by Roger Knight
Intelligence, as well as naval supremacy, played a vital part in the Peninsular War. Tactically the British often had the advantage, informed by a network of sympathetic informers behind enemy lines. The breaking of Napoleon’s codes by Major George Scovell of the 57th Regiment of Foot gave Wellington an insight into the emperor’s plans and, more often, into the relationships between the bickering marshals who commanded the French armies.42 The hubs of these networks were the British ambassador in Lisbon, Sir Charles Stuart, and the ambassador in Madrid, Henry Wellesley, the fourth of the Wellesley brothers to play a major part in this war. The two diplomats cooperated closely with each other, running networks of agents the length and breadth of the Peninsula. The timeliness of intelligence was a problem over the great distances involved, but the navy both speeded and contributed to the process.43 Its effectiveness and accuracy naturally varied from officer to officer. Off Cádiz, Vice-Admiral Richard Goodwin Keats sent reliable assessments to Wellington, while Sir Home Popham, ‘given a choice between conflicting reports, chose that which most agreed with his estimation, or offered the most appealing prospects’.44 In spite of such flaws, this transmission of intelligence was a significant advantage to Wellington; the French had nothing like it.45
The other operational British advantage was the supply and provisioning system. Unlike the French, who were an army of occupation and requisitioned without payment, British troops were under orders to pay for food and wine. The French armies had to disperse to find food and expended enormous effort in doing so, while foraging parties were always under threat of ambush from bands of guerillas. To some extent, Wellington’s army also had to live off the land, for it could not depend only upon provisions from Britain; the pace of advance would have been constrained by the punctuality and volume of supplies from the sea. Plentiful supply engendered discipline, although British troops ran riot on occasion (the plunder and rape after the storming of Badajoz in April 1812 or after the siege of San Sebastián in September 1813 were dramatic, and shocked the officers who tried and failed to bring their men under control). Unsurprisingly, the British supply system was not perfect, especially at times of rapid advance: for instance, officers received tents only in 1811, and the enlisted men not until 1813.46 When the British Army reached French territory, one officer recalled that ‘Numbers of men were marching barefooted, and in vain did the captains of companies ride on before the line of march to the various towns in our route in order to purchase a supply of these articles, which they uniformly found had been put in requisition by the French.’47
Thus local flour, meat and fresh vegetables were essential to the British Army, and had to be purchased from Portuguese and Spanish farmers, for whom the preferred means of payment was the Spanish dollar. The shortage of specie caused Wellington and the politicians in London particular concern. By special arrangement with the Spanish authorities, Commissary Drummond went to Lima in Peru to purchase $3 million, but the main source of specie during these years was the traders of Lisbon. The paymaster-general’s accounts record a total of £6,066,021 spent in the Peninsula during 1810, most of which was raised by bills of exchange.48 Sooner or later, these bills would be redeemed in London. The lack of specie in the army was alleviated to some extent by a small number of British merchants who travelled up from Gibraltar through the Spanish countryside, purchasing British bills at a discount in return for silver, ensuring the Portuguese and Spanish farmers received cash, albeit at a lower price, for their produce; the traders would cash their bills in Lisbon at full value to realize their profit. Wellington did not like these merchants, and called them ‘sharks’, but they were essential to the local purchase system.49 The situation improved by 1813, when the supply of gold and silver from Britain began to flow in greater quantity, helped by Rothschild’s efforts.50
This crude credit system ensured the continuity of supply, as well as the cooperation of the Spanish populace, which was wearing very thin some time before the end of the war. Indiscipline and theft by British troops infuriated the Spanish. As the army moved towards the French border, and the threat from the French Army decreased, relations between the British and the Spanish deteriorated dangerously. After the taking of San Sebastián on the coast, mass pillaging led to the burning of the town, and subsequently to accusations from the local junta that this had been deliberate in order to maintain British trading supremacy. The Spanish authorities retaliated by withholding cooperation and hindering British supplies: imports were searched for contraband and delayed on their journey; the transport of supplies through the streets of Bilbao was banned because of damage caused to the streets by the wagons; Santander was quarantined because of supposed sickness. When the Allied armies invaded France in October 1813, which should have been a high point in the Anglo-Spanish alliance, violence erupted between British and Spanish soldiers.51
Yet, hard as Wellington’s army had to fight as it approached French soil, it paled beside the immense, desperate conflict taking place in Germany, as the armies of Russia, Austria and Prussia, now acting together, pursued Napoleon. The campaign culminated in the three-day Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, the ‘Battle of the Nations’, when a total of half a million soldiers were involved on both sides, the largest battle ever fought to that date. The Allies had a significant advantage in numbers. The French defended the city of Leipzig but could not hold off three converging Allied armies. Total casualties are likely to have been in the region of 100,000 men. The Allies estimated their losses at 52,000 killed, of whom 22,000 were Russian. Napoleon retreated with only 70,000 effective troops, followed by 30,000 unarmed stragglers, and he had to abandon 300 guns and 900 ammunition wagons.52 Napoleon and his much diminished army retreated across the Rhine into France on 2 November 1813.
Leipzig was not ransacked after the battle, for Tsar Alexander and the king of Prussia, who were present, prohibited plundering, and the Allied armies were in a state of high discipline. The aftermath of this great battle was nonetheless shocking. Removing the wounded and the dead from the battlefields around Leipzig took two weeks, a task undertaken by prisoners of war and the local civilians, who were conscripted into the task. It was almost a year before most of the sick and wounded soldiers left the area. The country was devastated, and it took years for the surrounding villages destroyed in the fighting to be rebuilt. Civilian starvation and exhaustion led to epidemics of typhus and dysentery: for some months after the battle in what was left of the city 700 to 800 a week fell ill with these diseases. In all, 13,500 citizens were infected with typhus; 2,700 of them died. This sort of horror was never visited upon the citizens of Britain.53 Thus the Continental land war against Napoleonic France was essentially settled. By the end of 1813 the Allies occupied Germany east of the Rhine, and the 1814 campaign saw the invasion of France, which started in the winter in order to pre-empt Napoleon’s efforts to reconstitute his army again. By the end of January the Allies had occupied a large swathe of northern France, ensuring that the area’s manpower and food would not be available to Napoleon. He had some late success in fierce fighting and impressive manoeuvring north-east of Paris, when the extended supply lines of the Allies became fully stretched, making things very difficult for their armies. Eventually, however, he was beaten back, though the French put up a desperate defence of Paris, by superior numbers and better cavalry and artillery. On 30 March 1814 the Allies entered Paris and Napoleon abdicated soon afterwards.54
Without in the least downplaying the ferocity of the battles in both the north and south of Europe, the perseverance and courage of all the armies involved, the reorganization of the Russian Army, and the meticulous brilliance of Wellington and his staff, it is fair to say that these campaigns were ultimately decided not only by fighting qualities but by the efficiency of supply and logistics. It was a war through which only the healthy and tenacious survived.* Not the least of Wellington’s personal accomplishments was to remain healthy for five years, withstanding the pressure of leadership, the rigours of
campaigning, the unhealthy climate and the food. He never took any leave of absence, a feat perhaps attributable to his comparative youth. In 1808 he was under forty, while his staff officers were in their thirties, and those beneath them in the Adjutant-General’s Department in their twenties.55 Together they wielded a powerful combination of battle experience, stamina and youth. (As we have seen, only the politicians were younger.) The remorseless pressure of a long war demanded that these offices were filled by young men with brains and energy.
In war-free Britain, confidence had been rising steadily, and domestic unrest had subsided. In March 1813 the home secretary, Henry Addington, now Lord Sidmouth, wrote to his friend Admiral Sir Edward Pellew out in the Mediterranean:
The present state of things, at home and abroad, is animating and encouraging to the greatest degree. I say, at home; for you may rest assured that the people are sound and firm. A most material and happy change, produced by various causes, has taken place in their temper and disposition within the last few months; of which almost every post brings proofs, even from those quarters where the spirit of insubordination and tumult was most prevalent.56
At the same time John Barrow recorded a general lightening of the atmosphere around the Admiralty Board table, citing the badinage between the commissioners.* ‘We were in fact a merry Board-room group: Sir George Warrender and Sir Joseph Yorke were of themselves a host of fun, and Croker and I did our best to keep it up.’57
Such cheerfulness and levity were easier to achieve as the Opposition attacks on the cost of the war faded. Spencer Perceval’s efforts to ensure the government’s solvency and an expanding economy had kept the war on a sound financial footing. It was now widely accepted that the government and the Allies must aim for nothing less than the removal of Napoleon. In 1813 a newly elected Opposition MP, Sir Robert Heron, a blunt and uncompromising Whig, ever pushing for economy, saw little point in opposing the government, or discouraging it from pressing on with the war with ‘the vigor for which … we must at least give them credit’. In February 1814 he reported: ‘I have not yet attended the session of Parliament. There was in fact nothing to do. All agreed that every exertion must now be made to prosecute the war to an honourable termination and none of the measures of ministers have met with any opposition.’58 At last parliamentary unity on how to fight Napoleon had been achieved.
15
The Manpower Emergency 1812–1814
The drains of seamen which the American Lake Service has required has already greatly distressed us, and the supply of seamen is so inadequate to the current demands of the service, that … the ships in commission are too frequently short of complement, but not less than six sail of the line and sixteen frigates, with a great number of sloops and smaller vessels, are at this moment ready to receive men, and are lying useless because men cannot be supplied to them; and … three other sail and five frigates, besides sloops etc will be ready for men in the course of the present month.
– Lord Melville, first lord of the Admiralty, to Admiral Lord Keith, commander-in-chief, Channel Fleet, 3 September 18131
In the first years of the new century, the neutral United States had benefited from trading with both Britain and France. Its merchant fleet had expanded considerably, and it was a time of prosperity in the former colonies. Relations with Britain were friendly enough. British frigates, hunting French warships known to be in American waters, usually put in at Hampton Roads to take on provisions, and officers and crew went ashore in Norfolk, Virginia. On one visit in 1807 some British seamen from H.M.S. Melampus deserted and signed on with several American warships lying at anchor, including the 38-gun U.S.S. Chesapeake. The British Navy had always had difficulty in finding and retaining crews for its ships in North America and impressment had played a significant part in the breakdown of relations between the colonies and London thirty years earlier. Vice-Admiral George Berkeley, no friend to Americans, and an impetuous man with a well-merited reputation for lack of judgement, ordered the ships under his command to board American warships suspected of harbouring British seamen. Now, with the pressures of war against Napoleon, skilled seamen were even more valuable to Britain. In June 1807, under orders from Berkeley, the 50-gun British warship Leopard then attacked the Chesapeake, after a parley but without warning. The American ship was manned by a new and inexperienced crew. Firing lasted for ten minutes, until the Chesapeake struck her colours. Three American sailors were killed, sixteen were wounded and the British took away four of the crew who had deserted from the Melampus. Admiral Berkeley’s orders had gone far beyond the wishes of British ministers, who eventually had to apologize to the Americans.2 This incident exacerbated deteriorating relations between Britain and America. In January 1807 the British government had issued orders-in-council that made trade with either Britain or France in neutral ships, of which America had the largest merchant fleet, virtually impossible. An outraged President Jefferson addressed Congress in firm tones that anticipated war.
As the president had insufficient ships to conduct any sort of hostilities, he retaliated by pushing an Embargo Act through Congress in December 1807, which prohibited American merchants from trading with Britain. In the event, the Act did more harm to United States trade than to that of its intended target, and it almost crippled the American economy.3 At the same time the French were acting belligerently against American merchant ships, which were frequently seized in Europe for contravening the Continental System. However, in 1811 the president, by now James Madison, accepted French promises that the Continental System would be relaxed in the Americans’ favour.4 No such conciliatory gesture was forthcoming from London, but only argument about the definition of the citizenship of a British or American sailor.* The British government’s attitude to ‘Cousin Jonathan’, as the Americans were commonly called, passed from irritation to an unhealthy disdain. In such an atmosphere, it is unsurprising that further conflict emerged over the American Indians and other questions of the expansion of the United States westwards across the North American continent. Until 1812 exchanges continued in what was to be a vain attempt to avert hostilities.5
Significant opposition to the unenforceable Embargo Act came from New England, which had most to lose from it.6 The political situation in Washington was complex, but on 18 June 1812 the Republicans, who had a limited political presence in that region, finally gained the upper hand and President Madison declared war on Great Britain, six days before Napoleon’s army invaded Russia. There was little agreement across the states of America on the war, which made it difficult for the British government to read American intentions. The Republicans’ war aims were unclear, though those of Thomas Jefferson were not: as early as 1807 he had suggested to Governor William Hull of Michigan that he should start planning an invasion of Canada with his local militia.7 In the event, Hull’s invasion of Canada in July1812 was a disaster, but at sea the United States fared better. American privateers, often based in French ports, made significant inroads into British merchant ships during the first two years of hostilities.8 Between August and December 1812, in three frigate actions – U.S.S. Constitution against H.M.S. Guerrière, the United States against H.M.S. Macedonian, the Constitution against H.M.S. Java – British ships, with the squadron under the command of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, were defeated by larger US frigates. These failures caused consternation to the public in Britain and embarrassed the government. The sense that the navy had become complacent was only offset in June 1813, when H.M.S. Shannon, commanded by a gunnery specialist, Captain Sir Philip Broke, forced the Chesapeake to surrender in an action that lasted only twelve minutes.*
To counteract the privateers, the British were forced to tighten their convoy planning, and take draconian measures against the masters of ships that ran from convoys. In early 1813 one master was prosecuted and spent a month in the Marshalsea Gaol. The large American privateers were soon deterred by a ship of the line accompanying each convoy across the Atlantic.9 The main British stra
tegy, however, was to mount such an effective blockade of America’s east coast ports that the tonnage entering US ports collapsed from 715,000 to 108,000 between 1812 and 1814. Since the US Treasury depended almost entirely upon taxes on imports and exports, by 1814 the federal government was effectively bankrupt.10
While the British strategy of commercial and naval blockades in 1812 and 1813 might seem to have been carefully planned, in fact the Admiralty had little choice, for there were not enough seamen available to take more aggressive action. The secretary of state for war, as well as the first lord of the Admiralty, were demanding levels of manpower that could not be satisfied. Soldiers were needed not only for the defence of Canada, but also for an army that the government planned to send to northern Europe. In November 1813 the Dutch rose in revolt against French occupation, and a British military presence in the main theatre of war on the Continent was politically highly desirable during the endgame against Napoleon.11 Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Graham was sent to Holland with 7,000 troops, though they were of very poor quality, having been previously rejected for service in the Peninsula.12 Strident demands for further forces were still being made by the increasingly influential Wellington, now advancing northwards in Spain. In October 1813 he had 62,000 soldiers, while another 11,000 were commanded by Lieutenant-General Frederick Maitland in the east of Spain, a total of 73,000 troops. Not since the days of Marlborough had Britain committed such large numbers to the Continent.13 With so much at stake in Europe, the conflict in North America was well down the scale of the priorities of Whitehall. Parliament spent far more time debating financial problems and domestic unrest, and indeed the problems of the royal family.* The most consistently debated issues were the sufficiency of the army, the employment of foreign troops, and the principles of army and militia recruitment.