William Francis Patrick Napier

“ Soldiers, at the battle of Orthes you did your duty, the enemy’s losses surpassed yours, his blood moistened all the ground he gained. You may consider that feat of arms as an advantage. Other combats are at hand, no repose for us until his army, formed of such extraordinary elements, shall evacuate the French territory or be annihilated. Its numbers and progress may be great, but at hand are unexpected perils. Time will teach the enemy’s general that French honour is not to be outraged with impunity. ”

“ To resist when nothing can be gained or saved is an act of barbarous courage which reason spurns at; but how seldom does that crisis happen in war? Napoleon wisely insisted upon a resistance which should make it dangerous for the besiegers to hasten a siege beyond the rules of art, he would not have a weak governor yield to a simulation of force not really existing; he desired that military honour should rest upon the courage and resources of men rather than upon the strength of walls: in fine he made a practical application of the proverb that necessity is the mother of invention. ”

“ My lord, you only fatigue yourself and your readers by your unwieldy floundering, you are heavy and throw much mud about; like one of those fine Andalusian horses so much admired in the Peninsula, you prance and curvet and foam and labour in your paces but you never get on. At Campo Mayor you had an enormous superiority of troops, the enemy were taken by surprize, they were in a plain, their cavalry were beaten, their artillery-drivers cut down, their infantry, hemmed in by your horsemen and under the play of your guns, were ready to surrender ”

“ It is a common but shallow and mischievous notion, that a villain makes never the worse soldier for an assault, because the appetite for plunder supplies the place of honour; as if the compatability of vice and bravery rendered the union of virtue and courage unnecessary in warlike matters. In all the host which stormed San Sebastian there was not a man who being sane would for plunder only have encountered the danger of that assault, yet under the spell of discipline all rushed eagerly to meet it. ”

“ Longa’s second brigade should have flanked the left of this attack with a wide skirting movement, but neither he nor his starved soldiers knew much of such warfare, and therefore quietly followed the riflemen in reserve.
Soon the open slopes of the mountains were covered with men and with fire, a heavy confused sound of mingled shouts and musquetry filled the deep hollows between, and the white smoke came curling up above the dark forest trees which covered their gloomy recesses. ”

“ But Napoleon never was hated by the people of France; he was their own creation and they loved him so as never monarch was loved before. His march from Cannes to Paris, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of poor men, who were not soldiers, can never be effaced or even disfigured. For six weeks, at any moment, a single assassin might by a single shot have acquired the reputation of a tyrannicide, and obtained vast rewards besides from the trembling monarchs and aristocrats of the earth, who scrupled not to instigate men to the shameful deed. ”

“ A commander-in-chief is guided by many circumstances distinct from the mere military facts, and it might be, that, on this occasion he did not choose to judge rashly or harshly a man, who had other good qualities, for an error into which, perhaps, a very bold and able man might have fallen by accident. And neither would I have thus judged sir John Murray from this fact alone, although the whole army were disgusted at the time by his want of daring and openly expressed an unfavourable opinion of his military vigour. ”

“ His discipline, severe but appealing to the feelings of hope and honour, wrought the quick temperament of the French soldiers to patience under hardships and strong endurance under fire; he taught the generals to rely on their own talents, to look to the country wherein they made war for resources, and to dare every thing even with the smallest numbers, that the impetuous valour of France might have full play: hence the violence of their attacks. ”

“ The Spaniards, nine thousand strong, moved in two lines and a reserve, and advanced with great resolution at first, throwing forwards their flanks so as to embrace the end of the Calvinet hill. The French musquetry and great guns thinned the ranks at every step, yet closing upon their centre they still ascended the hill, the formidable fire they were exposed to increasing in violence until their right wing, which was also raked from the bridge of Matabiau, unable to endure the torment wavered. ”

“ But the man who thinks that real liberty was never attained under a single unmixed form of government giving no natural vent to the swelling pride of honour birth or riches; those who measure the weakness of pure republicanism by the miserable state of France at home and abroad when Napoleon by assuming power saved her; those who saw America with all her militia and her licentious liberty unable to prevent three thousand British soldiers from passing three thousand miles of ocean and burning her capital, will hesitate to condemn him. ”

“ They have not time to teach, they must command although they know that pride and ignorance and even honesty will carp at the despotism which brings general safety. It was this vain short-sighted impatience that drove Hannibal into exile, caused the assassination of Cæsar, and strewed thorns beneath the gigantic footsteps of Oliver Cromwell. It raged fiercely in Spain against lord Wellington, and in France against Napoleon, and always with the most grievous injury to the several nations. Time only hallows human institutions. ”

“ Lord Wellington with a vastness of conception and a capacity for arrangement and combination equal to his opponent, possessed in a high degree that daring promptness of action, that faculty of inspiration for suddenly deciding the fate of whole campaigns with which Napoleon was endowed beyond all mankind. It is this which especially constitutes military genius. For so vast so complicated are the combinations of war, so easily and by such slight causes are they affected, that the best generals do but grope in the dark, and they acknowledge the humiliating truth. ”

“ General Stewart was surprised, his troops were not, and never did soldiers fight better, seldom so well. The stern valour of the ninety-second, principally composed of Irishmen, would have graced Thermopylæ. The Portuguese cavalry patroles, if any went out which is uncertain, might have neglected their duty, and doubtless the front should have been scoured in a more military manner; but the infantry picquets, and the light companies so happily ordered up by major Thorne, were ready, and no man wondered to see the French columns crown the great hill in front of the pass. ”

“ He recommended that commander’s system to the Spaniards, but he did not follow it himself. His military policy more resembled that of Scipio Africanus. Fabius dreading Hannibal’s veterans, red with the blood of four consular armies, hovered on the mountains, refused battle, and to the unmatched skill and valour of the great Carthaginian opposed the almost inexhaustible military resources of Rome. Lord Wellington was never loath to fight when there was any equality of numbers. He landed in Portugal with only nine thousand men, with intent to attack Junot who had twenty-four thousand. ”

“ Order and tranquillity, profound even on the very edge of the battle-field, attended the march of the civilized army which passed the Bidassoa. And what were the military actions? Napoleon rising even above himself hurtled against the armed myriads opposed to him with such a terrible energy that though ten times his number they were rolled back on every side in confusion and dismay. But Wellington advanced without a check, victorious in every battle, although one half of the veterans opposed to him would have decided the campaign on the eastern frontier. ”

“ The flat miry ground between the river and the heights became narrower and deeper as the troops advanced, Berton’s cavalry was ahead, an impassable river was on the left, and three French divisions supported by artillery and horsemen overshadowed the right flank! Fortune came to their aid. Soult always eyeing their march, had, when the Spaniards were defeated, carried Taupin’s division to the platform of St. Sypiere, and supporting it with a brigade of D’Armagnac’s division disposed the whole about the redoubts. ”

“ For Paris sustained the fight on his right until Foy and Taupin’s troops rallied, and when the impetuous assault of the fifty-second and the rush of the fourth and seventh divisions drove Paris back, D’Armagnac interposed to cover him until the union of the allies’ wings was completed, then both retired, being covered in turn by Villatte. In this manner the French yielded, step by step and without confusion, the allies advancing with an incessant deafening musketry and cannonade, yet losing many men especially on the right where the third division were very strongly opposed. ”

“ The experience of captain Codrington during the first siege of Taragona, had proved indeed, that an army could not be stopped by this fire, yet it was an impediment not to be left out of the calculation. Thus, the advantage of a central position, the possession of the enemy’s point of junction, the initial movement, the good will of the people, and the aid of powerful flank diversions, belonged to Murray; superior numbers and a better army to the French, since the allies, brave, and formidable to fight in a position, were not well constituted for general operations. ”

“ I know that you have served your country long, I firmly believe to the utmost of your ability, and I admit that ability to have been very considerable; but history, my lord, deals with very great men, and you sink in the comparison. She will speak of you as a general far above mediocrity, as one who has done much and a great deal of it well, yet when she looks at Campo Mayor and Albuera she will not rank you amongst great commanders, and if she should ever cast her penetrating eyes upon this your present publication, she will not class you amongst great writers. ”

“ I applaud you for it, and with the exception of two points I will leave you in the full enjoyment of any triumph which the force of your arguments may procure you; always, however, retaining my right to assume that your lordship’s memory with respect to the duke of Wellington’s negative, may have been as treacherous as it was about your own letter to the junta of Badajos.
I have therefore nothing to add to the arguments I have already used in my Justification, and in my History, in favour of the march to Merida; if I am wrong the world will so judge me. ”

“ These persons must see that if the libels are not written or encouraged by the government they are at least not discouraged, they know that we are odious to the government and they treat us accordingly. The Spanish troops plunder every thing they approach, neither their own nor our magazines are sacred. Until recently there was some semblance of inquiry and of a desire to punish offenders, lately these acts of disorder have been left entirely unnoticed, unless when I have interfered with my authority as commander-in-chief of the Spanish army. ”

“ The hardships and privations endured on the mountains by the Anglo-Portuguese troops had been beneficial to them as an army. The fine air and the impossibility of the soldiers committing their usual excesses in drink had rendered them unusually healthy, while the facility of enforcing a strict discipline, and their natural impatience to win the fair plains spread out before them, had raised their moral and physical qualities in a wonderful degree. Danger was their sport, and their experienced general in the prime and vigour of life was as impatient for action as his soldiers. ”

“ Lord Wellington has been blamed for putting his troops in a false position, and no doubt he under-valued, it was not the first time, the military genius and resources of his able adversary, when he exposed Hill’s troops on the left of the Nive to a species of surprize. But the passage of the Nive itself, the rapidity with which he moved his divisions from bank to bank, and the confidence with which he relied upon the valour of his troops, so far from justifying the censures which have been passed upon him by French writers, emphatically mark his mastery in the art. ”

“ How the emperor’s views were frustrated by his secret enemies is one of the obscure parts of French history, at this period, which time may possibly clear but probably only with a feeble and uncertain light. For truth can never be expected in the memoirs, if any should appear, of such men as Talleyrand, Fouché, and other politicians of their stamp, whose plots rendered his supernatural efforts to rescue France from her invaders abortive. Meanwhile there is nothing to check and expose the political and literary empirics who never fail on such occasions to poison the sources of history. ”

“ What governor was ever in a more desperate situation than general Bizanet at Bergen-op-Zoom, when sir Thomas Graham, with a hardihood and daring which would alone place him amongst the foremost men of enterprize which Europe can boast of, threw more than two thousand men upon the ramparts of that almost impregnable fortress. The young soldiers of the garrison frightened by a surprise in the night, were dispersed, were flying. ”

“ Iron hardihood of body, a quick and sure vision, a grasping mind, untiring power of thought, and the habit of laborious minute investigation and arrangement; all these qualities he possessed, and with them that most rare faculty of coming to prompt and sure conclusions on sudden emergencies. This is the certain mark of a master spirit in war, without it a commander may be distinguished, he may be a great man, but he cannot be a great captain: where troops nearly alike in arms and knowledge are opposed the battle generally turns upon the decision of the moment. ”

“ He had conceived a project so vast so original so hardy, so far above the imaginations of his contemporary generals, that even Wellington’s sagacity failed to pierce it, and he censured the emperor’s long stay on the Elbe as an obstinacy unwarranted by the rules of art. But Napoleon had more profoundly judged his own situation. The large forces he left at Dresden at Torgau, and Wittemberg, for which he has been so much blamed by shallow military critics as lessening his numbers on the field of Leipsic, were essential parts of his gigantic plan. ”

“ It is my opinion that the policy of Spain should lead the government and the Cortez to grant a general amnesty with certain exceptions. This subject deserves consideration in the two views of failing or succeeding in freeing the country from its oppressors. If the effort fail the enemy will by an amnesty be deprived of the principal means now in his hands of oppressing the country in which his armies will be stationed; he will see clearly that he can place no reliance on any partizans in Spain, and he will not have even a pretence for supposing that the country is divided in opinion. ”

“ But from a people holding millions of their fellow-beings in the most horrible slavery while they prate and vaunt of liberty until all men turn with loathing from the sickening folly, what can be expected?
Terrified by these excesses the French people fled even from the larger towns, but Wellington quickly relieved their terror. On the 12th, although expecting a battle, he put to death all the Spanish marauders he could take in the act, and then with many reproaches and despite of the discontent of their generals, forced the whole to withdraw into their own country. ”

“ Mischief of this kind, however, necessarily awaits men who like Napoleon and Oliver Cromwell have the courage to attempt after great convulsions and civil wars the rebuilding of the social edifice without spilling blood. Either to create universal abhorrence by their cruelty, or to employ the basest of men, the Talleyrands, Fouchés, and Monks, of revolutions, is their inevitable fate; and never can they escape the opposition, more dangerous still, of honest and resolute men, who unable to comprehend the necessity of the times see nothing but tyranny in the vigour which prevents anarchy. ”