Part 21

The situation the new general was called on to meet might have depressed a weaker man. The third corps or Army of Aragon had been severely shaken by the long, stubborn siege of Saragossa. Many of its best officers and men were dead or invalided to France; the ranks were full of raw recruits who had not yet felt the bit of discipline. There were no magazines, the men's pay was months in arrear, the morale of the troops was bad; but the General was told that he must expect no reinforcements and that his army must live off the province of Aragon. To increase his difficulties further he was informed that, while lending an obedient ear to all commands from Madrid, he was really to obey orders which came from the major-general in Paris. Meanwhile, all around him Aragon and even Saragossa were seething with discontent, and Spanish forces, elated by partial success, were springing up on all sides. It was thus situated that Suchet had his first experience of commanding in war, and of showing that success depends on achieving the object desired with the means at hand. Luckily for his reputation he fulfilled Napoleon's dictum that "a general should above all be cool-headed in order to estimate things at their value: he must not be moved by good or bad news. The sensations which he daily receives must be so classed in his mind that each should occupy its appropriate place." Accordingly he at once grasped the vital points of the problem, and strove to restore the morale of the troops so that he might be in a position to meet and overcome the organised forces which were moving against him. His first step was to hold a review of his new command, and then he proceeded to visit his troops in their quarters and to get into personal touch with the officers and men by watching them at their company and battalion drills, encouraging them and supervising the interior economy of the various regiments and brigades. His reputation and his personal magnetism soon began to effect a complete change in his army. But unfortunately the enemy, fighting in their own country, where every inhabitant was a spy on their side, knew as well as the general himself the exact state of the French morale, the position of every unit, and the strength of each company and squadron. So accurate was their information that on one occasion, when a battalion was despatched on a reconnaissance to occupy a small town, and the officer commanding demanded a thousand rations for his men and a hundred for his horse, the Alcalde at once replied, "I know that I must furnish rations for your troops, but I will only supply seven hundred and eighty for the men and sixty for the horses," as he knew beforehand the exact number of men and horses in the column.

The Spanish General Blake, with this wonderful intelligence organisation at his command, called together his troops, and took the initiative against the new French commander by advancing towards Saragossa. Suchet, recognising the importance of utilising to the full the elan which the French soldier always derives from the sense of attacking, advanced to meet him near Alcaniz, but Blake easily beat off the French attack. So demoralised was the Army of Aragon that on the following night, when a drummer cried out that he saw the Spanish cavalry advancing, an entire infantry regiment threw down their arms before this phantom charge. The offender was brought at once before a drumhead court martial and shot, but with troops in such a condition the French commander very wisely slowly fell back the next day towards Saragossa. The situation was extremely critical: a hurried retreat would have roused all Aragon to the attack; fortunately the morale of the Spanish troops was also none too good, and Blake waited for reinforcements before advancing. Meanwhile Suchet spent every hour reorganising his army, visiting with speedy punishment all slackness, encouraging where possible by praise, everywhere showing a cheerfulness and confidence he was far from feeling. Every day the troops were drilled or attended musketry practice; the ordinary routine of peace was carried out in every detail, and the civil and military life of Saragossa showed no signs of the greatness of this crisis. Meanwhile care and attention soon showed their effect, and when three weeks later the enemy appeared at Maria before Saragossa, Suchet had under his command a force full of zealous desire to wipe out its late disgrace and absolutely confident in its general. Fortunately the Spanish commander, by attempting a wide encircling movement, weakened his numerical superiority, and Suchet, as usual assuming the offensive, broke the Spanish centre with his cavalry, hurled his infantry into the gap, and amid a terrific thunder-shower drove the Spanish from the field. The battle before Saragossa saved Aragon for the French, but it did not satisfy their commander, who knew that "to move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war"; accordingly with his now elated troops he pursued the enemy and attacked them at Belchite. The Spanish morale was completely broken; a chance shot at the commencement of the engagement blew up an ammunition wagon, and thereon the whole army turned and bolted; for the rest of the war, no regular resistance existed in Aragon.

The battles of Saragossa and Belchite marked the commencement of a fresh stage in the conquest of Eastern Spain. From this time onwards Aragon became the base from which was organised the conquest of Catalonia and Valencia. It was in pursuance of this scheme that Suchet's next task was the organisation of the civil government of the ancient kingdom of Aragon. Fortunately for the commander-in-chief the old local patriotism burnt strong in the hearts of the Aragonese; jealous of the Castilians, they placed their love of Aragon far above their love of Spain. Suchet, an ardent student of human nature, was quick to appreciate how to turn to his use this provincialism. Loud in his praises of their stubborn resistance to the French arms, he approached the nobles and former civil servants and prayed them to lend him their help in restoring the former glories of the ancient kingdom of Aragon. Meanwhile the people of the towns and villages were propitiated by a stern justice and a new fiscal system, which, while it drew more from their pockets, was less aggravating and inquisitorial than the former method, which exacted a tax on the sale and purchase of every individual article. Meanwhile the needs of the French army created a market for both agricultural produce and for manufactured articles, and hence both the urban and rural populations, while paying heavier taxes, made greater profits than formerly. Such was the ability with which Aragon was administered that a province, which even in its most prosperous days had never contributed more than four million francs to the Spanish treasury, was able to produce an income of eight million francs for the pay of the troops alone, without counting the cost of military operations, and at the same time to maintain its own civil servants, while works of public utility were commenced in Saragossa and elsewhere.

But it was not only from the point of finance that Suchet proved to the full the maxim that the art of war is nothing but the art of feeding your troops: his military operations were no whit less remarkable than his success as a civil administrator. Immediately after Belchite he swept all the guerillas out of Aragon, and by a carefully thought out plan of garrisons gave the country that peace and certainty which is requisite for commerce and agriculture alike. He then proceeded to wrest from the enemy the important fortresses of Lerida and Mequinenza, which command the approaches to Catalonia. Suchet's conquest of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia was marked by a succession of brilliant sieges. Lerida, Mequinenza, Tortosa, the fort of San Felipe, the Col of Balanquer, Tarragona, Sagunto, and Valencia all fell before his conquering arm, for Spain had to be won piece by piece. Each forward step was marked by a siege, a battle to defeat the relieving force, the fall of the fortress, and its careful restoration as a base for the next advance. It was not owing to any weakness or want of precaution on the part of the enemy that Suchet thus captured all the noted fortresses of central Spain: in every case the Spaniards fought with grim determination, and the regular Spanish armies, aided by swarms of guerillas, made desperate efforts to relieve their beleaguered countrymen. But the French success was due to the qualities of their general. With a patience equal to that of Marlborough, with a power of supervision over detail like that of his great chief, Suchet knew exactly how to pick his staff and how far to trust his subordinates. Above all, he had absolute self-control. In the blackest hour he never gave way, under the most extreme provocation he never lost his temper; hence his own troops idolised him, while his perfect justice impressed itself on the enemy. Though the Spanish priests were teaching the catechism in every village that it was one's duty to love all men except the French, that it was not only lawful but one's sacred duty to kill all Frenchmen, though a letter was captured in which a guerilla chief ordered his subordinates to make every effort to capture Madame Suchet and to cut her throat, especially because she was pregnant, the commander-in-chief kept his men in absolute control, and punished with the greatest severity every outrage committed by his troops.

The battle and siege of Valencia in 1811 were the crowning success of his career, and brought as their reward the long-coveted Marshal's baton and the title of Duke of Albufera: to support his title the Emperor granted him half a million francs, a greater sum than he gave to any other of his Paladins. The year 1812 saw the Marshal busily engaged in reorganising the province of Valencia on the lines he had found so successful in Aragon. But his work there had never time to take root. The necessities of the Russian campaign had forced Napoleon to recall from Spain many of his best troops, while the successful advance of Wellington on Madrid showed how unstable was the French rule. It was the province of Valencia alone which supplied the money and provisions for the armies which reconquered the Spanish capital for King Joseph. In 1813 the victorious advance of Wellington and the battle of Vittoria compelled Suchet to evacuate Valencia. The fall of Pampeluna caused him to evacuate Aragon. Deprived of all his trustworthy troops, he still, by his bold counter-attacks, delayed the advance of the English and Spaniards under Bentinck, but by the time Napoleon abdicated he had been compelled with his handful of men to fall back on French territory.

Under the Restoration the Marshal was retained in command of the tenth division, but on Napoleon's return from Elba he once again rejoined his old leader, whom he had not seen since 1808. The Emperor greeted him most cordially. "Marshal Suchet," he said, "you have grown greatly in reputation since last we met. You are welcome; you bring with you glory and all the glamour that heroes give to their contemporaries on earth." The Marshal was at once sent off to his old home of Lyons to organise there out of nothing an army which was to cover the Alps. Men there were in plenty, but the arsenals were empty; still, the Marshal with ten thousand troops beat the Piedmontese on June 15th and a few days afterwards defeated the Austrians. But the occupation of Geneva by the Allies forced him to evacuate Savoy and fall back on Lyons, where he was greeted with the news of Waterloo. Under the second Restoration the Marshal never appeared in public life, and died at the chateau of Saint Joseph at Marseilles on January 3, 1826.

Talking to O'Meara at St. Helena, Napoleon said, "Of the generals of France I give the preference to Suchet. Before his time Massena was the first." At another time he said of him, "It is a pity that mortals cannot improvise men like him. If I had had two Marshals like Suchet I should not only have conquered Spain, but have kept it." While making due allowance for the probability that the Emperor was influenced in this speech by the fact that Suchet alone relieved the gloom of the unsuccessful war in Spain, it is yet abundantly clear that the Marshal was a commander of no mean ability, for though he did not show the precocity of a Marmont, yet, as Napoleon himself said, "Suchet was a man whose mind and character increased wonderfully."

As a commander-in-chief, though acting in a small sphere and never having more than fifty thousand troops under his command, he showed that he possessed determination, insight, and great powers of organisation. From the first he saw that the one and only way to wear down the Spanish resistance was to capture the fortresses. Hence his operations were twofold--the conduct of sieges and the protection of his convoys from the guerillas. He justified his reasoning; by 1812 he had captured no less than seventy-seven thousand officers and men and fourteen hundred guns and had pacified Aragon, Valencia, and part of Catalonia. Another great secret of his success lay in the fact that he knew how to profit by victory; the battle of Belchite followed on that of Maria; no sooner was Lerida captured than plans were made to take Mequinenza, and before that fortress was captured the siege train for Tortosa was got ready. Profiting by the depression of the enemy after the fall of Tortosa, he despatched columns to capture San Felipe and the Col of Balanquer. Thanks to his former training as chief of the staff, the Marshal was able with his own hand to draw up all the smallest regulations for siege operations, and for the government of Aragon and Valencia. The gift of drafting clear and concise orders and the intuition with which he chose his staff and column commanders explain to a great extent the reason why his operations in Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia were so little hampered by the constant guerilla warfare which paralysed the other French commanders in Spain. The indefatigable energy with which he made himself personally acquainted with every officer under his command, and his knowledge of, sympathy with, and care for his soldiers, always made him popular; while the burning enthusiasm which he knew how to infuse into French, German, and Italian alike so stimulated his troops that he could demand almost any sacrifice from them. Thus it was that he himself created the morale which enabled him again and again to conquer against overwhelming odds.

As a man, moderation and justice lay at the root of his character, and they account largely for his success as a statesman. He had the difficult task of administering Aragon and Valencia for the benefit of the army under his command; yet he was remembered not with hate, but with affection, by the people of those countries. When any one inquired what was the character of the French general, the Spaniards would reply, "He is a just man." The same moderation which caused him to save Tarragona and Valencia from the fury of his troops taught him to devote himself to the welfare of his temporary subjects, and caused his hospital arrangements to receive the gratuitous praise of the Spanish and English commanders. At Saragossa his name was given to one of the principal streets, and on his death the inhabitants of the town paid for masses for his soul, while the King of Spain was only voicing the feelings of the people when he wrote to the Marshal's widow that everything he had heard in Spain proved how deservedly the Duke of Albufera had gained the affections of the people of Valencia and Aragon.

XII

LAURENT GOUVION ST. CYR, MARSHAL

Laurent Gouvion St. Cyr, the son of a small landowner of Toul, was born in that town on April 13, 1764. His father, who was a Gouvion, had married a St. Cyr, but the marriage had turned out an unfortunate one, and soon after the birth of the young Laurent a separation was agreed on. Consequently, from an early age, the boy lacked a mother's care. His father, many of whose relations were in the artillery, desired his son to enter the army, and with that object in view sent him to the Artillery College at Toul. But at the age of eighteen the future Marshal decided to abandon the career of arms for that of art, preferring the freedom of an artist's life to the dull routine of garrison service. Taking the bit between his teeth early in 1782, he set off for Rome, which he made his headquarters for the following two years, with occasional trips as far as Sicily. The year 1789 found Laurent Gouvion established in Paris with a great knowledge of art and some considerable skill in technique. Steeped in classic lore, contemptuous of dull authority and full of youthful enthusiasm, he hailed with joy the outbreak of the Revolution. But by the end of 1792 the young painter was too keen a student of men and matters not to perceive "the danger which menaced the Republic," and, like all other thinking men, "was lost in astonishment, not to say at the imprudence, but the folly of the Convention, which instead of seeking to diminish the number of its enemies, seemed resolved to augment them by successive insults, not merely against all kings, but against every existing government." In spite of this, when Europe threatened France, Laurent Gouvion was one of the first to enlist in the volunteers. His personality and former training at once made themselves felt; within a month of enlisting he was elected captain, in which grade he joined the Army of the Rhine under General Custine. On reaching the front the volunteer captain soon found scope for his pencil. In an army thoroughly disorganised a good draughtsman with an eye for country was no despicable asset. Gouvion was attached to the topographical department of the staff. He added his mother's name--St. Cyr--to his surname because of the constant confusion arising owing to the number of Gouvions employed with the army. After a year's hard work on the staff, during which he acquired a thorough grasp of the art of manoeuvring according to the terrain, and a good working knowledge of the machinery of an army, St. Cyr was promoted on June 5, 1794, general of brigade, and six days later general of division. His promotion was not unmerited, for it was his complete mastery of mountain warfare which had contributed more than anything else to the success of the division of the Army of the Rhine to which he had been attached. The soldiers had long recognised the fact, and when they heard the guns booming through the defiles of the Vosges they used to call one to the other, "There is St. Cyr playing chess." Like Bernadotte, at first he refused this rapid promotion; he feared it might lead to the scaffold, for death was then the reward of failure, and besides this, the Gouvions were classed among the ci-devant nobles. As a commander the new general speedily proved that, much as he admired liberty in the abstract, he would have nothing but obedience from his men. Tall of stature, more like a professor than a soldier, through all his career wearing the plain blue overcoat, without uniform or epaulettes, which were affected by the generals of the Army of the Rhine, St. Cyr soon became one of the best known generals of Republican France. As one of his most bitter enemies wrote of him, "It was impossible to find a calmer man; the greatest dangers, disappointments, successes, defeats, were alike unable to move him. In the presence of every sort of contingency he was like ice. It may be easily understood, of what advantage such a character, backed by a taste for study and meditation, was to a general officer." In the army of the Rhine Desaix and St. Cyr were regarded as the persons whose examples should be followed. The austerity of their manner of life, their sincere patriotism and laborious perseverance, left an indelible mark on all with whom they came in contact. But though they had much in common they were really very dissimilar, for Desaix was intoxicated with the love of glory, full of burning enthusiasm, sympathetic to an extraordinary degree, exceedingly susceptible to the influence of the moment, while St. Cyr loved duty as the rule of his life, modelled his action by the strict laws of calculation, was absolutely impervious to outside influence, and never knew what it was to doubt his own powers. But with all his great gifts he had many faults; he was exceedingly jealous, and without knowing it he allowed his own interests to affect his calculations, consequently very early in his career his fellow-generals hated to have to work in co-operation with him, and he got the name of being a "bad bed-fellow." Further, excellent as he was as a strategist and tactician, the details of administration bored him. He never held a review, never visited hospitals, and left the threads of administration in the hands of his subordinates; consequently, much as his troops trusted him in the field, they disliked him in quarters, because, while his discipline was most severe, he did nothing to provide for their needs or amusements.

From 1795 to the peace of Campo Formio St. Cyr shared the fortunes and vicissitudes of the Army of the Rhine, serving as a subordinate under Hoche, Jourdan, and Moreau. The battle of Biberach, in 1796, was his personal triumph. With one single corps he defeated three-fourths of the whole of the enemy's army and drove it in rout with a loss of five thousand prisoners. But in spite of this victory and numerous mentions in despatches, on being introduced to the Director Rewbell, after the treaty of Campo Formio, he was actually asked, "In which army have you served?" An explanation was necessary, whereupon the Director, finding that the general understood and spoke Italian, sent him off at once to take command of the Army of Rome. On March 26, 1798, he arrived there and commenced his first independent command. His task was a difficult one. The officers of the army had risen in revolt against Massena, who had made no attempt to pay them or their troops, but had spent his time in amassing a fortune for himself. The new general had orders to arrest certain officers and restore discipline. It was a task admirably suited to his talents, and within four days of his arrival the disaffected were arrested and the mutiny quelled. His next duty, according to the command of the Directory, was to remove the Pope from Rome; by a queer coincidence the officer entrusted to escort his Holiness to Tuscany was a certain Colonel Calvin. So far St. Cyr, much against his wish, had carried out the orders of the Directory, but his next action was spontaneous and dictated by his own idea of justice. It was the hour of spoliation: a committee appointed by the Directory was busy in transporting to France all the masterpieces of Italian art, and the newly-appointed Consuls of the Roman Republic were likewise fully engaged in acts of vandalism. When the general heard that the magnificent oblation of diamonds belonging to the Doria family had been purloined from the Church of St. Agnes to grace the necks of the wives of the bastard Consuls, he at once ordered the ostensoir to be returned to its owners. The Consuls appealed to the Directory; so after a command of four short months St. Cyr was recalled, only to be sent at once to resume his old position as a divisional commander in the Army of the Rhine.