On the afternoon of the 18th it was reported to Soult that both the

rivers had fallen, and that the Gebora had again become fordable.

He made no delay, and at dusk his striking-force began to cross the

Guadiana--the operation was slow, since only two flying-bridges and

a few river-boats were available. But at dawn nine battalions[72],

three squadrons, and two batteries were on the north bank, while

Latour-Maubourg had come up from his usual post at Montijo with six

cavalry regiments more. The whole force assembled in the angle between

the Guadiana and the Gebora amounted to no more than 4,500 infantry[73]

and 2,500 horse, with twelve guns, a total so much below Mendizabal’s

9,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry that the adventure seemed most

hazardous. But fortune often favours the audacious, and on this day

Soult chanced on the unexpected luck of a very foggy morning. He was

practically able to surprise the enemy, for the first warning that a

battle was at hand only came to Mendizabal when, shortly after dawn,

his picket at the broken bridge of the Gebora--a short mile or so in

front of the heights--was driven in by masses of French infantry. At

the same moment a tumult broke out on his left rear: the 2nd Hussars,

sent on by Latour-Maubourg to discover and turn the Spanish northern

flank, had been able to mount the heights unseen and unopposed, by

making a long détour, and rode unexpectedly into the camp of one of

Carlos de España’s regiments. Mendizabal’s troops flew to arms, and

began hastily to form their line upon the heights, but they had no

time to get into good order, for the enemy was upon them within a few

minutes.

[72] Three battalions each of the 34th, 88th, and 100th Line.

[73] Thirteen squadrons of the 4th, 14th, and 26th Dragoons,

the 2nd and 10th Hussars, the 21st and 27th Chasseurs, and the

Spanish light cavalry regiment of Juramentados.

Mortier, to whom Soult had committed the conduct of the battle, showed

great tactical skill. On reaching the line of the Gebora, infantry

and cavalry poured across it without a moment’s delay; all the three

fords of which the French knew proved to be practicable, though on the

southernmost one, near the bridge, the infantry had to cross with the

chilly water up to their waists. The order of battle was very simple:

the right wing, composed of the whole of the cavalry, was to pass by

the most northern ford and ascend the heights beyond the Spanish left.

Arrived at the crest, one brigade was to push along it, and fall on the

flank of the hostile line, while the other descended into the valley

of the Caya, and charged into the Spanish camps, so placing itself

directly in Mendizabal’s rear. Of the infantry three battalions (the

100th regiment) were to ascend the hillside in the gap between the fort

of San Cristobal and the nearest Spanish camp, a gap which had been

caused (as it will be remembered) by the withdrawal of the Spaniards

from the southernmost heights under the stress of bombardment six days

before. This column was to risk the fire of the fort, which it had to

disregard, and fall on the hostile flank. Meanwhile the centre--very

weak and composed only of six battalions of infantry (34th and 88th

regiments)--was to attack the Spanish front, when the two turning

movements were well developed.

The San Cristobal heights are a most formidable position, two miles of

smooth steep slopes with an altitude of 250-300 feet, overlooking the

whole plain of the Gebora and with hardly any ‘dead ground’ in their

sides. They form an excellent _glacis_ for an army in position ready to

defend itself by its fire, for the assailant must come up the hill at a

slow pace and utterly exposed. Cavalry could only climb at a walk, and

with difficulty; but Mortier had sent all his horse far to the north,

where they ascended, and partly crossed, the range at its lowest point,

beyond the extreme flank of the enemy. Just at this moment the fog

rose, and everything became visible. On gaining the heights unopposed,

Briche’s light cavalry formed up across them, and commenced to move

along the summit towards the Spanish left wing, while Latour-Maubourg,

with three dragoon regiments, descended the reverse slope and moved

towards the hostile camp, in front of which Butron’s Spanish horse and

Madden’s Portuguese could be seen hastily arraying their squadrons.

It may be said that the battle of the Gebora was lost almost before a

shot had been fired, for on seeing themselves threatened in flank and

about to be charged by Latour-Maubourg, the Spanish and Portuguese

horse broke in the most disgraceful style, disregarding the orders

of their commanders, and went off in a disorderly mass across the

plain of the Caya, towards Elvas and Campo Mayor. They outnumbered

the enemy, and could have saved the day if they had fought even a

bad and unsuccessful action, so as to detain the French dragoons for

a single hour. But the cavalry of the Army of Estremadura had a bad

reputation--they were the old squadrons of Medellin and Arzobispo, of

which Wellington preserved such an evil memory, and Madden’s Portuguese

this day behaved no better[74]. They escaped almost without loss, for

Latour-Maubourg let them fly, and turned at once against the flank and

rear of Mendizabal’s infantry.

[74] See his pathetic letter in Wellington, _Supplementary

Disp._, vii. p. 67.

The combat on the southern part of the heights had not yet assumed

a desperate aspect. Though the column which was formed by the 100th

regiment had got up the hillside under the fort of San Cristobal, and

had penetrated into the gap between that work and its extreme left, the

Spanish infantry was still holding its own. The fog having cleared,

they were able to estimate the smallness of the number of the hostile

infantry, and stood to fight without showing any signs of failing.

But the fusilade was only just beginning all along the hillside when

the victorious French cavalry came into action. Briche’s light horse

came galloping along the crest of the heights, while Latour-Maubourg’s

dragoons were visible in the plain behind, well to the rear of the

Spanish line. Mendizabal, horrified at the sight, ordered his men to

form squares, not as usual by battalions, but vast divisional squares,

each formed of many regiments, and with artillery in their angles. If

the French cavalry alone had been present, it is possible that in this

formation the Spaniards might have saved themselves. But Mortier’s

infantry was also up, and well engaged in bickering with Mendizabal’s

men. The squares, when formed with some difficulty, found themselves

exposed to a heavy fire of musketry from the front at the same moment

that the cavalry blow was delivered on their flank. Briche’s hussars

penetrated without much difficulty through battalions already shaken

by the volleys of the French infantry. First the northern and soon

afterwards the southern square was ridden through from the flank and

broken. The disaster that followed was complete: some of the Spanish

regiments dispersed, many laid down their arms in despair, a limited

number clubbed together in heavy masses and fought their way out of

the press towards the plain of the Caya and the frontier of Portugal.

General Virues and three brigadiers were taken prisoners, with at least

half of the army. Mendizabal and two other generals, La Carrera and

Carlos de España, got away, under cover of the battalions which forced

their passage through toward the west. In all about 2,500 infantry

escaped into Badajoz[75], and a somewhat smaller number towards

Portugal[76]. The rest were destroyed--only 800 or 900 had been killed

or wounded, but full 4,000 were taken prisoners, along with seventeen

guns--the entire artillery of the army--and six standards. The French

loss, though under-estimated by Soult in his dispatch at the ridiculous

figure of 30 killed and 140 wounded, was in truth very small--not

exceeding 403 in all. It fell almost entirely on the cavalry--who

had done practically the whole of the work. The regimental returns

show that only four officers in the infantry were killed or wounded,

to thirteen in the mounted arm. In proportion this battle was more

disastrous to the vanquished and less costly to the victors than even

Medellin or Ocaña. It is difficult to write with patience of the

culpable negligence of Mendizabal, in allowing himself to be surprised

in such a position, when he was amply provided with cavalry, or of

the conduct of the Spanish and Portuguese horse in abandoning their

infantry without striking a single blow, when even a show of resistance

might at least have given their comrades time to save themselves. For

the battalions on the heights could have escaped into Badajoz, or even

have retreated along the Guadiana without desperate loss, if they had

been granted an hour’s respite: while if the French cavalry could have

been detained till the infantry battle on the heights was decided, it

is quite clear that Mendizabal in his splendid fighting position, and

with double numbers, could have held his own and driven off the attack

of the nine battalions of Mortier.

[75] The statement that only a few men escaped into Badajoz is

disproved by the figures of the surrender-rolls of March 11th,

which show 1,108 men of La Carrera’s division, 554 of Virues’s

division, and 995 of battalions of Garcia’s division which had

not been told off to the regular garrison, as laying down their

arms.

[76] There escaped into Portugal, beside the cavalry, the greater

part of the regiments La Union from Garcia’s division, Rey and

Princesa from that of Virues, Vittoria from that of La Carrera,

and fragments of Zamora, and 1st of Barcelona. The whole,

reorganized into new battalions, made a weak brigade of 1,800 men

under Carlos de España in April.

[Illustration: BADAJOZ. The French Siege (Jan.-March 1811), & the

Battle of the Gebora (Feb. 19th 1811).]

The Army of Estremadura having been practically destroyed,--the

demoralized remnant of 4,000 horse and foot which escaped into Portugal

counted for nothing,--Soult could at last besiege Badajoz from both

sides of the river, and reckon on being undisturbed in his operations.

He left three battalions, a battery, and five regiments of Montbrun’s

cavalry on the north bank, to invest the fort of San Cristobal, and

returned, with the rest of the force that had won the battle, to his

lines. There was still much to be done, for the governor Menacho was

resolute, and the garrison had been raised to over 8,000 men by the

influx of Mendizabal’s fugitives. The siege was destined to last three

weeks longer, and might have been prolonged to a far greater duration

if Menacho had not been killed on March 4; as long as he lived the

defence was vigorous and honourable.

Though Soult could concentrate all his attention on the approaches

towards the curtain between the bastions of Santiago and San Juan, they

did not progress very rapidly. Menacho brought up all the artillery

that could be readily moved on the threatened front, and continued to

pound the ruins of the Pardaleras and the trenches leading up to it.

It was only on the night of the 24th February that a battery was at

last completed under the right flank of the fort, and another under

its left, to keep down the fire of the defenders. Nor was it till the

28th of the same month and the 1st of March that the zigzags began to

creep forward from the second parallel towards the body of the place.

On the 2nd of March the approaches reached the demi-lune outside the

bastion of San Juan, and the French could look down into the ditch, but

they found the counterscarp in good order, and the palisades intact.

On the 3rd they commenced mining, with the object of blowing in the

counterscarp and filling the ditch. But their work was stopped by a

vigorous sortie, the last which Menacho sent out. A small column of

Spaniards passed out of the left bastion, seized and demolished the

advanced trenches, and spiked the twelve guns which armed the two

nearest batteries. The progress of the besiegers was checked for a

day--but at a disastrous cost, for the governor himself, while watching

the effect of the sortie from the ramparts, was killed by a chance

shot. His place was taken by the senior brigadier in the place, José

Imaz, a man of desponding heart and utterly lacking in energy. It was a

thousand pities that, when the rout of the Gebora took place, neither

La Carrera nor Carlos de España had been driven back into Badajoz, for

both these officers were men of desperate resolution, who would have

played out a losing game to the last moment with stubborn courage.

The French narratives note that from the moment of Menacho’s death

the defence slackened; it became partly passive, and was no longer

conducted with common skill. No more sorties were made, and there

seemed to be a lack of ingenuity in the measures taken to resist the

completion of the approaches[77]. All that was done was to keep up a

hot fire on the head of the French sap, and to replace one disabled gun

by another upon the walls.

[77] ‘Depuis la mort du Général Menacho l’ennemi avait éprouvé

un certain découragement, dont l’effet se faisait connaître par

l’absence de cette force morale qui fait agir les hommes et qui

donne le mouvement et la vigueur. Il n’osa plus nous attaquer

dans nos batteries, dans nos tranchées, afin de détruire en

quelques moments l’œuvre d’un jour. Il ne profita pas des moyens

de chicane et des subtilités que la nécessité et l’industrie font

inventer.’ La Mare, p. 98.

On the 4th of March the besiegers had lodged themselves solidly in

the demi-lune of the bastion of San Juan, and had commenced on the

very edge of the ditch a battery for six heavy guns (24-pounders),

which were to work upon the curtain between San Juan and Santiago,

the place selected for the breaching. On the 5th the embrasures were

completed, on the 7th the guns were got into position, on the 8th the

counterscarp was blown in by a mine, and the battery began to play upon

the walls at a distance of only sixty yards. Though the besieged kept

up a terrible fire upon it, and killed many gunners, its effect was

all that the French had desired. The ramparts began to crumble, and on

the morning of the 10th there was a breach seventy feet wide in the

curtain, near the bastion of Santiago, while the ditch was half filled

with débris. The engineers pronounced that an assault was practicable,

though another day’s fire would be desirable to finish the business.

The Spanish guns on the front attacked were all silenced, but from the

flanking bastions a fire was still kept up, which would obviously be

very murderous to the storming columns. It was clear that it would be

better to subdue it, and to batter the breach into an easier slope,

before the assault should be delivered.

Soult, however, was anxious to press matters, for he had received on

the 8th two pieces of news which completely changed the strategical

situation. The first was that Masséna had given orders for the

evacuation of Santarem and his other positions on the Tagus five days

before, and had already commenced his retreat towards the north. There

was no longer any chance of joining the Army of Portugal and attacking

Wellington. Indeed, it was probable that the English general would

find himself free to make a large detachment against the besiegers of

Badajoz, and that, if the town should not fall within the next ten

days, Beresford’s 15,000 men from the south bank of the Tagus would

appear at Elvas or Campo Mayor, ready to attack the siege-lines in the

rear. And Soult from his experiences of 1809 was quite aware that to

meet an Anglo-Portuguese army would not be a business like that of the

Gebora.

But this was not all. News of the most disquieting kind had just

arrived from Andalusia. Victor reported from in front of Cadiz that

a large expeditionary force, comprising an English division, had

landed at Algesiras and Tarifa on February 25th-26th, had moved into

the inland, and was evidently about to attack his siege-lines from

the rear. He expressed grave doubts as to the situation. Daricau,

the Governor of Seville, had even a worse report to make: the roving

division of Ballasteros, which had been driven into Portugal by Gazan

on January 25th, had recrossed the Spanish frontier the moment that

its pursuers had retired, had invaded the Condado de Niebla, and had

inflicted a severe defeat on Remond, whose small corps had been left

to cover that region, on the Rio Tinto (March 2nd). Daricau reported

that the Spaniards were marching on Seville, and that, after leaving

a skeleton garrison of convalescents and _Juramentados_ in the city,

he was moving out with a field force of no more than 1,600 bayonets to

rally Remond’s men, and fight at San Lucar la Mayor for the protection

of the capital of Andalusia. Ballasteros was believed to have a

considerable force, and the result was doubtful.

On the morning of the 10th of March, therefore, Soult was in no

small distress concerning the fate of Daricau and Victor, whose last

dispatches were now six or seven days old, and who might have suffered

disasters, for all that he knew, since those dispatches were written.

If modern methods of communication had existed in 1811, he would have

known already that Victor had suffered a complete and bloody defeat

at Barrosa on March 5th. He was therefore prepared to take great

risks at Badajoz, in order to have his army free at any cost for the

succour of Andalusia. Mortier was ordered to get all ready for a storm

during the course of the afternoon, but meanwhile, when a few hours’

battering after dawn had somewhat improved the slope of the breach,

a _parlementaire_ was sent into Badajoz at 9 a.m. to summon Imaz to

capitulate. The letter which he bore was couched in such elaborate

terms of politeness, complimenting the Spaniards on their long and

gallant resistance, and intimating that the most honourable terms would

be granted, that the governor should have suspected that Soult was

not sure of his ground. But to a man cowed in spirit and weighed down

by a responsibility too great for him, such hints were useless. Imaz

summoned a council of war, the regular refuge of weak commanders, and

called into it a veritable crowd of councillors, not only the three

generals and four brigadiers present in the city, the chief engineer,

and two artillery officers, but nearly a score of lieutenant-colonels

and majors commanding all the battalions represented in the garrison.

Unfortunately the engineer colonel, Julian Alvo, who led off the

discussion, was the most downhearted man of all: he reported that

the breach was from thirty to thirty-two ells (_varas_) broad, and

accessible, as it had an angle of forty-five to fifty degrees; that

there had been great difficulty in throwing up retrenchments and

inner defences behind it, because at this point the ground-level of

the streets of the town was much lower than that of the ramparts. He

pointed out that to garrison the whole enceinte with a minimum force

would absorb 5,000 men, which would leave only 2,000 to defend the

breach. ‘As to the number and _morale_ of the troops, the regimental

officers would be able to speak with better knowledge than himself.’

But he held that if the first assault were repulsed, the fall of the

town would only be delayed two or three days. If there were evidence

that the place might be relieved from outside within that time, it

was proper to resist to the last. If not, he thought that the heroic

garrison and the city ought not to be sacrificed. For they had fully

done their duty, and Badajoz as a fortress was full of defects[78].

[78] For all these interesting details see the verbatim report of

the Council of War in the Appendix to Arteche, vii. pp. 544-7.

Twelve colonels and majors gave their opinions in almost the same terms

as the engineer, many repeating his actual phrases, some adding that

the rank and file were demoralized[79], others that they were few in

number [they actually were only 1,800 less than the infantry of the

besieging force]. On the other hand, the commanding artillery officer,

Joaquin Caamano, set forth a very different case. ‘The enemy has not

yet subdued the fire of the place; the bastions flanking the breach

are intact, and have their guns in order; the breach itself has been

mined, and a parapet behind it has been thrown up during the last

night; in spite of the arguments of the commander of the engineers the

assault ought to be resisted, or as an alternative the garrison ought

to try to cut its way out by the north bank, towards Elvas or Campo

Mayor.’ Caamano was supported by the vote of another artilleryman, the

Portuguese João de Mello, commanding a company which Beresford had

sent into the city in the preceding year[80], and two major-generals,

Garcia and Mancio.

[79] ‘Hallarse la guarnicion en una total decadencia’ (opinion of

Col. Ponce de Leon of 1st Barcelona). The garrison ‘no es de la

primera classe en general’ (opinion of Col. Zamora of the Zafra

regiment). ‘El soldado, cansado ya de la mucha fatiga, trataría

de salvarse’ (opinion of Col. Hernandez of the Majorca regiment).

[80] See Soriano da Luz, iii. 337-8.

Then came the oddest part of the proceedings. The Governor gave as his

opinion that ‘though an inner line of defence has not been contrived,

and though very few guns still remain serviceable in the bastions

of Santiago, San José, and San Juan, and though we have no succour

for sustaining the assault, I think we should defend the place with

valour and constancy to our last breath.’ After which he at once

commenced negotiations with the French _parlementaire_, in direct

contradiction to his own vote! Apparently he thought that thirteen

votes for surrender against four for resistance among his councillors

covered his ignominy. The worst part of his conduct was that he was

aware that an army of succour was on the march to help him. For Badajoz

had semaphore communication with Elvas, and on the preceding day the

Portuguese General Leite had telegraphed to him, by Wellington’s

orders, that Beresford had been detached with two divisions to hasten

to his aid on March 8th[81]. As a matter of fact, Beresford’s movement

into Estremadura was retarded, and his corps did not move off for some

days later, but Imaz did not know this, and he was certainly guilty of

concealing from his officers that prompt succour had been promised, and

was actually upon its way. The whole responsibility for the surrender

falls on him, because he allowed Alvo, and the other voters for

capitulation, to produce uncontradicted the statement that no relief

was probable, while he knew himself that it had been promised. It is

impossible to deny that this was pusillanimity reaching into and over

the border of treason.

[81] D’Urban (Beresford’s chief of the staff) has in his

diary under March 8th: ‘At 3 o’clock the Marshal crossed the

river (Tagus) at Torres Novas and had an interview with Lord

Wellington. The immediate relief of Badajoz, whose danger becomes

imminent, has been judged desirable, this to be done with the

2nd and 4th Divisions. The Marshal returned at 8. Orders sent to

Punhete to throw the bridge of boats over the Tagus at Tancos for

the re-passage of General Stewart (2nd Division) and the passage

of General Cole (4th Division). The troops still on the south

bank of the Tagus are thrown into march upon Portalegre [near

Elvas]. Orders to Mr. Ogilvie, the commissary, to take measures

for supplies southward. General Menacho’s last sally, in which he

is unfortunately killed, has probably saved the place by gaining

of time, even if but for a few additional days.’ On the evening

of the 9th March the movement was stopped, on a false rumour that

Masséna was offering battle near Thomar, but news of it had been

sent to General Leite at Elvas, who passed it by semaphore from

Fort La Lippe to San Cristobal, which safely received it. It was

not till the 12th that the 2nd Division was ordered to Crato in

the Alemtejo, and Beresford reached Portalegre only on the 20th,

nine days after Badajoz fell. Wellington says (_Dispatches_, vii.

360-1) ‘the Governor surrendered on the day after he received my

assurances that he should be relieved, and my entreaty to hold

out till the last moment.’ Cf. ibid., 367.

After making some foolish hagglings for eighteenth-century ceremonial

of honour--the garrison was to march out by the breach, drums beating,

with two cannons at its head, with lighted matches, &c.--Imaz

surrendered at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and the lofty San Cristobal

and the bridge-head fort were occupied by the French before dusk. Next

day the troops came forth, not by the breach, because it was found

impossible to scramble down it, but by the Trinidad gate, and laid down

their arms[82]. They numbered 7,880 men, and there were 1,100 sick and

wounded in the hospitals; the total loss in the town during the siege

had been 1,851 casualties, almost the same as that of the French, which

came to just under 2,000. But the 800 killed and wounded, and 4,000

prisoners of the Gebora must, of course, be added to the balance.

[82] Arteche (ix. 229) says that they used the breach, but La

Mare, an eye-witness, says that the Trinidad gate was the point

of exit. Soriano da Luz, using some Portuguese source unknown

to me, says that only some Spanish sappers came down the breach

slope, and they with difficulty.

Badajoz was found by the victors to contain rations for 8,000 men

sufficient to last for over a month, more than 150 serviceable cannon,

80,000 lb. of powder, 300,000 infantry cartridges, and two bridge

equipages. There is not the slightest doubt that if Menacho had lived

the place would have held out till it was relieved by Beresford. For

the latter, who was finally ordered to move to its relief on March

12th, would have reached its neighbourhood on the 18th, if he had not

been checked on the first day of his start by the news that the city

had fallen[83]. After the need for hurry had been removed by this

disheartening intelligence, he moved slowly, but was in front of Campo

Mayor, less than ten miles from Badajoz, on the 24th.

[83] This was known to Wellington and Beresford on the 14th, or

the night of the 13th, as is shown by Wellington, _Dispatches_,

vii. p. 359.

There is hardly ever an excuse for a governor who surrenders without

having withstood at least one assault, and Napoleon laid down the

general rule that any officer so doing should be sent before a court

martial. Imaz with his large garrison, his immense artillery resources,

and his certainty of being relieved in ten days was least of all men in

a condition to plead justification. It is only necessary to compare him

with Alvarez at Gerona, who with a smaller garrison and a far weaker

fortress held out for three months, after not one but three large

breaches had been made in his weak mediaeval enceinte. The Regency very

properly ordered Imaz to be put on his trial, but the proceedings,

which only commenced when the French liberated him, dragged on

interminably, and had not come to an end when the war ceased in 1814.

If ever there was a case where an example in the style of Admiral Byng,

_pour encourager les autres_, could have been rightfully made, this was

one.

Soult, relieved from desperate anxiety by Imaz’s surrender, had no

other thought than to return as quickly as possible to Andalusia.

Leaving Mortier at Badajoz with sixteen battalions and five regiments

of cavalry, about 11,000 men, he started back for Seville on the third

day after the capitulation, taking with him two regiments of dragoons

and the bulk of Gazan’s division[84]. As he marched he was in fear that

any hour might bring the news that Daricau had lost Seville, or that

Victor had been forced to abandon the siege of Cadiz, for the report

of the bloody defeat of Barrosa (March 5) had reached him on the 12th

of March, and heightened his anxiety. But he reached Seville on March

20th, to find that the situation might yet be saved, and that Andalusia

was still his own.

[84] Less two battalions left in Badajoz as garrison, and the

100th of the Line also left with Mortier.

His achievements during the two months of his Estremaduran campaign

had indeed been splendid. With an army not exceeding 20,000 men, and

operating in the worst of weather, he had taken two fortresses, won a

battle in the open field, and captured 16,000 prisoners. The Spanish

Army of Estremadura, which had seemed so powerful at the commencement

of his campaign, was almost exterminated, and the frontier of Portugal

was laid open. Soult had redeemed his promise to make a powerful

diversion in favour of Masséna, and it is hard to see how he could have

done more. For he could not have moved to the Tagus before Badajoz

fell, and (thanks to the courage of Menacho) that city had held out

till eight days after the date on which Masséna ordered the Army of

Portugal to commence its retreat to the north. Wellington’s plan of

starvation had, after all, achieved its effect, and Masséna had been

driven out of his position before Soult was in a position to come to

his aid. Even if Masséna had stayed a little longer at Santarem, it

seems hard to believe that Soult could have joined him, considering

that Elvas, a place stronger than Badajoz, was in his front, and that

the news from Andalusia spelt utter ruin unless he should return to

save it. He must have done so, even if on March 11 the Army of Portugal

had still been in its old position.

SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER III

MASSÉNA’S LAST WEEKS AT SANTAREM

JANUARY-MARCH 1811

After the arrival of Drouet and his division of the 9th Corps at Leiria

in the early days of the New Year, there was no serious movement of any

part of the French or the British armies for some weeks. The weather

was bad, and the troops on both sides remained in their cantonments,

save such of the French as were detailed for the perpetual marauding

parties up the line of the Zezere or in the southern slopes of the

Serra da Estrella by which alone the army was kept alive. The ranks of

Masséna’s battalions continued to grow thinner, but not at such a rate

as in November and December--for the weakly men had already been weeded

out by the dreadful mortality of the preceding period. Provisions had

daily to be sought further and further afield, but they were not wholly

exhausted. The Marshal waited anxiously for further news from Paris,

and for tidings that the Army of Andalusia was coming to his aid. But

after the arrival of Drouet’s column no further information got through

for five weeks, for Wilson and Trant were blocking the northern roads

with their militia as effectually as in the time before the 9th Corps

started from Almeida.

Wellington, for his part, was waiting for his great scheme of

starvation to work out to its logical end. He had, as has already been

observed, somewhat underrated the time for which the French would be

able to live on the resources of the country that he dominated. More

than once in December and January he thought that he had detected the

signs of a coming retreat, and had been disappointed[85]. The enemy

still remained in his old cantonments, and nothing more than petty

movements of small units had taken place. This anxious waiting was, as

might have been expected, trying to Wellington’s temper. He was not

shaken in his belief that he had made the right decision, but it was

exasperating to see the deadlock on the Tagus continuing far beyond his

expectations, and the Estremaduran campaign developing behind his back.

During the long weeks of tension the strain on his mind vented itself

in criticism, reasonable and unreasonable, of the authorities with whom

he had to work--the British and Portuguese Governments.

[85] I find in D’Urban’s diary under January 13: ‘Concurring

testimony of deserters, &c., announces some general movement on

the part of the enemy. Lord W. inclines to imagine that this

will be a retreat, and that the retreat will be by the Mondego;

to this he is inclined by Claparéde being ordered to take post

at Guarda. But I have my doubts if anything like retreat has yet

entered the head of Masséna.’ This is borne out by Wellington to

Beresford of same day. (_Dispatches_, vii. 138.)

The administration of Spencer Perceval had done its best to maintain

the war and to support its general, under great difficulties. It had

not shrunk from making financial exertions of the most unprecedented

kind in order to keep up the war in Portugal. As Lord Liverpool pointed

out to Wellington[86], the army in the Peninsula had cost £2,778,796

in 1808, £2,639,764 in 1809; in 1810 the sum asked for had risen to

£6,061,235--more than double the total of either of the preceding

years. And this did not include either ordnance stores, supplies sent

out in kind, or the hire of transports, which were calculated to make

out £2,000,000 more. The Government had provided these sums in face of

a bitter and carping opposition on the part of the Whigs, and despite

of much lukewarmness among their own followers, of whom many considered

that the limit of reasonable expense had been reached. As Lord

Liverpool observed, the increase of the Portuguese subsidy, and the

taking into British pay of the larger half of the Portuguese army, had

been ‘carried by a small and unwilling majority[87].’ The Government

had driven the money bills through the House of Commons only by smart

cracking of the whip of party loyalty. They had promised Wellington

that his army should be increased by 14,000 men during the course of

the winter, and the promise was in the course of fulfilment. Many

regiments had already arrived; all were to reach the Tagus before March

was out. This had been done in a time of dire distress to the Tory

party, George III had been prostrated by his last attack of insanity,

which was destined to be permanent, in October 1810. As it became

certain that his recovery was not to be looked for, the appointment of

the Prince of Wales as Regent was the obvious and necessary corollary.

But the Prince was still reckoned a Whig, and it was believed with

reason that his first act on coming into power would be to dismiss the

Perceval Ministry, and to call upon Grey, Grenville, and Sheridan to

form an administration. The Tories all through the winter thought that

they were destined to immediate expulsion from office, and had before

them a long strife with the Crown. It was only at the beginning of

February 1811 that the younger George, who had taken the oath as Regent

on the 6th of that month, announced, to the general surprise of the

nation, that he had no intention of dismissing the Ministry, and was

prepared to work with them. Perceval and Liverpool, during the three

preceding months, were doing their best for the army in Portugal while

they believed that a political disaster was hanging over their heads.

They did not yet realize that the Prince’s Whig principles had worn

thin of late, and that he was tired of the dictatorial manners which

Grey and Grenville had adopted towards him.

[86] Lord Liverpool to Wellington, February 20, 1811.

[87] Lord Liverpool to Wellington, September 20, 1810.

It is terrible to contemplate the results which might have followed

had the Whigs come into office at this juncture. They were pledged

to the theory that the Peninsular War was hopeless and ought to be

abandoned. Grey and Grenville had stated that Wellington was a failure;

they had denied that Talavera was a victory. Brougham had summarized

the feelings of the party in a savage attack upon both Government

and general in the _Edinburgh Review_. At this very moment--February

1811--Ponsonby, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons,

was preaching that ‘France cannot be prevented from overrunning Spain

by continuing a war in Portugal, ... so that neither in Spain or

Portugal has anything happened that can give reason to believe that

the war will ever terminate to our advantage[88].’ Freemantle, another

leader, maintained that ‘Bonaparte, having conquered the rest of the

Continent, must also conquer the Peninsula, because he has greater

numbers to bring up after every defeat, and therefore defeat of one

of his armies was vain[89].’ Every Whig journal was prophesying the

expulsion of Wellington from Portugal within a few weeks, as indeed

they had been doing ever since October 1809.

[88] Hansard for 1811, vol. xix. 397.

[89] Plumer Ward’s _Diary_, i. 406.

All honour, therefore, is due to the statesmen who continued in the

midst of all their own troubles, constitutional and financial, to give

a steady support to Wellington, and to redeem the pledges which they

had made to him. When Napier in his great history declares that the

Ministry betrayed Wellington, that ‘Perceval had neither the wisdom to

support nor the manliness to put an end to the war in the Peninsula;

his crooked contemptible policy was shown by withholding what was

necessary to continue the contest and throwing upon the General the

responsibility of failure,’ he is merely venting the malignant folly of

the Whigs of his day, which ought to have been forgotten by the time

that he took his pen in hand, long after the war was over.

It is unfortunately true that Wellington, in the stress of waiting

hours during the winter of 1810-11, used querulous and captious

language concerning his supporters at home. The main point of his

complaint was that he was not supplied rapidly enough with specie, that

bills were sent him when he wanted dollars or guineas, and that so the

pay of the army was falling into arrears. The fact was deplorable; but

on a consideration of the condition of the English monetary system

at this date it is hard to see how the difficulty could have been

avoided. Since the suspension of the coinage of guineas in 1797, and

the introduction of an almost unlimited issue of bank-notes, gold had

gradually become an almost invisible commodity in Great Britain[90].

The guinea, when seen, commanded an ever-increasing premium; by 1809

it was worth £1 5_s._, or more, in paper. British silver was equally

deficient; there had been none coined at the Mint since 1787, and the

internal trade of the country was being transacted with difficulty, by

means of Spanish dollars or half-dollars stamped with the king’s head,

or by local tokens struck by banks and corporations, which only served

in the immediate neighbourhood of their place of issue[91]. The Bank

of England dollar, the only coin which circulated generally, passed

for 5_s._, though it had only the value of 4_s._ 2_d._ in its weight of

silver. When Great Britain could find no specie for its own internal

business, the Government was required to send enormous remittances in

cash to the Peninsula, because all transactions therein were made in

silver or gold, and English paper was not negotiable[92]. That the

coin was sent at all seems marvellous, rather than that it was sent

late and in insufficient quantities. The worst time of all was in the

early spring of 1811, when there was a severe commercial crisis at

home, and the Government was issuing exchequer bills, to the amount of

£6,000,000, as an advance to merchants and manufacturers to stave off

general bankruptcy in London[93].

[90] Note that Perceval and Liverpool inherited the paper

currency of Pitt, and were not responsible for its creation.

[91] For some curious anecdotes as to the dearth of silver change

see Lord Folkestone’s speech quoted in Yonge’s _Life of Lord

Liverpool_, i. 368.

[92] ‘How can you expect that we can buy specie here [London]

with the exchange 30 per cent. against us, and guineas selling

at 25 shillings?’ Huskisson to Wellington (private), 19th July,

1809. _Wellington MSS._, see Mr. Fortescue’s _British Statesmen

of the Great War_, p. 254.

[93] For notes on this see Walpole’s _Life of Perceval_, ii. pp.

207-8.

It was certainly an unhappy thing that Wellington could look upon the

whole situation as one in which ‘the Government chooses to undertake

large services, and not to supply us with sufficient pecuniary

means[94],’ and could write that the present ministers complained so

much of the expense of the war, that he considered it not impossible

that the army might be recalled bag and baggage--a remark made not

in February but in March, when Masséna had actually retreated from

the Tagus[95]. This rather unjustifiable complaint was probably the

direct result of Lord Liverpool’s letter of February 20, in which he

had set forth at length the enormous burden of the war, and expressed

his doubts as to whether the augmentation of the Peninsular army by

14,000 men, for which he had just provided, could be permanently kept

up[96]. He suggested that when the ‘present crisis’ (i. e. Masséna’s

presence at the gates of Lisbon) had come to an end, the army should

send home some of its less effective regiments, and that the ideal of

30,000 effective rank and file (not including the garrison of Cadiz)

would probably have to be kept in mind. But long before the dispatch

of February 20 Wellington thought that he had detected an intention

on Liverpool’s part to bring the whole Peninsular War to an end,

on financial grounds, and wrote most bitterly to his kinsman Pole,

accusing the Secretary of State of being half-hearted, and showing a

deep-rooted distrust of his influence in the Cabinet[97]. All this

was forgotten when the firmness of the Ministry in support of the war

became evident, and in later years Wellington wrote to acknowledge

in the most handsome style the support that he had received from the

Perceval administration[98].

[94] To Charles Stuart, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 462.

[95] To Admiral Berkeley, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 415.

[96] ‘The recent augmentation of your force must be considered

as made with reference to the present exigency.... We are very

anxious, not with a view of abandoning, but for the purpose

of maintaining the contest in the Peninsula for an indefinite

time, that when the present crisis shall appear to be over, you

should send home the excess of your force, after keeping 30,000

effective rank and file for Portugal, and a sufficient garrison

for Cadiz, selecting of course those regiments to be sent home

which are least efficient, and consequently least fitted for

active service.’

[97] Mr. Fortescue writes: ‘This was unfair. Perceval and

Liverpool had deliberately turned their backs upon Pitt’s old

policy of spasmodic efforts all over the world, in favour of a

steady and persistent feeding of the war in one quarter--the

Peninsula. Wellington himself had approved the change in his

letters of 1810, had named the amount of money that he wanted,

and fixed the figure of the reinforcements that he asked. But in

1811 he never ceased to ask for more men and more money, till

Liverpool was obliged to remind him very gently, that he was

going far beyond his own estimates.’ He had got to the stage

of writing that Government having embarked on the contest, and

chosen the best officer they could find, must give him the

largest army they could collect, and reinforce it to the utmost,

without asking precisely how many men were wanted, and for what

precise objects. It was Mr. Fortescue who indicated to me two

important passages about Liverpool which are omitted from the

printed version of Wellington’s letters to Pole of January 11 and

March 31, 1811, in _Supplementary Dispatches_, vii. pp. 40-3 and

93.

[98] See especially Wellington to Dudley Perceval (the

premier’s son), June 6th, 1835, a protest against Napier’s wild

misrepresentations.

During all these weeks of waiting Wellington was also troubled by

problems with regard to the internal state of Portugal. Two main

sources of worry can be traced in his correspondence. The first was

the inefficiency of the Portuguese commissariat, which bid fair to

cause absolute starvation among those brigades of the national army

which were not incorporated with British divisions and supplied from

the British stores. Slow and irregular forwarding of provisions to

the corps stationed in advanced or remote positions led to a dreadful

increase in the number of sick. We find Wellington complaining that

regiments which had 1,200 men in line at Bussaco could only show 1,000

or 900 under arms in February, although they had received considerable

drafts from their dépôts at midwinter. D’Urban’s daily notes bear out

the statements of the Commander-in-Chief. He asserts with indignation

that by ‘the villany of commissaries,’ the same quantity of flour

which provided 15½ rations for the British soldier was returned

as having given only 9 to the Portuguese--the balance having been

embezzled. Allowances, of course, must be made for the difficulties of

a government of whose territory a good third had been depopulated by

the orders of Wellington. But the trouble does not seem to have been

so much the actual want of food-stuffs at head quarters[99]--great

quantities were got from the Alemtejo and the north--as the

inefficiency of distribution, which left outlying brigades sometimes

foodless for two or three days at a time. Clothing and shoes were also

very slow in arriving at the front. At the bottom the cause of all this

inefficiency was probably (as Wellington observes in one letter[100])

the want of money to keep up an adequate transport service, and it

might be pleaded that in the distressful condition of the country the

deficit was no fault of the government, but unavoidable. Wellington’s

view was that with greater economy in civil expenses, and more careful

supervision of commissaries and contractors, there was money enough

to pay for all necessary military objects. He was probably right, but

there is small wonder if a provisional government like the Regency

found it hard to introduce administrative reforms in the midst of a

crisis, and with the enemy almost at the gates of the capital. After

all, the effort which Portugal had made was splendid, and the whole

nation had accepted the awful necessity of the depopulation of its

central provinces with a loyalty that was surprising, if we consider

the magnitude of the sacrifice.

[99] See Wellington to Beresford from Cartaxo, February 12.

(_Dispatches_, vii. 253.)

[100] Ibid. ‘The cause of the state of deficiency is the old want

of money to pay for carriage.’

There was, however, a small minority of traitors still left in

Portugal, and their intrigues seem to have given Wellington much

concern, not because there was any danger from their personal action,

but because they conveyed to Masséna the intelligence as to the

condition of affairs in Lisbon, and in Europe at large, which he

could not obtain in any other way, owing to the strict blockade kept

up around his rear. On the last day of the old year four officers,

two colonels and two majors, had fled out of Lisbon and joined the

French[101]. They were all men who had quarrelled with Beresford,

and deserted in revenge: but that four field officers could turn

traitors at once was a most distressing sign. Wellington had fears of

a general plot against the English, and was inclined to suspect the

Bishop of Oporto and President Sousa of knowing more about it than

befitted members of the Regency. He was apparently mistaken, though

their petulance and intermittent protests against all his actions

seemed to him to justify any doubts. But minor persons in Lisbon, old

friends of Alorna and his Francophil policy, had contrived to open

up communication with the renegade General Pamplona, and to send him

newspapers, reports of the movement of troops, and other miscellaneous

information, using as their intermediaries smugglers, who passed

the lines at night to sell coffee, sugar, and other luxuries to the

French[102]. For there was a ready market for such things in the army

of Masséna. Fortunately this illicit correspondence was of little

importance, since there was no solid party in Portugal in favour of

Napoleon, and the information conveyed by newspapers as to affairs in

Lisbon was not, at this time, at all encouraging to the French; while

that as to events in England or remote parts of Spain was too old in

date to be of any great profit to them.

[101] Their names, San Miguel, Loulé, Candido Xavier, and Manuel

de Castro, are given by Fririon (Masséna’s aide-de-camp) in his

diary. Major Leslie tells me that he cannot identify them in the

Portuguese army-list of 1810, and thinks that two of them at

least were only Ordenança officers.

[102] For details as to all this see Wellington to Charles

Stuart, February 10. (_Dispatches_, vii. 237-8.)

Meanwhile Wellington regarded his position as secure for the moment.

The Army of Portugal, even after Drouet’s arrival, was too weak to

attack him. Soult’s movement from Andalusia at first caused him some

uneasiness, for he had conceived a notion that the expedition from

Andalusia, leaving Badajoz and Elvas on its left, and ignoring the

Spanish Army of Estremadura, might be intending to march by Merida and

Truxillo to Almaraz, and from thence to join Masséna by the circuitous

route through Coria and Castello Branco[103]. He was reassured as to

this possibility when the news came that Soult, unable to undertake

anything bold so long as Gazan had not joined him, had sat down to

besiege Olivenza on January 11th. If the Marshal intended to take

all the Estremaduran fortresses before moving on, occupation could

be found for him for many a week, and when La Romana’s two divisions

had been sent to join Mendizabal on January 22, Wellington imagined

that he might regard the situation on this side as secure. It will be

remembered that he gave Mendizabal elaborate advice as to the course

that he was to pursue, and he was justified in believing that if that

advice was followed Badajoz would never fall, and Soult for the moment

would become an almost negligible quantity.

[103] This fear is expressed in a letter to Charles Stuart dated

January 16 (_Dispatches_, vii. 147), on the news that Mortier’s

cavalry had seized the bridge of Merida. ‘The passage of the

Tagus by Mortier removes to a distant period the danger of

Alemtejo; but it shows that we may be attacked at an early period

in our positions. For Mortier, supposing him to march by Almaraz,

can be on the Zezere in the first days of February, and I think

it possible that the battle for the possession of this country,

and probably the fate of the Peninsula, will be fought in less

than a month from this time.’

There was always the chance, however, that Soult might turn against the

Alemtejo after all, and that Masséna might make a desperate effort to

cross the Tagus and join him. Hence Wellington spent much thought in

devising means to prevent this danger from coming into being. Beresford

received elaborate orders as to the conduct that he was to pursue, with

his corps south of the Tagus, in case Masséna attempted a passage, or

Soult appeared before Elvas. In the latter case the French would be

fought by an army composed of Mendizabal’s Estremadurans, Beresford’s

corps, and the brigade of Portuguese line troops in Elvas, a mass of

over 30,000 men. This force ought to suffice, but if the worst came,

and a defeat were suffered, the army south of the Tagus would try to

defend first the passages of the Zatas river (or the Benevente river

as Wellington usually calls it), then those of the Almansor, and lastly

the line across the neck of the Setubal peninsula, opposite Lisbon,

where there was a short front of ten miles from Setubal itself (which

was fortified) past the castle of Palmella to Moita on the Tagus

estuary. But behind this again was the strongest defensive position of

all, a Lines of Torres Vedras on a small scale[104]. The works erected

here were an afterthought: they had formed no part of the original

scheme for the fortification of Lisbon, but when it had been proved to

Wellington that batteries on the Heights of Almada, beyond the broad

Tagus mouth, might incommode the shipping in the harbour, and possibly

the town itself [the range was 2,300 yards], he had ordered, early

in December, that the Portuguese labourers set free from work on the

old lines by Masséna’s departure should be transferred to the Almada

front[105]. Here a line of 8,000 yards from sea to sea was marked out,

and strengthened with no less than seventeen closed redoubts, connected

by a covered way. Eighty-six guns were allotted to them, and their

defence was to be given over to the marines of the fleet, and the local

militia and trained Ordenança (_Atiradores nacionaes_) of Lisbon.

It was calculated that Beresford would find a garrison of 7,500 men

already placed in these forts if he were ever forced back on to them.

It seemed impossible that such a short front, so strongly held, could

ever be broken through.

[104] All this may be found in Wellington’s dispatch of January

12, 1811, where he details the successive positions which

Beresford must try to hold.

[105] For a description of this front see Jones, _Lines of Torres

Vedras_, pp. 43-5.

But all this was a precaution designed to face a very unlikely--if a

possible--situation of affairs. It was much more probable that Masséna

would try to pass the Tagus higher up, than that Soult would fight

his way to its mouth across the Alemtejo, and every precaution was

taken to give Masséna a hot reception if he should make the attempt.

It was clear that his starting-point for such an enterprise must be

Punhete and the mouth of the Zezere, for there were collected the

ninety boats and the materials for the floating bridges which had been

created by the energy of General Eblé. At Santarem, the other place

where Masséna had boats, the stock of them was known to be too small

for a passage in force. Beresford, it will be remembered, had already

established batteries which commanded the mouth of the Zezere, and

had several times stopped small explorations by the French boats.

Only on one occasion did a few succeed in running past down-stream.

On the whole it was considered unlikely that Masséna would attempt

such a serious matter as the crossing of the Tagus opposite Punhete.

D’Urban, Beresford’s chief of the staff, reported ‘It is altogether

improbable that he will commit himself, unless in combination with

the army arriving from the south. The stream is very rapid. The boats

cannot return to the original point of embarkation for a second load

of men, nor to the second point for a third load, but must cross at

each time to a point lower down, owing to the current. This must and

will occasion great disunion and scattering among the parts of the

division who first pass, all the more because they will be vigorously

opposed from the beginning. It appears to me that no attempt of the

kind can succeed. The Zezere-mouth alone is their _place d’armes_,

and leaves little else for us to watch: hence arises for them a

difficulty of accomplishing this enterprise that would appear almost

unsurmountable.’[106] It is most interesting to compare this judgement

from the English side with the discussion of the problem by the French

generals, which followed a few days later, and with which we shall

presently have to deal[107].

[106] From a long note by D’Urban in his unpublished diary, dated

January 22, 1811.

[107] See pp. 77-9.

Meanwhile both parties were decidedly nervous as to the possible

movements of their adversaries. If Wellington sometimes thought that

Masséna might make an attempt to cross the Tagus, Masséna was very

reasonably suspicious that Wellington might make a surprise-attack

upon Junot’s corps along the upper Rio Mayor, and try to cut it off,

before it could be succoured by Ney from Thomar and Golegão. This

suspicion led to the only skirmish that marked the month of January. On

the 19th the Marshal ordered Junot to make a reconnaissance in force

beyond the river, along the Alcoentre road, to see whether a rumour

that an English division had been brought up behind Pack’s Portuguese

outposts were true. The Duke of Abrantes conducted the affair himself,

at the head of 3,000 infantry of Clausel’s division and 500 horse.

He pressed in the cavalry screen in front of Pack, consisting of a

squadron of the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion, and occupied

the village of Rio Mayor, from which he drove out two Portuguese

companies. Discovering nothing in reserve save Pack’s brigade, drawn

up for resistance on the heights to the rear, and noting no red-coated

battalions, the French withdrew after a little skirmishing, and

returned to their lines. During this trifling affair Junot received a

painful but not dangerous wound from the carbine of a hussar vedette.

The ball struck him on the side of the nose, broke the bone there,

and lodged in his cheek; but it was extracted with no difficulty, and

he was able to resume command of his corps within a few days[108].

Nothing further occurred on this front till February 10, when the

English cavalry paid a return visit to the French outlying picket east

of the Rio Mayor, drove it in, and retired with an officer and ten men

prisoners.

[108] The best account of this reconnaissance is in the Journal

of Sprünglin, pp. 462-3.

On February 5th the third and final period of Masséna’s stay on the

Tagus may be said to have begun, with the arrival of the last orders

from Paris which he was destined to receive. He had been more than a

month without any official intelligence of what was going on behind

him, the latest dispatches to hand having been those brought by Drouet

at the end of the old year. But General Foy now appeared with the

orders which the Emperor had issued on December 22nd. He had cut his

way from Ciudad Rodrigo across the eastern mountains, and along the

Estrada Nova, at the head of a column of 1,800 men, mostly composed

of drafts belonging to the 2nd Corps, which he had found waiting on

the Spanish frontier. The rains had been continuous, the badness of

the road was notorious, and Colonel Grant with a small party of local

Ordenança hung about the route of the column for the last five days of

its march, and slew or captured more than a hundred stragglers. The

total loss by fatigue and sickness was much greater[109].

[109] There is a good account of this march by Foy in his _Vie

Militaire_, ed. Girod de l’Ain, pp. 127-8.

The orders brought by Foy were not particularly comforting to Masséna.

He was bidden to hold on to his position till he had received succour

from the Army of the South, and also from the Army of the Centre.

Mortier’s corps, as he had already been assured, would at some

not-distant date make its appearance on the Tagus, in the direction

of Montalvão and Villaflor. A column from the Army of the Centre was

to advance to Plasencia, and communicate with the Marshal via Coria

and Castello Branco. He was not expected to take the offensive till he

should have received these reinforcements, but he must use Drouet’s

troops to keep open communications with Almeida, and ‘regularize’ the

war. There was no order for him to cross the Tagus into the Alemtejo in

search of Mortier: it was Mortier who was to come to him. Practically

all this amounted to a command to wait and endure--the initiative was

to come from outside, with the arrival of reinforcements from the south

and east. ‘L’empereur appelait son armée à une lutte de fatigue et de

persévérance,’ as Foy commented.

But this ‘strife of toil and perseverance’ had already been going on

since November, the dispatch was forty-four days old when it reached

Masséna, and the co-operation by the Armies of the South and Centre,

which it promised, showed no signs of coming to pass. As a matter

of fact, when Foy arrived, Mortier’s divisions were absorbed in the

siege of Badajoz, and Soult, with Mendizabal upon his hands, could

have moved neither a detachment nor the whole 5th Corps to the Tagus.

The promised assistance from the Army of the Centre, a mere column

of 3,000 men under Lahoussaye, had advanced first to Truxillo and

then to Plasencia, as was promised, but had turned back for want of

provisions long before reaching the Portuguese frontier. Masséna pushed

several reconnaissances towards the upper Tagus, in the hope of getting

information as to the appearance of friendly troops on either side of

the river, but could learn nothing. He says that he judged from the

tranquillity shown by the English south of the Tagus that there could

be no French force near enough to cause them disquietude. Meanwhile the

power of the Army of Portugal to live by plundering the country-side

was being reduced every day. The distance at which food had to be

sought was ever increasing, and the loss suffered by the parties which

were cut off while raiding was growing daily more serious. The number

of prisoners taken by the British cavalry on Junot’s flank and Drouet’s

front amounted to several hundreds in January and February[110]. Many

more were destroyed by the Ordenança, who were goaded to ferocious

activity by the ever-growing cruelty of the marauders, and dogged every

expedition that set out with an ever-increasing skill. They avoided the

main bodies, but trapped and shot small parties that strayed more than

a few hundred yards from the column, with patient persistence.

[110] For details of this see the Diary of Tomkinson of the 16th

Light Dragoons. His own regiment alone brought in 82 prisoners

between January 19 and February 23. There were some very fine

feats of arms on a small scale in this outpost fighting, notably

a capture made by Lieutenant Bishop on January 19th, when with

six men he charged twenty chasseurs, and took eight with twelve

horses.

After waiting for a fortnight after the arrival of Foy and the imperial

dispatches, and learning nothing of any approach of the long-promised

troops of Mortier, Masséna assembled the corps leaders and certain

other generals at Golegão on February 19th, at a meeting which he

carefully refrained from calling a council of war. That he should do

so was in itself a sign of flagging confidence; he had shown himself

very autocratic hitherto, and had asked the advice of none of his

lieutenants. Now he regarded the situation as so desperate that he

thought that he must either give up the game and retreat from the

Tagus, or risk an attack on the allied forces south of that river,

with the object of crossing into the Alemtejo and going off to join

Soult. His own mind was practically made up in favour of the former

alternative; but he knew that if he took it without consulting his

lieutenants, they would probably report him to the Emperor as having

despaired before all was lost. The council of war was really called for

the purpose of arguing them down, and committing them to the policy of

retreat[111], so that they should not be able to protest against it at

a later date.

[111] The best account of this council of war is Foy’s (in

his _Vie Militaire_, pp. 129-32), which is contemporary. It

differs largely from Koch’s narrative in his _Vie de Masséna_.

It is quite convincing when compared with Masséna’s explanatory

dispatch to Berthier of March 6th, which sets forth his own

arguments for the retreat. They are the same which Foy attributes

to him in the précis of the meeting of February 18th.

The three corps-commanders came to the meeting each with a scheme of

his own to develop. Ney proposed to pass the Tagus by force, with the

whole army, to abandon Portugal for the moment, and to join Soult. The

united armies should establish themselves on the Guadiana, complete

the conquest of Estremadura, and then, after calling in all possible

reinforcements, take in hand the invasion of the Alemtejo, and an

attack on Lisbon from the south. Junot hotly combated this scheme:

to pass into the Alemtejo meant the surrender of all Portugal to

Wellington, who would chase the 9th Corps out of the Beira; it would

be ‘giving up the whole game.’ He wished to establish a bridge-head on

the other side of the Tagus, but not to send the whole army across,

merely to occupy it with a strong detachment, and then to wait for

Mortier’s promised appearance. Reynier’s scheme was a variant of

Junot’s, but infinitely more dangerous, for he was a general of

second-rate capacity. He would throw one corps across the Tagus, to

scour the Alemtejo for provisions, and to try to find Mortier. The

other two should hold on at Santarem, in the entrenched positions which

had already checked Wellington for three months. The English general,

he said, was timid, and would never dare to assault these formidable

works, even in the absence of one-third of the army.

Masséna had no difficulty in demolishing this last proposal. The

passage of the Tagus would be a dangerous and difficult operation in

face of an enemy who was upon the alert, who had fortified all the

obvious landing-places on the opposite bank, and who was known to have

established a perfect system of signals and communications. It might

very probably end in a bloody repulse. But granting that it succeeded,

and that a corps of 15,000 men got over into the Alemtejo, victory

would have consequences more disastrous than failure. For Wellington

would fall upon the two corps left north of the Tagus with his main

force, perhaps 60,000 men; and when separated from the troops detached

in the Alemtejo the Army of Portugal would have only 30,000 in line.

‘N’est-il pas à craindre que cette portion de l’armée, séparée de

l’autre, ne soit attaquée, battue, détruite, par un ennemi à qui, pour

nous faire beaucoup de mal, il ne manque que de le vouloir?’ This

was absolutely irrefutable logic; nothing could be more insane than

Reynier’s proposal to separate the French army into two parts by the

broad stream of the Tagus. Wellington could have destroyed with ease

the two-thirds of it left north of the river, unless that portion

should be ready to evacuate all else that it held and shut itself up to

be besieged in Santarem--the only possible centre of resistance. But to

be shut up in Santarem meant starvation on a worse scale than had been

hitherto endured. For the army, losing its old broad foraging-ground,

would be compelled to live entirely upon what might be sent it from

the northern Alemtejo by the detached corps; and that region was

known to be barren and thinly peopled, and had probably already been

stripped of its resources by Wellington’s orders. (As a matter of fact

such orders had been issued some time back.) ‘Faut-il pour un intérêt

si modique que celui de manger un mois dans l’Alemtejo risquer une

pareille opération?’ asked the Marshal. And any dispassionate judge

must decide that his question could only be answered in the negative.

Ney’s proposal, to take the whole army across the Tagus into the

Alemtejo, was not quite so easy to dispose of. But there stood against

its first necessary preliminary--the passage of the river--the same

objections that were registered against Reynier’s plan. The passage

might end in a repulse, and the position of the army would be very bad

if, having concentrated at Punhete (or at Santarem) for the crossing,

it found itself encircled by all Wellington’s forces, which would march

in upon it the moment that Ney’s and Junot’s corps were withdrawn from

their present cantonments. The Marshal disliked the idea of having to

fight a battle, with the Tagus at his back, and all his possible lines

of retreat intercepted[112]. Or again, the crossing might succeed, so

far as the throwing of a vanguard across to the Alemtejo bank went. But

Wellington would close in upon the army while it was actually passing,

and might easily destroy its rearguard, or even its larger half, by

attacking when the rest was across the water, and unable to return

with sufficient promptness.

[112] ‘Bientôt viendrait le moment où on serait forcé de se jeter

sur l’une ou sur l’autre rive; et alors on pourrait trouver les

têtes-de-pont entourées par une contrevallation de l’ennemi, ou

bien l’armée se verrait forcée à recevoir bataille avec un fleuve

au dos, en voulant se porter sur la rive droite.’ Masséna to

Berthier, March 6.

If the army were so lucky as to get off entire into the barren

Alemtejo, and to unite with the 5th Corps on the Guadiana, Wellington,

as Junot had pointed out, would have a free hand in northern and

central Portugal, and would sweep Claparéde out of it, while he need

not be seriously alarmed at any attack on Lisbon from the south of the

Tagus, for the city was covered by the Almada lines[113] and could

not be harassed from this quarter. Meanwhile the Army of Portugal

would be cut off from all the supplies and reinforcements which were

accumulating for it on the frontier of Spain, at Ciudad Rodrigo and

Salamanca; ‘it would be going off to a distance from its real line of

operations and of communications.’

[113] It is interesting to see from Masséna’s dispatch of March

6 that he was aware of the existence both of the Setubal and the

Almada fortifications.

Masséna then came to the point: having argued down the schemes of

Reynier and Ney, he developed his own determination, which was to

hold on for the few days more that seemed possible. The marauding

operations that fed the army were rapidly growing less productive, and

the moment was approaching when the daily plunder would no longer meet

the daily consumption, and then, in case the long-expected Soult did

not appear, the army must retire on to the line of the Mondego[114].

There, in a country comparatively undamaged, Masséna hoped to hold out

some fifty or sixty days at the least: the whole 9th Corps would be

available for opening and maintaining the communications with Almeida

and Ciudad Rodrigo, and reinforcements and stores would easily be

brought forward[115]. But no further offensive movements could be

contemplated; the army was exhausted and needed a long rest; in the end

it would probably have to retire within the borders of Spain--perhaps

to Alcantara on the Tagus, perhaps into Leon.

[114] Foy, present at the council, where he was asked to comment

on the Emperor’s last orders, which he had brought himself,

renders Masséna’s decision in his diary as: ‘Que faut-il donc

faire? Tenir ici le plus longtemps que nous pourrons: voir d’ici

là ce qui se passera dans l’Alemtejo: puis, si rien n’est changé,

nous transporter sur le Mondego, en laissant un corps d’armée à

la rive gauche de cette rivière.’ [_Vie Militaire_, p. 131.]

[115] This comes from Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier of March 6th.

Ney and Reynier seem to have retired from the conference rather talked

down than convinced, and the latter sent in to his Commander-in-Chief a

sort of protest, taking the form of a précis of the meeting, in which

the arguments used and the result arrived at were so misrepresented

that Masséna caused a formal document to be drawn up and signed by five

other generals present at the council, in which it was declared that

the précis was wholly incorrect. Apparently Reynier had intended to get

his protest to the Emperor’s hands, in order to free himself from any

responsibility in approving a retreat which he thought that his master

would condemn[116].

[116] For details as to this see Foy’s narrative quoted above.

The few weeks for which the Army of Portugal retained its position

after the conference at Golegão, were spent by all its units as a mere

period of preparation for the retreat, for the generals had long made

up their minds that Soult would never appear on the Tagus. They seem

even to have thought that he might have retired from Estremadura,

for the distant thunder of the bombardment of Badajoz, which had

been audible at Punhete during the first half of February, seemed to

have ceased. This must have been due to some change of atmospheric

conditions, for it was going on with redoubled energy in the last days

of the month. But Masséna and his lieutenants argued that either the

siege had been raised, or else Soult had taken the place, and yet was

not marching to the Tagus. They seem to have regarded his doings as a

negligible quantity, when coming to their final resolve.

During the last days of February all the corps received preliminary

orders, which could have no other meaning than that a retreat had been

decided upon. The divisions were ordered to send their parks and heavy

baggage to the rear, and the divisional batteries were told to complete

as many gun-teams with good serviceable horses as was possible, by

destroying caissons, and drafting their animals on to the guns. In

some cases batteries had to be reduced to three or four pieces,

even when half the caissons had been burnt. The 8th Corps destroyed

fifty-one caissons on the 24th-27th February, yet still could find

only four horses each for those remaining, including animals that were

sick or barely fit for service[117]. But the transport of food was

even more important than that of artillery material; in the central

magazines there was gathered together some fifteen days’ of biscuit

for the whole army, the flour for which had been procured with the

greatest difficulty in small quantities, and had been hoarded to the

last. This was issued to the regiments, with stringent orders not to

use it till the actual retreat began. Some units were so pressed by

starvation that they began to consume it, and ultimately started with

only eight or ten days consumption in their packs or on their waggons.

The whole of the transport was in a deplorable state; if the cavalry

and artillery had lost 5,088 horses since November, the train had been

depleted of draught-beasts in a still greater proportion, since they

were both weaker to start with, and less carefully kept. Some regiments

had no longer any horses attached to them, and could only show a few

pack-mules and asses, quite insufficient for carrying their reserve

ammunition and food[118]. Two things were certain--the one that if

the army could not pick up provisions on the way by marauding, it

would ultimately have to retire to its base within the frontiers of

Spain. And no food could be collected for some days, since the first

five stages of the retreat would be through a region already stripped

bare. The second was that the ammunition might suffice for one general

engagement, supposing that there was heavy fighting during the retreat,

but that it would hardly be able to serve for two.

[117] Journal of Noël of the Artillery of the 8th Corps, p. 137.

[118] For general statements as to the miserable state of the

material of the army see Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier of March

6, 1811.

On March 3rd Masséna issued the orders which marked his determination

to retreat at once. Ney was directed to march on the next day from

Thomar, with Marchand’s division and some cavalry, and join Drouet

at Leiria in the rear--they were ultimately to be the covering force

of the retiring army. On the 5th Reynier was directed to send back

his first division (Merle) from Santarem towards the rear, while the

second division (Heudelet) continued to hold the old lines. On this

same day Ney’s second division (Mermet) evacuated Torres Novas, and

marched northward to Ourem near Leiria, while one of Junot’s divisions

(Solignac) massed itself at Pernes, to await the arrival of the other

(Clausel), which was to hold the outposts till the last moment. This

was the critical day of the concentration, for of the eight divisions

forming the Army of Portugal five had started off, leaving three

(Heudelet at Santarem, Clausel on the Rio Mayor, Loison at Punhete) to

hold the old positions. If Wellington had attacked in force on the 5th,

it seems certain that he must have destroyed these covering forces,

which in their scattered position could not possibly have held their

ground. But the British general, as we shall see, was engaged in a

scheme of his own, and did not at first detect the full meaning of the

French movements.

For Wellington at this moment was busy in developing an encircling

attack on the whole of the French positions, and it was not yet

ready[119]. On February 23rd he had made up his mind to strike the

moment that a large body of reinforcements, already overdue from

England and the Mediterranean, should have arrived. The plan was that

the main army, while holding Reynier in check at Santarem with one or

two divisions, should attack Junot on the Rio Mayor with the bulk of

its force. At the same time Beresford, drawing his corps to the north

of the Tagus by the boat-bridge at Abrantes, was to fall upon Loison at

Punhete, and (as it was hoped) thus distract Ney, whose duty would be

divided between the succouring of Junot and that of the division on the

Zezere. But, even if he turned most of the reserves in the direction of

the Rio Mayor, the long distance would prevent them from arriving in

time. Junot would almost certainly be overwhelmed by superior numbers,

while Reynier was being ‘contained,’ and while Ney’s columns were still

far off.

[119] This plan comes out in full in the diary of Beresford’s

Chief of the Staff. D’Urban writes under the 23rd February: ‘The

Marshal tells me that Lord Wellington means to attack, and his

(Beresford’s) own share is that he must turn and force the French

left, when the reinforcements should arrive. Some of them are

already on their march up from Lisbon. On their arrival Lord

Wellington will attack the French right, on the Rio Mayor, while

Marshal Beresford crosses the Tagus at Abrantes, and attacks the

force on the Zezere at the same time. Orders to inquire how far,

in attacking the corps at Punhete, Amoreira can be turned, and

the heights of Montalvão gained, with consequent advantage of

ground in coming on the enemy upon the Zezere.’ The local reports

were prepared by D’Urban on the 25th. The only allusion to the

plan in the Wellington dispatches is in the last paragraph of the

letter to Lord Liverpool of February 23rd, in which the phrase

occurs, ‘I cannot venture to detach troops [to Estremadura] even

after the reinforcements shall arrive: and if the weather should

hold up a little I must try something else-of greater extent but

more doubtful result.’

Preparations and reconnaissances in view of this great attack began

to be made, but the reinforcements were slow to arrive. Six thousand

men were due, mainly the troops which afterwards formed the 7th

Division and the second British brigade of the 6th. But on March 1

only the _Chasseurs Britanniques_ from Cadiz, and half of the 51st had

yet landed[120]. Of the other expected regiments the bulk turned up

in Lisbon harbour on the 4th-6th March, viz. the 2nd, 85th, 1/36th,

2/52nd, but the light infantry brigade of the King’s German Legion did

not come in till the 21st of the same month. It was undoubtedly the

accidental delay of a few days in the arrival of these seven battalions

that caused Wellington to hold back; if Masséna had postponed his move

for a week more, all would have been in line save the two belated

German battalions, and the attack would have been delivered about the

10th-12th of March.

[120] The _Chasseurs Britanniques_ had landed very early in

February, and a wing of the 51st on the 25th of that month. But

the bulk of the transport fleet from England only was reported

at the Tagus mouth on March 4th, and began to land men next

day--the critical day of Masséna’s retreat. The ships with the

German light brigade had sailed late, and came in even later in

proportion.

Set on the carrying out of his own plan, which could not begin to

work for a few days more, Wellington was evidently not fully prepared

for the suddenness of Masséna’s retreat. On the 4th of March, the day

when Ney’s corps began to file to the rear, he wrote to Beresford, ‘I

think it likely that the enemy is about some move, but have been so

frequently disappointed that it is impossible to be certain. There

is no alteration whatever in their front.’ This was true, for Junot

and Reynier had not moved on a man upon the 4th. On the next--the

critical--day he himself made a survey of Reynier’s lines in front of

Santarem, found them still manned by Heudelet’s division, but thought

that he could detect that the artillery in the French works was less

numerous than on the previous day. There were no howitzers in the

great work across the high road, but only what appeared to be pieces

of small calibre. He could not perceive guns any longer upon the main

heights in front of Santarem; bushes seemed to have been laid to cover

the stations which they had occupied. But the outposts were the same,

and he did not observe any other change on the heights, excepting that

all the troops visible upon them were fully accoutred. He concluded

that no general movement of Reynier’s corps had taken place. ‘It is

probable that baggage and heavy artillery may have been sent off, but

the effective part of the army still remains in position.’ There was no

obvious alteration visible along Junot’s front, where Clausel was that

day holding all the outposts, Solignac having marched back to Pernes.

If Wellington had attacked at once that day, with the troops that were

up in his front line, the Light Division and the 1st Division, in front

of Santarem, while demonstrating with Pack’s Portuguese and the cavalry

brigades along the Rio Mayor to detain Clausel, it is probable that he

might have made great havoc of Heudelet’s division, which was holding a

front too long for its strength, and had no supports, since the rest of

the 2nd Corps was a march to the rear by now. But he was still thinking

of his own plan; the fleet, with the bulk of the expected battalions,

was reported at the mouth of the Tagus, and one regiment had actually

landed. Wherefore he wrote to Beresford, ‘the reinforcements have

arrived, and we shall be able in a few days to attack the enemy, if he

retains this position, or possibly to attack him in any other which he

may take up.’ Meanwhile the rear divisions of the army were ordered to

close in; on the evening of March 5th Cole (4th Division) was brought

up to Cartaxo, while Campbell (6th Division) moved out from the old

lines to Azambuja, which Cole had left. The 3rd Division was ordered up

from Alcoentre to join Pack’s Portuguese on the Rio Mayor. Beresford

was directed to bring the 2nd Division across the Tagus at Abrantes,

and to attack the French on the Zezere (Loison’s division) the moment

that he saw any signs of their being about to move off[121].

[121] Most of these orders will be found in the early (6 a.m.)

dispatch of March 5th to Beresford. The rest are mentioned as

having been ordered to take place on the 5th in the dispatch to

Beresford of the 6th.

But all this was too late: the only chance of destroying Masséna’s

rearguard would have been to have attacked on the morning of the 5th

with the troops that were already on the spot. And this Wellington

would not do, because he thought that Reynier and Junot were still

in position ‘with the effective part of the army.’ On the following

morning it was too late: Heudelet had evacuated Santarem, and Clausel

the line of the Rio Mayor, after dusk; and each having made a long

night-march, the one was at Ponte de Almonda near Golegão, the other

near Torres Novas, before noon on the 6th. Heudelet had blown up the

bridge of Alviella, Clausel that of Pernes, to detain the pursuers. The

enemy had gained a full march upon the British in this direction. On

the other flank Beresford brought the 2nd Division over the Tagus on

the 6th, but finding that Loison had made no movement had not attacked

him, his orders being to fall on only when he saw the enemy break up

from his positions.

On the early morning of the same day Wellington had found that Santarem

was empty and occupied it. The Light Division and Pack were sent

in pursuit of Junot, and reached Pernes: the 1st Division followed

Reynier, and had the head of its column at the broken bridge of the

Alviella by the afternoon. The 4th and 6th Divisions, coming up from

the rear, entered Santarem, while the 3rd Division reached the line

of the Rio Mayor and followed the Light Division. The 5th Division

and Campbell’s Portuguese were still far to the rear. On this day

Wellington made up his mind, from the signs before him, that Masséna

was in full march for Coimbra and the north, and did not intend to

fight a battle[122]. The only puzzling sign was that Loison’s division

still remained stationary on the Zezere. Was it even now possible that

the other corps were going to join him for an attack on Abrantes,

an attempt to cross the Tagus near it, or a retreat into Spain via

the Castello Branco road? This was not likely: for if such had been

Masséna’s plan, Ney would have arrived to join Loison already, and they

would have commenced their movement beyond the Zezere. Wellington,

however, did not feel quite certain as to what was the French scheme

till Loison burnt his boats and bridges on the night of the 6th-7th,

and moved off towards Thomar, in the same direction as the rest of

the French army. It is clear that if Beresford had been ordered to

fall upon Loison in force upon the afternoon of the 6th, he might

have done him much harm, for there lay upon the Zezere only a single

French infantry division and a cavalry brigade, while Beresford had at

Abrantes, beside the garrison, an English and a Portuguese division of

infantry, and as much cavalry at least as Loison possessed.

[122] See Wellington to Beresford, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 344.

On the 7th Ney and Drouet were halted at Leiria to cover the arrival

of the rest of the army. Reynier marched from Golegão to Thomar;

Junot from Torres Novas to Chão de Maçans; Loison was at dawn close

to Thomar, after a night march, leaving his boats and bridges blazing

behind him as a beacon for Beresford’s benefit. It was clear that the

French were all making for the Coimbra roads, and had no designs west

of the Zezere. The English cavalry, following on the heels of both

Reynier’s and Junot’s columns, informed Wellington that the enemy was

apparently about to use both roads towards the Mondego, that by Leiria

and Pombal, and that by Chão de Maçans and Ancião. The British general

expressed some surprise at this, remarking in a letter to Beresford

that the latter road was so bad that he marvelled that everything had

not gone by the infinitely superior Leiria chaussée, the main road to

the north[123]. Meanwhile, of his own troops Beresford had crossed

the Zezere, but did not reach Thomar; Nightingale’s brigade of the

1st Division moved on from the bridge of the Alviella to Atalaya

beyond Golegão, the Light Division from Pernes advanced to Arga and

La Marosa on the Torres Novas-Thomar road. The 4th and 6th Divisions

reached Golegão in the afternoon. But hearing of Ney’s and Drouet’s

concentration at Leiria, and doubtful whether he would not find that

the rest of the enemy was about to take shelter behind them, Wellington

resolved not to push any more troops in the Thomar direction, but to

keep a large mass upon the Santarem-Leiria-Coimbra road. The bulk

of the 1st Division (all save Nightingale’s brigade) and the 3rd

Division were halted at Alcanhede and Pernes, and thither too the 5th

Division and the Portuguese brigades from the rear were directed. It

must be confessed that this was not a very rapid or vigorous pursuit:

Wellington was waiting on the enemy’s movements, rather than forcing

them to take such directions as best suited himself. But it must be

remembered that he had been compelled to advance ere yet his own

preparations were made, four or five days before he had intended to

make his great concentric attack, and two factors were against him.

The first was the eternal food-problem; the divisions had marched

unexpectedly, with such supplies as they had in hand; they were unable

to get anything from the country, which the French had stripped bare

during the last three months. The rations for them were being brought

up from the rear, but if they outmarched them they must starve: hence

there were reasons against hurry. The second cause of delay was that

Wellington wished to have his whole army in hand, if the enemy should

turn and show fight, and the divisions which had started from the

Torres Vedras Lines on the first notice of Masséna’s departure on

the 5th were still far to the rear, viz. the 5th and the Portuguese

battalions which had once been Le Cor’s and was now under Campbell.

The new 7th Division, which had just landed, had not yet commenced its

march from Lisbon.

[123] Wellington to Beresford, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 346.

The aspect of the region through which the army was marching was

piteous in the extreme. Santarem town was a wreck, ‘the houses torn and

dilapidated, the streets strewn with household furniture half-burnt

and destroyed, many streets quite impassable with filth and rubbish,

with an occasional man, horse, or donkey rotting, and corrupting

the air with pestilential vapours: a few miserable inhabitants like

living skeletons[124].’ The country-side was worse--cottages burnt

and unroofed, and corpses of murdered peasants, some fresh, some mere

heaps of bones, lying in every ravine. The survivors were just emerging

from woods or caverns to cut up the French sick and stragglers. A

single quotation may suffice to give some idea of the wayside sights

of this distressing march. It comes from a 3rd Division chronicler,

who is describing the village of Porto de Mos, south of Leiria: ‘When

we entered the place, there was a large convent fronting us, which, as

well as many of the houses, had been set on fire by the French. I never

before witnessed such destruction: floors torn up, beds cut in pieces,

their contents thrown about intermixed with kitchen utensils, broken

mirrors, china, &c. There was a large fire in the chapel, on which had

been heaped broken pieces of the altar, wooden images, picture frames,

and the ornamental woodwork of the organ. Searching for a clean place

to put down bags of biscuit, we found a door leading to a chamber apart

from the chapel. It was quite dark, so I took up a burning piece of

wood to inspect it. It was full of half-consumed human bodies, some

lying, others kneeling or leaning against the walls. The floor was

covered with ashes, in many places still red-hot. Such an appalling

sight I have never witnessed. Of those who had sunk on the floor

nothing remained but bones: those who were in a kneeling or standing

posture were only partially consumed. The expression of their scorched

faces was horrible beyond description. In a bag lying at the upper

end of the apartment was the dead body of a young child, who had been

strangled: the cord used was still tight about its little neck[125].’

[124] Memoirs of George Simmons of the 95th, p. 137.

[125] From the Memoirs of Donaldson of the 94th, p. 104. Passing

through Porto de Mos on September 29, 1910, I thought that I

would try to discover whether any memory of this horrid tragedy

survived. The sacristan, of whom I made inquiries, at once took

me to a ruined chamber to the left of the church, and told

me that 200 people had been burned there in the ‘time of the

French.’ A new sacristy had been built to replace it in 1814, the

chamber being held accursed.

It was on the morning that followed his arrival at Torres Novas (March

8th) that Wellington, encouraged by the reports of his cavalry scouts,

to the effect that the French were marching day and night, and showed

no wish to fight, issued the orders already alluded to in a previous

chapter, which bade Beresford turn back the 2nd Division, and march

with it and the 4th to the relief of Badajoz[126]. The report of

Menacho’s death and of the rapid advance of the French siege-works had

just reached him. Beresford was to take with him Hamilton’s Portuguese

division, which had not yet passed the Tagus, and De Grey’s cavalry

brigade. The boat-bridge at Abrantes was floated down to Tancos near

Punhete, in order to save the 2nd and 4th Divisions some miles of march

in their journey to the Alemtejo. These troops turned back, and were

nearing Tancos on the following day, when they received orders to halt.

The French, so the advanced cavalry reported, after marching hitherto

day and night, had come to a stand at Pombal, north of Leiria, where

Ney, Junot, and Drouet were now all massed. Though Reynier was said

to have taken another road, that by Espinhal, Wellington was not sure

that Masséna did not intend to fight, and if so, he wished to have the

4th Division with him, and De Grey’s heavy dragoons. ‘In this case it

is desirable,’ he writes, ‘that I should be a little stronger, and as

Badajoz is not yet pressed ... I have sent to Cole to desire that his

division and the dragoons march to-morrow for Cacharia. I shall then

be as strong as the enemy, or very nearly.’ The 2nd Division was to

halt and wait further orders. It was not till the 12th that it was let

loose, and told to resume its march to the Alemtejo: Cole and De Grey

were not sent back from the main army till the 16th. Meanwhile Badajoz,

as we have already seen, fell by Imaz’s pusillanimity on March 10--a

date too early for Beresford to have saved it, even if he had continued

the march originally prescribed to him on the 8th of that month.

[126] See Chapter II above, p. 60, and Wellington, _Dispatches_,

vii. 350-1.

Before Wellington sent on their southward journey the three divisions

which were to form the future Army of Estremadura, stirring events had

begun to occur on the Leiria-Coimbra road, and the general course of

Masséna’s retreat had already been settled.

SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER IV

EVENTS IN THE SOUTH OF SPAIN. THE BATTLE OF BARROSA

JANUARY-MARCH 1811

In the second chapter of this volume we dealt with Soult’s expedition

to Estremadura and its results, but had to defer for later

consideration the events which brought him back in haste to Andalusia

the moment that Badajoz had fallen (March 12th). These must now be

explained.

When his 20,000 men, collected from all the three corps which formed

the Army of the South, set out on the last day of the old year 1810,

Soult left behind him three problems, each of which (as he was well

aware) might assume a dangerous aspect at any moment. We have already

indicated their character[127]. Would Victor, with 19,000 men left

to him for the blockade of Cadiz, be able to hold with security the

immense semicircle of lines and batteries which threatened the island

stronghold of the Cortes? Would the provisional garrison which had been

patched up for Seville prove strong enough to defend that capital and

its arsenals against any possible attack of roving Spanish detachments,

from the mountains of the west and south? Would Sebastiani and the

4th Corps be able to beat back any attempt by the Army of Murcia to

trespass upon the limits of the broad and rugged province of Granada?

We may add that it was conceivable that all these three problems might

demand a simultaneous solution. For if all the Spanish forces had been

guided by a single capable brain, nothing would have been more obvious

to conceive than a plan for setting them all to work at once. If a

sortie from Cadiz were taken in hand, it would have the best chance of

success supposing that Sebastiani were to be distracted by an invasion

of Granada, and Seville threatened by any force that could be collected

in the Condado de Niebla, or the mountains above Ronda.

[127] See pp. 57-8 above.

Soult, as Napoleon pointed out to him two months later[128], had

committed a considerable fault by not putting all the divisions left

behind in Andalusia under a single commander, responsible for all parts

of the kingdom alike. Victor was given no authority over Sebastiani,

nor even over Daricau, who had been left as governor of Seville, or

Godinot, whose depleted division occupied the province of Cordova.

Napoleon, always suspicious of Soult, accused him of having neglected

this precaution because he was jealous of Victor, and would not make

him as great as himself[129]. Whether this was so or not, it is at any

rate clear that the position was made much more dangerous by the fact

that each of the three problems named above would be presented to a

different commander, who would be prone to think of his own troubles

alone, and to neglect those of his colleagues. If all three dangers

became threatening at the same moment, each general would regard his

own as the most important, and bestow comparatively little care on

those which menaced the others. As a matter of fact, Victor was almost

destroyed, because Sebastiani did not come to his help, when the sally

from Cadiz took place early in March; and Seville was in serious danger

a few days later, because there was no one who could order Godinot to

march to its aid from Cordova without delay.

[128] _Correspondance_, no. 17,531. ‘Le siège de Cadix n’aurait

pas couru les chances qu’il vient de courir si, en partant pour

l’Estrémadure, le duc de Dalmatie avait mis le corps du général

Sebastiani et la division Godinot sous les ordres du Maréchal duc

de Bellune [Victor] ... il aurait alors eu trois fois plus de

troupes qu’il n’en aurait fallu.’

[129] ‘Soult vient de me faire une grande sottise: il aurait

dû laisser à Victor le commandement de toutes les troupes

d’Andalousie. Il ne l’a pas fait, de peur que Victor ne fût

aussi grand que lui.’ Foy’s interview with Napoleon in his _Vie

Militaire_, p. 140.

Soult was fully aware of all the possible perils of his absence.

Apparently he thought Sebastiani was in the greater danger, for he

requisitioned only a few cavalry and artillery from the 4th Corps,

and left it practically intact to defend the province of Granada

against the Army of Murcia. As to Seville, he considered that it could

only be endangered by Ballasteros, and for that reason did his best

to destroy that general’s division, by causing Gazan to hunt it as

far as the borders of Portugal--a diversion which nearly wrecked the

Estremaduran expedition for lack of infantry[130]. When Gazan had

driven Ballasteros over the Guadiana, after the action of Castillejos

(January 25), the Marshal thought that the Spaniard was out of the

game, and no longer in a position to do harm--in which he erred, for

this irrepressible enemy was back in Andalusia within a few weeks, and

was actually threatening Seville early in March.

[130] See above, p. 33.

But the greatest danger was really on the side of Cadiz, where Victor,

deprived of nearly all his cavalry and one regiment of infantry for the

Estremaduran expedition, had also to furnish outlying detachments--a

garrison for Xeres and the column with which General Remond was

operating in the Condado de Niebla, far to the west[131]. He had only

19,000 men left for the defence of the Lines, of which a considerable

proportion consisted of artillery, sappers, and marine troops, needed

for the siege but useless for a fight in the open, if the enemy should

make a sally by sea against his rear. The Duke of Belluno was anxious,

and rightly so: for the nearest possible succours were Sebastiani’s

troops in Granada and Malaga, many marches away, while the garrison of

Cadiz was very strong, and indeed outnumbered his own force. At the

beginning of February it comprised, including the urban militia, nearly

20,000 Spanish troops; Copons had just been withdrawn from the west to

join it. There was also an Anglo-Portuguese division. General Graham

had been left a considerable force, even after Wellington withdrew

certain regiments to join in the defence of the Lines of Torres Vedras.

He had two composite battalions of the Guards, the 2/47th, 2/67th,

2/87th, a half battalion of the 2/95th, the two battalions of the 20th

Portuguese, and a provisional battalion of German recruits[132], as

also two squadrons of the 2nd Hussars of the King’s German Legion, and

two field batteries. The whole amounted to between 5,000 and 6,000

men. It is curious to note that Napoleon, in the dispatch by which he

spurred Soult on to his Estremaduran expedition, assured him ‘that

there had never been more than three English regiments at Cadiz,

and that they had all gone to Lisbon,’ so that the Isle of Leon and

city were only defended by ‘ten thousand unhappy Spaniards without

resolution or power to resist[133].’ When the Emperor’s directions were

based upon information so utterly incorrect as this, it was hard for

his generals to satisfy him!

[131] See above, p. 31.

[132] Whom Wellington (in his dispatch to Graham of December 31)

calls ‘the German deserters’--they having been mainly men who had

absconded from the French armies.

[133] _Correspondance_, no. 17,131.

Within a few days of the withdrawal of the detachment taken by Soult

from Victor, the news came to Cadiz that the 1st Corps had been

weakened: and when the destination of the expedition was known, it

seemed probable that no reserves had been left at Seville on which the

besieging force could count. The idea of an attack on Victor was at

once broached by the Regency, and accepted by General Graham; after

some discussion, it was considered best not to assail the lines by a

disembarkation from the Isle of Leon, but to land as large a force as

could be spared in the rear of the enemy, at Tarifa, Algesiras, or some

other point of Southern Andalusia which was in the hands of the Allies.

Such a movement, if properly conducted, would compel Victor to draw

backward, in order to hold off the Allies from the Lines. He would have

to fight at some distance inland, leaving a minimum garrison to protect

his forts and batteries, and it was proposed that the fleet and the

troops left in Cadiz should fall upon them during his enforced absence.

The execution of this plan was deferred for some weeks, partly

because of the difficulty of providing transport by sea for a large

expeditionary force, partly because Gazan was unexpectedly drawn

back into Andalusia by Ballasteros’s division, and was at the end

of January in a position from which he might easily have reinforced

Victor. When he had gone off to Estremadura, in the wake of Soult,

the problem became simpler. After drawing back Copons’s division from

the Condado de Niebla to Cadiz (as has already been mentioned), the

Regency found themselves able to provide 8,000 men for embarkation,

while leaving 7,000 regulars and the urban militia to hold Cadiz.

Graham was ready to join in, with all his troops save the battalion

companies of the 2/47th and the 20th Portuguese, and the doubtfully

effective German battalion, which were to remain behind, for he did

not wish to withdraw the whole British force from Cadiz at once. But

he procured the aid of an almost equivalent number of bayonets from

an external source: he wrote to General Campbell, commanding at

Gibraltar, begging him to spare reinforcements from the garrison of

that fortress and of the minor stronghold of Tarifa, at the extreme

southern point of Europe, which was then maintained as a sort of

dependency of Gibraltar. Campbell eagerly consented to take part in the

plan and promised to lend 1,000 infantry. This assistance would bring

up the British contingent to 5,000 men. The Spaniards were also to

collect some small reinforcements: there was an irregular force under

General Beguines operating in the Ronda mountains, and basing itself on

Gibraltar. It was ordered to join the expedition when it should come

to land, and (as we shall see) actually did so, with a force of three

battalions or 1,600 men. The total of the troops whom it was proposed

to collect amounted, therefore, to 9,600 Spaniards and 5,000 British,

a force almost equal in numbers to Victor’s depleted corps. But it was

clear that the Marshal would have to leave some sort of a garrison in

the Lines before Cadiz, and that the Allies would have a numerical

superiority, if they could force on a fight at a distance from the sea

and the French base.

One cardinal mistake was made in planning the expedition. Its command

was to be entrusted to General Manuel La Peña, then the senior officer

in Cadiz, a man with a talent for plausible talking and diplomacy, but

one who had already shown himself a selfish colleague and a disloyal

subordinate. This was the same man who in 1808, nearly three years

back, had sacrificed his chief Castaños at the disastrous battle

of Tudela[134], by refusing to march to the sound of the guns, and

securing a safe retreat for himself and his 10,000 men, while the

main army was being crushed, only four miles away, by Marshal Lannes.

Though not personally a coward, he was a shirker of responsibilities,

and incapable of a swift and heroic decision. He was ambitious enough

to aspire to and intrigue for a post of importance, but collapsed when

it became necessary to discharge its duties. He treated Graham in 1811

precisely as he had treated Castaños in 1808, and it was not his fault

that the sally from Cadiz failed to end in a disaster[135]. The English

lieutenant-general had discretionary authority from his Government to

refuse to act in any joint expedition of which he was not given the

command. But anxious to bring matters to a head, and deceived by La

Peña’s mild plausibility, he consented to take the second place, on the

ground that the Spaniard contributed the larger body of troops to the

enterprise.

[134] See vol. i. pp. 442-3.

[135] Schepeler, the Prussian officer in Spanish service, whose

notes on all the Cadiz affairs are so important, owing to his

having served through them under Blake and La Peña, says that the

latter was generally allowed to be incompetent--he was a regular

old woman. He tells an illustrative anecdote, of a guerrillero

chief who came to concert a bold plan with the general, and went

away at once, saying, ‘Can I hope to get anything out of an

officer who, as I find, is called “Donna Manuela” by every one

about him?’ Schepeler, _Geschichte der spanischen Monarchie_, i.

134. La Peña had kept his place, despite of his Tudela fiasco,

through family and _salon_ intrigues--he is said to have been the

‘tame cat’ of certain great ladies of the patriotic party.

If Graham himself had headed the united force, it is certain that the

siege of Cadiz would have been raised for the moment, though what

would have followed that success no man can say, for it would have

brought about such a convulsion in Andalusia, and such a concentration

of the French troops, that the whole of the conditions of the war in

the south would have been altered. Graham had all the qualities which

La Peña lacked--indomitable resolution, swift decision, a good eye

for topography, the power of inspiring enthusiastic confidence in his

troops. He was no mere professional soldier, but a crusader with a

mission; indeed his personal history is one of extraordinary interest.

When the French Revolution broke out he was a civilian of mature years,

a Whig Member of Parliament, aged forty-four, mainly known as a great

sportsman[136] and a bold cross-country rider. Yet certainly if the

war of 1793 had not come to pass, he would only be remembered now as

the husband of that beautiful Mrs. Graham whose portrait is one of

Gainsborough’s best-known masterpieces.

[136] He played in the first recorded cricket match in Scotland

in 1785.

[Illustration: _Lieutenant-General Thomas Graham_]

Driven to the Riviera in 1792 by the failing health of his wife, who

died at Hyères, Graham was an eye-witness of the outbreak of violence

and blind rage in France which followed Brunswick’s invasion. He

himself was arrested--his wife’s coffin was torn open by a mob which

insisted that he was smuggling ‘arms for aristocrats’ therein. He

narrowly escaped with his life, and returned to England convinced

that the French had become a nation of wild beasts, _hostes humani

generis_. ‘I had once deprecated,’ he wrote at the time, ‘the hostile

interference of Britain in the internal affairs of France, but what I

have seen in my journey through that country makes me consider that

war with her has become just and necessary in self-defence of our

constitution[137].’ Widowed and childless, he thought it his duty to go

to the front at once, despite of his forty-four years and his lack of

military training. He devoted all his available funds to the raising,

in his own county, of the 90th Foot, the ‘Perthshire volunteers,’ of

which he became the honorary colonel. He could not take command of the

corps, because he had no substantive military rank, but he could not

keep at home. He went out to the Mediterranean as a sort of volunteer

aide-de-camp to Lord Mulgrave, and afterwards, being found useful owing

to his gift of languages--he knew not only Italian but German, a rare

accomplishment in those days--he was entrusted with a special mission

to the Austrian army of Italy. He served through all the disasters of

Beaulieu and Würmser, starved in Mantua, and froze in the Tyrolese Alps.

[137] See his diary, quoted in Delavoye’s _Life of Lord

Lynedoch_, p. 32.

From that time onward we find him wherever there was fighting against

the French to be done--in Sicily, Minorca, Malta, Egypt, Portugal.

So great were his services that, contrary to all War Office rules,

his honorary colonelship was changed to a regular commission on the

staff, and in 1808-9 he served first as the British attaché with

Castaños’s army, and later as one of Sir John Moore’s aides-de-camp. In

reward for brilliant service in the Corunna campaign he was given in

1810 the command of the British force at Cadiz. And so it came about

that this Whig Member of Parliament, who had commenced soldiering at

forty-four (like Oliver Cromwell and Julius Caesar), was at sixty-two

leading a British division in the field. He had an iron frame[138],

and his spirit was as firm as his body--the crusade had to be fought

out to the end, though the enemy was now the Corsican Tyrant, not the

Atheist Republic against which he had first drawn his sword. It was

in keeping with all his previous career that he consented to take

the second place in the Tarifa expedition; to get the army started

was essential--his personal position counted for nothing with him.

Before a month was out he had good reason to regret that he had been so

self-denying.

[138] Graham survived Barrosa for thirty years, lived to be

ninety-six, and after Waterloo founded the United Service Club,

as a place of rendezvous for his old Peninsular comrades, who

looked upon him as a kind of father.

After many tiresome delays[139] the English contingent sailed from

Cadiz on February 21st, but met with such fierce west winds, when it

neared Cape Trafalgar, that the convoy could not make the difficult

harbour of Tarifa, and was blown past it into Gibraltar Bay, where

Graham landed on the 23rd at Algesiras. Here he found waiting for him

a ‘flank battalion’ of 536 bayonets, which General Campbell had made

up for him out of the six flank companies of the 1/9th, 1/28th, and

2/82nd. From Algesiras the troops marched on the 24th to Tarifa, where

they picked up another reinforcement provided by Campbell, the eight

battalion companies of the 1/28th, which had been doing garrison duty

in that little fortress--460 men in all. Having now just 5,196 men,

Graham divided the infantry into two brigades. The first under General

Dilkes numbered 1,900 bayonets: it was composed of the two composite

battalions of the Guards, together with the flank battalion from

Gibraltar and two companies of the 95th Rifles. The second brigade,

under Colonel Wheatley, had 2,633 bayonets, and consisted of the

1/28th, 2/67th, 2/87th, and another ‘flank battalion’ under Colonel

Barnard, composed of the two light companies of the 20th Portuguese

(the only troops of that nation which served in the expedition), those

of the 2/47th, with four more companies of the 95th Rifles. There were

only 206 cavalry--two squadrons of the 2nd Hussars of the King’s German

Legion--and ten guns under Major Duncan.

[139] The delays in the start caused an unexpected conjunction

in the mountains of the south. Beguines and his roving brigade,

warned to be ready to join in the campaign by the 23rd, came

down from the Ronda mountains in search of the army, advanced

as far as Medina Sidonia, and skirmished there with Victor’s

flank guard, two battalions under General Cassagne, which were

always kept watching the mountains (March 25). Beaten off,

Beguines retired to his usual haunts, and waited for signs of the

expedition. His premature attack--premature through no fault of

his own--called Victor’s attention to his rear, and caused him

to fortify Medina Sidonia, and to reinforce Cassagne with three

battalions and a cavalry regiment.

The Spanish contingent had sailed three days after Graham, had met

with the same rough weather, and had been much beaten about. But the

troops began to arrive at Tarifa on the 26th, and were all ashore on

the 27th. La Peña assumed command, was all politeness, and made over to

Graham two unbrigaded battalions of his own, to bring up the force of

the two small British brigades to a higher figure[140]. The rest of his

troops were organized in two divisions under Lardizabal and the Prince

of Anglona, the first five, the second six battalions strong[141]; he

had brought fourteen guns, and four squadrons of horse under an English

colonel in the Spanish service, Samuel Whittingham, an officer who did

not add to his laurels during this expedition.

[140] These battalions were, I believe, Ciudad Real and 4th

Walloon Guards.

[141] As the names of the Spanish battalions engaged in this

expedition have never before been collected, it may be worth

while to mention here that they were--Lardizabal’s division:

Campomayor, Carmona, Murcia (2 batts.), Canarias; Anglona’s

division: Africa (2 batts.), Sigüenza, Cantabria (2 batts.),

Voluntaries de Valencia.

On arriving at the bridge of Facinas and the village of Bolonia, ten

miles outside Tarifa, La Peña had to make up his mind whether he would

march against the rear of the French lines before Cadiz by the track

nearer to the coast, which passes through Vejer de la Frontera, Conil,

and Chiclana, or by the inland road through the mountains, which runs

past Casas Viejas to Medina Sidonia. The two roads at their bifurcation

are separated by the long lagoon of La Janda, a very shallow sheet of

water, seven miles long, which nearly dries up in summer, but was at

this moment full to overflowing from spring rains[142]. To take the

inland route across the mountains was by far the better course. The

road was not good, but if the Allies could reach Medina Sidonia with

their army intact, Victor would be forced to come out and attack

them, at a great distance from his Lines. For it would be practically

impossible for the Marshal to allow La Peña and Graham to establish

themselves at Medina, in the rear of his head quarters, and backed by

the Sierra de Jerez, from whose skirts they could send out as many

detachments as they pleased, to cut the communication between Seville

and the Lines. There was little danger of being taken in the rear by

troops sent by the distant Sebastiani, whose nearest forces were at

Marbella, eighty miles away, and whose attention was at this moment

fully taken up by the local guerrilleros, who had been turned loose on

him. Indeed, Sebastiani for some time thought that the expedition was

directed against himself, and was preparing to concentrate and take

the defensive. The only drawbacks to the Medina Sidonia route were

there would be no chance of communicating along it with the garrison of

Cadiz, and that the question of provisions might grow serious if the

campaign were protracted, for the region was barren and the army ill

provided with transport. But a few days would settle the affair--Victor

would be compelled to come out at once and fight, with every man that

he could bring, and while he was engaged at Medina, there would be

nothing to prevent the 7,000 Spaniards in Cadiz from crossing the

harbour and destroying the ill-garrisoned Lines. This in itself, even

if the Allies failed to hold back the Marshal, would have an immense

effect all over Andalusia[143].

[142] I do not know these roads, nor the field of Barrosa, but

Colonel Churcher, of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, who is well

acquainted with them, tells me that the track (five miles inland

from the coast) marked on the British staff map of 1810, from

Bolonia to Vejer, is no proper road at all, and unfit for wheeled

traffic to this day; while the Tarifa-Medina Sidonia road is bad,

but can carry vehicles. He tells me that he has actually crossed

the Laguna de la Janda at its centre in dry weather, so shallow

does it become.

[143] There is a good note on the pros and cons of the two routes

in Schepeler, i. 161.

La Peña originally intended to take the right-hand road, and ordered

Beguines, who was now in the high hills to the east, about Ximena,

to join him with his roving brigade at Casas Viejas. The column left

Facinas late in the evening, for La Peña had a great and misplaced

belief in night marches, by which he always hoped to gain time on the

enemy, since his moves could not be discovered or reported till the

next morning. He overlooked the corresponding disadvantage of the

extreme slowness of progress over bad roads in rugged country, the

very real danger that the troops (or some of them) might miss their

way in the dark, and the inevitable fatigue to the men from losing

their proper hours of sleep. Graham’s laconic diary shows how this

worked out. ‘Marched in the evening, very tedious from filing across

water (the stream which fills the head of the lagoon of La Janda) and

other difficulties. Misled by the guides on quitting the Cortigo de la

Janda (farm at the head of the lagoon): the counter-march made a most

fatiguing night.... It was twelve noon before the troops halted, having

been nineteen hours under arms.’

The troops of Lardizabal, at the head of the column, had reached Casas

Viejas in the morning, but the English division in the rear of the army

had got no further than the northern end of the lagoon, some thirteen

miles from their starting-place at Puente de Facinas. There was a

violent east wind, the night had been very cold, and the men were much

fatigued.

Lardizabal on reaching Casas Viejas had found the convent, which

was the only solid building there, occupied by a French post, two

companies sent out by General Cassagne from Medina Sidonia to watch the

high-road. Thinking at first that he was only about to be worried by

guerrilleros, the French captain shut himself up behind his barricades,

instead of retreating at once. When he found out his mistake, and saw

that a whole army was about him, it was too late to get off without

loss. La Peña ordered that the convent should be left alone, as he did

not wish to waste time in battering and storming it. The whole of his

troops had come up, including the roving force of 1,600 men from the

hills under Beguines, when the French unwisely made a bolt eastward,

in the hope of escaping. The little column was pursued and cut up by a

squadron of Busche’s German Hussars, many being killed and captured.

From the prisoners and Beguines’s scouts La Peña learnt that Medina

Sidonia was (contrary to his expectation) held by a serious force of

French--Cassagne’s detachment being now composed of five battalions of

infantry, a battery, and a cavalry regiment, about 3,000 men. The walls

had been repaired, it was said, and the place was in a state of defence.

The Spanish general should have rejoiced to learn that Victor had sent

an appreciable part of his army so far afield--fifteen miles from

Chiclana--and by advancing he could have forced the Marshal to come to

this distance from his lines in order to support Cassagne. A battle

would no doubt have followed--but it was for a battle that the army

had sailed to Tarifa. And by drawing Victor’s whole fighting force so

far away from Cadiz, La Peña would have given a unique opportunity to

the garrison to come out and destroy the siege-works. Meanwhile, if the

French lost the battle they would be annihilated, being off their line

of retreat; if they won it, they would return to find the greater part

of the siege-works destroyed.

But this was not the line of thought that guided La Peña; he was, as

his previous record showed, a shirker of responsibilities, and the

prospect of a battle on the morrow, or the day after, seems to have

paralysed him. To every one’s surprise he gave orders that the army,

waiting till dusk had come on, should leave the Medina road, and march

across country by a bad bridle-path to Vejer, on the other route from

Tarifa to Cadiz. Graham protested against a second night march, after

the experience of the first, and rightly, for news came in ere night

that the road along the north side of the Barbate river, which La Peña

had intended to use, was absolutely under water from inundations. La

Peña therefore consented to wait till the next morning (March 3rd)

and to use another country road, that between the north end of the La

Janda lagoon and the river into which it falls. The army marched at 8

o’clock--Lardizabal as before in front, the English division in the

rear. But on reaching the intended crossing-place, it was found that

this road, like that north of the river, was flooded, the lagoon having

overflowed at its northern end, and joined itself in one shallow sheet

of water to the Barbate. Graham, on arriving at the passage, found the

Spaniards halted at the edge of the flood, and apparently at a nonplus.

The energetic old man took the business out of La Peña’s hands--he and

his staff rode into the water, and sought personally for the track of

the submerged causeway, which they fortunately found to be nowhere more

than three feet under the surface of the flood. He placed men along the

track at intervals, to guide those who should follow, and sat on his

horse in the middle of the ford encouraging the troops as they marched

past him. ‘I set the example of going into the water,’ he remarks in

his diary, ‘which was followed by Lacy, the Prince of Anglona, and

others. The passage lasted three hours, and would have taken double

that time but for the exertions made to force the men to keep the

files connected.’ It was 12 o’clock at night before the army reached

Vejer--having taken fifteen hours to cover ten miles, owing to the

delays at the inundation. Every one was wet through and much fatigued,

for the weather was still very cold.

It remained to be seen what the enemy would make of this move; a

squadron of French dragoons had been found in Vejer by the advanced

guard, and driven out, so that it was certain that Victor would get

prompt news that at any rate some part of the allied army had now

appeared on the western road. The Marshal, as a matter of fact, was

puzzled. On the night of the 2nd he had heard from Cassagne that the

enemy was in force on the Medina Sidonia road, and had cut up the

post at Casas Viejas. He accordingly sent orders to Cassagne to bid

him stand firm, and promised to support him with his whole disposable

force. But before dawn on the 4th he got news, from the dragoons

expelled from Vejer, that there was a heavy force on the western road.

Had La Peña transferred himself from one route to another, or were the

Allies operating in two columns? Cassagne reported a little later that

the column opposed to him had advanced no further, but that there were

still Spanish troops on the Casas Viejas road; and this was true, for

La Peña had left a battalion and some guerrilla horse at that place, to

give him news of Cassagne, if the latter should move.

But there was also the garrison of Cadiz to be watched, and it was

showing signs of activity. On the night of the 2nd-3rd, when the field

army had been lying at Casas Viejas, General Zayas had, in accordance

with the scheme of times left with him, thrown his bridge of boats

across the Santi Petri creek, and passed a battalion across it, which

entrenched itself on the mud-flat, facing the French works that cut off

the peninsula of the Bermeja. They threw up a strong _tête-du-pont_,

undisturbed, being under the protection of the heavy guns in the castle

of Santi Petri, and other batteries on the Isle of Leon. The move could

only mean that the garrison of Cadiz intended to come out. Accordingly

Victor resolved to stop its egress; waiting for the dusk on the night

of the 3rd-4th, he sent six companies of picked _voltigeurs_ to storm

the _tête-du-pont_. This they accomplished, the heavy guns failing to

stop them in the dusk: the Spanish battalion in the work (Ordenes

Militares) was nearly annihilated, losing 13 officers and 300 men

killed or taken. But the bridge itself was saved by the prompt sinking

of two of its boats, and was hastily floated back to the island, where

Zayas laid it up for further use. He had been much chagrined at seeing

and hearing nothing of allied forces behind the French, which he had

been told to look for on March 3rd[144].

[144] According to Schepeler La Peña had sent an officer out from

Tarifa in a fishing-boat on the 1st March, to let the garrison

of Cadiz know that he might not keep his time accurately; this

messenger was stopped at sea by an English brig, and since he was

disguised and had no English pass, he was detained some time as a

suspicious character, and only reached Cadiz on the 4th.

Putting together the movement of Zayas, and the fact that some at least

of the allied army was now on the Vejer road, the Marshal came to the

correct conclusion that the army in the field was intending to get

into communication with Cadiz and its garrison. Accordingly he made a

new plan to suit this hypothesis: of his three divisions one, that of

Villatte, was to block the neck of the peninsula along which the track

from Vejer and Conil leads to the Santi Petri creek and the Isle of

Leon. The other two, concentrated at Chiclana, were to wait till the

allied force had found itself blocked in front by Villatte, and then to

fall upon its flank, in the space of three miles that lies between the

hill of Barrosa and the position where Villatte had been posted. This

plan would place the intercepting division in obvious danger, since,

while attacked in front by the head of the allied army, it might find

Zayas attempting once more to lay his bridge, and to take it in the

rear. Such a movement by the garrison could not be stopped, because

the end of the peninsula, by the bridge-place, was under the guns of

several heavy batteries. But Victor directed Villatte not to fight to

the last, but to be contented with holding the Allies in check long

enough to enable the main body to fall on their flank. The sound of his

guns would be the signal for the two striking divisions to move out

from the wood of Chiclana, and dash at the long column whose head would

be engaged with Villatte, while its tail would still be coming along

the coast many miles to the rear. For 14,000 men had only the single

line of communication along which to move.

[Illustration: THE BARROSA CAMPAIGN]

Meanwhile Cassagne, at Medina Sidonia, was sent orders to find out

exactly what was in front of him, and if there was no solid force, to

march to join the main body on the morning of the 5th. He must have

received the order to do so somewhere in the afternoon of the 4th.