Military Career of Napoleon the Great Part 18

Advancing, they saw 13,000 Spaniards placed as if in an amphitheatre in such a way that no one battalion was masked by another, and they could only join in columns. From that point the Poles had to sustain forty thousand discharges of musketry and as many of cannon, every minute.

However, the order was positive.

"Commandant," said Segur, "let us go, it is the Emperor's wish; the honors will be ours; Poles advance. Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon wished to teach his soldiers that with the Spaniards they must not consider danger, but drive them wherever found.

The smoke of the skirmishers on the side hills mingled with the thick fog and vapors of the morning, and under this veil the brave cavalry of the Guard led the way fearlessly and rushed up the ascent. A brilliant cavalry officer, General Montbrun, at this time somewhat out of favor with the Emperor, advanced at the head of the Polish light horse, a young troop of elite which Napoleon had formed at Warsaw that he might have all nations and costumes in his Guard. General Montbrun with those gallant young soldiers dashed at a gallop upon the cannon of the Spaniards, and in defiance of a horrible fire of musketry. The first squadron received a discharge which threw it into disorder, sweeping down thirty or forty men in the ranks; but those that followed, pa.s.sing beyond the wounded, reached the pieces, cut down the gunners and took all the cannon.

As the rus.h.i.+ng steeds pa.s.sed the Spanish infantry the latter fired and then threw down their guns, abandoned their intrenchments and fled. The brave San Juan, covered with blood, having received several wounds, strove in vain to stop his soldiers, who fled to the right and to the left in the mountains, leaving colors, artillery, 200 wagons with stores and almost all the officers in the hands of the victors. By the time the Emperor reached the top not only was the French flag found floating over Buitrago, but Montbrun's cavalry was pursuing the routed Spanish a league beyond the town.

Napoleon was delighted to have proved to his generals what the Spanish insurgents were, what his soldiers were, and in what estimation both were to be held, and to have overcome an obstacle which some had seemed to think extremely formidable. The Poles had about fifty men killed or wounded. That evening Napoleon complimented and rewarded the survivors and included in the distribution of his favors M. Philippe de Segur who had received several shot wounds in this charge; he also destined him to carry to the Legislative Body at Paris the colors taken at Somosierra and appointed Montbrun general of division.

On the morning of the 2nd three divisions of French cavalry made their appearance on the high ground to the north-west of the capital. The inhabitants of Madrid for eight days had been preparing to resist an invasion. Six thousand regular troops were within the town, and crowds of citizens and of the peasantry of the adjacent country were in arms with them. The pavement had been taken up, the streets barricaded, the houses on the outskirts loop-holed and occupied by a strong garrison.

Many persons, suspected of adhering to the side of the French, were put to death, and amid the ringing of the bells of churches and convents, a general uprising for all means of defense was in operation when the French cavalry appeared.

The day was the anniversary of Napoleon's coronation and of the battle of Austerlitz, and for the Emperor as well as his soldiers a superst.i.tion was attached to that memorable date. The fine cavalry, on beholding its glorious chief, raised unanimous acclamations, which mingled with the shouts of rage sent up by the Spaniards on seeing the French at their portals.

At noon the town was summoned to open its gates. The young officer carrying the message barely escaped with his life, the mob being determined to ma.s.sacre him. Only the interference of the Spanish regulars saved his life by s.n.a.t.c.hing him out of the hands of the a.s.sa.s.sins. The Junta directed a Spanish general to convey a negative answer to the summons of the French. When sent back he was a.s.sured that firing would commence immediately, although told that in resisting they would only expose a population of women, and children and old men to the slaughter, and was informed that the city could not hold out long against the French army.

[Ill.u.s.tration: From a Painting by Horace Vernet

NAPOLEON AT THE BATTLE OF JENA]

Napoleon waited until his artillery and infantry came up in the evening and then the place was invested on one side. The Emperor made a reconnaissance himself on horseback around Madrid and formed the plan of attack which might be divided into several successive acts, so as to summon the place after each of them, and to reduce it rather by intimidation than by the employment of formidable military means.

At midnight the city was again summoned and the answer still being defiant, the batteries began to open. Terror now began to prevail within, and shortly afterward the city was summoned for the third time.

Thomas de Morla, the governor, came to demand a suspension of arms. He said that all sensible men in Madrid were convinced of the necessity of surrendering; but that it was necessary to make the French troops retire and allow the Junta time to pacify the people and to induce them to lay down their arms.

Napoleon replied with some show of anger that Morla himself had excited and misled the people: "a.s.semble the clergy, the heads of the convents, the alcaldes, the princ.i.p.al proprietors," he said "and if between this and six in the morning the city has not surrendered it shall have ceased to exist. I neither will nor ought to withdraw my troops.... Return to Madrid. I give you till six tomorrow morning. Go back, then; you have nothing to say to me about the people but to tell me that they have submitted. If not, you and your troops shall be put to the sword."

Morla returned to the town and urged the necessity of instantly capitulating, to which all the authorities but Costellas, the commander of the regular troops agreed. The peasantry and citizens continued firing on the French outposts during the night and then Costellas, seeing that further resistance was useless, withdrew his troops and sixteen cannon in safety.

At eight o'clock on the morning of the 4th Madrid surrendered. The Spaniards were at once disarmed and the French troops filled the town and established themselves in the great buildings. Napoleon took up his residence in a country house near the capital. He gave orders for a general and immediate disarming, and tranquility was once more restored, the shops and theatres being opened as usual.

Napoleon now exercised all the rights of a conqueror and issued edicts abolis.h.i.+ng, among other evils, the Inquisition of the Jesuits, as well as the feudal inst.i.tutions of the Middle Ages. He received a deputation of the chief inhabitants who came to signify their desire to see his brother Joseph among them again. His answer was that Spain was his own by right of conquest; that he could easily rule it by viceroys; but if they chose to a.s.semble in their churches, priests and people, and swear allegiance to Joseph, he was not indisposed to listen to their request.

He distinctly affirmed that he would, in case they proved disloyal, put the crown upon his own head, treat the country as a conquered province and find another kingdom for his brother: "for" added he, "G.o.d has given me both the inclination and the power to surmount all obstacles."

Meanwhile Napoleon was making arrangements for the completion of his conquest. His plan was to invade Andalusia, Valencia and Galicia by his lieutenants, and march in person to Lisbon.

On learning on December 19th that the English army under Sir John Moore, amounting to 20,000, men, had put itself in motion, had advanced into Spain and left Salamanca to proceed to Valladolid; that a separate British corps of 13,000 men under Sir David Baird had recently landed at Corunna with orders to march through Galicia and effect a junction with Moore, either at Salamanca or Valladolid, Napoleon resolved to advance in person and overwhelm Moore. His resolution was instantly taken with that promptness of decision and unerring judgment which never forsook him. He instantly put himself at the head of 50,000 men and marched with incredible rapidity, with the view of intercepting Moore's communications with Portugal, and in short hemming the English commander in between himself and Soult.

Moore no sooner heard that Napoleon was approaching than he perceived the necessity of an immediate retreat; and he commenced, accordingly, a most calamitous one through the naked mountains of Galicia, in which his troops displayed a most lamentable want of discipline. They ill-treated the inhabitants, straggled from their ranks, and in short lost the appearance of an army except when the trumpet warned them that they might expect the French to charge.

Leaving Chamartin on the morning of the 22nd of December Napoleon arrived at the foot of the Guadarrama as the infantry of his Guard was beginning to ascend it. The weather, which till then had been superb, had suddenly become terrible, and at the very moment when forced marches were to be performed, as it was necessary that they lose no time in coming up with the English.

Napoleon, seeing the infantry of his Guard acc.u.mulating at the entrance of the gorge, in which the gun-carriages were also crowded together, spurred his horse into a gallop, and gained the head of the column which he found detained by the hurricane. The peasants declared that it was impossible to pa.s.s without being exposed to the greatest dangers. This, however, was not sufficient to stop the conqueror of the Alps. He made the cha.s.seurs of his Guard dismount, and ordered them to advance first in close column, conducted by guides. These bold fellows, marching at the head of the army, and trampling down the snow with their own feet and those of their horses, formed a beaten track for the troops who followed.

The Emperor himself climbed the mountain on foot, amidst the cha.s.seurs of his Guard, merely leaning, when he felt fatigued, on the arm of General Savary. The cold, which was as severe as at Eylau, did not prevent him from crossing the Guadarrama. General Marbot, who accompanied Napoleon on the journey, says in his "Memoirs": "A furious snowstorm, with a fierce wind, made the pa.s.sage of the mountains almost impracticable. Men and horses were hurled over precipices. The leading battalions had actually begun to retreat; but Napoleon was resolved to overtake the English at all cost. He spoke to the men, and ordered that the members of each section should hold one another by the arm. The cavalry, dismounting, did the same. The staff was formed in similar fas.h.i.+on, the Emperor between Lannes and Duroc, we following with locked arms; and so, in spite of wind, snow and ice, we proceeded, though it took us four hours to reach the top. Half way up the marshals and generals, who wore jackboots, could go no farther. Napoleon, therefore, got hoisted on to a gun, and bestrode it; the marshals and generals did the same, and in this grotesque order they reached the convent at the summit. There the troops were rested and wine served out. The descent though awkward, was better."

Napoleon spent the night in a miserable post-house in the little village of Espinar. On the mules laden with his baggage had been brought the wherewithal to serve him with supper, and which he shared with his officers, cheerfully conversing with them on that series of extraordinary adventures which had commenced at the school of Brienne--to end, he knew not where!

Next day the Emperor proceeded with his Guard; but the infantry advanced with difficulty and the artillery could not stir owing to the frightful quagmires. The stragglers and baggage came up slowly while Napoleon, anxious to meet the fleeing English troops, pushed on with his advance guard and with his cha.s.seurs until Benevento was reached. Here he came up with his own troops in pursuit of Moore at Benevento, on the 29th of December, and enjoyed for a moment, from his headquarters established there, the spectacle of the English army in full retreat.

The French columns seemed to rival each other in their efforts to overtake the enemy. In their precipitation the English abandoned their sick, hamstrung their horses, when unable to keep up with them, and destroyed the greater part of their ammunition and baggage.

Marshal Soult, who had taken another road, was much nearer the enemy.

His orders to follow the English intermission were difficult of accomplis.h.i.+ng as the mud was deep and the soldiers sank up to their knees.

Napoleon now decided that Moore was no longer worthy of his own attention and intrusted the consummation of his ruin to Soult, who was ordered to pursue the English to the last extremity, and "with his sword at their loins." He therefore set out at once, his troops marching past the Emperor.

Soult hung close on the rear of the English; he came up with them in the mountains of Leon and continued to pursue them until they reached the port of Corunna. Here Moore perceived that it would be impossible to embark without a convention or battle and he chose the latter. The attack was made by the French on the 16th of January in heavy columns and with their usual vivacity; but it was sustained and repelled by the English and they were permitted to embark without further molestation.

Sir John Moore fell in the action mortally wounded by a cannon shot. His body was wrapped in a military cloak, instead of the usual vestments of the tomb, and deposited in a grave hastily dug on the ramparts of the citadel of Corunna, while the guns of the enemy paid him funeral honors.

The next morning the grenadiers of France, who had been struck with admiration at the chivalry of the English commander, gathered reverently around the new-made grave, and while the English fleet was yet visible on the bosom of the Mediterranean, they erected a monument over his body and placed thereon an appropriate inscription.

Napoleon, having been informed of the embarkation of the English army, instead of returning to Madrid to complete his Spanish conquest, proceeded at once towards Astorga where his fears with reference to Austria were heightened by news from Paris by courier. The storm that was gathering once more along the sh.o.r.es of the Danube was of more vital consequence to France than the kingdom of Joseph Bonaparte. On his arrival at Astorga he changed all his plans. "It was late at night when the Emperor and Lannes, escorted only by their staffs, and some hundred cavalry, entered Astorga," says General Marbot. "So tired and anxious for shelter and warmth was everyone that the place was scarcely searched. If the enemy had had warning of this, and returned on their tracks, they might perhaps have carried off the Emperor; fortunately they were in too great a hurry, and we did not find one of them in the town. Every minute fresh bodies of French troops were coming up and the safety of the Imperial headquarters was soon secured."

Proceeding to Valladolid with his Guard, which he wished to keep as near to events in Germany as himself, after placing Joseph on the throne at Madrid again, he soon afterwards hastened to Paris with all speed, riding on post horses on one occasion not less than eighty-five miles in five and one-half hours. He had traversed Spain with the rapidity of lightning, followed by his Guard, to the spot where new dangers and triumphs awaited him. He left behind a feeble king, equally as incapable of keeping as obtaining a conquest; and marshals who, no longer restrained by the presence of an inflexible chief, for the most part delivered themselves over to their own self-love or private jealousies.

In his "Memorial" written in exile at St. Helena, Napoleon said "that the war of Spain destroyed him, and that all the circ.u.mstances of his disasters connect themselves with this fatal knot." "In the crisis France was placed in," he said at another time, "in the struggle of new ideas in the great cause of the age against the rest of Europe, we could not leave Spain behind."

X

WAR WITH AUSTRIA, 1809.

Before Napoleon returned to Paris from Spain he learned that, yielding to England's instigations, Austria was about to take advantage of his being so far away, to cross its borders, invade Bavaria, carry the war to the banks of the Rhine, and then effect the liberation of Germany.

The opportunity was an excellent one for attempting such an undertaking.

The Emperor had been compelled to send the pick of his battalions to the other side of the Pyrenees, thus greatly reducing the number of French foes in Germany. The French minister of foreign affairs, Talleyrand, had during Napoleon's absence made every effort to conciliate the Emperor Francis, but the warlike preparations throughout the Austrian dominions proceeded with increasing vigor.

After the declaration of war by Austria on the 6th of April, couriers were at once dispatched with orders to the armies on the Rhine, and beyond the Alps, to concentrate themselves on the field. To the amba.s.sadors at Paris the Emperor spoke most freely of the coming conquest. "They have forgotten the lessons of experience there," he said; "They want fresh ones; they shall have them, and this time they shall be terrible I promise you. I do not desire war; I have no interest in it, and all Europe is witness that my whole attention and all my efforts were directed towards the field of battle which England had selected, that is to say, Spain. Austria, which saved the English in 1805 when I was about to cross the straits of Calais, has saved them once more by stopping me when I was about to pursue them to Corunna. She shall pay dearly for this new diversion in their favor. Either she shall disarm instantly, or she shall have to sustain a war of destruction. If she disarms in such a manner as to leave no doubt on my mind as to her further intentions, I will myself sheathe my sword, for I have no wish to draw it except in Spain against the English; otherwise the conflict shall be immediate and decisive, and such that England shall for the future have no allies on the Continent."

The instant Napoleon ascertained that Bavaria was invaded by the Archduke Charles, he at once proceeded, without guards, without equipage, accompanied solely by the faithful Josephine, to Frankfort and thence to Strasbourg. Here he a.s.sumed command of the army on the 13th of April, and immediately formed the plan of his campaign. He found the two wings of his army, the one under Ma.s.sena, the other under Davoust, at such a distance from the centre that, had the Austrians seized the opportunity, the consequences might have been fatal to the French.

On the 17th of April, while at Donawerth, Napoleon commanded Davoust and Ma.s.sena to march simultaneously towards a position in front, and then pushed forward the centre in person, to the same point. The Archduke Louis, who commanded the Austrian divisions in advance, was thus hemmed in unexpectedly by three armies, moving at once from three different points.

At Donawerth Napoleon addressed his troops in a proclamation in which he said: "Soldiers, the territory of the Confederation has been violated.

The Austrian general expects us to fly at the sight of his arms, and to abandon our allies to him. I arrive with the rapidity of lightning.

Soldiers, I was surrounded by you when the sovereign of Austria came to my camp in Moravia; you have heard him implore my clemency, and swear an eternal friends.h.i.+p towards me. Victors, in three wars Austria has owed everything to your generosity; three times has she perjured herself. Our past successes are a safe guarantee of the victory which awaits us. Let us march, and at our aspect may the enemy acknowledge his conqueror."

It should be remembered that at this time, while Napoleon was astonis.h.i.+ng Europe by the rapidity of his movements, and the display of the resources of his military and political genius, he had left an army in the Peninsula, distributed over an immense s.p.a.ce of territory, weakened by diseases, reduced by partial combats, and without receiving reinforcements from the interior of the Empire. During the whole of the German campaign of 1809, the French in Spain were merely able to maintain themselves in the positions they had occupied soon after Napoleon's departure.

Austria had reckoned on the absence of Napoleon and his Guard, and on the veteran troops of Marengo and Austerlitz being far distant. She knew that there did not remain more than 80,000 French scattered throughout Germany, while her army divided into nine bodies, under the orders of the Archduke Charles, had not less than 500,000 men.

The Archduke Louis was defeated and driven back at Abensberg on the 20th, and utterly routed at Landshut on the 21st, losing 9,000 men, thirty guns and all his stores. Those unfortunate Austrians who had been led from Vienna singing songs, under a persuasion that there was no longer a French army in Germany, and that they should only have to deal with Wurtemburgers and Bavarians, experienced the greatest terror when they came to conflict and found themselves defeated. The Prince of Lichtenstein and General Lusignan, were wounded, while the loss of the Austrians in colonels, and officers, of lower rank was considerable.

In the battle of Abensberg which occurred on the 20th, Napoleon was resolved to destroy the corps of the Archduke Louis, and of General Keller, amounting to sixty thousand men. The enemy only stood his ground for an hour and left eighteen thousand prisoners. The cannonade of the French was successful at all points and the Austrians, disconcerted by Napoleon's brilliant movements, beat a hasty retreat leaving eight standards and twelve pieces of cannon. The French loss was very small.