Napoleon Intercepts Two Letters Bearing News of Loss in Spain, and He Must Seek to Safeguard Supplies

“I don’t understand at all what MacDonald is doing…. there are a lot of Spanish prisoners escaping”

 

He sees the surging Spanish and seeks to save his supplies: “I think we ought to change some of the depots and to distance them from the Spanish border.””

The Peninsular War was a key focal point of the Napoleonic Wars, one that drained French forces and energies and led to a rise to leadership of the Duke of Wellington, who would be Napoleon’s nemesis. It pitted the French and its allied armies against the Anglo-Portuguese armies under Wellington and Spanish insurgents. The war began when France, with the consent of Spain, crossed the Iberian Peninsula and invaded Portugal in 1807. In May 1808, France turned on its ally when Napoleon handed the throne of Spain to his brother Joseph and forced the abdication of King Carlos IV. A puppet Spanish government was formed, but an insurrection broke out against it that required France to expend significant resources to counter. Where once Napoleon had bragged that 12,000 men could conquer Spain, now he required 80,000 to keep peace in just a portion. That number grew exponentially over time.

British military intervention became a reality for Napoleon in August 1808, when the Duke of Wellington landed in Portugal and successfully threw the French out of that country. The next few years saw competing incursions, with the troops led by Wellington attempting to push the French eastward and the French attempting renewed and unsuccessful invasions of Portugal. In early 1811, the tide turned firmly in Wellington’s direction. Napoleon had become stretched too thin and his commanders were not up to the task in Spain. Indeed Napoleon lost Portugal completely in early 1811 and Wellington began to move east.

In late 1810 and early 1811, the French captured a key city in the Spanish east, south of Barcelona and Tarragona, and with it the strategic fort and hill of Balaguer. Napoleon now had his sights on Tarragona.

For reasons not easy to fathom, Marshal MacDonald made his march to his base not by the direct road, but past Tarragona via Reus and Valls. Probably he aimed to clear the countryside of the outlying Spanish troops as a preliminary to a siege. That he could have no serious intention of blockading Tarragona was shown by the fact that he had sent back all his cavalry, save one regiment, and most of his guns, to Lerida, his base.

MacDonald was usually unlucky in his Catalonian campaigning; though he had won great reputation in mountain warfare against the Austrians in his early days, he was not able to apply his knowledge of it to Spain. Instead of moving against Tarragona, he instead reached and occupied the large town of Reus, only ten miles from Tarragona. In combat in this region, MacDonald would eventually draw back to Lerida and leave the Spanish with a moral victory. In fact, although Napoleon might not have known it, the tide had turned and Wellington and the Spanish were on the offensive.

He decides that the surging Spanish required moving his forward supply depots farther from the border.

Letter signed, Paris, February 13, 1811. To Mons le Duc de Feltre. “I send you two intercepted letters. In truth, I don’t understand at all what MacDonald is doing. I don’t understand this Reus affair. Why on the 13th of January wasn’t MacDonald before Tarragone, when the Hill of Balaguer had been taken some time back? You will see by one of the letters there are a lot of Spanish prisoners escaping. I think we ought to change some of the depots and to distance them from the Spanish border.”

Napoleon was furious at MacDonald and gave the task of taking Tarragona to Suchet, sidelining the former.