WELLINGTON’S AUTUMN CAMPAIGN OF 1811
I. Wellington’s Blockade of Ciudad Rodrigo.
August-September 1811 542
II. El Bodon and Aldea da Ponte. September 1811 559
III. The End of Wellington’s Campaigns of 1811. Arroyo
dos Molinos. September 1811 583
APPENDICES
I. The French Army in Portugal, Returns of January-April
1811 608
II. Soult’s Army in his First Expedition to Estremadura,
January-March 1811 610
III. Spanish Troops in Estremadura, March 1811 610
IV. Graham’s Army at Barrosa, and its Losses 612
V. Victor’s Army at Barrosa, and its Losses 613
VI-VII. British Losses at Pombal, Redinha, Casal Novo,
Foz do Arouce, and Sabugal, March-April 1811 614-16
VIII. French Losses at Sabugal, April 3rd, 1811 617
IX. Force of Wellington’s Army at Fuentes de Oñoro,
May 3-5, 1811 618
X. British and Portuguese Losses at Fuentes de Oñoro,
First Day, May 3 622
XI. British and Portuguese Losses at Fuentes de Oñoro,
Second Day, May 5th, 1811 623
XII. The French Army at Fuentes de Oñoro 625
XIII. Masséna’s Orders for Fuentes de Oñoro 629
XIV. French Losses at Fuentes de Oñoro 630
XV. The Allied Army at Albuera, and its Losses,
May 16, 1811 631
XVI. Soult’s Army at Albuera, and its Losses 634
XVII. Strength of the Spanish Armies in the Summer
of 1811 636
XVIII. Strength of the French Army in Spain,
July 15, 1811 638
XIX. French and Spanish Forces at the Siege of
Tarragona 643
XX. Wellington’s Army on the Beira Frontier,
September 15 644
XXI. Allied Losses at the Combat of El Bodon 648
XXII. Allied Losses at the Combat of Aldea da Ponte 648
XXIII. Hill’s Force in Estremadura,
September-October 1811 649
XXIV. The British Artillery in the Peninsula during
the Campaign of 1811 650
INDEX 653
MAPS AND PLANS
I. BADAJOZ AND THE BATTLE OF THE GEBORA _To face_ 54
II. GENERAL MAP OF THE BARROSA CAMPAIGN ” 104
III. THE BATTLE OF BARROSA ” 124
IV. COMBAT OF REDINHA ” 144
V. COMBAT OF CASAL NOVO ” 152
VI. COMBAT OF FOZ DO AROUCE ” 158
VII. MASSÉNA’S RETREAT. LEIRIA TO THE ALVA RIVER ” 166
VIII. COMBAT OF SABUGAL ” 196
IX. MASSÉNA’S RETREAT. CELORICO TO CIUDAD RODRIGO ” 200
X. PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF TORTOSA ” 238
XI. THE BRITISH SIEGES OF BADAJOZ IN MAY
AND JUNE 1811 ” 286
XII. BATTLE OF FUENTES DE OÑORO (two plates) ” 316,338
XIII. BATTLE OF ALBUERA (two plates) ” 384,394
XIV. GENERAL MAP OF ESTREMADURA ” 452
XV. PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF TARRAGONA ” 524
XVI. GENERAL MAP OF CATALONIA ” 538
ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF GENERAL PICTON _Frontispiece_
PORTRAIT OF GENERAL GRAHAM _To face_ 96
PORTRAIT OF MARSHAL BERESFORD ” 260
BRITISH ARMY CROSSING THE TAGUS AT VILLA VELHA ” 408
FORT SAN CRISTOBAL ” 424
SECTION XXIII
THE WINTER CAMPAIGN OF 1810-11
CHAPTER I
MASSÉNA AT SANTAREM. THE DEADLOCK ON THE LOWER TAGUS. DECEMBER
1810-JANUARY 1811
On the 18th of November, 1810, Masséna had completed the movement
to the rear which he had commenced on the 14th. His army no
longer threatened the Lines of Torres Vedras: he had abandoned
the offensive for the defensive. Concentrated in the triangle
Santarem-Punhete-Thomar, with his three corps so disposed that a
march of twenty miles would suffice to concentrate everything save
outlying detachments, he waited to see whether his enemy would dare
to attack him; for he still hoped for a battle in the open field,
and was prepared to accept its chances. At Bussaco, so he reasoned,
his defeat had been the result of an over-bold attack on a strong
position. The event might go otherwise if he threw the responsibility
of the offensive on Wellington. He had secured for himself an
advantageous fighting-ground: his left flank was protected by the
formidable entrenchments around Santarem; his front was covered by the
rain-sodden valley of the Rio Mayor, which during the winter season
could be crossed only at a few well-known points. His right wing could
not be turned, unless his adversary were ready to push a great force
over villainous roads towards Alcanhede and the upper course of the
Rio Mayor. And if Wellington should risk a large detachment in this
direction, it might be possible to burst out from Santarem, against
the containing force which he would be compelled to leave on the banks
of the Tagus, about Cartaxo, and to beat it back towards the Lines--a
movement which would almost certainly bring back the turning column
from the North. For the English general could not dare to leave Lisbon
exposed to the chances of a sudden blow, when there was little but
Portuguese militia left to occupy the long chain of defensive works
from Alhandra to Torres Vedras. For some weeks after his retreat to his
new position at Santarem, Masséna lived in hopes that Wellington would
either deliver an attack on his well-protected front, or undertake the
dangerous turning movement towards his left.
No such chance was granted him. His adversary had weighed all the
arguments for and against the offensive, and had made up his mind to
rely rather on his old weapon--starvation--than on force. In several
of his December dispatches he sums up the situation with perfect
clearness; on the 2nd he wrote to Lord Liverpool, ‘It would still be
impossible to make any movement of importance upon the right flank of
the enemy’s position at Santarem without exposing some divisions of
troops to be insulated and cut off. The enemy having concentrated their
army about Torres Novas, &c., I do not propose to make any movement
by which I incur the risk of involving the army in a general action,
on ground less advantageous than that which I had fixed upon to bring
this contest to an issue [i. e. the Lines]. The enemy can be relieved
from the difficulties of their situation only by the occurrence of
some misfortune to the allied army, and I should forward their views
by placing the fate of the campaign on the result of a general action
on ground chosen by them, and not on that selected by me. I therefore
propose to continue the operation of light detachments on their
flanks and rear, to confine them as much as possible, but to engage
in no serious affair on ground on which the result can be at all
doubtful[1].’ At the end of the month he simply restates his decision:
‘Having such an enemy to contend with, and knowing (as I do) that there
is no army in the Peninsula capable of contending with the enemy,
excepting that under my command; that there are no means of replacing
any large losses I might sustain; and that any success acquired by a
large sacrifice of men would be followed by disastrous consequence to
the cause of the allies, I have determined to persevere in the system
which has hitherto saved all, and which will, I hope, end in the defeat
of the enemy[2].’
[1] _Dispatches_, vii. pp. 23-4, from Cartaxo, December 2.
[2] Also to Lord Liverpool, Cartaxo, December 29.
Accordingly Wellington’s main army was kept for the three winter months
of December, January, and February almost precisely on the same ground
on which it had been placed in the last week of November. The three
British cavalry brigades formed a line in front of the whole, reaching
from Porto de Mugem on the Tagus to São João de Ribiera on the upper
Rio Mayor[3]. The infantry divisions (save the 2nd) were arranged in
successive lines of cantonment behind them, watching the course of
the Rio Mayor, while the reserves had retired as far as the Lines of
Torres Vedras. Practically the whole force could be concentrated in a
single march--or a march and a half at most--in case Masséna should
take the improbable--but still conceivable--step of sallying out from
Santarem to resume the offensive. When the first French reinforcements
began to come up--about the New Year of 1810-11--such a sally seemed
to Wellington quite worth guarding against[4]. The disposition of
the infantry was as follows: On the right, near the Tagus, lay the
Light Division, immediately in front of Santarem, quartered in Valle
and other villages. On the left the front line was formed by Pack’s
Portuguese, who lay at Almoster, on heights overlooking the middle
course of the Rio Mayor. In support of the Light Division, but five
miles to the rear, at Cartaxo and other places, was the large and
powerful 1st Division, 7,000 bayonets. The 4th Division lay at an equal
distance behind the 1st, at Azambuja and Aveiras da Cima. Behind Pack,
on the inland or Leiria road, Picton and his 3rd Division were placed
at Alcoentre. Their support was the 5th Division at Torres Vedras in
the old Lines, seventeen miles to the rear, from which a circuitous
road led to Alcoentre. Finally the newly-formed 6th Division was placed
at the other end of the Lines, but just outside them, at Alemquer
and Arruda, with Le Cor’s Portuguese division immediately behind, at
Alhandra.
[3] De Grey’s brigade at Valle, with the Light Division; Anson’s
on the left at São João; Slade’s at Porto de Mugem on the right,
near the Tagus.
[4] Wellington to Liverpool, December 29. ‘Whatever may be
Masséna’s opinion of his chance of success in an attack on the
allied army, I am convinced that he will make it, if he receives
orders from Paris, whatever the amount of the reinforcements sent
to him.’ _Dispatches_, vii. p. 84.
In all the main army consisted of about 48,000 men of all arms; but
this did not compose the whole of Wellington’s available resources.
He had transferred a considerable detachment to the southern bank of
the Tagus, to protect the Alemtejo against any possible descent by
the French. It will be remembered that as early as the beginning of
November[5] he had sent across the river Fane’s Portuguese cavalry
and a battalion of Caçadores, who were directed to watch the road
along the further bank, to prevent any trifling force of French from
crossing in search of provisions, and to keep open the communications
with Abrantes. As long as Masséna was threatening the Lines of Torres
Vedras, there was no danger that he would throw anything more than a
raiding party across the Tagus; he would want every man for the great
assault. But when the Marshal gave up the offensive and retired to
Santarem, the aspect of affairs was changed; it was quite possible
that, with his army in a state of semi-starvation, he might venture
to send a considerable detachment over the river, to gather the food
which was so necessary to him. Nor was it unlikely that he might have a
still more cogent reason for invading the Alemtejo. If, as Wellington
thought probable[6], the army of Andalusia were to be ordered up to
assist the army of Portugal, it would be of great importance for the
latter to possess a footing on the left bank of the Tagus, as the
communication with Soult’s troops must certainly be made in this
direction. Accordingly there was good reason for securing the line of
the river, and for cooping up Masséna in his limited sphere on its
western bank. On the 19th-20th of November, Hill and the 2nd Division,
attended as usual by Hamilton’s two Portuguese brigades, and with the
13th Light Dragoons attached, crossed the Tagus in boats a little to
the north of Salvaterra, to reinforce Fane’s detachment. This was a
serious force--10,000 men--which Wellington could ill spare, and he
made elaborate arrangements to enable it to return in haste, in the
event of Masséna’s once more taking the offensive on the western bank
of the Tagus. The flotilla of gunboats and river craft, which had
been guarding the river, was to be kept ready at Alhandra to bring
back the 2nd Division, at the first alarm of a movement of the French
from Santarem. Meanwhile Hill moved up the river and established his
head quarters at Chamusca, a little north of Santarem, from which
point he could both observe the main body of the French and impede any
attempt that they might make to cross the river, and also could keep in
touch with Abrantes, and reinforce it, supposing that Masséna showed
any signs of molesting it. The British brigades of the 2nd Division
were distributed along the river, William Stewart’s at Pinheiros
and Tramagal most to the north, Hoghton’s at Chamusca, Lumley’s at
Almeirim, exactly facing Santarem. Hamilton’s two Portuguese brigades
continued the line southward, Fonseca’s brigade at Mugem, Campbell’s
at Salvaterra. Fane’s four regiments of Portuguese cavalry, and the
British 13th Light Dragoons, were strung out by squadrons along the
whole front from the neighbourhood of Abrantes to Almeirim, patrolling
the river bank with unceasing care[7].
[5] See vol. iii. p. 462.
[6] The first hint of this occurs in a letter to Lord Liverpool,
from Cartaxo, December 21, in which Wellington ‘thinks it not
improbable that a large part (if not the whole) of the French
army of Andalusia may be introduced into the southern part of
this kingdom [Portugal].’
[7] These arrangements are taken from the unpublished diary of
D’Urban, the Quarter-Master-General of the Portuguese army.
On the 29th of November Hill was disabled by a severe attack of
fever, and the control of all the troops beyond the Tagus devolved
on his senior brigadier, William Stewart. Wellington only allowed
this hard-fighting but somewhat too venturesome officer to retain
his very responsible command for a few weeks. Troubled by Stewart’s
constant requests to be allowed to make offensive movements against
the French, which did not enter into his own plans[8], and dreading
the consequences of his enterprise, the Commander-in-Chief superseded
him, by sending over Beresford to take the charge of all the forces on
the Alemtejo bank of the Tagus (December 30). He would have preferred
to give the duty to Hill, who had in the preceding summer carried out
a similar task with complete success, while he watched Reynier from
Castello Branco[9]. But Hill’s fever lingered on for many weeks, and
when he was convalescent the medical men insisted that he must return
to England for change of air. This he did in February, and we miss his
familiar name in the records of the Peninsular War for a space of three
months, till his reappearance at the front in May.
[8] Wellington (December 8) sarcastically thanks Stewart for
sending him plans for an attack on the enemy, but utterly scouts
them. _Dispatches_, vii. pp. 36-7.
[9] See pp. 269-79 of vol. iii.
Beresford therefore began, with the New Year, to exercise a
semi-independent command over the detached force beyond the Tagus,
which he was to retain for nearly six months. The experiment of giving
him this responsible duty was not altogether a happy one; and after his
unsuccessful operations in Estremadura, and his ill-fought victory at
Albuera, Wellington withdrew him to other duties in June, and once more
handed over the troops south of the Tagus to the cautious yet capable
hands of Hill.
The main force, meanwhile, faced the front of Masséna’s army;
Beresford’s detachment observed its left flank along the Tagus. But
this was not all; Wellington had also taken his precautions to cast
around the rear of the irregular parallelogram held by the French a
screen of light troops, which effectually cut their communications with
Spain, and restricted, though they could not altogether hinder, their
marauding raids in search of provisions. This screen was weakest beyond
Abrantes, on the line of the Zezere; but here the land was barren,
and the enemy had little or nothing to gain by plundering excursions.
The Castello Branco country was only guarded by its own Ordenança
levy, which was trifling in force, as the whole ‘corregedoria’ from
the Zezere to the Elga had only 40,000 souls, and it had sent its two
militia regiments within the Lisbon lines. But, save in the small
upland plain about Castello Branco itself, there was practically
neither population nor tillage. The less barren and deserted mountain
land between the Zezere and the Mondego was much more worth plundering,
and was protected by the militia brigade of John Wilson, who lay at
Espinhal on the Thomar-Coimbra road, with a force of four battalions,
which ought to have numbered 3,000 men, but often shrank down to 1,500.
For the militiamen, unpaid and ill-fed, deserted freely during the
winter season, and as their homes lay far northward, by the Douro,
it was not easy to gather them back to their colours. But Wilson had
always a sufficient nucleus about him to check any marauding party
that fell short of a regiment, and was a real restraint on the foragers
of the 6th Corps, when they pushed out from Ourem or Thomar to gather
food. He was only once seriously engaged, when, on December 23rd,
General Marcognet, with two battalions and a cavalry regiment, came
up against him, drove him out of Espinhal after some skirmishing, and
pushed a reconnaissance as far as the Mondego, of which we shall hear
in its due place.
Beyond Wilson to the west, the line of observation was taken up by
Trant’s militia brigade, which lay at Coimbra, to which town many of
its fugitive inhabitants had by this time returned. He had a larger
force than Wilson--seven militia regiments, whose strength varied from
day to day but seldom fell below 3,000 men. With this irregular force
he watched the line of the lower Mondego, keeping pickets out some way
to the south of the river, as far as Louriçal and Redinha. They were
only once driven in, when on Dec. 6th-8th one of Montbrun’s dragoon
regiments pushed up the high road, and verified the fact that all the
passages of the lower Mondego, including the bridge of Coimbra, were
guarded.
The last link in the chain of detachments which Wellington had cast
around the French was the garrison of the sea-girt fortress of Peniche,
half-way between Lisbon and the mouth of the Mondego. It was held by
the dépôts of several infantry regiments of the regular army, under
General Blunt of the Portuguese service, not by any single organized
unit. But there were some 2,000 or 3,000 recruits, more or less
trained, in the place, and the enterprising Major Fenwick, whom Blunt
had put in charge of his outpost-line, kept large pickets out in the
direction of Caldas and Obidos, which frequently came in contact
with the raiding parties of the 8th Corps, and did them much harm.
Fenwick was mortally wounded in action near Obidos on Dec. 4th[10],
but the forward position of these outposts of the Peniche garrison was
maintained, and the French could never forage in the coast-land for a
radius of some fifteen miles around that fortress, though they moved
as they pleased about Leiria and the deserted abbeys of Batalha and
Alcobaça. The Portuguese outposts at Caldas were in close and regular
touch with Anson’s cavalry pickets from São João de Ribiera on the Rio
Mayor.
[10] Mentioned in Wellington’s dispatch of December 10 to Lord
Liverpool, but the date December 4 is fixed by D’Urban’s diary.
For exploits of Fenwick in November and December see Tomkinson’s
_Diary_, pp. 58 and 66.
It will be seen therefore that the limited space in which Masséna’s
army could seek its living was a parallelogram, bounded by the Tagus
on the south, the lower Zezere on the east, the Rio Mayor and the
Alcoa (the river of Alcobaça) on the west, and on the north by an
irregular line drawn from Leiria through Pombal to Cabaços near
the Zezere. Outside these limits food could only be got by large
detachments, moving with all military precautions, and obliged to keep
up a constant running fight with the Portuguese militia. The profit
from such expeditions, whose march was necessarily very slow, was so
small that Masséna sent out very few of them, since the peasantry got
off with their flocks into the hills, whenever the first skirmishing
shots along the high road were heard. The sustenance of the French was
mainly obtained by harrying and re-harrying the area bounded by the
limits stated above, where they could work their will without meeting
with any resistance. There was very little change in the cantonments of
Masséna’s army during the three months of their stay between the Tagus
and the Zezere. Of the 2nd Corps both divisions were in the Santarem
fortifications, holding the town and the banks of the Rio Mayor to
the west of it. Close in touch with the 2nd Corps came the 8th, with
Clausel’s division in front line from Tremes to Alcanhede and Abrahão,
and Solignac’s in second line at Torres Novas, Pernes, and the adjacent
villages. Both corps had their cavalry brigades out in front of them,
along the line of the Rio Mayor. Ney and the 6th Corps formed the
general reserve of the army, having Mermet’s division at Thomar (the
Marshal’s head quarters), and Marchand’s at Golegão near the Tagus;
Loison’s, the third division of the corps, was detached on the Zezere,
guarding the bridge which had been established across that river at
Punhete, and watching the garrison of Abrantes. Its front post was
at Montalvão beyond the Zezere, only five miles from the Portuguese
fortress; its remaining battalions were ranged along the river from
Punhete as far north as Dornes. Montbrun and the cavalry reserve
(less certain squadrons lent to Loison), lay at Chão-de-Maçans on the
northern skirts of the plain of Thomar; they had one infantry regiment
(lent by Ney) to support them, at Cabaços, and their main duty was to
watch and restrain Trant and Wilson, with whose advanced posts they
were always bickering.
The situation of the French army was remarkably compact: Ney’s division
at Golegão was only one long march (eighteen miles) behind Reynier; his
second division at Thomar was less than two marches (twenty-six miles)
behind Junot. Only Loison could not have been brought up at short
notice, supposing that Wellington had attacked the line of the Rio
Mayor. If, on the other hand, an Anglo-Portuguese force had debouched
from Abrantes to attack Loison--no impossible plan, and one that
William Stewart had strenuously urged Wellington to adopt--the division
at Punhete could have been reinforced from Golegão and Thomar in one
march, since the former of these places is about thirteen miles from
the Zezere, and the latter not more than ten.
Masséna’s dispositions, as can be seen at a glance, were purely
defensive. They could not be otherwise, when his army had dwindled down
by the beginning of December to 45,000 efficient sabres and bayonets,
while his hospitals were encumbered by 8,000 or 9,000 sick. All that
he aspired to do was to hold on in the Santarem-Rio Mayor position,
pinning his adversary down to the neighbourhood of Lisbon, till he
should be restored to the power of taking the offensive once more,
by the arrival of reinforcements; his aid must come on one side from
Soult and the Army of Andalusia, on the other from Drouet’s 9th Corps,
whose services had been promised to him by the Emperor long before the
invasion of Portugal began. But down to the end of the year he had not
the slightest breath of information as to whether this assistance was
close at hand, or whether it had, perchance, not even begun to move
in his direction. Since he had cut himself loose from the frontier of
Spain in September, not a single dispatch had reached him, not even
a secret emissary had penetrated to his head quarters. For all that
he knew Napoleon might be dead, or engaged in a new war with some
continental enemy. It is an astonishing testimony to the efficiency of
the screen of Portuguese Ordenança and militia, which Wellington had
cast round the French army, to find that nothing had slipped through.
And the Marshal’s attempts to send out news of himself had been almost
equally well foiled; all his messengers had been intercepted save Foy,
who (as it will be remembered) had forced his way over the unfrequented
Estrada Nova road on October 31st[11]. And Foy had got through to
Ciudad Rodrigo because he had been given such a large escort--600
men--that no mere gathering of local Ordenança could stop him.
[11] The next messenger who got through was Major Casabianca, who
started on January 21st with 400 men, and safely reached Rodrigo.
See Fririon’s _Journal of the Campaign of Portugal_, p. 129.
Masséna, down to the end of December, did not know in the least
whether Foy or any other of his emissaries had got through. He had
simply to wait till news should penetrate to him. Meanwhile the one
governing preoccupation of his life was to get food for his army,
since if food failed he must be driven to the disastrous winter
retreat, across flooded streams and between snow-clad mountains, to
which Wellington hoped to force him. The English general’s forecast
of the time which would be required to starve out the French army
was wrong by some eight or nine weeks. He thought that they would
have consumed every possible morsel of food that could be scraped
together by December--as a matter of fact they held out till the end
of February, in a state of constantly increasing privation. It seems
that Wellington underrated both the capacity for endurance that the
enemy would show, and still more the resources which were available to
him. The Portuguese government had ordered the peasantry to destroy
all food-stuffs that they could not carry off, when the country-side
was evacuated in October, and the people retired within the Torres
Vedras lines. Ostensibly the decree had been carried out; but it was
impossible to induce these small cultivators to make away with good
food, the worst of crimes to the peasant’s mind. The large majority hid
or buried, instead of burning, their stores, trusting to recover what
they had concealed when the French should have departed. Many of the
hiding-places were very ingenious--in some cases caves in the hills had
been used, and their mouths plastered up with stones and earth. In
others, pits or _silos_ had been dug in unlikely places, and carefully
covered up, or cellars had been filled, and their entrances bricked up
and concealed. The ingenuity that is bred by an empty stomach soon set
the French on the search for these hoards. When it was once discovered
that there was much hidden grain and maize in the country, every man
became a food-hunter. Whole villages were pulled down in the search for
secret places in their walls or under their floors. Parties scoured
every ravine or hillside where caves might lurk. We are told that
one effective plan was for detachments to go about with full barrels
in fields near houses, and to cast water all over the surface. Where
the liquid sank in suddenly, there was a chance that a _silo_ lurked
below, and the spade often turned up a deposit of hundreds of bushels.
But more drastic methods than these were soon devised. In the sort of
no-man’s-land between the actual cantonments of the French army and the
outposts of Wilson, Trant, and Blunt, the population had not entirely
disappeared. Though the large majority had retired, some of the poorest
or the most reckless had merely hidden themselves in the hills for a
week or two, and came down cautiously when the French had marched by
towards Lisbon. A sprinkling of miserable folk lived precariously in or
near their usual abodes, always ready to fly or to conceal themselves
when a foraging party was reported in the neighbourhood. Hence came the
horrid business that one French diarist calls the ‘chasse aux hommes’;
it became a regular device for the marauders to move by night, hide
themselves, and watch for some unwary peasant. When he was sighted he
was pursued and often caught. He was then offered the choice between
revealing the hiding-places of himself and his neighbours, and a
musket-ball through the head. Generally he yielded, and the party
went back with their mules loaded with grain, or driving before them
some goats and oxen. Sometimes he was himself starving, could reveal
nothing, and was murdered. We are assured by more than one French
narrator of these hateful times that it was discovered that torture
was more effective than the mere fear of death. If the prisoner could
or would discover nothing, he was hung up for a few minutes, and then
let down and offered a second chance of life. Sometimes this led to
revelations; if not he was strung up again for good[12]. Torture by
fire is also said to have been employed on some occasions.
[12] For a description of this see Lemonnier-Delafosse’s
_Mémoires_, p. 95.
Naturally these atrocities were not practised under the eyes of the
officers commanding regular foraging parties[13]. But when a company
had dispersed in search of plunder, the men who were separated in
twos or threes without control acted with such various degrees of
brutality as suited themselves. Moreover, there was a floating
scum of unlicensed marauders, who had left their colours without
leave, and were in no hurry to rejoin them. These were responsible
for the worst crimes: sometimes they gathered together in bands of
considerable strength, and it is said that they were known to fire on
regular foraging parties who tried to arrest or restrain them[14], and
that one troop, several hundred strong, fought a desperate skirmish
with a whole battalion sent to hunt them down. But it was not these
_fricoteurs_, as they were called, who were the sole offenders; many
horrors were perpetrated within the limits of the cantonments by the
authorized raiding companies. Guingret of the 39th, in Ney’s corps,
mentions in his diary that he had seen such a detachment return to
camp, after having surprised a half-deserted village, with a number
of peasant girls, whom they sold to their comrades, some for a couple
of gold pieces, others for a pack-horse[15], and assures us that rape
was habitual when such a surprise had succeeded. It was in vain that
Masséna and the corps-commanders issued general orders prohibiting
misconduct of any kind, and even executed one or two offenders caught
_flagrante delicto_. For the regimental officers, who depended on the
individual efficiency of their men in marauding for their daily food,
were not too eager to make inquiries as to what had passed outside
their own vision, and the soldier who brought home much booty was not
too closely questioned as to the manner in which he had obtained it.
When a foraging party had turned over many bushels of wheat or maize,
or a hundred sheep, to the store of their battalion, it could hardly
be expected that their colonel would show his gratitude by inquiring
whether the happy find had been procured by torture or by simple murder.
[13] ‘Les détachements se subdivisent à mesure qu’ils
s’éloignent: et il en résulte que les hommes isolés des chefs se
livrent à toute espèce de rapines et même à des cruautés sur les
pauvres paysans,’ says Noël (p. 128).
[14] The story of the marauding sergeant ‘Maréchal Chaudron’
and his band, given by Marbot (ii. pp. 418-19), is probably
exaggerated by that lively narrator--the scale is too large.
But there was undoubtedly some foundation for the tale; see
Lemonnier-Delafosse, _Mémoires_, p. 103.
[15] Guingret, pp. 124-6.
Of the three corps which formed Masséna’s army, that of Reynier, in the
Santarem entrenchments, seems to have suffered most, because it was
concentrated on a narrow position, with no unexhausted country around
it, and with other troops immediately in its rear, who had sucked dry
the resources of the plain of Golegão. Its foraging parties had to go
thirty miles away before they had a chance of finding ground that had
not been already picked over most carefully by the men of the 6th or
the 8th Corps. Junot’s men were a little better off, as they had the
Leiria-Alcobaça country immediately on their flank, and could plunder
there without molestation, unless they pressed in too closely upon the
outposts of Trant’s or Blunt’s detachments. Nevertheless the 8th Corps
lost more men by disease than either of the others during this hard
winter. It was composed to a great extent of conscript battalions new
to Spain, young and unacclimatized, whose men died off like flies from
cold, dysentery, and rheumatism. Clausel’s division, which contained
all these raw units, sank from 6,700 to 4,000 men in the three months
that preceded the New Year, without having been engaged in any serious
fighting--a loss of forty per cent.: while the case-hardened troops
of Reynier, who had been in the Peninsula since 1808, and had already
gone through the privations of Soult’s marches to Corunna and Oporto,
only shrank from 17,000 to 12,000 bayonets in the same three months.
Moreover, of the 5,000 lost by them, 2,000 were the casualties of
Bussaco, not the victims of Wellington’s scheme of starvation. Ney’s
corps and the cavalry reserve were better off than either Junot’s or
Reynier’s troops, having at their disposition the fertile country
between Golegão, Thomar, and Abrantes, where, at the commencement of
their sojourn, food was to be got with comparative ease--many fields
of maize were still standing unreaped when they first arrived, and it
was not till after the New Year of 1811 that they began to be seriously
pinched, and to be driven far afield, up the valley of the Zezere and
into the mountains in the direction of Espinhal and Coimbra. The 6th
Corps was still 18,000 strong out of its original 24,000 on January
1st, and of the 6,000 missing, 2,000 represented Bussaco casualties in
actual fighting.
It must be confessed that the French army displayed splendid fortitude
and ingenuity in maintaining itself on the Tagus so long beyond the
period of Wellington’s estimate. That it did not altogether dissolve,
when it was living from hand to mouth, with a fifth or a quarter of
the men habitually absent on foraging expeditions, is surprising.
Desertions to the allied lines, save from the foreign battalions in
Loison’s and Solignac’s divisions, were very rare; the native French
gave many recruits to the marauding _fricoteurs_, but seldom passed
over to the enemy. The regimental officers succeeded in organizing
a regular system by which the exploitation of the country-side was
made as effectual as could be managed. They repaired and set going
the ruined mills, discovered and rebuilt the bakers’ ovens of every
village and town, and in most cases organized regimental food-reserves
which made them independent of the general commissariat[16]. For there
was little or nothing to be got from head quarters. Shoes proved the
greatest difficulty, but the men learnt to make rude mocassins or
‘rivlins’ of untanned hide, which served fairly well, though they
needed constant replacing[17]. In some regiments a third of the men
might be seen wearing this primitive footgear. Another weak point was
ammunition--there had been no great consumption of it since Bussaco,
or the state of the army would have been perilous indeed, since it
had to depend on what it had originally brought down from Spain in
September. No more had been received, and attempts to establish a
powder factory at Santarem failed for lack of saltpetre. If Masséna had
been forced to fight two or three general engagements, his stores would
have been so depleted that he would have had to abscond at once, lest
the army should be left without cartridges. Meanwhile he hung on to
his position, conscious that his power of endurance was limited, but
hoping at any moment to see reinforcements break through from the north
or the east, to refill his ranks and bring him the needful convoys.
[16] See Colonel Noël’s account of his food-getting and his
stores, _Souvenirs militaires_, pp. 128-9.
[17] See Lemonnier-Delafosse, _Souvenirs_, pp. 106-7.
Of military operations, as opposed to mere raids by detachments in
search of food, hardly anything was undertaken by the Army of Portugal
down to the end of the year. Between the 22nd and the 29th of December,
General Ferey, with five battalions and a cavalry regiment, carried
out a useless excursion beyond the Zezere, into the desolate region
of Castello Branco as far as Cortiçada; apparently he had been sent
out because of rumours that a French force was operating in this
direction, and he was told to get into touch with it. But these
reports were idle--they were tardy echoes of Gardanne’s unhappy march
on the Estrada Nova[18] a full month before. The brigade returned,
wearied and more than half-starved, on the seventh day, equally
destitute of news and of the plunder that it had hoped to find in a
hitherto untouched district. The only fruitful action, indeed, which
the French carried out in this month was the completion of the great
bridge-equipage at the mouth of the Zezere, which Masséna had ordered
General Eblé to construct many weeks back[19]. His object was to have
at his disposition means for crossing the Tagus, in case he should
wish to invade the Alemtejo, or to co-operate with any friendly troops
that might appear from that direction. Originally he had intended
to make Santarem his crossing-point, but, after some boats had been
built there, with immense difficulties owing to the entire lack of
appliances, he determined that the place was too near the British
lines, and too much exposed to attacks by Wellington’s river flotilla.
Obviously a serious attempt to cross the Tagus near Santarem, even if
its initial stages succeeded, and the larger part of the army got over,
would expose the rear divisions to almost certain destruction, since
Wellington could throw 30,000 men upon them within the next twelve
hours. There is no more certain way of ruining an army than to allow it
to be caught divided into two halves by a broad river spanned by one
or two precarious bridges. On the other hand, the mouth of the Zezere
was very remote from Wellington’s main army, and a crossing made
opposite to it could only be opposed by a part of Beresford’s force,
which was not very large, and was spread along fifty miles of the river
front. Moreover, the corps executing the passage would not have any
great danger on its flank or rear, since there was only the Portuguese
garrison of Abrantes to molest it. It was an additional advantage that
a bridge-equipage at Punhete could be kept in perfect safety a mile
or two up the Zezere, out of range of guns on the further bank of the
Tagus, and could be floated down at the last moment: while at Santarem
the boats had to be stored on the actual bank of the Tagus, exposed to
attacks from the side of the water by Wellington’s gunboats. One effort
to sink or fire them by a bombardment and the use of Congreve rockets
had already been made[20].
[18] See vol. iii. pp. 470-1.
[19] See vol. iii. pp. 450-1.
[20] See vol. iii. p. 462.
Accordingly Masséna resolved that if he made any attempt to cross into
the Alemtejo, he would take Punhete and the estuary of the Zezere as
his starting-point. Here he established his dockyard, and hither he
transferred most of the busy workers from Santarem. In the course of a
month they got ready for him the materials for two bridges broad enough
to span the Tagus, besides ninety flat-bottomed boats. The mouth of the
Zezere was protected by a number of batteries, to keep down the fire of
any guns that Beresford might bring up to sink the bridges when they
were being cast across.
These preparations did not long escape Wellington’s notice; he saw that
the ground opposite Punhete was the most crucial point in Beresford’s
long front, and bade him close up his troops toward it. The detachment
beyond the Tagus was reinforced by a Spanish brigade under Carlos de
España, drawn from La Romana’s army, which was placed at Barca just
opposite the mouth of the Zezere, with William Stewart’s brigade of
the 2nd Division close by at Santa Margarida, Tramagal, and Pinheiros.
Three batteries were established on the Tagus bank opposite Punhete,
and armed with six-pounders; but as these were overmatched by the
French guns across the water, nine-pounders were requisitioned from
Lisbon[21]. The rest of the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s two Portuguese
brigades were to be ready to march to support Carlos de España and
Stewart at the shortest notice. These dispositions were sufficient
to keep Masséna quiet; he had no real intention of crossing the
Tagus unless he heard of Soult’s approach from the direction of the
Alemtejo[22].
[21] For details see D’Urban’s diary, January 1, 4, and 5, 1811.
The French batteries on the first day shelled Carlos de España’s
cantonments across the river, but with no effect.
[22] So Fririon in his _Campagne de Portugal_, p. 128.
On that side all was tranquil--as indeed it was destined to remain for
many a week more. But just at the end of the month of December the
isolation in which the Army of Portugal had so long been living at last
came to an end, and reinforcements and news were at last received,
though the news was disheartening and the reinforcements inadequate.
On the 26th the reconnoitring party under General Marcognet, which had
just beaten up Wilson’s quarters at Espinhal, was surprised by the
appearance of a party of regular cavalry pushing towards them on the
road from Ponte de Murcella. The uniforms were soon seen to be those of
French dragoons, and a joyful meeting took place[23]. The new-comers
announced that they were the advanced guard of Drouet’s 9th Corps,
which was pushing down the valley of the Mondego in search of the Army
of Portugal, but had no exact knowledge of where it was to be found.
[23] There is a description of the meeting in the diary of Ney’s
aide-de-camp Sprünglin, who was in command of the party which
actually met D’Erlon’s dragoons, p. 460.
The 9th Corps, it will be remembered, was a promiscuous assembly of
some twenty newly-raised fourth battalions, belonging to the regiments
which were already in Spain. Eleven were fractions of corps serving
in Soult’s Army of Andalusia, five of regiments of Ney’s 6th Corps,
the rest of units under Reynier’s and Junot’s command. Drouet had
been originally ordered to do no more than conduct these battalions,
which were little better than a mass of drafts, to join the regiments
to which they belonged. They were divided into two provisional
divisions under Generals Conroux and Claparéde. Thrust, as it were,
into Spain without any regular organization, destitute of battalion
transport, and with an improvised and insufficient staff, they had
made very slow progress since they crossed the Pyrenees, mainly
owing to difficulties of commissariat. When Foy passed Salamanca on
November 10th, the head of Claparéde’s division had only just entered
that city; the tail of the corps was struggling up from Valladolid
and Burgos. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Claparéde
only reached the neighbourhood of Almeida on the 15th of November,
and that Drouet had not concentrated his whole force at that place
till December 14th. He had about 16,000 men, having left three of his
own battalions to garrison Ciudad Rodrigo, and picked up instead the
remains of Gardanne’s column, which had retreated on to the Spanish
frontier in such disorder at the end of the preceding month[24]. This
detachment, by reason of its losses during its disastrous flight,
had been reduced to about 1,400 men fit for service--about the same
number that Drouet had left behind him from his own corps. Drouet was
acting under stringent orders from the Emperor to move forward at the
earliest possible moment[25], and open up communication with Masséna.
His original instructions had been to go no further forward than
Almeida himself, but to send a column under Gardanne, 6,000 strong,
to clear and keep open the way to the Tagus. The march and failure
of Gardanne have been already related, and Drouet saw that to carry
out the Emperor’s orders he must use a larger force. At the same time
his dispatches told him that he must at all costs keep in touch with
Almeida, and not merely join Masséna and allow himself to be cut off
from Spain[26].
[24] See vol. iii. p. 481.
[25] Napoleon to Berthier, November 3 and November 20,
_Correspondance_, 17,079 and 17,141.
[26] ‘Qu’il rouvre avec un gros corps les communications avec le
prince d’Essling, mais que je compte, du reste, sur sa prudence
de ne pas se laisser couper d’Almeida.’ Napoleon to Berthier,
November 20.
Drouet’s solution of the problem was that with Conroux’s division and
Gardanne’s detachment, some 8,000 men, he would march down the Mondego
by Celorico and Ponte de Murcella, and cut his way to join Masséna,
but that he would leave his second division under Claparéde behind
him, about Celorico and Trancoso, to keep in touch with Almeida and
maintain his communications. This was about as much as could be done to
carry out Napoleon’s instructions, which were essentially impossible
to execute. For the Portuguese militia, with which the 9th Corps had to
deal, were, when properly managed, a very intangible enemy, who could
retire whenever a column passed, and return to block the way when it
had gone by. It is impossible to see how Drouet could have kept open
the whole road from Almeida to Thomar, without leaving all along the
way a couple of battalions, entrenched in a good position, at distances
of fifteen or twenty miles from each other. And if he had done this,
he would have had no force left at the moment when he joined Masséna.
It was useless for Napoleon to tell him in one breath to keep the road
open from end to end, and in the next to forbid him to make any small
detachments[27]. But the Emperor neither fully understood the military
situation in Portugal, nor grasped the relative merits of its roads or
the relative resources of its various regions. In a dispatch sent out
to Masséna on December 4th (but not delivered till February) he advised
that Marshal to try to open his communications with Spain by the awful
mountain road from the Zezere by Cardigos and Belmonte to Guarda, and
at the same time to use the desolate Castello Branco country ‘pour
faire des vivres.’ Ferey’s fruitless expedition up that very road and
into that very region, carried out a fortnight before the Emperor’s
dispatch was even written, had sufficiently proved the futility of the
suggestion.
[27] ‘Il est donc important qu’il ne fasse point de petits
pacquets.’ Ibid.
But to return to Drouet: he left Almeida on December 14th, and crossed
the Coa with both his divisions and Gardanne’s detachment. The only
enemy near him was Silveira, who with his six militia regiments and the
reorganized 24th of the Line (the absconding garrison of Almeida, which
had eluded its forced oath to Masséna in the preceding autumn[28]) was
lying at Trancoso. To that place the Portuguese general had retired
(abandoning the blockade of Almeida) when the 9th Corps arrived on the
frontier. Of the other militia brigades of the north Miller with four
battalions was at Vizeu, Trant with seven at Coimbra; Baccelar, the
Commander-in-Chief, lay at Oporto with the small remainder.
[28] See vol. iii. p. 276.
Drouet, copying Masséna’s first dispositions in the preceding autumn,
marched from Almeida in two columns; he himself took the high road by
Celorico; Claparéde was sent along the more difficult mountain route by
Trancoso, which place Silveira evacuated on his approach. At Celorico
Drouet cut himself loose from his lieutenant, who (in accordance with
Napoleon’s orders) was to stay behind, to remain in touch with Almeida,
and (vain thought!) to keep open the communications. Taking Conroux
and Gardanne with him, he marched south of the Mondego, past Chamusca
and Moita, as far as Ponte de Murcella, which he reached on the 24th.
He met with no opposition, for Baccelar, anxious only for Oporto, had
told Silveira to keep in front of Claparéde, and Miller to stay at
Vizeu, but both to be ready to fall back on Oporto if Drouet’s advance
turned out to have that city as its objective. Similarly Trant was to
hold on to Coimbra unless the French column took the northern road, in
which case he too might be called back to Oporto[29]. Between Drouet,
therefore, and Masséna’s army there was only left the weak brigade of
John Wilson at Espinhal, and this force had been driven out of its
usual position by Marcognet’s flying column on November 23rd, and had
retired to Peñacova beyond the Mondego, below the heights of Bussaco.
On the 26th Drouet’s advance cavalry came into touch with Marcognet, as
has been already related, at Espinhal, just as the latter was preparing
to retire to Thomar, with the report that there was nothing stirring in
the north.
[29] These dispositions are given in D’Urban’s unpublished diary.
Thus Drouet’s 8,000 men came into the sphere of Masséna’s operations;
but he did not at first seem to realize the fact. He sent on Gardanne’s
detachment (which mostly belonged to the 2nd Corps) to join the
Marshal, but halted Conroux’s division at Espinhal, and only went
forward in person as far as Thomar, where he stopped for two days
conferring with Ney. Instead of reporting himself to Masséna, he merely
sent on a dispatch, to say that he had opened the communications, and
was under orders from the Emperor to keep them safe. With this purpose
he intended to return to the Mondego, and get back into touch with
Claparéde. Masséna was in no small degree irritated at this pretension
of Drouet to act as an independent commander, and sent him a peremptory
order to come to head quarters to make his report, and to send on
Conroux’s division from Espinhal to occupy Leiria. After some slight
friction Drouet obeyed. The communications with Almeida, re-established
for a moment, were thus broken again after four days, for John Wilson,
the instant that Conroux began to break up from Espinhal, came boldly
back towards that place, attacked the French rearguard on December
30th, and, after doing it some little harm, blocked the high-road to
the north once more[30]. Drouet was completely cut off from Claparéde,
and his arrival brought no profit to Masséna beyond his 8,000 men and
the moderate train of ammunition which he had escorted. It was not
with such a reinforcement that the Marshal could hope to resume the
offensive. Indeed, as Wellington sagely remarked[31], if nothing more
came up to join him, his retreat looked more certain and necessary than
ever.
[30] For Wilson’s movements I have his letters to Trant and
D’Urban of January 3, 1811--the one in D’Urban’s correspondence,
the other in the Trant papers lent me by Captain Chambers, R.N.
[31] Wellington to Hill, Dispatches, vii. p. 86, Dec. 30, 1810.
While Drouet was on the march to Leiria, his lieutenant, Claparéde,
the moment that he was no longer under his superior’s eye, had gone
off on a bold and rather hazardous raid of his own. Finding that
Silveira’s militia were sticking closely to his skirts, he resolved to
make an attempt to surprise them by a forced march. Concentrating at
Trancoso on December 30th, he fell upon the enemy on the following day
at Ponte do Abbade, and routed them with a loss of 200 men. Silveira,
notwithstanding this check, adhered to his orders to keep close to
Claparéde, and retired no further than Villa da Ponte, some seven miles
away. But the French general made a second sudden sally from Trancoso
on January 11th[32], beat the Portuguese much more decisively, and
pursued them as far as Lamego on the Douro. Silveira crossed the river
in great disorder on the 13th, and the news of his defeat brought
terror to Oporto. Baccelar at once ordered not only the brigade from
Vizeu (Miller was just dead and no longer commanded it), but Trant from
Coimbra, and Wilson from Peñacova, to fall back and join him. They
concentrated at Castro Daire, ten miles south of Lamego, with a force
of 14,000 bayonets, whereupon Claparéde, who had only 6,000 men with
him, began to fear that he would be cut off from Almeida and isolated
in a difficult position. He evacuated Lamego and returned to Trancoso
by forced marches, having accomplished nothing save the destruction
of a few hundred militia and the spreading of panic as far as Oporto
(January 18th)[33]. Shortly after he left Trancoso and moved southward
to Celorico and Guarda[34], where he commanded the two roads to the
Tagus, yet was not too far from Almeida and his base. But he was still
completely cut off from Masséna, and the Portuguese at once resumed
their old positions around him--Trant returning to Coimbra, Wilson to
Peñacova on the Mondego, while Baccelar with the reserves lay more
to the rear, at São Pedro do Sul on the Vouga. Claparéde’s movement
would have been dangerous for the allies if he had possessed a heavier
force, but 6,000 men were too few for a serious march on Oporto, and if
the column had not retreated in haste it would probably have suffered
complete disaster.
[32] Chaby, ii. p. 272, gives January 5th as the date of the
combat of Villa da Ponte, but all the other authorities place it
on the 11th.
[33] According to Thiébault, then commanding at Salamanca,
Claparéde’s rather wild excursion was due to mere desire for
plunder; he accuses him of having raised, and put into his
private purse, great contributions at Moimento, Lamego, and other
towns which he occupied for a few days. (_Mémoires_, iv. 422-3.)
[34] Date uncertain, perhaps January 22, as Wellington knew he
was there on January 26.
The only use which Masséna could make of Drouet and the division of
Conroux was to cover more ground for foraging by their means. When
placed at Leiria they much restricted the activities of Blunt at
Peniche and Trant at Coimbra, who could no longer push their advanced
posts so far to the front, and had to cede to the enemy all the land
about the Souré and Alcoa rivers. Here Drouet collected enough food
both to feed himself and to give help to Ney; but the resources of the
district were, after all, limited, and within a few weeks the men of
the 9th Corps were living on the edge of daily starvation like their
fellows. The Army of Portugal had got no solid help from this quarter.
It remained to be seen whether they would obtain better aid from the
other side from which Masséna had hoped to be reinforced--the Army of
Andalusia.
SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER II
SOULT’S EXPEDITION INTO ESTREMADURA. JANUARY-MARCH 1811. THE BATTLE OF
THE GEBORA AND THE FALL OF BADAJOZ
In his original scheme for the invasion of Portugal, Napoleon had given
no part to the Army of Andalusia, judging that Masséna, supported
by the 9th Corps, would be amply strong enough to drive the English
into the sea. It is not till the 29th of September that the imperial
correspondence begins to show signs of a desire that Soult should do
something to help the Army of Portugal. But the assistance which was
to be given is defined, in the dispatch of that date, as no more than
a diversion to be made against Estremadura by Mortier and the 5th
Corps, with the object of preventing La Romana from giving any aid to
Wellington[35]. Soult is directed to see that Mortier keeps the Spanish
Army of Estremadura in check: he is always to be on its heels, so
that it will have no opportunity of sending troops towards the Tagus.
Nothing is said about making a serious attack on Estremadura, or of
threatening Badajoz with a siege. On the 26th of October comes the next
allusion to this subject[36]: the Emperor had learnt from the English
newspapers--always his best source of intelligence--that La Romana with
a large part of his forces has marched on Lisbon to join Wellington,
and that he has been able to do so without molestation. That this
should have happened was, he thought, due to direct disobedience on
Soult’s part: the Marshal cannot have kept in touch with the enemy.
And he is directed in vague terms to ‘faire pousser sur La Romana,’
whatever exactly that may mean. An interpretation for the phrase,
however, turns up in the next imperial dispatch[37]--Mortier and the
5th Corps ought to have followed the Spanish general march for march,
and to have presented themselves on the Lower Tagus in face of Lisbon
shortly after the arrival of La Romana in the Portuguese capital.
[35] The Emperor to Berthier, September 29, no. 16,967 of the
_Correspondance de Napoléon_.
[36] Not in the _Correspondance_, but in the form of a letter
from Berthier to Soult, which Soult answers at great length in
his Dispatch from Seville of December 1.
[37] ‘Le 5e Corps, au lieu de suivre La Romana, et par là
de menacer la rive gauche du Tage vis-à-vis de Lisbonne
(pour empêcher les Anglais d’avoir toutes leurs forces sur
la rive droite), s’est replié honteusement sur Séville.’
_Correspondance_, no. 17,131.
Soult had little difficulty in proving that this scheme was absolutely
impossible. It argued, indeed, a complete misconception of the
situation in Estremadura and Andalusia. To talk lightly of pushing
Mortier and the 5th Corps, which comprised at this moment just 13,000
men, right across Estremadura to the mouth of the Tagus, ‘en talonnant
La Romana,’ was futile. The Spanish General had gone off to join
Wellington with some 7,000 or 8,000 men. But he had left behind him
in Estremadura two strong infantry divisions, those of Mendizabal and
Ballasteros, with 12,000 bayonets, 6,000 more infantry in garrison
at Badajoz, Olivenza, and Albuquerque, and the whole of his cavalry,
2,500 sabres. In addition there were interposed between Mortier and
the Tagus about 8,500 Portuguese--a cavalry brigade under Madden which
had been lent to the Spaniards, and, near Badajoz, a regular infantry
brigade at Elvas, and four militia regiments, forming the garrisons
of the last-named place, of Campo Mayor, and of Jerumenha. That is to
say, there lay before Mortier, after La Romana’s departure, a field
army which, if concentrated, would make up 18,000 men, and in addition
six fortresses containing garrisons amounting to 11,000 men more, and
covering all the main strategical points of the country. How could
he have pursued La Romana? If he had followed, he would have found
himself at once involved in a campaign against superior forces in a
region studded with hostile strongholds. ‘On this frontier,’ as Soult
wrote to Berthier, ‘there are six fortified places--Badajoz, Olivenza,
Jerumenha, Elvas, Campo Mayor, Albuquerque, in which there are at least
20,000 infantry and 2,500 cavalry. It is clear to me that if I thrust a
body of 10,000 men forward to the Tagus, as his majesty has directed,
that body would never reach its destination, and would be cut off and
surrounded before I could get up to its aid[38].’ This was indisputably
correct: Mortier might have beaten Mendizabal and Ballasteros in the
open field, if they chose to offer him battle; but if they preferred to
concentrate on Badajoz or Elvas, and defied him from under the shadow
of those great fortresses, he could not ignore them and march by in
pursuit of La Romana. The moment that he was past their positions, they
would cut him off from Andalusia, and he would find himself with their
whole force at his back, and in front of him anything that Wellington
might have sent to the south bank of the Tagus. In December this
would have meant 14,000 men under Hill, at the New Year about 16,000
under Beresford. As Soult truly said, the expedition would have been
encompassed, and probably destroyed, long before Masséna heard of its
having got anywhere near him[39]. Nevertheless the Commander-in-Chief
of the Army of Portugal was told to expect this diversion as a matter
of certainty: in the dispatch that Foy took back to him (dated Dec. 4)
he was given the precise statement that the 5th Corps was to be looked
for somewhere in the direction of Montalvão and Villaflor, on the Tagus
above Abrantes, at no distant date.
[38] Soult to Berthier, no. 24 in Appendix to _Belmas_, vol. i.
p. 472.
[39] The total of the troops available against Mortier in
December would have been, giving net totals, with sick and
detached men all deducted:--
_Spanish_:
Ballasteros’s Division 5,000
Mendizabal’s Division 6,000
Permanent garrison of Badajoz 4,200
5 battalions left behind by La Romana at Albuquerque,
Olivenza, &c. 2,000
Carlos de España’s brigade on the Tagus near Abrantes 1,500
Cavalry of the Army of Estremadura 2,600
Artillery 500
_Portuguese_:
Brigade of Line Regiments, Nos. 5 and 17, at Elvas 2,500
Brigade of Cavalry under Madden, 3rd, 5th, 8th regiments 950
Hamilton’s Division (with Hill), 2nd, 4th, 10th, 14th Line 4,800
Portuguese Militia, 4 regiments, Beja, Evora, Villa Viciosa,
Portalegre, in Elvas, Jerumenha, and Campo Mayor 4,000
5th Caçadores (with Hill) 450
Fane’s Cavalry (with Hill), 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th regiments 1,200
Artillery (4 batteries) 600
_British_:
Hill’s Second Division 5,250
13th Light Dragoons 350
Artillery (3 batteries) 400
------
Total 42,300
------
Mortier had in the 5th Corps 11,500 infantry, 1,200 cavalry, and
about 700 artillery in his 7 batteries.
After having, as he thought, demonstrated to his master that it would
be useless to send Mortier alone, with 10,000 or 12,000 men, to make
an impossible dash at the Tagus, Soult made another proposal. He would
undertake not a mere raid, but the capture of Badajoz, the conquest of
Estremadura, and the destruction of the army of that province; but he
must take with him a force much greater than the mere 5th Corps. ‘The
enterprise is a big one, but ought to succeed--at least it will produce
a happy diversion in favour of the imperial army in Portugal[40].’ It
would call back La Romana from Lisbon, and possibly cause Wellington to
detach troops in his aid, and Masséna would have less in front of him
in consequence, and might resume the offensive.
[40] Soult to Berthier, December 1, 1810, from Seville.
There was of course another course possible: Soult might have marched
for Estremadura not with the 13,000 men of the 5th Corps alone, nor
yet with the 20,000 men whom he actually took thither in January, but
with the greater part of the French Army of Andalusia, 35,000 or 40,000
men. To do so he would have had to abandon Granada, Malaga, and Jaen
on the one side, and his hold on the Condado de Niebla and the west
upon the other. He might even possibly have had to raise the siege of
Cadiz, though this is not quite certain. Many months after, in the
end of March, when all chance of the conquest of Portugal was over,
the Emperor told him that this would have been his proper course, and
read him an _ex-post-facto_ lecture on the advantages that might have
followed, if he had evacuated two-thirds of his viceroyalty and taken
an imposing force to sweep across the Alemtejo and assail Lisbon from
the southern side[41]. But it must be remembered that in December and
January all the orders that were sent him directed him to move no more
than a small corps--in one dispatch the Emperor calls it only 10,000
men. A supreme commander-in-chief present on the spot might have seen
his way to make the temporary sacrifice of the provinces which had cost
so many men to conquer and to hold, in order that every available man
might be sent against Lisbon, and the English might at last be expelled
from the Peninsula. But Soult was not such a commander-in-chief; he
was only one of the many viceroys whom Napoleon preferred to a single
omnipotent lieutenant. Was it likely that he would sacrifice half his
own territory, when no order to do so lay before him, in order that a
colleague, sent on a separate task with forces no less than his own,
might have every possible advantage? Soult is often blamed for not
having seen that the crushing of Wellington’s army was the end to which
all others should have been subordinated, and that it would have been
cheap in the end to surrender half or three-quarters of Andalusia,
and even to raise the siege of Cadiz, in order to secure that point.
He might have replied that his master was no less blind than himself:
dispatch after dispatch had ordered him to send a trifling detachment
towards the Tagus, not to mass every available man and march on Lisbon,
leaving Seville and the Cadiz lines exposed to all manner of dangers.
He was primarily responsible for the retention of the Andalusia that
he had conquered; it was for the Emperor, not for himself, to order
the evacuation of much or all of that great realm. The Emperor gave
no such directions: from September to January his whole series of
dispatches spoke of nothing more than the movement of a moderate force;
those of January 25th and February 6th approved of the course which
Soult had actually chosen, and took it for granted that he would not
move towards the Tagus till he should have captured Badajoz[42]. It
was not till March, when he began to see that all his arrangements
were going wrong, and that his scheme of times was erroneous, that the
Emperor began suddenly to launch out into criticisms of Soult, and to
complain that ‘to try to hold every point at a moment of crisis leads
to possible disaster,’ that ‘Seville, Badajoz, and the Cadiz lines were
the only necessary things,’ and that the Marshal ought to have 30,000
men or more with him at Badajoz instead of the 20,000 men whom he had
actually taken thither[43]. If so, why had the orders not been given to
that effect early in December, when Napoleon had just learnt from Foy
the state and position of the Army of Portugal, which had so long been
hidden from him behind Wellington’s screen of Ordenança?
[41] This dispatch of March 29 (Nap. _Corresp._, no. 17,531),
which must have reached Soult about the end of April, when
Masséna had long retired to Spain, told him that he should have
withdrawn all the 4th Corps from Granada save the six Polish
battalions, and have drawn in Godinot’s brigade from Cordova,
i. e. have abandoned the whole eastern half of Andalusia, and
have tried to hold nothing but the siege lines of Cadiz and
the city of Seville. But this was ‘wisdom after the event.’ In
December Napoleon was harping upon a diversion with 10,000 men
to Montalvão and Villaflor, not ordering the evacuation of the
greater part of Andalusia.
[42] January 25, Napoleon to Berthier, ‘Il est nécessaire
d’écrire au duc de Dalmatie _qu’après la prise de Badajoz_ il
doit se porter sur le Tage, avec son équipage de pont, et donner
les moyens au prince d’Essling d’assiéger et prendre Abrantès.’
_Correspondance_, no. 17,295.
February 5, Napoleon to Berthier, ‘Écrivez au duc d’Istrie
(Bessières, now commanding the new “Army of the North”) ... que
tout paraît prendre une couleur avantageuse, que si Badajoz a
été pris dans le courant de Janvier, le duc de Dalmatie a pu se
porter sur le Tage.’ [Unfortunately Badajoz did not surrender
till March 11, and Soult was extremely lucky to get it so early.]
_Correspondance_, no. 17,335.
[43] Napoleon to Berthier, March 29, _Correspondance_, no. 17,531.
If we seek deep enough, we find the cause of all misdirections
in the fact that the Emperor persisted in guiding the movements
of all his army from Paris, and would not appoint an independent
commander-in-chief of all the Spanish armies, who should be able to
issue orders that would be promptly obeyed by every separate marshal
or general in each province. A moment’s reflection shows that the
_data_ as to the details of the situation in the Peninsula, from which
Napoleon had to construct his scheme of operations, always came to him
a month late. And when he had issued the dispatch which dealt with the
situation, it reached its destination after the interval of another
month, and had long ceased to have any bearing on the actual position
of affairs. A single example of how the system worked may suffice.
Masséna started Foy for Paris, with his great report on the state of
the Army of Portugal, on October 29. Foy reached Paris and saw the
Emperor on November 22 and the succeeding days. The detailed dispatches
to Masséna and Soult, consequent on Foy’s report, were not sent off
till December 4. On January 22nd Soult acknowledges the receipt
of the dispatch of that date, along with that of two others dated
November 28 and December 10, all of which arrived together, because
the guerrilleros of La Mancha had stopped the posts between Madrid and
Seville for a full fortnight after the New Year[44]. Of what value to
Soult on January 22 could be orders based on the condition and projects
of Masséna on October 29? The data at the base of the orders were
three months old--while Soult had been already for more than a month
engaged on a campaign undertaken on his own responsibility, without any
knowledge of the exact requirements of Masséna, or of the intentions of
the Emperor.
[44] Soult to Berthier, from the siege lines in front of
Olivenza, dated January 22.
The Estremaduran expedition of January-March 1811, therefore, must
be looked upon as the private scheme of the Duke of Dalmatia[45],
undertaken with the general object of giving _indirect_ assistance
to Masséna, because the last orders that he had received from Paris
(those of October 26), telling him to give _direct_ assistance, by
sending Mortier to the Tagus, were impossible of execution[46]. Soult
had two leading ideas in his mind when he planned out his campaign.
The first was that he was going into a country thickly set with
fortresses; the second was that, when once the skirts of the Sierra
Morena have been passed, Estremadura is a ‘cavalry country,’ a land
of heaths and of unenclosed tillage-fields of vast area. Accordingly
he intended to march with a very large force of cavalry, and with a
heavy siege-train. At Seville he had at his disposition the greatest
arsenal of Spain; but for many months all that it produced had been
going forward to Cadiz: no less than 290 pieces had been sent to
arm the vast lines in front of the blockaded city. Accordingly it
took some time to get ready the heavy guns, and to manufacture the
ammunition required for such a big business as the siege of the six
fortresses, small and great, into whose midst he was about to thrust
himself. The personnel for the siege-train had also to be collected:
requisitions were sent, both to Victor at Cadiz and to Sebastiani at
Granada, to detach and send into Seville nearly all their sappers, and
the men of several companies of artillery. They were also to send to
the expeditionary force many regiments of cavalry. Mortier had only
two (10th Hussars and 21st Chasseurs), which had sufficed when he was
engaged in the heights of the Sierra Morena, but were insufficient when
he was about to descend into the plain of the Guadiana. Accordingly
half the cavalry of Victor’s 1st Corps was called up--four regiments
(4th, 14th, 26th Dragoons, 2nd Hussars), while Sebastiani gave up one
(27th Chasseurs); to these was added an experimental Spanish cavalry
regiment of ‘Juramentados’ recently organized at Seville. Only one
infantry regiment was requisitioned, the 63rd Line, from Victor’s 3rd
Division. The putting together of these resources gave a force in which
the proportions of the arms were very peculiar--4,000 cavalry, 2,000
artillery and sappers, to only 13,500 infantry; the last, all save
the above-mentioned 63rd regiment, drawn from Mortier’s 5th Corps.
The orders for the concentration of the troops were issued early in
December, but owing to the time required for drawing in units from
Granada and Cadiz, and for the preparation of the siege-train, it
was not till the last day of the old year that the Marshal took his
departure from Seville.
[45] He calls it ‘la détermination que j’avais prise sur de
simples avis indirects.’ To Berthier, January 25.
[46] For the explanation of all this see Soult to Berthier,
already quoted, from Seville, December 1, acknowledging the
receipt of the imperial orders of October 26th.
The collection of a field army of 20,000 men, which was to cut itself
loose from Andalusia for a time, imposed some tiresome problems on
Soult. Since he had resolved not to evacuate Granada or Malaga on the
one hand, nor the posts west of the Guadalquivir on the other, and
since he was drawing off the 5th Corps, which had hitherto provided for
the safety of Seville and found detachments for the Condado de Niebla,
he had to make provision for the filling of the gap left behind him.
Hence we find him calling upon Victor to spare men from in front of
Cadiz--a demand which the Duke of Belluno took very ill--since he truly
declared that he had no more troops in the 1st Corps than sufficed
to man the lines and to keep posts of observation in his rear. The
garrison of Cadiz was always increasing, and included a strong nucleus
of British troops. How could he face sorties, or disembarkations in
his rear, if he was cut down to a mere 18,000 men in place of the
24,000 on which he had hitherto reckoned? Nevertheless, he was forced
to provide a detachment to hold Xeres, as a half-way house to Seville,
and to send out a cavalry regiment (9th Dragoons) and one battalion
west of the Guadalquivir. Similarly, the brigade of Godinot in the
kingdom of Cordova[47] was required to find a skeleton garrison for
Seville, which was raised to a somewhat higher figure, in appearance,
by the doubtful aid of some ‘juramentado’ companies of Spaniards, and
of the dépôts and convalescents of the 5th Corps. The great city, with
a turbulent population of 100,000 souls, which formed the centre of his
viceroyalty, became at this time Soult’s weakest point--he left it so
inadequately held that it was at the mercy of any considerable hostile
force which might approach it--and such a force was ere long, as we
shall see, to make its appearance. Godinot had also to look after the
insurgent bands of the central Sierra Morena, who often blocked the
post road to Madrid. Sebastiani (save for the cavalry and artillery
borrowed from him) was left with his 4th Corps intact, and his duty was
unchanged--to watch the Spanish army of Murcia, and to suppress the
guerrilleros of the Sierra de Ronda and the eastern coast--an unending
task from which Soult thought that he ought not to be distracted.
Napoleon, wise after the event, wrote in March that Soult should have
left no more than the Polish division of the 4th Corps in the direction
of Granada, and have brought the remainder of it to strengthen or
support the troops at Seville and in the lines before Cadiz. In that
case the Poles would certainly have had to move westward also ere long,
since there were but 5,000 of them, and all Eastern Andalusia would
have had to be evacuated. But this idea had never struck Soult as
practicable, and Sebastiani’s whole corps was left in its old posts in
the kingdom of Granada.
[47] Belonging to that division of the Army of the Centre under
Dessolles which Soult had borrowed for the conquest of Andalusia,
and which King Joseph, despite of many demands, could never get
back.
The invasion of Estremadura was carried out in two columns of about
equal strength, which used the two main passes between Western
Andalusia and the valley of the Guadiana. The right column under
Latour-Maubourg took the route by Guadalcanal, Llerena, and Usagre;
it was composed of his own regiments of dragoons from the 1st Corps,
and of Girard’s infantry division of the 5th Corps, which latter had
been cantoned in Llerena since the autumn, and was now picked up and
taken forward by the cavalry. The left column, which was accompanied
both by Soult and by Mortier, was composed of Briche’s light cavalry
and Gazan’s division of the 5th Corps. It had to escort the slowly
moving siege-train of 34 guns, which (with the 60,000 kilos of powder
belonging to it) was drawn by 2,500 draught oxen, requisitioned along
with their drivers from the province of Seville. This column took the
route Ronquillo, Sta Olalla, Monasterio, which, if less steep and
better made than the Llerena-Guadalcanal road, is longer, and passes
through an even more desolate and resourceless country. It was intended
that the two columns should join at Los Santos or Almendralejo, in the
Estremaduran plain, and lay siege at once to Badajoz, the enemy’s most
formidable stronghold. Its fall, so Soult hoped, would lead to the easy
conquest of the minor fortresses.
But the two columns did not meet with equal fortune. That commanded by
Latour-Maubourg met practically no resistance in its first stages. On
arriving at Usagre on January 3, it found in its front almost the whole
of the allied cavalry in Estremadura--Butron with 1,500 Spaniards,
Madden with nearly 1,000 Portuguese. But this was merely a screen
thrown out to cover the retreat beyond the Guadiana of Mendizabal
and the division of Spanish infantry which had been cantoned in this
region. That officer had been ordered by his chief, La Romana, to break
the bridge of Merida, after retiring over it, and then to attempt to
hold the line of the Guadiana. He did neither; precipitately marching
on Merida, he passed through it in great haste, but forgot to see
that the bridge was duly destroyed, and then retired along the north
bank of the Guadiana to Badajoz. Latour-Maubourg, according to his
directions, did not cross the river, but halted near Almendralejo,
to wait for the other column, which was not forthcoming. Only Soult
himself and Briche’s light cavalry appeared at Zafra on the 5th, and
joined Latour-Maubourg on the 6th of January. Gazan’s infantry and the
siege-train were far away, and unavailable for many a day. The plans
of the left invading column had miscarried. For when its head reached
Monasterio, at the summit of the long pass, its tail, the siege-train,
was dragging far behind. In the desolate stages about Ronquillo and Sta
Olalla it had met with tempestuous rains, as might have been expected
at the season. Many of the oxen died, the unwilling Spanish drivers
deserted wholesale, and there was much delay and considerable loss of
vehicles. The train and its small escort got completely separated from
Gazan’s infantry. At this moment Soult’s cavalry reported to him that
a formidable column of hostile infantry was lying a few miles to the
west of Monasterio, on the bad cross-road to Calera, and was apparently
moving round his flank, either to fall upon the belated convoy or
perhaps to make a dash at Seville.
This column was the 5,000 infantry of Ballasteros, who, as it chanced,
had begun to march southward at the same moment that Soult had started
northward. The Spanish general had just received orders from Cadiz
bidding him cut himself loose from the Estremaduran army, and move into
the Condado de Niebla, where he was to unite with the local levies
under Copons, drive out the weak French detachment there stationed,
and threaten Seville from the west if it should be practicable. These
orders had been given, of course, before Soult’s plan for invading
Estremadura was suspected at Cadiz. But though unwise in themselves--it
was not the time to deplete Estremadura of troops--they had the effect
of bringing Soult’s great manœuvre to a standstill for some weeks. The
Marshal determined that he must free his flank from this threatening
force before continuing his march, and ordered Mortier to attack
Ballasteros without delay. This was done, but the Spaniard, after a
running fight of two hours, retired to Fregenal, fifteen miles further
west, without suffering any serious harm (January 4th). He was still
in a position to threaten the rear of the convoy, or to slip round the
flank of the French column towards Seville. Soult therefore resolved to
go on with his cavalry and join Latour-Maubourg, but to drop Gazan’s
infantry in the passes, with the order to head off Ballasteros at
all costs, and to cover the siege-train in its journey across the
mountains. Gazan therefore took post at Fuentes de Leon, but soon
heard that Ballasteros had moved south again from Fregenal towards the
Chanza river, and was apparently trying to get round his flank. Leaving
a detachment to help the convoy on its slow and toilsome route, Gazan
resolved to pursue the Spanish column and destroy it at all costs. This
determination led him into three weeks of desperate mountain-marching
and semi-starvation, at the worst season of the year. For Ballasteros,
who showed considerable skill in drawing his enemy on, moved ever south
and west towards the lower Guadiana, and picked up Copons’s levies by
the way. He at last turned to fight at Villanueva de los Castillejos on
January 24th. Gazan, who had been joined meanwhile by the small French
detachment in the Condado de Niebla, brought his enemy to action on the
25th. The Asturian battalions which formed Ballasteros’s division made
a creditable resistance, and when evicted from their position retired
across the Guadiana to Alcoutim in Portugal, without having suffered
any overwhelming loss[48]. Gazan therefore resolved to pursue them no
further--indeed he had been drawn down into one of the remotest corners
of Spain to little profit, and realized that Soult must be brought to a
standstill one hundred miles away, for want of the 6,000 infantry who
had now been executing their toilsome excursion in the mountains for
three weeks.
[48] Certainly not with the loss of 1,500 men as Gazan alleged,
still less with that of 3,000 as stated by Napier.
Accordingly, the French general bade Remond, the commander of the
Niebla detachment, watch Ballasteros, and himself returned to
Estremadura by a most painful march through Puebla de Guzman, El Cerro,
Fregenal, and Xeres de los Caballeros. He reported his return to Soult
at Valverde on February 3rd. His services had been lost to his chief
for a month all but two days, a fact which had the gravest results on
the general course of the campaign of Estremadura[49].
[49] By far the best account of this wild excursion is to be
found in La Mare’s account of the Estremaduran Campaign of
1811-12 (Paris, 1825). Toreno exaggerates the losses of the
French, which cannot have been heavy, as Martinien’s _Liste des
officiers tués_, &c., shows only two or three casualties in
Gazan’s division.
For the Duke of Dalmatia, when he had joined Latour-Maubourg on
January 6th, found that he had at his disposition 4,000 cavalry but
only the 6,000 infantry of Girard, while the siege-train was still
blocked in the passes by Monasterio. With such a force he did not like
to beleaguer a place so large and so heavily garrisoned as Badajoz.
Accordingly, he was forced to abandon his original intention of forming
its siege, and to think of some lesser enterprise, more suited to his
strength. After some hesitation, he determined to attack the weak
and old-fashioned fortress of Olivenza, the southernmost of all the
fortified places on the Spanish-Portuguese frontier. To cover his
movement he sent Briche’s cavalry to Merida, which they occupied on
January 7th, almost without resistance, finding the bridge intact. From
thence they sought for Mendizabal on the north side of the Guadiana,
and discovered that he had withdrawn to Albuquerque, twenty miles north
of Badajoz. Meanwhile Latour-Maubourg with four dragoon regiments took
post at Albuera to watch the garrison of Badajoz, while Soult marched
with Girard’s infantry and one cavalry regiment to attack Olivenza,
before whose walls he appeared on January 11th, 1811.
Olivenza ought never to have been defended. For since its cession
by Portugal to Spain after Godoy’s futile ‘War of the Oranges’ in
1801, it had been systematically neglected. The breach made by the
Spaniards at its siege ten years before had never been properly
repaired--only one-third of the masonry had been replaced, and the
rest of the gap had been merely stopped with earth. Its one outlying
work, a lunette 300 yards only from its southern point, was lying in
ruins and unoccupied. The circuit of its walls was about a mile, but
there were only eighteen guns[50] to guard them. The garrison down to
the 5th of January had consisted of a single battalion left there by
La Romana, when he marched for Portugal in October. But Mendizabal,
apparently in inexcusable ignorance of the condition of the place, had
ordered a whole brigade of his infantry to throw themselves into it
when Soult began to press forward. He sacrificed, in fact, 2,400 out
of the 6,000 bayonets of his division by bidding them shut themselves
up in an utterly untenable fortress[51]. The governor, General Manuel
Herck--an old Swiss officer--was ailing and quite incapable; a man of
resources might have done something with the heavy garrison placed
under his orders, even though the walls were weak and artillery almost
non-existent; but Herck disgraced himself.
[50] Soult reports eighteen guns surrendered: but Herck says in
his dispatch that only eight were serviceable.
[51] The original garrison was Voluntarios de Navarra, 1,150
bayonets properly belonging to O’Donnell’s division, which was at
Lisbon with La Romana. The reinforcements thrown in at the last
moment were four battalions, 2,400 bayonets, from the regiments
Merida, Truxillo, Barbastro, and Monforte--the two former part
of the original army of Estremadura, the two latter part of Del
Parque’s old army from the north.
When Soult arrived in front of Olivenza on January 11th, his engineers
informed him that the place, weak as it was, was too strong to take by
escalade, but that a very few days of regular battering would suffice
to ruin it. Unfortunately for him, there was as yet no heavy artillery
at his disposition, but only the divisional batteries of Girard’s two
brigades; the siege-train was still stuck in the passes. However, the
outlying lunette opposite the south front was at once seized, and
turned into a battery for four field-guns, which opened their fire on
the next day. The old Spanish breach of 1801, obviously ready to fall
in on account of its rickety repairs, was visible in the north-west
front, the bastion of San Pedro. Opposite this sites for two more
batteries were planned, and a first parallel opened. The trench-work
went on almost unhindered by the Spaniards, who showed but few guns and
shot very badly, but under considerable difficulties from the rainy
weather, which was perpetually flooding the lower parts of the lines.
But in ten days approaches were pushed right up to the edge of the
counterscarp, and mines prepared to blow it in. The siege artillery
began to arrive on the 19th, in detachments, and continued to drop in
for several days. On the 21st the batteries, being completed, were
armed with the first 12-pounders that came up. On the 22nd the fire
began, and at once proved most effective: the bastion of San Pedro
began to crumble in, and the old breach of 1801 revealed itself, by
the falling away of the rammed earth which alone stopped it up. The
arrangements for a storm had not yet been commenced when the garrison
hoisted the white flag. Mortier refused all negotiations and demanded
a surrender at discretion. This the old governor hastened to concede,
coming out in person at one of the gates, and putting the place at
the disposition of the French without further argument.[52] Soult and
Mortier entered next day, and 4,161 Spanish troops marched out and laid
down their arms before the 6,000 infantry of Girard, who had formed the
sole besieging force. The total loss of the French during the siege was
15 killed and 40 wounded--that of the besieged about 200. The figures
are a sufficient evidence of the disgraceful weakness of the defence.
[52] Herck’s miserable exculpatory dispatch may be found in
Chaby, iv. pp. 200-1.
When one reflects what was done to hold the unfortified town of
Saragossa, and the mediaeval enceinte of Gerona, it is impossible
not to reflect what a determined governor might have accomplished
at Olivenza. The place was short of guns, no doubt--but the enemy
was worse off till the last days of the siege, since he had nothing
but twelve light field-pieces until the siege-train began to arrive.
General Herck made no sorties to disturb the works--though he had a
superabundant garrison; he made no serious attempt to retrench the
breach, and he surrendered actually ere the first summons had been
sent in before the storm. At the worst he might have tried to cut
his way out between the French camps, which were scattered far from
each other, owing to the extremely small numbers of the besieging
army, who only counted three men to the defenders’ two. Altogether it
was a disgraceful business. The place, no doubt, ought never to have
been held; but if held it might at least have been defended--which it
practically was not.
Soult was placed in a new difficulty by the surrender of Olivenza.
Though his siege-train had begun to come up, he had no news of Gazan,
and his infantry was still no more than a single division. He had
to spare two battalions to escort the 4,000 prisoners to Seville,
and to put another in Olivenza as garrison[53]. This left him only
eleven battalions--5,435 bayonets, to continue the campaign, though
he had the enormous force of 4,000 cavalry at his disposition, and a
siege-train that was growing every day, as more belated pieces came
up from the rear. He might probably have waited for Gazan, for whom
messages had been vainly sent, if he had not received, on the day
that Olivenza fell, one more of Berthier’s peremptory letters, dated
22 December, in which he was told (as usual) to send the 5th Corps to
join Masséna on the Tagus without delay. This letter came at an even
more inappropriate moment than usual, as Gazan, with half that corps,
was lost to sight in the mountain of the Condado de Niebla, more than
a hundred and twenty miles away. But it was clear that something
immediate must be done, or the Emperor would be more discontented than
before; accordingly Soult resolved to take the very hazardous step of
laying siege to Badajoz at once with the small infantry force at his
disposition. For this move would undoubtedly provoke alarm at Lisbon,
and lead Wellington to send off La Romana’s army to succour it, and
perhaps some Anglo-Portuguese troops also, so that the mass opposed to
Masséna would be more or less weakened.
[53] The regiment sent back with the prisoners was the 63rd,
the one borrowed from Victor: it had not been at the siege, but
supporting Latour-Maubourg at Albuera. The garrison left in
Olivenza was one battalion of the 64th.
Accordingly on the 26th of January Soult marched against Badajoz,
which is only twelve miles north-west of Olivenza, with under 6,000
infantry, ten companies of artillery, and seven of sappers, to invest
the southern side of Badajoz, while Latour-Maubourg, with six regiments
of cavalry, crossed the Guadiana by a ford, and went to blockade the
place on its northern front.
Badajoz, though owning some defects, was still a stronghold of
the first class, in far better order than most of the Peninsular
fortresses. It belonged to that order of places whose topography
forces a besieger to divide his army by a dangerous obstacle, since
it lies on a broad river, with the town on one side and a formidable
outwork on the other. Indeed the most striking feature of Badajoz,
whether the traveller approaches it from the east or the west, is the
towering height of San Cristobal, crowned by its fort, lying above
the transpontine suburb and dominating the whole city. Any enemy who
begins operations against the place must take measures to blockade or
to attack this high-lying fort, which completely covers the bridge and
its _tête-du-pont_, and effectively protects ingress or egress to or
from the place. But San Cristobal is not easy to blockade, since it is
the end-bluff of a very steep narrow range of hills, which run for many
miles to the north, and divide the country-side beyond the Guadiana
into two separate valleys, those of the Gebora and the Caya, which are
completely invisible from each other.
The city of Badajoz is built on an inclined plane, sloping down from
the Castle, which stands on a lofty hill with almost precipitous
grass slopes, at the north-east end of the place, down to the river
on the north and the plain on the south and west. The castle-hill and
San Cristobal between them form a sort of gorge, through which the
Guadiana, narrowed for a space, forces its way, to broaden out again at
the immensely long bridge with its thirty-two arches and 640 yards of
roadway. Below the castle the Rivillas, a stagnant brook with hardly
any current,--the home of frogs and the hunting-ground of the city
storks,--coasts around the walls, and finally dribbles into the river.
The front of the place from the river to the castle was composed of
eight regular bastions; along the river edge there lies nothing more
than a single solid wall without relief or indentations: but this side
of the place is wholly inaccessible owing to the water. There are two
outlying works, which cover heights so close into the place that it is
necessary to hold them, lest the enemy should establish himself too
near the enceinte. These are the Picurina lunette beyond the Rivillas,
and the much larger Pardaleras fort, a ‘half-crown-work,’ opposite the
south point of the city, which covers a well-marked hill that commands
that low-lying part of the place, and is a position impossible to
concede to the besieger, since it is only 250 yards from the nearest
bastion. It was ill-designed, having a very shallow ditch, and being
incompletely closed at its gorge by a mere palisade.
The eight bastions which form the attackable part of the enceinte of
Badajoz have (they remain to-day just as they were in 1811, for the
place has never been modernized) a height of about thirty feet[54] from
the bottom of the ditch to the rampart, while the curtains between them
are somewhat lower, about twenty-two feet only. The ditch was broad,
with a good counterscarp in masonry seven feet high; beyond it each
bastion was protected in front by a rather low and weak demi-lune.
[54] Except the two nearest the river, San Vincente and San José,
which are a little lower.
The garrison, not more than enough for such an extensive place,
consisted at the New Year of 4,100 men; but Mendizabal threw in two
battalions more (1st and 2nd of the Second Regiment of Seville) before
he retired to the borders of Portugal, so that the figure had risen to
5,000 before Soult appeared in front of the walls. The governor was
a very distinguished soldier, General Rafael Menacho, who had served
through the old French war of 1792-5, and had commanded a regiment
at Baylen. He was in the full vigour of middle age (forty-four years
old) and abounding in spirit, resolution, and initiative, as all his
movements showed down to the unhappy day of his death.
Soult’s engineers, after surveying the situation of Badajoz, reported
that under ordinary circumstances the most profitable front to attack
would certainly be the western--that between the Pardaleras fort
and the river; but at the same time they decided that it had better
be left alone. For the army was so weak that it could not properly
invest the whole city, and if the north bank of the Guadiana were
left practically unoccupied, as must necessarily be the case, the
Spaniards would be able to seize the ground beyond the bridge-head,
and establish batteries there, which would effectually enfilade the
trenches which would have to be constructed for approaching the west
side of the place. The castle and the north-east angle of the town were
too high-lying to be chosen as the point of attack, and the Rivillas
and its boggy banks were better avoided. They therefore advised that
the south front should be chosen as the objective, and that the first
operation taken in hand should be the capture of the Pardaleras fort,
for that work appeared weak and ill-planned, while its site would make
the most advantageous of starting-points for breaching the enceinte
of the town itself. It was the most commanding ground close in to
the walls which could be discovered. Soult and Mortier concurred,
and placed the army in the best position for utilizing this method
of attack. The camps of Girard’s division were placed on and around
two low hills, the Cerro de San Miguel on the right of the Rivillas,
and the Cerro del Viento on its left. On the former height, about
1,800 yards from the town, nothing was done save the construction
of a rough entrenchment--to face the Picurina and restrict possible
sallies--in which three small batteries were afterwards inserted. The
Cerro del Viento, which is about 1,200 yards from the Pardaleras,
was to be the real starting-point of the attack, and under its side
the siege-park and engineers’ camp were established. Two batteries
in front of it were marked out and begun on the first night of ‘open
trenches’ (January 28-9), but it was not till the third night (January
30-1) that the first parallel was commenced, on the undulating ground
to the west of the Rivillas. When the work became visible next day,
the governor directed a vigorous sortie against it, composed of 800
men. The trenches were occupied for a moment, but soon recovered by
the French supports. A small body of Spanish cavalry which had taken
part in the sally rode right round the rear of the camp, and sabred
the _chef-de-bataillon_ Cazin, the chief engineer, and a dozen of his
sappers on the Cerro del Viento. But the total loss of the besiegers
was only about seventy killed and wounded, while the men of the sortie
suffered much more heavily, while they were being driven back across
the open ground towards the city. Their commander, a Colonel Bassecourt
of the 1st Regiment of Seville--the corps which furnished the sallying
force--was killed. Next day the siege-works were so little injured
that the artillery was able to put guns into the first batteries that
had been marked out. On the first three days of February incessant and
torrential rains stopped further work--the whole of the first parallel
was inundated, and the flying bridge by which alone Soult could
communicate with Latour-Maubourg on the other side of the Guadiana was
washed away.
But despite of the rain February 3 was a day of joy for the French,
for on its morning Gazan reported his arrival at Valverde, ten miles
away, and at 3 o’clock his division of 6,000 men marched into camp and
doubled the force of the besieging army. Their arrival was a piece of
cruel ill-luck for the Spaniards, for on that same afternoon, at dusk,
Menacho sent out a formidable sortie of 1,500 men--all that he could
safely spare from the ramparts--who came out of the river-side gate
(Puerto de las Palmas) and stormed the first parallel, driving out the
workers and the three companies of their covering party. The Spaniards
had already filled up a considerable section of the trench, when they
were charged by two battalions of Gazan’s newly-arrived troops, and
driven out again, before they had finished their task. The serious
nature of the attack may be judged from the fact that the French lost
188 killed and wounded--including eight officers--in repelling it. If
only one brigade of Girard had been in the Cerro del Viento camps,
instead of Gazan’s entire division, it is probable that the whole first
parallel and the batteries behind it would have been destroyed. While
the damage was being repaired, on February 4, Soult began to bombard
the town from these batteries, but with no good effect. The result,
indeed, was rather to the profit of the Spaniards, for a great portion
of the civil population fled at the first sign of bombardment, and
escaped by night down the Guadiana bank towards Elvas. The provisions
left in their deserted houses added appreciably to Menacho’s stores.
The work of extending the first parallel diagonally toward the
Pardaleras was still going on, when, on February 5th, the whole
situation before Badajoz was changed by the appearance in the
neighbourhood of a Spanish army of succour. Even before Soult had
started from Seville at the New Year, Wellington had been aware of the
imminence of the invasion of Estremadura, and had been consulting with
his colleague La Romana as to the measures that it would be necessary
to take[55]. As early as the 2nd of January La Romana had sent orders
to Mendizabal, to tell him that if the French should cross the Sierra
Morena in force, he was to evacuate Southern Estremadura, break the
bridges of Medellin and Merida, and endeavour to defend the line of
the Guadiana[56]. By later instructions (January 8) Mendizabal was
directed to retire into the Sierra de San Mamed if the enemy crossed
the river above Badajoz, but to throw himself upon their rear, and to
hang on to them, if they crossed below, and seemed to be making for
Elvas and Portugal. On the 12th, Wellington, hearing that Soult seemed
to be heading towards Olivenza rather than Merida, conceived doubts
as to whether he might not be intending to abandon his communications
with Seville, to leave the fortresses behind him, and to march to the
Tagus to co-operate with Masséna upon the Alemtejo bank of that river.
On the 14th arrived the more comfortable news that the French had sat
down to beleaguer Olivenza, a sure sign that they did not propose to
cut themselves loose from their base and to join Masséna as a flying
column. As a matter of fact, as we have seen, Soult, having been
deprived of Gazan’s assistance, was too weak at this moment to dream of
an incursion into Portugal, and had attacked Olivenza because he could
find nothing else to do for the present.
[55] Wellington, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 98, dated January 1st, to
Charles Stuart reports that from Cadiz advices of December 23 he
is aware that a concentration is taking place at Seville, though
Mendizabal knows nothing of it.
[56] Wellington’s covering letter to La Romana’s dispatch is in
_Wellington Dispatches_, vii. p. 99.
Accordingly, since the enemy had apparently settled down to besiege
the Estremaduran fortresses, Wellington and La Romana determined to
reinforce Mendizabal up to a strength which would enable him to act
as a serious check upon Soult, probably even to foil him completely.
On January 14th La Romana ordered Carlos de España and his brigade of
some 1,500 or 1,800 men, from opposite Abrantes, to join the small
existing remnant of the Army of Estremadura[57]. On the 19th[58],
the more important resolve was taken of sending the remainder of the
Spanish troops from the Lisbon lines on the same errand--they amounted
to about 6,000 men, the rest of La Carrera’s division, and the whole of
that of Charles O’Donnell. Starting on the 20th they reached Montemor o
Novo on the 24th--where they heard of the disgraceful capitulation of
Olivenza,--and Elvas on the 29th. To the same point came in Mendizabal,
who, with the remains of his own infantry division--something over
3,000 men, and Butron’s cavalry, had moved from his original post at
Albuquerque to Portalegre on the Portuguese border, and had there been
joined by Carlos de España’s brigade. Madden’s Portuguese cavalry had
already moved back to Campo Mayor and Elvas when Soult first undertook
the siege of Olivenza. By the accumulation of all these forces an army
of about 11,000 infantry and over 3,000 cavalry was put together[59].
[57] Wellington, _Dispatches_, vii. 143.
[58] Ibid., vii. 165, where a letter to Henry Wellesley fixes the
resolve to send off these troops to ‘yesterday,’ i. e. January
19th.
[59] Viz.
La Carrera (including Carlos de España) about 2,500 infantry.
Charles O’Donnell’s division 5,000 ”
Remains of Mendizabal’s division, which had
thrown four battalions into Olivenza and
two into Badajoz 3,500
Butron’s cavalry, about 2,500 cavalry.
Madden’s Portuguese cavalry brigade 950 ”
Artillery 450 artillery.
------
Total 14,900 in all.
La Romana himself had intended to take charge of the expedition, which
under his prudent leadership would probably have achieved its desired
end, and have held Soult completely in check. But he was prevented
from starting with his troops on the 20th by an indisposition which
was not judged to be serious--a ‘spasm in the chest[60],’ apparently
a preliminary attack of _angina pectoris_. He appeared convalescent
on the 22nd, but died suddenly of a recurrence of the complaint early
on the afternoon of the 23rd, after he had already sent forward his
secretary and staff to prepare quarters for him on the way towards the
army. His death was a real disaster to the cause of the allies, for two
main reasons. The first was that, unlike most of his contemporaries
in the Spanish service, he was a very cautious general, who avoided
risks and preferred to manœuvre rather than to fight, unless he had
a good chance of success. His long marches and many retreats had won
him the punning nickname of the ‘Marqués de las Romerías’--the Marquis
of Pilgrimages: but even a long ‘pilgrimage’ is better than a defeat,
and he had never destroyed an army, like Cuesta, Blake, or Areizaga.
The other reason which made him valuable to the allied cause was that,
being a man of great tact and obliging manners, he had won Wellington’s
personal regard, and always lived on the best terms with him. Indeed,
the Marquis was the only Spanish general, save Castaños, who never had
any difficulties with his English colleague; and it may be added that
Wellington thought much more of his capacity than of that of Castaños,
whom he regarded as well-meaning but weak. He wrote of him, in words
that may be regarded as entirely genuine and heartfelt, and which were
not intended for Spanish eyes, that he was the brightest ornament
of the Spanish army, an upright patriot, a strenuous and zealous
defender of the cause of European liberty, a loyal colleague, a useful
councillor[61].
[60] Wellington calls the disease ‘spasms of the chest’; the
Spanish authorities term it an aneurism.
[61] See especially Wellington to Liverpool, January 26th,
in _Dispatches_, vii. 196-7. The corresponding letter to
Mendizabal is less important, because it is written to a Spanish
correspondent.
That the Marquis was not a man of brilliant genius, nor a general
of the first rank, is sufficiently evident from the account of his
campaigns, duly detailed in the first three volumes of this work. But
he had a very high and meritorious record; of all the old nobles of
Spain he was the one who served his country best in the day of her
distress. His energy and determination were displayed in his romantic
escape from Denmark in 1808[62]. Having once unsheathed his sword in
the national cause, he never faltered or despaired even in the day of
the worst disaster. If his life had been spared he would have fought
on undismayed to the end of the war. Though he became involved in the
unhappy disputes which preceded the fall of the Supreme Junta, in
the winter of 1809-10[63], and did not disdain to accept a command
from the illegal Seville government in the January of the latter
year[64], he was neither a self-seeker nor a _frondeur_. If his words
or acts sometimes appeared factious, they were inspired by a genuine
discontent at the incapacity of the ruling powers, not by a desire for
self-advancement; and there seems to be no evidence to connect him
with the unwise and autocratic proceedings of his brother José Caro in
Valencia. During the last year of his life he was discharging a very
invidious task while he commanded in Estremadura under the control
of the last regency, which treated him with neglect and regarded him
with suspicion. His death is said to have been hastened by scurrilous
accusations made against his loyalty in pamphlets and newspapers
published at Cadiz[65], which drove him to distraction, for he was
a man of a sensitive disposition, keenly affected by any criticism.
Albuquerque, it will be remembered, is said to have been helped towards
his grave by similar means[66].
[62] See vol. i. pp. 371-4.
[63] See vol. iii. pp. 6-7.
[64] Ibid., 40.
[65] See Wellington, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 115, for note as to
libels published by ‘a vagabond named Calvo.’
[66] See vol. iii. p. 325.
The death of La Romana, and the transfer at this same date of
Charles O’Donnell to another sphere of operations, caused a general
rearrangement of the commands in the Army of Estremadura. Mendizabal,
as the sole Lieutenant-General in the province, succeeded to the place
and responsibilities of the Marquis, but only as a provisional chief;
the Regency, justly doubting his abilities, nominated Castaños as
Captain-General. Unfortunately, as we shall see, the victor of Baylen
reached Estremadura just in time to hear that his _locum tenens_ had
destroyed the army, and left hardly a wreck of it behind him. Meanwhile
Mendizabal made over his own old division to a Major-General Garcia,
while that of Charles O’Donnell fell to another officer new to us,
Major-General José Virues. La Carrera became chief of the staff, or
practically second in command, and his ‘vanguard division’ passed to
his old brigadier Carlos de España.
As early as January 28th Soult had directed Latour-Maubourg with four
regiments of light cavalry to make a reconnaissance in the direction
of the Portuguese frontier, and by this movement had become aware
that Mendizabal was at Portalegre, with his own infantry and Butron’s
cavalry. It was no surprise to the Marshal, therefore, to find, a week
later, that a considerable force was pressing in his posts on the
north of the Guadiana. The presence of Madden’s Portuguese dragoons
in the advanced guard showed that the enemy had been reinforced.
Latour-Maubourg’s cavalry-screen was driven in without much fighting,
and the French general retired to Montijo, nine miles up the river
(February 5th-6th). That night Mendizabal’s army, nearly 15,000 strong,
camped on the heights of San Cristobal, and communicated with Badajoz
freely, the blockade being broken so far as the northern bank of the
Guadiana was concerned.
Wellington and La Romana, when the return of the Spanish troops from
Lisbon to Estremadura was ordered, had settled upon a regular plan of
campaign[67], which had been communicated to Mendizabal. It required
some slight modification when the fall of Olivenza became known, and
when Soult’s intention to besiege Badajoz declared itself. But in
its essentials it was well applicable to the situation of affairs
upon February 6th. After a solemn warning to the Spanish generals
that the Army of Estremadura is ‘the last body of troops which their
country possesses,’ and must not be risked in dangerous operations,
the memorandum suggests (1) that an entrenched camp capable of
holding the entire army should be prepared on the heights which lie
between Campo Mayor and Badajoz, and which end in the high bluff of
San Cristobal above the latter town. (2) That if possible an attempt
should be made to break the bridges of Medellin and Merida, so as to
restrict the French to the southern bank of the Guadiana. (3) That the
Regency should be asked to send back Ballasteros’s division to join
the Army of Estremadura, and (4) that the bridge of boats in store at
Badajoz should, if possible, be floated down to Jerumenha, to give the
Portuguese garrison of Elvas the power of crossing the Guadiana below
Badajoz. The last suggestion was impracticable, because the French,
when the dispatch reached Mendizabal, were so close to the river that
the bridge could not have been transferred. The other three suggestions
were all valuable, but none of them were carried out--least of all the
most important of them, that which prescribed the entrenching of the
San Cristobal heights, and their occupation by the whole of the Spanish
army.
[67] This is ‘Memorandum to the Marquis of La Romana,’ to be
found in Wellington, _Dispatches_, vii. 163, with date January
20, three days before that of the death of the Marquis.
Mendizabal had a plan of his own--he resolved not to fortify himself
on the heights beyond the river, as Wellington suggested, but to throw
a great part of his infantry into Badajoz, and make with them a grand
sortie against the French lines. The bulk of his cavalry remained below
San Cristobal, and had a skirmish of evil omen with Latour-Maubourg,
who drove them in with ease, and pursued them beyond the Gebora to the
foot of the heights. But Madden’s Portuguese horse filed into town
across the bridge, to join in the sally of the infantry.
At three o’clock on the afternoon of the 7th of February the sortie was
made. While Madden’s dragoons and a small infantry support threatened
the left of the French lines, without closing, a large force composed
of all Carlos de España’s ‘vanguard division,’ with picked battalions
from the others, delivered a vigorous--indeed a desperate--assault upon
Soult’s right, the entrenchments on the hill of San Miguel. There were
apparently four columns, each of two battalions, and making 5,000 men:
they came out from the Trinidad gate, drew up under the wing of the
Picurina lunette, and then marched straight at the French camp. They
pierced the line of entrenchments in their first rush, swept away the
guard of the trenches, carried the three batteries which were inserted
in them, and then became engaged in a fierce fight with Phillipon’s
brigade of Girard’s division, the troops encamped behind this part of
the lines. Mortier, who was on the other flank, detecting that the
movements in front of him were only a demonstration, promptly sent
several battalions eastward to succour the threatened point. These
fell upon the Spaniards’ flank, and threatened to cut them off from
their retreat into the fortress, whereupon Carlos de España, who was
slightly wounded, ordered a retreat, finding that forces equal to his
own had now been concentrated against him[68]. His troops suffered
severely in fighting their way back into Badajoz--their loss was about
650 men; that of the French, whose front line had been very severely
handled, came to about 400. But the besieged could spare the larger
number better than the besiegers the smaller, since they had the whole
army of succour to draw upon, while Soult had no reserves nearer than
Seville. It is hard to see why Mendizabal, if he was resolved upon a
sortie, did not double the force engaged in it, as he might easily have
done without depleting any part of the enceinte. For, counting the
garrison, he had 15,000 infantry--a larger number than the French could
dispose of. To send out 5,000 only seems to have been a half-measure,
which ensured ultimate failure when the besiegers should have drawn
together[69]. The fighting of Carlos de España’s men was most
creditable, but there were not enough of them.
[68] The French put into action six battalions of the 34th and
40th of Phillipon’s brigade [two in trench-guards, four in
reserves], and one each of the 28th Léger, 64th, 88th, and 100th.
The total force of these was, according to Belmas’s figures, well
over 5,000. Carlos de España had apparently six battalions of his
own, and two or three more from the other divisions, very much
the same force in mere numbers. But quality had also to be taken
into consideration. La Mare gives the French loss as 6 officers
and 48 men killed, 25 officers and 337 men wounded.
[69] This remark, a very just one, is made by Arteche in his
great History, ix. p. 193.
On the next day but one Mendizabal withdrew from Badajoz the divisions
of Carlos de España and Virues, and part of that of Garcia[70], leaving
the original garrison strengthened by the remainder of the last-named
unit up to a force of 7,000 men. The field army retired across the
river, and encamped on the strong position of the heights of San
Cristobal, its right wing resting on the fort, while the remainder of
its camps lay along the reverse slope of the range for a distance of
a mile and a half. There were some 9,000 infantry on the position,
and the 3,000 horse of Butron and Madden were encamped behind it in
the plain of the Caya. By some inconceivable folly Mendizabal made
no attempt to use this large force of cavalry, which he should have
sent forward to seize and hold the valley of the Gebora, in front of
his position. All beyond that stream, which flows at the very foot
of the San Cristobal heights, was abandoned to Latour-Maubourg. It
seems certain that the French cavalry general could have been driven
to a respectful distance if a force of all arms had been sent against
him, for he had on the north of the Guadiana only five regiments of
horse and not a single battalion of infantry. But the Spaniard allowed
himself to be cooped up on the hill, and kept no guard of cavalry
far out in the plain to shield his front and report the motions of
the enemy. What was worse, he made no attempt to entrench the long
hillside, though this was a point on which Wellington and La Romana had
given very clear and definite instructions. The position was strong,
but as no care was taken to keep the enemy at a distance, it was always
possible that he might make a sudden dash at it, and the Spanish
army--scattered in its camps--would require time to take up its ground
and form its fighting-line.
[70] Valladolid, Osuna, Zafra, and La Serena now became part of
the garrison, with a strength of about 2,000 bayonets.
For some days after the sortie, however, Soult paid little attention
to Mendizabal, and concentrated all his efforts against the fortress.
Having completed the first parallel, and established several new
batteries in it, he proceeded with his operations against the
Pardaleras fort. His plan was very daring--not to say hazardous--for on
the afternoon of the 11th of February, when the work was much battered
but still quite defensible, he determined to try to capture it by
escalade. At dusk two columns, making about 500 men, issued from the
trenches and dashed at the Pardaleras: the left-hand column coasting
round its flank made for the gorge, which was only defended by a row
of palisades. These were so weak that they were broken down or hewn to
pieces by the assailants without much difficulty. At the same time the
right column, which had entered the ditch, found an open postern into
which it made its way. Attacked on two sides, the garrison evacuated
the work, and fled into the city, leaving 60 men killed or prisoners
behind them. The French, who had lost only 4 killed and 32 wounded
in this reckless venture, established themselves in the Pardaleras.
But the governor turned against the fort all the guns of the next two
bastions, and the captors had to burrow and lie low, till on the night
of the 12th-13th a trench was run out from the first parallel, which
gave safe ingress and egress. During the intervening day the besiegers
lost more men in holding the work than they had in storming it[71], and
the Pardaleras, close though it was to the walls, proved to be ground
from which it was most difficult to push forward while the artillery
fire of the town was unsubdued. To transform the open gorge in its rear
into a base for new approaches was a slow and expensive business, and
the siege made a much less rapid progress than had been hoped.
[71] 3 officers and 48 men killed and wounded according to La
Mare, _Siége de Badajoz_, p. 58.
Meanwhile Soult resolved to make a blow at Mendizabal and his field
army, which was visible day after day encamped on the San Cristobal
heights, in a position imposing but unfortified and ill-watched. The
Marshal had intended to cross the Guadiana and deliver his attack
even before the Pardaleras was taken, but much rain was falling, and
the river had overflowed its banks, so that access to the point where
the French flying-bridge had been established, a mile above Badajoz,
was difficult. Moreover the Gebora was also in flood, and reported to
be unfordable, though usually a slender stream. The only thing which
the Marshal was able to do between the 11th and the 18th of February
was to shell the nearer end of the heights of San Cristobal from the
batteries in his right attack, with the object of inducing the Spanish
battalions there encamped to move further from the protection of the
fort, which effectually covered their right flank. On February 13th
this plan was seen to have been effective: the Spaniards had withdrawn
from the neighbourhood, and had left half a mile unoccupied between San
Cristobal and their new camp.