Yet, so long as he could, Wellesley clung to his position. For not only did it bar the southward road across the Tagus to Seville and Cadiz, but it lay on the flank of any westward advance against Beresford and Portugal. Cuesta, after losing half his rearguard at Arzibospo and thirty guns—including most of those captured by the British at Talavera—had retired into the hills on the south bank and was now holding an almost impregnable position at Mesa de Ibor, a few miles to the west of Jaraicejo. Meanwhile Joseph had withdrawn eastwards in search of Venegas, while Ney's corps had had to hurry back to the north to deal with an eruption of the Asturian and Galician patriots into the plain of Leon. As for Soult, in the barren lands between the Tagus and the Vera de
1 "We were then young soldiers in the art of war"—Tomkinson, 214. See also Leith Hay, I, 174, 177-8; Schaumann, 204-5; Oman, n, 600-5; Fortescue, VII, 276-7, 279.
Plasencia his men were growing as hungry as Wellesley's. Sooner or later they, too, would have to retreat.
But there was a limit to what flesh and blood could bear, and by the middle of August the British army had reached it. Hunger, dysentery and fever had reduced men and horses to bundles of bones, and, according to Commissary Schaumann, the soldiers' wives— usually decently clad and faithful to their husbands—went round on starved donkeys offering themselves to any one for half a loaf.1 After it became known that Venegas, as dilatory when threatened by disaster as when proffered victory, had been routed on August nth at Almonacid, there ceased to be any object in the British remaining in the Spanish hinterland. There was no means of doing so either. "I must either move into Portugal where I know I shall be supplied," Wellesley informed General Eguia, Cuesta's deputy— for the old man had had a paralytic stroke—" or I must make up my mind to lose my army."
On August 21st, to their inexpressible relief, the troops set off to march by Trujillo and Merida to the fortress of Badajoz in the Guadiana valley, a hundred and thirty miles to the south-west. Starving and fever-stricken, they arrived on September 3rd and entered cantonments along the Portuguese frontier. Here they could be supplied from Elvas and Lisbon. To Spanish complaints that they were betraying Spain and laying Andalusia open to invasion, Wellesley replied that the responsibility lay with those who had been acquainted with their wants and made no attempt to relieve them. In any case, with the winter approaching, Seville was almost as well secured by his new position on the French flank as it had been by his presence on the direct road south of the Tagus. With this object he agreed to remain for the time being in the Guadiana valley—at that season notoriously unhealthy—thus exposing his men to new ravages of typhus and malaria. But beyond that, protest though the Junta might, he would not go. Nothing would induce him to co-operate again with Spanish generals or rely any longer on Spanish promises for food. He had lost a third of his army by doing so, and it was enough.
1 Schaumann, 205.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Fabian General
"They may do what they please. I shall not give up the game here as long as it can be played."
Wellington.
THE fourth of the great European coalitions which England had formed to restrain the power of France had failed. The colossus that had defied Pitt had defeated Canning too. On October 14th, 1809, Austria made her peace at Schonbrunn. She lost a fifth of her population and territory including her last outlet to the sea. The Tyrol was partitioned and enslaved. The ancient bishopric of Salzburg was ceded to the Bavarians and western Galicia to the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. Croatia, Carniola, Trieste and Carinthia became the Illyrian provinces of France. The latter's coastline, which England had gone to war seventeen years before to confine at the Scheldt, now stretched from the Baltic to the southern Adriatic.
The Foreign Secretary's tenure of office did not survive his humiliation. In mid-August, while the fate of the Walcheren expedition still hung in the balance, the Duke of Portland had a stroke. Though he rallied, it was plain that his Ministry's days were numbered. During the next week it became known that the attempt on Antwerp had failed and with it all hope of nominating Chatham as his successor. Sooner than serve under a more active mediocrity Canning resolved to bid for the Premiership himself. Informing his colleagues that the time had come for Castlereagh's resignation, which unknown to the latter he had been demanding since the spring, he announced his belief that the country could no longer be led from the Lords. This left the choice between himself and Perceval, the leader of the Lower Flouse and Chancellor of the Exchequer. To be sure of the issue, he threatened to resign if Perceval was preferred.
But Castlereagh and Perceval, though neither equalled Canning in eloquence and genius, were men of character. The former, hearing of the intrigue which had been going on behind his back, resigned and challenged the Foreign Secretary to a duel. Appalled by the denouement, the old Prime Minister resigned. Perceval, confronted with his brilliant colleague's suggestion that he should withdraw to the Upper House as Lord President, admitted the .impossibility of Canning serving under him but refused to give up his place at the Exchequer to free the Treasury. Since precedent prevented the Administration from being led from the Foreign Office, he proposed seeking another Prime Minister from the Lords who would leave every one in his old office.
Thus it came about that in the third week of September the country, staggering under bad news from Spain, Scheldt and Danube, learnt that the Government had resigned and that two of its members had fought a duel on Putney Heath.1 The Tories seemed doomed. Having bungled the European invasion, the Grand Alliance and the war in Spain, they had now by their divisions lost their claim to be "the sole representatives of Mr. Pitt." The chief aspirant to that statesman's mantle had hopelessly discredited himself; honest mediocrity cried out in horror at " Canning's monkey tricks to make himself Premier."2 Yet without Canning, his former colleagues could not hope to hold their own in debate. It came, therefore, as no surprise when it was learnt that overtures were being made to the Opposition leaders.
Yet once again hopes of a National Administration foundered. Though Grenville and Grey were summoned to London and the former—torn from his beloved Boconnoc—obeyed the call, neither was prepared to sacrifice Party scruples to the broader needs of the country. They would only, Grenville announced, co-operate with those who were ready to grant full political rights to the Irish Catholics. On that point, as every one knew, King and nation were adamant.
There was a deeper issue between the Whig aristocrats and the old Protestant, fighting England that their ancestors had led. Out of loathing for the Tories and partly because of their very virtues, they had set their faces against a war which a people that hated all foreign dictators—temporal or spiritual—had resolved to fight to the death. In their bitterness at exclusion from office it had become almost an article of faith with the Opposition chiefs that the Continent was lost. Coalitions and expeditions were in their eyes alike vain; Grey spoke of Talavcra as as much a disgrace as Walcheren. Angry though they were at the continued failure of their armies, the English could not stomach a quitter. They preferred fools and mediocrities to those whom they esteemed cowards. Walter Scott spoke for thousands
1 Canning was wounded in the thigh. "Now, pray," he observed to his opponent, "tell me what we have been fighting about?"—Two Duchesses, 326, 340; Dudley, "76-7.
2 Auckland, IV, 322. See also Dudley, 87; Wellesley, I, 248, 251 Plumer Ward, 206, 211, 260; Crcevey, 95-8.
when he expressed his fear that the Whigs would come in like a flood, make peace and lay the country at Bonaparte's feet. " I don't care for place myself," wrote a country magnate, "but for the sake of the country keep out the Talents!"1
On October 4th, 1809—three weeks before Portland breathed his last under the surgeon's knife—Spencer Perceval took office as Prime Minister. No one supposed that he would survive for a single session. For two days before meeting Parliament this cheerful, modest little man appeared gloomy and silent for the only time in his career. But his habitual courage
came to his aid and, like his stubborn countrymen at Talavera, he resolved to go through with it. A peer's younger son with small means and large family, he had built up a lucrative practice at the bar which two years earlier, at the age of forty-four, he had sacrificed to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of narrow education and principles, his good manners, honourable conduct and generous disposition had won him the esteem of all who knew him. His only obvious defect, apart from his unimposing stature, was that he was a lawyer with a lawyer's limited vision, and in religious matters an evangelical of extreme Protestant views. As an opponent said, it was hard to object to anything about him except his opinions.
Against this pleasant-looking but rather insignificant little man, with his bright, wide-apart eyes, large sensitive mouth and firm chin, stood Napoleon Bonaparte, now at the very apex of his glory. At the age of forty the latter looked, as a contemporary described him, " the very incarnation of success." Within a few years he had entered every capital in Christendom save Moscow and London, had incorporated Italy and half Germany into his dominions and had filled the tin-ones of Spain, Holland, Westphalia and Naples with his# kinsfolk. As though this immense dynastic empire was not enough, he had buttressed it round with a group of subservient Teuton princes on whom, in return for unquestioning obedience, he conferred puppet crowns. It was all done, a wit explained, by their saying the Lord's Prayer together; the Electors of the German States said to Bonaparte, "Thy will be done," and the great man replied "Thy Kingdom cornel"
Only the English could have seen subject for jest in the matter. Sweden, their last ally outside the Peninsula, had now repudiated them and joined in the embargo on their trade. Even the Pope had been bundled that summer off St. Peter's throne and imprisoned for
1 Granville, II, 347, 355; Creevey, I, 107; Jackson, II, 492; Romilly, 305; Dudley, 81; Tucker, II, 350-2; Windham Papers, II, 357.
failing to prohibit their spices and cottons. His domains, he was curtly informed, had not been granted by Charlemagne to his predecessor to succour heretic usurers and were therefore forfeit to the imperial power whence they derived. The Eternal City would become instead the second capital of the new Empire.
Charlemagne's successor took care, too, in that autumn of conquest to perpetuate Ins dynasty. As his wife was barren, he divorced her and took another.1 His first choice was a sister of the Czar. But when Alexander, prompted by an old-fashioned mother, made excuses, the dual and Byzantine policy of Tilsit was dropped. In its place Napoleon reverted to the single European State of his earlier dreams and—like some sudden counter-stroke in battle—demanded the hand of the eighteen-year-old Archduchess Marie-Louise. Instead of a barbarian princess, the new Caesar would marry the lineal representative of the old, and, by union with the Hapsburgs, legitimise his line and restore the unity of civilised Europe. This accorded with the policy advocated by that good European, Talleyrand: it suited, too, the book of Prince Metternich who, promoted from the Paris Embassy to the Imperial Chancellery at Vienna, was-secretly advising his master that the only hope for Austria was to tack, turn and flatter and so build up strength for better days. Thus it came about that on April ist, 1810, the niece of Marie Antoinette was united to the heir of the Revolution amid the cheers of the Paris mob. The guillotine had been legitimised.
Later that summer a Jewish lad of genius saw the architect of all these wonders riding through the palace avenue at Diisseldorf—the world-famous hat, the white steed, the invisible-green uniform, the glittering cortege overshadowed by its chief's dazzling simplicity. " Carelessly, almost lazily sat the Emperor, holding his rein with one hand and with the other good-naturedly patting the horse's neck. It was a sunny, marble hand, a mighty hand, one of those two hands which bound fast the many-headed monster of anarchy, and ordered the war of races, and it good-naturedly patted the horse's neck. Even the face had that hue which we find in the marble of Greek and Roman busts; the traits were as nobly cut as in the antique, and on that face was written, * Thou shalt have no Gods before me!' A smile flitted over the lips—and yet all knew that those lips needed but to whistle—et la Prusse n’existait plus; those lips needed but to whistle—and the entire clergy would have stopped their ringing and singing; those lips needed but to whistle—and the entire Holy
1 The Minister of Police, Fouche—now Duke of Otranto and exceedingly anxious to make amends for his hesitation at the time of Walcheren—was employed to persuade Josephine of the necessity of " this most sublime and inevitable of sacrifices."
Roman Empire would have danced. And those lips smiled and the eye smiled too. In was an eye clear as heaven; it could read the hearts of men, it saw at a glance all the things of this world, while we others see them only one by one and by their coloured shadows. . . . The Emperor rode quietly straight through the avenue. No policeman opposed him; proudly, on snorting horses and laden with gold and jewels, rode his retinue; the drums were beating, the trumpets were sounding; close to me the wild Aloysius was muttering his general's name; not far away the drunken Gumpertz was grumbling, and the people shouted with a thousand voices, ' Long live the Emperor! "
Four years later when all was in the dust Haydon, the painter, who like a true John Bull had always hated Napoleon, visited his palace at Fontainebleau. There he saw the sculptured heads of Alexander, Caesar and Michael Angelo in his bedroom, the golden eagle grappling the world with its great talons outside the library window, the avenues where the conqueror of mankind had walked with brooding, lowered head and hands clasped behind his back. And still echoing from that tremendous dominion, he heard the drums of the Imperial Guard in the barracks outside: " beating with a harsh unity that made my heart throb with their stony rattle. Never did I hear such drums and never shall again; there were years of battle and blood in every sound."2 It was their tyrannic unity that Napoleon imposed on mankind, sweeping away the franchises, privileges and serfdoms of bygone centuries, smashing outworn ideals and institutions, making new laws, roads and bridges, devising out of his sole reason codes and systems to last for all time, and imposing on all the rationalising, undiscriminating bureaucracy through which, regardless of race or prescriptive right, he made his will obeyed.
After Wagram the whole Continent, from the Urals to the Atlantic, and from the North Cape to the Pyrenees, was at peace under the shadow of the Eagles. But beyond that shadow were still the sea and the sierras. Here the maritime barbarians and their dupes stood at bay. Every night old Mr. Duffe, their Consul at Cadiz— almost the last port in Europe open to their trade—drank his unchanging toast, " To the downfall of Bonaparte !"3 Nearly a hundred and fifty ships of the line, two hundred frigates and five hundred sloops and brigs, manned by 130,000 seamen and marines, kept watch round the long European coastline. In the Mediterranean one of the
1Bonapartism, 61-3.
2Haydon, I, 280.
3 Jackson, II, 488.
largest fleets England had ever maintained in those waters exerted an invisible influence on every State round its shores. Under its pressure and that of its taciturn Commander-in-Chief, Turkey made peace with London and reopened her ports, the craven Court of Sicily continued to tolerate a British garrison, and the guerrilleros of Catalonia and Valencia, armed and nourished from the sea, held up the eastern highroads out of France. For Collingwood's work never ended: from dawn till far into the night he bent over his desk in the Ocean's cabin, corresponding with princes, sultans, merchants and consuls, smugglers, spies and naval and military commanders. Driven from the Continent, the cautious, tenuous, ubiquitous diplomacy of England still sent out its disturbing waves from a three-decker's tilting quarter-deck.
Its most awful quality was its persistence. It was Lord Collingwood's boast that no battle or storm could ever remove a British squadron from the station it had been ordered to hold. Once for fifteen months he never let go an anchor. " My family are actually strangers to me," he told a fellow officer in one of his rare moments of communicativeness; " how little do the people of England know th
e sacrifices we make for them." His heart was utterly set on England: on the patient, sensible wife on whom he had not set eyes for seven years, on the daughters who had forgotten what he looked like, on his beloved Morpeth and the oaks he had laid out with old Scott, the gardener, for a maritime country's future.1 "Tell me," he wrote, " do the trees which I planted thrive ? Is there shade under the three oaks for a comfortable summer seat ? Do the poplars grow on the walk, and docs the wall of the terrace stand firm ?" One thing only he valued more; his country's honour and security. "To stand a barrier between the ambition of France and the independence of England," he once confessed to his wife, "is the first wish of my life." Until the giant who threatened her was defeated or dead, there was no moving this homesick, domestic, ageing man. Not Nelson himself had loved England more.
In 1808 Collingwood's health gave way under his close confinement and unceasing labour and he asked to be relieved. The Admiralty, which regarded him as as much a feature of the landscape as the rock of Gibraltar, replied that he could not be spared, and he remained. "This mortal body of ours," he wrote, "is but a crazy
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