THE FRENCH RETREAT TO THE EBRO

While dealing with the operations of the French armies in the various provinces of Spain, we have observed that at every point the arrival of the news of Dupont’s disaster at Baylen produced notable results. It was this unexpected intelligence that drove the intrusive king out of Madrid within a week of his arrival, and ere the ceremonial of his proclamation had been completed. It brought back Bessières from the Esla to the Arlanzon, and raised the siege of Saragossa. Knowing of it Junot summoned his council of war at Torres Vedras with a sinking heart, and Duhesme lacked the confidence to try the ordeal of battle before Gerona. Beyond the Pyrenees its influence was no less marked. Napoleon had imagined that the victory of Rio Seco had practically decided the fate of the Peninsula, and at the moment of Baylen was turning his attention to Austria rather than to Spain. On July 25, five days after Dupont had laid down his arms, he was meditating the reinforcement of his army in Germany, and drafting orders that directed the garrisons of northern France on Mainz and Strasburg[324]. To a mind thus preoccupied the news of the disaster in Andalusia came like a thunderclap. So far was the Spanish trouble from an end, that it was assuming an aspect of primary[p. 335] importance. If Austria was really intending mischief, it was clear that the Emperor would have two great continental wars on his hands at the same moment—a misfortune that had never yet befallen him. It was already beginning to be borne in upon him that the treachery at Bayonne had been a blunder as well as a crime. Hence came the wild rage that bursts out in the letters written upon the days following that on which the news of Baylen reached him at Bordeaux. ‘Has there ever, since the world began,’ wrote Bonaparte to Clarke, his minister of war, ‘been such a stupid, cowardly, idiotic business as this? Behold Mack and Hohenlohe justified! Dupont’s own dispatch shows that all that has occurred is the result of his own inconceivable folly.... The loss of 20,000 picked men, who have disappeared without even inflicting any considerable loss on the enemy, will necessarily have the worst moral influence on the Spanish nation.... Its effect on European politics will prevent me from going to Spain myself.... I wish to know at once what tribunal ought to try these generals, and what penalty the law can inflict on them for such a crime[325].’ A similar strain runs through his first letter to his brother Joseph after the receipt of the news—‘Dupont has soiled our banners. What folly and what baseness! The English will lay hands on his army[326]. Such events make it necessary for me to go to Paris, for Germany, Poland, Italy, and all, are tied up in the same knot. It pains me grievously that I cannot be with you, in the midst of my soldiers[327].’ In other letters the capitulation is ‘a terrible catastrophe,’ ‘a horrible affair, for the cowards capitulated to save their baggage,’ and (of course) ‘a machination paid for with English gold[328]. These imbeciles are to suffer on the scaffold the penalty of this great national crime[329].’ The Emperor[p. 336] did well to be angry, for the shock of Baylen was indeed felt to every end of Europe. But he should have blamed his own Macchiavellian brain, that conceived the plot of Bayonne, and his own overweening confidence, that launched Dupont with 20,000 half-trained conscripts (not, as he wrote to Clarke, with vingt mille hommes d’élite et choisis) on the hazardous Andalusian enterprise.

Meanwhile he had to face the situation: within a few hours of the moment when Villoutreys placed Dupont’s dispatch in his hands, he had so far got over the first spasms of his wrath that he was able to dictate a general plan for the reconcentration of his armies[330]. We have compared the French forces in Spain to a broad wedge, of which the point, directed against the heart of the insurrection, was formed by the three divisions of Dupont’s corps. This point had now been broken off; but the Emperor, still clinging to the idea of the wedge, wished to preserve Madrid and to form in and about it a new army fit for offensive operations. With this force he would strike at the insurgents of Andalusia and Valencia when they marched on the capital, while Bessières in the[p. 337] valley of the Douro, and Verdier in the valley of the Ebro were still to preserve a forward position, and shield the army of the centre from the flank attacks of the Galicians and the Aragonese. The troops left around Madrid at the moment of the disaster of Baylen were parts of the three divisions of Moncey’s corps[331], one of Dupont’s, and the brigade which had escorted Joseph Napoleon from Burgos, together with 3,000 horse—a total of about 23,000 men. Bonaparte judged that this was not enough to resist the combined attack of Casta?os and of the Valencians and Murcians of Saint March and Llamas. Accordingly he intended that Bessières should lend the King two brigades of infantry—a deduction from his force which would compel him to fall back from Leon into Old Castile[332]—and that Verdier should spare a brigade from the army in front of Saragossa[333], though it was none too strong for the task before it. Six battalions from the reserve at Bayonne were to make a forced march to Madrid to join the King. Thus reinforced up to 35,000 men, the corps at Madrid would be able, as the Emperor supposed, to make head against any combination of Spanish troops that could possibly be brought against it.

But all these arrangements were futile. Bonaparte at Bordeaux was separated from his brother at the Retiro by so many miles that his orders were grown stale before they reached their destination. His scheme was made out on August 2, but on the preceding day King Joseph and his whole army had evacuated Madrid. The terror of Baylen was upon them, and they were expecting every moment to find themselves attacked by Casta?os, who was as a matter of fact celebrating triumphal feasts at Seville. With a[p. 338] haste that turned out to be altogether unnecessary, Moncey’s corps, escorting the King, his court, and his long train of Spanish refugees, crossed the Somosierra and did not halt till they reached Aranda de Duero, in the plains of Old Castile. Napoleon was forced to make other plans in view of this retreat, whose moral consequences were hardly inferior in importance to those of Dupont’s capitulation. For both the Spanish nation and the courts of Europe looked upon the evacuation of Madrid as marking the complete downfall of Napoleon’s policy, and portending a speedy retirement of the invaders behind the Pyrenees. It is certain that if the spirit of Joseph and his advisers had been unbroken, they might have clung to the capital till the reinforcements which the Emperor was hurrying to their aid had arrived. It is probable that the 35,000 men, of whom Savary and Moncey could then have disposed, might have held Casta?os in check till the army from the Rhine had time to come up. Yet there is every excuse for the behaviour of the French commanders, for they could not possibly have known that the Spaniards would move with such astonishing ............