placed under his orders. He resigned his seat in parliament and the Secretaryship of Ireland, and prepared to encounter Soult as he had faced Junot. But first he measured his strength with Victor and King Joseph, and earned by the battle of Talavera (which the Emperor described as "a terrible defeat ") the title of Viscount Wellington and a place in the peerage. But the French retreated from the action in good order; and the approach of Soult, Ney, and Mortier made it necessary for Lord Wellington to recross the Tagus. No valour and no generalship could, with so limited a force as his, make head against 90,000 veterans thirsting for revenge. Nothing was left but to defend Portugal and to cover the approaches to Lisbon. Intrenched between the triple lines of Torres Vedras, the Allies were inaccessible to the attacks of Massena; scarped hills, streams dammed, breastworks, batteries, abattis, and forts met him everywhere, and he therefore retired into Spain with his huge army wasted by famine. Wellington meanwhile was covered with reproaches for delay, which few could understand, but which was in itself victory. Lord Liverpool feebly supported him at home; the Opposition was clamorous for his recall; the Spanish and Portuguese governments thwarted him at every turn, and his iron will only enabled him to risk nothing during the winter of 1810. He knew what Brougham and Jeffrey, with the whole staff of the Edin * Gleig's "Life of Wellington," p. 158. burgh Review, would not perceive, that Spain and Portugal had defensible lines, which a weaker force might defend for ever against a stronger, if duly provisioned and supplied with munitions of war.* This was the simple but great idea which formed the basis of his operations and led ultimately to such brilliant results. In the spring of 1811 he was again in the field, dealing, as ever, sure and rapid strokes. He stormed the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo and captured Badajos in the early part of 1812. The last exploit was achieved with prodigies of valour. The English columns appeared at a distance to be "in the midst of a volcano," fighting onward through "showers of living flame." It was a type of Wellington's career in the Peninsula; for he was matched with some of the bravest and most skilful generals that ever served in Europe. He had waited long and patiently for the moment when he might assail the strongholds just mentioned. It was ever the character of his mind to have a fixed end in view, to make everything subserve it, and never to be turned aside from it by the promise of incidental advantage. Thus the honours he never grasped at came thick upon him in the issue. Spain hailed him as the Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo; Portugal created him Marquis of Torres Vedras; and England raised him to the Earldom of Wellington. All through his campaigns he was unconsciously working his way to the premiership. While Napoleon * Hugh Miller's "Essays," p. 52-3. had in every expedition the resources of a great empire at his command, Wellington's military chest was empty, and he was compelled to create a paper currency in Portugal without any chance of its being available in Spain. The battle of Salamanca was fought in July, 1812. It established Wellington's fame as a tactician; destroyed or scattered more than half of Marmont's army, separated the French force in Spain from that of Portugal, put a stop to the negotiations between King Joseph and the Cortes; and virtually "settled the question of the occupation of the Peninsula by Bonaparte's armies." In one point only Wellington seems to have been remisshe allowed Joseph to escape across the Tagus, though he might certainly have made him a prisoner of war.† Madrid was now open to the conqueror. Whigs and Tories at home united in praising his strategy. The Spaniards made him Generalissimo, and in the British peerage he ranked as Marquis. But the junction of King Joseph with Suchet and Soult compelled him to abandon the siege of Burgos, to fall back again upon Portugal, and to await reinforcements there in winter quarters. The summer of 1813 saw him once more in Spain, carrying his army in less than two months over 200 leagues of difficult ground, crossing six great rivers, winning the battle of Vittoria, investing two fortresses, and clearing Spain of 120,000 French soldiers. Pampe * M. Thebandeau, quoted by Rev. G. R. Gleig. + Gleig's "Life," p. 206. luna was blockaded and fell; San Sebastian fell; and through the passes of the Pyrenees, in deadly conflict with Soult and his legions at every turn, Wellington forced his way into France, and cantoned his men and horses in the plateau of Biarritz. Then, pushing forward, he effected in sixteen days the passage of five great rivers; he fought the battle of Orthes, driving Soult from his strong position; he invested St. Jean Pied-de-Port, seized several magazines, and laid siege to Bayonne, one of the bulwarks of France. But he refused to unfurl the white flag of the Bourbons, or to proclaim Louis XVIII., till the allied sovereigns should cease to regard. Napoleon as the ruler of the French people. In April, 1814, he defeated Soult in the hard-fought battle of Toulouse, and was welcomed by the inhabitants of that city as a deliverer. They lifted him from his horse, bore him on their shoulders to the court-house, and rent the air with shouts of "Vive le Roi! Vive Wellington!" The news arrived shortly of Napoleon's abdication, and Soult, with the other generals, gave in their adhesion to the restored dynasty. The superiority of Wellington's tactics over those of all the other leaders of the allied armies was universally admitted; and his kind and generous conduct towards the people whom he subdued was extolled as highly as his political sagacity and his military genius. One victory more awaited him—one achievement which was to decide the fate of Europe, and place his name above Napoleon's in the annals of war. But already he was the idol of a grateful people. After a short time spent in Paris with the allied sovereigns, and in Madrid, where he vainly endeavoured to restrain the reactionary measures of King Ferdinand, he arrived in London after an absence of five years, was greeted as a duke, and enriched with half a million of money. In six weeks he was again in Paris as British Ambassador. He saw with sorrow the growing unpopularity of the Bourbons, and tried to avert it, as he had tried to dissuade Ferdinand from his despotic course. On the 7th of March, 1815, he was apprised of Napoleon's landing at Fréjus. How he took the command of the allied armies in Flanders; how he and many of his staff lingered in the brilliant saloons of the Duchess of Richmond in Brussels till past midnight on the 15th of June; how he slept in the village of Waterloo on the night of the 17th; how in the morning he saw 71,947 French troops spread over the heights facing his own, 15,765 of them superb cavalry, and supported by 249 guns; how he stood without the smallest visible emotion before the greatest general of modern times, himself excepted; how he met the shock of his columns with an army of "young gentlemen "-" the worst army he ever commanded;"* how he made hosts. long accustomed to victory recoil before raw battalions, foreigners, and militia; how the last attack of the French had been delivered even before the Prussians arrived, and how their arrival turned defeat into rout;-are events * Gleig's "Life," p. 318; Dublin Review, Jan. 1865, p. 149. 66 |