Britain Against Napoleon

by Roger Knight

  The French emperor waited impatiently for the Russian government representatives to arrive to negotiate a treaty. They never came. On 19 October he and his army began the retreat from Moscow: had he waited only two weeks instead of a month his army would have reached Smolensk, where a large provisions depot had been established, before the snow arrived on 6 November. The French Army was not used to retreating under duress, and it was wretchedly ill-organized for doing so. It left Moscow with carts overloaded with the plunder of the soldiery, rather than with provisions: some food depots were destroyed as they left. No one had thought to provide winter horseshoes, a shortage that was responsible, in the opinion of one French officer, for more horse deaths even than hunger.* The consequent loss from hunger, hypothermia and frostbite of the soldiers, horses and equipment of the Grande Armée was the single event that lost Napoleon his reputation for invincibility, gave the Allies heart and presaged the emperor’s defeat.8 After the terrible crossing of the River Berezina at the end of November, by which time Napoleon had lost up to 40,000 men, his artillery and baggage, half of those troops who escaped were accounted for by the cold. Fewer than 20,000 of the troops who served in Russia fought again in a Napoleonic army.9

  These great campaigns in the far north and south of Europe were fought not only against the enemy but against harsh conditions. Large parts of both Spain and Russia are unforgiving landscapes, with extremes of heat and cold, poor roads and thinly populated countryside with low agricultural yields, unequal to feeding large armies. Spain, it was said, was a country where small armies were defeated and large armies starved, and the provisioning problem was far worse when an army marched through an area that had already been ravaged by campaigning.10 The French forces hardly fell below 200,000, and were at their most numerous in July 1811 at 291,414. Wellington’s armies did not exceed 80,000 until 1813, although it should not be forgotten that several dispersed Spanish armies and many bands of guerrillas fought on the side of the Allies. The French were never able to concentrate their forces because of the difficulty of provisioning. As Marshal Marmont observed in early 1812, ‘The English army, provided in advance with large magazines, and adequate means of transport, lives everywhere equally well; the [French] Army of Portugal, without magazines, with little transport, without money, can only live by spreading itself out.’11

  Thus the military advantages over the French gained in both Russia and the Peninsula were the results of a policy of prolonged tactical retreat, of evading an enemy that became weakened by starvation and exposure to winter weather. Tsar Alexander took his armies beyond Moscow, and Wellington withdrew behind the Torres Vedras Lines. In both cases the consequent wastage of the French Army proved to be the turning point in the military struggle. An essential element of military success, therefore, for the British and the Russians was an efficient Commissariat, forward planning, the establishment of food and equipment depots, and the securing of thousands of carts and the horses to pull them. Not the least of the improvements in the Russian Army in the years before Napoleon’s invasion were found in the commissariat, for lessons in logistics and supply had been learnt from the campaigns after the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, when the Russian Army all but starved. A ruthless requisitioning system, raising food and supplies from the Duchy of Warsaw, filled the thousands of carts as they followed the army. Commissars were appointed to ensure that local officials obeyed orders.12 The Russians nonetheless found it difficult to keep their army supplied while in pursuit of the French in late 1812, because of the slow speed of their carts, which could not keep up with the army, and because the horses pulling them consumed great quantities of oats and straw. When provisions were plentiful, a Russian soldier was supplied with three days’ rations and seven more days of dried black bread; but it required 850 carts to carry a day’s food and forage for 120,000 men and 40,000 horses.13 Kutuzov was criticized for holding his troops back in pursuing the French, but he reasoned that he could save his army and watch while the French soldiers were decimated by the cold. The Russian Army underwent great privations, but the sufferings and casualties of the invading army were terrible.

  Britain played only a small part in Russia’s great effort, but made timely provision of finance and munitions for the pursuit of Napoleon’s army across Germany in 1813. In the winter of 1812, when the Russians were rebuilding their army, arming the reserve units that reinforced the field army in 1813, 101,000 muskets were sent from Britain (as we saw in Chapter 12). A request to Britain for a subsidy of over £4 million in December 1812 was successful, with £1.33 million immediately and £3.3 million to follow, which was significant in a country financed by depreciated paper roubles.14 Britain’s contributions of arms and finance to other European countries buttressed the emerging anti-French alliance, which was greatly strengthened when Prussia threw off its French alliance at the beginning of 1813.

  The Allies in the Peninsula were totally dependent upon the British Treasury, and it was the operations of Wellington’s army that generated the greatest political heat in London. Between 1809 and 1812 the Whig Opposition did everything it could to force the government to abandon the Peninsula, convinced that Britain could not afford to subsidize Portugal and Spain.* Powerful parliamentary speakers such as Grey, Whitbread and Sheridan continually spoke against retaining Wellington’s army in the Peninsula. Lord Grenville’s opinion was that ‘Portugal so far from being the most defensible was the least defensible of any country in Europe’; to his brother he wrote, ‘We are reinforcing and defending Portugal, which to do is madness.’15 Opposition newspapers such as the Morning Chronicle poured contempt on the prospects for military success in the Peninsula, but Lord Liverpool, secretary of state for war, secured a strong assurance from Wellington that Portugal could be defended, and he supported his general through thick and thin.16 Nevertheless, by the autumn of 1810 the prospects did not look good, even to Lord Liverpool, who wrote to Wellington, ‘Not one officer … expressed … any confidence as to probable success’, and most were convinced of ‘the necessity of a speedy evacuation of the country’.17 But he still held firmly to the strategy of defending Portugal. By January 1811 Wellington’s army had increased to 48,000 British troops. By October his intelligence told him that the French Army in Spain was in financial trouble, unable to pay new recruits or tend the wounded. He wrote to Liverpool, ‘It is impossible that this fraudulent tyranny can last. If Great Britain continues stout we must see the destruction of it.’18

  Against this background of vituperative political attacks, Liverpool and his successor as secretary of state for war, Lord Bathurst (after Liverpool became prime minister in June 1812), had to encourage Wellington.* The two ministers were patient and tolerated Wellington’s complaints over criticism in the newspapers, his mistaken perception that he lacked the government’s support and an inadequate supply of money. His scornful and contemptuous letters reflected, perhaps, the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.† As the war progressed, the politicians left its conduct to his military judgement, though Wellington continued to voice his frustrations. Liverpool’s firm but open and conciliatory handling of his difficult general was admirable. The prime minister had matured from his awkward and sensitive youth, and was proving an efficient administrator, a powerful debater and a colleague trusted by his cabinet, party and the prince regent. Even Wellington eventually came to respect him. Liverpool was quick to pass on the intelligence he was receiving from Russia. As early as 27 October 1812 he informed Wellington that ‘the situation of the French army must have become most critical. The season of the year must operate likewise against them in a degree incalculable.’ He concluded correctly that Wellington could be confident that the French could not reinforce their armies in Spain because of the events in Russia. In late December he wrote, less accurately, that he doubted whether Buonaparte (as he called Napoleon) could field any sort of army in 1813.19

  It is difficult to see how Liverpool and Bathurst could have given Wellington greater sup
port, for the fact remained that Britain did not have the strength to deliver a decisive blow.20 It is never easy to mount a political defence of an army in retreat, and withdrawal to winter quarters after success at the end of the campaigns of 1810 and 1812 placed the ministers in a difficult position. Even though the Allied army, behind a strong defensive line, pinned down very large numbers of French troops that Napoleon needed elsewhere in Europe, this argument did not play well to critics. Defending the Torres Vedras Lines made great military sense, undermining the French Army, which suffered lack of food, shelter and supplies, but the House of Commons wanted an outright military victory. The message that the French were experiencing hunger and cold, and therefore wastage through disease and desertion, was not accepted as a valid strategy by the Opposition.

  By November 1812 the cabinet began to see a clear connection between Napoleon’s disaster in Russia and the operations in the Peninsula. Bathurst wrote encouragingly to Wellington in November 1812, ‘in whatever way the Campaign in the North may terminate, the French armies must suffer so much that they cannot hope to begin another, or make preparations for it, without such reinforcements from France, as will prevent her sending any considerable forces to Spain.’21 Liverpool wrote at the end of December: ‘The disposition to abuse the Government for the retreat from Burgos and Madrid might naturally have been expected in the actual state of political parties’, but he assured Wellington that these attacks ‘produced no effect of any consequence to the prejudice of those in whose hands the administration of the Government has been placed’.22

  The following year saw even more slaughter in Germany and northern France, and the 1813 campaign proved to be a savage contest of manpower and reserves. But Napoleon’s genius for extricating himself from tight corners continued. On his return to France from Russia, he rebuilt his army in the winter of 1812 and early 1813: 200,000 French troops, many of them untrained and untested, were fielded in the spring. Opposing this new army were only 110,000 of the Allied armies, but Austria and Russia had greater reserves of men than France. Between 1812 and 1814 the immense total of 650,000 Russians were conscripted, and a reserve army of 7,000 officers and 325,000 soldiers was formed. The Russian high command also gave priority to gathering horses, which were levied in some provinces in lieu of army recruits: from late 1812 nearly 50,000 were assembled. A further 14,000 reached the cavalry towards the end of the winter of 1812/13. Thousands more were available to haul carts. Old and tired horses were rested and rehabilitated away from the fighting.23 These were resources which France could not match.

  Though vastly smaller in scale, the war in the Peninsula was just as much a war of logistics, and Wellington’s letters of complaint about scarce resources continued. At the end of 1813, from St Jean de Luz, he claimed that he was so short of supplies and specie that he could not move his army. Bathurst was also facing demands for men and equipment for northern Europe and for Canada, where Britain faced a hostile United States. He not only wrote to reassure Wellington that his needs were to be met before any others, but sent the military undersecretary, the tactful Colonel Bunbury, to explain to Wellington the cabinet’s view of the plans and the outlook for the coming year. Although no record survives of their discussions, Wellington was almost certainly told the plans for Rothschild to provide specie for the troops: the risks of committing such a secret to paper were too high. Unsurprisingly, Bunbury travelled back with a stern memorandum from the commander-in-chief to Bathurst: he wished to keep his veteran troops, he needed more provisions and sea transport, and more support from the navy.24

  The Tory governments had been committed to the Peninsular War since its start in 1808, and it was Liverpool’s administration that began to reap success after its investment over several years.25 Between 1808 and 1814 Spain received a subsidy that averaged just over £1 million a year, considerably less than the Portuguese subsidy, which was £1.5 million for the same period: in total Portugal received £10,605,689.26 (Even this amount represented only 57 per cent of the total cost of keeping the Portuguese Army in the field; the rest was raised by the Portuguese government.*) Remarkably, monthly expenditure accounts were rendered from Lisbon to the British Treasury in London. The financial relationship, therefore, was as close as the military one, for many British officers served in the Portuguese Army, commanded by an Irishman, General William Carr Beresford. Over 60 per cent of the British payments went on pay, which included a 12 per cent increase in 1809.27 However, Portuguese officers and men also received from Britain a full range of provisions from flour and bread to salted and fresh meat, salted fish, wine and spirits. The detailed accounts kept by the Portuguese Royal Treasury also reveal the longer list of help in kind, including uniforms, horse fodder, tents, bottles, bottle-straps, axes, new and second-hand blankets, and even firewood, which came with oil and flints.28

  Provisions and stores for the British, Portuguese and Spanish armies were trans-shipped by merchant ships chartered by the Transport Board in London. Far from the battlefield, transports and their warship escorts brought essential supplies from Britain.29 Between the summer of 1808 and the spring of 1814, the Allied armies in the Peninsula were supplied with reinforcements, munitions, food and stores by nearly 13,500 individual ship voyages from England to various ports in Spain and Portugal, escorted in 400 convoys.30 In addition to this continuous stream of ships, wheat was procured from the Barbary States and Gibraltar; one very large consignment even came from Egypt. However, the really important alternative source of wheat and flour was the United States, shipped mostly from the Delaware River. This supply became critical during 1811 because of the failure of the harvest in Britain. The Lisbon trading house of Henrique Teixeira de Sampaio stepped up its imports of American supplies primarily of flour, but also of biscuit and maize (for horses), transported in neutral ships and using British licences. In 1811 seventy-one ships brought these cargoes to Lisbon in 529,105 barrels, accounting for nearly half of the Commissariat’s issues of these provisions in 1811 and 1812.31

  By late 1811, however, as we shall see in the next chapter, acute bread shortages were being experienced in Britain, and exports of wheat were prohibited. On 21 November, Liverpool informed Wellington that he could have no further wheat, but by that time enough wheat and flour had been stockpiled in Lisbon. Significantly, the supply from America continued while Britain and the United States were at war, such was the weak control of a divided United States Congress over the middle states. Eventually an American Act of 29 July 1813 prohibited all trade under British licences.32 Six weeks before that, however, Britain had secured alternative supplies of grain by liberating the transport of wheat from the Baltic, after Napoleon’s defeat in Russia.33 When Wellington’s army reached its greatest strength as it approached the French border in early October 1813, it was consuming forty-four tons of biscuit a day.34

  An advancing army needed an efficient supply chain. The Russian Army’s reached from Germany right back to Russia, and was ruthlessly and efficiently managed.35 The supply of Wellington’s army as it approached the French border was no less essential. The capture of Santander by Admiral Sir Home Popham in August 1812 gave the Allied armies a temporary convenient port before their retreat in the late autumn of that year, but it came into its own as the main supply depot after the Battle of Vitoria in June 1813.36 Continuity and flexibility of supply gave Wellington a critical advantage over the French from the moment he landed in Portugal in 1808; as he described his first campaign:

  I kept the sea always on my flank; the transports attended the movements of the army as a magazine; and I had at all times, and every day, a short and easy communication with them. The army, therefore, could never be distressed for provisions or stores, however limited its means of land transport; and in case of necessity it might have embarked at any point of the coast.37

  For the taking of Ciudad Roderigo in January 1812, the siege artillery and its supporting stores went by sea. In March 1811 eleven transports moved this British heavy
siege artillery 180 miles northwards from Lisbon to Oporto in twelve days; flat-bottomed boats then took the guns and equipment 50 miles up the River Douro to Lamego, taking six days. The final 130 miles by road was laborious and lengthy, a reminder of the efficiency of water transport. It took twenty-six days, and required 384 pairs of oxen and 1,092 country carts, making two journeys for shot and powder, and 200 carts for engineer stores.38 After Ciudad Roderigo, the siege train moved on to Badajoz, which fell in early April.39 However, in September and October, when Wellington invested Burgos, there were no such transport advantages, and little artillery: British infantry failed to scale the battlements, which remained unscathed; failure there was almost guaranteed.40

  British sea control and a plentiful supply of merchant ships chartered by the Transport Board gave Wellington advantages in addition to a flexible and speedy supply train. Warships and transports were in use at every point of conflict along the Spanish coast. In June 1813, for instance, 255 ships were serving the army in the Peninsula: they were part of amphibious operations on the south-east coast at Cartagena, off the coast of Catalonia, Cádiz and Corunna, on passage to and from England. They created diversions, transported troops from Sicily, and landed arms to sustain guerrilla groups in the Catalan hills. Wellington told Rear-Admiral Thomas Byam Martin at the end of the war that ‘If anyone wishes to know the history of this war, I will tell them that it is our maritime superiority that gives me the power of maintaining my army while the enemy is unable to do so.’41