CHAPTER TWENTYWhen he left Spain, Napoleon assured Joseph he would be back as soon
as he had dealt with the Austrians. Furthermore, he made this
grandiloquent announcement to the Corps Legislatif: 'When I show
myself beyond the Pyrenees the terrified leopard [England] will seek the
Ocean in order to avoid shame, defeat and death. The triumph of my
arms will be the triumph of the spirit of good over that of evil.' Yet he
never went back to Spain and remained in France for over two years for
no good reason while the military situation worsened. How is this to be
explained?
The usual answer provided is that he thought the Spanish theatre
secondary and considered that the war there could be won whenever he
chose to return. Superficially, too, the situation in Spain in the spring of
r8o9 seemed much more promising: the English had been expelled,
Madrid taken and the siege of Zaragoza successfully completed after
40,000 casualties among the defenders. Yet there are grounds for
believing the real explanation is in terms of Napoleon's own credibility. It
seems unlikely, to say the least, that the problems of his army in Spain
appeared mysterious to him. But how could he pull his forces out now
and risk an unacceptable loss of prestige?
Napoleon's problem was that he needed an immense army to subdue
Spain, yet such an army could neither live off the land nor be supplied
from France, ·because of the atrocious state of the roads across the
Pyrenees. Even if he did manage to supply them, the drain on the French
treasury would be unacceptable. Hitherto he had been able to pyramid his
successes: blitzkrieg warfare was followed by an orgy of looting, which in
turn paid for fu rther armies, fu rther blitzkriegs, further loot, and so to
the continuance of the cycle. But in Spain the French, instead of gaining
some 250 million francs per successful battle, began to pour out blood
and treasure, gaining nothing in return. There was no possibility of an
Austerlitz. Seeing all this clearly, yet unable to withdraw for reasons of
pride and prestige, Napoleon simply distanced himself from the
campaign, as he had with the Vendee in 1795 and Egypt in 1798; reasons