making a fr ontal attack while Ney worked round to the rear - was more
controversial. While Napoleon railed at Ney for incompetence, accusing
him of arriving on the scene three days too late, revisionist military
scholars have fastened the blame on the Emperor himself for failing to
calculate the marching distances correctly.
By the time Napoleon reached Burgos on I I November, it was clear
there would be no repeat of Austerlitz or Jena. He had to spend twelve
days in Burgos whipping his own undisciplined and insubordinate troops
into line, which he did by some exemplary hangings and other draconian
punishments. After a further week's preparations at Aranda de Douro,
the Grande Armee finally commenced its push on Madrid. On 30
November there was a bloody engagement in the Somosierra pass, which
later critics adduced as yet another sign that the Emperor was losing his
grip. Frustrated and irritated by the doughty resistance of the Spanish
army in the pass, Napoleon ordered the 3rd Squadron of Polish Light
Horse to make a frontal charge on the Spanish guns. It was a pre-echo of
the charge of the Light Brigade nearly fifty years later, and the
proportionate slaughter was as great. The Poles failed to reach their target
and left sixty dead and wounded behind them, out of a total complement
of eighty-eight. Napoleon then proceeded to defeat the Spanish by the
patient, methodical, coordinated attack he should have employed earlier.
The vanguard of the Grande Armee was in the suburbs of Madrid on I
December and all resistance in the capital had been mopped up by the
4th. Napoleon then spent two weeks in Madrid, usurping the fu nctions of
his restored brother King Joseph. The junta of nobles who had assembled
in Bayonne earlier in the year to endorse Joseph had merely abolished
torture and the majorats but had left many Bourbon institutions intact.
Napoleon now went much further, by sweeping away all relics of
feudalism, the Inquisition and the old Bourbon system of taxation. With
winter descending fast, he again reorganized his army, ready for a rather
different sort of campaigning. He managed to alienate madrileiios by
bombastic speeches about Spain's backwardness and his own role as
liberator, of which the following is a fair sample: 'Your grandchildren will
bless me as your redeemer. The day when I appeared in your midst they
will count as the most memorable, and from that day Spain's prosperity
will date its beginning.' He was also in womanizing mood in the Spanish
capital and would often call for female company: 'I want a woman! Bring
me a woman! A woman here and now!' But his highly developed sense of
smell sometimes got in the way of his pleasures: a voluptuous sixteen
year-old actress had to be sent home because she reeked of perfume.
This was the moment when Napoleon should have moved south to
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