But when Soult presented himself next morning there was no scene. The King handed him over his papers and dispatches, and said that he intended to establish himself in a country house just outside the gates of Bayonne (July 12). Three days later, however, he made a sudden and secret departure, and was well on the way to Bagnères de Bigorre before his escape was discovered. He had to be pursued, stopped by force, and shown the imperial warrant which authorized Soult to put him under arrest. For eight days he was a prisoner at the Château of Poyanne, when a dispatch arrived from Dresden, in which the Emperor said that he might be allowed to retire to his own estate of Mortefontaine, on condition that he saw no one, and never visited Paris [July 24]. If he should make himself a centre of intrigues, and should fail to realize that he was in disgrace, the Minister of Police had orders to imprison him[767].
And thus Joseph disappears from the purview of students of the Peninsular War, though he was to have one more short moment of notoriety in the following spring, when he was made the nominal head of the Council of Regency, which purported to govern France for a few weeks, before the Northern Allies forced their way into the French capital. He did not shine in that capacity, and would have done better to content himself with escaping the notice of the world in the semi-captivity to which his brother had condemned him in July 1813. But Joseph, however much he might deny the impeachment, loved a prominent place, however incapable he might be of filling it in a competent fashion.
This, indeed, is the secret of his whole unfortunate career. The chance which made him the brother of Napoleon put within his grasp ambitions with which his very moderate talents could not cope. He was by no means a bad man: the Spaniards would gladly have drawn him as a tyrant or a monster, if it had been possible to do so; but had to content themselves with representing him as a ludicrous and contemptible character, ‘Pepe Botellas’[768], a comic-opera king, too much addicted to wine and women, and tricked by his courtiers and mistresses. There seems no reason to suppose that the charge of inebriety had any particular foundation; but Joseph—long separated from his wife by the chances of war—undoubtedly sought consolations in more than one other quarter at Madrid. His amatory epistles and souvenirs, captured in his carriage at Vittoria, provoked a smile and a caustic remark from Wellington. As to the taunt that he was continually cheated and exploited by those about him, there is no doubt that the unfortunate King was possessed of the delusion that his personal charm and affable manners won all hearts; he wasted much time in cajoling every person of any importance with whom he came in contact, and had many sad moments of disillusion, when he discovered that supposed friends had failed him. His most persistent and dangerous error was that he imagined that he could win over the Spaniards to his cause, by generous treatment and emotional speeches. For years he went on enlisting in his ‘national army’ every prisoner who was willing to save himself a tramp to a French prison, by taking an easy oath of allegiance. When given arms and uniforms they deserted: first and last Joseph enlisted 60,000 Spaniards in his leaky regiments—about 1,500 crossed the Bidassoa with him at the moment of his fall. With those above the rank and file he was a little more successful, because officers and politicians were marked men, when once they had risked their necks by forswearing their allegiance to Ferdinand VII. They knew that there would be no such easy pardon for them as was granted to the common soldier. There had been moments of intense depression for the Spanish cause, such as those following the capture of Madrid in December 1808, and the invasion of Andalusia in 1810, at which many timid or selfish souls had despaired of the game, and had taken service with the adversary. Having once done so it was impossible to go back—hence the King, when his star began to wane, was overloaded with hundreds, and even thousands, of downhearted and pessimistic dependants, who had no faith in his ultimate triumph, yet still hung on to his skirts, and petitioned for the doles which he was no longer able to give them. Few served him zealously—those who did were in the main adventurers as destitute of morality as of national feeling, who strove for their own profit rather than their master’s—his prefects and intendants had villainous reputations for the most part.
Though vain and self-confident, Joseph was entirely lacking in backbone—he endured all the Emperor’s insults and taunts without any real feeling of resentment, though he protested loudly enough. Unlike his brothers, Lucien and Louis, he never dared to set his will against Napoleon’s—his threatened abdications never became realities. He pretended that his submission was the result of loyalty and brotherly affection—in reality he had an insufficient sense of righteous indignation and self-respect, and an exaggerated love of royalty—even of its shadow. An intelligent French observer summed up his character in the following curious phrases:
‘The King’s most striking characteristic is his easy temper. It does not come from a generous heart or a real magnanimity, but from a facile disposition and a total absence of decision. He has not the courage to refuse to do things which his own reason condemns, and is often guilty of acts which he himself acknowledges to be unwise. At bottom he is an honest man, but he has not the firmness to maintain his principles if he is pressed and harried. Tiresome solicitation may induce him to cast aside principle and act like a rogue. His greatest hobby is a belief in his own finesse—a great perspicacity in discovering the secret and selfish motives of those about him. He often gives them credit for more Machiavellian ingenuity than they really possess. He does not always withdraw his favour from those whom he has discovered cheating him, but rejoices in making them feel that he has found out their private designs. He is incapable of owning that he has done an injustice: when he discovers that he has wronged one of his followers, he shirks meeting him, and tries to get rid of him by circuitous methods. Hence he often persists in acts of injustice, because he is ashamed of confessing himself to have been mistaken.’
The natural result of this lack of moral backbone was that Joseph was systematically disobeyed and cheated. Very little was to be feared from his anger, much could be got by threatening or worrying him. It is true that he was much handicapped by the constant interference of the Emperor, and even of the French Minister of War, in all his attempts to create a Spanish administration, and to co-ordinate the efforts of the various armies in the Peninsula. Nevertheless there was much truth in his brother’s savage comments on his character—‘he cannot get himself obeyed’—‘he has neither military talent nor administrative ability’—‘he does not know how to draw up accounts’—he ‘cannot command an army himself, but he can prevent other and more competent people from doing so’—‘the greatest moral error is to take up a profession which one does not understand: that the King was not a professional soldier was not his fault, but he was responsible for trying to be one[769].’ To this last and perfectly just remark Joseph could have made an unanswerable reply, by asking who was responsible for the promotion of a person who was not, and never could be, a professional soldier, to the post of Commander-in-Chief of all the Armies of Spain.
It is only fair to concede to this unlucky prince his good qualities: he was never cruel—no usurper ever shed so little blood: he was a good master to many ungrateful servants: he was courteous and considerate, liberal so far as his scanty means allowed, and interested in literature and art. Unfortunately his artistic tastes brought him only ridicule. He was greatly given to pulling down slums and eyesores in Madrid, but never had the money to replace them by the stately buildings which he had designed—his good intentions were only shown by empty spaces—whence the people called him El rey Plazuelos. This was rather to his credit than otherwise—less so the interest in art shown by his eleventh-hour pilfering of the best pictures of the Madrid Galleries, of which Wellington recaptured a selection at Vittoria. To sum him up in a single phrase, Joseph Bonaparte was the mildest mannered man who ever stole a crown—or rather acted as receiver of a crown stolen by his ruthless brother.
With King Joseph his Chief-of-the-Staff went into the depths of disgrace. Napoleon wrote that he never wanted to hear of Jourdan again. He must go into complete retirement at his estate of Coudray near Orleans. He was cut down to the strictest minimum of retired pay—not over 20,000 francs a year[770], which left him in miserable straits—for he had a large family, and he was honest, and had never feathered his nest like other marshals. The only notice to be taken of him was that he was to be ordered to draw up a memorandum explaining how the battle of Vittoria had been fought and lost—if any explanation were possible[771]. But Napoleon, when he pardoned Joseph a few months later, pardoned Jourdan also. He was given the command of the Rouen Military District, where he did competent administrative work in the spring of 1814, so far as his broken health permitted. It is surprising to find that, with all his ailments, this worthy old officer—the Cassandra of the great drama of 1812-13—survived till 1833, when he died, after having been for many years Governor of the Invalides. His military memoirs, first published in a scattered and incomplete form in Ducasse’s Life and Correspondence of Joseph Bonaparte, and afterwards in a better shape so late as 1908, form one of the best critical commentaries on the Peninsular War. As a purveyor of hard truths concerning his imperial master, and the marshals who were his colleagues in Spain, Jourdan has no rival.
SECTION XXXVIII
THE BATTLES OF THE PYRENEES