This is the crucial objection to Napoleon’s main thesis: he underrated Wellington’s numbers and his readiness to give battle. As to details we may observe (1) that there was no siege-train to batter Rodrigo, because the whole of the heavy guns of the Army of Portugal had been captured in that fortress. (2) That Wellington was ‘mad’ enough to march upon Badajoz with his whole army, precisely because he knew that, even if Marmont should invade Portugal, he could never get to Lisbon. He realized, as the Emperor did not, that an army of five or six divisions could not march on Lisbon in the casual fashion recommended in this dispatch, because it would starve by the way. Central Portugal, still suffering from the blight of Masséna’s invasion, could not have sustained 30,000 men marching in a mass and trying to live upon the country in the usual French style. And Marmont, as his adversary well knew, had neither great magazines at his base, nor the immense transport train which would have permitted them to be utilized. The best proof of the impracticability of Napoleon’s scheme was that Marmont endeavoured to carry it out in April, when nothing lay in front of him but Portuguese militia, and failed to penetrate more than a few marches into the land, because he could not feed his army, and therefore could not keep it concentrated.
The Marshal knew long beforehand that this plan was hopeless. He wrote to Berthier from Valladolid on February 26th as follows:
‘Your Highness informs me that if my army is united at Salamanca the English would be “mad” to move into Estremadura, leaving me behind them, and free to advance on Lisbon. But they tried this precise combination in May 1811, though all my army was then quite close to Salamanca, and though the Army of the North was then twice as strong as it is to-day, and though the season was then later and allowed us to find provender for our horses, and though we were then in possession of Ciudad Rodrigo. They considered at that time that we could not undertake such an operation [as a march on Lisbon], and were perfectly right. Will they think that it is practicable to-day, when all the conditions which I have just cited are changed to our disadvantage, and when they know that a great body of troops has returned to France?... Consequently no movement on this side can help Badajoz. The only possible course is to take measures directly bearing on that place, if we are to bring pressure upon the enemy and hope to attain our end. The Emperor seems to ignore the food question. This is the important problem; and if it could be ended by the formation of base-magazines, his orders could be executed with punctuality and precision. But we are far from such a position—by no fault of mine.... When transferred to the North in January, I found not a grain of wheat in the magazines, not a sou in the treasury, unpaid debts everywhere. As the necessary result of the absurd system of administration adopted here, there was in existence a famine—real or artificial—whose severity was difficult to realize. We could only get food for daily consumption in our cantonments by using armed force: there is a long distance between this state of affairs and the formation of magazines which would allow us to move the army freely.... The English army is always concentrated and can always be moved, because it has an adequate supply of money and transport. Seven or eight thousand pack-mules bring up its daily food—hay for its cavalry on the banks of the Coa and Agueda has actually been sent out from England[235]. His Majesty may judge from this fact the comparison between their means and ours—we have not four days’ food in any of our magazines, we have no transport, we cannot draw requisitions from the most wretched village without sending thither a foraging party 200 strong: to live from day to day we have to scatter detachments to vast distances, and always to be on the move.... It is possible that His Majesty may be dissatisfied with my arguments, but I am bound to say that I cannot carry out the orders sent me without bringing about a disaster ere long. If His Majesty thinks otherwise, I must request to be superseded—a request not made for the first time: if I am given a successor the command will of course be placed in better hands[236].’
This was an admirable summary of the whole situation in Spain, and might have caused the Emperor to change his policy, if he had not by this time so hardened himself in his false conceptions as to be past conviction. As Marmont complains, his master had now built up for himself an imaginary picture of the state of affairs in the Peninsula, and argued as if the situation was what he wished it to be, not what it actually was. ‘Il suppose vrai tout ce qu’il voudrait trouver existant[237].’
A subsequent letter from Paris, dated February 21st and received about March 2nd, contained one small amelioration of Marmont’s lot—he was told that he might take back Bonnet’s division, and not cede it to Dorsenne, on condition that he sent it at once to occupy the Asturias. But it then proceeded to lay down in the harshest terms the condemnation of the Marshal’s strategy:
‘The Emperor charges me to repeat to you that you worry too much about matters with which you have no concern. Your mission was to protect Almeida and Rodrigo—and you have let them fall. You are told to maintain and administer the North, and you abandon the Asturias—the only point from which it can be dominated and contained. You are getting into a state of alarm because Lord Wellington sends a division or two towards Badajoz. Now Badajoz is a very strong fortress, and the Duke of Dalmatia has 80,000 men, and can draw help from Marshal Suchet. If Wellington were to march on Badajoz [he had done so the day before this letter was written] you have a sure, prompt, and triumphant means of bringing him back—that of marching on Rodrigo and Almeida.’
Marmont replied, with a suppressed rage that can be read between the lines even more clearly than in his earlier letters, ‘Since the Emperor attributes to me the fall of Almeida, which was given up before I had actually taken over the command of this army[238], I cannot see what I can do to shelter myself from censures at large: ... I am accused of being the cause of the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo: it fell because it had an insufficient garrison of inferior quality and a bad commandant. Dorsenne was neither watchful nor prescient. Was it for me to take care of a place not in my command, and separated from me by a chain of mountains, and by the desert that had been made by the six months’ sojourn of the Army of Portugal in the valley of the Tagus?... I am blamed for having cantoned myself in the valley of the Tagus after repulsing Lord Wellington beyond the Coa [at the time of El Bodon], but this was the result of the imperative orders of the Emperor, who assigned me no other territory than the Tagus valley. Rodrigo was occupied by troops of the Army of the North.... I have ordered General Bonnet to reoccupy the Asturias at once, and quite see the importance of the occupying of that province.... I am told that the Emperor thinks that I busy myself too much about the interests of others, and not enough about my own. I had considered that one of my duties (and one of the most difficult of them) was to assist the Army of the South, and that duty was formally imposed on me in some twenty dispatches, and specially indicated by the order which bade me leave three divisions in the valley of the Tagus. To-day I am informed that I am relieved of that duty, and my position becomes simpler and better! But if the Emperor relies with confidence on the effect which demonstrations in the North will produce on the mind of Wellington, I must dare to express my contrary opinion. Lord Wellington is quite aware that I have no magazines, and is acquainted with the immensely difficult physical character of the country, and its complete lack of food resources at this season. He knows that my army is not in a position to cross the Coa, even if no one opposes me, and that if we did so we should have to turn back at the end of four days, unable to carry on the campaign, and with our horses all starved to death[239].’
This and much more to the same effect had apparently some effect on the mind of the Emperor. But the result was confusing when formulated on paper. Berthier replied on March 12: