Fairly able was he, but always a gambler
Correlli Barnett
BRITAIN AND THE DEFEAT OF NAPOLEON, 1807-1815 by Rory Muir Yale, 129.95, pp. 384 Do not groan at the prospect of yet another book on Napoleon (or Bonaparte, as the English properly called him at the time), because Rory Muir's approach to the subject is refreshingly different from the orthodox romantic celebrations of supposed military 'genius'.
For Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon 1807-1815 is an exercise in 'total strategy', exploring the interrelationships between military campaigning, grand strategy, diplomacy, and domestic politics. Nor does the author omit the financial, commercial, and industrial strength which enabled Britain to support her allies with arms supplies and large subsidies, the 'Lend- Lease' of the period. Moreover, Muir's book is a delight to read, matching a mastery of impressively comprehensive sources to a coolly lucid narrative.
Muir chooses as his starting-point the apogee of Bonaparte's success: the Treaty of Tilsit with Czar Alexander of Russia in 1807, which confirmed this domination of Europe and witnessed the frontiers of his gimcrack Empire at their widest. No man could then imagine — certainly no one in isolated, impotent, yet still belligerent England — that only seven years later Bonaparte would have abdicated after losing a campaign on the soil of France itself to his once defeated enemies, Austria, Prussia and Russia.
In tracing the course of this astonishing reversal of fortune, the author acknowl- edges that the final defeat of so great a military power as France essentially depended on the mass armies of the Continental land powers, even though the campaigns in Portugal and Spain served to keep the war alive in 1810-1812 (when otherwise Europe lay under a Bonapartian peace) and thereafter increasingly drained 'Bless him, he wants to go into agriculture when he grows up.' French resources and damaged French prestige.
Muir credits Canning with persuading a doubtful and reluctant cabinet in 1808 to commit Britain to the defence of Portugal, entrusting that defence to Sir Arthur Wellesley, the one British general who, though relatively junior, possessed the political and military judgment coupled with the steely will essential to success. Muir also congratulates those humdrum prime ministers, Spencer Percival and Lord Liverpool (no Pitts or Churchills they), and their cabinets on their good sense (especially in regard to domestic politics), admirable steadiness of purpose, and full- hearted backing (not always appreciated) of Wellington, who, unlike unfortunate field commanders of today chained by pernickety Whitehall directives, was granted virtually complete military and diplomatic discretion in carrying out the Government's broad policy. The author further shows how after Wellington's defeat of Massena's attempt to drive the British from Portugal in 1810-11 that policy evolved from the mere saving of Portugal to the grander objective of driving the French out of Spain. It had taken Britain some 16 years of war to find the right formula for making Britain's limited military power tell to the maximum advantage.
Yet even Wellington's smashing of Marmont's army at Salamanca in 1812 could not begin to compare in scale with the catastrophe which overtook the Grande Armee that year in Russia, reducing it from 400,000 men to a frost-bitten rabble of 20,000, and marking the true turning-point in Bonaparte's fortunes. It is Muir's judgment that this catastrophe was not inevitable. However, I have to disagree. It is one weakness of Muir's book that he does not seem to recognise that from glittering start to humiliating finish Bonaparte's system of war and diplomacy was fundamentally flawed, as I pointed out in my study, Bonaparte (1974), a work which sadly does not feature in Muir's bib- liography. For the truth is that every one of Bonaparte's campaigns, from Italy in 1796 to Russia in 1812 and Germany in 1813, rested on highly precarious logistic and strategic foundations: each was therefore a gamble, the success of which depended on an enemy's willingness to offer an early battle and then sue for peace immediately after losing it. It was in Russia in 1812 that for the first time the system failed to work, when the Czar Alexander, instead of making peace, exhausted Bonaparte's offensive momentum and destroyed his army by conducting protracted war in great depth.
Interestingly enough, Muir himself points out that Alexander had learned this lesson from Wellington's successful defence of Portugal against Massena in 1810-11.
The advent of protracted war hence- forward doomed Bonaparte. His initial showy successes in Germany in 1813 and France itself in 1814 could not save him from defeat and finally abdication at the hands of enemies who simply fought on regardless, eventually grinding him down by sheer weight of numbers.
Muir gives an admirably clear account of the rivalries between Austria, Russia and Prussia which accompanied their gradual victory over Bonaparte in 1813-14, and of the role of English diplomacy, in the person of Lord Castlereagh and backed by the prestige of Wellington's victories, in composing these allied differences in favour of commonly acceptable peace terms. Here, then, was an England far removed from the sadly diminished Britain of today — a commercial, industrial and naval superpower, leader of the concert of Europe.
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