numbers and with the utmost confidence.
The advance of the
allied army was irresistible.
Position after position was evacuated
by the French, until Wellington, driving everything before
him, came up with the retreating enemy at Vittoria (q.v.), and
won an overwhelming victory (June 21st). Soult’s combats in the Pyrenees, and the desperate resistance of St Sebastian, prolonged the struggle through the autumn, and cost the English thousands of men. But at length the frontier was passed, and Soult forced back into his entrenched camp at Bayonne. Both armies now rested for some weeks, during which interval Wellington gained the confidence of the inhabitants by his unsparing
repression of marauding, his business-like payment for supplies, and the excellent discipline which he maintained. In February 1814 the advance was renewed. The Adour was crossed, and Soult was defeated at Orthes. At Toulouse, after the allies had entered Paris, but before the abdication of Napoleon had become known, the last battle of the war was fought. Peace being proclaimed, Wellington took leave of his army at Bordeaux, and returned to England, where he was received with extraordinary
honours, created duke of Wellington, and awarded a
fresh grant of £400,000.
After the treaty of Paris (May 30) Wellington was appointed British ambassador at the French capital. During the autumn and winter of 1S14 he witnessed and reported the mistakes of the restored Bourbon dynasty, and warned his government of the growing danger from conspiracies and from the army, which was visibly hostile to the Bourbons. His insight, however, did not extend beyond the circumstances immediately before and around him, and he failed to realize that the great mass of the French nation was still with Napoleon at heart. He remained in Fiance until February 1815, when he took Lord Castlereagh’s place at the congress of Vienna, . All the great questions of the congress had already been settled, and Wellington’s diplomatic work here was not of importance. His imperfect acquaintance with French feeling was strikingly proved in the despatch which he sent home on learning of Napoleon’s escape from Elba. “He has acted,” he wrote, “upon false or no information, and the king (Louis XVIII.) will destroy him without difficulty and in a short time.” Almost before Wellington’s unfortunate prediction could reach London, Louis had fled, and France was at Napoleon’s feet. The ban of the congress, however, went out against the common enemy, and the presence of Wellington at Vienna enabled the allies at once to decide upon their plans for the campaign. To Wellington and Blücher were committed the invasion of France from the north, while the Russians and Austrians entered it from the east. Wellington, with the English troops and their Dutch, German and Belgian allies, took his post in the Netherlands, guarding the country west of the Charleroi road. Blücher, with the Prussians, lay between Charleroi, Namur and Liege. In the meantime Napoleon had outstripped the preparations of his adversaries. By the 13th of June he had concentrated his main army on the northern frontier, and on the 14th crossed the Sambre. The four days' campaign that followed, and the crowning victory of the 18th of June, are described in the article Waterloo Campaign. Wellington’s reward was a fresh grant of £200,000 from parliament, the title of prince of Waterloo and great estates from the king of Holland, and the order of the Saint-Esprit from Louis XVIII.
Not only the prestige of his victories, but the chance circumstances of the moment, now made Wellington the most influential personality in Europe. The emperors of Russia and Austria were still far away at the time of Napoleon’s second abdication, and it was with Wellington that the commissioners of the provisional government opened negotiations preliminary to the surrender of Paris. The duke well knew the peril of delaying the decision as to the government of France. The emperor Alexander was hostile to Louis XVIII. and the Bourbons generally; the emperor Francis might have been tempted to support the cause of Napoleon’s son and his own grandson, who had been proclaimed in Paris as Napoleon II.; and if the restoration of Louis—which Wellington believed would alone restore permanent peace to France and to Europe—was to be effected, the allies must be confronted on their arrival in Paris with the accomplished fact. He settled the affair in his usual downright manner, telling the commissioners bluntly that they must take back their legitimate king, and refusing—perhaps with more questionable wisdom—to allow the retention of the tricolour flag, which to him was a “symbol of rebellion.” At the same time the opposition of the most influential member of the commission and the most powerful man in France, Fouche, was overcome by his appointment, on Wellington’s suggestion, as minister of police. The result was that when the emperor Alexander arrived in Paris he found Louis XVIII. already in possession, and the problem before the allies was merely how to keep him there.
In the solution of this problem the common sense of Wellington and of Castlereagh, with whom the duke worked throughout in complete harmony, played a determining part; it was mainly owing to their influence that France escaped the dismemberment for which the German powers clamoured, and which was advocated for a while by Lord Liverpool and the majority of the British cabinet. Wellington realized the supreme necessity, in the interests not only of France but of Europe, of confirming and maintaining the prestige of the restored monarchy, which such a dismemberment would have irretrievably damaged. It was this conviction that inspired his whole attitude towards French affairs. If he unwillingly refused to intervene in favour of Marshal Ney, it was because he believed that so conspicuous an example of treason could not safely be allowed to go unpunished. If he bore in silence the odium that fell upon him owing to the break-up of the collection of the Louvre, it was because he knew that it would be fatal to allow it to be known that the first initiative in the matter had come from the king. In the same spirit he carried out the immense and unique trust imposed upon him by the allies when they placed him in command of the international army by which France was to be occupied, under the terms of the second peace of Paris, for five years. By the terms of his commission he was empowered to act, in case of emergency, without waiting for orders; he was, moreover, to be kept informed by the French cabinet of the whole course of business. His power was immense, and it was well and wisely used. If he had no sympathy with revolutionary disturbers of the peace, he had even less with the fatuous extravagances of the comte d’Artois and his reactionary entourage, and his influence was thrown into the scale of the moderate constitutional policy of which Richelieu and Decazes were the most conspicuous exponents. The administrative duties connected with the army of occupation would alone have taxed to the uttermost the powers of an ordinary man.[1] Besides this, his work included the reconstruction of the military frontier of the Netherlands, and the conduct of the financial negotiations with Messrs Baring, by which the French government was able to pay off the indemnities due from it, and thus render it possible for the powers to reduce the period of armed occupation from five years to three. He was consulted, moreover, in all matters of international importance, notably the affairs of the Spanish colonies, in which he associated himself with Castlereagh in pressing those views which were afterwards carried into effect by George Canning.
The length of time during which France was to be occupied by the allies practically depended upon Wellington’s judgment. On the 10th of December 1816 Pozzo di Borgo wrote to the duke enclosing a memorandum in which the emperor Alexander of Russia suggested a reduction in the army of occupation: “no mere question of finance, but one of general policy, based on reason, equity and a severe morality”; at the same time he left the question of its postponement entirely to Wellington. To
- ↑ Isolated fortresses were still holding out for Napoleon in September 1815, e.g. Longwy, which surrendered on the 20th. Much trouble was caused by the behaviour of some of the allied troops, notably the Prussians. Detailed reports of the condition of the country for the first months of the occupation are contained in the Bulletins de la correspondance de l’Interieur, copies of which are preserved in the Foreign Office records (F.O . Congress. Paris. Castlereagh, August, &c., 1815).
