This may have been good ‘propaganda’ for the army—it served to soothe their wounded pride by throwing all blame on their late commanders. But there can be no doubt that it was inspired not so much by this very comprehensible motive as by long-cherished malice and hatred for the unfortunate Joseph and Jourdan. This was quite in keeping with Soult’s character. He was a most distinguished soldier, but a most unamiable man; and his memory was as long as his spite was strong.
We have already had much to write on this cold calculating son of a provincial lawyer—one of the few ‘best military brains,’ as his master called him, but also, as King Joseph truly observed, ‘untrustworthy, perverse, dangerous[831].’ He served the Emperor well as long as their interests coincided, but he was quite ready for any other profitable service. Some thirteen months later, as the war minister of Louis XVIII, he showed himself a zealous persecutor of Bonapartists[832]. Soult was the most monstrous of egotists; at this moment his ambition served his master well: no general save William III ever won so much credit from a series of defeats as did Soult in 1813-14 from the operations that began with the disaster of Sorauren and ended with the loss of Toulouse. But on the receipt of the news of the abdication at Fontainebleau he became a zealous Royalist: eighteen months later he was, as the minister of the Bourbons, issuing flamboyant proclamations against ‘the usurper and adventurer, Napoleon Bonaparte[833].’ Yet in the Hundred Days he was to be found as the ‘usurper’s’ Chief of the Staff on the field of Waterloo! Proscribed for a short time on account of this unhappy error in calculation, he was so far back in favour with the ‘powers that were’ as to receive a gift of 200,000 francs from Louis XVIII in 1820, and the grand cordon of St. Louis from Charles X in 1825, on the occasion of his coronation at Reims.
But as long as Napoleon I was emperor, Nicholas Soult was his most valuable lieutenant: their interests coincided, and it is certain that none of the other marshals would have played such a creditable losing game on the Pyrenees and the plains of Southern France against such an adversary as Wellington.
The Army of Spain received the news of his advent with mixed feelings. There was a considerable faction among his own old generals of Andalusia, who welcomed back one who had been an indulgent spectator of their peculations—of which he himself had set the example. For Soult’s acquisitiveness was portentous—he was ready to snatch at everything from a shadowy Portuguese crown in Oporto to inferior Murillos in the convents of Seville. The train of his personal plunder had excited anger, envy, or derision, according to the temper of the observer, as it defiled through Madrid, when he quitted Spain five months back. He had left behind him many adherents, who followed him for the same motive for which he himself followed Napoleon. They rejoiced at his return, believing, not in error, that his patronage would be exercised in favour of old comrades of the Army of the South, rather than for the benefit of strangers. Others held that he was to be welcomed because any leadership would be better than that of King Joseph, and because his undoubted military talents would be exercised in the best style when he was working for his own credit, and not for that of any one else. Like the Emperor, they had a great belief in his brains. It was difficult to feel much personal enthusiasm for a chief so self-centred, so cold and hard in his dealings with subordinates, so ready to shift blame on to other men’s shoulders, so greedy in getting and so mean in spending. But at any rate he would not be weak like Jourdan, or rash like Marmont, or simply incapable like Dorsenne or Caffarelli. A general who served as his senior aide-de-camp for eight uncomfortable years, and left his staff with glee, sums him up in the following cruel phrases:
‘In war he loved vigorous enterprises, and when once committed to a scheme stuck to it with obstinacy and force. If I say that he loved vigorous enterprises I must add that he loved them provided that they did not involve too much personal danger, for he was far from possessing the brilliant courage of Ney or Lannes. It might even be said that he was the very reverse of rash—that he was a little too careful of himself. This failing grew upon him after his great fortune had come to him—and indeed it was not uncommon to meet officers who showed no care of their lives when they were mere colonels or brigadiers, but who in later years took cover behind their marshal’s bâton. But this caution visible on the battlefield did not follow him to the tent, under whose roof he conceived and ordered, often in the presence of the enemy, movements of great audacity—whose execution he handed over to officers of known courage and resolution[834].’ Another contemporary makes remarks to much the same effect, ‘Proud of the reputation which he had usurped, he was full of assurance on the day before a battle: he recovered that same assurance the day after a defeat. But in action he seemed unable to issue good orders, to choose good positions, or to move his troops freely. It seemed as if any scheme which he had once conceived and written down at his desk was an immutable decree from heaven, which he had not the power to vary by subsequent changes[835].’
This is much what Wellington meant when he observed in familiar conversation that Soult was not equal to Masséna. ‘He did not quite understand a field of battle: he knew very well how to bring his troops on to the field, but not so well how to use them when he had brought them up[836].’
But on July 12th Soult, with his great opportunity before him, was in his audacious mood, and it was in all sincerity that he had written to the Emperor before he assumed his command, that he would concentrate the army, and retake the offensive within a very few days, and that he trusted to be able to stop the movements of Wellington. This was no small promise considering the state in which the army was handed over to him, and it is a marvellous proof of his driving power that he actually succeeded in launching a most dangerous attack on Wellington’s line by the thirteenth day after his arrival at Bayonne.
The detailed orders for the reorganization of the army were published on July 15th. Soult had started with a general idea of the lines on which they were to be carried out, and had just received a more definite scheme from the Emperor, sent off from Dresden on July 5th in pursuit of him. Napoleon ordered that not only were the armies of the North, South, Centre, and Portugal to be abolished—their names were now absurd anachronisms—but, despite of the great number of troops available, no army corps were to be created. Evidently he had come to the conclusion that not only army-commanders, but even army-corps-commanders might be strong enough to impair the complete control which he wished to give over to Soult. He directed that the infantry should be divided into as many divisions of two brigades and 6,000 men each as the available total of bayonets could complete. The Marshal was authorized to work them as he pleased, in groups of two, three, or four divisions. To command these groups (which were really army-corps in all but name) he might appoint three officers with the title of lieutenant-general, who would have the divisional generals under their orders. There were to be no special staffs for the groups, whose composition the Marshal might alter from time to time: the lieutenant-generals were only to be allowed a chief staff-officer and their own personal aides-de-camp, and their pay was to be no more than 40,000 francs per annum. Clearly there was to be no recrudescence of the enormous staffs and liberal perquisites and allowances of the old corps-commanders.
Artillery might still be short, despite of the large number of guns sent up to the front from Toulouse and Bordeaux. But the Emperor directed that each infantry division ought to have two field batteries, each cavalry division one horse artillery battery, and that Soult ought to create an army-reserve of two horse artillery batteries and several batteries of guns of position. There was to be one general commanding artillery and one general commanding engineers for the whole army, and (what was quite as important) one commissary general only, in whose hands all responsibilities for food and transport were to be centralized.
In a general way, but not in all details, Soult carried out these orders. The gross total of the troops under his command would appear to have been 117,789 of all ranks. But this included the garrisons of St. Sebastian, Pampeluna, and Santoña, 8,200 men in all: also 5,595 half-trained conscripts of the Bayonne Reserve, 16,184 sick and detached, and over 4,500 men of the non-combatant services—ouvriers militaires, transport train, ambulance train, &c. Deducting these, he had available 84,311 fighting men, of whom 72,664 were infantry, 7,147 cavalry, and about 4,000 artillery, sappers and miners, gendarmerie[837], &c. This total does not include Paris’ troops from Saragossa, who were lying at Jaca, and had not yet joined the Army of Spain, being still credited to Suchet’s Army of Aragon and Valencia.