The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  Back at his headquarters on the northern frontier at Freneida, he indulged in the long idle months of winter and spring in more agreeable pursuits than quarrelling with the Spaniards. Captain Thomas Browne, a British officer observed: ‘He had at headquarters a pack of hounds from England and hunted two or three times a week with such officers of headquarters as chose to join in the chase. There were not many, as few could afford to have English horses, and our Spanish and Portuguese steeds were not equal to the work. There was no want of foxes, but it was a difficult and rocky country to ride over. He went out shooting every now and then, but did not appear fond of it, as he was a very indifferent shot.’

  He wrote to General Stuart: ‘The hunting season is coming on apace. The hounds are on the road, and I shall want Waters for the earth-stopping business, if not for that of Adjutant-General. He has been very near dying, poor fellow, and what is worse, I hear he has lost all his dogs.’ He was accustomed to rising at six and doing paperwork for three hours before breakfast. Then he would hold meetings with his officers until three in the afternoon. After a light meal he would go riding for three hours.

  He was curt and brusque in the morning, but extremely good company in the evening. The subaltern George Gleig (later Wellington’s biographer) wrote that in company he was ‘most interesting and lively. The Duke himself spoke out on all subjects with an absence of reserve which sometimes surprised his guests . . . He was rich in anecdote, most of them taking a ludicrous turn, and without any apparent effort he put the company very much at their ease . . .’

  He was fastidious in appearance, wearing his celebrated ‘Wellington boots’ frequently; Francis Larpent, Wellington’s advocate general, observed: ‘like every great man, present or past, almost without exception, he is vain . . . He is remarkably neat and most particular in his dress . . . He cuts the skirts of his coat shorter to make them look smarter: only a short time since, going to him on business, I found him discussing the cut of his half-boots and suggesting alterations to his servant.’

  During that long period of rest and recreation, Wellington became increasingly convinced that 1813 would be the decisive year of the war. He had at last recovered his old bounce and self-confidence after the awful setbacks of the previous autumn.

  Chapter 73

  THE KILL: VITORIA

  It was not until 22 May, however, that he at last recrossed the frontier with his rested and reinforced army. The men were told not to bring their great coats. It was the equivalent of Wellington burning his boats: he did not believe they would have to return in winter. As they crossed the border, Wellington stagily took off his hat and shouted: ‘Farewell, Portugal. I shall never see you again.’ He had already remarked that there was ‘scarcely any French army left, except that in our front’.

  His own army now consisted of 80,000 men, including the Portuguese, and 20,000 Spaniards. The French in Spain meanwhile had been depleted of 20,000 of their best troops to reinforce Napoleon’s beleaguered northern armies: worse still, Napoleon had ordered Wellington’s old adversary, the Army of Portugal, to hold down the mounting insurgencies in the Basque country, Navarra and Aragón. General Clausel, the new northern commander, was a fine and energetic soldier, but even he proved unable to control the rebellions in the north.

  Wellington’s offensive had been brilliantly and meticulously planned through the winter and spring, in contrast to the improvised and disastrous one of the previous autumn. He would use as a forward base the Spanish port of Santander in the north, controlled by the Spaniards, where he assembled voluminous supplies and a siege train. He would no longer need to depend on the long supply line to Lisbon. Santander would also provide a point of evacuation if necessary. His army moved forward in two giant columns, one under Hill heading for Salamanca, the other much larger under Wellington himself and Sir Thomas Graham.

  The second crossed the river Douro with great skill, Wellington himself supervising the operation from a basket slung over the cliffs, and then marched on to Valladolid. Joseph and Marshal Jourdan had had to evacuate the city, as well as Madrid. The two British columns joined up at Toro and, instead of attacking the French stronghold at Burgos, bypassed it and did what they should have done the previous year – moving into the sparsely populated hills to the north, threatening to surround Burgos and cut off the forces there from possible retreat to France. The French abandoned the fortress without a fight and retreated further across the Ebro to Vitoria.

  There at last Joseph decided to make a stand. The town was approached from the west by a valley bounded on one side by the Zaderra river and on the other by virtually impassable mountains, although the French feared that an attack might be mounted from the north as well. On 21 June there was skirmishing from the south-east, to which the French immediately rushed troops, imagining this to be the main thrust of the British attack. In fact the bulk of the British forces were concentrated to the south-west, on the other side of the river valley, under the nominal command of Lord Dalhousie but under the actual command of Sir Thomas Picton and behind him Wellington.

  From the north there appeared out of the supposedly impassable mountains another body of troops under Graham. Wellington’s artillery pounded away. The French fought bravely under this three-pronged attack, battling continuously as all three advanced. Harvey, Wellington’s aide, had two horses shot under him in the thick of the fighting. If the northern force had advanced with speed, the French would have been completely trapped: instead they hesitated and the French troops, in full retreat, were able to make their escape across the Pass of Salvatierra, leaving most of King Joseph’s baggage train in its wake. This was promptly plundered by the British troops, who swarmed into Vitoria in an undisciplined mass.

  Some 8,000 French soldiers were killed or taken prisoner, and 150 guns were captured. Five million francs were left behind, along with golden dubloons and Napoleons. Some 500 prostitutes of the French army were also taken. One British soldier wrote:

  I had not proceeded far when I met one of the Sixty-Eighth Regiment with a handkerchief full of dollars. He was followed by about a dozen Portuguese soldiers. One of these fellows . . . cut the handkerchief and down went the dollars. A general scramble followed. As the Portuguese were down on their hands and knees picking up the money, we paid them off in style with the sockets of our bayonets. After this fracas was over . . . I started off in the direction I heard most noise [and] soon came to the place where the money was. After much difficulty I secured a small box of dollars, and was fortunate enough to get back safe to camp.

  Wellington, as usual, was incandescent at the indiscipline of his troops. Yet the battle had been one of his finest victories, because, rather than in spite, of the fact that it had been over relatively quickly. His strategic skill had ensured that the French had never stood a chance, were wholly overwhelmed and were so assaulted from every direction that they had little idea how to regroup and react.

  The French were now in total disarray. Clausel fell back to Zaragoza and then to France, another French army withdrew from Aragón, and only Catalonia now remained under French control. The escaping and defeated French army from Vitoria headed straight for the French border, leaving a few garrisons behind at Pamplona, San Sebastian and Santona – which did little to slow the British advance. Vitoria had broken the back of French control of the Peninsula. But the Peninsular War was not over yet. Wellington was acutely aware that the tide could turn again, particularly if developments on the eastern front allowed Napoleon to send fresh troops back into the Peninsula. He was offered the command in Germany, but refused: ‘Many might be found to conduct matters as well as I can, both here and in Germany; but nobody would enjoy the same advantage here, and I should be no better than another in Germany. If a British army should be left in the Peninsula, therefore, it is best that I should remain with it.’

  His next objective was to take San Sebastian, a well-fortified fortress protected on one side by the sea and on the other by the river Urumea. The
unreliable if courageous Graham was put in charge of the siege. Once again Wellington’s caution was evident in his inability to bypass a fortress which he feared could threaten his flank. The siege proved a disaster, with attacks being made at low tide between the sea and the fortress under intense fire. A sergeant present wrote:

  Waiting for the tide to be sufficiently low to admit men to reach the breach, it was daylight ere we moved out of the trenches, and, having to keep close to the wall to be as clear of the sea as possible, beams of timber, shells, hand grenades and every missile that could annoy or destroy life were hurled from the ramparts on the heads of the men . . . Those who scrambled onto the breach found it was wide and sufficient enough at the bottom, but at the top . . . from thence to the street was at least twenty feet . . . Some little idea may be formed of the destructive fire of the enemy when [I say that] on the breach were left by the tide more [men] than would have loaded a wagon of fish, killed in the water by the shot of the garrison . . . And it not being sufficiently low at the time of the attack those who fell wounded and might have recovered were swept away by the current which runs here very rapid. Nor was it an easy matter for any man to keep his feet as the stones were so slippery.

  While this was being botched, Napoleon ordered a counter-offensive into Spain under Soult. A huge army of 85,000 poured through two passes in the Pyrenees to fulfil Napoleon’s desperate need to secure a victory in the Peninsula. This in turn would display his power in the European theatre and in particular prevent the Austrians declaring war upon him again in the east.

  Wellington was caught with his army spread out between San Sebastian and inland Pamplona. One of the two immense French columns ran up against Wellington himself on a ridge with a much smaller but substantial force in a typically well-chosen defensive position on high ground. Wellington actually saw his adversary, Soult, when a spy told him to look. ‘I levelled my glass exactly as he pointed, and there, sure enough, I distinctly discerned Soult with his staff around him, several of them with their hats off and in animated conversation . . . I saw his features so distinctly that when I met him in a drawing-room in Paris for the first time I knew him at once.’

  Wellington slept on rough ground for the next two days, and would fall asleep whenever he got the chance, anxiously awaiting the attack. He was very nearly captured, but when Soult attempted a breakthrough to San Sebastian, the British were ready. They attacked down the hill: the French were routed and made their escape back to the passes of the Pyrenees where they took up strong positions and impeded any further British advance. Some 13,000 French casualties and prisoners had been taken.

  Chapter 74

  INTO FRANCE

  With Soult’s army departed, the siege of San Sebastian intensified and two breaches were made in the walls. The suffering of the besiegers was intense, however, as one eyewitness recalled:

  I was coming away making use of my firelock as a crutch, having received a grapeshot in the right leg . . . The scene before me was truly awful. Here you might observe . . . legs and arms sticking up, some their clothes in flames, [and] numbers not dead, but so jammed as not to be able to extricate themselves. I never expected to reach my trench with my life, for, not content with depriving me of my limb, the fire shot away my crutch also . . . Contrary to my expectations, I gained the trench which was a dreadful sight. It was literally filled . . . with the dead and dying. ’Twas lamentable to see the poor fellows here. One was making the best of his way minus an arm, another so disfigured . . . as to leave no trace of the features of a human being; others creeping along with the leg dangling to a piece of skin; and, worse than all, some endeavouring to keep in the bowels.

  The citadel was carried, and then the towers. The usual horrors ensued, the British soldiery showing again that they were little different from the French when motivated by revenge and plunder and unrestrained by their officers. An officer wrote:

  As soon as the fighting began to wax faint, the horrors of plunder and rapine succeeded. Fortunately there were few females in the place, but of the fate of the few which were there I cannot even now think without a shudder. The houses were everywhere ransacked, the furniture wantonly broken, the churches profaned, the images dashed to pieces; wine and spirit cellars were broken open, and the troops, heated already with angry passions, became absolutely mad by intoxication. All good order and discipline were abandoned. The officers no longer had the slightest control over their men, who, on the contrary, controlled the officers, nor is it by any means certain that several of the latter did not fall by the hands of the former, when they vainly attempted to bring them back to a state of subordination.

  On 7 October Wellington crossed the Bidassoa, the Rubicon of France. It was but lightly defended. As a young ensign wrote:

  We commenced the passage of the Bidassoa about five in the morning and in a short time infantry, cavalry and artillery found themselves upon French ground. The stream at the point we forded was nearly four feet deep, and had Soult been aware of what we were about, we should have found the passage of the river a very arduous undertaking. Three miles above we discovered the French army and ere long found ourselves under fire. The French army, not long after we began to return their fire, was in full retreat, and after a little . . . fighting, in which our division met with some loss, we took possession of the camp . . . of Soult’s army. We found the soldiers’ huts very comfortable: they were built of branches of trees and furze and formed . . . streets which had names placarded up, such as Rue de Paris, Rue de Versailles, etc.

  It was an historic moment, a turning point in the entire revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. For the first time the British were on French soil in force, not as at the beginning of the revolutionary war in alliance with continental countries or counter-revolutionaries, not as a raiding party, but through their own military success. Instead of Napoleon invading British territory, as he had so often threatened, Wellington was invading the territorial mainland of France.

  Wellington’s emotions at this juncture can only be imagined: in particular his army had been the first to penetrate France, which was still uninvaded from the east after so many bitter campaigns there by the far larger forces of Austria, Prussia and Russia. He was under no illusions that the war was over, but held out the hope that the terror, strife and suffering which had dominated all of Europe for nearly two decades might at last be approaching the beginning of the end. Yet there could be no certainty: Napoleon and France were far from beaten. Wellington had learned to his chagrin the dangers of overconfidence the previous year and had been appallingly humiliated on the retreat from Burgos.

  On 31 October Pamplona surrendered at last, finally ending the threat of a fresh strike across Wellington’s rear and permitting him to advance tentatively to the French Pyrenees. His 55,000-strong army moved forward up the mountain passes against the heavily fortified but lightly manned French positions above. The British and Portuguese displayed extraordinary determination and bravery. In spite of considerable casualties – more than 3,000 – they prevailed and drove the French from the passes. The latter lost over 4,000 men and sixty guns in the murderous fighting. This was the Battle of the Nivelle, the first fought by Wellington on French soil.

  The British commander rudely but wisely decided to dispense with the services of his Spanish allies for fear that they might antagonize the French population needlessly through acts of brutality – which of course infuriated the Spaniards: ‘I despair of the Spaniards. They are in so miserable a state that it is really hardly fair to expect that they will refrain from plundering a beautiful country into which they enter as conquerors, particularly adverting to the miseries which their own country has suffered from its invaders. I cannot, therefore, venture to bring them into France . . . Without pay and food, they must plunder, and if they plunder they will ruin us all.’

  He was in a small spearhead between the coast and the Pyrenees, liable to be attacked at any time. He advanced across the Nivelle towards Bayonne. Soul
t launched a desperate counteroffensive on 10 December against the British-Portuguese vanguard. This failed, and Soult staged a further one, this time against the extremely able Sir Rowland Hill who struck back with force and drove the French back to Bayonne, giving them, in Wellington’s phrase, ‘a hell of a licking’. Altogether in both battles the French suffered some 6,500 casualties to 4,500 Anglo-Portuguese ones – an illustration of the intensity of the fighting. Now some 4,500 German troops fighting for the French deserted. Behind Wellington Spain had been liberated and in 1814 the final French stronghold in Catalonia fell almost without a fight.

  In an act of supreme cynicism, the struggling Napoleon sought to do a deal with Ferdinand VII, the young and cruel Bourbon heir to the throne of Spain and one of the most reactionary figures in contemporary Europe, to place him back on the throne; he offered him the hand of Joseph’s daughter. The Spanish Cortes (Parliament) rebelled against this and told Ferdinand that any agreement he reached with Napoleon would not be respected. Napoleon himself wrote: ‘The system that I pursued in Spain . . . would have eventually been for the good of that country, yet it was contrary to the opinion of the people, and therefore I failed.’

  Wellington remained stuck at St Jean de Luz for a while because of the weather and established comfortable quarters. Astonishingly, he asserted that peace could yet be made with Napoleon. ‘If Bonaparte becomes moderate, he is probably as good a sovereign as we can desire in France,’ he wrote to London. He spent his time hunting or promenading along the sea wall. Not until the end of February 1814 did he decide to advance across the river Adour below Bayonne which was bridged with a magnificent pontoon.