Authors: Richard Holmes
Wellington also enjoyed a good party, and bent the same ferocious energy to partying that he did to everything else. On 13 March 1813, he gave a ball at Ciudad Rodrigo, at which he invested Lowry Cole with the Order of the Bath. Larpent wrote that:
He stayed at business at Freneida until half past three, and then rode full seventeen miles to Rodrigo in two hours to dinner, dressed in all his orders etc., was in high glee, danced himself, stayed supper, and at half past three in the morning went back to Freneida by moonlight and arrived before day-break at six, so that by twelve he was again ready for business, and I saw him amongst others upon a Court-martial when I returned at two …
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But for all this, there was no doubting that Wellington was the pivot on which the army turned. He was secretive even with his closest confidants, and remained steadfastly opposed to the notion of a second-in-command, although one was generally foisted on him by the government – first Lieutenant General Sir Brent Spencer, then Lieutenant General Lord Paget (who had the ill luck to be captured soon after coming out in 1812), and lastly Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Graham. As he told Beresford, who he regarded as de facto second-in-command because of his broad understanding of operations, ‘there is nobody in a modern army who must not see that there is no duty for the second in command to perform, and that this office is useless. It can at the same time be inconvenient, as it gives the holder pretensions which cannot be gratified except at the public inconvenience.’
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Wellington was convinced that the campaign of 1813 would be decisive, and there were essential preliminaries to be completed before he could embark upon it. The first was the honing of his own army, achieved in winter quarters. Discipline was re-established and useful changes made to equipment: the infantry was given light tin cooking-pots instead of heavy iron camp-kettles, and tents that housed about twenty-five men apiece. All this helped restored morale, bruised by the retreat from Burgos. ‘We were not pleased with Lord Wellington at the beginning of the winter,’ admitted Captain William Bragge. ‘He has now given the infantry tents. Therefore he is again a fine Fellow.’
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It was also essential to negotiate with the Spanish to ascertain the real limits of his authority as commander-in-chief of their army. In December Wellington travelled to Cádiz to meet the Cortes – the journey took him eleven days – and although he did not accomplish all he hoped for, as an alarmist campaign in the Spanish press had caused concern, he was content with the agreement. The experience helped colour his political views, and he wrote to Lord Bathurst on 27 January that: ‘I wish that some of our reformers would go to Cadiz and see the benefits of a sovereign popular assembly … and of a written constitution … In truth there is no authority in the state, apart from the libellous newspapers …’
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He also organised diversionary operations, like one mounted by Major General Sir John Murray from Alicante: there were still 200,000 French soldiers south of the Pyrenees, and he had to ensure that they could not concentrate against him.
On 22 May 1813, he crossed the frontier into Spain, turning his horse as he did so and doffing his hat with the words: ‘Farewell, Portugal! I shall never see you again.’ His intelligence network, now working better than ever before, speedily told him that the main French army, under Joseph and Jourdan, had relinquished Madrid and was marching north in an effort to join Clausel, now commanding French forces in the north-west. Wellington was anxious to catch Joseph before the meeting could take place, and set off in hot pursuit. This time he moved faster than his enemies. Joseph’s army, ‘encumbered with a King, a Court, large portions of a Civil Service …’ had such an abundance of camp-followers that one disenchanted general described it as ‘a walking bordello’. On his way through Salamanca, Wellington attended mass, his ‘very light-grey pelisse coat, single-breasted, without a sash’ in sharp contrast to the glittering Spanish generals in his suite. It was the same at Zamora, where they could not understand that ‘the man sitting there so meekly in a grey coat’ was the famous Lord Wellington.
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Soon he was at Burgos, of evil memory, but a series of mighty explosions announced that the French, as Harry Smith put it, ‘had blown Burgos to where we wished it’ and did not intend to make a stand.
Wellington caught them at last at Vitoria, in the valley of the River Zadorra, on 21 June. Although the French were well-placed to meet an attack from the west – Wellington’s line of approach – he divided his army into four large columns and ordered two of them to attack from the west, pinning the French to their positions, while the others struck through the hills to the north, feeling for the French flank. The French fought well to begin with, and inflicted 5,000 casualties on the allies, but Wellington’s army was at the peak of its form and would not be denied. The 3
rd
Division, back under Picton’s command, played an especially distinguished part, led forward by Picton himself with cries of ‘Come on, ye rascals! Come on, ye fighting villains!’ As the flanking attacks bit home, the French collapsed, abandoning the whole of their baggage and all but two of their guns.
The large-scale looting that followed temporarily cost Wellington more men than the 7,000 lost by the French, and he fulminated predictably against poor discipline and lack of attention to duty. His letter to Bathurst complained that the battle had ‘totally annihilated all order and discipline’. ‘This is the consequence of the state of discipline of the British army,’ he concluded. ‘We may gain the greatest victories; but we shall do no good, until we shall so far alter our system, as to force all ranks to perform their duty.’
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This time he had a point, for this was not the necessity-driven theft of the sort that had disfigured the retreat from Burgos, but larceny on a gigantic scale in which officers participated enthusiastically, and which brought the pursuit to a halt. William Tomkinson described an Aladdin’s cave of ‘carriages, wagons, mules, monkeys, parrots …’ and admitted that his regiment’s commissary took £600 in cash.
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The 15
th
Light Dragoons carried off King Joseph’s silver chamber-pot, earning the nickname ‘The Emperor’s Chambermaids.’ Captain Browne, having escaped from brief captivity, found a friendly sergeant who stuffed his pockets with £210 of captured money, saying ‘at all events your Honour if you have got a hard thump today you have got your pockets well lined with Doubloons’.
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Wellington himself had the paintings of the Spanish royal collection packed and sent to England for safe-keeping. In March 1814, he told Henry Wellesley that he was anxious to return them, but was invited by King Ferdinand to retain them as they had ‘come into your possession in a manner as just as they are honourable’.
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Marshal Jourdan’s baton was found in the baggage, and Wellington sent this trophy to the Prince Regent. Amongst the prisoners was Madame Gazan, wife of a general on Joseph’s staff. When asked if another unfortunate lady was also a general’s wife, she replied:
‘Ah, pour cela – non, elle est seulement sa femme de campagne.’
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Although Vitoria was a less desperate battle than Talavera or Albuera, it was of far greater strategic significance: a
Te Deum
was sung in St Petersburg, and Beethoven composed ‘Wellington’s Victory’ in its honour. The French grip on Spain was definitively broken, and all Napoleon’s generals could now do was to hold the Pyrenees and their approaches in an effort to prevent an invasion of southern France. However, Marshal Soult, who replaced Joseph and Jourdan in mid-July, skilfully reorganised his army and mounted a counter-offensive. He cut up British detachments at Roncesvalles and Maya, but was checked by Wellington himself at Sorauren, just north of Pamplona, on 28 and 30 July. ‘The 28
th
was fair bludgeon-work …,’ Wellington told his brother William. ‘I escaped unhurt as usual, and I begin to believe that the finger of God is upon me.’
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San Sebastián, keystone of the frontier, was blockaded by the allies in late June and bombarded in July 1813. It was attacked on the 25
th
after two practicable breaches had been established, but the assault was beaten off with heavy losses. Wellington concluded ‘that it would be necessary to increase the facilities of the attack before it should be repeated … and desired that the siege should for the moment be converted into a blockade’.
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It was not until late August that he was ready to proceed. Bombardment was renewed on the 26
th
, and five days later the place was assaulted in daylight so that the attackers could profit from the low tide. The garrison resisted desperately, compelling Graham, in command of the attack, to pause and recommence artillery fire, but by nightfall the town, now largely in flames, was in allied hands. The capture of San Sebastián was marred by the depressingly familiar pillage that followed it, and anti-British feeling was aroused by rumours that Wellington had fired the town deliberately, to punish it for its pre-war trade with the French. Had he wished to do so, he could have mortared the place at no risk to his army, but that was not an argument that commended itself to the wilder sections of the Spanish press.
Operations on the north-east coast of Spain were not going well, with the allies held in check by Marshal Suchet near Barcelona. Wellington considered intervening in that sector, but concluded that he was better placed to enter France from the north-west. News from elsewhere in Europe was encouraging, with early reports suggesting that Napoleon was in real trouble deep in Germany. With San Sebastián taken, he proposed to cross the River Bidossoa and then force the passes of the Pyrenees beyond it.
On 7 October Wellington crossed the Bidossoa, giving Ensign Howell Rees Gronow of the 1
st
Foot Guards his first view of ‘the immortal Wellington’:
He was very stern and grave looking; he was in deep meditation, so long as I kept him in view, and spoke to no one. His features were bold, and I saw much decision of character in his expression. He rode a knowing-looking thoroughbred horse, and wore a gray overcoat, Hessian boots, and a large cocked hat.
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Wellington was now a field marshal. He had been promoted full general in 1812, although the new rank only applied in the Peninsula, but his success at Vitoria encouraged the Prince Regent to write (Elizabeth Longford points out that the language is as fine as the writing is faint) from Carlton House on 3 July that:
Your glorious conduct is beyond all human praise, and far beyond my reward. I know no language the world affords worthy to express it … You have sent me, among the trophies of your unrivalled fame, the staff of a French Marshal, and I send you in return that of England.
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Alas, it was not that simple, for there was no regulation field-marshal’s baton in the British army of the age, and the prince, that ‘fountain of taste’ had helped design one. The Duke of York, never slow to tarnish the gilt, also sent a letter of congratulation, observing that the promotion had been mooted after Salamanca but was turned down because of the ‘spirit of jealousy’ it would have inspired.
The French defended the Bidossoa from stout field fortifications, but Wellington broke their line at Vera. The fall of Pamplona on 31 October released more troops, and with their aid he then unhinged Soult’s defence with battles on the Nivelle, the Nive and St Pierre, and was able to threaten Bayonne. On 1 November, he issued a proclamation to the French population, warning it to take no part in the operations but stressing that he had ordered that no harm would be done to civilians. However, it was soon evident that while British and Portuguese soldiers were conducting themselves so well that ‘the inhabitants are living very comfortably and quietly with our soldiers cantoned in their houses’, the Spanish were another matter altogether. They fiercely resented what the French had done to their country, and in consequence ‘plundered a good deal, and did a good deal of mischief …’
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This persuaded Wellington to send some of his Spanish troops back to Spain, which reduced the size of the force available to meet Soult when campaigning resumed in 1814, but also reduced the risk of large-scale French popular resistance to his invasion.
Wellington spent the winter of 1813 at St Jean de Luz, where his headquarters settled down to the familiar between-campaign routine. Larpent wrote that ‘everyone works hard, and does his business: the substance and not the form is attended to.’ The young gentlemen of the staff were in sparkling form. George Gleig described how:
They had many school-boy tricks; among others, that of giving nick-names, at which nobody took offence. ‘Where is Slender Billy?’ said Lord FitzRoy Somerset, looking round the table, and apparently missing somebody. ‘Here I am, FitzRoy,’ replied the Prince of Orange, ‘what do you want?’
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Several Bourbon sympathisers appeared, amongst them the Duc d’Angoulême, nephew of Louis XVIII, legitimate king of France. Visitors to headquarters had long been nicknamed tigers, and the duke, ‘a short, rather mean-looking man, with a strongly-marked Bourbon cast of countenance, and endless grimaces …’ became known as ‘The Royal Tiger.’
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The duke might have become even more tigerish had he known that Wellington was urging Bathurst that it would be better to impose a moderate peace on Napoleon than to unseat him in favour of a Bourbon restoration, because: ‘If Buonaparte becomes moderate, he is probably as good a sovereign as we can desire in France.’ Larpent noted that Wellington’s appetite for work seemed to have slackened slightly, and he enjoyed some hunting, appearing ‘just like a genuine country squire and fox-hunter’, and habitually spending two hours each afternoon in ‘a common blue frock [coat] … and with a round hat on his head’ walking up and down the quay. The mayor gave a ball, but it was pronounced a failure, largely because there were 200 splendidly-attired gentlemen but very few ladies who could or would dance. Gronow thought that this was because most ‘were too patriotic to appear’.
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