FRENCH AND SPANISH PREPARATIONS

While the Supreme Junta was expending its energy on discussing the relative merits of benevolent despotism and representative government, and while Casta?os fretted and fumed for the moving up of reinforcements that never arrived, the French Emperor was getting ready to strike. It took many weeks for the veteran divisions from Glogau and Erfurt, from Bayreuth and Berlin, to traverse the whole breadth of the French Empire and reach the Pyrenees. While they were trailing across the Rhineland and the plains of France, well fêted and fed at every important town[387], their master employed the time of waiting in strengthening his political hold on Central Europe. We have seen that he was seriously alarmed at the possibility of an Austrian war, and alluded to it in his confidential letters to his kinsfolk. But the court of Vienna was slow to stir, and as August and September slipped by without any definite move on the Danube, Bonaparte began to hope that he was to be spared the dangerous problem of waging two European wars at the same time. Meanwhile he assumed an arrogant and blustering tone with the Austrian Government, warning them that though he was withdrawing 100,000 men from Germany, he should replace them with new levies, and was still strong enough to hold his own[388]. Metternich gave prudent and[p. 377] evasive answers, and no immediate signs of a rupture could be discerned. But to make matters sure, the Emperor hastened to invite his ally the Emperor Alexander of Russia to meet him at Erfurt. The ostensible object of the conference was to make a final effort to induce the British Government to accept terms of peace. Its real meaning was that Bonaparte wished to reassure himself concerning the Czar’s intentions, and to see whether he could rely upon the support of Russia in the event of a new Austrian war. There is no need to go into the details of the meeting (September 27 to October 14), of the gathering of four vassal kings and a score of minor princes of the Confederation of the Rhine to do homage to their master, of the feasts and plays and reviews. Suffice it to say that Napoleon got what he wanted, a definite promise from the Czar of an offensive and defensive alliance against all enemies whatsoever: a special mention of Austria was made in the tenth clause of the new treaty[389]. In return Alexander obtained leave to carry out his designs against Finland and the Danubian principalities: his ally was only too glad to see him involved in any enterprise that would distract his attention from Central Europe. The Emperor Francis II hastened to disarm the suspicions of Napoleon by sending to Erfurt an envoy[390] charged with all manner of pacific declarations: they were accepted, but the acceptance was accompanied by a message of scarcely concealed threats[391], which must have touched the court of Vienna to the quick. Strong in his Russian alliance, Bonaparte chose rather to bully than to cajole the prince who, by the strangest of chances, was destined within eighteen months to become his father-in-law. The quiet reception given to his hectoring dispatches showed that, for the present at least, nothing need be feared from the side of Austria. The Emperor’s whole attention could be turned towards Spain. After telling off a few more regiments for service beyond[p. 378] the Pyrenees, and giving leave to the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine to demobilize their armies, he left Erfurt [October 14] and came rushing back across Germany and France to Paris; he stayed there ten days and then started for Bayonne, where he arrived on the twentieth day after the termination of the conference [November 3].

Meanwhile the ostensible purpose of that meeting had been carried out, by the forwarding to the King of England of a joint note in which France and Russia offered him peace on the basis of Uti Possidetis. It was a vague and grandiloquent document, obviously intended for the eye of the public rather than for that of the old King. The two Emperors expatiated on the horrors of war and on the vast changes made of late in the map of Europe. Unless peace were made ‘there might be greater changes still, and all to the disadvantage of the English nation.’ The Continental System was working untold misery, and the cessation of hostilities would be equally advantageous to Great Britain and to her enemies. King George should ‘listen to the voice of humanity,’ and assure the happiness of Europe by consenting to a general pacification.

Though well aware of the hollowness of these protestations, which were only intended to throw on England the odium of continuing the war, the British Cabinet took them into serious consideration. The replies to the two powers were carefully kept separate, and were written, not in the name of the King (for the personal appeal to him was merely a theatrical device), but in that of the ministry. To Russia a very polite answer was returned, but the question on which the possibility of peace rested was brought straight to the front. Would France acknowledge the existing government of Spain as a power with which she was prepared to treat? Canning, who drafted the dispatch, was perfectly well aware that nothing was further from the Emperor’s thoughts, and could not keep himself from adding an ironical clause, to the effect that Napoleon had so often spoken of late of his regard for the dignity and welfare of the Spanish people, that it could not be doubted that he would consent. The late transactions at Bayonne, ‘whose principles were as unjust as their example was dangerous to all legitimate sovereigns,’ must clearly have been carried through without his concurrence or approbation.

The reply to France was still more uncompromising. ‘The[p. 379] King,’ it said, ‘was desirous for peace on honourable terms. The miserable condition of the Continent, to which allusion had been made, was not due to his policy: a system devised for the destruction of British commerce had recoiled on its authors and their instruments.’ But the distress even of his enemies was no source of pleasure to the King, and he would treat at once, if the representatives of Sweden, Portugal, Sicily, and Spain were admitted to take part in the negotiations. It was to be specially stipulated that the ‘Central Junta of Government’ at Madrid was to be a party to any treaty of peace.

The two British notes brought the replies from St. Petersburg and Paris that Canning expected. Count Romanzoff, writing for the Czar, could only state that his master had acknowledged Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, and could not recognize the existence of any other legal authority in that kingdom. But if this point (the only really important one) could be got over, the Russian Government was ready to treat on a basis of Uti Possidetis, or any other just and honourable terms. The French reply was, as was natural, couched in very different language. Napoleon had been irritated by Canning’s sarcastic allusions to the failure of the Continental System: he thought the tone of the British note most improper and insulting—‘it comes from the same pen which the English ministry employs to fabricate the swarm of libels with which it inundates the Continent. Such language is despicable, and unworthy of the imperial attention[392].’

Considering the offensive and bullying tone which Bonaparte was wont to use to other powers—his note written to Austria a few days before was a fair example of it—he had little reason to be indignant at the epigrams of the English minister. Yet the latter might perhaps have done well to keep his pen under control, and to forget that he was not writing for the Anti-Jacobin, but composing an official document. Even though Napoleon’s offer was hollow and insincere, it should have been met with dry courtesy rather than with humorous irony.

Of course Bonaparte refused to treat the Spaniards as a free and equal belligerent power. He had declared his brother King of Spain, and had now reached that pitch of blind autolatry in which he regarded his own fiat as the sole source of legality. In common honour England could not abandon the insurgents; for[p. 380] the Emperor to allow his brother’s claim to be ignored was equally impossible. In his present state of mind he would have regarded such a concession to the enemy as an acknowledgement of disgraceful defeat. It was obvious that the war must go on, and when the Emperor suggested that England might treat with him without stipulating for the admission of the Junta as a party to the negotiations[393], he must have been perfectly well aware that he was proposing a dishonourable move which the ministry of Portland could not possibly make. His suggestions as to a separate treaty with England on the basis of Uti Possidetis were futile: he intended that they should be declined, and declined they were. But he had succeeded in his end of posing before the French nation and the European powers as a lover of peace, foiled in his devices by the unbending arrogance of Great Britain. This was all that he had desired, and so far his machinations attained their object[394].

Long before the English replies had been sent off to Champagny and Romanzoff, the much-delayed campaign on the Ebro had commenced. All through the months of August and September the French had behaved as if their adversaries were acting on proper military principles, and might be expected to throw their whole force on the true objective point. Jourdan and his colleagues had no reason to foresee that the Spanish Government would launch out into the hideous series of blunders which, as a matter of fact, were committed. That no commander-in-chief would be appointed, that the victorious troops of Baylen would be held back for weeks in Andalusia, that no strenuous effort would be made to raise new[p. 381] armies in Leon and the two Castiles, were chances that seemed so improbable that King Joseph and his advisers did not take them into consideration. They expected that the Spaniards would mass the armies of Andalusia, Estremadura, Castile, and Aragon, and endeavour to turn their left flank on the side of Sanguesa and Pampeluna, or that (the other rational course) they would send the Asturians, the Andalusians, and the Castilians to join Blake, and debouch down the line of the Upper Ebro, from Reynosa on to Vittoria and Miranda. In the first case 70,000, and in the latter case 80,000 men would be flung against one flank of the French position, and it would be necessary to concentrate in hot haste in order to hold them back. But, as a matter of fact, the Spanish forces did not even come up to the front for many weeks, and when they did appear it was, as we have seen, not in the form of one great army concentrated for a stroke on a single point, but as a number of weak and isolated columns, each threatening a different part of the long line that lay along the Ebro from Miranda to Milagro. When feeble demonstrations were made against so many separate sections of his front, Jourdan supposed that they were skilful feints, intended to cover some serious attack on a weak spot, and acted accordingly, holding back till the enemy should develop his real plan, and refusing to commit himself meanwhile to offensive operations on a serious scale. It must be confessed that the chaotic and inconsequent movements of the Spaniards bore, to the eye of the observer from the outside, something like the appearance of a deep plan. On August 27 the Conde de Montijo, with a column of the Aragonese army, felt his way up the Ebro as far as the bridge of Alfaro, nearly opposite the extreme left flank of the French at Milagro. When attacked by Lefebvre-Desnouettes at the head of a few cavalry and a horse-battery, the Spanish general refused to stand, and retreated on Tudela. Marshal Moncey then pressed him with an infantry division, but Montijo again gave back. The French thought that this move must be a mere diversion, intended to attract their attention to the side of Aragon, for Montijo had acted with such extreme feebleness that it was unnatural to suppose that he was making anything but a feint. They were quite wrong however: Palafox had told the count to push as far up the Ebro as he could, without any thought of favouring operations by Blake or Casta?os, the former of whom was at this moment not far in front of Astorga, while the latter was still at Madrid. Montijo[p. 382] had given way simply because his troops were raw levies, and because there were no supports behind him nearer than Saragossa. It was to no effect, therefore, that King Joseph, after the fighting in front of Alfaro and Tudela, moved his reserves up the river to Miranda, thinking that the real attack must be coming from that side. There was no real attack intended, for the enemy had not as yet brought any considerable force up to the front.

It was not till nearly three weeks later that the Spaniards made another offensive move. This time Blake was the assailant. On September 10 he had at last concentrated the greater part of his army at Reynosa—the centre of roads at the source of the Ebro, of which we have already had to speak on several occasions. He had with him four divisions of the army of Galicia, as well as a ‘vanguard brigade’ and a ‘reserve brigade’ of picked troops from the same quarter. Close behind him were 8,000 Asturians under General Acevedo. The whole came to 32,000 men, but there were no more than 400 cavalry with the corps—a fact which made Blake very anxious to keep to the mountains and to avoid the plains of Old Castile[395]. He had left behind him in Galicia and about Astorga more than 10,000 men of new levies, not yet fit to take the field. There were also some 9,000 Asturians in similar case, held back within the limits of their own principality[396].

In the elaborate plan of operations which had been sketched out at Madrid on September 5, it will be remembered that Blake’s army was intended to co-operate with those of Casta?os and of Eguia. But he paid no attention whatever to the promises which his representative, Infantado, had made in his name, and executed an entirely different movement: there was no commander-in-chief to compel him to act in unison with his colleagues. The Castilian and Estremaduran armies were not ready, and Casta?os had as yet only a feeble vanguard facing the enemy on the Central Ebro, his rear divisions being still far back, on the road from Andalusia. Blake neither asked for nor received any assistance whatever from his colleagues, and set out in the most light-hearted way to attack 70,000 French with his 32,000 Galicians and Asturians.

His plan was to threaten Burgos with a small portion of his[p. 383] army, while with the main body he marched on Bilbao, in order to rouse Biscay to a second revolt, and to turn the right flank of the French along the sea-shore. Accordingly he sent his ‘vanguard’ and ‘reserve’ brigades towards Burgos, by the road that passes by O?a and Briviesca, while with four complete divisions he moved on Bilbao. On the twentieth his leading column turned out of that town General Monthion, who was in garrison there with a weak brigade of details and detachments.

Here at last, as it seemed to Joseph Bonaparte and to Jourdan, was the long-expected main attack of the Spaniards. Accordingly they concentrated to their right, with the object of meeting............