Wellington: Crossing the Gaves and the Battle of Orthez

IN this book an attempt is made to show how the greatest of modern British Generals planned and carried out the first stages in the execution of the task set him by his Government, namely, to make a further advance into French territory, and thereby render efficient co-operation to the armies of the other Great Powers then about to invade Northern and Eastern France.

The distance between the two spheres of action was too great to permit the hope of active co-operation between the armies under Wellington and those of Austria, Prussia and Russia. This Wellington recognized, though it does not appear to have been so clearly realized at the headquarters of the allied sovereigns. The co-operation had to be indirect and be worked by preventing Napoleon from calling to himself the large force of veteran soldiers he still had in the south, by pushing back those opposed to the allied armies under Wellington, and so bringing under the latter’s control a large and wealthy area of Southern France, thereby lessening the Emperor’s prestige and imposing on him the loss of considerable resources in men and money, and opening also a field for action against him by the supporters of the Bourbon party.

But for Colonel Henderson’s untimely death we should now have a real military life of Wellington. This is not an attempt in any way to fill the gap: but merely to give an example of how that general applied his strategical skill with a highly perfected machine.—Preface.