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THE MONTHS OF WAITING: SIEGE OF ASTORGA (MARCH-MAY 1810)
Masséna, as we have seen, was only appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Portugal on April 17, 1810, and did not appear at Valladolid, to take up his charge, till May. The campaign, however, had begun long before under the Emperor’s own directions. There were preliminary operations to be carried out, which could be finished before either the new General-in-Chief or the main body of the reinforcements from beyond the Pyrenees had arrived. These were the repression of the insurgent bands of Navarre, Biscay, and Old Castile, the firm establishment of the line of communications between Salamanca and Bayonne, and the capture of the outlying Spanish fortresses, Astorga and Ciudad Rodrigo, which served as external defences for the Portuguese frontier. ‘Les besoins en Espagne sont successifs,’ wrote the Emperor early in the winter of 1809-10, ‘il faut d’abord un corps qui soumette les derrières. étant en Novembre il serait impossible de réunir tous les moyens avant du commencement de janvier. Et dans cette presqu’?le coupée de montagnes les froids et les neiges de janvier ne permettront de rien faire.’ All that he could do before spring would be to send forward Junot’s corps, and the other earlier reinforcements, to positions from which they should be ready to strike, the moment that the fine weather began. With the coming of the new year, when these corps had reached their destined positions, the imperial orders begin to abound in elaborate directions for the extermination of the guerrillas of the Upper Ebro and the Upper Douro, orders which led to much marching and counter-marching of the newly arrived troops, but to little practical effect in the way of repression, for skilled leaders like Mina, the Empecinado, and Julian Sanchez, nearly always slipped between the fingers of their pursuers, and on the few occasions when they were pressed into a corner, simply bade their men disperse and unite again at some distant rendezvous. These operations, however, were wholly subsidiary: the actual advance against Portugal only commences with the orders given to Junot in February to concentrate his corps at Valladolid, to hand over the charge of Salamanca and Old Castile to Kellermann’s dragoons and the divisions of the 6th Corps, and then to subdue the whole of the plain-land of Leon, as far as the foot of the Asturian and Galician mountains, including the towns of Benavente, Leon, and Astorga. Bonnet and his division, now as always based on Santander, were already advancing to invade the Asturias, and to threaten Galicia from the east. Ney with the 6th Corps was ordered to draw near to the frontier of Portugal on the side of Ciudad Rodrigo, ‘to inundate all the approaches to that kingdom with his cavalry, disquiet the English, and prevent them from dreaming of transferring themselves back to the south.’ The news of the near approach of the Emperor himself with 80,000 men was to be spread in every direction.
Meanwhile the third great unit which was to form part of the projected Army of Portugal, the 2nd Corps (under the temporary command of General Heudelet), was taking part in a separate and remote series of operations, far to the South. This corps, it will be remembered, had been left on the Tagus about Talavera and Oropesa, to protect the rear of Soult and King Joseph, when they marched in January with the 1st, 4th, and 5th Corps to conquer Andalusia. That exploit having been accomplished, Mortier went, with half of the 5th Corps, to attack Badajoz, and to subdue Estremadura, which Soult imagined to be defenceless, since Albuquerque had marched with the old Estremaduran army to save Cadiz. Mortier advanced unopposed to the walls of Badajoz, which he reached on February 12, but found himself unable to undertake its siege with his small force of 9,000 men, because a new Spanish host had just appeared upon the scene. La Romana, with three of the divisions of the army that had been beaten at Alba de Tormes in November, had marched down the Spanish-Portuguese frontier by the Pass of Perales; and on the same day that Mortier appeared in front of Badajoz, his vanguard arrived at Albuquerque, only twenty miles away. These divisions were 13,000 strong: La Romana could add to this force a few thousands more left behind by Albuquerque. Mortier rightly felt that he dare not commence the regular siege of Badajoz when he had such superior numbers in his front. He therefore asked for reinforcements, both from Soult and from King Joseph. The former could spare nothing from Andalusia at this moment, but the 2nd Corps was ordered to leave the Tagus and place itself in communication with Mortier. Heudelet had other projects on hand at the moment: he had just seized Plasencia on February 10, and was engaged in bickering with Carlos d’Espa?a and Martin Carrera, whom La Romana had left in the Sierra de Gata. But, in obedience to his orders, he called in his detachments, and marched by Deleytosa and Truxillo into the valley of the Guadiana. This movement, from the French point of view, was a hazardous one; by the transference southward of the 2nd Corps, a long gap was left between Ney at Salamanca and Heudelet and Mortier in Estremadura. No troops whatever covered Madrid from the side of the south-west and the valley of the Tagus, and an irruption of the English on this line was one of the dangers which Napoleon most dreaded. He was unaware of Wellington’s deeply-rooted determination to commit himself to no more Spanish campaigns.
Long before Heudelet approached the Guadiana, Mortier had been compelled, partly by want of supplies, partly by the threatening attitude of La Romana, who began cautiously to turn his flanks, to retire from in front of the walls of Badajoz. He gave back as far as Zafra on the road to the south, and six days after marched for Seville, leaving only a rearguard at Santa Ollala, on the extreme border of Estremadura. Soult required his presence, for, on account of a rising in Granada, and a threatening movement by the Spanish army of Murcia, the French reserves in Andalusia had been moved eastward, and its capital was almost stripped of troops. Hence when the 2nd Corps reached Ca?eres on March 8, and appeared in front of Albuquerque on March 14, it found that the 5th Corps had departed, and that it was nearly 100 miles from the nearest friendly post. Heudelet, therefore, having all La Romana’s army in his front, and no orders to execute (since the junction with Mortier had failed), retired to Merida, where Reynier arrived from the north, superseded him, and took command. Here the 2nd Corps remained practically passive for the rest of the spring, keeping open, but with difficulty and at long intervals, the communications between Madrid and Seville, by means of detachments at Truxillo and Almaraz. To a certain extent Reynier kept La Romana’s army in check, but he did not fully discharge even that moderate task, for the Spanish general detached southward two of his divisions, those of Contreras and Ballasteros, to threaten the frontiers of Andalusia and stir up an insurrection in the Condado de Niebla and the other regions west of Seville. Ballasteros surprised the cavalry brigade of Mortier’s corps at Valverde, at midnight on February 19, and scattered it, killing Beauregard, the brigadier. He then advanced to Ronquillo, only twenty miles from Seville, where, on March 25-6, he had an indecisive engagement with one of Gazan’s brigades, after which he retired into the Condado. Mortier, thereupon, came out against him from Seville at the head of a whole division. Unwisely offering battle at Zalamea, on the Rio Tinto, on April 15, Ballasteros was beaten, and retired into the mountains. Thither, after some time, he was pursued by Mortier’s columns, and again defeated at Ara?ena on May 26. But he rallied his broken force in the Sierra de Ara?ena, where he remained for long after, a thorn in the side of the Army of Andalusia, always descending for a raid in the plains of Seville when he was left unwatched. Soult was forced to keep a considerable part of the 5th Corps in observation of him—a detachment that he was loth to spare.
La Romana’s central divisions, meanwhile, those of Charles O’Donnell (brother of the Henry O’Donnell who had distinguished himself at Gerona in the previous autumn), Mendizabal, and Contreras, bickered with the 2nd Corps in the direction of Ca?eres and Torresnovas, without any notable advantage on either side. But as long as Reynier lay at Merida, and Mortier might at any moment come up from Seville to his aid, Wellington felt uneasy as to the possibility of a French advance between Tagus and Guadiana, and, regarding La Romana’s army as an insufficient security on this side, moved Hill with a force of 12,000 men to Portalegre, close to the rear of Badajoz. Hill had with his own British division, now consisting of three brigades, another division composed of Portuguese, under General Hamilton, the English heavy cavalry brigade of Slade, a weak Portuguese cavalry brigade under Madden, and three batteries. He was ordered not to countenance any offensive movements on the part of La Romana, but to support him, and to endeavour to cover Badajoz, if the French should unite the 2nd and 5th Corps, and make a serious move westward. There was no need, as matters turned out, for any such support, for Reynier, though he executed some rather useless feints and counter-marches in April and May, undertook nothing serious. One of his demonstrations drew Hill to Arronches, close to Elvas, on May 14, but it turned out to be meaningless, and the British troops returned to their usual head quarters at Portalegre a few days later. There seems to have been some uncertainty of purpose in all this man?uvring of the French in Estremadura. Reynier was not strong enough to offer to fight La Romana and Hill combined; he might have done so with good prospect of success if Mortier could have been spared from Andalusia; but half the 5th Corps was usually detached far to the south, hunting the insurgents of the Sierra de Ronda, and the other half had to garrison Seville and watch Ballasteros. Hence Reynier, left to himself, did no more for the common cause of the French in Spain than detain Hill’s two divisions in the Alemtejo. That Wellington was thus obliged to divide his army was no doubt a permanent gain to the enemy: yet they obtained it by the very doubtful expedient of leaving nothing on the Tagus; a push in the direction of Plasencia and Almaraz by even a small Spanish force would have been a very tiresome and troublesome matter for King Joseph, who would have been forced either to bring down Ney from Salamanca, or to call Reynier back from the Guadiana, for Madrid was entirely uncovered on the West. But nothing of the sort happened; La Romana kept his main body concentrated in front of Badajoz, and had the full approval of Wellington for doing so.
At the extreme opposite flank of the French front, on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, there was going on at this same time a side-campaign conducted with a much greater degree of vigour, but equally indecisive in the end. The Asturias had been almost stripped of troops by Del Parque, in order to reinforce the army that fought at Tamames and Alba de Tormes. When the Duke moved his main force southward after the last-named fight, he carried off with him the division of Ballasteros, which had been the core of the old Asturian Army. General Antonio Arce was left in the principality with some 4,000 men, whom he kept at Colombres, behind the Deba, under General Llano-Ponte, watching the French force in the province of Santander. New levies, little more than 2,000 strong, were being collected at Oviedo. In the end of January General Bonnet, whose division at Santander had received its drafts, and had been strengthened up to 7,000 men, thought himself strong enough to drive in Arce’s weak line and to make a dash at the Asturian capital. On the 25th he attacked the lines of Colombres, and carried them with no difficulty. On the 31st he captured Oviedo, which was evacuated by the Captain-General Arce and the local Junta without serious fighting. But that active partisan Juan Porlier at once cut off his communication with Santander, by seizing Infiesto and Gijon. Bonnet at once evacuated Oviedo, and turned back to clear his rear. Porlier escaped along the coast to Pravia, and meanwhile the main body of the Asturians, under General Barcena, reoccupied the capital. Having driven off Porlier, the French general marched westward once more, beat Barcena at the bridge of Colleto on February 14, and again made himself master of Oviedo. The Asturians rallied behind the Narcea, where they were joined by a brigade of 2,000 men sent to their aid by Mahy, the Captain-General of Galicia.
That province, like the Asturias, had been left almost ungarrisoned by Del Parque, when he took the old ‘Army of Galicia’ across the Sierra de Gata, and transferred it to Estremadura. Mahy had been left behind with the skeleton of one division, which he was to recruit, as best he could, by new levies. His main preoccupation at this moment was the defence of the newly fortified stronghold of Astorga, which was already threatened by the French troops in the plains of Leon. But seeing his flank menaced by Bonnet’s advance, he lent what men he could spare to aid in the defence of the Asturias.
The Asturian junta, having deposed General Arce for incapacity and corruption, and appointed Cienfuegos to take over his troops, ordered the resumption of offensive operations against Bonnet in March. Porlier, their great partisan-hero, made a circuit along the coast, and threatened the French communications with Santander. At the same time their main force advanced against Oviedo by the valley of the Nalon. Bonnet’s advanced brigade was driven in, after a sharp skirmish at Grado on March 19, and disquieted by Porlier’s simultaneous attack on his rear, he evacuated the Asturian capital for the third time, and gave back as far as Cangas de Onis, in the valley of the Ona. He then called up all the reinforcements that he could obtain from Santander, and marched—for the fourth time in three months!—on Oviedo with his whole division; the Spaniards retired without offering serious opposition, and took up a line behind the Narcea . This time Bonnet left them no time to rally, but forced the passage of that river, whereupon the Asturians ascended to Tineo in the mountains, while the Galician succours gave back to Navia, almost on the edge of their own principality . After this, Bonnet’s offensive force was spent; having to occupy Oviedo and its ports of Gijon and Aviles, as well as all the central and eastern Asturias, and, moreover, to defend his communication with Santander from new attacks of Porlier, his strength sufficed for no more. His 7,000 men were immobilized for the rest of the year: he had conquered two-thirds of the Asturias, and barely succeeded in keeping it down. But he was quite unable to spare a man to aid in French operations in the plains of Leon, or even to make a serious attempt to threaten Galicia. Once or twice he succeeded in communicating with the forces which Junot (and after him Kellermann and Serras) commanded in the plains beyond the Cantabrian range, by expeditions pushed down through the pass of Pajares on to Leon; but the road was always closed again by the guerrillas, and no co-operation could take place. In short, the Spaniards lost the greater part of the Asturias, and the French lost the further services of Bonnet’s division. It had no power to threaten Galicia, because it was forced to keep garrisons in Gijon, Aviles, Lastres, Santona, and all the sea-ports, with a full brigade at Oviedo in the centre, to support them. Any concentration of troops, leading to the evacuation of the smaller garrisons, at once let loose the guerrillas from their mountains. Bonnet had but 7,000 men in all: of these, not more than half could be used for an expedition, and such a force was too small to have any practical effect on the general course of events in north-western Spain.
Bonnet’s operations were, of course, wholly subsidiary; the really important movements that were on foot in the early spring of 1810 were those of Junot and Ney in the plains of Leon. In pursuance of the Emperor’s orders to the effect that the whole plain-land of Leon was to be occupied, as a preliminary to the invasion of Portugal, Loison, who had re-entered Spain at the head of a number of battalions which were ultimately to join the corps of Ney, was ordered to move on from Valladolid and occupy the country about Benavente and Astorga. He was left free to select either of those towns as his head quarters, and was directed to communicate with Bonnet, when the latter should have entered the Asturias, so that their operations should threaten Galicia simultaneously. Loison’s expedition, however, proved a complete failure; he marched towards Astorga early in February with nearly 10,000 men. On the 11th he appeared before that town, and learnt that since Carrié’s reconnaissance in October 1809, it had been much strengthened. La Romana had repaired the breaches of its mediaeval walls. He had thrown up entrenchments round the suburb of La Reteibia, which occupies that part of the hill of Astorga, which is not covered by the town itself. He had also established outlying posts in the suburbs of San Andrés and Puerta del Rey, which lie at the foot of the hill, on its northern and eastern sides. Fourteen guns, only two of them 12-pounders, the rest light, had been mounted on the walls. The place, therefore, was a make-shift fortification of the most antiquated style. General Garcia Velasco, who had been left behind in Galicia with one division of the old Northern army when Del Parque marched for Estremadura, was in charge of this portion of the Spanish front, under the superintendence of Mahy, the Captain-General. He had placed half his troops—five battalions, or 2,700 men, in Astorga, while he himself with the remainder lay beyond the mountains, at Villafranca, in the Vierzo, with about the same force. The total of organized troops in Galicia at this moment did not exceed 8,000 men, including the small brigade which Mahy sent to the Asturias, and a detachment under Echevarria at Puebla de Senabria. Astorga had not been expecting a siege at such an early date as February 11; it was only provisioned for twenty days, and the guns had not ammunition to last for even that short space of time. The governor, José Santocildes, was a man of courage and resource, who knew how to put on a bold face to an impossible situation, or instant disaster might have followed.
Loison was disconcerted to find that Astorga, his destined head quarters, was held and garrisoned against him. His engineers reconnoitred its walls, and informed him that it could not be taken without a regular battering-train. He had only field-pieces with him, the weather was abominable, and his troops—all conscript battalions from France—were suffering terribly from the continued rain and cold. Wherefore he contented himself with inviting Santocildes to surrender, promising him promotion at King Joseph’s hands, if he ‘would implore the clemency of a sovereign who treats all Spaniards like a father.’ When the governor sent a curt reply, intimating that he and his people intended to do their duty, Loison retired to La Baneza, and reported to his chiefs that he was helpless for want of siege-guns. He announced at the same time that he had attempted to communicate with Bonnet at Oviedo, by sending two battalions to the foot of the pass of Pajares, but that the mountain roads were all blocked with snow, and that this detachment had been forced to fall back into the plains, without obtaining any news of what was afoot in the Asturias.
A few days later, the head of Junot’s corps entered the province of Leon, and Loison was directed to move southward and join Ney at Salamanca. His place on the Esla and the Orbigo was taken by Clausel’s division of the 8th Corps. The newly arrived general executed another reconnaissance to the neighbourhood of Astorga, and on February 26 sent Santocildes a second summons, in the name of Junot. It received the same answer that had been given to Loison. It was clear that Astorga must be besieged, and that a battering train must be placed at the disposition of the force charged with the operation. But in the present state of the roads it would take some time to bring heavy guns to the front. Further operations had to be postponed. The 6th Corps, it may be remarked, had executed at the same time that Loison appeared in front of Astorga, a demonstration against Ciudad Rodrigo. King Joseph had written from Andalusia to beg Ney to threaten the place, while the news of the French victories in the south were still fresh, assuring him that the Spaniards were so cowed that a prompt surrender was probable. The Marshal, though doubting the wisdom of these optimistic views, concentrated his corps, advanced to San Felices, and on February 13 summoned Rodrigo. He got from General Herrasti, the governor, an answer as bold and confident as that which Loison received from Santocildes, and returned to Salamanca to disperse his troops in cantonments and ask for a battering-train. His short and ineffective excursion to the banks of the Agueda had taken him in sight of the British outposts on the Spanish frontier, and had induced Wellington for a moment to think that the invasion of Portugal was at hand. It was impossible that he should have guessed that Ney’s advance had no better cause than King Joseph’s foolish confidence. Hence the withdrawal of the 6th Corps, after the vain summons of Ciudad Rodrigo, was as inexplicable as its advance. ‘I do not understand Ney’s movement,’ he wrote to his trusted subordinate, Robert Craufurd, ‘coupled as it is with the movement upon Badajoz from the south of Spain. The French are not strong enough for the two sieges at the same time, and I much doubt whether they are in a state to undertake one of them.’ The prompt retirement of Ney from before Ciudad Rodrigo, and of Mortier from before Badajoz, completely justified his conclusions within a day or two of the writing of his letter.
There was nothing for the French in the kingdom of Leon to do, save to await the arrival of the great battering-train which Napoleon had bestowed upon his Army of Portugal. It was far to the rear: on February 20 its head was only beginning to approach Burgos, and its tail had not quitted Bayonne. The reason of this tardiness was the want of draught animals at the southern dép?ts of France. The equipment of the train and the artillery of the 8th Corps, and the other great reinforcements which had just passed the Pyrenees, had exhausted the available supplies of horses, and when the authorities at Bayonne had to place the ‘grand park’ on a war footing there was intolerable delay. Even when detachments of the park had started, they made slow progress in Spain, for the French horses died off rapidly in the bitter weather of the plateau of Old Castile, and it was almost impossible to replace them by requisition from the country-side. Junot, bold to the verge of rashness, and feverishly anxious to remake the reputation that he had lost at Vimiero, could not endure the delay. He sent to requisition Spanish guns from the governors of Burgos and Segovia, dispatched his own teams to draw them, and when he heard that a small train was procurable, ordered the 8th Corps towards Astorga on March 15, leaving the cannon to follow. The month’s delay in the investment had enabled Santocildes to fill up the supply of food and ammunition which had been so low in February; he had now got his fortress in as good state as was possible, considering the intrinsic weakness of its mediaeval walls, and had induced 3,000 of the 4,000 inhabitants to retire to Galicia.
On March 21 Clausel’s division invested Astorga, while Solignac’s came up to Leon and Benavente in support, and St. Croix’s division of dragoons took post in advance of La Baneza, to observe the Spanish forces in southern Galicia and the Portuguese of the Tras-os-Montes. Till the guns should arrive, there was nothing to be done save to choose the point of attack, prepare fascines and gabions, and open the first parallel, out of harm’s way from the small artillery of the garrison—none of it heavier than a 12-pounder. Valazé, Junot’s chief engineer, opined that the low-lying suburbs at the foot of the hill of Astorga might be neglected, and the newly entrenched Reteibia on the high ground masked by a false attack, while the projecting and unflanked north-west corner of the old walls of the city itself might be battered from the slopes below: here, as in all its circuit, the place had neither ditch nor glacis: there was simply the stout mediaeval wall, broken every 30 yards by a small square tower, which followed the sky-line of the plateau.
The first three weeks of the siege had an unusual character, since the French could build what works they pleased, but could not seriously batter Astorga with the sixteen field-guns of small calibre belonging to the division lying before the walls. The officer in temporary command of the artillery, Colonel No?l, contented himself with opening fire from various false attacks, from which the guns were repeatedly moved, in order to distract the attention of the enemy from the chosen front on the north-west, where the approaches were completed, and a great battery constructed, ready for the siege-guns when they should arrive. Meanwhile there was a good deal of infantry skirmishing in and about the lower suburbs, in whose outskirts the French ultimately established themselves, though they had no intention of pushing up to the walls either from Puerta del Rey or from San Andrés. The garrison defended itself well, executed several vigorous sorties, and lost no post of importance, though the line of resistance in the suburbs was gradually thrust back. Santocildes received several encouraging messages from his chief Mahy, who announced that he was bringing up to the pass of Foncebadon, on the edge of the plain of Astorga, every man that Galicia could furnish. But even when the Captain-General had brought his reserves from Lugo to join Garcia’s division, they had only 5,000 bayonets. To hold them off, Junot sent Clausel’s division to the outposts, and replaced it in the trenches by Solignac’s and one brigade of Lagrange’s. Mahy, in face of such an accumulation of men, was absolutely helpless. Echevarria, with his weak brigade from Puebla de Senabria, had pushed a little forward, to give moral support to Mahy. He was surprised and routed near Alcanizas on April 10, by St. Croix’s dragoons.
Map of the siege of Astorga
Enlarge SIEGE OF ASTORGA
On the 15th the siege-train arrived from Valladolid; it was small, but sufficient against an enemy so miserably provided with guns as Santocildes. Junot himself came up on the 17th to watch the effect of the attack. It was instant and overpowering. When once the artillery had been placed in the works prepared for it, and had begun its fire, the old walls of Astorga began to crumble. The light Spanish pieces on the enceinte were overpowered, despite of the gallant way in which the gunners stuck to their work. By noon on the 21st of April the north-western angle of the walls of Astorga had been beaten down, and the fallen stones, there being no ditch, had accumulated at the foot of the broad breach, so as to give an easy entrance. Fortunately for the defence, there was a large church just inside the angle: its roof and tower had been shot down, but the garrison had made themselves strong in the lower parts of the building, and threw up traverses from it to the wall on each side of the breach. This gave them a second line of defence, though but a weak one, and when Junot sent in a summons in the afternoon Santocildes refused his offer. At seven the French general bade 700 men storm the breach; the forlorn hope was composed of the voltigeur and grenadier companies of the Irish Legion and the 47th of the Line. The column penetrated to the foot of the breach without much difficulty, though exposed to heavy musketry from the walls, and a flanking fire from the suburb of the Reteibia. The breach was carried, and, in addition, a house built with its back to the ramparts just inside the enceinte. But the assailants could get no further, owing to the murderous fire which the Spaniards kept up from behind the ruined church and the traverses. After an hour of desperate attempts to break in, they took shelter, some in the house that they had captured, but the majority behind the lip of the breach, where they covered themselves as best they could, by piles of débris built in with their haversacks, and even with the corpses of the fallen. Under this poor shelter they lay till dark, suffering heavily. During the night the troops in the trenches ran out a line of gabions from the front works to the foot of the walls, and by dawn had opened a good communication with the men at the breach, though they had to work under a furious but blind fire from above.
At dawn on April 22, Santocildes surrendered. He might have held out some hours longer behind his inner defences, if he had not exhausted nearly all his musket ammunition in resisting the storm. There were less than thirty cartridges a head left for the infantry of the garrison, and only 500 pounds of powder for the artillery. The defence had been admirable, and, it may be added, very scientific, a fact proved by the low figures of the dead and wounded, which did not amount to 200 men. The French, in the assault alone, lost five officers and 107 men killed, and eight officers and 286 men wounded. Junot was thought to have been precipitate in ordering the storm: his excuse was that there were less than two hours of daylight left, and that, if he had deferred the attack till next morning, the Spaniards would have retrenched the breach under cover of the dark, and made it impracticable. The siege cost the 8th Corps in all 160 killed and some 400 wounded, a heavy butcher’s bill for the capture of a mediaeval fortress armed with only fourteen light guns. Two thousand five hundred prisoners were taken, as shown by Santocildes’ lists, but Junot claimed to have ‘captured 3,500 fine troops, all with good English muskets, and well clothed in English great coats,’ as well as 500 sick and wounded—impossible figures.
On the morning of the surrender Mahy made a feeble demonstration against the covering troops, on both the passes of Manzanal and Foncebadon, while Echevarria beat up the force at Penilla which lay facing him. All three attacks were checked with ease, the Galician army not being able to put more than 6,000 men in the field on the three fronts taken together. Its loss was heavy, especially at Penilla.
After detaching the 22nd Regiment, which was ordered to endeavour to communicate with Bonnet in the Asturias, and garrisoning Astorga with two battalions, Junot drew back the greater part of his corps to Valladolid and Toro. He had been ordered to place himself near Ney, in order to aid and cover the 6th Corps in the oncoming siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. At the same time he received the unwelcome news that Masséna had been named Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Portugal, and that the 8th Corps was placed under his orders.
Masséna, as has been already mentioned, did not arrive at Salamanca till May 28th: he could not well have reached the front earlier, since the Emperor had only placed him in command in April. The long delay in the opening of the main campaign must, therefore, be laid to Napoleon’s account rather than to that of his generals. If he had suspected that every day of waiting meant that Wellington had added an extra redoubt to the ever-growing lines of Torres Vedras, it is permissible to believe that he would have hurried forward matters at a less leisurely pace. But his determination to conduct the invasion of Portugal in what he called ‘a methodical fashion’ is sufficiently shown by the orders sent to Salamanca on May 29. ‘Tell the Prince of Essling that, according to our English intelligence, the army of General Wellington is composed of no more than 24,000 British and Germans, and that his Portuguese are only 25,000 strong. I do not wish to enter Lisbon at this moment, because I could not feed the city, whose immense population is accustomed to live on sea-borne food. He can spend the summer months in taking Ciudad Rodrigo, and then Almeida. He need not hurry, but can go methodically to work. The English general, having less than 3,000 cavalry, may offer battle on ground where cavalry cannot act, but will never come out to fight in the plains.’
The Emperor then proceeds to add that with the 50,000 men of the 6th and 8th Corps, the cavalry reserve, &c., Masséna is strong enough to take both Rodrigo and Almeida at his ease: Reynier and the 2nd Corps can be called up to the bridge of Alcantara, from whence they can menace Central Portugal and cover Madrid. No order is given to bring up this corps to join the main army: it seems that the Emperor at this moment had in his head the plan, with which Wellington always credited him, of threatening a secondary attack in the Tagus valley. The 2nd Corps is treated as covering Masséna’s left, while on his right he will be flanked by Kellermann, who is to add to the small force already under his command in Old Castile a whole new division, that of Serras, composed of troops just arrived from France. This, added to Kellermann’s dragoons, would make a corps of 12,000 men. In addition, as the Emperor remarks, by the time that the Army of Portugal is ready to march on Lisbon, it will have in its rear the 9th Corps under Drouet, nearly 20,000 men, who will be concentrated at Valladolid before the autumn has begun. There will be over 30,000 men in Leon and Old Castile when Masséna’s army moves on from Almeida, and in the rear of these again Burgos, Navarre, and Biscay will be held by the Young Guard, and by twenty-six 4th battalions from France, which were due to start after the 9th Corps, and would have made their appearance south of the Pyrenees by August or September.
This document is a very curious product of the imperial pen. It would be hard to find in the rest of the Correspondance a dispatch which so completely abandons the ‘Napoleonic methods’ of quick concentration and sharp strokes, and orders a delay of three months or more in the completion of a campaign whose preliminary operations had begun so far back as February. We may reject at once the explanation offered by some of Napoleon’s enemies, to the effect that he was jealous of Masséna, and did not wish him to achieve too rapid or too brilliant a success. But it is clear that a humanitarian regard for the possible sufferings of the inhabitants of Lisbon—the only reason alleged for the delay—is an inadequate motive. Such things did not normally affect the Emperor, and he must have remembered that when Junot occupied Portugal at the mid-winter of 1807-8 famine had not played its part in the difficulties encountered by the French. Nor does it seem that an exaggerated estimate of the enemy’s strength induced him to postpone the attack till all the reinforcements had arrived. He under-estimates Wellington’s British troops by some 5,000, his Portuguese troops by at least 15,000 men. He is utterly ignorant of the works of Torres Vedras, though six months’ labour has already been lavished on them, and by this time they were already defensible. Three months seem an altogether exaggerated time to devote to the sieges of the two little old-fashioned second-rate fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. From whence, then, comes this unprecedented resolve to adopt a ‘methodical’ system in dealing with the invasion of Portugal? It has been suggested that the Emperor was very desirous to make sure of the absolute suppression of the guerrilleros of the Pyrenees and the Ebro, before pushing forward his field army to Lisbon. Possibly he was influenced by his knowledge of the infinite difficulty that Masséna would find in equipping himself with a train, and more especially in creating magazines during the months before the harvest had been gathered in. Some have thought that, looking far forward, he considered it would be more disastrous to the English army to be ‘driven into the sea’ somewhere in the rough months of October and November rather than in the fine weather of June—and undoubtedly no one who reads his dispatches can doubt that the desire to deal an absolutely crushing blow to that army was his dominating idea throughout. But probably the main determining factor in Napoleon’s mind was the resolve that there should be no failure this time, for want of preparation or want of sufficient strength; that no risks should be taken, and that what he regarded as an overwhelming force should be launched upon Portugal. After Junot’s disaster of 1808 and Soult’s fiasco in 1809, the Imperial prestige could not stand a third failure. The old pledge that ‘the leopard should be driven into the sea’ must be redeemed at all costs on this occasion. Solid success rather than a brilliant campaign must be the end kept in view: hence came the elaborate preparations for the sustaining of Masséna’s advance by the support of Drouet, Kellermann, and Serras. Even Suchet’s operations in Eastern Spain were to be conducted with some regard to the affairs of Portugal. It was a broad and a formidable plan—but it failed in one all-important factor. Wellington’s strength was underrated; it was no mere driving of 25,000 British troops into the sea that was now in question, but the reduction of a kingdom where every man had been placed under arms, and every preparation made for passive as well as for active resistance. When Napoleon was once more foiled, it was because he had treated the Portuguese army—a ‘tas de coquins’ as he called them—as a negligible quantity, and because he had foreseen neither that systematic devastation of the land, nor the creation of those vast lines in front of Lisbon, which were such essential features of Wellington’s scheme of defence. The French attack was delivered by 65,000 men, not by the 100,000 whose advent the British general had feared: and precisely because the numbers of the Army of Portugal were no greater, the attack was made on the Beira frontier only. Masséna had no men to spare for the secondary invasion south of the Tagus which Wellington had expected and dreaded. The Emperor’s plans went to wreck because he had under-estimated his enemy, and assigned too small a force to his lieutenant. But it was no ordinary general who had so prepared his defence that Napoleon’s calculations went all astray. The genius of Wellington was the true cause of the disastrous end of the long-prepared invasion.
THE MONTHS OF WAITING: THE SIEGE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO (MAY-JULY 1810)
The long months of delay that followed the first operations of the French in 1810 were a time of anxious waiting for Wellington. He had moved his head quarters to Vizeu on the 12th of January, and had been lying in that bleak and lofty town all through the rest of the winter. With him there had come to the North all the old British divisions save the 2nd, which had been left with Hill, first at Abrantes and then at Portalegre, to watch the French between the Tagus and the Guadiana. The 1st Division was placed at Vizeu, the 3rd at Trancoso and the neighbouring villages, the 4th at Guarda, while the cavalry wintered in the coast plain between Coimbra and Aveiro. Only the Light Brigade of Robert Craufurd, which takes the new style of the Light Division on March 1, was pushed forward to the Spanish frontier, and lay in the villages about Almeida, with its outposts pushed forward to the line of the Agueda. The Portuguese regular brigades, which were afterwards incorporated in the British divisions, were still lying in winter quarters around Coimbra and Thomar, drilling hard and incorporating their recruits. The militia were also under arms at their regimental head quarters, save the few battalions which had already been thrown into Elvas, Almeida, Peniche, and Abrantes.
Wellington’s front, facing the French, was formed by Hill’s corps in the Alemtejo, Lecor’s Portuguese brigade in the Castello Branco district, and Craufurd’s force on the Agueda. Neither Hill nor Lecor was in actual contact with the enemy, and La Romana’s army, spread out from the Pass of Perales to Zafra and Ara?ena in a thin line, lay between them and Reynier’s and Mortier’s outposts. It was otherwise with Craufurd, who was placed north of La Romana’s left division, that of Martin Carrera; he was in close touch with Ney’s corps all along the line of the Agueda, as far as the Douro. Since the outposts of the 6th Corps had been pushed forward on March 9th, the Commander of the Light Division was in a most responsible, not to say a dangerous, position. The main army was forty miles to his rear in its cantonments at Vizeu, Guarda, and Trancoso. He had with him of British infantry only the first battalions of the 43rd, 52nd, and 95th, with one battery, and one regiment of cavalry, the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion. His orders were to keep open the communication with Ciudad Rodrigo till the last possible moment, to cover Almeida as long as was prudent, and to keep the Commander-in-Chief advised of every movement of the enemy. It was clear that he might be thrust back at any moment: the 6th Corps, since Loison had joined it, was 30,000 strong: the Light Division had only 2,500 infantry with the 500 German light horse. On March 28th Wellington sent up to reinforce Craufurd two battalions of Ca?adores, the 1st and 2nd. The latter of these units was afterwards changed for the 3rd, which, trained by Elder, the best of all the colonels lent to the Portuguese army, was reckoned the most efficient corps that could be selected from Beresford’s command. But the two Ca?ador battalions only added 1,000 bayonets to the Light Division, and even after their arrival Craufurd’s force was less than 4,000 strong.
Robert Craufurd, though only a brigadier, and junior of his rank, had been chosen by Wellington to take charge of his outpost line because he was one of the very few officers then in the Peninsula in whose ability his Commander-in-Chief had perfect confidence. Nothing is more striking than to compare the tone and character of the letters which Wellington wrote to him with those which he dispatched to most of his other general officers. Only with Craufurd, Hill, and Beresford, did he ever condescend to enter into explanations and state reasons. The rest receive orders without comment, which they are directed to carry out, and are given no opportunity to discuss. The difference was noted and resented by the others: when on March 8th Craufurd was formally given charge of the whole outpost line of the army, and his seniors Picton and Cole were told to conform their movements to his, without waiting for orders from head quarters, some friction was engendered. Picton and Craufurd, in especial, were for the rest of the campaign in a state of latent hostility, which more than once led to high words when they met—a fact which was not without its dangers to the welfare of the army.
The celebrated commander of the Light Division was at this time well known for his ability, but reckoned rather an unlucky soldier. He had entered the army so far back as 1779, and had seen service in every quarter of the globe, yet in 1809 was only a colonel. This was the more astounding since he was one of the few scientific soldiers in the British army when the Revolutionary War broke out. He had spent some time at Berlin in 1782, studying the tactics of the army of Frederick the Great, and had translated into English the official Prussian treatise on the Art of War. His knowledge of German, a rare accomplishment in the British army at the end of the eighteenth century, caused him to be given the post of military attaché at Coburg’s head quarters in 1794, and he followed the Austrian army through all the disasters of that and the two following years. Again in 1799 he went out to take the same post at the head quarters of the army of Switzerland, but quitted it to serve on the staff of the Duke of York, during the miserable Dutch expedition of that same year. He seemed destined to witness nothing but disasters, and though he was known to have done his duty with admirable zeal and energy in every post that he occupied, promotion lingered. Probably his caustic tongue and fiery temper were his hindrances, but it seems astonishing that he took twenty-six years to attain the rank of colonel, though he was not destitute of political influence, having friends and relatives in Parliament, and even in the Ministry. In 1801 he was a disappointed man, thought of retiring from the army, and, having accepted a nomination borough, sat in the Commons for five years. In 1805 he was at last made a colonel, and in the following year went on active service with the expedition which, sent originally to the Cape, was distracted in 1807 to the unhappy Buenos Ayres campaign. This was the zenith of his misfortunes; it was he who, placed in charge of a light brigade by the incapable Whitelocke, was thrust forward into the midst of the tangled streets of Buenos Ayres, surrounded in the convent of San Domingo, and forced to capitulate for lack of support. At the ensuing court-martial he was acquitted of all blame, but the fact that he had surrendered a British brigade rankled in his mind for the rest of his life. The unshaken confidence in his abilities felt by the Home authorities was marked by the fact that he was sent out in October 1808 with Baird’s corps, which landed at Corunna, and again in June 1809 to Lisbon, each time in command of a brigade. But his bad luck seemed still to attend him: he missed the victory of Corunna because Moore had detached his brigade on the inexplicable march to Vigo. He failed to be present at Talavera, despite of the famous forced march which he made towards the sound of the cannon.
In 1810 Craufurd was burning to vindicate his reputation, and to show that the confidence which Wellington placed in him was not undeserved. He still regarded himself as a man who had been unjustly dealt with, and had never been given his chance. He could not forget that he was four years older than Beresford, five years older than Wellington, eight years older than Hill, yet was but a junior brigadier-general in charge of a division. He was full of a consuming energy, on the look-out for slights and quarrels, a very strict disciplinarian, restless himself and leaving his troops no rest. He was not liked by all his officers: in the Light Division he had many admirers and many bitter critics. Nor was he at first popular with the rank and file, though they soon began to recognize the keen intelligence that guided his actions, and to see that he was a just if a hard master. In the matter of feeding his troops, the most difficult task imposed on a general of the Peninsular army, he had an unparalleled reputation for accomplishing the impossible—even if the most drastic methods had to be employed. The famous old story about Wellington and the commissary had Craufurd (and not, as it is sometimes told, Picton) as its hero. As a sample of his high-handed ways, it may be mentioned that he once seized and impounded some church-plate till the villages to which it belonged found him some corn for his starving division. Craufurd, on one of his happy days, and they were many, was the most brilliant subordinate that Wellington ever owned. His mistakes—and he committed more than one—were the faults of an ardent and ambitious spirit taking an immoderate risk in the hour of excitement.
From March to July 1810 Craufurd, in charge of the whole outpost system of Wellington’s army, accomplished the extraordinary feat of guarding a front of forty miles against an active enemy of sixfold force, without suffering his line to be pierced, or allowing the French to gain any information whatever of the dispositions of the host in his rear. He was in constant and daily touch with Ney’s corps, yet was never surprised, and never thrust back save by absolutely overwhelming strength; he never lost a detachment, never failed to detect every move of the enemy, and never sent his commander false intelligence. This was the result of system and science, not merely of vigilance and activity. The journal of his aide de camp Shaw-Kennedy, giving the daily work of the Light Division during the critical months of 1810, might serve as an illustrative manual of outpost duty, and was indeed printed for that purpose in 1851.
Craufurd’s one cavalry regiment, the German Hussars, had to cover a front of nearly forty miles, and performed the duty admirably; it had been chosen for the service because it was considered by Wellington superior in scouting power to any of his British light cavalry corps. ‘General Craufurd worked out the most difficult part of the outpost duty with them. He had the great advantage of speaking German fluently, and he arranged for the outpost duties of the different parts of the long line that he had to guard by his personal communications with the captains of that admirable corps, men who were themselves masters of the subject. They each knew his plan for the space that they covered, though not his general plan, and each worked out his part most admirably. The General communicated with them direct. He had the great advantage of possessing, with his great abilities and energy, uncommon bodily strength, so that he could remain on horseback almost any length of time.... When his operations began, the point to be observed was the line of the Agueda, extending for some forty miles. The country, although very irregular in its surface, was quite open and unenclosed, and fit almost everywhere for the action of all three arms. When he took up the line he kept his infantry back entirely, with the exception of four companies of the Rifles above the bridge of Barba del Puerco, upon the calculation of the time that would be required to retire the infantry behind the Coa, after he received information from the cavalry of the enemy’s advance. If we are properly to understand Craufurd’s operations, the calculation must never be lost sight of, for it was on calculations that he acted all along. The hazarding of the four companies at Barba del Puerco forms a separate consideration: it rested on the belief that the pass there was so difficult, that four companies could defend it against any numbers, and that, if they were turned higher up the river, the Hussars would give the Rifles warning in ample time for a safe retreat.... Special reports were made of the state of the fords of the Agueda every morning, and the rapidity of its rises was particularly marked. An officer had special charge of all deserters from the enemy, to examine them and bring together their information. Beacons were prepared on conspicuous heights, so as to communicate information as to the enemy’s offensive movements. To ensure against mistakes in the night, pointers were kept at the stations of communication, directed to the beacons.... As Napier has remarked in his History, seven minutes sufficed for the division to get under arms in the middle of the night, and a quarter of an hour, night or day, to bring it in order of battle to its alarm-posts, with the baggage loaded and assembled at a convenient distance to the rear. And this not upon a concerted signal, nor as a trial, but at all times and certain.’
To complete the picture it remains to be added that there were some fifteen fords between Ciudad Rodrigo and the mouth of the Agueda, which were practicable in dry weather for all arms, and that several of them could be used even after a day or two of rain. The French were along the whole river; they had 3,000 horse available in March and April, 5,000 in May and June. Their infantry at some points were only three or four miles back from the river: yet Craufurd’s line was never broken, nor was even a picket of ten men cut off or surrounded. The least movement of the enemy was reported along the whole front in an incredibly short time, the whole web of communication quivered at the slightest touch, and the division was immediately ready to fight or to draw back, according as the strength of the French dictated boldness or caution.
During February Wellington had rightly concluded that Craufurd had nothing to fear; Ney’s early demonstration against Ciudad Rodrigo had no more serious significance than Mortier’s similar appearance in front of Badajoz. But when March arrived, and the 8th Corps appeared in the plains of Leon and commenced the siege of Astorga, while Ney began to move up his cavalry to the line of the Yeltes, and Loison’s division, coming from Astorga, established itself on the lower Agueda, it seemed likely that serious work would soon begin. The first test of the efficiency of Craufurd’s outpost system was made on the night of March 19-20, when Ferey, commanding the brigade of Loison’s division which lay at San Felices, assembled his six voltigeur companies before dawn, and made a dash at the pass of Barba del Puerco. He had the good luck to bayonet the sentries at the bridge before they could fire, and was half way up the rough ascent from the bridge to the village, when Beckwith’s detachment of the 95th Rifles, roused and armed in ten minutes, were upon him. They drove him down the defile, and chased him back across the river with the loss of two officers and forty-five men killed and wounded. Beckwith’s riflemen lost one officer and three men killed, and ten men wounded in the three companies engaged. After this alarm Craufurd was in anxious expectation of a general advance of the 6th Corps, and made every preparation to receive them. But Ferey’s reconnaissance had no sequel, and a whole month passed by without any serious move on the part of the enemy. The Agueda was in flood for the greater part of April, owing to incessant rains, which made the outpost work simple, as the number of points to be observed went down from fifteen to three or four. It was not till the twenty-sixth that Maucune’s and Ferey’s brigades moved up close to Ciudad Rodrigo, drove in the Spanish outposts, and formed the blockade of the place on the east side of the Agueda. Even then its bridge remained unmolested, and Craufurd could communicate quite freely with the garrison, and did so till June 2nd. Masséna at a later date blamed Ney for having established this partial and useless blockade before he was ready to commence the siege in earnest. The two French brigades consumed, during the month of May, the whole of the local resources of the district around Rodrigo, so that, when the rest of the army came up, all supplies had to be brought up from a great distance. It may also be remarked that to advance a corps of no more than 7,000 men within striking distance of the British army would have been very hazardous, if Wellington had been entertaining any designs of taking the offensive—and Ney at this time could not have been sure that such a contingency was unlikely. The only advantage which the Marshal got from keeping his detachment so close to the fortress was that, in their month of waiting, the brigades were able to prepare a great store of gabions and fascines, and the engineers to make a thorough survey of the environs.
Ciudad Rodrigo stands on a single circular knoll of no great height, whose summit it exactly covers. It is a small place of some 8,000 souls, packed tight in narrow streets within a stout mediaeval wall thickly set with towers. A fourteenth-century castle, on which the houses press in too close for strength, fills its south-eastern corner: there is no other inner place of refuge. The Agueda, divided into several channels, runs under the southern side of the place; it is crossed by a bridge completely commanded by the fire of the walls. On the water-front the knoll is at its highest, on the opposite face it is much less steep, and only very slightly exceeds the level of the surrounding ground. Round the circuit of the mediaeval wall a low modern enceinte had been constructed, and served as an outer protection (fausse-braye); it was only twelve feet high, so did not shield more than a third of the inner wall, which could be battered over its summit. Its outline was zigzagged in the form of redans, and it was furnished with a dry ditch. Its glacis, owing to the rising of the knoll, gave it little protection, so that both the older and the modern wall could be searched, for the greater part of their height, by the artillery of a besieger. Outside the eastern gate of Rodrigo lies the straggling suburb of San Francisco, on very low ground. It was so large and so close to the walls that the governor Herrasti considered it absolutely necessary to take it inside the circuit of his defences. It had accordingly been surrounded by a strong earthwork, and the three great monasteries which it contains—San Francisco, San Domingo, and Santa Clara—had been strengthened and loopholed. The small suburb of La Marina, just across the bridge, was retrenched and manned, as was also the convent of Santa Cruz, which stands isolated 200 yards outside the north-west angle of the town. Other outlying buildings had been levelled to the ground, lest they should afford cover to the enemy.
Map of the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo
Enlarge SIEGE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO
These preparations were very wise and helpful, but they did not do away with the main weakness of Ciudad Rodrigo considered as a modern fortress. Like many other mediaeval strongholds it is commanded by outlying heights, which could be disregarded as an element of danger in the fourteenth or the sixteenth century, because of their distance, but became all-important with the improvement of artillery. In this case two knolls, considerably higher than that on which the place stands, lie outside its northern walls. The smaller, named the Little Teson, lies only 200 yards from the northern angle of the town; it is some fifty feet higher than the base of the ramparts. Immediately behind it rises the Great Teson, which dominates the whole country-side, its broad flat top, three-quarters of a mile in diameter, being a hundred feet above the level of the plain. It was hopeless to think of holding the little Teson as an outwork, since the greater one looks down into it and searches it from end to end. The Great Teson, on the other hand, is so large—its circuit is about the same as the city itself—that it would be impossible to think of defending it, as when entrenched it would require a garrison of at least 3,000 men, and Herrasti had but 5,500 troops under his command. Its slopes, moreover, are gentle, and do not lend themselves to fortification. The southern edge of the plateau of the Great Teson being only 500 yards from the town wall, it was obvious that here was the place from which Rodrigo could best be assailed. Batteries on its sky-line could breach both the inner and outer walls, and could command every square foot both of the town and of the fortified suburbs. Accordingly the brigades which lay before the place in May had encamped on and behind the Teson, and stored the gabions, fascines, and sandbags which they were making in a park, near the convent of La Caridad and the village of Pedro de Toro, on its further side.
Herrasti, as we have said, had a garrison of 5,500 men, composed of one line battalion, two militia battalions, three battalions of new levies from the town and its vicinity, called ‘Voluntarios de Ciudad Rodrigo,’ and one battalion of ‘Urban Guards.’ None of these troops, save the line battalion of Majorca (which had formed part of the old Army of Estremadura) had ever been under fire—a fact which makes their fine defence all the more creditable. There were only 11 officers and 37 men of the artillery of the line in the place: these had to train 350 men assigned to them from the infantry; but fortunately the long delay in the opening of the siege had allowed the instruction to be thoroughly carried out. Of engineers there were only 4 officers and 60 sappers—of cavalry none—but the partisan chief Julian Sanchez with some 200 of his Lancers chanced to be in the place on the day when it was completely invested, and was forced to cut his way out when the bombardment began. Perhaps the main strength of Ciudad Rodrigo, as of Gerona, lay in the personality of its governor. General Andrés Herrasti, a veteran of nearly seventy years, was determined to do his duty, and showed as much ingenuity and readiness as obstinacy in his defence.
Though the French had appeared before the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo on April 26th, it was not till May 30th that Ney came up in person, with four brigades of infantry and Montbrun’s division of reserve cavalry, to complete the investment. The main cause of the delay was, as usual, the lack of supplies. Ney had to levy and forward from Salamanca two months’ rations for an army of 30,000 men, and could only do so after long and harassing preparation. He nearly came to actual blows with King Joseph over the matter, for he sent a cavalry brigade to raise requisitions in the province of Avila, which was outside his command, and General Hugo, the King’s governor, put his troops under arms and refused to allow the dragoons to enter his district. An imperial rescript, however, soon arrived, which placed Avila at the disposition of the 6th Corps, and the royal authorities had to yield.
All Ney’s troops were now concentrated for the siege, his outlying detachments in every direction having been relieved by Junot, who, at Masséna’s orders, brought down the 8th Corps from the Douro, placed a brigade to watch the Pass of Ba?os, left garrisons in Zamora and Toro, and advanced with the remainder of his troops to the line of the Agueda. Clausel’s division and St. Croix’s division of dragoons took post at San Felices, in immediate touch with Craufurd’s division. Solignac’s division lay a march and a half to the rear at Ledesma. San Felices is only 20, Ledesma is 40 miles from Ciudad Rodrigo, so that the 8th Corps, deducting the outlying brigades, could have joined Ney in two days. These distances were the governing factor in Wellington’s policy during the next month. Ney had 26,000 men of the 6th Corps and Montbrun’s 4,000 dragoons in front of Rodrigo; Junot could join him with 8,000 infantry and 1,800 cavalry in a day; a second day would bring up Solignac with 7,000 men more. Unless the 6th Corps could be surprised in its camps, and forced to fight before it received its reinforcements, there would be 47,000 French to face. Of their numbers Wellington was roughly aware; the figures sent in to him by Craufurd were accurate to within a few thousands, and estimated the enemy at 40,000 men. The Commander-in-Chief’s own calculation was even nearer the truth; early in May he reckoned Ney, with Loison’s division included, at 30,000 men, Junot and Kellermann at 30,000. Early in June he made out that the two corps in his front, without Kellermann, amounted to 50,000 men, which was only 3,000 over the true total. He himself had at this moment only 18,000 British troops under his hand, and within striking distance. He had on April 27th, brought up his head quarters and the 1st Division to Celorico, and moved forward Picton and the 3rd Division to Pinhel, while Cole with the 4th remained at Guarda, and the Light Division was, as usual, facing the Agueda. The cavalry had also come up from the Mondego valley, and lay behind Almeida. Moreover, the five Portuguese brigades of Harvey, Collins, Pack, Coleman, and Alex. Campbell were ordered up to the front, and joined the army in the first days of May. Wellington thereupon incorporated Harvey’s brigade with the 3rd Division and Collins’s with the 4th, a system which he afterwards carried out with nearly all the Portuguese units. The whole of this mass of troops came to some 15,000 men. These, with the British, making a total of 32,000 men, were all that Wellington could count upon, for he could not dare to move Hill’s 12,000 men from the south, where they were observing Reynier, nor to displace the small reserve, which lay at Abrantes and Thomar to guard against a possible French move along the Tagus by Castello Branco. Lisbon could not be left unprotected on this side, so long as Reynier lay between the Tagus and the Guadiana.
By bringing up every man Wellington could have attacked Ney’s 30,000 in front of Rodrigo with 33,000, of whom nearly half would have consisted of the newly organised Portuguese brigades, of which hardly a battalion had been under fire. He would have had under 3,000 cavalry to face 5,000, and a marked inferiority in artillery also. No practical assistance could have been got by inviting the co-operation of Martin Carrera’s depleted Spanish division of 3,000 men, which lay on the hills about the sources of the Agueda, watching Ney’s flank. If the first stroke should fail, and Ney were not surprised, Wellington would have Junot’s 17,000 men to count with within forty-eight hours. Ciudad Rodrigo lies on a plain, a full day’s march from the hills, and by advancing to relieve it the British army must commit itself to an action in the open. It is no wonder then that Wellington refused to attempt the movement; weak in cavalry and with 15,000 troops of uncertain value in his ranks, he would have been mad to embark upon such an operation. It was most improbable that Ney could have been surprised, and forced to fight without Junot’s aid, when he had 5,000 horsemen at hand, to discover and report the first movement of the Anglo-Portuguese. Napoleon had been right when he told Masséna that it was practically impossible that Wellington would offer battle in the plains. Herrasti had been sent assurances that the British army would do anything that was feasible for his relief, but he was warned in a supplementary letter of June 6th that it might be impossible to aid him. ‘You will believe,’ wrote Wellington, ‘that if I should not be able to attempt your relief, it will be owing to the superior strength of the enemy, and to the necessity for my attending to other important objects.’ Notwithstanding this caution it would appear that the Spanish governor still hoped for prompt assistance. It seemed to him, as it did to all Spanish and some English officers at the time, that Wellington would not be able to endure the spectacle of Ciudad Rodrigo being taken while his outposts were lying only six miles in front of it. Those who held such views little knew the inflexible character of the man with whom they had to deal, or his contempt for considerations of pride or sentiment. To take a great risk, when victory would mean only the raising of the siege of Rodrigo till Junot and Kellermann should have joined Ney, while defeat might mean the loss of Portugal, was not in consonance with Wellington’s character. The possible gain and loss were too unequal, and he very rightly, and not without much regret, remained in observation at Celorico. He sums up the matter thus:—‘I must leave the mountains and cross the plains, as well as two rivers, to raise the siege. To do this I have about 33,000 men (including Carrera’s Spaniards), of which 3,000 are cavalry. Included are 15,000 Spaniards and Portuguese, which troops (to say the best of them) are of doubtful quality. Is it right, under these circumstances, to risk a general action to raise the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo? I should think not.’ And again, ‘My object is to be able to relieve the place, if it should be advisable to attempt it, in consequence of any alteration in the enemy’s force. This does not appear to be a very probable event at present, and ought not to be provided for according to the common rules of prudence, at any considerable risk.’ Expressions of regret are added, ‘I do not give the matter up; if they hold out like men they are worth saving, and under certain circumstances it might be possible to “incur the risk.”’ But the ‘certain circumstances’ never came about; they seem to have been the possibility either that (1) Ney or Junot might make detachments, or move their corps into a less concentrated position than they at present occupied, or (2) that they might form a covering army, and advance to drive him off from his present quarters, which were too close to Ciudad Rodrigo for their comfort. This last contingency almost happened, as we shall see; probably if the enemy had come out to attack him Wellington would have accepted battle, in one of the defensive positions that he knew so well how to select.
Ney, as has been already mentioned, arrived before the fortress with some 20,000 men on May 30th. On June 1st he threw a bridge across the Agueda, a mile and a half above Rodrigo, but sent no troops across it. Two days later Masséna came up from the rear, approved of the plan that had been formed for breaching the city from the side of the two Tesons, and, having reviewed the 6th Corps, took his way back to Salamanca. At this moment he gave orders to Reynier and the 2nd Corps to leave Truxillo and the valley of the Guadiana, and to cross the Tagus to Coria and Plasencia, from whence they could threaten Castello Branco and Abrantes. This was in accordance with the orders of the Emperor, who had bidden him call up Reynier from the Guadiana, to cover his flank. Such a movement had been foreseen by Wellington, who as early as June 9th had directed Hill to leave Portalegre with his 12,000 men, and to cross the Tagus at Villa Velha the moment that Reynier should have passed it at Almaraz. Some days later the Galician general Mahy sent to the British head quarters four duplicates of Napoleon’s dispatches to Masséna and King Joseph, which had been intercepted by guerrillas on the way to Salamanca. They corroborated all Wellington’s suspicions, and enabled him to provide against the danger on this side even before it had begun to arise. Hill’s route by Villa Velha being appreciably shorter than that of Reynier, he was in position beyond the Tagus before the 2nd Corps had reached Coria. Their cavalry met and skirmished at Ladoeiro on the Zarza-Castello Branco road on July 22nd. Thus the relative position of the two hostile forces in the south was exactly preserved: Wellington knew that he could call in Hill to join his main army as quickly as Masséna could draw Reynier to himself through the Pass of Perales—the only route possible for him. He felt all the more secure because he had now some British troops at Abrantes ready to support Hill. Three newly arrived battalions, which landed at Lisbon early in April, had been passed up the Tagus to Thomar and the line of the Zezere, where, uniting with two Portuguese brigades, they formed Leith’s ‘5th Division,’ a fresh factor in the situation. This detachment, with two batteries added, could assist Hill with 7,000 men, if Reynier should push forward in the direction of Castello Branco.
Whether at this moment Masséna was proposing to order a serious attack on this side, or whether he was from the first intending to bring up the 2nd Corps to join the main army, is not certain. Napoleon in some of his dispatches seems to recommend the rather hazardous ‘attack on double external lines’—a result of his general under-estimate of Wellington’s resisting power. On May 29th he told his lieutenant that with 50,000 men of the 6th and 8th Corps he could capture both Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and then march ‘methodically’ into Portugal, while Reynier at Alcantara could cover the communication with Madrid and menace Upper Beira; ‘le prince le maintiendra dans cette position sans le laisser entamer.’ Masséna, however, did not think his main army strong enough, and, being left a free hand by his master, ultimately called in Reynier to join him, and so freed Wellington from the harassing doubt as to whether he might not have to defend himself on the Zezere and on the Mondego at the same moment.
Long before the orders reached the 2nd Corps to move up from Truxillo to Coria and Zarza, the siege of Rodrigo had begun in earnest. On June 1st, as we have already seen, Ney had cast a bridge across the Agueda above the town; four days later a second was constructed at the ford of Lora, below the place. The moment that it was completed, Marchand’s division, half Mermet’s, and the light cavalry brigade of Lamotte crossed the river and established camps on its western bank. The horsemen pushed back Craufurd’s pickets to Marialva and Manzanilla, and completely cut his communication with Rodrigo, which had hitherto been intermittently open. The troops which had passed the river threw up redoubts to cover the bridge heads, and slightly entrenched their camps. On June 8th Ney received the first convoy of his siege train, which continued to come in by detachments during the next week, till he had fifty heavy guns in hand, with 700 rounds for each, and 2,000 gunners and sappers of the ‘Grand Park.’
On the 15th the French opened their first parallel on the Great Teson, on a front of 1,500 yards; it was only 500 yards from the glacis of the town. Herrasti kept up a furious fire upon it, and vexed the workmen by two sorties, which were not pressed home and did no harm. On the 19th six batteries on the Teson were commenced; the work was easy owing to the great store of gabions and sandbags already in store, which the brigades of Maucune and Ferey had prepared in May. While the emplacements for the guns were being got ready, the sappers pushed forward zig-zags from the right end of the first parallel down the slopes on the flank of the Little Teson. One approach was directed toward the isolated convent of Santa Cruz, the other toward the extreme northern angle of the town. The Spaniards, though firing furiously day and night, could not prevent either the construction of the batteries or the advance of the approaches; wherefore Julian Sanchez, seeing that his cavalry could not live under the oncoming bombardment, got leave from the governor to quit the town. On the night of the 21st-22nd he crossed the bridge, broke through the lines of Marchand’s division, and escaped by the Fuente Guinaldo road with his 200 Lancers. He came into Craufurd’s camp, and gave a full report of the state of the garrison and the progress of the enemy’s works.
It was impossible for the French to open their second parallel so long as the convent of Santa Cruz was held, for the fire of this outwork would have enfiladed its whole length. On the night of the 23rd-24th, therefore, Ney tried to storm the convent with a picked body of Grenadiers; they blew in its door with a petard, and set fire to its lower story, but were finally driven off. The convent was partially destroyed, but the garrison gallantly clung to its ruins, and covered themselves in the débris. The French lost fifteen killed and fifty wounded that night. On June 25th the batteries opened, without waiting for the reduction of Santa Cruz, with forty-six guns placed in six batteries along the crest of the Teson. The counter-fire of the besieged was very effective; two expense magazines containing 9,000 lb. of powder were blown up in the trenches, many guns dismounted, and one battery silenced. The loss of the besiegers was heavy. The Spaniards suffered less, but fires broke out in several quarters of the town from the shells thrown by the French mortars, and many houses were destroyed. The ruins of the convent of Santa Cruz, moreover, were so thoroughly battered to pieces that the garrison retired, when an assault was made upon it by 300 Grenadiers after nightfall. This enabled the French to push forward their works much nearer to the town.
Four days of furious artillery engagement followed, in which the besiegers, though suffering heavily, succeeded not only in setting more than half the town on fire, but, what was more serious, in making a breach in the fausse-braye, at the projecting angle of the north side of the city, on which four of the batteries had been trained, and in injuring the inner mediaeval wall at the back of it. Believing, wrongly as it seems, that the breach was practicable, Ney sent an officer to summon the town. Herrasti replied that he was still in a position to defend himself, and ‘that after forty-nine years of service he knew the laws of war and his military duty.’ He made, however, the unusual request that he might be allowed to send a letter to Wellington, and that a suspension of arms should be granted till the return of his messenger. The Marshal, as was natural, sent a refusal, and ordered the bombardment to recommence (June 28th).
Up to this moment the French engineers had been under the impression that Ciudad Rodrigo would probably surrender when it had been breached, without standing an assault. Now that they recognized that the governor intended to fight to the last, and noted that he had spent the night following the summons in clearing the ditch and repairing the damaged fausse-braye with sandbags, they resolved that the breaching batteries must be brought closer in, and the approaches pushed up to the foot of the walls. Accordingly a second parallel was opened along the front of the Little Teson, two hundred and fifty yards in advance of the first, on the night of July 1st. On the same night a column of 600 men stormed the convent of San Francisco in the suburb, a post which would have enfiladed the southern end of the new parallel in the most dangerous fashion. Having obtained this lodgement in the suburb the French set to work to conquer the whole of it, and after some stiff street-fighting stormed Santa Clara, its central stronghold. Herrasti thereupon evacuated the rest of the scattered houses, and withdrew all his troops inside the town (July 3rd).
The new battery on the Little Teson was costly to build and maintain—on one night the French lost sixty-one men killed and wounded in it. But it was very effective; the original breach was much enlarged, and the old wall behind it was reduced to ruins. Meanwhile a mortar battery, placed in the conquered suburb, played upon the parts of the town which had hitherto escaped bombardment, and reduced many streets to ashes. The position of the garrison was unsatisfactory, and Herrasti sent out several emissaries to beg Wellington to help him, ere it was too late. Most of these adventurers were captured by the French, but at least two reached the British commander, who had recently come up to the front to observe for himself the state of the enemy’s forces. He found them too strong to be meddled with, and sent back a letter stating that he was ready to move if he saw any chance of success, but that at present none such was visible. He then retired, after leaving Craufurd two squadrons of the 16th Light Dragoons to strengthen his thin outpost line. Herrasti, though much dispirited by Wellington’s reply, continued to make a vigorous defence, but the town was now mostly in ruins, and the breach gaped wide.
On July 4th Masséna, who had again come up to visit the siege, obtained intelligence that Wellington had been with the Light Division at Gallegos, and determined to push back the British outposts, in order to discover whether the front line of his enemy had been strengthened by any troops from Portugal. It seemed to him likely enough that the British general might have massed his army for a bold stroke at the besiegers, now that the strength of Ciudad Rodrigo was running low. Accordingly St. Croix’s division of dragoons, supported by a brigade of Junot’s infantry, crossed the Azava brook and drove in Craufurd’s cavalry pickets. They retired, skirmishing vigorously all the way, to Gallegos, where the five infantry battalions of the Light Division had concentrated. Craufurd, having strict orders from his chief that he was not to fight, fell back on Fort Concepcion, the work on the Spanish frontier half way to Almeida. Thereupon the French retired, having obtained the information that they wanted, viz. that Craufurd had not been reinforced by any considerable body of troops from the rear. The Light Division had man?uvred with its customary intelligence and alertness all day; its flanks were being continually turned by horsemen in overpowering numbers, but it beat them off with ease, and lost only five men wounded while falling back across ten miles of absolutely open country. The French lost five officers and over twenty men, mostly in combats with the German Hussars, who surpassed themselves on this day, and repeatedly charged the heads of the hostile columns on favourable occasions. For the future Craufurd kept behind the Dos Casas, while the French took up his old line on the Azava. This move made any attempt to help Ciudad Rodrigo a harder business than before, since the British outposts were now fifteen instead of only six miles from the town. An attempt to storm by surprise the French camps on the near side of the place was for the future impossible.
Warned by this activity on the part of the enemy, Wellington again reinforced Craufurd’s cavalry, giving him three squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons, so that the Light Division had now some 1,200 horse to watch its long and much exposed front. But the French advance now halted again for a full fortnight, the demonstration of July 4th having had no other purpose than that of ascertaining the strength of the British observing force behind the Azava.
On the four days that followed Craufurd’s retreat the French batteries were thundering against the northern angle of Ciudad Rodrigo, and had reduced it to one vast breach more than 120 feet broad. But Ney, more sparing of life than was his wont, refused to order an assault till the whole of the Spanish artillery on the neighbouring front should have been silenced, and till the engineers should have worked up to and blown in the counterscarp. This last preliminary was accomplished on the night of the eighth, when a mine containing 800 lb. of powder was exploded with success just outside the counterscarp, and cast down a vast amount of earth into the ditch, so that there was now an almost level road from the advanced trenches to the foot of the inner wall. The garrison repeatedly built up the lip of the breach with palisades and sandbags, under a heavy fire and at great expense of life. But their flimsy repairs were swept away again and again by the batteries on the Little Teson, and all their guns on this front of the walls were gradually disabled or destroyed. Early on the afternoon of July 9th the engineers informed the Marshal that Ciudad Rodrigo was untenable, and that a storm could not fail of success. Three battalions, composed of picked voltigeur and grenadier companies, were brought up to the advanced trenches, under the Marshal’s personal superintendence. Before letting them loose on the broad acclivity of rubble before them, Ney asked for three volunteers who would take the desperate risk of climbing up to the crest of the breach to see if it were retrenched behind. A corporal and two privates made this daring venture, ran lightly up to the summit, fired their muskets into the town, and descended unhurt, under a scattering fire from the few Spaniards who were still holding on to the ruins. On receiving their assurance that nothing was to be feared, Ney ordered the storming battalions to move out of the trenches, but ere they had started an officer with a white flag appeared on the breach, and descended to inform the Marshal that the Governor was prepared to capitulate. Finding that Ney was immediately below, Herrasti came out in person with his staff a few minutes later, and settled the whole matter in a short conversation. Ney congratulated the white-haired veteran on his handsome defence, returned him his sword, and told him that he should have all the honours of war.
Accordingly the garrison marched out next morning about 4,000 strong, laid down its arms below the glacis, and was marched off to Bayonne. The Spaniards had lost 461 killed and 994 wounded, just a quarter of their force, in their highly honourable resistance. They had only a few days’ provisions left, and, though their munitions were by no means exhausted, they would have been forced to yield for want of food, even if the storm had failed, which was absolutely impossible. The French captured 118 guns, most of them in bad order or disabled, and 7,000 muskets. Not a house or church in the place was intact, and a large majority were roofless or levelled to the ground. There was no use whatever in protracting the resistance, and it is clear that Herrasti had done all that a good officer could. In his dispatch to the Junta he spoke somewhat bitterly of the fact that Wellington had made no effort to relieve the place, showing feeling natural enough under the circumstances. Martin La Carrera, who had been commanding the Spanish division that lay in the mountains south of the town, expressed his wrath still more bitterly, and marched off to Estremadura in high dudgeon, the moment that the news of the surrender reached him.
The French had been forced to much greater exertions in the siege of Rodrigo than they had expected when they first sat down before its walls. Their artillery had thrown 11,000 shells and 18,000 round shot into the place, which almost exhausted their store of munitions—only 700 rounds for each of their fifty guns having been provided. They had lost 180 killed and over 1,000 wounded, mainly in the costly work of pushing forward the approaches towards the wall, before the Spanish artillery fire had been silenced. Professional critics attributed the delays and losses of the siege entirely to the fact that the engineers believed, when they first planned their works, that the enemy would surrender the moment that a breach had been made, an idea which had never entered into Herrasti’s head. Masséna showed his ill-temper, when all was over, by sending the civilian members of the Junta as prisoners to France, and imposing a fine of 500,000 francs on the miserable ruined town. It is surprising to learn that he actually succeeded in extracting half that sum from the homeless and starving population.
On the day that the garrison of Rodrigo marched out (July 10) Craufurd had suffered a misadventure. Seeing that the French foragers were busy in the villages between the Azava and the Dos Casas, he had resolved to make an attempt to surprise some of their bands, and went out from Fort Concepcion with six squadrons of cavalry, six companies of the Rifles and the 43rd, a battalion of Ca?adores and two guns. Coming suddenly upon the French covering party near the village of Barquilla, he ordered his cavalry to pursue them. The enemy, consisting of two troops of dragoons and 200 men of the 22nd regiment from Junot’s corps, began a hasty retreat towards their lines. Thereupon Craufurd bade his leading squadrons, one of the German Hussars and one of the 16th, to charge. They did so, falling upon the infantry, who halted and formed square in a corn-field to receive them. The charge, made by men who had been galloping for a mile, and had been much disordered by passing some enclosures, failed. The troopers, opening out to right and left under the fire of the square, swept on and chased the French cavalry, who were making off to the flank. They followed them for some distance, finally overtaking them and making two officers and twenty-nine men prisoners. Meanwhile Craufurd called up the next squadron from the road, the leading one of the 14th Light Dragoons, and sent it in against the little square. Headed by their colonel Talbot the men of the 14th charged home, but were unable to break the French, who stood firm and waited till the horses’ heads were within ten paces of their bayonets before firing. Talbot and seven of his men fell dead, and some dozen more were disabled. Before another squadron could come up, the French slipped off into the enclosures of the village of Cismeiro and got away. It was said that no effort was made to stop them because two outlying squadrons of British cavalry, which had ridden in towards the sound of the firing, were mistaken for a large body of French horse coming up to the rescue of the infantry. Both Craufurd and the British cavalry were much criticized over this affair; but it was, in truth, nothing more than an example of the general rule that horsemen could not break steady infantry, properly formed in square, during the Peninsular War. The instances to the contrary are few. It was said at the time that Craufurd might have used his leading squadrons to detain and harass the French till his guns or his infantry, which were a mile to the rear, could be brought up. This may have been so, but criticism after the event is easy, and if the guns or the riflemen had come up ten minutes late, and the French infantry had been allowed to go off uncharged, the General would have been blamed still more. He lost in all an officer and eight men killed, and twenty-three wounded, while he took thirty-one prisoners, but the defeat rankled, and caused so much unpleasant feeling that Wellington went out of his way to send for and rebuke officers who had been circulating malevolent criticism. The French captain Gouache, who had commanded the square, was very properly promoted and decorated by Masséna: nothing could have been more firm and adroit than his conduct.
COMBAT OF THE COA: SIEGE OF ALMEIDA (JULY-AUGUST 1810)
On July 10th the French had entered Ciudad Rodrigo, but ten days more elapsed before they made any further advance. Masséna, who had returned to the front, was resolved to follow his master’s orders and to act ‘methodically.’ It was clearly incumbent on him to begin the siege of Almeida as soon as possible, and, as that place is only twenty-one miles from Ciudad Rodrigo, one long march would have placed him before its walls. But since he had only a few thousand rounds of ammunition left for his heavy guns, he refused to move on till all the available reserves were on their way from Salamanca to the front, and requisition for a further supply had been sent to Bayonne. He had also to do his best to scrape together more food, since the magazines that Ney had collected were nearly exhausted when Rodrigo fell. Moreover, 1,500 draught animals had died during the late siege, and it was necessary to replace them before the Great Park could move forward.
On July 21st, however, some convoys having come up from Salamanca, Masséna directed Ney to advance with the 6th Corps and to drive Craufurd back on to Almeida. The main point that he was directed to ascertain on this day was whether the English intended to make a stand at Fort Concepcion, the isolated Spanish work which faces Almeida on the frontier, beyond the Turones. This was a solid eighteenth-century fort, covering the bridge where the high-road passes the river. It had lately been repaired, and could have resisted a bombardment for some days. But it would have required a garrison of 1,000 men, and, since it lies in the midst of the plain, there would be little chance of relieving it, if once it were surrounded. Wellington, therefore, gave orders that it should be blown up whenever the French should advance in force toward Almeida, and that Craufurd should make no attempt to defend the line of the Turones, and should send back his infantry to Junca, a village about a mile outside the gates of Almeida, keeping his cavalry only to the front. On the 21st Ney advanced with the whole of Loison’s division, and Treillard’s cavalry brigade. Thereupon Craufurd, with some reluctance, retired and blew up Fort Concepcion as he went. The French advanced, skirmishing with the 14th Light Dragoons and the German Hussars, but finally halted at Val de Mula, four miles from Almeida. Craufurd established himself at Junca, only three miles from the enemy’s line of pickets. On the next evening he received a strong suggestion, if not quite an order, from his Chief to send his infantry across the Coa. ‘I am not desirous of engaging an affair beyond the Coa,’ wrote Wellington. ‘Under these circumstances, if you are not covered from the sun where you are, would it not be better that you should come to this side of it, with your infantry at least?’ The tentative form of the note well marks the confidence that the Commander-in-Chief was wont to place in his subordinate’s judgement. This time that confidence was somewhat misplaced, for Craufurd tarried two days longer by the glacis of Almeida, and thereby risked a disaster.
It must be remembered that Almeida is not on the Coa, but two miles from it, and that its guns, therefore, did not cover the one bridge over which Craufurd could make his retreat. Indeed, that bridge and the river also are invisible from Almeida. The fortress is slightly raised above the level of the rolling plain, which extends as far as Ciudad Rodrigo: the river flows in a deep bed, so much below the plateau as to be lost to sight. Its ravine is a sort of ca?on which marks the end of the plains of Leon. It has often been remarked that Almeida’s value would have been doubled, if only it had been on the near side of the Coa, and commanded its bridge. But Portuguese kings had built and rebuilt the old fortress on its original site, with no regard for strategy. Craufurd, then, should have remembered that, if he were suddenly attacked in his camp outside the gates, he risked being thrown back into the town (the last thing he would wish), or being hustled down to the bridge and forced to pass his division across it in dangerous haste. But he had so often challenged, held back, and evaded Ney’s and Junot’s advanced guards, that he evidently considered that he was taking no very serious risk in staying where he was. He was, moreover, discharging a valuable function by keeping Almeida from being invested, as stores and munitions were still being poured into the place. The only peril was that he might be attacked both without warning and by overwhelming superiority of numbers, with the defile at his back. Neither of these misadventures had yet happened to him during the four and a half months while he had been defying the 6th and the 8th Corps along the banks of the Agueda. The French had never assailed him with much more than a division, nor had they ever pressed on him with headlong speed, so as to prevent an orderly retreat properly covered by a moderate rearguard.
Now, however, Ney, untrammelled by any other operation, had his whole corps concentrated behind Val de Mula, and having learnt of the defile that lay in Craufurd’s rear, thought that he might be hurled into it and crushed or caught. Before dawn he arrayed his whole 24,000 men in one broad and deep column. Two cavalry brigades, Lamotte’s 3rd Hussars and 15th Chasseurs, and Gardanne’s 15th and 25th Dragoons, were in front. Then came the thirteen battalions of Loison’s division, in a line of columns; behind them was Mermet with eleven battalions more, while three regiments of Marchand’s division (the fourth was garrisoning Ciudad Rodrigo) formed the reserve. In a grey morning, following a night of bitter rain, the French horsemen rode at the British cavalry pickets, and sent them flying helter-skelter across the three miles of rolling ground that lay in front of the Light Division. On hearing the fire of the carbines Craufurd’s men turned out with their accustomed celerity, and in a very short space were aligned to the right of Almeida, with their flank only 800 yards from the glacis, and their front covered by a series of high stone walls bounding suburban fields. There would have been just enough time to get cavalry, guns, and impedimenta across the bridge of the Coa if the General had started off at once. But, not realizing the fearful strength that lay behind the French cavalry advance, he resolved to treat himself to a rearguard action, and not to go till he was pushed. On a survey of the ground it is easy to understand the temptation, for it would be hard to find a prettier battlefield for a detaining force, if only the enemy were in no more than moderate strength. A long double-headed spur runs down from the high plateau on which Almeida stands to the Coa. Successive points of it can be held one after the other, and it is crossed by many stone walls giving good cover for skirmishers. With his left covered by the fire of the fortress, and his right ‘refused’ and trending back towards the river, Craufurd waited to be attacked, intending to give the leading French brigade a lesson. There was a delay of more than an hour before the French infantry was up, but when the assault came it was overwhelming. Craufurd’s line of three British and two Portuguese battalions was suddenly assaulted by Loison’s thirteen, who came on at the pas de charge ‘yelling, with drums beating, and the officers, like mountebanks, running ahead with their hats on their swords, capering like madmen and crying as they turned to wave on their men, “Allons, enfants de la Patrie, le premier qui s’avan?era, Napoléon le recompensera.”’ The rolling fire of the British stopped the first rush, when suddenly a French cavalry regiment, the 3rd Hussars, charged across the interval between Craufurd’s left and the walls of Almeida, braving the fire of the ramparts in the most gallant style. Some fell, but the gunners were flurried at this unexpected development, and fired wildly, so that the hussars swept down unchecked on the extreme flank of the Light Division, where a company of the 95th Rifles was annihilated, and began riding along the rear of the line and rolling it up. They were luckily checked for a moment by a stone wall, but Craufurd saw that he must retreat at once, since he was turned on the side where he had thought that he was safest. The cavalry and guns were ordered to gallop for the bridge, the Ca?adores to follow them, and the rest of the infantry to fall back in échelon from the left, defending each enclosure and fold of the hillside as long as possible. But it is hard to make an orderly retreat when a foe with twofold strength in his fighting line is pressing hard. Moreover, the road to the bridge has an unfortunate peculiarity; instead of making straight for its goal it overshoots it, in order to descend the slope at an easy point, and then comes back along the river bank for a quarter of a mile. The cavalry and guns, forced to keep to the road because the hillside was too steep for them, had to cover two sides of a triangle with a sharp turn at the apex, which delayed them terribly. To add to the trouble an artillery caisson was upset at a sharp turn, and took much trouble to right and send forward. Thus it chanced that the covering infantry were driven down close to the bridge before the Ca?adores and the last of the guns had crossed the river. The retreat of the three British battalions had been most perilous; at one moment a wing of the 43rd found themselves checked by a vineyard wall ten feet high, while the French were pressing hard on their rear. They only escaped by shoving a long part of it over by sheer strength—fortunately, like all other walls in this part of Portugal, it was made of dry flat stones without mortar. Finally the 43rd, the Rifles, and part of the 52nd were massed on a long knoll covered with pine-trees, which lies above the bridge and completely masks it against an attack from above. While they held firm, Craufurd ranged the guns and the Ca?adores on the slopes upon the other side, so as to command the passage when the rest of the troops should have to cross. He then began to withdraw the 43rd, and part of that battalion had already crossed the water, when five companies of the 52nd, which had occupied the extreme right wing of the division, were seen hastening along the river bank some way above the bridge. They had held out a little too long on the slopes above, and seemed likely to be cut off, for the French, noting their position, made a vigorous effort, and carried the knoll which protected their line of retreat to the point of passage. This was a desperate crisis, but such was the splendid courage and initiative of the regimental officers of the Light Division that the disaster was averted. At one point Beckwith, colonel of the Rifles, at another Major McLeod of the 43rd, called on the disordered mass of men, who had been driven back to the bridge head, to charge again and save the 52nd. The soldiers grasped the situation, cheered and followed; they recaptured the knoll that they had just lost, and held it for ten minutes more, gaining time for the companies of the 52nd to pass behind and cross the bridge. ‘No one present,’ wrote an eye-witness, ‘can fail to remember the gallantry of Major McLeod. How either he or his horse escaped being blown to atoms, while in this daring manner he charged on horseback at the head of some 200 skirmishers of the 43rd and 95th mixed together, and headed them in making a dash at the line of French infantry, whom we dislodged, I am at a loss to imagine. It was one of those extraordinary escapes which tend to implant in the mind some faith in the doctrine of fatality.’
The moment that the 52nd were safe, the troops on the knoll evacuated it, and crossed the bridge behind them at full speed, while the French reoccupied the wooded eminence. If Ney had been wise he would have stopped at this moment, and have contented himself with having driven in the Light Division with a loss of 300 men, while his own troops had suffered comparatively little. But, carried away by the excitement of victory, he resolved to storm the bridge, thinking that the British troops were too much shaken and disordered to make another stand, even in a strong position. There were plenty of examples in recent French military history, from Lodi to Ebersberg, where passages had been forced under difficulties as great. Accordingly he ordered the 66th, the leading regiment of Loison’s division, to push on and cross the river. This was a dire mistake: Craufurd already had the Ca?adores in position behind stone walls a little above the bridge, and Ross’s guns placed across the road so as to sweep it from end to end. The British battalions were no sooner across the river than they began to string themselves out behind the rocks and walls, which lie in a sort of small amphitheatre on the slope commanding the passage. The bridge, a two-arched structure seventy yards long, crosses the Coa diagonally, at a point where it is narrowed down between rocks, and flows very fiercely: it was flooded at this moment from the rain of the previous night, and was swelling still, for a tropical storm had just begun and raged at intervals throughout the afternoon. The cavalry, useless at the bridge, was sent up-stream to watch some difficult fords near Alveirenos.
The French 66th, ordered by the Marshal to carry the bridge, formed its grenadiers on the knoll, to lead the column, and then charged at the passage. But the leading company was mown down, before it had got half way across, by a concentrated musketry salvo from the hillside in front, and the enfilading fire of the guns from the right. The column broke, and the men recoiled and dispersed among the rocks and trees by the bank, from whence they opened a fierce but ineffective fire upon the well-sheltered British battalions. Ney, who had now lost his temper, ordered up a bataillon d’élite of light infantry which had distinguished itself at the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, and told his aide de camp Sprünglin to take the command and cross at all costs. There ensued a most gallant effort and a hideous butchery. The Chasseurs flung themselves at the bridge, and pushed on till it was absolutely blocked by the bodies of the killed and the wounded, and till they themselves had been almost literally exterminated, for out of a battalion of little more than 300 men 90 were killed and 147 wounded in less than ten minutes. A few survivors actually crossed the bridge, and threw themselves down among the rocks at its western end, where they took shelter from the British fire in a little corner of dead ground, but could of course make no further attempt to advance.
Ney, irritated beyond measure, now bade a mounted officer sound for a ford at a spot above the bridge, where the river spreads out into a broad reach. But horse and man were killed by a volley from the British side, and floated down the swollen stream. Finding the river impracticable, the Marshal again ordered the 66th to go forward: this third attack, delivered without the dash and determination of the first two, was beaten back with little trouble. The firing then died down, and during one of the fierce rainstorms of the late afternoon the few chasseurs who had crossed the bridge ran back and escaped to their own bank. Craufurd held the position that he had occupied till midnight, and then retired on Pinhel. He had lost 333 men only, and was fortunate therein, for half his division might have been destroyed if the officers had shown less intelligence and the men less pluck. The French had 527 casualties, four-fifths of them in the mad attempt to force the bridge, in which the colonel of the 66th and fifteen of his officers had fallen, and the battalion of Chasseurs had been practically exterminated. Ney forwarded an honest chronicle of the day’s doings to his chief, which Masséna wrote up, and sent to the Emperor turned into a work of fancy, in which he declared that he had destroyed 1,200 of Craufurd’s men (whom he estimated at 2,000 horse and 8,000 infantry, double their real strength), taken 300 prisoners, a colour, and two guns. Making no mention of the complete check that Loison’s division had suffered at the bridge, he stated that ‘the Imperial troops have shown once again this day that there is no position which can resist their intrepidity.’ He added foolish gossip, ‘Their Estafete-Mor (chief Portuguese courier) has been captured with all his dispatches, in which are several of the 25th and 26th instant, which declare that the English army is in complete rout, that its deplorable state cannot be exaggerated, that the English have never been in such a hot corner, that they have lost sixty officers, of whom they buried twenty-four on the battlefield, about 400 dead and 700 wounded.’ Apparently these ‘dispatches’ are an invention of Masséna’s own. It is incredible that any British officer can have written such stuff after a combat of which every man present was particularly proud, and in which the losses had been incredibly small, considering the risks that had been run. Four officers, not twenty-four, had been killed, and one made prisoner. Instead of being in ‘complete rout’ the Light Division had retired at leisure and unmolested, without leaving even a wounded man or a single cart behind.
Wellington was justly displeased with Craufurd for accepting this wholly unnecessary combat: if the Light Division had been withdrawn behind the Coa on the 22nd, as he had advised, no danger would have been incurred, and the bridge might have been defended without the preliminary retreat to the water’s edge. Yet so great was the confidence in which Craufurd was held by Wellington, that their correspondence shows no break of cordiality or tension of relations during the ensuing days, though unofficially the divisional general was aware that the Commander-in-Chief had disapproved his action, and felt the blame that was unspoken in the keenest fashion. There was another British general involved in a serious degree of culpability on the 24th: this was Picton, who hearing at his post of Pinhel the firing in the morning, rode up to the bridge of the Coa; there he met Craufurd, who was just preparing to resist Ney’s attempt to cross the river. Picton was asked to bring up the 3rd Division in support, which could have been done in less than three hours, but roughly refused, saying apparently that Craufurd might get out of his own scrape. The generals parted after an exchange of some hard words, and Picton rode back to order his division to get ready to retreat, having committed one of the greatest military sins, that of refusing to support a comrade in the moment of danger, because he did not choose to compromise his own troops.
Having cleared the country-side beyond the Coa by pressing back the Light Division, and having ascertained by a reconnaissance that Picton had evacuated Pinhel on the night of the 25th, Masséna was able to sit down to besiege Almeida at his leisure. The investment was assigned to Ney and the 6th Corps, while Junot and the 8th Corps were brought up from the Agueda, and placed in the villages behind and to the right of the besieged place, so as to be able to support Ney at a few hours’ notice. The extreme steepness of the banks of the Coa during its whole course rendered it most unlikely that Wellington would attempt the relief of Almeida by a direct advance. He would have had to force a passage, and the Coa, unlike the Agueda, has very few fords. Its only two bridges, that opposite Almeida, and that higher up at Castello Bom, were held in force by the 6th Corps. The siege however might not improbably prove long. Almeida was in far better repair than Ciudad Rodrigo, and had less defects. The little town is situated on the culminating knoll of an undulating plateau, a very slight eminence, but one which was not commanded by any higher ground as Rodrigo was by the two Tesons. The outline of the place is almost circular, and exactly fits the round knoll on which it stands. It has six bastions, with demi-lunes and a covered way. There is a dry ditch cut in the solid rock, for Almeida lies on a bare granite plateau, with only two or three feet of earth covering the hard stratum below. It was well armed with over 100 guns, forty of which were 18-pounders or still heavier. It had casemates completely proof against bomb fire, and large enough to cover the whole garrison. This, as has been already said, consisted of one regular regiment, the 24th of the Line over 1,200 strong, and the three militia regiments of Arganil, Trancoso, and Vizeu—in all some 4,000 infantry, with a squadron of the 11th cavalry regiment and 400 gunners. The governor was William Cox—an English colonel and a Portuguese brigadier; he had with him five other English officers, all the rest of the garrison being Portuguese. There was an ample store both of food and of ammunition, which Wellington had been pouring in ever since the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo began. Only two serious defects existed in the place: the first was that its glacis was too low, and left exposed an unduly large portion of the walls. The second, a far worse fault, was that the grand magazine was established in a rather flimsy mediaeval castle in the centre of the town, and was not nearly so well protected as could have been desired. Nevertheless Wellington calculated that Almeida should hold out at least as long as Ciudad Rodrigo, and had some hope that its siege would detain Masséna so much that the autumn rains would set in before he had taken the place, in which case the invasion of Portugal would assume a character of difficulty which it was far from presenting in August or September.
For some days after the investment of Almeida had been completed the 6th Corps remained quiescent, and made no attempt to break ground in front of the place. Ney was waiting for the Grand Park and the train, which had now started in detachments from Ciudad Rodrigo, but were advancing very slowly on account of the lack of draught animals. For a moment Wellington thought it possible that the enemy was about to mask Almeida, and to advance into Portugal with his main army without delay. This hypothesis received some support from the facts that Junot had moved up from the Agueda, and that Reynier had shown the head of a column beyond the Pass of Perales. This last appeared a most significant movement; for if the 2nd Corps was about to march up from the Tagus to join Masséna, the deduction was that it was required to join in a general invasion, since it was clear that it was not needed for the mere siege of Almeida. Wellington accordingly wrote to urge Hill to keep a most vigilant eye on Reynier, and to be ready to move up to the Mondego the moment that it was certain that his opponent had passed the Sierra de Gata and linked himself to the main French army. As a matter of fact there was, as yet, no danger from Reynier. The advance of one of his flanking detachments to Navas Frias beyond the Pass of Perales, and a raid made upon Penamacor on July 31 and upon Monsanto on August 1, by another, were pure matters of foraging and reconnaissance. Reynier had no orders to move up his whole force to join Masséna, and was only amusing himself by demonstrations. His actions became most puzzling to Wellington when, a few days later, he called back all the troops that had moved northward, and concentrated his force at Zarza la Mayor, on the road to Castello Branco, so as to threaten once more to invade Central Portugal by the line of the Tagus. This was no device of his own, but the result of a dispatch from Masséna dated July 27, ordering him to keep more to the south for the present, to threaten Abrantes, and to afford Hill no chance of joining Wellington.
Reynier’s feints meanwhile had given Hill some trouble; the appearance of a northward move on the part of his adversary had caused the British general to make ready for a parallel march on Fund?o and Guarda, so as to connect himself with his chief. He transferred his head quarters first from Castello Branco to Sarzedas, and then from Sarzedas to Atalaya, at the foot of the pass that leads to the Mondego valley, intending to cross the mountains the moment that Reynier had passed over the Perales defiles with his main body. But seeing the 2nd Corps unexpectedly turning back and concentrating at Zarza, Hill also retraced his steps, and lay at Sarzedas again from August 3rd till September 21st, with his advanced guard at Castello Branco and his cavalry well out to the front along the Spanish frontier, watching every movement of the 2nd Corps. During this time of waiting the Portuguese cavalry of his division had two small but successful engagements with Reynier’s horse, of whom they cut up a squadron on the 3rd of August near Penamacor and another on the 22nd at Ladoeiro, when two officers and sixty men of the Hanoverian Chasseurs à Cheval were killed or taken.
Wellington’s doubts as to Masséna’s intentions in the first days of August were provoked not merely by the movements of the 2nd Corps, but by a demonstration made on an entirely new front by General Serras, the officer who had been left with an unattached division to hold the plains of Leon, when Junot and the 8th Corps went off to join the main army on the Agueda. In obedience to Masséna’s orders, on July 27 Serras collected at Benavente as much of his division as could be spared from garrison duty, and moved forward to threaten the frontier of the Tras-os-Montes, far to the north of Portugal. He advanced with some 5,000 men as far as Puebla de Senabria, from which on July 29 he drove out a small Spanish force under General Taboada—the weak brigade which Echevarria had formerly commanded. Silveira immediately collected all the Portuguese militia of his district at Braganza, and prepared to defend the frontier. But Serras unexpectedly turned back, left a battalion of the 2nd Swiss Regiment and a squadron of horse in Puebla de Senabria, and returned to Zamora. The moment that he was gone Silveira and Taboada united their forces, attacked this small detached force, routed it, and shut it up in the town on August 4. It was forced to surrender some six days later, about 20 officers and 350 men, all that remained of 600, being made prisoners. Serras, who had hurried back when he heard of Silveira’s offensive movement, was too late by twelve hours to save his men, and found Puebla de Senabria empty, for the allies had gone off with their prisoners and taken to the mountains. He then retired to Benavente, and Taboada reoccupied Puebla de Senabria, where he was not again disturbed. Serras soon after was drawn away to the north-east by the demands of Bonnet, whose communications with Santander had once more been cut by Porlier’s roving Asturian bands. He called on his colleague to attack this partisan force in the rear, and while Serras was hunting it at Potes and Alba, in the Cantabrian Hills, Northern Portugal and Galicia were left undisturbed in September.
While glancing at the subsidiary operations in this remote corner of Spain, it may be worth while to note, as a proof of the slight hold which Bonnet and Serras possessed on their allotted districts, that on June 7 Mahy threatened Astorga, while the Asturian bands of Colonel Barcena, eluding Bonnet, came down into the plains by the Pass of Pajares and surprised Leon. They got into the town by escalade at night, held it for two days, and only evacuated it when Serras came up in strength on June 9. Provoked at this bold adventure, Bonnet made his last attempt to conquer Western Asturias, and so to destroy the indefatigable and evasive partisans in his front. He forced his way across the Narcea and the Navia, and his vanguard had reached Castropol, on the Galician border, upon July 5, when he heard to his disgust that the enemy had slipped behind him. Barcena was threatening his base at Oviedo, while Porlier’s band, carried round by English ships, had landed near Llanes and cut the communication with Santander. These clever moves brought Bonnet back in haste: he evacuated Western Asturias, called up Serras to his aid, and was engaged in August and September in the hunt after Porlier which we have already mentioned.
But to return to the main focus of the war in the North. On August 15th Ney’s troops, having at last received the siege-train and a good supply of munitions from Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca, broke ground in front of Almeida. Wellington was much relieved at the news, as it was now clear that Masséna was about to besiege the place, and not to mask it and march forward into Portugal. The front which the engineers of the 6th Corps had chosen for attack was that facing the bastion of San Pedro on the south-east front of the town. The first parallel was drawn at a distance of only 500 yards from the walls; it was found very difficult to complete, owing to the shallowness of the earth, and had to be built with gabions and sandbags rather than to be excavated in the rocky subsoil. In many places outcrops of stone came to the surface, and had actually to be blasted away by the sappers, in order to allow of a trench of the shallowest sort being formed. It was clear that the construction of approaches towards the town would present the greatest difficulties, since there was little earth in which to burrow. Between the 17th and the 24th no less than eleven batteries were constructed along the first parallel. They were armed with more than fifty heavy guns, for there was artillery in abundance; in addition to the old siege-train many of the Spanish guns taken in Ciudad Rodrigo had been brought forward. The Portuguese kept up a vigorous but not very destructive fire all the time; but on the 24th they succeeded in preventing the commencement of a second parallel, driving out the workmen before they could cover themselves in the stony ground. At six o’clock on the morning of the 26th August the batteries were all completed and opened fire. Several quarters of the town were in flames before the afternoon, and the guns on the three bastions attacked were unable to hold their own against the converging fire directed on them. But no serious damage had been done to the defences, and the governor was undismayed. At seven o’clock in the evening, however, a fearful disaster occurred—one in its own way unparalleled in magnitude during the whole Peninsular War. The door of the great magazine in the castle had been opened, in order to allow of the sending out of a convoy of powder to the southern ramparts, where the artillery had been hard at work all day. A leaky barrel was handed out, which left a trail of powder behind it along the ground; it was being fixed to the saddle of a pack-ass when a French bomb fell in the courtyard of the castle. In bursting, the bomb chanced to ignite the train; the spark ran along it and exploded another barrel at the door of the magazine, which was still open. This mischance fired the whole store, and in two seconds the castle, the cathedral at its side, and the whole central portion of the town had been blasted out of existence. ‘The earth trembled,’ wrote a French eye-witness, ‘and we saw an immense whirlwind of fire and smoke rise from the middle of the place. It was like the bursting of a volcano—one of the things that I can never forget after twenty-six years. Enormous blocks of stone were hurled into the trenches, where they killed and wounded some of our men. Guns of heavy calibre were lifted from the ramparts and hurled down far outside them. When the smoke cleared off, a great part of Almeida had disappeared, and the rest was a heap of débris.’ Five hundred of the garrison perished, including nearly every man of the two hundred artillerymen who were serving the guns on the front of attack. Some inhabitants were killed, but not many, for the majority had taken refuge in the casemates when the bombardment began that morning. It was the unfortunate soldiers who were manning the walls that suffered.
Map of the combat of the Coa
Enlarge COMBAT OF THE COA.
JULY 24TH, 1810.
Fearing that the French might seize the moment for an escalade, General Cox ran to the ramparts and, assisted by a Portuguese artillery officer, loaded and fired into the trenches some of the few guns on the south front which were not disabled. He turned out the whole garrison, and kept them under arms that night, lying behind the walls in expectation of an assault which never came. The morning light enabled him to realize the full extent of the disaster; the bastions and curtains had suffered little, the shell, so to speak, of the town was still intact, and the casemates had stood firm, but everything within the enceinte was wrecked. Only five houses in the place had kept their roofs: the castle was a deep hole, like the crater of a volcano: the streets were absolutely blocked with ruins, so that there was no going from place to place save along the ramparts.
There were still 4,000 men under arms; but the officer commanding the artillery reported that thirty-nine barrels of powder, and a few hundred rounds in the small expense-magazines on the ramparts, were all that had escaped the explosion. That is to say, there was not powder in the place to keep up a reply for one day to the batteries of the besieger. The infantry had 600,000 cartridges in their regimental stores (150 rounds per man) but that was of no use for the heavy guns. Moreover, more than half the gunners had perished in the disaster of the previous night—only 200 were left to man nearly 100 guns that were still serviceable. It was clear that Almeida was doomed, since it could not defend itself without powder: but there was a chance that Wellington, whose outposts must have heard and seen the explosion, might think it worth while to dash forward and endeavour to save the garrison during the next twenty-four hours. Therefore Cox resolved to protract his resistance as long as was possible, to give his chief the option of fighting if he should so please. But the defence could not be prolonged for more than a day or two at the most.
At nine on the morning of the 27th Masséna sent in his aide de camp Pelet to demand the surrender of the fortress. Cox had him blindfolded, and taken into a casemate for their interview, so that he might not be able to judge of the awful effects of the explosion. The usual haggling followed—the French officer threatened that the place should be escaladed at once, and the garrison put to the sword. The governor replied that his walls were intact, that he could still defend himself, and that the ‘deplorable accident’ had not appreciably diminished his resisting power. But he finally consented to send out an officer to the French camp to negotiate for terms. All this was merely done to gain time, and the semaphore on the western ramparts was signalling desperate messages to Wellington all the morning.
Cox’s attempt to gain time was fruitless, for a reason that he had not foreseen. The garrison was hopelessly demoralized, knew that it must surrender, and did not see why it should expose itself to another day’s bombardment for a lost cause. During the conference in the casemate General d’Alorna and other Portuguese officers on Masséna’s staff came out of the trenches, and boldly presented themselves at the foot of the walls, calling to their compatriots above and beseeching them to accept the good terms offered, and not to risk their lives for Wellington, who would abandon them just as he had abandoned Herrasti at Ciudad Rodrigo. The officers on the ramparts ought to have driven the renegades away, by shots if necessary; but, far from doing so, they entered into long conversation with them and approved their arguments. D’Alorna recognized some old acquaintances among the regulars, and pledged his word to them that an assault was imminent, and that they were doomed if they made any resistance. What was still more unlucky for Cox was that the officer whom he sent out to the French camp to treat, Major Barreiros of the artillery, was one of those who were most convinced that further defence was fruitless; he divulged the hopeless state of the place to the Marshal, and bade him press his attack without fear, for the garrison would not fight. He himself remained at the French head quarters, and did not return to Almeida. Masséna, therefore, sent back a blank refusal of all Cox’s demands and conditions, and ordered the bombardment to recommence at seven in the evening, while approaches were thrown out from the second parallel towards the ramparts. A feeble musketry fire alone replied.
The renewal of the bombardment speedily brought matters inside the place to a head. A deputation of Portuguese officers, headed by Bernardo Da Costa, the second in command, visited Cox and informed him that further resistance was madness, and that if he did not at once hoist the white flag they would open the gates to the enemy. The Governor was forced to yield, and capitulated at eleven o’clock on the night of the 27th. Masséna granted him the terms that the regular troops should be sent as prisoners to France, while the three militia regiments should be allowed to disperse to their homes, on giving their parole not to serve again during the war.
On the morning of the 28th the garrison marched out, still 4,000 strong, its total loss during the siege having been some 600—nearly all destroyed in the explosion. The French had lost fifty-eight killed and 320 wounded during the operations. The capitulation was no sooner ratified than it was violated: instead of dismissing the militia and marching off the regulars towards France, Masséna kept them together, and set the renegades d’Alorna and Pamplona to tempt them to enter the French service. The officers were promised confirmation of their rank, the men were invited to compare the relative advantages of prison and of joining the victorious side and keeping their liberty. The arguments of the traitors seemed to prevail; almost the whole of the regulars and 600 of the militia signified their consent to enlist with the enemy. The rest of the militia were turned loose, but d’Alorna was able to organize a brigade of three battalions to serve the Emperor as the ‘Second Portuguese Legion.’ But the intentions of these docile recruits were quite other than Masséna had supposed. They had changed their allegiance merely in order to escape being sent to France, and while left unguarded during the next three days, absconded in bands of 200 or 300 at a time, officers and all, and kept presenting themselves at Silveira’s and Wellington’s outposts, for a week. The French, undeceived too late, disarmed the few men remaining in the camp, who were packed off to France, to rejoin Cox and the half-dozen officers who had loyally refused to accept d’Alorna’s offers. Wellington had been somewhat alarmed when the first news of the adhesion of the garrison to the French cause reached him, fearing that it implied serious disaffection in the whole Portuguese army. He was soon undeceived on this point, as the troops gradually streamed in to his camp. But he was then seized with grave doubts as to whether he could, consistently with military honour, accept the service of these perjured but patriotic people. ‘It was well enough for the private men, but highly disgraceful to the character of the officers,’ he observed, and was pondering what should be done, and proposing to cashier the officers, when he received a proclamation from the Regency approving the conduct of the deserters and restoring them to their place in the army. Finally he resolved that, since Masséna had obviously broken the capitulation by his action, it might be held that it was not binding on the prisoners, and ordered the 24th Regiment to be re-formed at its head quarters at Braganza. The militia he dismissed to their homes, on the scruple that the French had let some, though not all of them, go free after the capitulation. There remained the problem of what was to be done with the Portuguese officers who had played a treacherous part on the 27th, especially Barreiros, the negotiator who had betrayed the state of the town to Masséna, and Da Costa, who had headed the mutinous deputation to Cox, which forced him to surrender. Finally, their names were included with those of the officers who had served on Masséna’s Portuguese staff during the campaign, in a great indictment placed before a special commission on traitors (called a Junta de Inconfidencia), which sat at Lisbon during the autumn. All from d’Alorna downwards were declared guilty of high treason, and condemned to death on December 22, 1810, but only two were caught and executed—Jo?o de Mascarenhas, one of d’Alorna’s aides de camp, and Da Costa, the lieutenant-governor of Almeida. The former was captured by the Ordenan?a while carrying Masséna’s dispatches in 1810, and the latter was apprehended in 1812; Mascarenhas died by the garotte, Da Costa was shot. Of the others, some never returned to Portugal, the others were pardoned at various dates between 1816 and 1820.
During the siege of Almeida, the British army had been held in a position somewhat less advanced and more concentrated than that which it had occupied in July. Wellington had brought back his head quarters from Alverca to Celorico, where he had the Light Division under his hand. A few miles behind, on the high-road running down the south bank of the Mondego, was the 1st Division, at Villa Cortes. Picton and the 3rd Division had been drawn back from Pinhel to Carapichina, but Cole and the 4th remained firm at Guarda. The Portuguese brigades of Coleman and A. Campbell were at Pinhan?os, that of Pack at Jegua. The whole of the cavalry had come up from the rear to join the brigade that had recently operated under Craufurd’s orders. They now lay in a thick line of six regiments from in front of Guarda, through Alverca and Freixadas to Lamegal. Thus the whole army was concentrated on a short front of fifteen miles, covering the watershed between the Coa and the Mondego, and the bifurcation of the roads which start from Celorico, down the two banks of the last-named river. The French held back, close to Almeida, with a strong advance guard at Pinhel, and occasionally raided the low country towards the Douro, in the direction of Villanova de Fosboa and Castel Rodrigo. About August 19 Wellington moved forward a day’s march, the front of his infantry columns being pushed up to Alverca and Freixadas, on a false rumour that Masséna was leaving the 6th Corps unsupported at Almeida, and had drawn back Junot into the plains of Leon. If this had been the case, Wellington intended to make a push to relieve the besieged fortress. But he soon discovered that the report was baseless, and that the 8th Corps was still on the Azava and the Agueda, wherefore he halted, and was still lying twelve miles in front of Celorico when the noise of the explosion at Almeida, and the cessation of fire on the next day, betrayed the fact that the place had fallen, and that there was no longer any reason for maintaining a forward position. On the night of the 28th, therefore, the whole army was drawn back once more to the strong line between Guarda and Celorico, and arrangements were made for a further retreat, in case the French should follow up the capture of Almeida by an instant and general advance. Masséna seemed at first likely to make this move: on September 2 a brigade of infantry and 1,200 horse drove in the British cavalry outposts to Ma?al de Ch?o only five miles in front of Celorico. Looking upon this as the commencement of the serious invasion of Portugal, Wellington sent back his infantry to Villa Cortes, Pinhan?os, and Moita, far down the high-road on the south of the Mondego, and bade Cole draw in the 4th Division from Guarda to San Martinho, under the north side of the Serra da Estrella. Only cavalry were left at, and in front of, Celorico and Guarda. This retreat shows that Wellington was fully convinced that the French would advance along the high-road to the south of the Mondego, where he intended to stand at bay on the Alva, behind the entrenchments of Ponte de Murcella.
The main point of interest at this moment was the movements of the French 2nd Corps, which still lay in cantonments at Zarza and Coria in front of Hill. Guarda being no longer held in force, it was clear that Hill could not safely join the main army by the road Atalaya-Fund?o-Guarda, if Reynier moved up by the Pass of Perales to Alfayates and Sabugal. Wellington began an anxious daily correspondence with Hill, giving him a new line of march by Sobreira Formosa, Villa d’el Rei and Espinhal, for his junction, but ordering him to be sure that he did not move till Reynier had thoroughly committed himself to the transference of his whole force to the north of the Sierra de Gata. For it would be disastrous if feints should induce the British detaining force to leave Villa Velha and Abrantes uncovered, and Reynier should turn out to have selected them as his objective, and to be meditating an invasion along the Castello Branco line. It was even possible, though not likely, that Masséna might bring up the 6th and 8th Corps to join Reynier, instead of bringing Reynier across the mountains to join them. But every contingency had to be provided against, the unlikely ones as well as the likely. As a corollary to Hill’s march, that of Leith had also to be arranged; he must wait at Thomar till it was certain that the 2nd Corps had moved, but the moment that certainty was obtained, must march for Ponte de Murcella, and join the main army, if the French had gone north, but support Hill on the Castello Branco road if they had taken the other, and less probable, course.
NOTE ON ALMEIDA AND THE BRIDGE OF THE COA
The small circular town of Almeida has never recovered from the disaster of 1810. The population does not fill up the area within the walls: open spaces are frequent, and some of the more important buildings—especially the old palace of the governor—stand in ruins. Others show solid seventeenth- or eighteenth-century masonry on the ground floor, and flimsy modern repairs above, where the upper stories were blown away by the explosion. The cathedral has never been properly rebuilt, and is a mere fragment. The railway passes twelve miles south of Almeida, so that the place has had no chance of recovery, and remains in a state of decay. The walls stand just as they were left after Wellington’s hasty repairs in 1811. The vast bomb-proof shelters repeatedly mentioned in narratives of the siege are still visible, damp but intact. The surrounding country-side is a low, rolling, treeless upland—the edge of the vast plains of Leon. It contrasts very strongly with the hilly and picturesque scenery that is reached when once the Coa has been passed.
From Almeida the ground slopes down sharply to the place of Craufurd’s celebrated skirmish. The town is not visible after the first mile of the descent towards the deep-sunk gorge through which the Coa cuts its way. The high-road is very bad for artillery, being steep, filled with great stones, and in many places shut in by high banks, which tower above it and make it narrow. The sharp turn at the end, where it descends to the river with a sudden twist, must have been specially tiresome to a force with cavalry and guns, compelled to a hasty retreat. All the slopes about the road are cut up into small fields by high walls of undressed stone, without mortar, such as are seen on Cotswold. The bridge is not visible till the traveller approaching from Almeida has got down to the level of the river: it is completely masked by the high fir-clad knoll described in the text, so long as he is descending the slope above. From the point where the road swerves aside, to avoid this knoll, there is a rough goat-track down to the still invisible bridge, but this is not available for guns, horses, or formed infantry, only for men scrambling individually.
The two-arched bridge is seventy yards long; it crosses the Coa diagonally, with a curious twist in the middle, where there is a little monument recording the reparation of the structure by John VI, in the days after the war was over. There is no mention of Craufurd’s fight in the inscription—only a laudation of the King. The bridge crosses the river at a sort of gorge—the place where the rocks on the two sides come nearest. Hence the stream runs under it very fiercely, being constricted to far less than its normal breadth. Up-stream the channel broadens and the passage looks much less formidable, but for some distance on each side of the bridge the river is very rapid, darting between rocks and boulders. The little corner where the few French who passed the bridge found a small angle of dead-ground can be easily identified. It was just to their right after crossing. All the rest of the ground on the west bank could be thoroughly searched by the British guns, which were placed a few hundred yards up the road on the left hand, as well as by the fire of the infantry ensconced among rocks and boulders above the bridge.
Of the French attacking force during the early part of the skirmish, those who were on their left, nearest the river and opposite the 52nd, had far easier ground to cover than those on the right, opposite the 43rd. It is not so high or rough, and less cut up by stone walls. Hence the stress on the 52nd ought to have been the heavier—yet they lost only 22 men to the 129 of the 43rd. The damage to the latter must have been caused partly when the cavalry got in among them, just as the retreat began, partly when they stormed the knoll to cover the retreat of the 52nd.
The scene of the fight is most picturesque on a small scale—one of the prettiest corners in Portugal, all rock, fir-trees, and rushing water.—
SUCHET AND AUGEREAU IN ARAGON, VALENCIA, AND CATALONIA, MARCH-JULY 1810
Though Suchet had successfully pacified the plains of Aragon during the autumn of 1809, and though Augereau in the last month of that year had received the surrender of the much-enduring garrison of Gerona, the position of the French in North-Eastern Spain was still far from satisfactory. It was not yet possible for the 3rd and the 7th Corps to combine their operations. While the broad strip of territory in Western Catalonia reaching from the foot of the Pyrenees to the sea—whose places of strength were Lerida, Tarragona, and Tortosa—still remained intact, Augereau and Suchet could still communicate only by the circuitous route through France: a letter from Saragossa to Barcelona took a fortnight or more to arrive at its destination. It was high time that they should endeavour to get into touch with each other, by cutting through the Spanish line of defence. Both of the corps-commanders had now a comparatively free hand, and could assemble a considerable force for offensive operations. Suchet’s position was the happier: he had no Spanish army opposed to him at the moment. His only opponents were—to the West the bold guerrillero Mina the Younger on the borders of Navarre; to the South Villacampa with the dilapidated remains of his band on the side of the Sierra de Albaracin and Molina; and to the East the governor of Lerida, who kept a flying force under Colonel Perena on foot between the Cinca and the Segre, for the encouragement of the insurgents of Eastern Aragon. None of these three opponents could do any serious mischief to the 3rd Corps, which had risen by the New Year of 1810 to a strength of 24,000 men, now that its drafts from France were beginning to arrive. Mina was the most tiresome of the three: he was a young man of untiring energy, and kept the borders of Navarre in a perpetual ferment, till he was finally put down by mere force of numbers. For while Suchet sent a number of columns under General Harispe to hunt him, Lagrange’s division of the newly arrived 8th Corps came down from the side of Pampeluna, and swept the valleys of the Arga and the Aragon from the other quarter. Pursued from one refuge to another by 12,000 men, Mina ended by bidding his followers disperse. He did not appear again as a combatant till the 8th Corps had passed on into Castile in the month of February 1810.
Villacampa and Perena being very weak adversaries, Suchet could now dispose of the greater part of his corps for offensive operations. Two lines of attack were open to him: the more natural and obvious one was to attack Lerida or Tortosa, while Augereau and the 7th Corps moved against them from the other side. This was Suchet’s own intention, and he had received dispatches from Paris which approved of the plan. But another objective was pointed out to him from another quarter. It will be remembered that while King Joseph and Soult were planning the details of their Andalusian expedition, one of the schemes which they discussed was the use of the 3rd Corps as a flanking detachment to cover their attack on Seville: it was to march on Valencia while Mortier marched on Badajoz. The plan was rejected in favour of the direct frontal march against the passes of the Sierra Morena. Nevertheless, when the defiles had been passed, and the King had entered Cordova in triumph, he recurred to his original scheme, and on January 27 Soult sent orders to Suchet directing him to make a dash at Valencia, and assuring him that the demoralization of the Spaniards was so great that he would probably enter the city without meeting with much resistance. Similar orders, as we have already seen, were sent to Ney, who was directed at the same moment to make himself master of Ciudad Rodrigo, which Soult and the King imagined to be likely to surrender at the first summons.
Suchet, though doubting (as he says) the wisdom of the plan of campaign imposed upon him, prepared to obey, and concentrated 8,000 men, consisting of Laval’s division and half that of Musnier, at Teruel, on the borders of Valencia, while Habert, with six battalions more, was to move in a separate parallel column from Alca?iz, and to strike down on to the sea-coast of Valencia by way of Morella. On their way to Teruel some of Laval’s columns made a side-stroke at Villacampa, and drove off his band into the mountains of New Castile.
The march on Valencia had already begun, when Suchet received at Teruel, on March 1, the dispatch from the Emperor which announced to him that the kingdom of Aragon had been made an independent ‘military government’ under his charge, and that he was for the future to take no orders from Madrid, but to seek all his instructions from Paris. By the same dispatch Suchet was informed that the Emperor approved of the plan for directing the 3rd Corps against Lerida and the rear of Catalonia which he had himself always advocated. But since Habert’s column had already disappeared in the mountains, and could not be recalled, and since his own advanced guard had actually crossed the borders of Valencia, Suchet thought that it was now too late to turn back, and that he must endeavour to carry out Soult’s orders, even though they were now countermanded by the Emperor. Accordingly he marched by Sarrion, on the road which leads from Teruel to Segorbe, and from thence to Murviedro on the Valencian coast, where Habert was to join him.
The force opposed to Suchet was that Valencian army which the governor—or rather the dictator—José Caro had so persistently refused to lend to Blake in the preceding autumn for the relief of Gerona. It was about 12,000 strong at the moment, and as some nine months had elapsed since the disaster of Belchite, where the Valencian troops had fared so badly, the regiments had been recruited up to their old strength, and had been thoroughly reorganized and re-equipped. Nevertheless, Caro did not wish to risk them in the open field, and, when Suchet’s approach was reported to him, ordered the troops to prepare to retreat within the walls of the city of Valencia, which had been so successfully defended against Moncey two years before. He was probably right in his decision: having no great superiority of numbers over the French invading columns, he would have been risking over much if he had offered battle on the frontier, even in an advantageous position. Behind the fortifications of Valencia, which had been improved and enlarged during the last two years, he could at least be certain of making a long and formidable resistance. If the enemy appeared without a great battering-train, and unprepared for a regular siege, the garrison would be absolutely safe. Accordingly, Caro sent out only a single brigade to observe and retard Suchet’s advance: this force, assisted by some armed peasants, tried to hold the defile of Alventosa against the French (March 4), but was beaten out of the position with ease, lost four guns, and retired by Segorbe and Murviedro on to Valencia, without offering further resistance. Suchet, following in the wake of the Spanish detachment, reached Murviedro on March 5, and there met Habert, whose march by Morella and Castellon-de-la-Plana had been absolutely unopposed.
A day later the French appeared in front of the fortifications of Valencia. Having surveyed the outworks, and summoned the place in vain, Suchet found that there was no more to be done. His bolt was shot: the city intended to defend itself: it was full of troops, and the whole population had been armed. Caro had given notice that the defence was to be conducted in the style of Saragossa, and as a foretaste of his intentions court-martialled and hanged several persons who were accused of being traitors. After lying four days in front of Valencia, Suchet marched off again on the night of March 10-11, having convinced himself that he had been sent on a fool’s errand by Soult and King Joseph. For the expedition had only been undertaken on the hypothesis that the enemy was demoralized and ready to surrender—which was clearly not the case. No siege train had been brought, and without heavy artillery Valencia was impregnable. The retreat of the French was hastened by the fact that their communications with Aragon had already been cut off. Villacampa, undismayed by his defeat in February, had returned to the front the moment that the invading columns had passed on to the Valencian coast. He had blockaded the garrison of Teruel, cut off two small columns which were moving in its neighbourhood, and captured four guns and some 300 prisoners. At the same moment, though Suchet was unaware of the fact, Colonel Perena, with a detachment from Lerida, had made a demonstration against Monzon, and when the garrison of Eastern Aragon concentrated to defend it, had fallen on Fraga and burnt the bridge there—the only crossing of the Cinca which was in French hands. Mina, too, warned of the departure of the main body of the 3rd Corps for the South, had reassembled some of his levies, and begun to render the road from Saragossa to Pampeluna once more unsafe.
Suchet, therefore, on withdrawing from Valencia, found plenty of occupation awaiting him in Aragon. Villacampa was once more chased into the wilds of the Sierra de Albaracin: and several columns were detached in pursuit of Mina. This time the young partisan was unfortunate—he was caught between one of Suchet’s detachments and a party sent out by the governor of Navarre, and taken prisoner on March 31, with some scores of his followers. His place, however, was taken ere long by his uncle Espoz y Mina, who rallied the remnant of the guerrilleros of North-Western Aragon, and continued the struggle with an energy as great, and a success far greater, than that of his nephew.
Meanwhile, the months of February and March had been wasted, so far as the 3rd Corps was concerned, and it was not till April that Suchet was able to take in hand the enterprise which he himself had approved, and to which the Emperor had now given his consent—the siege of Lerida. A few weeks after his return to Saragossa he received from Paris two imperial letters denouncing his late campaign as presumptuous, objectless, and altogether deserving of high condemnation.
While the Valencian expedition had been in progress Marshal Augereau had been trying his hand at the Catalan problems which Verdier and St. Cyr had found so puzzling. His luck had been bad—and his faults had been many—for of all the commanders-in-chief who successively endeavoured to subjugate the untameable principality he was decidedly the least capable. When Gerona fell, the main body of his army was let loose for operations in the open field. But Verdier’s divisions, on whom the burden of the siege work had fallen, were in much too dilapidated a condition for active service. Leaving them to recover their strength and gather up their convalescents, in cantonments between Figueras and Gerona, Augereau moved southwards in January, at the head of the troops of Souham and Pino, whose two divisions still counted 12,000 bayonets with the eagles, though they left behind them 5,000 sick in the hospitals of Figueras and Perpignan.
The Marshal’s main duty at this moment was to clear the road from Figueras to Barcelona, which the Spanish fortress of Gerona had so effectually blocked during the whole year 1809. All further advances were suspended till this operation should have been completed, by the Emperor’s special orders. Duhesme, indeed, isolated in Barcelona with some 6,000 men, communicating with France only by sea, and surrounded by a discontented population, which was reduced to semi-starvation by the blockade kept up by the British fleet, was in a perilous condition. There had been many who thought that if Blake, in October 1809, had marched against Barcelona instead of trying to throw succours into Gerona, he would have forced Augereau to abandon the siege of the latter place. For Duhesme would have been in such danger, since he was neither strong enough to fight in the open nor to man efficiently the immense circuit of the walls of Barcelona, that Augereau might probably have judged that it was better to save the capital of Catalonia than to continue the interminable blockade of the smaller town that was holding out so obstinately against him. Be this as it may, Augereau set Souham’s and Pino’s columns on the march early in January 1810, after having first executed at their head a sort of battue of the somatenes of the mountains around Gerona, as far as Ripol and Campredon. His progress was a reign of terror: he had issued on December 28th a proclamation stating that all irregulars taken with arms in their hands were to be treated as simple highway robbers, and hung without any form of trial. He was as good as his word, and all the prisoners taken by the flying columns of Souham and Pino were suspended on a line of gallows erected on the high-road between Gerona and Figueras. These atrocities turned the war in Catalonia into a struggle even more ferocious than that of 1809, for the natives, very naturally, retaliated upon every French straggler that they caught, and the Spanish regular officers had great difficulty in saving the lives even of large bodies who had laid down their arms upon formal terms of surrender.
Two roads lead from Gerona and the valley of the Ter to Barcelona—that by Vich and that by Hostalrich. They unite near Granollers, twenty miles outside Barcelona. Augereau marched with the Italian division of Pino by the second road, while he sent Souham by the other. Both met with opposition: the small castle of Hostalrich was still held by the Spaniards—it was the only fortified place in central Catalonia which was now in their hands, and commanded, though it did not actually block, the main road to Barcelona. On arriving before it, the Marshal ordered Mazzuchelli’s Italian brigade to form the siege, trusting that the place would fall in a few days; but finding the resistance more serious than he had expected, he finally continued his march, with the remainder of the Italian division, towards Granollers and Barcelona. He had ordered Duhesme to come out to meet him at the former place, with as many of his troops as he could spare from garrison duty.
Map ofCcatalonia
Enlarge CATALONIA
Souham meanwhile, on the eastern road, had entered Vich on January 11. He found that it had just been evacuated by the main body of the Spanish Army of Catalonia, whose head quarters had been maintained in that town all through the later months of the siege of Gerona. This force, still numbering about 7,000 men, was no longer under the command of its old general. Blake had resigned at Christmastide, after a lively altercation with the Junta of Catalonia, who laid the blame for the fall of Gerona on his shoulders, while he maintained that they were to blame for not having ordered the general levée en masse of the principality at an earlier date. The command then passed in quick succession to the two senior general officers of the Catalan army, first to the Marquis of Portago, and then, after he had fallen ill, to General Garcia Conde, Governor of Lerida. But these interim commanders-in-chief were replaced in a few weeks by a younger and much more active leader, Henry O’Donnell—the man who had conducted the second convoy for Gerona, and had cut his way out of the place with such splendid address and resolution. He had only just been raised to the rank of Major-General, yet was now entrusted by the Central Junta with the control of the entire army of Catalonia. As he was setting to work to reorganize it, Souham arrived in front of his head quarters. Judging it unwise to offer battle at the head of demoralized troops, O’Donnell evacuated Vich, and fell back to the mountains above it. Souham followed him with an advanced guard as far as the pass called the Col de Suspina, where the Spaniard suddenly turned upon the pursuing force, and hurled it back with loss upon the main body of the division (January 12, 1810). He refused, however, to face Souham next day, and retreated towards Manresa; thereupon the French general also turned back, thinking it profitless to leave the Vich-Barcelona road, and to plunge into the hills in pursuit of an evasive enemy. He ended by making his way across the mountains to join the Marshal.
Meanwhile, Augereau, with Pino’s Italian brigades, reached Granollers, and came into touch with Duhesme’s troops, just in time to find that a disaster had preceded his arrival. The Governor of Barcelona, in obedience to the orders sent him, had marched out on January 16 with three battalions and 250 cuirassiers in order to meet the Marshal. He waited four days at Granollers, and then left the brigade under the charge of Colonel Guétry, and returned in person to Barcelona, recalled by rumours of a threatened attack from the side of Tarragona. On the morning after his departure Guétry’s force, which believed itself in complete security, was suddenly surprised in its camps by a detachment sent out by O’Donnell. That enterprising officer had heard that Augereau was still twenty miles away, and that Guétry had scattered his men in the three villages of Santa Perpetua, Mollet, and Granollers, in order to cover them from the bitter January weather. Accordingly, he resolved to risk an attack on this unwary detachment. Two brigades—about 4,000 men—under the Marquis of Campo Verde, made a forced march across the mountains, and fell upon the villages at dawn. The battalion of the 112th in Santa Perpetua was completely cut to pieces or captured—only two men are said to have escaped. The 7th and the cuirassiers at Mollet fared somewhat better, but were driven back to Barcelona with heavy loss. Part of the third battalion, one of the 5th Italian Line regiment, which was posted at Granollers, escaped destruction by throwing itself into a fortified convent, and held out for two days, till it was saved by the approach of Augereau along the high-road. Altogether, Duhesme’s division was thinned by the loss of 1,000 men on January 21-22: Guétry had been taken prisoner, with some 600 men more and two guns. The Spaniards disappeared the moment that Augereau came in sight, and rejoined O’Donnell in the hills.
Augereau entered Barcelona on the twenty-fourth, and at once asserted his authority by deposing Duhesme from the governorship and sending him home to France. They were old enemies, and the general’s friends regarded his disgrace as a display of spite on the part of his superior. But as all the Spanish narratives describe the eighteen-months’ dictatorship of Duhesme as having been as much distinguished for private rapacity as for public oppression, it is probable that the Marshal’s action was wholly justifiable. The Emperor, however, refused to sanction the prosecution of the general on the charges laid against him, remarking that such proceedings would give too much pleasure to the Catalans, ‘il y avait bien autre chose à faire que de réjouir les Espagnols par cette réaction.’
Having concentrated Pino’s and Souham’s troops at Barcelona, Augereau would have proceeded to advance against the Catalans, and lay siege to Tarragona, but for one fact—the magazines of the city were almost empty, and no food could be procured for the army. Indeed, after a very few days it was necessary for the Marshal to retrace his steps, in order to bring up an enormous convoy for the revictualling of the place, which was being collected at Perpignan and Figueras. All that he had done by his march was to open up the road, and to muzzle the fortress of Hostalrich, which was still being blockaded by the Italians. Accordingly, on February 1 his two divisions marched back each by the way that it had originally taken—Souham to Vich, where he halted, Pino to Gerona, where the convoy began presently to gather, escorted thither in detachments by a large body of reinforcements which had just come up from France. For the Emperor had strengthened the Army of Catalonia by a division of troops of the Confederation of the Rhine, under General Rouyer, and by a Neapolitan brigade—some 8,000 men in all. But the long train of carts and mules came in slowly, and March began before Augereau was ready to move.
Meanwhile, his lieutenant Souham had been exposed to a sudden and unexpected peril. O’Donnell had discovered that the division at Vich was completely isolated and did not count much more than 5,000 sabres and bayonets. Having reorganized his own field army at Moya, near Manresa, and brought it up to a strength of 7,000 foot and 500 horse by calling a few troops from Tarragona, he directed the somatenes of Northern Catalonia to muster on the other side of Vich, so as to fall on Souham from the rear. The indefatigable miquelete leaders Rovira and Milans got together between 3,000 and 4,000 men, despite of all their previous losses and defeats. On February 19 these levies thrust in the pickets of the French division on the eastern side, but Souham did not see his danger till, on the following morning, he found O’Donnell’s regular troops pouring down into the plain of Vich in three columns, and challenging him to a battle in the open. Since the day of Valls the Catalan army had never tried such a bold stroke.
The French general was greatly outnumbered—he had but 4,000 infantry and 1,200 horse to oppose to O’Donnell’s 7,500 regulars and the 3,500 miqueletes. The action fell into two separate parts—while Rovira and Milans bickered with two battalions left to guard the town of Vich, Souham fought a pitched battle against the Spanish main body with the eight battalions and two and a half regiments of cavalry which constituted the remainder of his force. It was a fierce and well-contested fight: O’Donnell took the offensive, and his men displayed an unwonted vigour and initiative. Unhappily for this enterprising general his small body of horsemen was utterly unable to restrain or to cope with the superior French cavalry. Twice the battle was turned by the charge of Souham’s squadrons: after the first repulse O’Donnell rallied his beaten right wing, threw in all his reserves, and tried to outflank the shorter French line on both sides. The enemy was losing heavily and showing signs of yielding, when the whole of his cavalry made a second desperate charge on the Spanish right. It was completely successful; O’Donnell’s turning column, composed of the Swiss regiments of Kayser and Traxler, was broken, and the larger part of it captured. Thereupon, the Spanish general, who had displayed undaunted courage throughout the day, and headed several charges in person, thought it time to retire. He fell back on the mountains, leaving behind him 800 killed and wounded, and 1,000 prisoners. The French had suffered at least 600 casualties, including Souham himself, desperately wounded in the head, and had been within an ace of destruction: but for their superiority in cavalry, the day was lost.
On March 13, Augereau had at last collected his vast convoy at Gerona—there were more than a thousand waggons laden with flour, besides pack-mules, caissons, carriages, and other vehicles of all sorts. He marched in person to escort it, with the Italians—who were now under Severoli, Pino having gone home on leave,—and the newly arrived German division of Rouyer. Verdier was left behind—as in January—to defend the Ampurdam from the incursions of the miqueletes of Rovira and Milans. Meanwhile, Souham’s division, which had passed into the hands of General Augereau, the Marshal’s brother, since its old chief had been invalided to France, pursued a line of march parallel to that of the main force. Moving from Vich by the Col de Suspina and Manresa, it came down into the valley of the Llobregat, on the same day that Pino’s and Rouyer’s troops reached it by the other route. The Marshal and the main column had made their way past Hostalrich, which was found still unsubdued, and still blockaded by Mazzuchelli’s brigade, which had been left opposite it in January. These troops were ordered to join their division, a mixed detachment under Colonel Devaux being left in their stead to watch the castle. The Marshal then took up his residence in the palace at Barcelona, and had himself proclaimed Governor of Catalonia with great state, in consonance with the imperial decree of February 8, which had taken the principality out of the hands of King Joseph, and made its administrator responsible to Paris alone, and not to Madrid.
Augereau established himself permanently at Barcelona, and proceeded during the next two months to act rather as a viceroy than as a commander-in-chief. The conduct of military operations he handed over to his brother, to the unbounded disgust of the other generals. In what proportions the responsibility for the disasters which followed should be distributed between the two Augereaus it is hard to say. But Napoleon, very naturally and reasonably, placed it on the Marshal’s shoulders, and wrote that ‘Ce n’est point en restant dans les capitales éloignées de l’armée que des généraux en chef peuvent acquérir de la gloire ou mériter mon estime.’ The force assembled on the Llobregat was now a very large one, consisting of three divisions, those of Augereau, Severoli, and Rouyer. It numbered nearly 20,000 men, for along with the convoy there had marched a mass of drafts for the old regiments of the 7th Corps, which brought their battalions up to full strength.
There were only two rational plans of campaign open to the French: the one was to march on Tarragona with a siege-train, and to complete the conquest of Catalonia by the capture of its greatest fortress. The other was to mask Tarragona, and to strike across the principality westward, in order to get into communication with Suchet and the Army of Aragon, by way of Igualada, Cervera, and Lerida. If the two corps could meet, Northern Catalonia would be completely isolated from Tarragona, Tortosa, and Valencia. It was this latter plan which Augereau had been ordered to carry out by his master. He was directed to march on Lerida, and to join Suchet before that place. By a dispatch of February 19 he had been informed that on March 1 the Army of Aragon would have arrived before Lerida, and would be forming its siege. This prophecy was false: for Suchet, as we have seen, had gone off on his Valencian expedition, and was at Teruel on the appointed day. It was impossible to direct from Paris a combined movement depending on accurate timing for its success. But Augereau should have attempted to carry out the order sent him by his master with proper zeal and dispatch. This he failed to do: his own inclination was to strike a blow at Tarragona, and the movements of his corps show that this was the operation which he had determined to carry out. Instead of marching in person with his main body, on Cervera and Lerida, he directed his brother to take his own and Severoli’s divisions and to move by Villafranca on Reus, a large town twelve miles to the north-west of Tarragona, and suitable as a base of operations against that city (March 29). A battalion and a half was dropped at Villafranca, to keep open the communications between Reus and Barcelona, while a brigade of Rouyer’s newly arrived Germans, under the ever-unlucky Schwartz—the vanquished of Bruch and Esparraguera—was placed as a sort of flank-guard at Manresa. On March 27 a summons was sent in to Tarragona demanding surrender. This was, of course, refused—the town was full of troops, for Henry O’Donnell had just strengthened its garrison by retiring into it himself, with the 6,000 men who represented the remains of his field army.
The Spanish general, contemplating the position of affairs with a wary eye, had convinced himself that he could stop General Augereau’s further movements by striking at his line of communication with Barcelona. This he proceeded to do in the most skilful and successful fashion. Before the enemy closed in upon Tarragona, he sent out a picked force under General Juan Caro, with orders to attack Villafranca and Manresa without a moment’s delay. This daring stroke was completely successful: Caro stormed Villafranca at dawn on March 30, and took or captured the whole of the 800 men posted there. He was wounded, and had to hand over his command to Campo Verde, who, after some preliminary skirmishing lasting for three days, completed the little campaign by driving Schwartz out of Manresa, after a heavy fight, on April 5, in which the German brigade lost 30 officers and 800 men. The somatenes turned out to hunt the routed force as it retired on Barcelona, and inflicted many further losses, so that Schwartz only brought back a third of his brigade to the Marshal.
The touch between the two divisions at Reus and the garrison of Barcelona was thus completely severed. Moreover, Augereau feared lest the next move of the raiding force might be an attack on the isolated force under Colonel Devaux which was blockading Hostalrich. He therefore sent out a brig with one of his aides-de-camp on board, bearing orders to his brother and Severoli to return at once to his head quarters with their troops. By good fortune the messenger reached his destination without being intercepted by English cruisers, and the two divisions started on their march back to Barcelona on April 7. Only two days before, Severoli, more by luck than by skill, had got for a moment into touch with the Army of Aragon. An exploring column of two battalions under Colonel Villatte, which he had sent out westward to Falcet, in the direction of the Ebro, met—entirely by chance—a similar detachment of Musnier’s division of the 3rd Corps, which had advanced to Mora. On interchanging news of their respective armies, Villatte learnt from his colleague that Suchet was at this moment marching on Lerida, where, according to the Emperor’s instructions to Marshal Augereau, he ought to have arrived more than a month before. Villatte brought back the information to Severoli, but the latter could make no use of it while he was under orders to return without delay to Barcelona. He and General Augereau accomplished their retreat in three days, much harassed on the way, not only by the somatenes of the mountains but also by O’Donnell, who followed them with a detachment of the garrison of Tarragona. They took some small revenge on him, however, at Villafranca, where they turned on the pursuers and inflicted a sharp check on their advanced guard, which was pressing in, with more courage than discretion, on a force which outnumbered it by four to one. On April 9 the whole army was encamped outside the walls of Barcelona. Counting the garrison, Augereau had now more than 20,000 men in hand, but, not contented with this concentration, he sent orders back to the Ampurdam, ordering Verdier to bring forward as many troops as possible to Gerona, and from thence to push forward down the high-road as far as Granollers, so as to succour Devaux, if the Spaniards should show any intention of relieving Hostalrich.
The Marshal’s next move lost him the favour of Napoleon, and led to his removal in disgrace to Paris. On April 11 he issued orders to Severoli to march on Hostalrich, and there to take over the conduct of the siege from Devaux, while at the same time he himself moved back to Gerona with his brother’s French division, and an immense train, consisting partly of the empty carts of the convoy which he had brought south in March, partly of confiscated property of all sorts from Barcelona. Augereau’s excuse for this retrograde movement, which abandoned all Central Catalonia to the enemy, was that his army would have exhausted the magazines of Barcelona if he had kept it concentrated for ten days more, and that he had no other way of feeding it, since the activity of the somatenes made the dispatch of foraging detachments utterly impossible. The moral effect of the move was deplorable: after taking in hand an offensive movement against Tarragona, he had allowed himself to be checked by an enemy hopelessly inferior in numbers, had lost over 3,000 men in petty combats, and then had retired to the base from which he had started in January. Three months had been wasted, and nothing had been gained save that the small castle of Hostalrich was now in a desperate condition for want of food, and must fall if not speedily succoured. What rendered the position of Augereau the more shameful was that he had now in front of him only a skeleton enemy. For O’Donnell at this moment was distracted by the advance of Suchet against Lerida, and had been forced to draw off towards the borders of Aragon two of the four divisions into which he had reorganized his little field army. Facing Augereau there was only Campo Verde’s division of regulars—not over 5,000 strong—and the bands of the mountains. It was against such an enemy that the Marshal had concentrated 25,000 men—including Verdier’s force—between Hostalrich and Gerona.
The food-problem, on which those who defend Augereau lay all the stress possible, was no doubt a very real one. The feeding of Barcelona, with its garrison and its large civil population, by means of convoys brought from France, was no easy task. But it seems clear that with the large force at his disposition—the 7th Corps was over 50,000 strong—Augereau could have organized convoy-guards sufficiently powerful to defy the Spaniards, without abandoning the offensive position in front of Barcelona, which was all-important to him. He might have set aside 10,000 men for that purpose, and still have kept a strong field army together. Had he done so, O’Donnell could not have dared to march with 8,000 men, the pick of the Catalan army, to relieve Lerida, while his old enemies were massed, awaiting an impossible attack, a hundred miles away.
Meanwhile, the one task which was completed by the 7th Corps during the months of April and May was the reduction of Hostalrich. The little castle was a place of strength, perched high above the abandoned town to which it belonged. It was garrisoned by two battalions, one of Granadan regulars from Reding’s old division, the other of local Catalan levies, under Colonel Juliano Estrada, an officer of high spirit and commendable obstinacy. To the first summons made to him in January by Augereau, he had replied that ‘Hostalrich was the child of Gerona, and would know how to emulate the conduct of the mother-city.’ Nor was this high-flown epigram belied by the after-conduct of the garrison. Hostalrich held out from January 16 to May 12 without receiving either a convoy from without or any reinforcements. Twice the local miqueletes attempted to pass succours into the castle, but on each occasion they were driven off, after having barely succeeded in communicating with Estrada. Their convoys never got close enough to enter the gates. At last, on May 12, the provisions of the place were completely exhausted: thereupon Estrada took in hand a scheme which was only tried by one other governor during the whole Peninsular War—the Frenchman Brennier at Almeida in May 1811. He put every able-bodied man of the garrison under arms at midnight, issued silently from the castle, and charged at the besiegers’ lines, with the intention of cutting his way through to Campo Verde’s head quarters in the mountains. He was fortunate enough to pierce the Italian outposts at the first rush. But two whole brigades were presently at his heels, his guides lost their way among cliffs and ravines, and he was overtaken. Turning back with his rearguard to fend off the pursuers, he was wounded and taken prisoner. Ten other officers and some 300 soldiers shared his fate: the rest of the garrison dispersed in the hills, and reached Vich in small parties to the number of 800 men. If only their gallant commander had escaped with them, the exploit would have been an exact parallel to the Almeida sortie of 1811.
The reduction of Hostalrich and of a small fort on the Isles of Las Medas near the mouth of the Ter, were the last achievements of the Army of Catalonia while it was under the command of Augereau. On April 24 the Emperor had resolved to remove him from his post, and had ordered Marshal Macdonald, Duke of Tarentum, to relieve him. In the Moniteur it was merely stated that the elder Marshal had been forced by ill-health to resign his charge. But the real causes of his displacement are plainly stated in Napoleon’s letter to the Minister of War. They were the blow which he had given to the imperial prestige by his retreat to Gerona, and his disobedience in having failed to march on Lerida in aid of Suchet. It must be confessed that the wrath of the Emperor was justifiably roused. Its final manifestation took the shape of a minute directing that when the Moniteur published the news of the successes at Hostalrich and Las Medas, the name of Augereau was to be kept out of the paragraph, and only those of his subordinates mentioned.
While the new commander of the 7th Corps was on his way from Italy to Perpignan, and for some time after his arrival on May 22, there was a complete suspension of active operations. None of the French generals in the principality could do more than await orders, and keep the neighbourhood of his cantonments safe from the irrepressible miqueletes. The whole interest of the French operations in North-Western Spain during this period turns on the movements of the Army of Aragon.
On returning from his futile Valencian expedition, Suchet had found awaiting him at Saragossa orders to commence without delay the siege of Lerida, and promising that Augereau would ‘contain’ the Spanish army of Catalonia, and would ultimately open up communication with him by way of Cervera or Momblanch. In obedience to the imperial mandate, the commander of the 3rd Corps collected more than half his troops for the expedition against Lerida. This concentration entailed the abandonment of the rough country of Southern Aragon to Villacampa and his bands; for having determined to leave only Laval’s division behind him to protect the central parts of the province, Suchet had to evacuate the region of Teruel, Albaracin and Montalvan. Laval’s two brigades remained in the valley of the Jiloca, between Saragossa and Daroca, watching the debouches from the mountains. The other two divisions of the Army of Aragon were destined for the siege of Lerida. Musnier, with one column, marching down from Caspe and Alca?iz, crossed the Ebro at Flix, and approached Lerida from the south. Habert, with his division, coming from the side of Saragossa, made for the same goal by way of Alcubierre and Monzon. It might seem a dangerous experiment to march the two isolated columns across the Spanish front, for a junction at a point so remote from their respective starting-points. But, for the moment, there was no hostile force of any importance in their neighbourhood. Severoli and Augereau being still at Reus, when Musnier and Habert started on their way, O’Donnell could spare no troops for the relief of Lerida. It was not till they had retired, and the Duke of Castiglione had withdrawn all his forces to Hostalrich and Gerona, that the Captain-General found himself free for an expedition to the West. In front of Musnier, while he was marching on Lerida, there were nothing but trifling detachments sent out for purposes of observation by the Governor of Tortosa. In front of Habert there were only 2,000 men under Colonel Perena, thrown out from Lerida to observe the open country between the Segre and the Cinca. This was the sole field-force which remained from the old Spanish Army of Aragon, with the exception of the two dilapidated regiments that formed the nucleus of Villacampa’s band.
On April 10, Suchet arrived at Monzon with a brigade of infantry, and the six companies of artillery and four of engineers which were destined for the siege of Lerida. On the thirteenth he was before the walls of the place on the west bank of the Segre, while on the next day Habert appeared on the other bank, driving before him Colonel Perena and his battalions. This second French column had passed the Segre at Balaguer, from which it had expelled the Spanish brigade. Perena, having the choice between returning into the mountains or strengthening the garrison of Lerida, had taken the latter alternative. On the same day Musnier came up from the South, and joined the army with the force that had started from Alca?iz and had crossed the Ebro at Flix. Suchet had now concentrated the whole of the 13,000 men whom he destined for the siege.
The town of Lerida, then containing some 18,000 inhabitants, lies in a vast treeless plain on the western bank of the broad and rapid Segre. Its topography is peculiar: out of the dead level of the plain rise two steep and isolated hills. One of these, about 800 yards long by 400 broad, and rising 150 feet above the surrounding flats, is crowned by the citadel of the town; the other, somewhat longer but rather narrower, is no other than the hill about which Caesar and Afranius contended in the old Civil Wars of Rome, when Lerida was still Ilerda. It lies about three-quarters of a mile from the first-named height. In 1810 its culminating summit was covered by a large work called Fort Garden, and its southern and lower end was protected by the two small redoubts called San Fernando and El Pilar. The town occupies the flat ground between the citadel-height and the river. It has no trans-pontine suburb, but only a strong tête-du-pont on the other side of the Segre. The strength of the place lay in the fact that its whole eastern front was protected by the river, its whole western front by the high-lying citadel. The comparatively short southern front was under the guns of Fort Garden, which commanded all the ground over which an enemy could approach this side of the town. There only remained, unprotected by outer works, the northern front, and this was the point which a skilful enemy would select as his objective. Another fact which much favoured the defence was that the besieger was forced to make very long lines of investment, since he had to shut in not only the town, but the whole plateau on which lie Fort Garden and its dependent works. Moreover, he must keep a force beyond the Segre, to block the tête-du-pont, and this force must be a large one, because the east was the quarter from which succours sent from Catalonia must certainly appear. The garrison, on the other hand, was quite adequate to man the works entrusted to it; the entry into the town of Perena’s Aragonese battalions had brought it up to a strength of over 8,000 men. The artillery were the weak point—there were only 350 trained men to man over 100 pieces. The Governor was Major-General Garcia Conde, who owed his promotion to his brilliant achievements at Gerona in the preceding September.
Suchet’s 13,000 men were insufficient for a close and thorough investment of such a large space as that covered by the Lerida-Garden fortifications. He was forced to leave a considerable part of its southern front watched by cavalry posts alone. Of his total force, Musnier, with six battalions and the greater part of the cavalry—about 4,000 men in all, was beyond the river. Three battalions blocked the tête-du-pont, the rest formed a sort of covering force, destined to keep off the approach of enemies from the side of Catalonia. On the hither side of the Segre the three brigades of Habert, Buget, and Vergès were encamped facing the western and north-western fronts of Lerida. They counted only thirteen battalions, being weakened by 1,200 men who had been detached to garrison Monzon and Fraga. The communication between Musnier’s division and the rest of the army was by a flying bridge thrown across the Segre two miles above the town; it was guarded by a redoubt. The artillery park was placed at the village of San Rufo, opposite the north-western angle of the town, from which it is distant about 2,500 yards. It was evident from the first that this would be the point of attack selected by the French engineers.
The army had barely taken up its position when, on April 19, rumours were spread abroad that O’Donnell was on his way to relieve Lerida. They must have been pure guesses, for the Spanish general on that day was still at Tarragona and had made no movement. They were, however, sufficiently persistent to induce Suchet to take off Musnier’s covering corps, strengthened by three other battalions, on a mission of exploration, almost as far as Tarrega, on the Barcelona road. No Spanish force was met, nor could any information be extracted from the inhabitants. The absence of the troops on the left bank of the Segre was soon detected by Garcia Conde, who—to his great regret three days later—sent messengers to inform O’Donnell that the French lines to the east of the city were now almost unoccupied.
The fiery O’Donnell was already on his way when this news reached him. The moment that he was sure that Augereau had left Barcelona and was retreating northward, he had resolved to fly to the relief of Lerida with the two divisions of which he could dispose. On the twentieth he marched from Tarragona by Valls and Momblanch, with 7,000 regular infantry, 400 horse, a single battery, and some 1,500 miqueletes. On the twenty-third he had reached Juneda, twelve miles from Lerida, without having seen a French picket or having been detected himself. He intended to drive off the few battalions blocking the bridge-head, and to open up communication with the besieged town that same day. Unfortunately for him, Suchet and Musnier had returned on the previous night from their expedition to Tarrega, and were now lying at Alcoletge, three miles north of the bridge-head, with seven battalions and 500 cuirassiers.
Pushing briskly forward along the high-road, in a level treeless plateau, destitute of cover of any kind, the leading Spanish division—that of Ibarrola—came into contact about midday with the small force guarding the bridge-head, which was now in charge of Harispe, Suchet’s chief-of-the-staff. To the surprise of the Spaniards, who had expected to see these three battalions and two squadrons of hussars retire in haste, the French showed fight. Harispe was aware that Musnier could come up to his aid within an hour, and was ready for battle. His hussars charged the leading regiment of Ibarrola’s column, and threw it into disorder, while his infantry formed up in support. At this moment the Spanish general received news that Musnier was moving in towards his flank; he therefore retired, to get the support of O’Donnell, who was following him with the second division. But at the ruined village of Margalef, six miles from Lerida, the column of Musnier came up with Ibarrola, and he was so hard pressed that he formed line, with 300 cavalry on his right wing and his three guns on his left. The position was as bad a one as could be found for the Spanish division—a dead flat, with no cover. Musnier, on reaching the front, flung his cavalry, 500 cuirassiers of the 13th regiment, at the Spanish right wing. The horsemen placed there broke, and fled without crossing sabres, and the French charge fell on the flank battalion of the infantry, which was caught while vainly trying to form square. It was ridden down in a moment, and the horsemen then rolled up the whole line, regiment after regiment. A great part of Ibarrola’s corps was captured, and O’Donnell, who came on the field with the division of Pirez just as the disaster took place, could do no more than retire in good order, covering the scattered remnants of his front line. A Swiss battalion, which he told off as his rearguard, was pierced by the cuirassiers and for the most part captured. In this disastrous affair the Spaniards lost 500 killed and wounded and several thousand prisoners, as also four flags and the half-battery belonging to Ibarrola’s division. The French, of whom the cavalry alone were seriously engaged, are said by Suchet to have had no more than 23 killed and 82 wounded.
It is clear that O’Donnell must take the blame for the ruin that fell upon his little field army. He should not have been caught with his two divisions marching with an interval of four miles between them. Nor ought he to have been ignorant of the return of Musnier’s force, considering that he had 400 cavalry, who should have been exploring the whole country-side for miles around, instead of riding in a mass along with Ibarrola’s infantry. The carelessness shown was unpardonable: relying, apparently, on Garcia Conde’s dispatch—now two days old—concerning the weakness of the French beyond the Segre, the Spanish general was caught moving as if for an unopposed entry into Lerida, instead of in battle order. It may be added that he would have done well to collect more men before advancing against Suchet—8,000 bayonets and sabres were too small a force to tackle the main body of the 3rd Corps, even if they were aided by a sortie from Lerida, as O’Donnell had intended. It would have been well to make some endeavour to get troops from the Valencian army, whose 12,000 men were absolutely idle at the moment. It is true that José Caro and the Valencian Junta were very chary of sending their men outside their own border. But for such a great affair as the relief of Lerida a brigade or two might have been borrowed. There was a considerable Valencian force, at the moment, in the neighbourhood of Alca?iz.
After the combat of Margalef Suchet summoned Lerida for a second time, and offered to allow the Governor to see the prisoners and guns which he had taken from O’Donnell. Garcia Conde very rightly answered that he relied on his own forces alone, and should fight to the end. Accordingly, the regular siege began. The trenches were opened opposite the north front of the town on April 29; several days of heavy rain hindered the completion of the first parallel, but on May 7 the breaching batteries were ready and the bombardment began. The front attacked—the Carmen and Magdalena bastions—was weak: it was not protected by any flanking fires, and had neither a ditch nor a covered way. It was bound to succumb before the very heavy fire directed against it, unless the defence should succeed in beating down the fire of the breaching batteries. The Spaniards did their best, bringing up every gun that could be mounted, and replacing each injured piece as it was disabled. But the end was obvious from the first: the walls were not strong enough to resist the attack.
Meanwhile, Suchet made two successive assaults on a part of the defences very far distant from the main front of attack—the two isolated redoubts which stood on the south end of the extramural plateau, of which Fort Garden formed the main protection. He wished to gain a footing on this high ground, both because he could from thence molest the south front of the town, and because he wished to prevent the Spaniards from using the plateau as a place of refuge after the fall of the city, which he regarded as inevitable. The first attempt to take the works by escalade, on the night of April 23-24, was a disastrous failure: the Pilar was occupied for a moment, but the attack on San Fernando failed, and the dominating fire from it drove the stormers out of the smaller work, after they had held it for a few hours.
The second escalade was more successful: it was carried out on the night of May 12-13, and ended in the storming of both works. Only a small part of their garrison succeeded in escaping into Fort Garden: the besieged lost 300 men, the successful assailants only 120. The greater part of the plateau was now in the hands of the French.
On the next day, May 13, the engineers announced that the two breaches in the north front of the town walls were practicable, and that same evening Lerida was stormed. The breaches were carried with no great difficulty, but the garrison made a stubborn resistance for some time, behind traverses and fortified houses in the rear of them. When these were carried, the city was at Suchet’s mercy; but it was not at the city alone that he was aiming—he wished to master the citadel also. During the last siege of Lerida, that by the Duke of Orleans in 1707, the high-lying castle had held out for many days after the town had been lost. Suchet’s way of securing his end was effective but brutal. On the whole, it was the greatest atrocity perpetrated by any combatant, French, Spanish, or English, during the whole Peninsular War. When his troops had entered the streets, he directed columns towards each gate, and having secured possession of them all, so as to make escape into the open country impossible, bade his troops push the whole non-combatant population of Lerida uphill into the citadel, where the beaten garrison was already taking refuge. ‘The soldiery,’ as he writes, with evident complacency and pride in his ingenuity, ‘were set in a concentric movement to push the inhabitants, along with the garrison, towards the upper streets and the citadel. They were dislodged by musketry fire from street after street, house after house, in order to force them into the castle. That work was still firing, and its discharges augmented the danger and the panic of the civil population, as they were thrust, along with the wreck of the garrison, into the ditch and over the drawbridge. Pressed on by our soldiers, they hastily poured into the castle yard, before the Governor had time to order that they should not be allowed to enter.’ The castle being crammed with some fifteen thousand men, women, and children, Suchet gave orders to bombard it with every available mortar and howitzer. ‘Every shell,’ he writes, ‘that fell into the narrow space containing this multitude, fell on serried masses of non-combatants no less than of soldiery. It had been calculated that the Governor and the most determined officers would be influenced by the presence of these women, children, old folk, and unarmed peasants. As General Suchet had flattered himself would be the case, the scheme had a prompt and decisive effect.’ On the 14th at midday, Garcia Conde, unable to stand the slaughter any longer, hoisted the white flag.
It is difficult to see how the forcing of thousands of non-combatants, by means of musketry fire, on to the front of the enemy’s line of defence, differs in any way from the device, not unknown among African savages and Red Indians, of attacking under cover of captured women and children thrust in upon the weapons of their fathers and husbands. The act places that polished writer and able administrator Louis-Gabriel Suchet on the moral level of a king of Dahomey. He acknowledges that the plan was deliberately thought out, and that scores of his victims perished not in the subsequent bombardment, but by being shot down by his own men while the crowd was being collected and hunted forward. Historians have denounced the atrocities committed by the French rank and file at Tarragona or Oporto, by the English rank and file at Badajoz or St. Sebastian, but the cultured general who worked out this most effective plan for the reduction of a hostile citadel has never had his due meed of shame. Napier’s remark that, ‘though a town taken by assault is considered the lawful prey of a licentious soldiery, yet this remnant of barbarism does not warrant the driving of unarmed and helpless people into a situation where they must perish,’ seems a sufficiently mild censure, when all the circumstances are taken into account.
The total number of Spanish troops surrendered by Garcia Conde in the Citadel and Fort Garden, or captured by the French during the storm, amounted to over 7,000 men, of whom about 800 were wounded lying in the hospital. It was calculated that 1,200 or 1,500 more had perished during the siege, and that about 500 of the civil population had fallen victims to Suchet’s barbarous device. The French losses during the whole series of operations had been 1,100 killed and wounded. The Spaniards declared that Garcia Conde had betrayed Lerida, and ought never to have surrendered. But the only ground for this accusation was that, after a short captivity, he did homage to King Joseph, and became an Afrancesado. Though he had shown dash and courage at Gerona, it is clear that he lacked the firmness of governors such as Mariano Alvarez, or Andrés Herrasti. His defence of Lerida had not been particularly skilful nor particularly resolute: with over 8,000 men within the walls he ought to have been able to hold out longer against Suchet’s 13,000. The most blameworthy part of his arrangements was his neglect to retrench the breaches, and to form a strong second line of temporary works behind them. Alvarez, under similar conditions, and with a garrison far less strong in comparison to the besieging army, held out for months after his walls had been breached, simply because he treated them only as an outer line of resistance, and was prepared to fight on behind his inner defences.
After the fall of Lerida, Suchet, having received through France the news that the whole of Augereau’s army was collected in the neighbourhood of Hostalrich and Gerona, made up his mind that he had better attempt nothing ambitious until the 7th Corps was in a position to help him. But there was a small task close to his hand, which was well worth undertaking in a moment of enforced leisure. This was the siege of Mequinenza, the only fortress left in Spanish hands on the eastern side of Aragon. It was a small place, but not without its strategic importance, for not only did it cover the junction of the Segre and the Ebro, but it was the highest point open for navigation on the last-named river. Any one holding Mequinenza can use the Ebro as a high-road, except in times of drought, and this was an advantage of no small importance, since the country from thence to the sea chances to be singularly destitute of roads of any kind. A few months later, Suchet found the place invaluable, as he was able to prepare his battering-train for the siege of Tortosa within its walls, and then to send all the heavy material down-stream with the minimum of trouble. Mequinenza was a small place, consisting of a few hundred houses along the river bank enclosed by a weak and old-fashioned wall, but dominated by a strong castle, which towers 500 feet above the water at the end of a spur of the Sierra de Montenegre. The garrison consisted of about 1,000 men, under a Colonel Carbon.
The very day after Lerida had fallen, Suchet sent a brigade to invest Mequinenza: more troops followed after an interval. It was clear that the taking of the town would offer small difficulty: but the castle was another matter. Its defences were independent of those of the place below, and its site was so lofty and rocky that it could not be battered from any ground accessible by existing roads. Indeed, it could only be approached along the crest of the Sierra, of which it forms the last lofty point. The main interest of the siege of Mequinenza lies in the fact that, in order to reduce the castle, the French engineers had to build a road practicable for heavy guns in zig-zags up the side of the Sierra. They had arrived in front of the place on May 15: by June 1 the road was completed: it was a piece of hard work, as in order to utilize the easiest possible slopes it had been made no less than five miles long. But when the guns had once been got up on to the crest of the mountain, Mequinenza—town and castle alike—was doomed. The town was stormed on June 5; it might have been captured long before, but there was little use in taking possession of it until the attack upon the castle had been begun. Before the storm, Colonel Carbon had wisely ordered all the large river craft in the place, eleven in number, to run down-stream to Tortosa; he was well aware that Suchet wanted to open up the navigation of the Ebro, and was resolved that he should find no vessels ready for him. Two of the craft ran ashore and were captured; the other nine got off clear.
When the three batteries erected on the summit of the Sierra opened on the castle, the walls began to crumble at once. At the end of eight days its front towards the French trenches was a mass of shapeless ruins. Carbon then surrendered, without waiting for an assault, which must undoubtedly have proved successful. There was nothing particularly obstinate, or, on the other hand, particularly discreditable, in the defence. The castle was not a modern fortress; its sole strength had lain in its inaccessible position; and when the French had climbed up on to a level with it, nothing more could be done.
Having mastered Lerida and Mequinenza, and obtained a firm footing in the plain of Western Catalonia, Suchet had now harder work before him. His first necessity was to clear the country behind him of the insurgents, who had swarmed down from the hills to attack the troops left behind in Central Aragon, while the main army had been concentrated before Lerida. Villacampa had half destroyed a column of 350 men at Arandija on the Xalon on May 14. Catalan somatenes had attacked the garrison of the valley of Venasque, on the very frontier of France, on May 16. Valencian bands had besieged the castle of Alca?iz for many days. But all the enemies of Suchet had to fly, as soon as his main army became once more free for field service. No attempt was made to oppose a serious resistance to his movable columns: the insurgents fled to right and left: the most extraordinary proof of their demoralization was that, on June 13, General Montmarie, at the head of one of these columns, found the strong fort of Morella, within the Valencian border, absolutely unoccupied. He seized and garrisoned it, knowing that this place, which commands the mountain-road from Aragon to Valencia, was of immense strategical importance.
When June came round, Suchet had once more mastered all Aragon, and was free for work outside its borders. A march against Valencia, on the one side, or against Tortosa and Tarragona on the other, was equally possible. But at this moment Napoleon was set on proceeding ‘methodically’—in Eastern Spain no less than in Portugal—and the orders issued to the Commander of the 3rd Corps were, to proceed against Tortosa, and cut off Valencia from Catalonia by its capture. The longer and more difficult advance against Valencia itself was relegated to a distant date; there must be no more fiascos like that of February. Accordingly, Suchet was ordered to follow up the capture of Lerida and Mequinenza by the reduction of Tortosa. He was informed at the same time that Macdonald, the new commander of the Army of Catalonia, was ordered to attack Tarragona. In this way, the restless O’Donnell would find his hands full at home, and would not be able to spare time or men for the relief of Tortosa. Only from the Valencian Army, which had always been badly led, and managed with the most narrow particularism by José Caro and his Junta, need Suchet expect any trouble.
But until Macdonald was prepared to lead down his corps to the neighbourhood of Tarragona and the lower Ebro, Suchet felt that his own enterprise must be held back, or at least conducted with caution. And although Macdonald had received his orders in May, on taking over Augereau’s post, it was some time before he was able to execute them. June and July had passed, and August had arrived, before he appeared in the regions where Suchet had been told to expect him, and at last placed himself in communication with the Army of Aragon. This long delay was entirely due to the burden imposed upon him by the necessities of Barcelona, with its large garrison and its vast civil population. The provisions which Augereau had introduced into the city in the early spring were exhausted, and his successor was forced to replace them by escorting thither two new convoys of great size in June and July. So active were the miqueletes that Macdonald found himself obliged to take with him his French and his Italian division as escort on each occasion. For a first-class convoy is a vast affair, stretching out to long miles in a mountain country, and requiring to be strongly guarded at every point of its unwieldy length. The Emperor was bitterly disappointed at Macdonald’s delays: it was hard to convince him that the problem of food-supply in Catalonia was almost insoluble, and that neither Barcelona nor the field army could be permanently fed by seizing the resources of the valley of the Llobregat, or the Campo of Tarragona, and making war support war in the regular style. Catalonia had never fed its whole population even in time of peace, but had largely depended on corn brought up from Aragon or imported by sea. But the British Mediterranean squadron now made the transport of food to Barcelona by water impossible, while, till the 3rd Corps and the 7th Corps should finally meet, it was impossible to supply the latter from the Aragonese base. While neither of the normal ways of procuring a regular supply of provisions was practicable, nothing remained but the weary task of escorting convoys from Perpignan and Figueras to Barcelona. This Macdonald accomplished thrice, in June, July, and August: it was only after the third journey that he left the storeshouses of Barcelona so thoroughly replenished that he was able to think of further offensive operations, and to concert the long-delayed junction with Suchet and the 3rd Corps. The Marshal in his autobiography confesses that he hated the task set him, and found it entirely out of the lines of his experience. He began his career by repealing Augereau’s hanging edicts, and endeavoured to introduce more humane methods of warfare. But his own men were out of hand, and the Spaniards being as fierce as ever, his task was a very hard one.
Meanwhile, Henry O’Donnell was granted three months in which to reorganize the Catalan army, which had suffered so severely at Margalef. His untiring energy enabled him to raise his force by the end of July to 22,000 men, organized in five divisions, with which he formed a double front, facing Suchet on the west and Macdonald on the east. One division under Campo Verde lay northward in the mountains, with head quarters at Cardona, and detachments pushed forward as far as Urgel and Olot: its main task was to harass the French garrison of the Ampurdam, and to threaten Macdonald’s rear every time that he moved forward towards Barcelona. A second division lay facing that city, on the lower Llobregat, with detachments at Montserrat and Manresa, which kept up the communications with Campo Verde and the North. Two more divisions lay westward, in the direction of Falcet and Borja Blanca, watching Suchet, and prepared to oppose any serious attempt on his part to close in upon Tortosa. The fifth division, or reserve, formed a central mass of troops, ready to reinforce either the detachments which watched Suchet or those which watched Macdonald; it lay south of Tarragona, at the Col de Alba. Thus posted O’Donnell waited for further developments, and continued to drill and exercise his new levies, to dismiss inactive and incompetent officers, to collect magazines, and to quarrel with the local Junta. For this active and intelligent, if reckless and high-handed, young officer was on even worse terms with the Catalan authorities than his predecessor, Blake. The main cause of quarrel was that O’Donnell wished to strengthen his regular troops, by drafting into the depleted cadres of Reding’s and Coupigny’s old battalions every recruit that he could catch. He held that the French could only be brought to a final check by disciplined troops. The Junta, on the other hand, believed in guerrilla warfare, and preferred to call out from time to time the miqueletes and somatenes, who drifted back to their homes whenever a crisis was over. Both sides had much to say for themselves: the Catalans could point out that the regular troops had been beaten times out of number, while their own irregulars had achieved many small successes, and done the French much harm. O’Donnell, on the other hand, was quite right in holding that guerrilla operations, much as they might incommode the enemy, would never deal him a fatal blow or finish the war. He dreamed of recruiting his army up to a force of 50,000 men at some happy future date, and of delivering a stroke with superior numbers which should destroy the French hold on Catalonia. Meanwhile, much as they quarrelled, the Irish-Spanish general and the local Junta were both too good haters of France to allow their disputes to prevent a vigorous resistance from being kept up in the principality. O’Donnell carried his point to the extent of persuading the Junta to allow him to form many of the ever-changing tercios of miqueletes into ‘legions,’ which were to be kept permanently embodied, and to count as part of the regular army. Hence came the large rise in his muster-rolls.
OPERATIONS IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN DURING THE SPRING AND SUMMER OF 1810 (MARCH-OCTOBER 1810)
The situation which had been created by King Joseph’s rapid conquest of the open country of Andalusia in January and February 1810, and by his failure to capture Cadiz, was destined to remain unchanged in any of its more important details for a full year. Soult, with the three corps of Victor, Sebastiani, and Mortier, was strong enough to hold the towns and plains, strong enough also to blockade Cadiz and to spare expeditionary forces at intervals for operations outside the limits of his own sphere of command. From time to time he sent the greater part of Mortier’s corps against Estremadura, and the greater part of Sebastiani’s corps against Murcia. But his 70,000 men were not sufficient to provide an army for the permanent conquest of either of these provinces. And every time that 10,000 or 15,000 sabres and bayonets were distracted to one of these raids, the total of troops left behind to watch Cadiz, to guard Seville, and to repress the interminable activity of the guerrilleros of the mountains was found to be dangerously small. Ere long the force that had marched out for external operations had to be called back in haste, to ward off some peril to one or other of the vital points of Andalusia.
Soult himself remained for the greater part of his time at Seville, occupied not only in keeping the movements of his three corps in unison—no easy task, for both Victor and Sebastiani had wills of their own, and even the placid Mortier occasionally murmured—but in superintending the details of civil administration. It was very seldom that he marched out in person at the head of his last reserves, to strengthen some weak point in his line of offence or defence. During the next two years he was quite as much the Viceroy as the Commander-in-Chief in Andalusia. Though the Emperor had refrained from naming that kingdom one of the ‘Military Governments,’ which he had created by his decree of Feb. 15, 1810, yet Soult made himself in fact, if not in name, as independent as the governors of Aragon or Navarre or Catalonia. The bond of common interests and desires which had united him to King Joseph during the winter of 1809-10 was soon broken. The monarch at Madrid soon discovered that his presence was not desired in Andalusia—some good military reason could always be discovered which made it impracticable that he should revisit Seville. Little or no money was remitted to him from the South: rich as was Soult’s sphere of governance, it was always made to appear that the expenses of the sustenance of the army and of the siege of Cadiz were so great that no surplus remained for the central government. When the King murmured, and appealed to Paris, his brother usually supported the Marshal; it was Napoleon’s first maxim that war should maintain war, and he thought it of far more importance that the army of Andalusia should pay for itself, than that the bankrupt exchequer at Madrid should be recruited. As the months rolled on, and Joseph gradually realized the position, his hatred for the plausible Marshal became as bitter as it had been during their earlier quarrel in the summer of 1809. He had good reason to be angry, for Soult undoubtedly sacrificed the interests of the King of Spain to those of the Viceroy of Andalusia. He played a selfish game, though he had always a good military excuse for any particular refusal to fall in with the King’s plans or to obey his orders. In 1810 his conduct may be justified, but in 1811 and 1812 he undoubtedly—as will be shown in chapters to come—ruined what small chance there was of bringing the Peninsular War to a successful termination, by pursuing a policy which made the maintenance of the French authority in Andalusia its chief end, and not the general good of the imperial arms in Spain.
Soult’s conduct at Oporto in the days of his invasion of Portugal must never be forgotten when his doings in Andalusia are discussed. He undoubtedly yearned after supreme power, and though the lesson which he had received after his vain attempt to create himself king of ‘Northern Lusitania’ had not been forgotten, his ambitions were as great as ever. He suppressed his desire for the royal name, but gave himself the reality of the royal power. He practically kept a court, a ministry, and a revenue of his own, despite of all the angry complaints of his immediate master at Madrid. Secure in the support of the Emperor, who reckoned him the ‘best military head in Spain,’ he ignored or disobeyed all such communication from Joseph as did not suit his purpose. To a great extent he justified his policy by success: the plain-land of Andalusia was undoubtedly the part of the French holding in Spain where the administration was most successful, and the occupation most thorough. Soult not only built up, but kept together, an Afrancesado party among the local population, which was stronger and more compact than in any other part of the Peninsula. He even succeeded in raising a small permanent force of Spanish auxiliaries, which was decidedly more trustworthy and less given to desertion than the regiments of the same class which King Joseph was perpetually creating in Madrid—only to see them crumble away under his hand. The Army of Andalusia was strengthened by two regiments of Chasseurs à Cheval, which were attached to the 5th Corps, and some free companies of infantry, which were used for garrison and blockhouse work. But it was far more important that Soult succeeded in enlisting many battalions of a sort of national guard, which he called Escopeteros (fusiliers); with them he kept the peace of the larger towns, such as Seville, Cordova, and Jaen. The very existence of such a force, which King Joseph had vainly attempted to establish in Madrid, was of evil omen for the patriotic cause in Andalusia. On several occasions they fought well against the guerrilleros, when the latter attempted raids dangerously close to the great cities. For the Juramentado was well aware that if the national cause were at last to triumph an evil fate would await him. Having once committed himself to the French side, he was forced to defend his own neck from the gallows.
Soult’s civil government was conducted with a far greater decency than that of Duhesme, Kellermann, and other noted plunderers among the French governors. But it involved, nevertheless, a considerable amount of more or less open spoliation. The Marshal’s own hands were not quite clean: his collection of the works of Murillo and Velasquez, the pride of Paris in after years, represented blackmail on Andalusian church-corporations, when it did not come from undisguised confiscation. Unless he was much maligned by his own compatriots, no less than by the Spaniards, hard cash as well as pictures did not come amiss to him. But his exactions were moderate compared with those of some of his subordinates: though Mortier and Dessolles had good reputations Sebastiani had an infamous one, and Perreymond, Godinot (who shot himself early in 1812 when called to face a commission of inquiry), and certain other generals have very black marks against them. Still the machine of government worked, if not without friction, at least with an efficiency that contrasted favourably with the administration of any other province of Spain save Suchet’s domain of Aragon.
But it was only the valley of the Guadalquivir which lay subdued beneath the feet of Soult. Cadiz and the mountains had yet to be dealt with, and, as the months went on, the difficulties of the French Army of Andalusia became more and more evident. It was only by degrees that the French generals came to comprehend the absolute impregnability of Cadiz, and the advantage that the possession of the island-city and the fleet depending on it gave to the Spaniards. In the first months of the siege Victor’s engineers and artillerists had flattered themselves that something might be done to molest the place, if not to reduce it to surrender, by pushing batteries forward to the extreme front of the ground in their possession all around the harbour. Within the first weeks of his arrival in front of Cadiz, Victor made an attempt to push forward his posts along the high-road which crosses the broad salt-marshes of the Santi Petri. But the bogs and water-channels were found impracticable, and the Spanish works in front of the bridge of Zuazo too strong to be attacked along the narrow causeway. The French drew back to Chiclana, which became the head quarters of the left wing of the blockading force, and where Ruffin’s division was permanently encamped. It was then thought that something might be accomplished further to the north, by working against the Arsenal of La Carraca, at the one end of the Spanish line, or the projecting castle of Puntales at the other. The struggle for the points of vantage from which Puntales could be battered formed the chief point of interest during the early months of the siege. The French, pushing down from the mainland on to the peninsula of the Trocadero, began to erect works on the ground most favourable for attacking the fort of Matagorda, which had once more become the outermost bulwark of Cadiz.
There was a bitter fight over this work, which stands on the tidal flats below the Trocadero, surrounded by mud for one half of the day, and by water for the other. It will be remembered that Matagorda had been blown up at the time of the first arrival of the French before Cadiz. But after a few days of reflection the English and Spanish engineer officers in command of the defence grew uneasy as to the possibilities of mischief which might follow from the seizure of the ruined fort by the enemy. Their fears, as it afterwards turned out, were unnecessary. But they led to the reoccupation of Matagorda on February 22 by a detachment of British artillery, supported by a company of the 94th regiment. The front of the work facing toward the mainland was hastily repaired, and heavy guns brought over the harbour from Cadiz were mounted on it. Moreover, it was arranged that it should be supported by a Spanish ship-of-the-line and some gunboats, as far as the mud banks permitted.
Victor took the reoccupation of the fort as a challenge, and thought that the Allies must have good reasons for attaching so much importance to it. Accordingly he multiplied his batteries on the Trocadero, till he had got forty guns mounted in a dominating position, with which to overwhelm the garrison in their half-ruinous stronghold. There was a long and fierce artillery contest, but the French had the advantage both in the number of guns and in the concentric fire which they could pour upon the fort. The naval help promised to Matagorda proved of little assistance, partly owing to the impracticability of the mud flats when the tide was out, partly because the gunboats could not endure the fire of the French heavy artillery. On April 22 General Graham, who had arrived at Cadiz and taken command of the British forces over the head of General Stewart, ordered Matagorda to be evacuated. It was high time, for the fort was shot to pieces, and 64 men out of a garrison of 140 had been killed or wounded. The enemy took possession of the ruins, and rebuilt and rearmed the fort; they also re-established the ruined forts of San Luis and San José, on the firm ground facing Matagorda, to which they had not possessed a safe access till the outer work in the mud had been captured. These were the most advanced points toward Cadiz which the French could hold, and here they mounted their heaviest guns, in the hope of demolishing the Castle of Puntales on the other side of the water, and of making the inner harbour useless for shipping. Their purpose was only partly accomplished: the ships, it is true, had to move east or west, into the outer harbour or nearer to the Carraca and the Isla de Leon. But Puntales was never seriously injured, and maintained an intermittent artillery duel with Matagorda across the strait as long as the siege lasted. The occasional bombs that fell beyond Puntales, in the direction of the Cortadura, did not seriously incommode the garrison, and ships could always pass the strait between the two forts at night without appreciable risk. Later on Soult caused mortars of unprecedented dimensions to be cast in the arsenal of Seville, on the designs presented to him by an artillery officer of the name of Villantroys. But even when these had been mounted on Matagorda no great damage was done, one bomb only—as a Spanish popular song recorded—ever touched Cadiz town, and that only killed a street dog.
Spanish Infantry 1810
Enlarge Spanish Infantry 1810
(showing the new uniform introduced under British influence)
Note: Under the influence of the immense quantity of British materials supplied, the uniform has completely changed since 1808. The cut is assimilated to that of the British army—the narrow-topped shako, and long trousers have been introduced. The coat is dark-blue, the trousers grey-blue, the facings red. Grenadiers have the grenade, light-companies the bugle-horn on their shakos.
After the fall of Matagorda, the next most notable event of the spring in front of Cadiz was a fearful hurricane, lasting from the 6th to the 9th of March, which caused grave losses to the vessels in the outer harbour. A south-wester from the Atlantic drove three Spanish line-of-battle ships, one of which, the Concepcion, was a three-decker of 100 guns, and a Portuguese 74, upon the coast about Puerto Santa Maria and Rota. The French opened upon them with red-hot shot, and destroyed them all, slaying a great part of the unfortunate crews, who had no thought of resistance, and were only trying to escape to land, where they were bound to become prisoners. More than thirty merchant ships, mostly British, were destroyed by the same storm. One was a transport containing a wing of the 4th regiment, which was coming to reinforce the garrison of Cadiz. Some 300 men from this unlucky vessel got ashore and were captured by the French.
A month after the loss of Matagorda the outer harbour of Cadiz again saw some exciting scenes. Moored beside the Spanish fleet were a number of pontoons, old men-of-war from which the masts and rigging had been removed, and which were used as prison-ships. On them there were still kept several thousands of French prisoners, mostly the men captured with Dupont in 1808. It is astonishing that the Regency had not ordered their removal to some more remote spot the moment that Victor’s army appeared in front of Cadiz. Overcrowded, and often kept without sufficient food for days at a time, these unhappy captives were in a deplorable position. The sight of their fellow-countrymen in possession of the opposite coast drove them to desperation, and they were prepared to take any risks for a chance of escape. Having noted, during the hurricane of March 6th-9th, that every vessel which broke loose from its moorings had been cast by the set of the tide upon the coast in the direction of Rota, the prisoners on the Castilla, on which nearly all the officers were confined, waited for the next south-wester. When it came, on the night of the 15th-16th May, they rose upon their small guard of Spanish marines, overpowered them, and then cut the cables of the pontoon, committing themselves to the perils of the sea as well as to the risk of being sunk by the neighbouring men-of-war. But it was supposed that they had got adrift by accident, and they had been carried by the tide almost to the opposite shore before it was realized that an escape was on foot. Two gunboats sent to tow the Castilla back met with resistance, the prisoners firing on them with the muskets taken from their guard, and throwing cold shot down upon the little vessels when their crews tried to board. Just as they were beaten off, the pontoon went ashore. The French garrisons of the neighbouring batteries ran down to help their countrymen to escape; at the same moment other gunboats, Spanish and English, came up, and began firing on the crowd, who strove to swim or scramble ashore. Some were killed, but over 600 got to land. It is surprising that after this incident the Spaniards did not take better care of the remaining pontoons, but ten days later the prisoners on the Argonauta were able to repeat the trick of their comrades. On this occasion the absconding vessel ran ashore upon a mud-bank some hundreds of yards from the shore of the Trocadero. The stranded vessel remained for hours under the fire of the gunboats which pursued it, and a large proportion of the men on board perished, for when the troops on shore brought out boats to save the survivors, many of them were sunk as they plied between the Argonauta and the land. Finally the pontoon was set on fire, and several wounded Frenchmen are said to have been burnt alive. The English seamen who were engaged in this distressing business were heartily disgusted with their share in it.
After this the Regency at last ordered the removal of the rest of the French prisoners from Cadiz. The few remaining officers were sent to Majorca, and afterwards to England. Of the men part were dispatched to the Canaries, part to the Balearic Islands. But the islanders protested against the presence of so many French in their midst, raised riots, and killed some of the prisoners. Thereupon the Regency ordered 7,000 of them to be placed upon the desolate rock of Cabrera, where there were no inhabitants and no shelter save one small ruined castle. The wretched captives, without roofs or tents to cover them, and supplied with food only at uncertain intervals and in insufficient quantity, died off like flies. Once, when storms hindered the arrival of the provision ships from Majorca, many scores perished in a day of sheer starvation. The larger half did not survive to see the peace of 1814, and those who did were for the most part mere wrecks of men, invalids for life. Even allowing for the desperate straits of the Spanish government, which could not feed its own armies, the treatment of the Cabrera prisoners was indefensible. They might at least have been exchanged for some of the numerous Spanish garrisons taken in 1810-11; but the Regency would not permit it, though Henry O’Donnell had arranged with Macdonald a regular cartel for prisoners in the neighbouring Catalonia. This is one of the most miserable corners of the history of the Peninsular War.
But to return to Andalusia. By the month of May the Regency at Cadiz had recovered a certain confidence, in view of the utter inefficacy of Victor’s attempt to molest their city. From that month began a systematic attempt to organize into a single system all the forces that could be turned to account against Soult. There were now in the Isla some 18,000 Spanish troops, as well as 8,000 British and Portuguese. This was a larger garrison than was needed, now that the defences had been put in order; and it was possible to detach small expeditionary corps to east and west, to stir up trouble in the coast-land of Andalusia, and serve as the nuclei round which the insurgents of the mountains might gather. For the insurrection in the remoter corners of the kingdom of Granada had never died down, despite of all the efforts of Sebastiani to quell it. The Regency had now determined that an effort should be made to extend it westward—the Sierra de Ronda being quite as well suited for irregular operations as the Alpujarras. At the other end of the line, too, there were opportunities in the Condado de Niebla and the lands by the mouth of the Guadiana, which the French had hardly touched: trifling detachments of the 5th Corps at Moguer and Niebla observed rather than occupied that region. By means of the large fleet always moored in Cadiz harbour, it was possible to transfer troops to any point of the coast, for the French could not guard every creek and fishing-village, and if an expedition failed it had a fair chance of escaping by sea. Moreover any force thrown ashore in the south had the option of retiring into Gibraltar if hard pressed, just as any force sent to the west might retire on Portugal.
In addition to the insurgents and the garrison of Cadiz there were two regular armies whose energies might be turned against Soult. The relics of Areizaga’s unfortunate host, which had fled into the kingdom of Murcia, and had been rallied by Blake, were now 12,000 strong, and since Suchet’s expedition against Valencia had failed, and there was no danger from the north, this force could be employed against Sebastiani and the French corps in the kingdom of Granada. It was in a deplorable condition, but was yet strong enough to render assistance to the insurgents of the Alpujarras, by demonstrating against Granada, and so forcing Sebastiani to keep his troops massed for a regular campaign. Whenever the French general was threatened from the east, he had to abandon his smaller posts, and to desist from hunting the guerrilleros, who thus obtained a free hand.
The Regency could also count to a certain extent upon aid from La Romana and the Army of Estremadura. The Marquis—it will be remembered—was now confronted in his own province by Reynier and the 2nd Corps, but he had thrust his flanking division, under Ballasteros, into the mountains of North-Western Andalusia, where it had been contending with Mortier’s corps in the direction of Ara?ena and Zalamea, as has already been recounted. This outlying division was in communication with Cadiz, via Ayamonte and the lower Guadiana, and could always compel Soult to detach troops from Seville by descending into the plains. La Romana himself could, and occasionally did, provide further occupation for the 5th Corps by moving other troops southward, on the Seville high-road, when he was not too much engrossed by Reynier’s demonstrations in his front.
Thus it was possible to harass the French troops in Andalusia on all sides. With the object of securing some sort of unity for their operations, the Regency made Blake Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Cadiz as well as of those in Murcia, declaring them parts of a single ‘Army of the Centre.’ Albuquerque’s separate charge had come to an end when, after many quarrels with the Cadiz Junta, he resigned the post of governor, and accepted that of Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s at the end of March. He died not long after his arrival in London, engaged to the last in a hot warfare of pamphlets and manifestos with the Junta, whose monstrous insinuations against his probity and patriotism are said to have driven him into the brain-fever which terminated his life. He was a man of unsullied honour and high personal courage, but not a lucky general, though his last military action, the direction of the Army of Estremadura on Cadiz, was a sound and meritorious piece of strategy. He and La Romana were the only Spanish officers with whom Wellington was able to work in concert without perpetual friction, but the British Commander-in-Chief had a greater respect for his allies’ hearts than for their heads as may be gathered from constant references in the Wellington Dispatches, as well as from the confidential conversations of the Duke’s later years.
Blake arrived in Cadiz on April 22, having turned over the temporary command of the Murcian army to General Freire, the ever-unlucky cavalry commander who had served under Venegas and Areizaga in the campaigns of Almonacid and Oca?a. He set himself to reorganize the various Estremaduran and other troops in Cadiz into one division of horse and three divisions of foot, which he numbered Vanguard, 2nd, and 4th of the Army of the Centre. The Murcian forces were distributed into the 1st, 3rd, and 5th infantry divisions of the same army, and two small cavalry divisions. This reorganization of the regular troops was followed by systematic attempts to foster the insurrection to right and left of Seville. General Copons was sent to Ayamonte, at the mouth of the Guadiana, with 700 men, round whom he collected a miscellaneous assemblage of peasantry, which often descended from the hills to worry the French garrisons of Moguer and Niebla. When chased by stronger forces detached from Mortier’s corps, he would retire into Portugal. When unmolested he joined hands with Ballasteros and the flanking division of the army of La Romana, or executed raids of his own in the central plain of the kingdom of Seville. Often chased, and sometimes dispersed, his bands were never completely crushed, and kept Western Andalusia, or ‘Spanish Algarve,’ as it was called in the old days when the boundaries of Castile and Portugal had only just been fixed, in a state of constant ferment.
The diversion which was prepared on the other flank by Blake and the Regency was far more important. Their intention was to wrest from the French the whole district of the Sierra de Ronda, the mountain region between Gibraltar and Malaga, and so to thrust in a wedge between Victor and Sebastiani. There was already the nucleus of an insurrection in this quarter; soon after King Joseph’s triumphal progress from Xeres by Ronda and Malaga to Granada, the first small bands had appeared. They were headed by local chiefs, such as Becerra, Ruiz, and Ortiz—better known as El Pastor—whose original followers were a party of the smugglers who, in times of peace and war alike, had been wont to ply a contraband trade with Gibraltar. In March and April they were not strong enough to do more than molest the convoys passing from Malaga and Seville to the French garrison of Ronda. But finding the enemy in their neighbourhood weak and helpless—the bulk of the 1st Corps was before Cadiz, and that of the 5th Corps was still watching La Romana on the roads north of Seville—they multiplied in numbers and extended their raids far afield. They asked for aid both from the British Governor of Gibraltar and from the Regency at Cadiz, promising that, if they were backed by regular troops, they would easily expel the French and master the whole country-side. Already their activity had produced favourable results, for Soult sent down from Seville Girard’s division of the 5th Corps, a detachment which left Mortier too weak for any serious operations on the side of Estremadura, and Sebastiani drew back from an expedition against Murcia, which might otherwise have proved most prejudicial to the Spanish cause.
This raid deserves a word of notice: just after Blake had left Murcia for Cadiz, Sebastiani (who had for the moment got the better of the insurgents in the Alpujarras) assembled at Baza, in the eastern extremity of the kingdom of Granada, the greater part of the 4th Corps, and marched with 7,000 men on Lorca. Freire, distrusting his troops, refused to fight, threw 4,000 men into the impregnable harbour-fortress of Cartagena, and retired with the rest of his army to Alicante, within the borders of Valencia. Thus, the rich city of Murcia, along with the whole of the rest of its province, which had never seen the French before, was exposed undefended to Sebastiani. He entered it on April 23, and commenced by fining the corporation 50,000 dollars for not having received him with a royal salute and the ringing of the bells of their churches. The rest of his behaviour was in keeping: he entered the cathedral while mass was in progress, and interrupted the service to seize the plate and jewels. He confiscated the money and other valuables in all the monasteries, hospitals, and banks. He permitted his officers to blackmail many rich inhabitants, and his rank and file to plunder houses and shops. Two days after his entry he retraced his footsteps, and retreated hastily towards Granada, leaving a ruined city behind him. The cause of his sudden departure was the news that the insurgents of the Alpujarras, whom he had vainly imagined that he had crushed, were beleaguering all his small garrisons, and that Malaga itself had been seized by a large band of the Serranos, and held for a short space, though General Perreymond had afterwards succeeded in driving them out. But the whole of the Alhama and Ronda Sierras were up in arms, no less than the more eastern hills where the rising had begun. It would have been absurd for Sebastiani to proceed any further with the offensive campaign in Murcia, when Southern Andalusia was being lost behind his back.
Throughout the month of May Girard and Sebastiani, with some small assistance from Dessolles, who spared a few battalions from the kingdom of Cordova, were actively engaged in endeavouring to repress the mountaineers. The larger bands were dispersed, not without severe fighting—Girard’s men had hot work at Albondonates on May 1, and at Grazalema on May 3. But just as the main roads had been reopened, and the blockade of the French garrison of Ronda raised, the whole situation was changed by the landing at Algeciras of General Lacy, with a division of 3,000 regulars sent from Cadiz by the Regency (June 19). His arrival raised the spirits of the insurgents, and they thronged in thousands to his aid, when he announced his intention of marching against Ronda. Lacy, however, was both irresolute and high-handed—as he afterwards showed on a larger stage when he became Captain-General of Catalonia. On arriving before Ronda he judged the rocky stronghold too formidable for him to meddle with, and turned aside to Grazalema, to the disgust of his followers. He then fell into a quarrel with the Serranos, dismissed many of them—smugglers and others—from his camp, as unworthy to serve alongside of regular soldiers, and even imprisoned some of the more turbulent chiefs. At this moment Girard from the north and Sebastiani from the east began to close in upon him. Uneasy at their approach, Lacy fell back towards the coast, and after some insignificant skirmishes re-embarked his force at Estepona and Marbella, from whence he sailed round to Gibraltar and landed at the Lines of San Roque, under the walls of that fortress (July 12). Almost the only positive gain produced by his expedition had been the occupation of Marbella, where he left a garrison which maintained itself for a considerable time. It was no doubt something to have detained Girard and Sebastiani in the remote mountain of the south for a full month, when they were much needed by Soult in other directions. Yet the evil results of Lacy’s timid man?uvres and hasty flight upon the morale of the insurgents might have been sufficiently great to counterbalance these small advantages, if the Serranos had been less tough and resolute. It is surprising to find that they did not lose courage, but kept the rising afoot with undiminished energy, being apparently confirmed in their self-confidence by the poor show made by the regular army, rather than disheartened at the ineffective succour sent them from Cadiz. Despite of all the efforts of Soult’s flying columns, they could not be entirely dispersed, though they were hunted a hundred times from valley to valley. The power of the viceroy of Andalusia stopped short at the foot-hills, though his dragoons kept the plains in subjection. Every time that Ronda and the other isolated garrisons in the mountains had to be revictualled, the convoy had to fight its way to its destination through swarms of ‘sniping’ insurgents.
The Regency had not yet done with Lacy and his expeditionary force. After they had lain for some time under the walls of Gibraltar, they were re-embarked and taken back to Cadiz, from where a short time after they were dispatched for a raid in the Condado de Niebla. In this region, where Copons was already in arms, the French forces, under Remond and the Duke of Aremberg, were so weak that the Junta believed that Lacy’s division would easily clear the whole country-side of the enemy. Its liberation would be most valuable, because Cadiz was wont to draw both corn and cattle from the lands between the Rio Tinto and Guadiana, and had felt bitterly the want of its accustomed supplies since the war had been carried thither.
Lacy landed in the Bay of Huelva on August 23 with nearly 3,000 men. He had the good fortune to meet and to overcome in succession two small French columns which marched against him from Moguer and from San Juan del Puerto. Thereupon the Duke of Aremberg—whose whole force in this region was less than 1,500 men (two battalions of the 103rd of the line and the 27th Chasseurs)—evacuated Niebla and fell back on Seville. Copons, who had been told to join Lacy but had failed to receive his instructions in time, pursued a separate French column under General Remond for some distance, but was soon stopped by the news that a large force was moving against him, to repair this check to the French arms. Lacy, meanwhile, to the surprise and disgust of the inhabitants of the Condado, re-embarked on August 29 and went back to Cadiz, professing to regard the purpose of his expedition as completed. He had this much justification, that the news of his raid had induced Soult to send out against him, at a most critical moment, the main body of Gazan’s division, which marched to Niebla, vainly sought the expeditionary force, and returned to its base after wasting a fortnight. But a larger garrison was now left in Western Andalusia, Copons was hunted more vigorously than before, and cruel reprisals were made on the inhabitants of Moguer and Huelva, who had aided Lacy.
Feeble as it had been, Lacy’s raid on the Condado had staved off a serious danger to the Spanish Army of Estremadura, by forcing Soult to detach Gazan against him, at a moment when he was concentrating the 5th Corps for a blow at La Romana, and was already engaged in active operations against the Marquis. A complete change had taken place in the situation in Estremadura at the end of July, when Reynier, acting under orders from Masséna, had marched northward from his old base at Merida and Medellin, and crossed the Tagus at the ferry of Alconetar above the broken bridge of Alcantara (July 16). This removal of the whole 2nd Corps to the north, followed (as we have already seen) by the corresponding transference of Hill’s British force from Portalegre to the neighbourhood of Castello Branco, had left La Romana at Badajoz with no enemy in front of him, and had caused a complete rupture of communications between the French Army of Andalusia and the Army of Portugal, who could for the future only hear of each other by the circuitous route through Madrid, since that by Almaraz was closed.
Soult had now thrown upon his hands, to his immense disgust, the task of containing the whole of La Romana’s force, which Reynier had been keeping in check from March till July. Accordingly he called back from the Sierra de Ronda the division of Girard, wishing to reunite the whole 5th Corps for the protection of the northern approaches to Seville. He was only just in time, for La Romana had seen his opportunity, and had resolved to concentrate his army for a demonstration against Andalusia, which seemed to offer great temptations while nothing but the solitary division of Gazan stood between him and Seville, and that division, moreover, was weakened by the detachments under Remond and Aremberg which lay in the Condado de Niebla. Accordingly the Marquis, leaving Charles O’Donnell to watch Reynier on the Tagus, and another division to guard Badajoz, marched with his cavalry and the infantry of La Carrera and Ballasteros to invade Andalusia. He also told Copons to come up to reinforce him with his levies from the lower Guadiana. Even without the help of the latter, who never succeeded in reaching him, he had 10,000 foot and 1,000 horse. But La Romana was always unlucky when he fought: just as he started, Girard had returned from Ronda to Seville. On hearing that the Army of Estremadura was on the move, Soult pushed the newly returned division, strengthened by part of Gazan’s regiments and a brigade of cavalry, out towards the passes of the Morena. On August 11, Girard, with about 7,000 bayonets and 1,200 sabres, encountered La Romana at Villagarcia, just outside the town of Llerena. The Spaniards were eager to fight, believing that they had only to deal with some fraction of Gazan’s division; the news of Girard’s return from Ronda had not yet reached them. They got involved in a severe combat, were beaten, and were forced back to Zafra and Almendralejo, with a loss of 600 men—triple that of the French.
Soult then strengthened Girard’s column, placed Mortier in command, and bade him push for Badajoz. But just as the Duke of Treviso was preparing to advance, the news of Lacy’s disembarkation at Moguer arrived. There were hardly any troops left in Seville, wherefore Soult hastily recalled from Mortier such of Gazan’s regiments as were with him, and nearly all the cavalry, and sent them off against Lacy. Girard’s division retired from Zafra and took up a defensive position in the passes covering Seville. Thus a dangerous crisis was avoided, for if the whole 5th Corps had marched on Badajoz in August, and had driven back La Romana into Portugal, Wellington’s flank in the Alemtejo would have been left exposed. There was no longer a British division south of the Tagus to support the Spanish Army of Estremadura, since Hill had transferred himself to Castello Branco in order to ‘contain’ Reynier. Of regular troops, indeed, Wellington had nothing left on the Alemtejo frontier save Madden’s brigade of Portuguese horse, and the two infantry regiments of the same nation, who formed part of the garrison of Elvas. Hence he was much troubled at La Romana’s tendency to take the offensive against Seville, and repeatedly begged him to content himself with defensive operations, and not to attract the notice of Soult. For the Duke of Dalmatia, if left alone, had enough to occupy his attention in Andalusia, yet, if provoked, might abandon some outlying part of his viceroyalty, in order to concentrate a force which might crush the Estremaduran army, and then execute that diversion against Portugal south of the Tagus which Wellington so much dreaded.
Yet despite the warning that he had received at the combat of Villagarcia, and, despite of his ally’s entreaties, La Romana renewed in September the project that had cost him so dear in August. Learning that the passes in front of Seville were once more weakly held by the French, he began to move his army southward in detachments, till he had gathered a heavy force at Guadalcanal and Monasterio. Attributing his misfortunes in the last month to the weakness of his cavalry, he brought down with him Madden’s Portuguese horsemen, a weak brigade of 800 men, which Wellington had put at his disposition, not foreseeing that its existence would add to the inclination which the Marquis felt for offensive demonstrations. The inevitable result followed. Disquieted by the activity of the Estremaduran army—its raiding parties had already pressed as far as Santa Olalla on the Seville road, and Constantina on the Cordova road—Soult ordered Mortier to concentrate the main body of the 5th Corps at Ronquillo, and to attack the enemy. La Romana gave back at once, evacuating the passes, but his rearguard was overtaken at Fuente Cantos, behind Monasterio, by the French horse (Sept. 15). His cavalry, under La Carrera, turned to bay to cover the retreat, but was charged and scattered with heavy loss by Briche’s Chasseurs, who captured the battery that accompanied it, and enveloped a large mass of the beaten horsemen, who would have been forced to surrender if Madden’s Portuguese, charging at the right moment, and with great vigour, had not checked the French advance, and given time for the routed brigades to save themselves in the hills. Madden, though pursued by the French reserves, made a steady and successful retreat, with small loss. The Spaniards, however, left behind them six guns and 500 killed and wounded, while the French loss had not exceeded 100.
Mortier then pursued La Romana to Zafra, and pushed his advanced cavalry as far as Fuente del Maestre, only thirty miles from Badajoz. Thus the situation which Wellington most dreaded had come into existence once again: a considerable French army was moving into central Estremadura, and threatening the Alemtejo frontier south of the Tagus, at a moment when every man of the Anglo-Portuguese field army was fully employed in Beira by the advance of Masséna. But again, as in August, Mortier did not push his advantage, though La Romana actually retired behind the Tagus to Montijo, after raising the garrison of Badajoz to its full strength, and left the Duke of Treviso the opportunity of laying siege either to that city, to Olivenza, or even to Elvas, if he should so please. But the governing fact in all the operations of Soult and his lieutenants at this period was, as we have already pointed out, that if any great concentration of the French for offensive purposes took place, it was only made by withdrawing the garrison troops from some one of the many disturbed regions of Andalusia. When the whole 5th Corps was united, and had advanced to Zafra, Western Andalusia was almost stripped of troops. Indeed, at Seville itself, Soult had nothing but his new Spanish levies, and the convalescents from his central hospital, together with some detachments escorting convoys which happened to be passing through the city, and had been detained in order to add a few hundred bayonets to its garrison. When, therefore, Copons began to make himself felt once more in the Condado de Niebla, and a second raiding expedition from Cadiz landed at Huelva, Soult felt very uncomfortable.
His perturbation of mind was increased by news from the East: Sebastiani at this moment had been molested by demonstrations of the Spanish Army of Murcia against his flank. Blake had returned in August from Cadiz to inspect the section of his forces which he had left behind under Freire, and which he had not seen since April. He had pushed reconnaissances to Huescar in the kingdom of Granada, had sent supplies to aid the insurgents of the Alpujarras, and was beginning to stir up a new rising on the side of Jaen. This provoked Sebastiani to concentrate the larger part of the 4th Corps, and to march against him with 8,000 men. Blake gave back before his enemy as far as the neighbourhood of Murcia, where he had prepared a fortified position by inundating the Huerta, or suburban plain, which is watered by many canals drawn from the river Segura, and by stockading all the villages. Fourteen thousand regulars, with a powerful artillery, held the approaches, while a mass of armed peasantry hung around Sebastiani’s flanks. The French, however, only advanced as far as Lebrilla, twelve miles from Murcia, and then halted (Aug. 28). Sebastiani, after reconnoitring Blake’s line, thought it too powerful to be meddled with, and retired two days later towards his base, much harassed by the peasantry on his way. But during the three weeks that it took for the French general to concentrate his field-force, to march on Murcia, and to return, all had gone to wrack and ruin behind him. The insurgents of the Alpujarras had captured the important seaport towns of Almunecar and Motril, and had garrisoned their castles with the aid of English guns sent from Gibraltar. The people of the Sierra de Alhama had cut the roads between Malaga and Granada, and 4,000 mountaineers had attacked Granada itself; they were defeated outside its gates by the garrison on Sept. 4, but were still hanging about its vicinity.
The news of all these troubles had reached Soult while Sebastiani was quite out of touch, lost to sight in the kingdom of Murcia. They undoubtedly had their part in inducing the Marshal to recall Mortier and the 5th Corps from Estremadura. He once more divided its two divisions, drawing back Gazan to Seville to form his central reserve, while Girard watched the passes as before. Meanwhile Copons had already been beaten in the Condado by the column of General Remond (Sept. 15), and Sebastiani on his return cleared the neighbourhood of Granada and Malaga of insurgents, and drove the untameable bands of the Alpujarras to take refuge in their mountains. Motril and Almunecar were both recovered. Thus the storm passed, as soon as the two French expeditionary forces under Mortier and Sebastiani returned once more to their usual garrison-posts.
Only two more incidents remain to be chronicled in the Andalusian campaign of 1810. Campbell, the governor of Gibraltar, had resolved—somewhat too late—to lend a small detachment to aid the Granadan insurgents. The plan which he concerted with the Spanish governor of Ceuta was that Lord Blayney with two British battalions from the Gibraltar garrison—the 82nd and 89th , and a Spanish regiment (Imperial de Toledo) from Ceuta, 2,200 men in all, should be thrown on shore at Fuengirola, twenty miles on the nearer side of Malaga, where there was a small French garrison and a dép?t of stores, which was serving for a brigade then engaged in the siege of Marbella, the town which had been garrisoned by Lacy in June, and which was still holding out gallantly in October.
It was calculated that, on hearing of a descent at Fuengirola, Sebastiani would come with the larger part of the garrison of Malaga to relieve the fort. But the moment that he was known to be nearing the expeditionary force, Lord Blayney was to re-embark and to make a dash at Malaga itself, which he could reach more swiftly by water than Sebastiani by land. Secret partisans within the city were ready to take arms, and the peasantry of the Sierra de Alhama were also enlisted in the enterprise. The scheme seems liable to many criticisms—the whole was at the mercy of the winds and waves of stormy October: what would happen if the weather was too rough to allow of re-embarkation, or of easy landing at Malaga? And if Malaga were captured for the moment, for how long could 2,000 regulars, backed by a mass of undisciplined insurgents, hold it against the whole of Sebastiani’s corps, which would be hurled upon it at short notice? The expedition, however, was not actually wrecked on either of these dangers, but ruined by the folly of its chief. Lord Blayney landed successfully on October 13, and laid siege to Fuengirola, which was held by 150 Poles under a Captain Milokosiewitz. Instead of making the attack a mere demonstration, he brought some 12-pounders ashore, and set to work to batter the castle in all seriousness. Finding its walls commencing to crumble, he held on for two days, though, if he had reflected, he must have remembered that the garrison of Malaga might be with him at any moment. He was busily preparing for an assault, when Sebastiani suddenly fell upon him with 3,000 men from the rear. Apparently the English commander had neglected to keep up any watch on the side of the inland, and the peasantry had failed to send any intelligence of the fact that the French were on the move. The besiegers, taken entirely by surprise, and distracted also by a sortie of the little garrison, were rolled down to the sea-shore in confusion. Lord Blayney—a short-sighted man—rode in among some French whom he mistook for Spaniards, and was made prisoner in the most ignominious fashion. The Spanish regiment got off with little loss: it had kept its ranks, and forced its way to the boats after beating off an attack. The 82nd was partly on shipboard at the moment of the combat, and the companies which were on shore saved themselves by a steady rearguard action. But the battalion of the 89th was half destroyed, losing over 200 prisoners besides some forty killed. The utter incapacity of the British commander was best shown by the fact that if he had but carried out the plan on which he was acting, he would certainly have captured Malaga—for Sebastiani had left only 300 men in the city when he marched on Fuengirola, and, if the expeditionary force had re-embarked twenty-four hours before the disaster, it would have found the place practically undefended, and Sebastiani a long day’s march away, and incapable of returning in time to save it.
The very last military event of the year 1810 on the Andalusian side was a disaster far worse than that of Lord Blayney—suffered by a general whose almost unbroken series of defeats from Medina de Rio Seco down to Belchite ought to have taught him by this time the advantages of caution, and the doubtful policy of risking a demoralized army in a fight upon open ground. When Sebastiani retired from the kingdom of Murcia in the first days of September, Blake had brought back his army to its old positions on the frontier of that realm. Seven weeks later, finding the French line in front of him very weak, he resolved to try a demonstration in force, or perhaps even a serious stroke against the force of the enemy in Granada. On November 2 he crossed the Murcian border, with 8,000 foot and 1,000 horse, and occupied Cullar.
On the next day he was at the gates of Baza, where there were four battalions of the French force which covered Granada. But on the next morning General Milhaud rode up with a powerful body of horsemen, the greater part of his own division of Dragoons and the Polish Lancers from Sebastiani’s corps-cavalry, some 1,300 men in all. Though he had only 2,000 infantry to back him, Milhaud determined to fight at once. Blake’s army invited an attack; it was advancing down the high-road with the cavalry deployed in front, one division of infantry supporting it, while a second division was some miles to the rear, on the hills which separate the plain of Baza from the upland of the Sierra de Oria. A rearguard of 2,000 men was still at Cullar, ten miles from the scene of action. The situation much resembled that of Suchet’s combat of Margalef, and led to the same results. For Milhaud’s squadrons, charging fiercely along and on each side of the road, completely routed Blake’s cavalry, and drove it back on to the leading infantry division, which broke, and was badly cut up before its remnants could take shelter with the other division in reserve on the hill behind. Blake gave the order for an instant retreat, and Milhaud could not follow far among the rocks and defiles. But he had captured a battery of artillery and a thousand prisoners, and killed or wounded some 500 men more, in the few minutes during which the engagement lasted. The French cavalry lost no more than 200 men. The infantry had hardly fired a shot. Blake, not being pursued, retired only as far as the Venta de Bahul on the other side of Cullar, and remained on the Murcian border, cured for a time of his mania for taking the offensive at the head of a demoralized army.
Thus ended the inconclusive campaign of 1810 in Andalusia—the French on the last day of the year held almost precisely the same limits of territory that they had occupied on the 1st of March. They had beaten the enemy in four or five considerable actions, yet had gained nothing thereby. They were beginning to understand that Cadiz was impregnable, and that the complete subjection of the mountains of the South and East was a far more serious task than had been at first supposed. Things indeed had come to a deadlock, and Soult kept reporting to his master that another 25,000 men would be required to enable him to complete his task. Almost as many battalions belonging to the 1st, 4th, and 5th Corps as would have made up that force had been sent by the Emperor into Spain. They were intended to join their regiments in the end, but meanwhile they had been distracted into the 8th and 9th Corps, and were marching in the direction of Portugal, when Soult wished to see them on the Guadalquivir. Very little of the mass of reinforcements which had been poured into the Peninsula in the spring of 1810 had come his way. While the whole battalions had been sent away with Junot or Drouet, the drafts in smaller units had been largely intercepted by the generals along the line of communication. There were 4,000 of such recruits detained in New Castile alone, and formed into ‘provisional battalions’ to garrison Madrid and its neighbourhood. King Joseph must not be blamed too much for thus stopping them on their way: he had been left with an utterly inadequate force, when the Emperor turned off everything on to the direction of Portugal. During the summer and autumn of 1810 there were with him only two French infantry regiments, the same number of light cavalry regiments, Lahoussaye’s weak division of dragoons, and the German division of the 4th Corps less than 4,000 strong, over and above his own guard and untrustworthy ‘juramentado’ battalions. The royal troops numbered about 7,000 men, the other units, including Soult’s detained drafts, about 12,000: with them Joseph had to garrison Madrid, Avila, Segovia, Toledo, and Almaraz, and hold down all New Castile and La Mancha—which last province was described at the time as ‘populated solely by beggars and brigands’. He had the duty of maintaining the sole and very circuitous line of communication between Soult and Masséna, which, after Reynier went north in July, had to be worked via Almaraz. He was frequently annoyed not only by the Empecinado and other guerrilleros, but by Villacampa, who descended from higher Aragon into the Cuenca region, and by Blake’s cavalry, which often raided La Mancha. But his great fear was lest La Romana or Wellington should send troops up the vast gap left between Reynier at Zarza and Coria and Mortier in the Sierra Morena; there was nothing but Lahoussaye’s dragoons and two infantry battalions in the whole district about Almaraz and Talavera, where such a blow would have fallen. It was small wonder that he felt uncomfortable.
But military sources of disquietude formed only the smaller half of King Joseph’s troubles at this date. His political vexations, which engrossed a much larger portion of his time and energy, must be dealt with elsewhere. They will be relegated to the same chapter which treats of the new development of Spanish politics consequent on the long-delayed meeting of the Cortes in the winter of 1810-11.
MASSéNA’S ADVANCE TO BUSSACO (SEPTEMBER 1810)
After the fall of Almeida Masséna waited much longer than Wellington had anticipated. The reasons for his delay were the usual ones that were always forthcoming when a French army had to advance in the Peninsula—want of transport and penury of supplies. The Marshal had just discovered that the country-side in front of him had already been depopulated by Wellington’s orders, and that the only inhabitants that were to be met would be the armed Ordenan?a, who were already shooting at his vedettes and attacking his foraging parties. He was inclined to treat them as brigands; his Provost-marshal, Colonel Pavetti, having been surprised and captured along with five gendarmes of his escort by the villagers of Nava d’Avel on September 5, he caused the place to be burned, shot the one or two male inhabitants who could be caught, and issued a proclamation stating that no quarter would be given to combatants without uniforms. This provoked two stiff letters from Wellington, who wrote to say that the Ordenan?a were an integral part of the Portuguese military forces, and that, if they wore no uniforms, the Marshal should remember that many of the revolutionary bands which he had commanded in the old war of 1792-7 were no better equipped: ‘vous devez vous souvenir que vous-même vous avez augmenté la gloire de l’armée Fran?aise en commandant des soldats qui n’avaient pas d’uniforme.’ If Ordenan?a were shot as ‘brigands and highway robbers’ in obedience to the proclamation of September 7, it was certain that French stragglers and foragers would be knocked on the head, and not taken prisoners, by the enraged peasantry. At present the number of them sent in to the British head quarters by the Portuguese irregulars proved that the laws of war were being observed. Masséna replied that Pavetti had been ambushed by men who hid their arms, and ran in upon him and his escort while he was peaceably asking his way. His letter then went off at a tangent, to discuss high politics, and to declare that he was not the enemy of the Portuguese but of the perfidious British government, &c., &c. Finally he complained that the Arganil and Trancoso militia, whom he had sent home after the fall of Almeida, had taken up arms again; if caught, ‘leur sort sera funeste’. The last statement Wellington denied; he said that the capitulation had been annulled by the French themselves, when they debauched the 24th regiment, and detained 600 of the militia to form a battalion of pioneers, but stated that as a matter of fact the militia battalions had not been re-embodied. The French continued to shoot the Ordenan?a, and the Ordenan?a soon began to reply by torturing as well as hanging French stragglers; Wellington forbade but could not prevent retaliation.
In his dispatch to Berthier of September 8, Masséna explains that the depopulation of the district in front of him, and the fact that the Ordenan?a had taken arms throughout the country-side, have compelled him to make an enormous provision of food for his army. Since the land has been swept bare, he must collect fifteen or twenty days’ rations for the 6th and 8th Corps. ‘Each day demonstrates the necessity of this more clearly, but each day makes it more evident that we are not obtaining as much as our activity deserves. The small amount of transport available, and the destruction by the Spanish brigands of several convoys of corn which were coming up from the province of Valladolid, have occasioned delay in the accumulation of the stores. An additional vexation is that while it was reported that we had captured 300,000 rations of biscuit in Almeida, there turn out really to be only 120,000 rations.’ But it was the loss of draught-beasts that was the most serious trouble; to his great regret Masséna had to cut down the artillery of each division from twelve to eight guns, for want of horses, with a similar reduction of the caissons. Every animal that could be procured was given over to the train, yet it could not carry even the fifteen days’ food which the Marshal considered the minimum that he could afford to take with him. There was also a deficiency in cartridges for the infantry, for whom 1,200,000 rounds were only procured by setting the artificers of the train to make up as many as was possible from the powder captured at Ciudad Rodrigo. Finally Masséna explains that the losses in the two late sieges, the necessity for garrisoning Almeida and Rodrigo, and the effects of a sickly summer, have reduced the two corps and the reserve cavalry under his hand to 42,000 or 45,000 men, so that he must incorporate Reynier with his main army, in order to get a sufficient force concentrated for the invasion. When this has been done, he will have no force to leave behind to guard his communications, and Kellermann and Serras are too much occupied to spare a man for that purpose. The Spaniards will press in between the army and Salamanca the moment that the troops have entered the Portuguese mountains. He will advance, therefore, on September 15, but only with grave apprehension for his rear, and he begs that at all costs a division of the 9th Corps should be brought up to Salamanca. He had been promised long ago that this should be done, but no signs of Drouet’s arrival were yet visible.
Reynier accordingly was called up, at last, to join the main army; he left Zarza and Penamacor on the 10th of September, crossed the Pass of Perales, and on the 12th was at Alfayates, with cavalry in front at Sabugal. Hill, always vigilant, perceived Reynier’s movement as soon as it had taken place. On the 12th his corps quitted Sarzedas, leaving nothing behind in the Castello Branco country save Lecor’s Portuguese at Fund?o, who were ordered to follow, unless Reynier should send back any detachments to the south side of the Sierra de Gata. Leith started from the banks of the Zezere three days later, and on the 20th the two divisions were drawing near to Wellington’s rear in the valley of the Mondego, Hill being at Espinhal that day, and Leith (who had less distance to cover) a march further to the front, at Foz d’Aronce. Wellington’s concentration on the Alva must obviously be completed before the French could strike.
On September 15, 1810, Ney and Junot broke up from the encampments in front of Almeida, while Reynier drew in close to the main body by marching up from Sabugal towards Guarda. It was clear that the attack of the French was to be delivered along the line of the Mondego, but whether by its southern or its northern bank Wellington could not yet be sure, though he was under the impression that the former would be the chosen route, since the chaussée from Almeida by Celorico and Ponte de Murcella is good for a Portuguese road, while the mountain track by Trancoso and Vizeu is abominable. Yet one of the three columns of the French pointed from the first towards the north bank: while Ney took his way by Freixadas and Alverca towards Celorico, Junot was reported to have turned off from the main road at Valverde, and to be marching by Pinhel westward or north-westward. What Reynier would do after reaching Guarda remained yet to be seen.
The total force which Masséna had drawn together for the invasion was 65,000 officers and men. He had left behind a regiment of dragoons and four battalions of infantry to take care of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo. In the latter place he had also deposited his siege-train, with the considerable body of artillerymen belonging to it. Brennier and Cacault commanded at the two places respectively. They had between them some 3,500 men, a force which perceptibly diminished the army of invasion, yet was insufficient to do more than to hold the two fortresses. Gardanne, with five squadrons of dragoons, was to maintain touch between them. Not a man would be available from the garrisons for service against Spanish or Portuguese insurgents—indeed both Almeida and Rodrigo were practically under blockade from the moment that the main army went forward, and were destined to learn nothing of its doings for many days. Wellington’s cordon of Ordenan?a proved perfectly efficient.
On the evening of the 15th the 2nd Corps had reached Guarda, from which it drove out a picket of the 16th Light Dragoons, who retired towards the Mondego. The 6th Corps bivouacked at Freixadas, having pushed back from it two squadrons of the 14th Light Dragoons and the German Hussars. The 8th Corps, which had to come up from the Azava, passed Almeida and slept beyond the Coa. In its rear was Montbrun’s reserve cavalry division, and behind this again the reserve artillery of the whole army. This column, therefore, was by far the longest and (owing to the amount of guns and caissons) the most unwieldy of the three masses in which the French were marching.
On the 16th Wellington hoped to see Masséna’s designs unmasked. But it proved a day of continued doubt: Reynier left Heudelet’s division at Guarda, and moved on with Merle’s and the cavalry to Celorico. Here he met Ney, who had marched from Freixadas to Celorico, and had pushed his light cavalry through it in advance. One body of horsemen took a hill road high up the side of the Serra da Estrella, and reached Linhares, another followed the great chaussée as far as Carapichina, and detached a squadron or two from that point to seize the bridge of Fornos d’Algodres, over which passes the bad side-road from Celorico to Vizeu. Was the enemy about to turn aside on this path, or to pursue the more probable policy of continuing along the chaussée to Ponte de Murcella? Nothing could yet be deduced from Junot’s movements: his heavy column only reached Pinhel that day: from thence he might either come down to Celorico (the most probable course), or make a move towards Oporto, by the high-road Pinhel-Marialva-St. Jo?o da Pesqueira, or (what seemed least likely) follow the very bad mountain-road from Pinhel by Povoa d’el Rei to Trancoso and Vizeu. Meanwhile Wellington ordered the continuation of the retreat of his army towards Ponte de Murcella and the position behind the Alva. The 1st, 3rd, and 4th Divisions retired at their leisure along the great chaussée, by Sarago?a and Chamusca: the Light Division moved parallel to them by the mountain-road Gouvea-San Martinho-San Rom?o. The appearance of Ney’s cavalry at Linhares on this track made the Commander-in-Chief anxious to have it watched, since it was possible that the 6th Corps might use it. The cavalry, keeping the rear well guarded, lay this day at Pinhan?os on the chaussée and San Martinho on the hill-road. Head quarters were at Cea, on the latter line. The only troops now left north of the Mondego, on the route which Junot might possibly follow from Pinhel, were a few cavalry-pickets, wherefore the Commander-in-Chief, conceiving it just possible that the 8th Corps might be intending to make a dash at Oporto, while the other two kept him in check, sent urgent letters to Trant, the officer in charge of the militia of Northern Beira, and to Baccelar, who lay at Oporto with the militia of the Entre-Douro-e-Minho, to take precautions against this movement. Trant, from Moimento de Beira, was to feel for Junot’s front and flank: Baccelar was to send out some picked battalions, under J. Wilson, to the line of the Vouga, and to get into touch with Trant on his left.
On the 17th Masséna’s intentions at last became clear to his adversary. The cavalry of the 6th Corps crossed the bridge of Fornos, which it had seized on the previous night, and the leading division of infantry followed it to Juncaes, on the Mondego bank: nothing came along the chaussée, all the French columns turning off it at Carapichina, and pursuing the cross-road. Ney’s rear was still at Celorico, to which place the whole of the 2nd Corps also came up that day. In the evening the head of the cavalry of the 6th Corps was near Mangualde, many miles along the road north of the Mondego. It seemed probable therefore, that a transference of the whole French army to the right bank, over the bridge of Fornos, was about to take place. This became almost certain when the simultaneous news arrived that Junot had marched that day from Pinhel not towards Celorico, nor on the Oporto road (that by Marialva and St. Jo?o da Pesqueira), but by the abominable cross-road by Povoa d’el Rei to Trancoso. The 8th and 6th Corps therefore were showing a tendency to converge on Vizeu. If so, they must be aiming at reaching Coimbra without touching Wellington’s chosen position of Ponte de Murcella, where he had hoped to fight. This deduction once made, the British commander had to recast his plans. ‘The 2nd and 6th Corps came to Celorico yesterday,’ he wrote to Leith that evening, ‘and a part of them crossed the Mondego at Fornos. More have crossed this day, while no part of the enemy’s army has moved this way . It is generally understood that their whole army is between the Douro and the Mondego, and that they are about to move on Coimbra. I shall have troops in Coimbra to-morrow.’ All the divisions were ordered back at once, so as to be ready on the Lower Mondego to resist the French, when they should appear from the direction of Vizeu. Only cavalry were left at Sampayo and Gouvea, to watch the passage of the Mondego by the French army, and to make certain that its rear (i. e. Reynier’s corps) might not be about to use the main chaussée, a move which was even yet possible.
Masséna’s resolve to use the route by the north bank of the Mondego surprised all British and some French observers at the time, and has been censured by most historical critics. He left a good for a bad road: he imposed two extra marches on his army at a moment when it was short of provisions. He gave Wellington ample time to call up Hill and Leith, and to select a new position for battle to replace that of Ponte de Murcella. The Bussaco hillsides, where the clash was to come, were as formidable as those behind the Alva. But these considerations were less obvious to Masséna in 1810 than they appear to the critic of 1907. It must first be remembered that his maps were abominable: the actual case of plans used by the staff of the Army of Portugal is preserved: it is that issued by Lopez in 1778, which in the remoter parts of Portugal not only offers a mere travesty of the natural features, but actually marks as existing roads that never had been made, and omits others that were actually available. It shows, moreover, no distinction between chaussées, country roads, and mere mule tracts. Places of considerable importance are misplaced by several miles, e. g. Almeida is placed on the Coa instead of two miles from it: Vizeu is much too far north, as is also Bussaco. As far as this map goes, the physical difficulties in the way of an advance north of the Mondego look no greater than those on the southern bank. But, it may be said, Masséna should have supplemented the use of the map by collecting oral information, and by sending reconnaissances in every direction. He did so, so far as was in his power. But exploration far afield was only possible with large bodies of men, since the Ordenan?a blocked every road to the isolated staff-officer, and the only oral information which was forthcoming was defective. Masséna asked for it from Alorna, Pamplona, and the other Portuguese officers on his staff—there were no less than eighteen of them in all. They were absolutely ignorant of their own country,—a normal thing in the military men of the old Portuguese army. Even Pamplona, whose estates lay in the neighbourhood of Coimbra, gave hopelessly erroneous information about the routes leading into that town. But, from natural amour propre they avoided confessing their ignorance, and, when taken into council by Masséna, gave him copious but wholly misleading details. They assured him that the roads Pinhel-Trancoso-Vizeu and Fornos-Mangualde-Vizeu were no worse than other lines of communication, and that the great chaussée by Sampayo and Ponte de Murcella was crossed by so many torrents and climbed so many slopes that it was not preferable to the routes north of the river. The news that a formidable position behind the Alva had been entrenched had reached the French head quarters; hence Masséna had fair reasons for taking the route that he selected, so far as strategy went. It undoubtedly enabled him to turn the line of the Alva. Moreover, on it lay a large town—Vizeu—from which it was hoped that much food would be procured, for the invaders were still ignorant of the thoroughness with which Wellington’s plans for devastating the country before them had been carried out. Even after Celorico and Guarda had been found empty of inhabitants, they hardly believed that such a large place as Vizeu, a town of 9,000 souls, would be deserted.
Masséna’s mistake became evident to his soldiers on the first day on which he ordered his columns to quit the main-roads and take to the by-paths. The infantry could still get forward, but the artillery and waggon-train began to drag behind, to lose horses, and to see vehicle after vehicle broken, disabled, or abandoned. On the 18th the infantry of the 6th Corps got as far as Mangualde on the north bank of the Mondego, but the artillery was so much delayed in the defile after passing Juncaes that it could not catch up the rear of the marching troops, and had to be parked at night not many miles beyond the bridge of Fornos. The 2nd Corps on reaching this spot found the road blocked, and bivouacked with one division beyond the Mondego, and one still in the rear of the bridge. But the troubles of this column were nothing to those of the 8th Corps on the miserable road from Pinhel to Vizeu. The journal of the commandant of the artillery of Junot’s first division, Colonel No?l, may be quoted as giving a fair description of the marches of the 17th and 18th September:—
‘After passing the little town of Trancoso, with its battlemented wall, all the country-side is mountain and rock. There is no road, only a stony narrow dangerous track, which the artillery had all the pains in the world to follow without meeting accidents. It is all steep ups and downs. I had to march with a party of gunners ahead of me, with picks and crowbars to enlarge the track. As each arm only looked out for itself, the artillery soon got left to the rear, and deserted by the infantry and cavalry. We only arrived at our halting-places late at night, utterly done up. The guns were almost always abandoned to themselves; we did not know what road to follow, having no one to give us information but a few infantry stragglers, who had themselves lost their way. At noon on the 18th I halted with my two batteries after two hours of incessant uphill, to find myself at the crest of a mountain, with a precipitous descent before me, and beyond that another ascent winding upwards, as far as the eye could reach. We were so exhausted that it was useless to go further that day, but on the 19th, with a party of gunners always working in front to enlarge the road, we moved over hill and vale, completely out of touch with the army. I had to ride out with four mounted men to hunt for any trace of it. At last, in a deserted village, we found an old peasant who pointed out the road to Vizeu. But it was only on the 20th that we got there.’ No?l’s batteries, it may be remarked, were moving all the time between the infantry, which was ahead, and the Grand Park which was behind them, with Montbrun’s cavalry bringing up the rear. Yet they were absolutely lost and had to shift for themselves without orders or escort.
The Park fared even worse; when nearing Sotojal, on the 20th, it was unexpectedly beset by Colonel Trant, who had come down from Moimenta with a brigade of his militia and two squadrons of Portuguese regular cavalry. The Park was escorted by one company of grenadiers, who marched at its head, and a battalion of the Irish Legion, who were far to the rear, while Montbrun’s immense cavalry column was quite out of sight. Trant had a great opportunity, for the long file of vehicles and guns, caught in a narrow road, was almost helpless. But he failed to do all that was in his power; his cavalry charged the company at the head of the column and was repulsed. He then filed his battalions along the hillside, opened fire on the horses and men of the train, and, descending into their midst, captured and destroyed some caissons and took some eighty prisoners. But when the escort-battalion came hurrying up from the rear, his levies were stricken with panic and hastily retired, though they were strong enough to have held off the five hundred Irish, and to have smashed or rolled over the precipices the greater part of the guns and waggons. Montbrun’s cavalry did not get up till all was over, and would have been perfectly useless on the precipitous road, even if they had arrived earlier. If Trant’s foray had been properly carried out, Masséna might have lost his reserve artillery and most of his provisions—a disaster which might have forced him to turn back to Almeida. He deserved such a punishment for having marched his all-important train on the extreme flank of his army, with an insufficient escort.
Though Junot’s infantry divisions reached the deserted walls of Vizeu on Sept. 19th and there met the corps of Ney, the divisional artillery did not arrive till next day, while the reserve artillery, the trains and the heavy cavalry were struggling in upon the 21st and 22nd by detachments. For Montbrun had halted the great convoy after Trant’s attack, and parked it, fearing that the Portuguese might come back in greater numbers and give more trouble. When he started it again, on the 21st, he took care to give it better marching arrangements, and to attach cavalry escorts to each section. But this caused much delay, and meanwhile the 8th Corps waited at Vizeu ‘marking time’ and unable to move. Even the 6th Corps remained there two days, waiting while its gun-carriages and cannons were being repaired; for the Fornos-Vizeu road, though infinitely less rough than that which the 8th Corps and the park had followed, was still bad enough to shake many vehicles to pieces. The Intendant-General reported that nineteen caissons carrying 2,900 rations of biscuit belonging to the 6th Corps broke down and had to be burnt; the food was distributed among the regiments as they passed, with much consequent waste. All that Ney could do between the 18th of September, when he reached Vizeu, and the 21st, was to push forward an advanced guard to Tondella, fifteen miles down the Vizeu-Coimbra road, with an infantry division in support at Fail. Meanwhile the 2nd Corps, following in the wake of the 6th, had also made its way to Vizeu. The bulk of Reynier’s force took the Fornos-Mangualde-Lagiosa route, as Ney’s had done. But an advanced guard of all arms descended the great chaussée south of the river as far as Taboa, driving in the pickets of the English cavalry, and then crossed the Mondego at the bridge of Taboa, and fell into the rear of the rest of the corps beyond Mangualde. This apparently was intended to keep Wellington uncertain, as long as possible, as to whether part of the French army was not intending, after all, to follow the chaussée and present itself before the position on the Alva. But it was executed by so small a force that the British general was not for an hour deceived. He was at this moment in a cheerful frame of mind; Masséna had made a mistake in choosing his route, and was merely wasting time when time was most precious. ‘There are certainly many bad roads in Portugal,’ he wrote, ‘but the enemy has taken decidedly the worst in the whole kingdom’; and again, ‘I imagine that Marshal Masséna has been misinformed, and has experienced more difficulty in making his movement than he expected. He has certainly selected one of the worst roads in Portugal for his march.’ Owing to the necessary delays of the enemy Wellington was now in a position as strong as that on the Alva; his head quarters were at the convent of Bussaco, his divisions, including Leith and Hill, so placed that they could be concentrated on the Serra de Alcoba, right across the Vizeu-Coimbra road, long before the French could descend from Vizeu. ‘We have an excellent position here, in which I am strongly tempted to give battle,’ he wrote on the evening of the 21st, foreseeing six days ahead the probability of the engagement which was to make Bussaco famous. There was a road by which his position might be turned, but it was doubtful whether the enemy would discover it, and ‘I do not yet give up hopes of discovering a remedy for that misfortune.’
Map of the Mondego Valley
Enlarge THE MONDEGO VALLEY
Masséna, meanwhile, was chafing at his self-imposed delays, and writing querulous letters from Vizeu to Berthier. ‘The grand park and the baggage,’ he wrote on the 22nd, ‘are still in the rear, and will only get up to-morrow. It is impossible to find worse roads than these; they bristle with rocks; the guns and train have suffered severely, and I must wait for them. I must leave them two days at Vizeu when they come in, to rest themselves, while I resume my march on Coimbra, where (as I am informed) I shall find the Anglo-Portuguese concentrated. Sir, all our marches are across a desert; not a soul to be seen anywhere; everything is abandoned. The English push their barbarity to the point of shooting the wretched inhabitant who tries to remain in his village; the women, the children, the aged, have all decamped. We cannot find a guide anywhere. The soldiers discover a few potatoes and other vegetables; they are satisfied, and burn for the moment when they shall meet the enemy.’ The plan of devastation was already beginning to work; Masséna had exhausted seven of the thirteen days’ provisions which his army carried, and it was not with the potatoes gleaned in the fields of Vizeu, or the ripe grapes of its vineyards, that he could refill the empty store-waggons. He must push on for Coimbra as fast as possible; this, no doubt, was why he made up his mind to march on that place, not by descending from Vizeu to Aveiro and entering the coast plain, but by taking the direct road by Santa Comba Dao, Mortagoa, and Bussaco. Even Lopez’s faulty map shows the ridge of Bussaco as a serious physical feature, but the Marshal does not seem to have reflected for a moment that Wellington might choose to defend it. The orders drawn up on September 24th for the march on Coimbra presuppose an unobstructed progress. Having met no active resistance as yet from the Anglo-Portuguese army, Masséna wrongly took it for granted that he might count on the prolongation of this good fortune.
Before moving on from Vizeu the organization of the French army was slightly modified. Junot’s corps contained a number of fourth battalions, belonging to regiments whose three senior battalions were serving in the 2nd Corps. The two corps had never met till both lay at Vizeu. Masséna then ordered the fourth battalions of the 36th, 47th, 70th of the Line, and the 2nd and 4th Léger to join their regiments in Reynier’s corps; this reduced the 8th Corps by 2,850 men; in return, however, Reynier was ordered to make over to Junot two regiments of old troops, the 15th and 86th of the line (each of three battalions) making in all 2,251 bayonets. Thus the two corps were somewhat equalized in quality, the 2nd receiving five battalions of recruits, while the 8th (in which there were too few veterans) got in return six battalions which had served in Spain since the commencement of the war. The net result was to make the 2nd Corps a little stronger (17,024 men) and the 8th Corps a little weaker (15,904 men).
On September 21st the advance of the Army of Portugal was recommenced, though the train and heavy baggage was not yet prepared to start, and some of its rear detachments had not even reached Vizeu. But on that day the advanced guard of the 6th Corps advanced from Tondella, and found in front of it some light cavalry and two Portuguese regiments—the first hostile troops that the French had seen since the campaign began. The whole of the 2nd and 6th Corps followed behind, and bivouacked that night at Casal-de-Maria, Tondella, Sabugo?a and other villages on the steep downward road from Vizeu to Coimbra. The 8th Corps still remained at Vizeu, guarding the belated reserve artillery and train. On the 22nd the 2nd Corps, passing the 6th, which had hitherto taken the lead, crossed the Criz and drove in the British outposts, who retired on Mortagoa. But Ney and the 6th Corps remained stationary, and the 8th did not even yet make a start. These delays seem extraordinary, but Masséna was still paying for his evil choice of roads; the infantry had to wait for the guns, and the guns could only creep forward as the sappers enlarged and improved the roads for them.
Wellington, meanwhile, was recasting his dispositions at his leisure. When Masséna’s march on Vizeu had become certain, the British Commander-in-Chief thought at first that the enemy would take the good chaussée Vizeu-Aveiro, so as to descend into the coast-plain and attack Coimbra from the easiest side. He therefore, on the 18th moved the 1st Division back from Ponte de Murcella to Coimbra, where it was joined by a new brigade from Lisbon, composed of the 1st battalions of the 7th and 79th, newly landed. A. Campbell’s and Coleman’s Portuguese also moved to the same point. The 3rd and 4th Divisions remained at Ponte de Murcella in the entrenched position, with the Light Division and Pack’s Portuguese in front of them at Venda do Porco and Sampayo.
But on the 20th, when Ney’s advanced guard began to come out from Vizeu on the Santa Comba Dao road, not on the Aveiro road, Wellington discovered that it was on the mountain of Bussaco, and not on the plain in front of Coimbra, that he would next meet the enemy. Accordingly Pack’s Portuguese and the Light Division forded the Mondego below Sampayo, as did the light cavalry, and a detaining force was thus thrown across the Vizeu-Coimbra road. The Portuguese brigade took post behind the Criz torrent, Craufurd’s men a little to the rear at Mortagoa. At the same time the 1st Division and the troops attached to it moved out from Coimbra to Mealhada on the Aveiro road, a point from which they could easily be called up to the Bussaco position, if no French columns were discovered coming down the Aveiro road, as now seemed probable. This day, Leith’s division, to Wellington’s intense satisfaction, arrived at San Miguel de Payares behind the Alva, and so joined the main body. Hill was reported to be a day’s march only to the rear, at Foz d’Aronce. Thus the whole of the Anglo-Portuguese regular forces between Douro and Tagus were neatly concentrated. At the same time Trant was told to bring the militia of Northern Beira down the Oporto-Coimbra road to Agueda and Sard?o, and Baccelar was directed to support him with Wilson’s militia brigade, in case Masséna should have some subsidiary operation against Oporto in his mind.
On the 24th the first skirmish of the campaign took place; the 2nd Corps, advancing into the plain in front of Mortagoa, found Pack’s Portuguese facing them on the right, and Craufurd’s division on the left, with a screen of cavalry in front. They pushed in the horsemen upon the infantry, but halted when artillery opened upon them, and made no further advance. On this day the belated 8th Corps, with the reserve cavalry, at last started from Vizeu. Next morning Reynier pressed on in force with two heavy columns each formed by a division, and Craufurd was ordered by Wellington to retire, which he did with some reluctance by alternate échelons of brigades. The 95th and 43rd had some sharp skirmishing with the French van, and made a stand by the village of Moura under the Bussaco heights, before retiring up the high-road, and taking position upon the crest of the great ridge, which they did at six o’clock in the evening.
While the advanced guards of Reynier and Ney were driving in Craufurd and Pack, the Anglo-Portuguese army was assembling on Wellington’s chosen fighting-ground. Picton and Cole, with the 3rd and 4th Divisions, had already taken up their quarters on the Bussaco ridge on the 21st, the first across the road from San Antonio de Cantaro to Palheiros, the second across the chaussée, behind the spot to which the troops of Pack and Craufurd were retiring. Leith, who had been brought over the Mondego by the fords of Pe?a Cova on the 23rd, moved up on to the southern tract of the Bussaco heights on the 24th. Hill, who reached the line of the Alva on the 22nd, followed in Leith’s wake, and on the 25th was at Pe?a Cova waiting for orders to cross. The 1st Division with Campbell’s and Coleman’s Portuguese alone were still absent, though not far off. They had started from Mealhada, when it became clear that no French force was coming by the Aveiro-Coimbra road, but on the night of the 25th were still some eight miles away, and did not get into position between Cole and Picton till between nine and ten o’clock on the morning of the 26th.
Nevertheless, nearly 40,000 men, composed of the Light, 3rd, 4th, 5th Divisions and their Portuguese auxiliaries, and of Hill on their flank, only four miles away, were concentrated on the night of the 25th, when Reynier’s vanguard deployed in front of the heights. Before ten o’clock on the following morning Spencer had arrived, and Hill was over the fords and encamped along the rear slopes of the heights. There seems to be no truth whatever in the allegation that the British army was in a somewhat dangerous position on the evening of the 25th, for the French had only their vanguard up, and there were less than two hours of daylight left when Craufurd retired from Moura, and Reynier and Ney obtained their first view of the British position. Before the enemy could have collected in strength sufficient for an attack, night would have set in.
NOTE ON THE SITUATION ON SEPT. 25
Napier wholly misrepresents the state of affairs in vol. iii. pp. 22-3. He writes as follows: ‘Before 3 o’clock 40,000 French infantry were embattled on the two points (the chaussée and the San Antonio de Cantaro road), their guns trying the range above, while the skirmishing clatter of musketry arose from the dark wooded chasms below. Ney, whose military glance was sure, instantly perceived that the mountain, a crested not a table one, could hide no great reserves, that it was only half occupied, and that the allies were moving with the disorder usual on the taking of unknown ground. He wished therefore to attack, but Masséna was ten miles to the rear, the officer sent to him waited two hours for an audience, and then returned with orders to attend the Prince’s arrival. Thus a great opportunity was lost, for Spencer was not up, Leith’s troops were only passing the Mondego, and Hill was still behind the Alva. Scarcely 25,000 men were in line, and with great intervals.’
Almost every statement here is incorrect.
(1) The French did not reach the ground in front of the heights till 5 o’clock: they were not up at 3 p.m. This diary, written that same night, cannot be wrong as to the dating of the hours. D’Urban was riding with Beresford at Wellington’s side. Napier was writing from memory twenty years after.
(2) Ney did not ‘perceive the mountain only half occupied, and wish to attack,’ on the evening of the 25th. His reconnaissance was made on the morning of the 26th, and it was then that he expressed his wish to attack, when Wellington had every man in line. This is conclusively proved by the following note of Ney to Reynier, dated at 10.30 on the morning of the 26th, from his advanced posts, which lies in the French archives:—
‘Je re?ois à l’instant, mon cher général, votre lettre de ce jour. Je pense qu’une grande partie de l’armée anglo-portugaise a passé la nuit sur la crête des montagnes qui dominent la vallée de Moura. Depuis ce matin l’ennemi marche par sa gauche, et semble diriger ses colonnes principales sur la route d’Oporto. Cependant il tient encore assez de monde à la droite du parc, qui couvre le couvent de Minimes appelé Sako, et montre une douzaine de pièces d’artillerie. Le chemin de Coimbre passe tout près de ce couvent. Si j’avais le commandement j’attaquerais sans hésiter un seul instant. Mais je crois que vous ne pouvez rien compromettre en vous échellonant sur la droite de l’ennemi, et en poussant ses avant-postes le plus possible: car c’est véritablement par ce point qu’il faudrait le forcer à faire sa retraite.’ What Ney had seen, and wrongly took for a general movement of the English army towards its left, was Cole taking ground to the left on the arrival of Spencer, who came up between 8 and 10 that morning, just before Ney was scribbling this hasty note to Reynier.
(3) The stretch of mountain opposite Ney and Reynier was not ‘crested’ but ‘table’—so much so that Wellington took two squadrons of cavalry up to it, for use in the battle. The British general never took up a position where he had no space to hide his reserves.
(4) The time when Ney sent an officer to Masséna to ask leave to attack was the morning of the 26th, not the evening of the 25th. How could Ney have hoped to get the permission to fight and carry it out, when the time when he reached Moura was 5 o’clock, and dusk falls at 6.30? The messenger had twenty miles to ride, to Mortagoa and back. See Fririon’s note in his ‘Aper?u sur la Campagne de Portugal’ in Victoires et Conquêtes, xxi. 320.
(5) Leith’s troops, so far from being ‘only passing the Mondego’ on the afternoon of the 25th, had passed it on the 23rd . On the night of the 22nd-23rd Wellington wrote to Hill, ‘Leith’s, Picton’s, and Cole’s divisions are now on the Serra de Busaco’ . Hill was not ‘behind the Alva,’ but massed at the fords of Pe?a Cova, only four miles from the battlefield. He crossed at dawn on the 26th, but could have been in action within two hours of the first shot, if the attack had been made on the 25th.
(6) Wellington, including Hill’s division, had therefore 40,000 men, not 25,000. But the latter number would have sufficed, for Ney and Reynier had only their advanced guards up, and in the hour and a half before dusk could not have brought up their whole corps by the bad and narrow roads from behind. The Diary of the 6th Corps mentions that only the vanguard division (Loison) bivouacked in front of the heights. The rearguard was as far back as Barril that night.
(7) The exact moment of the arrival of the British 1st Division may be gauged from the fact that it passed Luzo, the village behind Bussaco, at 8 a.m. on the 26th—Diary of Stothert (3rd Foot Guards), p. 188. There is only two miles from Luzo to the position taken up by the 1st Division.
THE BATTLE OF BUSSACO (SEPTEMBER 27, 1810)
It remains that we should describe the ground which Wellington had chosen on the 21st, and on which he fought with such splendid success upon the 27th. The ridge which takes its name from the convent of Bussaco is one of the best-marked positions in the whole Iberian Peninsula. A single continuous line of heights covered with heather and furze, with the dull-red and dull-grey granite cropping up here and there through the soil, extends from the Mondego on the right—where it ends precipitously—to the main chain of the Serra de Alcoba on the left. The ridge is very irregular in its altitude: the two loftiest sections are one at a distance of two miles from the Mondego, and the other to the immediate right of the convent enclosure, where the original obelisk commemorating the battle was set up. Between these two culminating summits the ridge sinks down, and is at its lowest where the country-road from San Antonio de Cantaro to Palheiros passes over it. There are three other points where it is crossed by lines of communication; two lie far to the east, not far from the Mondego, where bad paths from San Paulo to Palmazes and from Carvalhal to Casal exist. The third and most important is in its left centre, where (close to the convent) the chaussée from Celorico to Coimbra, the main artery of the local road-system, passes the watershed. It does so at a place which is by no means the least lofty point of the ridge; but the line was obvious to the road-making engineer, because a spur (the only one of any importance in the heights) here runs gradually down from the Serra into the lower ground. To lead the chaussée up the side of this spur, past the village of Moura, and so to the crest of the ridge on gentle slopes, was clearly better than to make it charge the main range, even at a less lofty point. The convent lies just to the right of the spot where the chaussée passes the sky-line, a few hundred yards off the road. It was a simple, low quadrangle, with a small chapel in its midst, standing in a fine wood of pine and oak, surrounded by a ten-foot wall. The wood is sprinkled with hermitages, picturesque little buildings hewn in the rock, where those of the monks who chose practised the anchorite’s life. The outer wall of the wood and the tops of its trees are just visible on the sky-line of the main ridge: the convent is not, being well down the reverse-slope. The point where the convent wood tops the heights is the only section of them where trees are seen on the summit: the rest of the line is bare heath, with occasional outbreaks of rock, falling in slopes of greater or lesser steepness towards the broken wooded foot-hills, where the French lay. On part of the left-centre there is ground which it is no exaggeration to describe as precipitous, to the front of the highest piece of the ridge, below the old obelisk. The effect of the whole line of heights is not dissimilar to, though on a smaller scale than, the Malvern Hills. The highest point on the Serra is about 1,200 feet above sea-level—but much less, of course, above the upland below.
The position of Bussaco is fully nine miles long from end to end, from the steep hill above the Mondego to Cole’s western flank: this was a vast front for an army of 50,000 men to cover, according to the ideas of 1810. There were absolute gaps in the line at more than one place, especially above Carvalho, where about a mile separated Leith’s left from his central brigade. The defence of such a position could only be risked because of two facts: one was that every movement of the enemy on the lower ground before the ridge could be accurately made out from above: he could not concentrate in front of any section of the heights without being seen. His only chance of doing so would have been to take advantage of the night; but even if he had drawn up for the attack before dawn—a thing almost impossible in the broken, ravine-cut, wooded bottoms—he could not have moved till full daylight, because the face of the position presents so many irregularities, such as small gullies and miniature precipices, that columns climbing in the dark must undoubtedly have got lost and broken up on the wild hillside. Moreover, there was a thick cordon of British pickets pushed forward almost to the foot of the ridge, which would have given warning by their fire and their preliminary resistance, if any advance had been attempted in the grey dawn.
The second advantage of the Bussaco position is that on its left-centre and right-centre the ridge has a broad flat top, some 300 or 400 yards across, on which all arms can move laterally with ease to support any threatened point. It is so broad that Wellington even ventured to bring up a few squadrons of dragoons to the summit, rightly arguing that a cavalry charge would be of all things the most unexpected reception that an enemy who had breasted such a hillside could meet at the end of his climb. As a matter of fact, however, this section of the heights was never attacked by the French. The right of the position is not flat-topped like the centre, but has a narrow saddle-back, breaking into outcrops of rock at intervals: but though here prompt motion from right to left, or left to right, is not possible on the crest, there is a rough country-path, good for infantry and available even for guns, a few hundred yards down the reverse side of the slope. Along this troops could be moved with ease, entirely out of sight of the enemy. It proved useful for Leith’s division during the battle. Wellington calculated, therefore, with perfect correctness, that he could count on getting an adequate force of defenders to any portion of his long line before the enemy could establish himself on the summit. The extreme left, where Cole’s division lay, was the hardest part of his line to reinforce, for want of good lateral communication: it was also a good deal lower than Craufurd’s post; here, therefore, Wellington had placed the main mass of his reserves; the German Legion, and two Portuguese brigades were lying on his left-centre very close to the 4th Division, so that they would be available at short notice, though they would have a stiff climb if the French chose that section of the position as their objective, and it had to be strengthened in haste.
The distribution of the army remains to be described. On the extreme right, on the height of Nossa Senhora do Monte, just overhanging the Mondego, was a battalion of the Lusitanian Legion, with two guns. Next to them, on very high ground, lay Hill’s division, three British and two Portuguese brigades, with a battery on each flank. Then came a slight dip in the ridge, where the road from San Paulo to Palmazes crosses it: athwart this path lay Leith’s newly constituted 5th Division, consisting of three British and seven Portuguese battalions. The British brigade lay on the right, then came (after a long interval) two battalions of the Lusitanian Legion, the only troops guarding two miles of very rough ground. On Leith’s extreme left, towards Picton’s right, was Spry’s Portuguese brigade, and three unattached battalions (8th Line and Thomar militia). Beyond the 8th regiment, where the watershed sinks again, and is crossed by the road from San Antonio de Cantaro to Palheiros, Picton’s line began. On his right, across the road, was Arentschildt’s Portuguese battery, supported by the 74th British regiment, and Champlemond’s Portuguese brigade of three battalions. The 45th and 88th, the two remaining battalions of the brigade of Mackinnon, were placed to the left of the road, the former on the first spur to the north of it, the latter nearly a mile to the left. Lightburne’s brigade, and Thompson’s British battery were a short distance beyond the 88th. North of Picton’s position the ridge rises suddenly again to its loftiest section; along this almost impregnable ground, with its precipitous front, were ranged the three British brigades of Spencer’s 1st Division—the Guards on the right, Blantyre’s on the left, Pakenham’s in the centre, 5,000 bayonets dominating the whole country-side and the rest of the position. North of them again, where the ridge falls sharply along the back wall of the convent wood, was Pack’s Portuguese brigade, reaching almost to the high-road. Along the curve of the high-road itself, in column, was Coleman’s Portuguese brigade, and beside it A. Campbell’s Portuguese, with the German Legion beyond them on the Monte Novo ridge. Coleman, Campbell, and the Germans were the main reserve of the army, and were in second line, for, far to the front of them, on a lower slope, along a curve of the chaussée, lay Craufurd and the Light Division, looking down on the village of Sula almost at the bottom of the heights. Between Craufurd and his next neighbour to the right, Pack, was a curious feature of the field, a long narrow ravine, with steep grassy sides, terraced in some places into vineyards. This cleft, between Sula on the left and Moura on the right, cuts deep up into the hillside, its head almost reaching the crest of the watershed below the convent. In order to circumvent this precipitous gully, the chaussée, after passing through the village of Moura, takes a semicircular curve to the right, and goes round the head of the cleft. For half a mile or more it overhangs the steep declivities on its right, while on its left at this point it is dominated by a pine wood on the upper slopes, so that it forms more or less of a defile. The gully is so narrow here that guns on Craufurd’s position had an easy range on the road, and enfiladed it most effectively. The battery attached to the Light Division—that of Ross—had been placed in a sort of natural redoubt, formed by a semicircle of boulders with gaps between; some of the guns bore on the village of Sula, on the lower slope below, others across the ravine, to the high-road. They were almost invisible, among the great stones, to an enemy coming up the hill or along the chaussée. Craufurd had got a battalion of his Ca?adores (No. 3) in the village, low down the slope, with his other Portuguese battalion and the 95th Rifles strung out on the hillside above, to support the troops below them. His two strong Line battalions, the 43rd and 52nd, were lying far above, in the road, at the point where it has passed the head of the gully in its curve, with a little fir wood behind them and a small windmill in their front. The road being cut through the hillside here, they were screened as they stood, but had only to advance a few feet to reach the sky line, and to command the slope stretching upwards from the village of Sula.
To the left rear of Craufurd’s position, and forming the north-western section of the English line lay Cole’s 4th Division, reaching almost to the villages of Paradas and Algeriz. Its Portuguese brigade (11th and 23rd regiments) was thrown forward on the left under Collins, its two English brigades were at the head of the slope. The ground was not high, but the slope was very steep, and as a matter of fact was never even threatened, much less attacked.
Sixty guns were distributed along the line of the Serra. Ross’s horse artillery troop were with Craufurd, Bull’s with Cole; of the field-batteries Lawson’s was with Pack, Thompson’s with Lightburne, Rettberg’s with Spencer, Cleeves’ with Coleman. There were also four Portuguese field-batteries; Arentschildt’s was on the high-road with Picton, Dickson’s two batteries with Hill, Passos’s with Coleman, alongside of Cleeves’ German guns. Counting their artillerymen, and the two squadrons of the 4th Dragoons on the summit of the plateau, Wellington had 52,000 men on the field. Of the rest of his disposable army, the Portuguese cavalry brigade (regiments 1, 4, 7, 8; 1,400 sabres under Fane) and one British regiment (13th Light Dragoons) were beyond the Mondego, far to the south-east, watching the open country across the Alva as far as Foz Dao and Sobral. Their head quarters were at Foz de Alva. To defend the Ponte de Murcella position against any possible flanking force the French might have detached, Wellington had left Le Cor’s Portuguese, two regular regiments (Nos. 12 and 13) and three battalions of the Beira militia. All these troops were ten or twelve miles from the nearest point at which a shot was fired, in a different valley, and were alike unseeing and unseen. In a similar fashion, far out to the west, on the other side of the watershed, in the low ground by Mealhada, was the English cavalry, with the exception of the one regiment at Foz de Alva and two squadrons on the Convent ridge.
Reynier’s corps, pushing the English rearguard before it, had arrived in front of the Bussaco position on the afternoon of September 25th. When Ney’s corps came up at dusk Reynier edged away to the left, and established himself on the low hills above the hamlet of San Antonio de Cantaro, leaving the ground about the high-road to the 6th Corps. The 8th and Montbrun’s cavalry were still some way behind, beyond Barril. Masséna, for reasons which it is hard to divine, had not come to the front, though he must have heard the guns firing all through the afternoon, and had been informed by Reynier that the English were standing at bay on the Bussaco ridge. He came no further to the front than Mortagoa on the 25th. Ney on the morn of the next day was busy reconnoitring the position; he sent forward tirailleurs to push in Craufurd’s outposts, and ventured as far to the front as was possible. So well hidden was Wellington’s line that the Marshal formed an entirely erroneous conception of what was before him. At 10.30 in the morning he wrote to Reynier to say that the whole English army seemed to be moving to its left, apparently on the road towards Oporto, but that it had still a rearguard, with a dozen guns, in position to the right of the park which covers the convent. Apparently Cole’s division, taking ground to its left on Spencer’s arrival, and Craufurd on the chaussée was all that he had made out. He had not discovered Leith and the 5th Division, and could not, of course, know that Spencer was at this moment arriving at the convent, and that Hill was across the Mondego at Pe?a Cova.
The Marshal added that if he had been in chief command he should have attacked whatever was in front of him without a moment’s hesitation. But things being as they were, he thought that Reynier would risk nothing by pushing forward on the English right, and thrusting back Wellington’s outposts, for it was desirable to make him retreat towards his left. It is clear that Ney, if he had possessed a free hand, would have brought on a battle, when he was only intending to drive in a rearguard. For by 10.30 on the 26th Wellington had every man upon the field whom he intended to use in the fight, and would have welcomed an assault. Of the French, on the other hand, Junot’s 8th Corps and the cavalry and artillery were still far away to the rear. They only came up in rear of Ney on the night of the 26th-27th.
Masséna, on receiving Ney’s report, rode up to the front at about two o’clock on the 26th—a late hour, but he is said to have been employed in private matters at Mortagoa. When he had at last appeared, he pushed forward as near to the foot of the British position as was safe, and reconnoitred it with care. In the evening he drew up orders for attacking the Bussaco heights at their most accessible points—along the chaussée that leads from Moura up to the convent, and along the country-road from San Antonio de Cantaro to Palheiros.
The Prince of Essling had no hesitation whatever about risking a battle. He had never seen the English before, and held concerning them the same views as the other French officers who had no experience of Wellington’s army. Some confused generalization from the misfortunes of the Duke of York’s troops in 1794-5 and 1799 determined the action of all the marshals till they had made personal acquaintance with the new enemy. The English were to be dealt with by drastic frontal attacks pushed home with real vigour. It is curious, as Napoleon remarked soon after, that Reynier, who had been badly beaten by the English at Alexandria and Maida, had learnt no more than the others, and committed exactly the same errors as his colleagues. He, who had experience of his adversaries, and Ney, who had not, adopted precisely the same tactics. These, indeed, were indicated to them by Masséna’s order to attack in columns, each at least a division strong, preceded by a swarm of tirailleurs. There was no question of a general advance all along the line; the two Corps-Commanders were directed to choose each his point, and to break through the British army at it, by force of mass and impact. Only two sections of Wellington’s nine-mile position were to be touched, there being a long gap between the objectives assigned to Ney and to Reynier. But by throwing 13,000 or 14,000 men in close order at each of the two short fronts selected, Masséna thought that he could penetrate the thin line of the defenders.
As none of the historians of the battle have thought it worth while to give the Marshal’s orders in detail, and many writers have misconceived or mis-stated them, it is necessary to state them. The attacks of the 2nd and 6th Corps were not to be simultaneous; Reynier, having the easier ground before him, was told to move first. He was to select the most accessible stretch of the hillside in his front, and to climb it, with his whole corps in one or two columns, preceded by a skirmishing line. Having gained the crest, and pierced the British line, he was to re-form his men, and then drop down the reverse slope of the heights on to the Coimbra road, along which he was to press in the direction of the convent of Bussaco, toward the rear of Wellington’s centre.
Ney was directed not to move till he should have learnt that Reynier had crowned the heights; but when he should see the 2nd Corps on the crest, was to send forward two columns of a division each against the British left-centre. One division was to follow the chaussée, the other to mount the rough path up the spur on which the village of Sula stands. Both columns, like those of the 2nd Corps, were to be preceded by a thick line of skirmishers. They were to halt and re-form when the crest of the English position should be carried, and then to adapt their movements to suit those of Reynier’s corps.
Junot was to assemble his two infantry divisions behind Moura, and to have them ready to reinforce either Ney or Reynier as might be needed. His artillery was to be placed on the knolls on each side of the chaussée, so as to be able to hold back the allied army if, after repulsing Ney, it should attempt a forward movement. Montbrun’s cavalry and the reserve artillery were to be placed on either side of the chaussée behind Junot’s centre.
The horsemen were obviously useless, save that in the event of Wellington being defeated they could be sent forward in pursuit. Nor were the guns much more serviceable: they could sweep the lower parts of the slopes of Bussaco, but could not reach its crest with their fire. Indeed, the only French artillery used successfully on the next day were two batteries which Ney’s columns of attack took with them along the chaussée, as far as the elbow of road in front of Moura. These were in effective range of Craufurd’s and Pack’s troops, since the latter were on a level with them, and not on the highest crest of the British position. Reynier’s guns could just reach the summit of the pass of San Antonio de Cantaro, but not so as to play upon it with any good result.
It is said that Junot and Reynier were in favour of trying the frontal attack which Masséna had dictated, as was also Laszowski, the Polish general who commanded the engineers of the army. Fririon, the chief of the staff, and Eblé, commanding the artillery, spoke against the policy of ‘taking the bull by the horns.’ Masséna, according to Fririon, turned on the doubters with the words ‘You come from the old Army of the Rhine, you like man?uvring; but it is the first time that Wellington seems ready to give battle, and I want to profit by the opportunity.’ Ney, too, as we read with some surprise, is said to have given the opinion that it would have been feasible to assault the heights yesterday, but that now, when Wellington had been given time to bring up his reserves and settle his army down into the most advantageous position, the policy of taking the offensive had become doubtful. He therefore advised that the army should turn aside and make a stroke at Oporto, which would be found unprotected save by militia. Masséna, according to his official biographer, announced ‘that the Emperor had ordered him to march on Lisbon, not on Oporto. This was entirely correct: the capture of Lisbon would end the whole war, that of Oporto would prolong it, and bring no decisive result. Moreover, it was quite uncertain whether Wellington would not be able to prevent such a move. He has troops échelloned as far as the Vouga, and he could get to Oporto in three marches, because he possesses the Oporto-Coimbra chaussée, while the French army, moving by worse roads, would require five marches to reach it.’ It is suggested that Ney’s policy was really to goad his superior into making the frontal attack at Bussaco, by feigning to believe it dangerous and to counsel its abandonment. For he thought that Masséna would do precisely the opposite of what he was advised, out of his personal dislike for himself, and general distaste for having counsel thrust upon him. If this was so, the Duke of Elchingen carried his point—to the entire discomfiture both of himself and his commander-in-chief.
Map of the battle of Bussaco
Enlarge BATTLE OF BUSSACO. Sep. 27th, 1810.
Position of the Troops at the commencement of the French Attack
On the 26th, after Masséna had retired to his head quarters at Mortagoa, there was a little skirmishing on the English right-centre, where Reynier’s advanced guard drove the light company of the 88th off some knolls at the foot of the heights, opposite San Antonio de Cantaro. Much about the same time there was some bickering on Ney’s front: the pickets of Pack’s 4th Ca?adores and Craufurd’s 95th were attacked, but held their ground. The contest was never very serious and the fire died down at dusk. That evening the British army slept in order of battle, ‘each man with his firelock in his grasp at his post. There were no fires, and the death-like stillness that reigned throughout the line was only interrupted by the occasional challenge of an advanced sentry, or a random shot fired at some imaginary foe.’ Below and in front, all the low hills behind Moura and San Antonio were bright with the bivouac fires of the French, of which three great masses could be distinguished, marking the position of the 2nd, 6th, and 8th Corps.
The dawn of the 27th was somewhat misty, but as soon as the light was strong enough Reynier commenced his attack. He had chosen for his objective, as was natural, the lowest point of the ridge opposite him, the dip where the country-road from San Antonio de Cantaro crosses the Serra. His two divisions, according to order, were drawn up in two heavy columns preceded by a dense swarm of tirailleurs. Heudelet’s division on the left was across the high-road, with the 31st Léger in front, then the two regiments of Foy’s brigade, the 70th and 17th Léger, with the 47th in reserve. The whole made 15 battalions, or 8,000 men. Merle’s division had the right, and was to attack north of the road: of its eleven battalions, making 6,500 men, the 36th of the Line led, the 2nd Léger followed, the 4th Léger brought up the rear. All the battalions were in serried column with a front of one company only, and in each regiment the three, or four, battalions were originally drawn up one behind the other. But the involuntary swerving of the attack soon turned the two divisions into an irregular échelon of battalion-columns, the right in every case leading. And the roughness of the hillside soon broke the ordered ranks of each column into a great clump of men, so that to the British defenders of the ridge the assault seemed to be delivered by a string of small crowds crossing the hillside diagonally. It is curious that Reynier placed no troops to his left of the road; a study of his orders (as of those of Masséna) leads to a suspicion that they had failed to discover Leith’s division, and still more Hill’s, and imagined that the road was on the extreme right, not in the right-centre, of the British position. Otherwise Reynier would have taken some precaution to guard himself from a flank attack from Leith, to which he was deliberately exposing his left column.
There were, as has already been pointed out, several gaps in the nine-mile British line. One was between the 8th regiment of Portuguese, on Leith’s extreme left, and the rest of the 5th Division. Another was between Picton’s troops at the pass of San Antonio and his left wing—the 88th and Lightburne’s brigade. Between the 45th and the 88th there was three-quarters of a mile of unoccupied ground. The first gap led to no danger, the second caused for a moment a serious crisis. Such was indeed almost bound to occur when a line so long was held by such a small army. But this morning there arose the special danger that fog hid the first movements of the enemy from the eye, if not from the ear.
Merle’s division seems to have been the first of Reynier’s two columns to move: at dawn, with the mist lying thick on the hillside, it began to move up the steep slope some three-quarters of a mile to the right of the San Antonio-Palheiros road. Here its tirailleurs came in contact with the light companies of the 74th, 88th, and 45th regiments, which were strung out along the front, and soon began to push this thin line up hill. For some reason undetermined—a trick of the mist, or a bend of the hillside—the three French regiments all headed somewhat to their left, so as to pass across the front of the 88th, and to direct their advance precisely to the unoccupied piece of crest between that regiment and the troops placed immediately above the pass of San Antonio. Their progress was slow: the tirailleurs left far behind them the eleven battalion-columns, which were trampling through the dense matted heather which here covers the hillside. Hearing the bicker of the skirmishing far to his left, Picton took the alarm, and though he could see nothing in the fog, detached first a wing of the 45th under Major Gwynne, and then the two battalions of the 8th Portuguese, to fill the unoccupied space which intervened between him and the 88th. If he had suspected the strength of the column that was aiming at it he would have sent more. But he was already distracted by the frontal attack of Heudelet’s vanguard along the high-road. A column of four battalions—the 31st Léger—was pushing up the road, and driving in the skirmishers of Champlemond’s Portuguese brigade. Just at this moment the mist began to lift, and Arentschildt’s guns opened on the broad mass, and began to plough long lanes through it. It still advanced, but was soon brought to a standstill by the fire of the British 74th and Portuguese 21st, which were drawn up in line to right and left, a little below the guns. The 31st Léger tried to deploy, but with small success, each section being swept away by the converging fire of the Anglo-Portuguese musketry, as it strove to file out of the disordered mass. Nevertheless, the French regiment gallantly held its ground for some time, shifting gradually towards its right to avoid the fire of the guns, and gaining a little of the hillside in that direction with its first battalion, while the other three were tending to edge away from the road, and to break up into a shapeless crowd.
Picton soon saw that there was no danger here, handed over the command at the Pass of San Antonio to Mackinnon, and started off towards his left, where the firing was growing heavier every minute, and the vast column of Merle’s division, climbing the hillside diagonally, had become visible through the mist.
It was fortunate that the attack of Merle was made very slow by the steepness of the hillside and the heather that clung about the soldiers’ stumbling feet. For the leading regiment reached the crest before there were any British troops yet established on the point at which it aimed. It was lurching over the sky-line on to the little plateau above, just as the defenders arrived—the 88th descending from the British left, the wing of the 45th and the two battalions of the 8th Portuguese coming along the hill-road from the right. If the French had been granted ten minutes to rest from the fatigue of their long climb, and to recover their order, they might have broken the British line. But Wallace, the commander of the 88th, was one of Wellington’s best colonels, the very man for the emergency. Seeing that the French must be charged at once, ere they had time to make a front, he threw out three of his companies as skirmishers to cover his flanks, called to the wing of the 45th to fall in on his right, and charged diagonally across the little plateau on to the flank of the great disordered mass before him. At the same moment the 8th Portuguese, a little further along the hilltop, deployed and opened a rolling fire against the front of the enemy, while Wellington himself, who had been called down from his post of observation on the Convent height by the noise of the fighting, came up with two of Thompson’s guns, and turned their fire upon the flank and rear of the climbing mass, which was still surging up the hillside. Apparently at the same instant the light companies of the 45th and 88th, which had been engaged in the earlier skirmishing with the French tirailleurs, and had been driven far away to their right, were rallied by Picton in person, and brought up along the plateau, to the right of the 8th Portuguese. They drew up only sixty yards from the flank of the leading French regiment, and opened a rolling fire upon it.
At any other juncture and on any other ground, four battalions would have been helpless against eleven. But Wallace had caught the psychological moment: the French 36th, dead beat from its climb, and in hopeless disorder, was violently charged in flank by the Connaught Rangers and the wing of the 45th, while it was just gathering itself up to run in upon the Portuguese battalions that lay in its front. The French had no time to realize their position, or to mark the smallness of the force opposed to them, when the blow fell. The four battalions of the 36th were rolled down hill and to their left by the blasting fire of Wallace’s little force, followed by a desperate bayonet charge. They were thrust sideways against the 2nd Léger, which was just reaching the sky-line on their left, and was beginning to struggle in among some rocks which here crown the crest of the heights. Then the whole mass gave way, trampled down the 4th Léger in their rear, and rushed down the slope. ‘All was confusion and uproar, smoke, fire, and bullets, French officers and soldiers, drummers and drums, knocked down in every direction; British, French, and Portuguese mixed together; while in the midst of all was to be seen Wallace fighting like his ancestor of old, and still calling to his soldiers to “press forward.” He never slackened his fire while a Frenchman was within his reach, and followed them down to the edge of the hill, where he formed his men in line waiting for any order that he might receive, or any fresh body that might attack him.’ This was certainly one of the most timely and gallant strokes made by a regimental commander during the war, and the glory was all Wallace’s own, as Picton very handsomely owned. ‘The Colonel of the 88th and Major Gwynne of the 45th are entitled to the whole of the credit,’ he wrote to Wellington, ‘and I can claim no merit whatever in the executive part of that brilliant exploit, which your Lordship has so highly and so justly extolled.’
The victorious British troops followed the enemy far down the hillside, till they came under the fire of Reynier’s artillery, and were warned to retire to their former position. They thus missed the last episode of Reynier’s attack, which occurred along the hillside just to the left of the point at which their collision with Merle’s battalions had taken place. The Commander of the 2nd Corps, seeing his right column rolling down the slope, while the 31st was melting away, and gradually giving ground under the fire of the Anglo-Portuguese troops at the Pass of San Antonio, hurried to Foy’s brigade and started it up the hill to the right of the 31st. Foy had been told to support that regiment, but had taken Reynier’s orders to mean that he was to follow up its advance when it began to make headway. His Corps-Commander cantered up to him shouting angrily, ‘Why don’t you start on the climb? You could get the troops forward if you choose, but you don’t choose.’ Whereupon Foy rode to the leading regiment of his brigade, the 17th Léger, put himself at its head, and began to ascend the heights, his other regiment, the 70th, following in échelon on his left rear. At this moment Merle’s division was still visible, falling back in great disorder some way to the right, and pursued by Wallace—a discouraging sight for the seven battalions that were about to repeat its experiment. Foy chose as his objective the first and lowest hilltop to the French right of the pass of San Antonio, and took his string of columns, the right always leading, up towards it at such pace as was possible over the long heather, and among the occasional patches of stones. The troops which were in front of them here were those sections of Picton’s division which were neither far away on the English left with Wallace and Lightburne, nor actively engaged on the road against the 31st Léger, viz. the right wing of the British 45th under Colonel Meade, and the Portuguese 8th of the Line which had just been aiding in the repulse of Merle. These were soon afterwards joined by one battalion of the 9th Portuguese from Champlemond’s brigade, and the unattached battalion of Thomar militia, which Picton sent up the hill. Yet this was still far too small a force to resist Foy’s seven battalions, unless speedily supported.
But support in sufficient quantity was forthcoming. General Leith had received orders from Wellington to close in to Picton’s right if he saw no hostile troops in his own front. As it was clear that Reynier had kept no reserves or flanking detachments to the south of the high-road, it was possible for the 5th Division to move at once. While the fog was still hanging thickly along the crests of the Serra, Leith ordered a general move of his brigades to the left, while Hill detached troops from the southern end of the position to occupy the heights which the 5th Division was evacuating. This general move to the left was carried out along the rough but serviceable country-road which passes along the rear of the plateau, out of sight of the French. At the moment when Foy’s attack was beginning, Leith had just reached the Pass of San Antonio, with Spry’s Portuguese brigade at the head of his column, then the two battalions of the Lusitanian legion, and lastly, Barnes’s British brigade. One of Dickson’s Portuguese batteries was also with him. He dropped the guns at the pass to aid Arentschildt’s battery, whose fire was beginning to slacken from want of ammunition, and left Spry in their rear and the Legionary battalions on the country-road hard by, while he brought up Barnes’s brigade to the front, and reported his arrival to Picton. The latter said, it appears, that he was strong enough at the Pass, but would be obliged if Leith would attend to the attack which was being made at this moment on the height to its immediate left. This movement of Foy’s was now becoming dangerous: forcing his way to the summit under a destructive fire, he had met on the edge of the plateau the three Portuguese battalions and the wing of the British 45th, and had driven them back—the Thomar militia broke and fled down the rear declivity of the heights, and the 8th Portuguese, though they did not fly, gave way and fell back in disorder. Just at this moment Leith, with Barnes’s three battalions, came up along the communication-road at the back of the plateau. ‘A heavy fire of musketry,’ writes Leith, ‘was being kept up upon the heights, the smoke of which prevented a clear view of the state of things. But when the rock forming the high part of the Serra became visible, the enemy appeared to be in full possession of it, and a French officer was in the act of cheering, with his hat off, while a continued fire was being kept up from thence, and along the whole face of the slope of the Serra, in a diagonal direction towards its bottom, by the enemy ascending rapidly in successive columns, formed for an attack upon a mass of men belonging to the left battalion of the 8th and the 9th Portuguese, who, having been severely pressed, had given way, and were rapidly retiring in complete confusion and disorder. The enemy had dispersed or driven off everything opposed to him—was in possession of the rocky eminence of the Serra.’ A few of his tirailleurs were even on the upper edge of the rear slope.
Leith, realizing that there was still time to save the position—for only the head of the French column had crowned the rocky knoll,—deployed his leading battalion, the 9th, across the summit of the plateau, while sending on his second, the 38th, to get between the enemy and the reverse slope of the position. This last move turned out to be fruitless, for the rear face of the knoll is so steep and so thickly covered with large boulders, that the 38th was unable to climb it, and came back to fall in on the right of the 9th. But before it could get back, the senior regiment had done its work. Leith had led it diagonally across the plateau, so as to place it along the flank of the leading battalions of Foy’s column, of which the first was now ensconced on the summit of the heights, while the others were struggling up to join it. The 9th opened with a volley at 100 yards, and then advanced firing, receiving hardly any return from the enemy, who seemed entirely disconcerted by the appearance of a new force parallel with its flank. At twenty yards from the French, the 9th lowered its bayonets and prepared to charge, Leith riding at its head waving his plumed hat. Then the enemy gave way. ‘My heroic column,’ writes Foy, ‘much diminished during the ascent, reached the summit of the plateau, which was covered with hostile troops. Those on our left made a flank movement and smashed us up by their battalion volleys; meanwhile those on our front, covered by some rocks, were murdering us with impunity. The head of my column fell back to its right, despite my efforts; I could not get them to deploy, disorder set in, and the 17th and 70th raced down-hill in headlong flight. The enemy pursued us half-way to the foot of the heights, till he pulled up on coming under effective fire from our artillery.’
The battle was now over on this side: Reynier had in reserve only one regiment, the 47th of the Line. His other twenty-two battalions had all been beaten to pieces; they had lost over 2,000 men, including more than half their superior officers: Merle commanding the 1st Division was wounded, his junior brigadier Graindorge was killed; Foy, commanding the first brigade of the other division, was wounded. Of the six colonels who had gone up the heights, those of the 31st Léger, 2nd Léger, 4th Léger, and 70th had been hit: of the twenty-three battalion commanders four were killed, seven wounded. Of 421 officers in all who went into action, 118—more than one in four—had been disabled. Of the 2,023 casualties, 350 men and fifteen officers were prisoners in the hands of the British. And these losses had been suffered without inflicting any corresponding loss upon the defenders of the position: Picton’s division had 427 killed and wounded; Leith’s 160. The only regiments appreciably diminished were the 45th, 88th, and Portuguese 8th—with 150, 134, and 113 casualties respectively. The only superior officers hit were the Portuguese brigadier Champlemond, and a major each in the 45th and 88th. Of the 3rd and 5th Divisions only six British and five Portuguese battalions had been engaged—the superiority of force against them had been about two to one. Yet Reynier complained in his dispatch to Masséna of being crushed by ‘a triple superiority of numbers’! As a matter of fact, it was the position that beat him, not the imagined numbers of the allies. Wellington could risk much in taking up a long line, when he had a good road of communication along its rear, to shift troops from point to point, and when he could descry every movement of the enemy half an hour before it began to take effect.
The other half of the battle of Bussaco was an even shorter business than Reynier’s struggle with Picton and Leith, but no less bloody and decisive. Ney exactly obeyed Masséna’s orders to attack, with two divisions, the ground on each side of the Coimbra chaussée, when he should see the 2nd Corps lodged on the crest beside the pass of San Antonio de Cantaro. The many reproaches heaped upon him, by critics who have not read his orders, for attacking too late, and not at the same moment as Reynier, are groundless: he was told to go forward only when his colleague ‘sera ma?tre des hauteurs.’ He moved precisely when the dispersing mists showed Merle’s great column massed on the edge of the plateau. Of his three divisions he had, again in exact obedience to orders, placed Loison on the right, Marchand on the left, while Mermet was in reserve, behind Moura. The two fighting divisions were completely separated by the deep and steep ravine of which we have had occasion to speak. The ground in front of them was very different: Marchand had to advance, by rather gentle slopes, along the chaussée, which curves up towards the convent of Bussaco. Loison had to go up a hillside of a very different sort, whose lower stretch, as far as the village of Sula, is gentle, and much cut up by woods and orchards, but whose upper half, beyond Sula, is extremely steep and absolutely destitute of cover. There was no road here, only a rough mule-track.
Loison started a few minutes before Marchand: he had his two brigades side by side, Simon’s (six battalions) on the right, Ferey’s (also six battalions) on the left. Both started from the low ground in front of Sula, each with a strong chain of tirailleurs covering an advance in serried battalion columns; the 26th regiment was the leading regiment in Simon’s, the 66th in Ferey’s brigade. On leaving the bottom, and advancing among the trees on the lower slope, both brigades found their tirailleurs at once checked by a very strong skirmishing line. Pack had spread out the whole of the 4th Ca?adores on the hillside in front of his line battalions. Craufurd had thrown out the 95th—more than 700 rifles—and the 3rd Ca?adores—600 rifles more—into the enclosures in front of Sula. The 43rd and 52nd, with the 1st Ca?adores, were lying down in the hollow road at the head of the steep slope above that village, completely concealed from sight. Of formed troops, Loison could only see the 1st Division far above him on the left on the highest plateau of the Serra, and Cole far away to his right on the lower hillsides towards Paradas. In order to press in the obstinate light troops in front of him, Loison was compelled to push forward whole battalions from his fighting-line: by a strenuous use of these, the Ca?adores and Rifles were evicted first from the lower slopes, then from the village of Sula. But when the latter had been captured, the French found themselves under a heavy fire of artillery: Ross’s guns on the knoll above, between their embrasures of rock, being carefully trained upon the exits of the village, while Cleeves’ German battery joined in from its position at the head of the ravine, and took Ferey in flank. It was impossible to halt in Sula, and Loison ordered his brigadiers to push forward the attack once more, taking Ross’s guns and the windmill near them as their objective. The slope was now much steeper, the British and Portuguese skirmishers had rallied once more above Sula, and Craufurd had sent down the 1st Ca?adores to feed the fighting-line. It was only with a severe effort, and with much loss, that the French battalions won their way up the culminating slope. Simon’s front regiment, the 26th of the Line, stuck to the mule-path up the hill from Sula, in one dense and deep column, with the front of a company only, and a depth of three battalions. Ferey’s brigade, having no track to follow, seems to have moved in a somewhat less vicious formation along the slope further to the left, bordering on the northern edge of the funnel-like ravine which formed the boundary of Craufurd’s position. Both were in a very disordered condition, owing to the fierce conflict which they had waged with the screen of Rifles and Ca?adores all up the hillside.
Lying in the hollow road parallel with the head of the ravine were the two Line regiments of the Light Division, the 43rd on the right, the 52nd on the left. They were very strong battalions, despite their losses at the Coa, the one having 800 the other 950 bayonets. In front of them, on the sky-line by the little windmill, to the right of Ross’s guns, Craufurd had been standing all through the earlier stages of the engagement, watching the gradual progress of the French up the hillside. He waited patiently till the enemy’s two columns, a few hundred yards apart, had reached the last steep of the hillside below him. His recoiling skirmishers were at last thrust in upon him—they passed, some to the flanks, some through the intervals between the battalions and the guns, and the front was clear.
Map of Ney’s attack at Bussaco
Enlarge NEY’S ATTACK at BUSSACO.
Map of Reynier’s attack at Bussaco
Enlarge REYNIER’S ATTACK at BUSSACO.
Then came the opportunity: the French, pulling themselves together, were preparing to rush up the last twenty yards of the ascent and to run in upon the guns, when Craufurd waved his hat to the battalions lying in the road behind him, the appointed signal for action, and (it is said) called to the men behind him ‘Now 52nd, revenge the death of Sir John Moore.’ The crest was at once covered by the long red line, and the fronts of the French brigades received such a volley at ten paces as has been seldom endured by any troops in war. The whole of the heads of their columns crumbled away in a mass of dead and dying. The centre and rear stood appalled for one moment; then Major Arbuthnot wheeled in three companies of the 52nd upon the right flank of Simon’s leading regiment, while Lloyd of the 43rd did the same upon the extreme left, so as to produce a semicircle of fire. It was impossible to stand under it, and the French broke and went hurtling down the hill, the wrecks of the front battalions carrying the rear ones away with them. So steep was the slope on their left that some are said to have lost their footing and to have rolled down to the bottom of the ravine before they could stop. The Light Division followed as far as Sula, and beyond, not stopping till Loison’s people had taken refuge in the wooded ground beyond that village, and the French guns by Moura had begun to play upon their pursuers. The rush had carried away the whole of the enemy, save one battalion upon Ferey’s extreme left, which had moved so far down in the slope of the ravine that it had become separated from the rest. This solitary column, pressing forward, came to the sky-line not in front of Craufurd, but at the very head of the ravine, below Cleeves’ battery. Here it was dealt with by the leading unit of Coleman’s Portuguese brigade, which was standing in line near the chaussée. The 1st battalion of the 19th regiment, under Major McBean, charged it and rolled it back into the cleft, down whose bottom it hastily recoiled, and joined the rest of the flying division.
This made an end of Loison’s two brigades as a serious attacking force. They reeled back to their original position, under cover of the 25th Léger, which Mermet sent out to relieve them. But later in the day they pushed some skirmishers up the hill again, and bickered with Craufurd’s outposts. Wellington, seeing that the Light Division was fatigued, sent the light companies of L?we’s German brigade and A. Campbell’s 6th Ca?adores, from the reserves, to take up the skirmishing. It stood still about Sula, but the French got a few men into the village, whom Craufurd had to evict with a company of the 43rd.
Loison lost, out of 6,500 men used in the attack, twenty-one officers killed and forty-seven wounded, with some 1,200 men. His senior brigadier, Simon, was wounded in the face, and taken prisoner by a private of the 52nd. The loss of the Light Division was marvellously small—the 3rd Ca?adores and the 95th, who had fought through the long skirmish up the hill, had seventy-eight and forty-one casualties respectively, but the 43rd and 52nd had the astounding record of only three men killed, and two officers and eighteen men wounded. McBean’s Portuguese battalion lost one officer and twenty-five men: the German light companies had nearly fifty casualties, but this was later in the day. Altogether, Loison’s attack was repelled with a loss of only 200 men to the allies.
It only remains to tell of one more section of the Battle of Bussaco; it was entirely independent of the rest. When Ney started Loison to his right of the deep ravine, he had sent forward Marchand’s division to his left of it, along the great chaussée. On turning the sweep of the road beyond Moura, the leading brigade of this column (6th Léger and 69th Line, five battalions) came under a terrible artillery fire from the three batteries which Wellington had placed at the head of the ravine, those of Cleeves, Parros, and Lawson. They, nevertheless, pushed along the road till they came level with a small pine wood on their left, which was full of the skirmishers of Pack’s Portuguese brigade—the whole of the 4th Ca?adores had been sent down into it from the height above. The flanking fire of these light troops was so galling that the French brigade—apparently without orders and by an instinctive movement—swerved to its left, and went up the hillside to turn the Ca?adores out of their cover. After a sharp bickering they did so, and then emerging from the wood on to the smooth slope of the height below the convent wall, got into a desperate musketry duel with Pack’s four Line-battalions, who stood in front of them. They were now in disorder, and their brigadier, Maucune, had been wounded. But they made several attempts to storm the hillside, which were all beaten back by the Portuguese musketry and the fire of Lawson’s artillery on the right. The second brigade of Marchand (that of Marcognet) pushed as far along the road as the preceding brigade had gone, but stopped when it came under the fire of Cleeves’ and Parros’s guns, to which that of Ross’s (from across the ravine) was also added, when Loison’s attack had been beaten off. Seeing that Marchand was making no headway, that Loison had been routed, and that Reynier’s corps was out of action, Ney called back his column, which fell back behind Moura. Maucune’s brigade had suffered severely—it had lost its brigadier, the colonel of the 6th Léger, and thirty-three other officers with some 850 men. The rear brigade (Marcognet’s) had suffered less—its casualty list, however, was fully 300 killed and wounded. There had been a little skirmishing meanwhile opposite Wellington’s centre, for during the main attack Ney had sent forward some voltigeur companies from his reserves to occupy the line of skirmishers at the foot of the heights, which Spencer’s 1st Division had thrown out. These two thin screens of light troops paired off against each other, and contended all the morning with some loss, but no appreciable advantage on either side.
Masséna still had it in his power to attack again, for Mermet’s division of the 6th Corps, and the whole of Junot’s 13,000 infantry had not yet advanced and had hardly lost a man. But the result of Ney’s and Reynier’s efforts had been so disheartening that the Marshal refused to waste more lives on what was clearly a hopeless enterprise. He could now see Wellington’s army concentrated on the two points that had been attacked. Hill’s heavy column of 10,000 men had now lined the heights on Leith’s right: Cole had edged the 4th Division close in to Craufurd’s left, and Coleman and the Germans were visible in the rear. If Masséna had still 20,000 fresh infantry, the English general had 33,000 who had not yet come up into the fighting-line. It was useless to persist. Accordingly, the skirmishing along Ney’s front was allowed to die down in the afternoon, and the French divisions retired to their camps.
The total loss of Wellington’s army had been 1,252 officers and men, of whom 200 were killed, 1,001 wounded, and fifty-one missing. No officer over the rank of a major had been killed: and the only senior officers wounded were the Portuguese brigadier Champlemond and Colonel Barclay of the 52nd. Of the casualties, 626 were in the ranks of the British, 626 in those of the Portuguese regiments—a strange coincidence in the losses of the two allied armies. The Portuguese line, indeed, had done their fair half of the fighting, as the return showed—in no instance with discredit, in some with high merit. If the 8th and 9th Portuguese had broken before Foy’s attack, it was under severe stress, and when attacked by superior numbers. On the other hand, Pack’s brigade, Coleman’s 19th, and the Ca?adores of the Light Division won the highest praises from their commanders, and had taken a most distinguished part in the victory. Wellington now knew exactly how far they could be trusted, and could estimate at last the real fighting value of his army—at least, for a defensive battle in chosen and favourable ground. It would be another matter to calculate how far the allied host was capable of taking the offensive.
The total loss of the French, as shown by the return—which was not quite complete—presented to Masséna on October 1, was 4,498, of whom 522 were killed, 3,612 wounded, and 364 missing (i.e. prisoners). After his usual fashion he represented it to the Emperor as being ‘about 3,000.’ One general (Graindorge), two colonels, and fifty-two other officers had been killed, four generals (Maucune, Foy, Merle, Simon) were wounded—the last was also a prisoner; five colonels and 189 other officers were wounded. The 2nd Corps in all had lost at least 2,043 officers and men, the 6th Corps at least 2,455. It may be remembered that of all the battles in the Peninsular War this was the one in which the proportion of officers to men hit on the French side was highest, one to sixteen—the average being one to twenty-two in ordinary engagements. The excessive proportion of casualties in the commissioned ranks bears witness to a desperate attempt to lead on the men to an impossible task, in which the officers sacrificed themselves in the most splendid style.
Masséna must not be too much blamed for his experiment. He had still to ascertain the fighting value of Wellington’s army—and estimated it too low, because of the extreme prudence which his adversary had hitherto displayed. He was handicapped by the impossibility of using his artillery effectively, and the position in front of him was strong—even stronger than he guessed, because of the road of communication along the rear of the plateau—but not too strong to be forced, if the defenders did not fight well. Moreover, it was immensely long—nine miles from end to end, so that two blows delivered with a corps each in the centre might have pierced the line before the enemy’s distant reserves could get up. Favoured by the fog—as we have seen—Reynier actually won the heights for a moment, though Ney never got near the crest. The mistake lay not so much in making the trial as in under-rating the warlike efficiency of the enemy. Strokes like Wallace’s charge with the 45th and 88th, or Craufurd’s masterly advance with the 43rd and 52nd, are beyond the common experiences of war. Masséna put forty-five battalions into his fighting-line—they were repulsed by twenty-four, for that was the number of Anglo-Portuguese battalions which engaged more than their light-companies. This could not have been foreseen. But the lesson was learnt. Before the lines of Torres Vedras, a fortnight later, Masséna refused to take any more risks of the kind, and the campaign assumed a very different character, because the invader had learnt to respect his enemy.
(1) NOTE ON THE TOPOGRAPHY OF BUSSACO
I spent two days in April 1904 and two days in April 1906 in going very carefully over the field—save that of its nine-mile length I did not investigate closely either Cole’s position on the extreme north, or Hill’s on the extreme south, no fighting having come near either of them. The ground is so minutely described in the preceding chapter that only a few additional points require notice.
(1) The ravine which lay between Pack and Craufurd, and between Marchand and Loison, is a feature which no map can properly express, and which no one who has not gone very carefully over the hillside can fully picture to himself. It produces an absolute want of continuity between the two fights which went on to its right and left.
(2) The Mondego is not visible from any point of the line of heights till Hill’s position is reached. It is sunk far below the level of the upland.
(3) The San Antonio-Palheiros road is a mere country track, barely deserving the name of road, though practicable for artillery and vehicles. The chaussée Moura-Bussaco is a high-road of the first class, admirably engineered. The paths across the Serra at Hill’s end of it are wretched mule-tracks, not suitable for wheeled traffic. So is the track from Sula up the slope to Craufurd’s standing-place.
(4) The view from the summit of the Serra is very extensive, embracing on the one side all the slopes of the Estrella as far as Guarda, and on the other the whole coast-plain of Coimbra as far as the sea. But in each direction there is so much wood and hill that many roads and villages are masked. The French army, both in advance and retreat, was only intermittently visible. But enough could be made out to determine its general movements with fair precision. When it reached the foot-hills before the Serra every detail of its disposition could be followed by an observer on any part of the crest, save that below Sula woods in the bottom hide the starting-point of Loison’s division.
(5) In the chapel by the side of the chaussée, just behind the sky-line of the English position, the traveller will find a little museum, including a very fine topographical map, with the position of the allied troops, and more especially of the Portuguese regiments, well marked. There are a few errors in the placing of the British battalions, but nothing of consequence. The French army is only vaguely indicated. But the map is a credit to the Portuguese engineer officers who compiled it.
(6) As I have observed in the next chapter, the ground to the north, along the Serras de Alcoba and de Caramula, is not so uniformly lofty, or so forbidding in its aspect, as to cause the observer to doubt whether there can be any pass across the watershed in that direction. Indeed, the first idea that strikes the mind on reaching the summit of the Serra, and casting a glance round the wide landscape, is that it is surprising that any officer in the French army can have believed that the Caramula was absolutely impracticable. Moreover it is far less easily defensible than the Bussaco ridge, because it is much more broken and full of cover. The beauty of the Bussaco position is that, save on the Moura-Sula spurs, it is entirely bare of cover on the side facing eastward. The smooth, steep slope, with its furze and heather and its occasional outcrops of rock, makes a splendid glacis. The reverse space would be a far worse position to defend, against an enemy coming from Coimbra and the coast-plain, because it is thickly interspersed with woods.
(7) With the possible exception of some of the Pyrenean fighting-grounds, Bussaco gives the most beautiful landscape of any of the British battlefields of the Peninsula. Albuera is tame, Talavera is only picturesque at its northern end, Salamanca is rolling ground with uninteresting ploughed fields, save where the two Arapiles crop up in their isolated ruggedness. Fuentes d’O?oro is a pretty hillside, such as one may see in any English county, with meadow below and rough pasture above. Vimiero is dappled ground, with many trees but no commanding feature. But the loftiness, the open breezy air, the far-reaching view over plain, wood, mountain, and distant sea, from the summit of the Bussaco Serra is unique in its beauty. It is small wonder that the modern Portuguese have turned it into a health-resort, or that the British colony at Oporto have fixed on the culminating plateau as the best golf-course in the Peninsula.
(2) NOTE ON THE CRISIS OF THE BATTLE OF BUSSACO
While there is no point of dispute concerning that part of the Battle of Bussaco in which Craufurd, Pack, and Coleman were engaged against the 6th Corps, there was bitter controversy on the exact details of the repulse of Reynier’s corps by Picton and Leith. Picton, and following him his subordinates of the 3rd Division, thought that Leith’s part in the action was insignificant, that he merely repulsed a minor attack after the main struggle was over. Leith and his officers considered that they gave the decisive blow, that Picton’s line would have been broken and the battle perhaps lost, if Barnes’s brigade had not arrived at the critical moment and saved the situation. All that Picton would allow was that Leith ‘aided the wing of the 45th and the 8th Portuguese in repulsing the enemy’s last attempt.’ Grattan, who wrote an admirable narrative of the defeat of Merle’s division by the 88th and the neighbouring troops, denied that the 3rd Division was ever pressed, says that he never saw Leith’s men till the action was over, and points out that Barnes’s brigade, out of 1,800 bayonets, lost but 47 men altogether, while the 45th regiment alone lost thrice, and the 88th more than twice, as many killed and wounded out of their scanty numbers (150 and 134 out of 560 and 679 respectively). Other 3rd Division officers suggest (see the letters in the Appendix to Napier’s sixth volume) that Leith fought only with a belated body of French skirmishers, or with men who had been cut off from the main attacking column by the successful advance of Wallace. On the other hand Leith (see his letter in Wellington, Supplementary Dispatches, vol. vi, p. 678) speaks of coming on the ground to find a large French column crossing the Serra, and the Portuguese 8th and 9th broken, and about to recoil down the rear slope. His aide-de-camp, Leith-Hay, and Cameron of the 9th bear him out.
Napier has failed to make the situation clear, from not seeing that there were two completely separate attacks of the French, divided by an appreciable interval. He thinks that Foy was on the Serra as soon as Merle, and calls his column (iii. p. 25) ‘the French battalions which had first gained the crest,’ while as a matter of fact they had only started after Wallace’s repulse of Merle was long over.
The real situation is made clear when Reynier’s and Heudelet’s dispatches in the French Archives and Foy’s diary are studied. From these it is clear that there were two occasions on which the French got to the top of the Serra, the first during Merle’s attack, the second during Foy’s. I have quoted Foy’s narrative on p. 377 above; but it may be well to give also his note showing the starting-time of his column. ‘La première division (Merle) a gravi la montagne en se jettant à droite. Mais à peine les têtes arrivaient sur le plateau, qu’attaquées tout à coup par des troupes immensement supérieures en nombre, fra?ches et vigoureuses, elles ont été culbutées en bas de la montagne dans le plus grand désordre. Ma brigade s’était portée au pied de la montagne, devant soutenir le 31e Léger. Au moment de l’échec de la 1re division j’ai fait halte un moment pour ne pas être entra?né par les fuyards.’ It was only at this instant, when the fugitives from Merle’s attack were pouring past him, that he got his orders from Reynier to attack, and started to climb the slope. There must, therefore, have been an interval of more than half an hour—possibly of an hour—between the moment when Wallace thrust Merle off the plateau, and that at which Foy crowned it, only to be attacked and beaten by the newly arrived Leith. For it took a very long time for the French 17th and 70th to climb the slope, and they only reached the top with difficulty, the skirmishers of the 8th and 9th Portuguese and of Meade’s wing of the 45th having fought hard to keep them back.
Reynier’s dispatch is equally clear as to his corps having made two separate attacks. He adds that some of Sarrut’s men were rallied in time to support Foy, a statement for which I find no corroboration elsewhere.
Napier then has failed to grasp the situation, when he makes the French crown the crest above the pass of San Antonio and the crest opposite Wallace, 900 yards further north, at the same moment. And the statement that Leith’s charge was directed against the other flank of the same mass that was beaten by the 88th and 45th is altogether erroneous.
Leith’s narrative of the business, in short, fits in with the French story, and must be considered correct. Picton cannot be acquitted of deliberate belittling of the part taken by his colleague in the action. Foy’s attack, though made by only seven battalions, while Merle had eleven, was the more dangerous of the two, and was defeated by Leith alone, after the small fraction of Picton’s force in front of it had been broken and thrust back.
WELLINGTON’S RETREAT TO THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS (OCTOBER 1810)
The dawn of September 28 brought small comfort to Masséna. His desperate attacks of the preceding day had been repulsed with such ease and such heavy loss, that neither he nor any of his subordinates dreamed of renewing the attempt to force the line of the Serra. Only three courses were open to him—to retreat on Almeida, giving up the campaign as one too ambitious for the strength of his army, or to change his objective and strike backwards at Oporto,—if Lisbon were beyond his grasp,—or to endeavour to move Wellington out of his position by turning his flank, since a frontal attack had proved disastrous. The first course was advocated by more than one adviser, but presented no attractions to the Marshal: he was both obstinate and angry, and did not dream for a moment of spoiling his military reputation by retreating tamely after a lost battle. The blow at Oporto was equally unattractive: he had been told to drive the English out of Portugal, and to capture Lisbon, not to make a mere lodgement on the Douro. Moreover, as he had remarked to Ney before the battle, if he marched on Oporto by the bad road via Vizeu, he might find the British army once more in his front, when he drew nearer to the city, since the Coimbra-Oporto chaussée is both shorter and better than the by-roads which he would have to follow. There remained the third possibility—that of turning Wellington out of the Bussaco position by flanking operations. The country-side did not look very promising, but the attempt must be made.
Early on the 28th the French cavalry was sent out in both directions to explore the whole neighbourhood—a task which Masséna should have prescribed to it on the 25th and 26th, instead of keeping it massed in his rear. The reconnaissances sent southward by Reynier’s light cavalry brought no encouraging report: if the French army crossed the Mondego, it would only run against Wellington’s carefully prepared position behind the Alva. Fane’s cavalry were out in this direction, and would give ample time of warning to allow the allied army to pass the fords of Pe?a Cova and man the long series of earthworks. Only a repetition of the Bussaco disaster could follow from an attempt to take the offensive on this side. From the north, however, Montbrun, who had ridden out with some of Sainte-Croix’s dragoons, brought far more cheering news. This indeed was the flank where, on the first principles of topography, some hope of success might have been looked for. To any one standing either on the Bussaco heights or on the lower ridge in front of them, and casting an eye over the dappled and uneven country-side to the north, it seems incredible that there should be no route whatever across the Serra de Caramula. Both the seacoast-plain of Beira and the valley of the Oerins, the little river which drains the plain of Mortagoa, were thickly populated. Was it likely that there would be no means of getting from the one to the other save by the chaussée through Bussaco, or the circuitous road far to the north, from Vizeu to Aveiro via Feramena and Bemfeita? The maps, it is true, showed no other route: but every day that he remained in Portugal was proving more clearly to the Marshal that his maps, Lopez and the rest, were hopelessly inaccurate. The Serra de Caramula, though rugged, is not one continuous line of precipices, nor is it of any great altitude. On first principles it was probable that there might be one or more passages in this stretch of thirty miles, though it was conceivable that there might be no road over which artillery could travel.
There was, therefore, nothing astonishing in the fact that Montbrun discovered that such a track existed, nine miles north of Bussaco, running from Mortagoa, by Aveleira and Boialvo, to Sard?o in the valley of the Agueda, one of the affluents of the Vouga. There was nothing particularly startling in the discovery, nor did it imply any special perspicacity in the discoverers, as many of the French narratives seek to imply. A peasant captured in one of the deserted villages high up the Oerins, and cross-questioned by Masséna’s Portuguese aide-de-camp Mascarenhas, who accompanied Sainte-Croix on his reconnaissance, revealed the fact that this country-road existed. He even, it is said, expressed to his compatriot his surprise that the French had not taken it when first they arrived at Mortagoa, since it was unguarded, while the whole allied army was lying across the Bussaco chaussée. It was, he said, habitually used by the ox-waggons of the peasantry: it was not a good road, but was a perfectly practicable one.
With this all-important news Montbrun and Sainte-Croix returned to Masséna about midday. The Marshal at once resolved to make an attempt to utilize the Boialvo road. There was some danger in doing so, since it was possible that Wellington might wait till the greater part of the French army had retired from his front, and then descend upon the rearguard and overwhelm it. Or, on the other hand, he might have made preparations to hold the further end of the pass, so that when the vanguard of the invaders was nearing Boialvo or Sard?o they might find 20,000 men, withdrawn from the Bussaco position in haste, lying across their path at some dangerous turn of the road. Indeed, we may confidently assert that if in 1810 the British general had possessed the army that he owned in 1813, Masséna would have had the same unpleasant experience that befell Soult at Sorauren, when he attempted a precisely similar man?uvre—a flank march round the allied army on the day after a lost battle.
But Masséna was prepared to take risks, and the risk which he was now accepting was a considerably less perilous one than that which he had incurred when he chose to make a frontal attack on the Bussaco position on the preceding day. For though flank marches across an enemy’s front are justly deprecated by every military authority, this was one executed at a distance of nine or ten miles from the British line, and not in a level country, on to which Wellington might easily descend from his fastness, but in a broken wooded upland, full of ridges on which the French might have formed up to fight if assailed. If this fact did not remove the danger, it at any rate made it infinitely less. If one of the two possible contretemps should happen—if Wellington should come down with a sudden rush upon the rearguard—that force would have to fight a defensive action on the ridges below Bussaco, till the main body could turn back to help it. In that case there would follow a pitched battle upon rolling and uneven ground, which did not favour one side more than the other; and this, at any rate, would be a more favourable situation for the French than that in which they had fought on Sept. 27. If, on the other hand, Wellington should send a strong detachment to hold the western debouch of the Boialvo road, nothing would be lost—if nothing would be gained. It was improbable that there would be any position in that quarter quite so strong as the tremendous slope of the Serra de Bussaco. The result of an attempt to force the defile might be successful.
At any rate Masséna thought the experiment worthy of a trial. Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 28th, ostentatious demonstrations were made against the front of the Bussaco position, which led to a good deal of objectless skirmishing. Wellington was not for a moment deceived. Indeed, the idea that another assault was impending was negatived by the fact that both Reynier’s and Ney’s men were seen to be throwing up abattis and digging trenches on the flanks of the two roads on which they lay. These could only be meant for defensive use, and presumably must be intended to help the French rearguard to hold the ridges, if the Anglo-Portuguese army should descend upon them. Late in the afternoon officers furnished with good telescopes, and stationed on the highest point of the Bussaco Serra, reported that they could detect columns in movement from the French rear in the direction of the north-west. These were Sainte-Croix’s cavalry and the baggage-trains of Ney and Junot making their way to the rear, in order to get into the Mortagoa-Boialvo road. At six o’clock, dusk having still not come on, it was reported that Ney’s infantry reserves were certainly moving in the same direction. Only Loison’s division was still immovable on its old position opposite Sula. At nightfall, therefore, the movement of the French was well ascertained. It might mean merely a general retreat on Mortagoa and an abandonment of the campaign, but this was most unlikely. Far more probable was some march to turn the allied flank by the passes of the Serra de Caramula. Wellington himself had no doubt whatever that this was the enemy’s intention. As the dusk fell he stood for some time on the summit of the Serra, watching the French columns receding in the distance. He then rode back to his head quarters at the convent of Bussaco, and dictated without delay a series of orders which set his whole army in retreat for Coimbra and Lisbon. Before daylight the position was deserted, only a rearguard being left on it. He does not seem to have thought for a moment of attacking, on the following morning, the 2nd Corps and Loison’s division, which had been left in his front, nor of directing his right wing to march on Sard?o, which it could have reached long before the French arrived there. Each of these courses was so obvious that critics have lavished blame upon him for not adopting the one or the other.
The explanation of his conduct is neither that he failed to see the two alternatives which were in his power, nor that he showed (as several French writers maintain) an excessive timidity. Still less is it possible to urge, as some have done, that he was ruined by his own neglect to occupy the Boialvo road. He knew of that pass, had taken it into consideration, and in one of his dispatches speaks vaguely of a means which he was hoping to discover to render it useless to the enemy. This remedy cannot mean, as some have supposed, the moving thither of Trant’s corps of Portuguese militia. It is true that Wellington had ordered this force to occupy Sard?o some days before. But it was neither large enough, nor composed of troops solid enough, to resist, even in a strong position, the attack of a single French brigade. Some other device must have been meant, though we cannot determine what it may have been. The true key to Wellington’s action is to remember the immense pains that he had taken in building the Lines of Torres Vedras, and the elaborate arrangements that had been made during the last few weeks to complete the system for devastating Portugal in front of the enemy. It was by these means, and not by fights in the open, that he had from the first designed to defeat the invader. Bussaco had been an ‘uncovenanted mercy’: if Masséna chose to run his head against that stone wall, it was worth while to man it, and to permit him to break himself against its granite boulders. But such an operation as descending into the plain to attack the 2nd Corps on the 29th, or offering battle in front of Sard?o on that same day, was not within the scope of Wellington’s intentions. If he had wished to engage in that sort of fighting, he had already had ample opportunities to attack sections of the French army during the last two months. But to get engaged with one corps in a rolling upland, and then to have the other two converging on him while the fight was in progress, he had never intended—nor would he do so now. He gave his orders for the retreat of the army on Coimbra actually before the French had possession of their own end of the Boialvo pass, and at a moment when a single night march would have sufficed to place Cole, Craufurd, and Spencer across the western end of it, with ample time to choose a position before the enemy could arrive in front. He explains his refusal to do so in his ‘Memorandum of Operations in 1810’ in the following terms: ‘It would have been impossible to detach a corps from the army to occupy the Serra de Caramula after the action of the 27th. That corps might have been hard pressed and obliged to retreat, in which case it must have retreated upon Sard?o and the north of Portugal. It could not have rejoined the army, and its services would have been wanting in the fortified position in front of Lisbon. It was therefore determined to rely upon Colonel Trant alone to occupy the Serra de Caramula, as his line of operations and retreat was to the northward. Nothing could have been done, except by detaching a large corps, to prevent the French from throwing a large force across the Caramula. When, therefore, they took that road, there was nothing for it but to withdraw from Bussaco. And, after quitting Bussaco, there was no position that we could take up with advantage, in which we could be certain that we could prevent the enemy from getting to Lisbon before us, till we reached the fortified positions in front of that place.’ As to the other possibility, that of attacking the French rearguard below Bussaco instead of endeavouring to stop its vanguard at Sard?o, Wellington only observes that ‘they had at least 12,000 or 14,000 more men than we had, and good as our position was, theirs was equally good.’ If he had fallen upon Reynier, the latter (he thought) could have detained him long enough to allow Ney and Junot to return, and so he would have found himself committed to an offensive action against superior numbers on unfavourable ground.
These arguments are unanswerable when we consider Wellington’s position. He might have succeeded in checking Masséna at Boialvo or Sard?o; but, if he did not, ruin would ensue, since he might be cut off from the detached corps, and then would not have men enough to hold the Lines of Torres Vedras. He might have crushed Reynier before he was succoured, but if he failed to do so, and became involved in a general action, a disastrous defeat was possible. In short, considering what failure would mean—the loss of Lisbon, the re-embarkation of the army, probably the end of the Peninsular War—he rightly hesitated to take any risk whatever. At the same time, we may suspect that if the allied army of 1810 had been the army of 1813, Wellington might very possibly have played a more enterprising game. But the Portuguese still formed the larger half of his force, and though he had ascertained by their behaviour on the 27th that they were now capable of fighting steadily in a defensive action on favourable ground, it was nevertheless very doubtful whether he could dare to risk them in a battle fought under different conditions. One cheering example of the courage and discipline of these newly organized regiments did not justify him in taking it for granted that they could be trusted under all possible conditions, as if they were veteran British troops.
On the dawn of Sept. 29, therefore, the two armies were marching away from each other. On the Bussaco position there remained only Craufurd’s Light Division, strengthened by Anson’s cavalry brigade, which was brought up behind the Serra, to form the mounted section of the force which was for the next ten days to act as the rearguard of the allied army. Opposite them only Reynier remained, and he had drawn far back on to the Mortagoa road, where he stood in a defensive position in the morning, but retired, brigade after brigade, in the afternoon. The main body of Wellington’s army was retiring in two columns: Hill, and Hamilton’s Portuguese division crossed the fords of Pe?a Cova and marched for Espinhal and Thomar. The force which had been left far out on the right behind the Alva—Fane’s cavalry and Lecor’s Portuguese militia—joined Hill and accompanied him to Lisbon. This column was absolutely unmolested by the enemy during the whole twelve days of the retreat to the Lines. The French did not so much as follow it with a cavalry patrol. The other and larger column, formed of Spencer, Cole, Leith, and Picton, with Pack’s, Coleman’s, and Alex. Campbell’s Portuguese, marched for Mealhada and Coimbra. Craufurd and Anson started twelve hours later to bring up the rear. During the hours while the Light Division was waiting its orders to start, some of its officers explored the evacuated French position, and found parked in an enclosure 400 desperately wounded soldiers, whom Masséna had abandoned to the mercy of the Portuguese peasantry. He had used up all available carts and mules to carry his wounded, but had been forced to leave the worst cases behind. They were picked up and moved into the convent of Bussaco; on what became of them afterwards it is well not to speculate. No friendly column came that way again, and the Ordenan?a were daily growing more exasperated at the conduct of the invading army. The French were not only carrying out in an intermittent fashion Masséna’s edict of Sept. 4, directing that all men with arms but without uniforms were to be shot at sight, but burning every village that they passed, and murdering nearly every peasant that they could hunt down, whether he was bearing arms or no.
Meanwhile, on the 29th and 30th of September, the French army was executing its flank march, practically unopposed, though not unobserved. Sainte-Croix’s division of dragoons was at the head of the line of march: then came the infantry of the 8th Corps, which had been put in the vanguard because it had not suffered at Bussaco. Next came the reserve cavalry of Montbrun, followed by the Grand Park and the massed baggage of the 6th and 8th Corps, mixed with a convoy of over 3,000 wounded. Ney’s troops brought up the rear of the main column. Reynier was a day’s march to the rear; having spent the 29th opposite the Bussaco heights, he only reached Mortagoa that evening. Sainte-Croix’s cavalry on this same day had passed the watershed and reached Avellans de Cima, where they met a patrol of De Grey’s dragoons, who had sent parties out in all directions, from their head quarters at Mealhada in the coast-plain. From this time onward the French advanced guard was watched by the four regiments of Slade and De Grey, who were directed to hold back its exploring cavalry, and not to permit it to reach Coimbra an hour sooner than could be helped. There was also a clash on the afternoon of the 30th between part of Sainte-Croix’s dragoons and the Portuguese militia of Trant in front of Sard?o. Trant had been ordered to be at that place on September 27: he only arrived there on the afternoon of the 28th, not by his own fault, but because his superior officer Baccelar, commanding the whole militia of the North, had ordered him to move from Lamego to Sard?o by the circuitous road along the Douro, and then from Feira southward, instead of taking the straight road across, the mountains north of Vizeu, where he might possibly have been stopped by some outlying French detachment. Trant had at the moment only a squadron of dragoons and four militia regiments with him (Porto, Penafiel, Coimbra, and a battalion of light companies), and these, from hard marching, and from desertion, were in all less than 3,000 strong. Knowing that he was expected to hold the debouch of the Boialvo road against anything short of a strong force, Trant made an attempt to stand his ground. But his vanguard bolted at the first shot fired, and with the rest he had to make a hurried retreat beyond the Vouga, leaving the road free to the French. Sainte-Croix had already pushed in between him and the British cavalry, who now began to make a slow retreat towards Mealhada. At that place, early on the 30th, Slade and De Grey were joined by Anson’s eight squadrons, who had come in at the tail of Craufurd’s division after the rearguard evacuated the Bussaco position. On this day the main column of the British infantry marched through Coimbra, leaving the Light Division alone in the city. Wellington’s head quarters that night were at Condeixa six miles south of the Mondego. The three cavalry brigades retired, bickering with the French advanced guard all day, as far as Fornos, eight miles north of Coimbra. Masséna’s infantry, after emerging from the Boialvo pass, were now pushing south, and bivouacked on the night of the 30th, Ney and Junot’s corps at Mealhada, Reynier’s at Barreiro, ten miles behind the others. The biscuit which the French army had taken with it from Almeida was now almost exhausted, and it was a great relief to the troops to find, in the deserted villages of the plain of Coimbra, considerable quantities of maize and rice, with which they could eke out or replace the carefully hoarded rations.
Meanwhile the city of Coimbra was full of distressing scenes. Though Wellington had ordered the whole population of Western Beira to leave their abodes as soon as the French reached Vizeu, yet only the richest of the inhabitants of Coimbra had departed. The bulk had still held to their houses, and the news of the victory of Bussaco had encouraged them to hope that no evacuation would be necessary. The Portuguese government, though it had consented to carry out Wellington’s scheme of devastation, and had duly published proclamations commanding its execution, had taken no great pains to secure obedience to it. The sacrifice, indeed, that was demanded of the citizens of a wealthy town such as Coimbra was a very great one—far more bitter than that imposed on the peasantry, who were told at the same moment to evacuate their flimsy cottages. It was bitterly resented, and, despite of the proclamation, four-fifths of the 40,000 inhabitants of Coimbra were still in their houses when, on the night of the 28th-29th, arrived Wellington’s dispatch stating that he was abandoning Bussaco, that the French would be in the city by the 30th or on the 1st of October, and that force would be used, if necessary, to expel people who still clung to their dwellings. During the next two days the whole of the population of Coimbra was streaming out of the place by the roads to the south, or dropping down the Mondego in boats, to ship themselves for Lisbon at the little port of Figueira. Even on the 1st of October, the day when the French were reputed to be facing Fornos, only eight miles away, all had not yet departed. Many of the poor, the infirm, and the reckless remained behind to the last possible moment, and only started when the distant cannonade on the northern side showed that the British outposts were being driven in. Twenty miles of road were covered by the dense column of fugitives, headed by those who had started on the 29th and brought up behind by those who had waited till the last moment. There was a great want of wheeled conveyances: the richer folks had gone off with most of them, and others had been requisitioned for the allied wounded. Hence, many could take off nothing but what they could carry on their persons. An eye-witness writes that he saw the whole chaussée covered with respectable families walking on foot with bundles on their heads, while in the abandoned houses he noticed food of all sorts, table-linen, shirts, and all manner of other property, which was left behind in disorder because it was too heavy to be carried. Another tells how ‘the old and the infirm, no less than the young and robust, carrying with them all their more valuable effects, covered the fields as well as the road in every direction, and from time to time the weary fugitives, unable to carry further the heavier articles that they had endeavoured to save, dropped them by the wayside and struggled onward, bereft of the remnant of their little property.’ Fortunately the weather for the first eight days after the evacuation of Coimbra was warm and dry, so that the unhappy multitude had almost reached Lisbon before they began to suffer any inconvenience from the October rains.
While this exodus was going on, Craufurd’s Light Division stood under arms on the northern side of the city, while the six regiments of British horse, in the extreme rearguard, were bickering with Masséna’s squadrons in the plain toward Fornos. On this day the Marshal had strengthened his van with almost the whole of his cavalry, having added to Sainte-Croix’s division, which had hitherto formed the advance, most of Montbrun’s reserve of dragoons, and Lamotte’s light brigade from the 6th Corps. This body of thirty-four squadrons was altogether too strong for Stapleton Cotton’s three brigades, who had to give way whenever they were seriously pressed. Two miles outside Coimbra the British horse was divided into two columns: De Grey’s heavy dragoons crossed the Mondego at a ford opposite Pereira, Slade and Anson’s light dragoons and hussars by another at Alciada, nearer to the city. At the same moment the Light Division, when the enemy’s horse came in sight, retired through Coimbra, crossed the bridge, and pressed up the ascent towards Condeixa, thrusting before them the rearguard of belated fugitives who had only made up their minds to depart at the last possible moment. It is said that the block in front of them was so great that Craufurd’s regiments would have been in a situation of some danger, if they had been closely followed by French infantry, and forced to turn back to defend themselves. But nothing more than a troop of dragoons watched their passage of the bridge and their retreat to Condeixa, and not a shot had to be fired.
It was otherwise with the cavalry column composed of Slade’s and Anson’s brigades: they were closely followed by the bulk of the French cavalry, and had to turn at the ford to hold back their eager pursuers. Two squadrons of the German Hussars and one of the 16th Light Dragoons charged in succession to check the French vanguard, while a fire was kept up by a line of dismounted skirmishers all along the river bank. The hussars lost four men killed, and two officers and thirteen men wounded, besides six prisoners; the 16th, two wounded and one missing in this skirmish. It could have been avoided, according to critics on the spot, if the brigade had retreated a little faster in the previous stage of its movement. But Stapleton Cotton, forgetting the dangers of crossing such a defile as a narrow ford, had been rather too leisurely in covering the last three miles, considering that the French were so close behind him. The enemy’s loss was insignificant.
That night the British rearguard lay at Soure and Condeixa, while head quarters and the rear of the main army were at Redinha. The French did not cross the Mondego with more than a few cavalry patrols, and made no attempt to incommode the retreating column. Indeed they were otherwise employed. The entry of an army into a deserted town is always accompanied by disorders: that of the army of Masséna into Coimbra was an exaggerated example of the rule—and for good reasons. The men had been living on bare rations for a month, and suddenly they found themselves in a town of 40,000 souls, where every door was open, every larder garnished, and every cellar full. The very quays were littered with sacks of flour torn open, and puncheons of rum stove in, for Wellington’s commissariat officers had been to the last moment engaged in breaking up and casting into the river the remains of the magazine which had been feeding the army at Bussaco. The houses on every side were full of valuable goods, for most of the inhabitants had only been able to carry off their money and plate, and had left all else behind them. The first division of the 8th Corps, the earliest French troops to enter the place, consisted almost entirely of newly-formed fourth battalions, composed of conscripts, and ill disciplined. They broke their ranks and fell to plunder, only half-restrained by their officers, many of whom joined in the sport. A late comer from the artillery says that he saw one officer breaking open a door with a pickaxe, and another placing a sentry at the door of a shop which he wished to reserve for his own personal pillage. There was wide-spread drunkenness, some arson, and an enormous amount of mischievous and wanton waste. It was afterwards said that Junot’s corps destroyed in twelve hours an amount of food that would have sufficed to supply the whole army for three weeks. It is at any rate certain that Coimbra was full of provisions when the French arrived, and that, when order was tardily restored, only a few days’ consumption could be scraped together to fill the empty waggons before the host marched on. Masséna raged against Junot for not having kept his men in hand, yet, if Portuguese narratives are to be trusted, he set as bad an example as any disorderly conscript, since he requisitioned for himself out of the University buildings all the telescopes and mathematical instruments, and distributed them among his staff. The pillage was as wanton and objectless as it was thorough; the tombs of the kings in the church of Santa Cruz were broken open, the University Museum and laboratories wrecked, and all the churches wantonly damaged and desecrated. There was no attempt to restore order, or to utilize the captured property for the general good of the army, till the 6th Corps marched in on the next day. Even these later comers, however, could not be restrained from joining in the plunder. The mob of soldiers threatened to shoot the commissary-generals Lambert and Laneuville, when they began to put guards over the nearly-emptied storehouses.
The state of his army on the 1st and 2nd October sufficiently explains the conduct of Masséna in refraining from the pursuit of Wellington’s rearguard. But he was also somewhat puzzled to determine the policy which he must now adopt. Down to the last moment he had thought that Wellington would have fought at Fornos, or some other such position, to defend Coimbra. And even when Coimbra was evacuated, he had imagined that he might find the enemy drawn up to dispute the passage of the Mondego. But it was now clear that Wellington was in full retreat for Lisbon. Since the Marshal was still ignorant of the existence of the lines of Torres Vedras, which was only revealed to him four days later, he was somewhat uncertain how to interpret the conduct of his adversary. After the vigorous stand that Wellington had made at Bussaco, it seemed dangerous to argue that he must now be in headlong flight for his ships, and about to evacuate Portugal. Yet the rapidity of his retreat seemed to argue some such purpose. Ought he, therefore, to be pursued without a moment’s delay, in order that his embarkation might be made difficult? This course, it is said, was advocated by Reynier, Montbrun, Fririon, and the Portuguese renegade d’Alorna. On the other hand, Ney and Junot both advised a stay at Coimbra, to rest the army, collect provisions, and, what was most important of all, to reopen communications with Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and the 9th Corps, which was now due on the Spanish frontier. They pointed to the diminished strength of the army, which, having lost 4,600 men at Bussaco, and 4,000 more by the hard marching and poor feeding of the last month, was now reduced to some 57,000 men. The fighting-power of Wellington was formidable, as he had shown at Bussaco, where many of the French officers persisted in believing that he had shown numbers superior to their own—in which they erred. A hasty advance, it was urged, might bring the invaders in face of a second Bussaco, where there was no chance of a turning movement. Would the commander-in-chief wish to accept another battle of the same sort? It would be better to establish a new base at Coimbra, to bring up the 9th Corps from the rear, and only to move on when the army was thoroughly reorganized. Meanwhile a detachment might demonstrate against Oporto, to distract Wellington’s attention. This was the policy that Napoleon, two months after, declared that Masséna should have adopted. ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘did the Prince of Essling, after his failure at Bussaco, pursue the march on Lisbon, instead of taking up a position on the Mondego, and restoring his communications with Almeida? I had not burdened him with orders or instructions, and he could see that the English were not easy to beat.’ Masséna’s advocate, Foy, replied that ‘if the Army of Portugal had been halted on the Mondego, your Majesty would have said to the Prince, Why did you not march on? The English would have re-embarked, if they had been pressed.’ To which Napoleon, with a broad smile, answered, ‘Very true; I probably should have said so.’
The problem presented to the Marshal, indeed, was not an easy one. If he remained at Coimbra, his enemies would delate him to the Emperor for timidity; if he advanced, he might find that he had undertaken a task too great for his strength. The personal equation settled the difficulty: Masséna was obstinate and enterprising to the verge of temerity. He resolved to go on, at the earliest possible moment, in the hope of forcing Wellington to a battle on ground less favourable than Bussaco, or of compelling him to embark without any general engagement at all. Two days only were spent at Coimbra. On October 3, Montbrun’s cavalry, after making a reconnaissance as far as the sea and the port of Figueira, crossed the Mondego to Villa Nova de Ancos, while the 8th Corps, headed by Sainte-Croix’s dragoons, occupied Condeixa: one division of Ney’s corps followed them. The rest of the 6th Corps and Reynier made ready to resume their advance.
A minor problem remained to be resolved. Should a large garrison be left in Coimbra, and a new base for the army established there? The Marshal had shot into the convent of Santa Clara 3,000 Bussaco wounded, and 1,000 sick men. There was an accumulation of waggons of the corps-trains and the Grand Park, which could push on no further, for want of draught beasts, and all manner of other impedimenta. If the army went on at full speed, in the hope of overtaking the English, all this must be left behind. But if left unguarded, wounded and all might become the victims of Trant’s militia, which was known to have retired no further than the Vouga, or even of the Ordenan?a of the hills. A strong garrison must be placed in Coimbra to make it safe: rumour had it on October 2 that Taupin’s brigade and a regiment of dragoons were to be set to guard the city. But rumour was wrong: Masséna, after some doubting, made up his mind that he could not spare even 3,000 men. Every bayonet would be wanted if Wellington once more turned to bay. Accordingly he took the extraordinary step of telling off only a single company, 156 men, of the 44th équipage de la Marine—a naval unit which had been given him in order that he might have a nucleus of sea-going people, in case he succeeded in seizing the Portuguese arsenal at Lisbon. One would have thought that such men would have been so valuable, if only the enterprise had succeeded, that he would have chosen rather a company of ordinary infantry. These sailors, with two or three hundred footsore or convalescent men, organized into a couple of provisional companies, were all that the Marshal placed at the disposition of Major Flandrin, to whom he gave the high-sounding title of Governor of Coimbra. That officer was told that every day would increase his force, as more convalescents came out of hospital, and 3,500 muskets, belonging to the sick and wounded, were left with him. The whole mass of disabled men was concentrated in the convent of Santa Clara, a vast building outside the trans-pontine suburb of Coimbra, on the south side of the Mondego. The garrison was so weak that it could do no more than keep a guard at each of the exits of the town, which was destitute of walls, with a post of thirty men, all that could be spared, at Fornos, on the great north road facing Oporto. To abandon his wounded to almost certain destruction was a reckless act on the Marshal’s part: probably he said to himself that if he could but catch and beat the Anglo-Portuguese army, a small disaster in his rear would be forgiven him. Unlike Wellington, he was ‘taking risks’.
On October 4 the French army made its regular start from Coimbra; the 6th Corps came out to Villa Pouca and Condeixa on the Pombal road, the 2nd Corps to Venda do Cego on the Anci?o road, which runs parallel with the other, ten miles to the east, and joins it at Leiria. Montbrun’s cavalry pushed in from Soure, to place itself in front of the 8th Corps, which now moved on from Condeixa as the head of the main infantry column. Its scouts that evening bickered in front of Pombal with Anson’s light cavalry, which was covering the retreat of the allied army. The two days which the French had spent in plundering Coimbra had allowed the Anglo-Portuguese infantry to get a start which they never lost: they never saw the enemy again during the rest of the retreat. That night Wellington’s head quarters were at Leiria, while Hill, unpursued by any hostile force, was at Thomar. For the next six days the British pursued a leisurely course towards the Lines, along the three roads Thomar-Santarem-Villafranca, which was taken by Hill; Alcoba?a-Caldas-Torres Vedras, which was taken by Picton; and Leiria-Batalha-Alemquer, which was taken by Spencer, Leith, and Cole. It was along the last-named, the central, road, that Craufurd’s infantry and the three cavalry brigades followed the main body, at the distance of a day’s march. Anson’s light cavalry brought up the extreme rear, and was almost the only unit which saw the enemy between the 4th and the 10th of October. The rest of the allied army had completely outmarched Masséna. Its retreat was marked by some disorders: the sight of rich monasteries like Alcoba?a and Batalha, and large towns, like Thomar and Leiria, standing empty, yet left full of all such property as the inmates could not easily carry off, proved as tempting to the British as the sight of Coimbra had been to the French. There was much drunkenness, much looting, and some wanton mischief. Wellington set himself to repress it by the strong hand. He hung at Leiria two troopers of the 4th Dragoon Guards, who were caught plundering a chapel, and a man of the 11th Portuguese infantry. Some of the regiments which were found specially addicted to pillage were ordered to bivouac in the open fields every night, and never to be quartered in a village.
Anson’s brigade, alone among the allied troops, had an adventurous career during the retreat to the Lines. It was always in touch with a pursuing force of immense strength, for Masséna had constituted a flying vanguard under Montbrun, whose orders were to push the enemy at all costs, and to try to come up with his infantry. This force consisted of Sainte-Croix’s dragoons, Pierre Soult’s cavalry from the 2nd Corps, Lamotte’s from the 6th Corps, one brigade (Ornano’s) of the Reserve Cavalry, and Taupin’s infantry from the 8th Corps. Lamotte’s light horse had the place of honour, and endured most of the hard knocks. They had lively skirmishing with Anson’s 1st German Hussars and 16th Light Dragoons between Pombal and Leiria on the 5th October. The British brigade turned back twice, and drove their pursuers back on to Taupin’s infantry, but always suffered when it had to resume its inevitable retreat. The French lost eight killed, seventeen wounded (including five officers) and twenty prisoners—the British fifty in all, including two officers wounded, and one taken. This combat would not have been worth mentioning, but for the fact that it was from prisoners captured in it that Masséna got his first news of the existence of the Lines of Torres Vedras. Some of the troopers spoke freely of ‘the Lines’ as their point of destination, not guessing that this was the first time that their captors had heard of them. Hence the French generals learned that there were now fortifications in front of Lisbon: but they had, of course, no knowledge of their extent or character, and only expected to find some field-works on which Wellington would turn to bay. In fact, Masséna was encouraged by the news, thinking that he was now certain of the battle which he desired.
On the 7th October the French infantry was all concentrated at Leiria, Reynier’s corps having now rejoined the other two. Montbrun’s cavalry spread out so far as Alcoba?a—whose monastery it sacked—on the coast-road, and Muliano on the central road. Vedettes were sent out on the cross-road to Thomar also, but could find no trace of an enemy in that direction. On the night that followed Masséna received the disquieting intelligence that his deliberate taking of risks with regard to Coimbra had already been punished. A mounted officer, who had escaped, brought him news that his hospitals and their guard had been captured at a single blow by Trant’s militia that same afternoon.
That enterprising partisan, it will be remembered, had been driven behind the Vouga by Sainte-Croix’s dragoons on September 30th. Since, however, none of the French turned aside to molest him, and all marched across his front on the Coimbra road, he was not forced to retire any further. And having his orders from Wellington to follow the enemy with caution, and pick up his stragglers and marauders, he came southward again when Masséna’s rearguard entered Coimbra. He had advanced to Mealhada when it was reported to him, on the 6th, that the rearguard of the French had left the city on the preceding day. A few people who had returned from the mountains to their homes, despite Wellington’s proclamation, sent him assurances that the numbers of the garrison were absolutely insignificant, and that of the wounded enormous. Judging rightly that it would have a splendid moral effect to capture Masséna’s hospitals, and the commencement of a base-magazine which was being formed at Coimbra, Trant resolved to strike at once. If he had waited a little he could have got help from J. Wilson and from Miller, who had descended into the Celorico-Vizeu country, each with his brigade. They had been directed by Wellington to cut the French communications with Almeida, and had already carried out their orders.
But Trant dreaded delay, thinking that Masséna might send back troops to Coimbra, when he found that Wellington was retiring as far as Lisbon. Without waiting for his colleagues, he marched at midday from Mealhada to Fornos on the 7th, and had the good fortune to surprise and capture the insignificant French post at that village: not a man escaped. He was now only eight miles from Coimbra, and was able to rush down into the city in the early afternoon before his arrival was known. He had with him one weak squadron of regular dragoons, and six militia battalions, having been joined since September 29th by all his stragglers and some outlying units. The whole made about 4,000 men. Formed in two columns, they charged into Coimbra by its two northern entrances, sweeping away the small French guards at the gates. The squadron of cavalry then galloped along the street parallel with the river, and seized the bridge, thus cutting off the communication between the French in the town and those at the convent of Santa Clara, where the wounded lay. The small grand-guard, which the enemy kept inside the place, took refuge in the bishop’s palace, but was forced to lay down its arms at the end of an hour. The men at the convent, joined by many of the convalescents, kept up a fire for a short time, but surrendered at discretion, on Trant’s promise to protect them from the fury of his troops. He was, unfortunately, not entirely able to redeem his promise: the Coimbra local regiment was so enraged at the state in which it found its native town that it mishandled some of the prisoners—eight are said to have been slain. The total loss of the Portuguese division was three killed and one officer and twenty-five men wounded.
Wilson and Miller came up next day, and sweeping the roads towards Condeixa and Pombal, picked up 300 more stragglers and marauders from the tail of Masséna’s marching column. Trant handed over Coimbra to them, and escorted his prisoners to Oporto with his own division: there were 3,507 sick and wounded, of whom half could march, while the rest were taken off in carts. Of able-bodied men not more than 400 soldiers were taken: but some hundreds of commissariat and hospital employés and men of the train brought up the total figures of the prisoners to 4,500 men. Trant has been accused by some French writers of deliberately exposing his captives to the fury of the peasantry, and parading the wounded in an indecent fashion through the streets of Oporto. But the handsome testimonial to his humanity signed by a committee of French officers, which Napier prints in the Appendix no. 5 to his third volume, is enough to prove that Trant did his best for his prisoners, and that the unfortunate incident which occurred just after the surrender must not be laid to his account.
Masséna’s army received the news of the fall of Coimbra with indignation. It produced a painful impression on every mind; and while the rank and file murmured at the Marshal’s cruelty in abandoning their comrades to death—for it was falsely reported that the Portuguese had massacred them all—the officers blamed his blind improvidence, and observed that a brigade might well have been spared to protect not only the hospitals but the invaluable base-dép?t behind them.
There was heavy skirmishing between the British rearguard cavalry and Montbrun’s advance, both on the 8th and 9th of October. On the first of these days the horse-artillery troop attached to Anson’s brigade was, by some extraordinary mistake, left encamped out in front of the squadrons which were told off as its escort, and was nearly surprised in Alcoentre by an irruption of Sainte-Croix’s dragoons in a storm of rain. Somers Cocks’s squadron of the 16th Light Dragoons charged just in time to save the guns, and to jam the head of the enemy’s column, as it was crossing the bridge which leads into the village. Alcoentre was held till dusk, when Taupin’s infantry came up, and Anson’s brigade retired, having lost only one trooper wounded, while the French had sixteen disabled or taken.
From this day onward, the weather, which had been fine and dry since the army left Coimbra, broke up for the autumn rains, and the last three days of the retreat to the Lines were spent in torrential downpour. This had the advantage of delaying the French; for while the British infantry, who were two days ahead of them, reached their destined position on the 9th (with the exception of the Light Division and Pack’s Portuguese), the enemy was marching on flooded roads from the 8th to the 11th.
On the 9th there was continual bickering in the rain, from Quinta da Torre as far as Alemquer, between Lamotte’s light cavalry brigade, which had again replaced Sainte-Croix’s dragoons at the head of the pursuing column, and Anson’s two much-enduring regiments. On this day the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion had the thick of the work: Linsingen’s squadron of that admirable regiment, which formed the rear detachment of the whole army, turned back to charge no less than four times in five miles, and always with success. At dusk the French infantry got up, and the allied cavalry retired on to Alemquer after a fatiguing day of fighting, in which the hussars had lost two killed, two officers and nine men wounded, and seventeen missing; the supporting regiment, the 16th Light Dragoons, had one killed, three wounded, and four missing, and the Royals of Slade’s brigade, who only got engaged in the late evening, one wounded and four missing. Lamotte’s loss was a little more—six killed, twenty-two wounded, and twenty-one prisoners. Three of his officers were hurt, one taken.
On the next day (Oct. 10) the whole of the British cavalry marched from Alemquer to within the Lines, distributing themselves to the cantonments which had been arranged for them. But Craufurd’s and Pack’s infantry, which had hitherto been completely covered by the horsemen, did not follow their example with quite sufficient promptitude, and got engaged in an unnecessary skirmish. The Light Division should have withdrawn at noon, but Craufurd, believing the French infantry to be still far away, and despising the cavalry which hovered around him, remained in Alemquer, intending to spend another night in a dry cantonment, for the torrential rain which was falling promised a fatiguing march to his men. At four o’clock Taupin’s infantry came up, and engaged the pickets of the Light Division in a skirmish. Having been strictly forbidden by Wellington to get entangled in a rearguard action, and remembering perhaps his experience at the Coa, Craufurd tardily and unwillingly moved off. But dusk coming on, his column missed its road, and instead of retiring into the section of the Lines which it was destined to occupy, between the Monte Agra?a and the valley of Calandriz, went too far to the west, and came in upon the position of the 1st Division in front of Sobral. This would have been dangerous if the French had had any infantry to the front, to take advantage of the unoccupied gap in the lines. But Montbrun’s advanced guard had pressed more than thirty miles in front of the main body of Masséna’s army, and this force contained nothing but cavalry, save the single brigade of Taupin—less than 3,000 men. This force, such as it was, did not pass Alemquer that night—Craufurd, in his retreat on Sobral, was followed by cavalry alone. It was not till next morning, when Montbrun sent out reconnaissances in all directions, that he found himself in front of fortifications drawn across every road, and gradually realized that he was in front of the famous ‘Lines of Torres Vedras.’
It must not be supposed that Wellington’s final arrangements for the reception of the army of Masséna in front of Lisbon were made at leisure, or at a moment when he had nothing to distract him. Though the actual retreat of his army from the position of Bussaco to the position of Torres Vedras was conducted at an easy pace, and practically unmolested by the enemy, yet the days during which it was being carried out were a time of political, though not of military, storm and stress. Ever since the French had started from Almeida, and made their first advance into the mountains of Beira, Wellington had been engaged in an endless and tiresome controversy with the Portuguese Regency. Though they had assented, long before, to the scheme for devastating the country-side and bringing Masséna to a check only in front of Lisbon, yet when the actual invasion began, and the first hordes of fugitives were reported to be leaving their homes, and burning their crops, and taking to the mountains, several of the members of the Regency became appalled at the awful sacrifices which they were calling upon the nation to endure. The Principal Sousa put himself at the head of the movement, and was supported by the Patriarch, the Bishop of Oporto, so famous in 1808. Sousa brought before the Regency proposals that Wellington should be formally requested to try the chances of a pitched battle on the frontier, before retiring on Coimbra or Lisbon. In addition, he was always maintaining in private company that the people should not be required to take in hand the scheme of devastation and wholesale emigration, till it was certain the allied army was unable to stop Masséna somewhere east of the Serra da Estrella. He also laid before the Regency documents intended to prove that the system of devastation was physically impossible, and that it would prove incapable of stopping the advance of the French, owing to the difficulty that would be found in persuading the peasantry to destroy instead of hiding their stores of food. There was a certain modicum of truth in this last argument, and the French did succeed in living for a longer time in the evacuated districts than Wellington had considered possible. On the other hand, the Principal was hopelessly wrong in his contention that the French would suffer little inconvenience. They were starved out of Portugal by Wellington’s device, even though it took longer to work out its results than he had calculated. There is no reason to suppose that Sousa was in any way treacherously inclined: he and his whole family stood or fell with the English alliance, and the victory of the French would mean ruin to them. But his private and public utterances and those of his satellites had a deplorable effect. In the mouth of the common people it took the form of a widely-spread rumour that Wellington had refused to fight at all, and intended to re-embark the British army. This did not lead to any wish to submit to Napoleon, but to a desperate determination to resist even if deserted. Wellington’s dispatches are full of a riot which took place in Lisbon on September 7th, when the militia proposed to seize on St. Julian’s, the Citadel, and the Bugio fort because they were informed that the English garrisons were about to evacuate them and put to sea. When Masséna had already passed Coimbra, Sousa was mad enough to propose, at the Regency board, that the Portuguese troops should not retire within the Lines, but remain outside and offer battle in the open, even if the British refused to stand by them. The nervous activity of the government had been shown some three weeks before by the sudden arrest and deportation of some fifty persons in Lisbon, who were suspected, rightly or wrongly, of ‘Jacobinism,’ and had been accused of having secret communication with d’Alorna and the other renegades in Masséna’s army. They included a few officers, and a good many lawyers, doctors, merchants, and minor officials, as well as some dependants and relatives of the exiles. The case against most of them was so weak that Wellington protested against their banishment, holding that the alarm caused by the arrests would make the people of Lisbon unreasonably suspicious, and give rise to a belief in wide-spread plots. But despite his letter to the Regency all were shipped off to the Azores. Some were ultimately allowed to go to England, others to Brazil, but the majority were not allowed to return to Portugal till 1816.
‘All I ask from the Government,’ wrote Wellington, on October 6th, in the midst of the retreat, ‘is tranquillity in the town of Lisbon, and provisions for their own troops.’ These two simple requirements were precisely those which he did not obtain. The capital of Portugal was kept disturbed by arbitrary arrests, by proclamations which often contained false news, and sometimes pledged the Regency to measures which the Commander-in-Chief disapproved, and by senseless embargoes laid on vehicles and commodities, which were never turned to use. At the same time the Portuguese troops were not fed, and the tents which had been ordered forward to the positions behind the lines never started from the magazines of Lisbon.
Wellington’s temper, tried to the uttermost by these distractions, when his mind was entirely engrossed by military problems, grew sharp and irritable at this time. He went so far as to write to the Prince Regent at Rio de Janeiro, to declare that either he or Principal Sousa must leave the country. He suggested that some post as ambassador or special envoy should be found for the man who troubled him so. The Patriarch, as ‘a necessary evil,’ he did not wish to displace, but only to scare. Unfortunately, an appeal to Brazil was hopeless, since the Regent was entirely in the hands of the Principal’s brother, the Conde de Linhares. Much acrimonious correspondence, delayed by the vast time which was consumed in getting letters to and from Rio, only led in the end to a proposal from Linhares that his brother should leave the Regency, if Charles Stuart, the British Ambassador, was also withdrawn from it, and if the War-Minister, General Miguel Forjaz, whom Wellington considered a necessary person and the ablest man in Portugal, should also be removed from his post. To this proposal neither Wellington nor the British government would consent, and as it only came in when Masséna’s invasion had already been foiled, and the French had retired into Spain, the crisis was over. The Principal remained at the Council Board, to talk much impracticable and mischievous stuff, but to do little positive harm. When the invasion was past Wellington could afford to disregard him.