History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 5

by William Francis Patrick Napier

The armies thus weakened in numbers, and considerably so during the transit of the troops, were also in quality greatly deteriorated, and at a very critical time, for not only was Wellington being powerfully reinforced, but the audacity, the spirit, the organization, the discipline, and the numbers of the Partidas, were greatly increased by English supplies, liberally, and now usefully dealt out. And the guerilla operations in the northern parts, being combined with the British naval squadrons, had, during the absence of the French armies, employed to drive the allies back to Portugal, aroused anew the spirit of insurrection in Navarre and Biscay; a spirit exacerbated by some recent gross abuses of military authority perpetrated by some of the French local commanders.

The position of the invading armies was indeed become more complicated than ever. They had only been relieved from the crushing pressure of lord Wellington’s grand operations to struggle in the meshes of the Guerilla and insurrectional warfare of the Spaniards. Nor was the importance of these now to be measured by former efforts. The Partida chiefs had become more experienced and more docile to the suggestions of the British chief; they had free communication with, and were constantly supplied with arms, ammunition, and money from the squadrons on the coast; they possessed several fortified posts and harbours, their bandsDuke of Feltre’s official correspondence, MSS. were swelling to the size of armies, and their military knowledge of the country and of the French system of invasion was more matured; their own dépôts were better hidden, and they could, and at times did, bear the shock of battle on nearly equal terms. Finally, new and large bands of another and far more respectable and influential nature, were formed or forming both in Navarre and Biscay, where insurrectional juntas were organized, and where men of the best families had enrolled numerous volunteers from the villages and towns.

These volunteers were well and willingly supplied by the country, and of course not obnoxious, like the Partidas, from their rapine and violence. In Biscay alone several battalions of this description, each mustering a thousand men, were in the field, and the communication with France was so completely interrupted, that the French minister of war only heard that Joseph had received his dispatches of the 4th of January, on the 18th of March, and then through the medium of Suchet! The contributions could no longer be collected, the magazines could not be filled, the fortresses were endangered, the armies had no base of operations, the insurrection was spreading to Aragon, and the bands of the interior were also increasing in numbers and activity. The French armies, sorely pressed for provisions, were widely disseminated, and every where occupied, and each general was averse either to concentrate his own forces or to aid his neighbour. In fine the problem of the operations was become extremely complicated, and Napoleon only seems to have seized the true solution.

When informed by Caffarelli of the state of affairs in the north, he thus wrote to the king, “Hold Madrid only as a point of observation; fix your quarters not as monarch, but as general of the French forces at Valladolid; concentrate the armies of the south, of the centre, and of Portugal around you; the allies will not and indeed cannot make any serious offensive movement for several months; wherefore it is your business to profit from their forced inactivity, to put down the insurrection in the northern provinces, to free the communication with France, and to re-establish a good base of operations before the commencement of another campaign, that the French army may be in condition to fight the allies if the latter advance towards France.” Very important indeed did Napoleon deem this object, and so earnest was he to have constant and rapid intelligence from his armies in the Peninsula, that the couriers and their escorts were directed to be dispatched twice a week, travelling day and night at the rate of a league an hour. He commanded also that the army of the north should be reinforced even by the whole army of Portugal, if it was necessary to effect the immediate pacification of Biscay and Navarre; and while this pacification was in progress, Joseph was to hold the rest of his forces in a position offensive towards Portugal, making Wellington feel that his whole power was required on the frontier, and that neither his main body nor even any considerable detachment could safely embark to disturb France. In short that he must cover Lisbon strongly, and on the frontier, or expect to see the French army menacing that capital. These instructions well understood, and vigorously executed, would certainly have put down the insurrection in the rear of the king’s position, and the spring would have seen that monarch at the head of ninety thousand men, having their retreat upon France clear of all impediments, and consequently free to fight the allies on the Tormes, the Duero, the Pisuerga, and the Ebro; and with several supporting fortresses in a good state.

Joseph was quite unable to view the matter in this common-sense point of view. He could not make his kingly notions subservient to military science, nor his military movements subservient to an enlarged policy. Neither did he perceive that his beneficent notions of government were misplaced amidst the din of arms. Napoleon’s orders were imperative, but the principle of them, Joseph could not previously conceive himself nor execute the details after his brother’s conception. He was not even acquainted with the true state of the northern provinces, norKing’s correspondence, MSS. would he at first credit it when told to him. Hence while his thoughts were intent upon his Spanish political projects, and the secret negociations with Del Parque’s army, the northern partidas and insurgents became masters of all his lines of communication in the north; the Emperor’s orders dispatched early in January, and reiterated week after week, only reached the king in the end of February; their execution did not take place until the end of March, and then imperfectly. The time thus lost was irreparable; and yet as the emperor reproachfully observed, the bulletin which revealed the extent of his disasters in Russia might alone have taught the king what to do.

Joseph was nearly as immoveable in his resolutions as his brother, the firmness of the one being however founded upon extraordinary sagacity, and of the other upon the want of that quality. Regarding opposition to his views as the result of a disloyal malevolence, he judged the refractory generals to be enemies to the emperor, as well as to himself. Reille, Caffarelli, Suchet, alike incurred his displeasure, and the duke of Feltre French minister of war also, because of a letter in which, evidently by the orders of the emperor, he rebuked the king for having removed Souham from the command of the army of Portugal.

Feltre’s style, addressed to a monarch was very offensive, and Joseph attributed it to the influence of Soult, for his hatred of the latter was violent and implacable even to absurdity. “The duke ofKing’s correspondence, MSS. Dalmatia or himself,” he wrote to the Emperor, “must quit Spain. At Valencia he had forgotten his own injuries, he had suppressed his just indignation, and instead of sending marshal Soult to France had given him the direction of the operations against the allies, but it was in the hope that shame for the past combined with his avidity for glory, would urge him to extraordinary exertions; nothing of the kind had happened; Soult was a man not to be trusted. Restless, intriguing, ambitious, he would sacrifice every thing to his own advancement, and possessed just that sort of talent which would lead him to mount a scaffold when he thought he was ascending the steps of a throne, because he would want the courage to strike when the crisis arrived.” He acquitted him, he said, with a coarse sarcasm, “of treachery at the passage of the Tormes, because there fear alone operated to prevent him from bringing the allies to a decisive action, but he was nevertheless treacherous to the emperor, and his proceedings in Spain were probably connected with the conspiracy of Malet at Paris.”

Such was the language with which Joseph in his anger assailed one of the greatest commanders and most faithful servants of his brother; and such the greetings which awaited Napoleon on his arrival at Paris after the disasters of Russia. In the most calm and prosperous state of affairs, coming from this source, the charges might well have excited the jealous wrath of the strongest mind; but in the actual crisis, when the emperor had just lost his great army, and found the smoking embers of a suppressed conspiracy at his very palace-gates, when his friends were failing, and his enemies accumulating, it seemed scarcely possible that these accusations should not have proved the ruin of Soult. Yet they did not even ruffle the temper of Napoleon. Magnanimous as he was sagacious, he smiled at the weakness of Joseph, and though he removed Soult from Spain, because the feud between him and the king would not permit them to serve beneficially together, it was only to make him the commander of the imperial guard; and that no mark of his confidence might be wanting, he afterwards chose him, from amongst all his generals, to retrieve the affairs of the Peninsula when Joseph was driven from that country, an event the immediate causes of which were now being laid.

It has been already shown, that when Wellington took his winter-quarters, the French armies occupied a line stretching from the sea-coast at Valencia to the foot of the Gallician mountains. In these positions Suchet on the extreme left was opposed by the allies at Alicant. Soult, commanding the centre, had his head-quarters at Toledo, with one detachment at the foot of the Sierra Morena to watch the army of Del Parque, and two others in the valley of the Tagus. Of these last one was at Talavera and one on the Tietar. The first observed Morillo and Penne Villemur, who from Estremadura were constantly advancing towards the bridges on the Tagus, and menacing the rear of the French detachment which was on the Tietar in observation of general Hill then at Coria. Soult’s advanced post in the valley of the Tagus communicated by the Gredos mountains with Avila, where Foy’s division of the army of Portugal was posted partly for the sake of food, partly to watch Bejar and the Upper Tormes, because the allies, possessing the pass of Bejar, might have suddenly united north of the mountains, and breaking the French line have fallen on Madrid.