On the morning of March 16th, the hills beyond the Ceira, where a whole

army had been visible on the preceding day, were now seen to be almost

void of defenders--only a trifling rearguard was visible watching the

broken bridge from a distance. Wellington sent scouts over the river

to reconnoitre, but did not cross it in force. He had accomplished

his main design of thrusting the French off the Coimbra road and into

the mountains, and he had entirely outmarched his provisions. He had

now got so far from his base at Lisbon that food sent up from thence

had far to travel, and he had not yet succeeded in setting up an

intermediate dépôt at Coimbra, though store-ships were already ordered

from Lisbon to its port of Figueira[196], now that there was no danger

of the enemy crossing the lower Mondego. During the last week the army

had used up all that it carried with it, and the Portuguese brigades,

badly supplied by the native commissariat, had run short even before

the British. Pack’s and Ashworth’s men had received no regular rations

for four days[197], and had only kept up to the front by gleaning in

the deserted bivouacs of the French, and borrowing the little that

the British commissariat could spare. Everything had run dry by the

16th, and Wellington considered that no great harm would be suffered

by waiting a day on the Ceira, for the first convoy to come up from

the rear, since the French were now in rugged ground, where they could

not make any long attempt to stand for sheer want of food. They must

continue their retreat or starve in a depopulated country. Accordingly

Wellington settled down at Lousão and took stock of the general

position of affairs: the result of his halt was an immense discharge

of arrears of correspondence--he had written only one dispatch between

the 10th and 16th of March, but got off seventeen on the last-named

day. Some of these are very important, as showing that he regarded the

crisis as over, and the ultimate evacuation of Portugal by the French

as certain. The most notable are two orders to Beresford[198], making

over to him once more the 4th Division and De Grey’s heavy dragoons for

the expedition into Estremadura, which now had as its object not the

relief of Badajoz (whose capitulation was known) but the holding back

of Soult from Campo Mayor and Elvas.

[196] See _Dispatches_, vii. p. 366.

[197] There is a bitter letter from Pack of March 21st in his

_Memoirs_ concerning the ‘bad commissariat and worse medical

establishment of an inefficient and penniless government which no

officer can serve with pleasure or advantage,’ which quite bears

out Wellington, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 371.

[198] Wellington had called Beresford up to him on May 9th, and

the latter was present at Pombal and Redinha. He rode hastily

back to pick up his forces, which were to form the Army of

Estremadura, on the 16th and reached Thomar on the 17th March.

It will be remembered that the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese

had been left behind near Abrantes when Wellington determined, on

March 9th, not to send an expedition against Soult, till he could

make it up to a force sufficient to cope with the army that was

beleaguering Badajoz. They were not to commit themselves to any

offensive operations, or to cross the Portuguese frontier, till the

reinforcements arrived, but were to move a stage on their way toward

the south. Accordingly the head quarters of the 2nd Division were

at Tramagal on the 14th, with its attached cavalry (the 13th Light

Dragoons) at Crato in advance, while the Portuguese horse of Otway had

been sent to watch the roads to Elvas by Portalegre and Estremos. Here

there was a halt for a week, Beresford being absent with Wellington

for five days, and it was not till the 17th that the movement towards

Estremadura began again, on his return. Meanwhile Masséna, oddly

enough, knowing of the existence of a considerable allied force at

Abrantes, and not feeling it on his own flank, formed a theory that it

must have been sent in a long sweep up by the Zezere, to drop into the

upper Mondego valley and cut him off from Spain. Nervousness as to this

imaginary movement had no small effect on his main operations[199].

[199] Masséna to Berthier, from Maceira, March 19: ‘D’après les

rapports, le général Hill [he means Beresford, who had been in

charge of Hill’s former command since December] se portait avec

sa division et un gros détachement de Portugais à travers les

montagnes du haut Zézère, se dirigeant sur la rive gauche du

Mondégo. Dès ce moment j’ai abandonné l’espoir de garder cette

rive sans risquer une bataille.’ ... ‘Dans l’état actuel des

choses et d’après les mouvements que l’ennemi peut faire sur mes

flancs, par le Mondégo ou par les montagnes de Guarda, où s’est

dirigé le corps de Hill, il est nécessaire de rapprocher l’armée

de notre base d’opérations’ [i. e. to retreat into Spain].

By sending off Cole and De Grey to join the future Army of Estremadura,

on the 16th March, Wellington reduced the force about him by 7,000

men, and had no more than 38,000 left on the Ceira. The newly formed

7th Division, which was marching up from Lisbon, and would ultimately

replace Cole with the main army, was at this moment only reaching

Santarem; it did not come up to the front till March was at its end.

For the rest of his operations against Masséna, therefore, Wellington

was more than ever in a state of numerical inferiority, and forced to

be cautious. But he was in a confident mood, foreseeing that the enemy

could not now stop in Portugal, and must be starved into a prompt

retreat over the frontier.

His conviction that the crisis was over is shown by another dispatch

of the 20th March, in which he directs that the whole of the Lisbon

Militia and Ordenança be dismissed to their homes, the former on

furlough, the latter for good. The Militia of the lower Beira (the

Castello Branco country) and of northern Estremadura were also to

return to their native districts, to be sent on leave or kept under

arms according as further events might determine[200]. Thus the Lines

of Torres Vedras were left ungarrisoned, there being no further danger

to be feared in the direction of Lisbon.

[200] Wellington to Beresford. (_Dispatches_, vii. 375-6.)

There was still much work, however, for the Militia of the North,

Trant’s and Wilson’s brigades, who were brought down to the middle

Mondego, and sent successively to Peña Cova, Mortagoa, and Fornos,

to guard the fords and restrain the French from endeavouring to raid

the north bank of the river. It was unlikely that they would make a

serious attempt to cross in force into the barren country under the

Serra de Alcoba, when they were in such a desperate plight for food,

and would have the allied army close behind them, for the troops were

to march again on the 17th. The middle Mondego, it must be remembered,

was bridgeless, and in flood from the spring rains: even if Masséna had

driven off Trant and Wilson, it would have taken him a long time to

build a bridge (since he had no pontoons) and Wellington would have

been pressing him in the rear before he had got more than a vanguard

over the water. The Marshal seems never to have contemplated at this

date a movement on to Coimbra or Oporto by the north bank of the

Mondego, such as is suggested as possible by some of the commentators

on the campaign: after the day of Condeixa a retreat eastward was

always in his mind[201]. His army was too dilapidated to make the

least offensive stroke. ‘I think it necessary for the interests of his

Imperial majesty,’ wrote Masséna on the 19th, ‘to bring the troops

back nearer to our base of operations by our fortresses [Almeida and

Rodrigo], in order to let them recover a little from their fatigues and

long privations, and to allow me to replace so much equipment which is

now entirely lacking[202].’

[201] ‘Rien ne nous empêchait,’ says Masséna’s biographer Koch,

‘de passer à gué le Mondégo, et de nous rendre maîtres de la

Sierra de Alcoba, d’où nous menacerions Coïmbre et toute la

contrée comprise entre le Mondégo, le Duero et la mer.’ But there

_was_ a hindrance--or rather three hindrances--the Mondego was

not fordable at the moment, and what was more important, the

starving army could not have lived on the country-side north of

the Mondego. Moreover the passage of the Mondego with a lively

enemy at his heels would have been too dangerous for Masséna,

who had already refused to accept such conditions on the day of

Condeixa.

[202] From Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier, March 19.

On the 16th, the day after the combat of Foz do Arouce, the 2nd and

8th Corps marched before dawn, in drenching rain, and retired as far

as the Alva river, where the bridge of Ponte de Murcella, repaired for

a moment by Drouet when he passed it a few days before, had again been

broken by Wilson’s Militia. It took all the day to repair it, and by

the evening only the artillery had been sent across. The divisions of

Mermet and Loison followed at a distance, leaving behind the much-tried

battalions of Marchand, which Ney had once more chosen to form his

rearguard. He drew them up across the road a few miles from the Ceira,

expecting to be attacked once more in the morning. But to his surprise

Wellington did not cross the river, and only sent a few scouts to

discover the position of the Marshal. Meanwhile his engineers mended

the bridge at Foz.

On the 17th, at dawn, Masséna sent the 8th Corps across the repaired

bridge of Ponte de Murcella, after which it halted at Cortiça, Moita,

and other villages beyond the Alva river, whose passage it was prepared

to defend. But the 2nd Corps was marched up-stream to Sarzedo, the next

ford, and placed there in position, with a detachment beyond the river

at the town of Arganil on its south bank. The 6th Corps, following the

other two, crossed the Alva at Ponte de Murcella later in the day, and

joined the 8th; it left a small detachment beyond the bridge to observe

the expected arrival of the Allies. Of the horsemen, Montbrun’s heavy

dragoons watched the lower course of the Alva, from Ponte de Murcella

to its junction with the Mondego, while Junot’s corps-cavalry was sent

up the Alva eastward, to hold the fords beyond Arganil.

These dispositions seemed to indicate an intention to make a serious

stand behind the Alva, where the positions are very strong. The river

is a fierce mountain torrent in a deep bed, with precipitous banks, and

very few fords. Wellington had fixed on this line, during the Bussaco

campaign in the preceding autumn, as the position where he should await

the French if they advanced by the south bank of the Mondego, and had

thrown up earthworks on each side of the Ponte de Murcella. These were,

of course, useless to Masséna, since they looked the wrong way; but the

river line was almost as defensible from the north bank as from the

south, and presented a very formidable obstacle to the pursuing enemy.

By the evening of the 17th Wellington was once more in touch with the

enemy. The cavalry brigades of Slade and Arentschildt had crossed the

bridge of Foz do Arouce, and followed the 6th Corps to the Alva, with

the 6th and Light Divisions behind them. The infantry, however, did not

show themselves, but encamped in the hills, some miles from the Ponte

de Murcella. They found the road strewn with dead or dying mules and

horses, and took a certain number of French sick and stragglers.

But Wellington had no intention of forcing the Ponte de Murcella

position; while two divisions took this road, the rest of the army

(1st, 3rd, 5th Divisions, and the Portuguese independent brigades)

were marched eastward by the steep road along the top of the watershed

between the Ceira and the Alva, the route Furcado-Arganil, towards

the fords of the upper Alva. They drove out of the last-named place

Reynier’s observing detachment, which reported that it had seen the

Allies in great force marching up-stream. This news convinced Masséna

that his adversary was intending either to cross the ford of Sarzedo

and attack Reynier, or to move still further up the valley, and to pass

the Alva in its upper course, so throwing himself across the main road

to Celorico, by which the Army of Portugal was intending to retreat.

Nothing but cavalry scouts having been seen opposite the Ponte de

Murcella, it was supposed that Wellington’s whole army was marching on

Arganil.

Accordingly, on the afternoon of the 17th, Masséna ordered the 8th

Corps to break up hastily from its camps and to march all night to

Galliges, on the high road beyond Reynier’s left. This was done, and

Junot hurried off, leaving hundreds of foragers scattered on the slopes

towards the Mondego, whither they had been sent out in search of food

during the day. Ney remained behind at the Ponte de Murcella, to keep

the passage as long as possible; he was uncertain, as was Masséna,

whether there was in his front only a cavalry screen or a serious force

of all arms.

On the morning of the 18th this problem was solved, for the Light

Division came down to the river, drove Ney’s rearguard across it, and

opened a cannonade against the troops of the 6th Corps visible on the

opposite bank. No serious attempt was made to pass, the intention being

only to hold Ney to his ground as long as possible by demonstrations,

while the real crossing was made far up-stream. This plan had the

desired result. In the afternoon Ney received the news that the Allies

had begun to cross the Alva at the ford of Pombeiro, from which they

had driven off one of Reynier’s battalions. If any considerable force

got over the river at this point, the 6th Corps was cut off from the

rest of the army; accordingly the Marshal ordered his three divisions

to march off without a moment’s delay; ‘I never saw _Johnny_ go off

in such confusion,’ says a Light Division diarist[203]. The cavalry

brigade of Arentschildt sent out reconnoitring parties, who forded the

river, while the engineers rigged up a temporary wooden bridge close to

the Ponte de Murcella[204], by which the 6th and Light Divisions were

able to cross at dawn on the following day.

[203] Diary of George Simmons of the 95th, p. 146.

[204] Napier says, ‘by an ingenious raft contrived by the

staff-corps’ (iii. 126), but Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons

and Simmons speak of a wooden bridge.

On the left the decisive crossing at Pombeiro had been made by the

Guards’ brigade of the 1st Division[205]: Reynier made no attempt

to support the single battalion at the ford, but called it in, and

drew up in battle order on the Serra de Moita some distance above

the river. There was no fighting here, and after dusk the 2nd Corps

decamped, taking the road Galliges-Chamusca-Gouvea-Celorico, which runs

parallel to and above the Alva; the 6th Corps fell in behind the 2nd;

the 8th, which had already got further to the east during the march

of the preceding night, led the column and was beyond Galliges in the

afternoon[206].

[205] So the diary of Captain Stothert of the 3rd Guards, p.

250. He puts the crossing later in the afternoon than the French

sources, but the whole 1st Division was across by dark. Several

French critics (e. g. Delagrave) blame Reynier for not stopping

the small force that first crossed.

[206] These movements are best given in Fririon’s diary:

Sprünglin gives some help for the 6th Corps.

On the night of the 18th-19th and the following morning the whole

French army made a most protracted and fatiguing march, which cost

them many stragglers and much material. This was the longest stage

which Masséna made during the whole retreat, more than twenty miles of

mountain road being covered in one stretch. On the evening of the 19th

the head of the 8th Corps was at Pinhanços, that of the 2nd at Çaragoça

and Sandomil, that of the 6th at Chamusca. The British cavalry in

pursuit picked up an immense number of prisoners this day, mainly small

parties of foragers belonging to the 6th and 8th Corps, who had been

marauding in the direction of the Mondego when their regiments received

sudden orders to march: they returned towards their camps to fall into

the hands of the British cavalry. Arentschildt’s brigade alone took 200

this day[207], and the total according to Wellington’s dispatch was

600 men[208]. Among them were an aide-de-camp of Loison’s and several

other officers. Some droves of oxen were captured from the foragers

and from the rear of the 6th Corps, and this was the only food which

the British vanguard got that day, for once more, as several diarists

ruefully note, ‘biscuit was out.’ The pursuers state that ‘quantities

of tumbrils, carts, waggons and other articles were abandoned by

the enemy’[209], and no doubt were right, though Masséna wrote that

evening from Maceira, ‘Nous n’avons pas laissé en arrière un malade,

un blessé, ni la moindre voiture d’artillerie ou de bagages’[210]. But

his dispatches frequently contained what he knew that Napoleon would

desire to see rather than the truth. Considering the difficulties of

the retreat, and the skilful way in which he had conducted it, he might

have been contented with his actual achievements, and need not have

padded out his reports with ‘terminological inexactitudes’. It must be

confessed that his aide-de-camp Fririon played a good second to him

when he wrote in his journal that between the 15th and 31st of March

the Army of Portugal left behind only twenty prisoners and fifty men

lost while marauding[211].

[207] Tomkinson’s diary, p. 87.

[208] _Dispatches_, vii. p. 375.

[209] Simmons’s diary, p. 148.

[210] Masséna to Berthier, from Maceira, March 19th.

[211] Fririon’s _Campagne de Portugal_, p. 176.

[Illustration: THE LOWER MONDEGO. To illustrate the First Stage of

Masséna’s Retreat.]

On the morning of the 20th March Wellington’s army was all across

the Alva, but only the cavalry and the Light, 3rd, and 6th Divisions

continued the pursuit. The small convoy received on the 17th was

exhausted, and what little food remained was made over to the three

divisions named above, while the 1st, 5th, and Pack’s and Ashworth’s

Portuguese halted for five days at Moita and the neighbouring villages,

till the first train of provisions sent up from Coimbra should arrive.

Of the troops which could still be fed, the Light Division pushed on

as far as Galliges that night, the 3rd and 6th were behind them. The

French, thanks to their desperate night march, were already a long way

ahead, and it was late on the 20th before the cavalry overtook, near

Cea, their extreme rearguard, two battalions of Heudelet’s division and

a hussar regiment. General Slade, whose brigade was leading, refused to

attack them until infantry and guns came up to his aid, and the French

slipped away before Elder’s Caçadores and Bull’s battery reached

him[212]. ‘This was the second day without bread, and the third without

corn for the horses, and we had marched nearly five leagues,’ explains

a cavalry diarist[213]. The pursuers were as harassed as the pursued,

and could go no further, but Slade was thought to have shown weakness.

He picked up a good many stragglers and sick, and found the road strewn

with broken vehicles and dying mules.

[212] According to Fririon’s diary the H.A. guns arrived in time

to shell the rear battalion and kill one officer.

[213] Tomkinson, p. 87: ‘Every one talked loudly of Slade’s

conduct through the day.’

Meanwhile Masséna had divided his army into two columns at the fork of

the roads near Maceira. The 2nd Corps, taking, on the right hand, the

southern and more hilly route, reached Gouvea. The 8th Corps, taking

the northern fork, got to Villacortes, and sent its cavalry on ahead to

the bridge of Fornos, which they found broken and guarded by Trant’s

Militia. The 6th Corps, following the 8th, lay at Pinhanços. Since

leaving the Ponte de Murcella the French were a little less pressed for

food: the district through which they were now passing was fertile, and

had not been raided before; most of the peasantry had returned to it

during the winter. Hasty plundering on both sides of the road brought

in a certain amount of food, especially in the way of cattle, which

had been sent up into the hills, but were often discovered by skilled

marauders. There was continual bickering with the Ordenança, one party

of whom, only 300 strong, tried, with more courage than discretion, to

defend the village of Penalva against the advanced guard of the 2nd

Corps. All along the road the pursuing Light Division found the dead

bodies of peasantry, mixed with those of the French sick who had fallen

by the way.

On the 21st the 8th Corps reached Celorico, where Drouet was found

in position with Conroux’s division of the 9th Corps. The 6th Corps

reached Carapichina and Cortiça. The 2nd, turning off at Villacortes on

the Guarda road, had a most distressing mountain march to Villamonte.

The pursuing infantry of the Light and 3rd Divisions reached Pinhanços

and Maceira, with the cavalry five miles in front, at the convent of

Vinho. They had now dropped fifteen miles behind the French rear,

and were quite out of touch with it, but continued to pick up

stragglers--200 men are said to have been taken on that day[214].

Like the enemy, they were now commencing to get a little food from

the country. ‘The peasants, who had all fled to the mountains on the

enemy’s retreat, on seeing us come down, baked bread for the troops,

and gave us whatever they had left. They had suffered a good deal,

all the principal houses had been burnt, and those left a good deal

destroyed, but the [French] troops had not been able to discover all

the corn, &c., concealed[215].’

[214] Simmons of the 95th, diary, p. 148.

[215] Tomkinson’s diary, p. 88.

On the 22nd the French army had reached the end of the main retreat.

Two corps were concentrated in and near Celorico[216], the other

(Reynier) reached Guarda, where it found Claparéde’s division of

Drouet’s corps, which had been there for some weeks. They were now only

three marches from Almeida and four from Ciudad Rodrigo; communication

with these two places was open, for Drouet and the 9th Corps had

now come into touch again with the Commander-in-Chief, and were

available for keeping the roads safe. The English had been outmarched,

and Masséna might have retired to Almeida and Rodrigo practically

unmolested, by a good _chaussée_. But this was not to be the end of the

campaign, as every one in the French army, save its Commander-in-Chief,

fervently desired. For generals and rank and file alike were tired

out, and yearned for a cessation of mountain marches, and a rest in

well-provisioned cantonments, before they should be called upon for

another effort. But another and a most unexpected episode was to take

place before the weary columns reached Rodrigo. Masséna made one more

attempt to ‘save his face,’ and to avoid being thrust over the Spanish

frontier, along the road on to which his adversary had forced him.

This led to a fortnight more of manœuvres in the mountains, and to the

combats of Guarda and Sabugal, after which the French Marshal had to

pocket his pride and acquiesce in the inevitable. These operations are

of a character so different from those which preceded them that they

must be treated as a separate story. The retreat from Santarem really

ended at Celorico. The events between March 22nd and April 4th must be

dealt with apart, since they practically amounted to a belated attempt

on the part of Masséna to seize the offensive once more, and to shift

the scene of war without his adversary’s consent. The project failed,

and (as we shall see) was hopeless from the first.

[216] Ney remained quiet at Cortiço and Carapichina this day, but

was only ten miles from Celorico, and so may be considered as

part of the same body as the 8th Corps.

Before dealing with it, a few remarks on the general character of the

operations that had taken place between March 9th and March 22nd must

be made. When reading in succession two narratives of Masséna’s retreat

from Santarem to Celorico, one by an English and one by a French

eye-witness, it is often difficult to realize that the two writers are

describing the same series of operations. Most of the French conceive

the retreat to have been a series of triumphant rearguard actions, in

which their army got off practically unmolested, under cover of the

skilful operations of a small covering force. On the other hand, the

English tell the tale as if the whole French army was easily hunted out

of Portugal by inferior numbers, foiled in repeated attempts to occupy

a permanent position in the valley of the Mondego, and finally thrust

back in a direction which it did not intend to take. Where the French

tell of nothing but an orderly retreat and small losses, the English

speak of the capture of hundreds of prisoners, and the destruction of

the whole baggage-train of the retiring army.

To a certain extent the mental attitudes of both sets of narrators can

be understood and justified by the impartial student. When a rearguard

action takes place, the covering force left behind by the retiring army

always thinks of itself as being opposed to the whole pursuing host.

It considers itself to be braving the assault of immensely superior

forces, and if it holds its own for a time and gets off without

crushing losses, is well satisfied with its own conduct. This is both

justifiable and comprehensible. But to the pursuer the same rearguard

action presents an entirely different moral aspect. The few squadrons

and battalions forming the head of his advance find themselves suddenly

brought to a check by a considerable hostile force arrayed in a

formidable position. They are forced to halt till their supports begin

to come up, from five, ten, or fifteen miles in the rear. Then, when

a body of reserve has begun to accumulate behind them, they launch

themselves upon the enemy, who gives ground after more or less fighting

and retires. The leading brigade or division of the pursuers considers

that it has victoriously driven the whole hostile army from its strong

position, and is no less satisfied with itself than is the force to

which it has been opposed. In short, all rearguard actions begin with a

check to the pursuers; they all end with the retreat of the defenders.

This is their necessary course; both parties, if their generals play

the game properly, may be content with themselves; the one has gained

time for the escape of the main body of the retreating host, the other

has cleared the way for the progress of the pursuing army. The only

method in which their relative merits can be tested, is by asking

whether the rearguard detained the advanced guard as long as might have

been expected, inflicted disproportionate losses upon it, and got away

with the minimum of loss to itself, or whether, on the other hand, the

advanced guard evicted its opponents from their position at a rapid

rate, with small sacrifices, and with considerable punishment inflicted

on the enemy. The mere facts that the rearguard held back the pursuers

for some hours, and that the advanced guard ultimately carried the

enemy’s position, are obligatory incidents of such fights. When we come

to examine the details of the combats which took place between the 11th

and 19th of March, we shall neither hold with the French narrators that

for many days Ney and two divisions of the 6th Corps fought and held

back Wellington’s whole army, nor with the English narrators that the

Light and 3rd Divisions, unassisted by their comrades, hunted 40,000

French out of the valley of the lower Mondego. Yet it is true that of

forty-four French infantry officers, who were killed or wounded in

Portugal between these dates, no less than thirty-seven belonged to

the divisions of Marchand and Mermet, while, similarly, of twenty-nine

British and Portuguese officers hit in the same period, no less than

nineteen belonged to the Light Division and eight more to the 3rd.

Clearly therefore Ney did not contend with the whole British army,

but only with its two leading divisions, and those two divisions did

not contend with the whole French army, but only with the two units

which formed its rearguard. Fine writing on both sides, as to struggles

against overwhelming odds, must be disregarded. Still more so may

the exaggerated estimates as to loss inflicted on the enemy which

are to be found in the narratives of most of the first-hand writers.

What they are worth may be guessed from Marbot’s statement that the

British lost 1,000 men at Redinha--Noël raises this liberal estimate

to 1,800[217]--the real casualty list being 240. Similarly Grattan

tells us that the French had 1,000 men _hors de combat_ at Foz do

Arouce[218], when their actual loss seems to have been about 250.

[217] Noël, _Souvenirs militaires_, p. 141.

[218] Grattan’s _With the Connaught Rangers_, 1809-13, p. 58.

The accusations of timidity and over-caution which these contemporary

chroniclers lavish upon each other’s generals are equally absurd.

Wellington is always rallied by the French for want of courage and

enterprise, because he did not at once dash the first two or three

battalions that came up against a division in position, but waited for

his supports. And Ney is criticized by both English and French writers

for having sometimes withdrawn from the fight over early, because

at Condeixa and on the Alva he hastened to get out of a dangerous

situation. Both generals, in reality, acted with perfect tactical

correctness; armies do not meet for the purpose of putting in the

maximum of fighting, without regard for ends or consequences, and the

commander who attacks before he has a sufficient force collected is

blameworthy just in the same degree as the commander who holds out too

long in a hazardous position.

Most of the French criticism on Wellington is based on the false

hypothesis that his army outnumbered Masséna’s during the whole

retreat, and that he therefore should have achieved greater results.

As a matter of fact, as we have seen, he was never stronger than the

enemy, because he had been forced to detach Beresford’s two divisions

against Soult before he started. And when, in the later stages of

the retreat, the French were short of Conroux’s division of the 9th

Corps, which had gone on to Celorico ahead of the main army, it must

be remembered that Wellington from March 16th onwards was deprived

of Cole’s division and the heavy dragoons, who had been sent off

southward to join Beresford. A pursuing army dealing with a superior

retreating army must act with the greatest caution, lest it should

suddenly run up against the enemy’s whole force, and find itself

committed to an offensive action against greater numbers in a strong

position. Wellington never fell into this trap; he manœuvred the French

out of every line which they took up, without incurring any danger,

or allowing his adversary any chance of harming him. While giving all

credit to Ney for the brilliant rearguard tactics by which he often

held back the pursuers for half a day, it is necessary to give equal

credit to Wellington for having fought his way through half a dozen

formidable lines of defence, with a minimum of loss, and without once

exposing himself to the chance of a serious check. After all, his

object was to drive Masséna away from the Mondego and towards Spain,

and that object he achieved in the most triumphant fashion.[219]

[219] The student must he specially warned against Fririon’s

figures for French losses. Though he was Masséna’s aide-de-camp,

and wrote a quasi-official account of the whole retreat, his

numbers are wholly untrustworthy. He states (p. 149) that the

6th Corps only lost 179 killed and wounded between March 1 and

March 15. The actual losses were Pombal, 63; Redinha, 227; Casal

Novo, at least 55; Foz do Arouce, at least 250 = 600. Similarly

he states the loss at Sabugal at 250; the official casualty list

sent in to the Marshal gives a total of 750. Fririon, from his

position, must have seen, or at least could have seen, these

figures.

SECTION XXIV: CHAPTER II

GUARDA AND SABUGAL. MARCH 22ND-APRIL 12TH, 1811

At noon on March 22nd, the day following that on which the French head

quarters had reached Celorico, Masséna issued a new set of orders,

entirely contradictory to those which he had been giving during the

last fifteen days. Though on the 19th he had stated his intention

of ‘falling back closer to his base of operations on the fortresses

[Almeida and Rodrigo], and giving the army a rest after its fatigues

and privations[220],’ he now proposed to plunge back once more into

the mountains, and to swerve aside from his places of strength and his

dépôts. The commanders of the corps received the astounding news that

it was the intention of the Commander-in-Chief to turn south-eastward,

towards the Spanish frontier and the central Tagus, with the object

of taking up a position in the Coria-Plasencia country, from which he

would threaten central Portugal on a new front. This necessitated a

march from Celorico through the mountains of Belmonte and Penamacor,

and then across the Sierra de Meras, into the thinly-peopled plateau of

northern Estremadura.

[220] Dispatch to Berthier, from Maceira, of that date.

Supposing that the centre of the Iberian peninsula had been a fertile

plain resembling Lombardy or Flanders, there would have been something

to say for this plan. Still more might it have been advisable if the

French army had been a fresh and intact force just opening a campaign.

Pelet, Masséna’s chief aide-de-camp, tries to justify the proposal by

saying that ‘it was more conformable to the general rules of strategy;

we should have connected ourselves with the 5th Corps in Estremadura,

with the Army of the Centre, and the general pivot of operations at

Madrid; we should have brought Lord Wellington back to the position

that he had quitted; we should have kept the results of the advantages

recently won in Estremadura, which were so soon to be lost; we should

also have had the means to menace once more Central Portugal and the

Lines of Torres Vedras[221].’ This is all very plausible, but it omits

the crucial facts that the Army of Portugal was tired out, destitute

of munitions, and almost destitute of food, and that it was proposed

to lead it across two difficult ranges of mountains full of gorges and

defiles, into a region which was one of the most thinly peopled and

desolate in all Spain, where there was not a single French soldier,

much less a dépôt of any sort. This was the same district in which

Victor had starved in 1809, and in passing through which Wellington

had suffered so many privations on the way to Talavera. It had been

visited in February by a flying column under Lahoussaye, sent out from

Talavera, which had got as far as Plasencia and Alcantara, and then

retired, because it was absolutely impossible for 3,000 men to live in

it.

[221] Pelet’s _Appendice sur la Guerre d’Espagne_ in _Victoires

et Conquêtes_, 21, p. 336.

Masséna’s maps were very bad--the actual set used by his head-quarters

staff is in existence, and can be seen at Belfast[222]. But his

intelligence department must have been worse than his maps, if he was

unaware of the character of the country on the border of Portugal and

Spain, and of that lying beyond, in northern Estremadura. He might

have asked information about it from Reynier and Ney, who had both

crossed it, but he did not. Most striking of all, however, is the

ignorance shown in these orders of the physical and moral state of

the French army. If it had ever reached Plasencia, it would have got

there without a gun or a baggage mule--the caissons and carriages were

almost all gone already. A single set of figures may serve to show

the situation: the artillery of the 8th Corps started from Almeida in

September 1810 with 142 wheeled units--guns, caissons, waggons, &c.,

and 891 horses. It got back to Ciudad Rodrigo on April 4, 1811, with

49 guns and caissons drawn by 182 horses, having lost 93 vehicles and

709 horses. Forty-one of the caissons and waggons had been destroyed

before the commencement of the retreat, the rest had been dropped

between Thomar and Celorico[223]. There were left at the end of March

only 24 guns with 25 caissons of ammunition, to draw which required

all the horses remaining. How long could this artillery have fought

with only one caisson of ammunition per gun left? How many horses would

have been alive after another hundred miles of mountain roads? Even if

some guns had got to Plasencia, how long would it have taken to get

them ammunition from Salamanca or Madrid, the nearest dépôts? The same

question would be no less forcible with regard to infantry ammunition,

which was depleted to an equal extent with that of the artillery.

[222] Captured at Vittoria, they were long after given to Belfast

University.

[223] All these interesting figures come from the diary of

Colonel Noël, commanding the artillery of Clausel’s division; see

his memoirs, pp. 137 and 146.

But it is even more important to remember that the Army of Portugal was

also in desperate straits for boots and clothing. In many regiments

a third or a quarter of the men had no footgear but ‘rivlins,’ or

mocassins made every few days from the hides of cattle. The uniforms

were in rags; many soldiers had nothing that recalled the regulation

attire but the _capote_ that covered everything.

Yet the main thing of all was the moral aspect of affairs. The army

would fight when it was its duty, as French armies always have done,

but it was discontented, sulky, angry with the Marshal, to whom it

attributed its miseries--though its indignation might have been

more justly reserved for the Emperor, who had set his lieutenant an

impossible task. The rank and file had sunk low in discipline, as must

be always the case when troops have been living by daily plunder for

six months. And this same want of discipline was most evident among

the generals, who, now that Masséna had failed, openly criticized him

before their staffs, and often neglected his orders. Masséna suspected

Ney, Junot, and Reynier alike of intending to denounce him to the

Emperor as a blunderer. It will be remembered that he had already

detected Reynier in a trick of this description[224]. Ney had been

girding at his orders with fury ever since the retreat began, and was

telling all who cared to listen that a hasty return to Spain was the

only possible policy, and that the dream of holding out on the Mondego

or the Alva was absurd.

[224] See p. 80.

It was probably not on mere strategic grounds, but because he was

determined to assert himself, to prove that he was master of his own

movements, and that he was not yet a beaten man or a failure, that

Masséna issued orders on the 22nd for the 2nd Corps to make ready to

move southward, not northward, from Guarda, and for the 6th and 8th

to prepare to follow on the same route. This provoked an explosion

of wrath on the part of Ney, who in the course of four hours of the

afternoon wrote three successive letters to his commander, in terms of

growing irritation. In the first, which was sent off before receiving

the detailed orders for the new movement, he merely set forth all

the objections to it, and inquired whether Masséna had the Emperor’s

leave for such a general change of plans. In the second, after he had

received and read the orders, he protested formally against them, and

said that, unless positive instructions from Paris authorizing the

new scheme had been received, the 6th Corps should not march. He gave

many arguments, and they were incontestably true. ‘The army has need

to rest behind the shelter of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, in order

to receive the clothing and shoes which are absolutely necessary,

and which must be brought up from the magazines. Your Excellency is

mistaken in thinking that food can be got in abundance in the region

of Coria and Plasencia. I have marched through that country [during

the attempt to cut off Wellington’s retreat from Talavera in 1809],

and it is impossible to exaggerate its sterility or the badness of its

roads. Your Excellency will not get one single gun so far, with the

teams that we have brought out of Portugal. Moreover this manœuvre, so

singular at this particular moment, would entirely uncover Old Castile,

and compromise all our operations in Spain. I am fully aware of the

responsibility which I take upon myself in making formal opposition

to your intentions, but, even if I were destined to be cashiered

or condemned to death, I could not execute the march on Coria and

Plasencia directed by your Highness, unless (of course) it has been

ordered by the Emperor[225].’

[225] The three letters are all printed in full in Fririon’s

_Memoir_, and the second of them in _Belmas’s Pièces

justificatives_, p. 507.

Within two hours of the second letter Ney sent in the third, which

was no mere protest, nor even a mere refusal to move, but an open

declaration of his intention to march back to Almeida. ‘I warn your

Excellency that to-morrow I shall leave my positions of Carapichina

and Cortiço, and échelon my troops from Celorico to Freixadas, and

on the day after they will be between Freixadas and Almeida. This

disposition is forced on me, in order to prevent the whole force from

disbanding, under the pretext of searching for the food necessary for

its subsistence, for food is now absolutely lacking.’

Unless he was to surrender his authority altogether, and obey

his subordinate, Masséna had now to strike. Ney had put himself

absolutely in the wrong in the way of military subordination, though

he was as absolutely in the right in the way of strategy. And the

Commander-in-Chief had every technical justification when he formally

deposed him from the command of the 6th Corps, and directed him to

leave for Valladolid without delay, and there await the orders of the

Emperor. Loison, the senior of the three divisional generals of the

6th Corps, was ordered to take over its command next morning. Several

of Ney’s partisans urged him to refuse obedience, to seize the person

of Masséna, and to declare himself Commander-in-Chief of the Army of

Portugal. We are assured that he would have been backed in the step by

the whole of his own corps, and would have met no resistance from the

others, for Masséna was universally disliked, and every man wished to

continue the retreat on Almeida of which Ney was the advocate[226]. But

he shrank from levying open war upon his chief, and departed among the

tears of the whole 6th Corps, of which he knew every officer and many

men by sight. It had been under him, without a break, since he first

formed it at the camp of Montreuil, near Boulogne, in 1804.

[226] Ney’s aide-de-camp Sprünglin says in his diary (p. 474)

that Ney hesitated for some time before rejecting the idea of a

_coup de main_ against Masséna, which was hotly urged upon him,

and opines that it would have been successful and most popular

with the army.

Masséna started off his aide-de-camp Pelet for Paris next day,

with orders to get to the Emperor without delay, and explain the

situation before Ney could tell his tale. This his emissary succeeded

in doing, and his representations to Napoleon were backed by those

of Foy, who had borne Masséna’s earlier message of March 9, and

was still in Paris. The Emperor seems to have approved of Masséna’s

stringent dealing with his subordinate, and even to have expressed his

satisfaction with the new plan for marching the Army of Portugal to the

middle Tagus[227]. He also declared that corps-commanders of the type

of Ney and Junot were a mistake, and that to avoid further friction

he would cut up the whole army into divisions, and abolish the corps

altogether. But at the same time he allowed Ney to return to Paris,

gave him a mere formal reproof, and then continued to employ him in

posts of the highest importance. Next year the Marshal was to win his

last title of ‘Prince of the Moscowa’ under his master’s eye, on the

field of Borodino.

[227] Foy to Masséna, April 8, 1811: ‘J’ai dit à Sa Majesté que

vous paraissiez être dans l’intention de porter votre quartier

général à Guarda, mais que (ne pouvant pas vivre dans cette

position) vous seriez probablement obligé de descendre jusqu’à

Alcantara. Cette position a paru à l’Empereur propre à protéger

également le midi et le nord de l’Espagne.’

Some parts of this interview of Foy with Napoleon, related in

his usual vivid style, are too good to omit. ‘Did Masséna really

intend to force the passage of the Tagus? He did? Well then, he

would have destroyed his army if he had tried. But I was not

worried about it; I knew he would never try to cross. Would

Masséna pass the Tagus, he who in the Isle of Lobau [Wagram

campaign of 1809] would not try to pass a mere brook! The moment

you told me that he had returned from in front of Torres Vedras

I knew that he would come back, and refuse to risk a general

engagement.... Wellington is a cleverer man than Masséna: he kept

his eye fixed on Claparéde’s division; if Claparéde had been

brought forward, the English would have expected to be attacked,

would have gone back into their Lines.... Portugal is too far

off--I can’t go there myself. The business would take six months,

and in that six months everything would be hung up in Europe,’

&c. See Foy’s _Vie Militaire_, pp. 139-40.

Ney having been superseded and banished, Masséna could carry out his

wild plan for a march towards northern Estremadura through the midst

of the Portuguese mountains. On the 23rd the 6th Corps was brought

into Celorico, and its artillery moved forward as far as Ratoeiro on

the Guarda road. The 8th Corps left Celorico and moved in the same

direction, with its cavalry at Ponte do Ladrão in advance. Drouet

with Conroux’s division had already gone back towards Almeida, with

the sick and wounded of the whole army; he was ordered to take post

at Val-de-Mula on the Turon, between Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo. His

other division, that of Claparéde, was sent from Guarda to join him on

the same day. Drouet, according to some versions of the events of this

critical week, had moved back of his own accord without waiting for

Masséna’s orders. But it is clear that there was absolute necessity to

tell off some covering force for the frontiers of Leon, if the main

army was to be drawn away to the central Tagus, lest Wellington should

send off a detachment to attack Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and find

nothing to hinder him.

For the next five days the march southward and eastward was continued.

After a rest of only two nights at Guarda, the 2nd Corps moved on the

24th of March by two bad parallel roads through the hills, and encamped

with its first division at Sortelha and its second at Aguas Bellas:

a flanking detachment of cavalry occupied Belmonte, further to the

west, in order to keep a look-out on the valley of the Zezere. The

8th Corps took up the position which the 2nd had evacuated at Guarda:

it is recorded to have lost many of its already depleted stock of

horses in climbing the steep ascent into that town, which stands on

the very summit of the Serra da Estrella, at a height of over 3,400

feet above sea-level. No other town in Portugal lies so high. The 6th

Corps followed the 8th, but halted short of Guarda, to cover the slow

progress of its artillery, which had to be dragged up the defile with

doubled teams, so that half the guns and vehicles had to wait at the

bottom, while their beasts were assisting to draw the first section to

its lofty destination.

The 25th saw the head of the 2nd Corps at Val de Lobos on the road

to Penamacor; the main body painfully trailed along behind. Junot

and the 8th Corps left Guarda, but took, not the path that Reynier

had followed, but an equally difficult one leading to Belmonte. But

the guns could not proceed with the infantry divisions. They had to

be left at Guarda, the Belmonte road being pronounced absolutely

impracticable for them: this was a serious check to Masséna, who had

counted on using this route for the whole corps. Of the 6th Corps one

division (Marchand) entered Guarda, a second (Loison’s old division,

now commanded by Ferey) halted at Rapoulla, at the foot of the great

mountain on which that town lies. The other division (Mermet) had taken

a flanking turn, more in the plain, and lay at Goveias, fifteen miles

north-east from Guarda, with a rearguard at Freixadas on the road to

Almeida.

On the 26th, the last day on which it can be said that Masséna’s insane

scheme for marching to Estremadura was still being carried out, the

whole 6th Corps closed up on Guarda; the 8th Corps at Belmonte sent

out reconnaissances towards Covilhão, Manteigas, and the Zezere; but

the 2nd, which was heading the column of march, was completely stuck

in the mountains between Sortelha and Penamacor. It must have seemed

a bitter piece of irony to Reynier when he received orders ‘to profit

by his stay in his position to collect grain, and bake bread and

biscuit[228],’ for he was in an almost entirely uninhabited country,

on the watershed between the sources of the Coa and the Zezere, with

the Sierra de Meras, the frontier-range between Spain and Portugal, in

front of him.

[228] Fririon, _Campagne de Portugal_, p. 175.

Next morning (March 27) Reynier, though he had the example of Ney’s

fate before him, was driven by sheer necessity into sending an

argumentative dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief, who had now got

as far as Guarda. He begged him to give up his great plan: ‘no food

could be procured for the whole way from Guarda to Plasencia; if the

corps ever got to the latter place, it would find no resources there,

for the Coria-Plasencia country does not grow its own corn, but is

fed in ordinary times from the valley of the Tietar and other distant

regions.’ This Reynier knew from his own experiences in that region,

when he had been observing Hill in the preceding summer. He also warned

Masséna that he was taking the army into an _impasse_, for the Tagus is

a complete barrier between northern and southern Estremadura, and could

not be crossed save at the ferry of Alconetar, where there were now no

boats, the bridge of Alcantara (now broken), and that of Almaraz, where

there was only a flying bridge of pontoons[229].

[229] For all this see Koch’s _Vie de Masséna_, pp. 413-20.

At the same time Junot was writing from Belmonte to say that he could

go no further; not only had he been forced to leave all his guns behind

at Guarda, but ‘les troupes meurent de faim, et ne peuvent pas se

présenter en ligne.’ He had scoured the country as far as Covilhão with

his cavalry, in search of food, with the sole result of ruining the few

horses that were still in passable condition.

In short, the game was up--it ought never to have been begun--and

Ney’s remonstrances (though not his insubordination) were completely

vindicated. On March 28th Masséna reluctantly conceded that a prompt

retreat into Spain was the only course possible. But he chose to base

his change of plans not on the true ground, viz. that he had ordered

the army to perform an impossibility, but on two other facts. A report

had just been received from Drouet; that general, on reaching the

neighbourhood of Almeida, had sent word that the fortress was in the

utmost danger, for it had only fifteen days’ food[230], and, if the

9th Corps had to retire, it would fall from starvation in a fortnight.

The state of Ciudad Rodrigo was little better. He therefore besought

the Prince of Essling not to expose these two all-important places, by

carrying the Army of Portugal off to the valley of the Tagus. This gave

a strategical reason for surrendering the new scheme of campaign, but

there was also a moral one. ‘Lassitude reigns in the Army of Portugal:

many of its regiments were in the expeditions of the Duke of Dalmatia

[Soult’s Oporto campaign of 1809] or that of the Duke of Abrantes

[Junot’s Vimeiro campaign of 1808]. The officers murmur, and, as I must

again repeat, the army must have two or three months of rest to recover

itself. I was the only soul who was determined to hold on in Portugal,

and unless I had set my will to it in the strongest fashion, we should

not have stopped fifteen days therein.... The troops are good, but

they need repose. Living by marauding, even though it was organized

marauding, such as we have been compelled to authorize, has in no

small degree weakened discipline, which is in the greatest need of

restoration[231].’ All this was very true, but it had been equally true

on March 22nd, when Masséna gave his orders for the march on Plasencia.

The root of his failure lay neither in the state of Almeida, nor in

the demoralized condition of the army, but in the fact that he had

directed his troops to execute a movement which was impossible without

magazines to live upon, or roads to march upon[232].

[230] This was a gross exaggeration, as it turned out that there

was forty days’ food in hand. Masséna accused Drouet of drawing

on the rations for his own 9th Corps to an inexcusable extent.

[231] Masséna to Berthier, March 31, from Alfayates.

[232] When Reynier marched from Coria to Guarda in

September 1810, he had been obliged to make the vast circle

Coria-Alfayates-Sabugal-Guarda, in order to avoid the miserable

mountain roads.

On March 29 Masséna gave the orders which marked the abandonment of

his great plan, and commenced his retrograde movement towards Ciudad

Rodrigo. Reynier and the 2nd Corps, abandoning the mountain roads,

came down by a lateral march to Sabugal in the upper valley of the

Coa: they were to stop there till Junot and the 8th Corps, coming

in from Belmonte, should have reached them and passed behind them.

The 6th Corps meanwhile was to halt at Guarda till the 8th Corps had

extricated itself from the mountains, but it was ordered to throw back

one division (Ferey’s) to Adão on the Sabugal road, eight miles to the

south-east, as the first échelon of its forthcoming movement of retreat

towards the Coa. Masséna himself and the head quarters of the army

moved from Guarda on the morning of the 29th to Pega, a village some

miles nearer the Coa than Adão.

On this morning the British army, of which Masséna had heard

practically nothing for eight days, put in its appearance in the most

forcible fashion, falling upon the enemy just as he was in the midst of

a complicated movement, with his three corps separated from each other

by distances of some twenty miles.

Wellington, it will be remembered, had halted about half of his army on

the Alva upon March 20th, for sheer want of provisions, sending on only

the two light cavalry brigades and the 3rd, 6th, and Light Divisions to

pursue Masséna on the Celorico road. He had no doubt that the enemy was

about to retire from Celorico and Guarda towards the Spanish frontier

with the smallest delay--the policy of Ney and of every one else in

the French army save Masséna himself. On the 24th, Slade’s dragoons

occupied Celorico, and reported that the enemy had left it on the

preceding day; two columns were traced: the larger [6th and 8th Corps]

had gone towards Guarda, the smaller [Drouet with Conroux’s division of

the 9th Corps] had taken the high-road towards Freixadas and Almeida.

There was nothing yet to indicate to Wellington Masséna’s intention of

proceeding in the direction of Estremadura and the middle Tagus. He

wrote on the 25th to General Spencer, ‘The French have retired from

Celorico, and appear to intend to take up a line on the Coa. Their left

has gone by Guarda, apparently for Sabugal’--and to Beresford, ‘The

French have gone towards the Coa: their left will cross at Sabugal, I

should think, and their right about Pinhel and Almeida[233]’.

[233] Both dispatches are dated from Santa Marinha, March 25th.

On this day (March 25) the first convoy of provisions from the new base

established at Coimbra reached the camps on the Alva, and Wellington

was at last able to set the 1st and 5th Divisions and Ashworth’s

Portuguese in motion[234]. They started on the Celorico road, and

reached Galliges that night. No news had yet come in of the southward

movement of the French from Guarda, which had begun on the preceding

day. The vanguard of the army had now established itself in Celorico,

which was reached by the Light and 3rd Divisions on the 25th-26th: they

had come up very slowly, being sadly distressed for food, and therefore

forced to make very short stages. Only one ration of bread had been

given out in the last four days.

[234] Pack’s Portuguese were so exhausted and sickly that they

were left behind for a rest, and to wait for more food, at

Mangualde on the upper Mondego.

On the 26th the cavalry pushed out from Celorico[235], Arentschildt’s

brigade took the Almeida road, Hawker’s (this colonel was in temporary

command of the 1st and 14th, while Slade managed the whole vanguard)

pushed towards Guarda. Each swept the villages on the flanks of its

route. The result of the exploration was to show that a very large body

of the enemy had retired on Guarda, and a very small body on Almeida.

A patrol of the 16th Light Dragoons hit on Mermet’s rearguard and took

an officer and eighteen men from it. The reports of the following day

came to much the same--it began to be clear that almost the whole

French army must have gone to Guarda, and at last Wellington began

to have the first news of Masséna’s southward movement, though he did

not yet grasp its meaning. ‘The French appear to stick about Guarda,’

he wrote to Beresford, ‘and yesterday they had some people well on

towards Manteigas: but I have heard nothing of them from Grant [the

famous scout and intelligence officer] and I conclude they were only a

patrol.’ Now Manteigas is at the source of the Zezere, near Covilhão,

and this ‘patrol’ was nothing less than Junot’s flank cavalry,

exploring out from Belmonte, which the 8th Corps had reached on the

preceding day. But so little did Wellington guess what was running in

Masséna’s mind, that he wrote on this day that he was proposing to take

a short turn to the Alemtejo to supervise Beresford’s operations (which

were hanging fire in the most discouraging fashion), as soon as the

French were over the frontier[236].

[235] ‘General Slade had been in Celorico the whole of

yesterday,’ complains Tomkinson of the 16th, ‘and yet had not the

least idea where the French had retired to.’ Diary, p. 89.

[236] Wellington to Henry Wellesley, March 27, from Gouvea.

Meanwhile Wellington made up his mind that, since the enemy persisted

in lingering at Guarda, he must manœuvre them out of that lofty city.

But imagining that two, if not three, corps were concentrated in its

neighbourhood, he would not attack till his rear had come up from the

Alva to Celorico. This did not happen till the 29th, when the 1st

Division reached that place, with the 5th close behind. But on the

previous day he had already started off Picton to cross the Serra da

Estrella by the mountain road by Prados, and the Light Division with

Arentschildt’s cavalry to take the longer route on the other bank

of the Mondego, which goes to Guarda via Baracal, Villa Franca, and

Rapoulla. A flanking detachment, composed of a wing of the 95th Rifles,

came upon a small rearguard left behind by Mermet at Freixadas, and

turned them out of the village, taking a few prisoners (March 28).

On the 29th the Light Division and the two cavalry brigades moved in

upon Guarda from Rapoulla, while Picton closed in from the west, on

the side of the higher hills, and General Alexander Campbell, with

the 6th Division, advanced between the other two columns, by the road

on the east side of the Mondego which passes through Ramilhosa[237].

The three converging columns appeared upon the heights around Guarda

within a few hours of each other, Picton being first on the spot. The

French had hardly any warning, for the cavalry screen had kept the

British hidden till the last. Picton found Mermet’s and Marchand’s

divisions on the plateau of Guarda, with Ferey’s at its foot on the

eastern side, already starting on its march for Adão, which was to be

the commencement of the general retreat that Masséna contemplated on

the next day. It seems clear, from French sources, that Loison was

practically taken by surprise. Fririon, the chief of the staff of the

Army of Portugal, says that, visiting Guarda to see how the 6th Corps

was arranged, he found Maucune’s brigade encamped in a ravine dominated

on all sides, with only one battalion on the hill on which Picton

appeared a few minutes later, and the rest in a position where they

were perfectly helpless. There was no other covering force at all out

in front of the town. Hence, when the British closed in, Loison got

flurried, and, seeing the Light Division threatening to press in on his

rear, absconded at once without fighting. As his force was still nearly

15,000 strong, and Wellington had as yet only three divisions, of no

greater numbers, in front of the formidable hill of Guarda, it seems

that the flight of the 6th Corps from such a position was somewhat

ignominious. Ney would undoubtedly have fought a brilliant detaining

action with his rearguard[238].

[237] Napier (iii. 129) is wrong in saying that the movement

was ‘Supported by the 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions.’ These only

reached Celorico that day, and were fifteen miles from the field.

See Diary of Stothert of the Guards, p. 232. Napier was misled

by the vague wording of Wellington’s dispatch to Lord Liverpool

(vii. 425), from which it might be supposed that these divisions

were up.

[238] The 3rd Division arrived some time before the 6th and the

Light were in actual touch with the enemy.

Picton writes about this: ‘Masséna with full 20,000 men was on

the heights, and in the city of Guarda, when I made my appearance

at 9 in the morning, with three British and two Portuguese

regiments.... He ought immediately to have attacked me, but

allowed me to remain within 400 yards of his main body for about

two hours, before the other columns came up. But of course their

movements were alarming him, and decided him not to hazard an

attack, the failure of which would have probably brought on the

total discomfiture of his army.’ Letter in Robinson’s _Life of

Picton_, vol. ii. pp. 3, 4.

Loison went off in great haste on the two roads open to him, both

leading south-east towards the Coa: one by Adão and Pega towards

Sabugal, the other by Villa Mendo and Marmeleiro to Rapoulla da

Coa. The British infantry could never come up with him. The cavalry

pressed his rear, and made many prisoners, mainly foraging parties

which were straggling in to join the main body. A patrol of the 16th

Light Dragoons captured 64 men in one party, and took 150 sheep and

20 oxen[239]. The total number of prisoners was between two and three

hundred. But the French rearguard of three battalions of infantry kept

well together, and was in too good order to be broken by unsupported

squadrons of cavalry. The main body of the 6th Corps marched all

day towards the fords of the Coa, but had not reached that river at

nightfall. One of its columns encamped at Pega, the other at Marmeleiro.

[239] See Tomkinson’s Diary, p. 90.

On the next morning (March 30) Masséna was in a very dangerous

situation: his three corps were still unconcentrated, and Junot was

lingering at Belmonte, from which he only moved that morning towards

Sabugal. If Wellington had known of the isolated position of the 8th

Corps, he might, by pushing down a column from Celorico, have cut

off its line of retreat towards the Coa, where the 2nd Corps was

awaiting it. But by ill-luck no reports came to hand about Junot, and

Wellington was under the impression that two, and not one, corps had

been holding Guarda when he attacked it[240]. He was aware that Reynier

was at Sabugal, but did not apparently receive any information which

demonstrated that there was another heavy column in this direction,

now commencing to move straight across the front of his own advanced

guard. Junot was able to extricate himself by two painful marches over

villainous cross-roads in the mountains, from Belmonte to Urgueira

(March 30) and from Urgueira to Sabugal (March 31). He was only able

to win salvation because he had left all his artillery behind him at

Guarda, and was therefore able to go wherever infantry could climb.

His guns had been given in charge to the 6th Corps, and formed part of

the column under Ferey that marched by Pega to the Coa.

[240] Wellington to Beresford, from Celorico, March 30:

‘Yesterday we manœuvred the French out of Guarda. Masséna was

there, some say with his whole army, I think certainly with two

corps: not a shot was fired.’ (_Dispatches_, vii. 412.) Same day

to Charles Stuart: ‘They were much stronger than we: I had only

three divisions on the hill.’ (_Dispatches_, vii. 418.)

Meanwhile the 6th Corps had to complete its retreat to the line of

the Coa, and reached it in the afternoon, harassed but not seriously

damaged by the two British cavalry brigades, of which Hawker’s followed

the column on the northern and Arentschildt’s that on the southern

of the two parallel roads on which Loison was moving. All accounts

agree that General Slade, who was directing both brigades, showed

over-caution, and missed several fair opportunities of attacking the

enemy’s rearguard, in open ground very favourable to cavalry and

horse-artillery tactics[241]. He only picked up a few stragglers, and

the enemy was safely across the Coa by nightfall, Marchand’s division

at Ponte Sequeiro, Ferey’s and Mermet’s at Bismula, seven miles further

to the south, where they were now only eight miles from Reynier’s right

wing at Sabugal. The British had not yet detected Junot’s flank march,

which was hourly bringing him nearer to safety.

[241] Napier’s statements (iii. 129) are quite borne out by

Tomkinson’s Diary: ‘In the rear of Pega is an open plain of two

miles which the enemy had to pass: as usual we looked at them

for half an hour: then the guns were ordered up, and in place

of firing at the main body could only get within range of their

pickets ... we continued to follow, and, although they had no

cavalry, our general was afraid to go into the plain to get the

guns in range of the infantry: they of course got clear off.’

(Diary, p. 91.)

On the 31st the 8th Corps escaped from its dangers, reached Sabugal,

and, passing behind Reynier, pushed on ten miles further to Alfayates,

where it halted for a much-needed rest. The troops were reduced to the

last extreme by exhaustion and hunger. At Alfayates, within three miles

of the Spanish frontier, and only two marches from Ciudad Rodrigo, they

at last began to receive regular provisions, and had nearly got out of

the mountains into the rolling upland of southern Leon.

Why Masséna, the moment that he knew that Junot was safe, did not

continue to retreat on to his magazines it is hard to say. But he

remained for two days more behind the upper Coa, and thereby exposed

himself to continued danger, for his army was strung out on too thin

a line, watching twenty miles of the river. Apparently he thought,

from seeing no British infantry on the 30th and 31st, that Wellington

had halted at Guarda, and did not intend to continue the pursuit on

Sabugal. His own forces continued in their old positions throughout

the 1st and 2nd of April, save that all Montbrun’s reserve cavalry was

sent to the rear, to the valleys of the Agueda and the Azava, to rest

and recover itself, the larger proportion of the surviving horses being

quite unserviceable. The corps-cavalry of Reynier, Junot, and Loison

also sent back many dismounted men, and hundreds more whose mounts

were incapable of use for the present, so that the brigade of light

horse attached to each was reduced to a few hundred sabres, many of the

regiments having only one efficient squadron left, and none more than

two[242]. The retreat from Santarem had practically disabled the French

cavalry.

[242] As late as May 1 the regimental statistics show that the

3rd Dragoons had only 139 available horses, sick or sound, and

the 10th Dragoons only 233, They had started the campaign with

563 and 535 respectively.

Wellington, meanwhile, having discovered by the explorations of

his horse, that the enemy was standing firm on the Coa, resolved

to dislodge them from their last hold on Portugal. To do this he

required his whole force, and the 1st and 5th Divisions moved onward

from Celorico to Freixadas on the 31st, to come up into line with

the 3rd, 6th, and Light Divisions. With them there was now present

the long-expected 7th Division, which reached the front at the end

of the month, though incomplete. For the light brigade of the German

Legion had arrived at Lisbon more than a fortnight late, and only four

battalions in the British service[243] and five of Portuguese[244] were

at present allotted to the newly formed unit. But in addition several

newly landed battalions[245] came up and joined the old divisions,

so that nearly 6,000 infantry in all were added to the army. After

deducting many men left behind from sickness or exhaustion[246], during

his advance over the wasted regions of Beira, Wellington had now about

38,000 men with him, a force very nearly equal to that of the enemy,

which on the 1st of April had sunk to 39,905 including officers, if the

9th Corps, now in the vicinity of Almeida, be omitted.

[243] We cannot say ‘four British battalions,’ for two of

them were foreign corps, the _Chasseurs Britanniques_ and the

Brunswick Oels Light Infantry. The two line regiments were the

51st and 85th.

[244] 7th and 19th Line and 2nd Caçadores, forming Collins’s

brigade.

[245] viz. 2/88th for 3rd Division, 2/52nd for Light Division,

1/36th for the 6th Division.

[246] Including Pack’s whole brigade.

The plan which Wellington evolved for the final eviction of the French

from Portugal was to turn their left wing on the side of Sabugal,

while containing their right wing (the 6th Corps) on the central Coa.

Occupation was at the same time found for the 9th Corps, as Wilson’s

and Trant’s Militia brigades were directed to cross the Coa near its

confluence with the Douro, and to threaten Almeida from the north side,

a move which could not fail to have the effect of keeping Drouet pinned

down to his present position, since his special task was the protection

of that place. It is a little difficult to make out why Wellington

chose to break in upon the French left rather than their right. From

the strategical point of view it would have been preferable to cross

the Coa north of the flank of the 6th Corps, and to throw the whole

weight of the British army so as to drive the French southward, towards

Sabugal and Alfayates. For they would thus be separated from the 9th

Corps, thrust into the barren and nearly roadless mountain district of

the Sierra de Gata and the Sierra de Meras, and cut off from Almeida

and even from Ciudad Rodrigo, which they were desirous of covering.

Whereas to turn their left wing would only have the effect of pushing

them back on their natural line of retreat towards Rodrigo, and would

press them towards rather than away from the 9th Corps. The British

general’s course seems, however, to have been guided by tactical

rather than by strategical considerations. He thought that he had a

good opportunity of catching the 2nd Corps at Sabugal in an isolated

position, and crushing it, before the 6th or the 8th could come up to

its help. And but for a chance of the weather it seems that he might

have accomplished this design with complete success.

Sabugal, a little walled place with a ruined Moorish castle, lies in

a projecting bend or hook of the Coa, which turns back just above the

town at right angles to its original course, which is directly from

east to west. The river is not far from its source, and though its

banks are steep its waters are narrow, and there are many fords both

above and below Sabugal. If a strong turning column, concealing itself

in the hills, passed along the south bank of the Coa, and crossed the

river some miles above the town, it could throw itself upon the rear of

the 2nd Corps and cut it off from its retreat on Alfayates. Meanwhile

a general attack by Wellington’s main body would drive it from its

position straight into the arms of the turning column, and there would

be a good chance of inflicting a crushing defeat upon the corps,

perhaps of capturing it wholesale. If the attack were delivered by

surprise at dawn, the whole matter ought to be completed before either

the 6th or the 8th Corps could get up to the support of Reynier. When

at last they could appear on the field, the 2nd Corps would be already

demolished, and Wellington was prepared to risk a general action.

It was with this design that his movements of the 1st and 2nd of April

were planned. The 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions were brought up from

Celorico to Guarda, and from thence to join the Light, 3rd, and 6th

Divisions which were already lying along the Coa over against the

French lines. The 6th Division was left at Rapoulla de Coa, facing

Loison’s centre, and a single battalion of the 7th Division observed

the bridge of Sequeiro opposite his northern flank. These troops

showed themselves freely, and kept Loison anxious, for nothing seemed

more likely than that the general attack would be directed against

him. Meanwhile the whole of the rest of the army, five divisions and

two cavalry brigades, over 30,000 men, was launched against Reynier.

The turning column was to be formed by the Light Division and the two

cavalry brigades, who were to ford the Coa at two separate points two

and three miles respectively above Sabugal. If Erskine, who was to

command it, so decided, the column might cross even higher up: it was

intended that it should appear far beyond Reynier’s left wing, and

should strike over the hills of Quadraseis to the village of Torre

on the Alfayates road, where it would be placed across his line of

retreat. The ground in that direction was open and favourable for

cavalry. Meanwhile the enemy was to be given no chance of falling

upon this detachment, since he was to be attacked in front with very

superior forces. Picton and his division were to cross an easy ford a

mile south of Sabugal, the 5th Division was to assail the town-bridge

at the same moment. The 1st and 7th Divisions were a few miles behind,

ready to support the two leading columns in the front attack. It was

intended that the turning force should cross the Coa first, but only

so far ahead of the frontal attacking force as to make it certain that

it should not get engaged with the main body of the enemy, before the

3rd and 5th Divisions were coming into action. The French pickets

having been pushed close back to the river on the preceding day by the

cavalry, it was certain that they would see nothing of the movements

till they were well developed.

Unfortunately the morning of the 3rd of April was one of dense

fog--good for concealing the march of the troops, but bad in that it

prevented the troops from discovering their objective. Both Picton

and Dunlop (who was commanding the 5th Division in Leith’s absence on

leave) resolved not to move, and sent to Wellington, who was hard by,

for orders. Not so the rash and presumptuous Erskine, who repeated this

day the precise mistake that he had made at Casal Novo three weeks

back. Without coming himself to the front, he sent an aide-de-camp to

the Light Division, to bid it descend to the river and cross at the

ford which had been assigned to it in the general scheme. The cavalry

were also ordered to move forward and take the other ford, more to the

right, by which they were to get into the enemy’s rear.[247]

[247] Details may be verified in Wellington, _Supplementary

Dispatches_, xiii. p. 611.

Beckwith’s brigade, the leading one of the Light Division, consisted of

the 1/43rd, Elder’s Caçadores (the 3rd of that arm), and four companies

of the 1/95th Rifles. It was waiting in column, on the road above the

river, when Erskine’s aide-de-camp rode up, and asked the brigadier

in a peremptory tone ‘why he did not cross.’ Beckwith at once struck

off in the direction where he supposed the ford to be, but, missing

his line in the fog, did not march sufficiently far to the right, and

reached the Coa not at the true ford but at a hazardous passage nearly

a mile nearer to Sabugal[248], where the water came up to the men’s

arm-pits. Drummond’s brigade followed at a distance, and used the

same wrong path. The cavalry, to whom Sir William Erskine had joined

himself, taking their bearings from the Light Division, came down to

the river not very far to its right, at a point some two miles more

to the west than was intended. They lost much time in searching for a

ford; by the time that they found one, the Light Division was already

heavily engaged, and the passage ultimately discovered was so close to

that force that the Dragoons came up almost in Drummond’s rear, instead

of far out on his flank.

[248] Wellington’s orders were to cross 2 miles at least above

Sabugal. The actual crossing was only 1¼ miles above.

Reynier’s pickets were close to the water’s edge, and opened a

scattering fire on the head of Beckwith’s column while it was still

struggling across the river. But they were easily driven off, and the

brigade formed up on the further side, in the usual order of the Light

Division, with a very strong skirmishing screen, composed of four

companies of the 95th and three of Elder’s Caçadores. The 43rd and the

other half-battalion of the Portuguese came on in line, a few hundred

yards behind the riflemen. They were still smothered in the fog, and

could discover nothing more than that they were pursuing the French

pickets up a gentle slope, mostly unenclosed waste ground, but cut up

by a few fields with low stone walls. Pushing forward briskly, they

presently came upon a French regiment, which was already under arms,

and preparing to show a front against them. What had happened in the

mist was that the Light Division, instead of getting round the flank

of Reynier’s position, had struck directly against it. The 2nd Corps

had been established on the long hill behind Sabugal and above the Coa,

ready to resist a frontal attack, with Merle’s division on the left and

Heudelet’s on the right, above the town. Beckwith had struck upon the

4th Léger, the left regiment of the left-hand division of the corps.

Merle, warned by the fire of the pickets, was making a new front, _en

potence_ to the general line of the French army, and had just got the

four battalions of the extreme flank regiment drawn out. They were,

as usual, in column of divisions, (double companies), with a weak

skirmishing line in front, which was at once driven in by the Rifles

and Caçadores. Merle then led down his four columns against the screen

of light troops which covered Beckwith’s line, and drove them back with

considerable loss to himself, and little to his opponents, since he had

only skirmishers to shoot at, while his own compact battalion columns

were very vulnerable. The light troops fell back to each flank of the

line presented by the 43rd and the formed companies of the Caçadores,

and then halted and turned upon the enemy. The balance of numbers was

now in favour of Beckwith’s brigade, for though he had only two and a

half battalions and the enemy four, the French units were very weak,

the 4th Léger having only 1,100 men, while the 43rd alone was a strong

battalion of 750 bayonets and its auxiliary light troops were at least

600 more. It was not surprising, therefore, that the French regiment

soon went to the rear, badly hit, after a short sharp exchange of

volleys. Beckwith followed, pushing the enemy through a small chestnut

wood, till he arrived at the southern summit of the ridge on which the

French line had been drawn out. Here he found himself confronted by

the seven battalions of the 36th of the Line, and the 2nd Léger, the

remaining regiments of Merle’s division, which were hurrying along the

crest to the assistance of their comrades of the 4th Léger.

Blinding rain came on at this moment, and much diminished the efficacy

of the British fire. Attacked by double numbers of fresh troops,

Beckwith’s brigade was thrust back for some distance. But they rallied

behind some stone walls of enclosures, just as the shower ceased, and

after an obstinate contest of musketry, stopped the French regiments,

who, falling into disorder, retired up the slope to re-form. Though

conscious that he was now engaged against hopeless odds, and though he

could see nothing of Drummond’s brigade or the British cavalry, which

ought by this time to have come up to his support, Beckwith went up

the hill a second time in pursuit. When he reached the crest he came

upon the divisional battery of Merle, drove it off, and captured one

howitzer. Immediately after, he was outflanked on his left by infantry,

apparently the rallied 4th Léger, while on the right he was charged by

two squadrons of chasseurs and hussars, all that the depleted cavalry

brigade of Pierre Soult could put in line that day. The 43rd and their

comrades were hardly pressed, and had to give ground, but sheltering

once more among the enclosures, refused to relinquish their position

on the slope. The captured howitzer lay out in their front, in an

open space swept by the musketry of both parties. Desperate attempts

were made by groups on each side to rush out and bring it in, but to

no effect, as the cross-fire was too heavy. Beckwith’s brigade was

in a most dangerous position, only preserved from annihilation by

the fact that the mist and rain prevented the enemy from recognizing

the smallness of the force opposed to him--two and a half battalions

against eleven, or 1,500 men against 3,500.

At this moment assistance at last arrived--the 2nd Brigade of the Light

Division under Drummond appeared on the scene. It consisted of the two

battalions of the 52nd, the 1st Caçadores, and four companies of the

95th, about 2,000 bayonets. Having lost touch of the 1st Brigade at

the ford, it had taken a route much more like that originally intended

by Wellington to be employed, and had come up the back slope of the

heights, far to the right of Beckwith, without meeting any enemy. The

noise of the combat attracted Drummond to his left; he changed his

direction, and was coming over the hillside and approaching Beckwith

when he received a most ill-advised order from Erskine--who was with

the cavalry some way to his right rear--directing him not to advance

or engage[249]. But to have held back would have meant to allow the

1st Brigade to be destroyed. Disregarding the order, Drummond deployed

the 1/52nd, the Caçadores, and the 95th on the right of the enclosures

where Beckwith was fighting, with the 2/52nd in reserve, and advanced

firing. This attack by a fresh force was too much for the French 2nd

and 36th, who had suffered severely in the earlier fighting. They

gave way, and Drummond, with Beckwith following in échelon on his

left, regained the crest of the heights and recaptured the French

howitzer. The two brigades were still engaged in a fierce struggle with

Merle’s division when Reynier brought up the 2nd Brigade of Heudelet’s

division, the seven battalions of the 17th Léger and 70th Ligne, which

had formed the centre of his original line of battle. These troops

attacked the left flank of the Light Division, Beckwith’s men, and put

them in grave danger, for the much-tried 43rd and 3rd Caçadores were in

great disorder. At the same time the two French squadrons charged again

upon the flank of the 52nd. Fortunately a stray squadron of the 16th

Light Dragoons came up and assisted in repulsing them. This was the

only aid given by the cavalry this day; Erskine contrived to keep them

useless, countermarching in the mist, some way from the fighting front.

[249] This fact comes from a MS. note by Sir John Bell of the

52nd, in my possession. He writes: ‘Just as the 2nd Brigade

changed its direction, the General, being at some distance, sent

an order for it not to engage. But the staff officer who carried

it, and Drummond, seeing how matters stood, took the liberty of

forgetting the message, so that Beckwith should have the full

benefit of the support at hand. No question was ever asked as to

the non-delivery of the order.’

At this moment the fog suddenly lifted, and both Wellington and Reynier

were able to make out the face of the battle. The sight was not

altogether comforting to either of them: Wellington could see the Light

Division on the crest, opposed by a very superior enemy (the proportion

was about five to three at this moment) and with their left flank

turned by the column which had just come up. Reynier, on the other

hand, saw the masses of Picton’s and Dunlop’s divisions halted close

above the fords, at and below Sabugal, and just preparing to cross. He

had so stripped his centre and right, while bringing up troops to crush

the Light Division, that only the two regiments forming Heudelet’s 1st

Brigade, the eight weak battalions of the 31st Léger and 47th Ligne,

about 3,300 bayonets, were left to occupy two miles of slope on each

side of the town of Sabugal. Reynier saw that they must be scattered

by the approaching onset, for 10,000 men were hurrying down towards

the fords, and gave instant orders for a general retreat. The intact

brigade was to abandon Sabugal and the heights, concentrate, and go off

at the double, to take up a position a mile to the rear, on the road

to Alfayates. Merle’s shattered troops on the crest, facing the Light

Division, were directed to make off in such order as they might, taking

the artillery with them, and to seek refuge behind this reserve. To

prevent Beckwith and Drummond from pursuing them, the 2nd Brigade of

Heudelet, the 17th Léger and 70th, were ordered to keep up a defensive

fight upon the heights where they had just come into action.

This brigade was thereby exposed to grave danger, for while it was

doing its best to ‘contain’ the Light Division, Picton, coming up

from the river at a furious pace, with the 5th Fusiliers deployed in

his front, rushed in upon its flank, and drove its battalions one

upon another. The 17th and 70th were overwhelmed and thrust down the

back of the hill with a loss of 400 men, of whom 120 were unwounded

prisoners. Their wrecks took refuge with the other brigades, which

retired as rapidly as they could along the Alfayates road, with the

31st Léger and 47th Ligne, the only intact body, covering the flight

of the rest. The British 5th Division had crossed at Sabugal without

meeting opposition or losing a man, but was too far to the left to be

of any use in urging the pursuit. That duty fell to Picton, who was

pressing the French rearguard when the rain, which had been falling for

almost the whole morning, became absolutely torrential, and hid the

face of the country-side so thoroughly that Wellington commanded the

whole army to halt. It is said that this order was given on the false

intelligence that the 8th Corps was visible coming up from Alfayates to

join Reynier[250], a report for which there was no foundation whatever.

Erskine and the cavalry never touched the retreating force, save one

squadron of the German hussars, who happed upon the French transport

column, and captured the private baggage of Reynier himself and General

Pierre Soult[251].

[250] This statement is made by Tomkinson in his diary on April

3, p. 94.

[251] Many details in this narrative of the combat of Sabugal

will be found to differ from those given in earlier histories. I

have been relying for the French movements largely on the life

of General Merle, the officer who was in charge of most of the

fighting, and had the best chance of giving a correct story.

[Braquehay’s _Le Général Merle_, pp. 160-1.]

So ended, in comparative disappointment, an operation which would

have had glorious results if the fog had not intervened, and which

might, even with that drawback, have been much more decisive if Sir

William Erskine had shown ordinary prudence and ability. The actual

combat, as Wellington truly observed, ‘was one of the most glorious

that British troops were ever engaged in,’ for the Light Division,

with its 3,500 bayonets, had fought the whole of the 2nd Corps save

one brigade, and had punished its adversaries in the most exemplary

style, without suffering any corresponding loss. ‘Really these attacks

in column against our line are very contemptible,’ wrote Wellington to

Beresford next morning. The chief glory lay with the 43rd, who fought

three separate contests with three successive bodies of opponents,

and counted very nearly half of the total British loss in their

ranks. Beckwith, their brigadier, was the admired of all beholders;

eye-witnesses relate with pride how he rode first in the advance and

last in the retreat, with blood streaming from a wound on his temple,

keeping the men in rank, checking those who showed a tendency to

quicken the pace, and directing the fire with perfect coolness. It

was in a great degree the confidence inspired by his cheerful and

resourceful leading which enabled the brigade to keep up the fight

against impossible odds, down to the moment of the arrival of Drummond

and the supports upon the scene.

[Illustration: SABUGAL]

The total loss of the French was 61 officers and 689 men; this fearful

proportion of losses in the commissioned ranks was due to the gallantry

with which they threw away their lives in bringing up to the front

the shaken and demoralized soldiers, who could not face the English

musketry. One gun and 186 unwounded prisoners were taken. The British

loss was only 169--that of their Portuguese companions no more than 10.

Of the total of 179 no less than 143 were men of the Light Division,

of whom 80 belonged to the 43rd; Picton’s troops, only engaged for a

few minutes at the end of the combat, had twenty-five casualties. The

horse artillery lost one, the German hussars two men wounded. It is

sufficiently clear from these figures who had done the fighting that

day[252].

[252] See the tables of the French and British losses in Appendix

No. VI. Fririon, as chief of the staff, must have seen and passed

the French return giving 750 casualties, yet in his narrative

allows for only 250, saying, ‘On a beaucoup exagéré les pertes:

les chiffres que nous donnons sont très exacts.’ This is only one

example of his habit of falsifying figures, in which he rivalled

Masséna and Soult.

On the afternoon following the combat of Sabugal, Masséna abandoned

the line of the Coa, drawing back the 6th Corps to join the other two

at Alfayates. Next morning (April 4) at early dawn the whole army made

a forced march to the rear, for there seemed every probability that

Wellington would appear, to force on a general action, during the

course of the day, and it was necessary to avoid the chance of being

thrust against the Sierra de Gata, and cut off from Ciudad Rodrigo.

Accordingly the 2nd Corps covered more than twenty miles, and did not

halt till it had reached Fuentes de Oñoro; the 6th Corps, marching a

less distance, halted at Fuente Guinaldo on the direct road to Ciudad

Rodrigo. The 8th Corps, on a road between the other two, stopped at

Campillo; the reserve cavalry of Montbrun, which was in such bad

condition that it had to be covered by the infantry, instead of acting

as their screen, drew back to El Bodon, and other villages in the

immediate vicinity of Rodrigo. By this movement Masséna recovered his

communication with the 9th Corps, which still lay on the Turon near

Almeida, for the 2nd Corps was now within fifteen miles of Drouet’s

head quarters at Val de Mula, while the 6th and 8th Corps covered

the roads to Ciudad Rodrigo. On the following day (April 5) the two

last-named corps drew back to Carpio, Marialva, and other places within

a few miles of that fortress, but the 2nd Corps remained at Fuentes de

Oñoro, in order to keep touch with the 9th till the latter should have

evacuated a position which had now become dangerous and over-advanced.

For if Masséna went back to the Agueda, Drouet could not linger near

Almeida, lest he should be cut off from the main army.

Meanwhile Wellington had occupied on the 4th Masséna’s old head

quarters at Alfayates, and sent forward his cavalry to Albergaria,

Alamedilla, and other villages, where they came in touch with the

outposts of the 2nd and 8th Corps. The Light Division felt for any

traces of the French at Val de Espinha and Quadraseis, and finding

none pushed on to Alfayates. The 1st and 3rd Divisions came to that

place also on the next day. By that evening (April 5) it was certain

that Masséna was falling back to Ciudad Rodrigo, perhaps even further

to the rear. The state of his army, of which Wellington had ample

evidence from the capture of more sick, stragglers, and baggage during

this and the two next days[253], rendered it extremely likely that the

French would not be able to halt till they reached their magazines

at Salamanca. The British general had no intention of following the

enemy far into Spain; he had again outmarched his supplies, for the

new base at Coimbra had only just been established, and convoys from

it were coming in slowly and with great delays, since they had to be

brought up over the wasted and depopulated region which the French

had just evacuated. Till he had some magazines accumulated nearer the

frontier, he could not dream of a serious offensive movement into Leon.

His letters at this time are full of laments as to the state of the

Portuguese troops, especially of the brigades which were fed by their

own commissariat. They had dropped so many sick and stragglers in the

advance, that on April 8th they were 2,500 short of the number with

which they had started from the Lines of Torres Vedras: the brigade

in the 5th Division had fallen to 1,061 rank and file from 1,400

with which it had set out--that in the 3rd Division to 1,190 from

1,319. Pack’s brigade had been left behind on the Mondego from sheer

inability to march, and had not been able to join in the Guarda and

Sabugal operations[254]. It was necessary to wait till the ranks were

fuller--the men were not lost but left behind exhausted, and could be

collected when a systematic supply of food was procurable. The allied

army could not dream of entering Spain with the intention of living by

plunder and requisitions, as the French habitually did.

[253] In the Diary of Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons there

is a curious note as to the capture of a ‘caravan’ or large coach

belonging to the head-quarter staff, and more especially to

Masséna’s Portuguese adviser, the Marquis d’Alorna, on April 7th.

Sixty-five infantry were captured by the regiment on the same day.

[254] See letters to Beresford of April 6th and to Charles Stuart

of April 8th, in _Dispatches_, vii. pp. 430-5.

Wellington’s ambition at the moment did not go beyond the hope of

recovering Almeida, which he conceived to be doomed to fall, and

possibly Ciudad Rodrigo also, if the enemy should be forced to fall

back towards Salamanca. But Almeida, at least, he was determined to

make his own, and the first necessity was to clear away the 9th Corps

from its neighbourhood. He was convinced that Drouet would retreat when

he heard that Masséna had retired to the Agueda, and thought that his

motions might be quickened by a demonstration. The 6th Division and

Pack’s Portuguese were destined for the blockade of Almeida, but they

would not be up for some days, and meanwhile Trant’s Militia, which

was already on the lower Coa, was directed to push in boldly upon the

place, and promised the support of Slade’s cavalry brigade on the 7th.

Trant, always daring and full of enterprise, pressed forward to Val

de Mula, on the further side of Almeida, and met there Claparéde’s

division on its way towards the Agueda--Conroux had already departed.

The Militia engaged in an irregular fight with the French, who turned

promptly round upon them, and seemed likely to make havoc of them near

the village of Aldea do Obispo. But just as the attack grew threatening

Slade’s dragoons appeared from the south, with Bull’s horse artillery

battery, and drew up on the flank of the enemy’s troops. The artillery

were already beginning to enfilade them, when Claparéde, forming his

division into battalion squares, made a hasty retreat towards the

Agueda, and passed it at the bridge of Barba del Puerco. Erskine,

who was in command of the expedition, did not press him hard, and

the French, according to their own account, only lost 7 killed and 4

officers and 24 men wounded, all by cannon shot, for the dragoons were

not allowed to charge home[255]. Slade captured, however, some baggage

and a good many stragglers, marauders, and guards of small convoys, who

were surprised in the open rolling country before they could get over

the Agueda.

[255] Napier (iii. 135) says that the French lost 300 men, which

contrasts strangely with the official numbers given by the

French. Probably Drouet gave only the actual loss in action,

while the British accounts speak of all the stragglers taken that

day as if they had been captured in the fight. The 16th certainly

got 65 prisoners from a convoy guard.

Wellington could now surround and blockade Almeida; he had been

nourishing some hopes that the French might evacuate it, when Drouet

departed from its neighbourhood, for he was aware that its stores had

run very low. But when it became evident that the place was not to be

abandoned, he realized that it would take some weeks to reduce it, for

he had no battering-train whatever, indeed there were no heavy guns

nearer than Oporto and Abrantes. It was not till the following autumn

that a proper siege-train was organized for the Anglo-Portuguese army.

Almeida could only be attacked by the weapon of famine; Badajoz, which

was beleaguered at the same time, had to be battered with a few guns

borrowed from the ramparts of the neighbouring fortress of Elvas. The

British army had now been two years in Portugal, yet Wellington still

lacked the materials for conducting the smallest offensive operation

against strongholds in the hands of the French.

[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE the LAST STAGE of MASSÉNA’S RETREAT

and the CAMPAIGN of FUENTES de OÑORO]

It was known, however, that the stores in Almeida had run low, for the

9th Corps had been consuming them while it lay close by, in spite of

Masséna’s strict directions to the contrary. But starvation knows no

laws. As a matter of fact there were still over thirty days’ rations

in the magazines, though it had been reported both to Wellington and

to Masséna that the stock had run down much lower;[256] Drouet had

falsely stated on one occasion that there was only enough to last for

fifteen days. The British general fancied that four weeks’ blockade

might reduce the place, and thought that he was quit of the Army of

Portugal for a much longer space of time. He even hoped to effect

something against Ciudad Rodrigo[257], which was also under-victualled,

for on reaching the frontier Masséna had been forced to indent upon it

for supplies for his broken host. If the French retired to Salamanca,

as seemed quite probable, Wellington had hopes that he might be able

to starve out Rodrigo. But he was not intending to throw his troops

around it; they were to remain on the Dos Casas and the Azava, covering

the siege of Almeida, but only observing the Spanish fortress with

cavalry. For the cutting of the road between it and Salamanca only

irregular forces were to be used: Wellington would not send any of his

own divisions forward beyond Rodrigo, but requested the daring and

resourceful guerrillero chief Julian Sanchez to throw his bands in this

direction, the moment that the French army should have retired from the

Agueda. Sanchez had been for many months already occupied in similar

work, having spent all the winter in raids to cut off convoys and small

parties passing from Salamanca to Ciudad Rodrigo, or from that place to

Almeida. He had been hunted, often but vainly, by General Thiébault,

the governor of the province, whose columns he had usually succeeded

in avoiding, while he was always at hand to fall on weak or incautious

detachments on the march[258].

[256] Wellington, _Dispatches_, vii. p. 448.

[257] But, as he wrote to Beresford on April 14, ‘I was not very

sanguine of the results of the blockade of that place, and had

indeed determined not to make it in any strength: and now it is

useless to keep anybody on the other side of the Agueda save for

food and observation.’ (_Dispatches_, vii. 457.)

[258] For the state of semi-blockade in which Sanchez had kept

Ciudad Rodrigo, see the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantes (vii.

pp. 275-7), who was beleaguered there while her husband was in

Portugal. For the hunts organized against him by Thiébault, see

the latter’s _Memoirs_, iv. 449-51, &c. Sanchez intercepted

numbers of dispatches which were of great use to Wellington, as

they kept him informed of the state of the French in northern

Spain.

On April 8th, as Wellington had expected, the Army of Portugal resumed

its march into the interior of the kingdom of Leon, all the three corps

passing the Agueda, and retiring, Reynier to San Felices el Grande,

Junot to Santi Espiritus, Loison to Alba de Yeltes. Junot, while

passing, had been ordered to send into Rodrigo a reinforcement for the

garrison; he detached a battalion of the 15th and another of the Irish

Legion, which brought up the troops in the place to 3,000 men. From the

8th to the 11th the retreat continued, till at last the 6th Corps went

into cantonments at Salamanca, Alba de Tormes, and other neighbouring

places, the 2nd at and about Ledesma, and the 8th at Toro, behind the

others. Drouet and his two divisions held the line of observation

against the Anglo-Portuguese, with head quarters at San Muñoz. So

ended, fifty miles within the borders of Spain, the movement that had

begun at Santarem and Punhete.

The effective of Masséna’s army, was on April 15th 39,546 sabres and

bayonets. It had started in September 1810 with 65,050 officers and

men, and had numbered 44,407 on March 15th. The exact loss, however,

was not the mere difference between its force of September 15, 1810,

and of April 15, 1811 (25,504), for it had received at midwinter two

drafts under Gardanne and Foy, amounting to 3,225 men in all[259]. On

the other hand, the figures of April 15th do not include two convoys of

sick sent back into Spain, one of 82 officers and 833 men dispatched

under the charge of Drouet from the Alva on March 11, and a second and

larger one sent back from Celorico to Almeida on March 22, along with

which went some dismounted cavalry, and some artillery which could

no longer follow the army. The whole may have amounted to 3,000 men.

Both of these convoys dropped large numbers of dead and stragglers

by the way, but it is impossible to ascertain their total. We must

also deduct the escort of an officer, Major Casabianca, sent from the

front to Ciudad Rodrigo on 21st January, who took 400 men[260] with

him and never returned. Deducting the 4,315 thus sent back to Spain,

and setting them against the 3,225 received from thence, it appears

that Masséna’s total loss must have been just under 25,000 men, or 38

per cent. of his original force. Of these Wellington had some 8,000

as prisoners, including the 4,000 captured in the hospital of Coimbra

on October 7th, 1810. The remainder had perished--not more than 2,000

in action, the rest by the sword of famine. Wellington’s scheme had

justified itself, though its working out had taken many more weeks than

he expected. Nor was the mere loss in men all that the Army of Portugal

had suffered. It returned to Leon stripped of everything--without

munitions, uniforms, or train. It had lost 5,872 horses of the 14,000

which it had brought into Portugal, and practically all its wheeled

vehicles; there were precisely 36 waggons left with the army. The men

were still ready to fight fiercely when they saw the necessity for

it, but were sulky, discontented, and perpetually carping against the

Commander-in-Chief, whose last unhappy inspiration--the projected

march from Guarda to Plasencia--had filled up the measure of their

wrath. And indeed they had good reason to be disgusted at it, for it

was wholly insane and impracticable. But every misfortune of the last

six months--the bloody repulse at Bussaco, the loss of the hospitals

and magazines at Coimbra, the long starvation at Santarem, the slow

and circuitous course of the retreat, was imputed to Masséna’s

account by his chief subordinates as well as by his rank and file.

What the generals muttered in the morning was loudly discussed around

every camp-fire at night. The whole army had lost in morale from six

months of systematic marauding, was quite out of hand in the way of

discipline, and had no confidence in its leader, who was absolutely

detested. The departure of Ney, who was liked and admired by all ranks,

had been a great discouragement, because his skilful handling of the

rearguard during the retreat had been understood and appreciated, while

Masséna was cried down as a tactician no less than as a strategist on

the general results of the campaign. A general whose troops no longer

rely on him cannot get the best out of his army, and for this reason

alone Napoleon was justified in removing the old Marshal from his

command in April, when the full tale of the retreat had reached him.

[259] See vol. iii, Appendix, p. 543.

[260] When Foy went back from Thomar on March 5 to Rodrigo

his escort was taken from the 9th Corps, not from the Army of

Portugal, so does not count. See _Pièces Justificatives_, No. 45,

in Foy’s _Vie Militaire_, p. 357.

Yet there can be no doubt that Masséna was hardly treated. That the

expedition of Portugal failed was, in the main, no fault of his.

Neither he nor his master, nor any one else on the French side, had

foreseen Wellington’s plans--the devastation of the country-side, which

rendered it impossible for the invader to live long by marauding, and

the systematic fortification of the long front of the Lisbon Peninsula.

For the actual game that was set before him, Masséna had not been given

sufficient pieces by the Emperor. As Wellington had said more than a

year before[261], the French could not turn him out of Portugal with

less than 100,000 men, and Napoleon had only provided 65,000. Moreover,

as the British general had added, he should so manage affairs that

100,000 French could not live in the country if they did appear; and

this was no vain boast.

[261] See pp. 167-8 of vol. iii.

Masséna, then, was sent to accomplish an impossible task, and his

merit was that he came nearer to his end than Wellington had believed

possible, before he was forced to recoil. Many of the French marshals

would never have got to Coimbra: certainly none of them would have

succeeded in holding on at Santarem for three months. There can be

no doubt that the Prince of Essling did not exaggerate when he wrote

to Berthier[262], on March 31st, that it was his own iron will alone

which had kept the army so long and so far to the front--that but for

him it would have recoiled on to Spain many weeks earlier. His heroic

obstinacy gave his adversary many an uneasy day, while it seemed in

January and February as if the calculation for famishing the French

had failed. Masséna, in short, had done all that was possible, and

the general failure of the campaign was not his fault, any more than

it was that of Soult, on whom the blame has always been laid by the

elder marshal’s advocates. We have shown in an earlier chapter[263]

that Soult did all and more than all that Napoleon had directed him

to accomplish. If he had literally obeyed the tardy orders that

reached him from Paris he would only have exposed the 5th Corps to

defeat, if not to destruction. The _ex post facto_ rebukes that the

Emperor sent him were unjust. We are once more driven back to our old

conclusion that the determining factors in the failure of the campaign

of Portugal were firstly that Napoleon refused to appoint a single

commander-in-chief in the Peninsula, to whose orders all the other

marshals should be strictly subordinate, and secondly that he persisted

in sending plans and directions from Paris founded on facts that were

seven weeks late, or more, when his dispatches reached the front. On

this we have enlarged at sufficient length on an earlier page.

[262] Dispatch printed in Fririon, p. 157.

[263] See above, pp. 24-5.

SECTION XXV

EVENTS IN NORTHERN, EASTERN, AND CENTRAL SPAIN

CHAPTER I

KING JOSEPH AND HIS TROUBLES

While following the fortunes of Wellington and Masséna, during the

first four months of 1811, we have been compelled to leave almost

untouched the sequence of events in the rest of Spain; not only the

doings of Suchet and Macdonald in the far east, which had no practical

connexion with the campaign of Portugal, but also the minor affairs

of the southern and central provinces. Only Soult’s expedition to

Estremadura, which came into close touch with Wellington, has been

dealt with. It is time to explain the general posture of the war in the

Peninsula, during the time when its critical point lay between Lisbon

and Abrantes, where Masséna and Wellington stood face to face, each

waiting for the other to move.

What was going on in Portugal was, as we have already seen, practically

a secret to the French in Spain. For the Portuguese Ordenança and the

Spanish guerrilleros had done their work of blocking the roads so

well, that no accurate information penetrated to Madrid, Valladolid,

or Seville from Santarem. It was only at rare intervals, when Foy

and other officers cut their way through this ‘fog of war’ that the

condition of affairs on the Tagus became known for a moment. The fog

descended again when they had passed through on their way to Paris,

and given their information as to the fortunes of the Army of Portugal

during the weeks that preceded their departure. The gaps in the

narrative were very long--nothing got through between the departure of

Masséna from Almeida on September 15, 1810, and Foy’s first arrival

at Ciudad Rodrigo on November 8th. There was another lacuna in the

knowledge of the situation between that date and the passage of

Masséna’s second successful messenger, Casabianca, from Santarem to

Rodrigo in the earliest days of February. And after Casabianca had

passed by, the next news came out through Foy’s second mission, when

he started to announce the oncoming retreat on March 5, and got to

the borders of Leon on March 13. The only way in which King Joseph at

Madrid, or the generals of the ‘military governments’ of Old Castile,

or Soult in Andalusia, felt the course of the war on its most important

theatre, was that they were for many months freed from any anxiety

about the movements of Wellington. He was ‘contained’ by Masséna, and,

however he might be faring, he had no power to interfere by armed force

in the affairs of Spain. The French for all this time had to deal only

with the armies of the Cortes, and with their old and irrepressible

enemies the guerrilleros of the mountains.

While the fate of the Portuguese expedition was still uncertain,

while it seemed possible to Napoleon that Masséna might cling to his

position at Santarem till Soult came up to join him on the Tagus,

a considerable change was made with regard to the French troops in

northern Spain. Convinced at last there was little to be said in favour

of that system of many small ‘military governments’, in Old Castile

and the neighbouring provinces, which he had created in 1810, the

Emperor resolved to put them all under a single commander. This would

give him six less independent generals to communicate with, and would

ensure for the future a much better co-operation between the divisions

which occupied the valley of the Douro and the Pyrenean regions. The

six military governors had been each playing his own game, and taking

little notice of that of his neighbours. Their enemies were mostly the

guerrillero bands of the Cantabrian hills and of Navarre. Each general

did his best to hunt these elusive enemies out of his own department,

but took little heed of their trespasses on his neighbours’ territory.

Evasive and indomitable partisans like Mina in Navarre, Julian Sanchez

in Old Castile, and Porlier and Longa in the Cantabrian sierras, found

it comparatively easy to shift their positions when the pressure on one

region was too great for them, and to move on into another--they were

sure that the hunt would soon slacken, and that they could return at

their leisure to their old haunts. The Emperor thought that it would

be possible to make an end of them, if all his garrisons and movable

columns in northern Spain were put under a single commander and moved

in unison under a single will. Hence came the decree of January 8,

1811, creating the ‘Army of the North,’ and handing it over to Marshal

Bessières, whose name was still remembered in those regions owing to

his old victory of Medina de Rio Seco. His authority extended over the

troops stationed in Navarre, Biscay, Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca,

the Asturias, and Santander, including not only the regular garrisons

of those provinces but the two divisions of the Young Guard, which had

replaced Drouet’s corps in Old Castile, and the division under Serras

which watched Galicia from the direction of Benavente and Astorga. The

total of the forces placed under his orders amounted to 70,000 men, of

whom 59,000 were ‘présents sous les armes,’ the rest being in hospital,

or detached outside the limits of the territory assigned to the Army of

the North.

Considerable as was this force, it did not accomplish all that the

Emperor hoped, even when directed by a single commander of solid

military talents. Bessières, though a capable officer, was not a

genius, and the tasks assigned to him were so multifarious that after a

short time he began to grow harassed and worried, and to cavil at every

order that was sent him. He was directed to ‘suppress brigandage,’

i. e. to put down the guerrilleros, to support the Army of Portugal

against Wellington whenever necessary, to keep an eye upon the Spanish

regular forces in Galicia and the Asturias. This, he declared, was

more than could be accomplished with the forces at his disposal. ‘If I

concentrate 20,000 men all communications are lost, and the insurgents

will make enormous progress. The coast would be lost as far as Bilbao.

We are without resources, because it is only with the greatest

pains that the troops can be fed from day to day. The spirit of the

population is abominably bad: the retreat of the Army of Portugal has

turned their heads. The bands of insurgents grow larger, and recruit

themselves actively on every side.... The Emperor is deceived about

Spain: the pacification of Spain does not depend on a battle with the

English, who will accept it or refuse it as they please, and who have

Portugal behind them for retreat. Every one knows the vicious system

of our operations. Every one allows that we are too widely scattered.

We occupy too much territory, we use up our resources without profit

and without necessity: we are clinging on to dreams. Cadiz and Badajoz

absorb all our means--Cadiz because we cannot take it, Badajoz because

it requires a whole army to support it. We ought to blow up Badajoz,

and to abandon the siege of Cadiz for the present. We ought to draw in,

get solid bases for our magazines and hospitals, and regard two-thirds

of Spain as a vast battlefield, which a battle may give us or cause us

to lose, till the moment that we change our system and take in hand the

real conquest and pacification of the country,’ &c.[264]

[264] Bessières to Berthier, printed in the Appendix to Belmas,

vol. i. p. 562.

All this means that Bessières found it impossible to pacify the North,

and concluded that it was useless to try to complete the conquest

of Andalusia or Portugal, when that of Navarre and Santander was so

far from being secure that no small party could go two miles from

a garrison town, without a large probability of being cut off by

the insurgents. He would have had his master abandon Andalusia and

Estremadura, in order to concentrate such masses of troops in the north

that the guerrilleros should be smothered by mere numbers, that every

mountain village should have its garrison. There was small likelihood

that his views would find favour at Paris; the Emperor knew well enough

the effect on his prestige that would result from the abandonment

of the siege of Cadiz, following upon the retreat of Masséna from

Santarem. It would look like a confession of defeat, a renunciation of

the great game of conquest; if the French armies retired beyond the

Sierra Morena, the results of eighteen months of victorious campaigning

in the south would be lost, and the Cortes at Cadiz would once more

have a realm to administer. Hence all that Napoleon did for Bessières

was to send him in June two new divisions for the strengthening of the

garrisons of the North[265], and to bid him fortify every important

station on the high-road to Madrid, and even the main bridges of the

upper Ebro. A few months later he recalled him, partly because he

considered him a pessimist, partly because Bessières quarrelled with

King Joseph, who was continually soliciting his removal. But before the

Duke of Istria departed he had many more troubles to go through, as

will be seen.

[265] See below, p. 225. Divisions Souham and Caffarelli.

The main difficulties of the Army of the North arose from geographical

facts. While the plains of Leon and Old Castile could be scoured by

cavalry, and easily traversed by flying columns, so that it was not

impossible to keep some sort of order in them, this flat upland was

bordered on the north by the long chain of the Cantabrian sierras

and their foot-hills, broad, rugged, and nearly roadless. Behind

these again lay the narrow and difficult coast-land of Asturias and

Santander, cut up into countless petty valleys each drained by its

own small river, and parted from its neighbours by spurs of the great

sierras. How was this mountain region, seventy miles broad and two

hundred long, to be dealt with? The French had no permanent garrisons

on the coast between Gijon, the port of Oviedo, which was generally

occupied by a detachment of Bonnet’s division, and Santander, not far

from the borders of Biscay[266]. This last Bessières describes as ‘a

bad post from every point of view, only to be defended by covering

it with large bodies of troops,’ and only accessible by a series of

difficult defiles. In the Cantabrian highlands dwelt Longa and Porlier,

with bands which had assumed the proportions of small armies; they

could communicate with the sea at any one of a dozen petty ports,

and draw arms and supplies from the British cruisers of the Bay of

Biscay. Even Mina would occasionally get in touch with the sea through

this coast-land, though his main sphere of operations was in Navarre.

There were dozens of smaller bands, each based on its own valley, but

capable of joining its neighbours for a sudden stroke. Again and again

French columns worked up into these sierras from the plain of the

Douro, and went on a hunt after the patriots. Sometimes they caught

them and inflicted severe loss; more often they were eluded by their

enemies, who fled by paths that regular troops could not follow, into

some distant corner of the mountains. It was impossible to garrison

each upland valley with a force that could resist a general levy of

the insurgents. Even little towns like Potes, in the Liebana, Longa’s

usual head quarters, which were repeatedly taken, could not be kept.

The ‘Army of the North’ would have required 150,000 men instead of

the 70,000 whom Bessières actually commanded, if it was to master the

whole of this difficult region. Indeed, Cantabria could only have been

conquered by an enemy possessing a sea force to attack it in the rear,

and occupy all its little ports, as well as an overwhelming land army

operating from all sides. To the end of the war Longa and Porlier,

often hunted but never destroyed, maintained themselves without any

great difficulty in their fastnesses. Nothing but the general despair

and demoralization that might have followed the extinction of the

patriotic cause in the whole of the rest of Spain, could have brought

the war in this region to an end. Nothing of the kind occurred: the

Cantabrians kept a high spirit; they won many small successes, and

they were perpetually helped by the British from the side of the

sea. Bessières had a hopeless problem before him in this quarter,

considering the size of his army.

[266] Bessières soon after his arrival put a garrison in Santoña,

between Santander and Bilbao.

But this was not his only trouble; Bonnet in Asturias was holding

Oviedo and the district immediately round it with a strong division,

which varied at one time and another from 6,000 to 8,000 men. He was

very useful in his present position, because he cut the Spanish line of

defence along the north coast in two, and because he seemed to threaten

Galicia from the north-east. The threat was not a very real one, for

he had not enough men to deliver an attack on eastern Galicia and at

the same time to hold Oviedo and its neighbourhood. But he was a source

of trouble as well as of strength to his superiors, for it was very

difficult to keep in touch with him through the pass of Pajares, and

if he were to be attacked at once by the Galicians and by a British

landing-force, his position would be a very dangerous one. He had

been put to great trouble by Renovales’s naval expedition in October

1810[267], though this was but a small force and had not received any

real help from Galicia along the land side. Bessières, after he had

been a few months in authority, was inclined to withdraw Bonnet to

the south side of the sierras, and to abandon Oviedo, but was warned

against such a move by his master, who said that this would be ‘a

detestable operation,’ as it would relieve Galicia from the threat of

invasion, allow of the re-formation of a Junta and an army in Asturias,

and necessitate a heavy concentration at Santander[268]. Nevertheless

the Marshal did at one crisis withdraw the division from Oviedo.

[267] See vol. iii. pp. 486-7.

[268] _Correspondance_, no. 17,785, 8th June, 1811.

Between Bonnet in the Asturias and Ciudad Rodrigo, the long front

against Galicia was occupied by a single weak French division, that

of Serras, whose head quarters were at Benavente, his advanced post

at Astorga, and his flank-guards at Leon and Zamora[269]. If the army

of Galicia had been in good order this force would have been in great

danger, for it was not strong enough to hold the ground allotted to it.

But when Del Parque in 1809 drew off to Estremadura the old Army of

the North, he had left behind him only a few skeleton corps, and the

best of these had been destroyed in defending Astorga in the following

year. The formation of a new Galician army of 20,000 men had been

decreed, and the _cadres_ left behind in the country had been filled up

in 1810, but the results were not satisfactory. The Captain-General,

Mahy, was a man of little energy, and spent most of it in quarrels

with the local Junta, whom he accused of conspiracy against him, and

charged with secret correspondence with La Romana and his party. He

seized their letters in the post and imprisoned two members, whereupon

riots broke out, and complaints were sent to the Regency at Cadiz. This

led to Mahy’s recall, and the captain-generalship was given to the

Duke of Albuquerque, then on his mission to London. He died without

having returned to Spain, so that the appointment was nugatory, and

the Regency then gave it to Castaños, who was at the same time made

Captain-General of Estremadura, after the death of La Romana and the

disaster at the Gebora. Castaños went to the Tagus, to rally the poor

remnants of the Estremaduran army, and while retaining the nominal

command in Galicia never visited that province, but deputed the command

in it to Santocildes, the young general who had so bravely defended

Astorga in the preceding spring. He had been sent prisoner to France,

but was adroit enough to escape from his captivity, and to make his

way back to Corunna. His appointment was popular, but he got no great

service out of the Galician army, which was in a deplorable condition,

and hopelessly scattered. The Junta kept many battalions to garrison

the harbour-fortresses of Corunna, Vigo, and Ferrol, and the main

body, whose head quarters lay at Villafranca in the Vierzo, did not

amount to more than 7,000 men, destitute of cavalry (which Galicia

could never produce) and very poorly provided with artillery. There was

another division, under General Cabrera, some 4,000 strong, at Puebla

de Senabria, and a third under Barcena and Losada on the borders of

the Asturias, opposite Bonnet. The whole did not amount to 16,000 raw

troops--yet this was sufficient to hold Serras in observation and to

watch Bonnet, who was too much distracted by the Cantabrian bands to

be really dangerous. But in the spring of 1811 the Galicians could do

no more, and Wellington was much chagrined to find that he could get

no effective assistance from them, after he had driven Masséna behind

the Agueda, and so shaken the hold of the French on the whole kingdom

of Leon. It was not till June that Santocildes found it possible

to descend from the hills and threaten Serras. This led to a petty

campaign about Astorga and on the Orbigo river, which will be narrated

in its due place.

[269] Since the disaster at Puebla de Senabria (vol. iii. p. 270)

Serras had drawn in his left flank and abandoned the Galician

foot-hills.