SECTION XXXVII: CHAPTER V

EXIT KING JOSEPH

While Wellington was pressing his victorious advance to the Ebro, the Emperor Napoleon had been so entirely engrossed in the management of his own great campaign in Saxony that he had little or no time to spare for considering the affairs of Spain. King Joseph had continued to receive dispatches from Paris, which purported to set forth his brother’s orders and commands. But, as he well knew, they were really the compositions of the War-Minister Clarke, who, from the general directions which the Emperor had left when departing for Germany, and such curt comments as intermittently came back from Dresden or Wittenberg, used to construct lectures or critical essays, which he tried to make appropriate to the last news that came up from Spain. The original instructions were completely out of date, and no new general scheme of operations could be got out of Napoleon, who could only find time to make commentaries of a caustic kind on any correspondence that came from beyond the Pyrenees[756]. Clarke’s dispatches to the King were quite useless, and they were often offensive in tone—it is clear that the minister took a personal pleasure in making sarcastic observations on the conduct of the war in Spain, which he could foist on King Joseph as his brother’s composition. They generally arrived at moments which made them particularly absurd reading—what could be more annoying to the King than to be told that Wellington’s Army was a wreck, and that there was little chance of the Allies taking the offensive, at the very moment when the French Head-Quarters was moving ever northward, pushed on by what seemed in the eyes of Joseph and Jourdan to be overwhelming numbers? It was absurd to be given hints on the defence of the Douro when the retreating host was already on the Ebro, or lectures on the advantages of the line of the Ebro, when the Pyrenees had already been crossed. The habit of Clarke, however, which most irritated the King, was that of corresponding directly with the minor army-commanders in Spain, over the head of the nominal commander-in-chief[757]. Joseph held very strongly to the opinion that a main part of his disasters was due to Clarke’s dispatches to Clausel and Suchet, which gave those generals excellent excuses for ignoring orders from Head-Quarters, and carrying out their own designs, under pretence that they were more consonant with the Emperor’s intentions than the directions which came to them from Madrid, Valladolid, or Burgos.

But the Emperor’s attention was at last attracted to Spain by a disaster which could not be overlooked, or ignored as a passing worry. The news of Vittoria reached him at Dresden on July 1—nine days after the battle had been lost—forwarded by Clarke with imperfect details. For the minister could only transmit a second-hand narrative written by Foy, who had not been present at the battle, and Joseph’s first short note from Yrurzun, dated July 23rd, which concealed much and told little. There was, however, enough information to rouse the Emperor to wild rage. He had three weeks before (June 4) concluded the armistice of Plässwitz with the allied sovereigns, so that he was not entirely absorbed in the details of his own strategy, and could at last find time to devote some attention to the affairs of Spain, whose consideration he had been putting off from week to week all through the last two months. His own situation was still perilous enough—he was uncertain whether he could come to terms with Russia and Prussia, despite of his recent victories. And the idea that Austria might be meaning mischief, and not merely playing for the enviable position of general arbitrator between the belligerents, was already present. But at least he was not wholly occupied by the strategical and tactical needs of each day, and could turn to contemplate the Spanish campaign as part of the European crisis. The exasperating thing was not so much that the Imperial arms had suffered a hideous affront, though this was a not unimportant consideration, which might encourage Alexander and Frederick William III to renew the war. It was rather that the position of Spain, as a counter in the negotiations which were going on at Prague, was completely changed. On May 25th the Franco-Spanish kingdom of Joseph Bonaparte made an imposing appearance—Madrid was still occupied, and a solid block of territory from the Esla to the Guadalaviar—more than half the Peninsula—showed on the map as part of the Napoleonic empire. On July 1 it was known that the King was a fugitive on the French border, that the Castiles, Leon, Navarre, and Biscay had all been lost, that Valencia would certainly, and Aragon probably, go the same way within a week or two. The pretence that Joseph was King of Spain had suddenly become absurd. In continuing the hagglings at Prague for a new European settlement, it would be ludicrous to insist on the restoration to Madrid of a king whose only possessions beyond the Pyrenees were a few scattered fortresses. For Catalonia, it must be remembered, did not count as part of Joseph’s kingdom; it had been formally annexed to France by the iniquitous decree of February 1812[758].

It was a bitter blow to the new Charlemagne to see the largest of his vassal-kingdoms suddenly torn from him, by a stroke dealt by an enemy whom he affected to despise, while his attention had been distracted for the moment to the Elbe and the Oder. The unexampled rapidity of the campaign of Vittoria was astounding—there was nothing to compare with it in recent military history, save his own overrunning of the Prussian monarchy in the autumn of 1806. Wellington’s army had crossed the Tormes on May 26th—by June 26th King Joseph was a fugitive in France, and the main French Army of Spain was pouring back as a disorganized rabble across the passes of the Pyrenees. The whole affair seemed incredible—even ludicrous[759]—the armies of King Joseph still appeared on the imperial muster-rolls as well over 100,000 strong, not including Suchet’s forces on the East Coast. It was only a month or so back that the Emperor had been comforting himself with the idea that Wellington could not put 40,000 British troops in the field, and was no longer a serious danger[760]. Obviously the only explanation of the disaster must be colossal incapacity in the French Higher Command in Spain, amounting to criminal negligence. That there might be another explanation, viz. that a war could not be successfully conducted in those pre-telegraphic days by orders sent from five hundred miles away, by dispatches liable to constant delay or loss, and by a commander-in-chief much distracted by other business, hardly occurred to him[761]. His own system of managing the affairs of Spain, as has been set forth in many earlier pages of this book[762], was really the source of all evil. His nominal transference of the supreme command to King Joseph had been a solemn farce, because he still permitted interference by the minister at Paris, acting in his name, tolerated private reports from army-commanders, which were concealed from the King, and refused to allow of the punishment of flagrant instances of disobedience to his vicegerent’s commands.

This perhaps the Emperor could hardly be expected to see. The news of Vittoria having arrived, a culprit had to be sought, and the culprit was obviously King Joseph, who with a magnificent army at his disposal, and a good military situation, had allowed himself to be turned out of Spain by a contemptible enemy. It went for nothing that the unfortunate monarch had repeatedly asked for leave to abdicate, and had demonstrated again and again that he was not allowed the real authority of a commander-in-chief. The blame must be laid on his shoulders, and he must be disgraced at once—not with too great public scandal, for after all he was the Emperor’s brother—but in the manner which would prove most wounding to his own feelings. ‘All the fault was his ... if there was one man wanting in the army it was a real general, and if there was one man too many with the army it was the King[763].’ Clarke was told to write to him a dispatch which not only superseded him in command, and deprived him of even the services of his own Royal Guard, but put him under a sort of arrest. He was on no account to go to Paris. ‘The importance of the interests that are at stake in the North, and the effect that your Majesty’s appearance could not fail to produce on public opinion—both in Europe at large and more especially in France—are so great, that the Emperor is constrained to issue his formal orders that your Majesty should stop at Pampeluna or St. Sebastian, or at least come no further than Bayonne.... Extraordinary precautions have been taken to prevent the newspapers from mentioning either the event of June 21st [the battle of Vittoria], or the Emperor’s decision concerning your Majesty.... It is at Bayonne, where the Emperor foresees that your Majesty has probably arrived, that his further intentions will be signified, when he has acquired full information as to the recent events. It is his definite order that your Majesty should come no further into France, nor most especially to Paris, under any pretext whatever. For the same reasons no officer of your Majesty’s suite, and none of the Spanish exiles, must come beyond the Garonne. They may be directed to establish themselves at Auch.’

But though this was bad enough, the greatest insult in King Joseph’s eyes was that he was directed to hand over the command of the army and his own Guards to his old enemy Soult, whose expulsion from Spain he had procured with so much difficulty, and whom he had denounced to the Emperor as selfish, disloyal, disobedient, and perjured, ‘the author of that infamous letter found at Valencia[764]’ which had accused the King of conspiring with the Cadiz Cortes against the interests of his own brother. When Soult had returned from Spain the Emperor had decided that all the accusations against him were frivolous, ‘des petitesses.’ He might not be an amiable character—how many of the marshals were?—but he had ‘the only military brain in the Peninsula’. He was not given the command of any of the army corps in Saxony, nor any administrative post of importance, but kept at Head-Quarters, at the Emperor’s disposition, for two whole months. Apparently even before the news of Vittoria arrived, his master had thought of sending him back to Spain, but had postponed the scheme, because he did not desire an open breach with his brother. But when Joseph’s débâcle was announced, the Marshal received orders to leave Dresden at a few hours’ notice, to call upon Clarke at Paris on the way, in order to pick up the latest military information, and then to assume the command at Bayonne at the earliest possible moment. He was posted up in all the Emperor’s latest political and military schemes—even, as it seems, entrusted with the secret that if matters went very badly it might be necessary to open secret negotiations with the Cadiz Regency, on the base that the Emperor might restore Ferdinand VII to his subjects, and withdraw all his troops from Spain, if the Cortes could be persuaded to make a separate peace, and to repudiate the British alliance[765]. It seems to have escaped Napoleon’s observation that the return of the ultra-conservative and narrow-minded Ferdinand would be the last thing desired by the Liberal party now dominant in the Cortes. But all the disappointments of the treaty of Valençay were still in the far future.

Among the instructions entrusted to Soult, for use if they should prove necessary, was a warrant authorizing him to put Joseph under arrest, if he should openly flout his brother’s orders to halt at Bayonne, and should show any intention of setting out for Paris. This warrant had actually to be employed—the most maddening insult of all in the eyes of the King—it made his treacherous enemy into his jailer, as he complained.

Joseph received the first notice of his supersession from the mouth of the Senator Roederer, who had been sent off by Clarke a few hours in advance of Soult, in order that there might not be any scandalous scene, such as might have occurred if the Marshal had presented himself in person to inform the King of his fate. Roederer had served under Joseph as King of Naples, was friendly to him, and broke the unpleasant tidings as tactfully as he could. The results were what might have been expected—the unfortunate monarch said that he had realized that he must go, that he was already drafting another act of abdication. But it was an insult to send Soult to take over the command, after all the proofs of the Marshal’s perversity and disloyalty which he had forwarded to the Emperor. He did not object to being deposed, or imprisoned, or put on his trial for treason, but he did object to being made the prisoner of Soult. ‘As often as he got on this topic his Majesty grew quite frantic[766].’