Vittoria is the true and decisive climax of the Peninsular campaigns. Behind it are five years of changing struggle, a curiously chequered story of advance and retreat, of triumph and of disaster; shining threads of victory interwoven with black threads of calamity and hardship. If those years had seen the glories of Talavera and of Salamanca, of Busaco and of Badajos, they had also seen the black days of the retreat to Torres Vedras, and the later retreat after the failure at Burgos. But no reflux of fortune dims the glory of Vittoria.

"In this campaign of six weeks," says Napier, "Wellington marched with 100,000 men 600 miles, passed six great rivers, gained one decisive battle, invested two fortresses, and drove 120,000 veteran troops from Spain." But Vittoria did even more. It shook the crown from the brow of Joseph. It finally overthrew Napoleon's whole plans about Spain; the plans on which he had practically staked his throne, and for which he expended, first and last not less than half a million men. It gave a new complexion to the struggle which, on the Continent, Russia and Austria and Prussia were now waging against Napoleon. It cast the blackness of swift-coming invasion on the soil of France itself.

Negotiations on the Continent were at that moment trembling betwixt peace and war. Napoleon had just secured the extension of an armistice to August 16, and it seemed probable that the armistice would result in a peace -- a peace which would have enabled Napoleon to pour a new flood of veterans into the Peninsula. The news of Vittoria reached the camps of the opposing Powers on June 29.

"The impression on the Allies," says Sir Charles Stewart, "was strong and universal, and produced, in my opinion, a resumption of hostilities."

Wellington himself has described the scene at Dresden when the story of Vittoria reached that city. Stadion, the Austrian Minister, received the letter bringing the news at midnight. As soon as he had read the letter he went immediately along the corridors of the chateau, knocking at the doors of kings and Ministers, and "calling them all (with some very bruyante expressions of joy) to get up, for he had good news from Spain. They soon assembled, and seeing that it was a blow that in all probability would deliver Spain, the Austrians took their line, and hostilities recommenced."

Napoleon's agents themselves deplored "the fatal influence" Vittoria exerted on the negotiations with Austria and Russia. Peace at that moment would have given to Napoleon a new lease of Imperial power; Vittoria robbed him of that chance.

For once, as the Vittoria campaign began, nearly every condition of the. war was on Wellington's side. In Great Britain itself party divisions for the moment, at least, were hushed, and the only accusation the Opposition had to bring against the Ministry was that Wellington had not been adequately supported in Spain.

It is evidence, too, both of the stubborn and enduring strength of Great Britain, and of the degree in which her command of the sea nourished her resources, that after nearly twenty years of wasting strife she was able to maintain the war on a scale exceeding anything previously attempted.

In 1813 the population of Great Britain was only 18 million whilst that of the French Empire was 42 million. But England -- leaving out of count her fleet -- maintained an armed force in Europe of 800,000 men. She spent in that Year £ 107 million sterling, £ 101 million of this sum going as subsidies to her Continental allies, and £ 39 million being raised as a loan at 5 1/2 per cent.

England is essentially a domestic, peace-loving nation, impatient of debt, chary of taxation, preoccupied with commerce and manufactures. But the Peninsular war proves that, when need arises, England can wage battle on a scale, and sustain it with an energy never exceeded, and not often paralleled, in history.

Preparations

Wellington spent the winter and early spring which followed the retreat from Burgos in far-reaching preparations for the great campaign which was to destroy French power in the Peninsula. He sternly restored the discipline of his own troops, drew large reinforcements from England, reorganised his commissariat, lightened the burdens and made more effective the equipment of his soldiers, and so prepared an army which, in fighting efficiency, has never been surpassed in the history of war.

It is a significant detail of the preparations for the campaign that every British infantryman carried in his knapsack three pairs of shoes, with an extra pair of spare soles and heels! Wellington, in a word, intended to win rather by the legs of his soldiers than by their bayonets. Wellington's Portuguese troops, too, hardened by Beresford's iron discipline, and equipped by Wellington's sleepless care, reached a high degree of efficiency. Wellington, moreover, was now in supreme command of the Spanish troops. A more desperate command never taxed the patience of a general. Wellington himself described, in his own blunt speech, the state of the Spanish armies.

"There is not a single battalion or squadron in the Spanish armies," he wrote, " in a condition to take the field; there is not in the whole kingdom of Spain a depot of provisions for the support of a single battalion in operation for one day; not a shilling of money in any military chest. To move them forward at any point now, against even inconsiderable bodies of the enemy, would be to ensure their certain destruction."

But the magic of Wellington's genius quickly created a new order in even the distracted chaos of Spanish military affairs. Native valour and fine qualities of patient endurance were never lacking to the Spanish private; and Wellington, by degrees, gave the Spanish troops discipline, steadiness, and a reasonably effective equipment. So the spring of 18 13 found Wellington with an army 70,000 strong, 40,000 of them being British, in a splendid state of efficiency and in the highest mood of courage.

There were Still 230,000 French troops in Spain, but they were scattered diagonally across the Peninsula, from the Asturias on the north-west to Valencia on the east coast. The shadow of Napoleon's disasters in Russia, it may be added, lay with the chill and blackness of an eclipse on the French armies, and 20,000 veteran troops had already marched back through the Pyrenees to strengthen Napoleon in the fighting on the Elbe and the Rhine.

The ablest French captain, Soult, had been driven from Spain by the suspicions and hate of Joseph, and was now commanding the Imperial Guard in Germany. The French army in Spain, hardy, brave, well-officered, familiar with war, and splendidly equipped, was thus left a body without a brain, an army without a general, and opposed to it was one of the greatest soldiers history has known!

Napoleon, amid the crowding disasters of his own struggle on the Continent, yet found time to plan the strategy of his armies in Spain. He warned Joseph that he must, for the moment, forget that he was a Spanish king, and remember only that he was a French general.

"Hold Madrid and Valladolid," he wrote, "only as points of observation. Fix your headquarters, not as monarch, but as general of the French forces, at Valladolid." It is a curious proof of the genius for war possessed in equal measure by Napoleon and by Wellington to note how clearly Napoleon foresaw the movements which would be most dangerous to the French in Spain, and how exactly Wellington -- as though he could read the inside of Napoleon's brain -- adopted those very movements!

"It would be fatal," Napoleon said, " if Suchet on the east coast and Clausel on the north were entangled in local struggles." The fate of the French depended on Joseph being able to concentrate the armies of the south, of the centre, and of Portugal at any one point.

But it was exactly these fatal conditions which the genius of Wellington imposed on the French. He fastened Suchet to the eastern coast by despatching Murray with an expedition against Tarragona. Murray was a poor general, and emerged from the campaign entangled in the uncomfortable process of a court-martial; but the mere presence of the British on the eastern coast cancelled Suchet, with over 65,000 good troops, as a factor in Joseph's campaign. In Biscay, again, Clausel, who had 40,000 troops under his command, was paralysed by the scale and energy of the guerilla warfare which Wellington kindled about him.

There remained only the army of the centre under Joseph. It stretched in a curve from Toledo to Zamora, through Madrid, guarding the central valley of the Douro, and covering the great road from Madrid through Burgos and Vittoria to France. The Douro itself, with its rugged banks and deep stream, made a direct attack on the French position almost impossible.

The French right was covered by the wild and trackless hills stretching from the Tras-os-Montes to the sources of the Esla. On their left lay a war-wasted district, where a great army could find no subsistence, and would be exposed to flank attack as it marched. And yet, under these difficult conditions, Wellington's soldierly brain had already framed an audacious strategy destined to drive the French armies -- marshals and generals and soldiers -- in all the disorder of flight through the Pyrenees.

Secrecy

Wellington shrouded his designs in profoundest secrecy. By a pretence of aggressive movements he fixed Joseph's attention on his left, where Hill was stirring, and on his front, where he himself had gathered a formidable force. Meanwhile Graham, with 40,000 men, crossed the Douro within Portugese territory, and was pushing at speed in a wide circle through the Tras-os-Montes, thus turning the French right and striking at Joseph's communications.

This strategy violated one of the canons of war. Wellington was dividing his forces in the face of a concentrated and powerful enemy. He was launching an army, too, with all its artillery and baggage, into a tangle of trackless hills, gashed with deep defiles and swift mountain torrents, where it would seem that only goats could pass. But genius overrides rules.

Graham, in some respects, seemed very unsuited for the leadership of an expedition which, in daring and hardship, almost rivals Suvarroff's march over the St. Gothard in 1799 or Napoleon's passage over the Alps in 1800. "He is a very fine old man," wrote Larpent in that year, "but does not look quite fit for this country work."

Graham, it is true, was sixty-eight years old, and was a soldier by accident rather than by training. But he had all the stern energy of the Scottish character, and his soldiers were in a mood of fighting temper which hardship could not cool nor perils daunt.

The French, though in their ranks were veterans who had toiled through the snows of St. Bernard with Napoleon, counted the wild and hilly region on their right impassable for the passage of an army. It was shaggy with forests, snowy peaks, and scored deep with leaping mountain torrents. Three great rivers had to be crossed; bill-crests, white with winter snows or buffeted with angry winds, had to be surmounted, and many a mountain pass, that never before had echoed to the tramp of disciplined battalions, had to be threaded. But Graham's hardy columns pressed on with tireless energy. Where horses could not draw the guns, men hauled them by hand; where wheels could not pass, the artillery was lowered with ropes down cliff-sides, and dragged up to the wind-whipped summits.

Soon the whole crest of the mountains between the Ebro and the sea was in their possession. Graham began his march on May 16; on the 31st he had reached the Esla; and so completely were the French deceived, that not till the 18th, when Graham made his appearance far on their flank, did the French guess Wellington's strategy.

The strong position on the Douro in an instant became worthless, and in the confusion of hurried retreat the French fell back towards Burgos. Madrid was abandoned. Burgos and Valladolid followed. Joseph, indeed, proposed to offer battle on the high plains round Burgos. He had an army of 55,000 in all, with 100 guns; and here, if anywhere, he might strike a blow for the crown of Spain. Burgos was the key of the north of Spain, the last stronghold held by the French south of the Ebro. It was here that, in the last campaign, an English army had suffered disaster.

But the fierce and eager march of Wellington's left wing under Graham never ceased, and almost without a shot being fired each strong position held by the French was turned, Graham by this time was across the Esla, and pressing tirelessly onwards towards the Ebro. The Esla was crossed on May 3 1, and the passalge offered a wild scene. The ford was uncertain, the water nearly chin deep, the bottom a mere quarry of rough and sliding stones, and many lives were lost. But nothing could check the torrent of war flowing with far-heard tumult through the deep valleys towards the Ebro.

If Graham succeeded in crossing that river in advance of Joseph, his communications with France would be broken. On the night of June 12 Joseph abandoned Burgos, first laying great mines to blow up the castle. These were fired with fuses calculated to bring about an explosion after a delay of hours, and, it was hoped, just as the eager British van reached the town. But the fuses proved too quick, and the mines, charged with a thousand shells, exploded while the last battalions of the French rear-guard were defiling through the town. The hills round Burgos shook to the deep blast, the wave of reverberating sound swept over fifty miles of space. Graham's troops, far off in the hills, paused in their march for a moment as they caught the faint yet deep and sullen roar of the explosion. The castle was wrecked, but 300 French infantry were also destroyed instantly by the explosion.

It is curious to remember that this tremendous blast of sound awoke -- it is not easy to understand why -- a history-making purpose in Wellington's brain. He told Croker long afterwards, "When I heard and saw this explosion (for I was within a few miles, and the effect was tremendous), I made a sudden resolution < I>instanter to cross the Ebro and endeavour to push the French at once to the Pyrenees."

The mind has its puzzles, and no one can tell why, stirred by the blast that wrecked Burgos, the vague half-shaped and half-unconscious plan of a great campaign lurking in the cells of Wellington's brain should have suddenly crystallised into clear resolve. Perhaps the sound of the great explosion, and the sight of Burgos tumbling into ruins, made Wellington suddenly conscious both of the power of his own movement and of the severity with which it was pressing on the French.

"All about me," he says, "were against my crossing the Ebro." But Wellington, almost with a breath, reached the point of audacious resolve. Thus, when some nameless French engineer put his match to the fuse In the mine at Burgos, he was touching a line of intellectual forces which thrilled through Wellington's brain, and in their after effects helped to shake down the throne of Napoleon.

"Dubreton's thundering castle," which had mocked Wellington's power eight months before, thus disappeared like a dream. Hill and Wellington were pressing on the French front, and still Graham's hardy untiring columns were pushing their resolute march past the French right. The tumult of retreat broke out afresh in Joseph's army. But pursuit was swifter-footed even than flight. Down the left bank of the Ebro now came Graham at speed. Still backward the French were thrust, till, in all the whirl of breathless retreat, their crowded divisions, burdened with the plunder of a kingdom, eddied into the shallow little oblong valley of Vittoria. Wellington had obtained all the results of a dozen battles almost without firing a shot, and by mere force of skilful and audacious strategy.

Leith Hay declares that Wellington's turning march past the French right, which preceded Vittoria, was "the most masterly movement made during the Peninsular war."

As an incidental advantage it gave to Wellington all the northern and western sea-coast of Spain. Portugal became unnecessary as a base, and the British found safe and easy communication with their ships in every harbour on the coast of Biscay. But the chief merit of this fine strategy was that it gave Wellington the advantage of a dozen victories with scarcely the loss of a life. It swept the French back to the Spanish frontier. And Joseph, burdened with the plunder of a kingdom, his troops disorganised by a hurried and unexpected retreat, had to risk the chances of a great battle to escape being driven in wild wreck through the passes of the Pyrenees. The battle of Vittoria is the natural and calculated climax to the strategy which thus, in six weeks, had driven Joseph's army across nearly 200 miles of strong positions into a narrow valley amongst the hills of Biscay.

Chapter XXVIII: The Rout of Vittoria