SECTION XXXV: CHAPTER IV
THE PERPLEXITIES OF KING JOSEPH.
FEBRUARY-MARCH 1813
We have seen, when dealing with the last month of 1812 and the distribution of the French army into winter quarters, that all the arrangements made by King Joseph, Jourdan, and Soult were settled before any knowledge of the meaning of the Moscow Retreat had come to hand. The famous ‘29th Bulletin’ did not reach Madrid till January 6th, 1813; this was a long delay: but the Emperor’s return to Paris on December 16th, though he arrived at the Tuileries only thirty-six hours after the Bulletin had come to hand, was not known to Joseph or Jourdan till February 14th—which was a vastly longer delay. The road had been blocked between Vittoria and Burgos for over five weeks—and couriers and dispatches were accumulating at both these places—one set unable to get south, the other to get north. The Minister of War at Paris received Joseph’s dispatches of the 9th, 20th, and 24th of December all in one delivery on January 29th[358]. The King, still more unlucky, got the Paris dispatches of all the dates between December 18th and January 4th on February 14th to 16th by several couriers who came through almost simultaneously[359]. It was not till Palombini’s Italian division—in a series of fights lasting from January 25 to February 13—had cleared away Longa and Mendizabal from the high-road between Burgos and Vittoria, that quicker communication between those cities became possible.
Long as it had taken in 1812 to get a letter from Paris to Madrid, there had never been such a monstrous gap in correspondence as that which took place in January 1813. Hence came the strange fact that when Napoleon had returned to France, and started on his old system of giving strategical orders for the Army of Spain once more, these orders[360]—one on top of another—accumulated at Vittoria, and came in one overwhelming mass, to upset all the plans which Joseph and Jourdan had been carrying out since the New Year.
The King had received the 29th Bulletin on January 6th: he had gathered from it that matters were going badly with the army in Russia, but had no conception of the absolute ruin that had befallen his brother’s host. Hence he had kept his troops spread in the wide cantonments taken in December, and had sent Daricau’s to the province of Cuenca, to reopen the way to Suchet at Valencia. The great convoy of Spanish and French administrators, courtiers, and refugees, which had been left in Suchet’s care, retraced its way to Madrid under escort of some of Daricau’s troops in the last days of January. Meanwhile Pierre Soult’s cavalry continued to sweep La Mancha, imposing contributions and shooting guerrilleros, and the Army of the Centre cleared the greater part of the country east and north of Madrid of strong parties of the Medico’s and the Empecinado’s men. Caffarelli, as Jourdan complained, ought to have been making more head in the North—but his dispatches were so infrequent that his position could not be fully judged—it was only certain that he could not keep the Burgos-Bayonne road open for couriers.
There was only one touch during the winter with Wellington’s army, whose cantonments, save those of the Light Division, were far back, behind the ‘no man’s land’ which encircled the French armies. This single contact was due to an adventurous reconnaissance by Foy, who at his head-quarters at Avila had conceived a project for surprising Hill’s most outlying detachment, the 50th regiment, which was billeted at Bejar, in the passes in front of Coria. On false news that no good look-out was being kept around Bejar, he started on the 19th February from Piedrahita with a column of three very weak infantry battalions and 80 horse—about 1,500 men in all, and marching day and night fell upon the cantonments of the 50th at dawn on the morning of the 20th. The surprise did not come off. Colonel Harrison of the 50th was a cautious officer, who had barricaded the ruined gates of the town, and patched its crumbling walls—He had picquets far out, and was accustomed to keep several companies under arms from 2 o’clock till daylight every night. Moreover Hill, thinking the position exposed, had lately reinforced him with the 6th Caçadores, from Ashworth’s brigade. Foy, charging in on the town in the dusk, dislodged the outlying picquets after a sharp skirmish; but his advanced guard of 300 voltigeurs met such a storm of fire from the gate and walls, which were fully manned, that it swerved off when 30 yards from the entrance. Foy ordered a general retreat, since he saw the enemy ready for him, and marched off as quickly as he had come, pursued for some distance by the Caçadores[361]. He says in his dispatch to Reille that he only lost two men killed and five wounded, that he could have carried the town had he pleased, and that he only retired because he was warned that the 71st and 92nd, the other regiments of Cadogan’s brigade, were marching up from Baños, seven miles away[362]. This those may believe who please: it is certain that he made off the moment that he saw that his surprise had failed, and that he was committed to an attack on a barricaded town. Hill expected more raids of this sort, but the attempt was never repeated.
It was on the 14th of February, five days before Foy’s adventure, that King Joseph received his first Paris mail. Its portentous and appalling contents were far worse than anything that he had expected. The most illuminating item was a letter from Colonel Desprez, his aide-de-camp, who had made the Moscow retreat, and was able to give him the whole truth concerning Russia. ‘We lost prisoners by the tens of thousands—but, however many the prisoners, the dead are many more. Every nightly bivouac left hundreds of frozen corpses behind. The situation may be summed up by saying that the army is dead. The Young Guard, to which I was attached, quitted Moscow 8,000 strong; there were 400 left at Wilna. All the other corps have suffered on the same scale; I am convinced that not 20,000 men recrossed the Vistula. If your Majesty asks me where the retreat will stop, I can only reply that the Russians will settle that point. I cannot think that the Prussians will resist: the King and his ministers are favourably disposed—not so the people—riots are breaking out in Berlin: crossing Prussia I had evidence that we can hardly count on these allies. And it seems that in the Austrian army the officers are making public demonstrations against continuing the war. This is a sad picture—but I think there is no exaggeration in it. On returning to Paris and thinking all over in cold blood, my judgement on the situation is as gloomy as it was at the theatre of war[363].’
Napoleon had spent several days at the Tuileries, busy with grandiose schemes for the organization of a new Grande Armée, to replace that which he had sacrificed in Russia, and with financial and diplomatic problems of absorbing interest, before he found a moment in which to dictate to Clarke his orders for the King of Spain. The note was very short and full of reticences[364]: it left much unsaid that had to be supplied by the recipient’s intelligence. ‘The King must have received by now the 29th Bulletin, which would show him the state of affairs in the North; they were absorbing the Emperor’s care and attention. Things being as they were, he ought to move his head-quarters to Valladolid, holding Madrid only as the extreme point of occupation of his southern wing. He should turn his attention to the pacification of Biscay and Navarre while the English were inactive. Soult had been sent orders to come back to France—as the King had repeatedly requested; his Army of the South might be given over to Marshal Jourdan or to Gazan.’ If Joseph had owned no independent sources of information such a statement would have left him much in the dark, both as to the actual state of the Emperor’s resources, and as to his intentions with regard to Spain. The Emperor did not say that he had lost his army and must create another, nor did he intimate how far he intended to give up his Spanish venture. But the order to draw back to Valladolid and hold Madrid lightly, could only be interpreted as a warning that there would be no more reinforcements available for Spain, so that the area of occupation would have to be contracted.
The recall of Soult was what Joseph had eagerly petitioned for in 1812, when he had come upon the curious letter in which the Marshal accused him before the Emperor of treason to the French cause[365]. But the Marshal was not brought home in disgrace; rather he was sent for in the hour of danger, as one who could be useful to the new Grande Armée. It must have been irritating to the King to know, from a passage in the already-cited letter of Colonel Desprez, that Napoleon had called the Duke of Dalmatia ‘the only military brain in the Peninsula’, that he stigmatized the King’s denunciations of him as des pauvretés to which he attached no importance, and that he had added that half the generals in Spain had shared Soult’s suspicions. The Marshal left, in triumph rather than in disgrace, with a large staff and escort, and a long train of fourgons carrying his Andalusian plunder, more especially his splendid gallery of Murillos robbed from Seville churches[366].
Dated one day later than the Emperor’s first rough notes, we find the formal dispatch from the war-minister Clarke, which made things a little clearer. Setting forth his master’s ideas in a more verbose style, Clarke explained that the affairs of Spain must be subordinated to those of the North. The move to Valladolid would make communication with Paris shorter and safer, and provide a larger force to hold down Northern Spain. Caffarelli was not strong enough both to hunt down the guerrilleros and at the same time to provide garrisons on the great roads and the coast. The King would have to lend him a hand in the task.
There were other dispatches for Joseph and Jourdan dated on the 4th of January, but only one more of importance: this was an order for wholesale drafts to be made from the Army of Spain, for the benefit of the new Army of Germany. But large as they were, the limited scale of them showed that the Emperor had not the least intention of surrendering his hold on the Peninsula, or of drawing back to the line of the Ebro or the Pyrenees, as Lord Liverpool had expected[367]. All the six Armies of Spain—those of the North, Portugal, the Centre, the South, Aragon, and Catalonia—were to continue in existence, and the total number of men to be drawn from any one of them did not amount to a fourth of its numbers. There were still to be 200,000 men left in the Peninsula.
The first demand was for twenty-five picked men from each battalion of infantry or regiment of cavalry, and ten from each battery of artillery, to reconstitute the Imperial Guard, reduced practically to nothing in Russia. Putting aside foreign regiments (Italian, Neapolitan, German, Swiss) there were some 220 French battalions in Spain in January 1813, and some 35 regiments of cavalry. The call was therefore for 5,500 bayonets and 875 sabres—no great amount from an army which had 260,000 men on its rolls, and 212,000 actually under the colours.
But this was only a commencement. It was more important that the Armies of the South and Catalonia were to contribute a large number of cadres to the new Grande Armée. Those of Portugal, Aragon, the Centre, and the North were at first less in question, because their regiments were, on the average, not so strong as those of the other two. The Army of the South was specially affected, because its units were (and always had been) very large regiments. In 1812 Soult’s infantry corps nearly all had three battalions—a few four. Similarly with the cavalry, many regiments had four squadrons, none less than three. The edict of January 4th ordered that each infantry regiment should send back to France the full cadre of officers and non-commissioned officers for one battalion, with a skeleton cadre of men, cutting down the number of battalions present with the eagle by one, and drafting the surplus rank and file of the subtracted battalion into those remaining in Spain. The cadre was roughly calculated out to 120 of all ranks. When, therefore, the system was applied to the Army of the South, it was cut down from 57 battalions to 36 in its 19 regiments[368]. The 21 cadres took off to France 2,500 officers and men. Similarly 15 cavalry regiments, in 50 squadrons, were to send 12 squadron-cadres to France, some 600 sabres.
The small Army of Catalonia was to contribute a battalion-cadre from each of those of its regiments which had three or more battalions—which would give six more cadres for Germany.
The Armies of Portugal, Aragon, and the Centre were mainly composed of regiments having only two battalions—they were therefore for the present left comparatively untouched. The first named was only ordered to give up one battalion-cadre, the second two, the third three (all from Palombini’s Italian division). Of cavalry the Army of Portugal only gave up one squadron-cadre, the Army of the Centre three.
In addition, the small number of foreign auxiliary troops still left in Spain were ordered back to France, save the remnant of Palombini’s and Severoli’s Italians and the Rheinbund units[369] in the Army of the Centre, viz. the 7th Polish Lancers (the last regiment of troops of this nationality left south of the Pyrenees), the Westphalian horse in the Army of the Centre, and the Berg and Westphalian infantry in Catalonia. Moreover, the brigade of the Young Guard in the Army of the North (that of Dumoustier) and the three naval battalions from Cadiz, which had served so long in the Army of the South, were to come home, also four batteries of French horse-artillery and two of Westphalian field artillery. Lastly, cadres being as necessary for the military train as for any other branch of the service, all the armies were to send home every dismounted man of this corps. The same rule was applied to the Équipages militaires and the Artillery Park. This whole deduction from the Army of Spain under these heads came to nearly 12,000 soldiers of all arms, over and above these cadres.
There was an elaborate clause as to reorganizing the Army of the North: in return for giving up four provisional regiments of drafts to the Armies of Portugal and the South, it was to get three regiments made over to it from the former, and one from the latter. Napoleon calculated that it would lose nothing in numbers from the exchange, but as a matter of fact it did. The drafts to be returned to their proper corps ran to over 8,000 men. But General Reille, being told to contribute three regiments to the Army of the North, selected the three depleted units which had composed Thomières’ unlucky division at the battle of Salamanca (the 1st, 62nd, and 101st), which together did not make up 3,000 bayonets[370], though Gazan chose to make over the 64th, a three-battalion regiment with 1,600 men. The Army of the North, therefore, lost nearly 3,000 men on the balance of the exchange, though the Emperor was aware that it was already too weak for the task set it. But he probably considered that Palombini’s Italians, detached (as we have already seen[371]) from the Army of the Centre, would make up the difference.
In addition to the squadron-cadres which he requisitioned on January 4th, the Emperor had a further intention of bringing back to Central Europe some complete units of heavy cavalry, to furnish the host now collecting in Germany with the horsemen in which it was so notoriously deficient. The whole of the dragoon-division of Boyer in the Army of Portugal is marked in the March returns with ordre de rentrer en France; so are several dragoon regiments in the Army of the South. But as a matter of fact hardly one of them had started for the Pyrenees by May[372], so that both in the Army of Portugal and the Army of the South the cavalry total was only a few hundreds smaller at the time of the opening of the campaign of Vittoria than it had been at the New Year—the shrinkage amounting to no more than the squadron-cadres and the few men for the Imperial Guard.
The Emperor’s intentions, therefore, as they became known to King Joseph and Jourdan on February 16th, left the three armies opposed to Wellington some 15,000 men smaller than they had been at the time of the Burgos retreat; but this was a very modest deduction considering their size, and still kept nearly 100,000 men in Castile and Leon, over and above the Army of the North, which might be considered as tied down to its own duty of suppressing the rising in Biscay and Navarre, and incapable of sparing any help to its neighbours. When we reflect on the scale of the Russian disaster, the demand made upon the Army of Spain seems very moderate. But there were two ominous doubts. Would the Emperor be content with his original requisitions in men and horses from the armies of Spain? And what exactly did he mean by the phrase that the King would have to lend appui et secours to the Army of the North, for the destruction of the rebels beyond the Ebro? If this signified the distraction of any large body of men from the forces left opposed to Wellington, the situation would be uncomfortable. Both these doubts soon developed into sinister certainties.
On receiving the Emperor’s original orders King Joseph hastened to obey, though the removal of his court from Madrid to Valladolid looked to him like the abandonment of his pose as King of Spain. He ordered Soult’s successor, Gazan, to evacuate La Mancha, and to draw back to the neighbourhood of Madrid, leaving a small detachment of light troops about Toledo. The Army of the South also took over the province of Avila from the Army of Portugal, and it was intended that it should soon relieve the Army of the Centre in the province of Segovia. For Joseph had made up his mind that any help which he must give against the northern rebels should be furnished by D’Erlon’s little army, which he would stretch out from Segovia towards Burgos and the Ebro[373], and so take Mina and the insurgents of Navarre in the rear. Early in March all these movements were in progress, and (as we have seen in the last chapter) were beginning to be reported to Wellington, who made many deductions from them. Joseph himself transferred his head-quarters to Valladolid on March 23rd, by which time the greater part of the other changes had been carried out. The Emperor afterwards criticized his brother’s delay of a whole month between the receipt of his orders to decamp and his actual arrival at Valladolid. To this Jourdan made the reply that it was useless to move the head-quarters till the drawing in of the Army of the South had been completed, and that the bringing in of such outlying units as Daricau’s division from the province of Cuenca, and the transference of the Army of the Centre northward, took much time[374]. Evacuations cannot be carried out at a day’s notice, when they involve the moving of magazines and the calling in of a civil administration.
On March 12th, while all the movements were in progress, another batch of orders from Paris came to hand. They contained details which upset the arrangements which the King was carrying out, for the Emperor decided that the succour which was to be given to the Army of the North was to be drawn from Reille’s Army, and not from D’Erlon’s, so that a new series of counter-marches would have to be carried out. And—what was more ominous for the future—Napoleon had dropped once more into his old habit of sending orders directly to subordinate generals, without passing them through the head-quarters of the Army of Spain. For Clarke, in his dispatch of February 3rd, informed the King that the Emperor had sent Reille directions to detach a division to Navarre at once, ‘a disposition which cannot conflict with any orders which your Majesty may give to the Army of Portugal, for the common end of reducing to submission the provinces of the North[375].’ Unfortunately this was precisely what such an order did accomplish, for Joseph had sent D’Erlon in the direction to which he now found that Reille had simultaneously detached Barbot’s division of the Army of Portugal, without any knowledge that D’Erlon had already been detailed for the job.
The Emperor was falling back into the practice by which he had in the preceding year ruined Marmont—the issuing of detailed orders for the movement of troops, based on information a month old, it being certain that the execution of these orders would take place an additional three weeks after they had been formulated. As we shall presently see, the initial successes of Wellington in his Vittoria campaign were entirely due to the position in which the Army of Portugal had placed itself, in obedience to Napoleon’s direct instructions.
Meanwhile Clarke’s dispatch of February 2nd, conveying these orders, arrived at the same moment as two others dated ten days later[376], which were most unpleasant reading. The first contained an absolutely insulting message to the King from his brother: ‘his Imperial Majesty bids me say,’ wrote Clarke, ‘with regard to the money for which you have asked in several recent letters, that all funds necessary for the armies of Spain could have been got out of the rich and fertile provinces which are being devastated by the insurgent bands. By employing the activity and vigour needed to establish order and tranquillity, the resources which they still possess can be utilized. This is an additional motive for inducing your Majesty to put an end to this war in the interior, which troubles peaceful inhabitants, ruins the countryside, exhausts your armies, and deprives them of the resources which they could enjoy if these fine regions were in a peaceful state. Aragon and Navarre are to-day under Mina’s law, and maintain this disastrous struggle with their food and money. It is time to put an end to this state of affairs.’
Written apparently a few hours later than the dispatch quoted above came another[377], setting forth the policy which was to be the ruin of the French cause in Spain three months later. It is composed of a series of wild miscalculations. When the head-quarters of the Army of Spain should have been moved to Valladolid, it would be possible to send the whole Army of Portugal to help the Army of the North beyond the Ebro. ‘The Armies of the Centre and South, occupying Salamanca and Valladolid, have sufficient strength to keep the English in check, while waiting on events. Madrid and even Valencia are of secondary importance. Valladolid and Salamanca have become the essential points, between which there should be distributed forces ready to take the offensive against the English, and to wreck their plans. The Emperor is informed that they have been reinforced in Portugal, and that they seem to have two alternative schemes—either to make a push into Spain, or to send out from the port of Lisbon an expedition of 25,000 men, partly English, partly Spanish, which is to land somewhere on the French coast, when the campaign shall have begun in Germany. To prevent them engaging in this expedition, you must always be in a position to march forward and to threaten to overrun Portugal and take Lisbon. At the same time you must make the communications with France safe and easy, by using the time of the English inactivity to subdue Biscay and Navarre.... If the French armies in Spain remain idle, and permit the English to send expeditions against our coast, the tranquillity of France will be compromised, and the ruin of our cause in Spain will infallibly follow.’
A supplementary letter to Jourdan of the same day recapitulates all the above points, adding that the Army of Portugal must send to Clausel, now Caffarelli’s successor in the North, as many troops as are needed there, but that the King at the same time must menace Portugal, so that Wellington shall not be able to detach men from his Peninsular Army.
The fundamental error in all this is that, underrating Wellington’s strength, Napoleon judged that the Armies of the South and Centre could keep him in check. They were at this moment under 60,000 of all arms: if the Army of Portugal were out of the way, they were absolutely insufficient for the task set them. As to their menacing Lisbon, Wellington would have liked nothing better than an advance by them into Portugal, where he would have outnumbered them hopelessly. The hypothesis that Wellington was about to send 25,000 men by sea for a landing inside the French Empire, on which Napoleon lays so much stress, seems to have been formed on erroneous information from French spies in London, who had heard the rumour that a raid on Holland or Hanover was likely, or perhaps even one aimed at La Vendée. For the royalist émigrés in England had certainly been talking of such a plan, and pressing it upon Lord Liverpool, as the dispatches of the latter to Wellington show[378]. The Emperor did not know that all such schemes would be scouted by the British Commander in Spain, and that he now possessed influence enough with the Cabinet to stop them.
It would appear that the Emperor’s intelligence from England misled him in other ways: he was duly informed of the departure from Lisbon of the depleted cavalry and infantry units, about which Wellington disputed so much with the Duke of York, and the deduction drawn was that the Peninsular Army was being decreased. The exaggerated impression of the losses in the Burgos retreat, which could be gathered from the Whig newspapers, led to an underrating of the strength that the British Army would have in the spring. Traitors from Cadiz wrote to Madrid that the friction between the Regency and Wellington was so great, that it was doubtful whether the new Generalissimo would have any real control over the Spanish armies. And the sickness in both the British and the Portuguese armies—bad as it was—was exaggerated by spies, so wildly that the Emperor was under the delusion that Wellington could not count on more than 30,000 British or 20,000 Portuguese troops in the coming campaign. It may be worth while to quote at this point the official view at Paris of the British army in Portugal, though the words were written some time later, and only just before the news of Wellington’s sudden advance on the Douro had come to hand:
‘In the position in which the enemy found himself there was no reason to fear that he would take the offensive: his remoteness, his lack of transport, his constant and timid caution in all operations out of the ordinary line, all announced that we had complete liberty to act as suited us best, without worry or inconvenience. I may add that the ill feeling between English and Spaniards, the voyage of Lord Wellington to Cadiz, the changes in his army, of which many regiments have been sent back to England, were all favourable circumstances allowing us to carry out fearlessly every movement that the Emperor’s orders might dictate[379].’
It is only necessary to observe that Wellington was not more remote from the French than they were from him: that he had excellent transport—far better than his enemies ever enjoyed: that timid caution was hardly the policy which stormed Badajoz or won Salamanca: that his rapid and triumphant offensive was just starting when the Minister of War wrote the egregious paragraph which we have just cited. Persistent undervaluing of the resources and energy of Wellington by Head-quarters at Paris—i.e. by the Emperor when present, by the Minister of War in his absence—was at the roots of the impending disaster.
Leaving the King newly established at Valladolid, the Army of the South redistributing itself between Madrid and the Douro, the Army of the Centre turning back from its projected march to Burgos in order to reoccupy the province of Segovia, and the Army of Portugal beginning to draw off from in front of Wellington troops to be sent to the North, we must turn for a moment to explain the crisis in Navarre and Biscay which was engrossing so much of Napoleon’s attention.