The Age of Elegance
Page 11
The tidings of these victories set the hearts of the British people rocketing. From the Prince Regent, who hugged the Speaker when he announced the news of Sorauren, to the smock-frocks around the ale-house fire, they were kept that winter in a state of continuous excitement. The harvest had been good, the opening of the European ports had revived trade, and the hopes of twenty years of endurance were being suddenly fulfilled. The guns sounded for triumphs in France, Germany and Italy; day after day the clanging bells of the mails, as they dashed by in a bower of laurel branches, set country folk along the highways cheering. Oxen were roasted in provincial market-squares, transparencies lit on Georgian balconies, and crackers and bonfires in London streets amid the roar of mobs: "the tumult and train-oil and transparent flippancies," wrote the scornful Byron, "and all the noise and nonsense of victory!" On October 18th a chaise-and-four with a flag waving from the window dashed on to the Horse Guards Parade with the news of Wellington's crossing of the Bidassoa; a fortnight later the Tower salvoes proclaimed the victory of Leipzig.2 Boney, men told one another, was back on the Rhine; his routed army, dripping with typhus, was crawling like a dying beast from the Europe it had ravaged. On November 4th the Allied Sovereigns entered Frankfurt; a few days
1 "They always met us like lions, but in the end it was like hares." Bell, I, 151.
2 Moore, Byron, 187-8, 202-5; Ashton, 1,174-5,185-7; Festing, 192; Croker, I, 53; Colchester, II, 454-60; Granville, II, 482-3, 492; Scott, III, 366, 389; Gomm, 336-8; Ham, 188; Auckland, IV, 394-5; Austen, 243-4; Dudley, 223; Haydon, I, 239.
later German troops reached the Rhine, kneeling with joy at the sight. Even the Dutch, who had placidly borne the conqueror's yoke for twenty years, caught the infection and drove the feeble French garrisons from their cities with shouts of "Orange Boven!" A Prussian army stormed Arnhem, liberating Cossacks clattered over the cobbles of Amsterdam, and the Guards, repeating their initiating act of twenty-one years earlier, marched through cheering streets to embark for Holland. Five days later the old Prince of Orange, at the invitation of his people, sailed in a British seventy-four from the shores which had sheltered him for a generation. It was like the final scene in a play: the hero was almost weighed down with fortune's favours.
Yet the war was not over. Though the road behind stank with half-buried corpses and only a tenth of the army that had set out in the spring recrossed the Rhine, Napoleon was still set on conquest. He would not recall a garrison from Germany or Italy for the defence of France. When on the day before the battle of the Nivelle the Allied Sovereigns from Frankfurt offered him the "natural frontiers" of Rhine, Alps and Pyrenees, he refused to consider such humiliating terms. "The word peace is ever in my ears," he told his Council of State, "when all around should echo with the cry, War! Peace! No peace till Munich is in flames!" The Corps Legislatif, who petitioned him to declare that he was only fighting for the independence of France, were denounced as traitors in the pay of England. Regardless of the cost, the Emperor meant to win back all he had lost. He might lose his throne, he assured Metternich, but he would bury the world in its ruins.
Everything, therefore, depended on the hunters holding together. In their failure to do so, as Napoleon knew, lay his one hope. Three times a European Coalition had dissolved before him; once again divisions in the victors' councils might save him. Already they were quarrelling; the homesick Russian generals wished to turn back; the Prussians, avid for loot, to go on; the Austrians, conscious of dynastic ties and afraid both of Russia and Prussia, to temporise. Even after Napoleon had rejected their terms the statesmen of Austria still continued, over his head, to offer the French people the Rhine frontier—"an extent of territory," they pointed out, "such as France has never had under her ancient kings."
It was England who cemented Europe's wavering purpose. She was already underwriting the Grand Alliance by maintaining nearly a quarter of a million Russian, Austrian and Prussian troops. She now reminded those who were taking her subsidies of the purpose for which they had been granted. On November 15th, before the news of Wellington's invasion of France had reached him, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, informed the British representative at Vienna that England would consent to no peace that did not give solid securities for a permanent settlement. Though for the sake of one prepared to surrender the greater part of her colonial conquests, she demanded the independence of Holland, Spain and Portugal, the demilitarisation of Antwerp and the mouth of the Scheldt, and the freedom of the seas. To ensure these the Foreign Secretary set out for Allied headquarters in southern Germany. He left London in the last week of the year in a dense fog, with men walking before the horses' heads carrying flambeaux. "We have now the bull close-pinioned between us," he wrote, "and if either of us let go our hold till we render him harmless, we shall deserve to surfer for it."'
Long before Castlereagh, travelling across a Continent gripped by frost, reached his destination, Wellington had resumed his advance. The Pyrenean roads were sodden with rain, but on December 9th, having learnt of Napoleon's losses at Leipzig, he struck once more. To break out of the restricted triangle between the mountains and the Lower Adour and Nive, he threw four of his eight divisions under Hill across the latter. It was a daring move, for until the flooded river could be bridged, it enabled Soult, whose force was concentrated round Bayonne, to hit back with superior numbers at either half of the British army. Yet Wellington, who never took risks without weighing them, felt complete confidence in his men's ability to beat off any assault the French might make.
The event proved him right. For though Soult with nearly 50,000 troops attacked, first Hope's 30,000 between the sea and the Nive on December 10th and nth, and then Hill's 14,000 on the right bank of the Nive at St. Pierre on the 13 th, he was held in both cases until the arrival of Wellington's reserves. In the second battle the British were nearly overwhelmed; one nervous colonel, fresh from England, withdrew his indignant men from the slaughter: another—a braggart —was found behind the lines attending to the wounded. But the
1 Castlereagh, IX, 41.
rank and file and rosy-faced "Farmer" Hill, their commander, rose gloriously to the occasion; it was almost the only occasion the latter had ever been heard to swear. For three hours the "thin red line of old bricks" stood between the cheering French columns and a victory that seemed at last within their grasp; "dead or alive," cried Colonel Brown of the Gloucesters, "we must hold our ground." And they did. The field was so thickly strewn with corpses that Wellington said afterwards that he had never seen its like. General William Stewart of Albuera fame—"auld grog Willie," as the men called him—had every member of his staff struck down: "a shell, sir, very-animating!" he remarked as one exploded at his feet, and went on with his conversation. The battle ended with a counter-attack by the 92nd Highlanders, who went into the fight with tossing plumes and a piper with a broken leg playing "Hey! Johnny Cope." "This," wrote Bell, recalling the blue bonnets' advance, "was to understand war." As the French began to stream back to Bayonne, the victors threw up their caps and gave "a long, thrilling cheer."1
Having established himself on the east bank of the Nive, a new prospect opened before Wellington. By remaining in his entrenched camp at Bayonne, the enemy could still bar his road to Bordeaux and the North, but only at the expense of leaving unguarded a broad and fertile expanse of France stretching eastwards for more than two hundred miles. On this Soult depended not only for his supplies—for the country north of Bayonne was mainly sand and wood—but for his communications with Suchet, who was still trying to hold the Catalonian fortresses.
Before he could advance Wellington had to win a victory of another kind over his own army. For, if it was to retain numerical superiority in the field, he could spare no troops to hold down territory in his rear. While the midwinter rains temporarily bogged down the armies, he devoted himself to winning the goodwill of the civilian population. In this he was helped by his opponents who, after twenty years of pillage, rape and arson abro
ad, could not deny themselves these pleasures in their homeland. This had the effect of making the invaders appear as liberators instead of conquerors. There was a little difficulty at first in imposing this conception on them; one private, tried and hanged for a rape, explained
1 Bell, I, 126-41; Gomm, 331; Larpent, II, 223; Gronow, I, 19-21; Fortescue, DC, 469-72; Oman, VII, 223-81.
that, as he was now in France, he thought it must be in order. Most of the Spaniards had to be sent home; as Wellington told their commander, he had not sacrificed thousands of men merely to enable the survivors to rob the French. Their British comrades, who included a liberal proportion of gaolbirds,1 he treated in his usual realist way by sending a strong force of military police up and down the columns with orders to string up on the spot every man found pilfering. After a few examples there was no more plundering.
Such a manner of making war much astonished the French. They could scarcely believe their eyes; an innkeeper veteran of Napoleon's Italian campaigns was speechless when Brigadier Barnard of the Light Division asked him how much he owed for his dinner. Having long repudiated the idea of gentility, the people of south-western France found themselves quartering an army of gentlemen. It was worth a dozen victories to the Allies. The British Commander-in-Chief even invited the maires of the towns where he stayed to his table: a thing undreamt of in a French Revolutionary general. Those who had fled came flocking back to their homes: the British, it was said, only waged war against men with arms in their hands. What was more, they paid for all they needed. Before long the inhabitants were coining money; fowls were selling at 14s. a-piece and turkeys at 3os. The Commissariat was inundated with cattle, grain and fodder. Even bankers offered the British cash and credit. If this, wrote an English officer, was what making war in an enemy country was like, he never wished to campaign in a friendly one again.
This wise humanity increased the size of Wellington's striking force by at least two divisions. Lines-of-communications troops were rendered needless. Men and supplies could travel about the country unescorted, while the wounded could be billeted and nursed in French households. In vain Soult circulated proclamations exhorting the people to raise partisan bands; they declined to do anything so unprofitable. The only guerrilleros were disgruntled conscripts who took to the hills and fought, not the British, but the Emperor's recruiting officers. Instead, the people of Aquitaine looked on their nice, orderly conquerors as harbingers of peace and prosperity who
1 When Wellington, having occasion to coin money for the occupied territories, called for a return of professional forgers, he was supplied with enough to man a mint. Oman, VII, 289. See idem, VII, 215-19'Durwood, XI, 288-9, 296, 306; Larpent, II. 5,106-7,161, 164-5,167, 226; HI, 36, 68; Gronow, 1,12-13; Bell, I, 131-3.153J Smith, 1,150; Simmons, 329; Bessborough, 237-8; George Napier, 251-2; Fortescue, IX, 443; Schaumann, 394-5.
had come to put an end to conscriptions and war taxes. Some even expressed a wish to be governed by them permanently.1
By the second week in January, Wellington knew that his fears of a premature peace were groundless and that the Austrians, Russians and Prussians had crossed the Rhine and invaded France. He did not approve of their dispersed line of advance in Napoleon's presence—a system, he said, on which he would not have marched a corporal's guard: his own advice would have been to "run in upon him" by a concentrated drive on Paris. None the less, he was resolved to give them what support he could, and on February 12th, after a week's sunshine had dried the roads, resumed his offensive. Napoleon had drawn off 14,000 of Soult's men for his own campaign in the north, so offsetting the Spanish divisions that had had to be left behind the frontier. As usual, the Marshal, facing south across the Adour and digging himself in, had taken up too wide a front. This gave Wellington the initiative. Dividing his army, he left 30,000 men under Sir John Hope in front of Bayonne and struck eastwards into the interior with the remaining 45,500. By doing so he caused the defensive-minded Soult to suppose that the line of the Adour was about to be attacked at its eastern end and to draw away his reserves from Bayonne.
Instead, however, of turning north against the line of the Adour, Wellington continued his eastward march. The country east of the Nive was an open plateau, crossed by five swift Pyrenean rivers— the Joyeuse, Bidouze, Saison, Gave d'Oloron and Gave de Pau— running from south to north and joining the Adour in its long westward reach above Bayonne. By using his slight superiority in numbers to maintain a strong flanking column under Hill to the south, Wellington turned the defence lines of each river without a fight and compelled the French to fall back ever farther eastwards. As was his wont, he guarded against a counter-blow by keeping a strong reserve under his own command behind his marching columns. Then, having by February 19th driven Soult's field army as far east as the Gave d'Oloron, forty miles from Bayonne, he
1 Larpent, I, 42; see idem, II, 181, 211, 221-2, 231; in, 30, 35, 44, 76-7, 90-1; George Napier, 241-2; Simmons, 342; Lynedoch, 610-11; Oman, VII, 286, 291-2, 390; Fortescue, X, 1819; Smith, I, 166; Bell, I, 150-1; Gronow, I, 12; Simmons, 335; Schaumann, 402; Bessborough, 237-8.
halted and, while his opponent tried to anticipate his next move, proceeded to do the one thing he was not expecting. On the 23rd, instead of attempting to cross the Adour above Bayonne, he threw Hope's 18,000 men across it at its broadest point between the fortress and the sea.
Wellington had returned to St.-Jean-de-Luz on the 19th to supervise this delicate operation. But the gunboats which were to have bridged the estuary being delayed by a Biscay gale, he had been forced to return to his main army on the Gave d'Oloron, leaving the task to Sir John Hope. Undeterred by the continuance of the gale and the non-appearance of the flotilla, this gallant Scotsman succeeded on the morning of the 23 rd in shipping five companies of the Guards and two of the 60th in rowing boats to the north bank of the Adour. Here they maintained their position under the noses of 14,000 Frenchmen. In this feat they received unexpected help from a battery of the new Congreve rockets which, at the instance of the Prince Regent, had arrived from England, and about which, on account of their erratic aim, both Wellington and the Army had been very scornful.1 The frightful noise they made and their capacity for setting things on fire kept the French from investigating the crossing too closely. By the evening of the 24th, when the British naval vessels at last forced the bar and came up the river, Hope had contrived to get the bulk of the Guards Division across. By the 26th the bridge of boats was complete and 15,000 British troops were beyond the Adour encircling Bayonne and its garrison.
On the day the fortress was invested—February 27th—Wellington, sixty miles away, struck at Soult on the Gave de Pau, the last river line that barred his advance into the central plain of southern France. Having been driven from the Gave d'Oloron by yet another march of Hill's flanking column, the Marshal had concentrated 36,000 men to dispute the crossing at Orthez. Though the attacking force only numbered 7000 more, Wellington again divided it, sending two of his seven divisions to cross the river above the town and threaten the French line of retreat. Since his victories on the Nive he no longer feared Soult's counter-attacks. He knew that the latter lacked resolution and his men fighting spirit: he knew, too, of what his own army was capable.
1 "I don't want to set fire to any town and I don't know any other use of rockets." Wellington, Dispatches. See also Larpent, II, 256-8; Fortescue, IX, 485.
The battle took place, not in front of the town, where the river was impassable, but to the west of it, where the British left wing under Beresford had crossed on the previous day while the French cavalry, expecting a repetition of Hill's out-flanking movement, had been watching the fords on the other side of Orthez. Souk's position was one of great natural strength, not dissimilar to those from which Wellington had repulsed so many attacks in the past. But, instead of, like Wellington, keeping a strong reserve in hand, and using it for counter-blows, he hoarded it to cover a withdrawal. Retreat from the start was his dominating idea. Throughout the si
x hours' fight the initiative remained with the British, who, even after their first assault had failed, were able to renew it elsewhere without interference. The day's crowning achievement was an attack by the ist Battalion of the 52nd Light Infantry, which at a critical moment deployed and, supported by a cloud of sharpshooters, drove with review precision up a bullet-swept height; Harry Smith thought it the most majestic advance he had ever seen. The battle ended, as Wellington had reckoned when he sent Hill's two divisions on a flanking march against Soult's communications,1 with the French scurrying to the bridge of Sault, ten miles to the north-east. Had the country been favourable for cavalry or had the British commander followed up more vigorously—he had been slightly wounded by a spent bullet—the French might have suffered major disaster. As it was, their losses were over 4000, including 1350 prisoners: casualties almost double those of the attackers. During their retreat they lost as many more from desertion.
Two days before the battle of Orthez, five hundred miles away in the little town of Bar-sur-Aube, the British Foreign Secretary conferred with the representatives of his country's allies—the Czar of Russia, Prince Hardenberg of Prussia, Prince Metternich, and the Austrian Commander-in-Chief, Prince Schwarzenberg. At that moment Napoleon, flushed with victory, was a few hours' march away at Troyes, which his troops had just recaptured. Yet, a fortnight before, the Allies, after advancing two hundred and fifty miles in a