As false and unsubstantial is the charge against Soult.
The acute remark of an English military writer,Memoirs of captain Kincaid. that if the duke of Dalmatia had known of the peace before he fought, he would certainly have announced it after the battle, were it only to maintain himself in that city and claim a victory, is unanswerable: but there are direct proofs of the falsehood of the accusation. How was the intelligence to reach him? It was not until the 7th that the provisional government wrote to him from Paris, and the bearer could not have reached Toulouse under three days even by the most direct way, which was through Montauban. Now the allies were in possession of that road on the 4th, and on the 9th the French army was actually invested. The intelligence from Paris must therefore have reached the allies first, as in fact it did, and it was not Soult, it was lord Wellington who commenced the battle. The charge would therefore bear more against the English general, who would yet have been the most insane as well as the wickedest of men to have risked his army and his fame in a battle where so many obstacles seemed to deny success. He also was the person of all others called upon, by honour, gratitude, justice and patriotism, to avenge the useless slaughter of his soldiers, to proclaim the infamy and seek the punishment of his inhuman adversary.
Did he ever by word or deed countenance the calumny?
Lord Aberdeen, after the passing of the English reform bill, repeated the accusation in the house of lords and reviled the minister for being on amicable political terms with a man capable of such a crime. Lord Wellington rose on the instant and emphatically declared that marshal Soult did not know, and that it was impossible he could know of the emperor’s abdication when he fought the battle. The detestable distinction of sporting with men’s lives by wholesale attaches to no general on the records of history save the Orange William, the murderer of Glencoe. And though marshal Soult had known of the emperor’s abdication he could not for that have been justly placed beside that cold-blooded prince, who fought at St. Denis with the peace of Nimeguen in his pocket, because “he would not deny himself a safe lesson in his trade.”
The French marshal was at the head of a brave army and it was impossible to know whether Napoleon had abdicated voluntarily or been constrained. The authority of such men as Talleyrand, Fouché, and other intriguers, forming a provisional government, self-instituted and under the protection of foreign bayonets, demanded no respect from Soult. He had even the right of denying the emperor’s legal power to abdicate. He had the right, if he thought himself strong enough, to declare, that he would not suffer the throne to become the plaything of foreign invaders, and that he would rescue France even though Napoleon yielded the crown. In fine it was a question of patriotism and of calculation, a national question which the general of an army had a right to decide for himself, having reference always to the real will and desire of the people at large.
It was in this light that Soult viewed the matter, even after the battle and when he had seen colonel St. Simon.
Writing to Talleyrand on the 22d, he says, “TheOfficial Correspondence, MSS. circumstances which preceded my act of adhesion are so extraordinary as to create astonishment. The 7th the provisional government informed me of the events which had happened since the 1st of April. The 6th and 7th, count Dupont wrote to me on the same subject. On the 8th the duke of Feltre, in his quality of war minister, gave me notice, that having left the military cipher at Paris he would immediately forward to me another. The 9th the prince Berthier vice-constable and major-general, wrote to me from Fontainbleau, transmitting the copy of a convention and armistice which had been arranged at Paris with the allied powers; he demanded at the same time a state of the force and condition of my army; but neither the prince nor the duke of Feltre mentioned events, we had then only knowledge of a proclamation of the empress, dated the 3rd, which forbade us to recognize any thing coming from Paris.
“The 10th I was attacked near Toulouse by the whole allied army under the orders of lord Wellington. This vigorous action, where the French army the weakest by half showed all its worth, cost the allies from eight to ten thousand men: lord Wellington might perhaps have dispensed with it.
“The 12th I received through the English the first hint of the events at Paris. I proposed an armistice, it was refused, I renewed the demand it was again refused. At last I sent count Gazan to Toulouse, and my reiterated proposal for a suspension of arms was accepted and signed the 18th, the armies being then in presence of each other. The 19th I ratified this convention and gave my adhesion to the re-establishment of Louis XVIII. And upon this subject I ought to declare that I sought to obtain a suspension of arms before I manifested my sentiments in order that my will and that of the army should be free. That neither France nor posterity should have power to say it was torn from us by force of arms. To follow only the will of the nation was a homage I owed to my country.”
The reader will observe in the above letter certain assertions, relative to the numbers of the contending armies and the loss of the allies, which are at variance with the statements in this History; and this loose but common mode of assuming the state of an adverse force has been the ground-work for great exaggeration by some French writers, who strangely enough claim a victory for the French army although the French general himself made no such claim at the time, and so far as appears has not done so since.