Vive la difference!

11 April 2012

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When the French denounce the brutalities of German occupation in the Second World War, it does no harm to remind them that Napoleon?s armies in Spain behaved with equal barbarism 130 years earlier.

It seems extraordinary that, while Germany utterly renounced Hitler after 1945, today that man of blood, Napoleon, remains France?s greatest national hero. No one before Hitler brought greater misery upon Europe through his megalomania.

Goya shows us that the glittering cavaliers of the French armies murdered innocents as ruthlessly as the Germans later massacred the villagers of Oradour.

I doubt that Andrew Roberts would accept much of the above. He perceives Napoleon?s greatness, and seems disinclined to make too much of the emperor?s cruelty, pettiness and vengefulness, vividly exemplified by a legacy in his will to a French NCO who tried to assassinate Wellington in Paris in 1818.

If it is true, as Roberts remarks, that Napoleon was a man of grand visions and considerable culture, he says less about the fact that the emperor was also a tyrant whose achievements on the battlefield were matched by absolute indifference to the human cost.

Wellington, by contrast, was an English gentleman (he spurned his Irish heritage) with all the virtues and limitations of his age and class. In his later life as a politician, the Duke?s conservatism dismayed even many of his contemporaries.

But he stands beside Marlborough, one of the two greatest commanders in our history. He relished the rewards of his success, as well he might, but never forgot that he was a servant of the State. His own men?s behaviour in Spain was imperfect ? remember the sacking of Badajoz ? but they never displayed the systematic brutality of the French.

Roberts is the author of two very good books, on Halifax and Salisbury. His latest work is, in effect, a long essay. His theme is an awkward one, because his two protagonists never saw each other in the flesh, and met only once on the battlefield, at Waterloo. To compare a British general who served the Crown with a French dictator who sought personal domination of Europe is an uneasy task. It is also difficult to find new material in historical territory that has been relentlessly explored for two centuries. Roberts himself seems to recognise this, quoting recognised authorities on the period to support his own assertions.

Spain was Wellington?s chief theatre of war, but not Napoleon?s. Even when his armies were struggling and he recognised the seriousness of his ?Spanish ulcer?, the emperor refused to take the field personally against Wellington, though he rashly sought to guide his marshals? movements from Paris.

When Napoleon suffered catastrophe in Russia, he acknowledged that he should have secured Spain before marching on Moscow. Wellington?s relatively small army could scarcely have resisted the full might of imperial France. Nothing can change the historical fact that, while the British under Wellington achieved miracles in Spain, Napoleon?s power was broken in Russia and at Leipzig. British seapower and subsidy for Napoleon?s enemies were vital in thwarting his ambitions. But until 1815, Britain?s role in the land war was secondary.

The 1815 Waterloo campaign was indeed closerun. If Napoleon had manoeuvred his entire army first to smash the Prussians, then to ensure that Bl?cher remained separated from Wellington, he could well have prevailed. The diversion of Grouchy?s corps against Bl?cher was probably decisive in enabling Wellington to hold the ridge of Mont St Jean on 18 June.

But what Englishman can read a narrative of Wellington?s direction of the battle that day without a stab of pride?

And what Englishman can think of Wellington that night, sleeping on the floor of his headquarters because one of his staff officers was dying in his bed, without perceiving a greatness of spirit that Napoleon utterly lacked, even if the emperor was incomparably the larger force in the history of the world?

Roberts makes a good deal of demolishing Wellington?s alleged claims to modesty. Yet it seems hard to grudge the Duke a sense of his own merits. When he asserted after Waterloo that if he had not been there he did not think Napoleon could have been beaten, he spoke no less than the truth. The author remarks on Wellington?s poor political judgment, as when he suggested to the British Government in 1813 that they should make a settlement with France that left Napoleon on his throne.

Wellington?s old soldier?s stories were no less prone to embellishment than those of most veterans. He liked to make it seem that events on the battlefield conformed with his intentions, which was not always the case.

Critics have claimed against him that he was no more than a good, plain cook. Yet a key part of Wellington?s brilliant military judgment was that he never feared not fighting a battle if he believed that retreat best served his strategic interests. Napoleon and his marshals sought constantly for decisive encounters on the battlefield ? and the consequences were sometimes disastrous. Wellington?s unshakeable physical courage may be dismissed as a mere characteristic of his caste. His moral courage, his wit and humanity were extraordinary in any age.

The author thinks better of Napoleon the man than some of us do, and a touch worse of Wellington. He attaches no moral odium to the emperor. He endorses the great military achievement of Britain?s ?sepoy general?. He writes so well that his new book will find a ready audience among admirers of both his protagonists. But it would have been nice to find more surprises. In his earlier books, Roberts has shown himself a skilful quarrier of new information and new ideas. Here, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that he is working an exhausted seam.

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