I could write much more of this notable character, with all its faults and merits. But so much must suffice. Nor have I space to tell of the other senior generals of the Peninsular War, though some of them, such as Leith and Cole, were great fighting men, just the tools that suited Wellington’s hand. They were, however, never trusted with independent commands, so that it is impossible to judge of their full mental stature. I should be inclined to think very highly of Cole from his conduct at Albuera, for it was he who ordered, on his own responsibility, without any permission from Beresford, the famous advance of the Fusilier Brigade and Harvey’s Portuguese, which turned into a victory that most perilous battle.[130] But of most of Wellington’s divisional officers we can only say that they were competent for the task set them—the vigorous carrying out of orders which were given them, but in whose framing they had no part. At the most, tactical skill in execution can be attributed to them, and of this there was no lack, as witness details of Salamanca, Vittoria, and the scattered fighting in the Pyrenees. Almost as much can be predicated of some of the great brigadiers, who managed their details well, but never had the chance of showing their full powers. It would be easy to make a long list of them; at least Kempt, Pack, Barns, Mackinnon, Colborne, Hay, Lumley, Ross, Halkett, Byng, Pakenham, Beckwith, and Barnard should be included in the list. Some of them died or were invalided early, others commanded brigades at Waterloo again, but none, save Byng, of this string of names, was ever given permanent command of a division, though several of them had held the interim charge of one in the Peninsula, when their regular chiefs were sick or absent. Ross and Pakenham alone were promoted to a separate command, both in America. The former had charge of the expedition which went to the Potomac and Chesapeake in 1813–14; he took Washington by a vigorous stroke, but fell in action shortly after, while conducting an attack on Baltimore, which ceased when he fell. Pakenham’s expedition to New Orleans was a series of misfortunes, of which some part at least must be attributed to his own fault. It is certain that Wellington never trained a general who proved himself a first-rate exponent of the art of war; but his system (as we have said above) was not calculated to foster initiative or self-reliance among his lieutenants.
Some Unsatisfactory Subordinates
Other subordinates Wellington possessed, of whom we can say that they were not up to their work, even in the carrying out of the orders given them with common self-reliance and clear-headedness. Such were Spencer and Slade, who were only capable of going forward to carry out a definite order; it was necessary, so to speak, that they should simply be put like trams on a line, and shoved forward, or they would slacken the pace and come to a stop, from want of initiative and moving power. Some few, like Sir William Erskine, who was Wellington’s pet aversion—yet irremovable because of the political influence that backed him—were positively dangerous from a combination of short-sightedness, carelessness, and self-will. In one dispatch Wellington says that he thinks that he is a little wrong in his head.[131] It is astounding that after Erskine’s mistakes at Casal Novo and Sabugal, Wellington did not get rid of him at all costs; but he simply tried to shunt him on to commands where it was unlikely that he could do much harm, and continued solemnly to rehearse his name with approval in his dispatches, along with those of all other officers of his rank, till the unfortunate man committed suicide, in a moment of insanity, in the interval between the campaigns of 1812 and 1813. This was the strongest case of difficulty which Wellington, for reasons of politics and patronage at home, did not care to face by the decisive step of sending home the general in disgrace. But there were several brigadier-generals whom he had not asked for, whom he disliked, and whose departure from the Peninsula he saluted with a small psalm of thanksgiving in his private letters.[132] It is certainly astonishing that, even after 1811, he was not given a free hand to get rid of subordinates whom he knew to be incompetent or recalcitrant, any more than he was given the power to promote officers without a tedious reference to the Horse Guards. It is true that in the later years of the war his recommendations were generally (but not always) carried out; yet it took whole months for a request made in a letter from Salamanca or Madrid to reach London, to be there acceded to, and then to take effect by a publication of the Gazette. The power to punish or reward with promptness was never granted; there was always a long delay. And both punishment and reward lose much of their salutary effect when there is an interval of months between the act and its consequence. Napoleon had a unique advantage in being at once the commander-in-chief and the dispenser of favours and chastisement; with him there was no time lost in lengthy reference to a home government.
CHAPTER VIII
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ARMY: HEADQUARTERS
Having dealt with the greater personalities among Wellington’s lieutenants, it remains that we should speak of the organization by which his army was set in motion.
Some great commanders have trusted much to their staff, and have kept their ablest subordinates about their person. This was pre-eminently not the case with Wellington: he was as averse to providing himself with a regular chief-of-the-staff, as he was to allowing a formal second-in-command to accompany his army. The duties which would, according to modern ideas, fall to the chief-of-the-staff, were by him divided between three officers, one of whom was of quite junior standing, and only one of whom held a higher rank than that of colonel. These officers were the Military Secretary, the Quartermaster-General, and the Adjutant-General.
The Military Secretary was merely responsible for the correct drawing out, and the transmission to the proper person or department, of the correspondence of the commander-in-chief. The post was held from April 27, 1809, to September 19, 1810, by Lieutenant-Colonel Bathurst, of the 60th. On the last-named date he went home on leave, and Captain Lord Fitzroy Somerset was given the status of acting-secretary, and confirmed as actual secretary three months later on January 1, 1811. This officer, better remembered by his later title as the Lord Raglan of the Crimean War, held the office till the end of the war—by which time he had reached the rank of colonel. He was one of Wellington’s best-trusted subordinates, and his personal friend, but being very young, and junior in rank to all heads of departments, he was in no sense an appreciable factor in Wellington’s conduct of the war. In fact, he was nothing more than his title of secretary indicated, and was in no way responsible for organization, or entitled to offer advice.
Much more important were the two great heads of departments, the Quartermaster-General and Adjutant-General. The former was charged with all matters relating to the embarkation or disembarkation, the equipment, quartering, halting, encamping, and route-marching of the various units of the army. He had to convey to all generals in command of them the orders of the general-in-chief, and for this purpose had under his control a number of officers bearing the clumsy titles of assistant-quartermaster-generals, and deputy-assistant-quartermaster-generals. Of the former there were five, of the latter seven, when the army was first organized in April, 1809, but their numbers were continually increasing all through the war, for each unit had an assistant-quartermaster-general and a deputy-assistant-quartermaster-general attached to it, and as the divisions and brigades grew in number, so did the officers of the Quartermaster-General’s department told off to them. There was also a parallel growth in the number of those who remained at headquarters, directly attached to their chief.
There is an interesting minute by Wellington, laying down the relations between the divisional generals and the staff-officers of the department: he points out that, though the latter are the organs of headquarters in dealing with divisions, yet they are under the command of the divisional general: and the responsibility both for the orders given through them being carried out, and for their acts in general, lies with the division-commander. “Every staff officer,” he says, “must be considered as acting under the direct orders and superintendence of the superior officer for whose assistance he is employed, and who is responsible for his acts. To consider the relative situation of the general officer and the staff officer in any other light, would tend to alter the nature of the Service, and, in fact, might give the command of the troops to a subaltern staff officer instead of to their general officer.”[133]