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

On the right of Foy, the remainder of the army of Portugal occupied Salamanca, Ledesma, and Alba on the Lower Tormes; Valladolid, Toro, and Tordesillas on the Duero; Benevente, Leon, and other points on the Esla, Astorga being, as I have before observed, dismantled by the Spaniards. Behind the right of this great line, the army of the north had retaken its old positions, and the army of the centre was fixed as before in and around Madrid, its operations being bounded on the right bank of the Tagus by the mountains which invest that capital, and on the left bank of the Tagus by the districts of Aranjuez, Tarancon, and Cuenca.

Joseph while disposing his troops in this manner, issued a royal regulation marking the extent of country which each army was to forage, requiring at the same time a certain and considerable revenue to be collected by his Spanish civil authorities for the support of his court. The subsistence of the French armies was thus made secondary to the revenue of the crown, and he would have had the soldiers in a time of war, of insurrectional war, yield to the authority of the Spanish civilians; an absurdity heightened by the peculiarly active, vigorous, and prompt military method of the French, as contrasted with the dilatory improvident promise-breaking and visionary system of the Spaniards. Hence scarcely was the royal regulationKing’s correspondence, MSS. issued when the generals broke through it in a variety of ways, and the king was, as usual, involved in the most acrimonious disputes with all the emperor’s lieutenants. If he ordered one commander to detach troops to the assistance of another commander, he was told that he should rather send additional troops to the first. If he reprimanded a general for raising contributions contrary to the regulations, he was answered that the soldiers were starving and must be fed. At all times also the authority of the prefects and intendants was disregarded by all the generals; and this was in pursuance of Napoleon’s order; for that monarch continually reminded his brother, that as the war was carried on by the French armies their interests were paramount; that the king of Spain could have no authority over them, and must never use his military authority as lieutenant of the empire, in aid of his kingly views, for with those the French soldiers could have nothing to do; their welfare could not be confided to Spanish ministers whose capacity was by no means apparent and of whose fidelity the emperor had no security.

Nothing could be clearer or wiser than these instructions, but Joseph would not see this distinction between his military and his monarchical duties, and continually defended his conduct by reference to what he owed his subjects as king of Spain. His sentiments, explained with great force of feeling, and great beneficence of design, were worthy of all praise if viewed abstractedly, but totally inapplicable to the real state of affairs, because the Spaniards were not his faithful and attached subjects, they were his inveterate enemies; and it was quite impossible to unite the vigour of a war of conquest with the soft and benevolent government of a paternal monarch. Thus one constant error vitiated all the king’s political proceedings, an error apparently arising from an inability to view his situation as a whole instead of by parts, for his military operations were vitiated in the same manner.

As a man of state and of war he seems to have been acute, courageous, and industrious, with respect to any single feature presented for his consideration, but always unable to look steadily on the whole and consequently always working in the dark. Men of his character being conscious of the merit of labour and good intentions, are commonly obstinate; and those qualities, which render them so useful under the direction of an able chief, lead only to mischief when they become chiefs themselves. For in matters of great moment, and in war especially, it is not the actual importance but the comparative importance of the operations which should determine the choice of measures; and when all are very important this choice demands judgment of the highest kind, judgment which no man ever possessed more largely than Napoleon, and which Joseph did not possess at all.

He was never able to comprehend the instructions of his brother, and never would accept the advice of those commanders whose capacity approached in some degree to that of the emperor. When he found that every general complained of insufficient means, instead of combining their forces so as to press with the principal mass against the most important point, he disputed with each, and turned to demand from the emperor additional succours for all; at the same time unwisely repeating and urging his own schemes upon a man so infinitely his superior in intellect. The insurrection in the northern provinces he treated not as a military but a political question, attributing it to the anger of the people at seeing the ancient supreme council of Navarre unceremoniously dismissed and some of the members imprisoned by a French general, a cause very inadequate to the effect. Neither was his judgment truer with respect to the fitness of time. He proposed, if a continuation of the Russian war should prevent the emperor from sending more men to Spain, to make Burgos the royal residence, to transport there the archives, and all that constituted a capital; then to have all the provinces behind the Ebro, Catalonia excepted, governed by himself through the medium of his Spanish ministers and as a country at peace, while those beyond the Ebro should be given up to the generals as a country at war.

In this state his civil administration would he said remedy the evils inflicted by the armies, would conciliate the people by keeping all the Spanish families and authorities in safety and comfort, would draw all those who favoured his cause from all parts of Spain, and would encourage the display of that attachment to his person which he believed so many Spaniards to entertain. And while he declared the violence and injustice of the French armies to be the sole cause of the protracted resistance of the Spaniards, a declaration false in fact, that violence being only one of many causes, he was continually urging the propriety of beating the English first and then pacifying the people by just and benevolent measures. As if it were possible, off-hand, to beat Wellington and his veterans, embedded as they were in the strong country of Portugal, and having British fleets with troops and succours of all kinds, hovering on the flanks of the French, and feeding and sustaining the insurrection of the Spaniards in their rear.

Napoleon was quite as willing and anxious as Joseph could be to drive the English from the Peninsula, and to tranquillize the people by a regular government; but with a more profound knowledge of war, of politics and of human nature, he judged that the first could only be done by a methodical combination, in unison with that rule of art which prescribes the establishment and security of the base of operations, security which could not be obtained if the benevolent but weak and visionary schemes of the king, were to supersede military vigour in the field. The emperor laughed in scorn when his brother assured him that the Peninsulars with all their fiery passions, their fanaticism and their ignorance, would receive an equable government as a benefit from the hands of an intrusive monarch before they had lost all hope of resistance by arms.

Yet it is not to be concluded that Joseph was totally devoid of grounds for his opinions; he was surrounded by difficulties and deeply affected by the misery which he witnessed, his Spanish ministers were earnest and importunate, and many of the French generals gave him but too much reason to complain of their violence. The length and mutations of the war had certainly created a large party willing enough to obtain tranquillity at the price of submission, while others were, as we have seen, not indisposed, if he would hold the crown on their terms, to accept his dynasty, as one essentially springing from democracy, in preference to the despotic, base, and superstitious family which the nation was called upon to uphold. It was not unnatural therefore for Joseph to desire to retain his capital while the negociations with Del Parque’s army were still in existence, it was not strange that he should be displeased with Soult after reading that marshal’s honest but offensive letter, and certainly it was highly creditable to his character as a man and as a king that he would not silently suffer his subjects to be oppressed by the generals.

“I am in distress for money,” he often exclaimed to Napoleon, “such distress as no king ever endured before, my plate is sold, and on state occasions the appearance of magnificence is supported by false metal. My ministers and household are actually starving, misery is on every face, and men, otherwise willing, are thus deterred from joining a king so little able to support them. My revenue is seized by the generals for the supply of their troops, and I cannot as a king of Spain without dishonour partake of the resources thus torn by rapine from my subjects whom I have sworn to protect; I cannot in fine be at once king of Spain and general of the French; let me resign both and live peaceably in France. Your majesty does not know what scenes are enacted, you will shudder to hear that men formerly rich and devoted to our cause have been driven out of Zaragoza and denied even a ration of food. The marquis Cavallero, a councillor of state, minister of justice, and known personally to your majesty, has been thus used. He has been seen actually begging for a piece of bread!”