The Press.
London, England, 1855-12-22 00:00:00

DECEMBER 22,1855.

iittraturt.

Histoire du Comtat et de r Empire. Vol. XII.
By M. Thiers. Paris : Paulin.
(Last Notice.)
OFTEN as the lines of Torres Vedras have been
described, both in our own and other coun-
tries, we remember no account of them equal
to that which M Thiers gives in the volume
before us. In brevity, in lucidity, and in the
art with which the vast extent and the stupen-
dous magnitude of the works are presented to
the mind's eye of the reader, that account
must, we think, be considered the best that
has yet appeared ; and at the same time it
possesses the additional merit in English
estimation of making the most careless reader
feel that the genius which could conceive and
the energy which could execute such gigantic
works of defence, could only have been found
in one of the greatest military commanders of
any age or country. We translate the passage,
partly to show the literary skill of M. Tillers,
and partly to pay new homage to the fame of
Wellington :
We must now make known the fatuous lines of Torres
Vedras. It was towards the month of October, 1809, that
Lord Wellington thought of assuring for himself, at the ex•
tremity of the Peninsula, an intrenched, and as far as
possible an impregnable, position, in which he could resist
tle accumulated force of the French, and await the decline
of the Imperial system, which in his opinion was near at
hand. The promontory formed by the extremity of the
Estrella, advancing between the ocean and the Tagus,
seemed to him the site beat adapted to his purpose. In
the first place, the different lines of works by which he
determined to bar in this promontory being at some
leagues in advance of Lisbon, and the roads which united
them not passing by Lisbon itself, he would be perfectly
independent of the population of that capital,—the most
numerous and most agitated of the Peninsula, desiring
some times one thing and sometimes another, but rarely
what the English 'general wanted.
V. The plan of the works was this :—At nine or ten leagues
in advance of Lisbon, between Alhandra on the Tagus, and
Torres Vedras on the ocean, he erected a first line of in-
trenchments to cut the promontory at twelve leagues at
least from its extremity in the sea. This first line con-
sisted of these works :—On the side of the Tagus the
heights of Alhandra, presenting steep declivities towards
the Tagus on one side, and on the other ascending towards
Sobral, formed four or five leagues of almost inaccessible
declivities, which were protected throughout their entire
length by the little river of Arruda. The road which
passed between the foot of these heights and the Tagus,
and which led to Lisbon by the side of the river, was cut
by barricades armed with cannon. From this point.ascend-
ing to Sobral, all the hills which were not of sufficiently
difficult access were cut straight down by the hand of man.
In the passes formed by ravines, and presenting little hills
capable of being reached, redoubts and abattis were estab-
lished which entirely closed the passages. Moreover, on
the principal summits forts armed with heavy guns, and
flanking one another, were raised, and they commanded to
a great distance the avenues by which the enemy might
have presented himself.
At Sobral, where there was a plateau which presented
less relief, a multitude of works of the greatest strength
were constructed to make tip for the weakness of the
tion, and on an eminence called Mont Agraca was built a
veritable citadel, which could only have been taken by a
regular siege. Beyond was a new chain cf heights which
extended to the sea, and which was bathed by the Zizambro.
This little river passes by Torres Vedras, the place from
which the lines we are speaking of received the name
heaceforth immortal of lines of Torres Vedras. There, as
on the side of Alhandra, the English general in some
places made, with the pickaxe, steep slopes of the flanks of
the heights, and in others closed the gorges by abattis or
redoubts, crowned and united the summits by means of
forts, and in particular rendered the Zizambro almost im-
possible to cross, by constructing passages in the bed of it
which caused its waters to overflow and form marshes.
The fortifications were some open in the gorge (they
were the fewest in number) and the others closed. All
had glacis in earth, fosses, erectments in stone, and
magazines in wood for provisions and ammunition. Some
were armed with six guns; some contained fifty, from the
calibre of six and eight to those of sixteen and twenty-four.
All these guns were fixed in such a manner as to be of no
use to the enemy in the event of a retrograde movement
from one line to the other. The rich arsenal of Lisbon
was emptied in order to supply this artillery, and
it. The
all the
oxen of the country were employed to convey
garrisons were permanent, and some of them amounted to
a thousand men. Large and excellent roads were formed
between the different works, so as to enable reinforcements
to be taken up with extreme rapidity. A system of sig.nals,
borrowed from the navy (the telegraph wis then in its
infancy), enabled a knowledge of what was passing at the
extremities of the lines to be transmitted, in a few minutes,
to the centre. At the very entrance—that is to say, oppo-
site Sobral--WAS a sort of battle-field, prepared in advance,
to enable all the English army to hasten towards the most
accessible parts, and to join its strength to the thousand
fires of the surrounding works. Naturally the Portuguese
were placed in the fortifications, and three thousand gun-
ners, Portuguese also, long practised in the manoeuvring of
cannon and firing well, were joined to them. The English
army, with that portion of the Portngnese army which was

THE PRESS.

most easily manoeuvred, was destined to occupy the
principal encampments, which were ably placed near the
expected points of attack. Everything was carefully pre-
pared to cause it to be well sheltered and well fed, and
to enable it to divide its time between repose and
manoeuvring.
Three or four leagues in the rear was a second line of
works, equally barring the promontory from the Tagus to
the ocean, seven or eight leagues in extent, dominated by
the summits of Magra and Nlontachique, and accessible in
one sole spot, the defile of Bucellas, which was transformed
into a thorough coup-gorge. Lastly, behind this second
and formidable line, at the very extremity of the promon-
tory, was another place of shelter, consisting of a semi-
circle of steep heights bristling with cannon, unapproach-
able by land, and presenting towards the sea a safe place of
anchorage for all the English fleet. This last position,
supposing the first two lines of works to have been
carried, would have held out several days—that is to say,
the time necessary to embark the troops and to remove
them from the pursuit of a victorious enemy.
Such was this colossal system of defensive lines, worthy
of the nation who conceived it, and of the enemy whose
power it was destined to check.
And what were almost as wonderful as these
tremendous works themselves, was the secrecy
and the rapidity with which they were con-
structed. The time occupied in them was less
than a year—the secrecy such that neither
Massena, nor Ney, nor any of the French
generals in Portugal or Spain, nor the French
Government at Madrid, nor Napoleon himself
at Paris, though he had spies everywhere, and
knew almost everything, had the slightest idea
that they existed. And so, when the French,
after the battle of Busaco, arrived before them,
and saw them bristling with cannon, they
were literally astounded. At first they hoped
to be able to take them, but " several days "
reconnoitring convinced Massena and his
lieutenants that they were impregnable ; and
accordingly, after fretting for a month before
them, the French deemed it prudent to decamp,
without making the slightest attack on them.
Were ever such works planned and executed
before ? Will the like of them ever be seen
again ? Compared with them, how Todtleben's
defences of Sebastopol, remarkable though
they were, sink into insignificance ! But, vast
as is the military glory of these lines of Torres
Vedras, they are even more glorious in a
political point of view ; for it was from them
that was proclaimed in a voice of thunder to
Napoleon, then at the height of his power,
with all the continent of Europe lying abject
at his feet, " Thus far shalt thou go, and no
" farther !'! It was at them that he met with
his first real repulse, and from them that he
was driven back step by step until he fell at
Waterloo.
Taking down the "Wellington Despatches,"
Napier's " History," and other English au-
thorities, it would be easy for us to convict
M. Thiers of gross partiality for his own coun-
trymen in the accounts which he gives of every
combat in which they were engaged against
the English; and we might make serious ob-
jections to his technical details of those
engagements, and of the share which particular
generals had in them. We might also prove
from the same and other authorities, and
especially from the " great fact " that the
English expelled the French from Spain, that
he is guilty both of unfairness and presump-
tion in representing, as he constantly does,
either in direct terms or by implication, that
the army of Wellington was in no respect
equal to that of Massena—that it, in fact, had
no military qualities except a sort of clumsy
courage, and not always that. Bt the task
would occupy more space and time than we
can afford, and, besides, the execution of it
would simply amount to the demonstration of
a fact which is as well known as that. two and
two make four—namely, that Frenchmen of
M. Thiers cast of mind think that in any
battle, competition, or comparison with fo-
reigners, all the advantage, all the honour.
and all the glory, must be on their side. The
increase of international relations, and the
prolongation of the existing war, may perhaps
have the effect of diminishing somewhat the
perhaps exaggerated vanity of our good allies.
But in the meanwhile the indulgence of it
may be tolerated, even in history, especially as
it affords them the highest pleasure, and does
no great harm to anybody.
We must pass over many topics touched
on by M. Thiers to which )ve could have
wished to have drawn the attention of our
readers, but we may draw attention to the
evidence we find here of the utter want of

1219

political sagacity and patriotism, and the
unprincipled tergiversationa, which have
always characterised the Whig part.). M.
Thiers does not, it is true, tell us anything ill
of this party which we did not know alreally ;
but it is pleasant to honest men to see
it shown up in foreign history in the same in-
famous light as that in which it is represented
in our own. Here is the way in which, am-
' curling to M. 'Driers, the Whigs spoke in
April, 1810—that is, when the British army in
the field had some checks to redeem and
mighty difficulties to encounter :

The Opposition in Parliament, headed by two eminent
personages, Lord Grenville and Lord they, maintained
that the war was continued beyond all reason, that every
year's prolongation of it had aggraudised the Colossus
whose destruction was sought for, that, if not Portugal, at
least Spain and Naples had been lust by that prolonga-
tion, that in continuing the war all the shores of the north
up to the mouths of the Oder would be lost also ; that the
war in the Peninsula in particular was very dangerous, for
that if Napoleon went with 100,000 men to attack the
lingl7sh army not a soldier of it would escape, and the sole
force capable of defending the country at home would he
destroyed ; that every day some new ally was lost, that re•
cently Sweden had been lust, and that the country •s as
menaced with the loss of America ; that the finances were
overwhelmed by an enormous burden, that the paper.
money became more deteriorated every day, that the rate
of exchange followed the fate of paper; that the moment
was approaching at which the relations with foreign court-
tries were becoming ruinous ; and that to persist iu such a
policy was neither safe nor prudent.
We must now close this twelfth volume of
M. Thiers' famous history. In so doing we
once again express admiration, hearty and
unbounded, at the brilliant literary qualities
which distinguish it—qualities so high and
so splendid as, we are forced to admit, to cast
into the shade the errors of detail and the in-
justice of appreciation which we have pointed
out But we cannot honestly say that this
volume is calculated to change in tl a
slightest degree the opinion which the ma-
jority of the people of this country have
been accustomed to entertain on the cha-
racter of the great Napoleon. For it
makes the heart sicken to think on the deso-
lation and the woe which he carried into
Spain and Portugal, and tho frightful loss of
human life which he caused there ; it fills the
mind with astonishment to reflect how a man
of such stupendous genius in war could have
supposed it possible, as he did, to establish
his domination over the greatest part of
Europe, and to subject millions on millions
of men of different races, religions, manners,
and languages, to his tyranny ; and it makes
one stand aghast at the blindness and
fatuity of ambition to see him, when
carrying on war, which for him was dis-
astrous, with England, Spain, and Portugal,
rush wantonly into war with Russia also,
though knowing that oppressed Germany was
only waiting for an opportunity to rise against
him. The conclusion of all is that this great
soldier was no statesman—no benefactor to
mankind ; and, notwithstanding the alliance
which now happily unites this country to
France under Napoleon 111., we can look back
without regret to the share which England,
under the guidance of Tory statesmen, had in
his overthrow and chastisement.

TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE.
THE publishing season of 1855.6, so far as we can
judge by present appearances, will be remarkable
for the number and weight of the books issued.
They crowd upon us faster than we can notice them.
Of histories, we have the thhd u:►.l fenrth volumes
of Macaulay, containing together 1,600 pages ; Dean
Milman has issued the fourth, fifth, and sixth of his
"Latin Christianity,"—most conscientious volumes as
regards bulk and quantity of matter; then we have
Dean Liddell's new " History of Rome," and other
works of less pretension. Of a biographical nature
are the "Life and Works of Goethe," by Mr. Lewes
"Napoleon's Correspondence with King Joseph," and
the third and fourth volumes of Montgomery's
" Memoirs." Theso.works, all demanding some critical
inquiry, we are obliged to put aside for s time, as
well as " Zaidee "—the novel of the day—and some
other works demanding more than running comment.
But to clear our table we put together here several
books on travel and adventure, which in a less busy
time we should have noticed iu
Mr. Woods• has taken great pains with these
volumes, and the pains will not be lost. As the
• The Past Campaign. By N. A. Woods. 2 vole. Lesion
Longman*.

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