A History of the Peninsular War, vol. 7

16–19 October 1813

Battle of Leipzig

BETWEEN SUCHET AND SOULT. AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1813

Soult received Suchet's counter-propositions on Septem- ber 22nd, and wrote to the Minister of War that he was prepared to accept them — indeed they were but a variant on his own scheme sent to Suchet on August 10th. The dispatches of both marshals were forwarded from Paris for the Emperor's considera- tion and approval. They reached the front in Saxony in the early days of October, when Napoleon was engaged in the whirl of unsatisfactory operations which led up to the battle of Leipzig. Either he had not time to read them at all, or he had not time to turn his mind from his own all-engrossing problems to the complicated situation in Spain, and to dictate a reply. At all events no answer was sent to Paris or the Pyrenees : the disaster of Leipzig supervened on October 16th-19th, and on October 31st the Emperor reached Frankfort, a broken man, with scarcely 70,000 men of the vast army which he had raised in the spring. But long before the news of Leipzig came to Bayonne or the Bidassoa, Wellington had settled Soult's problems for him, and raids over the Somport had become dreams of the past. It is doubtful whether they had ever been more than dreams.

THE END OF THE DAY

and the centre advanced slowly, waiting for him to come up into line, Soult had the whole day before him, in which to organize some sort of a front from the Ocean to the Nive. Wellington's tactics seem cautious, even allowing for the fatigue of his troops, when we consider the state into which half the divisions opposite him had been battered overnight. But he refused to push forward with his victorious centre, into the gap that lay before him, till his left wing could co-operate. And while Hope was coming up, the opportunity slipped away. There was no attempt to divide and smash up, by an irruption into their midst, the much de- moralized enemy. For that Soult's troops were demoralized there can be no doubt, after they had been hustled out of a position of such strength, so elaborately fortified. The officers had just received the report of the battle of Leipzig [October 19], — suffici- ently discouraging news, even when toned down in the Emperor's Erfurt bulletin. There is a curious side-light on their feelings in one of Wellington's private letters. 'On the 11th', he writes to Hope, 'the colonel who was taken yesterday dined with me. He was at first very melancholy, and would not talk: but he afterwards became more communicative. Having been asked where the Emperor's Head-Quarters now were, he answered Nulle part: il rCy a point de Quartier General, et point d'Armee1.1 And he was not so very far out.

NOVEMBER 11-DECEMBER 9, 1813

Before proceeding to explain all that Wellington meant by sending the Spaniards across the Bidassoa, and by declaring his intention of making no general movement till he knew the results of the battle of Leipzig, we must dismiss the small affair of the bridge of Cambo. On the first available day, as had been intended, Hill moved up opposite to it with a couple of brigades, and showed obvious interest in it ; indeed a recon- naissance in force against the tete-de-pont led to some slight skirmishing on November 12th. Soult, not yet realizing his adversary's resolve to go into winter quarters, thought that this

NOVEMBER 1913-JANUARY 1914

It will be remembered that the total force of the Armies of Aragon and Catalonia still looked very formidable on paper in the autumn4. But copying the example of his master in the Leipzig campaign, Suchet had left an enormous proportion of it shut up in garrisons, with which all communication had been lost. And several thousand more were locked up in the Catalan fortresses, and could not be used in the field without risking the loss of those places. With an army amounting on paper to 52,000 men, Suchet had in January only 28,000 disposable for field service, and of these a good third were keeping open his com- munication with Northern Catalonia and France. In front of Barcelona, along the Llobregat, his main army was only some 18,000 strong. It was therefore a severe blow when the orders of January 14th arrived from Paris, and he was directed to detach 10,000 men without delay toward Lyons. The results of this deduction from his army will be dealt with in its proper place.