The War of Wars (88 page)

Command in the Peninsula now devolved upon the capable shoulders of Sir John Moore. Admiral Sir Charles Cotton, in charge of the British squadron off Portugal, insisted that the three generals had no right to decide naval dispositions and ignored the Convention of Cintra; instead he forced the Russian admiral to give up his ships to the British until the end of the war, a minor but significant victory.

Castlereagh determined that Britain should go on the offensive. He had agreed to despatch a fresh army of 30,000 troops to the Peninsula. In the event 14,000 infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 800 artillerymen were sent under Sir David Baird, Wellesley’s old
bête noire
, to Corunna in northern Spain. There they were to link up with the 20,000 of the 30,000 troops in Portugal under Moore’s command. Quite quickly Britain’s commitment in Portugal had escalated to the status of major intervention.

Good news started to flood in across the Peninsula. Imaginations were kindled by the defiance of Zaragoza and the story of the brave girl named Augustina who fought against the invaders in the ruins of her burnt house with a cutlass at her side and dressed in pantaloons. After just eleven days, Joseph had fled Madrid for Burgos, and then for Vitoria in the north. Some 60,000 French troops were now confined to the north-east of Spain behind the Ebro, leaving behind some 40,000 dead or prisoner. It had been a reversal for the French in an area which Napoleon had contemptuously believed would be a walkover.

British opinion came to the conclusion that the war was all but won, that the British and Spaniards united could drive France out of the
Peninsula and march on Paris. The ever-realistic Moore did not share that illusion. He had a different task ahead: to march to Salamanca across the mountains and join up with a force that was being shipped to Corunna, under Sir Henry Barclay, before, as he feared, Napoleon could reinforce his army in northern Spain and launch a counter-offensive.

What followed was to become one of the great epics in British military history. Moore immediately set about organizing his dispersed men outside Lisbon. The British troops there were openly contemptuous of the Portuguese. In spite of the incredible beauty of the city, its streets were littered with dead horses, sewage and refuse piled in the famous ‘dunghills’. Some 10,000 pariah dogs, which normally acted as mobile waste disposal units, had been shot by the fastidious French, merely adding to the mountains of rotting food in the streets. One soldier wrote: ‘What an ignorant, superstitious, priest-ridden, dirty, lousy set of devils are the Portuguese. Without seeing them it is impossible to conceive there exists a people in Europe so debased. The filthiest pig sty is a palace to the filthy houses in this dirty stinking city, and all the dirt made in the houses is thrown into the streets, where it remains baking for months until a storm of rain washes it away.’

Moore instilled a new spirit into his men through his energy. On 16 October 1808 he led 20,000 on a march into Spain which was to cross some 300 miles across mountains rising to 4,000 feet. He had very few horses and no heavy artillery because the roads were unable to bear it: just 6-pounders pulled by 4,000 troops along the main road to Madrid, where they would be unable to support his main forces in the north.

At first the going was easy across the pleasant Portuguese countryside, through prosperous villages amidst hills and valleys. Then the troops began to climb into sparsely populated areas, and finally mountain passes where the men had to carry equipment across rough tracks, through torrential rain and close to precipices. They bore all their supplies with them, as there were none available here, and no shelter either.

After these rigours they descended into the gentler regions of western Spain. There, according to Rifleman Harris: ‘We had fought
and conquered and felt elated. Spain was before us and every man in the Rifles seemed only too anxious to get a rap at the French again. It was a glorious sight to see our colours spread in those fields. The men seemed invincible and nothing, I thought, could beat them.’ The goal was Salamanca, where they were to rendezvous with Barclay’s army, which had arrived off Corunna on 13 October and had been following behind three weeks later. From there they intended to march to join three Spanish armies and converge on the French in northern Spain.

The British and Spaniards had underestimated the enemy they were dealing with. Napoleon had always regarded Spain as a ‘sideshow’, on a par with the almost bloodless seizure of Naples. A string of disasters, first at Bailen and then at Gerona, Valencia, Zaragoza and Vimeiro, had brought him down to earth. He feared that failure might be contagious across Europe and was bent on a crushing revenge and re-establishment of French authority in the Peninsula. He poured vitriol on his commanders in Spain whom he blamed for the debacle. Writing to his brother Joseph, he complained:

I don’t like the tone of your letter of the 24th. There is no question of dying, but of fighting, and of being Victorious. I shall find in Spain the pillars of Hercules, not the bounds of my power. In all my military career I have seen nothing more cowardly than these mobs of Spanish soldiers . . . I can see from the report of the cuirassier officer that Dupont’s corps will have to retreat. The whole thing is inconceivable. Brute! Fool! Coward! Dupont has lost Spain to save his baggage! It’s a spot on my uniform! . . . The enclosed documents are for you alone; read them with a map, and you will be able to judge whether there was ever anything since the world was created so senseless, so stupid, and so dastardly! Here are the Macks and the Hohenlohes justified! One can see clearly enough, by General Dupont’s own report, that all that happened resulted from his inconceivable folly. This loss of 20,000 picked men, with the moral effect which it is bound to have, have made the King take the grave decision of falling back towards France. The influence which it will have on the general situation prevents my going to Spain in person; I am sending Marshal Ney there.

The knowledge that you have been thrown into the midst of events that are beyond your range of experience and of character grieves me, my dear friend. Dupont has covered our standards with infamy. An event like this makes my presence in Paris necessary. I feel the sharpest pang at the thought that at such a moment I cannot be at your side and in the midst of my soldiers. Let me know that you are keeping your spirits up, that you are well, and getting used to soldiering – here is a splendid opportunity for studying the business . . . What is going on in Spain is lamentable. My army is not commanded by generals who have made war, but by postal inspectors.

Napoleon’s main worry was that the Austrians, in spite of their formal treaties, were planning to open a new offensive. As early as 25 July 1808, he had written perceptively: ‘Austria is arming, but denies it; she is therefore arming against us. She is spreading the report that I demand some of her provinces: she is therefore trying to cloak as a rightful defence an unprovoked and hopeless attack. Since Austria is arming, we too must arm. I am therefore ordering the Grand Army to be reinforced. My troops are concentrating at Strasbourg, Mainz, Wesel.’ His first preoccupation was to deter an Austrian attack and to this end he sought to renew his links with Russia.

However, after Tilsit the Tsar had become increasingly dissatisfied: he was also under fire at court for having been too subservient to Napoleon on the raft. Many Russians were furious that the French now occupied the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, traditionally a sphere of Russian influence and that, contrary to their promises, they still occupied three-quarters of Prussia. Moreover, Russia had lost its lucrative export market to Britain, one of its chief customers for wood and corn. Alexander was no longer as naïve as Napoleon believed he was, although he was still possessed of a highly erratic temperament.

Moreover he had secured an extraordinary spy: Napoleon’s chief foreign adviser, Talleyrand, an aristocratic traditionalist, who by that time regarded Napoleon as ‘a devil’ leading France to disaster, and hated him. He believed in a general settlement in Europe which would put France at peace with Austria, Russia and England.

Napoleon decided to hold a summit with the Tsar at Erfurt. He ordered all his vassal princes to attend in an extraordinary attempt to overpower the Tsar into renewing his support for him. The conference was to last for two and a half weeks. Napoleon said he wanted ‘the Emperor Alexander to be dazzled by the spectacle of my power’.

A gorgeous array of thirty-six princes was on hand to meet the Tsar. Talleyrand was also there, proposing to the Tsar that they should meet secretly every evening at the house of a sister of the formidable Queen of Prussia. Alexander spent his time there each evening either talking to the wily French diplomat or making love to Princess Stephanie of Baden. Talleyrand told him baldly at the first meeting: ‘Sire, it is in your power to save Europe, and you will only do so by refusing to give way to Napoleon. The French people are civilized, their sovereign is not. The sovereign of Russia is civilized and his people are not: the sovereign of Russia should therefore be the ally of the French people.’

Talleyrand argued that the French people were desperate for peace and believed that if Alexander resisted Napoleon’s demands it would be possible to secure it for Europe. Alexander was only too happy to oblige. In fact, Talleyrand was not close to Russia: he was an ally of the Austrian Habsburgs who had paid him the colossal sum of a million francs for his services. Metternich, the equally able and devious Austrian ambassador in Paris was his partner. Talleyrand was not just deceiving Napoleon, but also Alexander while posing as his secret friend: he was a triple agent and one being rewarded very handsomely.

He completely outwitted his French master. The final treaty was a gift to the Russians. Alexander was to be given a free hand in Finland, as well as part of modern Romania, in exchange for France abandoning its support for the Ottoman empire. Most important of all, Russia was vague about whether it would support France in the event of renewed hostilities with Austria – which had been Napoleon’s main concern. He had no wish to go to Spain leaving weakened eastern boundaries of his empire to be attacked by Austria. The Austrians, indeed, had not been invited to Erfurt.

For all the splendour and lavish entertainment, huge shooting parties and nine performances by the Comédie Française, Napoleon left without the assurances he needed. As in politics, so in diplomacy:
Napoleon could be easily outmanoeuvred: it was only in warfare that he really excelled. In the event Napoleon, having achieved little, also refused to moderate his policies of aggression. He set off personally to put down the rebellion in Spain.

As Napoleon departed on his long journey, some 60,000 French troops were ordered to reinforce the army along the Ebro. Napoleon took a further 100,000 along with his best marshals, Lannes, Soult, Ney, Victor and Lefebvre. It was to be a war of annihilation: crushing Spanish resistance and slaughtering their allies in the civilian population – one of the most brutal campaigns ever mounted.

The Spanish with their ill-disciplined, ill-equipped and ill-clad forces in the army of Galicia under General Blake attacked Ney frontally, bravely but foolishly, and were massacred at Durango. Napoleon himself arrived at Vitoria on 5 November in charge of a force superior to the ones in central Spain. He promptly decided to attack. Two of the Spanish armies got away. Napoleon marched impatiently to Burgos and on to the Somosierra Pass, where he encountered unexpected Spanish resistance, before reaching Madrid itself on 1 December. This he took easily.

He issued imperial decrees reminiscent of his arrival in Cairo, abolishing feudal dues and the customs paid between the various Spanish provinces. It remained for him to march southwards with his huge army and pound the fragmented Spanish resistance there. Meanwhile the French had occupied Valladolid. Sir John Moore’s army, first at Ciudad Rodrigo and then at Salamanca, heard the news from the defeated Spanish commander. Barclay was still a hundred miles away in Lugo; and Moore realized that he was only sixty miles’ distance from the overwhelming French force.

The foolhardy Spanish armies under Generals Castaños and Palafax that had escaped being massacred by the
Grande Armée
set off to attack the French from the east in an effort to cut their lines: the French in Burgos decided to march to face this threat. That gave Moore a breathing space. He knew now that he was in great danger, cut off from retreat by the mountains behind as winter approached and facing an overwhelming French army in front. He wrote to his closest friend,
Pitt’s niece, Lady Hester Stanhope: ‘Farewell, my dear Lady Hester. If I extricate myself and those with me from our present difficulties, I shall return to you with satisfaction; but if not it will be better I shall never quit Spain.’

He asked Baird to move forward to join him: ‘I see my situation in as unfavourable a light as you or any one can do. But it is our business to make every effort to unite here and to obey our orders and the wishes of our country. It would never do to retreat without making the attempt. If the enemy prevent us, there is no help for it, but if he does not, I am determined to unite the army. When that is done we shall act according to circumstances. There is still a chance that the presence of so large a British force may give spirits to the Spaniards.’

Lord Paget, one of Baird’s ablest commanders, was astonished: ‘The game is considered as completely up. The Government must have been grossly deceived . . . We do not discover any enthusiasm anywhere. The country appears to be in a state of complete apathy. A junction of Moore’s corps and of Baird’s corps is impossible . . . Even if we were now to form the junction, we have no ulterior object. There is no Spanish army and there is no salvation for the Spanish nation, take my word for it.’

Then Moore heard the appalling news that Castaños and Palafax had been crushed at Tudela: the Spanish armies in northern Spain had been annihilated. There was clearly no alternative but a desperate escape back across the barren Portuguese northern border mountains.