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TUDELA
Having narrated the misfortunes of Blake and of Belvedere, we must now turn to the eastern end of the Spanish line, where Casta?os and Palafox had been enjoying a brief and treacherous interval of safety, while their friends were being hunted over the Cantabrian Mountains and the plains of Old Castile. From October 26-27—the days when Ney and Moncey drove Casta?os’ advanced troops back over the Ebro—down to November 21, the French in Navarre made no further movement. We have seen that it was essential to Napoleon’s plan of campaign that the armies of Andalusia and Aragon should be left unmolested in the dangerous advanced position which they were occupying, till measures should have been taken to cut them off from Madrid and to drive them back against the roots of the Pyrenees. The Emperor had left opposite to them the whole of Moncey’s corps, one division of Ney’s corps (that of Lagrange), and the cavalry of Colbert and Digeon—in all about 27,000 bayonets and 4,500 sabres. They had strict orders to act merely as a containing force: to repel any attack that the Spaniards might make on the line of the Ebro or the Aragon, but not to advance till they should receive the orders from head quarters.
The initiative therefore had passed back to the Spanish generals: it was open to them to advance once more against the enemy, if they chose to be so foolish. Their troops were in very bad order for an offensive campaign. Many of them (like Blake’s men) had never received great-coats or winter clothing, and were facing the November frosts and the incessant rain with the light linen garments in which they had marched up from the south. An English observer, who passed through the camps of Palafox and Casta?os at this moment, reports that while the regulars and the Valencian troops seemed fairly well clad, the Aragonese, the Castilians, and the Murcians were suffering terribly from exposure. The Murcians in especial were shivering in light linen shirts and pantaloons, with nothing but a striped poncho to cover them against the rain. Hence came a terrible epidemic of dysentery, which thinned the ranks when once the autumn began to melt into winter. The armies of Casta?os and Palafox should have counted 53,000 men at least when the fighting at last began. It seems doubtful whether they actually could put much over 40,000 into the field. Casta?os claims that at Tudela his own ‘Army of the Centre’ had only 26,000 men in line, and the Aragonese about 16,000. It is probable that the figures are almost correct.
Nevertheless, the generals assumed the responsibility of ordering a general advance. We have shown in an earlier chapter that after the arrival of the three deputies from Madrid, and the stormy council of war at Tudela on November 5, a new plan of offensive operations was adopted. It was not quite so mad as the scheme that had been drafted in October, for seizing the passes of the Pyrenees and surrounding the whole French army. Casta?os and Palafox, it will be remembered, were to mass the bulk of their forces between Tudela and Caparrosa, cross the Aragon, and deliver a frontal attack upon the scattered fractions of the corps of Moncey at Peralta, Falces, and Lodosa. There would have been something to say for this plan if it had been proposed in September, or early in October; but on November 5 it was hopeless, for it ignored the fact that 80,000 French troops had entered Biscay and Navarre since the middle of October, and that Napoleon himself had reached Vittoria. To advance now was to run into the lion’s mouth.
The armies of Andalusia and Aragon were just beginning to concentrate when, on November 8, a dispatch came in from Blake announcing his disaster at Zornoza, and his hurried retreat beyond Bilbao. The same day there arrived a correct report of the arrival of the Emperor and great masses of French troops at Vittoria, with an inaccurate addition to the effect that they were being directed on Logro?o and Lodosa, as if about to cross the Central Ebro and fall upon the left flank of the army of Andalusia.
Casta?os, in his Vindication, published to explain and defend his movements during this campaign, stated that his first impulse was to march by Logro?o and Haro to meet the enemy, or to hasten by Agreda and Soria to interpose himself between the Emperor and Madrid. But, on second thoughts, he resolved that it was more necessary to endeavour to beat the French in his immediate front, and that it would be better to persevere in the plan, drawn up on November 5, for a blow at Moncey. A sharp thrust delivered on this point would distract the attention of the Emperor from Blake, and draw him off the direct road to Madrid. Meanwhile, however, on November 11 Casta?os fell ill, and took to his bed at Cintruenigo. While he was thus disabled, the deputy Francisco Palafox took the astounding step of issuing orders in his own name to the divisional generals both of the Andalusian and the Aragonese armies. Nothing like this had been seen since the days in the French Revolutionary War, when the ‘Representatives on Mission’ used to overrule the commands of the unhappy generals of the Republic. Before the concentration of the armies was complete, the Deputy ordered the assumption of the offensive at all points in the line: he directed O’Neille, whom he incorrectly supposed to be already at Caparrosa, to attack Moncey at once; bade Grimarest, with the 2nd Andalusian division, to cross the Ebro at Calahorra; La Pe?a to threaten Milagro; and Cartaojal, with a small flanking brigade, to demonstrate against the French troops who lay at Logro?o. These orders produced utter confusion, for some of the generals obeyed, while others sent the answer that they would not move without the permission of their proper chiefs, Casta?os and Joseph Palafox. The former got his first notice of the Deputy’s presumptuous action by letters from La Pe?a, delivered to his bedside, in which he was asked whether he had given his sanction to the project for crossing the Ebro. As a matter of fact only Grimarest and Cartaojal moved: the former was sharply repulsed at the fords opposite Calahorra: the latter, more fortunate, skirmished with Lagrange’s division, in front of Logro?o, without coming to any harm .
It was now three days since the Emperor had routed Belvedere at Gamonal and entered Burgos, and two days since Blake had been beaten at Espinosa. The conduct of the generals who had charge of the last intact army that Spain possessed, seems all the more insane when we reflect on the general condition of affairs. For on the fourteenth the mad advance which Francisco Palafox advocated was resumed, Casta?os on his sick bed not having had sufficient energy to lay an embargo on the moving forward of his own troops. On the fourteenth O’Neille arrived at Caparrosa and drove out of it Moncey’s advanced posts, while Grimarest and La Pe?a received new instructions—to push up the Ebro and attack Lodosa, which O’Neille was at the same moment to assail from the other side of the stream. Thus the great river was to be placed between the two halves of the army, which had no communication except by the bridge of Tudela, far to the rear of both. ‘This seems rather a hazardous undertaking,’ wrote Graham in his diary, ‘affording the enemy an opportunity of attacking on whichever side of the river he chooses with superior force.’ But the only thing that prevented it from being attempted was the sudden refusal of O’Neille to advance beyond Caparrosa unless he were provided with 50,000 rations of biscuit, and reinforced at once with 6,000 bayonets from the Army of the Centre . As if the situation were not already sufficiently complicated, Casta?os had on the preceding day received unofficial intelligence from Madrid, to the effect that the Central Junta had determined to depose him, and to appoint the Marquis of La Romana general-in-chief of the Army of the Centre as well as of the Army of Galicia. This really made little difference, as the Marquis was at this moment with Blake’s corps (he had joined it at Renedo on the fifteenth), so that he could not issue any orders for the troops on the Ebro, from whom he was separated by the whole French army. Casta?os remained at the head of the Andalusians till he was formally superseded, and it was he who was destined to fight the great battle that was now impending. It is hard to say what might have happened had the French held back for a few days more, for now, at the last moment, Joseph Palafox suddenly harked back to his old plan for an advance on Pampeluna and the roots of the Pyrenees, and proposed to Casta?os that the whole of the Andalusian army save La Pe?a’s division should assist him. Casta?os and Coupigny strongly opposed this mad idea, and submitted an entirely different scheme to the Captain-General of Aragon, inviting him to bring all his forces to Calahorra, and to join the Army of the Centre in taking up a defensive position behind the Ebro.
The two plans were being hotly debated, when news arrived which proved decisive. The French were at last on the move, and their columns were pouring out of Logro?o and Lodosa along the southern bank of the Ebro, heading for Calahorra and Tudela . On the same day a messenger arrived from the Bishop of Osma, bearing the intelligence that a French corps (he called it that of Dessolles, but it was really Ney) had marched up the head-waters of the Douro to Almazan, and was heading for Soria and Agreda, with the obvious intention of falling upon the rear of the Army of the Centre. If Casta?os remained for a moment longer at Calahorra, he would clearly be caught between the two French armies. He should have retired at once in the direction of Saragossa, before Ney could reach him: but instead he took the dangerous half-measure of falling back only as far as the line Tudela—Tarazona. This was a safer position than that of Calahorra—Arnedo, but still sufficiently perilous, for the enveloping corps from the south could still reach his rear by a long turning movement through Xalon and Borja.
Map of the battle of Tudela
Enlarge Battle of Tudela. November 23, 1808.
If the position from Tudela, on the banks of the Ebro, to Tarazona at the foot of the Sierra de Moncayo was to be held, the army of Casta?os needed strong reinforcements, for the line was ten miles long, and there were but 26,000 men to occupy it. The Army of Aragon must be brought up also, and Casta?os wrote at once to O’Neille at Caparrosa, inviting him to hasten to cross the Ebro and occupy Tudela and its immediate vicinity. The dispatch reached the Irish general late on the afternoon of the twenty-first, but he refused to obey without the permission of his own commander, Joseph Palafox. Thus the night of November 21-22 was lost, but next morning the Aragonese Captain-General appeared from Saragossa, and met Casta?os and Coupigny. They besought him to bid O’Neille join the Army of the Centre, but at first he refused, even when the forward march of Moncey and the flanking movement of Ney had been explained to him. He still clung to his wild proposal for a blow at Pampeluna, ‘talking,’ says Colonel Graham, ‘such nonsense as under the present circumstances ought only to have come from a madman.’ But at the last moment he yielded, and at noon on the twenty-second wrote orders to O’Neille to bring his two divisions to Tudela, and to form up on the right of the Army of Andalusia. When the Aragonese host at last got under weigh, the hour was so late that darkness was falling before the bridge of Tudela was passed. O’Neille then had an unhappy inspiration: he ordered his men to defer the crossing of the Ebro till the following morning, and to cook and encamp on the northern bank. Half of the line which Casta?os intended to hold next day was still ungarnished with troops when the dawn broke, and soon it was discovered that the French were close at hand.
The approaching enemy were not, as Casta?os and Palafox supposed, under the command of Moncey and Ney. The latter was carrying out his turning movement by Soria: the former was for the moment superseded. The Emperor regarded the Duke of Conegliano as somewhat slow and overcautious, and for the sudden and smashing blow which he had planned had chosen another instrument. This was Marshal Lannes, who had crossed the Pyrenees with the ‘Grand Army,’ but had been detained for a fortnight at Vittoria by an accident. His horse had fallen with him over a precipice, and he had been so bruised and shaken that his life was despaired of. It appears that the celebrated surgeon Larrey cured him by the strange device of sewing up his battered frame in the skin of a newly flayed sheep. By November 20 he was again fit for service, and set out from Logro?o with Lagrange’s division of Ney’s corps, Colbert’s light cavalry, and Digeon’s dragoons. Moncey joined him by the bridge of Lodosa, bringing his whole corps—four divisions of infantry and one of cavalry. The protection of Navarre had been handed over to General Bisson, the governor of Pampeluna.
Lannes met with no opposition whatever in his march to Tudela, and easily reached Alfaro on the twenty-second. Here he learnt that the Spaniards were awaiting him beyond the river Queiles, drawn up on a very long front between Tudela and Tarazona. On the morning of the twenty-third he came in sight of them, and deployed for an attack: the state of utter disorder in which the enemy lay gave the best auguries for the success of the imperial arms.
Casta?os had placed the troops under his immediate command at Tarazona and Cascante, which were destined to form the left and centre of his position: the remainder of it, from Cascante to Tudela, was allotted to the Aragonese and to the Murcian division of the Army of Andalusia, which had been across the Ebro in O’Neille’s company, and was now returning with him. Till they came up Casta?os had only under his hand two complete divisions of his ‘Army of the Centre,’ and some small fragments of two others. The complete divisions were those of Grimarest (No. 2) and La Pe?a (No. 4), each of which had been increased in numbers but not in efficiency by having allotted to it some of the battalions of the ‘Army of Castile,’ which had been dissolved for its bad conduct at Logro?o on October 26. There had at last begun to arrive at the front a considerable part of the other two Andalusian divisions, which had first been detained beyond the Sierra Morena by the Junta of Seville, and then kept some time in Madrid to complete their equipment. Two battalions of these belated troops had at last appeared on October 30, and ten more had since come up. But the bulk of the 1st and 3rd Divisions was still absent, and no more than 5,500 men from them had been added to Casta?os’ army. The mixed brigade formed from these late arrivals seems to have been under General Villariezo, of the 1st Division. The whole force amounted to about 28,000 men, of whom 3,000 were horsemen, for the army of Andalusia was stronger in the cavalry arm than any other of the Spanish hosts. But of these the Murcian and Valencian division of Roca (formerly that of Llamas) was with O’Neille, and had not yet reached the field; while five battalions, from the dissolved Castilian army, were far away on the left in the mountains of Soria, whither Casta?os had detached them under General Cartaojal, with orders to observe the French corps which was coming up on his rear.
The other half of the Spanish army consisted of the missing division of the Army of the Centre—that of Roca—and the two divisions belonging to Palafox—those of O’Neille and Saint March—the former composed mainly of Aragonese, the latter almost entirely of Valencian troops. None of the Aragonese reserves from the great camp at Saragossa had yet come upon the scene. But the two divisions in the field were very strong—they must have had at least 17,000 men in their ranks. On November 1 they were more than 18,000 strong, and, two months after—when they had passed through the disaster of Tudela, and had endured ten days of the murderous siege of Saragossa—they still showed 14,000 bayonets. We cannot calculate them at less than 17,000 men for the battle of November 23. On the other hand, there were hardly 600 cavalry in the whole corps.
It would appear then that Casta?os must have had some 45,000 men in line, between Tarazona and Tudela, when Lannes came up against him. The French marshal, on the other hand, had about 34,000. On the difference in quality between the two armies we have no need to dilate: even the two divisions of the conscripts of 1807, which served in Moncey’s corps, were old soldiers compared to the armies of Aragon and Castile, or a great part of that of Andalusia. Moreover, as in all the earlier battles of the Peninsular War, the Spaniards were hopelessly outmatched in the cavalry arm. There was no force that could stop the 4,500 or 5,000 horsemen of Colbert, Digeon, and Wathier.
The position Tudela—Tarazona, which Casta?os intended to hold, is of enormous length—about ten and a half miles in all. Clearly 45,000 men in the close order that prevailed in the early nineteenth century were inadequate to hold it all in proper strength. Yet if the points on which the French were about to attack could be ascertained in good time, the distances were not so great but that the army could concentrate on any portion of the line within three hours. But to make this practicable, it was necessary firstly that Casta?os should keep in close touch with the enemy by means of his cavalry—he had quite enough for the purpose—and secondly that he should have all his men massed at suitable points, from which they could march out to the designated fighting-ground at short notice. The Spanish troops were, now as always, so slow at man?uvring that the experiment would be a dangerous one, but this was the only way in which the chosen position could possibly be held. The ground was not unfavourable; it consisted of a line of gentle hills along the south bank of the river Queiles, which commanded a good view over the rolling plain across which the French had to advance. On the extreme right was the town of Tudela, covered by a bold hill—the Cerro de Santa Barbara—which overhangs the Ebro. Thence two long ridges, the hills of Santa Quiteria and Cabezo Malla, extend for some two and a half miles in a well-marked line: this section formed the right of the position. From the left of the Cabezo Malla as far as the little town of Cascante—four miles—the ground is less favourable; indeed, it is fairly flat, and the line is indicated mainly by the Queiles and its irrigation-cuts, behind which the Spanish centre was to form. From Cascante westward as far as Tarazona—a distance of four miles or a little over—the position is better marked, a spur of the Sierra de Moncayo coming down in a gentle slope all along the southern bank of the little Queiles. The centre, between the Cabezo Malla and Cascante, was obviously the weak point in the position, as the only obstacle to the enemy’s advance was the river, which was fordable by all arms at every point along this dangerous four miles.
The disaster which Casta?os was to suffer may be ascribed to two mistakes, one of which was entirely within his own control, while the other was due to the stupidity of O’Neille. With 3,000 cavalry in hand, the Commander-in-chief ought to have known of every movement of the French for many hours before they drew near to the position. It would then have been in his power to concentrate on those parts of the line where the attack was about to be delivered. But instead of sending out his horse ten miles to the front, Casta?os kept them with the infantry, and the first notice of the approach of Lannes was only given when, at nine in the morning, a regiment of Wathier’s cavalry rode right up to the town of Tudela, driving in the outposts and causing great confusion. To the second cause of disaster we have already had occasion to allude: on the night of the twenty-second O’Neille had (contrary to his orders) encamped north of the Ebro. His 17,000 men began to defile over the bridge next morning in a leisurely fashion, and were still only making their way to their designated positions when Lannes attacked. In fact the Spanish line of battle was never formed as had been planned: the various brigades of the Army of Aragon were hurried one after another on to the heights south-west of Tudela, but entirely without system or order: the lower ground to the left of the Cabezo Malla was never occupied at all, and remained as a gap in the centre of the line all through the battle.
Lannes, who was aware that the Spaniards were intending to fight at Tudela, had marched at dawn from his camps in front of Alfaro in two columns. One, composed of Moncey’s corps, with Wathier’s cavalry at its head, came by the high-road near the Ebro. The other, composed of the two independent cavalry brigades of Colbert and Digeon, and of Lagrange’s division, was more to the west, and headed for Cascante. The Marshal had no intention of attacking the left of the Spanish line in the direction of Tarazona, which he left entirely to itself. He met not a single Spanish vedette till Wathier’s cavalry ran into the pickets immediately outside Tudela.
Casta?os was in the town, engaged in hurrying the march of the Aragonese troops across the great bridge of the Ebro, when the fusillade broke out. The unexpected sound of musketry threw the troops into great excitement, for they were jammed in the narrow mediaeval lanes of Tudela when the sounds of battle came rolling down from the Cerro de Santa Barbara. The Commander-in-chief himself was caught between two regiments and could not push his way out to the field for some time. But the men were quite ready to fight, and hurried to the front as fast as they were able. Roca’s Valencian division (the 5th of the Andalusian army) had been the first to cross the Ebro: it was pushed up to the Cerro de Santa Barbara, and reached its summit just in time to beat off the leading brigade, one from Morlot’s division, which was ascending the hill from the other side. Saint March’s battalions, who had crossed the bridge next after Roca, were fortunate enough to be able to deploy and occupy the hill of Santa Quiteria before they were attacked. But O’Neille’s Aragonese and Murcians were less lucky: they only succeeded in seizing the Cabezo Malla ridge after driving off the skirmishers of Maurice Mathieu’s French division, which had come up next in succession to Morlot, and was just preparing to mount the slope. But the position was just saved, and the Army of Aragon was by ten o’clock formed up along the hills, with its right overhanging the Ebro and its left—quite in the air—established on the Cabezo Malla. The front was somewhat over two miles in length, and quite defensible; but the troops were in great disorder after their hurried march, and the generals were appalled to find that the Army of the Centre had not moved up to join them, and that there was a gap of three miles between the Cabezo Malla and the nearest of the Andalusian divisions. Casta?os perceived this fact and rode off, too late, to bring up La Pe?a from Cascante to fill the void. Palafox was not on the field: he had gone off at daybreak (still in high dudgeon that his scheme for an attack by Pampeluna had been overruled) and was far on the road to Saragossa.
It is clear that Lannes’ first attack was unpremeditated and ill-arranged: he had been tempted to strike when his vanguard only had come up, because he saw the Spanish position half empty and the Aragonese divisions struggling up in disorder to occupy it. Hence came his first check: but the preliminary skirmish had revealed to him the existence of the fatal gap between the two Spanish armies, and he was now ready to utilize it. While Casta?os was riding for Cascante, the divisions of Musnier, Grandjean, and Lagrange were coming upon the field, and Lannes was preparing for a second and more serious attack.
Meanwhile the fortune of the day was being settled on the left. When the army of Lannes appeared in the plain, La Pe?a at Cascante should have marched at once towards the Aragonese, and Grimarest and Villariezo from Tarazona should have moved on Cascante to replace La Pe?a’s division at that place. Neither of them stirred, though the situation was obvious, and though they presently received orders from Casta?os to close in to their right. La Pe?a was the most guilty, for the whole battle-field was under his eye: he would not move because he had before him Digeon’s and Colbert’s cavalry, and was afraid to march across their front in the open plain, protected only by the shallow Queiles. He had 8,000 or 9,000 Andalusian and Castilian infantry, and 1,500 horse, but allowed himself to be neutralized by two brigades of dragoons. All that he did in response to the summons to move eastward was to send two battalions to occupy the hamlet of Urzante, a mile to his right. There was still a space of three miles between him and Saint March. This scandalous and cowardly inaction is in keeping with the man’s later career: it was he who in 1811 betrayed Graham at Barossa, and fled back into safety instead of stopping to assist his allies. On this occasion he lay for four hours motionless, while he watched the French forming up for a second attack on the Army of Aragon. Cowed by the 3,000 dragoons in his front, he made no attempt to march on the Cabezo Malla to O’Neille’s assistance. Grimarest’s conduct was almost equally bad: he was further from the scene of fighting, and could not, like La Pe?a, see the field: but it is sufficient to say that he received Casta?os’ order to march on Cascante at noon, and that he did not reach that place—four miles distant—till dusk.
The Commander-in-chief himself was most unlucky: he started for Cascante about noon, intending to force his divisional generals to draw near the battle-field. But as he was crossing the gap between O’Neille and La Pe?a he was sighted by some French cavalry, who were cautiously pushing forward through the unoccupied ground. He and his staff were chased far to the rear by this reconnoitring party, and only shook them off by riding hard and scattering among the olive groves. Unable to reach Cascante, he was returning towards Tudela, when he received a hasty note from General Roca to the effect that the right wing of the army had been broken, and the heights of Santa Barbara lost.
When his three belated divisions had appeared Lannes had drawn up his army in two lines, and flung the bulk of it against the Aragonese, leaving only Colbert’s and Digeon’s dragoons and the single division of Lagrange to look after La Pe?a and the rest of the Army of Andalusia.
Instead of sending forward fresh troops, Lannes brought up to the charge for a second time the regiments of Maurice Mathieu and Morlot. Behind the latter Musnier deployed, behind the former Grandjean, but neither of these divisions, as it turned out, was to fire a shot or to lose a man. While Morlot with his six battalions once more attacked the heights above the city, Maurice Mathieu with his twelve attempted both to push back O’Neille and to turn his flank by way of the Cabezo Malla. After a short but well-contested struggle both these attacks succeeded. Morlot, though his leading brigade suffered heavily, obtained a lodgement on top of the Cerro de Santa Barbara, by pushing a battalion up a lateral ravine, which had been left unwatched on account of its difficulty. Others followed, and Roca’s division broke, poured down the hill into Tudela, and fled away by the Saragossa road. Almost at the same moment O’Neille’s troops were beaten off the Cabezo Malla by Maurice Mathieu, who had succeeded in slipping a battalion and a cavalry regiment round their left flank, on the side of the fatal gap. Seeing the line of the Aragonese reeling back, General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, to whom Lannes had given the chief command of his cavalry, charged with three regiments of Wathier’s division at the very centre of the hostile army. He burst through between O’Neille and Saint March’s troops, and then wheeling outward attacked both in flank. This assault was decisive. The whole mass dispersed among the olive groves, irrigation-cuts, and stone fences which cover the plain to the south of Tudela. A few battalions kept their ranks and formed a sort of rearguard, but the main part of Roca’s, Saint March’s, and O’Neille’s levies fled straight before them till the dusk fell, and far into the night. Some of them got to Saragossa next day, though the distance was over fifty miles.
Meanwhile La Pe?a’s futile operations in front of Cascante had gone on all through the afternoon. He had at first nothing but cavalry in front of him, but about three o’clock Lagrange’s division, which had been the last to arrive on the field of all the French army, appeared in his direction. Its leading brigade marched into the gap, wheeled to its right, and drove out of Urzante the two isolated battalions which La Pe?a had placed there in the morning. They made a gallant resistance, but had to yield to superior numbers and to fall back on the main body at Cascante. Here they found not only La Pe?a but also Grimarest, and Villariezo’s mixed brigade, for these officers had at last deigned to obey Casta?os’ orders and to close in to the right. There was now an imposing mass of troops collected in this quarter, at least 18,000 foot and 3,000 horse, but they allowed themselves to be ‘contained’ by Lagrange’s single division and Digeon’s dragoons. Colbert, with the rest of the cavalry, had ridden through the gap and gone off in pursuit of the Aragonese. The remaining hour of daylight was spent in futile skirmishing with Lagrange, and after dark La Pe?a and Grimarest retired unmolested to Borja, by the road which skirts the foot of the Sierra de Moncayo. They were only disturbed by a panic caused by the blowing up of the reserve ammunition of the Army of the Centre. Some of the troops took the explosion for a sudden discharge of French artillery, broke their ranks, and were with difficulty reassembled.
It is impossible to speak too strongly of the shameful slackness and timidity of La Pe?a and his colleagues. If they had been tried for cowardice, and shot after the manner of Admiral Byng, they would not have received more than their deserts. That 20,000 men, including the greater part of the victors of Baylen, should assist, from a distance of four miles only, at the rout of their comrades of the Army of Aragon, was the most deplorable incident of all this unhappy campaign.
From the astounding way in which the Andalusian army had been mishandled, it resulted that practically no loss—200 killed and wounded at the most—was suffered in this quarter, and the troops marched off with their artillery and wagons, after blowing up their reserve ammunition and abandoning their heavy baggage in their camps. The Aragonese had, of course, fared very differently. They lost twenty-six guns—apparently all that they had brought to the field—over 1,000 prisoners, and at least 3,000 killed and wounded. That the casualties were not more numerous was due to the fact that the plain to the south of Tudela was covered with olive-groves, and irrigation-cuts, which checked the French cavalry and facilitated the flight of the fugitives.
Lannes, it is clear, did not entirely fulfil Napoleon’s expectations. He did not take full advantage of the gap between O’Neille and La Pe?a, and wasted much force in frontal attacks which might have been avoided. If he had thrust two divisions and all his horse between the fractions of the Spanish army, before ordering the second attack of Maurice Mathieu and Morlot, the victory would have been far more decisive, and less costly. The loss of the 3rd Corps was 44 killed and 513 wounded; that of Lagrange’s division and the dragoons has not been preserved, but can have been but small—probably less than 100 in all—though Lagrange himself received a severe hurt in the arm. The only regiment that suffered heavily was the 117th, of Morlot’s division, which, in turning Roca off the Cerro de Santa Barbara, lost 303 killed and wounded, more than half the total casualties of the 3rd Corps.
Lannes had carried out indifferently well the part of the Emperor’s great plan that had been entrusted to him; but this, as we have seen, was only half of the game. When Casta?os and the Aragonese were routed, they ought to have found Marshal Ney at their backs, intercepting their retreat on Saragossa or Madrid. As a matter of fact he was more than fifty miles away on the day of the battle, and arrived with a tardiness which made his flanking march entirely futile. The orders for him to march from Aranda on Soria and Tarazona had been issued on November 18, and he had been warned that Lannes would deliver his blow on the twenty-second. But Ney did not receive his instructions till the nineteenth, and only set out on the twentieth. When once he was upon the move he made tremendous marches, for on the twenty-first he had reached Almazan, more than sixty miles from his starting-point: by dusk on the twenty-second he had pushed on to Soria, where he halted for forty-eight hours on account of the utter exhaustion of his troops. He had pushed them forward no less than seventy-eight miles in three days, a rate which cannot be kept up. Hence he was obliged to let them spend the twenty-third and twenty-fourth in Soria: at dawn on the twenty-fifth they set out again, and executed another terrible march. It is thirty miles from Soria to Agreda, in the heart of the Sierra de Moncayo, where the 6th Corps slept on that night, and every foot of the way was over villainous mountain roads. Hence Ney only reached Tarazona early on the twenty-sixth, three days after the battle; yet it cannot be said that he had been slow: he had covered 121 miles in six and a half days, even when the halt at Soria is included. This is very fair marching for infantry, when the difficulties of the country are considered. Napoleon ungenerously ascribed the escape of Casta?os to the fact that ‘Ney had allowed himself to be imposed upon by the Spaniards, and rested for the twenty-second and twenty-third at Soria, because he chose to imagine that the enemy had 80,000 men, and other follies. If he had reached Agreda on the twenty-third, according to my orders, not a man would have escaped.’ But, as Marshal Jourdan very truly remarks in his Mémoires, ‘Calculating the distance from Aranda to Tarazona via Soria, one easily sees that even if Ney had given no rest to his troops, it would have been impossible for him to arrive before the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, that is to say, twenty-four hours after the battle. It is not he who should be reproached, but the Emperor, who ought to have started him from Aranda two days earlier.’
Blind admirers of Bonaparte have endeavoured to make out a case against Ney, by accusing him of having stopped at Soria for three days in order to pillage it—which he did not, though he made a requisition of shoes and cloth for great-coats from the municipality. If he is really to blame, it is rather for having worked his men so hard on the twentieth to the twenty-second that they were not fit to march on the twenty-third: he had taken them seventy-eight miles on those three days, with the natural result that they were dead beat. If he had contented himself with doing sixteen or eighteen miles a day, he would have reached Soria on the twenty-third, but his men would have been comparatively fresh, and could have moved on next morning. Even then he would have been late for the battle, as Jourdan clearly shows: the fact was that the Emperor asked an impossibility of him when he expected him to cover 121 miles in four days, with artillery and baggage, and a difficult mountain range to climb.
Meanwhile the routed forces of O’Neille, Roca, and Saint March joined at Mallen, and retreated along the high-road to Saragossa, accompanied for part of the way by Casta?os; while those of La Pe?a, Grimarest, and Villariezo marched by Borja to La Almunia on the Xalon, where their General-in-chief joined them and directed them to take the road to Madrid, not that which led to the Aragonese capital. On the night of the twenty-fifth the Army of Andalusia, minus the greater part of the wrecks of Roca’s division, was concentrated at Calatayud, not much reduced in numbers, but already suffering from hunger—all their stores having been lost at Cascante and Tarazona—and inclined to be mutinous. The incredible mismanagement at Tudela was put down to treachery, and the men were much inclined to disobey their chiefs. It was at this unhappy moment that Casta?os received a dispatch from the Central Junta dated November 21, which authorized him to incorporate the divisions of O’Neille and Saint March with the army of Andalusia, leaving only the Aragonese under the control of Palafox. This order, if given a month earlier, would have saved an enormous amount of wrangling and mismanagement. But it was now too late: these divisions had retired on Saragossa, and the enemy having interposed between them and Casta?os, the authorization remained perforce a dead letter.
Lannes had directed Maurice Mathieu, with the divisions of Lagrange and Musnier, to follow the Andalusians by Borja, while Morlot and Grandjean pursued the Aragonese on the road of Mallen. The chase does not seem to have been very hotly urged, but on each road a certain number of stragglers were picked up. Ney, reaching Borja on the twenty-sixth with the head of his column, found himself in the rear of Maurice Mathieu, and committed to the pursuit of Casta?os. Their vanguard reached Calatayud on the twenty-seventh, and learnt that the Army of the Centre had evacuated that city on the same morning, and was pressing towards Madrid, with the intention of taking part in the defence of the capital.
Ney, taking with him Lagrange’s infantry and Digeon’s and Colbert’s cavalry from the troops which fought at Tudela, and adding them to the two divisions of Marchand and Dessolles, which had formed his turning column, urged the pursuit as fast as he was able. Twice he came up with the Spanish army: on each occasion Casta?os sacrificed his rearguard, which made a long stand and was terribly mauled, while he pushed ahead with his main body. At this cost the army was saved, but it arrived in New Castile half starved and exhausted, and almost as much demoralized as if it had been beaten in a pitched battle. A few days later many of the battalions burst into open mutiny, when they were ordered to retire into the mountains of Cuenca. But at least they had escaped from Ney by rapid marching, and still preserved the form and semblance of an army.
Meanwhile Napoleon, on his side, had begun to operate against Madrid with a speed and sureness of stroke that made futile every attempt of the Spaniards to intervene between him and his goal. The moment that the news of Tudela reached him (November 26) he had hurled his main body upon the capital, and within eight days it was in his hands. The march of the army of Andalusia to cover Madrid was (though Casta?os could not know it) useless from the first. By hurrying to the aid of the Junta, through Siguenza and Guadalajara, he was merely exposing himself for a second time to destruction. His troops were destined to escape from the peril in New Castile, by a stroke of fortune just as notable as that which had saved them from being cut off on the day after Tudela. But he, meanwhile, was separated from his troops, for on arriving at Siguenza he was met by another dispatch from the Junta, which relieved him of the command of the army of the Centre, and bade him hasten to Head Quarters, where his aid was required by the Central Committee for War. Handing over the troops to the incapable La Pe?a, Casta?os hastened southward in search of the Junta, whose whereabouts in those days of flight and confusion it was not easy to find.
PASSAGE OF THE SOMOSIERRA: NAPOLEON AT MADRID
After completing his arrangements for the two sweeping flank-movements that were destined to entrap Blake and Casta?os, the Emperor moved forward from Burgos on November 22, along the great road to Madrid by Lerma and Aranda de Duero. His advance was completely masked by the broad screen of cavalry which had gone on in front of him. Lasalle was ahead, Milhaud on the right flank, and covered by them he moved with ease across the plain of Old Castile. He brought with him a very substantial force, all the Imperial Guard, horse and foot, Victor and his 1st Corps, and the reserve-cavalry of Latour-Maubourg and Lahoussaye. King Joseph and his household troops were left behind at Burgos, to preserve the line of communication with Vittoria and Bayonne. The flanks were quite safe, with Ney and Moncey lying out upon the left, and Soult and Lefebvre upon the right. In a few days—supposing that the armies of Blake and Casta?os fell into the snare, or were at least broken and scattered—the Emperor hoped to be able to draw in both Ney and Lefebvre to aid in his enveloping attack upon Madrid. Nor was this all: the corps of Mortier and Junot were now approaching the Pyrenees, and would soon be available as a great central reserve. The whole force put in motion against Madrid was enormous: the Emperor had 45,000 men under his own hand: Ney and Lefebvre could dispose of 40,000 more: Mortier and Junot were bringing up another 40,000 in the rear. Omitting the troops left behind on the line of communication and the outlying corps of Soult and Moncey, not less than 130,000 men were about to concentrate upon Madrid.
The Emperor halted at Aranda from November 23 to 28, mainly (as it would seem) to allow the two great flanking operations to work themselves out. When Soult reported that Blake’s much-chased army had dissolved into a mere mob, and taken refuge in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and when Lannes sent in the news of Tudela, the Emperor saw that it was time to move. On the twenty-eighth he marched on Madrid, by the direct high-road that crosses the long and desolate pass of the Somosierra.
Meanwhile the Spaniards had been granted nineteen days since the rout of Gamonal in which to organize the defence of their capital—a space in which something might have been done had their resources been properly applied and their commanders capable. It is true that even if every available man had been hurried to Madrid, the Emperor must still have prevailed: his numbers were too overwhelming to be withstood. But this fact does not excuse the Junta for not having done their best to hold him back. It is clear that when the news of Gamonal reached them, on the morning of the twelfth, orders should have been sent to Casta?os to fall back on the capital by way of Calatayud and Siguenza, leaving Palafox and the Aragonese to ‘contain’ Moncey as long as might be possible. Nothing of the kind was done, and the army of the Centre—as we have seen—was still at Tudela on the twenty-third. There was another and a still more important source of aid available: the English army from Portugal had begun to arrive at Salamanca on November 13: its rearguard had reached that city ten days later. With Sir John Moore’s designs and plans of campaign we shall have to deal in another chapter. It must suffice in this place to say that he was now within 150 miles of Madrid by a good high-road: the subsidiary column under Hope, which had with it nearly the whole of the British artillery, was at Talavera, still nearer to the capital. If the Junta had realized and frankly avowed the perils of the situation, there can be no doubt that they would have used every effort to bring Moore to the defence of Madrid. Seven or eight good marches could have carried him thither. But the Spaniards did nothing of the kind: refusing to realize the imminence of the danger, they preferred to urge on Mr. Frere, the newly arrived British minister, a scheme for the union of Moore’s forces with Blake’s broken ‘Army of the Left.’ They suggested that Hope’s division might be brought up to reinforce the capital, but that the rest of the British troops should operate in the valley of the Douro. This proposition was wholly inadmissible, for Hope had with him all Moore’s cavalry and most of his guns. To have separated him from his chief would have left the latter incapable of any offensive movement. Hope declined to listen to the proposal, and marched via the Escurial to join the main army.
The fact was that the Junta still persisted in the foolish belief that Napoleon had no more than 80,000 men disposable in Northern Spain, instead of the 250,000 who were really at his command. They looked on the French advance to Burgos as a mere reconnaissance in force made by a single corps, and in this notion the imbecile Belvedere did his best to confirm them, by stating in his dispatch that the force which had routed him amounted to no more than 3,000 horse and 6,000 infantry. Instead of calling in Casta?os and making a desperate appeal for aid to Moore, the Junta contented themselves with endeavouring to reorganize the wrecks of the army of Estremadura, and pushing forward the belated fragments of the 1st and 3rd Andalusian divisions, which still lingered in Madrid, as well as the few Castilian levies that were now available for service in the field. Nothing can show their blind self-confidence more clearly than their proclamation of November 15, put forward to attenuate the ill effects on the public mind of the news of the rout of Gamonal. ‘The Supreme Junta of Government’—so runs the document—‘in order to prevent any more unhappy accidents of this kind, has already taken the most prudent measures; it has nominated Don Joseph Heredia to the command of the army of Estremadura: it has ordered all the other generals of the Army of the Right to combine their movements: it has given stringent orders for the prompt reinforcement of the above-named army.... There is every hope that the enemy, who now boasts of having been able to advance as far as Burgos, will soon be well chastised for his temerity. And if it is certain—as the reports from the frontier assure us—that the Emperor of the French has come in person to inspect the conduct of his generals and his troops in Spain, we may hope that the valiant defenders of our fatherland may aspire to the glory of making him fly, with the same haste with which they forced his brother Joseph to abandon the throne and the capital of which he vainly thought that he had taken possession.’
Since they systematically undervalued the number of Napoleon’s host, and refused to believe that there was any danger of a serious attack on Madrid during the next few days, it was natural that the Junta should waste, in the most hopeless fashion, the short time of respite that was granted to them between the rout of Gamonal and Napoleon’s advance from Aranda. They hurried forward the troops that were close at hand to hold the passes of the watershed between Old and New Castile, and then resumed their usual constitutional debates.
The forces available for the defence of Madrid appear absurdly small when we consider the mighty mass of men that Bonaparte was leading against them. Nearly half of the total was composed of the wrecks of the Estremaduran army. Belvedere, as it will be remembered, had brought back to Lerma the remains of his 1st and 2nd Divisions, and rallied them on his intact 3rd Division. The approach of Lasalle’s cavalry on November 11 scared them from Lerma, and the whole body, now perhaps 8,000 or 9,000 strong, fell back on Aranda. From thence we should have expected that they would retire by the high-road on Madrid, and take post in the pass of the Somosierra. But the Estremaduran officers decided to retreat on Segovia, far to the left, leaving only a handful of men to cover the main line of access to the capital. It looks as if a kind of ‘homing instinct’ had seized the whole army, and compelled them to retire along the road that led to their own province. The only explanation given by their commanders was that they hoped to pick up in this direction many of the fugitives who had not rallied to their main body (one cannot say to their colours, for most of them had been captured by the French) on the day after Gamonal. At Segovia the unhappy Belvedere was superseded by Heredia, whom the Junta had sent down from Aranjuez to reorganize the army.
The other troops available for the defence of Madrid consisted mainly of the belated fractions of the army of Andalusia, which Casta?os had summoned so many times to join him on the Ebro, but which were still, on November 15, in or about Madrid. They were supposed to be completing their clothing and equipment, and to be incorporating recruits. But considering the enormous space of time that had elapsed since Baylen, it is not unfair to believe that the true reason for their detention in the capital had been the Junta’s wish to keep a considerable body of troops in its own immediate neighbourhood. It was convenient to have regiments near at hand which had not passed under the control of any of the generals commanding the provincial armies. There were in Madrid no less than nine battalions of the original division of Reding—all regulars and all corps who had distinguished themselves at Baylen. Of the 3rd Division there were two regular and two old militia battalions. The remainder of the available force in the capital consisted of four battalions of new levies raised in the capital (the 1st and 2nd Regiments of the ‘Volunteers of Madrid’), of one new corps from Andalusia (the 3rd Volunteers of Seville), and of fragments of four regiments of cavalry. The whole division, twelve thousand strong, was placed under the charge of General San Juan, a veteran of good reputation. But he was only a subordinate: the supreme command in Madrid was at this moment in dispute between General Eguia, who had just been appointed as head of the whole ‘Army of Reserve,’ and the Marquis of Castelar, Captain-General of New Castile. The existence of two rival authorities on the spot did not tend to facilitate the organization of the army, or the formation of a regular plan of defence. Eguia, succeeding at last in asserting his authority, ordered San Juan with his 12,000 men to defend the Somosierra, while Heredia with the 9,000 Estremadurans was to hold the pass of the Guadarrama, the alternative road from Old Castile to Madrid via Segovia and San Ildefonso. These 21,000 men were all that could be brought up to resist Napoleon’s attack, since the Junta had neglected to call in its more distant resources. It is clear that from the first they were doomed to failure, for mountain chains are not like perpendicular walls: they cannot be maintained merely by blocking the roads in the defiles. Small bodies of troops, entrenched across the actual summit of the pass, can always be turned by an enemy of superior numbers; for infantry can easily scramble up the flanking heights on each side of the high-road. These heights must be held by adequate forces, arranged in a continuous line for many miles on each side of the defile, if the position is not to be outflanked. Neither Heredia nor San Juan had the numbers necessary for this purpose.
It was open to Napoleon to attack both the passes, or to demonstrate against one while concentrating his main force on the other, or to completely ignore the one and to turn every man against the other. He chose the last-named alternative: a few cavalry only were told off to watch the Estremadurans at Segovia, though Lefebvre and the 4th Corps were ultimately sent in that direction. The main mass of the army marched from Aranda against the Somosierra. San Juan had not made the best of his opportunities: he had done no more than range his whole artillery across the pass at its culminating point, with a shallow earthwork to protect it. This only covered the little plateau at the head of the defile: the flanking heights on either side were not prepared or entrenched. They were steep, especially on the right side of the road, but nowhere inaccessible to infantry moving in skirmishing order. At the northern foot of the pass lies the little town of Sepulveda, which is reached by a road that branches off from the Madrid chaussée before it commences to mount the defile. To this place San Juan pushed forward a vanguard, consisting of five battalions of veteran line troops, a battery, and half his available cavalry. It is hard to see why he risked the flower of his little army in this advanced position: they were placed (it is true) so as to flank any attempt of the French to advance up the high-road. But what use could there be in threatening the flank of Napoleon’s 40,000 men with a small detached brigade of 3,500 bayonets? And how were the troops to join their main body, if the Emperor simply ‘contained’ them with a small force, and pushed up the pass?
Napoleon left Aranda on November 28: on the twenty-ninth he reached Boceguillas, near the foot of the mountains, where the Sepulveda road joins the great chaussée, at the bottom of the pass. After reconnoitring the Spanish position, he sent a brigade of fusiliers of the Guard, under Savary, to turn the enemy out of Sepulveda. Meanwhile he pushed his vanguard up the defile, to look for the position of San Juan. Savary’s battalions failed to dislodge Sarden’s detachment before nightfall: behind the walls of the town the Spaniards stood firm, and after losing sixty or seventy men Savary drew off. His attack was not really necessary, for the moment that the Emperor had seized the exit of the defile, the force at Sepulveda, on its cross-road, was cut off from any possibility of rejoining its commander-in-chief, and stood in a very compromised position. Realizing this fact, Colonel Sarden retreated in the night, passed cautiously along the foot of the hills, and fell back on the Estremaduran army at Segovia. The only result, therefore, of San Juan’s having made this detachment to threaten the Emperor’s flank, was that he had deprived himself of the services of a quarter of his troops—and those the best in his army—when it became necessary to defend the actual pass. He had now left to oppose Napoleon only six battalions of regulars, two of militia, and seven of raw Castilian and Estremaduran levies: the guns which he had established in line across the little plateau, at the crest of the pass, seem to have been sixteen in number. The Emperor could bring against him about five men to one.
The high-road advances by a series of curves up the side of the mountain, with the ravine of the little river Duraton always on its right hand. The ground on either flank is steep but not inaccessible. Cavalry and guns must stick to the chaussée, but infantry can push ahead with more or less ease in every direction. There were several rough side-tracks on which the French could have turned San Juan’s position, by making a long circling movement. But Bonaparte disdained to use cautious measures: he knew that he had in front of him a very small force, and he had an exaggerated contempt for the Spanish levies. Accordingly, at dawn on the thirtieth, he pushed up the main defile, merely taking the precaution of keeping strong pickets of infantry out upon the flanking heights.
When, after a march of about seventeen miles up the defile, the French reached the front of San Juan’s position, the morning was very far spent. It was a dull November day with occasional showers of rain, and fogs and mists hung close to the slopes of the mountains. No general view of the ground could be obtained, but the Emperor made out the Spanish guns placed across the high-road, and could see that the heights for some little way on either hand were occupied. He at once deployed the division of Ruffin, belonging to Victor’s corps, which headed his line of march. The four battalions of the 96th moved up the road towards the battery: the 9th Léger spread out in skirmishing order to the right, the 24th of the Line to the left. They pressed forward up the steep slopes, taking cover behind rocks and in undulations of the ground: their progress was in no small degree helped by the mist, which prevented the Spaniards from getting any full view of their assailants. Presently, for half a mile on each flank of the high-road, the mountain-side was alive with the crackling fire of the long lines of tirailleurs. The ten French battalions were making their way slowly but surely towards the crest, when the Emperor rode to the front. He brought up with him a battery of artillery of the Guard, which he directed against the Spanish line of guns, but with small effect, for the enemy had the advantage in numbers and position. Bonaparte grew impatient: if he had waited a little longer Ruffin’s division would have cleared the flanking heights without asking for aid. But he was anxious to press the combat to a decision, and had the greatest contempt for the forces in front of him. His main idea at the moment seems to have been to give his army and his generals a sample of the liberties that might be taken with Spanish levies. After noting that Victor’s infantry were drawing near the summit of the crest, and seemed able to roll back all that lay in front of them, he suddenly took a strange and unexpected step. He turned to the squadron of Polish Light Horse, which formed his escort for the day, and bade them prepare to charge the Spanish battery at the top of the pass. It appeared a perfectly insane order, for the Poles were not 100 strong: they could only advance along the road four abreast, and then they would be exposed for some 400 yards to the converging fire of sixteen guns. Clearly the head of the charging column would be vowed to destruction, and not a man would escape if the infantry supports of the battery stood firm. But Bonaparte cared nothing for the lives of the unfortunate troopers who would form the forlorn hope, if only he could deliver one of those theatrical strokes with which he loved to adorn a Bulletin. It would be tame and commonplace to allow Victor’s infantry to clear the heights on either side, and to compel the retreat of the Spanish guns by mere outflanking. On the other hand, it was certain that the enemy must be growing very uncomfortable at the sight of the steady progress of Ruffin’s battalions up the heights: the Emperor calculated that San Juan’s artillerymen must already be looking over their shoulders and expecting the order to retire, when the crests above them should be lost. If enough of the Poles struggled through to the guns to silence the battery for a moment, there was a large chance that the whole Spanish line would break and fly down hill to Buitrago and Madrid. To support the escort-squadron he ordered up the rest of the Polish regiment and the chasseurs à cheval of the Guard: if the devoted vanguard could once reach the guns 1,000 sabres would support them and sweep along the road. If, on the other hand, the Poles were exterminated, the Guard cavalry would be held back, and nothing would have been lost, save the lives of the forlorn hope.
General Montbrun led the Polish squadron forward for about half the distance that separated them from the guns: so many saddles were emptied that the men hesitated, and sought refuge in a dip of the ground where some rocks gave them more or less cover from the Spanish balls. This sight exasperated the Emperor: when Walther, the general commanding the Imperial Guard, rode up to him, and suggested that he should wait a moment longer till Victor’s tirailleurs should have carried the heights on each side of the road, he smote the pommel of his saddle and shouted, ‘My Guard must not be stopped by peasants, mere armed banditti.’ Then he sent forward his aide-de-camp, Philippe de Ségur, to tell the Poles that they must quit their cover and charge home. Ségur galloped on and gave his message to the chef d’escadron Korjietulski: the Emperor’s eye was upon them, and the Polish officers did not shrink. Placing themselves at the head of the survivors of their devoted band they broke out of their cover and charged in upon the guns, Ségur riding two horses’ lengths in front of the rest. There were only 200 yards to cross, but the task was impossible; one blasting discharge of the Spanish guns, aided by the fire of infantry skirmishers from the flanks, practically exterminated the unhappy squadron. Of the eighty-eight who charged four officers and forty men were killed, four officers (one of them was Ségur) and twelve men wounded. The foremost of these bold riders got within thirty yards of the guns before he fell.
Having thus sacrificed in vain this little band of heroes, Bonaparte found himself forced, after all, to wait for the infantry. General Barrois with the 96th Regiment, following in the wake of the lost squadron, seized the line of rocks behind which the Poles had taken refuge before their charge, and began to exchange a lively musketry fire with the Spanish battalions which flanked and guarded the guns. Meanwhile the 9th and 24th Regiments on either side had nearly reached the crest of the heights. The enemy were already wavering, and falling back before the advance of Barrois’ brigade, whose skirmishers had struggled to the summit just to the right of the grand battery on the high-road, when the Emperor ordered a second cavalry charge. This time he sent up Montbrun with the remaining squadrons of the Polish regiment, supported by the chasseurs à cheval of the Guard. The conditions were completely changed, and this second attack was delivered at the right moment: the Spaniards, all along the line, were now heavily engaged with Victor’s infantry. When, therefore, the horsemen rode furiously in upon the guns, it is not wonderful that they succeeded in closing with them, and seized the whole battery with small loss. The defenders of the pass gave way so suddenly, and scattered among the rocks with such speed, that only 200 of them were caught and ridden down. The Poles pursued those of them who retired down the road as far as Buitrago, at the southern foot of the defile, but without inflicting on them any very severe loss; for the fugitives swerved off the path, and could not be hunted down by mounted men among the steep slopes whereon they sought refuge. The larger part of the Spaniards, being posted to the left of the chaussée, fled westward along the side of the mountain and arrived at Segovia, where they joined the army of Estremadura. With them went San Juan, who had vainly tried to make his reserve stand firm behind the guns, and had received two sword-cuts on the head from a Polish officer. Only a small part of the army fled to the direct rear and entered Madrid.
The story of the passage of the Somosierra has often been told as if it was an example of the successful frontal attack of cavalry on guns, and as if the Poles had actually defeated the whole Spanish army. Nothing of the kind occurred: Napoleon, as we have seen, in a moment of impatience and rage called upon the leading squadron to perform an impossibility, and caused them to be exterminated. The second charge was quite a different matter: here the horsemen fell upon shaken troops already closely engaged with infantry, and broke through them. But if they had not charged at all, the pass would have been forced none the less, and only five minutes later than was actually the case. In short, it was Ruffin’s division, and not the cavalry, which really did the work. Napoleon, with his habitual love of the theatrical and his customary disregard of truth, wrote in the 13th Bulletin that the charge of the Polish Light Horse decided the action, and that they had lost only eight killed and sixteen wounded! This legend has slipped into history, and traces of its influence will be found even in Napier and other serious authors.
The combat of the Somosierra, in short, is only an example of the well-known fact that defiles with accessible flank-slopes cannot be held by a small army against fourfold numbers. To state the matter shortly, fifteen battalions of Spaniards (five of them regular battalions which had been present at Baylen) were turned off the heights by the ten battalions of Ruffin: the cavalry action was only a spectacular interlude. The Spanish infantry, considering that there were so many veteran corps among them, might have behaved better. But they did not suffer the disgrace of being routed by a single squadron of horse as Napoleon asserted; and if they fought feebly their discouragement was due, we cannot doubt, to the fact that they saw the pass packed for miles to the rear with the advancing columns of the French, and knew that Ruffin’s division was only the skirmishing line (so to speak) of a great army.
On the night of November 30, Napoleon descended the pass and fixed his head quarters at Buitrago. On the afternoon of December 1 the advanced parties of Latour-Maubourg’s and Lasalle’s cavalry rode up to the northern suburbs of Madrid: on the second the French appeared in force, and the attack on the city began.
The Spanish capital was, and is, a place incapable of any regular defence. It had not even, like Valencia and Saragossa, the remains of a mediaeval wall: its development had taken place in the sixteenth century, when serious fortifications had gone out of date. Its streets were broad and regular, unlike the tortuous lanes which had been the real strength of Saragossa. Nothing separates the city from its suburbs save ornamental gates, whose only use was for the levy of octroi duties. Madrid is built in a level upland, but there is a rising ground which dominates the whole place: it lies just outside the eastern limit of the city. On it stood the palace of the Buen Retiro (which gives its name to the height), and several other public buildings, among them the Observatory and the royal porcelain manufactory, known as La China. The latter occupied the more commanding and important section of the summit of the hill. Between the Retiro and the eastern side of the city lies the public park known as the Prado, a low-lying open space laid out with fountains, statues, and long avenues of trees. Three broad and handsome streets run eastward and terminate in the Prado, just opposite the Retiro, so that cannon planted either by the palace or by La China can search them from end to end. This was so obvious that Murat, during his occupation of Madrid in April and May, had built three redoubts, one large and two small, facing down into the city and armed with guns of position. The inhabitants of Madrid had partly dismantled them after the departure of the French—and did themselves no harm thereby, for these earthworks were useless for defence against an enemy from without: they could be employed to overawe the city but not to protect it.
Ever since the rout of Gamonal, those members of the Junta who were gifted with ordinary foresight must have realized that it was probable that the Emperor would appear ere long before the gates of the capital. But to avoid alarming the excitable populace, the fact was concealed as long as possible, and it was given out that Madrid would be defended at the impregnable Somosierra. It was not till November 25 that any public measures for the fortification of the capital were spoken of. On that day the Junta issued a proclamation placing the charge of the capital in the hands of the Marquis of Castelar, Captain-General of New Castile, and of Don Tomas de Morla, the officer who had won a name by bombarding and capturing the French fleet at Cadiz in June. Under their directions, preparations were begun for putting the city in a state of defence. But the military men had a strong and well-founded belief that the place was indefensible, and that all efforts made to fortify it were labour thrown away: the fight must be made at the Somosierra, not at the gates of Madrid. It was not till the news of the rout of San Juan’s army on the thirtieth came to hand, that any very serious work was executed. But when this disaster was known there was a sudden and splendid outburst of energy. The populace, full of vindictive memories of May 2, were ready and willing to fight, and had no conception of the military weakness of their situation. If Saragossa had defended itself street by street, why, they asked, should not Madrid do the same? Their spirits were so high and their temper so ferocious, that the authorities realized that they must place themselves at the head of the multitude, or be torn to pieces as traitors. On December 1 a Junta of Defence was formed, under the presidency of the Duke of Infantado, in which Morla and Castelar were given a large and heterogeneous mass of colleagues—magistrates, officers, and prominent citizens forming an unwieldy body very unfit to act as an executive council of war. The military resources at their disposal were insignificant: there was a handful of the fugitives from the Somosierra—Castelar estimated them as not more than 300 or 400 in all—and two battalions of new levies from the south, which had arrived only on the morning of December 1. The organized forces then were not more than 2,500 or 3,000 in all. But there was a vast and unruly mob of citizens of Madrid and of peasants, who had flocked into the city to aid in its defence. Weapons rather than men were wanting, for when 8,000 muskets from the Arsenal had been served out, the supply ran short. All private persons owning firearms of any description were invited to hand them in to the Junta: but this resource soon failed, and finally pikes were served out, and even mediaeval weapons from the royal armoury and the family collections of certain grandees. How many men, armed in one way or another, took part in the defence of Madrid will never be known—it cannot have been less than 20,000, and may have amounted to much more.
Not merely the combatants, but the whole population of both sexes turned themselves with absolute frenzy to the work of fortification. In the two days which they had at their disposal they carried out an enormous and ill-compacted scheme for surrounding the whole city with lines. In front of each of the gates a battery was established, formed of earth reveted with paving-stones: to connect these a continuous wall was made, by joining together all the exterior houses of the town with earthworks, or with piles of stones and bricks pulled down from buildings in the suburbs. On several fronts ditches were excavated: the more important streets were blocked with barricades, and the windows and doors of exposed buildings were built up. There were very few engineers at the disposal of the Junta of Defence, and the populace in many places worked not under skilled guidance but by the light of nature, executing enormous but perfectly useless works. ‘The batteries,’ wrote a prominent Spanish witness, ‘were all too small: they were so low that they did not prevent the gates and streets which they defended from being enfiladed: the guns being placed en barbette were much exposed, and were dominated by the artillery which the enemy afterwards placed on the high ground . The low parapets and the want of proportion between them and their banquettes left the infantry unsheltered: indeed they were harmed rather than helped by the works, for the splinters of the paving-stones which formed the parapets proved more deadly to the garrison than did the enemy’s cannon-balls. The batteries were too low at the flanks, and placed so close to the buildings in their rear that the guns could not easily be worked nor the infantry supports move freely. The gates behind being all of hewn stone, every ball that struck them sent such a shower of fragments flying that the effect was like grape: it forced the defenders to lie flat, and even then caused terrible loss.’ It may be added that not only were the works unscientifically executed, but that the most tiresome results were produced by the misguided energy of persons who threw up barricades, or dug cuttings, behind them, so that it was very hard to send up reinforcements, and quite impossible to withdraw the guns from one battery for use in another.
It was natural that these self-taught engineers should neglect the one most important point in the defences of Madrid. The Retiro heights were the key of the city: if they were lost, the whole place lay open to bombardment from the dominating ground. But nothing was done here, save that the old French works round the factory of La China were repaired, the buildings of the palace, barracks, and hospital in the vicinity barricaded, and a low continuous earthwork constructed round the summit of the hill. It should have been turned into a regular entrenched camp, if the city was really to be defended.
The Junta of Defence did its best to preserve order and introduce discipline: all the armed men were paraded in the Prado, told off into bands, and allotted their posts around the circumference of the city. But there were many idle hands, and much confusion: it was inevitable that mobs should collect, with the usual consequences. Cries of ‘Treason’ were raised, some houses were sacked, and at least one atrocious murder was committed. The Marquis of Perales was president of the sub-committee which the Junta had appointed to superintend the manufacture and distribution of ammunition. Among the cartridges given out to the people some were found in which sand had been substituted for powder—probably they were relics of some petty piece of peculation dating back to the times of Godoy. When this was discovered, a furious mob ran to the house of the marquis, beat him to death, and dragged his corpse through the streets on a hurdle.
If the populace of Madrid was full of blind self-confidence, and imagined that it had the power to beat off the assault of Napoleon, its leaders were in a much more despondent frame of mind. Morla was one of those who had joined the patriotic party merely because he thought it was the winning side: he was deeply disgusted with himself, and was already contemplating the traitorous desertion to the enemy which has covered his name with eternal disgrace. Castelar seems to have been weak and downhearted. The Duke of Infantado was enough of a soldier to see the hopeless inefficiency of the measures of defence which had been adopted. The only chance of saving Madrid was to hurry up to its aid the two field-armies which were within touch—the old Andalusian divisions (now under La Pe?a), which, by orders of the Supreme Junta, were marching from Calatayud on the capital, and the routed bands of Heredia and San Juan at Segovia. Urgent appeals were sent to both of these hosts to press forward without delay: Infantado himself rode out to meet the army of the Centre, which on this day had not long passed Siguenza in its retreat, and was still nearly eighty miles from the capital. He met it at Guadalajara on the next day, in very bad condition, and much reduced by long marches and starvation: with the colours there were only 9,000 foot and 2,000 horse, and these were in a state of half-developed mutiny. The rest of the 20,000 men who had escaped from Tudela were ranging in small bands over the country-side, in search of food, and were not rallied for many days. There was not much to be hoped for from the army of the Centre, and it was evident that it could not reach Madrid till December 3 or 4. The troops of San Juan and Heredia were not so far distant, but even they had fifty-five miles to march from Segovia, and—as it turned out—the capital had fallen before either of the field-armies could possibly come to its aid. Still more fruitless were the attempts made at the last moment to induce Sir John Moore to bring up the British expeditionary force from Salamanca—he was 150 miles away, and could not have arrived before December 7, three days after the capitulation had been signed.
Napoleon dealt with the insurgents of Madrid in a very summary manner. On December 1—as we have already seen—his vedettes appeared before the city: on the morning of the second the dragoons of Lahoussaye and Latour-Maubourg came up in force and invested the northern and eastern fronts of the city. At noon the Emperor himself appeared, and late in the afternoon the infantry columns of Victor’s corps. December 2 was one of Bonaparte’s lucky days, being the anniversary of Austerlitz, and he had indulged in a faint hope that an open town like the Spanish capital might do him the courtesy of surrendering without a blow, like Vienna in 1805, or Berlin in 1806. Accordingly he sent a summons to the Junta in the afternoon; but the Spaniards were in no mood for yielding. General Montbrun, who rode up to the gates with the white flag, was nearly mobbed by enraged peasants, and the aide-de-camp who took the dispatch into the city was only saved from certain death by the exertions of some Spanish officers of the line. The Junta sent him back with the haughty reply that ‘the people of Madrid were resolved to bury themselves under the ruins of their houses rather than to permit the French troops to enter their city.’
Since the ‘sun of Austerlitz’ was not destined to set upon the triumphal entry of the Emperor into the Spanish capital, it became necessary to prepare for the use of force. As a preliminary for an attack on the following morning, Lapisse’s division of Victor’s corps was sent forward to turn the Spaniards out of many isolated houses in front of their line of entrenchments, which were being held as advanced posts. The ground being cleared, preparations could be made for the assault. The moment that Bonaparte cast eyes on the place, he realized that the heights of the Retiro were the key of the position. Under cover of the night, therefore, thirty guns were ranged in line opposite the weak earthworks which crowned the eminence. Artillery in smaller force was placed in front of several of the northern and eastern gates of the city, to distract the attention of the garrison from the critical point. Before dawn the Emperor sent in another summons to surrender, by the hands of an artillery officer who had been captured at the Somosierra. It is clear that he wished, if possible, to enter Madrid without being obliged to deliver up the city to fire and sword: it would be unfortunate if his brother’s second reign were to begin under such unhappy conditions. But it is hard to understand how he could suppose that the warlike frenzy of the Spaniards would have died down between the afternoon of December 2 and the dawn of December 3. All the reply that he obtained was a proposal from the Captain-General Castelar, that there should be a suspension of arms for twelve hours. The sole object of this delay was to allow the Spanish field-armies time to draw nearer to Madrid. Recognizing the fact—which was obvious enough—the Emperor gave orders for an immediate assault. A cannonade was opened against the gates of Los Pozos, the Recoletos, Fuencarral, and several others on the northern and eastern sides of the city. Considerable damage was done to the Spanish defences, but these attacks were all subsidiary. The real assault was delivered against the Retiro heights. The heavy cannonade which was directed against the Spanish works soon opened several breaches. Then Villatte’s division of Victor’s corps was sent in to storm the position, a feat which it accomplished with the greatest ease. The garrison of this all-important section of the defences consisted of a single battalion of new levies—the Regiment of Mazzaredo—and a mass of armed citizens. They were swept out of their works, and pursued downhill into the Prado. Pressing onward among the avenues and fountains, Villatte’s division took in the rear the defenders of the three neighbouring gates, and then, pushing in among the houses of the city, made a lodgement in the palace of the Duke of Medina Celi, and several other large buildings. There was now nothing between the French army and the heart of Madrid save the street-barricades, which the populace had thrown up behind the original lines of defence.
If Napoleon had chosen to send into the fight the rest of Victor’s corps, and had pushed forward the whole of his artillery to the edge of the captured heights, with orders to shell the city, there can be little doubt that Madrid might have been stormed ere nightfall. Its broad streets did not give the facilities of defence that Saragossa had possessed, and the Emperor had at his disposal not a weak and heterogeneous army, such as Verdier had commanded, but more than 40,000 veteran troops. His artillery, too, had on the Retiro a vantage-ground such as did not exist outside the Aragonese capital. Nevertheless the Emperor did not press the attack, and once more sent in a demand for the surrender of the place, at about eleven in the morning of December 3.
The populace of Madrid did not yet recognize its own forlorn state, and was keeping up a vigorous fusillade at the gates and behind the barricades. It had suffered severe loss from the French artillery, owing to the unscientific construction of the defences, but was not yet ready to yield. But the Junta was in a very different frame of mind: the military men thoroughly understood the situation, and were expecting to see a hundred guns open from the crest of the Retiro within the next few minutes. Their civilian colleagues, the magistrates, and local notables were looking forward with no enviable feelings to the conflagration and the general sack that seemed to be at hand. In short the idea of rivalling Saragossa was far from their thoughts. When Napoleon’s letter, offering ‘pardon to the city of Madrid, protection and security for the peaceful inhabitants, respect for the churches and the clergy, oblivion for the past,’ was delivered to the Junta, the majority decided to treat with him. They sent out as negotiators General Morla, representing the military element, and Don Bernardo Iriarte, on behalf of the civil authorities. Napoleon treated these delegates to one of those scenes of simulated rage which he was such an adept at producing—his harangue was quite in the style of the famous allocutions to Lord Whitworth and to Metternich. It was necessary, he thought, to terrify the delegates. Accordingly he let loose on Morla a storm of largely irrelevant abuse, stringing together accusations concerning the bombardment of the French fleet at Cadiz, the violation of the Convention of Baylen, the escape of La Romana’s troops from the Baltic, and (strangest of all!) the misconduct of the Spanish troops in Roussillon during the war of 1793-5. He ended by declaring that unless the city had been surrendered by six o’clock on the following morning, every man taken in arms should be put to the sword.
Morla was a very timid man, moreover he was already meditating submission to King Joseph: he returned to the Junta in a state of absolute collapse, and gave such a highly coloured account of the Emperor’s wrath, and of the number of the French army, that there was no further talk of resistance. The main difficulty was to stop the promiscuous firing which was still going on at the outposts, and to induce the more exasperated section of the mob to quit the city or to lay down their arms. Many of them took the former alternative: the Marquis of Castelar, resolved to avoid captivity, got together his handful of regular troops, and fled in haste by the road towards Estremadura: he was followed by some thousands of peasants, and by a considerable number of persons who thought themselves too much compromised to be able to remain behind. Having got rid of the recalcitrants, the Junta drew up a form of capitulation in eleven articles, and sent it out to the French camp. Napoleon, anxious above all things to get possession of the city as soon as possible, accepted it almost without discussion, though it contained many clauses entirely inappropriate to such a document. As he did not intend to observe any of the inconvenient stipulations, he did not care to waste time in discussing them. Morla and Fernando de Vera, governor of the city, came back with the capitulation duly ratified by Berthier, and next morning the gates were opened, a division under General Belliard marched in, and the Spaniards gave up their artillery and laid down their muskets without further trouble. After the spasmodic burst of energy which they had displayed during the last four days, the citizens showed a melancholy apathy which surprised the conquerors. There was no riot or confusion, nor were any isolated attempts at resistance made. Hence the occupation of Madrid took place without any scenes of bloodshed or pillage, the Emperor for his part keeping a very stern hand upon the soldiery, and sending in as small a garrison as could safely be allotted to the task.
Madrid having fallen after no more than two days of resistance, the two Spanish field-armies which were marching to its aid were far too late to be of any use. The army of the Centre under La Pe?a had reached Guadalajara at nightfall on December 2: there it was met by the Duke of Infantado, who had come out from Madrid to hurry on the troops. At his solicitation the wearied and disorganized host, with Ney’s corps pressing hard on its heels, marched for San Torcaz and Arganda, thus placing itself in a most dangerous position between the Emperor and the corps that was in pursuit. Fortunately La Pe?a got early news of the capitulation, and swerving southward from Arganda, made for the passage of the Tagus at Aranjuez. But Bonaparte had sent out part of Victor’s corps to seize that place, and when the army of the Centre drew near, it found French troops in possession . With Ney behind, Victor in front, and Bessières’ cavalry ranging all over the plain of New Castile, the Spaniards were in grave danger. But they escaped by way of Estremera, crossed the ferries on the Upper Tagus, and finally rallied—in a most miserable and disorganized condition—at Cuenca. The artillery, unable to leave the high-road, had been sent off three days before, from Guadalajara towards the kingdom of Murcia, almost without an escort: by a piece of extraordinary luck it escaped without seeing an enemy.
The doings of the disorganized divisions of San Juan and Heredia, which had marched from Segovia on December 2, were much more discreditable. Late on the third they reached the Escurial, some thirty miles from Madrid, and were met by fugitives from the capital, who reported that the Retiro had been stormed, and that the Junta of Defence was debating about a surrender. The two commanders were doubting whether they ought not to turn back, when their troops broke out into mutiny, insisting that the march on Madrid must be continued. After a scene of great disorder the generals gave in, and resumed their advance on the morning of the fourth, just at the moment when Morla was opening the gates to Napoleon. They had only gone a few miles when certain news of the capitulation was received. There followed a disgraceful scene; the cry of treason ran down the ranks: some battalions disbanded themselves, others attacked their own officers, and the whole mass dissolved and went off in panic to Talavera, leaving its artillery abandoned by the wayside. They had not even seen a French vedette, or fired a single shot, yet they fled in utter rout for sixty miles, and only halted when they could run no further. Seven or eight thousand men out of the two armies were got together at Talavera, on the sixth; but when, next morning, San Juan attempted to take up the command again, they raised the idiotic cry that he wished to lead them forward into the midst of Napoleon’s armies in order to force them to surrender! The unfortunate general was hunted down, shot as he was trying to escape from a window, and hung from a large elm-tree just outside the town. This was the most disgraceful scene of the whole campaign in 1808. It was not for some days later that the remnants of this miserable army were reduced to some shadow of discipline, and consented to march under the command of new generals.
It is clear that even if Madrid had held out for a day or two more, by dint of desperate street-fighting, it would have got no effective aid from the armies in the field. We cannot therefore say that the Junta of Defence did much harm by its tame surrender. From the military point of view Madrid was indefensible: on the other hand it was eminently desirable, from the political point of view, that Napoleon should not enter the place unopposed, to be received, as at Vienna or Berlin, by obsequious deputations mouthing compliments, and bearing the keys of the city on silver salvers. It was far better, in the long run, for Spain and for Europe that he should be received with cannon-balls, and forced to fight his way in. This simple fact made all his fictions to the effect that he was only opposed by the rabble, the monks, and the agents of England appear absurd. He could not, after this, pretend to introduce his brother Joseph as a legitimate sovereign quietly returning to his loyal capital. So much was secured by the two days’ resistance of Madrid: on the other hand, when once the French were inside the city, and further resistance would have ended merely in general pillage and conflagration, it would have required more than Spartan resolution for the Junta to go on fighting. If Madrid had been burnt like Moscow, the moral effect on Spain and on Europe would, no doubt, have been enormous. But the heterogeneous council of war, composed of dispirited officers and local notables trembling for their homes, could hardly be expected to see this. They yielded, considering that they had already done enough by way of protest—and even with Saragossa in our mind we should be loth to say that their capitulation was culpable. The one shameful thing about the surrender was that within a few days both Morla, the military head of the defence, and several of the chief civil officials, swore allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte, and took service under him. Such treason on the part of prominent men did more to encourage the invader and to dishearten Spain and her allies than the loss of half a dozen battles. For, when once desertion begins, no one knows where it will stop, and every man distrusts his neighbour as a possible traitor. Madrid, as we have already said, was not a true national capital, nor was its loss a fatal blow; but that its chief defenders should shamelessly throw over the cause of their country, and join the enemy, was a symptom of the most dire and deadly sort. But, fortunately, the fate of the country was not in the hands of its corrupt bureaucracy, but in those of its much-enduring people.
NAPOLEON AT MADRID
From December 4 to December 22 the Emperor remained fixed in the neighbourhood of Madrid. He did not settle down in the royal palace, and it would seem that he made no more than one or two hurried visits of inspection to the city. He established himself outside the gates, at Chamartin, a desolate and uncomfortable country house of the Duke of Infantado, and devoted himself to incessant desk-work. It was here that he drew up his projects for the reorganization of the kingdom of Spain, and at the same time set himself to the task of constructing his plans of campaign against those parts of the Peninsula which still remained unsubdued. In seventeen days, uninterrupted by the cares of travel, Bonaparte could get through an enormous amount of business. His words and deeds at this period are well worth studying, for the light that they throw alike on his own character and on his conceptions of the state and the needs of Spain.
His first act was to annul the capitulation which he had granted to the inhabitants of Madrid. Having served its purpose in inducing the Junta to yield, it was promptly violated. ‘The Spaniards have failed to carry it out,’ he wrote, ‘and I consider the whole thing void.’ Looking at the preposterous clauses which he had allowed to be inserted in the document, there can be no doubt that this was his intention at the very moment when he ratified it. It was a small thing that he should break engagements, such as those in which he had promised not to quarter troops in the monasteries (Article 7), or to maintain all existing officials in their places (Article 2). But having guaranteed security for their life and property, freedom from arrest, and free exit at their pleasure, to such persons as chose to remain behind in the city, it was shameless to commence his proceedings with a proscription and a long series of arrests. The list of persons declared traitors and condemned to loss of life and goods was not very long: only ten persons were named, and seven of these were absent from Madrid. But the three others, the Prince of Castelfranco, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and the Count of Altamira, were seized and dispatched into France, sentenced to imprisonment for life.
The arrests were a much more serious matter. In flagrant contravention of the terms of surrender, Bonaparte put under lock and key all the members of the Council of the Inquisition on whom he could lay hands, irrespective of what their conduct had been during the reign of the Supreme Junta. He also declared all the superior officers of the army resident in Madrid, even retired veterans, to be prisoners of war, and liable to answer with their necks for the safety of the captives of Dupont’s corps. Among them was discovered an old French émigré, the Marquis de Saint-Simon, who had entered the service of Charles IV as far back as 1793, and had taken part in the last campaign. The Emperor refused to consider him as a Spaniard, declared that he was one of his own subjects, had him tried by court-martial, and condemned him to death. All this was to lead up to one of those odious comedies of magnanimity which Bonaparte sometimes practised for the benefit of the editor of the Moniteur. Saint-Simon’s daughter was admitted to the imperial presence to beg for her father’s life, and the master of the world deigned to commute the punishment of the ‘traitor’ to imprisonment for life in the mountain-fortress of Joux. This was a repetition of the Hatzfeldt affairs at Berlin, and Saint-Simon was treated even worse than the unfortunate Prussian nobleman of 1806. Truly the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel!
Among other persons who were arrested were Don Arias Mon, president of the Council of Castile, the Duke of Sotomayor, and about thirty other notables: some were ultimately sent away to France, others allowed to go free after swearing allegiance to Joseph Bonaparte.
All these measures were designed to strike terror into the hearts of the Spaniards. But at the same time the Emperor issued a series of decrees—in his own name and not in that of his brother, the titular king—which were intended to conciliate them by bestowing upon them certain tangible benefits. He knew that there existed the nucleus of a Liberal party in Spain, and hoped to draw it over to his side by introducing certain much-needed reforms in the administration of the country. With this object he removed the tiresome inter-provincial octroi duties, abolished all feudal dues and all rights of private jurisdiction, declared that all monopolies should be annulled, and forbade all assignments of public revenues to individuals. Such measures would have seemed excellent to many good Spaniards, if they had been introduced by a legitimate ruler: but coming from the hand of a foreign conqueror they were without effect. Moreover there was hardly a square mile of Spanish territory, outside Madrid and the other towns held by the French, where Napoleon’s writs could run. Every village which was unoccupied was passively or actively disobedient. The reforms, therefore, were but on paper. Another series of decrees, which appeared at the same time, were in themselves quite as justifiable as those which were concerned with administrative changes, but were certain to offend nine-tenths of the Spanish nation. They dealt with the Church and its ministers. The most important was one which declared (with perfect truth) that there were far too many monasteries and nunneries in Spain, and that it was necessary to cut them down to one-third of their existing number. The names of those which were destined to survive were published: to them the inmates of the remaining institutions were to be transferred, as vacancies arose. The suppressed convents were to become the property of the state. Part of their revenues was to be devoted to raising the salaries of the secular clergy, so that every parish priest should have an income of 2,400 reals (about ￡25). Monks or nuns who might choose to leave the monastic life were to be granted a small pension. At the same time the Inquisition was abolished ‘as dangerous to the crown and to civil authority,’ and all its property confiscated. In Madrid there was seized 2,453,972 reals in hard cash—about ￡25,000; the smallness of the amount much surprised the French, who had vague ideas concerning the fabulous wealth of the institution.
The only results of these measures were that every Spaniard was confirmed in his belief that Napoleon was a concealed atheist and an irreconcilable enemy of all religion. Could anything else be expected of one who (in spite of his Concordats and Te Deums) was after all a child of the Revolution? The man who had persecuted the Pope in January, 1808, would naturally persecute the monks of Spain in December. As to the Inquisition, its fate inspired no rejoicing: it had been effete for many years: there was not a prisoner in any of its dungeons. Indeed it had enjoyed a feeble popularity of late, for having refused to lend itself as a tool to Godoy. The only result of Napoleon’s decree for its abolition was that it acquired (grotesque as the idea may seem) considerable credit in the eyes of the majority of the Spanish people, as one of the usurper’s victims. Never was work more wasted than that which the Emperor spent on his reforms of December, 1808. They actually tended to make old abuses popular with the masses, merely because he had attempted to remove them. As to the possibility of conciliating the comparatively small body of Liberals, he was equally in error: they agreed with the views of Jovellanos: reforms were necessary, but they must come from within, and not be imposed by force from without. They were Spaniards first and reformers afterwards. The only recruits whom Bonaparte succeeded in enrolling for his brother’s court were the purely selfish bureaucrats who would accept any government—who would serve Godoy, Ferdinand, Joseph, a red republic, or the Sultan of Turkey with equal equanimity, so long as they could keep their places or gain better ones.
The Emperor had a curious belief in the power of oaths and phrases over other men, though he was entirely free himself from any feebleness of the kind. He took considerable pains to get up a semblance of national acceptance of his brother’s authority, now that his second reign was about to begin. Joseph had appeared at Chamartin on December 2: but he was not allowed to re-enter Madrid for many days. The Emperor told him to stay outside, at the royal palace of the Pardo, till things were ready for his reception. This was not at all to the mind of the King, who took his position seriously, and was deeply wounded at being ordered about in such an arbitrary fashion. He sent in a formal protest against the publication of the decrees of December 4: his own name, he complained, not that of his brother, ought to have appeared at the bottom of all these projects of reform. He had never coveted any crown, and least of all that of Spain: but having once accepted the position he could not consent to be relegated into a corner, while all the acts of sovereignty were being exercised by his brother. He was ready to resign his crown into the hands from which he had received it: but if he was not allowed to abdicate, he must be allowed to reign in the true sense of the word. It made him blush with shame before his subjects when he saw them invited to obey laws which he had never seen, much less sanctioned. Napoleon refused to accept this abdication: he looked at matters from an entirely different point of view. He was master of Spain, as he considered, not merely by the cession made at Bayonne, but by the new title of conquest. He intended to restore Joseph to the throne, but till he had done so he saw no reason why he should not exercise all the rights of sovereignty at Madrid. If, in a moment of pique, he said that his brother might exchange the crown of Spain for that of Italy, or for the position of lieutenant of the Emperor in France during his own numerous absences, there is clear evidence that these were empty words. His dispatches show not the least sign of any project for the future of Spain other than the restoration of Joseph; and while the latter was at the Pardo he was continually receiving notes concerning the reorganization of the Spanish army and finances, which presuppose his confirmation on the throne within the next few days.
It would seem that Napoleon’s real object in keeping his brother off the scene, and acting as if he intended to annex Spain to France as a vassal province, was merely to frighten the inhabitants of Madrid into a proper frame of mind. If they remained recalcitrant, and refused to come before him with petitions for pardon, they were to be threatened with a purely French military government. If they bowed the knee, they should have back King Joseph and the mockery of liberal and constitutional monarchy which he represented. So much we gather from the Emperor’s celebrated proclamation of December 7, and his allocution to the Corregidor and magistrates of Madrid two days later. Both of these addresses are in the true Napoleonesque vein. In the first we read that if the people of Spain prefer ‘the poisons which the English have ministered to them’ to the wholesome régime introduced from France, they shall be treated as a conquered province, and Joseph shall be removed to another throne. ‘I will place the crown of Spain on my own brow, and I will make it respected by evil-doers, for God has given me the strength and the force of will necessary to surmount all obstacles.’ In the second, which is written in a mood of less rigour, the inhabitants of Madrid are told that nothing could be easier than to cut up Spain into provinces, each governed by a separate viceroy. But if the clergy, nobles, merchants, and magistrates of the capital will swear a solemn oath upon the Blessed Sacrament to be true and loyal for the future to King Joseph, he shall be restored to them and the Emperor will make over to him all his rights of conquest. We cannot stop to linger over the other details of these addresses: one of the most astounding statements in them is that the quarrel between King Charles and King Ferdinand had been hatched by the English ministry, and that the Duke of Infantado, acting as their tool, was plotting to make Spain England’s vassal, ‘an insensate project which would have made blood run in torrents’! But this mattered little, as within a few weeks every English soldier would have been cast out of the Peninsula, and Lisbon no less than Saragossa, Valencia, and Seville would be flying the French flag.
In accordance with the Emperor’s command, the notables of Madrid, civil and ecclesiastical, were compelled to go through the ceremony of swearing allegiance to King Joseph on the Holy Sacrament, which was exposed for several days in every church for this purpose. Apparently a very large number of persons were induced, by terror or despair, to give in their formal submission to the intrusive King. Three pages of the Madrid Gazette for December 15 are filled with the names of the deputies of the ten quarters and sixty-four barrios of the city, who joined in the formal petition for the restoration to them of ‘that sovereign who unites so much kindness of heart with such an interest in the welfare of his subjects, and whose presence will be their joy.’
Satisfied with this declaration, and pretending to take it as the expression of the wishes of every Spaniard who was not the paid agent of England or the slave of the Inquisition, the Emperor was graciously pleased to restore Joseph to all his rights. Great preparations were made for his solemn entry, which was celebrated with considerable state in the month of January.
But his plans for the reorganization of Spain only formed a part of the Emperor’s work at Chamartin. He was also busied in the reconcentration of his armies, for the purpose of overrunning those parts of the Peninsula which still remained unconquered. On the very morrow of the fall of Madrid he had pushed out detachments in all directions, to cover all the approaches to the capital, and to hunt down any remnants of the Spanish armies which might still be within reach. He was particularly hopeful that he might catch the army of the Centre, which, with Ney and Maurice Mathieu at its heels, was coming in from the direction of Siguenza and Calatayud. To intercept it the fusiliers of the Guard marched for Alcala, one of Victor’s divisions for Guadalajara, and another for Aranjuez; while Bessières with the Guard cavalry, and one of Latour-Maubourg’s brigades of dragoons, swept all the country around the Tajuna and the Tagus. But, as we have already seen, La Pe?a’s famishing men ultimately got away in the direction of Cuenca. When it was certain that they had escaped from the net, Napoleon rearranged his forces on the eastern side of Madrid. Bessières, with Latour-Maubourg’s whole division of dragoons, occupied cantonments facing at once towards Cuenca and towards La Mancha: the Marshal’s head quarters, on December 11, were at Tarancon. Of Victor’s infantry, one division (Ruffin) marched on Toledo, which opened its gates without resistance; another, that of Villatte, remained at Aranjuez with an advanced guard at Oca?a, a few miles further south. The third division of the 1st Corps, that of Lapisse, remained at Madrid. Ney’s troops were also at hand in this quarter: when La Pe?a had finally escaped from him, he was told to leave the division of Dessolles at Guadalajara and Siguenza. These forces were destined to keep open the communications between Madrid and Aragon, where the siege of Saragossa was just about to begin. With his other two divisions, those of Marchand and Maurice Mathieu, Ney was directed to march into Madrid: he was to form part of the mass of troops which the Emperor was collecting, in and about the capital, for new offensive operations. For this same purpose the 4th Corps, that of Lefebvre, was brought up from Old Castile: the Marshal with his two leading divisions, those of Sebastiani and Leval, arrived in Madrid on December 9: his third division, that of Valence, composed of Poles, was some way to the rear, having only reached Burgos on December 1. But by the thirteenth the whole corps was concentrated at Madrid. A few days later the divisions of Sebastiani and Valence were pushed on to Talavera, as if to form the advanced guard of an expedition against Estremadura, while that of Leval remained in Madrid. Talavera had been occupied, before the Duke of Dantzig’s arrival, by the cavalry of Lasalle and Milhaud, who drove out of it without difficulty the demoralized troops that had murdered San Juan. This mob, now under the orders of Galluzzo, the Captain-General of Estremadura, fled behind the Tagus and barricaded the bridges of Arzobispo and Almaraz, to cover its front.
It will thus be seen that the troops of Victor, Lefebvre, and Dessolles, with the cavalry of Latour-Maubourg, Lasalle, and Milhaud thrown out in front of them, formed a semicircle protecting Madrid to the east, the south, and the south-west. On the north-west, in the direction of the Guadarrama and the roads towards the kingdom of Leon, the circle was completed by a brigade of Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons, who lay in and about Avila. In the centre, available for a blow in any direction, were the whole of the Imperial Guard (horse and foot), Ney’s corps, Lapisse’s division of Victor’s corps, and Leval’s division of Lefebvre’s corps, besides King Joseph’s Guards—a total of at least 40,000 men. It only needed the word to be given, and these troops (after deducting a garrison for Madrid) could march forward, either to join Lefebvre for a blow at Lisbon, or Victor for a blow at Seville.
Meanwhile there were still reinforcements coming up from the rear: the belated corps of Mortier, the last great instalment of the army of Germany, had at last reached Vittoria, accompanied by the division of dragoons of Lorges. The Marshal was directed to take his corps to Saragossa, in order to assist Lannes and Moncey in the siege of that city; but the dragoons were sent to Burgos on the road to Madrid. Moreover Junot’s corps, after having been refitted and reorganized since its return from Portugal, was also available. Its leading division, that of Delaborde, had crossed the Bidassoa on December 4, and had now reached Burgos. The other two divisions, those of Loison and Heudelet (who had replaced Travot at the head of the 3rd Division) were not far behind. They could all be brought up to Madrid by the first day of January. The last division of reserve cavalry, Millet’s four regiments of dragoons, was due a little later, and had not yet crossed the frontier.
That the Emperor believed that there was no serious danger to be apprehended from the side of Leon and Old Castile, is shown by the fact that he allotted to these regions only the single corps of Soult. Nor had the Duke of Dalmatia even the whole of his troops in hand, for the division of Bonnet was immobilized in Santander, and only those of Merle and Mermet were near his head quarters at Carrion. The cavalry that properly belonged to his corps were detached, under Lasalle, in New Castile. Instead of them he had been assigned the four regiments forming the division of Franceschi. He was promised the aid of Millet’s dragoons when they should arrive, but this would not be for some three weeks at the least. Nevertheless, with the 15,000 foot and 1,800 or 2,000 light cavalry at his disposal, Soult was told that he commanded everything from the Douro to the Bay of Biscay, and that he might advance at once into Leon, as there was nothing in his way that could withstand him. As far as the Emperor knew, the only hostile force in this direction was the miserable wreck of Blake’s army, which had been rallied by La Romana on the Esla. In making this supposition he was gravely mistaken, and if Soult had obeyed his orders without delay, and advanced westward from Carrion, he would have found himself in serious trouble; for, as we shall presently see, the English from Salamanca were in full march against him at the moment when the Emperor dispatched these instructions. It was in the valley of the Douro, and not (as Bonaparte intended) in that of the Tagus that the next developments of the winter campaign of 1808 were to take place.
It remains only to speak of the north-east. The Emperor was determined that Saragossa should pay dearly for the renown that it had won during its first siege. He directed against it not only Moncey’s force, the troops which had won Tudela, but the whole of Mortier’s 5th Corps. One of its divisions was to take post at Calatayud, relieving Musnier’s eight battalions at that point, and to keep open (with the aid of Dessolles) the road from Saragossa to Madrid: but the rest would be available to aid in the siege. More than 40,000 men were to be turned against Palafox and the stubborn Aragonese. With Catalonia we need not deal in this place: the operations in the principality had little or no connexion with those in the rest of Spain. St. Cyr and Duhesme, with the 7th Corps, had to work out their own salvation. They were not to expect help from the Emperor, nor on the other hand were they expected to assist him for the present, though it was hoped that some day they might invade Aragon from the side of Lerida.
Looking at the disposition of the French troops on December 15-20, we can see that the Emperor had it in his power to push the central mass at Madrid, supported by the oncoming reserves under Junot and Lorges, either to support Lefebvre on the road to Lisbon, or Victor on the road to Seville. As a matter of fact there can be no doubt that the former was his intention. He was fully under the impression that the English army was at this moment executing a hasty retreat upon Portugal, and he had announced that his next move was to hurl them into the sea. ‘Tout porte à penser que les Anglais sont en pleine marche rétrograde,’ he wrote to Soult on December 10. On December 12 he issued in his Bulletin the statement that the ‘English are in full flight towards Lisbon, and if they do not make good speed the French army may enter that capital before them.’ If anything was wanted to confirm the Emperor in his idea that the English were not likely to be heard of in the north, it was the capture by Lasalle’s cavalry of eight stragglers belonging to the King’s German Legion near Talavera. ‘When we catch Hanoverians the English cannot be far off,’ he observed, and made all his arrangements on the hypothesis that Moore would be met in the valley of the Tagus, and not in that of the Douro. In so doing he was breaking one of his own precepts, that censuring generals ‘qui se font des tableaux’ concerning their enemy’s position and intentions, before they have sufficient data upon which to form a sound conclusion. All that he really knew about Moore and his army was that they had reached Salamanca in the middle of November, and had been joined towards the end of the month by Hope’s column that marched—as we shall presently relate—via Badajoz and the Escurial. Of the existence of this last division we have clear proof that Bonaparte was aware, for he inserted a silly taunt in the Bulletin of December 5 to the effect that ‘the conduct of the British had been dishonourable. Six thousand of them were at the Escurial on November 20: the Spaniards hoped that they would aid in the defence of the capital of their allies. But they did not know the English: as soon as the latter heard that the Emperor was at the Somosierra they beat a retreat, joined the division at Salamanca, and retired towards the sea-coast.’ There is also no doubt that the Emperor had received intelligence of a more or less definite sort concerning the landing of Baird’s division at Corunna. It is vaguely alluded to in the 10th Bulletin, and clearly spoken of in the Madrid Gazette of December 17. But though aware of the existence of all the three fractions of the British army, Bonaparte could draw no other deduction from the facts at his disposal than that the whole of them would promptly retreat to Portugal, when the passage of the Somosierra and the fall of Madrid became known to their commander-in-chief. Lisbon, he thought, must be their base of operations, and on it they must retire: he had forgotten that one of the advantages of sea-power is that the combatant who possesses it can transfer his base to any port that he may choose. So far from being tied to Lisbon was Moore, that he at one moment contemplated making Cadiz his base, and finally moved it to Corunna.
With pre-conceived ideas of this sort in his head, the Emperor was preparing to push on his main body in support of the advanced troops under Lefebvre and Lasalle on the road to Estremadura and Portugal. Victor meanwhile was to guard against the unlikely chance of any move being made on Madrid by the shattered ‘Army of the Centre’ from Cuenca, or by new Andalusian levies. Already Lasalle’s horsemen were pushing on to Truxillo and Plasencia, almost to the gates of Badajoz and to the Portuguese frontier, when unexpected news arrived, and the whole plan of campaign was upset.
Instead of retiring on Lisbon, Sir John Moore had pushed forward into the plains of Old Castile, and was advancing by forced marches to attack the isolated corps of Marshal Soult. Bonaparte was keenly alive, now as always, to the danger of a defeat in the valley of the Douro. Moreover the sight of a British army in the field, and within striking distance, acted on him as the red rag acts upon the bull. No toil or trouble would be too great that ended in its destruction, and looking at his maps the Emperor thought that he saw the way to surround and annihilate Moore’s host. Throwing up without a moment’s delay the whole plan for the invasion of Portugal, he marched for the passes of the Guadarrama with every man that was disposable at Madrid. His spirits were high, and the event seemed to him certain. He sent back to his brother Joseph the command to put in the Madrid newspapers and circulate everywhere the news that 36,000 English troops were surrounded and doomed to destruction. Meanwhile, with 50,000 men at his back, he was marching hard for Arevalo and Benavente.
MOORE AT SALAMANCA
It will be remembered that on October 6, 1808, the command of the British forces in Portugal had passed into the hands of Sir John Moore, to the entire satisfaction of Wellesley and the other officers who had served under those slow and cautious generals Sir Hew Dalrymple and Sir Harry Burrard. The moment that the news of Vimiero was received, and long before the details of the Convention of Cintra could come to hand, the Government had determined to send on the victorious British army into Spain, and to assist it with heavy reinforcements from home. Dalrymple was even informed that he might cross the frontier at once, if he chose, without waiting for any detailed instructions from the War Office. Wellesley, as we have seen, thought that his chief should have done so without delay, and observed that if he had charge of affairs the army would be at Madrid by October 1.
Yet when Moore took over the command, he found that little or nothing had been done to carry out this design. The delay was partly occasioned by the tardy evacuation of Portugal by Junot’s troops: the last of them, as we have seen, did not leave the Tagus till the month of October had begun. But it was still more due to the leisurely and feeble management of Dalrymple, who would not march without detailed and definite orders from home. He might well have begun to move his brigades eastward long before the last small detachments of the French had disappeared. But when on October 6 Dalrymple’s successor looked around him, he found that the whole army was still concentrated in the neighbourhood of Lisbon, save Hope’s two brigades, and these had been sent forward to the frontier not so much for the purpose of entering Spain, as for that of bringing moral force to bear on General Galluzzo, and compelling him to abandon his ridiculous siege of Elvas. Two things had been especially neglected by Dalrymple—the exploration of the roads that lead from Portugal into Spain, and the pressing on of the formation of a proper divisional and regimental transport for the army. It is strange to find that he had remembered the existence of both of these needs: his dispatches speak of his intention to send officers both towards Badajoz and into Beira, and he asserts that ‘the army is in high order and fit to move when required.’ Yet his successor had to state that as a matter of fact no body of information about the routes and resources of Portugal and Spain had been collected, and that the scheme for moving and feeding the army had not been drawn up. ‘When I shall pass the frontier of Portugal,’ wrote Moore to Castlereagh, ‘it is impossible for me at this instant to say: it depends on a knowledge of the country which I am still without, and on commissariat arrangements yet unmade.’ We may grant that Dalrymple had been somewhat handicapped by the fact that his army had been landed, in the old haphazard British fashion, without any proper military train. We may also concede that no one could have foreseen that the Portuguese and Spanish governments would be unable to supply any useful information concerning the main roads and the resources of their own countries. But the whole month of September had been at the disposal of the late commander-in-chief, and he, with his quartermaster-general, Murray, must take the blame of having failed to accomplish in it all that might have been done. Within a fortnight after the Convention of Cintra had been signed, British officers ought to have explored every road to the frontier, and to have reported on their facilities. Yet on October 6 Moore could not find any one who could tell him whether the roads Lisbon—Sabugal—Almeida, and Lisbon—Abrantes—Castello Branco were or were not practicable for artillery! And this was in spite of the fact that a British detachment had actually marched from Lisbon to Almeida, in order to receive the surrender of the garrison of that fortress. The fact would seem to be that Dalrymple had placed his confidence in the native governments of the Peninsula. He vainly imagined that the Portuguese engineers could supply him with accurate details concerning the roads and resources of Beira and the Alemtejo. He sent a very capable officer—Lord William Bentinck—to Madrid, and entered into communication with the Spanish government. From them he hoped that he might get some account of the plan of campaign in which his army was to join, a list of the routes which it would be convenient for him to use, and details as to the way in which he could collect and carry provisions. As a matter of fact he could only obtain a quantity of vague and generally useless suggestions, some of which argued an astonishing ignorance of military affairs in those who made them. If there had been a Spanish commander-in-chief, Dalrymple might have extracted from him his views about the campaign that must shortly begin. But the Junta had steadfastly refused to unite the charge of their many armies in the hands of a single general: they told Lord William that he might make inquiries from Casta?os: but the Andalusian general could only speak for himself. It was not he, but a council of war, that would settle the plan of operations: he could only give Bentinck the conclusions that had been arrived at after the abortive meeting of generals that had taken place on September 5. In answer to a string of questions administered to him by Dalrymple’s emissary, as to the routes that the British army had better follow, and the methods of supply that it had better adopt, he could only reply that he was at present without good maps, and could not give the necessary information in detail. He could only refer Bentinck to the newly formed Commissariat Board (Junta de Víveres), which ought to be able to designate the best routes with reference to the feeding of the army and the establishment of magazines. Of course this board turned out to know even less than Casta?os himself. Nothing whatever was done for the British army, with the exception that a certain Colonel Lopez was sent to its head quarters to act as the representative of the Junta de Víveres. It does not seem that he was able to do anything for the expeditionary force that they could not have done for themselves. In this way the whole time that Dalrymple had at his disposal had been wasted in the long correspondence with Madrid, and not a soldier had passed the frontier when Moore took up the command.
Meanwhile, it ought at least to have been possible to make preparations in Portugal, even if nothing could be done in Spain. But the question of transport and commissariat was a very difficult one. The British army had struggled from Mondego Bay to Lisbon with the aid of the small ox-wagons of the country-side, requisitioned and dismissed from village to village. But clearly a long campaign in Spain could not be managed on these lines. A permanent provision of draught and pack animals was required, and natives must be hired to drive them. The few regular enlisted men of the Royal Wagon Train who had reached Portugal were only enough to take care of the more important military stores. Moreover their wagons turned out to be much too heavy for the roads of the Peninsula, and had to be gradually replaced by country carts. The great mass of the regimental baggage and the food had always to be transported on mules, or vehicles bought or hired from the peasantry. The Portuguese did not care to contract to take their animals over the frontier, and it was most difficult to collect transport of any kind, even with the aid of the local authorities. When once Moore’s dreadful retreat began, his drivers and muleteers deserted their wagons and beasts, and fled home, resolved that if they must lose their property they would not lose their lives also.
In later years Wellington gradually succeeded in collecting a large and invaluable army of Spanish and Portuguese employés, who—in their own fashion—were as good campaigners as his soldiery, and served him with exemplary fidelity even when their pay was many months in arrear. But in 1808 this body of trained camp-followers did not exist, and Moore had the greatest difficulty in scraping together the transport that took him forward to Salamanca. As to commissariat arrangements, he found that even though he divided his army into several small columns, and utilized as many separate routes as possible, it was not easy for the troops to live. The commissariat officers, sent on to collect magazines at the various halting-places, were so inexperienced and so uniformly ignorant of the Portuguese tongue, that even where they were energetic they had the greatest difficulty in catering for the army. Wellesley, as we have already seen, had been complaining bitterly of their inefficiency during the short Vimiero campaign. Moore, more gracious in his phrases, wrote that ‘we have a Commissariat extremely zealous, but quite new and inexperienced in the important duties which it falls to their lot to perform.’ This was but one of the many penalties which England had to pay for her long abstention from continental warfare on a large scale. It is easy to blame the ministry, the permanent officials in London, or the executive officials on the spot. But in reality mere want of knowledge of the needs of a great land-war accounts for most of the mistakes that were committed. To lavish angry criticism on individuals, as did the Opposition papers in England at the time, was almost as unjust as it was useless. The art of war, in this as in its other branches, had to be learnt; it was not possible to pick it up by intuition. Nothing can be more interesting than to look through the long series of orders and directions drawn up by the quartermaster-general’s department between 1809 and 1813, in which the gradual evolution of order out of chaos by dint of practical experience can be traced. But in October, 1808, the process was yet in its infancy.
It was with the greatest difficulty, therefore, that Moore got his army under weigh. He found it, as he wrote to Castlereagh, ‘without equipment of any kind, either for the carriage of the light baggage of regiments, artillery stores, commissariat stores, or any other appendage of an army, and without a magazine formed on any of the routes by which we are to march.’ Within ten days, however, the whole force was on the move. The heavy impedimenta were placed in store in Lisbon: it was a thousand pities that the troops did not leave behind their women and children, whose presence with the regiments was destined to cause so many harrowing scenes during the forced marches of the ensuing winter. They were offered a passage to England, but the greater part refused it, and the colonels (from mistaken kindness) generally allowed them to march with their corps.
The direction in which the army was to move had been settled in a general way by the dispatches sent from Castlereagh to Dalrymple in September. It was to be held together in a single mass and sent forward to the Ebro, there to be put in line with Blake and Casta?os. An attempt on the part of the Junta to distract part of it to Catalonia had been firmly and very wisely rejected. The French were still on the defensive when the plan was drawn out, and Burgos had been named as the point at which the British troops might aim. It was very close to the enemy, but in September neither English nor Spanish statesmen were taking into consideration the probability of the advent of the Emperor, and his immediate assumption of the offensive. They were rather dreaming of an advance towards the Pyrenees by the allied armies. If the large reinforcements which were promised to Moore were destined to land at Corunna, rather than at Gihon or Santander, it was merely because these latter ports were known to be small and destitute of resources, not because they were considered to be dangerously near to the French. La Romana’s division, it will be remembered, was actually put ashore at Santander: it is quite possible that Sir David Baird’s troops might have been sent to the same destination, but for the fortunate fact that it was believed that it would be impossible to supply him with transport from the bare and rugged region of the Monta?a. Corunna was selected as the landing-place for all the regiments that were to join Moore, partly on account of its safe and spacious port, partly because it was believed that food and draught animals could be collected with comparative ease from Galicia.
More than 12,000 men, including three regiments of cavalry (the arm in which the force in Portugal was most deficient) and a brigade of the Guards, had been drawn from the home garrisons. The charge of this fine division had been given to Sir David Baird, an officer with a great Indian reputation, but comparatively unpractised in European warfare. They were embarked at Harwich, Portsmouth, Ramsgate, and Cork at various dates during September and October, and on the thirteenth of the latter month the main body of the force reached Corunna. By some stupid mismanagement at home the cavalry, the most important part of the expedition, were shipped off the last, and did not arrive till three weeks after the rest of the troops had reached Spain.
By October 18 Moore reported that the greater part of his troops were already in motion, and as Baird’s infantry had reached Corunna on the thirteenth, it might have been expected that the junction of their forces would have taken place in time to enable them to play a part in the defensive campaign against Napoleon which ended in the fall of Madrid on December 4. If the troops had marched promptly, and by the best and shortest routes, they might have easily concentrated at Salamanca by the middle of November: Napier suggests the thirteenth as a probable day, and considering the distances the date seems a very reasonable one. At that moment Gamonal and Espinosa had only just been fought and lost: Tudela was yet ten days in the future: sixteen days were to elapse before the Somosierra was forced. It is clear that the British army, which at Salamanca would have been only seven marches (150 miles) from Madrid, and four marches (eighty miles) from Valladolid, might have intervened in the struggle: whether its intervention might not have ended in disaster, considering the enormous forces of the French, is another matter. But the British Government intended that Moore and Baird should take part in the campaign: the Junta had been told to expect their help: and for the consolidation of the alliance between the two nations it was desirable that the help should be given in the most prompt and effective fashion.
There is no possibility of asserting that this was done. Moore and Baird did not join till December 20: no British soldier fired a single shot at a Frenchman before December 12. The whole army was so much out of the campaign that Bonaparte never could learn what had become of it, and formed the most erroneous hypotheses concerning its position and intentions. We may frankly say that not one of his movements, down to the fall of Madrid, was in the least influenced by the fact that there was a British force in Spain.
That this circumstance was most unfortunate from the political point of view it would be childish to deny. It gave discontented Spaniards the opportunity of asserting that they had been deserted and betrayed by their allies. It afforded Bonaparte the chance, which he did not fail to take, of enlarging upon the invariable selfishness and timidity of the British. It furnished the critics of the ministry in London with a text for declamations against the imbecility of its arrangements. It is true that after the fall of Madrid Moore was enabled, by the new situation of affairs, to make that demonstration against the French lines of communication in Castile which wrecked Napoleon’s original plan of campaign, and saved Lisbon and Seville. But this tardy though effective intervention in the struggle was a mere afterthought. Moore’s original plan had been to make a tame retreat on Lisbon, when he discovered that he was too late to save Madrid. It was a mere chance that an intercepted dispatch and an unfounded rumour caused him to throw up the idea of retiring into Portugal, and to strike at the Emperor’s flank and rear by his famous march on Sahagun. Without this piece of good fortune he would never have repaired the mischief caused by the lateness of his original arrival on the scene. How that late arrival came to pass it is now our duty to investigate.
As far as Moore’s own army was concerned, the loss of time may be ascribed to a single cause—a mistake made in the choice of the roads by which the advance into Spain was conducted. It was the original intention of the British general to march on Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo by three parallel routes, those by Coimbra and Celorico, by Abrantes, Castello Branco, and Guarda, and by Elvas, Alcantara, and Coria. He was compelled to utilize the last-named road, which was rather circuitous and notoriously bad, by the fact that Dalrymple had left Hope’s two brigades at Elvas, and that any advance from that place into the kingdom of Leon could only be directed across the bridge of Alcantara. If Moore had stuck to this original resolve, and used none but these three roads, his army might have been concentrated at Salamanca on or about November 13. This could have been done with ease if all the reserve artillery and heavy baggage had taken the Coimbra—Celorico road, the easiest of the three, and nothing but an irreducible minimum had been allowed to follow the columns which went by the other routes. It would have been necessary also to move the troops in masses of not less than a brigade, and to keep them well closed up.
Moore had the best intentions: he cut down the baggage to what he considered the smallest practicable bulk, and started off the leading regiments on the Coimbra route as easily as October 11, two days after he had taken over the command. ‘I am sufficiently aware,’ he wrote, ‘of the importance of even the name of a British army in Spain, and I am hurrying as much as possible.’ Then followed an irreparable mistake: it was all-important to find out which of the roads was most suitable for artillery and heavy baggage. Moore consulted the available officers of the old Portuguese army, and received from them the almost incredibly erroneous information that neither the Coimbra—Celorico—Almeida road nor the Abrantes—Guarda—Almeida road was practicable for artillery. It would seem that he also sought information from the officers whom Dalrymple had sent out into the province of Beira, and that their answers tallied with those of the Portuguese, for he wrote to Castlereagh that ‘every information agreed that neither of them was fit for artillery or could be recommended for cavalry.’ General Anstruther, then in command at Almeida, must take a considerable share in the blame that has to be distributed to those who failed to give the Commander-in-chief accurate information, for he more than any one else had been given the chance of trying these roads. But whatever may be the proportion in which the censure must be distributed, a certain amount must be reserved for Moore himself. He ought on first principles to have refused to believe the strange news that was brought to him. It might have occurred to him to ask how heavy guns of position had found their way to the ramparts of Almeida, the second fortress of Portugal, if there was no practicable road leading to it. A few minutes spent in consulting any book dealing with Portuguese history would have shown that in the great wars of the Spanish Succession, and again in that of 1762, forces of all arms had moved freely up and down the Spanish frontier, in the direction of Celorico, Guarda, Sabugal, and Castello Branco. Even a glance at Dumouriez’s Account of the Kingdom of Portugal, the one modern military book on the subject then available, would have enabled Moore to correct the ignorant reports of the natives. Strangest of all, there seems to have been no one to tell him that, only four months before, Loison, in his campaign against the insurgents of Beira, had taken guns first from Lisbon to Almeida, then from Almeida to Pezo-de-Ragoa and Vizeu, and finally from Almeida to Abrantes. It is simply astounding that no one seems to have remembered this simple fact. In short, it was not easily pardonable in any competent general that he should accept as possible the statement that there was no road for artillery connecting the capital of Portugal and the main stronghold of its north-eastern frontier. Moore did so, and in a fortnight was bitterly regretting his credulity. ‘If anything adverse happens,’ he wrote to his subordinate Hope, ‘I have not necessity to plead: the road we are now travelling is practicable for artillery: the brigade under Wilmot has already reached Guarda, and as far as I have already seen the road presents few obstacles, and those easily surmounted. This knowledge was only acquired by our own officers: when the brigade was at Castello Branco, it was still not certain that it could proceed.’ What made the case worse was that another of the three roads, the one by Coimbra and Celorico, was far easier than that by Guarda. Both Wellesley and Masséna took enormous trains of artillery and baggage over it in 1810, without any particular difficulty.
Misled by the erroneous reports as to the impracticability of the Portuguese roads, Moore took the unhappy step of sending six of the seven batteries of his corps, his only two cavalry regiments, and four battalions of infantry to act as escort, by the circuitous high-road from Elvas to Madrid. In order to reach Salamanca they were to advance almost to the gates of the Spanish capital, only turning off at Talavera, in order to take the route by the Escurial, Espinar, and Arevalo. To show the result of this lamentable divagation, it is only necessary to remark that from Lisbon to Salamanca via Coimbra is about 250 miles: from Lisbon to Salamanca via Elvas, Talavera, and Arevalo is about 380 miles: i.e. it was certain that the column containing all Moore’s cavalry and nearly all his guns would be at least seven or eight days late at the rendezvous, in a crisis when every moment was of vital importance. As a matter of fact the head of the main column reached Salamanca on November 13: the cavalry and guns turned up on December 4. It would not be fair, however, to say that the absence of Hope’s column delayed the advance of the whole army for so much as three weeks. It was only the leading regiments from Lisbon that appeared on November 13. However carefully the march of the rest had been arranged, the rear could not have come in till several days later: indeed the last brigade did not appear till the twenty-third: this delay, however, was owing to bad arrangements and preventable accidents. But it cannot be denied that the twelve days Nov. 23-Dec. 4 were completely sacrificed by the non-arrival of the cavalry and guns, without which Moore very wisely refused to move forward. If the army had been concentrated—Baird could easily have arrived from Corunna ere this—it would have been able to advance on November 23, and the campaign would undoubtedly have been modified in its character, for the Emperor would have learnt of the arrival of Moore upon the scene some days before he crossed the Somosierra and started on his march for Madrid. There can be no doubt that he would have changed his plans on receiving such news, for the sight of a British army within striking distance would have caused him to turn aside at once with a large part of his army. Very probably he might have directed Lefebvre, Victor, and the Imperial Guard—all the disposable forces under his hand—against Moore, and have left Madrid alone for the present as a mere secondary object. It is impossible to deny that disaster to the British arms might have followed: on the other hand Moore was a cautious general, as his operations in December showed. He would probably have retired at once to the mountains, and left the Emperor a fruitless stern-chase, such as that which actually took place a month later. But whether he would have fallen back on the route to Portugal, or on the route to Galicia, it is impossible to say: everything would have depended on the exact development of Napoleon’s advance, but the first-named alternative is the more probable.
The erroneous direction given to Moore’s cavalry and guns, however, was not the only reason for the late appearance of the British army upon the theatre of war. Almost as much delay was caused by a piece of egregious folly and procrastination, for which the Spaniards were wholly responsible. When Sir David Baird and the bulk of his great convoy arrived in the harbour of Corunna on October 13, he was astonished to find that the Junta of Galicia raised serious objections to allowing him to land. Their real reason for so doing was that they wished the British troops to disembark further east, at Gihon or Santander. They did not realize the military danger of throwing them ashore in places so close to the French army, nor did it affect them in the least when they were told that the equipment of Baird’s force in those barren regions would be almost impossible. All that they cared for was to preserve Galicia from the strain of having to make provisions for the feeding and transport of a second army, when all its resources had been sorely tried in supplying (and supplying most indifferently) the troops of Blake. They did not, however, make mention of their real objections to Baird’s disembarkation in their correspondence with him, but assumed an attitude of very suspicious humility, stating that they considered their functions to have come to an end now that the Central Junta had met, and that they thought it beyond their competence to give consent to the landing of such a large body of men without explicit directions from Aranjuez. Baird could not offer to land by force, in face of this opposition. He did not, however, move off to Santander (as the Galicians had hoped), but insisted that an officer should be promptly dispatched to the Supreme Junta. This was done, but the delay in receiving an answer was so great that thirteen days were wasted: the Galician officer bearing the consent of the central government travelled (so Moore complained) with the greatest deliberation, as if he were carrying an unimportant message in full time of peace. The first regiments, therefore, only landed on October 26, and it was not till November 4 that all the infantry were ashore. Thus they were certain to be late at the rendezvous in the plains of Leon. Nor was this all: the Supreme Junta had suggested that, in order to facilitate the feeding of the division, Baird should send it forward not in large masses but in bodies of 2,000 men, with a considerable interval between them. The advice was taken, and in consequence the troops were soon spread out over the whole length of road between Corunna and Astorga. The greatest difficulty was found in equipping them for the march: Galicia, always a poor country, had been almost stripped of mules and carts to supply Blake. It was absolutely impossible to procure a sufficient train for the transport of Baird’s food and baggage. He was only able to gather enough beasts to carry his lighter impedimenta from stage to stage, by the offer of exorbitant rates of hire. He vainly hoped to complete his equipment when he should have reached the plains. Part of his difficulties was caused by lack of money: the Government at home had not realized that only hard cash would circulate in Spain: dollars in abundance were to come out in the Tigre frigate in a few weeks: meanwhile it was expected that the Spaniards would gladly accept British Government bills. But so little was paper liked in the Peninsula that only ￡5,000 or ￡6,000 in dollars could be raised at Corunna: without further resources it would have been impossible to begin to push the army forward. The feat was only accomplished by borrowing 92,000 dollars from the Galician Junta. For this act, carefully ignored by Napier, they deserve a proper recognition: it shows a much better spirit than might have been expected after their foolish behaviour about the disembarkation. Shortly after, Baird succeeded in getting ￡40,000 from Mr. Frere, the new minister to Madrid, who chanced to arrive at Corunna with ￡410,000 in cash destined for the Spanish government. Finally on November 9 the expected ship came in with the 500,000 dollars that had been originally intended to be divided between Corunna and Lisbon, and Baird had as much money as he could possibly require, even when mules and draught-oxen had risen to famine prices in Galicia. If he still found it hard to move, it was because this poor and desolate province was really drained dry of resources.
But what between the Junta’s folly in hindering the landing of the troops, and the unfortunate lack of money in the second half of October, all-important time was lost. Baird ought to have been near Salamanca by November 13: as a matter of fact he had only reached Astorga with three brigades of infantry and some artillery, but without a single mounted man to cover his march, on November 22. There he received, to his infinite dismay, the news that Blake had been routed at Espinosa on November 11, and Belvedere at Gamonal on November 10. There was now no Spanish army between him and the French: the latter might be advancing, for all he knew, upon Leon. He heard of Soult being at Reynosa, and Lefebvre at Carrion: if they continued their advance westward, they would catch him, with the 9,000 infantry of the Corunna column, marching across their front on the way to Salamanca. Appalled at the prospect, he halted at Astorga, and, after sending news of his situation to Moore, began to prepare to retreat on Corunna, if the marshals should continue their movement in his direction. This, as we have already seen, they did not: Napoleon had no knowledge of the position of the British troops, and instead of ordering the dukes of Dalmatia and Dantzig to push westward, moved them both in a southerly direction. Soult came down to Sahagun and Carrion: Lefebvre, on being relieved by the 2nd Corps, moved on Madrid by way of Segovia. Thus Baird, left entirely unmolested, was in the end able to join Moore.
It is time to turn to the movements of that general. After sending off Sir John Hope on his unhappy circular march by Badajoz and the Escurial, he set out from Lisbon on October 26. He took with him the whole force in Portugal, save a single division which was left behind to protect Lisbon, Elvas, and Almeida while a new native army was being reorganized. This detachment was to be commanded by Sir John Cradock, who was just due from England: it comprised four battalions of the German Legion, a battalion each of the 9th, 27th, 29th, 31st, 40th, 45th, and 97th Foot, the wrecks of the 20th Light Dragoons, and six batteries of artillery—about 9,000 men in all. The rest, twenty-five battalions of infantry, two cavalry regiments and seven batteries, marched for Spain. Two brigades under Beresford took the good road by Coimbra and Celorico to Almeida: three under Fraser went by Abrantes and Guarda, taking with them the single battery which Moore had retained with his main body, in order to try whether the roads of Eastern Portugal were as bad as his advisers had reported. Two brigades under General Paget, starting from Elvas, not from Lisbon, separated themselves from Hope and marched on Ciudad Rodrigo by Alcantara and Coria. The general himself followed in the track of Fraser, whom he overtook and passed in the neighbourhood of Castello Branco.
The march was a most unpleasant one, for the autumn rains surprised the troops in their passage through the mountains. Moreover some of the regiments were badly fed, as Sataro, the Portuguese contractor who had undertaken to supply them with meat, went bankrupt at this moment and failed to fulfil his obligations. Nevertheless the advance was carried out with complete success: the men were in good heart, marched well, and generally maintained their discipline. On November 13 the leading regiments began to file into Salamanca, whither the Commander-in-chief had already preceded them. The concentration would have been a little more rapid but for a strange mistake of General Anstruther, commanding at Almeida, who detained some of the troops for a few days, contrary to the orders which had been sent him. But by the twenty-third the three columns had all joined at Salamanca, where Moore now had 15,000 infantry and the solitary battery that had marched with Fraser’s division. The guns had met with some tiresome obstacles, but had surmounted them with no great difficulty, and Moore now saw (as we have already shown) that he might have brought the whole of his artillery with him, if only he had been given correct information as to the state of the roads.
On November 23, then, the British commander-in-chief lay at Salamanca, with six infantry brigades and one battery. Baird lay at Astorga, with four brigades and three batteries: a few of his battalions were still on the march from Galicia. Hope, with Moore’s cavalry and guns, was near the Escurial. Lord Paget with Baird’s equally belated cavalry, which had left Corunna on the fifteenth, was between Lugo and Astorga. The situation was deplorable, for it was clear that the army would require ten days more to concentrate and get into full fighting order, and it was by no means certain that those ten days would be granted to it. Such were the unhappy results of the false direction given to Hope’s column, and of the enforced delay of Baird at Corunna, owing to the folly of the Galician Junta.
It may easily be guessed that Moore’s state of mind at this moment was most unenviable. He had received, much at the same time as did Baird, the news of Gamonal and Espinosa. He was aware that no screen of Spanish troops now lay between him and the enemy. He had heard of the arrival of Milhaud’s dragoons at Valladolid, and of Lefebvre’s corps at Carrion, and he expected every moment to hear that they were marching forward against himself. Yet he could not possibly advance without cavalry or guns, and if attacked he must fly at once towards Portugal, for it would be mad to attempt to fight in the plains with no force at his disposition save a mass of foot-soldiery. If the French moved forward from Valladolid to Zamora on the one side, or to Avila on the other, he would inevitably be cut off from Baird and Hope. There was no serious danger that any one of the three columns might be caught by the enemy, if they halted at once, for each had a clear and safe line of retreat, on Lisbon, Corunna, and Talavera respectively. But if they continued their movement of concentration the case was otherwise. To any one unacquainted with Bonaparte’s actual design of throwing all his forces on Madrid by the Somosierra road, it looked not only possible, but probable, that the enemy would advance westward as well as southward from his present positions, and if he did so the game was up. The British army, utterly unable to concentrate, must fly in three separate directions. Moore and Hope might ultimately unite in front of Lisbon: Baird might be shipped round from Corunna to the same point. But this movement would take many weeks, and its moral effect would be deplorable. What would be thought of the general who marched forward till he was within eighty miles of the French, and then ordered a precipitate retreat, without even succeeding in concentrating his army or firing a single shot? The thought filled Moore’s heart with bitterness: must he, with all his ability and with his well-earned reputation, swell the list of the failures, and be reckoned with the Duke of York, Dalrymple, and Hutchinson among the generals who were too late—who had their chance of fame, and lost it by being an hour, or a week, or a month behind the decisive moment? But on one point he was clear: he must run no unnecessary risk with the forces committed to him: they were, as was once remarked, not a British field-army, but the only British field-army. Supposing they were destroyed, no such second host existed: it would take years to make another. There were still many regiments on home service, but those which now lay at Salamanca and Astorga were the pick of the whole, the corps chosen for foreign service because they were the fittest for it.
The question, then, which Moore had to put to himself was whether he should persist in attempting to complete the concentration of his army, and in case of success take an active part in the campaign, or whether he should simply order each fraction of the British forces to retreat at once towards some safe base. The way in which the question should be answered depended mainly on two points—what would be the movements of the French during the next few days, and what Spanish troops existed to co-operate with the British army, in case it were determined to commence active operations. For clearly the 30,000 men of Moore and Baird could not hope to struggle unaided against the whole French army in Spain.
To explain Moore’s action, it is necessary to remember that he started with a strong prejudice against trusting the British army to the mercy of Spanish co-operation. He had been receiving very gloomy reports both from Mr. Stuart, the temporary representative of the British Government at Aranjuez, and from Lord William Bentinck, the military agent whom Dalrymple had sent to Madrid. The latter was one of the few British officers who (like Wellesley) foresaw from the first a catastrophe whenever the French reinforcements should cross the Ebro. Moreover the character of Moore’s correspondence with the Central Junta, before and during his advance, had conspired with the reports of Stuart and Bentinck to give him a very unfavourable idea of the energy and administrative capacity of our allies. He had been vexed that the Junta refused to put him in direct communication with the Spanish generals. He complained that he got from them tardy, unfrequent, and inaccurate news of the enemy’s movements. He was disgusted that Lopez, the officer sent to aid him in moving his troops, turned out to know even less about the roads of the Spanish frontier than he did himself. But above all he professed that he was terrified by the apathy which he found both among the officials and the people of the kingdom of Leon and Old Castile. He had been politely received by the authorities both at Ciudad Rodrigo and at Salamanca, but he complained that he got little but empty compliments from them.
There was some truth in this allegation, though certain facts can be quoted against it, even from Moore’s own correspondence. Leon and Old Castile had, as we have already had occasion to remark, been far less energetic than other parts of the Peninsula in raising new troops and coming forward with contributions to the national exchequer. They had done no more than furnish the 10,000 men of Cuesta’s disorderly ‘Army of Castile,’ a contingent utterly out of proportion with their population and resources. Nor did they seem to realize the scandal of their own sloth and procrastination. Moore had expected to see every town full of new levies undergoing drill before marching to the Ebro, to discover magazines accumulated in important places like Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca, to find the military and civil officials working busily for the armies at the front. Instead he found an unaccountable apathy. Even after the reports of Espinosa and Gamonal had come to hand, the people and the authorities alike seemed to be living in a sort of fools’ paradise, disbelieving the gloomy news that arrived, or at least refusing to recognize that the war was now at their own doors. Moore feared that this came from want of patriotism or of courage.
As a matter of fact, the people’s hearts were sound enough, but they had still got ‘Baylen on the brain’: they simply failed to recognize the full horror of the situation. That their armies were not merely beaten but dispersed, that the way to Madrid was open to Bonaparte, escaped them. This attitude of mind enraged Moore. ‘In these provinces,’ he wrote, ‘no armed force whatever exists, either for immediate protection or to reinforce the armies. The French cavalry from Burgos, in small detachments, are overrunning the province of Leon, and raising contributions to which the inhabitants submit without the least resistance: the enthusiasm of which we heard so much nowhere appears. Whatever good-will there is (and among the lower orders I believe there is a good deal) is taken no advantage of. I am at this moment in no communication with any of their generals. I am ignorant of their plans, or those of their government.’ And again, he adds in despair, ‘I hope a better spirit exists in the southern provinces: here no one stirs—and yet they are well inclined.’ While Leon and Old Castile were in this state of apathy, it was maddening to Moore to receive constant appeals from the Supreme Junta, begging that the British army might move forward at once. Their dispatches were accompanied by representations, which Moore knew to be inaccurate, concerning the numbers and enthusiasm of the Spanish armies still in the field, and by misrepresentations of the force of the French. They were also backed by urgent letters from Mr. Frere, the new ambassador at Madrid, urging him to give help at all costs.
These appeals were intolerable to a man who dared not advance because his army (partly by his own fault, partly owing to circumstances that had not been under his control) was not concentrated. From the point of view of policy, Moore knew that it was all-important that he should take the field: but, from the point of view of strategy, he saw that an advance with the 15,000 men that he had at Salamanca might very probably lead to instant and complete disaster. He refused to move, but all the time he knew that his refusal was having the worst effect, and would certainly be represented by his critics as the result of timidity and selfishness. It was this consciousness that caused him to fill his dispatches with the bitterest comments on the Spanish government and people. He had been induced to advance to Salamanca, he said, by false pretences. He had been told that there was a large army in front of him, ready to cover his concentration. He had been informed that the whole country-side was full of enthusiasm, that he might look for ready help from every official, that when once he had crossed the frontier transport and food would be readily provided for him. Instead, he found nothing but apathy and disasters. ‘Had the real strength and composition of the Spanish armies been known, and the defenceless state of the country, I conceive that Cadiz, not Corunna, would have been chosen for the disembarkation of the troops from England: and Seville or Cordova, not Salamanca, would have been selected as the proper place for the assembling of this army.’ Thus he wrote to Castlereagh: to Frere, in reponse to constant invitations to strike a blow of some sort in behalf of Spain, he replied in more vigorous terms. ‘Madrid is threatened; the French have destroyed one army (Blake’s), have passed the Ebro, and are advancing in superior numbers against another (Casta?os’), which from its composition promises no resistance, but must retire or be overwhelmed. No other armed force exists in this country: I perceive no enthusiasm or determined spirit among the people. This is a state of affairs quite different from that conceived by the British Government, when they determined to send troops to the assistance of Spain. It was not expected that these were to cope alone with the whole force of France: as auxiliaries they were to aid a people who were believed to be enthusiastic, determined, and prepared for resistance. It becomes therefore a question whether the British army should remain to be attacked in its turn, or should retire from a country where the contest, from whatever circumstances, is become unequal.’
All that Moore wrote was true: yet, granting the accuracy of every premise, his conclusion that he ought to retire to Portugal was not necessarily correct. The British Government had undoubtedly over-estimated the power and resources of Spain: the Supreme Junta had shown no capacity for organization or command: most of the Spanish generals had committed gross military blunders. But none of these facts were enough to justify Moore in washing his hands of the whole business, and marching out of Spain without firing a shot. He had not been sent to help the patriots only if they were powerful and victorious, to desert them if they proved weak and unlucky. If these had been the orders issued to him by Castlereagh, all Bonaparte’s taunts about the selfishness and timidity of the British Government would have been justified. It was true that on his arrival at Salamanca he found the aspect of the war very different from what he had expected at the moment of his quitting Lisbon. Instead of aiding the victorious Spanish armies to press up to the Pyrenees, he would have to cover their retreat and gain time for the reorganization of the scattered remnants of their first line of defence. To reject this task because the Supreme Junta had been incapable, or Blake and Palafox rash and unskilful, would have been unworthy of a man of Moore’s talents and courage.
Yet in a moment of irritation at the mismanagement that he saw before him, and of anger at the continual importunities that he was receiving from the Central Junta and from Mr. Frere, Moore nearly committed this fault. The last piece of news which broke down his resolution and drove him to order a retreat was the account of the battle of Tudela. If he had been forced to wait for the notification of this disaster through Spanish official sources, he might have remained ignorant of it for many days. But Charles Vaughan, the secretary of Mr. Stuart, had been in the camp of Palafox, and had ridden straight from Tudela to Madrid, and from Madrid to Salamanca—476 miles in six days. He brought the intelligence of Casta?os’ defeat to the English commander-in-chief on the night of November 28. Moore lost not a moment in dictating orders of retreat to the whole army. In the few hours that elapsed before midnight he gave his own troops directions to prepare to retire on Portugal, sent Hope a dispatch bidding him turn off on to cross-roads and move by Pe?aranda on Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and wrote to Baird that he must return to Corunna, re-embark his army, and bring it round by sea to Lisbon.
The spirit in which Moore acted is shown by the wording of his letter to Hope:—‘I have determined to give the thing up, and to retire. It was my wish to have run great risks to fulfil what I conceive to be the wishes of the people of England, and to give every aid to the Spanish cause. But they have shown themselves equal to do so little for themselves, that it would only be sacrificing this army, without doing any good to Spain, to oppose it to such numbers as must now be brought against us. A junction with Baird is out of the question, and with you, perhaps, problematical.... This is a cruel determination for me to make—I mean to retreat: but I hope you will think the circumstances such as demand it.’
To Moore, weighed down by the burden of responsibility, and worried by the constant pressure of the Spaniards at Madrid, ‘who expected every one to fly but themselves,’ this resolve to retreat seemed reasonable, and even inevitable. But it was clearly wrong: when he gave the order he was overwrought by irritation and despondency. He was sent to aid the Spaniards, and till he was sure that he could do absolutely nothing in their behalf, it was his duty not to abandon them. The British army was intended to be used freely in their cause, not to be laid up—like the talent in the napkin—lest anything might happen to it. Its mere presence at Salamanca was valuable as an encouragement to the Spaniards, and a check on the free movement of the French. Above all, it was not yet proved that the concentration with Baird and Hope was impossible: indeed, the events of the last few days were rendering it more and more likely that the junction might, after all, take place. The French cavalry which had appeared at Valladolid had gone off southward, without any attempt to move in the direction of Salamanca. Soult and Lefebvre were also moving in a direction which would not bring them anywhere near the British army. Hope had crossed the Guadarrama unhindered, and was now near Villacastin, only seventy miles from Moore’s head quarters. Under these circumstances it was most impolitic to order an instant retreat. What would have been thought of Moore if this movement had been carried out, and if after the British columns had reached Corunna and Almeida the news had come that no French infantry had ever been nearer than fifty miles to them, that their concentration had been perfectly feasible, and that Napoleon had possessed no knowledge of their whereabouts? All these facts chanced to be true—as we have seen. The Emperor’s advance on Madrid was made without any reference to the British army, by roads that took him very far from Salamanca: he was marching past Moore’s front in serene unconsciousness of his proximity. If, at the same moment, the British had been hurrying back to Portugal, pursued only by phantoms hatched in their general’s imagination, it is easy to guess what military critics would have said, and what historians would have written. Moore would have been pronounced a selfish and timid officer, who in a moment of pique and despondency deliberately abandoned his unhappy allies.
Fortunately for his own reputation and for that of England, his original intentions of the night of November 28 were not fully carried out. Only Baird’s column actually commenced its retrograde movement. That general received Moore’s letter from Vaughan on the thirtieth, and immediately began to retire on Galicia. Leaving his cavalry and his light brigade at Astorga, to cover his retreat, he fell back with the rest of his division to Villafranca, fifty miles on the road towards Corunna. Here (as we shall see) he received on December 6 a complete new set of orders, countermanding his retreat and bidding him return to the plains of Leon.
Hope also had heard from Moore on the thirtieth, had been informed that the army was to retire on Portugal, and was told to make forced marches by Pe?aranda and Ciudad Rodrigo to join his chief—unless indeed he were forced to go back by the way that he had come, owing to the appearance of French troops in his path. Fortunately no such danger occurred: Hope arranged his two cavalry regiments as a screen in front of his right, in the direction of Arevalo and Madrigal. He hurried his infantry and guns by Fontiveros and Pe?aranda, along the road that had been pointed out to him. The cavalry obtained news that patrols of French dragoons coming from the north had pushed as far as Olmedo and La Nava—some sixteen or eighteen miles from their outposts—but did not actually see a single hostile vedette. This was lucky, as, if Napoleon had heard of a British force hovering on the flank of his advancing columns, he would certainly have turned against it the troops that were covering the right flank of his advance on Madrid—Lefebvre’s corps and the dragoons of Milhaud. But, as it chanced, Hope was entirely unmolested: he moved, as was right, with his troops closed up and ready for a fight: on the night of the thirtieth his infantry actually slept in square without piling arms: during the ensuing thirty-six hours they marched forty-seven miles before they were allowed to encamp at Pe?aranda. There they were practically in safety: slackening the pace for the exhausted infantry and for the over-driven oxen of the convoy, Hope drew in to Alba de Tormes, where he was only fifteen miles from Salamanca. Here he received orders not to push for Ciudad Rodrigo, but to turn northward and join the main body of the army, which was still—as it turned out—in its old positions. Thus on December 3 Moore could at last dispose of his long-lost cavalry and guns, and possessed an army of 20,000 men complete in all arms. This very much changed the aspect of affairs for him, and removed one of his main justifications for the projected retreat on Portugal. Hope also brought information as to the movements of the French which was of the highest importance. He reported that their columns were all trending southward, none of them to the west of Segovia. He had also heard of the infantry of the 4th Corps, and could report that it had marched by Valladolid and Olmedo on Segovia, evidently with the intention of driving Heredia’s Estremaduran troops out of the last-named city, and of opening the Guadarrama Pass. There was no sign whatever of any movement of the French in this quarter towards Salamanca. Thus the Emperor’s plan for a concentration of his whole army on Madrid became clear to Moore’s discerning eyes.
MOORE’S ADVANCE TO SAHAGUN
Moore’s determination to retreat on Portugal lasted just seven days. It was at midnight on November 28-29 that he wrote his orders to Baird and Hope, bidding the one to fall back on Corunna and the other on Ciudad Rodrigo. On the afternoon of December 5 he abandoned his scheme, and wrote to recall Baird from Galicia: on the tenth he set out on a very different sort of enterprise, and advanced into the plains of Old Castile with the object of striking at the communications of the French army. We have now to investigate the curious mixture of motives which led him to make such a complete and dramatic change in his plan of campaign.
Having sent off his dispatches to Hope and Baird, the Commander-in-chief had announced next morning to the generals who commanded his divisions and brigades his intention of retreating to Portugal. The news evoked manifestations of surprise and anger that could not be concealed. Even Moore’s own staff did not succeed in disguising their dismay and regret. The army was looking forward with eagerness to another campaign against the French under a general of such well-earned reputation as their present chief: a sudden order to retreat, when the enemy had not even been seen, and when his nearest cavalry vedettes were still three or four marches away, seemed astounding. There would have been remonstrances, had not Moore curtly informed his subordinates that ‘he had not called them together to request their counsel, or to induce them to commit themselves to giving any opinion on the subject. He was taking the whole responsibility entirely upon himself: and he only required that they would immediately prepare to carry it into effect.’ In face of this speech there could be no argument or opposition: but there was murmuring in every quarter: of all the officers of the army of Portugal Hope is said to have been the only one who approved of the Commander-in-chief’s resolve. The consciousness of the criticism that he was undergoing from his own subordinates did not tend to soften Moore’s temper, which was already sufficiently tried by the existing situation of affairs.
After announcing this determination, it might have been expected that Moore would fall back at once on Almeida. But while beginning to send back his stores and his sick, he did not move his fighting-men: the reason (as he wrote to Castlereagh) was that he still hoped that he might succeed in picking up Hope’s division, if the French did not press him. Accordingly he lingered on, waiting for that general’s approach, and much surprised that the enemy was making no advance in his direction. It was owing to the fact that he delayed his departure for five days, on the chance that his lost cavalry and guns might after all come in, that Moore finally gained the opportunity of striking his great blow and saving his reputation.
During this period of waiting and of preparation to depart, appeals from many quarters came pouring in upon Moore, begging him to advance at all costs and make his presence felt by the French. The first dispatches which he received were written before his determination to retreat was known: after it was divulged, his correspondents only became the more importunate and clamorous. Simultaneous pressure was brought to bear upon him by the British ambassador at Aranjuez, by the Supreme Junta, by the general who now commanded the wrecks of the Spanish army of Galicia, and by the military authorities at Madrid. Each one of them had many and serious considerations to set before the harassed Commander-in-chief.
Moore had been so constantly asserting that Blake’s old ‘Army of the Left’ had been completely dispersed and ruined, that it must have been somewhat of a surprise to him when the Marquis of La Romana wrote from Leon, on November 30, to say that he was now at the head of a considerable force, and hoped to co-operate in the oncoming campaign. The Galicians had rallied in much greater numbers than had been expected: their losses in battle had not been very great, and the men had dispersed from sheer want of food rather than from a desire to desert their colours. Their equipment was in the most wretched condition, and their shoes worn out: but their spirit was not broken, and if they could get food and clothing, they were quite prepared to do their duty. La Romana enclosed a dispatch of Soult’s which had been intercepted, and remarked that the news in it (apparently a statement of the marshal’s intention to move westward) made it advisable that the English and Spanish armies should at once concert measures for a junction.
All that the Marquis stated was perfectly true: his army was growing rapidly, for his muster-rolls of December 4 showed that he had already 15,600 men with the colours, exclusive of sick and wounded: ten days later the number had gone up to 22,800. This was a force that could not be entirely neglected, even though the men were in a dire state of nakedness, and were only just recovering from the effects of their dreadful march from Reynosa across the Cantabrian hills. Moore had always stated, in his dispatches to Castlereagh, that there was no Spanish army with which he could co-operate. He was now offered the aid of 15,000 men, under a veteran officer of high reputation and undoubted patriotism. The proposal to retreat on Portugal seemed even less honourable than before, when it involved the desertion of the Marquis and his much-tried host.
Not long after the moment at which La Romana’s dispatch came to hand, there arrived at Salamanca two officers deputed by the Central Junta to make a final appeal to Moore. These were Don Ventura Escalante, Captain-General of the kingdom of Granada, and the Brigadier-General Augustin Bueno. They had started from Aranjuez on November 28, and seem to have arrived at the British head quarters on December 3 or 4. They brought a letter from Don Martin de Garay, the secretary to the Junta, stating that they were authorized to treat with Moore for the drawing up of a plan of campaign, ‘by which the troops of his Britannic Majesty may act in concert with those of Spain, accelerating a combined movement, and avoiding the delays that are so prejudicial to the noble enterprise in which the two nations are engaged.’ The proposal that the two generals made would appear to have been that Moore should march on Madrid by the Guadarrama Pass, picking up Hope’s division on the way, and ordering Baird to follow as best he could. They wished to demonstrate to their despondent ally that it was possible to concentrate for the defence of Madrid a force sufficient to hold the Emperor at bay. If the British came up, they hoped even to be able to repulse him with decisive effect. They alleged that Casta?os had escaped from Tudela with the Andalusian divisions almost intact, and must now be at Guadalajara, quite close to the capital, with 25,000 good troops. Heredia, with the rallied Estremaduran army, was at Segovia, and had 10,000 bayonets: San Juan with 12,000 men was occupying the impregnable Somosierra. Andalusian and Castilian levies were coming in to Madrid every day—they believed that 10,000 men must already be collected. This would constitute when united a mass of nearly 60,000 men: if Moore brought up 20,000 British troops all must go well, for Napoleon had only 80,000 men in the north of Spain. After deducting the army sent against Saragossa, and the detachments at Burgos and in Biscay, as also the corps of Soult, he could not have much more than 20,000 men concentrated for the attack on Madrid. All this ingenious calculation was based on the fundamental misconception that the French armies were only one-third of their actual strength—which far exceeded 200,000 men. But on this point Moore was as ill informed as the Spaniards themselves, and the causes which he alleged for refusing to march on Madrid had nothing to do with statistics. He informed them that his reasons for proposing to retreat on Portugal were that the Spanish armies were too much demoralized to offer successful resistance to the Emperor, and that the road to the capital was now in the possession of the French. He then introduced Colonel Graham, who had just returned from a meeting with San Juan, and had heard from him the story of the forcing of the Somosierra on November 29. Of this disaster Escalante and Bueno were still ignorant: they had to learn from English lips that the French were actually before the gates of Madrid, that Heredia and San Juan were in flight, and that their junction with Casta?os (wherever that general might now be) had become impossible. This appalling news deeply affected Escalante and Bueno, but they then turned to urging Moore to unite with La Romana, and march to the relief of Madrid. The British general replied that he did not believe that the Marquis had 5,000 men fit to take the field along with the British, and that any such scheme would be chimerical. His whole bearing towards the emissaries of the Junta seems to have been frigid to the verge of discourtesy. How much they irritated him may be gathered from the account of the interview which he sent to Mr. Frere two days later. In language that seems very inappropriate in an official dispatch—destined ere long to be printed as a ‘Parliamentary Paper’—he wrote: ‘The two generals seemed to me to be two weak old men, or rather women, with whom it was impossible for me to concert any military operations, even had I been so inclined. Their conferences with me consisted in questions, and in assertions with regard to the strength of different Spanish corps, all of which I knew to be erroneous. They neither knew that Segovia or the Somosierra were in the hands of the enemy. I shall be obliged to you to save me from such visits, which are very painful.’
It is clear that the mission of Escalante and Bueno had no great share in determining Sir John to abandon his projected retreat on Portugal, though it may possibly have had some cumulative effect when taken in conjunction with other appeals that were coming in to him at the same moment. It was quite otherwise with the dispatches which he received from the authorities at Madrid, and from the British ambassador at Aranjuez: in them we may find the chief causes of his changed attitude. The Madrid dispatch was written by Morla and the Prince of Castelfranco—the two military heads of the Junta of Defence which had been created on December 1—in behalf of themselves and their colleagues. It was sent off early on December 2, before Napoleon had begun to press in upon the suburbs, for it speaks of the city as menaced, not as actually attacked by the enemy. It amounted to an appeal to Moore to do something to help Madrid—not necessarily (as has been often stated) to throw himself into the city, but, if he judged it best, to man?uvre on the flank and rear of the Emperor’s army, so as to distract him from his present design. The writers stated, in much the same terms that Escalante and Bueno had used, that Casta?os with 25,000 men from Tudela and San Juan with 10,000 men from the Somosierra were converging on the capital, and added that the Junta had got together 40,000 men for its defence. With this mass of new levies they thought that they could hold off for the moment the forces that Napoleon had displayed in front of them; but when his reserves and reinforcements came up the situation would be more dangerous. Wherefore they made no doubt that the British general would move with the rapidity that was required in the interests of the allied nations. They supposed it probable that Moore had already united with La Romana’s army, and that the two forces would be able to act together.
There is no reason to think, with Napier and with Moore’s biographer, that this dispatch was written by Morla with the treacherous intent of involving the British army in the catastrophe that was impending over the capital. Morla ultimately betrayed his country and joined King Joseph, but there is no real proof that he contemplated doing so before the fall of Madrid. The letter was signed not only by him but by Castelfranco, of whose loyalty there is no doubt, and who was actually arrested and imprisoned by Bonaparte. Moreover, if it had been designed to draw Moore into the Emperor’s clutches, it would not have given him the perfectly sound advice to fall upon the communications of the French army after uniting with La Romana—the precise move that the British general made ten days later with such effect. It would have begged him to enter Madrid, without suggesting any other alternative.
Moore had always stated that his reluctance to advance into Spain had been due, in no small degree, to the apathy which he had found there: but now the capital, as it seemed, was about to imitate Saragossa and to stand at bay behind its barricades. He had no great confidence in its power to hold out. ‘I own,’ he wrote to Castlereagh, ‘that I cannot derive much hope from the resistance of one town against forces so formidable, unless the spark catches and the flame becomes pretty general.’ But he could realize the dishonour that would rest upon his own head if, as now seemed possible, Madrid were to make a desperate resistance, and at the same moment the British army were to be seen executing unmolested a tame retreat on Portugal. The letter of Morla and Castelfranco he might perhaps have disregarded, suspecting the usual Spanish exaggerations, if it had stood alone. But it was backed up by an appeal from the most important British sources. Mr. Stuart, whose forecasts Moore had always respected because they were far from optimistic, had written him to the effect that ‘the retrograde movements of the British divisions were likely to produce an effect not less serious than the most decisive victory on the part of the enemy.’ Frere, the newly arrived ambassador to the Central Junta, launched out into language of the strongest kind. He had already discovered that his opinions were fundamentally opposed to those of Moore: this was but natural, as the general looked upon the problem that lay before him from a military point of view, while the ambassador could only regard its political aspect. Any impartial observer can now see that the advance of the British army into Spain was likely to be a hazardous matter, even if Hope and Baird succeeded in joining the main body at Salamanca. On the other hand, it is quite clear that the Spanish government would have every reason to regard itself as having been abandoned and betrayed, if that advance were not made. Balancing the one danger against the other, it seems evident that Frere was right, and that it was Moore’s duty to make a diversion of some sort against the French. Executed on any day before Madrid fell, such a movement would have disturbed Bonaparte and distracted him from his main plan of operations. Nor would the operation have been so hazardous as Moore supposed, since his junction with Hope had become certain when that general reached Pe?aranda, while Baird had never had any French troops in his neighbourhood. The retreat on Galicia was always open: that on Portugal was equally available till the moment when the capitulation of Madrid set free great masses of Bonaparte’s central reserve.
In his earlier epistles to Moore Frere had deprecated the idea of a retreat, and had suggested that if for military reasons an advance should be impracticable, it would at least be possible that the British army might remain on Spanish ground. He had soon learnt that the general entertained very different views, and his penultimate letter, that of November 30, shows signs of pique at the small impression that his arguments had made upon his correspondent. Now on December 3 he wrote from Talavera, whither he had followed the Supreme Junta in their flight, to try his last effort. To his previous arguments he had only one more to add, the fact that on December 1-2 the people of Madrid were showing that spirit of fanatical patriotism which Moore had sought in vain hitherto among the Spaniards. The populace, as he had learnt, was barricading the streets and throwing up batteries: 30,000 citizens and peasants were now under arms. Considering their spirit, he had no hesitation in taking upon himself the responsibility of representing the propriety, not to say the necessity, of doing something in their behalf. The fate of Spain depended absolutely, for the moment, on some help being given by the British army. Frere had first-hand evidence of the enthusiasm which was reigning in Madrid on the first day of December, having spoken to several persons who had just left the capital, including a French émigré colonel, one Charmilly, to whose care he entrusted his last letter to the Commander-in-chief. But so convinced was he that no argument of his would affect Sir John Moore, that he took a most improper step, and endeavoured to appeal to the public opinion of the army over the head of its general. He entrusted Charmilly with a second letter, which he was only to deliver if Moore refused to countermand his retreat after reading the first. This document was a request that in case Sir John remained fixed in his original determination, he would allow the bearer of these letters to be examined before a Council of War. Frere thought that Charmilly’s account of what was going on in Madrid would appeal to the Brigadiers, if it had no effect on the Lieutenant-General—and probably he was not far wrong. Such a plan struck at the roots of all military obedience: it could only have occurred to a civilian. If anything could have made the matter worse, it was that the document should be entrusted not to a British officer but to a foreign adventurer, a kind of person to whom the breach between the civil and military representatives of Great Britain ought never to have been divulged. Moreover Charmilly (though Frere was not aware of this fact) chanced to be personally known to Moore, who had a very bad opinion of him. The émigré was said to have been implicated in the San Domingo massacres of 1794, and to have been engaged of late in doubtful financial speculations in London. To send him to Salamanca with such an errand seemed like a deliberate insult to the Commander-in-chief. Frere was innocent of this intention, but the whole business, even without this aggravation, was most unwise and improper.
Charmilly handed in his first document on the evening of December 5, a few hours after Morla’s messenger had delivered the appeal from Madrid. Moore received him in the most formal way, dismissed him, and began to compare Frere’s information with that of the Junta of Defence, of the emissaries from Aranjuez, and of his other English correspondents. Putting all together, he felt his determination much shaken: Madrid, as it seemed, was really about to defend itself: the preparations which were reported to him bore out the words of Morla and Castelfranco. His own army was seething with discontent at the projected retreat: Hope being now only one march away, at Alba de Tormes, he could no longer plead that he was unable to advance because he was destitute of cavalry and guns. Moreover, he was now so far informed as to the position—though not as to the numbers—of the French, that he was aware that there was no very serious force in front of himself or of Baird: everything had been turned on to Madrid. Even the 4th Corps, of which Hope had heard during his march, was evidently moving on Segovia and the Guadarrama.
Contemplating the situation, Moore’s resolution broke down: he knew what his army was saying about him at the present moment: he guessed what his government would say, if it should chance that Madrid made a heroic defence while he was retreating unpursued on Lisbon and Almeida. A man of keen ambition and soldierly feeling, he could not bear to think that he might be sacrificing his life’s work and reputation to an over-conscientious caution. Somewhere between eight o’clock and midnight on the night of December 5 he made up his mind to countermand the retreat. He dashed off a short note to Castlereagh, and a dispatch to Baird, and the thing was done. To the war-minister he wrote that ‘considerable hopes were entertained from the enthusiastic manner in which the people of Madrid resist the French.’ This hope he did not share himself, but ‘in consequence of the general opinion, which is also Mr. Frere’s, I have ordered Sir David Baird to suspend his march and shall myself continue at this place until I see further, and shall be guided by circumstances.’ To Madrid he would not go till he was certain that the town was making a firm defence, and that the spirit of resistance was spreading all over Spain: but the plan of instant retreat on Portugal was definitely abandoned. The dispatch to Baird shows even more of the General’s mind, for he and his subordinate were personal friends, and spoke out freely to each other. The people of Madrid, Moore wrote, had taken up arms, refused to capitulate, and were barricading their streets—they said that they would suffer anything rather than submit. Probably all this came too late, and Bonaparte was too strong to be resisted. ‘There is, however, no saying, and I feel myself the more obliged to give it a trial, as Mr. Frere has made a formal representation, which I received this evening. All this appears very strange and unsteady—but if the spirit of enthusiasm does arise in Spain, and the people will be martyrs, there is no saying what our force may do.’ Baird therefore was to stay his march on Corunna, to make arrangements to return to Astorga, and to send off at once to join the main army one of his three regiments of hussars. All this was written ere midnight: at early dawn Moore’s mind was still further made up. He sent to Sir David orders to push his cavalry to Zamora, his infantry, brigade by brigade, to Benavente, in the plains of Leon. ‘What is passing at Madrid may be decisive of the fate of Spain, and we must be at hand to take advantage of whatever happens. The wishes of our country and our duty demand it of us, with whatever risk it may be attended.... But if the bubble bursts, and Madrid falls, we shall have a run for it.... Both you and me, though we may look big, and determine to get everything forward, yet we must never lose sight of this, that at any moment affairs may take the turn that will render it necessary to retreat.’
If only Moore had discovered on November 13, instead of on December 5, that events at Madrid were important, and that his country’s wishes and his duty required him to take a practical interest in them, the winter campaign of 1808 would have taken—for good or evil—a very different shape from that which it actually assumed. Meanwhile his resolve came too late. Madrid had actually capitulated thirty-six hours before he received the letters of Morla and of Frere. Moreover the offensive could not be assumed till Baird should have retraced his steps from Villafranca, and returned to the position at Astorga from which his wholly unnecessary retreat had removed him.
A painful and rather grotesque scene had to be gone through on the morning of December 6. Colonel Charmilly had been received by Moore on the previous night in such a dry and formal manner, that it never occurred to him that the letter which he had delivered was likely to have had any effect. Accordingly he presented himself for the second time next morning, with Frere’s supplementary epistle, taking it for granted that retreat was still the order of the day, and making the demand for the assembly of a Council of War. Moore, fresh from the severe mental struggle which attended the reversal of all his plans, was in no mood for politeness. Righteously indignant at what seemed to him both a deliberate personal insult, and an intrigue to undermine his authority with his subordinates, he burst out into words of anger and contempt, and told his provost-marshal to expel Charmilly from the camp without a moment’s delay. When this had been done, he sat down to write a dispatch to Frere, in which his conscientious desire to avoid hard words with a British minister struggled in vain with his natural resentment. He began by justifying his original resolve to retreat; and then informed his correspondent that ‘I should never have thought of asking your opinion or advice, as the determination was founded on circumstances with which you could not be acquainted, and was a question purely military, of which I thought myself the best judge.’ When he made up his mind, the army had been hopelessly divided into fractions, and there was good reason at that moment to fear that the French would prevent their concentration. But as the resistance made by the people of Madrid had deterred Bonaparte from detaching any corps against him, and the junction of the British divisions now seemed possible, the situation was changed. ‘Without being able to say exactly in what manner, everything shall be done for the assistance of Madrid, and the Spanish cause, that can be expected from an army such as I command.’ But Moore would not move till Baird came up, and even then, he said, he would only have 26,000 men fit for duty. Believing that Frere’s conduct had been inspired by a regard for the public welfare, he should abstain from any comment on the two letters brought by Colonel Charmilly. But he must confess that he both felt and expressed much indignation at a person of that sort being made the channel of communication between them. ‘I have prejudices against all that class, and it is impossible for me to put any trust in him. I shall therefore thank you not to employ him in any communication with me.’
Moore had kept his temper more in hand than might have been expected, considering the provocation that he had received: the same cannot be said for Frere, whose next letter, written from Truxillo on December 9, ended by informing the general that ‘if the British army had been sent abroad for the express object of doing the utmost possible mischief to the cause of Spain, short of actually firing upon the Spanish troops, they would have most completely fulfilled their purpose by carrying out exactly the measures which they have taken.’ This was unpardonable language from one official writing a state paper to another, and it is regrettable to find that Frere made no formal apology for it in his later dispatches. Even when he discovered that Moore was actually executing a diversion against the communications of the French army, he only wrote that he was ‘highly gratified’ to find that they were at last agreed on the advisability of such a move. Frere’s uncontrolled expressions showed that he was entirely unfit for a diplomatic post, and cannot be too strongly reprobated. At the same time we are forced to concede that his main thesis was perfectly true: nothing could have been more unhappy than that the aid of a British army of 33,000 men should have been promised to Spain: that the army should have marched late, in isolated divisions and by the wrong roads: that after its van had reached Salamanca on November 13, it should not have taken one step in advance up to December 5: that just as Madrid was attacked it should tamely begin to retreat on Corunna and Lisbon. Moore was only partly responsible for all this: but it is certain that the whole series of movements had in truth been calculated to do the utmost possible mischief to the cause of Spain and of England. If Moore had died or been superseded on December 4, 1808, he would have been written down as wellnigh the worst failure in all the long list of incompetent British commanders since the commencement of the Revolutionary War.
It is, therefore, with all the greater satisfaction that we now pass on to the second part of the campaign of the British army in Spain, wherein Moore showed himself as resourceful, rapid, and enterprising as he had hitherto appeared slow and hesitating. Having once got rid of the over-caution which had hitherto governed his movements, and having made up his mind that it was right to run risks, he showed that the high reputation which he enjoyed in the British army was well deserved.
Moore’s first intention, as is shown by his orders to Baird and his letters to Castlereagh, was merely to disturb the French communications by a sudden raid on Valladolid, or even on Burgos. If Madrid was really holding out, the Emperor would not be able to send any large detachment against him, unless he made up his mind to raise the siege of the capital. It was probable that Bonaparte would consider the destruction of an English army of even more importance than the prosecution of the siege, and that he would come rushing northward with all his army. In that case, as Moore wrote to Baird, ‘we shall have a run for it,’ but Madrid would be saved. In short, Napoleon was to be treated like the bull in the arena, who is lured away from a fallen adversary by having a red cloak dangled before his eyes. Supposing that the main force of the French were turned upon him, Moore was perfectly well aware that his line of retreat on Portugal would be cut, for troops marching from the neighbourhood of Madrid, via the Guadarrama Pass, might easily seize Salamanca. But it is one of the privileges of the possessor of sea-power that he can change his base whenever he chooses, and Moore wrote to Castlereagh to request that transports might be massed at Corunna for the reception of his army. If forced to fall back on that place he intended to sail round to Lisbon or to Cadiz, as circumstances might dictate.
In the unlikely event of Bonaparte’s persisting in the siege of Madrid, and sending only small detachments against the British army, Moore thought that he would be strong enough to make matters very unpleasant for the enemy in Old Castile. If he beat the forces immediately opposed to him, and seized Valladolid and Burgos, the Emperor would be compelled to come north, whether he wished it or no.
All these plans were perfectly reasonable and well concerted, considering the information that was at Moore’s disposition on December 6. But that information was based on two false premises: the one was that Madrid was likely to hold out for some little time—Moore never supposed that it could be for very long, for he remained fixed in his distrust of Spanish civic virtues: the second was that the French army in the north of Spain did not amount to more than 80,000 or 100,000 men, an estimate which had been repeated to him by every Spaniard with whom he had communicated, and which had been confirmed, not only by Frere, but by Stuart and other English correspondents in whom he had some confidence. If he had known that the French had entered Madrid on December 4, and that they numbered more than 250,000 bayonets and sabres, his plans would have been profoundly modified.
Moore’s original intention was to move on Valladolid, a great centre of roads, and a sort of halfway-house between Burgos and Madrid. Meanwhile, Baird was to come down from Astorga via Benavente, and to converge on the same point. A cavalry screen in front of the combined force was formed, by pushing the two regiments which belonged to Moore’s own corps towards Alaejos and Tordesillas, on the south bank of the Douro; while Baird’s cavalry brigade, under Lord Paget, made a forced march from Astorga to Toro, and extended itself north of the river. Moore’s infantry was not to move till the tenth, but that of Baird was already returning as fast as it could manage from Villafranca to Astorga. The unfortunate orders of retreat, issued on November 29, had cost Sir David six marches, three from Astorga to Villafranca and three from Villafranca to Astorga—time lost in the most miserable and unnecessary fashion. One of his brigades, that of General Leith, was now so far off that it never managed to overtake the army, and was out of the game for something like a fortnight. But the rest, which had only to return from Villafranca, succeeded in joining the main body in much better time than might have been expected. The fact was that the news of an advance had restored the high spirits of the whole army, and the men stepped out splendidly through the cold and rainy winter days, and easily accomplished their twenty miles between dawn and dusk.
Moore, meanwhile, was occupied at Salamanca in making the last preparations for his advance. He had already sent back into Portugal one large convoy on December 5, escorted by the fifth battalion of the 60th Regiment. He now dispatched another which marched by Ciudad Rodrigo, where it picked up the 3rd Foot, who guarded it back to Portugal. The two between them contained all his heavy baggage, and all the sick from his base hospital who could bear transport—probably more than 1,500 invalids: for the total number of the sick of the army was very nearly 4,000, and the larger half of them must have belonged to Moore’s own corps, which was in worse trim than that of Baird. The loss of the regiments sent off on escort duty was partly made up a few days later by the arrival of the 82nd, which came up by forced marches from Oporto, and reached Benavente on December 26. It was the leading battalion of a brigade which the government had resolved to add to Moore’s force from the slender division of Cradock: the other two battalions of the brigade were too far behind, and never succeeded in joining the field-army. Allowing for these final changes we find that Moore and Baird started forth with 29,946 effective sabres and bayonets—in which are included 1,687 men on detachment: they left behind them nearly 4,000 sick. If we deduct 2,539 for Leith’s brigade, which was still far beyond Villafranca, and for the belated 82nd, the actual force which carried out the great raid into the plain of Old Castile must have been just over 25,000 strong: of these 2,450 were cavalry, and there were 1,297 artillery gunners and drivers with sixty-six guns.
Moore had, of course, given notice to La Romana of his change of plan: in response to his letter of December 6 the Marquis expressed his pleasure at the prospect of the union of the allied armies, and his wish to co-operate to the best of his power. He had now collected 20,000 men—a formidable army on paper—and was certain to do his best, but what that might amount to was very doubtful. It was well known that a great part of his troops were not fit to move: but it was not till a few days later that Moore received definite intelligence as to the exact amount of military aid that might be furnished by the army of the Left.
The British troops were fully committed to their new plan of campaign—Baird was hastening back to Astorga, the sick and the convoys had started for Portugal, the cavalry had pushed well to the front—when Moore suddenly received a piece of intelligence which profoundly modified the situation. Madrid had fallen into the hands of Bonaparte: the news was brought by Colonel Graham, who had been sent off with the reply to Morla and Castelfranco. Forced to make a long detour, because all the direct roads were known to be in the hands of the French, he had fallen in at Talavera with the fugitive army from the Escurial, and had almost witnessed the murder of San Juan. From information given him by various persons, and especially by two belated members of the Central Junta, he learnt that Napoleon had stormed the Retiro and the Prado, and that Morla had signed a capitulation. The populace were said to be still in possession of their arms, and it was supposed that there would be much trouble in pacifying the city; but there was no doubt that, from a military point of view, it was in the Emperor’s power.
Considering Moore’s earlier doubts and hesitations, we should almost have expected that this news would have induced him to throw up his whole plan for an advance into Old Castile, and once more to order a retreat on Almeida. But he evidently considered that he was now committed to the raid on Bonaparte’s lines of communication, and thought that, even if he could not save Madrid, he could at least distract the enemy from an attempt to push further south, and give the Spanish armies time to rally. There was a chance, as he wrote to Castlereagh, that he might effect something, and he should take it, committing himself to Fortune: ‘If she smiles we may do some good: if not, we shall still I hope have the merit of having done all that we could. The army, for its numbers, is excellent, and is (I am confident) quite determined to do its duty.’
On December 11 the infantry at last began to move forward from Salamanca—a month all but two days had elapsed since its vanguard reached that city. On that day the reserve division, under General E. Paget, and Beresford’s brigade of Fraser’s division marched for Toro, where they found Lord Paget with Baird’s cavalry, ready to cover their advance. These troops were to form the left-hand column of the advance on Valladolid. On the next day Hope’s detachment from Alba de Tormes, and the brigades of Bentinck, Fane, Hill, and Charles Alten from Salamanca, which formed the right-hand column, marched for Alaejos and Tordesillas. In front of them was Charles Stewart’s cavalry brigade, which, on the same evening (December 12), fell upon a French cavalry patrol at Rueda and captured it whole, only one man escaping. The prisoners turned out to belong to the 22nd Chasseurs cf Franceschi’s cavalry division, which, as it was discovered, lay at Valladolid without any infantry supports. They expressed the greatest surprise at finding themselves assailed by English cavalry, as they were under the impression that Moore had retired on Lisbon some days before. This side-light on the general ignorance prevailing in the French army as to the position and designs of the British was very valuable: the first meeting with the enemy, trifling as was the success, promised well for the future.
On the thirteenth Moore himself came up from Salamanca to Alaejos, where he overtook the infantry. Stewart’s cavalry meanwhile pushed on to Tordesillas and Medina del Campo, without coming across any traces of the French. At Tordesillas they found themselves in touch with Lord Paget’s horsemen on the other side of the Douro, who had also met with no opposition whatever. On the fifteenth the whole army would have converged on Valladolid, if Moore’s original intention had been carried out. But a fortunate accident intervened to prevent this march, which would have placed the British troops nearer to Madrid and to the Emperor than did the route which they finally adopted.
There was brought to Moore at Alaejos an intercepted dispatch from Berthier to Soult, containing the most valuable information. The officer bearing it had been sent off from Madrid without an escort, according to the Emperor’s usual habit—a habit that cost the lives of some scores of unfortunate aides-de-camp during the first year of the Peninsular War. It was only by experience that Napoleon and his marshals learnt that isolated officers travelling in this fashion were devoted in Spain to probable death and possible torture, as Marbot (after a personal experience of the kind) bitterly observed. The bearer of this particular dispatch had been murdered by peasants at the post-house of Valdestillos, near Segovia.
The document was full of invaluable facts and details. It informed Soult that with his existing force—the two infantry divisions of Merle and Mouton, and the four cavalry regiments of Franceschi’s division—he was strong enough to march straight before him from Salda?a, and to overrun the whole kingdom of Leon. He was to seize the towns of Leon, Zamora, and Benavente, and to sweep the débris of the army of Galicia into its native mountains. He would find nothing else to oppose him; for the English, as all accounts agreed, were in full retreat on Lisbon. They had last been heard of at Salamanca and the Escurial. A knowledge of this plan was valuable to Moore, but still more so was what followed—a sketch of the position of the French army at the moment when the dispatch was written. The advanced guard of the ‘Grand Army’ (Lefebvre’s corps) was at Talavera, and would shortly be at Badajoz: Bessières was chasing Casta?os beyond the Upper Tagus, on the road to Valencia. Mortier’s and Junot’s corps had reached Spain: the former had been ordered off to aid in the siege of Saragossa: the latter was on the march to Burgos, and its leading division had reached Vittoria. The chief omission was that Berthier did not mention the Imperial Guard or the corps of Ney, which were in or about Madrid when he wrote, and were probably destined to follow Lefebvre’s march on Badajoz and Lisbon. The dispatch ends with the curious note that ‘His Majesty is in the best of health. The city of Madrid is quite tranquil: the shops are open, theatrical amusements have been resumed, and you would never suppose that our first addresses to the place had been emphasized by 4,000 cannon-balls.’
Moore was thus placed in possession of the Emperor’s plan of campaign, and of the dislocation of the greater part of his army. Most important of all, he discovered that his own position and designs were wholly unsuspected. His mind was soon made up: Soult, as it seemed, with his 15,000 or 16,000 men at Salda?a and Carrion, was about to move forward into Leon. He would thus be placed at an enormous distance from the Emperor, and would have no solid supports save the leading division of Junot’s corps, which must now be drawing near to Burgos. If he advanced, the whole British army, aided by whatever troops La Romana could produce, might be hurled upon him. The results could not be doubtful, and a severe defeat inflicted on the 2nd Corps would shake the hold of the French on Northern Spain, and ruin all the Emperor’s plans. Moreover the region where Soult might be looked for, about Carrion, Sahagun, and Mayorga, was far more remote from Madrid than the Valladolid country, where Moore was originally intending to strike his blow, so that several days would be gained before the Emperor could interfere.
Accordingly, on December 15, the whole army suddenly changed its direction from eastward to northward. The left-hand column of the infantry crossed the Douro at Zamora, the right-hand column at Toro. The cavalry, screening the march of both, went northward from Tordesillas to the banks of the Sequillo, pushing its advanced parties right up to Valladolid, and driving back the dragoons of Franceschi, several of whose detachments they cut off, capturing a colonel and more than a hundred men. They intercepted the communications between Burgos and Madrid to such effect that Bonaparte believed that the whole British army was moving on Valladolid, and drew up his first plan of operations under that hypothesis.
Meanwhile four good marches carried Moore’s infantry from Zamora and Toro by the route Villalpando—Valderas to Mayorga. The weather was bitterly cold, which in one way favoured the movement, for the frost hardened the country roads, which would otherwise have been mere sloughs of mud. A little snow fell from time to time, but not enough to incommode the troops. They marched well, kept their discipline, and left few sick or stragglers behind. This was the result of good spirits, for they had been told that they would meet the French before the week was out. At Mayorga the junction with Baird’s column was safely effected.
When the army had thus completed its concentration, Sir John Moore, for reasons which it is not quite easy to understand, rearranged all its units. He formed it into four divisions and two independent light brigades. The 1st Division was given to Sir David Baird, the 2nd to Sir John Hope, the 3rd to General Fraser, the 4th (or Reserve) to General E. Paget. The two light brigades were under Charles Alten and Robert Crawfurd (now as always to be carefully distinguished from Catlin Crawfurd, who commanded a brigade of Hope’s division). All the old arrangements of the army of Portugal were broken up: Baird was given three regiments which had come from Lisbon: on the other hand he had to make over four of his Corunna battalions to Hope and two to Fraser. Apparently the idea of the Commander-in-chief was to mix the corps who had already had experience of the French in Portugal with the comparatively raw troops who had landed in Galicia. Otherwise it is impossible to understand the gratuitous divorce of regiments which had been for some time accustomed to act together. The cavalry was formed as a division of two brigades under Lord Paget: the three hussar regiments from Corunna formed one, under General Slade; the two corps from Lisbon the other, under Charles Stewart, the brother of Lord Castlereagh. Of the whole army only the 82nd and Leith’s brigade were still missing: the former had not yet reached Benavente. The belated regiments of the latter were still on the further side of Astorga, and never took any part in the advance.
During this march Moore at last got full information as to the state of La Romana’s troops, and the aid that might be expected from them. The Marquis himself, writing to contradict a false report that he was retiring on Galicia, confessed that two-thirds of his 20,000 men wanted reclothing from head to foot, and that there was a terrible want of haversacks, cartridge-boxes, and shoes. He complained bitterly that the provinces (i.e. Asturias and Galicia) were slack and tardy in forwarding him supplies, and laid much of the blame on them. But he would move forward the moment he could be assisted by Baird’s troops in pressing the French in his front. He reported that Soult had 10,000 infantry at Salda?a, Carrion, and Almanza, with cavalry out in advance at Sahagun: he dared not move across their front southward, for to do so would uncover the high-road through Leon to the Asturias. But the appearance of Baird on the Benavente—Palencia road should be the signal for him to advance against the French in conjunction with his allies.
Romana’s description of his army did not sound very promising. But a confidential report from an English officer who had visited his cantonments gave an even less favourable account of the Galicians. Colonel Symes had seen four of the seven divisions which formed the ‘Army of the Left.’ He wrote that the soldiers were ‘in general, stout young men, without order or discipline, but not at all turbulent or ferocious. Their clothing was motley, and some were half-naked. Their man?uvres were very confusedly performed, and the officers were comparatively inferior to the men. The equipment was miserable: of sixteen men of General Figueroa’s guard only six had bayonets. The springs and locks of the muskets often did not correspond. A portion of them—at least one-third—would not explode, and a French soldier could load and fire his piece with precision thrice, before a Spaniard could fire his twice.’ Of the three divisions which he saw reviewed at Leon, one (the 5th, the old troops from the Baltic) seemed superior to the rest, and was armed with good English firelocks: there was also a corps of light troops, 1,000 men in uniform, who might be called respectable.... Without undervaluing the spirit of patriotism of the Spaniards, which might in the end effect their deliverance, the writer of the report could only say that they were not, and for a very long time could not be, sufficiently improved in the art of war to be coadjutors in a general action with the British: if any reliance were placed on Spanish aid in the field, terrible disappointment must result: ‘we must stand or fall through our own means.’ Colonel Symes doubted whether La Romana would even dare to take his troops into the field at all—wherein he did the Marquis grave injustice: he had every intention of doing his best—though that best turned out to be merely the bringing to the front of the 7,000 or 8,000 men out of his 22,000, who were more or less armed and equipped, while the rest were left behind as wholly unserviceable.
With this document before him, Moore must have found a certain grim humour in the perusal of a letter from the Supreme Junta, which reached him at Toro on December 16, informing him that La Romana would join him with 14,000 ‘picked men,’ and that within a month 30,000 more Asturian and Galician levies should be at his disposal. This communication was brought to him by Francisco Xavier Caro, the brother of the Marquis, who was himself a member of the Junta. With him came Mr. Stuart, as an emissary from the British minister, bringing the last of those unhappy epistles which Frere had written before he knew that the plan of retreating on Portugal had been given up. We have already quoted one of its insulting phrases on page 524: the rest was in the same strain. Fortunately, it could be disregarded, as Moore was actually advancing on the enemy, with a definite promise of help from La Romana. Caro professed to be much delighted that the Junta’s hopes were at last obtaining fruition. Stuart expressed surprise and grief at the tone of Frere’s letters, and ‘seemed not much pleased at his mission.’ This was the last of the many troubles with the British and Spanish civil authorities which were destined to harass the Commander-in-chief. For the future it was only military cares that were to weigh upon his mind.
On December 20 the army had concentrated at Mayorga. Somewhat to his disappointment Moore discovered that Soult had not begun the advance on Leon which Berthier’s intercepted dispatch had ordered. Either no duplicate of it had been received by the Marshal, or he had been disconcerted by the report that the English were on the move for Valladolid. That they were coming against his own force he can as yet hardly have guessed. He was still in his old position, one infantry division at Salda?a, the other at Carrion. Debelle’s light-cavalry brigade lay in front as a screen, with its head quarters at Sahagun, only nine miles from the English advanced pickets, which had reached the abbey of Melgar Abaxo.
The proximity of the enemy led Lord Paget, who showed himself throughout the campaign a most admirable and enterprising cavalry commander, to attempt a surprise. Marching long ere dawn with the 10th and 15th Hussars, he reached the vicinity of Sahagun without being discovered. Debelle had no outlying vedettes, and his main-guard on the high-road was suddenly surrounded and captured before it was aware that an enemy was near. Only a single trooper escaped, but he aroused the town, and Paget, hearing the French trumpets sounding in the streets, saw that he must lose no time. He sent General Slade with the 10th Hussars by the straight road into Sahagun, while he himself galloped around it with the 15th to cut off the enemy’s retreat. As he reached the suburb he found Debelle forming up his two regiments—the 8th Dragoons and the 1st Provisional Chasseurs—among the snow-covered stumps of a vineyard. Nothing could be seen of the 10th, which was scouring the town, but Paget formed up the 15th for a charge. His first movement was checked by an unexpected ditch; but moving rapidly down it he crossed at a place where it was practicable, and found Debelle changing front to meet him. Catching the French before they had begun to move—their new formation was not yet quite completed—Paget charged into them without hesitation, though they outnumbered him by nearly two to one. He completely rode down the front regiment, the provisional chasseurs, and flung it back on to the dragoons, who broke and fled. The chasseurs, who were commanded by Colonel Tascher, a cousin of the Empress Josephine, were half destroyed: two lieutenant-colonels, eleven other officers, and 157 men were taken prisoners, twenty were killed, many were wounded. The regiment indeed was so mauled that Bonaparte dissolved it soon after, and replaced it in Franceschi’s division by the 1st Hussars, which had just arrived from France.
This was perhaps the most brilliant exploit of the British cavalry during the whole six years of the war. When the Peninsular medals were distributed, nearly forty years after, a special clasp was very rightly given for it, though many combats in which a much larger number of men were engaged received no such notice. While reading the records of later stages of the war the historian must often regret that Wellington never, till Waterloo, had the services of Paget as commander of his light cavalry. There were unfortunate personal reasons which rendered the presence of the victor of Sahagun and Benavente impossible in the camp of the victor of Vimiero.
The scared survivors of Debelle’s brigade rode back to give Soult notice that the enemy was upon him, and might close in on the very next day. Meanwhile Moore’s infantry, following in the wake of Paget’s horse, reached Sahagun on the evening of the twenty-first. It was to be almost their last step in advance. The general allowed one day’s rest to enable the rear divisions to close up to the van, so that all might advance on Salda?a and Carrion in a compact mass. He intended to deliver his much-desired blow at Soult upon the twenty-third.
The Duke of Dalmatia, though he had heard nothing as yet of the British infantry, made the right inference from the vigorous way in which his cavalry had been driven in, and concluded that Moore was not far off. He drew down his second infantry division from Salda?a to Carrion, thus concentrating his corps, and sent aides-de-camp to Burgos and Palencia to hurry up to his support every regiment that could be found. The disposable troops turned out to be Lorges’s division of dragoons, and Delaborde’s division of the 8th Corps, which were both on their way from Burgos to Madrid. The rest of Junot’s infantry was two days off, on the road from Vittoria to Burgos. The brigade of Franceschi’s cavalry which had evacuated Valladolid, was also heard of on the Palencia road. No news or orders had been received from Madrid, with which place communication was now only possible by the route of Aranda, that by Valladolid being closed.
If Moore, allowing his infantry the night of the twenty-first and the morning of the twenty-second to recruit their strength, had marched on Carrion on the afternoon of the latter day, he would have caught Soult at a disadvantage at dawn on the twenty-third, for none of the supporting forces had yet got into touch with the Marshal. If the latter had dared to make a stand, he would have been crushed: but it is more probable that—being a prudent general—he would have fallen back a march in the direction of Burgos. But, as it chanced, Moore resolved to give his men forty-eight hours instead of thirty-six at Sahagun—and twelve hours often suffice to change the whole situation. The army was told to rest as long as daylight lasted on the twenty-third, and to march at nightfall, so as to appear in front of the bridge of Carrion at dawn on the twenty-fourth. Attacked at daybreak, the Marshal would, as Moore hoped, find no time to organize his retreat and would thus be forced to fight.
While waiting at Sahagun for the sun to set, Moore received a dispatch from La Romana to say that, in accordance with his promise, he had marched from Leon to aid his allies. But he could only put into the field some 8,000 men and a single battery—with which he had advanced to Mansilla, with his vanguard at Villarminio, on the road to Salda?a. He was thus but eighteen miles from Sahagun, and though he had only brought a third of his army with him, could be utilized in the oncoming operations.
But this was not the only news which reached Moore on the afternoon of the twenty-third. Only two short hours before he received the dispatch from Mansilla, another note from La Romana had come in, with information of very much greater importance. A confidential agent of the Marquis, beyond the Douro, had sent him a messenger with news that all the French forces in the direction of the Escurial were turning northward and crossing the Guadarrama. Putting this intelligence side by side with rumours brought in by peasants, to the effect that great quantities of food and forage had been ordered to be collected in the villages west of Palencia, Moore drew the right inference. What he had always expected had come to pass. Napoleon had turned north from Madrid, and was hastening across the mountains to overwhelm the British army.
Without losing a moment, Moore countermanded his advance on Carrion. The orders went out at nine o’clock, when the leading brigades had already started. As the men were tramping over the frozen snow, in full expectation of a fight at dawn, they were suddenly told to halt. A moment later came the command to turn back by the road that they had come, and to retire to their bivouacs of the previous day. Utterly puzzled and much disgusted the troops returned to Sahagun.
NAPOLEON’S PURSUIT OF MOORE: SAHAGUN TO ASTORGA
We have many times had occasion in this narrative to wonder at the extreme tardiness with which news reached the Spanish and the English generals. It is now at the inefficiency of Napoleon’s intelligence department that we must express our surprise. Considering that Moore had moved forward from Salamanca as far back as December 12, and had made his existence manifest to the French on that same day by the successful skirmish at Rueda, it is astonishing to find that the Emperor did not grasp the situation for nine days. Under the influence of his pre-conceived idea that the British must be retiring on Lisbon, he was looking for them in every other quarter rather than the banks of the Upper Douro. On the seventeenth he was ordering reconnaissances to be made in the direction of Plasencia in Estremadura (of all places in the world) to get news of Moore, and was still pushing troops towards Talavera on the road to Portugal. The general tendency of all his movements was in this direction, and there can be no doubt that in a few days his great central reserve would have followed in the wake of Lasalle and Lefebvre, and started for Badajoz and Elvas. On the nineteenth he reviewed outside Madrid the troops that were available for instant movement—the Imperial Guard, the corps of Ney, the divisions of Leval and Lapisse—about 40,000 men with 150 guns, all in excellent order, and with fifteen days’ biscuit stored in their wagons. Of the direction they were to take we can have no doubt, when we read in the imperial correspondence orders for naval officers to be hurried up to reorganize the arsenal of Lisbon, and a private note to Bessières—the commander-in-chief of the cavalry—bidding him start his spare horses and his personal baggage for Talavera.
The Emperor’s obstinate refusal to look in the right direction is very curious when we remember that Moore’s cavalry was sweeping the plains as far as Valladolid from December 12 to 16, and that on the eighteenth Franceschi had abandoned that important city, while Soult had got news of Moore’s being on the move two days earlier. Clearly either there was grave neglect in sending information on the part of the French cavalry generals in Old Castile, or else the Emperor had so convinced himself that the British were somewhere on the road to Lisbon, that he did not read the true meaning of the dispatches from the north. Be this as it may, it is evident that there was a serious failure in the imperial intelligence department, and that a week or more was wasted. Bonaparte ought to have been astir two or three days after Stewart and Paget drove in Franceschi’s screen of vedettes. As a matter of fact it was nine days before any move was made at the French head quarters: yet Rueda is only ninety-five miles from Madrid.
The first definite intelligence as to the English being on the move in Old Castile reached the Emperor on the evening of December 19. Yet it was only on the twenty-first that he really awoke to the full meaning of the reports that reached him from Soult and Franceschi. But when he did at last realize the situation, he acted with a sudden and spasmodic energy which was never surpassed in any of his earlier campaigns. He hurled on to Moore’s track not only the central reserve at Madrid, but troops gathered in from all directions, till he had set at least 80,000 men on the march, to encompass the British corps which had so hardily thrown itself upon his communications. Moore had been perfectly right when he stated his belief that the sight of the redcoats within reach would stir the Emperor up to such wrath, that he would abandon every other enterprise and rush upon them with every available man.
On the evening of the twenty-first the French troops from every camp around Madrid were pouring out towards the Escurial and the two passes over the Guadarrama. The cavalry of Ney’s corps and of the Imperial Guard was in front, then came the masses of their infantry. Lapisse’s division fell in behind: an express was sent to Dessolles, who was guarding the road to Calatayud and Saragossa, to leave only two battalions and a battery behind, and to make forced marches on the Escurial with the rest of his men. Another aide-de-camp rode to set Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons on the move from Avila. Finally messengers rode north to bid Lorges’s dragoons, and all the fractions of Junot’s corps, to place themselves under the orders of Soult. Millet’s belated division of dragoons was to do the same, if it had yet crossed the Ebro.
The Emperor, once more committing the error of arguing from insufficient data, had made up his mind that the English were at Valladolid. He had no news from that place since Franceschi had abandoned it, and chose to assume that Moore, or at any rate some portion of the British army, was there established. Under this hypothesis it would be easy to cut off the raiders from a retreat on Portugal, or even on Galicia, by carrying troops with extreme speed to Tordesillas and Medina de Rio Seco. This comparatively easy task was all that Napoleon aimed at in his first directions. Villacastin, Arevalo, Olmedo, and Medina del Campo are the points to which his orders of December 21 and 22 require that the advancing columns should be pushed.
For the maintenance of Madrid, and the ‘containing’ of the Spanish armies at Cuenca and Almaraz, the Emperor left nothing behind but the corps of Lefebvre, two-thirds of the corps of Victor, and the three cavalry divisions of Lasalle, Milhaud, and Latour-Maubourg—8,000 horse and 28,000 foot in all, with ninety guns. King Joseph was left in nominal command of the whole. Such a force was amply sufficient to hold back the disorganized troops of Galluzzo and Infantado, but not to advance on Seville or on Lisbon. It was impossible that any blow should be dealt to the west or the south, till the Emperor should send back some of the enormous masses of men that he had hurled upon Moore. Thus the English general’s intention was fully carried out: his raid into Old Castile had completely disarranged all Bonaparte’s plans. It gave the Spaniards at least two months in which to rally and recover their spirits, and it drew the field-army of the Emperor into a remote and desolate corner of Spain, so that the main centres of resistance were left unmolested.
Napoleon had guessed part, but by no means all, of Moore’s design. ‘The man?uvre of the English is very strange,’ he wrote to his brother Joseph; ‘it is proved that they have evacuated Salamanca. Probably they have brought their transports round to Ferrol, because they think that the retreat on Lisbon is no longer safe, as we could push on from Talavera by the left bank of the Tagus and shut the mouth of the river.... Probably they have evacuated Portugal and transferred their base to Ferrol, because it offers advantages for a safe embarkation. But while retreating, they might hope to inflict a check on the corps of Soult, and may not have made up their mind to try it till they had got upon their new line of retreat, and moved to the right bank of the Douro. They may have argued as follows: “If the French commit themselves to a march on Lisbon, we can evacuate on Oporto, and while doing so are still on our line of communications with Ferrol. Or, possibly, they may be expecting fresh reinforcements. But whatever their plan may be, their move will have a great influence on the end of this whole business.”’
The Emperor thought therefore that Moore’s main object had been to change an unsafe base at Lisbon for a safe one in Galicia, and that the demonstration against Soult was incidental and secondary. It does not seem to have struck him that the real design was to lure the central field-army of the French from Madrid, and to postpone the invasion of the south. Many of his apologists and admirers have excused his blindness, by saying that Moore’s plan was so rash and hazardous that no sensible man could have guessed it. But this is a complete mistake: the plan, if properly carried out, was perfectly sound. Sir John knew precisely what he was doing, and was prepared to turn on his heel and go back at full speed, the instant that he saw the least movement on the side of Madrid. It was in no rash spirit that he acted, but rather the reverse: ‘I mean to proceed bridle in hand,’ he said; ‘and if the bubble bursts, we shall have a run for it.’ And on this principle he acted: three hours after he got notice that Napoleon was on the march, he started to ‘make a run for it’ to Astorga, and his promptness was such that his main body was never in the slightest danger from the Emperor’s rush on Benavente, fierce and sudden though it was. The disasters of the second part of the retreat were not in the least caused by Napoleon’s intercepting movement, which proved an absolute and complete failure.
But to proceed: Ney’s corps, which led the advance against Moore, crossed the Guadarrama on the night of December 21, and had arrived safely at Villacastin, on the northern side of the passes, on the morning of the twenty-second. As if to contradict the Emperor’s statement—made as he was setting out—that ‘the weather could not be better,’ a dreadful tempest arose that day. When Bonaparte rode up from Chamartin, to place himself at the head of his Guard, which was to cross the mountains on the twenty-second, he found the whole column stopped by a howling blizzard, which swept down the pass with irresistible strength and piled the snow in large drifts at every inconvenient corner of the defile. It is said that several horsemen were flung over precipices by the mere force of the wind. The whole train of cannon and caissons stuck halfway up the ascent, and could neither advance nor retreat. Violently irritated at the long delay, Napoleon turned on every pioneer that could be found to clear away the drifts, set masses of men to trample down the snow into a beaten track, forced the officers and all the cavalry to dismount and lead their horses, and unharnessed half the artillery so as to give double teams to the rest. In this way the Guard, with the Emperor walking on foot in its midst, succeeded at last in crawling through to Villacastin by the night of December 23. A considerable number of men died of cold and fatigue, and the passage had occupied some sixteen hours more than had been calculated by the Emperor. The troops which followed him had less trouble in their passage, the tempest having abated its fury, and the path cleared by the Guard being available for their use.
At the very moment at which Moore was countermanding the advance on Sahagun—about seven o’clock on the evening of the twenty-third—Napoleon was throwing himself on his couch at Villacastin, after a day of fatigue which had tried even his iron frame. For the next week the two armies were contending with their feet and not their arms, in the competition which the French officers called the ‘race to Benavente.’ Napoleon was at last beginning to understand that he had not before him the comparatively simple task of cutting the road between Valladolid and Astorga, but the much harder one of intercepting that between Sahagun and Astorga. For the first three days of his march he was still under some hopes of catching the English before they could cross the Esla—and if any of them had been at Valladolid this would certainly have been possible. On December 24 he was at Arevalo: on Christmas Day he reached Tordesillas, where he waited twenty-four hours to allow his infantry to come up with his cavalry. On the twenty-seventh he at last understood—mainly through a letter from Soult—that the English were much further north than he had at first believed. But he was still in high spirits: he did not think it probable that Moore also might have been making forced marches, and having seized Medina de Rio Seco with Ney’s corps, he imagined that he was close on the flank of the retreating enemy. ‘To-day or to-morrow,’ he wrote to his brother Joseph on that morning, ‘it is probable that great events will take place. If the English have not already retreated they are lost: even if they have already moved they shall be pursued to the water’s edge, and not half of them shall re-embark. Put in your newspapers that 36,000 English are surrounded, that I am at Benavente in their rear, while Soult is in their front.’ The announcement was duly made in the Madrid Gazette, but the Emperor had been deceived as to the condition of affairs, which never in actual fact resembled the picture that he had drawn for himself.
Sir John had commenced his retreat from Sahagun on the twenty-fourth, with the intention of retiring to Astorga, and of taking up a position on the mountains behind it that might cover Galicia. He did not intend to retire any further unless he were obliged. If Soult should follow him closely, while the Emperor was still two or three marches away, he announced his intention of turning upon the Marshal and offering him battle. He wrote to La Romana asking him to hold the bridge of Mansilla (the most northerly passage over the Esla) as long as might be prudent, and then to retire on the Asturias, leaving the road to Galicia clear for the English army.
At noon on the twenty-fourth Moore started off in two columns: Baird’s division marched by the northern road to Valencia de Don Juan, where the Esla is passable by a ford and a ferry: Hope and Fraser took the more southern route by Mayorga and the bridge of Castro Gonzalo. The reserve division under E. Paget, and the two light brigades, remained behind at Sahagun for twenty-four hours to cover the retreat. The five cavalry regiments were ordered to press in closely upon Soult, and to keep him as long as possible in doubt as to whether he was not himself about to be attacked.
This demonstration seems to have served its purpose, for the Marshal made no move either on the twenty-fourth or the twenty-fifth. Yet by the latter day his army was growing very formidable, as all the corps from Burgos and Palencia were reporting themselves to him: Lorges’s dragoons had reached Frechilla, and Delaborde with the head of the infantry of Junot’s corps was at Paredes, only thirteen miles from Soult’s head quarters at Carrion. Loison and Heudelet were not far behind. Yet the English columns marched for two days wholly unmolested.
On the twenty-sixth Baird crossed the Esla at Valencia: the ford was dangerous, for the river was rising: a sudden thaw on the twenty-fourth had turned the roads into mud, and loosened the snows. But the guns and baggage crossed without loss, as did also some of the infantry, the rest using the two ferry-boats. Hope and Fraser, on the Mayorga road, had nothing but the badness of their route to contend against. The soil of this part of the kingdom of Leon is a soft rich loam, and the cross-roads were knee-deep in clay: for the whole of the twenty-sixth it rained without intermission: the troops plodded on in very surly mood, but as yet there was no straggling. It was still believed that Moore would fight at Astorga, and, though the men grumbled that ‘the General intended to march them to death first and to fight after,’ they still kept together.
But already signs were beginning to be visible that their discipline was about to break down. A good deal of wanton damage and a certain amount of plunder took place at the halting-places for the night—Mayorga, Valderas, and Benavente. A voice from the ranks explains the situation. ‘Our sufferings were so great that many of the men lost their natural activity and spirits, and became savage in their dispositions. The idea of running away, without even firing a shot, from the enemy we had beaten so easily at Vimiero, was too galling to their feelings. Each spoke to his fellow, even in common conversation, with bitterness: rage flashed out on the most trifling occasion of disagreement. The poor Spaniards had little to expect from such men as these, who blamed them for their inactivity. Every man found at home was looked upon as a traitor to his country. “Why is not every Spaniard under arms and fighting? The cause is not ours: are we to be the only sufferers?” Such was the common language, and from these feelings pillage and outrage naturally arose.’ The men began to seize food in the towns and villages without waiting for the regular distribution, forced their way into houses, and (the country being singularly destitute of wood) tore down sheds and doors to build up their bivouac fires. The most deplorable mischief took place at Benavente, where the regiment quartered in the picturesque old castle belonging to the Duchess of Osuna burnt much of the mediaeval furniture, tore down the sixteenth-century tapestry to make bed-clothes, and lighted fires on the floors of the rooms, to the destruction of the porcelain friezes and alcoves. Moore issued a strongly-worded proclamation against these excesses on December 27, blaming the officers for not keeping an eye upon the men, and pointing out that ‘not bravery alone, but patience and constancy under fatigue and hardship were military virtues.’ Unfortunately, such arguments had little effect on the tired and surly rank and file. Things were ere long to grow much worse.
The infantry, as we have seen, accomplished their march to Benavente without molestation, and all, including the rearguard, were across the Esla by the twenty-seventh. Paget’s cavalry, however, had a much more exciting time on the last two days. Finding that he was not attacked, Soult began to bestir himself on the twenty-sixth: he sent Lorges’s dragoons after the British army, in the direction of Mayorga, while with Franceschi’s cavalry and the whole of his infantry he marched by the direct road on Astorga, via the bridge of Mansilla.
Lorges’s four regiments were in touch with the rearguard of Paget’s hussars on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, but they were not the only or the most important enemies who were now striving to drive in Moore’s cavalry screen. The advanced guard of the Emperor’s army had just come up, and first Colbert’s brigade of Ney’s corps and then the cavalry of the Guard began to press in upon Paget: Lahoussaye’s dragoons arrived on the scene a little later. It is a splendid testimonial to the way in which the British horsemen were handled, that they held their own for three days against nearly triple forces on a front of thirty miles. No better certificate could be given to them than the fact that the Emperor estimated them, when the fighting was over, at 4,000 or 5,000 sabres, their real force being only 2,400. He wrote, too, in a moment of chagrin when Moore’s army had just escaped from him, so that he was not at all inclined to exaggerate their numbers, and as a matter of fact rated the infantry too low.
But under the admirable leading of Paget the British cavalry held its own in every direction. Moore was not exaggerating when he wrote on the twenty-eighth that ‘they have obtained by their spirit and enterprise an ascendency over the French which nothing but great superiority of numbers on their part can get the better of.’ The 18th Light Dragoons turned back to clear their rear six times on December 27, and on each occasion drove in the leading squadrons of their pursuers with such effect that they secured themselves an unmolested retreat for the next few miles. At one charge, near Valencia de Don Juan, a troop of thirty-eight sabres of this regiment charged a French squadron of 105 men, and broke through them, killing twelve and capturing twenty. The 10th Hussars, while fending off Lorges’s dragoons near Mayorga, found that a regiment of the light cavalry of Ney had got into their rear and had drawn itself up on a rising ground flanking the high-road. Charging up the slope, and over soil deep in the slush of half-melted snow, they broke through the enemy’s line, and got off in safety with 100 prisoners. Every one of Paget’s five regiments had its full share of fighting on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, yet they closed in on to Benavente in perfect order, with insignificant losses, and exulting in a complete consciousness of their superiority to the enemy’s horse. Since the start from Salamanca they had in twelve days taken no less than 500 prisoners, besides inflicting considerable losses in killed and wounded on the French. They had still one more success before them, ere they found themselves condemned to comparative uselessness among the mountains of Galicia.
On the twenty-eighth Robert Crawfurd’s brigade had waited behind in the mud and rain, drawn up in front of the bridge of Castro Gonzalo, ‘standing for many hours with arms posted, and staring the French cavalry in the face, while the water actually ran out of the muzzles of their muskets.’ At last our hussars retired, and Crawfurd blew up two arches of the bridge when Paget had passed over, and moved back on Benavente, after some trifling skirmishing with the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, who had come up in force and tried to interrupt his work. The indefatigable British horsemen left pickets all along the river on each side of the broken bridge, ready to report and oppose any attempt to cross.
After resting for a day in Benavente Moore had sent on the divisions of Fraser and Hope to Astorga, by the highway through La Baneza. The division of Baird, marching from Valencia by villainous cross-roads, converged on the same point, where the three corps met upon December 29. Their march was wholly unmolested by the French, who were being successfully held back by Moore’s rearguard under the two Pagets—the cavalry general and the commander of the reserve division—and by Crawfurd and Alten’s light brigades. On the same morning that the main body reached Astorga, the infantry of the rearguard marched out of Benavente, leaving behind only the horsemen, who were watching all the fords, with their supports three miles behind in the town of Benavente. Seeing that all the infantry had disappeared, Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who commanded the cavalry of the Guard, thought it high time to press beyond the Esla: it was absurd, he thought, that the mass of French horsemen, now gathered opposite the broken bridge of Castro Gonzalo, should allow themselves to be kept in check by a mere chain of vedettes unsupported by infantry or guns. Accordingly he searched for fords, and when one was found a few hundred yards from the bridge, crossed it at the head of the four squadrons of the chasseurs of the Guard, between 500 and 600 sabres. The rest of his troops, after vainly seeking for other passages, were about to follow him. The moment that he had got over the water Lefebvre found himself withstood by the pickets, mainly belonging to the 18th Light Dragoons, who came riding in from their posts along the river to mass themselves opposite to him. When about 130 men were collected, under Colonel Otway, they ventured to charge the leading squadrons of the chasseurs, of course with indifferent success. After retiring a few hundred yards more, they were joined by a troop of the 3rd Dragoons of the King’s German Legion, under Major Burgwedel, and again turned to fight. At this second clash the front line of the pursuers was broken for a moment, and the dragoons who had burst through the gap had a narrow escape of being surrounded and captured by the second line, but finally fought their way out of the mêlée with no great loss. Charles Stewart, their brigadier, now came up and rallied them for the second time: he retired towards the town in good order, without allowing himself to be cowed by Lefebvre’s rapid advance, for he knew that supports were at hand. Lord Paget, warned in good time, had drawn out the 10th Hussars under cover of the houses of the southern suburb of Benavente. He waited till the chasseurs drew quite near to him, and were too remote from the ford they had crossed to be able to retire with ease: then he suddenly sallied out from his cover and swooped down upon them. The pickets at the same moment wheeled about, cheered, and charged. The enemy, now slightly outnumbered—for the 10th were fully 450 sabres strong, and the pickets at least 200—made a good fight. A British witness observes that these ‘fine big fellows in fur caps and long green coats’ were far better than the line regiments with which the hussars had hitherto been engaged. But in a few minutes they were broken, and chased for two miles right back to the ford by which they had crossed. Lefebvre himself was captured by a private of the 10th named Grisdale, his wounded horse having refused to swim the river. With him there were taken two captains and seventy unwounded prisoners. The chasseurs left fifty-five men dead or hurt upon the field, and many of those who got away were much cut about. The British casualties were fifty, almost all from the men who had furnished the pickets, for the 10th suffered little: Burgwedel, who had led the Germans of the 3rd K. G. L., was the only officer hurt.
The remnant of the chasseurs crossed the river, and were immediately supported by other regiments, who (after failing to find another ford) had come down to that which Lefebvre had used. They showed some signs of attempting a second passage, but Lord Paget turned upon them the guns of Downman’s horse-battery, which had just galloped up from Benavente. After two rounds the enemy rode off hastily from the river, and fell back inland. They had received such a sharp lesson that they allowed the British cavalry to retreat without molestation in the afternoon. Napoleon consoled himself with writing that the British were ‘flying in panic’—a statement which the circumstances hardly seemed to justify—and gave an exaggerated account of the disorders which they had committed at Valderas and Benavente, to which he added an imaginary outrage at Leon. But there is no more talk of Moore’s corps being surrounded—wherefore it suddenly shrinks in the Emperor’s estimation, being no longer 36,000 strong, but only ‘21,000 infantry, with 4,000 or 5,000 horse.’ Lefebvre’s affair he frankly owned, when writing to King Joseph, was disgusting: ‘by evening I had 8,000 horse on the spot, but the enemy was gone.’
Paget indeed was so effectively gone, that though French cavalry by the thousand crossed the ford that night they could do nothing. And Crawfurd had so thoroughly destroyed the bridge of Castro Gonzalo—he had blown up the central pier, and not merely cut the crowns of the arches—that infantry and guns could not cross till the thirtieth. It was only on that day that the heads of Ney’s corps and of the Imperial Guard came up: Lapisse’s division was still far behind, at Toro. All that the rapid forced marches of the Emperor had brought him was the privilege of assisting at Paget’s departure, and of picking up in Benavente some abandoned carts, which Moore had caused to be broken after burning their contents.
Napoleon still consoled himself with the idea that it was possible that Soult might have been more fortunate than himself, and might perhaps already be attacking the English at Astorga. This was not the case: after learning that Moore had disappeared from his front, the Duke of Dalmatia had taken the road Sahagun—Mansilla, as the shortest line which would bring him to Astorga, the place where any army intending to defend Galicia would make its first stand. This choice brought him upon the tracks of La Romana’s army, not of the British. The Marquis, when Moore retired, had moved back on Leon, but had sent to his ally a message to the effect that he could not accept the suggestion to make the Asturias his base, and would be forced, when the enemy advanced, to join the British at Astorga. It was absolutely impossible, he said, to repair to the Asturias, for the pass of Pajares, the only coach-road thither, was impassable on account of the snow. La Romana left as a rearguard at the all-important bridge of Mansilla, his 2nd Division, 3,000 strong, with two guns. Contrary to Moore’s advice he would not blow up the bridge, giving as his reason that the Esla was fordable in several places in its immediate neighbourhood. This was a blunder; but the officer in command of the 2nd Division committed a greater one, by drawing up his main body in front of the bridge and not behind it—a repetition of Cuesta’s old error at Cabezon. Soult did not come in contact with the Spanish rearguard till four days after he had left Carrion: so heavy had been the rain, and so vile the road, that it took him from the twenty-sixth to the twenty-ninth to cover the forty-five miles between Carrion and Mansilla. But on the morning of December 30 he delivered his attack: a tremendous cavalry-charge by the chasseurs and dragoons of Franceschi broke the Spanish line, and pursuers and pursued went pell-mell over the bridge, which was not defended for a moment. The French captured 1,500 men—who were cut off from re-crossing the river—two guns, and two standards. Hearing of this disaster La Romana at once evacuated Leon, which Soult seized on the thirty-first. The place had been hastily fortified, and there had been much talk of the possibility of defending it; but at the first summons it opened its gates without firing a shot. The Marquis—leaving 2,000 sick in the hospitals, and a considerable accumulation of food in his magazines—fell back on Astorga, much to the discontent of Moore, who had not desired to see him in that direction. Soult at Leon was only twenty-five miles from Astorga: he was now but one march from Moore’s rearguard, and in close touch with the Emperor, who coming up from the south reached La Baneza on the same day—the last of the old year, 1808.
The divisions of Baird, Hope, and Fraser, as we have already seen, had reached Astorga on the twenty-ninth, the reserve division and the light brigades (after a most fatiguing march from Benavente) on the thirtieth, while the cavalry was, as always, to the rear, keeping back the advancing squadrons of Bessières. Thus on the thirtieth the English and Spanish armies were concentrated at Astorga with every available man present—the British still 25,000 strong; for they had suffered little in the fighting, and had not yet begun to straggle—but Romana with no more than 9,000 or 10,000 of the nominal 22,000 which had been shown in his returns of ten days before. His 2nd Division had been practically destroyed at Mansilla: he had left 2,000 sick at Leon, and many more had fallen out of the ranks in the march from that place—some because they wished to desert their colours, but more from cold, disease, and misery; for the army was not merely half naked, but infected with a malignant typhus fever which was making terrible ravages in its ranks.
Moore had told La Romana on the twenty-fourth that he hoped to make a stand at Astorga. The same statement had been passed round the army, and had kept up the spirits of the men to some extent, though many had begun to believe that ‘Moore would never fight.’ There were magazines of food at Astorga, and much more considerable ones of military equipment: a large convoy of shoes, blankets, and muskets had lately come in from Corunna, and Baird’s heavy baggage had been stacked in the place before he marched for Sahagun. The town itself was surrounded with ancient walls, and had some possibilities of defence: just behind it rises the first range of the Galician mountains, a steep and forbidding chain pierced only by the two passes which contain the old and the new high-roads to Corunna. The former—the shorter, but by far the more rugged—is called the defile of Foncebadon; the latter—longer and easier—is the defile of Manzanal.
The question was at once raised as to whether the position in rear of Astorga should not be seriously defended. The town itself would naturally have to be given up, if the French chose to press on in force; but the two defiles might be fortified and held against very superior numbers. To turn 25,000 British troops out of them would have been a very serious task, and the Spaniards meanwhile could have been used for diversions on the enemy’s flank and rear. La Romana called upon Moore, at the moment of the latter’s arrival at Astorga, and proposed that they should join in defending the passes. To give them up meant, he said, to give up also the great upland valley behind them—the Vierzo—where lay his own dép?ts and his park of artillery at Ponferrada, and where Moore also had considerable stores and magazines at Villafranca. The proposal was well worthy of being taken into account, and was far from being—as Napier calls it—‘wilder than the dreams of Don Quixote!’ for the positions were very strong, and there was no convenient route by which they could be turned. The only other way into Galicia, that by Puebla de Sanabria, is not only far away, but almost impassable at midwinter from the badness of the road and the deep snow. Moreover it leads not into the main valley of the Minho, but into that of the Tamega on the Portuguese frontier, from which another series of difficult defiles have to be crossed in order to get into the heart of Galicia. La Romana thought that this road might practically be disregarded as an element of danger in a January campaign.
The suggestion of the Marquis deserved serious consideration. Moore’s reasons for a summary rejection of the proposal are not stated by him at any length. He wrote to Castlereagh merely that there was only two days’ bread at Astorga, that his means of carriage were melting away by the death of draught beasts and the desertion of drivers, and that he feared that the enemy might use the road upon his flank—i.e. the Puebla de Sanabria route—to turn his position. He purposed therefore to fall back at once to the coast as fast as he could, and trusted that the French, for want of food, would not be able to follow him further than Villafranca. To these reasons may be added another, which Moore cited in his conversation with La Romana, that the troops required rest, and could not get it in the bleak positions above Astorga.
Some of these reasons are not quite convincing: though there were only two days’ rations at Astorga, there were fourteen days’ at Villafranca, and large dép?ts had also been gathered at Lugo and Corunna. These could be rendered available with no great trouble, if real energy were displayed, for there was still (as the disasters of the retreat were to show) a good deal of wheeled transport with the army. The flanking road by Puebla de Sanabria was (as we have said) so difficult and so remote that any turning corps that tried it would be heard of long before it became dangerous. There would be great political advantage in checking Bonaparte at the passes, even if it were only for a week or ten days. Moreover, to show a bold front would raise the spirits of the army, whose growing disorders were the marks of discontent at the retreat, and whose one wish was to fight the French as soon as possible. As to the rest which Moore declared to be necessary for the troops, this could surely have been better given by halting them and offering to defend the passes, than by taking them over the long and desolate road that separated them from Corunna. The experiences of the next eleven days can hardly be called ‘rest.’
Though clearly possible, a stand behind Astorga may not have been the best policy. Napoleon had a vast force in hand after his junction with Soult, and he was a dangerous foe to brave, even in such a formidable position as that which the British occupied. But it is doubtful whether this fact was the cause of Moore’s determination to retreat to the sea. If we may judge from the tone of his dispatches, his thought was merely that he had promised to make a diversion, under strong pressure from Frere and the rest; that he had successfully carried out his engagement, and lured the Emperor and the bulk of the French forces away from Madrid; and that he considered his task completed. In his letter of December 31 to Castlereagh, he harks back once more to his old depreciation of the Spaniards—they had taken no advantage of the chance he had given them, they were as apathetic as ever, his exertions had been wasted, and so forth. In so writing he made a mistake: his campaign was so far from being wasted that he had actually saved Spain. He had caused the Emperor to lose the psychological moment for striking at Seville and Lisbon, when the spirits of the patriots were at their lowest, and had given them three months to rally. By the time that the southward move from Madrid was once more possible to the French, Spain had again got armies in the field, and the awful disasters of November and December, 1808, had been half forgotten.
It seems improbable, from Moore’s tone in his dispatch of December 31, that he ever had any serious intention of standing behind Astorga. He had fallen back upon his old desponding views of the last days of November, and was simply set on bringing off the British army in safety, without much care for the fate of the Spaniards whom he so much disliked and contemned. The only sign of his ever having studied the intermediate positions between Astorga and Corunna lies in a report addressed to him on December 26, by Carmichael Smith of the Royal Engineers. This speaks of the Manzanal—Rodrigatos position as presenting an appearance of strong ground, but having the defect of possessing a down-slope to the rear for six miles, so that if the line were forced, a long retreat downhill would be necessary in face of the pursuing enemy. The engineer then proceeded to recommend the position of Cacabellos, a league in front of Villafranca, as being very strong and safe from any turning movement. But Moore, as we shall see, refused to stand at the one place as much as at the other, only halting a rearguard at Cacabellos to keep off the pursuing horse for a few hours, and never offering a pitched battle upon that ground. It is probable that nothing would have induced him to fight at either position, after he had once resolved that a straight march to the sea was the best policy.
So little time did Moore take in making up his mind as to the desirability of holding the passes above Astorga, that he pushed on Baird’s, Fraser’s, and Hope’s divisions towards Villafranca on the thirtieth, while Paget’s reserve with the two light brigades followed on the thirty-first. The whole British army was on the other side of Astorga, and across the passes, when Soult and Bonaparte’s columns converged on La Baneza. Their infantry did not enter Astorga till the first day of the new year, thirty-six hours after Moore’s main body had evacuated the place.
But this easy escape from the Emperor’s clutches had been bought at considerable sacrifices. Astorga was crammed with stores of all kinds, as we have already had occasion to mention: food was the only thing that was at all short. But there was not sufficient transport in the place, and the retreating army was already losing wagons and beasts so fast that it could not carry off much of the accumulated material that lay before it. A hasty attempt was made to serve out to the troops the things that could be immediately utilized. La Romana’s Spaniards received several thousand new English muskets to replace their dilapidated weapons, and a quantity of blankets. Some of the British regiments had shoes issued to them; but out of mere hurry and mismanagement several thousand pairs more were destroyed instead of distributed, though many men were already almost barefoot. There were abandoned all the heavy baggage of Baird’s division (which had been stacked at Astorga before the march to Sahagun), an entire dép?t of entrenching tools, several hundred barrels of rum, and many scores of carts and wagons for which draught animals were wanting. A quantity of small-arms ammunition was blown up. But the most distressing thing of all was that those of the sick of the army who could not bear to be taken on through the January cold in open wagons had to be left behind: some four hundred invalids, it would seem, were abandoned in the hospital and fell into the hands of the French.
The most deplorable thing about these losses was that all the evacuation and destruction was carried out under difficulties, owing to the gross state of disorder and indiscipline into which the army was falling. The news that they were to retreat once more without fighting had exasperated the men to the last degree. Thousands of them got loose in the streets, breaking into houses, maltreating the inhabitants, and pillaging the stores, which were to be abandoned, for their private profit. The rum was naturally a great attraction, and many stragglers were left behind dead drunk, to be beaten out of the place by the cavalry when they left it on the night of the thirty-first. La Romana had to make formal complaint to Moore of the misbehaviour of the troops, who had even tried to steal his artillery mules and insulted his officers. There can be no doubt that if the rank and file had been kept in hand many valuable stores could have been distributed instead of destroyed, and the straggling which was to prove so fatal might have been nipped in the bud. But the officers were as discontented as the men, and in many regiments seem to have made little or no effort to keep things together. Already several battalions were beginning to march with an advanced guard of marauders and a rearguard of limping stragglers, the sure signs of impending trouble.
By the thirty-first, however, Astorga was clear of British and Spanish troops. Moore marched by the new high-road, the route of Manzanal: La Romana took the shorter but more rugged defile of Foncebadon. But he sent his guns along with the British, in order to spare the beasts the steeper ascents of the old chaussée. The terrible rain of the last week was just passing into snow as the two columns, every man desperately out of heart, began their long uphill climb across the ridge of the Monte Teleno, towards the uplands of the Vierzo.
NOTE
This account of the retreat from Sahagun is constructed from a careful comparison of the official documents with the memoirs and monographs of the following British eye-witnesses:—Robert Blakeney (of the 28th), Rifleman Harris and Sergeant Surtees (of the 2/95th), Lord Londonderry, and Lord Vivian of the Cavalry Brigade, Leith Hay (Aide-de-Camp to General Leith), Charles and William Napier, T.S. of the 71st, Steevens of the 20th, the Surgeon Adam Neale, and the Chaplain Ormsby. Bradford, another chaplain, has left a series of admirable water-colour drawings of the chief points on the road as far as Lugo, made under such difficulties as can be well imagined. Of French eye-witnesses I have used the accounts of St. Chamans, Fantin des Odoards, Naylies, De Gonneville, Lejeune, and the detestably inaccurate Le Noble.
SOULT’S PURSUIT OF MOORE: ASTORGA TO CORUNNA
When he found that Moore had escaped from him, Napoleon slackened down from the high speed with which he had been moving for the last ten days. He stayed at Benavente for two nights, occupying himself with desk-work of all kinds, and abandoning the pursuit of the British to Bessières and Soult. The great coup had failed: instead of capturing the expeditionary force he could but harass it on its way to the sea. Such a task was beneath his own dignity: it would compromise the imperial reputation for infallibility, if a campaign that had opened with blows like Espinosa, Tudela, and the capture of Madrid ended in a long and ineffectual stern-chase. If Bonaparte had continued the hunt himself, with the mere result of arriving in time to see Moore embark and depart, he would have felt that his prestige had been lowered. He tacitly confessed as much himself long years after, when, in one of his lucubrations at St. Helena, he remarked that he would have conducted the pursuit in person, if he had but known that contrary winds had prevented the fleet of British transports from reaching Corunna. But of this he was unaware at the time; and since he calculated that Moore could be harassed perhaps, but not destroyed or captured, he resolved to halt and turn back. Soult should have the duty of escorting the British to the sea: they were to be pressed vigorously and, with luck, the Emperor trusted that half of them might never see England again. But no complete success could be expected, and he did not wish to appear personally in any enterprise that was but partially successful.
Other reasons were assigned both by Napoleon himself and by his admirers for his abandonment of the pursuit of Moore. He stated that Galicia was too much in a corner of the world for him to adventure himself in its mountains—he would be twenty days journey from Paris and the heart of affairs. If Austria began to move again in the spring, there would be an intolerable delay before he could receive news or transmit orders. He wished to take in hand the reorganization of his armies in Italy, on the Rhine, and beyond the Adriatic. All this was plausible enough, but the real reason of his return was that he would not be present at a fiasco or a half-success. It would seem, however, that there may have been another operating cause, which the Emperor never chose to mention; the evidence for it has only cropped up of late years. It appears that he was somewhat disquieted by secret intelligence from Paris, as to obscure intrigues among his own ministers and courtiers. The Spanish War had given new occasions to the malcontents who were always criticizing the Empire. Not much could be learnt by the French public about the affair of Bayonne, but all that had got abroad was well calculated to disgust even loyal supporters of the Empire. The talk of the salons, which Napoleon always affected to despise, but which he never disregarded, was more bitter than ever. It is quite possible that some hint of the conspiracy of the ‘Philadelphes,’ which four months later showed its hand in the mysterious affair of D’Argenteau, may have reached him. But it is certain that he had disquieting reports concerning the intrigues of Fouché and Talleyrand. Both of those veteran plotters were at this moment in more or less marked disgrace. For once in a way, therefore, they were acting in concert. They were relieving their injured feelings by making secret overtures in all directions, in search of allies against their master. Incredible as it may appear, they had found a ready hearer in Murat, who was much disgusted with his brother-in-law for throwing upon him the blame for the disasters of the first Spanish campaign. Other notable personages were being drawn into the cave of malcontents, and discourses of more than doubtful loyalty were being delivered. Like many other cabals of the period, this one was destined to shrink into nothingness at the reappearance of the master at Paris. But while he was away his agents were troubled and terrified: they seem to have sent him alarming hints, which had far more to do with his return to France than any fear as to the intentions of Austria.
An oft-repeated story says that the Emperor received a packet of letters from Paris while riding from Benavente to Astorga on January 1, 1809, and, after reading them by the wayside with every sign of anger, declared that he must return to France. If the tale be true, we may be sure that the papers which so moved his wrath had no reference to armaments on the Danube, but were concerned with the intrigues in Paris. There was absolutely nothing in the state of European affairs to make an instant departure from Spain necessary. On the other hand, rumours of domestic plots always touched the Emperor to the quick, and it must have been as irritating as it was unexpected to discover that his own sister and brother-in-law were dabbling in such intrigues, even though ostensibly they were but discussing what should be done if something should happen in Spain to their august relative.
Already ere leaving Benavente the Emperor had issued orders which showed that he had abandoned his hope of surrounding and crushing Moore. He had begun to send off, to the right and to the left, part of the great mass of troops which he had brought with him. On December 31 he wrote to Dessolles, and ordered him to give his division a short rest at Villacastin, and then to return to Madrid, where the garrison was too weak. On January 1, the whole of the Imperial Guard was directed to halt and return to Benavente, from whence it was soon after told to march back to Valladolid. Lapisse’s division of Victor’s corps, which had got no further than Benavente in its advance, was turned off to subdue the southern parts of the kingdom of Leon. To the same end were diverted D’Avenay’s and Maupetit’s brigades of cavalry. Quite contrary to Moore’s expectations and prophecies, the people of this part of Spain displayed a frantic patriotism, when once the enemy was upon them. Toro, an open town, had to be stormed: Zamora made a still better resistance, repulsed a first attack, and had to be breached and assaulted by a brigade of Lapisse’s division. The villagers of Penilla distinguished themselves by falling upon and capturing a battery of the Imperial Guard, which was passing by with an insufficient escort. Of course the guns were recovered, and the place burnt, within a few days of the exploit.
Having sent off the Guards, Lapisse, Dessolles, and Maupetit’s and D’Avenay’s cavalry, the Emperor had still a large force left in hand for the pursuit of Moore. There remained Soult’s and Ney’s corps, the horsemen of Lahoussaye, Lorges, and Franceschi, and the greater part of Junot’s 8th Corps. The Emperor had resolved to break up this last-named unit: it contained many third-battalions belonging to regiments which were already in Spain: they were directed to rejoin their respective head quarters. When this was done, there remained only enough to make up two rather weak divisions of 5,000 men each. These were given to Delaborde and Heudelet, and incorporated with Soult’s 2nd Corps. Loison’s division, the third of the original 8th Corps, was suppressed. Junot himself was sent off to take a command under Lannes at the siege of Saragossa. When joined by Delaborde and Heudelet, Soult had a corps of exceptional strength—five divisions and nearly 30,000 bayonets. He could not use for the pursuit of Moore Bonnet’s division, which had been left to garrison Santander. But with the remainder, 25,000 strong, he pressed forward from Astorga in pursuance of his master’s orders. His cavalry force was very large in proportion: it consisted of 6,000 sabres, for not only were three complete divisions of dragoons with him, but Ney’s corps-cavalry (the brigade of Colbert) was up at the front and leading the pursuit. Ney himself, with his two infantry divisions, those of Maurice Mathieu and Marchand, was a march or two to the rear, some 16,000 bayonets strong. If Soult should suffer any check, he was sure of prompt support within three days. Thus the whole force sent in chase of Moore mustered some 47,000 men.
The head of the pursuing column was formed by Lahoussaye’s dragoons and Colbert’s light cavalry: in support of these, but always some miles to the rear, came Merle’s infantry. This formed the French van: the rest of Soult’s troops were a march behind, with Heudelet’s division for rearguard. All the 2nd Corps followed the English on the Manzanal road: only Franceschi’s four regiments of cavalry turned aside, to follow the rugged pass of Foncebadon, by which La Romana’s dilapidated host had retired. The exhausted Spaniards were making but slow progress through the snow and the mountain torrents. Franceschi caught them up on January 2, and scattered their rearguard under General Rengel, taking a couple of flags and some 1,500 men: the prisoners are described as being in the last extremity of misery and fatigue, and many of them were infected with the typhus fever, which had been hanging about this unfortunate corps ever since its awful experience in the Cantabrian hills during the month of November.
Moore’s army, as we have already seen, had marched out from Astorga—the main body on December 30, the rearguard on the thirty-first. After determining that he would not defend the passes of Manzanal and Foncebadon, the general had doubted whether he should make his retreat on Corunna by the great chaussée, or on Vigo, by the minor road which goes via Orense and the valley of the Sil. It is strange that he did not see that his mind must be promptly made up, and that when once he had passed the mountains he must commit himself to one or the other route. But his dispatches to Castlereagh show that it was not till he had reached Lugo that he finally decided in favour of the main road. He must have formed the erroneous conclusion that the French would not pursue him far beyond Astorga: he thought that they would be stopped by want of provisions and by fatigue. Having formed this unsound hypothesis, he put off the final decision as to his route till he should reach Lugo. Meanwhile, to protect the side-road to Vigo he detached 3,500 of his best troops, Robert Crawfurd’s light brigade , and Alten’s brigade of the German Legion. They diverged from the main road after leaving Astorga, and marched, by Ponferrada and La Rua, on Orense. How much they suffered on the miserable bypaths of the valley of the Sil may be gathered in the interesting diaries of Surtees and Harris: but it was only with the snow and the want of food that they had to contend. They never saw a Frenchman, embarked unmolested at Vigo, and were absolutely useless to Moore during the rest of the campaign. It is impossible to understand how it came that they were sent away in this fashion, and nothing can be said in favour of the move. Unless the whole army were going by the Orense road, no one should have been sent along it: and the difficulties of the track were such that to have taken the main body over it would have been practically impossible. As it was, 3,500 fine soldiers were wasted for all fighting purposes. The duty of covering the rear of the army, which had hitherto fallen to the lot of Crawfurd, was now transferred to General Paget and the ‘Reserve Division.’ One regiment of hussars was left with them: the other four cavalry corps pushed on to the front, as there was no great opportunity for using them, now that the army had plunged into the mountains.
Colbert and Lahoussaye took some little time, after leaving Astorga, before they came upon the rear of Moore’s army. But they had no difficulty in ascertaining the route that the English had taken: the steep uphill road from Astorga into the Vierzo was strewn with wreckage of all kinds, which had been abandoned by the retreating troops. The long twelve-mile incline, deeply covered with snow, had proved fatal to a vast number of draught animals, and wagon after wagon had to be abandoned to the pursuers, for want of sufficient oxen and mules to drag them further forward. Among the derelict baggage were lying no small number of exhausted stragglers, dead or dying from cold or dysentery.
The whole morale of Moore’s army had suffered a dreadful deterioration from the moment that the order to evacuate Astorga was issued. As long as there was any prospect of fighting, the men—though surly and discontented—had stuck to their colours. Some regiments had begun to maraud, but the majority were still in good order. But from Astorga onward the discipline of the greater part of the corps began to relax. There were about a dozen regiments which behaved thoroughly well, and came through the retreat with insignificant losses: on the other hand there were many others which left from thirty to forty per cent. of their men behind them. It cannot be disguised that the enormous difference between the proportion of ‘missing’ in battalions of the same brigade, which went through exactly identical experiences, was simply due to the varying degrees of zeal and energy with which the officers kept their men together. Where there was a strong controlling will the stragglers were few, and no one fell behind save those who were absolutely dying. The iron hand of Robert Crawfurd brought the 43rd and 95th through their troubles with a loss of eighty or ninety men each. The splendid discipline of the Guards brigade carried them to Corunna with even smaller proportional losses. There is no mistaking the coincidence when we find that the battalion which Moore denounced at Salamanca as being the worst commanded and the worst disciplined in his force, was also the one which left a higher percentage of stragglers behind than any other corps. The fact was that the toils of the retreat tried the machinery of the regiments to the utmost, and that where the management was weak or incompetent discipline broke down. It was not the troops who had the longest marches or the most fighting that suffered the heaviest losses: those of Paget’s division, the rearguard of the whole army, which was constantly in touch with the French advance, compare favourably with those of some corps which never fired a shot between Benavente and Corunna. It is sad to have to confess that half the horrors of the retreat were due to purely preventible causes, and that if the badly-managed regiments had been up to the disciplinary standard of the Guards or the Light Brigade, the whole march would have been remembered as toilsome but not disastrous. Moore himself wrote, in the last dispatch to which he ever set his hand, that ‘he would not have believed, had he not witnessed it, that a British army would in so short a time have been so completely demoralized. Its conduct during the late marches was infamous beyond belief. He could say nothing in its favour but that when there was a prospect of fighting the men were at once steady, and seemed pleased and determined to do their duty.’ This denunciation was far too sweeping, for many corps kept good order throughout the whole campaign: but there was only too much to justify Moore’s anger.
The serious trouble began at Bembibre, the first place beyond the pass of Manzanal, where Hope’s, Baird’s, and Fraser’s divisions had encamped on the night of the thirty-first. The village was unfortunately a large local dép?t for wine: slinking off from their companies, many hundreds of marauders made their way into the vaults and cellars. When the divisions marched next morning they left nearly a thousand men, in various stages of intoxication, lying about the houses and streets. The officers of Paget’s Reserve, who came up that afternoon, describe Bembibre as looking like a battle-field, so thickly were the prostrate redcoats strewn in every corner. Vigorous endeavours were made to rouse these bad soldiers, and to start them upon their way; but even next morning there were multitudes who could not or would not march. When the Reserve evacuated the place on January 2, it was still full of torpid stragglers. Suddenly there appeared on the scene the leading brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons, pushing down from the pass of Manzanal, and driving before them the last hussar picket which Paget had left behind. The noise of the horsemen roused the lingerers, who began at last to stagger away, but it was too late: ‘the cavalry rode through the long line of these lame defenceless wretches, slashing among them as a schoolboy does among thistles.’ Most of the stragglers, it is said, were still so insensible from liquor that they made no resistance, and did not even get out of the road. A few, with dreadful cuts about their heads and shoulders, succeeded in overtaking the Reserve. Moore had the poor bleeding wretches paraded along the front of the regiments, as a warning to drunkards and malingerers.
Meanwhile Baird and Hope’s divisions had reached Villafranca on the first, and scenes almost as disgraceful as those of Bembibre were occurring. The town was Moore’s most important dép?t: it contained fourteen days’ rations of biscuit for the whole army, an immense amount of salt-beef and pork, and some hundreds of barrels of rum. There was no transport to carry off all this valuable provender, and Moore ordered it to be given to the flames. Hearing of this the troops broke into the magazines, and began to load themselves with all and more than they could carry, arguing, not unnaturally, that so much good food should not be burnt. Moore ordered one man—who was caught breaking into the rum store—to be shot in the square. But it was no use; the soldiers burst loose, though many of their officers cut and slashed at them to keep them in the ranks, and snatched all that they could from the fires. Some forced open private houses and plundered, and in a few cases maltreated, or even murdered, the townsfolk who would not give them drink. A great many got at the rum, and were left behind when the divisions marched on January 3.
While these orgies were going on at Villafranca, Paget and the Reserve had been halted six miles away, at Cacabellos, where the high-road passes over the little river Cua. There was here a position in which a whole army could stand at bay, and Moore’s engineers had pointed it out to him as the post between Astorga and Lugo where there was the most favourable fighting-ground. It is certain that if he had chosen to offer battle to Soult on this front, the Marshal would have been checked for many days—he could not have got forward without calling up Ney from Astorga, and there is no good road by which the British could have been outflanked. But Moore had no intention of making a serious defence: he was fighting a rearguard action merely to allow time for the stores at Villafranca to be destroyed.
The forces which were halted at Cacabellos consisted of the five battalions of the Reserve (under Paget), the 15th Hussars, and a horse-artillery battery. A squadron of the cavalry and half of the 95th Rifles were left beyond the river, in observation along the road towards Bembibre: the guns were placed on the western side of the Cua, commanding the road up from the bridge. The 28th formed their escort, while the other three battalions of the division were hidden behind a line of vineyards and stone walls parallel with the winding stream.
About one o’clock in the afternoon the French appeared, pushing cautiously forward from Bembibre with Colbert’s cavalry brigade of Ney’s corps now at their head, while Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons was in support. The infantry were not yet in sight. Colbert, a young and very dashing officer, currently reputed to be the most handsome man in the whole French army, was burning to distinguish himself. He had never before met the British, and had formed a poor opinion of them from the numerous stragglers and drunkards whom he had seen upon the road. He thought that the rearguard might be pushed, and the defile forced with little loss. Accordingly he rode forward at the head of his two regiments, and fell upon the squadron of the 15th Hussars which was observing him. They had to fly in hot haste, and, coming in suddenly to the bridge, rode into and over the last two companies of the 95th Rifles, who had not yet crossed the stream. Colbert, sweeping down close to their heels, came upon the disordered infantry and took some forty or fifty prisoners before the riflemen could escape across the water. But, seeing the 28th and the guns holding the slope above, he halted for a moment before attempting to proceed further.
Judging however, from a hasty survey, that there were no very great numbers opposed to him, the young French general resolved to attempt to carry the bridge of Cacabellos by a furious charge, just as Franceschi had forced that of Mansilla five days before. This was a most hazardous and ill-advised move: it could only succeed against demoralized troops, and was bound to fail when tried against the steady battalions of the Reserve division. But ranging his leading regiment four abreast, Colbert charged for the bridge: the six guns opposite him tore the head of the column to pieces, but the majority of the troopers got across and tried to dash uphill and capture the position. They had fallen into a dreadful trap, for the 28th blocked the road just beyond the bridge, while the 95th and 52nd poured in a hot flanking fire from behind the vineyard walls on either side. There was no getting forward: Colbert himself was shot as he tried to urge on his men, and his aide-de-camp Latour-Maubourg fell at his side. After staying for no more than a few minutes on the further side of the water, the brigade turned rein and plunged back across the bridge, leaving many scores of dead and wounded behind them.
Lahoussaye’s dragoons now came to the front: several squadrons of them forded the river at different points, but, unable to charge among the rocks and vines, they were forced to dismount and to act as skirmishers, a capacity in which they competed to no great advantage against the 52nd, with whom they found themselves engaged. It was not till the leading infantry of Merle’s division came up, not long before dusk, that the French were enabled to make any head against the defenders. Their voltigeurs bickered with the 95th and 52nd for an hour, but when the formed columns tried to cross the bridge, they were so raked by the six guns opposite them that they gave back in disorder. After dark the firing ceased, and Moore, who had come up in person from Villafranca at the sound of the cannon, had no difficulty in withdrawing his men under cover of the night. In this sharp skirmish each side lost some 200 men: the French casualties were mainly in Colbert’s cavalry, the British were distributed unequally between the 95th (who suffered most), the 28th, and 52nd: the other two regiments present (the 20th and 91st) were hardly engaged.
Marching all through the night of 3rd-4th of January the Reserve division passed through Villafranca, where stores of all kinds were still blazing in huge bonfires, and did not halt till they reached Nogales, eighteen miles further on. They found the road before them strewn with one continuous line of wreckage from the regiments of the main body. The country beyond Villafranca was far more bare and desolate than the eastern half of the Vierzo: discipline grew worse each day, and the surviving animals of the baggage-train were dying off wholesale from cold and want of forage. The cavalry horses were also beginning to perish very fast, mainly from losing their shoes on the rough and stony road. As soon as a horse was unable to keep up with the regiment, he was (by Lord Paget’s orders) shot by his rider, in order to prevent him from falling into the hands of the French. Many witnesses of the retreat state that the incessant cracking of the hussars’ pistols, as the unfortunate chargers were shot, was the thing that lingered longest in their memories of all the sounds of these unhappy days.
Beyond Villafranca the Corunna road passes through the picturesque defile of Piedrafita, by which it reaches the head waters of the Nava river, and then climbing the spurs of Monte Cebrero comes out into the bleak upland plain of Lugo. This fifty miles contained the most difficult and desolate country in the whole of Moore’s march, and was the scene of more helpless and undeserved misery than any other section of the retreat. It was not merely drunkards and marauders who now began to fall to the rear, but steady old soldiers who could not face the cold, the semi-starvation, and the forced marches. Moore hurried his troops forward at a pace that, over such roads, could only be kept up by the strongest men. On January 5 he compelled the whole army to execute a forced march of no less than thirty-six continuous hours, which was almost as deadly as a battle. This haste seems all the less justifiable because the district abounded with positions at which the enemy could be held back for many hours, whenever the rearguard was told to stand at bay. At Nogales and Constantino, where opposition was offered, the French were easily checked, and there were many other points where similar stands could have been made. It would seem that Moore, shocked at the state of indiscipline into which his regiments were falling, thought only of getting to the sea as quickly as possible. Certainly, the pursuit was not so vigorous as to make such frantic haste necessary. Whenever the Reserve division halted and offered battle, the French dragoons held off, and waited, often for many hours, for their infantry to come up.
‘All that had hitherto been suffered by our troops was but a prelude to this time of horrors,’ wrote one British eye-witness. ‘It had still been attempted to carry forward our sick and wounded: here (on Monte Cebrero) the beasts which dragged them failed, and they were left in their wagons, to perish among the snow. As we looked round on gaining the highest point of these slippery precipices, and observed the rear of the army winding along the narrow road, we could see the whole track marked out by our own wretched people, who lay expiring from fatigue and the severity of the cold—while their uniforms reddened in spots the white surface of the ground. Our men had now become quite mad with despair: excessive fatigue and the consciousness of disgrace, in thus flying before an enemy whom they despised, excited in them a spirit which was quite mutinous. A few hours’ pause was all they asked, an opportunity of confronting the foe, and the certainty of making the pursuers atone for all the miseries that they had suffered. Not allowed to fight, they cast themselves down to perish by the wayside, giving utterance to feelings of shame, anger, and grief. But too frequently their dying groans were mingled with imprecations upon the General, who chose rather to let them die like beasts than to take their chance on the field of battle. That no degree of horror might be wanting, this unfortunate army was accompanied by many women and children, of whom some were frozen to death on the abandoned baggage-wagons, some died of fatigue and cold, while their infants were seen vainly sucking at their clay-cold breasts.’ It is shocking to have to add that the miserable survivors of these poor women of the camp were abominably maltreated by the French.
Not only was the greater part of the baggage-train of the army lost between Villafranca and Lugo, but other things of more importance. A battery of Spanish guns was left behind on the crest of Monte Oribio for want of draught animals, and the military chest of the army was abandoned between Nogales and Cerezal. It contained about ￡25,000 in dollars, and was drawn in two ox-wagons, which gradually fell behind the main body as the beasts wore out. General Paget refused to fight a rearguard action to cover its slow progress, and ordered the 28th Regiment to hurl the small kegs containing the money over a precipice. The silver shower lay scattered among the rocks at the bottom: part was gathered up by Lahoussaye’s dragoons, but the bulk fell next spring, when the snow melted, into the hands of the local peasantry .
On the further side of the mountains, between Cerezal and Constantino, the army was astounded to meet a long train of fifty bullock-carts moving southward. It contained clothing and stores for La Romana’s army, which the Junta of Galicia, with incredible carelessness, had sent forward from Lugo, though it had heard that the British were retreating. A few miles of further advance would have taken it into the hands of the French. Very naturally, the soldiery stripped the wagons and requisitioned the beasts for their own baggage. The shoes and garments were a godsend to those of the ragged battalions who could lay hands on them, and next day at Constantino many of the Reserve fought in whole- or half-Spanish uniforms.
The skirmish at Constantino, on the afternoon of January 5, was the most important engagement, save that of Cacabellos, during the whole retreat. It was a typical rearguard action to cover a bridge: the British engineers having failed in their endeavour to blow up the central arch, Paget placed his guns so as to command the passage, extended the 28th and the 95th along the nearer bank of the deep-sunk river, and held out with ease till nightfall. Lahoussaye’s dragoons refused, very wisely, to attempt the position. Merle’s infantry tried to force the passage by sending forward a regiment in dense column, which suffered heavily from the guns, was much mauled by the British light troops ranged along the water’s edge, and finally desisted from the attack, allowing Paget to withdraw unmolested after dark. The French were supposed to have lost about 300 men—a figure which was probably exaggerated: the British casualties were insignificant.
On January 6 Paget and the rearguard reached Lugo, where they found the main body of the army drawn out in battle order on a favourable position three miles outside the town. The fearful amount of straggling which had taken place during the forced marches of the fourth and fifth had induced Moore to halt on his march to the sea, in order to rest his men, restore discipline, and allow the laggards to come up. A tiresome contretemps had made him still more anxious to allow the army time to recruit itself. He had made up his mind at Herrerias (near Villafranca) that the wild idea of retiring on Vigo must be given up. The reports of the engineer officers whom he had sent to survey that port, as well as Ferrol and Corunna, were all in favour of the last-named place. Accordingly he had sent orders to the admiral at Vigo, bidding him bring the fleet of transports round to Corunna. At the same time Baird was directed to halt at Lugo, and not to take the side-road to Vigo via Compostella. Baird duly received the dispatch, and should have seen that it was sent on to his colleagues, Hope and Fraser. He gave the letter for Fraser to a private dragoon, who got drunk and lost the important document. Hence the 3rd Division started off on the Compostella road, a bad bypath, and went many miles across the snow before it was found and recalled. Baird’s negligence cost Fraser’s battalions 400 men in stragglers, and having marched and countermarched more than twenty miles, they returned to Lugo so thoroughly worn out that they could not possibly have resumed their retreat on the sixth.
Moore had found in Lugo a dép?t containing four or five days’ provisions for the whole force, as well as a welcome reinforcement—Leith’s brigade of Hope’s division, which had never marched to Astorga, and had been preceding the army by easy stages in its retreat. Including these 1,800 fresh bayonets, the army now mustered about 19,000 combatants. Since it left Benavente it had been diminished by the strength of the two Light Brigades detached to Vigo (3,500 men), by 1,000 dismounted cavalry who had been sent on to Corunna, by 500 or 600 sick too ill to be moved, who had been left in the hospitals of Astorga and Villafranca, and by about 2,000 men lost by the way between Astorga and Lugo. Moore imagined that the loss under the last-named head had been even greater: but the moment that the army halted and the news of approaching battle flew round, hundreds of stragglers and marauders flocked in to the colours, sick men pulled themselves together, and the regiments appeared far stronger than had been anticipated. The Commander-in-chief issued a scathing ‘General Order’ to the officers commanding corps with regard to this point. ‘They must be as sensible as himself of the complete disorganization of the army. If they wished to give the troops a fair chance of success, they must exert themselves to restore order and discipline. The Commander of the Forces was tired of giving orders which were never attended to: he therefore appealed to the honour and feelings of the army: if those were not sufficient to induce them to do their duty, he must despair of succeeding by any other means. He had been obliged to order military executions, but there would have been no need for them if only officers did their duty. It was chiefly from their negligence, and from the want of proper regulations in the regiments, that crimes and irregularities were committed.’
The Lugo position was very strong: on the right it touched the unfordable river Minho, on the left it rested on rocky and inaccessible hills. All along the front there was a line of low stone walls, the boundaries of fields and vineyards. Below it there was a gentle down-slope of a mile, up which the enemy would have to march in order to attack. The army and the general alike were pleased with the outlook: they hoped that Soult would fight, and knew that they could give a good account of him.
The Marshal turned out to be far too circumspect to run his head against such a formidable line. He came up on the sixth, with the dragoons of Lahoussaye and Franceschi and Merle’s infantry. On the next morning Mermet’s and Delaborde’s divisions and Lorges’s cavalry appeared. But the forced marches had tried them no less than they had tried the British. French accounts say that the three infantry divisions had only 13,000 bayonets with the eagles, instead of the 20,000 whom they should have shown, and that the cavalry instead of 6,000 sabres mustered only 4,000. Some men had fallen by the way in the snow, others were limping along the road many miles to the rear: many were marauding on the flanks, like the British who had gone before them. Heudelet’s whole division was more than two marches to the rear, at Villafranca.
On the seventh, therefore, Soult did no more than feel the British position. He had not at first been sure that Moore’s whole army was in front of him, and imagined that he might have to deal with no more than Paget’s Reserve division, with which he had bickered so much during the last four days. He was soon undeceived: when he brought forward a battery against Moore’s centre, it was immediately silenced by the fire of fifteen guns. A feint opposite the British right, near the river, was promptly opposed by the Brigade of Guards. A more serious attack by Merle’s division, on the hill to the left, was beaten back by Leith’s brigade, who drove back the 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line by a bayonet-charge downhill, and inflicted on them a loss of 300 men.
On the eighth many of Soult’s stragglers came up, but he still considered himself too weak to attack, and sent back to hurry up Heudelet’s division, and to request Ney to push forward his corps to Villafranca. He remained quiescent all day, to the great disappointment of Moore, who had issued orders to his army warning them that a battle was at hand, and bidding them not to waste their fire on the tirailleurs, but reserve it for the supporting columns. As the day wore on, without any sign of movement on the part of the French, the British commander began to grow anxious and depressed. If Soult would not move, it must mean that he had resolved to draw up heavy reinforcements from the rear. It would be mad to wait till they should come up: either the Marshal must be attacked at once, before he could be strengthened, or else the army must resume its retreat on Corunna before Soult was ready. To take the offensive Moore considered very doubtful policy—the French had about his own numbers, or perhaps even more, and they were established in a commanding position almost as strong as his own. Even if he beat them, they could fall back on Heudelet and Ney, and face him again, in or about Villafranca. To win a second battle would be hard work, and, even if all went well, the army would be so reduced in numbers that practically nothing would remain for a descent into the plains of Leon.
Accordingly Moore resolved neither to attack nor to wait to be attacked, but to resume his retreat towards the sea. It was not a very enterprising course; but it was at least a safe one; and since the troops were now somewhat rested, and (as he hoped) restored to good spirits, by seeing that the enemy dared not face them, he considered that he might withdraw without evil results. Accordingly the evening of the eighth was spent in destroying impedimenta and making preparations for retreat. Five hundred foundered cavalry and artillery horses were shot, a number of caissons knocked to pieces, and the remainder of the stores of food destroyed so far as was possible. At midnight on January 8-9 the army silently slipped out of its lines, leaving its bivouac fires burning, so as to delude the enemy with the idea that it still lay before him. Elaborate precautions had been taken to guide each division to the point from which it could fall with the greatest ease into the Corunna road. But it is not easy to evacuate by night a long position intersected with walls, enclosures, and suburban bypaths. Moreover the fates were unpropitious: drenching rain had set in, and it was impossible to see five yards in the stormy darkness. Whole regiments and brigades got astray, and of all the four divisions only Paget’s Reserve kept its bearings accurately and reached the chaussée exactly at the destined point. For miles on each side of the road stray battalions were wandering in futile circles when the day dawned. Instead of marching fifteen miles under cover of the night, many corps had got no further than four or five from their starting-point. Isolated men were scattered all over the face of the country-side, some because they had lost their regiments, others because they had deliberately sought shelter from the rain behind any convenient wall or rock.
Continuing their retreat for some hours after daybreak, the troops reached the village of Valmeda, where their absolute exhaustion made a halt necessary. The more prudent commanders made their men lie down in their ranks, in spite of the downpour, and eat as they lay. But Baird, from mistaken kindness, allowed his division to disperse and to seek shelter in the cottages and barns of neighbouring hamlets: they could not be got together again when the time to start had arrived, and Bentinck and Manningham’s brigades left an enormous proportion of their men behind. The same thing happened on a smaller scale with Hope’s and Fraser’s divisions: only Paget’s regiments brought up the rear in good order. But behind them trailed several thousand stragglers, forming a sort of irregular rearguard. There was more dispersion, disorder, and marauding in this march than in any other during the whole retreat. The plundering during this stage seems to have been particularly discreditable: the inhabitants of the villages along the high-road had for the most part gone up into the hills, in spite of the dreadful weather. The British seem to have imputed their absence to them as a crime, and to have regarded every empty house as a fair field for plunder. As a matter of fact it was not with the desire of withholding aid from their friends that the Galicians had disappeared, but from fear of the French. If they had remained behind they would have been stripped and misused by the enemy. But the unreasoning soldiery chose to regard the unfortunate peasants as hostile: they wantonly broke up doors and furniture, and stole all manner of useless household stuff. Even worse outrages occasionally happened: where the inhabitants, in outlying farms and hamlets, had remained behind, they turned them out of their houses, robbed them by force, and even shot those who resisted. In return, it was but natural that isolated marauders should be killed by the angry country-folk. But the good spirit of the Galicians was displayed in many places by the way in which they fed stragglers, and saved them from the French by showing them bypaths over the hills. No less than 500 men who had lost their way were passed on from village to village by the peasants, till they reached Portugal.
What between deliberate marauding for food or plunder, and genuine inability to keep up with the regiment on the part of weakly men, Moore’s main body accomplished the march from Lugo to Betanzos in the most disorderly style. Paget’s rearguard kept their ranks, but the troops in front were marching in a drove, without any attempt to preserve discipline. An observer counted one very distinguished regiment in Manningham’s brigade of Baird’s division, and reports that with the colours there were only nine officers, three sergeants, and three privates when they reached the gates of Betanzos.
Fortunately for Moore, the French pursued the retreating army with the greatest slackness. It was late on the morning of the ninth before Soult discovered that the British were gone: the drenching rain which had so incommoded them had at least screened their retreat. After occupying Lugo, which was full of dead horses, broken material, and spoiled provisions, the Marshal pushed on Franceschi’s cavalry in pursuit. But he had lost twelve hours, and Moore was far ahead: only stragglers were captured on the road, and the British rearguard was not sighted till the passage of the Ladra, nearly halfway from Lugo to Betanzos. This was late in the day, and Paget was not seriously molested, though the engineers who accompanied him failed to blow up the bridges over the Ladra and the Mendeo, partly because their powder had been spoilt by the rain, partly (as it would seem) from unskilful handiwork.
The fatiguing retreat was continued through part of the night of January 9-10, and on the following morning all the regiments reached Betanzos, on the sea-coast. The indefatigable Reserve division took up a position on a low range of heights outside the town, to cover the incoming of the thousands of stragglers who were still to the rear. From this vantage-ground they had the opportunity of witnessing a curious incident which few of the narrators of the retreat have failed to record. Franceschi’s cavalry had resumed the pursuit, and after sweeping up some hundreds of prisoners from isolated parties, came to the village at the foot of the hills where the stragglers had gathered most thickly. At the noise of their approach, a good number of the more able-bodied men ran together, hastily formed up in a solid mass across the road, and beat off the French horsemen by a rolling fire. This had been done more by instinct than by design: but a sergeant of the 43rd, who assumed command over the assembly, skilfully brought order out of the danger. He divided the men into two parties, which retired alternately down the road, the one facing the French while the other pushed on. The chasseurs charged them several times, but could never break in, and the whole body escaped to the English lines. They had covered the retreat of many other stragglers, who ran in from all sides while the combat was going on. Yet in spite of this irregular exploit, the army lost many men: on this day and the preceding ninth, more than 1000 were left behind—some had died of cold and fatigue, some had been cut down by the French. But the majority had been captured as they straggled along, too dazed and worn out even to leave the road and take to the hillside when the cavalry got among them.
Soult had as yet no infantry to the front, and Moore remained for a day at Betanzos, observed by Franceschi’s and Lahoussaye’s cavalry, which dared not molest him. On January 11 he resumed his march to Corunna, with his army in a far better condition than might have been expected. The weather had turned mild and dry, and the climate of the coastland was a pleasant change from that of the mountains. The men had been well fed at Betanzos with food sent on from Corunna, and, marching along the friendly sea with their goal in sight, recovered themselves in a surprising manner. Their general was not so cheerful: he had heard that the fleet from Vigo had failed to double Cape Finisterre, and was still beating about in the Atlantic. He had hoped to find it already in harbour, and was much concerned to think that he might have to stand at bay for some days in order to allow it time to arrive.
At Betanzos more sacrifices of war-material were made by the retiring army. Moore found there a large quantity of stores intended for La Romana, and had to spike and throw into the river five guns and some thousands of muskets. A considerable amount of food was imperfectly destroyed, but enough remained to give a welcome supply to the famishing French. It had been intended to blow up Betanzos bridge, but the mines were only partially successful, and the 28th Regiment from Paget’s Reserve division had to stay behind and to guard the half-ruined structure against Franceschi’s cavalry, till the main body had nearly reached Corunna, and the French infantry had begun to appear.
On the night of the eleventh, the divisions of Hope, Baird, and Fraser reached Corunna, while that of Paget halted at El Burgo, four miles outside the town, where the chaussée crosses the tidal river Mero. Here the bridge was successfully blown up: it was only the second operation of the kind which had been carried out with efficiency during the whole retreat. Another bridge at Cambria, a few miles further up the stream, was also destroyed. Thus the French were for the moment brought to a stand. On the twelfth their leading infantry column came up, and bickered with Paget’s troops, across the impassable water, for the whole day. But it was not till the thirteenth that Franceschi discovered a third passage at Celas, seven miles inland, across which he conducted his division. Moore then ordered the Reserve to draw back to the heights in front of Corunna. The French instantly came down to the river, and began to reconstruct the broken bridge. On the night of the thirteenth infantry could cross: on the fourteenth the artillery also began to pass over. But Soult advanced with great caution: here, as at Lugo, he was dismayed to see how much the fatigues of the march had diminished his army: Delaborde’s division was not yet up: those of Merle and Mermet were so thinned by straggling that the Marshal resolved not to put his fortune to the test till the ranks were again full.
This delay gave the British general ample time to arrange for his departure. On the thirteenth, he blew up the great stores of powder which the Junta of Galicia had left stowed away in a magazine three miles outside the town. The quantity was not much less than 4,000 barrels, and the explosion was so powerful that wellnigh every window in Corunna was shattered.
On the afternoon of the fourteenth the long-expected transports at last ran into the harbour, and Moore began to get on board his sick and wounded, his cavalry, and his guns. The horses were in such a deplorable state that very few of them were worth reshipping: only about 250 cavalry chargers and 700 artillery draught-cattle were considered too good to be left behind. The remainder of the poor beasts, more than 2,000 in number, were shot or stabbed and flung into the sea. Only enough were left to draw nine guns, which the general intended to use if he was forced to give battle before the embarkation was finished. The rest of the cannon, over fifty in number, were safely got on board the fleet. The personnel of the cavalry and artillery went on shipboard very little reduced by their casualties in the retreat. The former was only short of 200 men, the latter of 250: they had come off so easily because they had been sent to the rear since Cacabellos, and had retreated to Corunna without any check or molestation. Along with the hussars and the gunners some 2,500 or 3,000 invalids were sent on board. A few hundred more, too sick to face a voyage, were left behind in the hospitals of Corunna. Something like 5,000 men had perished or been taken during the retreat; 3,500 had embarked at Vigo, so that about 15,000 men, all infantry save some 200 gunners, remained behind to oppose Soult. Considering all that they had gone through, they were now in very good trim: all the sick and weakly men had been sent off, those who remained in the ranks were all war-hardened veterans. Before the battle they had enjoyed four days of rest and good feeding in Corunna. Moreover, they had repaired their armament: there were in the arsenal many thousand stand of arms, newly arrived from England for the use of the Galician army. Moore made his men change their rusty and battered muskets for new ones, before ordering the store to be destroyed. He also distributed new cartridges, from an enormous stock found in the place. The town was, in fact, crammed with munitions of all sorts. Seeing that there would be no time to re-embark them, Moore utilized what he could, and destroyed the rest.
THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA
When Sir John Moore found that the transports were not ready on the twelfth, he had recognized that he might very probably have to fight a defensive action in order to cover his retreat, for two days would allow Soult to bring up his main-body. He refused to listen to the timid proposal of certain of his officers that he should negotiate for a quiet embarkation, in return for giving up Corunna and its fortifications unharmed. This would have been indeed a tame line of conduct for a general and an army which had never been beaten in the field. Instead he sought for a good position in which to hold back the enemy till all his impedimenta were on shipboard. There were no less than three lines of heights on which the army might range itself to resist an enemy who had crossed the Mero. But the first two ranges, the Monte Loureiro just above the river, and the plateaux of Palavea and Pe?asquedo two miles further north, were too extensive to be held by an army of 15,000 men. Moore accordingly chose as his fighting-ground the Monte Moro, a shorter and lower ridge, only two miles outside the walls of Corunna. It is an excellent position, about 2,500 yards long, but has two defects: its western and lower end is commanded at long cannon-range by the heights of Pe?asquedo. Moreover, beyond this extreme point of the hill, there is open ground extending as far as the gates of Corunna, by which the whole position can be turned. Fully aware of this fact, Moore told off more than a third of his army to serve as a flank-guard on this wing, and to prevent the enemy from pushing in between the Monte Moro and the narrow neck of the peninsula on which Corunna stands.
Soult, even after he had passed the Mero and repaired the bridges, was very circumspect in his advances. He had too much respect for the fighting power of the English army to attack before he had rallied his whole force. When Delaborde’s division and a multitude of stragglers had joined him on the fifteenth, he at last moved forward and seized the heights of Palavea and Pe?asquedo, overlooking the British position. There was some slight skirmishing with the outposts which had been left on these positions, and when the French brought down two guns to the lower slopes by Palavea, and began to cannonade the opposite hill, Colonel McKenzie, of the 5th Regiment, made an attempt to drive them off, which failed with loss, and cost him his life.
Map of battle of Corunna
Enlarge Battle of Corunna. January 16, 1809.
As the French pressed westward along these commanding heights, Moore saw that he might very possibly be attacked on the following day, and brought up his troops to their fighting-ground, though he was still not certain that Soult would risk a battle. The divisions of Hope and Baird were ranged along the upper slopes of the Monte Moro: the ten battalions of the former on the eastern half of the ridge, nearest the river, the eight battalions of the latter on its western half, more towards the inland. Each division had two brigades in the first line and a third in reserve. Counting from left to right, the brigades were those of Hill and Leith from Hope’s division, and Manningham and Bentinck from Baird’s. Behind the crest Catlin Crawfurd supported the two former, and Warde’s battalions of Guards the two latter. Down in the hollow behind the Monte Moro lay Paget’s division, close to the village of Eiris. He was invisible to the French, but so placed that he could immediately move out to cover the right wing if the enemy attempted a turning movement. Lastly, Fraser’s division lay under cover in Corunna, ready to march forth to support Paget the moment that fighting should begin. Six of the nine guns (small six-pounders), which Moore had left on shore, were distributed in pairs along the front of Monte Moro: the other three were with Paget’s reserve.
After surveying the British position from the Pe?asquedo heights, Soult had resolved to attempt the man?uvre which Moore had thought most probable—to assault the western end of the line, where the heights are least formidable, and at the same moment to turn the Monte Moro by a movement round its extreme right through the open ground. Nor had it escaped him that the ground occupied by Baird’s division was within cannon-shot of the opposite range. He ordered ten guns to be dragged up to the westernmost crest of the French position, and to be placed above the village of Elvina, facing Bentinck’s brigade. The rest of his artillery was distributed along the front of the Pe?asquedo and Palavea heights, in situations that were less favourable, because they were more remote from the British lines. The hills were steep, no road ran along their summit, and the guns had to be dragged by hand to the places which they were intended to occupy. It was only under cover of the night that those opposite Elvina were finally got to their destination.
Soult’s force was now considerably superior to that which was opposed to him, sufficiently so in his own estimation to compensate for the strength of the defensive positions which he would have to assail. He had three infantry divisions with thirty-nine battalions (Heudelet was still far to the rear), and twelve regiments of cavalry, with about forty guns. The whole, even allowing for stragglers still trailing in the rear, and for men who had perished in the snows of the mountains, must have been over 20,000 strong. The cavalry had 4,500 sabres, and the infantry battalions must still have averaged over 500 men, for in November they had nearly all been up to 700 bayonets, and even the toilsome march in pursuit of Moore cannot have destroyed so much as a third of their numbers: only Merle’s division had done any fighting. It is absurd of some of the French narrators of the battle to pretend that Soult had only 13,000 infantry—a figure which would only give 330 bayonets to each battalion.
Soult’s plan was to contain the British left and centre with two of his divisions—those of Delaborde and Merle—while Mermet and the bulk of the cavalry should attack Moore’s right, seize the western end of Monte Moro, and push in between Baird’s flank and Corunna. If this movement succeeded, the British retreat would be compromised: Delaborde and Merle could then assail Hope and prevent him from going to the rear: if all went right, two-thirds of the British army must be surrounded and captured.
The movement of masses of infantry, and still more of cavalry and guns, along the rugged crest and slopes of the Pe?asquedo heights, was attended with so much difficulty, that noon was long passed before the whole army was in position. It was indeed so late in the day, that Sir John Moore had come to the conclusion that Soult did not intend to attack, and had ordered Paget’s division, who were to be the first troops to embark, to march down to the harbour. The other corps were to retire at dusk, and go on shipboard under cover of the night.
But between 1.30 and 2 o’clock the French suddenly took the offensive: the battery opposite Elvina began to play upon Baird’s division, columns descending from each side of it commenced to pour down into the valley, and the eight cavalry regiments of Lahoussaye and Franceschi, pushing out from behind the Pe?asquedo heights, rode northward along the lower slopes of the hills of San Cristobal, with the obvious design of cutting in between the Monte Moro and Corunna.
Moore welcomed the approach of battle with joy: he had every confidence in his men and his position, and saw that a victory won ere his departure would silence the greater part of the inevitable criticism for timidity and want of enterprise, to which he would be exposed on his return to England. He rode up to the crest of his position, behind Baird’s division, took in the situation of affairs at a glance, and sent back orders to Paget to pay attention to the French turning movement, and to Fraser to come out from Corunna and contain any advance on the part of the enemy’s cavalry on the extreme right.
For some time the English left and centre were scarcely engaged, for Merle and Delaborde did no more than push tirailleurs out in front of their line, to bicker with the skirmishers of Hill, Leith, and Manningham. But Bentinck’s brigade was at once seriously assailed: not only were its lines swept by the balls of Soult’s main battery, but a heavy infantry attack was in progress. Gaulois and Jardon’s brigades of Mermet’s division were coming forward in great strength: they turned out of the village of Elvina the light company of the 50th, which had been detached to hold that advanced position, and then came up the slope of Monte Moro, with a dense crowd of tirailleurs covering the advance of eight battalion columns. Meanwhile the third brigade of Mermet’s division was hurrying past the flank of Bentinck’s line, in the lower ground, with the obvious intention of turning the British flank. Beyond them Lahoussaye’s dragoons were cautiously feeling their way forward, much incommoded by walls and broken ground.
All the stress of the first fighting fell on the three battalions of Bentinck, on the hill above Elvina. Moore was there in person to direct the fight: Baird, on whom the responsibility for this part of the ground would naturally have fallen, was wounded early in the day, by a cannon-ball which shattered his left arm, and was borne to the rear. When the French came near the top of the slope, driving in before them the British skirmishing line, the Commander-in-chief ordered the 42nd and 50th to charge down upon them. The 4th, the flank regiment of the whole line, could not follow them: it was threatened by the encircling movement of the French left, and Moore bade it throw back its right wing so as to form an angle en potence with the rest of the brigade, while still keeping up its fire. The man?uvre was executed with such precision as to win his outspoken approval—‘That is exactly how it should be done,’ he shouted to Colonel Wynch, and then rode off to attend to the 50th and 42nd, further to his left.
Here a very heavy combat was raging. Advancing to meet the French attack, these two battalions drove in the tirailleurs with the crushing fire of their two-deep line, and then became engaged with the supporting columns on the slopes above Elvina. For some time the battle stood still, but Moore told the regiments that they must advance to make their fire tell, and at last Colonel Sterling and Major Charles Napier led their men over the line of stone walls behind which they were standing, and pressed forward. The head of the French formation melted away before their volleys, and the enemy rolled back into Elvina. The 42nd halted just above the village, but Napier led the 50th in among the houses, and cleared out the defenders after a sharp fight. He even passed through with part of his men, and became engaged with the French supports on the further side of the place. Presently Mermet sent down his reserves and drove out the 50th, who suffered very heavily: Charles Napier was wounded and taken, and Stanhope the junior major was killed. While the 50th was reforming, Moore brought up the divisional reserve, Warde’s two magnificent battalions of Guards, each of which, in consequence of their splendid discipline during the retreat, mustered over 800 bayonets. With these and the 42nd he held the slope above Elvina in face of a very hot fire, not only from the enemy’s infantry but from the battery on the opposite heights, which swept the ground with a lateral and almost an enfilading fire. It was while directing one of the Guards’ battalions to go forward and storm a large house on the flank of the village that Moore received a mortal wound. A cannon-ball struck him on the left shoulder, carrying it away with part of the collar-bone, and leaving the arm hanging only by the flesh and muscles above the armpit. He was dashed from his horse, but immediately raised himself on his sound arm and bade his aide-de-camp Hardinge see that the 42nd should advance along with the Guards. Then he was borne to the rear, fully realizing that his wound was mortal: his consciousness never failed, in spite of the pain and the loss of blood, and he found strength to send a message to Hope to bid him take command of the army. When his bearers wished to unbuckle his sword, which was jarring his wounded arm and side, he refused to allow it, saying ‘in his usual tone and with a very distinct voice, “It is well as it is. I had rather that it should go out of the field with me.”’ He was borne back to Corunna in a blanket by six men of the Guards and 42nd. Frequently he made them turn him round to view the field of battle, and as he saw the French line of fire rolling back, he several times expressed his pleasure at dying in the moment of victory, when his much-tried army was at last faring as it deserved.
While Bentinck’s brigade and the Guards were thus engaged with Mermet’s right, a separate combat was going on more to the west, where Edward Paget and the Reserve division had marched out to resist the French turning movement. The instant that Moore’s first orders had been received, Paget had sent forward the 95th Rifles in extended order to cover the gap, half a mile in breadth, between the Monte Moro and the heights of San Cristobal. Soon afterwards he pushed up the 52nd into line with the riflemen. The other three battalions of the division moved out soon after. Paget had in front of him a brigade—five battalions—of Mermet’s division, which was trying to slip round the corner of Monte Moro in order to take Baird in the flank. He had also to guard against the charges of Lahoussaye’s cavalry more to his right, and those of Franceschi’s chasseurs still further south. Fortunately the ground was so much cut up with rough stone walls, dividing the fields of the villages of San Cristobal and Elvina, that Soult’s cavalry were unable to execute any general or vigorous advance. When the British swept across the low ground, Lahoussaye’s dragoons made two or three attempts to charge, but, forced to advance among walls and ravines, they never even compelled Paget’s battalions to form square, and were easily driven off by a rolling fire. The Reserve division steadily advanced, with the 95th and 52nd in its front, and the horsemen gave back. It was in vain that Lahoussaye dismounted the 27th Dragoons and ranged them as tirailleurs along the lower slopes of the heights of San Cristobal. The deadly fire of Paget’s infantry thinned their ranks, and forced them back. It would seem that the 95th, 28th, and 91st had mainly to do with Lahoussaye, while the 52nd and 20th became engaged with the infantry from the division of Mermet, which was bickering with the 4th Regiment below the Monte Moro, and striving to turn its flank. In both quarters the advance was completely successful, and Paget pushed forward, taking numerous prisoners from the enemy’s broken infantry. So far did he advance in his victorious onslaught that he approached from the flank the main French battery on the heights of Pe?asquedo, and thought that (if leave had been given him) he would have been able to capture it: for its infantry supports were broken, and the cavalry had gone off far to the right. But Hope sent no orders to his colleague, and the Reserve halted at dusk at the foot of the French position.
Franceschi’s horsemen meanwhile, on the extreme left of the French line, had at first pushed cautiously towards Corunna, till they saw Fraser’s division drawn up half a mile outside the gates, on the low ridge of Santa Margarita, covering the whole neck of the peninsula. This checked the cavalry, and presently, when Paget’s advance drove in Lahoussaye, Franceschi conformed to the retreat of his colleague, and drew back across the heights of San Cristobal till he had reached the left rear of Soult’s position, and halted in the upland valley somewhere near the village of Mesoiro.
We left Bentinck’s and Warde’s brigades engaged on the slopes above Elvina with Mermet’s right-hand column, at the moment of the fall of Sir John Moore. The second advance on Elvina had begun just as the British commander-in-chief fell: it was completely successful, and the village was for the second time captured. Mermet now sent down his last reserves, and Merle moved forward his left-hand brigade to attack the village on its eastern side. This led to a corresponding movement on the part of the British. Manningham’s brigade from the right-centre of the British line came down the slope, and fell upon Merle’s columns as they pressed in towards the village. This forced the French to halt, and to turn aside to defend themselves: there was a long and fierce strife, during the later hours of the afternoon, between Manningham’s two right-hand regiments (the 3/1st and 2/81st) and the 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line of Reynaud’s brigade. It was prolonged till the 2/81st had exhausted all its ammunition, and had suffered a loss of 150 men, when Hope sent down the 2/59th, the reserve regiment of Leith’s brigade, to relieve it. Soon afterwards the French retired, and the battle died away at dusk into mere distant bickering along the bottom of the valley, as a few skirmishers of the victorious brigade pursued the retreating columns to the foot of their position.
Further eastward Delaborde had done nothing more than make a feeble demonstration against Hope’s very strong position on the heights above the Mero river. He drove in Hill’s pickets, and afterwards, late in the afternoon, endeavoured to seize the village of Piedralonga, at the bottom of the valley which lay between the hostile lines. Foy, who was entrusted with this operation, took the voltigeur companies of his brigade, and drove out from the hamlet the outposts of the 14th Regiment. Thereupon Hill sent down Colonel Nicholls with three more companies of that corps, supported by two of the 92nd from Hope’s divisional reserve. They expelled the French, and broke the supports on which the voltigeurs tried to rally, taking a few prisoners including Foy’s brigade-major. Delaborde then sent down another battalion, which recovered the southern end of the village, while Nicholls held tightly to the rest of it. At dusk both parties ceased to push on, and the firing died away. The engagement at this end of the line was insignificant: Foy lost eighteen killed and fifty wounded from the 70th of the Line, and a few more from the 86th. Nicholls’s casualties were probably even smaller.
Soult had suffered such a decided reverse that he had no desire to prolong the battle, while Hope—who so unexpectedly found himself in command of the British army—showed no wish to make a counter-attack, and was quite contented to have vindicated his position. He claimed, in his dispatch, that at the end of the engagement the army was holding a more advanced line than at its commencement: and this was in part true, for Elvina was now occupied in force, and not merely by a picket, and Paget on the right had cleared the ground below the heights of San Cristobal, which Lahoussaye had been occupying during the action. Some of the French writers have claimed that Soult also had gained ground: but the only fact that can be cited in favour of their contention is that Foy was holding on to the southern end of Piedralonga. All the eye-witnesses on their side concede that at the end of the action the marshal’s army had fallen back to its original position.
English critics have occasionally suggested that the success won by Paget and Bentinck might have been pressed, and that if the division of Fraser had been brought up to their support, the French left might have been turned and crushed. But considering that Soult had fourteen or fifteen intact battalions left, in the divisions of Merle and Delaborde, it would have been well in his power to fight a successful defensive action on his heights, throwing back his left wing, so as to keep it from being encircled. Hope was right to be contented with his success: even if he had won a victory he could have done no more than re-embark, for the army was not in a condition to plunge once more into the Galician highlands in pursuit of Soult, who would have been joined in a few days by Heudelet, and in a week by Ney.
The losses suffered by the two armies at the battle of Corunna are not easy to estimate. The British regiments, embarking on the day after the fight, did not send in any returns of their casualties till they reached England. Then, most unfortunately, a majority of the colonels lumped together the losses of the retreat and those of the battle. It is lucky, however, to find that among the regiments which sent in proper returns are nearly all those which fought the brunt of the action. The 50th and 42nd of Bentinck’s brigade were by far the most heavily tried, from the prolonged and desperate fighting in and about Elvina. The former lost two officers killed and three wounded, with 180 rank and file: the Highland battalion thirty-nine rank and file killed and 111 (including six officers) wounded. The Guards’ brigade, on the other hand, which was brought up to support these regiments, suffered very little; the first battalion of the 1st Regiment had only five, the second only eight killed, with about forty wounded between them. In Manningham’s brigade the 81st, with its loss of three officers and twenty-seven men killed, and eleven officers and 112 men wounded, was by far the heaviest sufferer: the Royals may also have had a considerable casualty-list, but its figures are apparently not to be found, except confused with those of the whole retreat. Paget’s division in its flank march to ward off the French turning movement suffered surprisingly little: of its two leading regiments the 1/95th had but twelve killed and thirty-three wounded, the 1/52nd five killed and thirty-three wounded. The other three battalions, which formed the supports, must have had even fewer men disabled. Hope’s division, with the exception of the 14th and the 59th, was not seriously engaged: the few battalions which sent in their battle-losses, apart from those of the retreat, show figures such as six or ten for their casualties on January 16. Fraser’s whole division neither fired a shot nor lost a man. It is probable then that Hope, when in his dispatch he estimated the total loss of the British army at ‘something between 700 and 800,’ was overstating rather than understating the total.
Soult’s losses are even harder to discover than those of Moore’s army. His chronicler, Le Noble, says that they amounted to no more than 150 killed and 500 wounded. The ever inaccurate Thiers reduces this figure to 400 or less. On the other hand Naylies, a combatant in the battle, speaks of 800 casualties; and Marshal Jourdan, in his précis of the campaign, gives 1,000. But all these figures must be far below the truth. Fantin des Odoards has preserved the exact loss of his own corps, the 31st Léger, one of the regiments of Mermet’s division, which fought in Elvina. It amounted to no less than 330 men. The other four regiments of the division were not less deeply engaged, and it is probable that Mermet alone must have lost over 1,000 in killed and wounded. Two of his three brigadiers went down in the fight: Gaulois was shot dead, Lefebvre badly hurt. Of Merle’s division, one brigade was hotly engaged in the struggle with Manningham’s battalions, in which our 2/81st lost so heavily. The French cannot have suffered less, as they were the beaten party. Lahoussaye’s dragoons must also have sustained appreciable loss: that of Delaborde (as we have already seen) was limited to about eighteen killed and fifty wounded. Of unwounded prisoners the British took seven officers and 156 men. If we put the total of Soult’s casualties at 1,500, we probably shall not be far wrong. All the later experience of the war showed that, when French troops delivered in column an uphill attack on a British position and failed, they suffered twice or thrice the loss of the defenders: we need only mention Vimiero and Busaco. On this occasion there was the additional advantage that Moore’s army had new muskets and good ammunition, while those of Soult’s corps were much deteriorated. A loss of 1,500 men therefore seems a fair and rational estimate. The impression left by the battle on Soult’s mind was such that, in his first dispatch to the Emperor, he wrote that he could do no more against the English till he should have received large reinforcements. But two days later, when Hope had evacuated Corunna, he changed his tone and let it be understood that he had gained ground during the battle, and had so far established an advantage that his position forced the English to embark. This allegation was wholly without foundation. Hope simply carried out the arrangements which Moore had made for sending off the army to England, and his resolve was dictated by the condition of his troops, who urgently needed reorganization and repose, and not by any fear of what the Marshal could do against him.
Moore, borne back to his quarters in Corunna, survived long enough to realize that his army had completely beaten off Soult’s attack, and had secured for itself a safe departure. In spite of his dreadful wound he retained his consciousness to the last. Forgetful of his own pain, he made inquiries as to the fate of his especial friends and dependants, and found strength to dictate several messages, recommending for promotion officers who had distinguished themselves, and sending farewell greetings to his family. He repeatedly said that he was dying in the way he had always desired, on the night of a victorious battle. The only weight on his mind was the thought that public opinion at home might bear hardly upon him, in consequence of the horrors of the retreat. ‘I hope the people of England will be satisfied,’ he gasped; ‘I hope my country will do me justice.’ And then his memory wandered back to those whom he loved: he tried in vain to frame a message to his mother, but weakness and emotion overcame him, and a few minutes later he died, with the name of Pitt’s niece (Lady Hester Stanhope) on his lips. Moore had expressed a wish to be buried where he fell, and his staff carried out his desire as far as was possible, by laying him in a grave on the ramparts of Corunna. He was buried at early dawn on the seventeenth, on the central bastion that looks out towards the land-side and the battle-field. Hard by him lies General Anstruther, who had died of dysentery on the day before the fight. Soult, with a generosity that does him much credit, took care of Moore’s grave, and ordered a monument to be erected over the spot where he fell. La Romana afterwards carried out the Marshal’s pious intentions.
Little remains to be said about the embarkation of the army. At nine o’clock on the night of the battle the troops were withdrawn from the Monte Moro position, leaving only pickets along its front. Many regiments were embarked that night, more on the morning of the seventeenth. By the evening of that day all were aboard save Beresford’s brigade of Fraser’s division, which remained to cover the embarkation of the rest.
Soult, when he found that the British had withdrawn, sent up some field-pieces to the heights above Fort San Diego, on the southern end of the bay. Their fire could reach the more outlying transports, and created some confusion, as the masters hastily weighed anchor and stood out to sea. Four vessels ran on shore, and three of them could not be got off: the troops on board were hastily transferred to other ships, with no appreciable loss: from the whole army only nine men of the Royal Wagon Train are returned as having been ‘drowned in Corunna harbour,’ no doubt from the sinking of the boat which was transhipping them. General Leith records, in his diary, that on the vessel which took him home there were fragments of no less than six regiments: we can hardly doubt that this must have been one of those which picked up the men from the stranded transports.
Beresford’s brigade embarked from a safe point behind the citadel on the eighteenth, leaving the town in charge of the small Spanish garrison under General Alcedo, which maintained the works till all the fleet were far out to sea, and then rather tamely surrendered. This was entirely the doing of their commander, a shifty old man, who almost immediately after took service with King Joseph.
The returning fleet had a tempestuous but rapid passage: urged on by a raging south-wester the vessels ran home in four or five days, and made almost every harbour between Falmouth and Dover. Many transports had a dangerous passage, but only two, the Dispatch and the Smallbridge, came to grief off the Cornish coast and were lost, the former with three officers and fifty-six men of the 7th Hussars, the latter with five officers and 209 men of the King’s German Legion. So ended the famous ‘Retreat from Sahagun.’
Moore’s memory met, as he had feared, with many unjust aspersions when the results of his campaign were known in England. The aspect of the 26,000 ragged war-worn troops, who came ashore on the South Coast, was so miserable that those who saw them were shocked. The state of the mass of 3,000 invalids, racked with fever and dysentery, who were cast into the hospitals was eminently distressing. It is seldom that a nation sees its troops returning straight from the field, with the grime and sweat of battle and march fresh upon them. The impression made was a very unhappy one, and it was easy to blame the General. Public discontent was roused both against Moore and against the ministry, and some of the defenders of the latter took an ungenerous opportunity of shifting all the blame upon the man who could no longer vindicate himself. This provoked his numerous friends into asserting that his whole conduct of the campaign had been absolutely blameless, and that any misfortunes which occurred were simply and solely the fault of maladministration and unwise councils at home. Moore was the hero of the Whig party, and politics were dragged into the discussion of the campaign to a lamentable extent. Long years after his death the attitude of the critic or the historian, who dealt with the Corunna retreat, was invariably coloured by his Whig or Tory predilections.
The accepted view of the present generation is (though most men are entirely unacquainted with the fact) strongly coloured by the circumstance that William Napier, whose eloquent history has superseded all other narratives of the Peninsular War, was a violent enemy of the Tory ministry and a personal admirer of Moore. Ninety years and more have now passed since the great retreat, and we can look upon the campaign with impartial eyes. It is easy to point out mistakes made by the home government, such as the tardy dispatch of Baird’s cavalry, and the inadequate provision of money, both for the division which started from Lisbon and for that which started from Corunna. But these are not the most important causes of the misfortunes of the campaign. Nor can it be pleaded that the ministry did not support Moore loyally, or that they tied his hands by contradictory or over-explicit orders. A glance at Castlereagh’s dispatches is sufficient to show that he and his colleagues left everything that was possible to be settled by the General, and that they approved each of his determinations as it reached them without any cavilling or criticism.
Moore must take the main responsibility for all that happened. On the whole, the impression left after a study of his campaign is very favourable to him. His main conception when he marched from Salamanca—that of gaining time for the rallying of the Spanish armies, by directing a sudden raid upon the Emperor’s communications in Castile—was as sound as it was enterprising. The French critics who have charged him with rashness have never read his dispatches, nor realized the care with which he had thought out the retreat, which he knew would be inevitable when his movement became known at Madrid. He was never for a moment in any serious danger of being surrounded by the Emperor, because he was proceeding (as he himself wrote) ‘bridle in hand,’ and with a full knowledge that he must ‘have a run for it’ on the first receipt of news that Napoleon was upon the march. His plan of making a diversion was a complete success: he drew the Emperor, with the 70,000 men who would otherwise have marched on Lisbon, up into the north-west of the Peninsula, quite out of the main centre of operations. Napoleon himself halted at Astorga, but 45,000 men marched on after the British, and were engulfed in the mountains of Galicia, where they were useless for the main operations of the war. Spain, in short, gained three months of respite, because the main disposable field-army of her invaders had been drawn off into a corner by the unexpected march of the British on Sahagun. ‘As a diversion the movement has answered completely,’ wrote Moore to Castlereagh from Astorga, and with justice. That the subsequent retreat to Corunna was also advisable we must concede, though the arguments in favour of attempting a defence of Galicia were more weighty than has generally been allowed.
But when we turn to the weeks that preceded the advance from Salamanca, and that followed the departure from Astorga, it is only a very blind admirer of Moore who will contend that everything was arranged and ordered for the best. That the army, which began to arrive at Salamanca on November 13, did not make a forward move till December 12 is a fact which admits of explanation, but not of excuse. The main governing fact of its inactivity was not, as Moore was always urging, the disasters of the Spaniards, but the misdirection of the British cavalry and artillery on the roundabout route by Elvas, Talavera, and the Escurial. For this the British general was personally responsible: we have already shown that he had good reasons for distrusting the erroneous reports on the roads of Portugal which were sent in to him, and that he should not have believed them. He ought to have marched on Almeida, with his troops distributed between the three available roads, and should have had a compact force of all arms concentrated at Salamanca by November 15. Even without Baird he could then have exercised some influence on the course of events. As it was, he condemned himself—by the unmilitary act of separating himself from his guns and his horsemen—to a month of futile waiting, while the fate of the campaign was being settled a hundred and fifty miles away.
The chance that Napoleon turned his whole army upon Madrid, and did not send a single corps in search of the British, gave Moore the grand opportunity for striking at the French communications, which he turned to such good account in the middle of December. But, though he so splendidly vindicated his reputation by this blow, we cannot forget the long hesitation at Salamanca by which it was preceded, nor the unhappy project for instant retreat on Portugal, which was so nearly put into execution. If it had been carried out, Moore’s name would have been relegated to a very low place in the list of British commanders, for he would undoubtedly have evacuated Lisbon, just as he had prepared to evacuate Corunna on the day before he was slain. We have his own words to that effect. On November 25 he put on paper his opinion as to the defence of Portugal. ‘Its frontier,’ he wrote, ‘is not defensible against a superior force. It is an open frontier, all equally rugged, but all equally to be penetrated. If the French succeed in Spain, it will be vain to attempt to resist them in Portugal. The British must in that event immediately take steps to evacuate the country.’ It is fortunate that Sir Arthur Wellesley was not of this opinion, or the course of the Peninsular War, and of the whole struggle between Bonaparte and Britain, might have been modified in a very unhappy fashion.
So much must be said of Moore’s earlier faults. Of his later ones, committed after his departure from Astorga, almost as much might be made. His long hesitation, as to whether he should march on Vigo or on Corunna, was inexcusable: at Astorga his mind should have been made up, and the Vigo road (a bad cross-route on which he had not a single magazine) should have been left out of consideration. By failing to make up his mind, and taking useless half-measures, Moore deprived himself of the services of Robert Crawfurd and 3,500 of the best soldiers of his army. But, as we have shown elsewhere, the hesitation was in its origin the result of the groundless hypothesis which Moore had formed—one knows not from what premises—that the French would not be able to pursue him beyond Villafranca.
Still more open to criticism is the headlong pace at which Moore conducted the last stages of the retreat. Napier has tried to represent that the marches were not unreasonable: ‘in eleven days,’ he wrote, ‘a small army passed over a hundred and fifty miles of good road.’ But we have to deduct three days of rest, leaving an average of about seventeen miles a day; and this for January marching, in a rugged snow-clad country, is no trifle. For though the road was ‘good,’ in the sense that it was well engineered, it was conducted over ridge after ridge of one of the most mountainous lands in Europe. The desperate uphill gradients between Astorga and Manzanal, and between Villafranca and Cerezal, cannot be measured in mere miles when their difficulty is being estimated. The marching should be calculated by hours, and not by miles. Moreover, Moore repeatedly gave his men night-marches, and even two night-marches on end. Half the horrors of the dreadful stage between Lugo and Betanzos came from the fact that the army started at midnight on January 8-9, only rested a few hours by day, and then marched again at seven on the evening of the ninth, and through the whole of the dark hours between the ninth and tenth. Flesh and blood cannot endure such a trial even in good weather, and these were nights of hurricane and downpour. Who can wonder that even well-disposed and willing men lagged behind, sank down, and died by hundreds under such stress?
All this hurry was unnecessary: whenever the rearguard turned to face the French, Soult was forced to wait for many hours before he could even begin an attempt to evict it. For his infantry was always many miles to the rear, and he could not effect anything with the horsemen of his advanced guard against Paget’s steady battalions—as Cacabellos sufficiently showed. Napier urges that any position that the British took up could be turned by side-roads: this is true, but the flanking movement would always take an inordinate time, and by the moment that the French had started upon it, the British rearguard could have got off in safety, after having delayed the enemy for the best part of a day. If, instead of offering resistance only at Cacabellos, Constantino, and Lugo, Moore had shown fight at three or four other places—e.g. at the narrow pass of Piedrafita, the passage of the Ladra, and the defile of Monte Falqueiro—he need not have hurried his main body beyond their strength, and left the road strewn with so many exhausted stragglers. French and English eye-witnesses alike repeatedly express their surprise that such positions were left undefended. While not disguising the fact that a great proportion of the British losses were due to mere want of discipline and sullen discontent on the part of the rank and file, we cannot fail to see that this was not the sole cause of the disasters of the retreat. The General drove his men beyond their strength, when he might, at the cost of a few rearguard skirmishes, have given them four or five days more in which to accomplish their retreat. Moore arrived at Corunna on January 11: it was January 16 before Soult had so far collected his army that he could venture to attack. At any other point, the result of offering battle would have been much the same. No excuse for Moore can be made on the ground of insufficient supplies: at Villafranca, Lugo, and Betanzos he destroyed enormous quantities of food, and often so imperfectly that the French succeeded in living for several days on what they could save from the flames.
In making these criticisms we are not in the least wishing to impugn Moore’s reputation as a capable officer and a good general. He was both, but his fault was an excessive sense of responsibility. He could never forget that he had in his charge, as was said, ‘not a British army, but the British army’—the one efficient force that the United Kingdom could put into the field. He was loth to risk it, though ultimately he did so in his admirably conceived march on Sahagun. He had also to think of his own career: among his numerous friends and admirers he had a reputation for military infallibility which he was loth to hazard. Acting under a strong sense of duty he did so, but all the while he was anxiously asking himself ‘What will they say at home?’ It was this self-consciousness that was Moore’s weak point. Fortunately he was a man of courage and honour, and at the critical moment recovered the confidence and decision which was sometimes wanting in the hours of doubt and waiting.
Few men have been better loved by those who knew them best. To have served in the regiments which Moore had trained at Shorncliffe in 1803-5, was to be his devoted friend and admirer for life and death. Handsome, courteous, just, and benevolent, unsparing to himself, considerate to his subordinates, he won all hearts. ‘He was a very king of men,’ wrote Charles Napier; and Charles’s more eloquent brother has left him a panegyric such as few generals have merited and fewer still obtained.
Vol. II, Jan. - Sep. 1809.PREFACE
Vol. II, Jan. - Sep. 1809. From the Battle of Corunna to
The End of the Talavera Campaign
The second volume of this work has swelled to an even greater bulk than its predecessor. Its size must be attributed to two main causes: the first is the fact that a much greater number of original sources, both printed and unprinted, are available for the campaigns of 1809 than for those of 1808. The second is that the war in its second year had lost the character of comparative unity which it had possessed in its first. Napoleon, on quitting Spain in January, left behind him as a legacy to his brother a comprehensive plan for the conquest of the whole Peninsula. But that plan was, from the first, impracticable: and when it had miscarried, the fighting in every region of the theatre of war became local and isolated. Neither the harassed and distracted French King at Madrid, nor the impotent Spanish Junta at Seville, knew how to combine and co-ordinate the operations of their various armies into a single logical scheme. Ere long, six or seven campaigns were taking place simultaneously in different corners of the Peninsula, each of which was practically independent of the others. Every French and Spanish general fought for his own hand, with little care for what his colleagues were doing: their only unanimity was that all alike kept urging on their central governments the plea that their own particular section of the war was more critical and important than any other. If we look at the month of May, 1809, we find that the following six disconnected series of operations were all in progress at once, and that each has to be treated as a separate unit, rather than as a part of one great general scheme of strategy—(1) Soult’s campaign against Wellesley in Northern Portugal, (2) Ney’s invasion of the Asturias, (3) Victor’s and Cuesta’s movements in Estremadura, (4) Sebastiani’s demonstrations against Venegas in La Mancha, (5) Suchet’s contest with Blake in Aragon, (6) St. Cyr’s attempt to subdue Catalonia. When a war has broken up into so many fractions, it becomes not only hard to follow but very lengthy to narrate. Fortunately for the historian and the student, a certain amount of unity is restored in July, mainly owing to the fact that the master-mind of Wellesley has been brought to bear upon the situation. When the British general attempted to combine with the Spanish armies of Estremadura and La Mancha for a common march upon Madrid, the whole of the hostile forces in the Peninsula were once more drawn into a single scheme of operations. Hence the Talavera campaign is the central fact in the annals of the Peninsular War for the year 1809. I trust that it will not be considered that I have devoted a disproportionate amount of space to the setting forth and discussion of the various problems which it involved.
The details of the battle of Talavera itself have engaged my special attention. I thought it worth while to go very carefully over the battle-field, which fortunately remains much as it was in 1809. A walk around it explained many difficulties, but suggested certain others, which I have done my best to solve.
In several other chapters of this volume I discovered that a personal inspection of localities produced most valuable results. At Oporto, for example, I found Wellesley’s passage of the Douro assuming a new aspect when studied on the spot. Not one of the historians who have dealt with it has taken the trouble to mention that the crossing was effected at a point where the Douro runs between lofty and precipitous cliffs, towering nearly 200 feet above the water’s edge! Yet this simple fact explains how it came to pass that the passage was effected at all—the French, on the plateau above the river, could not see what was going on at the bottom of the deeply sunk gorge, which lies in a ‘dead angle’ to any observer who has not come forward to the very edge of the cliff. I have inserted a photograph of the spot, which will explain the situation at a glance. From Napier’s narrative and plan I am driven to conclude that he had either never seen the ground, or had forgotten its aspect after the lapse of years.
A search in the Madrid Deposito de la Guerra produced a few important documents for the Talavera campaign, and was made most pleasant by the extreme courtesy of the officers in charge. It is curious to find that our London Record Office contains a good many Spanish dispatches which do not survive at Madrid. This results from the laudable zeal with which Mr. Frere, when acting as British minister at Seville, sent home copies of every Spanish document, printed or unprinted, on which he could lay his hands. Once or twice he thus preserved invaluable ‘morning states’ of the Peninsular armies, which it would otherwise have been impossible to recover. Among our other representatives in Spain Captain Carroll was the only one who possessed to a similar degree this admirable habit of collecting original documents and statistics. His copious ‘enclosures’ to Lord Castlereagh are of the greatest use for the comprehension of the war in the Asturias and Galicia.
Neither Napier nor any other historian of the Peninsular War has gone into the question of Beresford’s reorganization of the Portuguese army. Comparing English and Portuguese documents, I have succeeded in working it out, and trust that Chapter III of Section XIII, and Appendix No. V, may suffice to demonstrate Beresford’s very real services to the allied cause.
It is my pleasant duty to acknowledge much kind help that I have received from correspondents on both sides of the sea, who have come to my aid in determining points of difficulty. Of those in England I must make particular notice of Colonel F. A. Whinyates, R.A., a specialist in all matters connected with the British artillery. I owe to him my Appendix No. XI, which he was good enough to draw up, as well as the loan of several unpublished diaries of officers of his own arm, from which I have extracted some useful and interesting facts. I must also express my obligation to Mr. E. Mayne, for information relating to Sir Robert Wilson’s Loyal Lusitanian Legion, of which his relative, Colonel W. Mayne, was in 1809 the second-in-command. The excerpts which he was kind enough to collect for me have proved of great service, and could not have been procured from any other quarter. Nor must I omit to thank two other correspondents, Colonel Willoughby Verner and the Rev. Alexander Craufurd, for their notes concerning the celebrated ‘Light Division,’ in which the one is interested as the historian of the old 95th, and the other as the grandson of Robert Craufurd, of famous memory.
Of helpers from beyond the Channel I must make special mention of Commandant Balagny, the author of Napoléon en Espagne, who has supplied me with a great number of official documents from Paris, and in especial with a quantity of statistics, many of them hitherto unpublished, which serve to fix the strength and the losses of various French corps in 1809. I also owe to him my Appendix VI (iii), a most interesting résumé of the material in the French archives relating to the strange ‘Oporto conspiracy’ of Captain Argenton and his confederates. This obscure chapter of the history of the Peninsular War is, I think, brought out in its true proportions by the juxtaposition of the English and French documents. It is clear that Soult’s conduct was far more sinister than Napier will allow, and also that the plot to depose the Marshal was the work of a handful of military intriguers, not of the great body of highly-placed conspirators in whose existence the mendacious Argenton has induced some historians to believe.
At Madrid General Arteche placed at my disposal, with the most bountiful liberality, his immense stores of knowledge, which I had learnt to appreciate long before, as a conscientious student of his Guerra de la Independencia. He pointed out to me many new sources, which had escaped my notice, and was good enough to throw light on many problems which had been vexing me. For his genial kindness I cannot too strongly express my obligation.
Of the officers at the Madrid Deposito de la Guerra, whose courtesy I have mentioned above, I must give special thanks to Captain Emilio Figueras, from whom (just as these pages are going to press) I have received some additional figures relating to the Army of Estremadura in 1809.
Finally, as in my first volume, I must make special acknowledgement of the assistance of two helpers in Oxford—the indefatigable compiler of the Index, and Mr. C. E. Doble, whose corrections and suggestions have been as valuable in 1903 as in 1902.
C. OMAN.
All Souls College,
June 20, 1903.