The Story of Wellington

The last battle of the Peninsular War was fought on Easter Sunday, the 10th April 1814, at Toulouse, on which Soult’s army had concentrated.

A mistake on the part of an engineer as to the breadth of the Garonne above Toulouse prevented Wellington from crossing at the spot he had selected because there were not sufficient pontoons. This caused considerable delay and a march to a narrower but more difficult place below the town. Sir George Napier says that he never saw the Commander-in-Chief in such a rage—he was “furious.” On the completion of the gangway, Beresford, with a portion of the army, passed over, drove in the French outposts, and remained in front of the enemy. There they stopped for three days, cut off from the main force and liable to attack any moment. This unexpected situation was brought about by a storm which flooded the river and swept away the pontoons.

Soult is stated to have given this reason for failing to assail Beresford’s force: “You do not know what stuff two British divisions are made of; they would not be conquered as long as there was a man of them left to stand, and I cannot afford to lose men now.”

When the new bridge was available no time was lost in crossing the river, and on the 10th Soult was attacked. An eye-witness thus records the event78:

“The 4th, 6th, and a Portuguese division under Marshal Beresford’s orders, attacked the great fort on the right of the French, and here was the brunt of the battle, for the enemy was strongly posted and flanked by works, with trenches in their front, and their best troops opposed to ours. But nothing could damp the courage of this column; the enemy’s guns poured a torrent of fire upon it; still it moved onward, when column upon column appeared, crowning the hill and forming lines in front and on the flanks of our brave fellows who were near the top; and then such a roll of musketry accompanied by peals of cannon and the shouts of the enemy commenced, that our soldiers were fairly forced to give way and were driven down again. This attack was twice renewed, and twice were our gallant fellows forced to retire, when, being got into order again and under a tremendous fire of all arms from the enemy, they once more marched onward determined ‘to do or die’ (for they were nearly all Scotch) and, having gained the summit of the position, they charged with the bayonet, and in spite of every effort of the enemy, drove all before them and entered every redoubt and fort with such a courage as I never saw before. The enemy lay in heaps, dead and dying! few, very few, escaped the slaughter of that day; but ‘victory’ was heard shouted from post to post as that gallant band moved along the crown of the enemy’s position taking every work at the point of the bayonet.

“While the work of death was going on here, the centre of the French position was attacked by the Spanish column of 8000 men, under General Freyre, who had demanded in rather a haughty tone that Lord Wellington should give the Spaniards the post of honour in the battle. He acceded, but took special care to have the Light Division in reserve to support them in case of accidents. Old Freyre placed himself at the head of his column, surrounded by his staff, and marched boldly up the hollow way, or road, which led right up to the enemy, under a heavy and destructive fire of cannon shot, which plunging into the head of his column made great havoc among his men; still they went steadily and boldly on, to my astonishment and delight to see them behave so gallantly, and I could not help expressing my delight to Colonel Colborne. But, alas! he knew them too well, and said to me, ‘Gently, my friend; don’t praise them too soon; look at yonder brigade of French Light Infantry, ready to attack them as soon as the head of their column enters the open ground. One moment more and we shall see the Spaniards fly! Gallop off, you, and throw the 52nd Regiment (which was in line) into open column of companies, and let these fellows pass through, or they will carry the regiment off with them.’ He had scarcely finished the words when a well-directed fire from the French Infantry opened upon the Spanish column, and instantly the words ‘Vive l’Empereur! En avant! en avant!’ accompanied by a charge, put the Spaniards to flight, and down they came upon the 52nd Regiment, and I had but just time to throw it into open column of companies when they rushed through the intervals like a torrent and never stopped till they arrived at the river some miles in the rear. As soon as they had passed, and I had formed the regiment into line again, we moved up and took the Spaniards’ place, driving before us the enemy’s brigade, who, being by this time completely beaten on the right and all his forts and trenches carried by Beresford’s troops, had retreated into the town; so that we found the fort on that part of the position which we attacked quite abandoned, and we entered it without loss.

“On our right the 3rd Division, under General Picton, was ordered to make a false attack on the canal bridge, which was strongly fortified and formed an impracticable barrier to that part of the town; but General Picton (who never hesitated at disobeying his orders) thought proper to change this false attack into a real one, and after repeated and useless attempts to carry it was forced to give it up, with an immense loss of officers and men. To our extreme right and on the opposite side of the river General Hill was stationed with his corps in order to watch the bridge and gates of the town, and either prevent any attempt of the enemy to pass over a body of troops during the action to cut off our communications with the rear, or, should he show any design of retreating that way, to impede him. However, all was quiet on that side, and now that every man of the enemy’s army had been chased from the position the battle was won, and the roar of cannon, the fire of the musketry, and the shouts of the victors ceased. All was still; the pickets placed; the sentinels set; and the greatest part of the army sleeping in groups round the fires of the bivouac.”

Soult had only been able to bring some 39,000 men into the field, to so great an extent had his forces been depleted, while Wellington had less than 50,000 available troops. Of the French, 3200 were killed or wounded, of the Allies 4600. On the 12th April Soult evacuated Toulouse, six days after Napoleon the Great had snatched up a pen and scrawled his formal abdication. A moment before he had been full of fight, had wanted to rally the corps of Augereau, Suchet and Soult. A year later he won back more than these. Wellington entered Toulouse on the day Soult left it, and within a few hours of the receipt of the news from Paris of the proclamation of Louis XVIII, a monarch as incompetent as the fallen Emperor was great. History is oftentimes ironic, and Time’s see-saw seldom maintains an even balance for any lengthy period.

CHAPTER XVII

The Prelude to the Waterloo Campaign

(1814–15)

“I work as hard as I can in every way in order to succeed.”

Wellington.

“I march to-morrow to follow Marshal Soult, and to prevent his army from becoming the noyau of a civil war in France.” Thus writes Wellington to Sir John Hope on the 16th April 1814, when the white flag of the Bourbons was flying at Toulouse, and forty-eight hours after Hope had been made a prisoner during a sortie on the part of the French garrison of Bayonne. Soult extended no right hand of welcome to Louis XVIII, and positively refused to submit to the new regime until he had received trustworthy information from some of Napoleon’s ministers. However, he was speedily convinced of the fall of his former master, and both he and Suchet acknowledged the Provisional Government. On the 19th April a Convention was signed by each party and Wellington for the cessation of hostilities and the evacuation of Spain. The British infantry were sent either to the homeland or on foreign service; the cavalry traversed France and crossed to England from Calais.

Wellington’s work was not yet over, although his military career was closed for a time. He was appointed British Ambassador at Paris, and while he wrote to a correspondent that recent political and military events promised “to restore the blessings of peace permanently to the world,” we must not suppose that he believed the abdication of Napoleon to be the herald of the millennium. When Castlereagh proposed the diplomatic post to him Wellington would have been perfectly justified in declining it, but sufficient of his story has been told for the reader to appreciate the fact that the Hero of the Peninsula was as keenly devoted to the service of his king and country as the Hero of Trafalgar. Whatever egotism he possessed was certainly not carried to excess. He says that he should never have thought himself qualified for the work. “I hope, however,” he adds, and here the sterling qualities of the man are revealed, “that the Prince Regent, his Government, and your Lordship, are convinced that I am ready to serve him in any situation in which it may be thought that I can be of any service. Although I have been so long absent from England, I should have remained as much longer if it had been necessary; and I feel no objection to another absence in the public service, if it be necessary or desirable.” He says much the same thing to his brother Henry: “I must serve the public in some manner or other; and, as under existing circumstances I could not well do so at home, I must do so abroad.”

Those who accuse Wellington of lack of heart will do well to remember that before leaving Toulouse for Paris he wrote an appealing letter to Earl Bathurst in behalf of Sir Rowland Hill and Sir Robert Kennedy, the latter of whom had exerted himself to the utmost in keeping the army well supplied with provisions, and to write a letter of condolence to Hope, who was a prisoner and wounded.

But he found time to join in a few fêtes in honour of the Restoration, including a magnificent ball given by Sir Charles Stewart, the British Commissioner to the Army of the Allies, where monarchs were plentiful and Society beauties abundant. “It was in the midst of this ball,” the Comtesse de Boigne relates, “that the Duke of Wellington appeared for the first time in Paris. I can see him now entering the room with his two nieces, Lady Burgers79 and Miss Pole, hanging on his arms. There were no eyes for any one else, and at this ball, where grandeur abounded, everything gave way to military glory. That of the Duke of Wellington was brilliant and unalloyed, and a lustre was added to it by the interest that had long been felt in the cause of the Spanish nation.”

He had only been in Paris six days before he set out for Madrid, viâ Toulouse, “in order to try whether I cannot prevail upon all parties to be more moderate, and to adopt a constitution more likely to be practicable and to contribute to the peace and happiness of the nation.” He had made the proposal, and the Allies had eagerly accepted it. When he started on his journey he was the Duke of Wellington,80 and it was additional cause of satisfaction to him to know that peerages had been conferred on Beresford, Hill, Cotton, Hope, and Graham, “my gallant coadjutors.” He stayed at Toulouse for a couple of days, attending to details connected with the army, and again continued his journey, writing dispatches, notes of condolence, a letter requesting permission to accept the Grand Cross of the Order of St George from the Czar, and so on.

Napoleon had released Ferdinand VII on the 13th of the previous March, and the king was now back in his capital. “I entertain a very favourable opinion of the King from what I have seen of him,” Wellington writes from Madrid on the 25th May 1814, “but not of his Ministers.” This opinion of Ferdinand must be taken as referring to the man and not to his methods, for he had already assumed the part of a despot to so alarming an extent that civil war was feared, hence the Duke’s journey. “I have accomplished my object in coming here”; he says in the same letter, “that is, I think there will certainly be no civil war at present.” But seven days later he communicates with Castlereagh in a minor key: “I have been well received by the King and his Ministers; but I fear that I have done but little good.”

He left a lengthy memorandum in the hands of his Catholic Majesty, full of excellent advice, and bereft, as he said, of “all national partialities and prejudices.” Commerce, the colonies, domestic interests, and finance are all touched upon in a sane, straightforward way, obviously with the intention of promoting “a good understanding and cementing the alliance with Great Britain,” but valuable quite apart from any motive that might be construed as selfish. As Wellington says in the preamble, “The Spanish nation having been engaged for six years in one of the most terrible and disastrous contests by which any nation was ever afflicted, its territory having been entirely occupied by the enemy, the country torn to pieces by internal divisions, its ancient constitution having been destroyed, and vain attempts made to establish a new one; its marine, its commerce, and revenue entirely annihilated; its colonies in a state of rebellion, and nearly lost to the mother country; it becomes a question for serious consideration, what line of policy should be adopted by His Majesty upon his happy restoration to his throne and authority.” Had Ferdinand taken Wellington’s well-intentioned advice to heart, Spain might have risen from her ashes. The old abuses cropped up, the Inquisition was re-established in a milder form, and troops were sent across the seas to perish in a futile endeavour to recover the Transatlantic colonies of a once glorious empire.

After returning to Paris to make arrangements for the embarkation of the British cavalry at Calais, the Duke sailed for England. When he landed at Dover on the 23rd June 1814, a salute from the batteries of the Castle welcomed him home. “About five o’clock this morning,” says a contemporary writer, “his majesty’s sloop-of-war, the Rosario, arrived in the roads, and fired a salute. Shortly afterwards, the yards of the different vessels of war were manned; a salute took place throughout the squadron, and the launch of the Nymphen frigate was seen advancing towards the harbour, with the Duke of Wellington; at this time the guns upon the heights and from the batteries commenced their thunder upon the boat leaving the ship; and on passing the pier-heads his Lordship was greeted with three distinct rounds of cheers from those assembled; but upon his landing at the Crosswall, nothing could exceed the rapture with which his Lordship was received by at least ten thousand persons; and notwithstanding it was so early, parties continued to arrive from town and country every minute. The instant his Lordship set foot on shore, a proposition was made, and instantly adopted, to carry him to the Ship Inn: he was borne on the shoulders of our townsmen, amidst the reiterated cheers of the populace.”

London went wild with excitement when he arrived, and at Westminster Bridge the mob took the horses from his carriage and dragged it along in triumph. On the 28th he took his seat for the first time in the House of Lords. He must have appeared a fine figure as, clad in his Field Marshal’s uniform under a peer’s robes, he was introduced by the Dukes of Beaufort and Richmond. The Lord Chancellor expressed the sentiments of the House, but refrained from attempting to state the “eminent merits” of his military character, “to represent those brilliant actions, those illustrious achievements, which have attached immortality to the name of Wellington, and which have given to this country a degree of glory unexampled in the annals of this kingdom. In thus acting, I believe I best consult the feelings which evince your Grace’s title to the character of a truly great and illustrious man”; and the Duke replied, in a short speech, attributing his success to his troops and general officers. A little later a deputation from the Lower House waited upon Wellington to offer him the congratulations of the Commons, and he attended in person to return thanks. The whole House rose as he entered. After a short speech the Speaker made an eloquent and touching address.

“It is not … the grandeur of military success,” he said, “which has alone fixed our admiration or commanded our applause; it has been that generous and lofty spirit which inspired your troops with unbounded confidence, and taught them to know that the day of battle was always a day of victory; that moral courage and enduring fortitude which, in perilous times, when gloom and doubt had beset ordinary minds, stood nevertheless unshaken; and that ascendancy of character which, uniting the energies of jealous and rival nations, enabled you to wield at will the fate and fortunes of mighty empires....

“It now remains only that we congratulate your Grace upon the high and important mission on which you are about to proceed, and we doubt not that the same splendid talents, so conspicuous in war, will maintain, with equal authority, firmness, and temper, our national honour and interests in peace.”

Wellington was made a Doctor of Laws by the University of Oxford, as Nelson had been before him,81 he received the freedom of the City of London in a gold casket, and a magnificent sword—in a word, he was the country’s Hero.

The time at his disposal was short and fully occupied, for he left London on the 8th August for Paris, travelling by way of the Netherlands, where he inspected the frontier from Liège along the Meuse and the Sambre to Namur and Charleroi, and thence by Mons to Tournay and the sea with a view to determining how Holland and Belgium, now united into one kingdom, could be placed in an adequate state of defence for future service should circumstances dictate. He also noted some of the most advantageous positions, including “the entrance of the forêt de Soignes by the high road which leads to Brussels from Binch, Charleroi, and Namur,”—in one word, Waterloo. He realized that there were more disadvantages than advantages, but “this country must be defended in the best manner that is possible,” even though it “affords no features upon which reliance can be placed to establish any defensive system.”82

Wellington had no hours of luxurious ease in Paris. The abolition of the slave trade, on which Great Britain had at last determined, occupied much of his attention, and one has only to refer to his dispatches at this period to understand the many difficulties he had to contend with in this one particular. Then there were questions of compensation for private property destroyed or damaged in the late war to be considered, of American vessels of war and privateers fitted out in French ports, and what was most important of all, a diagnosis of the increasing restlessness in Paris to be made. He believed that the sentiments of the people were favourable to the Bourbon king, “but the danger is not in that quarter, but among the discontented officers of the army, and others, heretofore in the civil departments of the service, now without employment.”

It would be incorrect to state that Wellington was popular in Paris, for not a few prominent military men regarded the presence of the General who had played no small part in tarnishing the glory of France as a perpetual reminder of the country’s misfortunes. The people even went so far as to resent his coat of arms, in which there was a lion or leopard bearing a tricoloured flag. This was construed as the British lion trampling on the French national flag. There was an eagle on the Duchess’s arms, which was another cause of offence. “My coach was in danger of being torn to pieces,” says the Duke, and he was obliged to have the innocent bird painted out.

The Congress of Vienna was now sitting, bent on undoing the work of the Revolution so far as was possible with a view to upholding the Divine right of kings. This is not to be wondered at considering the members of the solemn conclave, which included the Czar, the Kings of Prussia, Bavaria, Denmark and Würtemberg, the Grand Duke Charles of Baden, the Elector William of Hesse, the Hereditary Grand Duke George of Hesse-Darmstadt, the Duke of Weimar, and Prince Eugene Beauharnais (Napoleon’s step-son). The President was Metternich, the Emperor of Austria’s right-hand man, the first representative of France was the wily Talleyrand, of Great Britain Castlereagh. A host of plenipotentiaries came to put their fingers into the political pie, including those of Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, France, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, Switzerland, Italy, the Pope, the Netherlands, and the smaller German States.

What with talk of projected attempts on his life and the far from pacific doings at Vienna, the Earl of Liverpool was of opinion that it would be advisable to get Wellington out of France as soon as possible. With this idea in view he was offered the command of the troops in North America, an offer he bitterly resented. However, Castlereagh solved the difficulty by asking the Duke to take his place at Vienna. The proposition was made by the Foreign Secretary in a letter dated the 18th December 1814. “I do not hesitate to comply with your desire,” the Duke replies. “As I mean to serve the King’s Government in any situation which may be thought desirable, it is a matter of indifference to me in what stage I find your proceedings.”

When Wellington reached the Austrian capital in January 1815—destined to be the greatest year in modern European history—he found that the wolves in sheep’s clothing had almost concluded their deliberations. Russia, supported by Prussia, was intent upon securing Poland, a plan bitterly opposed by Great Britain and Austria. France was wishful for Holland and Belgium. The quarrelling suddenly ceased when, on the 7th March, Metternich received the most astounding news. Napoleon, King of Elba, had left his little island state, landed on the French coast, and was marching in the direction of Paris! Wellington heard on the same day from another source, and immediately communicated the scanty news detailed to him by Lord Burghersh to the Emperor of Austria and the Czar.

“I do not entertain the smallest doubt that, if unfortunately it should be possible for Buonaparte to hold at all against the King of France, he must fall under the cordially united efforts of the Sovereigns of Europe.” Thus writes the Duke to Castlereagh, but in a dispatch of the same date, namely the 12th March, he shows that he entirely failed to appreciate the fascination still exercised by the name “Napoleon.” “It is my opinion,” he writes, “that Buonaparte has acted upon false or no information, and that the King will destroy him without difficulty, and in a short time.” We know that the ex-Emperor’s reception was at first somewhat lukewarm, but as he marched towards the capital it assumed the form of a triumphal procession, with Ney and the 6000 men who were “to bring him back in an iron cage” as enthusiastic followers. The inhabitants of the south alone refused to recognize the former Emperor of the French.

Far from Louis XVIII destroying Napoleon “without difficulty,” that brave monarch left France to its own devices on the 19th March, the day before his predecessor and successor reached the Tuileries. “What did he do in the midst of the general consternation of Paris?” asks the Baron de Frénilly. “He acted. A great crowd saw him in the morning proceeding in pomp with Monsieur to the Chamber of Deputies; he was seen to enter and throw himself into his brother’s arms, with the solemn promise to remain in Paris and be buried under the ruins of the monarchy; and on the following day the population learnt that he had fled in the night by the road to Flanders!” Soult, now Minister of War, apparently under the impression that an Army Order would tend to dispel any affection the soldiers might feel towards their former Head, issued the most stupid of nonsensical proclamations. “Bonaparte,” it reads in part, “mistakes us so far as to believe that we are capable of abandoning a legitimate and beloved sovereign in order to share the fortunes of one who is nothing more than an adventurer. He believes this—the idiot!—and his last act of folly is a convincing proof that he does so.”

Without loss of time the Fifth Coalition was formed, Great Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia entering into a treaty on the 17th March, whereby each of them guaranteed to put 150,000 men in the field against “the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world,” Great Britain, as usual, financing the Allies, this time to the enormous extent of £5,000,000.