1 Scott, III, 451. See idem, 428-9, 441; De Selincourt, 592-4; Moore, Byron, 227, 334; Two Duchesses, 386-7; Colchester, II, 482; Broughton, I, 87, 103-5; Haydon, I, 239; Lord Coleridge, 212; Gaussen, 317; Scott, III, 427-9; Ashton, I, 251-3; Wilberforce, 395; Auckland, IV, 413; Robinson, 429.
he could hope to find. Wellington would have preferred to have advanced northwards from Bordeaux through the traditionally royalist Bocage to the Loire, so carrying the war which he had begun on the circumference of Napoleons empire to its heart. By doing so and making Nantes his base, he would have drawn, as in his march to the Bay of Biscay in the previous summer, towards his seaborne supplies.1 But with the reinforcements he should have received sent by the Cabinet to besiege fortresses in Holland, he had not the men both to advance towards the Loire and contain Soult in the east. The latter might at any time be joined by Suchet who, at last, was withdrawing from Catalonia; and, though the two Marshals hated each other, they would together constitute a formidable force.
As Wellington also feared that Napoleon might try to prolong the war by marching south to join his last two armies, and, as the capture of Toulouse might precipitate a Royalist rising throughout Languedoc, he resolved to drive Soult out of the town. It involved a grave risk, for he was in an enemy country far from his base, only slightly superior in numbers, and without any siege-train. Before he could even reach the city and attack its eastern and only superable side, he had to move the bulk of his troops across the Garonne— swollen by floods to a width of over 500 feet. "How the devil," asked the cheery Patlanders, "are we to get over that big strame of a river to leather them vagabones out o' that!"
It proved an operation of great difficulty. The troops had to trudge barefooted through knee-deep clay; at one point on the road six oxen and four horses, in addition to its own six mules, had to be fastened to Wellington's travelling carriage to drag it through the quagmires. The first attempt to cross the river below Toulouse failed owing to the inadequacy of the pontoon bridge; a second, made by Hill's corps a mile lower down, was abandoned owing to the state of the roads. But Wellington, with the resilience that always came to his aid when thwarted, chose a new crossing-place above the town, withdrew Hill's troops, and on the stormy night of April 4th renewed his attempt. While the operation was only half completed the bridge was broken by floods, and for three days 18,000 British troops under Beresford were isolated and exposed to the attack of more than double their numbers. Yet Soult refused to attack. "You do not know what stuff two British divisions are made
1 See his conversation in Stanhope, 21.
of," he is reported to have said; "they would not be conquered so long as there was a man left to stand." Instead, he continued to dig himself in.
On three sides, where the walls were surrounded by water defences, Toulouse was impregnable. Its weakness lay in a 600-foot ridge named Mont Rave to the east from which a besieger's artillery could dominate the city. It was this that Soult had been so busy fortifying. Here, behind his field-works, he had concentrated nearly half his 42,000 troops on a two-and-a-half-mile front, with a strong reserve behind. As Toulouse was the chief magazine of southern France, he had been able to re-equip them with plentiful arms and ammunition. In artillery he out-gunned the British—a fortnight's march from their nearest base—by two to one. Thus, with 49,000 troops—only 7000 more than the defenders—Wellington had to attack a fortified city from the side farthest from his communications and with a flooded river dividing his army. His own headquarters at Grenade were guarded by less than twenty men with a French garrison at Montauban only an hour's ride away.
Yet he never hesitated. His moral ascendancy over the enemy was now complete. As one of his officers put it, six years of almost uninterrupted success had engrafted a seasoned confidence into his soldiers that made them invincible. Leaving sufficient forces to contain the defenders round the city's circumference and to act as a reserve, Wellington at dawn on April 10th—Easter Day—moved up two British and two Spanish divisions against the eastern heights. To reach their assault stations at the south end of the ridge the British had to march, or rather flounder, through three miles of swamp under heavy fire from Mont Rave, closely crossing the enemy's front with an unfordable river behind them. There was only one thing to prevent Soult descending from the hill to destroy them: his fear, founded on repeated experience, of what would happen if he did.
Before Beresford's British divisions could deploy, the Spaniards, who had begged to be allowed to share in the glory of the day, rashly attempted to storm the northern end of the ridge without waiting for orders. During the ensuing rout, as Wellington hastily plugged the gap in his line with the Light Division, he remarked that he had never before seen ten thousand men running a race. Their absence till they could be re-formed for another attack gave Soult
BATTLE OF TOULOUSE
two hours to complete his preparations for dealing with the British, who were still plodding across his front through the marshes. Bringing up his reserve to the south end of the ridge, he concealed it in almost Wellingtonian fashion behind the skyline, ready to fall on Cole's 4th Division—the men of Albuera—as they came toiling in a thin, extended line up the slope. But instead of driving them in rout down the hill, Soult's charging columns were stopped dead in their course. Closing their ranks and forming square on either flank, the English regiments, though taken by surprise, riddled their assailants with volley after volley. The French divisional commander fell pierced by three bullets; his men, as the redcoats resumed their advance, fled up the hill. Their panic spread to the garrison of the Sypiere redoubt on the summit. Within a few minutes the British were in possession of the southern crest of the ridge.
During the remainder of the day Beresford's two divisions, exploiting their success, fought their way northwards along the ridge, enfilading successive redoubts. Though the French fought fiercely back, repeatedly counter-attacking, the issue was never in doubt. The battle ended with a magnificent charge by General Pack's 42nd and 79th Highlanders with the 91st in support. By five o'clock, twelve hours after the first shot, the whole ridge was in British hands. Though the guns had still to be brought up, Toulouse was at Wellington's mercy. Of the attackers 4568 had fallen, to the French 3236, the Black Watch alone losing more than half and the Camerons nearly half their strength. Four hundred of the casualties were needlessly contributed by Picton, who, haunted by the memories of his achievement at Badajoz, disobeyed his orders and converted a sham diversion against the city's water defences into a real attack.1
On the following evening Soult began the evacuation of the city, withdrawing southwards, to the immense relief of its inhabitants, to join Suchet along the only road remaining open. He left behind 1600 wounded and half his guns. Next day Wellington entered amid scenes of, to him, rather distasteful jubilation. When at dinner the leading royalists of the place hailed him as the Liberator of Spain, France and Europe, he bowed shortly and called for coffee. His troops, on the other hand, were charmed with their reception as they marched in their tattered coats through the city, their colours flying, drums beating, and the ladies waving to them from the balconies and throwing garlands. They supposed, after their victory, that they were now to enjoy this garden of Eden with its flowers and pretty girls. A smirking aide-de-camp in a cocked-hat soon undeceived them, and by nightfall they were marching along the Carcassone road after the old familiar stink of tobacco and onions. It appeared that, having boxed them round the compass, they had now to chase the parlez-vous back to Spain.
But that evening Colonel Frederick Ponsonby of the 12th Light
1 The account of the battle is based on Oman, VII, 465-95; Fortescue, X, 79-80; and a brilliant article by Colonel Alfred Burne, The Enigma of Toulouse, in The Army Quarterly for January, 1927. See also Lapene, 370-85; Bell, I, 164-9; Seaton, 205; George Napier, 257-9; Gurwood; Vidal de la Blache, UEvacuation de I'Espagne et Vinvasion dans le midi
Dragoons galloped into the town with dispatches from Bordeaux.
He found Wellington in his lodgings pulling on his boots. "Ay, I thought so," he said, as Ponsonby broke the news, "I knew we should have peace." "Napoleon has abdicated." "You don't say so, upon my honour. Hurrah!" And, spinning on his heel, the British Commander-in-Chief snapped his fingers.1
Yet even now it was not quite over. After a day or two of argument, Soult laid down his arms. His rival, Suchet, had already done so. But at Bayonne the Governor decided to fight on. On the night of April 13 th, three days after the battle of Toulouse, General James Hay, going the round of the besieging trenches, told his men that the war was finished and that they would soon be home with their wives and sweethearts. Two hours later he was dead, slain with several hundred British and French soldiers after a sortie as wanton as it was useless. Among those taken prisoner was the British commander, Sir John Hope, whose love of fighting drew him into the trenches as soon as firing began. Not till April 26th did the French Governor condescend to do like the rest of the world and make peace.
Thereafter the British army took its ease. The cavalry, by arrangement with the new Bourbon Government, rode home across France to Boulogne and Calais, feasting off champagne at a shilling a bottle and delighting in a countryside unravaged by war. The infantry marched to Bordeaux to await transportation to England or America, where war with the United States was still continuing. As the troops tramped the sunny roads of southern France or glided in barges down the silver stream, a new world of peace seemed to be opening before them and mankind: a world in which there should be no more parades and piquets, no more midnight alerts, no more broken bones, no more slaying and being slain. After hard commons for so long they found it difficult to accustom themselves to down beds and no danger; an officer of the Rifles, who had never lost a piquet in six years' campaigning, woke in a cold sweat in his chateau bed with dreams of sentries unposted and lines surprised.2
Here at the camp of Blanquefort, among fruit, flowers, wines and friendly people, the veterans who had begun the liberation of Europe bade farewell to one another and, as an army, dissolved. Their skill and comradeship and hard-won experience were no longer needed.
1 Broughton, I, 189-00. See Oman, VII, 498; Bell, 1,170; Larpent, m, 137; Fortescue, X, 91. 2 Smith, I, 189-90; Costello, 183, 186; Bell, I, 173-4.
They left behind the bones of their companions and the memory of their victories, of their invincible endurance in adversity and their magnanimity and good conduct in triumph. When the time came for them to sail, the host of one subaltern—a worthy Bordeaux merchant—took his bronzed, youthful lodger aside and, with tears in his eyes, offered to lend him any money he might need, adding that he had every confidence in the word of an Englishman, and expressing a desire that their two countries might henceforward live together in peace. Then he accompanied him to the ship, kissed him on both cheeks and parted from him for ever.1
1 Bell, I, 185-7.
CHAPTER FIVE
Triumphant Island
"For States, as for individuals, true prosperity consists, not in acquiring or invading the domains of others, but in making the best of one's own."
Talleyrand
PART I
The Court of Prince Florizel
"The papers have told you, no doubt, of the fusses, The fetes and the gapings to get at those Russes, Of his Majesty's suite up from coachman to Hetman And what dignity decks the fat face of the great man."
Byron
O
N June 6th, 1814, six weeks after the last shot was fired, the Czar Alexander and his ally, the King of Prussia, arrived at Boulogne. They were accompanied by the ruling princes, statesmen and generals of the greater part of Europe. Among them were the Chancellor of the Austrian Empire, Prince Metternich, the hero of the hour, Field Marshal von Blücher, the snowy-haired Chancellor of Prussia, Prince Hardenberg, and his colleague, the famous scholar, von Humboldt, the still more famous Hetman Platoff of the Don Cossacks, the young royal princes of Prussia—boys in years but veterans in battle1—and the rulers or heirs of half a dozen German kingdoms and principalities. They were bound for England—the heart of the coalition which had overthrown the revolutionary dictatorship of Europe. It was a spontaneous act of homage to the nation which, in De Quincey's words, had for twenty years "put a soul into the resistance to Napoleon, wherever and in whatever corner manifested,,, to "the moral grandeur which had yielded nothing to fear, no tiling to despondency," and the resources which had enabled her to support the united exertions of Christendom.2
1 One of whom, more than half a century later, was to be proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles.
2 De Quincey, III, 62-3.
Before the travellers lay the sea and the harbour where ten years earlier Napoleon had tried to embark his army for the expedition which was to have completed his conquest of the world. Now the barges he had built were mouldering at their moorings, the harbour-works silted up with sand, and he himself, caged in the little Mediterranean island of Elba, a poor pensioner of those he had once controlled. Close to the harbour lay one of the floating castles with which England's sailors, from their remote haunts of waves and clouds, had halted his armies. Even in that far, dark hour her admirals had predicted that one day the power they wielded would free the world from slavery.
At midday the sovereigns were received on board H.M.S. Impregnable by the King of England's sailor son, the Duke of Clarence. Around him were the symbols of his country's strength: the masts and yards with their forest of ropes, the scrubbed decks and spotless brass work, the triple lines of guns, the smart, self-assured officers and gaunt, taut-buttocked tars in blue jackets, checked shirts and bell-bottomed trousers, moving so resiliently that they seemed, like the escorting frigates, part of the sea itself. The piping of whistles, the trampling of feet, the clanking and creaking of pulleys, the hammering of the waves and the smell of tar and brine were new to the lords of the Continent. So was the ship's uneasy motion.
At six o'clock on the same evening, after waiting for two hours for the tide under the white cliffs, the kings and captains went ashore among the bathing boxes, piers and marine terraces of Dover. Crowds thronged the beaches, and the Scots Greys and three of the most famous regiments in the British Army—the 43rd, 52nd and 95th —were waiting on the quayside. The little tough light-infantrymen, who had fought the French out of every stony acre from the Tagus to the Garonne, saw walking swiftly down their ranks a tall, moonfaced potentate in a short-skirted, bottle-green uniform, a high gold collar, and a tunic so padded and laced that his arms hung down like a doll's beneath his gilded epaulettes. Behind, at a respectful distance, came the King of Prussia—a gaunt, melancholy, wall-eyed man, with high cheekbones and closely-cropped hair, wearing top-boots and white pantaloons. He, too, had a surprisingly short waist and showed, in an uncompromising, soldier-like way, a good deal of bottom. After them came the Prussian princes—fine erect lads with blond hair and rosy faces—and a clinking cavalcade of generals with whiskers, epaulettes, spurs and feathered hats.
Next morning they set out for the capital. As their carriages bowled along the fine metalled highways, they were able to see something of England's wealth with their own eyes: the emerald downs with their immense flocks of sheep, the fat meadows and cattle, the yeoman farms and orchards; the weather-boarded cottages smothered in flowers; the painted hay-wains with straked wheels and tilted bows; the country houses with classical facades and cool, creeper-framed windows set among lawns and trees. In this thriving countryside, with its corn-mills and hop-yards, ancient barns and churches, neat hedgerows and chestnut coppices merging into blue horizons, everything seemed cared for down to the minutest blade of grass. To the Czar, fresh from scenes of destruction, it all looked like a garden.1
Five hours after leaving Dover the travellers reached the outskirts of London. They saw from the top of Shooter's Hill a canopy of vapour on the eastern horizon, and then, as the low-slung landaus, with their varnished, panelled sides, sped across Blackheath, the stately hospital of Greenwich r
ising among woods, the windmills and straggling hedgerows of the Isle of Dogs, and, winding in and out of trees, a river of masts. And beyond, under the green hills of Highgate and Hampstead,
"a mighty mass of brick and smoke . . . A wilderness of steeples peeping On tiptoe through their sea-green canopy; A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap crown On a fool's head—and there is London Town!"
The people of the capital were wildly excited. They had been waiting for this for twenty years. There was nothing narrow or ungenerous in their rejoicing. For having fought so long to save their own liberties, they had been thrilled when the princes and peoples of the Continent had taken up arms by their side. They had forgotten all that had gone before: the defeats, the betrayals, the abuse, the collaboration with the foe. "The Emperor of Russia," wrote an
1 Colchester, II, 502. For some contemporary accounts of the dazzling appearance of rural
g
rosperity which England presented to foreign visitors, see Bury, I, 242; Lord Coleridge, 223-4; Simond, I, 3.10, 14,16,146-7, 201-2, 206; II, 86, 100, 224,228, 235, 246, 254, 283; Leigh Hunt, Autobiography, II, 154: Bamford, I, 94; Lady Shelley, I, 1-3; Washington Irving, Sketch Book; Don Juan, Canto X; Wansey, 115.
English lady, "is my hero, and everybody's hero!" Since the retreat from Moscow she and her compatriots had lost all sense of proportion about the northern heroes who had chased their enemies across Europe. The first Cossack to appear in London had been followed by cheering thousands and given three-times-three by the Lord Mayor on the steps of the Royal Exchange. The almost hysterical enthusiasm with which everything that had happened was now attributed to Russia caused the Czar's sister, who was not given to understating Russian achievements, to reply impetuously: "Oh, no! the emancipation of Europe is owing to the steady and persevering conduct of this great and happy country! To this country Europe owes its deliverance!"1
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