THE RETREAT.
"Lords and dukes and noble princes,
On thy fatal banks were slain;
Fatal banks that gave to slaughter
All the pride and flower of Spain.
Furious press the hostile squadrons--
Furious he repels their rage;
Loss of blood at length enfeebles--
Who can war with thousands wage?"
_Old Spanish Ballad._
On the llth of December the division of Sir John Hope quitted Alva
and marched towards Tordesillas.
By this time Sir John Moore had discovered that Bonaparte, abandoning
his project of entering the southern provinces, was on the march to
intercept his retreat towards the sea-coast and Portugal, while
another column was advancing against him from the direction of Burgos.
To frustrate a design that might prove so fatal to his slender army,
Moore was compelled to relinquish all hope of fighting the Duke of
Dalmatia; so, countermanding the order for the advance of his various
divisions, he requested Romana to defend the bridge of
Mansilla-de-los-Mulos, and while he fell back towards the Douro,
ordered all the heavy baggage to be conveyed to Astorga.
On hearing of these movements, Bonaparte exclaimed energetically to
Soult, who related it to Major Charles Napier of the 43rd--
"_Moore is the only general now fit to contend with me; I shall
advance against him in person._"
Marching to his left, Moore crossed the Douro at Toro, to form a
junction with Sir David Baird on the 21st December at Vallada. On
the day before this, near the magnificent Abbey of Sahagun, nine
hundred French cavalry pressing on, were met by four hundred of ours
under Lord Paget, who repulsed them by one brilliant charge, sabreing
thirty, and taking two hundred and sixty prisoners.
Bonaparte advanced with his main body, a hundred thousand strong, by
four routes, towards Benevente, along roads buried deep in snow,
through which, by force or bribery, he had thousands of Spanish
labourers cutting pathways, for the winter had set in with unusual
rigour; but the division of Sir John Hope, whose cavalry and
artillery suffered much by the loss of their horses, which died fast
of the glanders, entered the town before him on the 24th of the same
month.
The sufferings of the army during this retreat towards the north-west
angle of Spain were very great, and the regimental officers were
compelled to carry their personal effects--at least such as were
absolutely necessary--about with them in bags or knapsacks, for the
baggage animals (carts there were none) died, or were lost by the
way. All bandsmen, batsmen, servants, and grooms were very properly
turned into the ranks, as Moore had resolved that there should be
available _as many muskets as possible_. Seven officers had but one
tent, and every mounted officer had to groom and rub down his own
horse: arrangements whereat the grumbling, from the staff
particularly, was deep if not loud. The rations were also
diminished: but of all the corps none suffered less than the Highland
regiments. After marching hundreds of miles through snow, rain, and
storm, by roads unchanged since the Moors traversed them, the 79th
and 92nd particularly had never a man on the sick-list, a fact
attributable either to their native hardihood or the serviceable
nature of their costume.
Snow was falling heavily as Hope's division entered the crumbling mud
walls of the small and miserable town of Benevente in Leon, where the
officers and men, irrespective of rank, crowded for shelter into the
houses and the castle, while a line of cavalry picquets with a few
pieces of artillery, held the bridge of Orviegro.
Weary and foot-sore, Quentin, after cleaning his musket, flung
himself on a heap of straw in one of the rooms of that wonderful old
castle which is the residence of the Dukes of Ossuna, and which
Southey, in his letters from Spain, describes as one of the finest
monuments of the age of Spanish chivalry, adding, "we have nothing in
England which approaches to its grandeur. Berkeley, Raby, even
Warwick and Windsor, are poor fabrics in comparison."
Projecting from a wall, a gigantic arm and hand in armour sustain a
magnificent lamp to light the grand staircase of the castle.
Its open galleries and horse-shoe Saracenic arches, that spring from
fluted and twisted columns of porphyry and granite; its long
aerial-like cloisters, with jasper pillars, jagged arches, and
tessellated floors; its recessed seats, deep niches, and canopied
alcoves, covered with quaint arabesques in scarlet, blue, and gold,
were now crowded by wet, weary, and almost shoeless (certainly
shirtless) infantry, who piled their muskets or heaped up their
knapsacks and camp kettles, without heed, in those noble apartments,
where they smoked and made fires of whatever they could lay hands on;
many a gilded chair became fuel, and pictures by Velasquez, Murillo,
and other eminent painters of the Spanish school, were torn from the
walls, and, with a curse on the Spaniards, rolled up and thrust under
a pot of rice soup.
In fact, the troops were now fast becoming reckless, and everything
that was combustible was destroyed on this occasion, the family
archives of the Dukes of Ossuna alone escaping.
Maddened by cold and hunger, they cared not how they made themselves
comfortable for the night; but with the first peep of dawn, the
report of cannon was heard at the bridge, the bugles sounded the
turn-out, and hundreds of hoarse voices were heard shouting,
"Stand to your arms! turn out! The enemy are coming on--the
out-picquets are engaged!"
The division got under arms to continue its retreat, which the flank
companies were ordered to cover by forming in front of the town; and
so came in this dreary 25th of December.
"A merry Christmas and a happy new year!" cried Monkton to Quentin,
as the grenadiers of Askerne left the battalion double-quick, and
just in time to witness a very brilliant cavalry encounter.
It was about the hour of nine in the morning, and from the slope on
which Benevente stands, they could see in a little plain below the
bridge of the Orviegro, three squadrons of the Imperial Guard led by
a dashing officer in a furred pelisse, skirmishing with the
out-picquets of the light cavalry, and endeavouring to cross the
river by a ford there. The red flashing of the carbines on both
sides was incessant; in the clear frosty air the reports rang
sharply, and the figures of the Imperial Light Cavalry, in their
brilliant uniforms, were distinctly visible upon the spotless
background of snow. No one was hit on either side, however, as the
dragoon is seldom much of a shot.
But suddenly two squadrons of the splendid 10th Hussars, by order of
Lord Paget, and led by Brigadier-General Stewart, defiled out of
Benevente to support the picquets, their loose scarlet pelisses and
plumes waving as they galloped along, and rapidly forming line, they
advanced with a loud hurrah, and keeping their horses well in hand,
lest they should be blown, against the Chasseurs à Cheval of the
Guard, who drew up on the crest of an eminence to receive them.
Many who looked on held their breath, and excitement repressed the
rising cheer as the adverse lines of cavalry met! There was a
mingled yell and hurrah; the long straight swords of the French on
one side, and the crooked sabres of the 10th on the other, all
uplifted, flashed keenly in the morning sun; then there was a
terrible shock; hussars and chasseurs were all mingled in a wild
tumultuous mass, and on both sides horses and men went down among
bloody and trodden snow; but the French fled at full speed, leaving
the ground strewed with killed and wounded men, and encumbered by
scared horses that rushed about with empty saddles.
Eighty-five French Chasseurs and fifty of our smart Hussars were
lying there dead or writhing in all the agony of sword wounds among
the snow; but with loud cheers the survivors came trotting into
Benevente, bringing with them seventy dismounted prisoners, among
whom was the leader of the French, superbly dressed in a green
uniform that had a profusion of gold and fur trimming upon it. He
was led forward between two Hussars, who had each his carbine resting
on his thigh.
"Paget," exclaimed Brigadier-General Sir Charles Stewart, hurrying up
at a canter, "allow me to present you with a valuable prisoner. We
have just had the honour to take Lieutenant-General Lefebre
Desnouettes, commander of the cavalry of the Imperial Guard."
Lord Paget bowed very low to the captive.
Pale, exhausted, and covered with sword-cuts, he was the picture of a
soldier; and his eyes had that keen, bright, almost wolfish
expression, peculiar to those who have recently stared the grim King
of Terrors face to face on the battlefield. He was led away, and was
soon after presented to Sir John Moore, to whom he spoke with intense
bitterness of his own defeat.
"Bonaparte," said he, "is the minion of fortune; he never forgives
the unfortunate, but ever believes them culpable!"
Moore sought to console him, and presented him with a splendid
oriental scimitar, which Lefebre ever after preserved with gratitude,
and wore in England, whither he was despatched at once in charge of
Captain Wyndham, one of the general's aides-de-camp.
The division continued its retreat by the ruined walls and mouldering
citadel of Astorga, and Villa Franca del Bierzo, and, though many
perished by the way, Quentin Kennedy, endowed by spirit and
enthusiasm rather than bodily strength, bore up manfully amid the
fatigue, the privations, and the horrors of that long and devious
retreat of so many hundred miles, along roads covered with deep snow,
over steep and rugged mountain sierras, through half-frozen rivers,
where the bridges had been broken down or blown up, and by narrow
defiles, followed by an enthusiastic enemy, whose well-victualled
force, outnumbering by three times that of Moore, came on fast and
surely, with flying artillery, lightly-armed dragoons, and pestilent
little Voltigeurs, skirmishing every foot of the way--the sharp
ringing of carbines and the boom of field-pieces being the invariable
close of each day's march, and the prelude to its resumption in the
cold, dark early morning, when the cavalry rear-guard held the
advance of the foe in check, till the jaded and half-slept infantry
pushed on, and on, and on--hopeless, heartless, and in rags, leaving,
en route, in the form of dead and dying men, women, children, and
horses, traces of the havoc that neglect and disaster were making in
the ranks, for now the Spanish authorities omitted utterly to supply
the troops with either billets or rations, or any necessary
provisions.
A junction of Hope's division with the main body of the British army
was effected, however; on the 31st of December, Moore quitted Astorga
with his famine-stricken force, and so hot and fierce was the
pursuit, that on the following day, the first of the new year,
Napoleon entered the little town at the head of eighty thousand horse
and foot, with two hundred pieces of cannon, while many thousand
bayonets more were on the march to join him!
The Emperor, however, went no further than Astorga, for there he left
to Soult--to use his own inflated words--"the glorious mission of
destroying the British--of pursuing them to the point of embarkation,
and driving them into the sea!"
And the state of matters we have described continued until the army
reached Lugo, after a five days' march through a rugged and savage
country.