WELLINGTON’S PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
Good generals are very properly averse to putting on paper, even for the benefit of premiers or war ministers, the plan of their next campaign. Points of leakage are so inscrutable, and so hard to detect, that the less that is written the better is it for the projected enterprise. And Wellington was the most reticent of men—even going to the length of hiding from his own responsible subordinates intentions that they much desired to learn, and of giving orders that seemed eccentric while the secret reason for them was kept concealed. He never wrote autobiographical memoirs—the idea was repulsive to him—nor consented to open up (even to William Napier, who much desired it) his full confidence. For the genesis of the plan of the Vittoria Campaign we are compelled to rely mainly on the careful collection of hints from his contemporary dispatches, supplemented by certain rare confidential letters, and some obiter dicta of his later years, which may or may not have been reproduced with perfect accuracy by admirers like Croker or Lord Stanhope.
One thing is clear—he was conscious of the mistakes of 1812, and was not going to see them repeated in 1813. When the Burgos campaign was just over he wrote two short comments[442] on it, for the benefit of persons whom he judged capable of appreciating his difficulties. He owned up to his errors—he acknowledged four. The first was that he had tried to take Burgos by irregular means, without a proper battering train: the second that he had under-estimated the strength of the united French armies of Portugal and the North: the third that he had kept his army in two equal halves over-long—Hill should have been called in from Madrid to join the main body much sooner than he actually was: the fourth and most notable was that he had entrusted a crucial part of his plan of campaign to a Spanish general, over whom he had no formal authority—Ballasteros, who should have advanced from Andalusia to distract and hinder Soult. ‘If the game had been well played it would have answered my purpose. Had I any reason to suppose that it would be well played? Certainly not. I have never yet known the Spaniards do anything, much less do anything well.... But I played a game which might succeed (the only one that could succeed) and pushed it to the last. The parts having failed—as I admit was to be expected—I at least made a handsome retreat to the Agueda, with some labour and inconvenience but without material loss.’
The interest of these confessions is that we find Wellington in his next campaign making a clear effort to avoid precisely these four mistakes. He made elaborate preparations long beforehand for getting up a battering train: he rather over- than under-estimated his adversary’s numbers by way of caution: he never divided his army at all during his great advance of May-June 1813; after the first six days it marched in close parallel columns all in one mass, till Vittoria had been reached: and, last but not least, he entrusted no important part of the scheme to any Spanish general, and indeed used a much smaller proportion of Spanish troops than he need have done, although he had now become Generalissimo of all the allied armies, and could command where he could formerly only give advice.
Immediately after the termination of the Burgos retreat Wellington’s views for the future do not seem to have been very optimistic. He wrote to the Prime Minister that at present he could do nothing against an enemy whose numbers had proved too great for him to contend with[443]. Next spring he hoped to take the field with a larger force than he had ever had before, but unless the Spaniards could display a discipline and efficiency which it seemed impossible to teach them, he saw no prospect of ever obliging the French to quit the Peninsula by force of arms. To Lord Bathurst he wrote in much the same terms—the French, he thought, would canton their army in Old Castile and wait for the arrival of fresh reinforcements from France.
But the whole aspect of affairs was changed when the news of Napoleon’s Russian débâcle came to hand. It soon became clear that so far from any French reinforcements coming to Spain, it would be King Joseph who would be asked to send reinforcements to Germany. Lord Liverpool’s letter, enclosing the 29th Bulletin, reached Wellington at Lisbon on January 18th, and put him in a more cheerful mood. Moreover, he thought that his visit to Cadiz to accept the position of Generalissimo had been a success, and that he would get more help out of the Spaniards now that he had the formal power of issuing orders to their generals, ‘though I am not sanguine enough to hope that we shall derive much advantage from Spanish troops early in the campaign.’ But he intended to start betimes, ‘and at least to put myself in Fortune’s way[444].’ The French would be compelled to stand on the defensive; if they continued to hold the immense line that they were still occupying in January, they must be weak somewhere, and it was impossible that they should be reinforced.
It is on February 10th[445] that we get the first hint that Wellington’s scheme for the campaign of 1813 was going to be a very ambitious one—aiming not at local successes in Castile, or on recovering Madrid, but at driving the French right up to the Pyrenees. On that day he wrote to Lord Bathurst to say that ‘the events of the next campaign may render it necessary for the army to undertake one or more sieges in the North of Spain,’ wherefore he wished certain heavy guns and munitions to be sent by sea to Corunna, to be at his disposal, as soon as might be convenient, and twice the quantity of each to be prepared in England to be shipped when asked for.
The mention of ‘one or more sieges in the North of Spain’ for which guns had better be sent by sea to Corunna, can only mean that Wellington was thinking of Burgos and St. Sebastian—perhaps also of Santoña and Pampeluna. There were no other fortresses needing the attention of a heavy battering train in that direction. It is clear that, even in February, Wellington’s mind was travelling far afield; and on June 26th, Vittoria having been now won, he wrote to remind Lord Bathurst of his demand, and to point out that his forecast had come true[446].
In March, as was shown in an earlier chapter, Wellington began to get the news which proved that the French were making large drafts from Spain for the new Army of Germany, and that Soult, Caffarelli, and other generals were summoned to Paris. He knew, a few days later, that the enemy was evacuating La Mancha, and that the King was moving his head-quarters from Madrid to Valladolid. Everything indicated conscious weakness on the part of the enemy—it would be well to take instant advantage of it: Wellington wrote to his brother on March 28 that he hoped to start out in force on May 1st[447]—giving no hint where that force would be employed. At the same time he expressed his doubt as to whether any of the Spanish corps which were to join him could be ready by that date. But he was depending so much on the sole exertions of the Anglo-Portuguese army, that the tardiness of the Spaniards would not put a complete stop to his projected operations. Two other practical hindrances were a late spring, which made green forage for the horses harder to procure than it normally was in April, and accidents from bad roads and bad weather to his pontoon train, which he was secretly bringing up from the Tagus to the Douro, as it was to play a most essential part in the commencement of the campaign[448]. These mishaps appear mere matters of detail, but (as we shall see) there were immense consequences depending upon them—the presence of a large pontoon train on the Esla and the Douro, when its normal habitat was on the lower Tagus, was one of the first surprises in the wonderful campaign of May-June 1813. Starting from Abrantes in the end of April, it did not reach Miranda de Douro till the 20th of May[449].
The first definite revelation as to what Wellington’s plan was to be, is contained in a letter to Beresford of April 24th. ‘I propose to put the troops in motion in the first days of May: my intention is to make them cross the Douro, in general within the Portuguese frontier, covering the movement of the left by that of the right of the Army toward the Tormes, which right shall then cross the Douro, over the pontoons, in such situation as may be convenient. I then propose to seize Zamora and Toro, which will make all future operations easy to us[450].’