1812. August. Suchet found resources in Valencia to support the king’s court and army, without augmenting the pressure on the inhabitants, and a counter-stroke could have been made against the allies, if the French commanders had been of one mind and had looked well to the state of affairs; but Joseph exasperated by the previous opposition of the generals, and troubled by the distresses of the numerous families attached to his court, was only intent upon recovering Madrid as soon as he could collect troops enough to give Wellington battle. He had demanded from the French minister of war, money, stores, and a reinforcement of forty thousand men, and he had imperatively commanded Soult to abandon Andalusia; that clear-sighted commander,[Appendix, No. 3.] could not however understand why the king, who had given him no accurate details of Marmont’s misfortunes, or of his own operations, should yet order him to abandon at once, all the results, and all the interests, springing from three years’ possession of the south of Spain. He thought it a great question not to be treated lightly, and as his vast capacity enabled him to embrace the whole field of operations, he concluded that rumour had exaggerated the catastrophe at Salamanca and that the abandoning of Andalusia would be the ruin of the French cause.
French correspondence taken at Vittoria, MSS. “To march on Madrid,” he said, “would probably produce another pitched battle, which should be carefully avoided, seeing that the whole frame-work of the French invasion was disjointed, and no resource would remain after a defeat. On the other hand, Andalusia, which had hitherto been such a burthen to the invasion, now offered means to remedy the present disasters, and to sacrifice that province with all its resources, for the sake of regaining the capital of Spain, appeared a folly. It was purchasing a town at the price of a kingdom. Madrid was nothing in the emperor’s policy, though it might be something for a king of Spain; yet Philip the Vth had thrice lost it and preserved his throne. Why then should Joseph set such a value upon that city? The battle of the Arapiles was merely a grand duel which might be fought again with a different result; but to abandon Andalusia with all its stores and establishments; to raise the blockade of Cadiz; to sacrifice the guns, the equipments, the hospitals and the magazines, and thus render null the labours of three years, would be to make the battle of the Arapiles a prodigious historical event, the effect of which would be felt all over Europe and even in the new world. And how was this flight from Andalusia to be safely effected? The army of the south had been able to hold in check sixty thousand enemies disposed on a circuit round it, but the moment it commenced its retreat towards Toledo those sixty thousand men would unite to follow, and Wellington himself would be found on the Tagus in its front. On that line then the army of the south could not march, and a retreat through Murcia would be long and difficult. But why retreat at all? Where,” exclaimed this able warrior, “where is the harm though the allies should possess the centre of Spain?”
“Your majesty,” he continued, “should collect the army of the centre, the army of Aragon, and if possible, the army of Portugal, and you should march upon Andalusia, even though to do so should involve the abandonment of Valencia. If the army of Portugal comes with you, one hundred and twenty thousand men will be close to Portugal; if it cannot or will not come, let it remain, because while Burgos defends itself, that army can keep on the right of the Ebro and the emperor will take measures for its succour. Let Wellington then occupy Spain from Burgos to the Morena, it shall be my care to provide magazines, stores, and places of arms in Andalusia; and the moment eighty thousand French are assembled in that province the theatre of war is changed! The English general must fall back to save Lisbon, the army of Portugal may follow him to the Tagus, the line of communication with France will be established by the eastern coast, the final result of the campaign turns in our favour, and a decisive battle may be delivered without fear at the gates of Lisbon. March then with the army of the centre upon the Despenas Peros, unite all our forces in Andalusia, and all will be well! Abandon that province and you lose Spain! you will retire behind the Ebro and famine will drive you thence before the emperor can, from the distant Russia, provide a remedy; his affairs even in that country will suffer by the blow, and America dismayed by our misfortunes will perhaps make peace with England.”
Neither the king’s genius, nor his passions, would permit him to understand the grandeur and vigour of this conception. To change even simple lines of operation suddenly, is at all times a nice affair, but thus to change the whole theatre of operations and regain the initial movements after a defeat, belongs only to master spirits in war. Now the emperor had recommended a concentration of force, and Joseph would not understand this save as applied to the recovery of Madrid; he was uneasy for the frontiers of France; as if Wellington could possibly have invaded that country while a great army menaced Lisbon; in fine he could see nothing but his lost capital on one side, and a disobedient lieutenant on the other, and peremptorily repeated his orders. Then Soult, knowing that his plan could only be effected by union and rapidity, and dreading the responsibility of further delay, took immediate steps to abandon Andalusia; but mortified by this blighting of his fruitful genius, and stung with anger at such a termination to all his political and military labours, his feelings over-mastered his judgment. Instead of tracing the king’s rigid counteraction of his scheme to the narrowness of the monarch’s military genius, he judged it part of a design to secure his own fortune at the expense of his brother, an action quite foreign to Joseph’s honest and passionate nature. Wherefore making known this opinion to six generals, who were sworn to secrecy, unless interrogated by the Emperor, he wrote to the French minister of war[Appendix No. 4.] expressing his doubts of the king’s loyalty towards the emperor, and founding them on the following facts.
1º. That the extent of Marmont’s defeat had been made known to him only by the reports of the enemy, and the king, after remaining for twenty-three days, without sending any detailed information of the operations in the north of Spain, although the armies were actively engaged, had peremptorily ordered him to abandon Andalusia, saying it was the only resource remaining for the French. To this opinion Soult said he could not subscribe, yet being unable absolutely to disobey the monarch, he was going to make a movement which must finally lead to the loss of all the French conquests in Spain, seeing that it would then be impossible to remain permanently on the Tagus, or even in the Castiles.
2º. This operation ruinous in itself was insisted upon at a time, when the newspapers of Cadiz affirmed, that Joseph’s ambassador at the court of Petersburgh, had joined the Prussian army in the field; that Joseph himself had made secret overtures to the government in the Isla de Leon; that Bernadotte, his brother-in-law, had made a treaty with England and had demanded of the Cortez a guard of Spaniards, a fact confirmed by information obtained through an officer sent with a flag of truce to the English admiral; finally that Moreau and Blucher were at Stockholm, and the aide-de-camp of the former was in London.
Reflecting upon all these circumstances he feared that the object of the king’s false movements, might be to force the French army over the Ebro, in the view of making an arrangement for Spain, separate from France; fears, said the duke of Dalmatia, which may be chimerical, but it is better in such a crisis to be too fearful than too confident. This letter was sent by sea, and the vessel having touched at Valencia at the moment of Joseph’s arrival there, the despatch was opened, and it was then, in the first burst of his anger, that the king despatched Desprez on that mission to Moscow, the result of which has been already related.
Soult’s proceedings though most offensive to the king and founded in error, because Joseph’s letters, containing the information required, were intercepted, not withheld, were prompted by zeal for his master’s service and cannot be justly condemned, yet Joseph’s indignation was natural and becoming. But the admiration of reflecting men must ever be excited by the greatness of mind, and the calm sagacity, with which Napoleon treated this thorny affair. Neither the complaints of his brother, nor the hints of his minister of war (for the duke of Feltre, a man of mean capacity and of an intriguing disposition, countenanced Joseph’s expressed suspicions[Appendix, No. 5.] that the duke of Dalmatia designed to make himself king of Andalusia) could disturb the temper or judgment of the Emperor; and it was then, struck with the vigour of the plan for concentrating the army in Andalusia, he called Soult the only military head in Spain. Nor was Wellington inattentive of that general’s movements, he knew his talents, and could foresee and appreciate the importance of the project he had proposed. Anxiously he watched his reluctant motions, and while apparently enjoying his own triumph amidst the feasts and rejoicings of Madrid, his eye was fixed on Seville; the balls and bull-fights of the capital cloaked both the skill and the apprehensions of the consummate general.
Before the allies had crossed the Guadarama, Hill had been directed to hold his army in hand, close to Drouet, and ready to move into the valley of the Tagus, if that general should hasten to the succour of the king. But when Joseph’s retreat upon Valencia was known, Hill received orders to fight Drouet, and even to follow him into Andalusia; at the same time general Cooke was directed to prepare an attack, even though it should be an open assault on the French lines before Cadiz, while Ballesteros operated on the flank from Gibraltar. By these means Wellington hoped to keep Soult from sending any succour to the king, and even to force him out of Andalusia without the necessity of marching there himself; yet if these measures failed, he was resolved to take twenty thousand men from Madrid and uniting with Hill drive the French from that province.