Wellington Against Massena

by David Buttery

  I knew Massena afterwards well in Paris; and met him first at a dinner at Marshal Soult’s, who was then Minister of War… Massena was much excited at first seeing me, made a great noise, and greeted me very cordially. ‘Ah, Monsieur le Maréchal, que vous m’avez fait passer des mauvais moments!’ And he declared to me that I had not left him one black hair on his body; he had turned grey, he said, all over. I answered that I thought we had been pretty even – things nearly balanced between us. ‘No,’ he said, ‘how near you were taking me two or three times!’ – which I was.299

  It is interesting that the two former opponents should have got on so well, particularly as many of Napoleon’s marshals shunned Wellington when they met him through resentment of his victories over them. Perhaps it testifies to the pair’s devotion to their craft and mutual professional respect, whereas many of the marshals saw soldiering as a means to an end. Massena lacked the vanity of his fellows and, clearly delighted to meet a man whose talents had finally surpassed his own, seemed to bear no grudges. Rarely generous with praise, Wellington respected Massena enormously and complimented him in turn when they discussed the Lines of Torres Vedras: ‘My Lord, you owe me a dinner – for you made me positively starve.’ Wellington laughed. ‘You should give it to me, Marshal, for you prevented me from sleeping.’300 It was the first of several conversations between them in which they discussed each other’s strategies and mused over the fortunes of war during the time when they had been adversaries. Criticised, perhaps unfairly, for his supercilious attitude towards the ranks and the ‘lower orders’, here was Wellington happily discussing high concept strategy with a former sergeant who had risen through the ranks. The fact that both had fought and overcome similar trials appeared to break the social and national barriers between them. It resembled a meeting between old comrades rather than a confrontation between former enemies.

  France was unhappy under the Bourbon restoration and even as a convinced Royalist, Wellington looked disdainfully upon the inept and overindulgent Louis XVIII. By anyone’s reckoning, he was a poor substitute for the man who had dominated the Continent. As the national representatives in Vienna debated their plans to restore the balance of European power, a bombshell disrupted their plans. Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on Elba and landed between Antibes and Caen on 1 March 1815. After only a year of Bourbon misrule he received an ecstatic welcome from the French population as he marched with a tiny force inland. The coastline where he landed was under Massena’s jurisdiction but, considering their recent past, he headed northwards rather than entering Marseilles or Toulon and risk trusting him. He later recalled:

  heard later that the latter wept with joy on hearing of my return, but he told my emissary that the attitude of Marseilles was so hostile that he would have to arrest him to save him from the fury of the mob… although Massena was attached to his old colours, under which he had fought for more than twenty-five years, he would not act rashly.301

  Napoleon was a shrewd judge of men. Whilst contemptuous of the Bourbons, Massena regarded the return of his former master with some trepidation following their differences and, although he had implemented many Republican policies, an Emperor was still a dictator. Massena went through the motions of sending men against the new threat and publicly denounced him to his troops, though without great enthusiasm. Napoleon’s supporters rallied about him and by the time he entered Paris Louis XVIII had fled and he was restored to power on a wave of public support.

  Massena felt that he had honoured his new oath to the monarchy but, now that the Bourbons had abandoned France, he was no longer bound by any obligation. When edicts arrived from the Emperor he obeyed them without hesitation, endeavouring to win over support in the Midi region despite its reputation as Royalist country. Nevertheless, the Emperor, worried about the Var frontier region in his district, decided that he needed a more reliable guardian and appointed Marshal Brune in Massena’s stead. Massena was recalled to Paris, where Napoleon teased him about his conflict of loyalties:

  ‘Well, Massena, so you were going to serve against me…’

  ‘Sire,’ replied Massena, ‘You know quite well that my flag has always been that of my country. If I was mistaken, it was against my wish.’

  ‘Against your wish! Come, come! You would have thrown me back into the sea if I had given you time to collect your troops.’

  ‘Certainly, Sire, so long as I believed that you were not recalled to France by the majority of Frenchmen.’302

  Napoleon had given Massena little cause for personal loyalty over the years and must have realised that his return had placed him in a difficult position. Whilst many of his former marshals gave evasive replies to similar questioning, Massena’s honest response must have been refreshing to a ruler well versed in cynical, self-serving politics. He was not vindictive and indeed offered him an active command in his forthcoming campaign with Europe forming a new coalition against him. However, pleading ill health, Massena refused to accept the appointment and once again the Emperor marched without him. During the campaign of the Hundred Days, which culminated in the Battle of Waterloo, he was also offered the Governorship of Metz, which included the 3rd and 4th Military Districts, but again felt unable to assume the position with his failing constitution.

  After Napoleon’s final defeat, a provisional government was formed and, with the enemy advancing on the capital, Massena was appointed commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Paris. As the Allies approached, he was present at the council of war that debated whether to resist or treat with the enemy. For once, Massena urged peace during the stormy session that followed. The line of the River Seine was defensible but Paris would be subject to a ruinous bombardment, he argued. In any case, following the Emperor’s second abdication, Frenchmen had little cause to fight. The anti-war faction gained the ascendancy and the French Army withdrew over the Loire to allow the Allies to enter the city as negotiations took place. As governor of Paris, Massena performed the difficult task of calming the excited population in a city flooded with Bonapartists, deserters and malcontents. When Louis XVIII entered the capital accompanied by Allied forces there were no major incidents, testifying to Massena’s efficiency in the task.

  In contrast to the Emperor, the Bourbons wished to punish those who had been disloyal and immediately set about hunting them down, despite Allied pleas for restraint. Hundreds were arrested, imprisoned or executed. One of the most notorious cases was that of Marshal Ney who, though sent to capture the ‘Corsican Tyrant,’ had immediately switched allegiance and fought for Napoleon at Waterloo. Charged with treachery in the presence of the enemy, Massena was asked to sit on the courts martial that would try him along with Augereau, Mortier and Moncey. As president of the courts martial, Moncey refused to sit in judgement on his former comrade-in-arms and was replaced by Marshal Jourdan. Massena also wrote to the Minister for War twice asking to be excluded, citing both ill health and bias towards the accused.303 Nevertheless, he was overruled.

  However, Ney solved Massena’s dilemma by insisting on a trial by his fellow lords in the Chamber of Peers and the army gladly passed on the responsibility. This was a bad move on Ney’s part since the army was likely to have absolved him on the grounds that the Allies had issued an amnesty for those who had fought under Napoleon. The Chamber condemned Ney to death and he was executed on 7 December in the Luxembourg Gardens. He had given Massena ample cause for animosity during their frequent and acrimonious disagreements in the Peninsula, but he spurned a chance for revenge and was not among his jurors. After all, no one was more aware of the crisis of allegiance that the Emperor’s return had caused and to hide behind the façade of a show trial was not the soldier’s way to settle a difference.

  Shortly afterwards, Massena resumed his post as Governor of the 8th Military District but his past came back to haunt him. Louis XVIII was determined to avert any repetition of 1815 and wished to remove all those from office whose loyalty was suspect. Many of those who had rallied to
Napoleon were exiled or punished, especially amongst the army. On 1 January 1816 Massena fell victim to this purge when he received an accusatory message on behalf of the king:

  The various letters written by Your Excellency on 3 March to the Minister of War and on 13 April to the Prince of Eckmuhl have furnished proof of the negligence with which Your Excellency received the first reports of Bonaparte’s landing, and the activity which you subsequently displayed in placing under his orders the Military District, the government of which the King had confided to you.304

  The letter ended with his dismissal from his command and the removal of all privileges, including pensions and annuities. This was grossly unfair, as he had been unaware that the Emperor himself had landed for two days and Paris was nearly five hundred miles from Marseilles, making the delivery of a swift warning unlikely. Although he had acted with some duplicity, he had stayed loyal to the monarchy until Louis himself had left the country, which left him no choice. It was a spiteful act by a regime that was not destined to last.

  Yet Massena was not sent into exile and could finally return to his estates and enjoy his retirement. After years of soldiering in the French army he was hardly penniless and still possessed a considerable fortune amounting to around forty million francs, the origins of which were somewhat obscure. However, the rigours of his hard life were catching up with him and he died on 4 April 1817, only one month short of his fifty-ninth birthday. Despite his philandering, his wife Rosalie had remained loyal and was present at Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Massena was buried with full military honours, ten marshals of France attending the funeral. The headstone read simply MASSENA, with the words Rivoli, Zürich, Génes and Essling underneath.

  Many in France mourned his passing, and the English press recorded the death of their former enemy in a host of obituaries. The Gentleman’s Magazine recalled his sobriquet ‘the favourite child of victory’ and in a list of his achievements expounded on what was perhaps his greatest victory: ‘…that memorable campaign of Switzerland, which the battle of Zurich rendered so decisive and so glorious: 70,000 prisoners were the fruits of this campaign, where he had to contend against two great captains, Prince Charles and Marshal Suwarroff.’305 His wife, two sons and a daughter survived him. Even though his final campaign was fought against Britain’s foremost general, the journal conceded that in the Peninsula he: ‘…displayed anew the firmness of his character in the midst of difficulties of all kinds with which he was surrounded and which he had to surmount.’ 306 This was a generous tribute coming from his former enemies.

  Whilst mourned by his contemporaries, he remained a mysterious and enigmatic figure to many. Having come to know the marshal well in Spain, Madame Junot believed that most people only knew him by his reputation as a skilled strategist and tactician, along with his reputed vices for womanising and embezzlement:

  Massena had as much regard for me as I believe he could have for anyone who could be of no service to him. He used often to come and chat with me in the morning, and these visits were very agreeable to me, as they afforded me some insight into the character of a man who seems to have been but imperfectly known to many of his biographers.307

  The trouble with assessing Massena’s character is that, being no lover of the written word, he left no memoirs and the majority of his family papers are of a functional nature. This was the case with many military men, though some of his contemporaries left reams of paperwork, and historians are fortunate in the memoirs of two of his aides, Marbot and Thiebault, both of whom were accomplished diarists.

  Most historians, while acknowledging his undoubted military talent, bemoaned his vices and to some extent exaggerated them. Oman was among them, remarking: ‘Massena was hard, suspicious, and revengeful; an intriguer to the finger-tips, he was always prone to suppose that others were intriguing against himself.’ 308 This assessment seems unjust. In addition to Massena’s single, disastrous foray into politics, he was far from diplomatic in military circles either. Whilst capable of great cunning on the battlefield, his dealings with subordinates in the Peninsula imply that he underestimated the effects of provoking them and he failed to placate them or outmanoeuvre them, being forced to endure their obstinacy and insubordination. Far from being vengeful, he went to great lengths to disassociate himself from Ney’s trial when many would have leapt at the opportunity to avenge the harm that his old rival had done to him.

  Massena had laboured long in the service of France and, though he had a weakness for money and women, had triumphed on many battlefields. During his final exile on the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic, the former Emperor mused over his misfortunes and reminisced over his former glories to an enthralled audience. The cult of Napoleon was far from diminished and, dictating to his entourage, he embellished his legend, belittling his own failings and blaming others for his downfall. Whilst not bitter about Massena’s role in his saga, he rarely mentioned his old rival and when he did so was rarely inclined to be generous:

  Asked by Dr O’Meara to say who was the ablest of his generals, Napoleon replied: ‘That is difficult to say, but it seems to me it may have been Suchet; once it was Massena, but eventually one had to consider him as virtually dead; Suchet, Clausel and Gérard were the best French generals in my opinion.’309

  Massena had fought dozens of successful actions in Italy, notably at Lodi and Arcola, and was second only to Bonaparte as a commander at this time. Later, with the Austrians and Russians driving all before them, he saved the Republic at Zurich and resisted long enough at Genoa to allow Napoleon to win his victory at Marengo. Not only did Napoleon display little gratitude for either feat, but he was also inclined to downplay their relevance, especially in the case of Genoa. On the Danube Massena’s stubborn defence of Aspern village enabled the Emperor to claw his way back from the brink of defeat and his actions at Wagram had contributed to Napoleon’s last decisive victory. Though it was true that his performance in Portugal had not been of this calibre, he was beset by a host of problems and received little help from the over mighty subordinates foisted upon him by his master. At Fuentes he had broken and driven in the Allied flank, a reverse far greater than anything Wellington suffered at Waterloo. Ironically, during a conversation with Croker, his old enemy gave a fairer assessment:

  ’You thought Massena their meilleure tête militaire?’

  ’Yes I did. While he was opposed to me I never could make an attempt on his line but I was sure to find him in force opposite to me. I should say, as far as my own experience goes, that he was their best.’310

  Wellington and Napoleon were the greatest generals of their time, yet they never bestowed praise lightly. For Napoleon, Massena was only as good as his last success and his remarks seem churlish and ungrateful. However, his rival’s honest tribute was a fitting epitaph for the man who had nearly beaten Wellington.

  Chapter 12

  Touring the Peninsula

  Visiting the Iberian Peninsula is fundamental for anyone wishing to gain an insight into the nature of the Peninsular War. It is particularly useful since the conflict was dominated by the constraints of geography and climate, which can only be appreciated in the region itself. Though road atlases and battlefield maps are available, Ordnance Survey maps are very hard to obtain due to lack of demand and security regulations for both countries, so it is wise to plan a trip bearing this in mind. A vehicle is necessary for a tour of this kind and it is advisable to buy plentiful drinking water due to the risk of dehydration in such a hot climate. Sensible headgear and skin protection is also important. The trip recounted below traced a circuitous route of around 500 miles starting from Lisbon, travelling south-west into Spain, following the border to Ciudad Rodrigo and returning to Lisbon tracing the approximate path of Massena’s invasion. It took a week and, though it covers the main sites of interest, there are many more locations that would have been desirable to visit. For example, the battlefields of Sabugal and Vimeiro had to be left out because of time limits. A close
watch on the time should be maintained if you wish to make your hotel before nightfall and allow enough time to locate and examine the sites.

  LISBON – PORTUGAL

  Lisbon is a large city so it is essential to have a street guide, especially with its occasionally confusing one-way system. In contrast to many of the locations on this tour, the traffic is always intense and it is advisable to start early to avoid congestion. Finding a hotel that provides parking is recommended, as most streets are constantly double-parked. Consequently, vans and lorries frequently stop to unload in the middle of the road and drivers should proceed carefully, as minor accidents are commonplace. Most of the buildings are modern, though neglected and derelict structures are common. This, along with the rubbish often piled on the pavements, recalls the experiences of Private Wheeler and others in this city during the nineteenth century. However, people are usually friendly and helpful. A visit to the castle is highly recommended, with its Napoleonic exhibits along with the Porto (fortified wine), which is usually excellent.

  ELVAS – PORTUGAL. BADAJOZ AND ALBUERA – SPAIN

  It is best to drive straight down to the coast and follow the River TeJo (referred to as the Tagus in nineteenth-century accounts) to Lisbon’s large suspension road bridge. The road across the bridge immediately runs into the A2-IP7 motorway, which leads straight to Elvas. Although a string of redoubts was built from Almada to the Costa da Caparica to guard the southern approaches, nothing remains of them as the area is almost entirely built over. The estuary narrows at this point, but it would still have been too wide an obstacle for the French to cross without serious naval support, though they could have mounted a long-range bombardment of Lisbon’s docks from this location.