The Age of Elegance (13 page)

The battle took place, not in front of the town, where the river was impassable, but to the west of it, where the British left wing under Beresford had crossed on the previous day while the French cavalry, expecting a repetition of Hill's out-flanking movement, had been watching the fords on the other side of Orthez. Souk's position was one of great natural strength, not dissimilar to those from which Wellington had repulsed so many attacks in the past. But, instead of, like Wellington, keeping a strong reserve in hand, and using it for counter-blows, he hoarded it to cover a withdrawal. Retreat from the start was his dominating idea. Throughout the six hours' fight the initiative remained with the British, who, even after their first assault had failed, were able to renew it elsewhere without interference. The day's crowning achievement was an attack by the ist Battalion of the 52nd Light Infantry, which at a critical moment deployed and, supported by a cloud of sharpshooters, drove with review precision up a bullet-swept height; Harry Smith thought it the most majestic advance he had ever seen. The battle ended, as Wellington had reckoned when he sent Hill's two divisions on a flanking march against Soult's communications,
¹
with the French scurrying to the bridge of Sault, ten miles to the north-east. Had the country been favourable for cavalry or had the British commander followed up more vigorously—he had been slightly wounded by a spent bullet—the French might have suffered major disaster. As it was, their losses were over 4000, including 1350 prisoners: casualties almost double those of the attackers. During their retreat they lost as many more from desertion.

Two days before the battle of Orthez, five hundred miles away in the little town of Bar-sur-Aube, the British Foreign Secretary conferred with the representatives of his country's allies—the Czar of Russia, Prince Hardenberg of Prussia, Prince Metternich, and the Austrian Commander-in-Chief, Prince Schwarzenberg. At that moment Napoleon, flushed with victory, was a few hours' march away at Troyes, which his troops had just recaptured. Yet, a fortnight before, the Allies, after advancing two hundred and fifty miles in a

¹
"The cry 'We are cut off, the enemy is across the road,' began to be heard in our ranks!" Lapene, 264. See Fortescue, IX, 498-514; Oman, VII, 282, 343-75; Beatson,
Orthez Campaign;
Gurwood; Smith, I, 163-5; BelL I, 147-8; Foy, 238-42;
Narrative of a Soldier;
Brown, 259-60; Seaton, 201-2; Cooper, 110-11; Col. A. Burne,
The Enigma of Toulouse (Army Quarterly,
January, 1927).

month, had overrun more than a third of France and were sweeping towards Paris in two great
armies, one of 60,000 under Blü
cher driving westwards down the Marne, and the other of more than 100,000 under Schwarzenberg down the Seine, thirty miles to the south, while the advance-guard of a third army in the north under Bernadotte—the renegade French Marshal who had become Crown Prince of Sweden—was moving down from Flanders and had occupied Laon, Rheims and Soissons. The morale of Napoleon's troops, outnumbered by three to one and disastrously defeated at La Rothiere at the beginning of the month, was visibly disintegrating, and hordes of deserters were pouring towards a silent and appalled Paris, while Cossack patrols, spreading far across the country, had penetrated as far as Orleans and had reached the imperial palace of Fontainebleau. Everywhere the Emperor's cause seemed in ruin; from Italy news had come that his brother-in-law, Murat, in return for an Austrian guarantee of his Neapolitan throne, had joined the Allied cause, while in the north Flanders and Denmark had been overrun by his fellow traitor, Bernadotte. All Europe was hunting down Napoleon. Antwerp was closely besieged, Brussels taken, and a British force under Sir Thomas Graham was investing Bergen-op-Zoom, while in Germany the last surviving French garrisons faced starvation. In England, which had been blanketed by the worst frost of living memory—the Thames was frozen over at Blackfriars and there had been twenty-foot drifts in the Midlands—glorious rumours percolated. On February 21st a post-chaise, decked with laurels, dashed up the Dover road with news of a great victory won at the gates of Paris and of Napoleon's death at the hands of Cossacks. On 'Change, Government stocks rose six points, only to fall a few hours later after the owners of the chaise had made a fortune.

For at that moment the campaign in France had taken a very different turn. Field Marshal Blucher, in his zeal to be the first in Paris, had allowed his army of Prussians and Russians to become dangerously strung out. Taking advantage of the leisurely pace of the main Austrian army down the Seine valley, Napoleon drove his famished and exhausted men northwards during the day and night of February 9th through the deep clay forest of Traconne and unexpectedly appeared at Champaubert on the morning of the 10th. Here, after annihilating a Russian division, he cut across
Blücher
's line of march; then turning westwards towards the head of hi
s
column, defeated another of his corps commanders at Montmirail on the nth, another at Chateau-Thierry on the 12th, and
Blücher
himself at Vauchamps on the 14th. In four swift battles that seemed to reach back across the years to Rivoli, in every one of which he brought superior numbers against the enemy's isolated columns, he inflicted 20,000 casualties and took fifty guns. Then, having flung back Blucher towards Chalons, he hurried back to the Seine where Schwarzenberg's army had driven Victor's and Oudinot's weak screen to within fifty miles of Paris. At Nangis on the 17th and Montereau on the 18th he inflicted a further 5000 casualties on the leading German and Russian corps. Appalled by the successive tidings of disaster, the Austrian Commander-in-Chief ordered a general retreat. By the 21st the Allies were back at Troyes; three days later, after a council of war, they began to retire—like Brunswick's army twenty-two years before—towards the Vosges. Against all probability Napoleon had saved his capital. His decision, speed and the legend of his name had snatched victory from defeat. The miracle of Marengo had been repeated. Or so it seemed to those whom he had so often defeated in the past.

Thanks to the Royal Navy the British Foreign Secretary had never suffered that experience. While the Austrians were counselling retreat and even the brave Czar was sunk in a wave of despair, Castlereagh remained serene. He reminded his allies of their overwhelming superiority in numbers: even now, after their losses of the past fortnight, they commanded within or near the borders of France more than half a million men. He was supported by Blucher who, despite his recent drubbing, was all for trying again and marching on Paris. Only a few days' march away on the Aisne and the Flemish frontier were two Russian and one Prussian corps; joined to Blucher's depleted troops they would bring his army up to 100,000 men, a force greater than any Napoleon could interpose between it and Paris. When the sovereigns and statesmen round the council table at Bar-sur-Aube pointed out that these three corps formed part of Bernadotte's Army of the North and could not be taken from it without trenching on the jealously guarded rights of that crafty and exceedingly dilatory commander, Ca
stlereagh replied that if Berna
dotte refused the transfer, his monthly subsidies from London would be cut off.
At
this the decision to let Blucher advance was taken.

The Austrians, however, continued their retreat and only stopped when Napoleon, turning back to chase
Blücher
away from his capital, ceased to pursue. Since Wagram it had been a canon of Austrian policy that it was better to try to civilise the revolutionary dictator of the West than to fight him. Only Napoleons refusal to be content with less than the domination of all Europe had induced the Emperor Francis to throw in his lot with the Allies after the failure of his attempts at mediation. Napoleon's son and heir, the infant King of Rome, was his grandson, and, to a cautious and far-sighted Austrian, an imperial France reduced to reasonable limits and governed in due course by a half-Habsburg seemed safer company than an enlarged Russia and Prussia unchecked by any Western counterpoise. The revolutionary barbarism of France might be redeemed by the civilising influence of the Habsburgs. That of Russia and her jackal, Prussia, were fundamental. To an Austrian, with his knowledge of the Orient, Russians and Prussians were barbarians in the bone.

To this view the British had never subscribed. Since their unsuccessful attempt to live on terms with Napoleon twelve years before, they had refused to countenance any compromise with him. Their view was that, so long as he reigned, permanent peace was unobtainable. Anyone who would fight him relentlessly like themselves was their friend, Latin, Slav or Teuton. His insane resolve to yield nothing at all, and his persistence, even after Leipzig, in rejecting the Rhine frontier, gave them the chance to impress on their allies the need for restraining him once and for all. Castlereagh's instructions were to insist that France should relinquish all claims in Germany, Italy and Spain, that Holland should become an independent kingdom with sufficient territory to secure her from future French invasion, and that Antwerp should be placed in friendly hands.

When, therefore, negotiations for a peace had been opened at Chatillon-sur-Seine in February the terms offered France were no longer the "natural frontiers" of Rhine, Alps and Pyrenees, but merely those she had enjoyed under her ancient kings. At one moment, after his defeat at La Rothiere, Napoleon had reluctantly given his Foreign Minister, Caulaincourt, authority to accept them if no other way of saving Paris seemed possible. But after his victories he had cancelled the recall of his troops from Italy and announced that he would carry the
war to Munich. Despite lambent
flashes of his old genius, his sense of reality seemed to have completely deserted him. He persisted in behaving as though he was at the head of a vast army, spoke of skeleton formations of disorganised survivors as though they were army corps in full -strength, and stormed at his Marshals when, with hopelessly attenuated forces, they failed to carry positions that only the vanished legions of his imagination could have taken. He cared nothing for peace; he was only concerned with recovering his former empire. The question whether it was arithmetically possible to do so interested him no more than whether it was morally desirable.

His only hope of success lay not in his military prowess—for the sword was already broken in his hand—but in the likelihood of his enemies falling out. Throughout the Chatillon negotiations he continued to address secret proposals for a separate peace to his father-in-law; if Austria could be detached, he felt he could deal with Russia and Prussia. It was Castlereagh's service that he defeated these efforts. Not only did he hearten the Czar, but he overcame the suspicions of Metternich. On March ist, the day that the Austrians, finding that Napoleon had turned back in pursuit of
Blücher
, cautiously resumed their advance, he secured the adhesion of his allies to a treaty which spelt the end of the usurper's power.

By the Treaty of Chaumont the four contracting Powers, in the now certain event of Napoleon continuing to refuse their terms— for nothing would now induce him to give up the Rhine frontier and Antwerp—undertook to prosecute the war till he was overthrown. Each was to maintain 150,000 troops in the field and abjure a separate peace, while Britain, in addition, was to contribute an annual subsidy of five millions sterling to her allies. Secret clauses provided for a federal union of the liberated German states, an Austrian hegemony in Italy, the return of the Bourbons to Spain, the independence of Switzerland and, at Britain's instance, the enlargement of Holland to include Antwerp and the former Austrian Netherlands. The alliance was to last for twenty years. Its creation was almost wholly Castlereagh's.

Meanwhile, Wellington, unaware of what was happening in the North, was exploiting his victory. The French rearguard made a show of standing at Aire on M
arch 2nd but disintegrated when
attacked. "It was all in vain," wrote Bell of the 34th, "the blood of the old bricks was up and we drove them into and right through the town." A few nights later he slept in a bedroom, with damask drapery, mirrors and polished furniture; it was the first time he had been in a bed since the occupation of Madrid two summers before. The campaign had suddenly become a picnic, with fowls to roast at the camp fires, wine at fifteen
sous
a bottle, and riflemen slicing slabs of bacon on their bread like English haymakers.
¹

By his retreat eastwards Soult left the road to the north open. More than a hundred miles up the Atlantic coast from besieged Bayonne lay the great
city of Bordeaux, the third in
France and the capital of Gascony. While his field-army halted its eastward march to consolidate its communications, the British Commander-in-Chief extemporised a flying force under Beresford to seize the city and secure the Gironde estuary for his transports. Reports had reached him that its merchants, ruined by the blockade, were talking of a Bourbon restoration, and, though scrupulously anxious not to encourage any Frenchman to a step which might prove fatal in the event of an Allied peace with Napoleon, he could not afford to ignore a civil movement so favourable to his operations. On March 12th Beresford reached Bordeaux with two regiments of hussars. The mayor met him at the gates and, tearing off his tricolour scarf, trampled it in the mud with cries of
"
A
b
as les aigles
!" "Vivent les Bourbons!"
Subsequently, ignoring th
e delicate negotiations at Chau
mont, he proclaimed, to Wellington's embarrassment and indignation, that he had been authorised by the Allies to conduct the administration of the city in King Louis' name.