratitude to either Spain or Portugal. The utter ingratitude of both nations towards the insular power who alone of all the nations of Europe gave them practical help, is more than apparent. The Iberian Peninsula was, and is, full of the graves of brave men who fought to save a country that had not the intelligence to save itself. Its coffers were filled with hard-earned British gold, which they had not the grace to acknowledge.
But the long war did one thing. It trained British officers and British soldiers to fight the last great fight in Europe for many a year.
Though the army at Waterloo contained but a proportion of the Peninsular veterans, the glory of the work they had done, the conviction of their own military masterfulness, the memory of what the army had been there, was a great factor in the final struggle against the greatest military power in Europe, when that final struggle came.
The teaching and the glory of the Peninsula made raw soldiers fight at Quatre Bras and Waterloo as brave men should. Peninsular victories had wiped out the remembrance of many years of either only partial success or actual defeat, and had carried the enthusiastic morale all armies should have back to the best days of Blenheim and Ramilies.
Thus things were when the return from Elba was devised, and, “with the violets in the spring,” Napoleon returned to France. At the moment of his return the French army numbered in round numbers about 150,000 men, and this he speedily increased to 200,000, a small body to meet the huge masses that were putting themselves in motion for his destruction. There were the Russians about Poland, numbering 280,000; the Austrians were 250,000 strong; Prussia alone could furnish 200,000 men; and, in addition, there were the minor German states, as well as Portugal and Spain. Holland and Belgium were not to be firmly reckoned on in case of disaster, but, stiffened by the British and Prussians, they might find it difficult to avoid casting in their lot with the other nations, and even assume an enthusiasm that possibly was only superficial. To stand, centrally situated, on the defensive, was but to invite disaster; and the time required for the close concentration of the enormous Allied mass could be calculated with tolerable certainty, though railways were not. For a time at least, therefore, the nations east of the Rhine could be disregarded, but those north of the Sambre came under a different category. They were closer, and therefore within striking distance. They could not only be got at quickly, and possibly be defeated, before the eastern armies could arrive to their assistance, but in case the emperor felt compelled to move towards the Rhine, they might assail him in flank, attack his communications, and even capture his capital. Finally, the Brussels road marked the line of junction of two allies who spoke different languages, and who had not fought side by side before. This joint, then, was the element of weakness. If it could be broken through, the French might, like a wedge, split asunder this flank of the coalition, and, if fortune favoured Napoleon, might destroy in detail two of his nearest enemies. Besides, something must be done, and this course would soonest of all carry the war out of France. Across the frontier the British army covered the front from the Charleroi-Brussels road to Ostend, and the Prussians extended the arc eastward to Liège. The former numbered about 106,000 men (of whom about 34,000 were British, and the remainder Germans, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Nassauers, Dutch, and Belgians), with its base of supply between Ostend and Antwerp; the latter 117,000, with its base on the lower Rhine. Thus the area covered by the troops had a frontage of about 100 miles and a depth of nearly 40. Opposed to them was a compact French army of 125,000 men.