Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign – 4

Today’s installment concludes Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign,
our selection by John Richard Green.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of four thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign.

Time: 1808-1813
Place: Spain

At the opening of the year, America, in despair of redress, had resolved on war; Congress had voted an increase of both army and navy, and laid in April an embargo on all vessels in American harbors. Actual hostilities might still have been averted by the repeal of the orders, on which the English Cabinet was resolved; but in the confusion which followed the murder of Perceval, and the strife of parties for office through the month that followed, the opportunity was lost. When the news of the repeal reached America, it came six weeks too late. On June 18th an act of Congress had declared the United States at war with Great Britain.

Had Napoleon been able to reap the fruits of the strife which his policy had thus forced on the two English peoples, it is hard to say how Britain could have coped with him. Cut off from her markets alike in east and west, her industries checked and disorganized, a financial crisis added to her social embarrassment, it may be doubted whether she must not have bowed in the end before the pressure of the Continental System. But if that sys tem had thrust her into aggression and ruin, it was as inevitably thrusting the same aggression and ruin on her rival. The moment when the United States entered into the great struggle was a critical moment in the history of mankind.

Six days after President Madison issued his declaration of war, Napoleon crossed the Niemen on his march to Moscow. Successful as his policy had been in stirring up war between England and America, it had been no less successful in break ing the alliance which he had made with the Czar at Tilsit and in forcing on a contest with Russia. On the one hand, Napoleon was irritated by the refusal of Russia to enforce strictly the suspension of all trade with England, though such a suspension would have ruined the Russian landowners. On the other, Alexander saw with growing anxiety the advance of the French Empire which sprang from Napoleon’s resolve to enforce his sys tem by a seizure of the northern coasts. In 1811 Holland, the Hanseatic towns, part of Westphalia, and the Duchy of Olden burg were successively annexed, and the Duchy of Mecklen burg threatened with seizure. A peremptory demand on the part of France for the entire cessation of intercourse with England brought the quarrel to a head; and preparations were made on both sides for a gigantic struggle.

Even before it opened, this new enterprise gave fresh vigor to Napoleon’s foes. The best of the French soldiers were drawn from Spain to. the frontier of Poland; and Wellington, whose army had been raised to a force of forty thousand Englishmen and twenty thousand Portuguese, profited by the withdrawal to throw off his system of defense and to assume an attitude of at tack. Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were taken by storm during the spring of 1812; and at the close of June, three days before Napoleon crossed the Niemen in his march on Moscow, Wellington crossed the Agreda in a march on Salamanca.

After a series of masterly movements on both sides, Marmont with the French Army of the North attacked the English on the hills in the neighborhood of that town on July 22nd. While he was marching round the right of the English position his left wing remained isolated; and with a sudden exclamation of “Marmont is lost!” Wellington flung on it the bulk of his force, crushed it, and drove the whole army from the field. The loss on either side was nearly equal, but failure had demoralized the French army; and its retreat forced Joseph to leave Madrid, and Soult to evacuate Andalusia and to concentrate the Southern Army on the eastern coast. While Napoleon was still pushing slowly over the vast plains of Poland, Wellington made his entry into Madrid in August, and began the siege of Burgos. The town, however, held out gallantly for a month, till the advance of the two French armies, now concentrated in the north and south of Spain, forced Wellington, in October, to a hasty retreat on the Portuguese frontier.

Wellington once more left Portugal in May, 1813, with an army which had now risen to ninety thousand men; and over taking the French forces in retreat at Vitoria on June 21st, he inflicted on them a defeat which drove them in utter rout across the Pyrenees. Madrid was at once evacuated; and Clauzel fell back from Saragossa into France. The victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit of the allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union of Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October the final overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall back in rout across the Rhine.

The war now hurried to its close. Though held at bay for a while by the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as well as by an obstinate defense of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in the very month of the triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the Bidassoa, which enabled him to enter France. He was soon followed by the allies. For two months more Napoleon maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw con scripts against their overwhelming numbers; while in the south Soult, forced from his entrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthes, fell back before Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies met in April in a stubborn and indecisive engagement. But though neither leader knew it, the war was even then at an end. The struggle of Napoleon himself had ended at the close of March with the surrender of Paris; and the submission of the capital was at once followed by the abdication of the Emperor and the return of the Bourbons.

This ends our series of passages on Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign by John Richard Green. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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