1º. Menace your enemy’s flanks, protect your own, and be ready to concentrate on the important points:
These maxims contain the whole spirit of Napoleon’s instructions to his generals, after Badajos was succoured in 1811. At that time he ordered the army of Portugal to occupy the valley of the Tagus and the passes of the Gredos mountains, in which position it covered Madrid, and from thence it could readily march to aid either the army of the south, or the army of the north. Dorsenne, who commanded the latter, could bring twenty-six thousand men to Ciudad Rodrigo, and Soult could bring a like number to Badajos, but Wellington could not move against one or the other without having Marmont upon his flank; he could not move against Marmont, without having the others on both flanks, and he could not turn his opponent’s flanks save from the ocean. If notwithstanding this combination he took Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, it was by surprise, and because the French did not concentrate on the important points, which proved indeed his superiority to the executive general opposed to him but in no manner affected the principle of Napoleon’s plan.
Again, when the preparations for the Russian war had weakened the army of the north, the emperor, giving Marmont two additional divisions, ordered him to occupy Castile, not as a defensive position, but as a central offensive one from whence he could keep the Gallicians in check, and by prompt menacing movements, prevent Wellington from commencing serious operations elsewhere. This plan also had reference to the maxim respecting flanks. For Marmont was forbidden to invade Portugal while Wellington was on the frontier of Beira, that is when he could not assail him in flank; and he was directed to guard the Asturias carefully as a protection to the great line of communication with France; in May also he was rebuked for having withdrawn Bonet from Oviedo, and for delaying to reoccupy the Asturias when the incursion against Beira terminated. But neither then nor afterwards did the duke of Ragusa comprehend the spirit of the Emperor’s views, and that extraordinary man, whose piercing sagacity seized every chance of war, was so disquieted by his lieutenant’s want of perception, that all the pomp, and all the vast political and military combinations of Dresden, could not put it from his thoughts.
[Appendix No. 2.] “Twice,” said he, “has the duke of Ragusa placed an interval of thirty leagues between his army and the enemy, contrary to all the rules of war; the English general goes where he will, the French general loses the initial movements and is of no weight in the affairs of Spain. Biscay and the north are exposed by the evacuation of the Asturias; Santona and St. Sebastian are endangered, and the guerillas communicate freely with the coast. If the duke of Ragusa has not kept some bridges on the Agueda, he cannot know what Wellington is about, and he will retire before light cavalry instead of operating so as to make the English general concentrate his whole army. The false direction already given to affairs by marshal Marmont, makes it necessary that Caffarelli should keep a strong corps always in hand; that the commander of the reserve, at Bayonne, should look to the safety of St. Sebastian, holding three thousand men always ready to march; finally that the provisional battalions, and troops from the dépôts of the interior, should immediately reinforce the reserve at Bayonne, be encamped on the Pyrennees, and exercised and formed for service. If Marmont’s oversights continue, these troops will prevent the disasters from becoming extreme.”
Napoleon was supernaturally gifted in warlike matters. It has been recorded of Cæsar’s generalship, that he foretold the cohorts mixed with his cavalry would be the cause of victory at Pharsalia. But this letter was written by the French emperor on the 28th of May before the allies were even collected on the Agueda, and when a hundred thousand French troops were between the English general and Bayonne, and yet its prescience was vindicated at Burgos in October!
2º. To fulfil the conditions of the emperor’s design, Marmont should have adopted Soult’s recommendation, that is, leaving one or two divisions on the Tormes he should have encamped near Baños, and pushed troops towards the upper Agueda to watch the movements of the allies. Caffarelli’s divisions could then have joined those on the Tormes, and thus Napoleon’s plan for 1811 would have been exactly renewed; Madrid would have been covered, a junction with the king would have been secured, Wellington could scarcely have moved beyond the Agueda, and the disaster of Salamanca would have been avoided.
The duke of Ragusa, apparently because he would not have the king in his camp, run counter both to the emperor and to Soult. 1º. He kept no troops on the Agueda, which might be excused on the ground that the feeding of them there was beyond his means; but then he did not concentrate behind the Tormes to sustain his forts, neither did he abandon his forts, when he abandoned Salamanca, and thus eight hundred men were sacrificed merely to secure the power of concentrating behind the Duero. 2º. He adopted a line of operations perpendicular to the allies’ front, instead of lying on their flank; he abandoned sixty miles of country between the Tormes and the Agueda, and he suffered Wellington to take the initial movements of the campaign. 3º. He withdrew Bonet’s division from the Asturias, whereby he lost Caffarelli’s support and realized the emperor’s fears for the northern provinces. It is true that he regained the initial power, by passing the Duero on the 18th, and had he deferred the passage until the king was over the Guadarama, Wellington must have gone back upon Portugal with some shew of dishonour if not great loss. But if Castaños, instead of remaining with fifteen thousand Gallicians, before Astorga, a weak place with a garrison of only twelve hundred men, had blockaded it with three or four thousand, and detached Santocildes with eleven or twelve thousand down the Esla to co-operate with Silveira and D’Urban, sixteen thousand men would have been acting upon Marmont’s right flank in June; and as Bonet did not join until the 8th of July the line of the Duero would scarcely have availed the French general.
3º. The secret of Wellington’s success is to be found in the extent of country occupied by the French armies, and the impediments to their military communication. Portugal was an impregnable central position, from whence the English general could rush out unexpectedly against any point. This strong post was however of his own making, he had chosen it, had fortified it, had defended it, he knew its full value and possessed quickness and judgement to avail himself of all its advantages; the battle of Salamanca was accidental in itself, but the tree was planted to bear such fruit, and Wellington’s profound combinations must be estimated from the general result. He had only sixty thousand disposable troops, and above a hundred thousand French were especially appointed to watch and controul him, yet he passed the frontier, defeated forty-five thousand in a pitched battle, and drove twenty thousand others from Madrid in the greatest confusion, without risking a single strategic point, of importance to his own operations. His campaign up to the conquest of Madrid was therefore strictly in accord with the rules of art, although his means and resources have been shewn to be precarious, shifting, and uncertain. Indeed the want of money alone would have prevented him from following up his victory if he had not persuaded the Spanish authorities, in the Salamanca country, to yield him the revenues of the government in kind under a promise of repayment at Cadiz. No general was ever more entitled to the honours of victory.
4º. The success of Wellington’s daring advance would seem to indicate a fault in the French plan of invasion. The army of the south, numerous, of approved valour and perfectly well commanded, was yet of so little weight in this campaign as to prove that Andalusia was a point pushed beyond the true line of operations. The conquest of that province in 1811 was an enterprize of the king’s, on which he prided himself, yet it seems never to have been much liked by Napoleon, although he did not absolutely condemn it. The question was indeed a very grave one. While the English general held Portugal, and while Cadiz was unsubdued, Andalusia was a burthen, rather than a gain. It would have answered better, either to have established communications with France by the southern line of invasion, which would have brought the enterprize within the rules of a methodical war, or to have held the province partially by detachments, keeping the bulk of the army of the south in Estremadura, and thus have strengthened the northern line of invasion. For in Estremadura, Soult would have covered the capital, and have been more strictly connected with the army of the centre; and his powerful co-operation with Massena in 1810 would probably have obliged the English general to quit Portugal. The same result could doubtless have been obtained by reinforcing the army of the south, with thirty or forty thousand men, but it is questionable if Soult could have fed such a number; and in favour of the invasion of Andalusia it may be observed, that Seville was the great arsenal of Spain, that a formidable power might have been established there by the English without abandoning Portugal, that Cadiz would have compensated for the loss of Lisbon, and finally that the English ministers were not at that time determined to defend Portugal.
5º. When the emperor declared that Soult possessed the only military head in the Peninsula he referred to a proposition made by that marshal which shall be noticed in the next chapter; but having regard merely to the disputes between the duke of Dalmatia, Marmont, and the king, Suchet’s talents not being in question, the justice of the remark may be demonstrated. Napoleon always enforced with precept and example, the vital military principle of concentration on the important points; but the king and the marshals, though harping continually upon this maxim, desired to follow it out, each in his own sphere. Now to concentrate on a wrong point, is to hurt yourself with your own sword, and as each French general desired to be strong, the army at large was scattered instead of being concentrated.