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Home The Napoleonic War, 1803-1815 The Peninsular War and the Fall of Napoleon, 1809-1814 1809-1814; Part 3 |
1809-1814; Part 3Massena's invasion of Portugal was a critical moment in the history of Europe; for if Wellesley had been expelled from that country, it seems not improbable that Great Britain would have yielded to Napoleon. Our intervention in the Peninsula had been fiercely attacked by many of the leading politicians of the day. The nation was tired of the continual failure of our continental expeditions, and regarded Napoleon as invincible. Moreover, owing to the increasing rigour of the Continental System, there was much distress in England, and the nation was greatly depressed. But Wellesley had devised a new and original plan against Massena's forces. Lisbon - his base - stood upon a peninsula. For the last six months Wellesley's engineers, aided by the peasantry of the district, had been secretly protecting the neck of that peninsula with three lines of defence - the famous "lines of Torres Vedras". These lines - the first of which was twenty-nine miles long - had been made with great ingenuity: in one place a river had been dammed to make a great lake, elsewhere the hills had been scarped so as to make them precipitous, the ravines filled with barricades of trees, and redoubts had been built at regular intervals for the guns. Meanwhile the inhabitants from the whole district in front of these lines had been ordered to destroy or carry away their foodstuffs and to retire either to Lisbon or to the mountains.In 1810 Wellesley, after defeating Massena at Busaco, retired behind these lines. Massena, who only heard of the existence of these defences five days before he arrived in front of them, found the first line impregnable, and the whole country round absolutely denuded of supplies. For a month he remained outside these lines; for nearly five more he stayed in Portugal, but his men suffered terribly from sickness and hunger, and he finally retired from the country back to Spain in the spring of 1811 with his object unattained and with twenty-five thousand less men than when he had entered it. Wellington was now able to advance. But he did nothing decisive in 1811, though two victories were secured, the one by Wellington at Fuentes d’Onoro, and the other by Beresford, through the magnificent charging of two Fusilier regiments, at Albuera ("They were bad soldiers," was the French commander's comment upon the British at Albuera; " they were completely beaten, the day was mine, and yet they did not know it and would not run"). With 1812 came the beginning of the end of Napoleon's omnipotence. Russia had been gradually drifting apart from Napoleon and had been so hard hit by the Continental System that she had practically abandoned it. It was essential to Napoleon's policy that the system should be upheld, and he determined to invade Russia. History has few greater tragedies to record than the fate of Napoleon's expedition. Before he started, Napoleon received the homage of kings, and princes at a brilliant gathering in Dresden. He then entered Russia with an army of over six hundred thousand men - a larger and more motley army than any seen since the time of Xerxes. After fighting a most murderous battle at Borodino, he entered the old capital of Russia, Moscow - but only to find it a deserted city, whilst on his arrival large parts of it were set on fire by incendiaries. After a brief stay he decided to retire, and on his return journey had to endure the awful rigours of a Russian winter and the pitiless and persistent attacks of the Russian cavalry. Less than sixty thousand of his troops eventually recrossed the Russian frontier in fighting condition. Napoleon himself left his troops before the end and hurried home accompanied by only three companions, and finally returned to Paris in a hackney coach. |
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