William Francis Patrick Napier

“ However, the French general, nothing daunted, despatched officer after officer, some to hasten up the troops from the forest, others to stop the progress of his left wing, and with a sanguine expectation still looked for the victory until he saw Pakenham with the third division shoot like a meteor across Thomieres’ path; then pride and hope alike died within him, and desperately he was hurrying in person to that fatal point, when an exploding shell stretched him on the earth with a broken arm and two deep wounds in his side. ”

“ If the army of Portugal comes with you, one hundred and twenty thousand men will be close to Portugal; if it cannot or will not come, let it remain, because while Burgos defends itself, that army can keep on the right of the Ebro and the emperor will take measures for its succour. Let Wellington then occupy Spain from Burgos to the Morena, it shall be my care to provide magazines, stores, and places of arms in Andalusia; and the moment eighty thousand French are assembled in that province the theatre of war is changed! ”

“ Napoleon, at St. Helena, declared, “that posterity would more bitterly reproach Mr. Pitt for the hideous school he left behind him, than for any of his own acts; a school marked by its insolent machiavelism, its profound immorality, its cold egotism, its contempt for the well-being of men and the justice of things.” Mr. Perceval was an eminent champion of this hideous school, which we thus find the leading men of England, France, and America, uniting to condemn. And shall a musty Latin proverb protect such a politician from the avenging page of history? The human mind is not to be so fettered. ”

“ Every British officer of rank knew, that without powerful interest, his future prospects, and his reputation for past services, would have withered together under the first blight of misfortune; that a selfish government would instantly offer him up, a victim to a misjudging public and a ribald press [22] with whom success is the only criterion of merit. English generals are and must be prodigal of their blood to gain a reputation, but they are necessarily timid in command, when a single failure, even without a fault, consigns them to an old age of shame and misery. ”

“ Clauzel’s division had indeed joined Thomieres’, and a front had been spread on the southern heights, but it was loose and unfit to resist; for the troops were, some in double lines, some in columns, some in squares; a powerful sun shone full in their eyes, the light soil, stirred up [172] by the trampling of men and horses, and driven forward by a breeze, which arose in the west at the moment of attack, came full upon them mingled with smoke in such stifling clouds, that scarcely able to breathe and quite unable to see, their fire was given at random. ”

“ Two batteries of artillery placed on the summit of the western heights suddenly took his troops in flank, and Pakenham’s massive columns supported by cavalry, were coming on full in his front, while two-thirds of his own division, lengthened out and unconnected, were still behind in a wood where they could hear, but could not see the storm which was now bursting. From the chief to the lowest soldier all felt that they were lost, and in an instant Pakenham the most frank and gallant of men commenced the battle. ”

“ Yet it is certain that if Wellington had retired without fighting, the murmurs of his army, already louder than was seemly, would have been heard in England, and if an accidental shot had terminated his career all would have terminated. The cortez, ripe for a change, would have accepted the intrusive king, and the American war, just declared against England, would have rendered the complicated affairs of Portugal so extremely embarrassed that no new man could have continued the contest. ”

“ As if it were possible, off-hand, to beat Wellington and his veterans, embedded as they were in the strong country of Portugal, and having British fleets with troops and succours of all kinds, hovering on the flanks of the French, and feeding and sustaining the insurrection of the Spaniards in their rear. ”

“ Thus Napoleon, having a war in Spain which required three hundred thousand men to keep in a balanced state, was forced, by resistless circumstances, into another and more formidable contest in the distant north, when the whole of Europe was prepared to rise upon his lines of communication, and when his extensive sea-frontier was exposed to the all-powerful navy of Great Britain.
A conqueror’s march to Moscow, amidst such dangers, was a design more vast, more hardy, more astounding than ever before entered the imagination of man ”

“ Repeated successes had rendered the particular contest in the Peninsula popular with the ardent spirits of the nation, and war-prices passed for glory with the merchants, land-owners, and tradesmen; but as the price of food augmented faster than the price of labour, the poorer people suffered, they rejoiced, indeed, at their country’s triumphs because the sound of victory is always pleasing to warlike ears, but they were discontented. ”

“ Many men of both sides perished in that labyrinth, and on both sides also, the soldiers, passing the Duero in groups, held amicable intercourse, conversing of the battles that were yet to be fought; the camps on the banks of the Duero seemed at times to belong to one army, so difficult is it to make brave men hate each other.
To the officers of the allies all looked prosperous, their only anxiety was to receive the signal of battle, their only discontent, that it was delayed; and many amongst them murmured that the French had been permitted to retreat from Christoval. ”

“ It is no mean consideration, that the praise or the hatred of nations, universal glory or universal, perhaps eternal contempt, waits on an action, the object of which may be more safely gained by other means, for in war there is infinite variety. But in this case it is impossible not to perceive, that the French general vacillated after the passage of the river, purposely perhaps to avoid an action, since, as I have before shown, he thought it unwise, in the disjointed state of the French affairs and without any fixed base or reserves in case of defeat, to fight a decisive battle. ”

“ Du moment que nous aurons 70 ou 80 mille Français réunis dans le midi de l’Espagne, le théâtre de la guerre est changé; l’armée de Portugal se trouve dégagée et elle peut se reporter successivement jusqu’au Tage. D’ailleurs ce serait sans inconvénient qu’elle gardât Burgos et la rive gauche de l’Ebre et que tout l’espace compris entre elle et le Sierra Morena fut à la disposition des ennemis jusqu’à ce que des renforts vinssent de France et que l’empereur eût pu prendre des dispositions. Le sacrifice une fois fait il n’y a plus de moyen d’y remédier. ”

“ Many guns were taken as the army advanced, and at six o’clock the French reached the last defensible height, one mile in front of Vittoria. Behind them was the plain in which the city stood, and beyond the city, thousands of carriages and animals and non-combatants, men women and children, were crowding together, in all the madness of terror, and as the English shot went booming over head the vast crowd started and swerved with a convulsive movement, while a dull and horrid sound of distress arose ”

“ In England the retreat from Burgos was viewed with the alarm and anger which always accompanies the disappointment of high-raised public expectation; the people had been taught to believe the French weak and dispirited, they saw them so strong and daring, that even victory could not enable the allies to make a permanent stand beyond the frontiers of Portugal. ”

“ The loss of a battle, not in the Peninsula even, but elsewhere, would expose his estate to confiscation, or at all events to ruin by a fresh incursion of the enemy. Even if any man could believe that Portugal is secure against the invasion of the enemy, and his estate and person against the ‘violence, exactions, and frauds’ (these were Funchal’s words respecting the allied army) of the enemy, he is not, during the existence of the war, according to the Conde de Funchal’s notion, exempt from those evils from his own countrymen and their allies. ”

“ War tries the strength of the military frame-work; it is in peace that the frame-work itself must be formed, otherwise barbarians would be the leading soldiers of the world; a perfect army can only be made by civil institutions, and those, rightly considered, would tend to confine the horrors of war to the field of battle, which would be the next best thing to the perfection of civilization that would prevent war altogether. ”

“ Il est donc de la plus haute importance que V. M. etende ses soins sur l’Aragon comme sur les autres provinces du nord de l’Espagne, et les évènemens qui se préparent rendront ce soin toujours plus nécessaire. D’un côte toutes les bandes chassées de la Biscaye et de la Navarre se trouveront bientôt forcées à refluer dans l’Aragon, et d’autre part l’évacuation de Cuenca, par résultat du mouvement général des armées du centre et du midi priverait le général Suchet de toute communication avec V. M. dans un moment ou les ennemis se renforcent devant lui d’une manière assez inquiétante. ”

“ England was the real deliverer of the Peninsula. It was her succours thrown into Biscay that had excited the new insurrection in the northern provinces, and enabled Mina and the other chiefs to enter Aragon, while Wellington drew the great masses of the French towards Portugal. It was that insurrection, so forced on, which, notwithstanding the cessation of the regular warfare in Catalonia, gave life and activity to the partidas of the south. ”

“ I declare that no person knows better than I do, the sacrifices and the sufferings of your people, for there is no one for the last four years has lived so much amongst those people; but it is a fact, sir, that the great cities, and even some of the smallest places, have gained by the war and the mercantile class has enriched itself; there are divers persons in Lisbon and Oporto who have amassed immense sums. Now your government is, both from remote and recent circumstances, unable to draw resources [424] from the capitalists by loans; it can only draw upon them by taxes. ”

“ To have given up all the Peninsula, west of the Ebro, would have been productive of no benefit, save what might have accrued from the jealousy which the Spaniards already displayed towards their allies; but if that jealousy, as was probable, had forced the British general away, he could have carried his army to Italy, or have formed in Germany the nucleus of a great northern confederation on the emperor’s rear. Portugal was therefore, in truth, the point of all Europe in which the British strength was least dangerous to Napoleon during the invasion of Russia ”

“ But such an art is war! So fearful is the consequence of error, so terrible the responsibility of a general. Strongly and wisely did Napoleon speak when he told Joseph, that if he would command, he must give himself up entirely to the business, labouring day and night, thinking of nothing else. ”

“ The French army, although surprised in the midst of an evolution and instantly swept from the field, killed and wounded six thousand of the allies; the eleventh and sixty-first regiments of the sixth division had not together more than one hundred and sixty men and officers left standing at the end of the battle; twice six thousand then would have fallen in a more equal contest, the blow would have been less decisive, and as Chauvel’s cavalry and the king’s army were both at hand, a retreat into Portugal would probably have followed a less perfect victory. ”

“ History. “Sir John Moore had to organize an army of raw soldiers, and in a poor unsettled country just relieved from the pressure of a harsh and griping enemy, he had to procure the transport necessary for his stores, ammunition, and even for the conveyance of the officers’ baggage. Every branch of the administration civil and military was composed of men zealous and willing indeed, yet new to a service where no energy can prevent the effects of inexperience being severely felt.” ”

“ The present feeling appears to be that we have done mighty things, and all that is in our power; that the rest must be left to all-bounteous Providence, and that if we do not succeed we must console ourselves by the reflection that Providence has not been so propitious as we deserved. This feeling you will allow is wonderfully moral and Christian-like, but still nothing will be done until we have a more vigorous military system, and a ministry capable of directing the resources of the nation to something nobler than a war of descents and embarkations. ”

“ In proportion as the troops arrived in Castile Reille sent men to the army of the north, and contracting his cantonments, concentrated his remaining forces about Medina de Rio Seco with his cavalry on the Esla. But the men recalled by the emperor were now in full march, the French were in a state of great confusion, the people urged by Wellington’s emissaries and expecting great events every where showed their dislike by withholding provisions, and the Partida warfare became as lively in the interior as on the coast, yet with worse fortune. ”

“ My ministers and household are actually starving, misery is on every face, and men, otherwise willing, are thus deterred from joining a king so little able to support them. My revenue is seized by the generals for the supply of their troops, and I [445] cannot as a king of Spain without dishonour partake of the resources thus torn by rapine from my subjects whom I have sworn to protect; I cannot in fine be at once king of Spain and general of the French; let me resign both and live peaceably in France. ”

“ Men engaged only in civil affairs and especially book-men are apt to undervalue military genius, talking as if simple bravery were the highest qualification of a general; and they have another mode of appeasing an inward sense of inferiority, namely, to attribute the successes of a great captain, to the prudence of some discreet adviser, who in secret rules the general, amends his errors, and leaves him all the glory. Thus Napoleon had Berthier, Wellington has sir George Murray! ”