‘Your letters of February 27 and 28 and March 2 have been laid before the Emperor. His Majesty thinks that not only must you concentrate at Salamanca, but that you must throw a bridge across the Agueda, so that, if the enemy leaves less than five divisions north of the Tagus, you may be able to advance to the Coa, against Almeida, and ravage all northern Portugal. If Badajoz is captured by two divisions of the enemy its loss will not be imputed to you, the entire responsibility will fall on the Army of the South. If the enemy leaves only two, three, or even four divisions north of the Tagus, the Army of Portugal will be to blame if it does not at once march against the hostile force before it, invest Almeida, ravage all northern Portugal, and push detachments as far as the Mondego. Its rôle is simply to “contain” six British divisions, or at least five: it must take the offensive in the North, or, if the enemy has taken the initiative, or other circumstances necessitate it, must dispatch to the Tagus, by Almaraz, the same number of divisions that Lord Wellington shall have dispatched to conduct the siege of Badajoz.’
This double-edged document reached Salamanca on March 27, eleven days after Wellington had invested Badajoz. The whole allied field army had marched for Estremadura in the last days of February, and not a single British division remained north of the Tagus. In accordance with the Emperor’s dispatches of February 11th and of February 18th, Marmont had already concentrated the bulk of his resources at Salamanca, drawing in everything except Bonnet (destined for the Asturias), Souham, who was left on the Esla to face the Army of Galicia, and the equivalent of another division distributed as garrisons in Astorga, Leon, Palencia, Zamora, and Valladolid. With five divisions in hand, or just coming up, he was on the move, as the Emperor had directed, to threaten Rodrigo and Almeida and invade northern Portugal.
The Paris letter of March 12, quoted above, suddenly imposed on Marmont the choice between continuing the attack on Portugal, to which he was committed, or of leading his whole army by Almaraz to Badajoz—it must be the whole army, since he was told to send just as many divisions southward as Wellington should have moved in that direction, and every one of the seven units of the allied army had gone off.
Since Badajoz was stormed on April 6th, only ten days after Marmont received on March 27 the Emperor’s dispatch of March 12, it is clear that he never could have arrived in time to help the fortress. In June 1811 he had accomplished a similar movement at a better season of the year, and when some time had been allowed for preparation, in fifteen days, but only by making forced marches of the most exhausting sort. It could not have been done in so short a time in March or April, when the crops were not ripe, the rivers were full, and the roads were far worse than at midsummer. Moreover (as we shall presently see) Wellington had placed a large containing force at Merida, half-way between Almaraz and Badajoz, which Marmont would have had to drive in—at much expense of time.
The Marshal’s perplexity on receiving the dispatch that came in upon March 27 was extreme. ‘The instructions just received,’ he wrote to Berthier, ‘are wholly contradictory to those of February 18 and February 21, imperative orders which forced me, against my personal conviction, to abandon my own plan, and to make it impossible to do what I regarded as suitable to the interests of the Emperor. The letters of February 18 and February 21 told me that his Majesty thought me a meddler in matters which did not concern me: he told me that it was unnecessary for me to worry about Badajoz, “a very strong fortress supported by an army of 80,000 men.” ... He gave me formal orders to abandon any idea of marching to succour it, and added that if Lord Wellington went thither, he was to be left alone, because by advancing to the Agueda I could bring him back at once. The letters of the 18th and 21st made it quite clear that His Majesty freed me from all responsibility for Badajoz, provided I made a demonstration on the Agueda.... To-day your Highness writes that I am responsible for Badajoz, if Lord Wellington undertakes its siege with more than two divisions. The concluding paragraph of your letter seems to give me permission to succour the place, by bringing up troops to the Tagus. So, after imperative orders have wrecked my original arrangement, which had prepared and assured an effective help for Badajoz, and after all choice of methods has been forbidden to me, I am suddenly given an option when it is no longer possible to use it.... To-day, when my troops from the Tagus valley have repassed the mountains, and used up the magazines collected there at their departure, when it is impossible to get from Madrid the means to establish a new magazine at Almaraz, my army, if it started from this point [Salamanca], would consume every scrap of food that could be procured before it could possibly reach Badajoz.... The movement was practicable when I was in my original position: it is almost impracticable now, considering the season of the year, and the probable time-limit of the enemy’s operations.... After ripe reflection on the complicated situation, considering that my main task is to hold down the North, and that this task is much greater than that of holding the South, taking into consideration the news that an English force is said to be landing at Corunna (an improbable story, but one that is being repeatedly brought me), considering that the Portuguese and Galician troops threaten to take the offensive from Braganza, remembering that your letters of February 18 and 21 state that Suchet’s Army of Aragon is reckoned able to reinforce the Army of the South, and considering that my dispositions have been made (in spite of immense preliminary difficulties) for a fifteen days’ march on the Agueda, which is already begun, I decide in favour of continuing that operation, though I have (as I said before) no great confidence in its producing any effective result.
‘Accordingly I am putting the division that came up from the Tagus in motion for Plasencia, with orders to spread the rumour that it is to rejoin the army by the pass of Perales and enter Portugal; I start from here with three more divisions for the Agueda; ... if I fought on the Tormes I could put one more division in line, five in all: the number of seven divisions of which the Emperor speaks could only be concentrated if the Army of the North[240] could send two divisions to replace my own two now on the lines of communications and the Esla.’
The recapitulation of all this correspondence may seem tedious, but it is necessary. When it is followed with care I think that one definite fact emerges. Napoleon was directly and personally responsible for the fall of Badajoz. Down to March 27th Marmont was strictly forbidden to take any precautions for the safety of that fortress, and was censured as a meddler and an alarmist, for wishing to keep a strong force in the valley of the Tagus, ready to march thither. On March 27 he was suddenly given an option of marching to Estremadura with his whole army. It appears to be an option, not a definite order, for Berthier’s sentence introducing the new scheme is alternative—the Army of Portugal is ‘to take the offensive in the North or, under certain circumstances, to march for Almaraz.’ But this point need not be pressed, for if taken as a definite order it was impracticable: Marmont received it so late that, if he had marched for Badajoz with the greatest possible speed, he would have reached it some days after the place was stormed. The fact that he believed that he would never have got there at all, because lack of food would have stopped him on the way, is indifferent. The essential point of Napoleon’s responsibility is that he authorized the march too late, after having most stringently forbidden it, in successive letters extending over several weeks.
That a march on Badajoz by the whole Army of Portugal (or so much of it as was not required to contain the Galicians and to occupy Asturias), if it had begun—as Marmont wished—in February or early March, would have prevented Wellington from taking the fortress, is not certain. A similar march in June 1811 had that effect, at the time of the operations on the Caya. But Wellington’s position was much better in February 1812 than it had been eight months earlier. This much, however, is clear, that such an operation had a possible chance of success, while Napoleon’s counter-scheme for a demonstration on the Agueda and an invasion of the northern Beira had no such prospect. The Emperor, for lack of comprehension of the local conditions, misconceived its efficacy, as Marmont very cogently demonstrated in his letters. Northern Portugal was a waste, where the Marshal’s army might wander for a few days, but was certain to be starved before it was many marches from the frontier. Napier, in an elaborate vindication of the Emperor, tries to argue that the Marshal might have taken Rodrigo by escalade without a battering-train, have assailed Almeida in similar fashion, have menaced Oporto and occupied Coimbra[241]. He deliberately ignores one essential condition of the war, viz. that because of the French system of ‘living on the country,’ Marmont had no magazines, and no transport sufficient to enable his army to conduct a long offensive campaign in a devastated and hostile land. His paragraphs are mere rhetoric of the most unfair kind. For example, he says, ‘Wellington with 18,000 men[242] escaladed Badajoz, a powerful fortress defended by an excellent governor and 5,000 French veterans: Marmont with 28,000 men would not attempt to escalade Rodrigo, although its breaches were scarcely healed and its garrison disaffected.’ This statement omits the essential details that Wellington had a large siege-train, had opened three broad breaches in the walls of Badajoz, and, while the enemy was fully occupied in defending them, escaladed distant points of the enceinte with success. Marmont had no siege-train, and therefore could have made no breaches; he would have had to cope with an undistracted garrison, holding ramparts everywhere intact. Moreover, Ciudad Rodrigo and its outworks form a compact fortress, of not half the circumference of Badajoz and its dependencies. If Ney and Masséna, with an adequate siege apparatus, treated Rodrigo with respect in 1810, and proceeded against it by regular operations, Marmont would have been entirely unjustified in trying the desperate method of escalade in 1812. The fortifications, as Napier grudgingly admits, were ‘healed’: an escalade against Carlos de España’s garrison would certainly have met the same fate as Suchet’s assault on Saguntum, a much weaker and unfinished stronghold. But it is unnecessary to follow into detail Napier’s controversial statements, which are all part of a wrong-headed scheme to prove Napoleon infallible on all occasions and at all costs.
The governing facts cannot be disputed: Marmont in February placed three divisions on the Tagus, which were to form the advanced guard of an army that was to march to the relief of Badajoz, whose siege he foresaw. Napoleon told him not to concern himself about Badajoz, and compelled him to concentrate his army about Salamanca. He instructed him that the proper reply to an attack on Badajoz by Wellington was an invasion of northern Portugal, and gave him elaborate instructions concerning it. Marmont reluctantly obeyed, and was starting on such an expedition when he was suddenly told that he might move on Badajoz. But he only received this permission ten days before that fortress was stormed: it was therefore useless. The Emperor must take the responsibility.