Wellington’s Insight into Character
This insight into the enemy’s probable move, when their strength, their object, and the personal tendencies of their leader were known, was a most valuable part of Wellesley’s mental equipment. The best known instance where it came into play was on the day of Sorauren. In the midst of the battles of the Pyrenees, when the British army had taken up its fighting position, though its numbers were as yet by no means complete, and two divisions were still marching up, Wellington arrived from the west to assume command. He could see Soult on the opposite hill surrounded by his staff, and it was equally certain that Soult could see him, and knew the reason of the cheer which ran along the front of the allied army as he rode up. Wellington judged, and rightly, that the news of his arrival, and the sight of him in position, would cause the marshal to delay his attack till the last of the French reserves had come on the field. “I had an excellent glass: I saw him spying at us—then write and send off a letter: I knew what he would be writing, and gave my orders accordingly.”[63] Wellington judged Soult a cautious general, knew that his own presence would redouble his caution, and so judged that the order given by the marshal would be for the checking of a threatened attack, which would have been very dangerous at the moment, if it had been pressed. “The 6th Division will have time to come up, and we shall beat him,” is said to have been his comment, when he saw Soult hurriedly write and dispatch an order to his front line.
Wellington played off a similar piece of bluff on Marmont at Fuente Guinaldo in September, 1811, when he drew up in a position strong indeed, but over-great for the numbers that he had in hand, and seemed to offer battle. He was aware that his own reputation for caution was so great that, if the enemy saw him halt and take up his ground, they would judge that he had concentrated his whole force, and would not attack him till their own reserves were near. He absconded unmolested in the night, while Marmont’s rear columns were toiling up for the expected battle of the next day.
For a long time in 1809–10 Wellesley had to assume a defensive attitude. It was not till 1811 that it at last became possible for him to think of taking the offensive, nor was it till 1812, the glorious year of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, and Salamanca, that the dream reached its realization. Hence came it that for a long time he was regarded only as a cautious and calculating general, a master of defensive warfare. This conception of him was wrong; as events showed, in 1812–1813, that he could be a very thunderbolt of war, when propitious chance gave him the opportunity, could strike the boldest blows, and launch his army upon the enemy with the most ruthless energy. But, in the earlier years of his command, he was always hopelessly outnumbered, and forced to parry rather than to strike. He had to run no risks with his precious little army, the 30,000 British troops on whom the whole defence of the Peninsula really depended: because if it were destroyed it could not be replaced. With these 30,000 men he had covenanted, in his agreement with Castlereagh, when first he sailed to take command at Lisbon, that he would keep up the war indefinitely. If by taking some great risk he had lost 15,000 or even 10,000 men, the government would have called him home, and would have given up the struggle. Thus he had to fight with the consciousness that a single disaster might ruin not only his own plans, but the whole cause of the allies in Spain. No wonder that his actions seem cautious! Yet even in 1810–1811 he took some serious risks, such as the offering of battle at Bussaco and Fuentes de Oñoro. When even a partial defeat would mean his own recall, and the evacuation of Portugal, it required no small resolution even to face such chances as these. But his serene and equable temper could draw the exact line between legitimate and over-rash enterprise, and never betrayed him.
Wellington on the Offensive
All the more striking, therefore, was the sudden development into a bold offensive policy which marked the commencement of that year of victories 1812. The chance had at last come: Napoleon was ceasing to pour reinforcements into Spain—the Russian War was beginning to loom near at hand. The French no longer possessed their former overwhelming superiority: in order to hold in check Wellington’s army, now at last increased by troops from home to 40,000 British sabres and bayonets, they had to concentrate from every quarter, and risk their hold on many provinces in order to collect a force so large that the British general could not dare to face it. At last, in the winter of 1811–1812, Napoleon himself intervened as Wellington’s helper, by dispersing his armies too broadcast. The actually fatal move was the sending of 15,000 of Marmont’s “Army of Portugal,” the immediate adversary of the Anglo-Portuguese host, for a distant expedition to the coast of the Mediterranean in aid of Marshal Suchet. It was the absence of this great detachment, which could not return for many weeks, that emboldened Wellington to make his first great offensive stroke, the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo on January 19, 1812, after a siege of only twelve days.
Following on this first success came the dear-bought but decisive success of the storming of Badajoz on April 7; this was a costly business, because Wellington had to operate “against time,” since, if he lingered over-long, the French armies from north and south would combine, outnumber him, and drive him back into Portugal. Badajoz had to be stormed by sheer force, before all the arts of the engineer and artillerist had worked their full effect. The fire of the besieged had not been subdued, nor had the approaches of the assailants been pushed close up to the walls, as science would have dictated. But by making three simultaneous attacks on different points of the fortress, and succeeding at two of them, Wellington achieved his object and solved his “time problem.” He showed here, for the first time, that he could, if it was necessary, spend the lives of his men remorselessly, in order to finish in a few days a task which, if much longer delayed, would have had to be abandoned. This was to his French enemies a revelation of a new side of his character. He had been esteemed one who refused risks and would not accept losses. If they had known of the details of his old Indian victory of Assaye, they would have judged his character more truly.
But Salamanca was the real revelation of Wellington’s full powers. It was a lightning stroke, a sudden offensive movement made at a crisis of momentary opportunity, which would have ceased if the hour had not been seized with all promptitude. Wellington hurled his army unexpectedly at the enemy, who was manœuvring in full confidence and tranquillity in front of his line, thinking that he had to deal with an adversary who might accept a battle (as at Vimeiro, Talavera, or Bussaco), but might be trusted not to force one on. Salamanca surprised and dismayed the more sagacious of the French officers. Foy, the most intelligent observer among them, put down in his diary six days later, “This battle is the most cleverly fought, the largest in scale, the most important in results, of any that the English have won in recent times. It brings up Lord Wellington’s reputation almost to the level of that of Marlborough. Up to this day we knew his prudence, his eye for choosing good positions, and the skill with which he used them. But at Salamanca he has shown himself a great and able master of manœuvring. He kept his dispositions hidden nearly the whole day: he allowed us to develop our movement before he pronounced his own: he played a close game; he utilized the “oblique order” in the style of Frederick the Great.... The catastrophe of the Spanish War has come—for six months we ought to have seen that it was quite probable.”[64]
This is one of the most striking and handsome compliments ever paid by a general of a beaten army to the commander of the victorious adversaries. It is perfectly true, and it reflects the greatest credit on Foy’s fair-mindedness and readiness to see facts as they were. The conqueror of Salamanca was for the future a much more terrifying enemy than the victor of Bussaco or Talavera had been. It is one thing to be repulsed—that had often happened to the French before—another to be suddenly assailed, scattered, and driven off the field with crushing losses and in hopeless disorder, as happened to Wellington’s enemies under the shadow of the Arapiles on July 22, 1812.
Wellington as a great master of the offensive came into prominence in 1812, and for the rest of the war it is this side of him which is most frequently visible, though the retreat from Burgos shows that his prudence was as much alive as ever. During the few days that preceded that retreat there was very great temptation to try a hard stroke at one of the French armies that were converging on the two halves of his own force. Napoleon would undoubtedly have made the attempt. But, Wellington, knowing that his own total numbers were much inferior to those of the enemy, and that to concentrate in front of either Soult or Souham would be to take a terrible risk on the other flank, preferred a concentric retreat towards his base on the frontier of Portugal, to a battle in the plains of Castille, where he was far from home and support, and where a defeat might lead to absolute ruin.