If I have dwelt perhaps at over-great length on the limitations of Wellington’s heart, it is only fair that full credit should be given to his wonderful powers of brain. To comprehend the actual merit of his military career, it is not sufficient to possess a mere knowledge of the details of his tactics and his strategy. The conditions under which he had to exercise his talents were exceptionally trying and difficult. When he assumed command at Lisbon on April 22, 1809, the French were in possession of all Northern and Central Spain, and of no inconsiderable part of Northern Portugal also. The Spanish armies had all been dashed to pieces—there was no single one of them which had not suffered a crushing defeat, and some of them (such as Cuesta’s army of Estremadura, and La Romana’s army of Galicia) were at the moment little better than wandering bands of fugitives. The British army of which Wellesley took command when he landed at Lisbon, though it only mustered 19,000 men present, or 21,000 including men in hospital, was the only solid force, in good order and intact in morale, on which the allies could count in the Iberian Peninsula. The task set before Wellesley was to see if he could defend Portugal, and co-operate in the protection of Southern Spain, it being obvious that the French were in vastly superior numbers, and well able to take the offensive if they should chose to do so. There were two armies threatening Lisbon. The one under Soult had already captured Oporto and overrun two Portuguese provinces, shortly before Wellesley’s landing. The other, under Victor, lay in Estremadura close to the Portuguese border, and had recently destroyed the largest surviving Spanish army at the battle of Medellin on March 28. Was it possible that 19,000 British troops could save the Peninsula from conquest, or even that they could keep up the war in Central Portugal? Never was a more unpromising task set to the commander of a small army.
Wellington’s Powers of Prescience
Fortunately we possess three documents from Wellesley’s own hand, which show us the way in which he surveyed the position that was before him, and stated his views as to the future course of the Peninsular War. He recognized that it was about to be a very long business, and that his task was simply to keep the war going as long as possible, with the limited resources at his disposition. Ambitious schemes for the expulsion of the French from the whole Peninsula were in 1809 perfectly futile. The hypothesis which he sets forth in the first of the three documents to which I allude, his Memorandum on the Defence of Portugal, laid before Castlereagh on March 7, before he had taken ship for Lisbon, is a marvel of prophetic genius. No more prescient document was ever written. Rejecting the decision of Sir John Moore, who had declared that Portugal was quite indefensible, Wellesley states that a British army of not less than 30,000 men, backed by the levies of Portugal, ought to be able to maintain itself for an almost indefinite period on the flank of the French army in Spain. Its presence on the Tagus would paralyse all offensive movements of the enemy, and enable the Spaniards to make head in the unsubdued provinces of their realm, so long as Portugal should remain intact. The French ought, if they were wise, to turn all their disposable forces against the British army and Portugal, but he believed that even then, when the geography of the country was taken into consideration, they would fail in their attempt to overrun it. They could not succeed, as he held, unless they were able to set aside 100,000 men for the task, and he did not see how in the spring of 1809 they could spare such a large detachment, out of the forces which they then possessed in the Peninsula. If they tried it with a smaller army, he thought that he could undertake to foil them. He believed that he could cope with Soult and Victor, the two enemies who immediately threatened Portugal.[60]
Further forward it was impossible to look. If a war should break out between Napoleon and Austria, as seemed likely at the moment in March, 1809, to one who (like himself) was in the secrets of the British Cabinet, the Emperor would not be able to send reinforcements to Spain for many a day. But, even so, the position of the French in the Peninsula was so strong that it could only be endangered if a very large allied force, acting in unison under the guidance of a single general, should be brought to bear upon them. Of the collection of such a force, and still more of the possibility of its being entrusted to his own command, there was as yet no question. Wellesley was aware of the jealousy of foreign interference which the Spanish Junta nurtured: there was little probability that they would entrust him with the supreme control over their armies. It was, indeed, only in 1812, when he had acquired for himself a much greater reputation than he owned in 1809, and when the Spanish Government had drunk the cup of humiliation to the dregs, that he was finally given the position of commander-in-chief of the Spanish armies.
This memorandum is a truly inspired document, which shows Wellesley at his best. It is not too much to say that it predicts the whole course of the Peninsular War—whose central point was to be invasion of Portugal in 1810 by a French army of 65,000 instead of the required 100,000 men, and that army, as he had foreseen, Wellesley was able to check and foil.
The second document of a prophetic sort that we have to notice is Wellesley’s reply to Mr. Canning’s question to him as regards the future general policy of the war, written on September 5, 1809. The whole aspect of affairs had been much changed since March, by the fact that Austria had tried her luck in a war against Napoleon, and had been beaten at Wagram and forced to make peace. It was therefore certain that the Emperor would now have his hands free again, and be able to reinforce his armies in the Peninsula. Wellesley replies that it is hopeless to attempt to defend both Southern Spain and Portugal also, even if the British army were raised to 40,000 men. But Portugal can still be defended.[61] He expresses the strongest objection to any attempt to cover Andalusia and Seville, for to endeavour to do so must mean that Lisbon would have to be given up.
The Lines of Torres Vedras
The third great prophetic despatch is the Memorandum of October 26, 1809, ordering the construction of the Lines of Torres Vedras. Wellesley looks a full year ahead. He sees that Napoleon can now reinforce his Spanish armies, but that the new troops cannot get up till the next spring. When they appear, the British army will have to retreat on Lisbon, where lines of such strength can be planned that there is a good prospect of bringing the invaders to a stand. Meanwhile the countryside shall be cleared of population and provisions, so that the French, if they keep concentrated, must starve, and the allied army shall so conduct its operations that the enemy will be compelled to remain en masse. Then follow directions to Colonel Fletcher (commanding the engineers) to make his plans for an immense line of redoubts covering the Lisbon peninsula from sea to sea. What was foreseen came to pass: the French reinforcements arrived: the invasion of Portugal under Masséna took place in 1810. But the whole countryside was swept clear of food, and when the marshal reached the Lines with his half-starved army, he was completely blocked, refused to attack the formidable positions, and, after a few weeks of endurance in front of them, withdrew with his famished troops. It was on October 26, 1809, that Wellington ordered the Lines to be laid out. On October 14, 1810, Masséna appeared in front of them and was foiled: Wellington had made his preparations exactly a year ahead!
Careful long-sighted calculation was perhaps the Duke’s strongest point. He had an immense grasp of detail, kept intelligence officers of picked ability out on every front, and had compiled an almost exactly correct muster-roll of the forces opposed to him. Seldom had a general of his time such a complete knowledge of his adversaries, and this he owed to the pains that he took to obtain it. His great scouts Colquhoun Grant,[62] Waters, and Rumann were always far out to the front, often within the French lines, sending him daily information, which he filed and dissected. In addition he had many Spanish and Portuguese correspondents, whose information would have been more valuable if it had not contained too much hearsay, and if they had been able to judge numbers with the trained eye of a soldier. Once he complained that he and Marmont were almost equally handicapped as regards information from the natives—for if the Frenchmen got none, he himself got too much: the proportion of it which was inaccurate spoiled the value of the rest. But Grant or Waters never made mistakes. Part of his system was the cross-questioning of every deserter and prisoner as to the number and brigading of his regiment, and the amount of battalions that it contained. By constant comparison of these reports he got to know the exact number of units in every French corps, and their average strength.
But this was less important than his faculty for judging the individual characters of his opponents. After a few weeks he got his fixed opinion on Masséna or Victor, Soult or Marmont, and would lay his plans with careful reference to their particular foibles. I think that this is what he meant when he once observed that his own merit was, perhaps, that he knew more of “what was going on upon the other side of the hill,”—in the invisible ground occupied by the enemy and hidden by the fog of war—than most men.