Soult, now on the defensive, was yet so fearful of1813. September. an attack along the Nive, that his uneasy movements made the allies think he was again preparing for offensive operations. This double misunderstanding did not however last long, and each army resumed its former position.
The fall of San Sebastian had given lord Wellington a new port and point of support, had increased the value of Passages as a depôt, and let loose a considerable body of troops for field operations; the armistice in Germany was at an end, Austria had joined the allies, and it seemed therefore certain that he would immediately invade France. The English cabinet had promised the continental sovereigns that it should be so when the French were expelled from Spain, meaning Navarre and Guipuscoa; and the newspaper editors were, as usual, actively deceiving the people of all countries by their dictatorial absurd projects and assumptions. Meanwhile the partizans of the Bourbons were secretly endeavouring to form a conspiracy in the south, and the duke of Berri desired to join the British army, pretending that twenty thousand Frenchmen were already armed and organized at the head of which he would place himself. In fine all was exultation and extravagance. But lord Wellington, well understanding the inflated nature of such hopes and promises, while affecting to rebuke the absurdity of the newspapers, took the opportunity to check similar folly in higher places, by observing, “that if he had done all that was expected he should have been before that period in the moon.”
With respect to the duke of Berri’s views, it was for the sovereigns he said to decide whether the restoration of the Bourbons should form part of their policy, but as yet no fixed line of conduct on that or any other political points was declared. It was for their interest to get rid of Napoleon, and there could be no question of the advantage or propriety of accepting the aid of a Bourbon party without pledging themselves to dethrone the emperor. The Bourbons might indeed decline, in default of such a pledge, to involve their partizans in rebellion, and he advised them to do so, because Napoleon’s power rested internally upon the most extensive and expensive system of corruption ever established in any country, externally upon his military force which was supported almost exclusively by foreign contributions; once confined to the limits of France he would be unable to bear the double expense of his government and army, the reduction of either would be fatal to him, and the object of the Bourbons would thus be obtained without risk. But, if they did not concur in this reasoning, the allies in the north of Europe must declare they would dethrone Napoleon before the duke of Berri should be allowed to join the army; and the British government must make up its mind upon the question.
This reasoning put an end to the project, because neither the English cabinet nor the allied sovereigns were ready to adopt a decisive open line of policy. The ministers exulting at the progress of aristocratic domination, had no thought save that of wasting England’s substance by extravagant subsidies and supplies, taken without gratitude by the continental powers who held themselves no-ways bound thereby to uphold the common cause, which each secretly designed to make available for peculiar interests. Moreover they all still trembled before the conqueror and none would pledge themselves to a decided policy. Lord Wellington alone moved with a firm composure, the result of profound and well-understood calculations; yet his mind, naturally so dispassionate, was strangely clouded at this time by personal hatred of Napoleon.
Where is the proof, or even probability, of that great man’s system of government being internally dependent upon “the most extensive corruption ever established in any country”?
The annual expenditure of France was scarcely half that of England, and Napoleon rejected public loans which are the very life-blood of state corruption. He left no debt. Under him no man devoured the public substance in idleness merely because he was of a privileged class; the state servants were largely paid but they were made to labour effectually for the state. They did not eat their bread and sleep. His system of public accounts, remarkable for its exactness simplicity and comprehensiveness, was vitally opposed to public fraud, and therefore extremely unfavourable to corruption. Napoleon’s power was supported in France by that deep sense of his goodness as a sovereign, and that admiration for his genius which pervaded the poorer and middle classes of the people; by the love which they bore towards him, and still bear for his memory because he cherished the principles of a just equality. They loved him also for his incessant activity in the public service, his freedom from all private vices, and because his public works, wondrous for their number their utility and grandeur, never stood still; under him the poor man never wanted work. To France he gave noble institutions, a comparatively just code of laws, and glory unmatched since the days of the Romans. His Cadastre, more extensive and perfect than the Doomsday Book, that monument of the wisdom and greatness of our Norman Conqueror, was alone sufficient to endear him to the nation. Rapidly advancing under his vigorous superintendence, it registered and taught every man the true value and nature of his property, and all its liabilities public or private. It was designed and most ably adapted to fix and secure titles to property, to prevent frauds, to abate litigation, to apportion the weight of taxes equally and justly, to repress the insolence of the tax-gatherer without injury to the revenue, and to secure the sacred freedom of the poor man’s home. The French Cadastre, although not original, would from its comprehensiveness, have been when completed the greatest boon ever conferred upon a civilized nation by a statesman.
To say that the emperor was supported by his soldiers, is to say that he was supported by the people; because the law of conscription, that mighty staff on which France leaned when all Europe attempted to push her down, the conscription, without which she could never have sustained the dreadful war of antagonist principles entailed upon her by the revolution; that energetic law, which he did not establish but which he freed from abuse, and rendered great, national, and endurable by causing it to strike equally on all classes, the conscription made the soldiers the real representatives of the people. The troops idolized Napoleon, well they might, and to assert that their attachment commenced only when they became soldiers, is to acknowledge that his excellent qualities and greatness of mind turned hatred into devotion the moment he was approached. But Napoleon never was hated by the people of France; he was their own creation and they loved him so as never monarch was loved before. His march from Cannes to Paris, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of poor men, who were not soldiers, can never be effaced or even disfigured. For six weeks, at any moment, a single assassin might by a single shot have acquired the reputation of a tyrannicide, and obtained vast rewards besides from the trembling monarchs and aristocrats of the earth, who scrupled not to instigate men to the shameful deed. Many there were base enough to undertake but none so hardy as to execute the crime, and Napoleon, guarded by the people of France, passed unharmed to a throne from whence it required a million of foreign bayonets to drive him again. From the throne they drove him, but not from the thoughts and hearts of men.
Lord Wellington having shaken off the weight of the continental policy, proceeded to consider the question of invading France simply as a military operation, which might conduce to or militate against the security of the Peninsula while Napoleon’s power was weakened by the war in Germany; and such was his inflexible probity of character, that no secret ambitious promptings, no facility of gaining personal reputation, diverted him from this object, all the renown of which he already enjoyed, the embarrassments mortifications and difficulties, enormous, although to the surface-seeing public there appeared none, alone remaining.
The rupture of the congress of Prague, Austria’s accession to the coalition, and the fall of San Sebastian were favourable circumstances; but he relied not much on the military skill of the banded sovereigns, and a great defeat might at any moment dissolve their alliance. Napoleon could then reinforce Soult and drive the allies back upon Spain, where the French still possessed the fortresses of Santona, Pampeluna, Jaca, Venasque, Monzon, Fraga, Lerida, Mequinenza, Figueras, Gerona, Hostalrich, Barcelona, Tortoza, Morella, Peniscola, Saguntum and Denia. Meanwhile lord William Bentinck, misled by false information, had committed a serious error in sending Del Parque’s army to Tudela, because the Ordal disaster and subsequent retreat shewed that Suchet was strong enough, if it so pleased him, to drive the Anglo-Sicilian army back even to the Xucar and recover all his strong places. In fine the affairs of Catalonia were in the same unsatisfactory state they had been in from the first. It was not even certain that a British army would remain there at all, for lord William assured of Murat’s defection was intent upon invading Italy; and the ministers seemed to have leaned towards the project, since Wellington now seriously desired to know whether the Anglo-Sicilians were to go or stay in Spain.
Lord William himself had quitted that army, making the seventh change in fifteen months; this alone was sufficient to account for its misfortunes, and the Spanish generals, who had been placed under the English commander, ridiculed the latter’s ill success and spoke vauntingly of themselves. Strenuously did lord Wellington urge the appointment of some commander for the Anglo-Sicilian troops who would devote his whole attention to his business, observing that at no period of the war would he have quitted his own army even for a few days without danger to its interests. But the English minister’s ignorance of every thing relating to war was profound, and at this time he was himself being stript of generals. Graham, Picton, Leith, lord Dalhousie, H. Clinton, and Skerrit, had gone or were going to England on account of ill health wounds or private business; and marshal Beresford was at Lisbon, where dangerous intrigues to be noticed hereafter menaced the existence of the Portuguese army. Castaños and Giron had been removed by the Spanish regency from their commands, and O’Donnel, described as an able officer but of the most impracticable temper, being denied the chief command of Elio’s, Copons’, and Del Parque’s troops, quittedWellington’s Dispatches, MSS. the army under pretext that his old wounds had broken out; whereupon, Giron was placed at the head of the Andalusians. The operations in Catalonia were however so important, that lord Wellington thought of going there himself; and he would have done so, if the after misfortunes of Napoleon in Germany, had not rendered it impossible for that monarch to reinforce his troops on the Spanish frontier.