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SANTAREM TO CELORICO. MARCH 9TH-22ND, 1811
On the 9th of March Wellington began at last to discover the real position of the various French corps; till their rear was well past Thomar, it had been difficult to divine the main trend of their movements, for the various columns had been crossing each other’s routes in a very puzzling fashion. But it now became clear that Masséna was intending to use all the three lines of communication which lead from the plain of the Tagus to the lower valley of the Mondego. Reynier and the 2nd Corps, after passing Thomar, had taken the bad mountain road by Caba?os and Espinhal, far to the east, and would come down on to the Mondego near the Ponte de Murcella, a little above Coimbra. The 8th Corps had taken the central road, that by Ch?o de Ma?ans and Ameiro, which joins the main Lisbon-Coimbra chaussée at Pombal. Loison and his division, having crossed the route of Reynier, fell into the Ch?o de Ma?ans road behind Junot. Ney, after holding Leiria till the 9th, with the divisions of Marchand and Mermet, fell back on that day a march along the great road in the plain (the Lisbon-Coimbra chaussée mentioned above), and then halted. In front of him was marching Drouet with Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps, escorting the main train of the army, such as it was; it reached Trava?o do Baixo, five miles south of Pombal, on the night of the 9th. Montbrun’s reserve cavalry was all with Ney. Of the three columns Reynier’s was 11,000 strong, that formed by Junot with Loison in his rear had about 16,000 men, that of Ney and Montbrun, with Conroux in front of them, comprised over 20,000 sabres and bayonets. The main fact to be borne in mind by the British general was that Reynier had been sent[p. 132] on an external road, separated by a very difficult mountain chain from those followed by the other two columns, but that Ney and Junot would undoubtedly unite at Pombal, where their roads met, so that a mass of 35,000 men would be collected at that important centre of communication on the 10th or the 11th. But Reynier could not join them till the columns should have got down to the Mondego, some days later[166]. Masséna was, rightly enough, trying to use as many roads as possible, both to avoid overcrowding of troops and trains on a single road, and also in order that wider foraging might be possible, when the army should get out of the devastated region north of Thomar, and descend into the valley of the Mondego, where it was hoped that food would be far more procurable. But the result of the disposition was that Reynier would not be available for several days, if the British threw their main force on to the rear of Ney and Junot and brought them to action.
The road Leiria-Coimbra was moreover both the best and the shortest of all those that led from the position now reached by Wellington’s marching columns to the valley of the Mondego. By following it, and hustling hard the French column that had taken it, the commander of the Allies might hope to reach Coimbra in time to prevent the French from taking up a secure position on the lower Mondego, and establishing themselves in cantonments on its banks. For it was his main object to turn them away from Coimbra and the coast-plain, and to force them up into the eastern mountains and towards the borders of Spain. At first he did not think that the line of the Mondego could be[p. 133] held against the retreating French by the trifling Portuguese militia force that lay behind it—Trant’s seven battalions at Coimbra, Wilson’s four at Pe?acova, which did not amount together to more than 5,000 or 6,000 troops of very inferior quality. He issued orders to those generals to retire, without committing themselves to an attempt to defend the line of the river—Trant had better go behind the Vouga, Wilson might retire on Vizeu; both would ultimately join the northern reserves under Baccelar, and co-operate with that general in defending the city of Oporto[167]. But Wellington hoped that matters would never reach the point at which the safety of Oporto came in question, for he thought that he would be pressing the rear of the French so hard in a few days, that they would be thinking of other things than taking the offensive against northern Portugal. He would do his best to thrust them north-eastward, towards the frontiers of Spain. As a matter of fact we shall see that he more than fulfilled his own forecast, for the French were so hotly pursued that they never succeeded in crossing the Mondego or seizing Coimbra. When they had reached its gates, Masséna refused to take the risk of passing the river at a moment when his rear was in such dire trouble that the whole army would have been in danger of destruction, if he had been attacked when the actual operation of passage was in progress.
Meanwhile the original movement of Reynier, Junot, and Loison towards Thomar had caused Wellington to spread his pursuing troops more towards the east than was convenient, when it turned out that only Reynier was taking the mountain road towards Espinhal, and that the other columns were going to join Ney on the Leiria-Coimbra road. Originally only the Light Division and Pack’s Portuguese had followed Ney, and they formed the only body of troops available for the pursuit of what was now detected to be the largest body of the enemy,[p. 134] until the other divisions should come up from the rear, or be marched westward from the Thomar region.
On the 9th Wellington’s total available force, minus the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese, now halted about Abrantes and destined for Estremadura, and minus also the regiments just landed at Lisbon, was about 46,000 men[168]. Of these the Light Division and Pack’s Portuguese, with Anson’s cavalry brigade (now under Arentschildt), were at Leiria, in close touch with Ney’s retreating corps. But the 1st, 4th, and 6th Divisions and De Grey’s heavy dragoons were at Thomar, two full marches east of the Light Division; Picton with the 3rd Division was at Porto de Mos on the Santarem-Leiria chaussée, a day’s journey behind the vanguard. The 5th Division and the independent Portuguese brigade of Ashworth were a march behind Picton, about Alcanhede.
If Ney were to be joined by Junot and Loison, as now seemed probable, in the direction of Pombal, it would take one full day for the 3rd Division to join the vanguard, two full days for the rest of the army to come up. It would not be till the 11th[p. 135] that a mass of combatants would be collected sufficient to attack the enemy, if he held the Pombal position. And this concentration had to be carried out for safety’s sake; it would have been insane to bid the Light Division and Pack, the only troops immediately available, to fall upon Ney and Junot and their 35,000 men. Accordingly Wellington directed the 3rd and 5th Divisions to close up rapidly upon the vanguard along the chaussée, while the mass of troops around Thomar was to follow the Ch?o de Ma?ans road in Junot’s track and unite with the other column in front of Pombal on the 11th. Only Nightingale’s brigade of the 1st Division was detached, with one squadron of dragoons, to follow Reynier on his ‘eccentric’ line of retreat, along the rough mountain road to Espinhal. Forty-three thousand men out of the 46,000 which formed the disposable total of Wellington’s army were sent in pursuit of Masséna’s main body.
The bringing up of the rear divisions took time. Meanwhile the Light Division with Pack’s Portuguese and the attached cavalry, now united under the temporary control of Sir William Erskine (for Robert Craufurd, the natural commander of such a vanguard, was on leave in England), kept close to Ney’s heels, and on the 10th were at Venda Nova, immediately in front of his position at Pombal. The 4th Division were at Cacharia on the same night, the 1st and 6th at Acentis and other villages near Thomar, the 3rd at Leiria, the 5th at Porto de Mos. All these marches were executed through a country full of scenes of horror: Picton, not a man easily to be moved by sentiment, wrote, ‘Nothing can exceed the devastation and cruelties committed by the enemy during his retreat: he has set fire to all the villages and murdered all the peasantry for leagues on each flank of his march[169].’ The large town of Leiria was burning in five places when the Light Division reached it. The great historic monasteries of Alcoba?a and Batalha had been wrecked in mere spite—the former, according to Wellington, by direct order from the French head quarters. Every by-road and ravine was strewn with corpses; a note from Grattan’s interesting journal of the marches of the 88th gives an average picture of[p. 136] what the British army saw. ‘At the entrance of a cave,’ he writes, ‘lay an old man, a woman, and two young men, all dead. The cave, no doubt, had served them as an asylum in the preceding winter, and appearances warranted the supposition that these poor creatures, in a vain effort to save their little store of provisions, fell victims to the ferocity of their murderers. The clothes of the young peasants were torn to atoms, and bore testimony that they did not lose their lives without a struggle. The hands of one were dreadfully mangled, as if in his last efforts he had grasped the sword which ultimately dispatched him. Beside him lay his companion, his brother perhaps, covered with wounds. A little to the right was the old man: he lay on his back with his breast bare; two large wounds were over his heart, and the back of his head was beaten to pieces. Near him lay an old rusty bayonet lashed to a pole; one of his hands grasped a bunch of hair, torn no doubt from the head of his assassin; the old woman had probably been strangled, as no wound appeared on her body. At some distance from the spot were two wounded soldiers of the French 4th Léger, abandoned by their comrades. These poor wretches were surrounded by half a dozen Portuguese, who were taking on them the horrible vengeance common during this contest. On our approach they dispersed and fled: both the Frenchmen were still alive, and asked us to shoot them. We dared not, and when we had passed on, we could perceive the peasants descending from the hill, like vultures who have been scared from their prey, but return with redoubled voracity.’
Before the marching divisions came up from the rear, there was a cavalry skirmish in front of Pombal between Arentschildt’s Light Horse (16th and 1st Hussars of the K.G.L.) and some of Montbrun’s dragoons, which was of little importance as to results, but assumes such a different complexion in the narratives of the combatants on the opposite sides that it is hardly possible to believe that they are writing of the same event[170].
[p. 137]During the hours on the 10th of March, while the English columns were toiling up from the rear to join the Light Division, Ney’s and Junot’s corps remained stationary, the former at the town of Pombal, the latter at Venda da Cruz, five miles behind it, resting, and seeking (mostly in vain) for provisions. Masséna was determined not to move backward before he should be obliged. Montbrun’s dragoons reconnoitred as far as the bridge of Coimbra, which they found with two of its arches broken, and cannon visible on the further side. The small force in sight was the rearguard of Trant’s Militia brigade, which (in accordance with Wellington’s orders) was preparing to draw back towards the Vouga, but held on to Coimbra till a serious attack should be delivered. Masséna thereupon ordered his engineer, Colonel Valazé, to search for a convenient spot below the town, at which a flying bridge might be thrown across the[p. 138] Mondego. On this day Reynier and the 2nd Corps, far off on the eastern mountain road, reached Espinhal, the first village beyond the Serra da Estrella. As that place has a by-road leading to Coimbra, this detached body was getting nearer to a possible reunion with the main body.
On the morning of March 11th the 3rd Division joined Wellington’s vanguard after a toilsome march, and the 4th Division, heading the column which came from Thomar, was reported to be in supporting distance. Ney, apparently having detected the arrival of British reinforcements, then drew back one of his divisions, and left the other (Mermet) in position on the heights behind the town, with a single battalion holding the lofty but ruined castle which dominates the place. Wellington, on perceiving that the enemy was drawing back, ordered Elder’s battalion of Ca?adores[171], supported by two companies of the 95th Rifles, to charge across the bridge and occupy the town, while the rest of the Light Division advanced in support, and Picton moved to the left, to cross the stream lower down. The attacking force passed the narrow bridge under fire, cleared the nearer streets and assailed the castle and the small force left there. Seeing his rearguard in danger of being cut off, and noting that Elder’s force was small, Ney came down from the heights with four battalions of the 6th Léger and the 69th Ligne, thrust back the Ca?adores and the supporting rifle companies, and brought off the troops in the castle. He barricaded the main street, and set fire to the houses along it in several places before departing; these precautions detained for some minutes the main column of the Light Division, which was hurrying up to reinforce its van. The French were all retiring up the hill before they could be got at, and only suffered a little from Ross’s guns, which were hurried up to play upon the retreating column, as it re-formed in the position beyond Pombal. By the time that the Light Division had disentangled itself from the burning town, and Picton had crossed the stream on the left, the day was far spent; and Ney retired at his leisure after dark, without having been further incommoded. The British followed, and encamped on the further side of the water, ready for pursuit next morning. Ney was much praised for the[p. 139] tactical skill which he had shown in saving his rearguard, and Erskine was thought to have handled the Light Division clumsily. The French losses, trifling as they were, much exceeded those of the Allies—they lost four officers and fifty-nine men, all in the 6th and 69th. The Ca?adores lost ten rank and file killed, and an officer and twenty men wounded—the two companies of the 95th had an ensign and four men wounded—a total of thirty-seven, little more than half the French loss.
Late on this day the 4th Division came up, and the 5th, 6th, and 1st were reported to be close behind, so that Wellington had his main body at last collected. He started the decisive operations on the following morning at 5 o’clock, advancing in three columns towards Venda da Cruz, where Ney had been located on the previous night by the cavalry scouts. Picton and the 3rd Division were on the right, Pack’s Portuguese in the centre, the Light Division on the left, with the 4th Division supporting on the high-road, and the rest following behind. But the enemy had retired at an equally early hour, and was not to be found at Venda da Cruz. He had gone back to Redinha, where there is a bridge over the Souré river, forming a defile behind the village, and a high plateau flanked by woods in its front. Mermet’s division formed on the plateau, with Marchand’s in support, while the rest of the French were not far off, Loison’s division being at Raba?al, three miles to the east, and Junot’s corps at Condeixa, five miles behind Redinha. Drouet, with Conroux’s division, had started during the night on the road for Ponte de Murcella and the Spanish frontier, escorting a convoy of 800 sick and wounded and the small remains of the reserve park of the army. He had orders to clear the chaussée and to get into touch with Claparéde, who was now lying with the other division of the 9th Corps at Celorico. This detachment would have revealed to Wellington, had he known of it, that Masséna was more anxious to secure his line of communication with Spain than to seize Coimbra and establish himself on the line of the Mondego. For a good general, intending to take risks in a general action, does not detach 5,000 men on the eve of the decisive day. It is only second-rate commanders who (like King Joseph at Vittoria in 1813) commit such mistakes.
[p. 140]It is clear that if Masséna had intended to make a serious blow at Coimbra, he ought to have done so at latest on the 10th or 11th, before the English army was close enough to hinder him. Junot’s corps, which was entirely covered by Ney and the rearguard, was well placed for a blow at the city, as it was little more than ten miles from the Mondego and the broken bridge. But Masséna did not march Junot in this direction, but kept him in a position to support Ney, while only some squadrons of Montbrun’s cavalry were sent against Coimbra. That general’s proceedings showed great timidity and feebleness. On the afternoon of the 10th, according to Trant’s dispatch, his advanced guard appeared on the Monte de Esperan?a, the height opposite Coimbra, and was seen to send down reconnoitring parties towards the banks of the river, both above and below the city, leaving unmolested the broken bridge, behind which were the guns placed in the battery which Trant had thrown up to protect his retreat. Much rain had fallen on the preceding night, the river was full, and Montbrun’s scouts reported to him and to his companion the Engineer-colonel Valazé that they could not find the fords which, as they had been told, were situated at the spots that they had visited. On the following day (March 11th), while the skirmish of Pombal was going on, Montbrun moved in nearer to the city, showing artillery and a cavalry brigade at the Cruz dos Moroi?os, and occupying the convent of Santa Clara, which lies less than a mile from the bridge. One of his squadrons tried to pass at the ford of Pereira, five miles below the city, but owing to the strength of the current failed completely, the men who first tried the water regaining with difficulty the bank from which they had started. Nothing more was done by the French that day, and Montbrun reported to Masséna that he had received information that the whole of the brigades of Trant and Silveira were in Coimbra, and that he had seen artillery in position at the bridge[172]. The real force opposed to him was[p. 141] seven battalions of Militia, some 3,000 men, and six guns. This was the last day on which it would have been possible for the French to seize Coimbra, for from the 12th onward Wellington was pressing them so hard that, if they had set themselves to force the passage, and had succeeded, their rearguard, and probably a great portion of their main body, would have been destroyed. For Ney, with all his tactical skill, could not have shaken off his pursuers in such a way as to allow 30,000 men to file over a single bridge, hastily repaired, when the Allies were in hot pursuit. The French engineers, indeed, reported that it would take several days to mend the bridge, even when the Portuguese had been driven away from the further bank. The main comment suggested by all this is that, since Masséna was intending to hold out on the Mondego, and to occupy its northern bank, according to his own dispatch sent to Napoleon, he ought to have taken measures to secure a safe passage many days back—at the first moment when his retreat began on the 5th of March. Part of the mass of troops accumulated at Leiria ought to have marched for Coimbra on March 6th. It was altogether too late to send a mere flying cavalry force to appear in front of the place on March 10th.
On March 12th Montbrun was prowling ineffectively along the south bank of the Mondego, and setting his horse artillery to engage in a futile exchange of fire with Trant’s guns, while[p. 142] a battalion of infantry borrowed from Junot tried to creep upon the bridge, but was detected and driven off by grape. But Ney was already engaged in such sharp fighting at Redinha that he could not have drawn his troops off, or have escaped towards Coimbra, even if the passage of the Mondego had been forced. Wellington, it will be remembered, was advancing towards the 6th Corps in the morning, when he found that it had retired from Venda da Cruz on to another position. His cavalry discovered that not only was he in presence of the 6th Corps, but that another French column was on his flank at Raba?al (this was Loison’s division). Moreover, the 8th Corps was known to be not far off, for stragglers and sick from it had been picked up upon the preceding day. Seeing therefore that he might be called upon to face some 30,000 men, the British general resolved not to open the fight over hastily. When his three leading columns came up, Pack in the centre, Picton on the right, the Light Division on the left, they were halted in front of Mermet’s line, and deployed; but no attack was made till the 4th Division had reached the front line and joined Pack, while the 1st and 5th were close behind. Then, at two o’clock in the afternoon, an encircling attack was made on Mermet’s rearguard, the wings being thrown forward, while the centre was somewhat held back. The 3rd Division, entering the woods on the French left, the Light Division those on their right, advanced as quickly as they could through difficult ground. Pack and the 4th Division halted beyond musket-range of the centre, but suffered a little from artillery fire while waiting for the flank attacks to develop. After some twenty minutes of hot skirmishing among the trees, Mermet’s flanks were turned by Picton on the side of the hills, and by the Light Division on the side of the plain, and Ney hastily drew back his front line behind the stream and the defile, where Marchand’s division was waiting in support. The retreating battalions were somewhat jammed at the bridge, and lost heavily, while passing it only a few yards in front of the skirmishers of the Light Division. Picton tried to ford the stream higher up, in order to cut off the retreating force before it could reach its supports, but failed, the water turning out too deep and rapid for passage[173].
[p. 143]It took some time to file the Light and 3rd Divisions over the bridge, and to make a new line in face of Ney’s second position on the ridge two miles beyond the stream. But when the two divisions once more went forward, each turning, as before, the enemy’s flank opposed to it, while Pack and the 5th Division formed up again in the centre, Ney gave back without any very strenuous resistance, and, abandoning his second position, fell back upon Condeixa, a village with a defile in front of it, five miles north of Redinha on the great Coimbra chaussée.
The day’s work had been a very pretty piece of man?uvring on both sides. Ney hung on to his two successive positions just so long as was safe, and absconded on each occasion at the critical moment, when his flanks were turned. A quarter of an hour’s more delay would have been ruin, but the retreat was made just in time. The two stands had delayed Wellington for a day, and his army had only advanced ten miles in the twenty-four hours. Yet it is unjust to accuse the British general of over-caution, as Napier and all the French annalists have done. He was quite right not to attack with the first division that came up, and to wait till he had three and a half in line. For he was aware that great strength lay in front of him, and, for all he knew, the troops of Mermet might have been supported not only by Marchand, as was actually the case, but by the whole of Junot’s corps. In that case an early attack would have meant a bloody check, and an enforced wait, till the 3rd, 4th, 1st, and 5th Divisions should have come up. As it was, the French rearguard was dislodged with a very modest loss on the part of the Allies, 12 officers and 193 men, of whom the large majority were in the Light and 3rd Divisions, the[p. 144] troops which had done the work. But the 4th Division and Pack’s Portuguese suffered some casualties, while waiting under cannon-fire for the flanking movement to take effect[174]. The French loss was 14 officers and 213 men, nearly all from Mermet’s division, as that of Marchand was little engaged[175].
During this day the 6th Division, moving apart from the rest of the army, marched north-westward to Souré, and so got upon the western route to Coimbra. It was apparently Wellington’s intention to push this detachment round the western or seaward flank of the French army, so as to threaten with it the right wing of any position that the enemy might take up across the Coimbra chaussée. Indeed, having found no hostile force of any sort in front of it, the 6th Division was able to push in quite close to Coimbra on the next day, and to take up a position at Ega, which menaced Ney and Junot’s march across its front if they should still continue their retreat in the original direction. It was probably the movement of this division which caused the French to believe that Wellington had landed a detached force from ships at the mouth of the Mondego, and was pushing it forward towards Coimbra: an account of the march of this imaginary corps is to be found in several narratives[176].
Condeixa, to which Ney had retired on the evening of the combat of Redinha, is a most important strategical point, since here the chaussée leading to Coimbra is joined by the last crossroad which meets it south of the Mondego, that which runs eastward to the Ponte de Murcella and the Spanish frontier. As long as the French held Condeixa, they were in a position to choose between an attack on Coimbra and a retreat up the south bank of the river towards Almeida and their base. And[p. 145] with Wellington at his heels, Masséna had now to make his choice between the two courses. His dispatch of March 19th to Berthier informs us that he resolved for a moment to offer battle to the Allies at Condeixa, with the 6th and 8th Corps, calling in perhaps (though he does not mention it) the 2nd Corps from Espinhal, which is no more than twenty miles away. The reasons which he gives for not doing so are firstly, that, since the departure of Drouet and his division on the 11th, his whole force was no more than half that of Wellington; as a matter of fact he had still 45,000 men, his adversary just about the same number. Secondly, that the morale of the army was impaired by long privations and short rations. Thirdly, that the stock of ammunition was dangerously low, and the artillery horses could hardly move. Fourthly, that he was hampered by the fact that his lieutenants (he is alluding to Ney in especial) were set on abandoning Portugal, ‘which contributes in no small degree to a lack of that harmony which ought to reign in an army.’ Fifthly, that a defeat at Condeixa would mean the inevitable loss of all his artillery, train, wounded, and baggage, while a success would not seriously injure Wellington, who could always retire on to the Lines of Torres Vedras. Sixthly, that being in the midst of a population roused to fury by the ravages of his army, he found that he could gather in little or no food, and was fast using up the stock that he had brought with him. Taking all these points into consideration, and being informed by Montbrun that, even if he succeeded in seizing Coimbra, its bridge would take two days to repair, he had resolved to avoid a general action, to abandon any attempt to pass the Mondego, and to draw back towards the 9th Corps and the Spanish frontier, where he could find the food and the new equipment which the army needed.
Map of the combat of Redinha
Enlarge REDINHA
Accordingly, on the early morning of March 13th the decisive step which committed Masséna to a retreat towards Celorico and the 9th Corps was taken. The 8th Corps was marched off, covering the train, along the road which leads by Miranda de Corvo to the Ponte de Murcella and the upper Mondego, instead of toward Coimbra, now only eight miles away. To cover its flank Loison’s division was moved from Raba?al, where it had lain on the day of the combat of Redinha, to Fonte Cuberta. Ney remained behind at Condeixa with his two old[p. 146] divisions, to cover the fork of the roads, and to detain the Allies as long as possible, while Junot and the trains were toiling along the bad and mountainous road towards Miranda de Corvo. The 2nd Corps was still kept at Espinhal, where it was observed by Nightingale’s brigade, which had dogged its steps at a cautious distance since the 9th.
These arrangements did not work very well, for Ney was turned out of the Condeixa position, much earlier than he or Masséna had expected, by Wellington’s skilful man?uvres. The movement used against him was much the same as at Redinha; the 3rd Division marched by a mountain path to turn his left, while the 6th Division, coming in from Souré by a wide sweep, appeared at Ega, almost behind his right wing, and threatened to get between him and Coimbra. Meanwhile the 4th and Light Divisions, with the rest of the army behind them, were halted on distant heights in his front, ready to attack when the turning movements should become pronounced. Ney was, very properly, anxious about his retreat, for he could not any longer (as at Pombal and Redinha) give back to his rear, but was forced to take a side direction, in order to follow the 8th Corps on the Miranda de Corvo road. The moment that he saw Picton making for this road, to cut him off from the rest of the French, he set fire to the town of Condeixa and moved off in great haste, just avoiding Picton, to Casal Novo, a village five miles east of his first position, where he formed up again at dusk. The day’s operations had been almost bloodless; nothing more than a few musket shots were exchanged by the skirmishers of the two sides. But they had been of the highest strategical importance, since they ended in the complete abandonment of the attempt to reach Coimbra by the French.
Incidentally, the rapid fashion in which Ney had been evicted from the cross-roads at Condeixa nearly led to disaster some of the outlying fractions of the French army. Masséna himself had halted at Fonte Cuberta, six miles to the south-east, with his staff and Loison’s division, which was escorting the reserve artillery of the 6th and 8th Corps. He was intending to cover Ney’s left from any wide turning movement by the British. The road on which this village lies falls into that from Condeixa to Miranda de Corvo about three miles from the first[p. 147]-named place. Ney, when preparing to evacuate Condeixa, sent an aide-de-camp to advise the Commander-in-Chief that he was about to retire. But the officer charged with the message lost his way, and only arrived at Fonte Cuberta late in the afternoon with the dispatch[177]. By this time Ney had already reached Casal Novo, some distance beyond the point at which the Fonte Cuberta road fell into his line of retreat. Masséna and the division in his company were therefore cut off from their proper route for retiring on to the main army. Within a few minutes after the arrival of Ney’s messenger, a patrol of the German hussars arrived at the village, and nearly rode into Masséna and his staff, who were dining in the open air under a tree outside its entrance. There was a mutual surprise; the Marshal’s escort of fifty men ran to their arms, while the hussars halted, not understanding what they had come upon. If they had charged, Masséna might have been taken or slain, as several French narrators assert. He mounted and galloped back in haste towards Loison’s infantry, who were camped in and beyond the village. The hussars went off to report to their squadron commander that Fonte Cuberta was still occupied—it had been with the object of obtaining information on this point that the reconnaissance had been sent out. Masséna hastened to put Loison’s men under march for Casal Novo, by a very rugged side-track, called up Clausel’s division to cover him, and got off in the dusk unhindered, save by a few flank skirmishers belonging to Picton’s division, who came upon him in the dark and were brushed away with ease[178].
[p. 148]This incident led to a furious quarrel between Masséna and Ney, for the former asserted, as it seems, that the latter had promised to hold Condeixa for a whole day or more, and had moved off at noon out of mere malice, so as to leave his chief in an exposed position. If we may believe the narrative of Masséna’s aide-de-camp, Fririon, he asserted that Ney had deliberately wished to get him captured, and had executed his retreat ‘clandestinement’[179]. It was impossible to persuade him to the contrary, and he saved up his wrath for the next occasion when he should be able to convict Ney of open disobedience, and not of mere errors of judgement. There can be no doubt that he was doing an injustice to his lieutenant in suspecting him of such a monstrous plot: Ney was a man of honour; Masséna had himself such a doubtful record for probity that we can well understand his suspicion of others. In truth, what happened was that the younger Marshal had promised to defend Condeixa longer than was really possible, when Wellington (as on this day) was in his happiest mood, and man?uvring with a skill which made a long resistance impracticable.
But Loison’s division was not the only French force which was in serious danger on March 13. Montbrun had lingered in front of Coimbra, till his retreat also was imperilled by the loss of Condeixa and its all-important bifurcation of roads. At eight o’clock in the morning he had made his last vain attempt to win his way into the city—this time by negotiation. He sent a parlementaire on to the broken bridge, with a demand that Trant should give up the place, and a promise that the citizens should suffer no harm, and the garrison should be allowed free[p. 149] egress. This last was really not his to grant, for during the night Trant had removed everything from the city except a battalion of Militia and the two guns at the bridge. The sergeant in command of these pieces (a certain José Correia Leal, whose name the Portuguese have very properly preserved) adroitly wasted time by detaining the French officer. He told him that he must wait till an answer came from Trant, whose absence he kept concealed, and then, after some hours, said that his commander had gone to visit a distant point of the river defences, from which he would not be back till the next morning[180]. Meanwhile, if any attempt were made to attack the bridge, he had orders to blow up several more arches, which were mined. Time drifted on, and meanwhile Montbrun received at noon the news that Ney was forced to give up Condeixa[181], i. e. that there was no more prospect of using Coimbra as a crossing-point. Moreover his own retreat was in danger, if an English detachment should march straight from Condeixa towards the bridge, a distance of only eight miles. The French general was obliged to abscond, and the only route open to him, since the chaussée was lost, was a rough path which, after coasting along the south bank of the Mondego for some time, turns up into the valley of the E?a[182], and so reaches Miranda de Corvo. After blowing up many of his wheeled vehicles, Montbrun hastened to take this track, and escaped by it, though he was discovered and pursued by some of Wellington’s cavalry patrols, who pressed his rearguard and made many prisoners. But the division of dragoons, with the infantry battalion attached, and the two horse artillery batteries—their caissons had to be destroyed because of the badness of the road—ultimately reached Miranda with no great loss.
This was a truly important day, the most critical in the whole campaign, since at its end Coimbra was safe, and the whole[p. 150] French army had been turned on to the road towards Spain. Wellington was satisfied, and had no reason to be otherwise. The accusation made against him by many critics of over-caution, which is said to have prevented him from destroying Loison’s and Montbrun’s detachments, seems unjustifiable. The cardinal fact that he was not superior in numerical strength to the army that he was pursuing is too often forgotten; indeed, the French writers from Masséna down to to-day have nearly always credited him with 50,000 or 60,000 men, whereas he had barely 45,000, of whom only 32,000 were British, and the Portuguese were still in great part untried troops; for though those of them who had passed the test of battle (Pack’s and Power’s[183] brigades, the Ca?adores in the Light Division, and the artillery) had done admirably hitherto, there were still four whole brigades which had never been in serious action since they were reorganized in 1809[184]. Nothing was to be risked, and partial attacks by unsupported vanguards were to be eschewed, when (as Wellington remarked in his dispatch of March 14) ‘the whole country affords advantageous positions to a retreating army, of which the enemy has shown that he knows how to avail himself. They are leaving the country, as they entered it, in one solid mass, covering their rear on every march by one (or sometimes two) corps d’armée, in the successive positions which the country affords, which corps d’armée are closely supported by the rest.’ A general action against equal or superior numbers ranged on a strong hill-position was clearly inadvisable, and the plan of man?uvring the enemy out of each line that he took up by a short flanking movement was infinitely preferable. Flanking movements take time, and unless the enemy is very slow or very rash, have effective rather than brilliant results. But Wellington never ‘played to the gallery’; he was no vendor of bulletins; he had a small army which it was difficult to reinforce, and he could not afford to waste his precious men in hazardous combats. It would have been of little profit to him if he had[p. 151] destroyed a division or two of the enemy, and had then arrived on the Spanish frontier with an army diminished by 10,000 men. The enemy had unlimited supports behind him; he had practically none. For when he had taken out his field army, and had detached Beresford to Estremadura, there were no regular troops left in Portugal save the newly formed 7th Division, which was coming up from Lisbon to join the main body.
Map of the combat of Casal Novo
Enlarge CASAL NOVO
That Wellington’s system was sound was sufficiently proved by an incident of the next morning’s march, when the army suffered the only check which it was destined to meet during the campaign, and lost more men than on any other day of this eventful month. At early dawn on the 14th there was a dense fog; notwithstanding this, Sir William Erskine, who was commanding the vanguard, composed of the Light Division, Pack’s Portuguese, and Arentschildt’s cavalry brigade, thought fit to march straight at the enemy, his orders of the preceding night being to stick to Ney’s heels. The French rearguard, Marchand’s division, was holding the village of Casal Novo[185], a strong post on a rising ground, surrounded with stone walls and enclosures, while the rest of the 6th and 8th Corps were defiling along the road to Ch?o de Lamas and Miranda de Corvo. The Light Division, heading the advancing column, ran into the pickets of the French, whereupon Erskine ordered out three companies of the 52nd and sent them forward to clear the way. They were soon heavily engaged, for Marchand was in force. When the fog lifted daylight showed the five battalions of the Light Division clubbed on the road, under the front of the enemy’s line of a battery and eleven battalions, ranged on the height of Casal Novo. Pack’s Portuguese and the 3rd Division were some distance off, coming along the defile which leads from Condeixa. The Light Division had to extend and fight hard in order to keep its ground, while the main body was coming up and developing a flanking movement against the French. It lost heavily of necessity, and was only released from a dangerous position by the movement of Picton and the 3rd Division to the right, which forced the French to abscond. Marchand’s division then fell back behind[p. 152] Mermet’s, which was in position two miles to the rear, between the villages of Casal de Azan and Villa Seca[186]. This second position was properly turned, and carried without loss, if with some delay. Then the enemy was discovered in the afternoon in a third and still more formidable post, on the heights of Ch?o de Lamas. This was treated in the same fashion, the Light Division and Pack’s Portuguese turning its left, Picton its right, while the main body, coming up from the rear, halted opposite its centre. Ney then gave up his position, and fell back six miles down hill, towards Miranda de Corvo on the banks of the E?a river, where the 8th Corps and Montbrun’s cavalry were waiting for him. The pursuers, tired out by a running fight of twelve hours, during which they had gained fourteen miles of ground, halted in front of him. Their loss had been 11 officers and 119 men in the British, and 25 in the Portuguese ranks, a total of 155. More than half fell in the mismanaged business of the early morning, in which the 43rd, 52nd, and 95th lost 9 officers and over 80 men, in an utterly unnecessary combat. This was the first of two exhibitions of wrongheadedness by which the newly arrived general, William Erskine, lost Wellington’s confidence. The second, on April 3rd, was (as we shall see) to be a still more discreditable affair. The French loss at Casal Novo and in the succeeding skirmishes of the day was apparently much smaller than that of the British, though the official figure of 55 killed[p. 153] and wounded seems very low[187]. On this morning the British, for the first time during the retreat, began to take prisoners on a considerable scale; there were more than 100 captured between Casal Novo and Miranda de Corvo, partly skirmishers cut off during the long bickering in woods and enclosures which filled the day, partly stragglers and marauders, who were taken in the country-side while wandering away from their colours.
On this evening Reynier and the 2nd Corps, so long divided from the rest of the French army, joined the main column. From March 10th to March 13th they had lain at Espinhal, resting after the difficult passage of the mountains, and endeavouring, without much success, to scrape together food to fill their depleted stores. Being closely observed, though not attacked, by Nightingale’s brigade, they could not scatter very far for marauding. But on the 14th Wellington, during the Casal Novo fighting, threw out Cole’s 4th Division far to his right to Penella, where it got into touch with Nightingale. Seeing that there was now a serious force in front of Reynier, and that it might thrust itself between him and the rest of the army, Masséna bade his[p. 154] lieutenant break up without delay, and come in to Miranda de Corvo. This was easily done by a ten-mile march in the afternoon, and the 2nd Corps camped on the further side of the E?a river that night. Thus the whole French army, save Conroux’s division, was concentrated, and 44,000 men under arms, dragging behind them a baggage-train that was still considerable, and over 5,000 sick and wounded, were gathered in the defile and the little plain north of it, with a most forbidding mountain range in their front, and the pursuing columns of Wellington in their rear.
The situation appeared so grave to Masséna that he resolved to lighten his army so far as was possible, in order to allow it to march faster. On this night there was a general destruction not only of all wheeled vehicles, save a minimum of ammunition waggons, but of all the baggage of the army, regimental as well as personal. Ney set the example by burning his own carriages, and abandoning all that could not be carried on pack mules[188]. The sick and wounded were transferred from waggons on to beasts of burden—a change which caused the death or abandonment of many hundreds of them during the next two days. A strict inspection was made of all the surviving draught and pack animals, and when those still in a fair state had been set aside for the carriage of the sick and the ammunition, an order was issued that all the rest should be put to death. To avoid the noise which would have been caused by shooting them, the officer charged with this duty caused them all to be hamstrung, a cruel device which was surely unnecessary, for they could have been killed as easily as mutilated by the sword or knife. The horrid sight of more than 500 live horses, mules, and asses sprawling or hobbling in a bleeding mass, just outside the village of Miranda de Corvo, was never forgotten by those who witnessed it[189] in the pursuit of the following morning.
[p. 155]The sacrifice of the baggage was the preliminary to a desperate and fatiguing night march. The 2nd Corps started off first, then the 8th, leaving the 6th as usual to bring up the rear. After firing Miranda de Corvo, in order that the conflagration in the narrow street leading up from the bridge might delay the advance of the Allies, Ney followed the rest of the army at one in the morning. All marched slowly in the dark for ten miles of an uphill road, and before noon reached the long descent into the valley of the Ceira, at the village of Foz do Arouce[190]. The 2nd and 8th Corps crossed the stream with much delay, at a bridge which had been somewhat injured by the local Ordenan?a but was still serviceable. They deployed on a range of commanding heights on the further side, and encamped. Ney, always eager to carry on the detaining process which he had hitherto practised with such skill, only sent three of his six brigades across the river[191], though Masséna had ordered him to pass, and to destroy the bridge. He remained with the rest and Lamotte’s light cavalry, posted on two long hills with the village of Foz between them, on the hither side of the water. Though he had a good position, yet the defile to the rear was a dangerous thing for such a large body of troops, since the Ceira was in[p. 156] flood, and every man had to retire over the single damaged bridge. Moreover the troops, tired by the night march, guarded themselves badly; in especial the cavalry, which ought to have watched every road, with vedettes out for many miles to the front, huddled together near the river for the convenience of water and grazing: General Lamotte indeed crossed the Ceira with great part of his men, and seems to have kept no look-out whatever[192].
Wellington’s pursuit this morning started very late. The burning of the French baggage and of the town of Miranda had been noted in the last hours of the night. But at dawn a heavy fog arose, and Wellington refused to move his masses till it was certain that the French were not still in position on the heights beyond the river with all their 44,000 men. For if Masséna were seeking a battle, as was quite possible, now that he had concentrated all his three corps, it would be reckless to attack him when every man of the allied army had to file over a narrow bridge. It was not till reconnaissances had pushed across the E?a, and had explored the burning town, and the ground beyond for some miles, that orders were issued for the army to march on. Even then the fog had not lifted, and the morning was some hours old before the 3rd and Light Divisions were on their way. They followed the retreating French up the long ascent, picking up many sick and stragglers, and at about four o’clock in the afternoon came in sight of the enemy in their new position behind the Ceira, with a formidable front extending for several miles along the hills, and Ney’s rearguard visible on the lower eminences on the hither side of the stream. Picton and Erskine halted, thinking that it was too late in the afternoon to undertake a serious attack, and that Wellington would wait, as usual, for his supports to come up. They had directed their divisions to encamp and thrown out their pickets, when the Commander-in-Chief rode up, not long before dusk.[p. 157] Surveying the enemy, and seeing that few battalions were under arms, and that Ney was evidently expecting no fighting—his cavalry indeed had given him no proper warning of the approach of the Allies—Wellington resolved to strike at once, though his nearest reserve, the 6th Division, was still some way off. Picton was told to attack the French left, the Light Division their right. The first blow was very effective and partook of the nature of a surprise, for the enemy was caught unprepared. Some companies of the 95th Rifles, penetrating down a hollow road, arrived almost unopposed in the village of Foz, quite close to the bridge, while the rest of the Light Division was holding Marchand’s troops engaged in a frontal fight, and Picton was making good way against the brigade belonging to Mermet, which formed the French left. The noise of close combat breaking out almost in their rear, at a spot which seemed to indicate that the bridge was in danger, and their retreat cut off, caused a panic in the French right-centre, and the 39th regiment broke its ranks and hurried towards the bridge, where it met and became jammed against Lamotte’s cavalry, who were hastily returning to take up the position from which they had unwisely retired an hour or two before. Finding the passage impossible, the fugitives turned to a deep ford a little down-stream and plunged into it, where many were drowned and the regimental eagle was lost[193], while their colonel was taken prisoner. Ney saved the situation, which had arisen through his own disobedience to Masséna’s orders, by charging, with the third battalion of the 69th regiment[194] the rifle companies which had got into Foz do Arouce and were threatening the bridge. They were driven back on to their support, the 52nd regiment, and the passage having been cleared by the Marshal’s exertions, the troops to the left and right crossed it in some disorder, and took refuge on the opposite bank. They were shelled during[p. 158] their defile, not only by Ross’s and Bull’s horse artillery batteries, but by some guns belonging to their own 8th Corps, which in the deepening twilight failed to distinguish between pursuers and pursued. By the time that night had fully set in, the French rearguard was all over the river, and the bridge was blown up. If the attack had been delivered an hour earlier, it is probable that Ney would have suffered losses far greater than he actually endured—perhaps 250[195] men killed, wounded, drowned, or taken—for the British divisions were prevented by the failing light from acting as effectively as they otherwise might against the masses hastily recrossing the bridge. Wellington’s loss was trifling—4 officers and 67 men, nearly a third of them in the rifle companies which had broken the French centre for a moment, and had then been driven back by Ney. The small remainder of the baggage of Marchand and Mermet was captured on this occasion, including some biscuit, which proved most grateful to the Light Division, as it had, like the rest of the British army, outmarched its transport.
It may not be out of place to note that the combat of Foz do Arouce bore a singular resemblance to Craufurd’s combat on the Coa of July 24, 1810. In each case a rearguard was tempted to stay too long beyond an unfordable river and a narrow bridge, by the defensible nature of the position in which it found itself, and nearly suffered a complete disaster. The only difference was that Ney had at least double as strong a force as Craufurd, and had also a whole army in line beyond the river to support him, while the British general had no reserves near. In each case the endangered detachment got away by dint of hard fighting, with appreciable but by no means crushing losses. It is curious that the tables were exactly turned between pursuer and pursued in these two fights—in 1810 it was Ney who by a sudden assault hustled the Light Division over the Coa. In 1811 the Light Division was at the head of the striking force which thrust Ney over the Ceira, If Craufurd had been in command instead of[p. 159] the incapable Erskine, there can be little doubt that the matter would have been pushed to a more decisive conclusion, despite of the dusk.
Map of the combat of Foz Do Arouce
Enlarge FOZ D’AROUCE
On the morning of March 16th, the hills beyond the Ceira, where a whole army had been visible on the preceding day, were now seen to be almost void of defenders—only a trifling rearguard was visible watching the broken bridge from a distance. Wellington sent scouts over the river to reconnoitre, but did not cross it in force. He had accomplished his main design of thrusting the French off the Coimbra road and into the mountains, and he had entirely outmarched his provisions. He had now got so far from his base at Lisbon that food sent up from thence had far to travel, and he had not yet succeeded in setting up an intermediate dép?t at Coimbra, though store-ships were already ordered from Lisbon to its port of Figueira[196], now that there was no danger of the enemy crossing the lower Mondego. During the last week the army had used up all that it carried with it, and the Portuguese brigades, badly supplied by the native commissariat, had run short even before the British. Pack’s and Ashworth’s men had received no regular rations for four days[197], and had only kept up to the front by gleaning in the deserted bivouacs of the French, and borrowing the little that the British commissariat could spare. Everything had run dry by the 16th, and Wellington considered that no great harm would be suffered by waiting a day on the Ceira, for the first convoy to come up from the rear, since the French were now in rugged ground, where they could not make any long attempt to stand for sheer want of food. They must continue their retreat or starve in a depopulated country. Accordingly Wellington settled down at Lous?o and took stock of the general position of affairs: the result of his halt was an immense discharge of arrears of correspondence—he had written only one dispatch between the 10th and 16th of March, but got off seventeen on[p. 160] the last-named day. Some of these are very important, as showing that he regarded the crisis as over, and the ultimate evacuation of Portugal by the French as certain. The most notable are two orders to Beresford[198], making over to him once more the 4th Division and De Grey’s heavy dragoons for the expedition into Estremadura, which now had as its object not the relief of Badajoz (whose capitulation was known) but the holding back of Soult from Campo Mayor and Elvas.
It will be remembered that the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese had been left behind near Abrantes when Wellington determined, on March 9th, not to send an expedition against Soult, till he could make it up to a force sufficient to cope with the army that was beleaguering Badajoz. They were not to commit themselves to any offensive operations, or to cross the Portuguese frontier, till the reinforcements arrived, but were to move a stage on their way toward the south. Accordingly the head quarters of the 2nd Division were at Tramagal on the 14th, with its attached cavalry (the 13th Light Dragoons) at Crato in advance, while the Portuguese horse of Otway had been sent to watch the roads to Elvas by Portalegre and Estremos. Here there was a halt for a week, Beresford being absent with Wellington for five days, and it was not till the 17th that the movement towards Estremadura began again, on his return. Meanwhile Masséna, oddly enough, knowing of the existence of a considerable allied force at Abrantes, and not feeling it on his own flank, formed a theory that it must have been sent in a long sweep up by the Zezere, to drop into the upper Mondego valley and cut him off from Spain. Nervousness as to this imaginary movement had no small effect on his main operations[199].
[p. 161]By sending off Cole and De Grey to join the future Army of Estremadura, on the 16th March, Wellington reduced the force about him by 7,000 men, and had no more than 38,000 left on the Ceira. The newly formed 7th Division, which was marching up from Lisbon, and would ultimately replace Cole with the main army, was at this moment only reaching Santarem; it did not come up to the front till March was at its end. For the rest of his operations against Masséna, therefore, Wellington was more than ever in a state of numerical inferiority, and forced to be cautious. But he was in a confident mood, foreseeing that the enemy could not now stop in Portugal, and must be starved into a prompt retreat over the frontier.
His conviction that the crisis was over is shown by another dispatch of the 20th March, in which he directs that the whole of the Lisbon Militia and Ordenan?a be dismissed to their homes, the former on furlough, the latter for good. The Militia of the lower Beira (the Castello Branco country) and of northern Estremadura were also to return to their native districts, to be sent on leave or kept under arms according as further events might determine[200]. Thus the Lines of Torres Vedras were left ungarrisoned, there being no further danger to be feared in the direction of Lisbon.
There was still much work, however, for the Militia of the North, Trant’s and Wilson’s brigades, who were brought down to the middle Mondego, and sent successively to Pe?a Cova, Mortagoa, and Fornos, to guard the fords and restrain the French from endeavouring to raid the north bank of the river. It was unlikely that they would make a serious attempt to cross in force into the barren country under the Serra de Alcoba, when they were in such a desperate plight for food, and would have the allied army close behind them, for the troops were to march again on the 17th. The middle Mondego, it must be remembered, was bridgeless, and in flood from the spring rains: even if Masséna had driven off Trant and Wilson, it would have taken him a long time to build a bridge (since he had no pontoons)[p. 162] and Wellington would have been pressing him in the rear before he had got more than a vanguard over the water. The Marshal seems never to have contemplated at this date a movement on to Coimbra or Oporto by the north bank of the Mondego, such as is suggested as possible by some of the commentators on the campaign: after the day of Condeixa a retreat eastward was always in his mind[201]. His army was too dilapidated to make the least offensive stroke. ‘I think it necessary for the interests of his Imperial majesty,’ wrote Masséna on the 19th, ‘to bring the troops back nearer to our base of operations by our fortresses [Almeida and Rodrigo], in order to let them recover a little from their fatigues and long privations, and to allow me to replace so much equipment which is now entirely lacking[202].’
On the 16th, the day after the combat of Foz do Arouce, the 2nd and 8th Corps marched before dawn, in drenching rain, and retired as far as the Alva river, where the bridge of Ponte de Murcella, repaired for a moment by Drouet when he passed it a few days before, had again been broken by Wilson’s Militia. It took all the day to repair it, and by the evening only the artillery had been sent across. The divisions of Mermet and Loison followed at a distance, leaving behind the much-tried battalions of Marchand, which Ney had once more chosen to form his rearguard. He drew them up across the road a few miles from the Ceira, expecting to be attacked once more in the morning. But to his surprise Wellington did not cross the river, and only sent a few scouts to discover the position of the Marshal. Meanwhile his engineers mended the bridge at Foz.
On the 17th, at dawn, Masséna sent the 8th Corps across the repaired bridge of Ponte de Murcella, after which it halted at[p. 163] Corti?a, Moita, and other villages beyond the Alva river, whose passage it was prepared to defend. But the 2nd Corps was marched up-stream to Sarzedo, the next ford, and placed there in position, with a detachment beyond the river at the town of Arganil on its south bank. The 6th Corps, following the other two, crossed the Alva at Ponte de Murcella later in the day, and joined the 8th; it left a small detachment beyond the bridge to observe the expected arrival of the Allies. Of the horsemen, Montbrun’s heavy dragoons watched the lower course of the Alva, from Ponte de Murcella to its junction with the Mondego, while Junot’s corps-cavalry was sent up the Alva eastward, to hold the fords beyond Arganil.
These dispositions seemed to indicate an intention to make a serious stand behind the Alva, where the positions are very strong. The river is a fierce mountain torrent in a deep bed, with precipitous banks, and very few fords. Wellington had fixed on this line, during the Bussaco campaign in the preceding autumn, as the position where he should await the French if they advanced by the south bank of the Mondego, and had thrown up earthworks on each side of the Ponte de Murcella. These were, of course, useless to Masséna, since they looked the wrong way; but the river line was almost as defensible from the north bank as from the south, and presented a very formidable obstacle to the pursuing enemy.
By the evening of the 17th Wellington was once more in touch with the enemy. The cavalry brigades of Slade and Arentschildt had crossed the bridge of Foz do Arouce, and followed the 6th Corps to the Alva, with the 6th and Light Divisions behind them. The infantry, however, did not show themselves, but encamped in the hills, some miles from the Ponte de Murcella. They found the road strewn with dead or dying mules and horses, and took a certain number of French sick and stragglers.
But Wellington had no intention of forcing the Ponte de Murcella position; while two divisions took this road, the rest of the army (1st, 3rd, 5th Divisions, and the Portuguese independent brigades) were marched eastward by the steep road along the top of the watershed between the Ceira and the Alva, the route Furcado-Arganil, towards the fords of the upper[p. 164] Alva. They drove out of the last-named place Reynier’s observing detachment, which reported that it had seen the Allies in great force marching up-stream. This news convinced Masséna that his adversary was intending either to cross the ford of Sarzedo and attack Reynier, or to move still further up the valley, and to pass the Alva in its upper course, so throwing himself across the main road to Celorico, by which the Army of Portugal was intending to retreat. Nothing but cavalry scouts having been seen opposite the Ponte de Murcella, it was supposed that Wellington’s whole army was marching on Arganil.
Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 17th, Masséna ordered the 8th Corps to break up hastily from its camps and to march all night to Galliges, on the high road beyond Reynier’s left. This was done, and Junot hurried off, leaving hundreds of foragers scattered on the slopes towards the Mondego, whither they had been sent out in search of food during the day. Ney remained behind at the Ponte de Murcella, to keep the passage as long as possible; he was uncertain, as was Masséna, whether there was in his front only a cavalry screen or a serious force of all arms.
On the morning of the 18th this problem was solved, for the Light Division came down to the river, drove Ney’s rearguard across it, and opened a cannonade against the troops of the 6th Corps visible on the opposite bank. No serious attempt was made to pass, the intention being only to hold Ney to his ground as long as possible by demonstrations, while the real crossing was made far up-stream. This plan had the desired result. In the afternoon Ney received the news that the Allies had begun to cross the Alva at the ford of Pombeiro, from which they had driven off one of Reynier’s battalions. If any considerable force got over the river at this point, the 6th Corps was cut off from the rest of the army; accordingly the Marshal ordered his three divisions to march off without a moment’s delay; ‘I never saw Johnny go off in such confusion,’ says a Light Division diarist[203]. The cavalry brigade of Arentschildt sent out reconnoitring parties, who forded the river, while the engineers rigged up a temporary wooden bridge close to the Ponte de Mur[p. 165]cella[204], by which the 6th and Light Divisions were able to cross at dawn on the following day.
On the left the decisive crossing at Pombeiro had been made by the Guards’ brigade of the 1st Division[205]: Reynier made no attempt to support the single battalion at the ford, but called it in, and drew up in battle order on the Serra de Moita some distance above the river. There was no fighting here, and after dusk the 2nd Corps decamped, taking the road Galliges-Chamusca-Gouvea-Celorico, which runs parallel to and above the Alva; the 6th Corps fell in behind the 2nd; the 8th, which had already got further to the east during the march of the preceding night, led the column and was beyond Galliges in the afternoon[206].
On the night of the 18th-19th and the following morning the whole French army made a most protracted and fatiguing march, which cost them many stragglers and much material. This was the longest stage which Masséna made during the whole retreat, more than twenty miles of mountain road being covered in one stretch. On the evening of the 19th the head of the 8th Corps was at Pinhan?os, that of the 2nd at ?arago?a and Sandomil, that of the 6th at Chamusca. The British cavalry in pursuit picked up an immense number of prisoners this day, mainly small parties of foragers belonging to the 6th and 8th Corps, who had been marauding in the direction of the Mondego when their regiments received sudden orders to march: they returned towards their camps to fall into the hands of the British cavalry. Arentschildt’s brigade alone took 200 this day[207], and the total according to Wellington’s dispatch was 600 men[208]. Among them were an aide-de-camp of Loison’s and several other[p. 166] officers. Some droves of oxen were captured from the foragers and from the rear of the 6th Corps, and this was the only food which the British vanguard got that day, for once more, as several diarists ruefully note, ‘biscuit was out.’ The pursuers state that ‘quantities of tumbrils, carts, waggons and other articles were abandoned by the enemy’[209], and no doubt were right, though Masséna wrote that evening from Maceira, ‘Nous n’avons pas laissé en arrière un malade, un blessé, ni la moindre voiture d’artillerie ou de bagages’[210]. But his dispatches frequently contained what he knew that Napoleon would desire to see rather than the truth. Considering the difficulties of the retreat, and the skilful way in which he had conducted it, he might have been contented with his actual achievements, and need not have padded out his reports with ‘terminological inexactitudes’. It must be confessed that his aide-de-camp Fririon played a good second to him when he wrote in his journal that between the 15th and 31st of March the Army of Portugal left behind only twenty prisoners and fifty men lost while marauding[211].
Map of the Lower Mondego
Enlarge THE LOWER MONDEGO.
To illustrate the First Stage of Masséna’s Retreat.
On the morning of the 20th March Wellington’s army was all across the Alva, but only the cavalry and the Light, 3rd, and 6th Divisions continued the pursuit. The small convoy received on the 17th was exhausted, and what little food remained was made over to the three divisions named above, while the 1st, 5th, and Pack’s and Ashworth’s Portuguese halted for five days at Moita and the neighbouring villages, till the first train of provisions sent up from Coimbra should arrive. Of the troops which could still be fed, the Light Division pushed on as far as Galliges that night, the 3rd and 6th were behind them. The French, thanks to their desperate night march, were already a long way ahead, and it was late on the 20th before the cavalry overtook, near Cea, their extreme rearguard, two battalions of Heudelet’s division and a hussar regiment. General Slade, whose brigade was leading, refused to attack them until infantry and guns came up to his aid, and the French slipped away before[p. 167] Elder’s Ca?adores and Bull’s battery reached him[212]. ‘This was the second day without bread, and the third without corn for the horses, and we had marched nearly five leagues,’ explains a cavalry diarist[213]. The pursuers were as harassed as the pursued, and could go no further, but Slade was thought to have shown weakness. He picked up a good many stragglers and sick, and found the road strewn with broken vehicles and dying mules.
Meanwhile Masséna had divided his army into two columns at the fork of the roads near Maceira. The 2nd Corps, taking, on the right hand, the southern and more hilly route, reached Gouvea. The 8th Corps, taking the northern fork, got to Villacortes, and sent its cavalry on ahead to the bridge of Fornos, which they found broken and guarded by Trant’s Militia. The 6th Corps, following the 8th, lay at Pinhan?os. Since leaving the Ponte de Murcella the French were a little less pressed for food: the district through which they were now passing was fertile, and had not been raided before; most of the peasantry had returned to it during the winter. Hasty plundering on both sides of the road brought in a certain amount of food, especially in the way of cattle, which had been sent up into the hills, but were often discovered by skilled marauders. There was continual bickering with the Ordenan?a, one party of whom, only 300 strong, tried, with more courage than discretion, to defend the village of Penalva against the advanced guard of the 2nd Corps. All along the road the pursuing Light Division found the dead bodies of peasantry, mixed with those of the French sick who had fallen by the way.
On the 21st the 8th Corps reached Celorico, where Drouet was found in position with Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps. The 6th Corps reached Carapichina and Corti?a. The 2nd, turning off at Villacortes on the Guarda road, had a most distressing mountain march to Villamonte. The pursuing infantry of the Light and 3rd Divisions reached Pinhan?os and Maceira, with the cavalry five miles in front, at the convent of Vinho. They had now dropped fifteen miles behind the French rear, and were[p. 168] quite out of touch with it, but continued to pick up stragglers—200 men are said to have been taken on that day[214]. Like the enemy, they were now commencing to get a little food from the country. ‘The peasants, who had all fled to the mountains on the enemy’s retreat, on seeing us come down, baked bread for the troops, and gave us whatever they had left. They had suffered a good deal, all the principal houses had been burnt, and those left a good deal destroyed, but the [French] troops had not been able to discover all the corn, &c., concealed[215].’
On the 22nd the French army had reached the end of the main retreat. Two corps were concentrated in and near Celorico[216], the other (Reynier) reached Guarda, where it found Claparéde’s division of Drouet’s corps, which had been there for some weeks. They were now only three marches from Almeida and four from Ciudad Rodrigo; communication with these two places was open, for Drouet and the 9th Corps had now come into touch again with the Commander-in-Chief, and were available for keeping the roads safe. The English had been outmarched, and Masséna might have retired to Almeida and Rodrigo practically unmolested, by a good chaussée. But this was not to be the end of the campaign, as every one in the French army, save its Commander-in-Chief, fervently desired. For generals and rank and file alike were tired out, and yearned for a cessation of mountain marches, and a rest in well-provisioned cantonments, before they should be called upon for another effort. But another and a most unexpected episode was to take place before the weary columns reached Rodrigo. Masséna made one more attempt to ‘save his face,’ and to avoid being thrust over the Spanish frontier, along the road on to which his adversary had forced him. This led to a fortnight more of man?uvres in the mountains, and to the combats of Guarda and Sabugal, after which the French Marshal had to pocket his pride and acquiesce in the inevitable. These operations are of a character so different from those which preceded them that[p. 169] they must be treated as a separate story. The retreat from Santarem really ended at Celorico. The events between March 22nd and April 4th must be dealt with apart, since they practically amounted to a belated attempt on the part of Masséna to seize the offensive once more, and to shift the scene of war without his adversary’s consent. The project failed, and (as we shall see) was hopeless from the first.
Before dealing with it, a few remarks on the general character of the operations that had taken place between March 9th and March 22nd must be made. When reading in succession two narratives of Masséna’s retreat from Santarem to Celorico, one by an English and one by a French eye-witness, it is often difficult to realize that the two writers are describing the same series of operations. Most of the French conceive the retreat to have been a series of triumphant rearguard actions, in which their army got off practically unmolested, under cover of the skilful operations of a small covering force. On the other hand, the English tell the tale as if the whole French army was easily hunted out of Portugal by inferior numbers, foiled in repeated attempts to occupy a permanent position in the valley of the Mondego, and finally thrust back in a direction which it did not intend to take. Where the French tell of nothing but an orderly retreat and small losses, the English speak of the capture of hundreds of prisoners, and the destruction of the whole baggage-train of the retiring army.
To a certain extent the mental attitudes of both sets of narrators can be understood and justified by the impartial student. When a rearguard action takes place, the covering force left behind by the retiring army always thinks of itself as being opposed to the whole pursuing host. It considers itself to be braving the assault of immensely superior forces, and if it holds its own for a time and gets off without crushing losses, is well satisfied with its own conduct. This is both justifiable and comprehensible. But to the pursuer the same rearguard action presents an entirely different moral aspect. The few squadrons and battalions forming the head of his advance find themselves suddenly brought to a check by a considerable hostile force arrayed in a formidable position. They are forced to halt till their supports begin to come up, from five, ten, or fifteen[p. 170] miles in the rear. Then, when a body of reserve has begun to accumulate behind them, they launch themselves upon the enemy, who gives ground after more or less fighting and retires. The leading brigade or division of the pursuers considers that it has victoriously driven the whole hostile army from its strong position, and is no less satisfied with itself than is the force to which it has been opposed. In short, all rearguard actions begin with a check to the pursuers; they all end with the retreat of the defenders. This is their necessary course; both parties, if their generals play the game properly, may be content with themselves; the one has gained time for the escape of the main body of the retreating host, the other has cleared the way for the progress of the pursuing army. The only method in which their relative merits can be tested, is by asking whether the rearguard detained the advanced guard as long as might have been expected, inflicted disproportionate losses upon it, and got away with the minimum of loss to itself, or whether, on the other hand, the advanced guard evicted its opponents from their position at a rapid rate, with small sacrifices, and with considerable punishment inflicted on the enemy. The mere facts that the rearguard held back the pursuers for some hours, and that the advanced guard ultimately carried the enemy’s position, are obligatory incidents of such fights. When we come to examine the details of the combats which took place between the 11th and 19th of March, we shall neither hold with the French narrators that for many days Ney and two divisions of the 6th Corps fought and held back Wellington’s whole army, nor with the English narrators that the Light and 3rd Divisions, unassisted by their comrades, hunted 40,000 French out of the valley of the lower Mondego. Yet it is true that of forty-four French infantry officers, who were killed or wounded in Portugal between these dates, no less than thirty-seven belonged to the divisions of Marchand and Mermet, while, similarly, of twenty-nine British and Portuguese officers hit in the same period, no less than nineteen belonged to the Light Division and eight more to the 3rd. Clearly therefore Ney did not contend with the whole British army, but only with its two leading divisions, and those two divisions did not contend with the whole French army, but only with the two[p. 171] units which formed its rearguard. Fine writing on both sides, as to struggles against overwhelming odds, must be disregarded. Still more so may the exaggerated estimates as to loss inflicted on the enemy which are to be found in the narratives of most of the first-hand writers. What they are worth may be guessed from Marbot’s statement that the British lost 1,000 men at Redinha—No?l raises this liberal estimate to 1,800[217]—the real casualty list being 240. Similarly Grattan tells us that the French had 1,000 men hors de combat at Foz do Arouce[218], when their actual loss seems to have been about 250.
The accusations of timidity and over-caution which these contemporary chroniclers lavish upon each other’s generals are equally absurd. Wellington is always rallied by the French for want of courage and enterprise, because he did not at once dash the first two or three battalions that came up against a division in position, but waited for his supports. And Ney is criticized by both English and French writers for having sometimes withdrawn from the fight over early, because at Condeixa and on the Alva he hastened to get out of a dangerous situation. Both generals, in reality, acted with perfect tactical correctness; armies do not meet for the purpose of putting in the maximum of fighting, without regard for ends or consequences, and the commander who attacks before he has a sufficient force collected is blameworthy just in the same degree as the commander who holds out too long in a hazardous position.
Most of the French criticism on Wellington is based on the false hypothesis that his army outnumbered Masséna’s during the whole retreat, and that he therefore should have achieved greater results. As a matter of fact, as we have seen, he was never stronger than the enemy, because he had been forced to detach Beresford’s two divisions against Soult before he started. And when, in the later stages of the retreat, the French were short of Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps, which had gone on to Celorico ahead of the main army, it must be remembered that Wellington from March 16th onwards was deprived of Cole’s division and the heavy dragoons, who had been[p. 172] sent off southward to join Beresford. A pursuing army dealing with a superior retreating army must act with the greatest caution, lest it should suddenly run up against the enemy’s whole force, and find itself committed to an offensive action against greater numbers in a strong position. Wellington never fell into this trap; he man?uvred the French out of every line which they took up, without incurring any danger, or allowing his adversary any chance of harming him. While giving all credit to Ney for the brilliant rearguard tactics by which he often held back the pursuers for half a day, it is necessary to give equal credit to Wellington for having fought his way through half a dozen formidable lines of defence, with a minimum of loss, and without once exposing himself to the chance of a serious check. After all, his object was to drive Masséna away from the Mondego and towards Spain, and that object he achieved in the most triumphant fashion.
GUARDA AND SABUGAL.
MARCH 22nd-APRIL 12th, 1811
At noon on March 22nd, the day following that on which the French head quarters had reached Celorico, Masséna issued a new set of orders, entirely contradictory to those which he had been giving during the last fifteen days. Though on the 19th he had stated his intention of ‘falling back closer to his base of operations on the fortresses [Almeida and Rodrigo], and giving the army a rest after its fatigues and privations[220],’ he now proposed to plunge back once more into the mountains, and to swerve aside from his places of strength and his dép?ts. The commanders of the corps received the astounding news that it was the intention of the Commander-in-Chief to turn south-eastward, towards the Spanish frontier and the central Tagus, with the object of taking up a position in the Coria-Plasencia country, from which he would threaten central Portugal on a new front. This necessitated a march from Celorico through the mountains of Belmonte and Penamacor, and then across the Sierra de Meras, into the thinly-peopled plateau of northern Estremadura.
Supposing that the centre of the Iberian peninsula had been a fertile plain resembling Lombardy or Flanders, there would have been something to say for this plan. Still more might it have been advisable if the French army had been a fresh and intact force just opening a campaign. Pelet, Masséna’s chief aide-de-camp, tries to justify the proposal by saying that ‘it was more conformable to the general rules of strategy; we should have connected ourselves with the 5th Corps in Estremadura, with the Army of the Centre, and the general pivot of operations at Madrid; we should have brought Lord Wellington back to the position that he had quitted; we should have kept the results of the advantages recently won in Estremadura, which were so soon to be lost;[p. 174] we should also have had the means to menace once more Central Portugal and the Lines of Torres Vedras[221].’ This is all very plausible, but it omits the crucial facts that the Army of Portugal was tired out, destitute of munitions, and almost destitute of food, and that it was proposed to lead it across two difficult ranges of mountains full of gorges and defiles, into a region which was one of the most thinly peopled and desolate in all Spain, where there was not a single French soldier, much less a dép?t of any sort. This was the same district in which Victor had starved in 1809, and in passing through which Wellington had suffered so many privations on the way to Talavera. It had been visited in February by a flying column under Lahoussaye, sent out from Talavera, which had got as far as Plasencia and Alcantara, and then retired, because it was absolutely impossible for 3,000 men to live in it.
Masséna’s maps were very bad—the actual set used by his head-quarters staff is in existence, and can be seen at Belfast[222]. But his intelligence department must have been worse than his maps, if he was unaware of the character of the country on the border of Portugal and Spain, and of that lying beyond, in northern Estremadura. He might have asked information about it from Reynier and Ney, who had both crossed it, but he did not. Most striking of all, however, is the ignorance shown in these orders of the physical and moral state of the French army. If it had ever reached Plasencia, it would have got there without a gun or a baggage mule—the caissons and carriages were almost all gone already. A single set of figures may serve to show the situation: the artillery of the 8th Corps started from Almeida in September 1810 with 142 wheeled units—guns, caissons, waggons, &c., and 891 horses. It got back to Ciudad Rodrigo on April 4, 1811, with 49 guns and caissons drawn by 182 horses, having lost 93 vehicles and 709 horses. Forty-one of the caissons and waggons had been destroyed before the commencement of the retreat, the rest had been dropped between Thomar and Celorico[223]. There were left at the end of March only 24 guns[p. 175] with 25 caissons of ammunition, to draw which required all the horses remaining. How long could this artillery have fought with only one caisson of ammunition per gun left? How many horses would have been alive after another hundred miles of mountain roads? Even if some guns had got to Plasencia, how long would it have taken to get them ammunition from Salamanca or Madrid, the nearest dép?ts? The same question would be no less forcible with regard to infantry ammunition, which was depleted to an equal extent with that of the artillery.
But it is even more important to remember that the Army of Portugal was also in desperate straits for boots and clothing. In many regiments a third or a quarter of the men had no footgear but ‘rivlins,’ or mocassins made every few days from the hides of cattle. The uniforms were in rags; many soldiers had nothing that recalled the regulation attire but the capote that covered everything.
Yet the main thing of all was the moral aspect of affairs. The army would fight when it was its duty, as French armies always have done, but it was discontented, sulky, angry with the Marshal, to whom it attributed its miseries—though its indignation might have been more justly reserved for the Emperor, who had set his lieutenant an impossible task. The rank and file had sunk low in discipline, as must be always the case when troops have been living by daily plunder for six months. And this same want of discipline was most evident among the generals, who, now that Masséna had failed, openly criticized him before their staffs, and often neglected his orders. Masséna suspected Ney, Junot, and Reynier alike of intending to denounce him to the Emperor as a blunderer. It will be remembered that he had already detected Reynier in a trick of this description[224]. Ney had been girding at his orders with fury ever since the retreat began, and was telling all who cared to listen that a hasty return to Spain was the only possible policy, and that the dream of holding out on the Mondego or the Alva was absurd.
[p. 176]It was probably not on mere strategic grounds, but because he was determined to assert himself, to prove that he was master of his own movements, and that he was not yet a beaten man or a failure, that Masséna issued orders on the 22nd for the 2nd Corps to make ready to move southward, not northward, from Guarda, and for the 6th and 8th to prepare to follow on the same route. This provoked an explosion of wrath on the part of Ney, who in the course of four hours of the afternoon wrote three successive letters to his commander, in terms of growing irritation. In the first, which was sent off before receiving the detailed orders for the new movement, he merely set forth all the objections to it, and inquired whether Masséna had the Emperor’s leave for such a general change of plans. In the second, after he had received and read the orders, he protested formally against them, and said that, unless positive instructions from Paris authorizing the new scheme had been received, the 6th Corps should not march. He gave many arguments, and they were incontestably true. ‘The army has need to rest behind the shelter of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, in order to receive the clothing and shoes which are absolutely necessary, and which must be brought up from the magazines. Your Excellency is mistaken in thinking that food can be got in abundance in the region of Coria and Plasencia. I have marched through that country [during the attempt to cut off Wellington’s retreat from Talavera in 1809], and it is impossible to exaggerate its sterility or the badness of its roads. Your Excellency will not get one single gun so far, with the teams that we have brought out of Portugal. Moreover this man?uvre, so singular at this particular moment, would entirely uncover Old Castile, and compromise all our operations in Spain. I am fully aware of the responsibility which I take upon myself in making formal opposition to your intentions, but, even if I were destined to be cashiered or condemned to death, I could not execute the march on Coria and Plasencia directed by your Highness, unless (of course) it has been ordered by the Emperor[225].’
Within two hours of the second letter Ney sent in the third, which was no mere protest, nor even a mere refusal to move, but[p. 177] an open declaration of his intention to march back to Almeida. ‘I warn your Excellency that to-morrow I shall leave my positions of Carapichina and Corti?o, and échelon my troops from Celorico to Freixadas, and on the day after they will be between Freixadas and Almeida. This disposition is forced on me, in order to prevent the whole force from disbanding, under the pretext of searching for the food necessary for its subsistence, for food is now absolutely lacking.’
Unless he was to surrender his authority altogether, and obey his subordinate, Masséna had now to strike. Ney had put himself absolutely in the wrong in the way of military subordination, though he was as absolutely in the right in the way of strategy. And the Commander-in-Chief had every technical justification when he formally deposed him from the command of the 6th Corps, and directed him to leave for Valladolid without delay, and there await the orders of the Emperor. Loison, the senior of the three divisional generals of the 6th Corps, was ordered to take over its command next morning. Several of Ney’s partisans urged him to refuse obedience, to seize the person of Masséna, and to declare himself Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Portugal. We are assured that he would have been backed in the step by the whole of his own corps, and would have met no resistance from the others, for Masséna was universally disliked, and every man wished to continue the retreat on Almeida of which Ney was the advocate[226]. But he shrank from levying open war upon his chief, and departed among the tears of the whole 6th Corps, of which he knew every officer and many men by sight. It had been under him, without a break, since he first formed it at the camp of Montreuil, near Boulogne, in 1804.
Masséna started off his aide-de-camp Pelet for Paris next day, with orders to get to the Emperor without delay, and explain the situation before Ney could tell his tale. This his emissary succeeded in doing, and his representations to Napoleon were backed by those of Foy, who had borne Masséna’s earlier message[p. 178] of March 9, and was still in Paris. The Emperor seems to have approved of Masséna’s stringent dealing with his subordinate, and even to have expressed his satisfaction with the new plan for marching the Army of Portugal to the middle Tagus[227]. He also declared that corps-commanders of the type of Ney and Junot were a mistake, and that to avoid further friction he would cut up the whole army into divisions, and abolish the corps altogether. But at the same time he allowed Ney to return to Paris, gave him a mere formal reproof, and then continued to employ him in posts of the highest importance. Next year the Marshal was to win his last title of ‘Prince of the Moscowa’ under his master’s eye, on the field of Borodino.
Ney having been superseded and banished, Masséna could carry out his wild plan for a march towards northern Estremadura through the midst of the Portuguese mountains. On the 23rd the 6th Corps was brought into Celorico, and its artillery moved forward as far as Ratoeiro on the Guarda road. The 8th Corps left Celorico and moved in the same direction, with its cavalry at Ponte do Ladr?o in advance. Drouet with Conroux’s division had already gone back towards Almeida, with the sick and wounded of the whole army; he was ordered to[p. 179] take post at Val-de-Mula on the Turon, between Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo. His other division, that of Claparéde, was sent from Guarda to join him on the same day. Drouet, according to some versions of the events of this critical week, had moved back of his own accord without waiting for Masséna’s orders. But it is clear that there was absolute necessity to tell off some covering force for the frontiers of Leon, if the main army was to be drawn away to the central Tagus, lest Wellington should send off a detachment to attack Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and find nothing to hinder him.
For the next five days the march southward and eastward was continued. After a rest of only two nights at Guarda, the 2nd Corps moved on the 24th of March by two bad parallel roads through the hills, and encamped with its first division at Sortelha and its second at Aguas Bellas: a flanking detachment of cavalry occupied Belmonte, further to the west, in order to keep a look-out on the valley of the Zezere. The 8th Corps took up the position which the 2nd had evacuated at Guarda: it is recorded to have lost many of its already depleted stock of horses in climbing the steep ascent into that town, which stands on the very summit of the Serra da Estrella, at a height of over 3,400 feet above sea-level. No other town in Portugal lies so high. The 6th Corps followed the 8th, but halted short of Guarda, to cover the slow progress of its artillery, which had to be dragged up the defile with doubled teams, so that half the guns and vehicles had to wait at the bottom, while their beasts were assisting to draw the first section to its lofty destination.
The 25th saw the head of the 2nd Corps at Val de Lobos on the road to Penamacor; the main body painfully trailed along behind. Junot and the 8th Corps left Guarda, but took, not the path that Reynier had followed, but an equally difficult one leading to Belmonte. But the guns could not proceed with the infantry divisions. They had to be left at Guarda, the Belmonte road being pronounced absolutely impracticable for them: this was a serious check to Masséna, who had counted on using this route for the whole corps. Of the 6th Corps one division (Marchand) entered Guarda, a second (Loison’s old division, now commanded by Ferey) halted at Rapoulla, at the foot of the[p. 180] great mountain on which that town lies. The other division (Mermet) had taken a flanking turn, more in the plain, and lay at Goveias, fifteen miles north-east from Guarda, with a rearguard at Freixadas on the road to Almeida.
On the 26th, the last day on which it can be said that Masséna’s insane scheme for marching to Estremadura was still being carried out, the whole 6th Corps closed up on Guarda; the 8th Corps at Belmonte sent out reconnaissances towards Covilh?o, Manteigas, and the Zezere; but the 2nd, which was heading the column of march, was completely stuck in the mountains between Sortelha and Penamacor. It must have seemed a bitter piece of irony to Reynier when he received orders ‘to profit by his stay in his position to collect grain, and bake bread and biscuit[228],’ for he was in an almost entirely uninhabited country, on the watershed between the sources of the Coa and the Zezere, with the Sierra de Meras, the frontier-range between Spain and Portugal, in front of him.
Next morning (March 27) Reynier, though he had the example of Ney’s fate before him, was driven by sheer necessity into sending an argumentative dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief, who had now got as far as Guarda. He begged him to give up his great plan: ‘no food could be procured for the whole way from Guarda to Plasencia; if the corps ever got to the latter place, it would find no resources there, for the Coria-Plasencia country does not grow its own corn, but is fed in ordinary times from the valley of the Tietar and other distant regions.’ This Reynier knew from his own experiences in that region, when he had been observing Hill in the preceding summer. He also warned Masséna that he was taking the army into an impasse, for the Tagus is a complete barrier between northern and southern Estremadura, and could not be crossed save at the ferry of Alconetar, where there were now no boats, the bridge of Alcantara (now broken), and that of Almaraz, where there was only a flying bridge of pontoons[229].
At the same time Junot was writing from Belmonte to say that he could go no further; not only had he been forced to leave all his guns behind at Guarda, but ‘les troupes meurent[p. 181] de faim, et ne peuvent pas se présenter en ligne.’ He had scoured the country as far as Covilh?o with his cavalry, in search of food, with the sole result of ruining the few horses that were still in passable condition.
In short, the game was up—it ought never to have been begun—and Ney’s remonstrances (though not his insubordination) were completely vindicated. On March 28th Masséna reluctantly conceded that a prompt retreat into Spain was the only course possible. But he chose to base his change of plans not on the true ground, viz. that he had ordered the army to perform an impossibility, but on two other facts. A report had just been received from Drouet; that general, on reaching the neighbourhood of Almeida, had sent word that the fortress was in the utmost danger, for it had only fifteen days’ food[230], and, if the 9th Corps had to retire, it would fall from starvation in a fortnight. The state of Ciudad Rodrigo was little better. He therefore besought the Prince of Essling not to expose these two all-important places, by carrying the Army of Portugal off to the valley of the Tagus. This gave a strategical reason for surrendering the new scheme of campaign, but there was also a moral one. ‘Lassitude reigns in the Army of Portugal: many of its regiments were in the expeditions of the Duke of Dalmatia [Soult’s Oporto campaign of 1809] or that of the Duke of Abrantes [Junot’s Vimeiro campaign of 1808]. The officers murmur, and, as I must again repeat, the army must have two or three months of rest to recover itself. I was the only soul who was determined to hold on in Portugal, and unless I had set my will to it in the strongest fashion, we should not have stopped fifteen days therein.... The troops are good, but they need repose. Living by marauding, even though it was organized marauding, such as we have been compelled to authorize, has in no small degree weakened discipline, which is in the greatest need of restoration[231].’ All this was very true, but it had been equally true on March 22nd, when Masséna gave his orders for the march on Plasencia. The root of his failure lay[p. 182] neither in the state of Almeida, nor in the demoralized condition of the army, but in the fact that he had directed his troops to execute a movement which was impossible without magazines to live upon, or roads to march upon[232].
On March 29 Masséna gave the orders which marked the abandonment of his great plan, and commenced his retrograde movement towards Ciudad Rodrigo. Reynier and the 2nd Corps, abandoning the mountain roads, came down by a lateral march to Sabugal in the upper valley of the Coa: they were to stop there till Junot and the 8th Corps, coming in from Belmonte, should have reached them and passed behind them. The 6th Corps meanwhile was to halt at Guarda till the 8th Corps had extricated itself from the mountains, but it was ordered to throw back one division (Ferey’s) to Ad?o on the Sabugal road, eight miles to the south-east, as the first échelon of its forthcoming movement of retreat towards the Coa. Masséna himself and the head quarters of the army moved from Guarda on the morning of the 29th to Pega, a village some miles nearer the Coa than Ad?o.
On this morning the British army, of which Masséna had heard practically nothing for eight days, put in its appearance in the most forcible fashion, falling upon the enemy just as he was in the midst of a complicated movement, with his three corps separated from each other by distances of some twenty miles.
Wellington, it will be remembered, had halted about half of his army on the Alva upon March 20th, for sheer want of provisions, sending on only the two light cavalry brigades and the 3rd, 6th, and Light Divisions to pursue Masséna on the Celorico road. He had no doubt that the enemy was about to retire from Celorico and Guarda towards the Spanish frontier with the smallest delay—the policy of Ney and of every one else in the French army save Masséna himself. On the 24th, Slade’s dragoons occupied Celorico, and reported that the enemy had left it on the preceding day; two columns were traced: the larger [6th and 8th Corps] had gone towards Guarda, the smaller [Drouet with Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps] had taken the[p. 183] high-road towards Freixadas and Almeida. There was nothing yet to indicate to Wellington Masséna’s intention of proceeding in the direction of Estremadura and the middle Tagus. He wrote on the 25th to General Spencer, ‘The French have retired from Celorico, and appear to intend to take up a line on the Coa. Their left has gone by Guarda, apparently for Sabugal’—and to Beresford, ‘The French have gone towards the Coa: their left will cross at Sabugal, I should think, and their right about Pinhel and Almeida[233]’.
On this day (March 25) the first convoy of provisions from the new base established at Coimbra reached the camps on the Alva, and Wellington was at last able to set the 1st and 5th Divisions and Ashworth’s Portuguese in motion[234]. They started on the Celorico road, and reached Galliges that night. No news had yet come in of the southward movement of the French from Guarda, which had begun on the preceding day. The vanguard of the army had now established itself in Celorico, which was reached by the Light and 3rd Divisions on the 25th-26th: they had come up very slowly, being sadly distressed for food, and therefore forced to make very short stages. Only one ration of bread had been given out in the last four days.
On the 26th the cavalry pushed out from Celorico[235], Arentschildt’s brigade took the Almeida road, Hawker’s (this colonel was in temporary command of the 1st and 14th, while Slade managed the whole vanguard) pushed towards Guarda. Each swept the villages on the flanks of its route. The result of the exploration was to show that a very large body of the enemy had retired on Guarda, and a very small body on Almeida. A patrol of the 16th Light Dragoons hit on Mermet’s rearguard and took an officer and eighteen men from it. The reports of the following day came to much the same—it began to be clear that almost the whole French army must have gone to Guarda,[p. 184] and at last Wellington began to have the first news of Masséna’s southward movement, though he did not yet grasp its meaning. ‘The French appear to stick about Guarda,’ he wrote to Beresford, ‘and yesterday they had some people well on towards Manteigas: but I have heard nothing of them from Grant [the famous scout and intelligence officer] and I conclude they were only a patrol.’ Now Manteigas is at the source of the Zezere, near Covilh?o, and this ‘patrol’ was nothing less than Junot’s flank cavalry, exploring out from Belmonte, which the 8th Corps had reached on the preceding day. But so little did Wellington guess what was running in Masséna’s mind, that he wrote on this day that he was proposing to take a short turn to the Alemtejo to supervise Beresford’s operations (which were hanging fire in the most discouraging fashion), as soon as the French were over the frontier[236].
Meanwhile Wellington made up his mind that, since the enemy persisted in lingering at Guarda, he must man?uvre them out of that lofty city. But imagining that two, if not three, corps were concentrated in its neighbourhood, he would not attack till his rear had come up from the Alva to Celorico. This did not happen till the 29th, when the 1st Division reached that place, with the 5th close behind. But on the previous day he had already started off Picton to cross the Serra da Estrella by the mountain road by Prados, and the Light Division with Arentschildt’s cavalry to take the longer route on the other bank of the Mondego, which goes to Guarda via Baracal, Villa Franca, and Rapoulla. A flanking detachment, composed of a wing of the 95th Rifles, came upon a small rearguard left behind by Mermet at Freixadas, and turned them out of the village, taking a few prisoners (March 28).
On the 29th the Light Division and the two cavalry brigades moved in upon Guarda from Rapoulla, while Picton closed in from the west, on the side of the higher hills, and General Alexander Campbell, with the 6th Division, advanced between the other two columns, by the road on the east side of the Mondego which passes through Ramilhosa[237]. The three converg[p. 185]ing columns appeared upon the heights around Guarda within a few hours of each other, Picton being first on the spot. The French had hardly any warning, for the cavalry screen had kept the British hidden till the last. Picton found Mermet’s and Marchand’s divisions on the plateau of Guarda, with Ferey’s at its foot on the eastern side, already starting on its march for Ad?o, which was to be the commencement of the general retreat that Masséna contemplated on the next day. It seems clear, from French sources, that Loison was practically taken by surprise. Fririon, the chief of the staff of the Army of Portugal, says that, visiting Guarda to see how the 6th Corps was arranged, he found Maucune’s brigade encamped in a ravine dominated on all sides, with only one battalion on the hill on which Picton appeared a few minutes later, and the rest in a position where they were perfectly helpless. There was no other covering force at all out in front of the town. Hence, when the British closed in, Loison got flurried, and, seeing the Light Division threatening to press in on his rear, absconded at once without fighting. As his force was still nearly 15,000 strong, and Wellington had as yet only three divisions, of no greater numbers, in front of the formidable hill of Guarda, it seems that the flight of the 6th Corps from such a position was somewhat ignominious. Ney would undoubtedly have fought a brilliant detaining action with his rearguard[238].
Loison went off in great haste on the two roads open to him, both leading south-east towards the Coa: one by Ad?o and[p. 186] Pega towards Sabugal, the other by Villa Mendo and Marmeleiro to Rapoulla da Coa. The British infantry could never come up with him. The cavalry pressed his rear, and made many prisoners, mainly foraging parties which were straggling in to join the main body. A patrol of the 16th Light Dragoons captured 64 men in one party, and took 150 sheep and 20 oxen[239]. The total number of prisoners was between two and three hundred. But the French rearguard of three battalions of infantry kept well together, and was in too good order to be broken by unsupported squadrons of cavalry. The main body of the 6th Corps marched all day towards the fords of the Coa, but had not reached that river at nightfall. One of its columns encamped at Pega, the other at Marmeleiro.
On the next morning (March 30) Masséna was in a very dangerous situation: his three corps were still unconcentrated, and Junot was lingering at Belmonte, from which he only moved that morning towards Sabugal. If Wellington had known of the isolated position of the 8th Corps, he might, by pushing down a column from Celorico, have cut off its line of retreat towards the Coa, where the 2nd Corps was awaiting it. But by ill-luck no reports came to hand about Junot, and Wellington was under the impression that two, and not one, corps had been holding Guarda when he attacked it[240]. He was aware that Reynier was at Sabugal, but did not apparently receive any information which demonstrated that there was another heavy column in this direction, now commencing to move straight across the front of his own advanced guard. Junot was able to extricate himself by two painful marches over villainous cross-roads in the mountains, from Belmonte to Urgueira (March 30) and from Urgueira to Sabugal (March 31). He was only able to win salvation because he had left all his artillery behind him at Guarda, and was therefore able to go wherever infantry could[p. 187] climb. His guns had been given in charge to the 6th Corps, and formed part of the column under Ferey that marched by Pega to the Coa.
Meanwhile the 6th Corps had to complete its retreat to the line of the Coa, and reached it in the afternoon, harassed but not seriously damaged by the two British cavalry brigades, of which Hawker’s followed the column on the northern and Arentschildt’s that on the southern of the two parallel roads on which Loison was moving. All accounts agree that General Slade, who was directing both brigades, showed over-caution, and missed several fair opportunities of attacking the enemy’s rearguard, in open ground very favourable to cavalry and horse-artillery tactics[241]. He only picked up a few stragglers, and the enemy was safely across the Coa by nightfall, Marchand’s division at Ponte Sequeiro, Ferey’s and Mermet’s at Bismula, seven miles further to the south, where they were now only eight miles from Reynier’s right wing at Sabugal. The British had not yet detected Junot’s flank march, which was hourly bringing him nearer to safety.
On the 31st the 8th Corps escaped from its dangers, reached Sabugal, and, passing behind Reynier, pushed on ten miles further to Alfayates, where it halted for a much-needed rest. The troops were reduced to the last extreme by exhaustion and hunger. At Alfayates, within three miles of the Spanish frontier, and only two marches from Ciudad Rodrigo, they at last began to receive regular provisions, and had nearly got out of the mountains into the rolling upland of southern Leon.
Why Masséna, the moment that he knew that Junot was safe, did not continue to retreat on to his magazines it is hard to say. But he remained for two days more behind the upper Coa, and thereby exposed himself to continued danger, for his army was strung out on too thin a line, watching twenty miles of the river.[p. 188] Apparently he thought, from seeing no British infantry on the 30th and 31st, that Wellington had halted at Guarda, and did not intend to continue the pursuit on Sabugal. His own forces continued in their old positions throughout the 1st and 2nd of April, save that all Montbrun’s reserve cavalry was sent to the rear, to the valleys of the Agueda and the Azava, to rest and recover itself, the larger proportion of the surviving horses being quite unserviceable. The corps-cavalry of Reynier, Junot, and Loison also sent back many dismounted men, and hundreds more whose mounts were incapable of use for the present, so that the brigade of light horse attached to each was reduced to a few hundred sabres, many of the regiments having only one efficient squadron left, and none more than two[242]. The retreat from Santarem had practically disabled the French cavalry.
Wellington, meanwhile, having discovered by the explorations of his horse, that the enemy was standing firm on the Coa, resolved to dislodge them from their last hold on Portugal. To do this he required his whole force, and the 1st and 5th Divisions moved onward from Celorico to Freixadas on the 31st, to come up into line with the 3rd, 6th, and Light Divisions. With them there was now present the long-expected 7th Division, which reached the front at the end of the month, though incomplete. For the light brigade of the German Legion had arrived at Lisbon more than a fortnight late, and only four battalions in the British service[243] and five of Portuguese[244] were at present allotted to the newly formed unit. But in addition several newly landed battalions[245] came up and joined the old divisions, so that nearly 6,000 infantry in all were added to the army. After deducting many men left behind from sickness or exhaustion[246], during his advance over the wasted regions of Beira, Wellington had now about 38,000 men with him, a force very[p. 189] nearly equal to that of the enemy, which on the 1st of April had sunk to 39,905 including officers, if the 9th Corps, now in the vicinity of Almeida, be omitted.
The plan which Wellington evolved for the final eviction of the French from Portugal was to turn their left wing on the side of Sabugal, while containing their right wing (the 6th Corps) on the central Coa. Occupation was at the same time found for the 9th Corps, as Wilson’s and Trant’s Militia brigades were directed to cross the Coa near its confluence with the Douro, and to threaten Almeida from the north side, a move which could not fail to have the effect of keeping Drouet pinned down to his present position, since his special task was the protection of that place. It is a little difficult to make out why Wellington chose to break in upon the French left rather than their right. From the strategical point of view it would have been preferable to cross the Coa north of the flank of the 6th Corps, and to throw the whole weight of the British army so as to drive the French southward, towards Sabugal and Alfayates. For they would thus be separated from the 9th Corps, thrust into the barren and nearly roadless mountain district of the Sierra de Gata and the Sierra de Meras, and cut off from Almeida and even from Ciudad Rodrigo, which they were desirous of covering. Whereas to turn their left wing would only have the effect of pushing them back on their natural line of retreat towards Rodrigo, and would press them towards rather than away from the 9th Corps. The British general’s course seems, however, to have been guided by tactical rather than by strategical considerations. He thought that he had a good opportunity of catching the 2nd Corps at Sabugal in an isolated position, and crushing it, before the 6th or the 8th could come up to its help. And but for a chance of the weather it seems that he might have accomplished this design with complete success.
Sabugal, a little walled place with a ruined Moorish castle, lies in a projecting bend or hook of the Coa, which turns back just above the town at right angles to its original course, which is directly from east to west. The river is not far from its source, and though its banks are steep its waters are narrow, and there are many fords both above and below Sabugal. If a[p. 190] strong turning column, concealing itself in the hills, passed along the south bank of the Coa, and crossed the river some miles above the town, it could throw itself upon the rear of the 2nd Corps and cut it off from its retreat on Alfayates. Meanwhile a general attack by Wellington’s main body would drive it from its position straight into the arms of the turning column, and there would be a good chance of inflicting a crushing defeat upon the corps, perhaps of capturing it wholesale. If the attack were delivered by surprise at dawn, the whole matter ought to be completed before either the 6th or the 8th Corps could get up to the support of Reynier. When at last they could appear on the field, the 2nd Corps would be already demolished, and Wellington was prepared to risk a general action.
It was with this design that his movements of the 1st and 2nd of April were planned. The 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions were brought up from Celorico to Guarda, and from thence to join the Light, 3rd, and 6th Divisions which were already lying along the Coa over against the French lines. The 6th Division was left at Rapoulla de Coa, facing Loison’s centre, and a single battalion of the 7th Division observed the bridge of Sequeiro opposite his northern flank. These troops showed themselves freely, and kept Loison anxious, for nothing seemed more likely than that the general attack would be directed against him. Meanwhile the whole of the rest of the army, five divisions and two cavalry brigades, over 30,000 men, was launched against Reynier. The turning column was to be formed by the Light Division and the two cavalry brigades, who were to ford the Coa at two separate points two and three miles respectively above Sabugal. If Erskine, who was to command it, so decided, the column might cross even higher up: it was intended that it should appear far beyond Reynier’s left wing, and should strike over the hills of Quadraseis to the village of Torre on the Alfayates road, where it would be placed across his line of retreat. The ground in that direction was open and favourable for cavalry. Meanwhile the enemy was to be given no chance of falling upon this detachment, since he was to be attacked in front with very superior forces. Picton and his division were to cross an easy ford a mile south of Sabugal, the 5th Division was to assail the town-bridge at the same moment. The 1st and[p. 191] 7th Divisions were a few miles behind, ready to support the two leading columns in the front attack. It was intended that the turning force should cross the Coa first, but only so far ahead of the frontal attacking force as to make it certain that it should not get engaged with the main body of the enemy, before the 3rd and 5th Divisions were coming into action. The French pickets having been pushed close back to the river on the preceding day by the cavalry, it was certain that they would see nothing of the movements till they were well developed.
Unfortunately the morning of the 3rd of April was one of dense fog—good for concealing the march of the troops, but bad in that it prevented the troops from discovering their objective. Both Picton and Dunlop (who was commanding the 5th Division in Leith’s absence on leave) resolved not to move, and sent to Wellington, who was hard by, for orders. Not so the rash and presumptuous Erskine, who repeated this day the precise mistake that he had made at Casal Novo three weeks back. Without coming himself to the front, he sent an aide-de-camp to the Light Division, to bid it descend to the river and cross at the ford which had been assigned to it in the general scheme. The cavalry were also ordered to move forward and take the other ford, more to the right, by which they were to get into the enemy’s rear.[247]
Beckwith’s brigade, the leading one of the Light Division, consisted of the 1/43rd, Elder’s Ca?adores (the 3rd of that arm), and four companies of the 1/95th Rifles. It was waiting in column, on the road above the river, when Erskine’s aide-de-camp rode up, and asked the brigadier in a peremptory tone ‘why he did not cross.’ Beckwith at once struck off in the direction where he supposed the ford to be, but, missing his line in the fog, did not march sufficiently far to the right, and reached the Coa not at the true ford but at a hazardous passage nearly a mile nearer to Sabugal[248], where the water came up to the men’s arm-pits. Drummond’s brigade followed at a distance, and used the same wrong path. The cavalry, to whom Sir William Erskine[p. 192] had joined himself, taking their bearings from the Light Division, came down to the river not very far to its right, at a point some two miles more to the west than was intended. They lost much time in searching for a ford; by the time that they found one, the Light Division was already heavily engaged, and the passage ultimately discovered was so close to that force that the Dragoons came up almost in Drummond’s rear, instead of far out on his flank.
Reynier’s pickets were close to the water’s edge, and opened a scattering fire on the head of Beckwith’s column while it was still struggling across the river. But they were easily driven off, and the brigade formed up on the further side, in the usual order of the Light Division, with a very strong skirmishing screen, composed of four companies of the 95th and three of Elder’s Ca?adores. The 43rd and the other half-battalion of the Portuguese came on in line, a few hundred yards behind the riflemen. They were still smothered in the fog, and could discover nothing more than that they were pursuing the French pickets up a gentle slope, mostly unenclosed waste ground, but cut up by a few fields with low stone walls. Pushing forward briskly, they presently came upon a French regiment, which was already under arms, and preparing to show a front against them. What had happened in the mist was that the Light Division, instead of getting round the flank of Reynier’s position, had struck directly against it. The 2nd Corps had been established on the long hill behind Sabugal and above the Coa, ready to resist a frontal attack, with Merle’s division on the left and Heudelet’s on the right, above the town. Beckwith had struck upon the 4th Léger, the left regiment of the left-hand division of the corps. Merle, warned by the fire of the pickets, was making a new front, en potence to the general line of the French army, and had just got the four battalions of the extreme flank regiment drawn out. They were, as usual, in column of divisions, (double companies), with a weak skirmishing line in front, which was at once driven in by the Rifles and Ca?adores. Merle then led down his four columns against the screen of light troops which covered Beckwith’s line, and drove them back with considerable loss to himself, and little to his opponents, since he had only skirmishers to shoot at, while his own compact battalion[p. 193] columns were very vulnerable. The light troops fell back to each flank of the line presented by the 43rd and the formed companies of the Ca?adores, and then halted and turned upon the enemy. The balance of numbers was now in favour of Beckwith’s brigade, for though he had only two and a half battalions and the enemy four, the French units were very weak, the 4th Léger having only 1,100 men, while the 43rd alone was a strong battalion of 750 bayonets and its auxiliary light troops were at least 600 more. It was not surprising, therefore, that the French regiment soon went to the rear, badly hit, after a short sharp exchange of volleys. Beckwith followed, pushing the enemy through a small chestnut wood, till he arrived at the southern summit of the ridge on which the French line had been drawn out. Here he found himself confronted by the seven battalions of the 36th of the Line, and the 2nd Léger, the remaining regiments of Merle’s division, which were hurrying along the crest to the assistance of their comrades of the 4th Léger.
Blinding rain came on at this moment, and much diminished the efficacy of the British fire. Attacked by double numbers of fresh troops, Beckwith’s brigade was thrust back for some distance. But they rallied behind some stone walls of enclosures, just as the shower ceased, and after an obstinate contest of musketry, stopped the French regiments, who, falling into disorder, retired up the slope to re-form. Though conscious that he was now engaged against hopeless odds, and though he could see nothing of Drummond’s brigade or the British cavalry, which ought by this time to have come up to his support, Beckwith went up the hill a second time in pursuit. When he reached the crest he came upon the divisional battery of Merle, drove it off, and captured one howitzer. Immediately after, he was outflanked on his left by infantry, apparently the rallied 4th Léger, while on the right he was charged by two squadrons of chasseurs and hussars, all that the depleted cavalry brigade of Pierre Soult could put in line that day. The 43rd and their comrades were hardly pressed, and had to give ground, but sheltering once more among the enclosures, refused to relinquish their position on the slope. The captured howitzer lay out in their front, in an open space swept by the musketry of both parties. Desperate attempts were made by groups on each side to rush out and[p. 194] bring it in, but to no effect, as the cross-fire was too heavy. Beckwith’s brigade was in a most dangerous position, only preserved from annihilation by the fact that the mist and rain prevented the enemy from recognizing the smallness of the force opposed to him—two and a half battalions against eleven, or 1,500 men against 3,500.
At this moment assistance at last arrived—the 2nd Brigade of the Light Division under Drummond appeared on the scene. It consisted of the two battalions of the 52nd, the 1st Ca?adores, and four companies of the 95th, about 2,000 bayonets. Having lost touch of the 1st Brigade at the ford, it had taken a route much more like that originally intended by Wellington to be employed, and had come up the back slope of the heights, far to the right of Beckwith, without meeting any enemy. The noise of the combat attracted Drummond to his left; he changed his direction, and was coming over the hillside and approaching Beckwith when he received a most ill-advised order from Erskine—who was with the cavalry some way to his right rear—directing him not to advance or engage[249]. But to have held back would have meant to allow the 1st Brigade to be destroyed. Disregarding the order, Drummond deployed the 1/52nd, the Ca?adores, and the 95th on the right of the enclosures where Beckwith was fighting, with the 2/52nd in reserve, and advanced firing. This attack by a fresh force was too much for the French 2nd and 36th, who had suffered severely in the earlier fighting. They gave way, and Drummond, with Beckwith following in échelon on his left, regained the crest of the heights and recaptured the French howitzer. The two brigades were still engaged in a fierce struggle with Merle’s division when Reynier brought up the 2nd Brigade of Heudelet’s division, the seven battalions of the 17th Léger and 70th Ligne, which had formed the centre of his original line of battle. These troops attacked[p. 195] the left flank of the Light Division, Beckwith’s men, and put them in grave danger, for the much-tried 43rd and 3rd Ca?adores were in great disorder. At the same time the two French squadrons charged again upon the flank of the 52nd. Fortunately a stray squadron of the 16th Light Dragoons came up and assisted in repulsing them. This was the only aid given by the cavalry this day; Erskine contrived to keep them useless, countermarching in the mist, some way from the fighting front.
At this moment the fog suddenly lifted, and both Wellington and Reynier were able to make out the face of the battle. The sight was not altogether comforting to either of them: Wellington could see the Light Division on the crest, opposed by a very superior enemy (the proportion was about five to three at this moment) and with their left flank turned by the column which had just come up. Reynier, on the other hand, saw the masses of Picton’s and Dunlop’s divisions halted close above the fords, at and below Sabugal, and just preparing to cross. He had so stripped his centre and right, while bringing up troops to crush the Light Division, that only the two regiments forming Heudelet’s 1st Brigade, the eight weak battalions of the 31st Léger and 47th Ligne, about 3,300 bayonets, were left to occupy two miles of slope on each side of the town of Sabugal. Reynier saw that they must be scattered by the approaching onset, for 10,000 men were hurrying down towards the fords, and gave instant orders for a general retreat. The intact brigade was to abandon Sabugal and the heights, concentrate, and go off at the double, to take up a position a mile to the rear, on the road to Alfayates. Merle’s shattered troops on the crest, facing the Light Division, were directed to make off in such order as they might, taking the artillery with them, and to seek refuge behind this reserve. To prevent Beckwith and Drummond from pursuing them, the 2nd Brigade of Heudelet, the 17th Léger and 70th, were ordered to keep up a defensive fight upon the heights where they had just come into action.
This brigade was thereby exposed to grave danger, for while it was doing its best to ‘contain’ the Light Division, Picton, coming up from the river at a furious pace, with the 5th Fusiliers deployed in his front, rushed in upon its flank, and drove its battalions one upon another. The 17th and 70th were[p. 196] overwhelmed and thrust down the back of the hill with a loss of 400 men, of whom 120 were unwounded prisoners. Their wrecks took refuge with the other brigades, which retired as rapidly as they could along the Alfayates road, with the 31st Léger and 47th Ligne, the only intact body, covering the flight of the rest. The British 5th Division had crossed at Sabugal without meeting opposition or losing a man, but was too far to the left to be of any use in urging the pursuit. That duty fell to Picton, who was pressing the French rearguard when the rain, which had been falling for almost the whole morning, became absolutely torrential, and hid the face of the country-side so thoroughly that Wellington commanded the whole army to halt. It is said that this order was given on the false intelligence that the 8th Corps was visible coming up from Alfayates to join Reynier[250], a report for which there was no foundation whatever. Erskine and the cavalry never touched the retreating force, save one squadron of the German hussars, who happed upon the French transport column, and captured the private baggage of Reynier himself and General Pierre Soult[251].
So ended, in comparative disappointment, an operation which would have had glorious results if the fog had not intervened, and which might, even with that drawback, have been much more decisive if Sir William Erskine had shown ordinary prudence and ability. The actual combat, as Wellington truly observed, ‘was one of the most glorious that British troops were ever engaged in,’ for the Light Division, with its 3,500 bayonets, had fought the whole of the 2nd Corps save one brigade, and had punished its adversaries in the most exemplary style, without suffering any corresponding loss. ‘Really these attacks in column against our line are very contemptible,’ wrote Wellington to Beresford next morning. The chief glory lay with the 43rd, who fought three separate contests with three successive bodies of opponents, and counted very nearly half[p. 197] of the total British loss in their ranks. Beckwith, their brigadier, was the admired of all beholders; eye-witnesses relate with pride how he rode first in the advance and last in the retreat, with blood streaming from a wound on his temple, keeping the men in rank, checking those who showed a tendency to quicken the pace, and directing the fire with perfect coolness. It was in a great degree the confidence inspired by his cheerful and resourceful leading which enabled the brigade to keep up the fight against impossible odds, down to the moment of the arrival of Drummond and the supports upon the scene.
Map of the combat of Sabugal
Enlarge SABUGAL
The total loss of the French was 61 officers and 689 men; this fearful proportion of losses in the commissioned ranks was due to the gallantry with which they threw away their lives in bringing up to the front the shaken and demoralized soldiers, who could not face the English musketry. One gun and 186 unwounded prisoners were taken. The British loss was only 169—that of their Portuguese companions no more than 10. Of the total of 179 no less than 143 were men of the Light Division, of whom 80 belonged to the 43rd; Picton’s troops, only engaged for a few minutes at the end of the combat, had twenty-five casualties. The horse artillery lost one, the German hussars two men wounded. It is sufficiently clear from these figures who had done the fighting that day[252].
On the afternoon following the combat of Sabugal, Masséna abandoned the line of the Coa, drawing back the 6th Corps to join the other two at Alfayates. Next morning (April 4) at early dawn the whole army made a forced march to the rear, for there seemed every probability that Wellington would appear, to force on a general action, during the course of the day, and it was necessary to avoid the chance of being thrust against the Sierra de Gata, and cut off from Ciudad Rodrigo. Accordingly the 2nd Corps covered more than twenty miles, and did not halt till it had reached Fuentes de O?oro; the[p. 198] 6th Corps, marching a less distance, halted at Fuente Guinaldo on the direct road to Ciudad Rodrigo. The 8th Corps, on a road between the other two, stopped at Campillo; the reserve cavalry of Montbrun, which was in such bad condition that it had to be covered by the infantry, instead of acting as their screen, drew back to El Bodon, and other villages in the immediate vicinity of Rodrigo. By this movement Masséna recovered his communication with the 9th Corps, which still lay on the Turon near Almeida, for the 2nd Corps was now within fifteen miles of Drouet’s head quarters at Val de Mula, while the 6th and 8th Corps covered the roads to Ciudad Rodrigo. On the following day (April 5) the two last-named corps drew back to Carpio, Marialva, and other places within a few miles of that fortress, but the 2nd Corps remained at Fuentes de O?oro, in order to keep touch with the 9th till the latter should have evacuated a position which had now become dangerous and over-advanced. For if Masséna went back to the Agueda, Drouet could not linger near Almeida, lest he should be cut off from the main army.
Meanwhile Wellington had occupied on the 4th Masséna’s old head quarters at Alfayates, and sent forward his cavalry to Albergaria, Alamedilla, and other villages, where they came in touch with the outposts of the 2nd and 8th Corps. The Light Division felt for any traces of the French at Val de Espinha and Quadraseis, and finding none pushed on to Alfayates. The 1st and 3rd Divisions came to that place also on the next day. By that evening (April 5) it was certain that Masséna was falling back to Ciudad Rodrigo, perhaps even further to the rear. The state of his army, of which Wellington had ample evidence from the capture of more sick, stragglers, and baggage during this and the two next days[253], rendered it extremely likely that the French would not be able to halt till they reached their magazines at Salamanca. The British general had no intention of following the enemy far into Spain; he had again outmarched[p. 199] his supplies, for the new base at Coimbra had only just been established, and convoys from it were coming in slowly and with great delays, since they had to be brought up over the wasted and depopulated region which the French had just evacuated. Till he had some magazines accumulated nearer the frontier, he could not dream of a serious offensive movement into Leon. His letters at this time are full of laments as to the state of the Portuguese troops, especially of the brigades which were fed by their own commissariat. They had dropped so many sick and stragglers in the advance, that on April 8th they were 2,500 short of the number with which they had started from the Lines of Torres Vedras: the brigade in the 5th Division had fallen to 1,061 rank and file from 1,400 with which it had set out—that in the 3rd Division to 1,190 from 1,319. Pack’s brigade had been left behind on the Mondego from sheer inability to march, and had not been able to join in the Guarda and Sabugal operations[254]. It was necessary to wait till the ranks were fuller—the men were not lost but left behind exhausted, and could be collected when a systematic supply of food was procurable. The allied army could not dream of entering Spain with the intention of living by plunder and requisitions, as the French habitually did.
Wellington’s ambition at the moment did not go beyond the hope of recovering Almeida, which he conceived to be doomed to fall, and possibly Ciudad Rodrigo also, if the enemy should be forced to fall back towards Salamanca. But Almeida, at least, he was determined to make his own, and the first necessity was to clear away the 9th Corps from its neighbourhood. He was convinced that Drouet would retreat when he heard that Masséna had retired to the Agueda, and thought that his motions might be quickened by a demonstration. The 6th Division and Pack’s Portuguese were destined for the blockade of Almeida, but they would not be up for some days, and meanwhile Trant’s Militia, which was already on the lower Coa, was directed to push in boldly upon the place, and promised the support of Slade’s cavalry brigade on the 7th. Trant, always daring and full of enterprise, pressed forward to Val de Mula, on[p. 200] the further side of Almeida, and met there Claparéde’s division on its way towards the Agueda—Conroux had already departed. The Militia engaged in an irregular fight with the French, who turned promptly round upon them, and seemed likely to make havoc of them near the village of Aldea do Obispo. But just as the attack grew threatening Slade’s dragoons appeared from the south, with Bull’s horse artillery battery, and drew up on the flank of the enemy’s troops. The artillery were already beginning to enfilade them, when Claparéde, forming his division into battalion squares, made a hasty retreat towards the Agueda, and passed it at the bridge of Barba del Puerco. Erskine, who was in command of the expedition, did not press him hard, and the French, according to their own account, only lost 7 killed and 4 officers and 24 men wounded, all by cannon shot, for the dragoons were not allowed to charge home[255]. Slade captured, however, some baggage and a good many stragglers, marauders, and guards of small convoys, who were surprised in the open rolling country before they could get over the Agueda.
Wellington could now surround and blockade Almeida; he had been nourishing some hopes that the French might evacuate it, when Drouet departed from its neighbourhood, for he was aware that its stores had run very low. But when it became evident that the place was not to be abandoned, he realized that it would take some weeks to reduce it, for he had no battering-train whatever, indeed there were no heavy guns nearer than Oporto and Abrantes. It was not till the following autumn that a proper siege-train was organized for the Anglo-Portuguese army. Almeida could only be attacked by the weapon of famine; Badajoz, which was beleaguered at the same time, had to be battered with a few guns borrowed from the ramparts of the neighbouring fortress of Elvas. The British army had now been two years in Portugal, yet Wellington still lacked the materials for conducting the smallest offensive operation against strongholds in the hands of the French.
Map of Masséna’s retreat. Celorico to Ciudad Rodrigo
Enlarge map to illustrate the LAST STAGE of MASSéNA’S RETREAT
and the CAMPAIGN of FUENTES de O?ORO
[p. 201]It was known, however, that the stores in Almeida had run low, for the 9th Corps had been consuming them while it lay close by, in spite of Masséna’s strict directions to the contrary. But starvation knows no laws. As a matter of fact there were still over thirty days’ rations in the magazines, though it had been reported both to Wellington and to Masséna that the stock had run down much lower;[256] Drouet had falsely stated on one occasion that there was only enough to last for fifteen days. The British general fancied that four weeks’ blockade might reduce the place, and thought that he was quit of the Army of Portugal for a much longer space of time. He even hoped to effect something against Ciudad Rodrigo[257], which was also under-victualled, for on reaching the frontier Masséna had been forced to indent upon it for supplies for his broken host. If the French retired to Salamanca, as seemed quite probable, Wellington had hopes that he might be able to starve out Rodrigo. But he was not intending to throw his troops around it; they were to remain on the Dos Casas and the Azava, covering the siege of Almeida, but only observing the Spanish fortress with cavalry. For the cutting of the road between it and Salamanca only irregular forces were to be used: Wellington would not send any of his own divisions forward beyond Rodrigo, but requested the daring and resourceful guerrillero chief Julian Sanchez to throw his bands in this direction, the moment that the French army should have retired from the Agueda. Sanchez had been for many months already occupied in similar work, having spent all the winter in raids to cut off convoys and small parties passing from Salamanca to Ciudad Rodrigo, or from that place to Almeida. He had been hunted, often but vainly, by General Thiébault, the governor of the province, whose columns he had usually succeeded in avoiding, while he was always at hand to fall on weak or incautious detachments on the march[258].
[p. 202]On April 8th, as Wellington had expected, the Army of Portugal resumed its march into the interior of the kingdom of Leon, all the three corps passing the Agueda, and retiring, Reynier to San Felices el Grande, Junot to Santi Espiritus, Loison to Alba de Yeltes. Junot, while passing, had been ordered to send into Rodrigo a reinforcement for the garrison; he detached a battalion of the 15th and another of the Irish Legion, which brought up the troops in the place to 3,000 men. From the 8th to the 11th the retreat continued, till at last the 6th Corps went into cantonments at Salamanca, Alba de Tormes, and other neighbouring places, the 2nd at and about Ledesma, and the 8th at Toro, behind the others. Drouet and his two divisions held the line of observation against the Anglo-Portuguese, with head quarters at San Mu?oz. So ended, fifty miles within the borders of Spain, the movement that had begun at Santarem and Punhete.
The effective of Masséna’s army, was on April 15th 39,546 sabres and bayonets. It had started in September 1810 with 65,050 officers and men, and had numbered 44,407 on March 15th. The exact loss, however, was not the mere difference between its force of September 15, 1810, and of April 15, 1811 (25,504), for it had received at midwinter two drafts under Gardanne and Foy, amounting to 3,225 men in all[259]. On the other hand, the figures of April 15th do not include two convoys of sick sent back into Spain, one of 82 officers and 833 men dispatched under the charge of Drouet from the Alva on March 11, and a second and larger one sent back from Celorico to Almeida on March 22, along with which went some dismounted cavalry, and some artillery which could no longer follow the army. The whole may have amounted to 3,000 men. Both of these convoys dropped large numbers of dead and stragglers by the way, but it is impossible to ascertain their total. We must also deduct the escort of an officer, Major Casabianca, sent from the front to Ciudad Rodrigo[p. 203] on 21st January, who took 400 men[260] with him and never returned. Deducting the 4,315 thus sent back to Spain, and setting them against the 3,225 received from thence, it appears that Masséna’s total loss must have been just under 25,000 men, or 38 per cent. of his original force. Of these Wellington had some 8,000 as prisoners, including the 4,000 captured in the hospital of Coimbra on October 7th, 1810. The remainder had perished—not more than 2,000 in action, the rest by the sword of famine. Wellington’s scheme had justified itself, though its working out had taken many more weeks than he expected. Nor was the mere loss in men all that the Army of Portugal had suffered. It returned to Leon stripped of everything—without munitions, uniforms, or train. It had lost 5,872 horses of the 14,000 which it had brought into Portugal, and practically all its wheeled vehicles; there were precisely 36 waggons left with the army. The men were still ready to fight fiercely when they saw the necessity for it, but were sulky, discontented, and perpetually carping against the Commander-in-Chief, whose last unhappy inspiration—the projected march from Guarda to Plasencia—had filled up the measure of their wrath. And indeed they had good reason to be disgusted at it, for it was wholly insane and impracticable. But every misfortune of the last six months—the bloody repulse at Bussaco, the loss of the hospitals and magazines at Coimbra, the long starvation at Santarem, the slow and circuitous course of the retreat, was imputed to Masséna’s account by his chief subordinates as well as by his rank and file. What the generals muttered in the morning was loudly discussed around every camp-fire at night. The whole army had lost in morale from six months of systematic marauding, was quite out of hand in the way of discipline, and had no confidence in its leader, who was absolutely detested. The departure of Ney, who was liked and admired by all ranks, had been a great discouragement, because his skilful handling of the rearguard during the retreat had been understood and appreciated, while Masséna was cried down as a tactician no less than as a strategist on the general results of the campaign. A general whose[p. 204] troops no longer rely on him cannot get the best out of his army, and for this reason alone Napoleon was justified in removing the old Marshal from his command in April, when the full tale of the retreat had reached him.
Yet there can be no doubt that Masséna was hardly treated. That the expedition of Portugal failed was, in the main, no fault of his. Neither he nor his master, nor any one else on the French side, had foreseen Wellington’s plans—the devastation of the country-side, which rendered it impossible for the invader to live long by marauding, and the systematic fortification of the long front of the Lisbon Peninsula. For the actual game that was set before him, Masséna had not been given sufficient pieces by the Emperor. As Wellington had said more than a year before[261], the French could not turn him out of Portugal with less than 100,000 men, and Napoleon had only provided 65,000. Moreover, as the British general had added, he should so manage affairs that 100,000 French could not live in the country if they did appear; and this was no vain boast.
Masséna, then, was sent to accomplish an impossible task, and his merit was that he came nearer to his end than Wellington had believed possible, before he was forced to recoil. Many of the French marshals would never have got to Coimbra: certainly none of them would have succeeded in holding on at Santarem for three months. There can be no doubt that the Prince of Essling did not exaggerate when he wrote to Berthier[262], on March 31st, that it was his own iron will alone which had kept the army so long and so far to the front—that but for him it would have recoiled on to Spain many weeks earlier. His heroic obstinacy gave his adversary many an uneasy day, while it seemed in January and February as if the calculation for famishing the French had failed. Masséna, in short, had done all that was possible, and the general failure of the campaign was not his fault, any more than it was that of Soult, on whom the blame has always been laid by the elder marshal’s advocates. We have shown in an earlier chapter[263] that Soult did all and more than all that Napoleon had directed him to accomplish. If he[p. 205] had literally obeyed the tardy orders that reached him from Paris he would only have exposed the 5th Corps to defeat, if not to destruction. The ex post facto rebukes that the Emperor sent him were unjust. We are once more driven back to our old conclusion that the determining factors in the failure of the campaign of Portugal were firstly that Napoleon refused to appoint a single commander-in-chief in the Peninsula, to whose orders all the other marshals should be strictly subordinate, and secondly that he persisted in sending plans and directions from Paris founded on facts that were seven weeks late, or more, when his dispatches reached the front. On this we have enlarged at sufficient length on an earlier page.
KING JOSEPH AND HIS TROUBLES
While following the fortunes of Wellington and Masséna, during the first four months of 1811, we have been compelled to leave almost untouched the sequence of events in the rest of Spain; not only the doings of Suchet and Macdonald in the far east, which had no practical connexion with the campaign of Portugal, but also the minor affairs of the southern and central provinces. Only Soult’s expedition to Estremadura, which came into close touch with Wellington, has been dealt with. It is time to explain the general posture of the war in the Peninsula, during the time when its critical point lay between Lisbon and Abrantes, where Masséna and Wellington stood face to face, each waiting for the other to move.
What was going on in Portugal was, as we have already seen, practically a secret to the French in Spain. For the Portuguese Ordenan?a and the Spanish guerrilleros had done their work of blocking the roads so well, that no accurate information penetrated to Madrid, Valladolid, or Seville from Santarem. It was only at rare intervals, when Foy and other officers cut their way through this ‘fog of war’ that the condition of affairs on the Tagus became known for a moment. The fog descended again when they had passed through on their way to Paris, and given their information as to the fortunes of the Army of Portugal during the weeks that preceded their departure. The gaps in the narrative were very long—nothing got through between the departure of Masséna from Almeida on September 15, 1810, and Foy’s first arrival at Ciudad Rodrigo on November 8th.[p. 207] There was another lacuna in the knowledge of the situation between that date and the passage of Masséna’s second successful messenger, Casabianca, from Santarem to Rodrigo in the earliest days of February. And after Casabianca had passed by, the next news came out through Foy’s second mission, when he started to announce the oncoming retreat on March 5, and got to the borders of Leon on March 13. The only way in which King Joseph at Madrid, or the generals of the ‘military governments’ of Old Castile, or Soult in Andalusia, felt the course of the war on its most important theatre, was that they were for many months freed from any anxiety about the movements of Wellington. He was ‘contained’ by Masséna, and, however he might be faring, he had no power to interfere by armed force in the affairs of Spain. The French for all this time had to deal only with the armies of the Cortes, and with their old and irrepressible enemies the guerrilleros of the mountains.
While the fate of the Portuguese expedition was still uncertain, while it seemed possible to Napoleon that Masséna might cling to his position at Santarem till Soult came up to join him on the Tagus, a considerable change was made with regard to the French troops in northern Spain. Convinced at last there was little to be said in favour of that system of many small ‘military governments’, in Old Castile and the neighbouring provinces, which he had created in 1810, the Emperor resolved to put them all under a single commander. This would give him six less independent generals to communicate with, and would ensure for the future a much better co-operation between the divisions which occupied the valley of the Douro and the Pyrenean regions. The six military governors had been each playing his own game, and taking little notice of that of his neighbours. Their enemies were mostly the guerrillero bands of the Cantabrian hills and of Navarre. Each general did his best to hunt these elusive enemies out of his own department, but took little heed of their trespasses on his neighbours’ territory. Evasive and indomitable partisans like Mina in Navarre, Julian Sanchez in Old Castile, and Porlier and Longa in the Cantabrian sierras, found it comparatively easy to shift their positions when the pressure on one region was too great for them, and to move on into another—they were sure that the hunt would soon slacken, and that they[p. 208] could return at their leisure to their old haunts. The Emperor thought that it would be possible to make an end of them, if all his garrisons and movable columns in northern Spain were put under a single commander and moved in unison under a single will. Hence came the decree of January 8, 1811, creating the ‘Army of the North,’ and handing it over to Marshal Bessières, whose name was still remembered in those regions owing to his old victory of Medina de Rio Seco. His authority extended over the troops stationed in Navarre, Biscay, Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca, the Asturias, and Santander, including not only the regular garrisons of those provinces but the two divisions of the Young Guard, which had replaced Drouet’s corps in Old Castile, and the division under Serras which watched Galicia from the direction of Benavente and Astorga. The total of the forces placed under his orders amounted to 70,000 men, of whom 59,000 were ‘présents sous les armes,’ the rest being in hospital, or detached outside the limits of the territory assigned to the Army of the North.
Considerable as was this force, it did not accomplish all that the Emperor hoped, even when directed by a single commander of solid military talents. Bessières, though a capable officer, was not a genius, and the tasks assigned to him were so multifarious that after a short time he began to grow harassed and worried, and to cavil at every order that was sent him. He was directed to ‘suppress brigandage,’ i. e. to put down the guerrilleros, to support the Army of Portugal against Wellington whenever necessary, to keep an eye upon the Spanish regular forces in Galicia and the Asturias. This, he declared, was more than could be accomplished with the forces at his disposal. ‘If I concentrate 20,000 men all communications are lost, and the insurgents will make enormous progress. The coast would be lost as far as Bilbao. We are without resources, because it is only with the greatest pains that the troops can be fed from day to day. The spirit of the population is abominably bad: the retreat of the Army of Portugal has turned their heads. The bands of insurgents grow larger, and recruit themselves actively on every side.... The Emperor is deceived about Spain: the pacification of Spain does not depend on a battle with the English, who will accept it or refuse it as they please, and who have Portugal[p. 209] behind them for retreat. Every one knows the vicious system of our operations. Every one allows that we are too widely scattered. We occupy too much territory, we use up our resources without profit and without necessity: we are clinging on to dreams. Cadiz and Badajoz absorb all our means—Cadiz because we cannot take it, Badajoz because it requires a whole army to support it. We ought to blow up Badajoz, and to abandon the siege of Cadiz for the present. We ought to draw in, get solid bases for our magazines and hospitals, and regard two-thirds of Spain as a vast battlefield, which a battle may give us or cause us to lose, till the moment that we change our system and take in hand the real conquest and pacification of the country,’ &c.[264]
All this means that Bessières found it impossible to pacify the North, and concluded that it was useless to try to complete the conquest of Andalusia or Portugal, when that of Navarre and Santander was so far from being secure that no small party could go two miles from a garrison town, without a large probability of being cut off by the insurgents. He would have had his master abandon Andalusia and Estremadura, in order to concentrate such masses of troops in the north that the guerrilleros should be smothered by mere numbers, that every mountain village should have its garrison. There was small likelihood that his views would find favour at Paris; the Emperor knew well enough the effect on his prestige that would result from the abandonment of the siege of Cadiz, following upon the retreat of Masséna from Santarem. It would look like a confession of defeat, a renunciation of the great game of conquest; if the French armies retired beyond the Sierra Morena, the results of eighteen months of victorious campaigning in the south would be lost, and the Cortes at Cadiz would once more have a realm to administer. Hence all that Napoleon did for Bessières was to send him in June two new divisions for the strengthening of the garrisons of the North[265], and to bid him fortify every important station on the high-road to Madrid, and even the main bridges of the upper Ebro. A few months later he recalled him, partly[p. 210] because he considered him a pessimist, partly because Bessières quarrelled with King Joseph, who was continually soliciting his removal. But before the Duke of Istria departed he had many more troubles to go through, as will be seen.
The main difficulties of the Army of the North arose from geographical facts. While the plains of Leon and Old Castile could be scoured by cavalry, and easily traversed by flying columns, so that it was not impossible to keep some sort of order in them, this flat upland was bordered on the north by the long chain of the Cantabrian sierras and their foot-hills, broad, rugged, and nearly roadless. Behind these again lay the narrow and difficult coast-land of Asturias and Santander, cut up into countless petty valleys each drained by its own small river, and parted from its neighbours by spurs of the great sierras. How was this mountain region, seventy miles broad and two hundred long, to be dealt with? The French had no permanent garrisons on the coast between Gijon, the port of Oviedo, which was generally occupied by a detachment of Bonnet’s division, and Santander, not far from the borders of Biscay[266]. This last Bessières describes as ‘a bad post from every point of view, only to be defended by covering it with large bodies of troops,’ and only accessible by a series of difficult defiles. In the Cantabrian highlands dwelt Longa and Porlier, with bands which had assumed the proportions of small armies; they could communicate with the sea at any one of a dozen petty ports, and draw arms and supplies from the British cruisers of the Bay of Biscay. Even Mina would occasionally get in touch with the sea through this coast-land, though his main sphere of operations was in Navarre. There were dozens of smaller bands, each based on its own valley, but capable of joining its neighbours for a sudden stroke. Again and again French columns worked up into these sierras from the plain of the Douro, and went on a hunt after the patriots. Sometimes they caught them and inflicted severe loss; more often they were eluded by their enemies, who fled by paths that regular troops could not follow, into some distant corner of the mountains. It was impossible to garrison each upland valley with a force that could resist a general levy of the insur[p. 211]gents. Even little towns like Potes, in the Liebana, Longa’s usual head quarters, which were repeatedly taken, could not be kept. The ‘Army of the North’ would have required 150,000 men instead of the 70,000 whom Bessières actually commanded, if it was to master the whole of this difficult region. Indeed, Cantabria could only have been conquered by an enemy possessing a sea force to attack it in the rear, and occupy all its little ports, as well as an overwhelming land army operating from all sides. To the end of the war Longa and Porlier, often hunted but never destroyed, maintained themselves without any great difficulty in their fastnesses. Nothing but the general despair and demoralization that might have followed the extinction of the patriotic cause in the whole of the rest of Spain, could have brought the war in this region to an end. Nothing of the kind occurred: the Cantabrians kept a high spirit; they won many small successes, and they were perpetually helped by the British from the side of the sea. Bessières had a hopeless problem before him in this quarter, considering the size of his army.
But this was not his only trouble; Bonnet in Asturias was holding Oviedo and the district immediately round it with a strong division, which varied at one time and another from 6,000 to 8,000 men. He was very useful in his present position, because he cut the Spanish line of defence along the north coast in two, and because he seemed to threaten Galicia from the north-east. The threat was not a very real one, for he had not enough men to deliver an attack on eastern Galicia and at the same time to hold Oviedo and its neighbourhood. But he was a source of trouble as well as of strength to his superiors, for it was very difficult to keep in touch with him through the pass of Pajares, and if he were to be attacked at once by the Galicians and by a British landing-force, his position would be a very dangerous one. He had been put to great trouble by Renovales’s naval expedition in October 1810[267], though this was but a small force and had not received any real help from Galicia along the land side. Bessières, after he had been a few months in authority, was inclined to withdraw Bonnet to the south side of the sierras, and to abandon Oviedo, but was warned against such a move by his master, who said that this would be ‘a detestable opera[p. 212]tion,’ as it would relieve Galicia from the threat of invasion, allow of the re-formation of a Junta and an army in Asturias, and necessitate a heavy concentration at Santander[268]. Nevertheless the Marshal did at one crisis withdraw the division from Oviedo.
Between Bonnet in the Asturias and Ciudad Rodrigo, the long front against Galicia was occupied by a single weak French division, that of Serras, whose head quarters were at Benavente, his advanced post at Astorga, and his flank-guards at Leon and Zamora[269]. If the army of Galicia had been in good order this force would have been in great danger, for it was not strong enough to hold the ground allotted to it. But when Del Parque in 1809 drew off to Estremadura the old Army of the North, he had left behind him only a few skeleton corps, and the best of these had been destroyed in defending Astorga in the following year. The formation of a new Galician army of 20,000 men had been decreed, and the cadres left behind in the country had been filled up in 1810, but the results were not satisfactory. The Captain-General, Mahy, was a man of little energy, and spent most of it in quarrels with the local Junta, whom he accused of conspiracy against him, and charged with secret correspondence with La Romana and his party. He seized their letters in the post and imprisoned two members, whereupon riots broke out, and complaints were sent to the Regency at Cadiz. This led to Mahy’s recall, and the captain-generalship was given to the Duke of Albuquerque, then on his mission to London. He died without having returned to Spain, so that the appointment was nugatory, and the Regency then gave it to Casta?os, who was at the same time made Captain-General of Estremadura, after the death of La Romana and the disaster at the Gebora. Casta?os went to the Tagus, to rally the poor remnants of the Estremaduran army, and while retaining the nominal command in Galicia never visited that province, but deputed the command in it to Santocildes, the young general who had so bravely defended Astorga in the preceding spring. He had been sent prisoner to France, but was adroit enough to escape[p. 213] from his captivity, and to make his way back to Corunna. His appointment was popular, but he got no great service out of the Galician army, which was in a deplorable condition, and hopelessly scattered. The Junta kept many battalions to garrison the harbour-fortresses of Corunna, Vigo, and Ferrol, and the main body, whose head quarters lay at Villafranca in the Vierzo, did not amount to more than 7,000 men, destitute of cavalry (which Galicia could never produce) and very poorly provided with artillery. There was another division, under General Cabrera, some 4,000 strong, at Puebla de Senabria, and a third under Barcena and Losada on the borders of the Asturias, opposite Bonnet. The whole did not amount to 16,000 raw troops—yet this was sufficient to hold Serras in observation and to watch Bonnet, who was too much distracted by the Cantabrian bands to be really dangerous. But in the spring of 1811 the Galicians could do no more, and Wellington was much chagrined to find that he could get no effective assistance from them, after he had driven Masséna behind the Agueda, and so shaken the hold of the French on the whole kingdom of Leon. It was not till June that Santocildes found it possible to descend from the hills and threaten Serras. This led to a petty campaign about Astorga and on the Orbigo river, which will be narrated in its due place.
While affairs stood thus in the north, King Joseph and his ‘Army of the Centre’ were profiting for many months from the absence of any danger upon the side of Portugal. Indeed, the period between September 1810 and April 1811 were the least disturbed of any in the short and troublous reign of the Rey Intruso, so far as regular military affairs went. There was no enemy to face save the guerrilleros, yet these bold partisans, of whom the best known were the Empecinado and El Medico (Dr. Juan Palarea) on the side of the eastern mountains, and Julian Sanchez more to the west, on the borders of Leon, sufficed to keep the 20,000 men of whom King Joseph could dispose[270][p. 214] in constant employment. Such a force was not too much when every small town, almost every village, of New Castile had to be provided with a garrison. Roughly speaking, each province absorbed a division: the Germans of the Rheinbund occupied La Mancha, Lahoussaye’s dragoons and the incomplete division of Dessolles[271] held Toledo and its district, the King’s Spaniards the Guadalajara country, leaving only the Royal Guards and some drafts and detachments to garrison the capital. It was with considerable difficulty that Joseph collected in January 1811 a small expeditionary force of not over 3,500 men[272], with which Lahoussaye went out, partly to open up communications with Soult in Estremadura, but more especially to search for any traces of the vanished army of Masséna in the direction of the Portuguese frontier. Lahoussaye started from Talavera on February 1, communicated by means of his cavalry with Soult’s outposts between Truxillo and Merida, and then went northward across the Tagus to Plasencia, from which his cavalry searched in vain, as far as Coria and Alcantara, for any news of the Army of Portugal. From Plasencia he was soon driven back to Toledo by want of supplies. Joseph had directed him to seize Alcantara, re-establish its broken bridge, and place a garrison there; but this turned out to be absolutely impossible, for it would have been useless to leave a small force in this remote spot, when it was certain that it must ere long retire for lack of food, and might well be cut off by the guerrilleros before it could reach Talavera, the nearest occupied point[273].
The Army of the Centre just sufficed to occupy the kingdom of New Castile, and was unable to do more. At least, however, it could maintain its position, and was in no danger. The King was even able to make state visits to places in the close neighbourhood of Madrid, such as Alcala and Guadalajara[274], and[p. 215] seems to have regarded the possibility of such a modest tour as a sign of the approaching pacification of this region.
But just at the moment when Joseph Bonaparte’s military situation was safe, if not satisfactory, he was passing through a diplomatic crisis which absorbed all his attention and reduced him to the verge of despair. We have already alluded, in an earlier chapter, to Napoleon’s insane resolve to annex all Spain beyond the Ebro to the French Empire[275], in return for which he was proposing to hand over Portugal, when it should be conquered, to his brother. The proclamation announcing this strange resolve, which was to make Frenchmen of Mina and all the guerrilleros of Navarre, no less than of the Catalan armies which were still striving so hard against Macdonald, was delayed in publication. For the Emperor wished to wait till Lisbon was in the hands of Masséna, before he made known his purpose. But Joseph was aware that the proclamation had been drawn up, and had been sent out to the governors of the northern provinces, who were only waiting for orders to issue it. The news that the English had evacuated Portugal might any day arrive, and would be the signal for the dismemberment of Spain. He had sent in succession to Paris his two most trusted Spanish adherents, the Duke of Santa-Fé and the Marquis of Almenara, to beg the Emperor to forgo his purpose; all was to no effect. Santa-Fé came back in December absolutely crushed by the reception that he had been given; the Emperor had delivered to him an angry diatribe, in which he complained that his brother forgot that he was a French prince, and remarked that ‘many other European sovereigns, who had received much harder measure, did not make nearly so much noise about it as the King of Spain[276].’ Almenara reached Madrid about a week later to report an equally characteristic interview with Napoleon. He had been directed to inform his master that he should be given one more chance. Let him open negotiations with the Cortes at Cadiz, making them the offer that if they would recognize him as King of Spain, he would recognize them as lawful representatives of the nation, and rule them according to the[p. 216] constitution drawn up at Bayonne. Cadiz and the other fortresses held by the troops of the Regency must open their gates, and Napoleon would then promise to make no annexations of Spanish soil; he would even guarantee the integrity of the kingdom. If the Cortes refused to treat, the Emperor would regard himself as free from any previous engagements made with his brother or the Spanish nation. The provinces beyond the Ebro would become part of France. He added that if affairs in Portugal went badly, it would not be wise to open negotiations with Cadiz at all, for fear that the Spaniards might take the mere fact that proposals had been made to them as a token of growing fear and depression on the part of Joseph.
The King and his ministers knew well the impracticability of making any offer to the government of Cadiz, which (with all its faults and internal dissensions) was determined to fight to the death, and had never shown the least intention of recognizing Napoleon’s nominee as King of Spain. They looked upon the scheme as merely a preliminary to the publication of the edict for the annexation of the provinces beyond the Ebro. King Joseph was to be made to demonstrate his own futility, since he would receive an angry and contemptuous reply, or no reply at all, and it would then be open to his brother to declare that the attempt to govern a united Spain by a king had failed, and that it was necessary to dismember it—perhaps to cut it up into a number of French military governments. This seems to have been Joseph’s own impression; in the council at which the Emperor’s proposal was discussed, he broke out into violent reproaches and bitter complaints against his brother, and explained with tears to his ministers that he and they were betrayed. He was now for abdicating, and this would have been the most dignified course to take. He talked of buying an estate in France, and settling down, far from Paris, as a private person. He had indeed charged his wife’s nephew, Marius Clary, to cross the Pyrenees, and purchase a castle and lands for him in Touraine or the South, where he might hide his disgrace and disappointment.
This move provoked Napoleon’s wrath. He signified his displeasure. ‘The members of the Imperial family could not legally make any acquisition of land in France without the[p. 217] formal consent of the Emperor. In addition, it was impossible for the King of Spain, or the commander of the Army of the Centre, to quit his post without having received the Imperial authorization. Painful as the declaration must be, if the King took such a hazardous step, he should be arrested at Bayonne on crossing the frontier. There must be no more talk about the constitution of Bayonne: the Emperor could dispose of Spain at his good pleasure, and in the interests of the French Empire alone.’ If Joseph persisted in the idea of abdication, he must first make a formal statement to that effect to the French ambassador at Madrid, and, provided that it was considered that the step would cause no dangerous results, nor give rise to any slanderous reports, he might come to his estate of Morfontaine near Paris and ‘finish the matter en règle[277].’
Joseph at first seemed inclined to accept any terms by which he might emerge from his present ignominious position, and actually had several interviews with Laforest, in which they discussed the drafting of a deed of abdication. But it seemed that Napoleon would prefer the prolongation of the present state of affairs, and for his own purposes intended that a puppet king should continue at Madrid. By the ambassador’s advice the document ultimately took the shape of a letter in which Joseph, instead of abdicating in definitive form, merely stated his wish to do so, and referred it to his brother. His confidant, Miot de Melito, with whom he talked over the whole matter, expresses his opinion that at the last moment the fascination of the crown overpowered his master’s full sense of resentment. ‘The King’s note was a good piece of writing, but I consider that it did not state clearly enough that the course to which he inclined, and which he preferred to all others, was abdication. I wished that he had made a stronger affirmation of this, and told him so, but to no effect. It was easy to see that the name of King had still a powerful attraction, from which Joseph could[p. 218] not escape, and I wondered at the glamour and intoxication which (as it seems) hangs about supreme power, since the mere shadow of that power could overweigh with him so many rebuffs and so much resentment[278].’
Napoleon made no reply to his brother’s declaration; he had no intention of taking over the formal responsibility for the government of Spain, and preferred to leave another to answer for all its obvious injustices and oppressions. Affairs were at a standstill for some months, till in April Joseph, taking the opportunity of a formal invitation to become one of the godfathers of the newly-born King of Rome, the heir of the Empire, made a sudden and unauthorized sally to Paris. He started from Madrid on April 23, accompanied by nine of his courtiers and ministers, and crossed the Bidassoa into France on May 10. He made no halt at Bayonne, lest he should be stopped there by orders from his brother, and when, at Dax in Gascony, he received an Imperial dispatch forbidding him to quit Spain, he was able to plead that it was too late to act upon it. Pursuing his journey night and day, he presented himself at Paris on May 15th, and announced to Napoleon that he was come to discharge in person the honourable duties of god-parent at the approaching baptism of his nephew.
Though annoyed at the King’s arrival, for refusals and evasions of a brother’s petitions are transacted more easily by letter than face to face, the Emperor thought it well to make no open show of displeasure, and accepted all the explanations given to him. There followed a series of interviews at Rambouillet, in which Joseph allowed himself to be talked out of his project of abdication: for the Emperor declared that he found him useful in his present position, and informed him that it was his duty, as a brother and a French prince, to obey the directions of the head of his house. In return Napoleon promised to make many arrangements which would render the King’s position less intolerable than it had been for the last year. He would provide him with a monthly subsidy of a million francs from the French treasury, of which half would be for the sustenance of his court and ministers, and the other half for the pay of the Army of the[p. 219] Centre. Orders were issued to Soult, commanding the Army of Andalusia, Bessières, commanding the newly-formed Army of the North, and Suchet, so far as the Army of Aragon was concerned (but not for Catalonia), by which they were directed to pay over to a commissary appointed by Joseph one quarter of the gross revenues which they were raising in the districts which they occupied. They were also directed to leave the law courts in the King’s hands, and not to allow judgements to be given in the name of the Emperor. It was this last practice, frequently adopted by Kellermann in Castile, which had irritated Joseph more than any other misdemeanour of the local commandants.
What Joseph most desired, a real directing power over the movements of all the French troops in Spain, was not given him. But he was granted a sort of illusory superintending authority: if he was at the head quarters of any of the armies, he was to be given the honours of supreme command; all the marshals and generals commanding armies were to send him frequent reports, and not to undertake any operations without informing him of them. ‘The King must have reports of everything that happens; he must know everything, and be able to act in his central position as a sort of agency for transmitting information to the generals. This communication of intelligence, observations, and advice may even take place through his Spanish Minister of War[279],’ wrote the Emperor. The King flattered himself that this meagre concession gave him something like a directing authority over the armies. He told his courtiers that he was given the position of General-in-Chief[280], and used his brother’s permission to send advice in reams to each of the local commanders. Unfortunately there was no way of making them take this advice; they answered more or less politely, showing reasons why they could not follow it, and went on their own ways as before. It was to no effect that Joseph got leave to have his old friend Marshal Jourdan sent back to him, first as governor of Madrid, and later as chief of the staff. He flattered himself[p. 220] that his dispatches would be taken more seriously by Soult or Suchet when they came countersigned by a marshal of France. But he erred, for the younger commanders looked upon Jourdan as effete and past his prime—nor were they altogether wrong.
Nothing can be more curious than the Emperor’s memorandum to Berthier, which directs him to lay these conditions before Joseph. ‘I am thus,’ he writes, ‘satisfying the desires which the King expressed to me, save on the single point of the supreme command over my troops. I cannot give away that supreme command, because I do not see any man capable of managing the troops, and yet the command ought to be one and indivisible. In the note which the King gave me, all the arrangements were complex and confused. It is in the nature of things that if one marshal were placed at Madrid, and directed all operations, he would want to have all the glory along with all the responsibility. The commanders of the Armies of the South and of Portugal would think themselves under the orders not so much of the King as of that marshal, and in consequence would not give him obedience.... My intention is to make no change whatever in the military command, neither with the Army of the North, nor the Army of Aragon, nor the Army of the South, nor the Army of Portugal, save so much as is necessary to secure for the King reports from them all.... I want to do all that I can to give the King a new prestige on his return to Spain, but nothing that may in any way disorganize the Army of Andalusia, or any of the other armies[281].’
It is clear that we have in these few sentences the key to all Napoleon’s difficulties in conducting the Spanish war. He did not wish to ‘have a marshal at Madrid who would want to have all the glory along with all the responsibility,’ i. e. he refused to make one of his servants dangerously great. Soult’s intrigues for kingship at Oporto in 1809 were not forgotten, and Soult would have been the obvious candidate for supreme command, now that Masséna had been tried and found wanting. The Emperor preferred to go on with the hopeless system that was already working, by which he himself directed operations from[p. 221] Paris, basing his orders on facts that were often a month old when he learnt of them, and sending out those orders to reach their destination another month later. He was aware of the evils of this arrangement, but anything was better than to hand over supreme power over 300,000 soldiers to a single lieutenant. It is strange that he did not resolve to descend into Spain himself during the summer of 1811, for European politics were at the moment so quiet that he was actually thinking of concentrating 80,000 men at Boulogne, for a real or a threatened descent on the British Isles[282], a project which he had not been able to dream of since Trafalgar. The tension between France and Russia, which was to increase in a dangerous fashion during the autumn, was not so great in May or June as to make the idea of a Spanish campaign impossible. If it was possible to think of an invasion of England at this moment, it was surely equally feasible to consider the advantages of a descent on Lisbon or Cadiz. But apparently it was the physical distance between Paris and the further end of the Peninsula which deterred the Emperor from seizing what turned out to be the last available opportunity for a sally beyond the Pyrenees. As he himself observed on another occasion, he would be at the end of the world in Portugal, and a crisis might arise behind his back before he got any adequate news of it[283]. This was different from campaigning in central Europe; when at Vienna or Berlin he was still in touch with Paris. The only parallel to an invasion of Portugal would be an invasion of Russia, and it will be remembered that Napoleon’s apprehensions were absolutely justified by what occurred in the autumn of 1812 during his absence at Moscow. The astounding conspiracy of General Malet was within an ace of succeeding,[p. 222] because it was possible to put about all manner of false rumours, when the Emperor was lost to sight on the steppes. A handful of plotters—we might almost say a single plotter, Malet himself—with no assets save impudence and reckless courage, seized the imperial ministers, mustered an armed force, and almost established a provisional government and mastered Paris. This was only possible because the Emperor and the grand army had got so far off that the touch between them and France had been lost, and absence of news for many days had set the tongue of rumour loose[284]. Under such circumstances almost anything might happen, for imposing as was the Colossus of the French Empire, it stood on no firm base, its feet were of clay. Napoleon hoped to build a permanent structure, but there can be no doubt that all through his reign its stability depended on his own life and strength. If he had been cut off suddenly by a cannon-ball at Jena or Wagram, or by the knife of a fanatic such as Staps—Spain could have produced such enthusiasts by the score—chaos would have supervened in France. When once the rumour was set about that the Emperor was dead, anything became possible in Paris. No one knew this better than himself; in his cynical moments he would remark to his confidants that he was well aware that if sudden death came to him the public feeling would be one of relief rather than of sorrow. It was the constraining force of his own indomitable will alone which kept everything together, and if he removed himself to some very remote corner of Europe, from which his orders could not be transmitted continuously and at short intervals, there was grave danger that the machine might run down.
Hence it may perhaps be said that the Peninsula was saved from the presence of the Emperor in 1811 because of the necessary limitations of a one-man power. He dared not remove himself from the centre of affairs; he would not make one of his jealous and ambitious lieutenants over-great, by giving him supreme command. This being so, the bad old system had to go on, and that system of over-late orders grounded on over-late information[285], and followed (or not followed) by over-late[p. 223] execution, was bound to fail, when the enemy’s movements were guided by the cool and resolute brain of Wellington. More than once Napoleon wrote in a petulant mood to complain that it was absurd that all his Spanish armies should be detained and kept in check by a mere 30,000 British troops[286]; he refused for a long time to take the Portuguese seriously, and would only reckon the Spanish guerrilleros as ‘brigands’ or ‘canaille.’ What he failed to see was that a small army worked by a general on the spot, who had minute local knowledge and admirable foresight, was necessarily superior to a much larger force directed by orders from a distance, and commanded by several marshals who were bitterly jealous of each other. Moreover he never thoroughly comprehended the way in which the movements of his armies were delayed by the fact that they were moving in a country where every peasant was their enemy, where provisions could only be collected by armed force, and where no dispatch would reach its destination unless it were guarded by an escort of from 50 to 250 men. And he refused to see that a division or an army corps was in Spain practically no more than the garrison of the province which it occupied—that, if it moved, that province immediately became hostile soil again, and would have to be reconquered. He was always prescribing the concentration of large bodies of men, by means of the evacuation of places or regions of secondary importance[287]. His marshals, knowing the[p. 224] practical inconveniences of such evacuations, were loth to carry them out. To disgarrison a region meant that all communications were cut off, and that the nearest posts were at once blockaded by guerrillero bands. Whenever the Army of Andalusia concentrated, it ceased to receive its dispatches or its convoys from Madrid, and soon learned that Granada and Seville were being menaced. Whenever the Army of the North concentrated, the road between Vittoria and Burgos was cut, and the partidas descended from the Cantabrian mountains to threaten all the posts in Old Castile. And the concentration, when made, could only continue for a few days for lack of food, for there is hardly a region in Spain where a very large army, 80,000 or 100,000 men, can live on the country for a week. It was this, and no mere jealousy of rival generals, which forced Soult and Marmont to part, as we shall see, in June 1811, and Marmont and Dorsenne in September of the same year, and which in November 1812 prevented the immense body formed by the united Armies of the South, Centre, North, and Portugal, from pursuing Wellington to Ciudad Rodrigo. If such a force as 80,000 men were concentrated, it had to be fed; after a few days of living on the country it would be forced to ask for convoys. But convoys coming from long distances were the destined prey of the guerrilleros; if not captured they were at least delayed ad infinitum. Meanwhile the army in front would run out of provisions, and be forced to scatter itself once more in order to live. After Masséna’s venture no French marshal ever dared to think of plunging into Portugal, where he knew that he would find before him a country systematically devastated. No one was better aware of this limitation of the French power than Wellington. He had written as early as 1809 that the enemy could not turn him out of the Peninsula with anything less than 100,000 men, and that he could make such arrangements that an army of that number could not live in the country. The prophecy was fulfilled over and over again. With the enormous strength of the imperial armies it was not impossible to collect 80,000 or 100,000 men—but it was impossible to feed them. All concentrations must be but temporary. When the enemy was massed, the Anglo-Portuguese army might have to give ground, or only to accept an action under the most favourable conditions. But the[p. 225] French would soon have to scatter, and then Wellington regained his freedom of action.
It was useless, therefore, for the Emperor to reiterate his orders that his marshals were to join their armies and ‘livrer enfin une belle bataille’ against Wellington[288]. It takes two sides to fight a battle, and Wellington was determined never to accept a general action, when the numbers were hopelessly against him. He would give back into Portugal, and the enemy could not follow him for more than a march or two.
Meanwhile, though he could not undertake to descend himself into Portugal, Napoleon did not cease to pour troops across the Pyrenees. It is often said that after Masséna’s expedition of 1810 he began to neglect the Peninsula, and to turn all his thoughts towards the growing tension with Russia. This is not correct; it ignores the fact that the French armies in Spain rose to their highest numbers during the year 1811. While not ceasing to send their regular drafts to all the corps there engaged, the Emperor dispatched three new divisions of his best troops to the front during the summer. These were no collections of newly-raised fourth battalions or régiments de marche, but old units of high reputation, drawn partly from the Army of Italy, partly from the garrisons of the coasts of France. One division, under General Souham, ultimately went to join the Army of Portugal, the second, under General Caffarelli, was absorbed in the Army of the North, the third, under General Reille, was sent to reinforce the garrison of Navarre and Aragon, where Suchet wanted fresh troops to occupy the land behind him, when he was pushing forward towards Catalonia and Valencia. In addition, two fresh regiments of Italian troops were requisitioned from the Viceroy Eugène Beauharnais for service in eastern Spain[289]. The total reinforcement to the armies beyond[p. 226] the Pyrenees amounted to some 25,000 men, in addition to the regular annual draft of conscripts. The deficit in the strength of the French forces caused by Masséna’s losses in Portugal was more than made up, and the gross total in October 1811 amounted to no less than 368,000 men. Nothing was withdrawn from the Peninsula till the following winter.
SUCHET ON THE EBRO. THE FALL OF TORTOSA.
DECEMBER 1810-MARCH 1811
In the last pages of the third volume of this work we brought the history of the campaigns of Suchet and Macdonald in Aragon and Catalonia as far as December 12th, 1810, the day on which the Marshal came down to the lower Ebro at the head of the field-divisions of the 7th Corps, in order to cover the long-delayed siege of Tortosa, which his colleague, the commander of the Army of Aragon, was about to take in hand.
For five months, ever since August 1810, as it will be remembered, Suchet had been waiting to commence the attack on Tortosa, which he was not strong enough to conduct with his own resources, since the besieger would have not only to execute his own operations, but to fend off at the same time all attempts by the Spanish armies of Catalonia and Valencia to relieve a fortress which was equally important to each of them. For Tortosa commanded the one land route by which Catalonia and Valencia were still able to communicate with each other; no other bridge on the Ebro was in Spanish hands. It was highly desirable to keep the line of defence in eastern Spain unbroken, and Tortosa lay at its narrowest and most dangerous point. The Emperor Napoleon attached an immense importance to its capture, and considered that after its fall, and that of Tarragona, the conquest of Valencia and the termination of the war on this side of the Peninsula would be at hand. Already in September 1810 he was looking forward to all these events as matters of the near future[290]. But though Tortosa was actually to be captured in January 1811, Tarragona in June, and Valencia in December, the long-foreseen consummation was never to come to pass. For two years more, down to the very end of[p. 228] the war, the indomitable Catalans were destined to maintain their independence, despite of all the successes of the French arms.
Tortosa was not quite so indispensable in reality as it looked on the map. For though it would have been a point of absolutely vital importance to the Spaniards, if they had been compelled to conduct all their operations by land, it must not be forgotten that the British command of the Mediterranean gave an alternative route for communication between north and south, which the French could never touch. Long after Tortosa had fallen, troops were repeatedly and easily transferred from Catalonia to Valencia, and vice versa, despite of the fact that Suchet had completely mastered all the land routes. Indeed it may be said that the sea passage from one to the other was always preferable to the route through Tortosa, for the country about both banks of the lower Ebro was rugged, barren, and thinly peopled, and Tortosa itself—a decayed city of 10,000 inhabitants—was the only place in this region which presented resources of any kind for an army on the march. It is, moreover, twenty miles from the sea, and not a port; strange to say, there is no decent harbour at the mouth of the Ebro. Though the river is intermittently navigable for a good many miles in its lower course, its estuary has never been a point through which trade discharges itself to the sea. The commerce of southern Catalonia goes to Tarragona, sixty miles to the north of the Ebro mouth, that of Northern Valencia to Peniscola, thirty miles to its south. Tortosa, indeed, was more important to the French than to the Spaniards, since Napoleon’s armies were tied down to land routes, and, if ever they were to make a lodgement in Valencia, would find the possession of that city and its bridge absolutely necessary, if they were to keep in touch with the troops left in Catalonia.
At last, in December 1810, Macdonald had accomplished the preliminary duties which rendered it possible for him to move on Tortosa. He had revictualled Barcelona, so that it would be safe for some months from famine, and he had repaired the gap in the French lines in northern Catalonia, which had been caused by Henry O’Donnell’s daring expedition to La Bispal in the preceding September. Though the Spanish army had not been[p. 229] crushed, nor indeed seriously injured, it had been thrust aside for the moment: Macdonald had brought down three divisions, over 15,000 men, to Mora on the Ebro, some twenty-five miles to the north of Tortosa, and with them he was prepared to act as a covering force to the projected siege. He was strong enough to render any attempt at relief by the Catalan army impossible, for a force sufficient to beat him could not be collected by the enemy, unless they abandoned all their outlying posts; and this was practically impossible, for local feeling in the Principality was too strong to allow of the withdrawal of the smaller Spanish detachments from the various valleys and small towns which they covered. There was still the Valencian army to be considered; but Suchet considered that he could himself deal with that unfortunate and oft-defeated force; he had already proved its weakness at the series of engagements in August[291] in which he had so effectually scattered the levies of the dictator José Caro. One division would probably suffice to keep the Valencians at bay, while with two others the actual siege of Tortosa could be taken in hand. It was the Catalan army alone which had made Suchet anxious, and he was now to be relieved of all care on that side by Macdonald.
The preparations for the siege, it will be remembered, had long been in progress; ever since August magazines and material had been accumulating at Xerta. They had been brought down the Ebro from Mequinenza, whenever the water was high enough to allow of navigation—not without much difficulty, and occasional petty disasters when the Catalan miqueletes made a pounce upon an exposed convoy[292]. Fifty-two heavy guns were now lying ready at Xerta, with 30,000 rounds of ammunition for them, and 90,000 lb. more of powder. To set in motion the besieging army and this very large battering-train, it only required that the covering forces on each side of the Ebro should take up their positions. When Macdonald had brought up his troops to Mora, and undertaken to move them to Perello, the junction point of the two roads from Tortosa to Tarragona, nothing more remained to be settled. If the Catalan army should try to attack him it would certainly be beaten, being far too weak[p. 230] to face 15,000 French troops concentrated in one body. For the restraining of the Valencians, on the other side of the Ebro, General Musnier with 7,000 men was placed at Uldecona, twelve miles beyond Tortosa on the great road to the south.
These arrangements being made, Suchet crossed the Ebro at Xerta by his pontoon bridge on December 15th with twelve battalions, and made a sweeping circular march to shut in Tortosa on the northern side, while five battalions more, under General Abbé, moved by the other bank to block the bridge-head, by which the city communicates with Valencia and the south. The operation was completed without resistance, save at the Col de Alba, where a post of 600 Catalans, placed to cover the road between Tortosa and the pass of Balaguer, was discovered. This small force was driven into Tortosa after a skirmish; two small convoys on their way from Tarragona by sea had to turn back, because the way into the city was closed.
The siege of Tortosa was remarkable for its swift progress and complete success—it can only be compared with Wellington’s capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, just a year later, in this respect. The Army of Aragon arrived in front of the city on December 16th—the surrender took place on January 2nd. At first sight the problem set before Suchet appeared by no means likely to receive such a rapid solution, for Tortosa as a fortress had many strong points. The city lies on and around the end of a spur of the Sierra de Alba, which runs down to the bank of the Ebro. This spur at its termination is many-headed: three ravines divide it into four separate hills, of which the highest is that crowned by the castle. The other three die down into undulations, and leave between them and the Ebro a comparatively flat space, on which the lower part of the town is built. Its higher quarters lie on the slopes where the various hills begin to rise from the level. The old enceinte of Tortosa had consisted of a mediaeval wall running across the hills and down the ravines between them, so as to enclose nothing but the inhabited parts of the city. But after a famous siege during the War of the Spanish Succession (1708), a number of outer works had been constructed to crown the culminating summit of each hill, and keep future besiegers at a distance, while part of the inner ancient fortifications had been transformed into a series of bastions, so far as the ground allowed.
[p. 231]The outer works were: (1) Starting from the river, on the extreme north-east front, a large hornwork called Las Tenazas[293], crowning the hill which lies most to the left, protecting the suburb of Remolinos, and commanding the flat ground as far as the river, from which it is only 400 yards distant. (2) A second hornwork covered the outer side of the castle hill: this was called El Bonete; there was a deep ravine on each side of it. (3) A sort of outer enceinte with three bastions (La Victoria, El Cristo, and Cruces) runs along the summit of the fourth hill, which is broader than the rest and expands into a plateau; the old town wall formed a second line in rear of this advanced front. (4) The last hill, that most towards the south-east, was crowned by a strong closed fort, named after the Duke of Orleans, the general who had captured the city for Philip V in the year 1708. Between the Orleans hill and the river there was no high ground; this was the only open front of the city which was approachable on a level without any natural hindrances. Here the enceinte had no outer works; it consisted of two large bastions, San Pedro and San Juan, with a demi-lune named El Temple projecting between them. This last was a low work of no great strength: the curtain behind it, which joined San Pedro and San Juan, was a mere shell with no terrace or room for guns. The other (south-western) side of the city was sufficiently protected by the broad and swift river, 300 yards in width; behind it was only the ancient wall, but, as this was wholly inaccessible, its weakness did not matter. In the middle of the river front, which was 1,200 yards long, was a gate leading to the great bridge of boats. This was protected on the further bank by a little tête-du-pont, built in the form of a ravelin and well armed with artillery.
The garrison consisted, when the siege began, of 7,179 men, including 600 artillery and a weak battalion of Urban Guards. The regiments were drawn partly from the Catalonian and partly from the Valencian army, there being seven battalions from the former and four from the latter[294]. The governor was[p. 232] Major-General Lilli, Conde de Alacha, an old officer who had won some credit, two years back, by bringing off his small corps intact after the battle of Tudela, when he had been cut off by the French in the mountains[295]. Unfortunately it is impossible to argue that because an officer has made a skilful retreat he is a good fighting-man. Lilli, indeed, proved the reverse on this occasion—all that can be said in his defence is that he was old and in bad health. His conduct during the siege was vacillating and inexplicable; he more than once declared that he would give over charge of the defence to the second in command, Brigadier-General Yriarte. But he would then appear again, and countermand all Yriarte’s orders. In the end he capitulated on his own account, against the wishes and without the knowledge of the brigadier.
The problem in poliorcetics set before Suchet and his engineers at Tortosa had some resemblance to that which was to confront Wellington at Badajoz a few months later. Given a town to besiege which is partly built on heights crowned by forts and partly in the flat, is it better to attack one of the forts, which if taken commands the whole town, or to start against the lower front? The latter will be easier to assail, but after its fall the strongholds on the heights may hold out as independent fortresses. Whereas if a dominating work on a high-lying hill is taken in hand, it may make a very hard and long resistance, but, if once it is captured, the whole city is overlooked by it and must surrender. The answer to the problem seems to be that all depends on the governor and the garrison; if he and they are weak, it will suffice to attack the easier front, for when the lower town has fallen the morale will be so shaken that they will surrender, without attempting to hold the upper works. But if they are active and obstinate, it may be worth while to aim[p. 233] at the most commanding position, which, if captured, absolutely compels the capitulation of the whole place. Yet there remains the danger that the crucial fort may be so strong that no effort can take it from a determined defender. This happened to Wellington at the two earlier sieges of Badajoz; the fall of San Cristobal would have brought about most inevitably the surrender of the city. But it proved too hard a nut to crack, in the time and with the means at the English general’s disposal. Suchet at Tortosa struck at the easiest front, taking the risk that he might have to conduct a second siege of the upper works (as he had to do at Tarragona, his next leaguer). When he had breached the weakest point, but before a storm had been tried, the imbecile governor capitulated.
The weak front of Tortosa was the bastion of San Pedro and the demi-lune of El Temple on its flank. They were not properly supported or flanked by any works on higher ground, for Fort Orleans (on the nearest hill) did not command all the flats in front of San Pedro, and moreover Suchet intended to give this fort so much business on its own account that its gunners would have little attention to spare for the attack on the lower ground to their right. There were two additional advantages: the soil in front of San Pedro was soft river mould, very easy to dig; and moreover this bastion could be enfiladed by batteries on the other side of the Ebro. Such batteries had nothing to fear, if properly constructed, from the guns of the little tête-du-pont; while on the river front of the city there were no cannon at all—they could not be mounted on the mediaeval walls.
On the 16th, 17th, and 18th Suchet was employed in bringing up his siege-guns, choosing the emplacements of his camps, and constructing flying-bridges across the river, both above and below the fortress. On the 19th active operations started, with the development of a false attack on Fort Orleans, whose attention it was necessary to distract. The construction of a first parallel against this work was begun with some ostentation, and had to be carried out under a furious fire from its artillery. On the night of the 20th-21st the real business commenced: 2,300 men crept across the flat ground by the river opposite San Pedro, and threw up an entrenchment within 160 yards of its ditch. They were undiscovered and unopposed, for the night[p. 234] was dark and windy, and the Spaniards had no outposts beyond the walls, and kept bad watch. At dawn 500 paces of trench had been constructed, and a safe access to the parallel had been contrived, by connecting one of its ends with a ravine which cuts across the flat a little to the rear, and whose bottom could not be searched by the guns of the place. The trench was sloped away on the right, so as not to be enfiladed by downward fire from Fort Orleans, which would have commanded it supposing it had been drawn exactly parallel to the front of San Pedro. This was a tremendously advantageous start; seldom has a besieger been able to begin his works at such a short distance from his objective.
Next morning the new trench became visible to the Spaniards, who turned all the artillery of the neighbouring front upon it, but to little effect, for the soil was soft and the French had dug deep. A sortie was made from the demi-lune of El Temple, but was driven off with loss. The only successful effort of the Spaniards on this day was that the guns of Fort Orleans succeeded in destroying part of the trenches of the false attack in front of them, and drove out the workers. This was of little consequence, as Suchet was not really aiming at the fort. On the 22nd and 23rd December the main attack was urged with a celerity that seemed appalling to the defenders; despite of a heavy fire of musketry as well as of artillery, approaches were pushed forward from the first parallel, to within 80 yards of the bastion of San Pedro and 110 yards of the Temple demi-lune. The works opposite Fort Orleans were repaired and extended. On the 24th the two approaches in the plain were connected by a long trench, which formed the second parallel, only 60 yards from the walls. On the 25th new zigzags, thrown out from this line, reached the glacis of San Pedro. The garrison made two sorties in the night to hinder this advance at all hazards, but failed, being driven off by the musketry from the second parallel without much difficulty: the force employed, 300 men, was too small. Meanwhile the artillery and sappers were constructing ten batteries, four—and these the largest—in the main frontal attack, but four others on the heights over against Fort Orleans, and two beyond the river, whose special purpose was to enfilade the front of San Pedro,[p. 235] and also to play upon the bridge of boats which joined the city to the tête-du-pont. The trenches on the heights before Fort Orleans were also strengthened, and a second parallel constructed in front of the first, at some loss of life; but it was necessary to keep the enemy on this front employed, or he would have interfered too much with the real attack in the plain.
All this had been accomplished before the French had fired a single gun; there is hardly another instance to be quoted of a siege in which the assailants got up to the glacis, and crowned the covered way, without any assistance from their artillery. It seems that the gunnery of the defence must have been exceptionally bad, and the sorties hitherto had been small and feeble—quite insufficient to interfere with, much less to destroy, the approaches. Noting batteries sketched out on several points and approaching completion, Yriarte saw that he must at all costs try to delay the opening of the adversary’s fire, and on the night of the 27th-28th made two sallies in considerable force—600 men came out of the Rastro gate, beyond Fort Orleans, to attack the upper trenches, as many more issued from San Pedro against the main attack. The first-named sortie was an entire failure—most of the men lay down and began to skirmish with the trench-guard before they had got near the works; a very few reached them, and were killed on the parapet. But the attack in the plain was a serious one, and pressed home. The lodgement in the covered way was captured and destroyed, and the Spaniards penetrated to the second parallel, and captured part of it for a time. They were finally driven out by a reserve of four battalions commanded by General Abbé, but not before they had done considerable damage. The besiegers had to spend the following day and night (28-29 December) in repairing the trenches and parapets, and getting a fresh lodgement in the covered way. On the morning of the latter day the ten siege-batteries opened simultaneously with 45 guns, and very soon gained a marked superiority over the fire of the defence. The cannon of Fort Orleans and the bastion of San Juan were silenced, as were also those of the Temple demi-lune and San Pedro. The bridge of boats was nearly destroyed. Next night, the Spanish fire being crushed, the third parallel was[p. 236] constructed on the very brink of the ditch of San Pedro, and within 25 yards of the wall of the bastion. The mortar batteries were employed in distributing a rain of projectiles in the streets behind the attacked front, to prevent the besieged from constructing defences and barricades on which they might fall back when the wall was breached. Though not altogether successful—for the Spaniards succeeded in building some traverses and in blocking and loopholing many houses—the bombardment caused many casualties, and cowed the population, who evacuated this quarter and sought refuge in the interior of the town. The interior of Fort Orleans was also shelled with some effect: its garrison retired to their bomb-proofs, and kept very quiet, making little attempt to repair the injuries to its outer wall, or to replace the injured cannon.
On the night of the 30th the French succeeded in getting down from the third parallel into the ditch of San Pedro, with the object of mining the scarp and blowing down sufficient debris to fill the ditch. Their first party was driven out again by the fire of two guns which had been brought up to enfilade the ditch from the extreme flank of the bastion. But on the following morning all the siege-batteries were turned on to these guns, and destroyed them. Meanwhile the Spaniards had abandoned the tête-du-pont, taking the men away by boat, and throwing the guns into the water, except three injured and spiked pieces. The ditch was occupied during the day (December 31st) and the miners got to work, so little incommoded by the fire of the defenders, who were hardly visible on the wall, that they lost only two men killed while establishing themselves in their dangerous position. Their most serious hindrance came from the good quality of the masonry which they were attacking—it was mediaeval work and as hard as iron. The decisive stroke at this point, however, was to be given by the artillery, and on the night of the 31st a battery for four 24-pounders was commenced in the third parallel—only 25 yards away from the ramparts of San Pedro. It had not yet opened when, at ten o’clock on the morning of January 1st, 1811, the governor hoisted the white flag, and sent a Colonel Veyan into Suchet’s camp, to treat for surrender. The proposals, however, were quite inadmissible, as Alacha only covenanted to evacuate[p. 237] Tortosa if it were not relieved in fifteen days, and demanded that the garrison should not be prisoners of war, but should be allowed to march to Tarragona with arms and baggage. Suchet refused to treat (as was natural) but was delighted with the aspect of affairs—a garrison which begins to parley before there is a practicable breach in its walls is obviously demoralized, and needs only a little further persuasion by the strong arm. He sent back with the Spanish parlementaire his own chief of the staff, Colonel Saint Cyr-Nugues, with orders to impress on the governor the futility of further demands such as those he had just made. He announced that he should storm the place next morning unless one of the upper forts were placed in his hands as a pledge of complete submission. The governor therefore called and consulted a council of war: some of the officers and notables assembled voted that an attempt must be made to defend the breach, others that the garrison should retire into the castle and forts, and abandon the town as untenable. But there were some despairing voices raised: the representatives of the municipality spoke with terror of the bombardment of the last few days; some of the officers complained that their troops were completely demoralized, and were leaving their posts to hide in the town. Suchet’s proposals, nevertheless, were rejected.
Only a little more persuasion, however, was required to break down Alacha’s nerve. On the morning of the 2nd of January the 4-gun battery opposite San Pedro opened with the best effect; by the afternoon there was a breach 15 yards broad, and the miners reported that they had got deep enough into the lower walls to make an explosion profitable. The curtain at the back of the Temple demi-lune had also been much battered, and was crumbling—but an assault here was not practicable, as the intervening work was still in the hands of the Spaniards. For a second time the governor hoisted the white flag, but Suchet ordered the fire to continue at the breach, and began to collect his storming columns in the shelter of the parallels, while his mortar batteries played on the town at large. He was afraid that the enemy was scheming for a suspension of arms, during which they would clandestinely repair and retrench the broken wall. The answer that he sent back, when a second parlementaire came out to him, was that he must have a simple[p. 238] and complete capitulation, and that one of the upper forts must be placed in his hands before he would allow the bombardment to cease.
Map of the siege of Tortosa
Enlarge TORTOSA
Alacha continued to keep the white flag flying on the citadel and to exchange messages with Suchet, while the fire was still going on at the breach of San Pedro, where Yriarte was doing his best to keep his men together, though he had his doubts as to the result of the threatened assault. Meanwhile the French general took an extraordinary resolution: gathering from the confused and wavering replies of the governor that the old man was at his wit’s end, and ready to yield to pressure, he came to the castle gate himself, with his staff and a company of grenadiers, and sent for the officer on guard—who did not order his men to fire because the white flag was flying, and messengers continually passing to and fro. Suchet told the astonished subaltern that hostilities were at an end, and that he must see the governor without delay. When Alacha came down to him, he assumed a peremptory tone, said that further resistance was criminal, that the assault was about to take place at once, and that the garrison would be put to the sword if resistance continued. He bade the governor ratify on the spot the terms of capitulation which had been sent in upon the previous afternoon. Utterly cowed, the old man obeyed at once, called for a pen, and signed the document upon the carriage of a gun. The company of grenadiers which had accompanied Suchet occupied the castle, and orders were sent down to the city to cease all resistance. The first notice that Yriarte got of what had happened was by hearing French drums beating in the streets behind him, as a column descended from the citadel to force the defenders of the breach to lay down their arms[296]. When they had withdrawn, the storming column ran into the gap, and sacked the quarter adjoining, despite of the cries and[p. 239] remonstrances of their officers. They would not be cheated out of what they considered their lawful prey[297].
In this disgraceful way fell Tortosa, after only eighteen days of siege, twelve of open trenches, and four of bombardment. The French lost no more than 400 men, nearly half of them among the sappers and artillerymen[298], for the infantry only suffered in repelling the sorties. The Spaniards had about 1,400 killed and wounded, but as the garrison marched out only 3,974 strong and had started with 7,179, it is clear that there had been other wastage. During the last days of the siege the Urban Guard disappeared, and the commanders of the regular troops were complaining bitterly of desertion among their men. Indeed, from the governor downwards, there seems to have been too much demoralization in all ranks. The second in command, Yriarte, and many other officers did their duty, but the defence was not what might have been expected from Catalans, with the example of Gerona before their eyes. From the start Suchet had the mastery, and largely owing to the mismanagement of his adversaries; if (for example) they had kept proper watch, he would never have been able to start his first parallel at the distance of only 160 yards from the walls—this piece of luck saved him many days of work. But if the defence was unskilful, and anything rather than resolute, the main responsibility falls on the governor, whose conduct was calculated to discourage even the most zealous subordinates. For he sometimes pleaded his age and infirmity, and declared that he handed over all responsibility to the second in command, shutting himself up in the castle for whole days at a time; but on other occasions he interfered in details, countermanded orders, and practically resumed charge of the defence. But to call a council of war, to receive its opinion in favour of protracted defence, and then to capitulate behind its back was worst of all. Such con[p. 240]duct was absolutely ignominious, and it was not without reason that the Catalan Junta ordered him to be tried (in his absence) for cowardice and treason. He was condemned to death, and the sentence (grotesquely enough) carried out upon his effigy, while he was safe in France, a prisoner on parole.
That nothing was done from outside to save Tortosa was mainly due to the rapidity of Suchet’s operations. The Junta of Catalonia was busily engaged in concerting measures for concentrating a relieving army, had sent to Cadiz for arms and (if possible) reinforcements, and had opened negotiations with the Valencians and with the irregular forces of Carbajal and Villa Campa in the Aragonese mountains. But who could calculate that the defence would last only eighteen days? Before any general scheme had been worked out the place had fallen[299]. The only organized force in the neighbourhood was the section of the Catalan army which lay in and about Tarragona. The responsibility here lay no longer with the active Henry O’Donnell, who had thrown up the command in December, and sailed to the Balearic Islands to give his gangrened wounds time to heal. General Yranzo, as the senior officer in the principality, ought to have taken over the charge of operations; but he called a council of war at Tarragona, and declared himself unwilling to assume the position that had fallen to him. He was unpopular, and the Catalans were holding violent meetings in favour of the Marquis of Campoverde, who enjoyed much local popularity at the moment. This ambitious officer finally obtained the interim command, owing to the abnegation of his seniors; but Tortosa had fallen before he was seated in the saddle, for he was finally recognized as chief only upon January 6th, four days after the capitulation.
But even a capable officer, enjoying undisputed control over all the Catalan forces, could have done little during the few days that the siege of Tortosa lasted. The covering army under Macdonald was too strong to be meddled with by the two divisions based on Tarragona. On the first day of the siege (as we have already seen) he marched from Mora with his 15,000 men: on the 18th he came up to Perello, where meet the two[p. 241] roads from Tortosa to the north, thus absolutely barring any attempt to approach the place. After some days he found it impossible to feed his troops in this rugged spot, and divided them, placing one division of 6,000 men under Frère on the Tarragona-Amposta road, in the direct rear of the besieging army, while with the other two he retired to Ginestar on the Ebro, twenty miles due north of Tortosa, from whence he could reinforce Suchet in a single march if the Spaniards made any movement. But no one came against him: the existence of his army in this quarter sufficed to paralyse the modest force then lying in the neighbourhood of Tarragona. Campoverde took one division to the Fort of Balaguer, covering the coast road, from which he observed Frère at a distance; while Yranzo with the other occupied Macdonald’s old head quarters at Momblanch. But they knew that they were too weak to risk an advance from these points, and while they remained quiet Tortosa fell. The only diversions carried out during the siege were in corners of Catalonia, where even a considerable success would have had no effect on the course of affairs on the lower Ebro. A French foraging party of 650 cavalry was cut up at Tarrega, near Lerida, on January 1, by a detachment from Momblanch. On December 25, a landing party from the British frigates on the Catalan station surprised the post of Palamos, and destroyed there two gunboats and eight transports which were coasting down from Cette towards Barcelona. But remaining on shore too long they were surprised by a French flying column, and driven back to their boats with a loss of over 200 men, including Captain Fane of the Cambrian, the officer in command.
On the news of the fall of Tortosa the Spanish divisions drew back towards Tarragona. Suchet left General Habert in charge of the captured city, dispersed Musnier’s troops to Morella, Alca?iz and Mequinenza, and left the Neapolitan brigade lent him by Macdonald at Mora. Harispe’s division escorted the Spanish prisoners to Saragossa, and was accompanied by Suchet himself, who had much to settle in Aragon before he took in hand the siege of Tarragona, the next task imposed upon him by the Emperor, who had informed him that ‘he would find his Marshal’s baton within its walls’. Before leaving the neighbourhood of Tortosa Suchet ordered four[p. 242] battalions of Habert’s division to execute a coup de main upon the little fort of San Felipe de Balaguer, on the coast defile of the Col de Balaguer so often mentioned of late. It was completely successful—after a short bombardment, part of the garrison escaped along the Tarragona road; the governor with ninety men surrendered [January 8, 1811]. The fort was a trifling work, but its strategic position was eminently important, as it blocks the only road along the sea from Tarragona to the regions of the Ebro mouth.
Macdonald, being no longer needed in the direction of Tortosa, resolved to return to Lerida, at the same time that Suchet went off to Saragossa. They were to meet again in the spring for the great enterprise against Tarragona. For reasons not easy to fathom, the Marshal made his march to his base not by the direct road, but past Tarragona via Reus and Valls. Probably he was desirous of clearing the country-side of the outlying Spanish troops as a preliminary to the siege, and perhaps he had some idea of destroying any magazines that might lie in this direction. That he could have no serious intention of blockading Tarragona was shown by the fact that he had sent back all his cavalry, save one regiment, and most of his guns, to Lerida. Since he had also lent his Neapolitan brigade to Suchet, his column was not much over 12,000 strong.
Macdonald was usually unlucky in his Catalonian campaigning; though he had won great reputation in mountain warfare against the Austrians in his early days, he does not seem to have been able to apply his knowledge of it to Spain. Marching from Ginestar by Falset, he reached and occupied the large town of Reus, only ten miles from Tarragona, on January 12th. From thence he set his army in motion for Valls on the 15th, marching across the front of the fortress, with which he clearly had no intention of interfering. His vanguard was formed by the Italian division, which was followed at a distance of three miles by his three French brigades and his single regiment of cavalry. Meanwhile Campoverde, now in command at Tarragona, had detached General Sarsfield with a division of 3,000 foot and 800 horse—all that the Army of Catalonia possessed—to observe the march of the French, while he himself remained just outside Tarragona with the remainder of his troops—some 8,000 men.[p. 243] Sarsfield had taken post at Pla, some five miles north of Valls, which town he had evacuated on the approach of the enemy. When Macdonald’s leading brigade reached Valls, information was received that there was a Spanish force close in its front. Without waiting for orders from the Marshal, who had merely directed that Valls should be occupied, the commander of the vanguard, General Eugenio[300], resolved to bring the enemy to action. Marching with five Italian battalions and only thirty chasseurs—about 2,500 men in all—he ran headlong into Sarsfield’s forces drawn up in a well-masked position, the infantry occupying a ridge, the 800 cavalry hidden in a wood to the left. Unable to estimate the enemy’s strength, and thinking that a brisk attack might drive them off the ground, Eugenio—a man of reckless courage—made a direct frontal charge against the enemy’s position in column of battalions. He was completely beaten, his brigade fell back still fighting, and he was himself mortally wounded. The recoiling mass was saved from annihilation by the arrival on the field of the other Italian brigade, that of Palombini, on which it rallied. But Sarsfield’s troops were determined to finish appropriately the day that they had begun so well. They fell on the newly formed line and broke it, the cavalry turning Palombini’s right and sweeping it away. The whole Italian division would have been annihilated but for the arrival of two squadrons of the 24th Dragoons under Colonel Delort, who charged the victorious cavalry, and, though hopelessly outnumbered, gave the Spaniards so much trouble that the routed infantry of Eugenio and Palombini escaped into Valls, without much further loss. Macdonald had refrained from bringing up the French brigades to help his vanguard, because he had discovered a column under Campoverde coming out of Tarragona to threaten his rear. This demonstration kept him occupied while the Italians were being cut up by Sarsfield, whose operations were extremely well managed and resolute. The Italian division and the dragoons lost 600 men including a few prisoners[301]—the Spaniards only 160.
[p. 244]Next day (January 16th) Macdonald was in order of battle at Valls, with two fronts, one facing towards Sarsfield and the north, the other towards Campoverde and Tarragona. But the Spaniards wisely refused to commit themselves to a general engagement, and Macdonald would not divide his army by marching to assail one or the other of the two hostile columns. In the night he retreated to Momblanch by a forced march, leaving the enemy encouraged by the results of the combat of the 15th, and no less by the fact that the Marshal had not tried to avenge his check by an attack on the following day. The French retired to Lerida unmolested, and the Duke of Tarentum began to make preparations for his approaching return to Tarragona in company with Suchet’s corps, as had been ordered by the Emperor. It is difficult to see that Macdonald gained anything by his curious flank march, and he certainly lost heavily in prestige. Campoverde, exultant at the good fortune of his first venture in arms, recovered from the despondency caused by the fall of Tortosa, and dreamed of making a great blow against the French by no less an achievement than the recapture of Barcelona.
Ever since the commencement of the war plots and conspiracies had been rife in that great city—it will be remembered that Duhesme had been forced to punish the most important of them by a series of executions[302]. Discontent was as keen as ever, and a knot of patriots had formed a scheme for opening to their friends without the gates of the fortress of Monjuich, which dominates the whole place. This was to be done by the assistance of a repentant ‘Juramentado,’ a Spanish commissary in the French service named Alcina, who had access to the stronghold, and imagined that he had corrupted the fort-major, a certain Captain Sunier, who for a great sum of money undertook to leave one of its posterns open on the night of March 19th. Campoverde, who loved plots and intrigues, arranged to have his men ready outside the ditch on the appointed night. Unfortunately the officer who was supposed to be a traitor was only[p. 245] feigning discontent and treason, and kept informing Maurice Mathieu, the governor of Barcelona, of all the details of the plot. It was allowed to proceed, in order that a sharp blow might be inflicted on the Spaniards. Before the appointed night Campoverde suddenly marched the divisions of Sarsfield and Courten to the immediate vicinity of Barcelona, and sent forward from them a body of 800 grenadiers, who were to execute the actual coup de main. They were allowed to descend into the ditch of Monjuich, and to approach the postern, when the whole of the ramparts were lighted up with cressets and fire-balls, and a furious fire was opened upon them. The head of the column was blown to pieces, a hundred men were killed and wounded at the first volley, and four officers and many of the rank and file taken prisoners, before the remainder could scramble off in the darkness. The supports hurriedly retired, and the business was over—save that Maurice Mathieu caused the commissary Alcina to be shot in public next morning as a warning to traitors. Such plots seldom succeed, but that they must not be too much disregarded as a source of danger was shown only a few weeks later, when Figueras, the second fortress of Catalonia, was successfully surprised by the Spaniards, as the result of a conspiracy exactly similar to that which failed at Barcelona[303].
The unfortunate affair at Monjuich was not the only sign of the revived activity of the Catalans under the leadership of Campoverde, a busy and active man, but (as subsequent events showed) one lacking both resolution and true strategic instinct. He was one of those who take many schemes in hand, but fail for want of determination at the critical moment, and was a very poor substitute for that hard fighter Henry O’Donnell, whose place he had been so eager to seize. On March 3rd he made a vain attack to recover the fort of San Felipe de Balaguer—marching with Courten’s division of 4,000 men he beat the French 117th out of Perello, where it was covering Tortosa, and laid siege to the fort. But General Habert came up with a force from the garrison to reinforce the 117th, and the attack had to be given up almost as soon as it was begun. More fruitful were some attacks of the somatenes of northern Catalonia on convoys passing between Gerona and Hostalrich. And[p. 246] Sarsfield, pushing forward to Cervera, usefully restrained the foraging of Macdonald’s cavalry in the region east of Lerida. But all this came to little, and Campoverde’s efforts seemed to have no very visible results, and certainly did nothing decisive to prevent Suchet and Macdonald from completing their preparations for the siege of Tarragona.
It was much the same in Aragon, where Villacampa and Carbajal were contending in the mountains of the south with the garrisons which held Daroca, Alca?iz, Teruel, and the other chief towns of this rugged and thinly peopled district. The fall of Tortosa had set free for the moment many troops of the 3rd Corps, and Suchet employed them in scouring the country between these posts, and endeavouring to clear away the partidas from their chief rallying-places. Flying columns under Generals Paris and Abbé marched up and down the sierras in the vile weather of February, expelled the insurrectionary Junta of Aragon from Cuenca, which was at that time its head quarters, and chased Carbajal to Moya, where the frontiers of Castile, Aragon, and Valencia meet. The Empecinado came over the mountains, from his usual beat in the Guadalajara country, to help the Aragonese, but had small success. Yet the net result of all this hunting was little. ‘This expedition,’ says Suchet himself, ‘which took two brigades over the border into Castile for twelve days, procured us a few hundred prisoners; a more useful thing was the destruction of some small manufactures of arms. But we were to see ten times, nay a hundred times more, these partisans appearing once again in the plains; they always surrounded us, were always dispersed rather than defeated, and never grew discouraged[304].’
BERESFORD’S CAMPAIGN IN ESTREMADURA. THE FIRST SIEGE OF BADAJOZ. MARCH-APRIL 1811
On the 11th of March, as it will be remembered, Imaz—the deplorable successor of the gallant Menacho—surrendered Badajoz to Marshal Soult, despite of the messages which he had received that an Anglo-Portuguese corps was on its way for his relief. On the 14th the conqueror, appalled at the news of the battle of Barrosa and the danger of Seville, marched back to Andalusia, taking with him a brigade of dragoons and the greater part of Gazan’s infantry division. He left behind him in Estremadura Mortier with a force of some 11,000 men, composed of fifteen battalions of the 5th Corps[305], five cavalry regiments[306], and a heavy proportion of artillerymen and engineers, who were required for the garrisoning of the fortress of Badajoz no less than for the siege of the small places in its vicinity, whose capture Soult had delegated to Mortier as his parting legacy.
This was a small force to leave behind, charged not only with the occupation of an extensive province, but with the duty of continuing the offensive, by attacking Campo Mayor and Albuquerque. Elvas the Marshal can hardly have hoped to assail—it was a fortress as large and in some ways stronger than Badajoz, with a garrison composed of Portuguese troops of the line. Any idea of an invasion of the Alemtejo was useless, now that it was known that Masséna had departed from his old position on the Tagus. The Emperor had ordered Soult to undertake it[p. 248] merely for Masséna’s assistance, and the ‘Army of Portugal’ was no longer needing such help: for good or for ill it had moved away on its own business. It remained to be seen whether Mortier would be able to carry out the orders given him, for no one in the French camp could tell whether the British relieving force for Badajoz, whose existence had been known since March 8th, had actually started for Estremadura, or had joined in the pursuit of Masséna, when it received the news that Imaz had made his disgraceful capitulation. If this force were on its way, and proved to be strong in numbers, Mortier would be thrown at once on the defensive. His duty would be to hold off the Allies till Badajoz was in a state of defence: and the repairing of the fortress would take some time, even though the greater part of its fortifications were intact, and only the Pardaleras Fort and the ruined bastions behind it required reconstruction. If the Allies came on in great force, and without delaying for a moment, it was even possible that Mortier would have to blow up Badajoz and withdraw its garrison, for it would be absurd to leave behind, in an untenable post, such a large body of men as would be required for the holding of its extensive enceinte.
The actual course of affairs in Estremadura followed logically from Wellington’s orders to Beresford on the 9th and the 15th of March. On the 8th, as it will be remembered, Beresford had been directed to march to the relief of Badajoz with the 2nd and 4th Divisions and Hamilton’s Portuguese, some 18,000 men. On the 9th these orders had been countermanded, on a false report that Masséna had concentrated and was offering battle behind Thomar. The 4th Division and one brigade (Hoghton’s) of the 2nd were called off, and marched to join Wellington’s main body. The rest of the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese stood halted, in or near Abrantes, till the intentions of the French should be discovered. It was not till March 12th that Wellington, reassured as to his adversaries’ intentions, thought it possible once more to take the relief of Badajoz in hand[307].[p. 249] The troops about Abrantes were ordered to prepare to march for the Guadiana in successive brigades; the absent brigade of the 2nd Division, which had reached Thomar, was directed to retrace its steps and join the main body of that unit. But the 4th Division had gone on much further; it was well on its way towards Coimbra, and was engaged in the Pombal-Redinha operations. It was not till the 15th that Wellington thought himself able to dispatch it, along with De Grey’s brigade of dragoons, to cross the Tagus in the wake of the 2nd Division. Beresford himself, who had joined the main army for a few days by Wellington’s own orders, was not given his final instructions and sent off to the south till the following morning.
But before the moment at which Beresford started, the whole face of affairs had been changed by the news, received on the 14th, that Badajoz had surrendered on the 11th. Wellington was not prepared for this blow. ‘I had received on the 9th,’ he wrote to Lord Liverpool, ‘accounts of a most favourable nature, from which I was induced to believe not only that the place was in no danger, but that it was in fact untouched: that its fire was superior to that of the enemy, that it was in no want of provisions and ammunition, had sustained no loss, excepting that of the governor Menacho, and was able and likely to hold out for a month. General Imaz, a person of equally good reputation, had succeeded to the command, and great confidence was reposed in him.... I had called up to the army the 4th Division of infantry and the brigade of heavy cavalry, under the conviction that Badajoz would hold out for the time during which it would be necessary to employ them. Experience has shown that I could not have done without these troops, and it is also clear that, if I had left them behind, they could not have saved Badajoz, which the governor surrendered on the day after he received my assurances[p. 250] that he should be relieved, and my entreaties that he would hold out to the last moment[308].’
As far as the argument from time goes, it is clear that Wellington is stating indisputable facts. Supposing that he had not countermanded on the 9th of March the orders to Beresford which he had given on the previous night, and that the three divisions designated for service in Estremadura had marched with unrelaxing vigour, the head of their column could not have been further forward than Arronches (if they took the Portalegre road) or Estremos (if they took the Elvas road) at the moment when Imaz surrendered. As the former of these points is about twenty-five and the latter about thirty miles from Badajoz, the capitulation would not have been prevented. For the governor was determined to surrender, and did so in full knowledge of the fact, transmitted by semaphore from Elvas[309], that a relieving expedition was in hand. Whether the nearest allied troops were (as was actually the case) at Abrantes or (as might have been the case) at Estremos, would not have affected him. For, as the proceedings recorded at his council of war show, he concealed from his officers the news that succour was promised, and allowed one of them to put down in the procès verbal of the proceedings the statement that ‘there was no official news whatever that any army of succour was in movement.’ Such official news Imaz possessed, through the semaphore messages sent on by General Leite at Elvas, so that it is evident that he kept them from the knowledge of his subordinates.
If Badajoz had held out for a fortnight after March 9th,—and Wellington supposed that it was well able to defend itself for a whole month—the relieving column would have been in good time. The dispatch of March 12th set in motion two divisions from near Abrantes, that of the 15th sent on the third from the banks of the Ceira. Steady marches of twenty miles a day, or a little less, would have brought Stewart and Hamilton to the neighbourhood of Badajoz on the 17th, and Cole with the 4th Division and the dragoon brigade on the[p. 251] 24th[310]. If, as is probable, Beresford had waited for the arrival of the last-named force before presenting himself in front of the French lines, the 24th of March would have been the critical day. It is hard to believe that Soult could have fought to advantage, since he must have left so many men to blockade Badajoz that he could not have faced Beresford with more than 12,000 sabres and bayonets, numbers inadequate to hold off the 18,000 Anglo-Portuguese who formed the allied Army of Estremadura. It is quite probable that he might have raised the siege, and offered battle with his whole army, somewhere south of Badajoz. But into these possibilities it is profitless to inquire.
Since, however, Wellington and Beresford knew on the night of the 14th that Imaz had surrendered, there was no longer the same need for haste that existed down to this moment, and the advance of the Anglo-Portuguese army was made at a moderate pace. Hamilton’s Portuguese were at Portalegre by the 17th, the 2nd Division came in on the 19th and 20th. Beresford himself appeared on the latter day, having ridden through from the neighbourhood of Coimbra in four days. The 4th Division, which had made an admirable march, a hundred and ten miles of mountain road in six days, came up on the 22nd. On this day, therefore, the whole 18,000 men of the expeditionary force were collected within forty miles of Badajoz, and Beresford had to make up his mind as to the course of his campaign. The orders given to him by Wellington had been to concentrate at Portalegre and attack the French, who (as it had now been ascertained) were moving out to besiege the little Portuguese fortress of Campo Mayor, just across the frontier. The small Spanish force under Casta?os at Estremos—the wrecks of the old Army of Estremadura—was to be called up to assist[311]. Wellington, who did not know of Soult’s departure for Seville,[p. 252] thought that he could not possibly collect enough men, after garrisoning Badajoz and Olivenza, to enable him to face Beresford. In a supplementary dispatch he told his colleague that he thought it most likely that the Marshal would go south of the Guadiana without accepting battle. In that case the allied army must be careful, when following him, not to trust its communications and line of advance or retreat to any temporary bridge, but must use the Portuguese riverside fortress of Jerumenha as its base, and construct there a bridge composed of twenty Spanish pontoon-boats, which (as Wellington was informed) had been floated down from Badajoz before the siege of that place began. Beresford was to construct a strong tête-du-pont on the Spanish bank to cover this bridge[312], and might then move forward and invest Badajoz if he were able.
A most prescient note occurs in this dispatch, which seems as if it were written in prophetical foresight of what was to happen at Campo Mayor five days later. ‘The cavalry is the most delicate arm we possess. We have few officers who have practical knowledge of the mode of using it, or who have ever seen more than two regiments together. To these circumstances add that the defeat of, or any great loss sustained by, our cavalry in these open grounds would be a misfortune, amounting almost to a defeat of the whole; you will therefore see the necessity of keeping your cavalry as much as possible en masse, and in reserve, to be thrown in at the moment when opportunity offers for striking a decisive blow.’ It looks almost as if Wellington knew that General Long, who commanded Beresford’s cavalry, was going to make the very mistakes that he actually committed on the first collision with the enemy.
The moment that the 4th Division and De Grey’s dragoons reached Portalegre, Beresford began his march on Campo Mayor (March 22) sending out Colborne’s and Lumley’s brigades of the 2nd Division to Arronches, and the Portuguese cavalry brigade of Otway to Azumar. This last-named unit had been watching the frontier between the Tagus and the Guadiana ever since Masséna’s retreat from Santarem, and joined the 2nd Divi[p. 253]sion on the 20th of March. Hamilton’s Portuguese infantry division was to follow next day, the 4th Division was to be allowed two days’ rest after its fatiguing march from the Ceira, and was only to start on the 24th[313]. On the 25th the whole army was to be in front of Campo Mayor.
It remains to speak of the position in which the enemy was found. Between the 14th of March, when Soult departed from Seville, and the 25th, when Beresford’s army made its sudden and quite unexpected descent into the middle of the French forces, only eleven days elapsed; but Mortier had turned them to good account, and had more than fulfilled all that had been expected of him. On the very day that Soult started for Seville he marched against Campo Mayor, with nine battalions of infantry, a cavalry brigade, and part of the siege-train which had just captured Badajoz. One other battalion was left as garrison in Olivenza, the six that remained from the corps were told off for Badajoz, where General Phillipon had been appointed governor. With the aid of three companies of sappers they were already busily engaged in levelling their own old siege-works, and commencing the repairs to the battered front of the walls. Mortier conceived that there could not be any danger in carrying out the orders that Soult had left, for he could find no traces of any hostile force in his vicinity, save the Portuguese garrison of Elvas, and the 4,000 men who formed the wrecks of Mendizabal’s army. This demoralized force had rallied at Campo Mayor, but on receiving the news of the fall of Badajoz retired in haste to Estremos, twenty miles within the Portuguese frontier. Their presence there was a danger rather than a defence to the Alemtejo, for not only did they consume some magazines collected there by Wellington’s orders for the use of the expeditionary force, but they plundered recklessly in the neighbouring villages, and committed such outrages that the Portuguese Government was almost forced to take military measures against them[314]. Mortier had nothing to fear from this quarter, while he could hear no news of the approach of any British force from the direction of the Tagus. The 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese, it will be remembered, had only been ordered to resume their movement towards Estremadura on the 13th, by Wellington’s dispatch of the 12th, and when Mortier started from Badajoz they were only just commencing their advance from the neighbourhood of Abrantes towards Crato and Portalegre, and were very nearly a hundred miles away, so that it was impossible that he should get any information concerning them.
[p. 254]Campo Mayor was an old-fashioned fortress, which had not been remodelled since the War of the Spanish Succession, its greatest weakness was that an outlying fort (S?o Jo?o), only 200 yards from the walls in a commanding position, had been dismantled, but not blown up and levelled to the ground. It overlooked one of the bastions of the place, and had only to be seized in order to provide an admirable starting-place for operations against the enceinte. No serious attention had been paid to Campo Mayor of late, the much stronger place of Elvas, only eleven miles away, having absorbed all the attention of the Portuguese government. The Spaniards had been garrisoning it for the last six months, but when they hastily departed the Governor of Elvas threw into it half a battalion of the Portalegre Militia (about 300 men) and a company of artillery. This handful of men, aided by the Ordenan?a of the place, were all that were at the disposition of the very gallant and resourceful old engineer officer, Major José Joaquim Talaya, who was left in charge of the place. As the population was under 3,000 souls, the levy of the Ordenan?a cannot have amounted to more than 300 men, and many of these (as was still the case in most parts of Portugal) had no firearms, but only pikes. But the chief[p. 255] magistrate (juiz de fora), José Carvalho, served at the head of them with great energy, and we are assured that (contrary to what might have been expected) the citizens took a more creditable part than the militiamen in the defence[315].
With no regulars save the company of artillery, and no more than 800 men in all to protect a long enceinte, it might have been expected that Talaya could make no defence at all—indeed he might have evacuated the place without any blame. But being a man of fine resolution, and recognizing the fact that he was doing the greatest possible service by detaining 7,000 French before his walls, and thereby covering Elvas and allowing time for Beresford to arrive, he resolved to hold out as long as possible. The French seized Fort S?o Jo?o on the night of their arrival (March 14th) and opened trenches on each side of it, commencing at the same time three batteries, of which two were sheltered by the dismantled work. Next morning two of these works were in a position to open fire on the town, since the heavy guns for them had only to come from Badajoz, a mere nine miles away.
Despite of this Talaya held out for seven days of bombardment and open trenches (15th-21st March). He concentrated all his artillery on the approaches and the breaching-batteries, and for some time held his own. On the 19th a breach was opened in the projecting bastion (de Concelho), but the Governor refused a summons to surrender, and actually beat off an assault that night. On the following day the whole face of the bastion began to crumble, and, since further resistance was hopeless, Talaya accepted the terms offered him by Mortier—viz. that the garrison should lay down its arms if not relieved within twenty-four hours, the Militia and Ordenan?a not to be regarded as prisoners of war, but to be allowed to stay in or retire to their homes, on condition that they should not again bear arms against the French. A similar favour was extended to the Governor himself, who was allowed, ‘on account of his great age,’ says the capitulation, to retire to his own residence on giving his word of honour not to serve again[316]. As the whole[p. 256] garrison, save the artillery, were irregular troops, Mortier took over less than 100 prisoners. Some fifty guns, many of them of very antique and useless fabric, and 10,000 rations of biscuit were captured. The delay of twenty-four hours in the surrender of the town turned out very unluckily for Mortier, as it just gave time for Beresford and his army to arrive, only four days after the surrender, before the place had been dismantled or injured.
The eight-day defence of the absolutely untenable Campo Mayor contrasts in the strongest fashion with that of the neighbouring Spanish fortress of Albuquerque. This, too, was a very neglected and antiquated place, but it possessed a citadel on a high crag, which might have been held for some days against anything but heavy artillery, and it would have taken some time to erect batteries which could effectively reach it. When, however, Latour-Maubourg, with two cavalry regiments, summoned it, on March 15, the Governor at once began to parley, and on being told that infantry and guns were coming forward, actually opened his gates next day, before the two battalions and two guns sent by Mortier arrived. This demoralized officer was Major-General José Cagigal; his garrison consisted of two battalions of the Estremaduran regiment of Fernando VII, about 800 men, and a few artillerymen with seventeen brass guns of position. This was, on the whole, the most disgraceful surrender made during the whole Peninsular War—it can only be compared to the celebrated capitulation of Stettin in 1806, when the Prussian general, in an exactly similar fashion, yielded a fortress to a brigade of hussars who were impudent enough to summon it. But Stettin was a far worse case than Albuquerque—since it was a modern stronghold with a garrison of no less than 6,000 men.
After the surrender of Albuquerque, Latour-Maubourg sent on a regiment of dragoons to Valencia de Alcantara, the last fortified place in Spanish hands between the Guadiana and the Tagus. The small garrison evacuated it, and the dragoons, after bursting seven guns found within its walls, and blowing up its gates (March 17), returned to Badajoz.
[p. 257]The news of the loss of the one Portuguese and the two Spanish fortresses did not detain Beresford a moment in his advance, indeed he was only anxious to attack the enemy before he should have either repaired and garrisoned, or else dismantled and destroyed, Campo Mayor. On the 24th, Cole’s 4th Division, having had its two prescribed days of rest, marched from Portalegre to Arronches, where it caught up the cavalry and the other two divisions. Nothing had been discovered of the French, save some hussar vedettes only three miles north of Campo Mayor. It seems that Beresford’s approach came as a complete surprise to Mortier, who had made no preparations to meet it. He had withdrawn the greater part of the troops who had formed the siege corps to Badajoz, and had left Latour-Maubourg to dismantle the place—for he had made up his mind not to hold it. The cavalry general retained three of his own regiments (26th Dragoons and 2nd and 10th Hussars), one infantry regiment (the 100th of the Line), a half-battery of horse artillery, with a large detachment of the military train, who were in charge not only of the siege-guns lately used, but of thirty pieces from the walls of Campo Mayor, which it was intended to bring over to Badajoz. The rest of the Portuguese guns were to be burst, as useless and antiquated. The engineers were selecting sections of the enceinte, which were to be mined and blown up. The whole French force was about 900 sabres and 1,200 bayonets, plus the detachments of the auxiliary arms—perhaps 2,400 men in all[317]. There was a very fair chance of capturing it entire, owing to the careless way in which Latour-Maubourg kept watch. The presence of scouting parties of Portuguese dragoons had been reported to him[318]. But probably he attached little importance to their presence in this direction. There had been cavalry of that nation on the Estremaduran frontier ever since January.
[p. 258]At half-past ten o’clock on the very rainy morning of the 25th, Beresford’s army was advancing on Campo Mayor in three converging columns, the bulk of the 2nd Division preceded by De Grey’s dragoons on the high-road, Hamilton’s Portuguese division on a by-path over a ridge to the east of the road, with the 13th Light Dragoons and two Portuguese squadrons in their front, Colborne’s brigade and the remaining Portuguese horse on a corresponding ridge, some way to the western or right side of the chaussée. Cole followed a mile in the rear as reserve. The French outposts were found as on the preceding day, only three miles outside the town. General Latour-Maubourg chanced to be visiting them, probably in tardy consequence of the reports of the previous day. When attacked they retired skirmishing, to delay as far as possible the advance of Beresford’s leading squadrons. Latour-Maubourg, seeing that the Allies were coming up on a broad front, and at least 15,000 strong, rode back hastily into the town, ordered the drums to beat, and directed infantry and cavalry alike to abandon their baggage, and to form up without a moment’s delay on the glacis outside the southern gate for a retreat. A column of sixteen heavy guns from the walls of Campo Mayor and the siege-train, with practically no escort, had started some little time back, and was on its way to Badajoz along the high-road before the alarm was given[319]. The allied cavalry, on coming in sight of the town from the ridge to its north, discovered the enemy just moving off, the infantry regiment in column of route on the road, with one hussar regiment in front of it and another in rear, while the 26th Dragoons, some little way ahead, was covering the rest from being intercepted on the high-road, for Latour-Maubourg had seen that his danger lay in the probability that Beresford would strike in, with the horse of his van, between him and Badajoz, and so force him to fight his way through, under pain of being surrounded and captured if he failed. This indeed was Beresford’s intention, but being impressed with Wellington’s warning not to risk or lose his cavalry, he had[p. 259] ordered General Long, who was in command of the division of that arm, not to commit himself against a superior force, and ‘to wait for the infantry to come up if he were in any doubt; yet if the opportunity to strike a blow occurs he must avail himself of it[320].’ The whole cavalry force with the army was only eleven British squadrons and five Portuguese, the latter very weak, and the total number of sabres was about 1,500, a very small allowance for an army of over 18,000 men, and therefore very precious.
When Latour-Maubourg saw the British divisions coming on in the distance, he marched off with all possible speed, and had such a start that his column, whose pace was set by the quick step of the infantry, had got nearly three miles from Campo Mayor before it was seriously threatened. General Long had, by Beresford’s orders, directed his squadrons to sweep east of the walls of the town, out of gunshot, in case there should chance to have been a garrison left behind. The sweep was a long one, because a ravine was discovered which forced the regiments to turn further eastward than was at first intended. They came up in two detachments, one formed by the 13th Light Dragoons and Otway’s Portuguese, more to the left (east), the other of De Grey’s dragoons further to the right (west). The first body was nearly level with the dragoon regiment which was moving ahead of the French column, the other was not so far to the front, being 400 or 500 yards away from the rear flank of the French. The nearest British infantry and guns, Colborne’s brigade and Cleeves’s German battery accompanying it, were out of sight, two miles to the rear, hidden by undulations of the ground; so was Beresford himself and his staff, who were riding ahead of the main body.
Seeing a fight forced on him, Latour-Maubourg resolved to accept it. He had a force of all arms, and thought himself strong enough to beat off cavalry unsupported by infantry or guns, even though they outnumbered his own horsemen in the proportion of five to three. Accordingly he suddenly halted[p. 260] and formed his infantry in battalion squares on the high-road, with the hussars flanking them in deep order, while the dragoon regiment, with its right wing drawn back and its left wing not far from the leading hussars, formed a line at an obtuse angle to the main body, ready to deliver a flanking charge on the British and Portuguese if they should attack the infantry.
Long, considering, as he says, that he was strong enough to attempt the ‘blow’ of which Beresford had spoken, resolved first to drive off the French dragoon regiment which threatened his flank, and then to fall upon the hussars and infantry. He sent orders to De Grey and the heavy dragoons to close in upon the rear and left flank of the French, from whom they were still separated by a ridge, but to hold off till the rest of the troops had disposed of the covering cavalry. He then advanced with the light squadrons, English and Portuguese, to get beyond the French dragoons—his line was formed with two Portuguese squadrons (7th regiment) on the extreme left, then the two and a half squadrons of the 13th British Light Dragoons[321], and to the right the three remaining Portuguese squadrons (1st regiment).
Seeing that Long was man?uvring to outflank him, Latour-Maubourg ordered the 26th Dragoons to charge before the movement was far advanced. The British 13th formed to their front, and started to meet them; the two lines met with a tremendous crash, neither giving way, and were mingled for a few moments in desperate hand to hand fighting[322], in which Colonel Chamorin, the French brigadier, was slain in a personal combat with a corporal named Logan of the 13th. Presently the French broke, and fled in disorder along and beside the Badajoz road. Then followed one of those wild and senseless pursuits which always provoked Wellington’s wrath, and induced him to say in bitterness that the ordinary British cavalry[p. 261] regiment was ‘good for nothing but galloping[323].’ General Long says in his account of the affair that he found it impossible to stop or rally the Light Dragoons, and therefore sent after them the two squadrons of the 7th Portuguese, to act as a support. But the Portuguese put on a great pace to come up with the 13th, got excited in pursuing stray knots of French dragoons, broke their order, and finally joined in the headlong chase as recklessly as their comrades.
Portrait of Marshal Beresford
Enlarge Field Marshal Sir William Carr Beresford
The ride was incredibly long and disorderly, quite in the style of Prince Rupert at Edgehill. It was continued for no less than seven miles; four miles from the place where it had started, the Light Dragoons came on the artillery convoy of sixteen heavy guns which had left Campo Mayor in the early morning, and had crawled on almost to the gates of Badajoz; the small escort was dispersed, and the drivers were cut down or chased off the road. Many of the Portuguese stopped to make prize of the horses—most valuable personal plunder—and went off with them in small parties towards the allied camp. The pursuers should have stopped here. There was no object in chasing any further the few surviving French dragoons, who were scattered broadcast. The guns, with a long train of caissons and carts, were left standing beside the road, but little attention was paid to these valuable trophies. One or two were rehorsed and turned towards the British lines by some officers of the 13th. The main body of the pursuers, however, did not stop with the convoy, but, still sabring at the routed French, rode two miles and a half further, till they hurtled against the bridge-head fortifications of Badajoz. They were only stopped by being shelled from Fort San Cristobal, and fired on by the garrison of the tête-du-pont. It is said by one French authority[324] that the leading dragoons actually reached the barrier-gate of the covered way of the latter work, and were shot there. Marshal Mortier, learning what had happened, sallied out of the fortress with a cavalry regiment and four battalions, captured quite a number of straggling dragoons, whose horses had fallen or given out in the wild ride, and found the bulk of the artillery convoy standing lonely and teamless by the wayside. It was dragged[p. 262] along into Badajoz, save one howitzer and six caissons, which were left behind on the approach of Beresford’s main body. Mortier also picked up near the place where the convoy was lying, and brought into Badajoz, Latour-Maubourg’s column, whose further fortunes need to be detailed.
When the 13th Light Dragoons and the 7th Portuguese went off on their mad escapade, General Long found himself left in front of the main French force, with only the three squadrons of the 1st Portuguese cavalry, which had formed his reserve, and the Heavy Brigade, distant half a mile from him, and on the other side of the French line. It was apparently his intention to charge the enemy with these troops, a most hazardous experiment, for the French with a regiment of 1,200 infantry in square, flanked by four squadrons of hussars, were dangerous to deal with. In all the Peninsular War there was only one occasion (at Garcia Hernandez in 1812) where formed squares of either side were broken by the cavalry of the other, and the 100th Ligne on this occasion had 500 hussars to support them. There was some delay while Long was sending an aide-de-camp to the Heavy Brigade to bid them prepare to attack[325], and, seeing him holding back, Latour-Maubourg started off his column once more along the high-road, the infantry marching in square, with two squadrons of hussars in front and two behind. To stop him from moving on, Long brought forward the 1st Portuguese to check the hussars. But when they advanced toward them, and were about to engage, the front side of the leading French battalion square opened a distant fire against their flank. Surprised by this, for they had not realized that they were within effective range of the hostile infantry, the three Portuguese squadrons broke and galloped off, pursued by the hussars for some little way[326].
[p. 263]At this moment Marshal Beresford and his staff came upon the scene, on the ridge near De Grey’s brigade, and saw the three Portuguese squadrons rallying at a distance, and still in disorder, while the heavy dragoons were preparing to attack. On inquiring what had become of the 13th and the rest of the Portuguese, Beresford was told by one of his staff[327] that they had been cut off and were believed to have been captured. Horrified at this news, which brought to his mind all Wellington’s warnings, Beresford forbade the Heavy Brigade to charge, and bade them hold off, till some infantry and guns should come up. He was indubitably right in so doing, for, as all previous and later experience proved, it was most unlikely that they would have broken the French squares.
He sent back for the nearest infantry, which was Colborne’s brigade, and some guns. Meanwhile the enemy continued moving off at a great pace, followed at a distance by the heavy dragoons, while Long and the three rallied Portuguese squadrons marched parallel with their flank. The two parties had proceeded several miles in this way, when the 13th Light Dragoons came in sight, returning from the direction of Badajoz, and their Portuguese companions with them. Soon after, two guns of Cleeves’s battery got up, unlimbered, and opened a fire at long range against the rear of the French. It had some effect, but the enemy kept his ranks and continued to move on as fast as possible, leaving his dead and wounded in the road. The artillery horses were exhausted and unable to keep up, wherefore Beresford ordered the whole force to halt, saying that without infantry there was nothing more to be done. At this moment Colborne’s brigade was no more than half a mile behind according to Long and certain other witnesses[328]. But on the[p. 264] other hand, Mortier with 2,000 infantry and a cavalry regiment from Badajoz was visible, waiting for Latour-Maubourg near the spot where the dismantled convoy was standing. The two French forces joined, and retired into the fortress with nearly all the recaptured guns—only one and some caissons remained to be picked up by Beresford’s advance.
The loss of the British on this occasion, all in the 13th Light Dragoons[329], was 10 killed, 3 officers and 24 men wounded, and 22 prisoners; among the Portuguese 1st and 7th cavalry an officer and 13 men killed, 40 wounded, and 55 prisoners—a total of over 150. The French suffered more—the 26th Dragoons alone had 8 officers[330] and over 100 men killed, wounded, and taken, the train and artillery had been dreadfully cut up at the capture of the convoy, and the infantry had lost 3 officers and many men by the fire of Cleeves’s guns. The total casualties were over 200[331]. But the moral effect of a combat is not judged by a mere comparison of losses, and the British officers were much disappointed. Beresford and his friends held that Long had by mismanagement wasted 150 precious cavalrymen—Long declared that if Beresford had not taken the command out of his hands he would have captured the whole French column. This last claim was absolutely unreasonable: it is far more likely that he would merely have caused severe loss to the two heavy dragoon regiments by persisting. The Marshal and the General were on bad terms from this moment onward, and the former took the next opportunity given him to remove the latter from the chief command of the allied cavalry. The most curious comment on the combat of Campo Mayor is Napier’s statement that ‘the 13th Light Dragoons were severely reprimanded for pursuing so eagerly. But the unsparing admiration of the whole army consoled them!’ Pursuing eagerly is a mild expression for riding seven[p. 265] miles off the battlefield, and on to the glacis of a hostile fortress. Wellington’s comment was that ‘the undisciplined ardour of the 13th Dragoons and the 7th regiment of Portuguese cavalry is not of the description of the determined bravery of soldiers confident in their discipline and their officers. Their conduct was that of a rabble galloping as fast as their horses could carry them, after an enemy to whom they could do no further mischief when they were broken: the pursuit was continued for an unlimited distance, and sacrificed substantial advantages, and all the objects of the operation, by want of discipline[332].’ A similar reproof was published in a General Order, to be read to the cavalry.
The only really satisfactory result of the combat of Campo Mayor was that Beresford recovered the town intact, with some guns which had not yet been sent off to Badajoz, and a considerable amount of stores, including 8,000 rations of biscuit. The place was at once re-garrisoned with the Faro regiment of militia from Elvas, who rapidly repaired the breach. It was tenable again in a few days.
On the 26th Beresford discovered that the French had withdrawn entirely beyond the Guadiana, keeping nothing north of it save the bridge-head and Fort San Cristobal at Badajoz. All accounts agreed that after deducting the garrison of that place Mortier could not have more than 8,000, or at the most 10,000, men available for the field, so that there was no reason why Wellington’s orders to thrust him out of Estremadura, and besiege Badajoz, should not be carried out. It was particularly directed in those orders that the expeditionary force should cross the Guadiana at Jerumenha, and make a bridge at that place, only a few miles from the strong fortress of Elvas, the base of its line of communications[333]. Accordingly the 2nd Division and[p. 266] Hamilton’s Portuguese marched to Elvas on the 26th, leaving Cole and the 4th Division (still much fatigued by their long march) for a day at Campo Mayor. There can be no doubt that if Beresford had been able to cross at Jerumenha on the 27th or 28th he would have compelled the French to retire southward at once, and might have invested Badajoz, then not yet fully repaired, as soon as he chose. But a most tiresome series of hindrances, for which it seems unjust to blame the Anglo-Portuguese commander, now began to crop up. The first and most fatal was that the stock of Spanish pontoon boats which, as he had been told by Wellington, would be found at Elvas or Jerumenha, was not forthcoming. Only five were discovered: two complete bridge-equipages had been kept by Imaz at Badajoz, and were now in the hands of the French. But twenty large pontoons, as the engineers declared, was the least number which would suffice to bridge the Guadiana. An attempt was made to seek for river-craft to eke out the pontoons. But by Wellington’s orders all the boats on the river for many miles had been destroyed, when Soult entered Estremadura in January. Some Portuguese pontoons were ordered from Lisbon, but it would be a week or so before they could be carted across the Alemtejo. Meanwhile Captain Squire, the engineer charged with the bridge-building, offered to lay trestles across the shallower part of the bed of the Guadiana on either bank, and to moor the five pontoons in the deep channel in the middle to join them. To this Beresford assented, and the bridge-place was selected on the 30th: Squire promised that the whole should be completed on the 3rd of April; he could not finish it earlier, as the wood for the trestles had to be found, cut down, and shaped ab initio.
The delay of a week thus caused was of the less importance, however, because of another contretemps. There were no stores ready to feed the army when it should cross the Guadiana. The 200,000 rations at Estremos which Wellington (as it will be remembered) had promised to Beresford, were found to have been entirely consumed by the wreck of Mendizabal’s army,[p. 267] who had been lying there for the last three weeks. There was nothing to lade upon the mules and carts of the expeditionary force; the troops were in great difficulties from day to day, ate the 8,000 rations at Campo Mayor, and were finally forced to indent upon the stores of the garrison of Elvas, which ought to have been sacred to the defence of the town.
Lastly, and this was perhaps the most important of all, the shoes of the 4th Division, which had marched continuously from the 6th to the 22nd of March, first from the Lines to Espinhal, and then from Espinhal to Portalegre, were completely worn out. Cole protested against the division being moved till it was reshod. No footgear could be found at Elvas, and though an immediate requisition was sent to Lisbon, the convoy bringing the shoes would obviously take a week or so to get up[334]. From the 26th of March to the 3rd of April Beresford was perforce immovable. This loss of eight days was apparently the reason why Badajoz did not fall into his hands a little later, for the fortifications, which were still in a dangerous state of disrepair on the 25th, were practically tenable by the second week in April. The stores in the fortress were a less important matter. Imaz when he surrendered had over a month’s rations for 9,000 men, which, even when a certain amount had been consumed by Soult’s field army, left a nucleus sufficient to keep the garrison of 3,000 men placed in the town by Mortier out of need for many weeks. In addition, cattle had been requisitioned all over Estremadura. The small movable force of 8,000 men which was available for observing Beresford, was now living entirely on the country-side, in order to spare the stores of Badajoz.
Beresford’s delay in crossing the Guadiana, therefore, was unfortunate, but apparently inevitable, and there seems no reason to blame him for it. On April 3rd the engineers reported that the bridge at Jerumenha would be ready that evening, and[p. 268] the three divisions concentrated on the left bank: the water was low, and a difficult ford for cavalry had been found above the bridge, by which a squadron of dragoons passed, and established a chain of pickets on the Spanish side. No French were seen abroad, though it was discovered that they still had a garrison in Olivenza, only six miles away. It is difficult to make out why no attempt was made to obstruct the building of Beresford’s bridge—the enemy had five regiments of cavalry in Estremadura, and 6,000 infantry of Girard’s division were available for field service. Even a small detachment with some guns would have made it impossible for the British engineers to complete their work. But the Allies found a great advantage in the fact that Mortier had just received orders to return to Paris, and had on March 26th handed over the command of all the troops on the Guadiana to Latour-Maubourg, who was a good divisional general on the battlefield, but a very indifferent strategist. All his man?uvres during the following month were weak and confused. How it came that from the 30th of March to the 7th of April no French cavalry were seen opposite Jerumenha, much less any serious force sent to disturb the bridge-building, it is impossible to conceive. By all accounts the horsemen who should have been in front of Olivenza were at this time mainly employed in scouring the villages of Central Estremadura for cattle and corn, and escorting what they could seize into Badajoz and the camp of Girard’s division.
On the morning of March 4th, when the allied troops should have crossed the Guadiana, Beresford was brought the untoward news that the river had risen three feet in the night, had swept away the trestles, and forced the engineers to draw back the five pontoon boats in the central stream to the Portuguese bank. The squadron beyond the river was cut off from the army, and communication with it was only restored during the day, by rigging up a flying bridge composed of a raft and a rope. The cavalry ford above the destroyed bridge was of course impassable. Throughout the 4th and 5th the water continued to rise, from storms higher up the river apparently, for there was no rain at Jerumenha.
The position was exasperating to the highest degree. ‘Establishing a permanent bridge is out of the question,’ writes[p. 269] D’Urban, the chief of the staff, in his journal. ‘The means are anything but secure either for passing the army (tedious beyond measure, too, no doubt), or for establishing a communication afterwards for supplies and other purposes. Nevertheless the general state of things, and above all Lord Wellington’s reiterated orders received this morning, render it necessary to pass[335].’ The engineers, put upon their mettle, finally made the five Spanish pontoon boats into two flying bridges worked by ropes. On these a battalion of infantry was passed across the river, and stockaded itself on the other side. Later in the day (April 5) some small tin pontoons arrived from Lisbon, and out of these, helped by all the wine-casks of the neighbouring villages, collected in haste, a floating bridge was constructed, ‘not very substantial, but, upon trial, found capable of admitting infantry to pass in file[336].’ It was not ready till noon on the 6th, but by the two flying bridges the whole 2nd Division and three squadrons of cavalry were passed on the night of the 5th-6th. What might have happened it Latour-Maubourg had concentrated at Olivenza, and fallen on the first two or three battalions that crossed with a force of all arms, we had better not inquire[337]. A disaster on a small scale might very possibly have occurred. But not a Frenchman was seen.
During the 6th Hamilton’s Portuguese passed with infinite slowness on the flying bridges, and the cask and pontoon bridge being at last completed, Cole’s 4th Division and Long’s cavalry began to file over it at dusk, an operation so tedious that the last of them were not over till the following dawn. Ere they were all across a ‘regrettable incident’ occurred: the advanced cavalry pickets were formed on the night of the 6th-7th by[p. 270] Major Morris’s squadron of the 13th Light Dragoons. Owing to bad staff work in the placing of them (as D’Urban and General Long both assert), the main guard of this squadron was surprised by French cavalry in the dusk of the morning, and captured almost entire, two officers and fifty men being taken. The assailants found that they had run into the camp of a whole army, and promptly retired before they could be touched.
At last Latour-Maubourg had given signs of life; this reconnaissance had been conducted by a flying column of two cavalry regiments and four battalions, under General Veilland, sent out to Olivenza from the camp of Girard’s division, with the very tardy purpose of hindering Beresford’s passage. Veilland reported to his chief that the enemy was across in such strength that he could do nothing. The appearance of 20,000 men on the Spanish bank of the Guadiana, so far to the south of Badajoz, placed Latour-Maubourg in a very delicate position: if he stayed twenty-four hours longer in his present camp close to Badajoz, he lost his communications with Andalusia, and might be pushed eastward up the Guadiana, out of touch with Soult, and having no retreat save towards the distant Army of the Centre. It was even possible that a rapid advance of the Allies might drive him into Badajoz, the last thing that he would desire. Accordingly he concentrated at Albuera, twelve miles south of that fortress, as a preliminary move, and prepared to fall back from thence by the great southern chaussée, towards Llerena and the Sierra Morena, where he would preserve, and shorten, his line of communication with Soult. Phillipon was left with 3,000 men in Badajoz, which was now quite beyond danger from a coup de main, and able to take care of itself for some weeks, till reinforcements should come up from Andalusia for its relief. With great unwisdom Latour-Maubourg left Olivenza garrisoned also; it was, as had been shown in January, contemptible as a fortress, even when held by a large force, and the French general placed in it only a single weak battalion of under 400 men. There were still on the walls the few guns that had been taken from the Spaniards—no more than fifteen were mounted, and several of these only on makeshift carriages. Why Latour-Maubourg chose to sacrifice a battalion it is hard to see; Napoleon wrote to Soult a month later to condemn the[p. 271] policy of small garrisons in the strongest terms[338]. At the best Olivenza, when so weakly held, could not hold out for more than a few days, and if Beresford had tried to rush it by escalade, when first he arrived before its walls, he must undoubtedly have succeeded, for 400 men cannot defend three miles of enceinte against a serious assault. There were some magazines in the place, and a small hospital of sick, who could not be removed[339]. But it was obviously absurd to throw away a battalion of sound men to keep them from capture for a few days. It has been suggested that Latour-Maubourg merely wanted to gain time[340]; but the time gained was trifling—Olivenza only held out five days—and might have fallen much sooner.
Beresford’s train and guns having joined him beyond the river on March 8th, he moved to Olivenza on the 9th, in an order of march ready to deploy into an order of battle in case Latour-Maubourg should turn up with his small field force. The town was summoned on the same afternoon, and when the governor refused to surrender, the 4th Division, still almost unable to move for want of the shoes which were daily expected from Lisbon, was left to besiege it, with the aid of heavy guns to be brought from Elvas, only fifteen miles away. The extreme weakness of the garrison was not known, or the Marshal would not have wasted time by ordering regular approaches to be made. The rest of the army bivouacked on the Badajoz road a few miles beyond Olivenza, and on the following day occupied Valverde, and pushed its cavalry to Albuera, cutting the chaussée between Badajoz and Seville. No enemy could be found, and it was ascertained that Latour-Maubourg’s rearguard was at Santa Marta, ten miles to the south, and the rest of his troops far beyond it. On the 11th the infantry, minus the 4th Division,[p. 272] were at Albuera, while the bulk of the cavalry marched to find out how far southward the enemy was ready to withdraw.
Central Estremadura, at any rate, was now in Beresford’s hands, and he was in a position to carry out Wellington’s orders to drive the 5th Corps over the Sierra Morena and invest Badajoz. In accordance with his instructions he had seen Casta?os on March 30th, and settled with him that the wrecks of the old Army of Estremadura—now about 1,000 horse and 3,000 foot—should join in the campaign. Casta?os, who showed himself both eager and obliging, had promised that his infantry should seize the bridge of Merida, and that, when it was occupied, his cavalry, under Penne Villemur, should join in the movement to sweep Latour-Maubourg over the mountains, operating on the eastern road (Merida-Ribera-Usagre-Llerena), while the allied cavalry took the western one (Albuera-Los Santos-Fuente Cantos-Monasterio). These promises were carried out: Morillo’s infantry division occupied Merida on the 10th, and next day Penne Villemur’s cavalry had reached Almendralejo.
The siege of Olivenza gave little trouble. The only difficulty was the improvising of a siege-train, even on the very modest scale required to deal with such a weak place. It was invested, as we have seen, on the 9th. On the 10th Major Alexander Dickson of the Portuguese artillery, and Captain Squire of the Engineers reconnoitred the place, and determined that the proper starting-point for the attack was the same ruined lunette, outside the walls, which the French had chosen as their first base in January. On the night of the 11th this point was occupied with the loss of one man only, killed by the enemy’s ill-directed fire. A battery for six guns was constructed in the gorge of the ruined work, but the pieces themselves, which Dickson went to choose from Elvas, did not arrive till the 14th; the cask-bridge at Jerumenha being too weak to bear them, they and their ammunition had to be ferried over on the flying bridges. The six 24-pounders were placed in position that same night. At daybreak they opened, and by the time that they had fired seventy rounds each, long ere noon, a practicable breach was made in the nearest bastion. Thereupon the governor, seeing that to have stood an assault with his handful of men would have been madness, surrendered at discretion. He marched out[p. 273] with only 9 officers and 357 men under arms, giving up also 96 sick, and some commissaries and medical officers. Several of his miserable stock of fifteen guns were found to be practically useless save to make a noise, for (as has already been mentioned) they were fixed not on proper carriages, but on the main timbers and wheels of ox-carts, and could not be elevated or depressed. The governor deserves some credit for having held out five days; if the Allies had been aware of the weakness of the garrison, they would have swamped it at once by an escalade.
On the next morning (April 16th) Cole and the 4th Division, who had at last received their much-needed supply of shoes, marched to join the rest of the army. A Portuguese garrison was thrown into Olivenza, but there was no intention to hold it, if the enemy should come up again. It was only a man-trap. Beresford might now have invested Badajoz, if it had pleased him so to do. But he thought it better to drive Latour-Maubourg completely out of Estremadura, and across the Sierra Morena, before taking the siege in hand. The main reason for his resolve was that it was clear that a week or ten days at least would be required to organize a battering-train at Elvas, for the bombardment and breaching of the fortress, and he thought it more profitable to spend this interval in pushing the French as far from Badajoz as possible, rather than in sitting down before it to no purpose, and waiting for the appearance of the siege-train. It was apparently an omission on Wellington’s part not to have ordered General Leite, the governor of Elvas, to begin making preparations for the gathering of a park and the collection of a large body of artillerymen, on the same day that he finally launched Beresford’s[341] force into Estremadura (March 16). But this had not been done, and it was not till April 18th that Major Alexander Dickson, who had already learnt what was available in Elvas while organizing the little train required for the capture of Olivenza, was directed to take in hand the much larger and more difficult task of collecting the[p. 274] men and material destined for the siege of a first-class fortress[342]. This delay seems extraordinary: did Wellington think on March 16th that Badajoz, only five days in the hands of the French at the moment, would be incapable of defence when Beresford should appear in front of it about the 25th of that same month? It is quite possible that this would have been the case, and that the French would have blown it up, if the Jerumenha bridge had been standing ready for the passage of the army on the next day, as Wellington had supposed. The Dispatches give us no help on this point; Wellington speaks of investing Badajoz, but gives no hint as to how the investment was to be followed up, till March 27th, when he observes to Beresford that ‘Elvas must supply the means for the attack on Badajoz, if possible; if it has them not, I must send them there; this will take time, but that cannot be avoided[343].’
Elvas, as matters turned out, did ‘supply the means,’ but the resources to be found there were so limited that, as was wittily said at the time by Picton, Wellington, both in May and in June 1811, ‘sued Badajoz in forma pauperis,’ and if the place had fallen it would have been almost a miracle, for no sufficient material to ensure its capture had been collected even by the month of June. The main difficulty arose from the fact that Wellington had never been provided by his Government with a siege-train. Looking upon the war in Portugal as essentially defensive in character, the Home authorities had forgotten that it might have offensive episodes, and that a great siege might not impossibly be one of them. The British army in Portugal possessed nothing in the way of artillery save the ordinary horse and field batteries (or ‘troops’ and ‘companies’ as they were then called), with their 3, 6, and 9-pounder guns. If a few hundred men were told off to heavy pieces in the Lisbon lines during the preceding autumn, it was not that they were intended for such service—they were parts of incomplete or unhorsed batteries, which had not taken the field when the campaign of 1810 began, and were waiting to complete their equipment. The British army in Portugal was absolutely destitute of artillery destined for and trained to the working of siege-guns.[p. 275] The only British pieces of heavy calibre used in the spring of 1811 were ships’ cannon lent by the commander of the squadron in the Tagus.
For such work as was now before them, therefore, the Allies had to depend entirely on what the Portuguese arsenals could supply. But all that could be found in them was now mounted on the interminable redoubts of the Lisbon lines, save such as had been sent to strengthen Elvas, Abrantes, and Peniche. Practically every gun in Portugal was defending some work, small or great; they had all been requisitioned down to the most antique and imperfect pieces. The walls of Elvas were a perfect museum of ancient artillery: among the heaviest pieces, carefully sorted out because of their calibre, and chosen for the siege-train that was to batter Badajoz, were to be seen not only many 24-pounders bearing the arms and cyphers of the earliest kings of the house of Braganza, Jo?o and Affonso, but still older brass guns of enormous length, showing the names of Philip III and IV of Spain, and dating back to the years before 1640, when Portugal was a discontented province of the Hapsburg kings[344]. It seems almost incredible, but is actually a fact, that some of the cannon used by Wellington’s men against Badajoz were just two hundred years old. Those that were not quite so antique were mainly pieces of early eighteenth-century pattern, without the later improvements invented by the French scientific artillerymen of the days of Louis XV and Louis XVI: for the Lisbon arsenal had persisted in using old models long after they had been dropped in the larger countries of Europe.
The gunners for the siege were of course mainly Portuguese, though a few were afterwards drawn from the imperfect British companies at Lisbon[345]. Those first employed were borrowed from the garrison of Elvas; they comprised a great number of recruits only partially trained, but did their best. It was the guns, not the men, that were at fault—or rather, both the guns[p. 276] and the ammunition, for the Portuguese cannon-balls in store, dating from all ages, varied much in size, and Dickson had to sort each convoy of 24 lb. or 12 lb. shot into batches, some of which were rather small and some rather large, and to apportion them to particular pieces. The old brass seventeenth-century guns, being generally worn from long use, needed the biggest shot, and even these were so large in the bore that the balls fitted loosely, and the discharge suffered from ‘windage.’ The impact of such shot was not half what it should have been[346]. With such tools to employ, it is not wonderful that the Anglo-Portuguese artillery made a poor show at the first siege of Badajoz. But worst of all was the fact that the number of pieces was at first far too small—Elvas could only spare a certain part of the armament of its walls, and it was not till some weeks had passed that guns, British and Portuguese, could be brought up from Lisbon, and with them drafts of artillerymen of both nations. But twenty-three guns and 400 artillerymen were all that Dickson could collect for the first siege, and these were not ready till April was out; indeed, it was no small achievement to organize a siege-train of any sort between April 18th and May 6th, from the sole resources of the fortress of Elvas. Of the additional hindrance caused by the small numbers and the inexperience of the engineer officers, and the total lack of trained sappers, we shall speak in the proper place.
The space of time before the siege-train for Badajoz could be got ready was employed by Beresford in clearing southern Estremadura of the enemy. Having left a brigade of the 2nd Division at Talavera Real, a battalion of the Lusitanian Legion (from Cole’s division) in Olivenza, and some squadrons of Portuguese cavalry round the southern front of Badajoz, to watch the garrison, the army marched for Santa Marta and Zafra, on the high-road to Seville, with its own cavalry in front, and Penne Villemur’s Spanish squadrons on the left (April 16th-18th). The bulk of the infantry went no further forward, because Latour-Maubourg withdrew into the Sierra Morena on the rumour of its approach. The cavalry continued the pursuit—at Los Santos on the 16th its leading regiment, the 13th Light[p. 277] Dragoons, had a smart affair with the French rearguard (2nd Hussars), and routed it with the loss of three officers and many men[347]. After this Latour-Maubourg never stopped till he had reached Guadalcanal, on the borders of Andalusia, evacuating Llerena and the other towns on the Estremaduran slope of the mountains (April 19th). Beresford thereupon left his British cavalry at Zafra, and Penne Villemur at Llerena, to watch the passes, while he drew back his infantry divisions to take in hand the siege of Badajoz (April 20th), with the exception of the brigade of Colborne, which was sent out with some Spanish horse to demonstrate against Latour-Maubourg, and to drive him still further southward if he showed signs of irresolution.
While these operations were in progress, there was a short and unexpected diversion in the extreme south-west corner of Estremadura, caused by the appearance of an outlying French column in that quarter, which had no connexion with Latour-Maubourg. A word as to this is necessary, since its result was to bring a new Spanish force into Beresford’s sphere of operations. When Soult returned to Andalusia in the middle of March, his first care was to drive off Ballasteros and the other detachments which had been threatening Seville in his absence. They gave back into the Condado de Niebla, as has already been mentioned. But at the end of the month the situation was complicated by the news that an expedition from Cadiz, the division of Zayas, had landed at Moguer, in the estuary of the Rio Tinto, and seemed about to join Ballasteros. If this junction had been made, the force collected in the west would have been too large to be safely neglected. Wherefore Soult sent out General Maransin and the Prince of Aremberg, the former with seven battalions of Gazan’s division, and the latter with two cavalry regiments, to attack the Spaniards. At the approach of this column of 4,500 men Zayas re-embarked, losing 300 men from his rearguard in so doing (April 1). Ballasteros retired into the mountains. Maransin thought it his duty to endeavour to make an end of this active and elusive adversary, whose constant appearances and reappearances on the flank of Seville had[p. 278] caused so much trouble. Sending back his cavalry and guns, he plunged into the hills with his infantry, and for twelve days hunted Ballasteros up and down the rugged upper valleys of the Odiel and the Rio Tinto. On April 12th Ballasteros, gradually pushed northward, came down to Fregenal, on the borders of Estremadura, where he offered battle, but was beaten, and fled to Xeres de los Caballeros. Maransin pursued, and reached that place on the 11th, while Ballasteros retired to Salvatierra de los Barros, not far from Santa Marta, and close on the flank of Beresford’s army. Maransin, who had long been cut off from touch with other French detachments, was wholly unaware that he had run into the neighbourhood of a British force, and would have been captured, or defeated, if he had stayed a day longer at Xeres, for Ballasteros had called for help to Beresford, and the latter was preparing to throw two divisions upon his flank and rear[348]. Letters from Latour-Maubourg to Maransin, to warn him of his danger, were intercepted by the guerrilleros and sent to the British camp[349]. But an Afrancesado, one of the principal inhabitants of Xeres, warned the French general just before it was too late: and, hastily leaving his position at night, Maransin retired into Andalusia via Fregenal and Aracena, and ultimately joined Latour-Maubourg by a circuitous route.
Ballasteros stayed behind in Estremadura, and the allied force in that province was strengthened by his 3,500 men. But this was not all: the Regency at Cadiz resolved to place a considerable army in this direction, their own city being more than amply garrisoned, and expeditions to the south being unpopular since the fiasco that followed Barrosa. On April 25th General Blake took the two divisions of Zayas and Lardizabal (both of which had fought at Barrosa), and landed with them at Ayamonte, the port in the mouth of the Guadiana. From thence he moved up along the Portuguese frontier, and joined[p. 279] Ballasteros near Xeres de los Caballeros about a fortnight later. Between them they had over 10,000 infantry and about 800 cavalry, but few guns, for Blake found it difficult to horse the batteries that he had brought with him, and left all save six pieces behind, at Ayamonte, to follow when they could procure teams. They had not rejoined him four weeks later, when the battle of Albuera was fought. The presence of Blake was not altogether an unmixed benefit, for he was independent of Casta?os, who commanded the ‘5th Army’ or old Estremaduran force, and the two generals were ancient rivals and did not seem likely to co-operate with any cordiality. But if Soult was to make his appearance for the relief of Badajoz, it was as well that the Allies should be as strong as possible on the front by which he must attack.
Before, however, Blake had arrived in Estremadura, the investment of Badajoz had begun. It was directed by Wellington himself, who dropped suddenly into the middle of the campaign on the 20th, when he arrived at Elvas. Having seen Masséna retreat to Salamanca, and break up his army into cantonments, he now considered that it was safe for him to pay the visit to the south which he had always projected. Leaving Sabugal on April 16th, he rode across country by Castello Branco and Niza, and reached Elvas on the fifth night. The next day but one he conducted a reconnaissance of Badajoz, escorted by a brigade newly landed at Lisbon, which he had ordered to join Beresford—Alten’s two light battalions of the King’s German Legion. The examination of the defences of the fortress was made under some difficulties, for at the moment when Wellington was riding round the walls a large working party of the garrison, which had been dispatched to cut timber in the woods to the south, was returning into the place. Phillipon, the governor, thinking that Wellington’s escort was a detachment sent to cut off his workmen, came hastily out of the fortress with three battalions, and swept off the high-road two companies of the Germans who were accompanying the head-quarters’ staff, with the loss of fifty or sixty men. The working party hurried to join their friends, and got into the gate before the main body of Alten’s brigade could come up. This interruption being over, Wellington completed his survey of the whole circuit of Badajoz, and on the[p. 280] next day (April 23rd) issued elaborate orders to Beresford, concerning the policy to be observed in Estremadura during the siege. He had never intended to stay more than a few days in the south, to supervise affairs, and on the 25th a dispatch received from Sir Brent Spencer, the senior officer left with the main army in the north, reported such activity of the French in that direction that he rode hard for the frontiers of Leon, where he arrived on the 29th.
The orders dictated to Beresford governed the whole course of the campaign in Estremadura during the next month, and were of the highest importance. Wellington directed that the siege of Badajoz should be begun the moment that the guns and material were ready, but warned his colleague that its commencement would infallibly bring Soult to the relief of the place, with every available man that he could scrape together from Andalusia. It was impossible to calculate what the strength of his army would be: if he raised the siege of Cadiz or evacuated Granada, so that he could bring a very large force with him, Beresford was to retire behind the Guadiana, and assume a defensive position on the Caya river in front of Elvas. If forced from thence, he must retire even as far as Portalegre should it be necessary. But if Soult (as was more likely) came up with a force which was not absolutely overwhelming in numbers, ‘Marshal Beresford will consider of and decide upon the chance of success, according to a view of the relative number of both armies, and making a reasonable allowance for the number of Spanish troops which will co-operate with him.... If he should think his strength sufficient to fight a general action to save the siege of Badajoz, he will collect his troops to fight it. I believe that, upon the whole, the most central and advantageous place to collect the troops will be at Albuera.... All this must of course be left to the decision of Sir William Beresford. I authorize him to fight the action if he should think proper, or to retire if he should not[350].’
The co-operation of the Spaniards was the crucial point. Unless it were assured, Wellington considered that Beresford must assume the more cautious and defensive attitude. If it were secured, the bolder policy might be pursued. The lines which[p. 281] Wellington laid down were in the main those which had already been suggested by Beresford: (1) Casta?os must undertake to keep the horse of Villemur in the Sierra Morena, closely observing Latour-Maubourg, but forbid him to engage in any fighting; he must retire if pressed; the infantry of the 5th army must stay at Merida, as at present, but be ready to join Beresford if Soult invaded Estremadura. (2) Ballasteros was to take a similar position on the other flank, with his head quarters at Burguillos (near Zafra)[351] and his advanced posts at Fregenal and Monasterio; if Soult moved forward, he was to join Beresford without attempting to fight. (3) When Blake’s army had landed, it was to pass up the Guadiana, and take post at Xeres de los Caballeros; on any alarm from Soult, it was (like the other Spanish troops) to join Beresford at once. If these arrangements worked, at least 15,000 Spaniards would be in line at Albuera, the chosen position, to assist in holding back Soult. And, as we shall see, the scheme did work exactly as Wellington had designed, and the whole force was collected. (4) Lastly, and this was all-important, when the allied forces were concentrated, they must be placed under a single commander, and not worked with divided authority and divided responsibility, as had been the case in the Talavera campaign of 1809. Concerning Blake there could be no difficulty, as he was junior to Casta?os, and the latter had consented to place himself at Beresford’s disposition when they met at Jerumenha on March 30th. Too much praise cannot be given to his reasonable and conciliatory conduct, which alone rendered possible the co-operation of all the allied forces during the ensuing campaign.
Wellington therefore, as is clear, foresaw the whole course of subsequent operations, and even fixed the exact battle-spot on which the fate of Soult’s attempt to relieve Badajoz would be decided. The only point left to Beresford’s decision was whether the strength of the French army was such as to render a successful resistance possible. And when we come to consider the respective forces at the disposition of the two parties, it can hardly be urged that Beresford was wrong to accept battle. That his victory was a hard-fought and costly one came[p. 282] from minor tactical circumstances, which will be explained in their due place.
As to the details of the projected siege of Badajoz, Wellington laid down an equally clear policy. All guns and material were to be collected in Elvas, Campo Mayor, and Olivenza, and not to move till everything was ready. The main communications of the army were to be across a floating bridge to be constructed at the junction of the Caya and the Guadiana, five miles below Badajoz and six from Elvas. The permanent bridge of Merida and the temporary bridges at Jerumenha would be subsidiary resources. Lastly, and here was the most important point, the general scheme to be pursued was that the besiegers should first reduce the outlying defences of Badajoz, Fort San Cristobal on the north bank of the Guadiana, the Pardaleras and the Picurina on the south bank. Only when all these were taken would operations against the city itself be begun. To quote the concluding paragraph of Wellington’s memorandum: ‘When the British army shall be in possession of San Cristobal, Picurina and Pardaleras, Marshal Beresford will determine upon the point at which he will attack the body of the place. It is believed that, upon the whole, one of the south faces will be the most advantageous.’
There can be no doubt that all the mishaps of the two first British sieges of Badajoz had their origin in these original orders of Wellington, which were drawn up on the advice of his chief engineer, Colonel Fletcher. The great mistake was the choosing of the almost impregnable fort of San Cristobal as one of the three first points of attack, and the making all subsequent operations depend upon its capture. No doubt the possession of this lofty and commanding work would render the fall of Badajoz certain, since it overlooked the castle and all the northern end of the city. But it was the strongest part of the whole defences, and when the miserable and antiquated train of artillery at Beresford’s disposition is taken into consideration, and it is remembered that the siege was to be conducted ‘against time’ as it were, i. e. with the hope that it might be concluded before Soult could collect a relieving force, it is clear that San Cristobal ought to have been left alone. The other points designated by Wellington, the Pardaleras and Picurina,[p. 283] were much more accessible, and the capture of one or other of them would have brought the besiegers close to the walls, though neither of them commanded the whole city in the same fashion as San Cristobal. The best commentary on the sieges of 1811 is that a year later, at the third and successful leaguer, Wellington left the high-lying fort on the other side of the Guadiana entirely alone. The original orders of 1811 gave three separate and distinct objectives, and none of these were to be mere ‘false attacks,’ since it is distinctly said that operations against the enceinte were only to begin when all three of the forts were in British hands. Wellington was not a trained engineer; he was dependent on the advice of the officers of that arm, and it seems that they gave him bad counsel, as they certainly did to Beresford during the subsequent weeks. The most puzzling thing is to make out why Colonel Fletcher and his colleagues ignored Soult’s precedent; the French engineers had concentrated their attack on the Pardaleras front as their sole objective, for their other operations were false attacks. The English engineers, instead of concentrating their efforts in the same way, wasted their work on three separate points, which was all the more inexcusable because they knew that the resources which their comrades of the artillery arm had at their disposition were most inadequate for a great siege. Hence came a very costly and deplorable series of failures.
On the day of Wellington’s departure from Elvas heavy rain fell, and the Guadiana rose high, not merely washing away the cask-bridge at Jerumenha, but rendering the working of the flying bridges impossible. This was a serious matter; not only did it put a temporary stop to the communications between Elvas and the army, but it raised the question as to what might happen if a similar mischance were to occur when Soult was invading Estremadura. For if the Jerumenha bridges should break when the Allies were concentrated at Albuera, they would have no line of retreat and an impassable river behind. Beresford, with this possibility in his eye, ordered an alternative line of communication to be established via Merida, and sent a brigade of the 2nd Division thither to reinforce the Spaniards of Morillo, and a day later the whole 4th Division. His anxiety on this point did not cease till, on the 5th of May, a strong pontoon[p. 284] bridge had been built at the point selected by Wellington, the place where the Caya falls into the Guadiana. By this time the Jerumenha bridges were again in working order, but it was clear that it would be a mistake to trust the whole safety of the army to them.
It was only on this same day (May 5) that Colonel Fletcher and Major Alexander Dickson reported to Beresford that they were ready to produce the means for the attack on Badajoz: the former had his stock of platforms, fascines, and gabions prepared; the latter had organized the first convoy of artillery and ammunition from Elvas. On the 6th, therefore, the investment of Badajoz on the south side of the Guadiana was completed by the British brigades of Lumley and Alten and the Portuguese brigade of Fonseca, while on the following day the brigade of Kemmis and the 17th Portuguese (part of the garrison of Elvas) appeared opposite San Cristobal, and shut in the place on the northern bank of the river. The rest of the infantry[352] encamped as a support of the besieging force in the woods between Badajoz and Albuera, but the cavalry still remained in southern Estremadura, and Colborne’s brigade had been for some days (April 30th-May 11th) executing a demonstration in the Sierra Morena, with the object of keeping Latour-Maubourg employed. This last operation, owing to Colborne’s skilful management of his column of 2,000 infantry and two squadrons each of Spanish and Portuguese horse, had been very successful. On hearing of British infantry in his front, the French general evacuated his posts on the crest of the mountains, Guadalcanal, Fuente Ovejuna, Azuaga, and Monasterio, and fell back south-eastward towards Constantina on the Cordova road, abandoning the direct line of retreat on Seville, which he had hitherto covered. Colborne, after clearing all these places, extended his march eastward into a very wild and unexplored country, and summoned the isolated castle of Benalcazar, the only French garrison left north of the Sierra Morena. When it refused to listen to a summons, he had to leave it, having neither guns to batter it nor time to waste. From thence he returned by a circular sweep through Campanario to Almendralejo, where he once more was in touch with the British army (May 11th).
[p. 285]The first episodes of the siege of Badajoz were not very encouraging to the besiegers. On the 8th trenches were opened opposite all the three points of attack designated by Wellington, the Picurina and Pardaleras forts on the south side, and San Cristobal on the north. In each case the first parallel was started at about 400 yards from the walls; Dickson had told off fourteen 24-pounders and two 8-inch howitzers for the work on the left bank, five 24-pounders and two other howitzers for the attack on San Cristobal. More energy was displayed in this last quarter than in the others, apparently from the notion that if this commanding work could be subdued the rest of the siege would be an easy matter. But the results were disappointing: on the stony slopes of San Cristobal there was little earth to throw up, and the spade gritted against rock at three inches from the surface. At the end of the first night’s digging the trench was but a seam, and there was only one section at which about ten men could work under cover. The rest had to be abandoned during daylight, for the enemy kept up a furious fire, not merely from the fort, but from the citadel on the other side of the river, whose flank battery enfiladed the projected trench. Three out of nine engineer officers present on this front were killed or wounded in the first twenty-four hours, and many of the workers from Kemmis’s brigade and the 17th Portuguese. It soon became obvious that the trenches would have to be built with earth from a distance and gabions, rather than excavated. Nevertheless, a battery for Dickson’s five 24-pounders was sketched out, and began to be visible to the enemy. On the night of the 10th Phillipon sent up a reserve battalion into San Cristobal, and executed a sortie upon the British works. It penetrated into the trenches, but was driven out after a sharp struggle by the covering party. But, pursuing too far, the British came under the guns of San Cristobal, and had to retire to their trenches with lamentably heavy loss[353]. Next day the battery was completed, despite of a deadly fire both from the[p. 286] fort and the castle, and opened upon its objective. But it was completely overmastered, and before night four of its five guns had been damaged or dismounted; three more engineer officers were hurt, leaving only three surviving of the original nine. It is said that the battery opened before it had been intended—a fault of over-zeal on the part of the Portuguese major in command. Beresford’s purpose had been to wait till the other attacks, on the Picurina and Pardaleras, were ready, before beginning to batter San Cristobal. These attacks had met with less difficulty, the ground being easier to dig, and on the evening of the 11th the trenches in front of the Picurina were well advanced, and the battery of ten guns there opened upon the fort with some, but not great, effect.
Seeing the San Cristobal attack faring so badly, the engineers got leave to erect a second battery on that side, further down the hill, which was intended to check the enfilading fire from the other side of the Guadiana. More guns were brought up to the original battery, to replace those that had been damaged. But both batteries were overpowered and badly maltreated on the morning of the 12th. A few hours later news arrived from the south, sent by Ballasteros, to the effect that the French were in motion from Seville with a large relieving army, and were marching hard across the Sierra Morena, just as Wellington had expected; they had reached Santa Olalla on the 11th, and were already in touch with Latour-Maubourg. Since their force was estimated at only 23,000 men—not far from the real amount—Beresford resolved to fight, and sent requests to Casta?os, Ballasteros, and Blake to concentrate on Albuera, the battle-ground selected by Wellington. It was fortunate that Blake was now in close touch and available—he had reached Fregenal on the 9th and Barcarrota on the 12th, so that his arrival was certain, unless some unforeseen accident should occur. Without his aid it would have been doubtful policy to wait for Soult and risk a general action: but with his 10,000 men in line the Allies would have wellnigh 35,000 men available, if every unit came complete to the field.
Map of the British Sieges of Badajoz in May and June 1811
Enlarge BADAJOZ The Two British Sieges (May & June 1811)
Meanwhile, pending the confirmation of the news of the French advance, Beresford’s engineers asked leave to open another parallel, and 1,400 men had been paraded for the[p. 287] purpose of starting it, when complete details as to Soult’s progress came to hand. It had been so rapid that the Marshal at once ordered all the siege operations to be discontinued, though the engineers tried to persuade him to risk two days’ more work, by the vain promise that they would undertake to produce two practicable breaches in that space of time. Beresford wisely refused to listen to them, and ordered that all the guns and ammunition should be returned at once to Elvas, with such of the siege stores as could be readily moved. But the mass of gabions and fascines had to be burnt, as these would be profitable to the garrison, and would certainly be carried into the town if they were left intact. The troops, English, Portuguese, and Spanish (three battalions of Casta?os’s infantry had come up from Merida), were ordered to prepare to march for Albuera in successive detachments, the 4th Division and the Spaniards being left to the last in the trenches, to cover the removal of the guns and stores.
Beresford’s total casualties in this mismanaged fragment of a siege, from May 6th to May 12th, had been 533 British and 200 Portuguese, or 733 in all, lost in the trenches and in the sortie. It will be seen that the sortie cost far more lives than the actual beleaguering work. All the British loss save seven casualties was in Kemmis’s brigade of the 4th Division[354], which lay on the Cristobal side, and suffered both in the trench-building and in the sortie. The Portuguese loss was partly in the 17th Line, which acted with Kemmis, partly among the artillery.
FUENTES DE O?ORO: PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS.
APRIL 12nd-MAY 3rd, 1811
The Army of Portugal, sullenly retiring far within the frontiers of Spain, had been lost to Wellington’s sight on April 8th, when it passed the Agueda and fell back in diverging columns towards various towns of the kingdom of Leon—Salamanca, Toro, and Zamora—where it went into cantonments. Only Drouet with the two divisions of Conroux and Claparéde remained in observation of the Allies, with his head quarters at San Mu?oz. The British general was well aware of the dilapidated state in which the enemy had reached his base, and calculated that it would take many weeks for Masséna to get his army into fighting trim again. He considered that he might even hope to gain possession of Almeida before the French would be in a position to attempt its relief, though it could only fall by famine, since there were no heavy guns to form a battering-train for its siege nearer than Oporto, Abrantes, or Lisbon. He had already inspected the place, and saw that it had been put in such a good state of defence by the governor, Brennier, that all external traces of the great explosion of August 1810 had disappeared. That the town within was still a mass of ruins, with nearly every house cut off sheer at the first story, was of no military importance, when the enceinte and the bomb-proofs were in good order.
There was a short moment during which Wellington had some hopes of being able to lay hands on Ciudad Rodrigo as well as Almeida. He had learnt that the Spanish fortress was almost as depleted of food as the Portuguese, and that Masséna’s troops had consumed 200,000 rations from its stores when they reached the frontier; he thought that the extra garrison which Junot had thrown into it, before he passed onward, would only serve to exhaust the magazines so much the earlier. Accordingly he not[p. 289] only requested that active and enterprising partisan Julian Sanchez, to beset the roads between Salamanca and Rodrigo, in order that no provisions might get through, but made preparations to throw some British light troops across the Agueda to co-operate with him, when the approach of a convoy should be reported. With this object he moved up the Light Division and Arentschildt’s brigade of cavalry close to the Agueda and within a few miles of Rodrigo. Their head quarters were at Gallegos, their outposts extended from the bridge of Barba del Puerco on the north as far as El Bodon on the south. It was intended that, when Don Julian signalled the approach of the French, the Light Division should make a dash across the fords of the Agueda, and endeavour to intercept the convoy. This plan failed on the 13th of April, owing, as Wellington held, to the slowness of Sir William Erskine[355], who was still in command of the division, though news had just arrived—to the great satisfaction of all the battalions—that its old general, Craufurd, was daily expected at Lisbon on his way to the front.
Rodrigo having been revictualled, Wellington abandoned all hope of molesting it further; to have invested it would have been useless, when he had no siege-train. But Almeida he intended to reduce at his leisure, being of the opinion that it would be starved out before Masséna was in a position to take the field to relieve it. Nothing short of his whole army would suffice for that operation—if that even were enough. And knowing that the troops had just reached Salamanca in a demoralized and discontented condition, without shoes, without train, almost without ammunition, and with the remnant of their cavalry and artillery horses dying off at the rate of several hundreds a day, Wellington doubted if his adversary would be able to come out of his cantonments before the summer was far spent. At any rate, he calculated that he had a good many weeks before him, in which he was not likely to find the Army of Portugal a serious danger. Accordingly he resolved to put[p. 290] his own host into cantonments also, in such a position as to block the road to Almeida, and to give it a well-earned rest while that fortress was being starved out. He had, as we observed in a previous chapter, no intention of assuming the offensive against the French in Leon till he had organized his line of communication with his new base at Coimbra, and established large intermediate dép?ts at Lamego, Celorico, and other conveniently placed localities. The army was living from hand to mouth,—all the country about Almeida, Guarda, and Sabugal having been thoroughly devastated,—on convoys which were only struggling up at irregular intervals from the lower Mondego. The horses especially were in very poor order, from want of proper forage. ‘The regiments subsisted on the green corn, which was dreadful to the inhabitants, and of little use to the horses, when they had to work. There was nothing else, and we had to cut their rye.... How our army has been carried though this desolate abandoned country is astonishing[356].’ Till there were dép?ts and a regular service established, it was impossible to concentrate the army, much less to send it forward into Spain.
Accordingly the allied troops were spread broadcast in the villages between the Coa and the Agueda. The Light Division and two cavalry regiments[357] were in front, holding the outposts facing Ciudad Rodrigo, and in touch with Drouet’s corps, which lay along the Yeltes, a stream that runs roughly parallel with the Agueda, at a distance of from seven to fifteen miles to the north-east. The 5th Division was in the villages around Fort Concepcion, in support of the Light Division. The 6th Division, with Pack’s Portuguese, who had lately come up from the Mondego, where they had been dropped during the pursuit of Masséna[358], were blockading Almeida. The main body of the army, the 1st, 3rd, and 7th Divisions, with Ashworth’s independent Portuguese brigade[359], were cantoned in the valleys of[p. 291] the Dos Casas and the Turon, tributaries of the Agueda, being distributed between Nava de Aver, Fuentes de O?oro, Pozo Bello, and other small places in the neighbourhood. The cavalry, save that detached to the front, was trying to keep its horses alive in the poor villages along the Coa, from Castello Rodrigo to Alfayates[360]. The whole army, distributed in a square of not more than twenty miles, was so placed that it could concentrate at any point in one march. Wellington, even though he judged Masséna unable to molest him, was determined not to be caught with his troops in a state of dispersion.
But considering that things were at present at a standstill on the northern frontier, and that nothing serious could be undertaken there, till the line of supplies was organized and Almeida captured, Wellington now resolved to pay the long-deferred visit to Estremadura which he projected as far back as the commencement of Masséna’s retreat. ‘At this moment,’ he wrote to Lord Liverpool, ‘the first object is certainly Badajoz.’ Till that place should have been recovered and regarrisoned, he could never feel quite safe on his southern flank. A diversion on the part of Soult in the Alemtejo, threatening Lisbon from the south, would always be a dangerous and tiresome possibility, until Badajoz was once more in the hands of the Allies, and all Estremadura recovered and held by a competent force. The future was inscrutable—for all Wellington knew the Emperor might appear in person, before the summer was over, to take up the Spanish problem; or, on the other hand, the affairs of Eastern Europe might cause him to shut off all reinforcements from the Peninsula, and to turn his attention to a Russian war. But whatever might happen, it was well to have the Portuguese frontier properly covered in the south. Supposing the French made another march on Lisbon, it was necessary to be free of danger in the rear. Supposing that they showed weakness, and dropped the offensive, the possession of Badajoz and Estremadura gave facilities for disquieting the Army of Andalusia, perhaps for raising the siege of Cadiz, which could not be secured in any other fashion.
[p. 292]Meanwhile Wellington formulated three possible courses[361] which the French might pursue during the next two months, before new reinforcements could reach them from France, or the Emperor make his appearance—if so he should decide to do. These three possible courses were: (a) Masséna might call on Bessières, and induce him to join the Army of Portugal at once with all his disposable troops, in order that they might save Almeida by driving off the British army. (b) Masséna might allow his troops a long repose in cantonments, relieving the Army of the North in its present charge of Old Castile, while Bessières, with such part of his corps as he could collect, might invade Galicia, to clear the French right flank. (c) Masséna might give his troops the repose that they needed, and, after some interval, might pass south into Estremadura, to join Soult in operations on the Guadiana, while leaving Bessières in charge of the defence of the frontiers of Leon. It will be seen that the French actually adopted first plan (a), the endeavour to save Almeida by a junction of the Armies of Portugal and the North, and then, a month later, plan (c), a concentration in Estremadura to save Badajoz. Oddly enough, Wellington conceived that the first plan was the least likely of the three, apparently because he over-estimated the time which it would take Masséna to reorganize his army and resume active operations. He did not make enough allowance for the old Marshal’s obstinacy, and for the pride which forbade him to allow Almeida to fall without any effort being made to relieve it. But though he thought this scheme the least likely for the French to adopt, he made full provisions for dealing with it, in case it should be the one they selected. His second suggestion, that Bessières might hand over the charge of Old Castile to Masséna, and[p. 293] proceed to invade Galicia, was founded on an insufficient knowledge of the present situation and difficulties of the Army of the North. Bessières, though the gross amount of his forces was large (over 70,000 men), was much too obsessed and worried by the guerrilleros to dream of concentrating a force large enough to make a serious invasion of Galicia. We shall find him, three weeks after the date of Wellington’s dispatch, declaring that he could only collect 1,600 cavalry and one battery to form a field force, because any movement of his infantry would imperil the whole fabric of the French supremacy in northern Spain. If the objection be raised that this plea of his was only put forth in order to disoblige Masséna, and to save himself from responsibility, no such objection can be made to his statement of June 6th—made after Masséna’s recall—to the effect that if he were forced to concentrate 20,000 men for any purpose, all communications with France and Madrid would be lost, and the whole of the country-side, from the Guadiana to the Bay of Biscay, would blaze up in one general insurrection[362]. Supposing that Masséna and Bessières had been on the best of terms, and that the former had proposed to take over the charge of the region occupied by the latter, in order to set the Army of the North free for field operations, Bessières must have replied that he would not be able to produce enough men to ‘contain’ the British army, and at the same time to attack Galicia. Wellington’s hypothesis therefore was faulty; he undervalued the work of the guerrilleros, who were occupying, for his benefit, the attention of a much greater part of the French army than he supposed. The idea that the enemy might make a blow at Galicia was inspired by his knowledge of the weakness of that province, where Mahy had put everything out of gear, and Santocildes had not yet begun the process of reorganization. Knowing how disastrous the appearance of a French corps in this quarter might prove, he feared it more than was necessary[363].
[p. 294]If it be asked what were Napoleon’s views as to the proper scheme for the French marshals to adopt, under the circumstances that existed on April 15, we must not look (of course) to orders issued about that time, when he was still working on data three weeks old. As late as March 30th he had been sending instructions to Soult and other commanders on the hypothesis that Masséna’s head quarters were at Coimbra, and that Oporto was very possibly in French hands![364] On April 9 he was telling the Prince of Essling to devote his energy to the armament of Almeida, and to place himself so as to cover both that place and Ciudad Rodrigo[365]—orders exquisitely inapplicable when Almeida was already blockaded by Wellington, and Masséna’s troops had just crawled past Ciudad Rodrigo, in a state of hopeless dilapidation, on their retreat to Salamanca. The next advice sent to the Army of Portugal was almost equally inappropriate: having heard of Wellington’s flying visit to Estremadura by intelligence dated April 18th (the trip had begun upon the 15th), he jumped to the conclusion that the English general must have taken many troops with him. On May 7th he wrote, ‘the translations from English newspapers herewith enclosed show that Lord Wellington had crossed the Tagus on April 18th. So it seems that on the side of Castile there can now be only half the English army left. The events which must already have taken place on the side of Almeida will have shown the generals that this is the case, and will have enabled them to make the proper corresponding move (de prendre le parti convenable), viz. to begin to move towards the Tagus[366].’ On the day when this was written, Wellington, who had not taken a man to Estremadura,[p. 295] had been back on the frontier of Leon since April 28, and had, at the head of the whole of his original army, defeated Masséna and Bessières at Fuentes de O?oro, on May 5th. As always, the imperial orders, founded on data that had long ceased to be correct, or had never been correct at all, arrived too late to direct the course of the campaign.
One most important measure, however, was taken at this time, by which the Emperor did succeed in affecting the general course of affairs on the frontier of Portugal. On April 20th he made up his mind to recall Masséna, and to send a new chief to the Army of Portugal. Five days before, Marshal Marmont, newly returned from commanding in Dalmatia, had received orders to start at once for Spain, where he was to replace Ney at the head of the 6th Corps. Whether the Emperor had already made up his mind on the 15th that Marmont was to replace Masséna, not to serve under him, it is impossible to say. But he at any rate concealed his purpose from the younger Marshal, who had been some days in Spain before he received on May 10th the dispatch of April 20th which made him commander of the Army of Portugal[367]. Probably the news that Masséna had failed in his design to hold Coimbra, which Foy had elaborately explained to the Emperor, and had fallen back behind Ciudad Rodrigo, had provoked his master to dismiss him from command. Foy’s report had caused Napoleon to believe that Masséna could stop on the Mondego and hold Wellington in check. The imperial dispatch of March 30 (as we have already seen) speaks of Masséna’s stay at Coimbra as a settled fact, and states that Oporto is or will soon be in his hands. On April 9 Napoleon knew that the Marshal had lost Coimbra and fallen back on Guarda[368], but continued to send him elaborate instructions. It was apparently the receipt of Masséna’s dispatch of March 31st from Alfayates, confessing that he was completely foiled, and that he must retire beyond the Agueda, as far as Zamora and Toro, since the spirit of the army was so broken that he dared not risk a general[p. 296] action[369], which determined the Emperor to supersede him. This document must have reached Paris about the 15th or 16th, and would suffice to explain Napoleon’s anger. For a Commander-in-Chief who confesses that he has lost the confidence of his army is a dangerous person to retain in power. There was ample evidence from Masséna’s earlier letters that he had quarrelled not only with Ney but with most of his other superior officers; if the general feeling of the army was also against him, he was not likely to get much good service out of it. Possibly there may have been also a feeling of wounded amour propre in the Emperor’s breast, when he reflected how, relying on Masséna’s assurances, he had informed Soult, King Joseph, and Bessières that the Army of Portugal had its head quarters at Coimbra, and would attack Lisbon in the autumn[370], so that ‘a hundred thousand men, using Coimbra and Badajoz as their bases, would complete the conquest of Portugal, a conquest which would drag England into a crisis that would be of the highest interest.’ Napoleon did not like to be made ridiculous before his subordinates, by having been induced to publish an absurd misstatement of fact, leading up to a vainglorious prophecy which appeared most unlikely to be realized.
But though Masséna’s death-warrant, as commander-in-chief was signed on April 20, and may have been decided upon as early as April 16, there were still three weeks during which he was to make his last stroke for revenge, and to lose his last battle, for it was not till May 12th that Marmont presented his lettres de service and took over the command.
Wellington, meanwhile, convinced that he had nothing to fear for some little time from the Army of Portugal and its commander, left Villar Formoso on the morning of April 15th, reached Sabugal that night, Castello Branco on the 17th, and Elvas by the noon of the 20th. This was marvellous travelling, considering the mountain roads that had to be traversed, but Wellington was a mighty horseman, and accompanied by only[p. 297] a few well-mounted staff officers flew like the wind over hill and dale. He remained only four days in Estremadura; during that short time he surveyed Badajoz, and issued compendious directions for the siege[371]; he drew up a plan of campaign for the united armies of Beresford, Blake, and Casta?os, and then, returning as rapidly as he had come, retraced his route to the frontiers of Leon, and was back at Alameda on the 29th, having been less than a fortnight absent from his army. This rapidity of movement, as we have already seen, completely puzzled Napoleon, who, on receiving the intelligence that Wellington was over the Tagus on the 18th, thought that he had gone with a strong force to establish himself in Estremadura, and sent orders for the Army of Portugal to move at once towards the south[372], a movement which at that moment could not have been executed for want of train, transport, and provisions.
During Wellington’s absence the command of the troops cantoned between the Agueda and the Coa had been given over to Sir Brent Spencer, as the senior division-commander present. Wellington did not think it probable that Spencer would be much troubled by the enemy during his short spell of responsibility, but left him directions that covered every possible contingency. If, contrary to all expectation, Masséna should make an effort to relieve Almeida within the fortnight for which the Commander-in-Chief intended to be absent[373], Spencer was directed to make a careful estimate of the force of the enemy; if it were but small the line of the Agueda might be held; if it were great—it was conceivable that Bessières might succour Masséna—Spencer was to concentrate, not in front of Almeida, nor across the road from Rodrigo to that place, but in a defensive position to the south of it, parallel to the French line of advance and threatening it in flank. Only Pack’s Portuguese infantry brigade, and Barba?ena’s cavalry brigade of the same[p. 298] nation, were to keep up the investment of Almeida till the last possible moment. The designated position was that in front of Rendo, Alfayates, and Aldea Velha, which Wellington took up himself later in the same year, during a subsequent movement of the French to relieve Ciudad Rodrigo. No leave to fight a battle was given to Spencer, though it was given to Beresford when the latter was placed in a similar responsible position. Instead, he was ordered to send constant information to his absent chief, who gave him a tabular statement of the mileage of his journey and the place at which he was to be heard of each day[374]. Wellington intended to return with his own peculiar swiftness on the first threatening news, and thought that he could reckon on being back in time, if he was properly advised of the first ominous movements of the enemy. He apparently calculated that, if Masséna came on in great force, and found the British army massed in a strong mountain position, upon the flank of the route that he must take towards Almeida, he would be unlikely to attack it—Bussaco being an unpleasant memory. If the Marshal began to man?uvre he would lose time, and he himself would be back before the crisis came.
As a matter of fact it was only towards the end of Spencer’s short period of responsibility that matters began to grow interesting upon the frontiers of Leon. There was, however, a slight alarm on the 15th-16th, just after Wellington’s departure. Masséna, not contented with having passed a first convoy into Rodrigo on the 13th, had followed it up with a second, which was escorted by Marchand’s division of the 6th Corps—a unit which had seen more severe service during March than any other part of the French army, yet was considered to be in better order than its fellows. The same phenomenon, it will be remembered, had been noted with Paget’s rearguard division during Moore’s retreat to Corunna. Marchand was ordered, when he should have lodged the convoy in Rodrigo, to make a reconnaissance toward the Azava, and try to discover what was the force of the British in that direction. He got into the fortress without hindrance, owing to Erskine’s usual talent for bungling—on the approach of the convoy the Light[p. 299] Division was concentrated at Molino de Flores, but Erskine refused to send it over the fords, and watched Marchand defile into the town. Some cavalry went across the Agueda, and cut off a flanking party of three hundred French, who took shelter in a ruined village and refused to surrender. Erskine sent no one to support the British horse, and presently a French column came out of Rodrigo and released the blockaded party. All this took place under the eyes of the disgusted Light Division on the other side of the water[375] (April 16th).
Some days later Marchand came out of Rodrigo with a regiment of infantry and a squadron, to make the reconnaissance which he had been directed to execute. At Marialva, five miles outside the fortress, he ran into the pickets of the 95th and 52nd, and received such a warm reception that he turned back at once, and sent the report to Masséna that the British were established in strong force close above the Agueda (April 22[376]). After this there were no further alarms at the front till the 28th, the day on which Wellington returned from Elvas. But Spencer’s account of the reconnaissance of the 22nd, which reached Wellington at Portalegre on the 25th, undoubtedly contributed to hurry the return journey of the Commander-in-Chief, for it was accompanied by a report—which was perfectly correct—that information from the side of Salamanca seemed to make it certain that Masséna was reconcentrating his troops for a dash at Almeida, and that Bessières had been asked to give help. The Salamanca secret correspondents (of whom the chief was Doctor Curtis, the head of the Irish College in the University) had always proved trustworthy, so that their reports could not be ignored, and Wellington was glad that the French movement was reported at the end, and not at the commencement, of his trip to Estremadura.
The fact was that Masséna was making a last desperate effort to save the military reputation of which he was so proud, and to justify himself to his master. If Almeida and Rodrigo were both to be lost, as the final sequel to his retreat from Portugal,[p. 300] his whole year’s command must be written down as a failure; if these early conquests of 1810 could be saved, he might yet claim to have added somewhat to the French dominions in the Peninsula. His troops had not been a fortnight in their cantonments before he was making preparations to reassemble them for a last effort. In some respects that fortnight had made a great difference in their condition: Salamanca and Valladolid, at the moment of his arrival, were full of drafts of men, and accumulation of stores, belonging to the Army of Portugal, which had been gathering there for many months while the communications with that army were cut. At one moment in the late winter, Thiébault, the governor of Salamanca, had no less than 18,000 men of detachments belonging to Masséna’s troops in his government[377]—partly convalescents, partly small parties which had come up from the French dép?ts to join their regiments, and had been unable to do so. Though some of them had ultimately gone forward with Foy and Gardanne, many still remained to be absorbed. The numbers of ‘present under arms’ in the 2nd, 6th, and 8th Corps went up at once, the mass of sick and exhausted men which they discharged into hospital being replaced by the drafts and convalescents. Masséna also took out of the 9th Corps the battalions belonging to regiments of which the main bodies were already in the old Army of Portugal, and sent them to join their comrades[378]. The cadres of one battalion in each regiment were then sent home to France, and the other three raised to something like their original war strength. This redistribution brought up the divisions of Reynier and Loison to a figure which they had not known for many months, though it depleted Drouet’s corps to a corresponding extent: his troops now consisted of only[p. 301] eighteen battalions, or 10,000 infantry, all consisting of fourth battalions belonging to regiments serving in Andalusia. He had received orders that when the crisis on the frontiers of Leon was over, he was to conduct these units to join their eagles in Soult’s army. Drouet was anxious to get away from Masséna as soon as possible, and would gladly have marched for Seville without delay; but it was obvious that this was as yet impossible, and, as he was technically under the command of the Marshal, he was compelled to play his part in the ensuing campaign.
The net result of all the transferences of battalions and the picking up of drafts was that on May 1, the 2nd Corps had in the ranks 1,200 more men than it had possessed on March 15, the 6th Corps 2,000 more, Solignac’s division of the 8th Corps 800 more. On the other hand, Clausel’s division of the last-named corps, originally composed almost entirely of isolated ‘fourth battalions’ was practically ruined[379]. Masséna left it behind, when he mobilized the other divisions of the old Army of Portugal for the May campaign. But the men available for the field in the remaining divisions, including those of Drouet, now amounted to 42,000 bayonets. Their ammunition had been replenished, they had been reshod, though only to a small extent reclothed, and they had received at the last moment several months’ arrears of pay. Their morale still left much to be desired, for confidence in their Commander-in-Chief had not been restored, and Ney was still regretted. But a French army, however discontented, could always be trusted to fight when duty called, and the Prince of Essling still hoped to redeem his lost reputation.
But the weak points in the Army of Portugal were the cavalry and artillery. The greater part of the horses which had survived the retreat from Santarem had only reached the plains of Leon to die. A third of the troopers lacked horses altogether, the remainder had in many cases mounts which must perish if asked to do another week’s work. When the cavalry brigadiers of the 2nd and 6th Corps were directed to send to the front all mounted men fit for service, Lamotte could only show 319[p. 302] sabres from a brigade which had counted 800 in March; Pierre Soult (decidedly more fortunate) had 600 out of 900, though one of his regiments (the 1st Hussars) could put only 103 men in the saddle. Montbrun’s division of reserve dragoons, which had 2,400 sabres a few weeks back, came to the front with 1,187. The most effective cavalry unit in the army was the brigade of Fournier[380], belonging to Drouet’s corps, which, not having shared in the winter campaign in Portugal, could show 794 men in good state. Thus Masséna could bring forward for the new campaign no more than 3,000 horsemen, and these not in the best condition[381].
With the artillery the case was even worse, for the class of horse had been weaker, and the mortality proportionately greater. As we have seen in a previous chapter, the batteries had for the most part just succeeded in dragging back their guns to the Agueda, after destroying nearly all their carts and caissons. It was doubtful whether for an offensive campaign the whole army could now provide twenty guns with the full complement of auxiliary vehicles, adequately horsed. Masséna, in stating his difficulties to Berthier, went so far as to say that each of the four corps could put about half a battery into the field in proper order[382]. The state of the military train was quite as bad—regimental and corps transport was reduced to such a state of nullity, that when the army took the field it would have to be for a few days at most, since, after loading the men with as many rations as each could carry, the only extra supply was what could be drawn by a few store carts found in Rodrigo and Salamanca. During the short campaign that was imminent, the troops lived from hand to mouth, on food daily brought up from the magazines of Rodrigo, after having been compelled to eat the convoy[p. 303] that they had brought with them for the supply of Almeida. There was nothing to be got from the country-side, which was exhausted, by the constant passing to and fro of armies and detachments, all the way from Salamanca to the frontier.
Food at the base existed; when Masséna reached Salamanca he had found there considerable accumulations, though not nearly so much as he expected or required[383]. It was on this particular point that he had started a lively dispute with Bessières the moment that he reached Spain. The Duke of Istria had been for some months in charge of the whole of Old Castile and Leon, and had come to look upon their resources as so much his own private property that he greatly resented the intrusion of 40,000 starving men into his governorship. Masséna complained that he was fed with promises, and that when statistics of food placed at his disposal were compared with what was actually handed over, there was a lamentable discrepancy. He had been told that he would find at Salamanca 10,000 fanegas of wheat, and that 8,000 more and 200,000 rations of biscuit for the garrison of Rodrigo would appear in a few days; he stated that he could only discover 6,000 fanegas and 39,000 rations of biscuit, and that the convoy sent to Rodrigo on the 13th had only carried 20,000 rations at most. Bessières replied that he was doing his best, that he had his own corps to feed, that the arrival of the Army of Portugal was wholly unexpected—had he not been told only a few weeks back, first that it was to stay at Coimbra, and then that it was going off by a cross march to Plasencia and the Tagus? For so Masséna had written from Guarda at the end of March. Moreover, Old Castile was dreadfully exhausted, and the guerrilleros so active that every convoy required an immense escort to guard it. All this was perfectly true, yet it is probable that he might have done more if he had chosen, and he presently received virulent rebukes from the Emperor for lack of zeal.
But when recriminatory letters were already passing between the two marshals on the food question, Bessières began to receive additional demands for military help. On April 20th Masséna wrote that he was bound in honour to march to the relief of Almeida, that he would have his infantry reorganized by the[p. 304] 26th, but that his cavalry and artillery were in such a hopeless state that he was forced to make a formal request for aid to the Army of the North. The Duke of Istria replied that his troops were so scattered, and the guerrilleros so active, that he doubted if he could give any help at all. On the 22nd, however, he wrote that by making a great effort he could collect some cavalry and guns, and would be at Salamanca on the 26th. But on the 27th nothing had arrived from the Army of the North at that city. Masséna replied in high wrath: ‘Vos lettres sont inconcevables. Je vous ai demandé de l’artillerie et des attelages, et encore plus positivement de la cavalerie—vous avez sous différents prétextes éludé ma demande. Toutes les troupes qui sont en Espagne sont de la même famille. Vous êtes, jusqu’à ce qu’il y ait de nouveaux ordres, chargé de la défense et de l’approvisionnement des places de Rodrigo et d’Almeida,’ &c.
Bessières, however, did not break his promise, as Masséna had for a moment feared, he merely executed it a little late, and on the smallest possible scale. He brought with him two small brigades of cavalry, making between 1,600 and 1,700 sabres, that of Wathier (11th, 12th, 24th Chasseurs à cheval, and 5th Hussars), and that of Lepic, which consisted of two squadrons each of the grenadiers, lancers, and chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. He had also a horse artillery battery of the Guard, and had brought thirty teams of gun-horses, which, when distributed to the Army of Portugal, enabled it to put thirty-two pieces and the corresponding caissons in the field. Masséna had asked for Bessières’s cavalry and guns, but had not been at all anxious to see his colleague in person appearing. ‘He would have done better,’ said the Prince to his staff, ‘to have sent me a few thousand men more, and more food and ammunition, and to have stopped at his own head quarters, instead of coming here to examine and criticize all my movements[384].’ He got a cool reception, which did not prevent him from following Masséna about during the whole campaign, volunteering frequent advice, and expressing a polite curiosity at his colleague’s smallest actions. Apparently he wanted to have credit for being present at a victory—if one[p. 305] should occur—but was anxious to risk as few of his own troops as possible, and not to take any responsibility. The Emperor, three weeks later, wrote him a letter of bitter rebuke, saying that he could well have brought up 10,000 men without disgarnishing any important posts; an infantry division of the Guard and four batteries might have been added to the 1,700 horse that he actually produced, without leaving Valladolid, Burgos, or the frontier opposite Galicia in any danger[385]. If the two marshals had collected some 55,000 men, it is certain that Wellington would not have fought, and would have allowed Almeida to be revictualled.
Masséna had reached Ciudad Rodrigo on April 26th, his four corps concentrated there by the 29th, and Bessières came up with his cavalry on the 1st of May. The whole force assembled consisted of 42,000 infantry, 4,500 cavalry, and 38 guns, a total, counting the auxiliary arms, of about 48,000 men[386]. On the 30th Marchand was sent out with six squadrons and his own infantry to make a reconnaissance in force of the allied lines. He found the Light Division still in position at Gallegos, with outposts along the Azava, and withdrew to Rodrigo after having stayed for some hours opposite the height of Marialva. On the next day but one (May 2) the French army began to pour in an interminable stream across the Agueda, by the bridge of Ciudad Rodrigo, dividing into two columns when it had passed—the 2nd Corps on the Marialva road, more to the north, the 8th and 9th Corps on the Carpio road, more to the south. The 6th Corps, forming the reserve and crossing late, also took the left-hand Carpio road. Each column was preceded by its corps-cavalry.
Wellington was perfectly well prepared to meet the movement. He had been back with his army since the 29th of April, and had been informed on his arrival that Masséna had[p. 306] come to Ciudad Rodrigo in person two days before, and that the roads from Salamanca westward were black with French columns[387]. He had made up his mind to fight, though he had denied Spencer the power to do so in his absence. The battle position was already chosen, and the army was concentrated upon it, all save the covering screen formed by the Light Division and the cavalry, which was to hold its ground as long as possible before falling back on the main body. The two cavalry regiments which had been sent to the rear in the middle of the month had been brought up again to the Azava on the 28th, so that the whole of the small force of that arm was available for holding back the French advance.
Wellington had less troops in line than he desired, mainly owing to the dreadful depletion in the ranks of the Portuguese infantry, caused by the inefficient way in which it was fed by its government, and the slowness with which convalescents and detached parties rejoined their colours[388]. Some of the regiments which ought to have shown 1,200 men in the ranks had only 500 or 700 men, and the twenty-five battalions with the field army amounted in all to no more than 11,000 bayonets on May 1st, though they had shown 13,000 in the preceding December, and had absorbed many drafts since that date. The single Portuguese cavalry brigade with the army was in even worse state, the two regiments showing but 312 sabres in line, though they had mustered nearly 800 during the winter. The men were alive, but the chargers had disappeared, owing (as[p. 307] Wellington maintained) to bad horse-mastership on the part of the men and slack supervision on the part of the regimental officers. As the four British cavalry corps, which had seen the same service during the last two months, were only 200 horses weaker in May than they were in March, the explanation is probably correct.
The total force available for a general action on May 1st was 34,000 infantry, of which 23,000 were British, 1,850 cavalry, including the 312 Portuguese, and 1,250 artillery, sappers, &c. There were four British and four Portuguese batteries, with 48 guns. This total does not include the detachment blockading Almeida, which consisted of Pack’s brigade and one British battalion. While only 8,000 weaker than Masséna in infantry, it will be seen that Wellington’s army had hardly more than a third of the number of his cavalry—1,850 to 4,500; in guns there was a slight superiority—48 pieces to 38. In a mountain position, such as that of Bussaco, the deficiency of cavalry would have been of no importance. But the country-side between Almeida and Rodrigo is mostly undulating plateau, practicable in most parts for cavalry operations on a large scale. The only obstacles of importance are the courses of the three small streams which cross the high-road, the Azava, Dos Casas, and Turon, minor tributaries of the Agueda. All three are insignificant brooks save after heavy rain, and though there had been a downfall in the end of April, they were now going down and resuming their usual proportions. Their waters were now a negligible quantity, but in some parts of their course they flow in deep-cut ravines, many feet below the general level of the plateau, and present a serious hindrance to the movement of troops. This is especially the case in their lower course; nearer the hills to the south, where they rise, the ravines as well as the streams grow smaller, and can be crossed anywhere.
The particular position which Wellington had selected as his fighting-ground was the line of the Dos Casas, from the ruined Fort Concepcion to the village of Fuentes de O?oro. The ravine of the Dos Casas is both wide and steep in the neighbourhood of the fort—perhaps 150 feet deep—but grows decidedly shallower towards Fuentes, and above that place is no longer a notable feature in the country-side. The stream itself is nowhere more[p. 308] than ten yards broad nor three feet deep, so that, when its banks cease to be high and scarped, it can be crossed anywhere by infantry, cavalry, or guns. Its valley above Fuentes is partly arable, partly meadow-land in gentle grassy slopes, much more like an English than a typical Spanish landscape. Standing on the higher ground behind the village, the observer sees a marked contrast between the rocky ravine down-stream, and the broad undulating bottom to his right. The ridge, however, on which he is standing does not entirely disappear to the south; it still remains as the watershed between the little basin of the Dos Casas and that of its twin-stream the Turon, which flows exactly parallel with it less than two miles to the west. Up-stream the view is closed by woods surrounding the village of Pozo Bello (or Posovelho as the neighbouring Portuguese call it) on the right or further bank of the Dos Casas, and by the rounded hill of Nava de Aver, below which the river is flanked on both sides by a stretch of boggy ground, only to be crossed by some invisible paths. There are five miles from Fort Concepcion to Fuentes de O?oro village, and this was Wellington’s original position, entirely covered in front by a well-marked ravine. But the two further miles from Fuentes to Pozo Bello, which he proceeded to take in for defence when the enemy showed signs of turning his right, may be described as open ground, with no protection on its flank save the morass by Nava de Aver, which could obviously be turned by any enemy who chose to make a sufficiently wide circuit, and might be crossed by infantry at some points, after careful exploration of its depths.
Fuentes de O?oro itself stands on the western bank of the Dos Casas, at the point where the heights begin to sink and the ravine ceases. Its lower houses are almost level with the stream, but the village slopes uphill to two points a little higher than the general summit of the plateau, one of which is crowned by its church, the other by a cross on a large rock. On the opposite side of the stream there are no buildings but a chapel and a single farm-steading. Past these the high-road from Ciudad Rodrigo ascends on a gentle slope, commanded for some hundred yards by the heights on which the village stands, so that any force advancing to attack Fuentes comes under fire early, and has no cover whatever. The eligibility of the place[p. 309] as a post is much increased by the fact that the houses are surrounded by numerous stone walls, making crofts and gardens, which are of a height and strength suitable for giving excellent cover to infantry in skirmishing order. Nor can it easily be turned, since to the left it is protected by the ravine of the Dos Casas, ever growing deeper down-stream, while on the right the houses trend back for a long distance up the slopes, and the stone walls continue their line for some distance. In short, it is an admirable point on which to rest the flank of an army in battle order, and Wellington had well marked its strength, and was serene and content, so long as the French ranged their forces parallel to his own. The trouble only came when, on the second day of battle, they extended their southern wing to Pozo Bello, so that Fuentes became the right centre instead of the right flank-guard of the allied army.
The general position behind the Dos Casas has only one serious defect: it has in its rear, at a distance of some six or seven miles, the ravine of the Coa, passable at only a limited number of points for artillery and wheeled vehicles, though there are many more at which infantry or cavalry can get across. Of bridges within a reasonable distance from the position there are only those of (1) Ponte Sequeiro, ten miles to the right rear; (2) of Castello Bom, six miles to the direct rear of Fuentes village; and (3) of Almeida, eight miles to the left rear[389]. If the army should be constrained by any misfortune to retreat, its transport and artillery would have to pass over one or more of these three defiles, of which the first is inconveniently placed because it is too far off to the flank, while the third had been broken by the French and only hastily repaired. It may be added also that it was dangerously close to Almeida, though out of sight of that fortress, and completely beyond the range of its cannon. But to have sent baggage or guns across it might have appeared a little hazardous. The only really convenient line of retreat from the Fuentes position was that across the bridge of Castello Bom, a structure of no great breadth, and liable to become congested or blocked in a moment of hurry. It was only wheeled traffic, however, that might become difficult; above[p. 310] and below the Castello Bom bridge are good fords for infantry and cavalry at San Miguel and Algeirenos, besides numerous other points where troops could get across at a pinch. Evidently, however, if Wellington failed to hold his chosen position, he ran the risk of losing some or all of his impedimenta, supposing that he were vigorously pursued and compelled to retreat in haste. A caisson overturned on the descent towards the bridge might force him to abandon whole batteries, jammed in the narrow road. Of this danger he was well aware, but judged it worth risking, in view of the importance of holding the best possible position for covering the siege of Almeida. No battle-ground that was ever chosen is destitute of some fault. And, at the worst, the infantry and cavalry would not be endangered, since the fords could not fail them, and the Coa (though its ravine is often steep) is by no means a large river. But Wellington did not believe that he could be beaten by the force which Masséna was able to bring against him, and though he thought over orders for a retreat, was strongly under the impression that he would never have to issue them.
On May 2nd, as we have already mentioned, the whole French army advanced from Ciudad Rodrigo, one column on the Marialva-Gallegos road, the other on the southern or Carpio road. The Light Division, and the four cavalry regiments accompanying it, began to retire, according to their directions, not making more haste than was necessary, and turning to bay occasionally to fight a small rearguard action. The country-side was somewhat dangerous for a small ‘detaining force,’ being passable for cavalry in many directions and thickly wooded. It had to be remembered that the enemy, using the cover of the woods, and hiding himself behind the undulations of the ground, might easily break through the screen of cavalry and light troops unless great care and caution were shown. Fortunately the Light Division was well skilled in keeping touch along the line, and in avoiding risks, and a whole day of skirmishing in retreat led to no regrettable incidents. On the night of the 2nd of May the covering force bivouacked behind Gallegos and Espeja, both of which villages were occupied by the advanced guards of the enemy.
On the 3rd Masséna resumed his advance, and drove in the[p. 311] Light Division and the cavalry upon Wellington’s chosen position. They retired skirmishing, till they came to the main body, when the four cavalry regiments wheeled into line on the right rear of the village of Fuentes de O?oro, while the Light Division, crossing the bridge at that place, placed itself in reserve on the heights, behind the front crest. In the afternoon the whole French army became more or less visible from the Allies’ position. It was now in three columns: the right column was formed by the 2nd Corps, which had taken the route Gallegos-Alameda, and displayed itself on the heights opposite Wellington’s left, facing towards Fort Concepcion and San Pedro, with the deepest part of the ravine of the Dos Casas in front of it. The centre column was formed by the single division of the 8th Corps (Solignac), which posted itself to the left of the 2nd, south of Alameda. The heaviest and most important mass of the enemy, however, was on the left, where Montbrun’s cavalry, which had been engaged all the morning in pushing back the British horse, came up directly opposite Fuentes de O?oro, and on finding that village occupied in force by the Allies took ground to its left, facing the squadrons which it had been pursuing, on the other side of the Dos Casas. When the cavalry had wheeled aside, the front of the infantry of the 6th Corps became visible on the high-road, division behind division. The 9th Corps, still out of sight in the rear, was behind the 6th, so that five of the eight infantry divisions forming Masséna’s army were concentrated opposite Fuentes de O?oro. The front of the French did not extend for more than a short distance south of that village, so that it looked as if Wellington was to be assailed precisely in the strong position that he had selected.
The allied army had been arrayed at leisure on the ground chosen by its chief, who had ample time to make all his dispositions while the covering force was being driven in. His line was formed as follows: the 5th Division (Erskine) was posted just to the south of Fort Concepcion, with Barba?ena’s handful of Portuguese cavalry (only 300 sabres) watching its flank. Next to the south of Erskine lay the 6th Division (Campbell), in front of San Pedro. These two units faced Reynier and Junot respectively, with the deep ravine protecting their front. The 1st, 3rd, and 7th Divisions and Ashworth’s Portu[p. 312]guese brigade were arrayed on the heights behind Fuentes de O?oro, and the Light Division had taken post in their reserve. The houses and crofts of the village were occupied by a strong force of picked troops, composed of the light companies of Nightingale’s, Howard’s, and L?we’s brigades of the 1st Division, and of Mackinnon’s, Colville’s, and Power’s (Portuguese) brigades of the 3rd Division—28 companies in all[390]—with the 2/83rd from Colville’s brigade in support. The senior officer in the village was Lieut.-Colonel Williams, of the 5/60th. He had under him about 1,800 men of the light companies, all chosen shots, besides the 460 of the 2/83rd. To the south and rear of Fuentes, some way behind the village, were the four British cavalry regiments, only 1,500 sabres in gross, and reduced to a somewhat lower figure by detachments[391]. It will thus be seen that Wellington, like Masséna, had strengthened his southern wing. He had four and a half divisions of infantry—24,000 men—facing the 6th and 9th Corps, with their 27,000 bayonets and 3,500 horse, in and about Fuentes, while the 2nd Corps was observed by Erskine’s 5,000 men, and the 8th Corps by Campbell with a similar number[392]. In the northern end of the field the immense strength of the position behind the ravine enabled Wellington to be economical of troops; if it should chance that the French made a serious attack in that direction, there were ample reserves to be spared from the mass of infantry behind the right wing.
Masséna, having surveyed Wellington’s position in the early afternoon, recognized without difficulty that the village of Fuentes was the key of the whole, and that the northern front was too formidable, from the nature of the ground, to be lightly meddled with. It was impossible to make out the disposition[p. 313] of the allied troops, for (in accordance with his usual practice) their general had placed his battle-line behind the crest, so that nothing could be made out save the skirmishers all along the heights, and the garrison of Fuentes itself, which was sufficiently visible on the slope. In a manner which somewhat suggests his old method of Bussaco[393], Masséna ordered the leading division of the 6th Corps, Ferey’s ten battalions, to storm the village by direct frontal attack, while Reynier made a mere demonstration against the 5th Division on the extreme northern end of the position. The latter movement led to nothing, save that, when it seemed threatening, Wellington sent off the Light Division to strengthen his right wing—but, since the 2nd Corps never closed, it was not needed there, and halted behind the crest till nightfall.
In Fuentes village, however, there was a sharp conflict: the first brigade of Ferey’s division charged across the easily fordable brook under heavy fire, and got possession of some of the houses on the lower slope. From these the French were dislodged by the charge of the reserves of which Colonel Williams could dispose. The second brigade was then thrown into action by Ferey, and, coming on to the British while they were in the disorder caused by a charge among houses and walls, beat them back, and pursued them up to the top of the village. Here the light companies rallied, by the church and among the rocks, but the enemy remained for a moment master of all that part of Fuentes which lies on the slope and in the bottom by the brook. Wellington was determined that the French should make no lodgement in his line, and late in the afternoon sent three fresh battalions of the 1st Division to clear the village. Cadogan with the 1/71st, supported by the 1/79th and 2/24th, made a determined advance through the tangle of houses, lanes, and walls, and at considerable cost drove Ferey’s men right over the brook and up their own slope. Masséna then ordered the defeated troops to be supported by four battalions from Mar[p. 314]chand’s division, and with this aid they once more advanced and got possession of the chapel and the few other buildings on the east side of Dos Casas, but could not make their way across the water again, or into the main body of the village.
The combat only stopped with the fall of night, though the fusillade across the brook was of course objectless, when neither side made any further definite attack. It had cost the French 652 men—mostly in Ferey’s division[394], of whom 3 officers and 164 men were prisoners, taken when the village was re-stormed by Cadogan. The Allies, being on the defensive, and under cover, save at the moment of their counter-attack, only had 259 killed and hurt, of whom 48 were Portuguese. Colonel Williams, the original commander of the village, was severely wounded, but no other officer above the rank of captain was hit[395].