THE BATTLES OF THE PYRENEES
I. The Siege of St. Sebastian: the First Period, July 12-25 557
II. Soult takes the Offensive in Navarre. July 1813 587
III. Roncesvalles and Maya. July 25, 1813 608
IV. Sorauren. July 28, 1813 642
V. Soult’s Retreat. Second Battle of Sorauren. July 30 681
VI. Soult Retires into France. July 31-August 3, 1813 707
APPENDICES
I. British Losses at the Siege of Burgos. September 20-October
21, 1812 741
II. The French Armies in Spain. Morning State of
October 15, 1812 741
III. Strength of Wellington’s Army during and after the
Burgos Retreat. October-November 1813 745
IV. British Losses in the Burgos Retreat 747
V. Murray’s Army at Castalla. April 1813 748
VI. Suchet’s Army at Castalla 749
VII. British Losses at Biar and Castalla 750
VIII. Wellington’s Army in the Vittoria Campaign 750
IX. Spanish Troops under Wellington’s Command. June-July
1813 753
X. The French Army at Vittoria 754
XI. British and Portuguese Losses at Vittoria 757
XII. French Losses at Vittoria 761
XIII. Sir John Murray’s Army in the Tarragona Expedition 762
XIV. Suchet’s Army in Valencia and Catalonia. June 1813 763
XV. Spanish Armies on the East Coast. June 1813 764
XVI. The Army of Spain as reorganized by Soult. July 1813 765
XVII. British Losses at Maya and Roncesvalles. July 25,
1813 768
XVIII. British Losses at Sorauren. July 28, 1813 769
XIX. British Losses at the Second Battle of Sorauren and
the Combat of Beunza. July 30, 1813 770
XX. British Losses in Minor Engagements. July 31-August
2, 1813 772
XXI. Portuguese Losses in the Campaign of the Pyrenees 773
XXII. French Losses in the Campaign of the Pyrenees 774
INDEX 775
MAPS AND PLANS
I. PLAN OF SIEGE OPERATIONS AT BURGOS. SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER
1812 _To face_ 48
II. OPERATIONS ROUND SALAMANCA. NOVEMBER 1812 ” 130
III. BATTLE OF CASTALLA ” 274
IV. GENERAL MAP OF NORTHERN SPAIN FOR THE BURGOS
AND VITTORIA CAMPAIGNS _End of volume_
V. PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF VITTORIA _To face_ 434
VI. PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF ST. SEBASTIAN ” 584
VII. GENERAL MAP OF THE COUNTRY BETWEEN BAYONNE
AND PAMPELUNA ” 606
VIII. COMBAT OF RONCESVALLES ” 622
IX. COMBAT OF MAYA ” 636
X. FIRST BATTLE OF SORAUREN. JULY 28 ” 640
XI. SECOND BATTLE OF SORAUREN AND COMBAT OF BEUNZA.
JULY 30 ” 670
ILLUSTRATIONS
PORTRAIT OF SIR ROWLAND HILL _Frontispiece_
KING JOSEPH AT MORTEFONTAINE _To face page_ 544
SECTION XXXIV
THE BURGOS CAMPAIGN
CHAPTER I
WELLINGTON IN THE NORTH: BURGOS INVESTED AUGUST 31ST-SEPTEMBER 20TH,
1812
The year 1812 was packed with great events, and marked in Spain no less
than in Russia the final turn of the tide in the history of Napoleon’s
domination. But the end was not yet: when Wellington entered Madrid in
triumph on August 12th, the deliverance of the Peninsula was no more
certain than was the deliverance of Europe when the French Emperor
evacuated Moscow on October 22nd. Vittoria and Leipzig were still a
year away, and it was not till they had been fought and won that the
victory of the Allies was secure. The resources of the great enemy were
so immense that it required more than one disaster to exhaust them.
No one was more conscious of this than Wellington. Reflecting on the
relative numbers of his own Anglo-Portuguese army and of the united
strength of all the French corps in Spain, he felt that the occupation
of Madrid was rather a _tour de force_, an admirable piece of political
propaganda, than a decisive event. It would compel all the scattered
armies of the enemy to unite against him, and he was more than doubtful
whether he could make head against them. ‘I still hope,’ he wrote to
his brother Henry, the Ambassador at Cadiz, ‘to maintain our position
in Castile, and even to improve our advantages. But I shudder when I
reflect upon the enormity of the task which I have undertaken, with
inadequate powers myself to do anything, and without assistance of any
kind from the Spaniards[1].... I am apprehensive that all this may
turn out but ill for the Spanish cause. If, for any cause, I should be
overpowered, or should be obliged to retreat, what will the world say?
What will the people of England say?... That we made a great effort,
attended by some glorious circumstances; that from January 1st, 1812,
we had gained more advantages for the cause, and had acquired more
extent of territory by our operations than any army ever gained in such
a period of time against so powerful an enemy; but that unaided by the
Spanish army and government, we were finally overpowered, and compelled
to withdraw within our old frontier.’
It was with no light heart that Wellington faced the strategical
problem. In outline it stood as follows. Soult was now known to be
evacuating Andalusia, and it was practically certain that he would
retire on Valencia, where he would join King Joseph and Suchet. Their
three armies would produce a mass of veteran troops so great that even
if every division of the Anglo-Portuguese army were concentrated, if
Hill came up from Estremadura and Skerrett’s small force from Cadiz, it
would be eminently doubtful whether Madrid could be held and the enemy
thrust back. The French might advance 85,000 strong, and Wellington
could only rely on 60,000 men of his own to face them--though he
might scrape together three or four divisions of Spanish troops in
addition[2]. It was true that Suchet might probably refuse to evacuate
his Valencian viceroyalty, and that occupation for him might be found
by utilizing Maitland’s expeditionary force at Alicante, and Elio’s
Murcian army. But even if he did not join Soult and King Joseph in a
march on Madrid, the armies of the South and Centre might put 65,000
men into the field.
But this was only half the problem. There was Clausel’s Army of
Portugal, not to speak of Caffarelli’s Army of the North, to be
taken into consideration. Clausel had some 40,000 men behind the
Douro--troops recently beaten it is true, and known to be in bad order.
But they had not been pursued since the Allied army turned aside for
the march on Madrid, and had now been granted a month in which to
pull themselves together. Nothing had been left in front of them save
Clinton’s 6th Division at Cuellar, and a division of the Galicians at
Valladolid. And now the vexatious news had come that Clausel was on
the move, had chased the Galicians out of Valladolid, and was sending
flying columns into the plains of Leon. It was clear that he must be
dealt with at once, and there was no way to stop his annoying activity,
save by detaching a considerable force from Madrid. If unopposed, he
might overrun all the reconquered lands along the Douro, and even
imperil the British line of communication with Salamanca and Portugal.
If, as was possible, Caffarelli should lend him a couple of divisions
from the Army of the North, he might become a real danger instead of a
mere nuisance.
This was the reason why Wellington departed from Madrid on August 31st,
and marched with the 1st, 5th and 7th Divisions, Pack’s and Bradford’s
Portuguese, and Bock’s and Ponsonby’s dragoons--21,000 sabres and
bayonets--to join Clinton, and thrust back Clausel to the North,
before he should have leisure to do further mischief. There was, as
he conceived, just time enough to inflict a sharp check on the Army
of Portugal before the danger from the side of Valencia would become
pressing. It must be pushed out of the way, disabled again if possible,
and then he would return to Madrid for the greater game, leaving as
small a containing force as possible in front of the Northern army. He
summed up his plan in a confidential letter in the following terms:
‘All the world [the French world] seems to be intending to mass itself
in Valencia; while I am waiting for their plans to develop, for General
Hill to march up from Estremadura, and for the Spanish armies to get
together, I shall hunt away the elements of Marmont’s [i. e. Clausel’s]
army from the Douro. I shall push them as far off as I can, I shall
try to establish proper co-operation between the Anglo-Portuguese
detachment which I must leave on this side and the Galician Army,
and so I shall assure my left flank, when I shall be engaged on the
Valencian side[3].’
Here then, we have a time-problem set. Will it be possible to deal
handsomely with the Army of Portugal, to put it completely out of power
to do harm, before Soult shall have reached Valencia, reorganized
his army, and joined King Joseph in what Wellington considered the
inevitable scheme of a march on Madrid? The British general judged that
there would be sufficient time--and probably there might have been, if
everything had worked out in the best possible way. But he was quite
conscious that events might prove perverse--and he shuddered at the
thought--as he wrote to his brother in Cadiz.
The last precautions taken before departing for the Douro were to
draw up three sets of instructions. One was for Charles Alten,
left in command of the four divisions which remained in and about
Madrid[4], foreseeing the chance of Soult’s marching on the capital
without turning aside to Valencia--‘not at all probable, but it is
necessary to provide for all events.’ The second was for Hill, who
was due to arrive at Toledo in about three weeks. The third was for
General Maitland at Alicante, whose position would obviously be very
unpleasant, now that Soult was known to be evacuating Andalusia and
marching on Valencia to join Suchet and King Joseph. Soult’s march
altered the whole situation on the East Coast: if 50,000 more French
were concentrated in that direction, the Alicante force must be in some
danger, and would have to observe great caution, and if necessary to
shut itself up in the maritime fortresses. ‘As the allied forces in
Valencia and Murcia’--wrote Wellington to Maitland--‘will necessarily
be thrown upon the defensive for a moment, while the enemy will be in
great strength in those parts, I conclude that the greater part of
those forces will be collected in Alicante, and it would be desirable
to strengthen our posts at Cartagena during this crisis, which I hope
will be only momentary[5].’ Another dispatch, dated four days later,
adverts to the possibility that Soult may fall upon Alicante on his
arrival in the kingdom of Valencia. Maitland is to defend the place,
but to take care that all precautions as to the embarking his troops
in the event of ill-success are made. He is expected to maintain it as
long as possible; and with the sea open to him, and a safe harbour, the
defence should be long and stubborn, however great the numbers of the
besiegers[6].
With these instructions drawn out for Maitland, Wellington finally
marched for the North. His conception of the situation in Valencia
seems to have been that Soult, on his arrival, would _not_ meddle with
Alicante: it was more probable that he and King Joseph would rather
take up the much more important task of endeavouring to reconquer
Madrid and New Castile. They would leave Suchet behind them to contain
Maitland, Elio and Ballasteros. It would be impossible for him to lend
them any troops for a march on Madrid, while such a large expeditionary
force was watching his flank. The net result would be that ‘by keeping
this detachment at Alicante, with Whittingham’s and Roche’s Spaniards,
I shall prevent too many of the gentlemen now assembled in Valencia
from troubling me in the Upper Country [New Castile][7].’
Travelling with his usual celerity, Wellington left Madrid on August
31st, was at Villa Castin on the northern side of the Guadarrama pass
on September 2nd, and had reached Arevalo, where he joined Clinton and
the 6th Division on September 3rd. The divisions which he was bringing
up from Madrid had been started off some days before he himself left
the capital. He passed them between the Escurial and Villa Castin, but
they caught him up again at Arevalo early on the 4th, so that he had
his fighting force concentrated on that day, and was prepared to deal
with Clausel.
The situation of affairs on the Douro requires a word of explanation.
Clausel, it will be remembered, had retired from Valladolid on July
30, unpursued. He was prepared to retreat for any length--even as far
as Burgos--if he were pressed. But no one followed him save Julian
Sanchez’s lancers and some patrols of Anson’s Light Cavalry brigade.
Wherefore he halted his main body on the line of the Arlanza, with two
divisions at Torquemada and two at Lerma; some way to his left Foy,
with two divisions more, was at Aranda, on the Upper Douro, where he
had maintained his forward position, because not even a cavalry patrol
from the side of the Allies had come forward to disquiet him. In front
of Clausel himself there was soon nothing left but the lightest of
cavalry screens, for Julian Sanchez was called off by Wellington to
New Castile: when he was gone, there remained Marquinez’s guerrilleros
at Palencia, and outposts of the 16th Light Dragoons at Valtanas:
the main body of G. Anson’s squadrons lay at Villavanez, twenty
miles behind[8]. The only infantry force which the Allies had north
of the Douro was one of the divisions of the Army of Galicia, which
(with Santocildes himself in command) came up to Valladolid on August
6th, not much over 3,000 bayonets strong. The second of the Galician
divisions which had descended into the plain of Leon was now blockading
Toro. The third and most numerous was still engaged in the interminable
siege of Astorga, which showed at last some signs of drawing to its
close--not because the battering of the place had been effective,
but simply because the garrison was growing famished. They had been
provisioned only as far as August 1, and after that date had been
forced upon half and then quarter rations. But the news of the disaster
of Salamanca had not, as many had hoped among the Allies, scared their
commander into capitulation.
Clausel on August 1 had not supposed it possible that he would be
tempted to take the offensive again within a fortnight. His army was
in a most dilapidated condition, and he was prepared to give way
whenever pressed. It was not that his numbers were so very low, for on
August 1st the Army of Portugal only counted 10,000 less effectives
than on July 15th. Though it had lost some 14,000 men in the Salamanca
campaign, it had picked up some 4,000 others from the dépôt at
Valladolid, from the many small garrisons which it had drawn in during
its retreat, and from drafts found at Burgos.[9] Its loss in cavalry
had been fully repaired by the arrival of Chauvel’s two regiments from
the Army of the North, and most of the fugitives and marauders who
had been scattered over the countryside after the battle of July 22nd
gradually drifted back to their colours. It was not so much numbers
as spirit that was wanting in the Army of Portugal. On August 6
Clausel wrote to the Minister of War at Paris that he had halted in a
position where he could feed the troops, give them some days of repose,
and above all re-establish their morale[10]. ‘I must punish some of
the men, who are breaking out in the most frightful outrages, and so
frighten the others by an example of severity; above all I must put
an end to a desire, which they display too manifestly, to recross the
Ebro, and get back nearer to the French frontier. It is usual to see an
army disheartened after a check: but it would be hard to find one whose
discouragement is greater than that of these troops: and I cannot, and
ought not, to conceal from you that there has been prevailing among
them for some time a very bad spirit. Disorders and revolting excesses
have marked every step of our retreat. I shall employ all the means
in my power to transform the dispositions of the soldiers, and to put
an end to the deplorable actions which daily take place under the
very eyes of officers of all grades--actions which the latter fail to
repress.’
Clausel was as good as his word, and made many and severe examples,
shooting (so he says) as many as fifty soldiers found guilty of
murders, assaults on officers, and other excesses[11]. It is probable,
however, that it was not so much his strong punitive measures which
brought about an improved discipline in the regiments, as the fortnight
of absolutely undisturbed repose which they enjoyed from the 1st to the
14th of August. The feeling of demoralization caused by the headlong
and disorderly retreat from Salamanca died down, as it became more and
more certain that the pursuit was over, and that there was no serious
hostile force left within many miles of the line of the Arlanza. The
obsession of being hunted by superior forces had been the ruinous
thing: when this terror was withdrawn, and when the more shattered
regiments had been re-formed into a smaller number of battalions, and
provided in this fashion with their proper proportion of officers[12],
the troops began to realize that they still formed a considerable
army, and that they had been routed, but not absolutely put out of
action, by the Salamanca disaster.
Yet their morale had been seriously shaken; there was still a want of
officers; a number of the rejoining fugitives had come in without arms
or equipment; while others had been heard of, but had not yet reported
themselves at their regimental head-quarters. It therefore required
considerable hardihood on Clausel’s part to try an offensive move, even
against a skeleton enemy. His object was primarily to bring pressure
upon the allied rear, in order to relieve King Joseph from Wellington’s
attentions. He had heard that the whole of the Anglo-Portuguese army,
save a negligible remnant, had marched on Madrid; but he was not sure
that the Army of the Centre might not make some endeavour to save the
capital, especially if it had been reinforced from Estremadura by
Drouet. Clausel knew that the King had repeatedly called for succours
from the South; it was possible that they might have been sent at the
last moment. If they had come up, and if Wellington could be induced
to send back two or three divisions to the Douro, Madrid might yet be
saved. The experiment was worth risking, but it must take the form of
a demonstration rather than a genuine attack upon Wellington’s rear.
The Army of Portugal was still too fragile an instrument to be applied
to heavy work. Indeed, when he moved, Clausel left many shattered
regiments behind, and only brought 25,000 men to the front.
There was a second object in Clausel’s advance: he hoped to save the
garrisons of Astorga, Toro, and Zamora, which amounted in all to over
3,000 men. Each of the first two was being besieged by a Spanish
division, the third by Silveira’s Portuguese militia. The French
general judged that none of the investing forces was equal to a fight
in the open with a strong flying column of his best troops. Even if
all three could get together, he doubted if they dared face two French
divisions. His scheme was to march on Valladolid with his main body,
and drive out of it the small Spanish force in possession, while
Foy--his senior division-commander--should move rapidly across country
with some 8,000 men, and relieve by a circular sweep first Toro, then
Astorga, then Zamora. The garrisons were to be brought off, the places
blown up: it was useless to dream of holding them, for Wellington would
probably come to the Douro again in force, the sieges would recommence,
and no second relief would be possible in face of the main British army.
On August 13th a strong French cavalry reconnaissance crossed the
Arlanza and drove in the guerrilleros from Zevico: on the following day
infantry was coming up from the rear, pushing forward on the high-road
from Torquemada to Valladolid. Thereupon Anson, on that evening, sent
back the main body of his light dragoons beyond the Douro, leaving only
two squadrons as a rearguard at Villavanez. The Galician division in
Valladolid also retired by the road of Torrelobaton and Castronuevo
on Benavente. Santocildes--to Wellington’s disgust when it reached
his ears--abandoned in Valladolid not only 400 French convalescents
in hospital, but many hundred stand of small arms, which had been
collected there from the prisoners taken during the retreat of Clausel
in the preceding month. This was inexcusable carelessness, as there was
ample time to destroy them, if not to carry them off. French infantry
entered Valladolid on the 14th and 15th, apparently about 12,000
strong: their cavalry, a day’s march ahead, had explored the line of
the Douro from Simancas to Tudela, and found it watched by G. Anson’s
pickets all along that front.
The orders left behind by Wellington on August 5th, had been that if
Clausel came forward--which he had not thought likely--G. Anson was
to fall back to the Douro, and if pressed again to join Clinton’s
division at Cuellar. The retreat of both of them was to be on Segovia
in the event of absolute necessity. On the other hand, if the French
should try to raise the sieges of Astorga or Zamora, Santocildes and
Silveira were to go behind the Esla[13]. Clausel tried both these moves
at once, for on the same day that he entered Valladolid he had turned
off Foy with two divisions--his own and Taupin’s (late Ferey’s)--and a
brigade of Curto’s _chasseurs_, to march on Toro by the road through
Torrelobaton. The troops in Valladolid served to cover this movement:
they showed a division of infantry and 800 horse in front of Tudela
on the 16th, and pushed back Anson’s light dragoons to Montemayor, a
few miles beyond the Douro. But this was only a demonstration: their
cavalry retired in the evening, and Anson reoccupied Tudela on the
20th. It soon became clear that Clausel was not about to cross the
Douro in force, and was only showing troops in front of Valladolid in
order to keep Anson and Clinton anxious. He remained there with some
12,000 or 15,000 men from August 14th till September 7th, keeping very
quiet, and making no second attempt to reconnoitre beyond the Douro.
Anson, therefore, watched the line of the river, with his head-quarters
at Valdestillas, for all that time, while the guerrilleros of Saornil
and Principe went over to the northern bank and hung around Clausel’s
flank. Clinton, on his own initiative, moved his division from Cuellar
to Arevalo, which placed him on the line of the road to Madrid via the
Guadarrama, instead of that by Segovia. This Wellington afterwards
declared to be a mistake: he had intended to keep the 6th Division more
to the right, apparently in order that it might cross the Douro above
Valladolid if required[14]. It should not have moved farther southward
than Olmedo.
Foy meanwhile, thus covered by Clausel, made a march of surprising
celerity. On the 17th he arrived at Toro, and learned that the
Galicians blockading that place had cleared off as early as the 15th,
and had taken the road for Benavente. He blew up the fort, and took
on with him the garrison of 800 men. At Toro he was much nearer to
Zamora than to Astorga, but he resolved to march first on the remoter
place--it was known to be hard pressed, and the French force there
blockaded was double that in Zamora. He therefore moved on Benavente
with all possible speed, and crossed the Esla there, driving away a
detachment of the Galician division (Cabrera’s) which had come from
Valladolid, when it made an ineffectual attempt to hold the fords. On
the 20th August he reached La Baneza, some sixteen miles from Astorga,
and there received the tiresome news that the garrison had surrendered
only thirty-six hours before to Castaños. The three battalions there,
worn down by famine to 1,200 men, had capitulated, because they had no
suspicion that any help was near. The Spanish general had succeeded in
concealing from them all knowledge of Foy’s march. They laid down their
arms on the 18th, and were at once marched off to Galicia: Castaños
himself accompanied them with all his force, being fully determined not
to fight Foy, even though his numbers were superior.
The French cavalry pushed on to Astorga on the 21st, and found the
gates open and the place empty, save for seventy sick of the late
garrison, who had been left behind under the charge of a surgeon.
It was useless to think of pursuing Castaños, who had now two days’
start, wherefore Foy turned his attention to Zamora. Here Silveira,
though warned to make off when the enemy reached Toro, had held on
to the last moment, thinking that he was safe when Foy swerved away
toward Astorga. He only drew off when he got news on the 22nd, from Sir
Howard Douglas, the British Commissioner with the Galician army, to the
effect that Foy, having failed to save Astorga, was marching against
him. He retired to Carvajales behind the Esla, but was not safe there,
for the French general, turning west from Benavente, had executed a
forced march for Tabara, and was hastening westward to cut in between
Carvajales and the road to Miranda de Douro on the Portuguese frontier.
Warned only just in time of this move, Silveira hurried off towards his
own country, and was within one mile of its border when Foy’s advanced
cavalry came up with his rearguard near Constantin, the last village
in Spain. They captured his baggage and some stragglers, but made no
serious endeavour to charge his infantry, which escaped unharmed to
Miranda. Foy attributed this failure to Curto, the commander of the
light horse: ‘le défaut de décision et l’inertie coupable du général
commandant la cavalerie font perdre les fruits d’une opération bien
combinée’ (August 23rd)[15]. This pursuit had drawn Foy very far
westward; his column turning back, only reached Zamora on August
26th: here he drew off the garrison and destroyed the works. He states
that his next move would have been a raid on Salamanca, where lay not
only the British base hospital, but a vast accumulation of stores,
unprotected by any troops whatever. But he received at Zamora, on the
27th, urgent orders from Clausel to return to Valladolid, as Wellington
was coming up against him from Madrid with his whole army. Accordingly
Foy abandoned his plan, and reached Tordesillas, with his troops in a
very exhausted condition from hard marching, on August 28th. Clausel
had miscalculated dates--warned of the first start of the 1st and
7th Divisions from Madrid, he had supposed that they would be at
Arevalo some days before they actually reached it on September 4th.
Foy was never in any real danger, and there had been time to spare.
His excursion undoubtedly raised the spirit of the Army of Portugal:
it was comforting to find that the whole of the Galicians would not
face 8,000 French troops, and that the plains of Leon could be overrun
without opposition by such a small force. On his return to join the
main body Foy noted in his diary that Clausel had been very inert in
face of Anson and Clinton, and wrote that he himself would have tried
a more dashing policy--and might possibly have failed in it, owing to
the discouragement and apathy still prevailing among many of the senior
officers of the Army of Portugal[16].
Wellington had received the news of Clausel’s advance on Valladolid as
early as August 18th, and was little moved by it. Indeed he expressed
some pleasure at the fact. ‘I think,’ he wrote to Lord Bathurst, ‘that
the French mean to carry off the garrisons from Zamora and Toro, which
I hope they will effect, as otherwise I must go and take them. If I do
not, nobody else will, as is evident from what has been passing for the
last two months at Astorga[17].’ He expressed his pleasure on hearing
that Santocildes had retired behind the Esla without fighting, for he
had feared that he might try to stop Foy and get beaten. It was only,
as we have already seen, after he obtained practical certainty that
Soult had evacuated Andalusia, so that no expedition to the South would
be necessary, that he turned his mind to Clausel‘s doings. And his
march to Arevalo and Valladolid was intended to be a mere excursion for
a few weeks, preparatory to a return to New Castile to face Soult and
King Joseph, when they should become dangerous. From Arevalo he wrote
to Castaños to say that ‘it was necessary to drive off Marmont’s (i.e.
Clausel’s) army without loss of time, so as to make it possible to turn
the whole of his forces eventually against Soult.’ He should press the
movement so far forward as he could; perhaps he might even lay siege
to Burgos. But the Army of Galicia must come eastward again without
delay, and link up its operations with the Anglo-Portuguese. He hoped
to have retaken Valladolid by September 6th, and wished to see Castaños
there, with the largest possible force that he could gather, on that
date[18]. The Galician army had returned to Astorga on August 27th, and
so far as distances went, there was nothing to prevent it from being at
Valladolid eleven days after, if it took the obvious route by Benavente
and Villalpando.
The troops from Madrid having joined Clinton and the 6th Division
at Arevalo, Wellington had there some 28,000 men collected for the
discomfiture of Clausel, a force not much more numerous than that which
the French general had concentrated behind the Douro, for Foy was now
back at Tordesillas, and the whole Army of Portugal was in hand, save
certain depleted and disorganized regiments which had been left behind
in the province of Burgos. But having the advantage of confidence, and
knowing that his enemy must still be suffering from the moral effects
of Salamanca, the British general pushed on at once, not waiting for
the arrival on the scene of the Galicians. On the 4th the army marched
to Olmedo, on the 5th to Valdestillas, on the 6th to Boecillo, from
whence it advanced to the Douro and crossed it by various fords between
Tudela and Puente de Duero--the main body taking that of Herrera. The
French made no attempt to defend the line of the river, but--rather
to Wellington’s surprise--were found drawn up as if for battle a few
miles beyond it, their right wing holding the city of Valladolid, whose
outskirts had been put in a state of defence, their left extending to
the ground about the village of La Cisterniga. No attempt was made
to dislodge them with the first divisions that came up: Wellington
preferred to wait for his artillery and his reserves; the process
of filing across the fords had been tedious, and occupied the whole
afternoon.
On this Clausel had calculated: he was only showing a front in
order to give his train time to move to the rear, and to allow his
right wing (Foy) at Simancas and Tordesillas to get away. A prompt
evacuation of Valladolid would have exposed it to be cut off. On the
following morning the French had disappeared from La Cisterniga, but
Valladolid was discovered to be still held by an infantry rearguard.
This, when pushed, retired and blew up the bridge over the Pisuerga
on the opposite side of the city, before the British cavalry could
seize it. The critics thought that Clausel might have been hustled
with advantage, both on the 6th and on the morning of the 7th, and
that Foy might have been cut off from the main body by rapid action
on the first day[19]. Wellington’s cautious movements may probably be
explained by the fact that an attack on Clausel on the 6th would have
involved fighting among the suburbs and houses of Valladolid, which
would have been costly, and he had no wish to lose men at a moment when
the battalion-strengths were very low all through the army. Moreover,
the capture of Valladolid would not have intercepted the retreat of the
French at Simancas, but only have forced them to retire by parallel
roads northward. At the same time it must be owned that any loss of
life involved in giving Clausel a thorough beating on this day would
have been justified later on. He had only some 15,000 men in line, not
having his right-wing troops with him that day. If the Army of Portugal
had been once more attacked and scattered, it would not have been able
to interfere in the siege of Burgos, where Wellington was, during the
next few weeks, to lose as many men as a general action would have
cost. But this no prophet could have foreseen on September 6th.
It cannot be said that Wellington’s pursuit of Clausel was pressed
with any earnestness. On the 8th his advanced cavalry were no farther
forward than Cabezon, seven miles in front of Valladolid, and it
was not till the 9th that the 6th Division, leading the infantry,
passed that same point. Wellington himself, with the main body of his
infantry, remained at Valladolid till the 10th. His dispatches give
no further explanation for this delay than that the troops which had
come from Madrid were fatigued, and sickly, from long travel in the
hot weather, and that he wished to have assurance of the near approach
of the Army of Galicia, which was unaccountably slow in moving forward
from Astorga[20]. Meanwhile he took the opportunity of his stay in
Valladolid to command, and be present at, a solemn proclamation of the
March Constitution. This was a prudent act; for though the ceremony
provoked no enthusiasm whatever in the city[21], where there were
few Liberals in existence, it was a useful demonstration against
calumnies current in Cadiz, to the effect that he so much disliked the
Constitution that he was conspiring with the _serviles_, and especially
with Castaños, to ignore or even to overthrow it.
While Wellington halted at Valladolid, Clausel had established himself
at Dueñas, fifteen miles up the Pisuerga. He retired from thence,
however, on the 10th, when the 6th Division and Anson’s cavalry pressed
in his advanced posts, and Wellington’s head-quarters were at Dueñas
next day. From thence reconnaissances were sent out both on the Burgos
and the Palencia roads. The latter city was found unoccupied and--what
was more surprising--not in the least damaged by the retreating enemy.
The whole of Clausel’s army had marched on the Burgos road, and its
rearguard was discovered in front of Torquemada that evening. The
British army followed, leaving Palencia on its left, and head-quarters
were at Magaz on the 12th. Anson’s light dragoons had the interesting
spectacle that afternoon of watching the whole French army defile
across the bridge of the Pisuerga at Torquemada, under cover of a
brigade of _chasseurs_ drawn up on the near side. Critics thought that
the covering force might have been driven in, and jammed against the
narrow roadway over the bridge[22]. But the British brigadier waited
for artillery to come up, and before it arrived the enemy had hastily
decamped. He was pursued as far as Quintana, where there was a trifling
cavalry skirmish at nightfall.
At Magaz, on the night of the 12th, Wellington got the tiresome
news that Santocildes and Castaños, with the main body of the Army
of Galicia, had passed his flank that day, going southward, and had
continued their way towards Valladolid, instead of falling in on the
British line of march. Their junction was thus deferred for several
days. Wellington wrote in anger, ‘Santocildes has been six days
marching: he was yesterday within three leagues of us, and knew it that
night; but he has this morning moved on to Valladolid, eight leagues
from us, and unless I halt two days for him he will not join us for
four or five days more[23].’ As a matter of fact the Galicians did not
come up till the 16th, while if Santocildes had used a little common
sense they would have been in line on the 12th September.
The pursuit of Clausel continued to be a very slow and uninteresting
business: from the 11th to the 15th the army did not advance more
than two leagues a day. On the 13th the British vanguard was at
Villajera, while the French main body was at Pampliega: on the 14th
Anson’s cavalry was at Villadrigo, on the 15th at Villapequeña, on
the 16th near Celada, where Clausel was seen in position. On this day
the Galicians at last came up--three weak divisions under Cabrera,
Losada, and Barcena, with something over 11,000 infantry, but only one
field-battery and 350 horse. The men looked fatigued with much marching
and very ragged: Wellington had hoped for 16,000 men, and considering
that the total force of the Galician army was supposed to be over
30,000 men, it seems that more might have been up, even allowing for
sick, recruits, and the large garrisons of Ferrol and Corunna.
The 16th September was the only day on which Clausel showed any signs
of making a stand: in the afternoon he was found in position, a league
beyond Celada on favourable ground. Wellington arranged to turn his
left flank next morning, with the 6th Division and Pack’s brigade; but
at dawn he went off in haste, and did not stop till he reached Villa
Buniel, near Burgos. Here, late in the afternoon, Wellington again
outflanked him with the 6th Division, and he retreated quite close to
the city. On the 18th he evacuated it, after throwing a garrison into
the Castle, and went back several leagues on the high-road toward the
Ebro. The Allies entered Burgos, and pushed their cavalry beyond it
without meeting opposition. On the 19th the Castle was invested by the
1st Division and Pack’s brigade, while the rest of Wellington’s army
took position across the road by which the French had retreated. A
cavalry reconnaissance showed that Clausel had gone back many miles:
the last outposts of his rear were at Quintanavides, beyond the
watershed which separates the basin of the Douro from that of the Ebro.
His head-quarters were now at Briviesca, and it appeared that, if once
more pushed, he was prepared to retreat _ad infinitum_. Wellington,
however, pressed him no farther: throwing forward three of his own
divisions and the Galicians to Monasterio and other villages to the
east of Burgos, where a good covering position was found, he proceeded
to turn his attention to the Castle.
This short series of operations between the 10th and the 19th of
September 1812 has in it much that perplexes the critical historian.
It is not Clausel’s policy that is interesting--he simply retired
day after day, whenever the enemy’s pursuing infantry came within
ten miles of him. Sometimes he gave way before the mere cavalry of
Wellington’s advanced guard. There was nothing in his conduct to
remind the observer of Ney’s skilful retreat from Pombal to Ponte
Murcella in 1811, when a rearguard action was fought nearly every
afternoon. Clausel was determined not to allow himself to be caught,
and would not hold on, even in tempting positions of considerable
strength. As he wrote to Clarke before the retreat had begun, ‘Si
l’ennemi revient avec toute son armée vers moi, je me tiendrai en
position, quoique toujours à peu de distance de lui, afin de n’avoir
aucun échec à éprouver.’ He suffered no check because he always made
off before he was in the slightest danger of being brought to action.
It is difficult to understand Napier’s enthusiasm for what he calls
‘beautiful movements’[24]; to abscond on the first approach of the
enemy’s infantry may be a safe and sound policy, but it can hardly be
called brilliant or artistic. It is true that there would have been
worse alternatives to take--Clausel might have retreated to the Ebro
without stopping, or he might have offered battle at the first chance;
but the avoidance of such errors does not in itself constitute a very
high claim to praise. An examination of the details of the march of
the British army during this ten days plainly fails to corroborate
Napier’s statement that the French general ‘offered battle every day’
and ‘baffled his great adversary.’ His halt for a few hours at Celada
on September 16th was the only one during which he allowed the allied
main body to get into touch with him late in the day; and he absconded
before Wellington’s first manœuvre to outflank him[25].
The thing that is truly astonishing in this ten days is the
extraordinary torpidity of Wellington’s pursuit. He started by waiting
three days at Valladolid after expelling the French; and he continued,
when once he had put his head-quarters in motion, by making a series
of easy marches of six to ten miles a day, never showing the least
wish to hustle his adversary or to bring him to action[26]. Now to
manœuvre the French army to beyond Burgos, or even to the Ebro, was
not the desired end--it was necessary to put Clausel out of action,
if (as Wellington kept repeating in all his letters) the main allied
army was to return to Madrid within a few weeks, to watch for Soult’s
offensive. To escort the Army of Portugal with ceremonious politeness
to Briviesca, without the loss to pursuers or pursued of fifty men, was
clearly not sufficient. Clausel’s troops, being not harassed in the
least, but allowed a comfortable retreat, remained an ‘army in being’:
though moved back eighty miles on the map, they were not disposed of,
and could obviously come forward again the moment that Wellington
left the north with the main body of his troops. Nothing, therefore,
was gained by the whole manœuvre, save that Clausel was six marches
farther from the Douro than he had been on September 1st. To keep him
in his new position Wellington must have left an adequate containing
army: it does not seem that he could have provided one from the 28,000
Anglo-Portuguese and 11,000 Galicians who were at his disposition, and
yet have had any appreciable force to take back to Madrid. Clausel had
conducted his raid on Valladolid with something under 25,000 men; but
this did not represent the whole strength of the Army of Portugal:
after deducting the sick and the garrisons there were some 39,000 men
left--of these some were disarmed stragglers who had only just come
back to their colours, others belonged to shattered corps which were
only just reorganizing themselves in their new _cadres_. But in a few
weeks Clausel would have at least 35,000 men under arms of his own
troops, without counting anything that the Army of the North might
possibly lend him. To contain him Wellington would have to leave, in
addition to the 11,000 Galicians, at least three British divisions and
the corresponding cavalry--say 16,000 or 18,000 men. He could only
bring back some 10,000 bayonets to join Hill near Madrid. This would
not enable him to face Soult.
But if Clausel had been dealt with in a more drastic style, if he had
been hunted and harassed, it is clear that he might have been disabled
for a long time from taking the offensive. His army was still in a
doubtful condition as regards morale, and there can be little reason
to doubt, that if hard pressed, it would have sunk again into the
despondency and disorder which had prevailed at the beginning of the
month of August. The process of driving him back with a firm hand
might, no doubt, have been more costly than the slow tactics actually
adopted; but undoubtedly such a policy would have paid in the end.
There is no explanation to be got out of Wellington’s rather numerous
letters written between the 10th and the 21st. In one of them he
actually observes that ‘we have been pushing them, but not very
vigorously, till the 16th[27],’ without saying why the pressure was not
applied more vigorously. From others it might perhaps be deduced that
Wellington was awaiting the arrival of the Galician army, because when
it came up he would have a very large instead of a small superiority
of force over the French. But this does not fully explain his slowness
in pursuing an enemy who was evidently on the run, and determined not
to fight. We may, as has been already mentioned, speak of his wish to
avoid loss of life (not much practised during the Burgos operations a
few days later on!) and of the difficulty of providing for supplies in
a countryside unvisited before by the British army, and very distant
from its base-magazines. But when all has been said, no adequate
explanation for his policy has been provided. It remains inexplicable,
and its results were unhappy.
SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER II
THE SIEGE OF BURGOS. SEPTEMBER 19TH-OCTOBER 20TH, 1812
The Castle of Burgos lies on an isolated hill which rises straight out
of the streets of the north-western corner of that ancient city, and
overtops them by 200 feet or rather more. Ere ever there were kings in
Castile, it had been the residence of Fernan Gonzalez, and the early
counts who recovered the land from the Moors. Rebuilt a dozen times in
the Middle Ages, and long a favourite palace of the Castilian kings,
it had been ruined by a great fire in 1736, and since then had not
been inhabited. There only remained an empty shell, of which the most
important part was the great Donjon which had defied the flames. The
summit of the hill is only 250 yards long: the eastern section of it
was occupied by the Donjon, the western by a large church, Santa Maria
la Blanca: between them were more or less ruined buildings, which had
suffered from the conflagration. Passing by Burgos in 1808, after the
battle of Gamonal, Napoleon had noted the commanding situation of the
hill, and had determined to make it one of the fortified bases upon
which the French domination in northern Spain was to be founded. He had
caused a plan to be drawn up for the conversion of the ruined mediaeval
stronghold into a modern citadel, which should overawe the city below,
and serve as a half-way house, an arsenal, and a dépôt for French
troops moving between Bayonne and Madrid. Considered as a fortress it
had one prominent defect: while its eastern, southern, and western
sides look down into the low ground around the Arlanzon river, there
lies on its northern side, only 300 yards away, a flat-topped plateau,
called the hill of San Miguel, which rises to within a few feet of the
same height as the Donjon, and overlooks all the lower slopes of the
Castle mount. As this rising ground--now occupied by the city reservoir
of Burgos--commanded so much of the defences, Napoleon held that it
must be occupied, and a fort upon it formed part of his original plan.
But the Emperor passed on; the tide of war swept far south of Madrid;
and the full scheme for the fortification of Burgos was never carried
out; money--the essential thing when building is in hand--was never
forthcoming in sufficient quantities, and the actual state of the place
in 1812 was very different from what it would have been if Napoleon’s
orders had been carried out in detail. Enough was done to make the
Castle impregnable against guerrillero bands--the only enemies who ever
came near it between 1809 and 1812--but it could not be described as
a complete or satisfactory piece of military engineering. Against a
besieger unprovided with sufficient artillery it was formidable enough:
round two-thirds of its circuit it had a complete double _enceinte_,
enclosing the Donjon and the church on the summit which formed its
nucleus. On the western side, for about one-third of its circumference,
it had an outer or third line of defence, to take in the lowest slopes
of the hill on which it lies. For here the ground descended gradually,
while to the east it shelved very steeply down to the town, and an
external defence was unnecessary and indeed impossible.
The outer line all round (i.e. the third line on the west, the second
line on the rest of the circumference) had as its base the old walls
of the external enclosure of the mediaeval Castle, modernized by
shot-proof parapets and with tambours and palisades added at the angles
to give flank fire. It had a ditch 30 feet wide, and a counterscarp
in masonry, while the inner enceintes were only strong earthworks,
like good field entrenchments; they were, however, both furnished with
palisades in front and were also ‘fraised’ above. The Donjon, which had
been strengthened and built up, contained the powder magazine in its
lower story. On its platform, which was most solid, was established
a battery for eight heavy guns (_Batterie Napoléon_), which from its
lofty position commanded all the surrounding ground, including the
top of the hill of San Miguel. The magazine of provisions, which was
copiously supplied, was in the church of Santa Maria la Blanca. Food
never failed--but water was a more serious problem; there was only one
well, and the garrison had to be put on an allowance for drinking
from the commencement of the siege. The hornwork of San Miguel, which
covered the important plateau to the north, had never been properly
finished. It was very large; its front was composed of earthwork 25
feet high, covered by a counterscarp of 10 feet deep. Here the work
was formidable, the scarp being steep and slippery; but the flanks
were not so strong, and the rear or gorge was only closed by a row of
palisades, erected within the last two days. The only outer defences
consisted of three light _flèches_, or redans, lying some 60 yards out
in front of the hornwork, at projecting points of the plateau, which
commanded the lower slopes. The artillery in San Miguel consisted of
seven field-pieces, 4- and 6-pounders: there were no heavy guns in it.
The garrison of Burgos belonged to the Army of the North, not to that
of Portugal. Caffarelli himself paid a hasty visit to the place just
before the siege began, and threw in some picked troops--two battalions
of the 34th[28], one of the 130th; making 1,600 infantry. There were
also a company of artillery, another of pioneers, and detachments
which brought up the whole to exactly 2,000 men--a very sufficient
number for a place of such small size. There were nine heavy guns (16-
and 12-pounders), of which eight were placed in the Napoleon battery,
eleven field-pieces (seven of them in San Miguel), and six mortars or
howitzers. This was none too great a provision, and would have been
inadequate against a besieger provided with a proper battering-train:
Wellington--as we shall see--was not so provided. The governor was a
General of Brigade named Dubreton, one of the most resourceful and
enterprising officers whom the British army ever encountered. He earned
at Burgos a reputation even more brilliant than that which Phillipon
acquired at Badajoz.
The weak points of the fortress were firstly the unfinished condition
of the San Miguel hornwork, which Dubreton had to maintain as long as
he could, in order that the British might not use the hill on which it
stood as vantage ground for battering the Castle; secondly, the lack
of cover within the works. The Donjon and the church of Santa Maria
could not house a tithe of the garrison; the rest had to bivouac in
the open, a trying experience in the rain, which fell copiously on
many days of the siege. If the besiegers had possessed a provision
of mortars, to keep up a regular bombardment of the interior of the
Castle, it would not long have been tenable, owing to the losses that
must have been suffered. Thirdly must be mentioned the bad construction
of many of the works--part of them were mediaeval structures, not
originally intended to resist cannon, and hastily adapted to modern
necessities: some of them were not furnished with parapets or
embrasures--which had to be extemporized with sandbags. Lastly, it must
be remembered that the conical shape of the hill exposed the inner no
less than the outer works to battering: the lower _enceintes_ only
partly covered the inner ones, whose higher sections stood up visible
above them. The Donjon and Santa Maria were exposed from the first to
such fire as the enemy could turn against them, no less than the walls
of the outer circumference. If Wellington had owned the siege-train
that he brought against Badajoz, the place must have succumbed in ten
days. But the commander was able and determined, the troops willing,
the supply of food and of artillery munitions ample--Burgos had
always been an important dépôt. Dubreton’s orders were to keep his
enemy detained as long as possible--and he succeeded, even beyond all
reasonable expectations.
Wellington had always been aware that Burgos was fortified, but during
his advance he had spoken freely of his intention to capture it. On
September 3rd he had written, ‘I have some heavy guns with me, and
have an idea of forcing the siege of Burgos--but that still depends
on circumstances[29].’ Four days later he wrote at Valladolid, ‘I am
preparing to drive away the detachments of the Army of Portugal from
the Douro, and I propose, if I have time, to take Burgos[30].’ Yet
at the same moment he kept impressing on his correspondents that his
march to the North was a temporary expedient, a mere _parergon_; his
real business would be with Soult, and he must soon be back at Madrid
with his main body. It is this that makes so inexplicable his lingering
for a month before Dubreton’s castle, when he had once discovered
that it would not fall, as he had hoped, in a few days. After his
first failure before the place, he acknowledged it might possibly foil
him altogether. Almost at the start he ventured the opinion that ‘As
far as I can judge, I am apprehensive that the means I have are not
sufficient to enable me to take the Castle.’ Yet he thought it worth
while to try irregular methods: ‘the enemy are ill-provided with water;
their magazines of provisions are in a place exposed to be set on fire.
I think it possible, therefore, that I have it in my power to force
them to surrender, although I may not be able to lay the place open to
assault[31].’
The cardinal weakness of Wellington’s position was exactly the same
as at the Salamanca forts, three months back. He had no sufficient
battering-train for a regular siege: after the Salamanca experience it
is surprising that he allowed himself to be found for a second time
in this deficiency. There were dozens of heavy guns in the arsenal at
Madrid, dozens more (Marmont’s old siege-train) at Ciudad Rodrigo and
Almeida. But Madrid was 130 miles away, Rodrigo 180. With the army
there was only Alexander Dickson’s composite Anglo-Portuguese artillery
reserve, commanded by Major Ariaga, and consisting of three iron
18-pounders, and five 24-pounder howitzers, served by 150 gunners--90
British, 60 Portuguese. The former were good battering-guns; the
howitzers, however, were not--they were merely short guns of position,
very useless for a siege, and very inaccurate in their fire. They threw
a heavy ball, but with weak power--the charge was only two pounds
of powder: the shot when fired at a stout wall, from any distance,
had such weak impact that it regularly bounded off without making
any impression on the masonry. The only real use of these guns was
for throwing case at short distances. ‘In estimating the efficient
ordnance used at the Spanish sieges,’ says the official historian of
the Burgos failure, ‘these howitzers ought in fairness to be excluded
from calculation, as they did little more than waste invaluable
ammunition[32].’ This was as well known to Wellington as to his
subordinates, and it is inexplicable that he did not in place of them
bring up from Madrid real battering-guns: with ten more 18-pounders
he would undoubtedly have taken the Castle of Burgos. But heavy guns
require many draught cattle, and are hard to drag over bad roads: the
absolute minimum had been taken with the army, as in June. And it was
impossible to bring up more siege-guns in a hurry, as was done at the
siege of the Salamanca forts, for the nearest available pieces were
not a mere sixty miles away, as on the former occasion, but double and
triple that distance. Yet if, on the first day of doubt before Burgos,
Wellington had sent urgent orders for the dispatch of more 18-pounders
from Madrid, they would have been up in time; though no doubt there
would have been terrible difficulties in providing for their transport.
It was only when it had grown too late that more artillery was at last
requisitioned--and had to be turned back not long after it had started.
Other defects there were in the besieging army, especially the same
want of trained sappers and miners that had been seen at Badajoz,
and of engineer officers[33]. Of this more hereafter:--the first
and foremost difficulty, without which the rest would have been
comparatively unimportant, was the lack of heavy artillery.
But to proceed to the chronicle of the siege. On the evening on which
the army arrived before Burgos the 6th Division took post on the south
bank of the Arlanzon: the 1st Division and Pack’s Portuguese brigade
swept round the city and formed an investing line about the Castle.
It was drawn as close as possible, especially on the side of the
hornwork of San Miguel, where the light companies of the first Division
pushed up the hill, taking shelter in dead ground where they could,
and dislodged the French outposts from the three _flèches_ which lay
upon its sky-line. Wellington, after consulting his chief engineer
and artillery officers, determined that his first move must be to
capture the hornwork, in order to use its vantage-ground for battering
the Castle. The same night (September 19-20) an assault, without any
preparation of artillery fire, was made upon it. The main body of the
assailing force was composed of Pack’s Portuguese, who were assisted
by the whole of the 1/42nd and by the flank-companies[34] of Stirling’s
brigade of the 1st Division, to which the Black Watch belonged. The
arrangement was that while a strong firing party (300 men) of the
1/42nd were to advance to the neighbourhood of the horn work, ‘as near
to the salient angle as possible,’ and to endeavour to keep down the
fire of the garrison, two columns each composed of Portuguese, but with
ladder parties and forlorn hopes from the Highland battalion, should
charge at the two demi-bastions to right and left of the salient, and
escalade them. Meanwhile the flank-companies of Stirling’s brigade
(1/42nd, 1/24th, 1/79th) were to make a false attack upon the rear, or
gorge, of the hornwork, which might be turned into a real one if it
should be found weakly held.
The storm succeeded, but with vast and unnecessary loss of life, and
not in the way which Wellington had intended. It was bright moonlight,
and the firing party, when coming up over the crest, were at once
detected by the French, who opened a very heavy fire upon them. The
Highlanders commenced to reply while still 150 yards away, and then
advanced firing till they came close up to the work, where they
remained for a quarter of an hour, entirely exposed and suffering
terribly. Having lost half their numbers they finally dispersed, but
not till after the main attack had failed. On both their flanks the
assaulting columns were repulsed, though the advanced parties duly laid
their ladders: they were found somewhat short, and after wavering for
some minutes Pack’s men retired, suffering heavily. The whole affair
would have been a failure, but for the assault on the gorge. Here the
three light companies--140 men--were led by Somers Cocks, formerly one
of Wellington’s most distinguished intelligence officers, the hero of
many a risky ride, but recently promoted to a majority in the 1/79th.
He made no demonstration, but a fierce attack from the first. He ran
up the back slope of the hill of St. Miguel, under a destructive fire
from the Castle, which detected his little column at once, and shelled
it from the rear all the time that it was at work. The frontal assault,
however, was engrossing the attention of the garrison of the hornwork,
and only a weak guard had been left at the gorge. The light companies
broke through the 7-foot palisades, partly by using axes, partly by
main force and climbing. Somers Cocks then divided his men into two
bodies, leaving the smaller to block the postern in the gorge, while
with the larger he got upon the parapet and advanced firing towards the
right demi-bastion. Suddenly attacked in the rear, just as they found
themselves victorious in front, the French garrison--a battalion of the
34th, 500 strong--made no attempt to drive out the light companies,
but ran in a mass towards the postern, trampled down the guard left
there, and escaped to the Castle across the intervening ravine. They
lost 198 men, including 60 prisoners, and left behind their seven
field-pieces[35]. The assailants suffered far more--they had 421 killed
and wounded, of whom no less than 204 were in the 1/42nd, which had
suffered terribly in the main assault. The Portuguese lost 113 only,
never having pushed their attack home. This murderous business was the
first serious fighting in which the Black Watch were involved since
their return to Spain in April 1812; at Salamanca they had been little
engaged, and were the strongest British battalion in the field--over
1,000 bayonets. Wellington attributed their heavy casualties to their
inexperience--they exposed themselves over-much. ‘If I had had some of
the troops who have stormed so often before [3rd and Light Divisions],
I should not have lost a fourth of the number[36].’
The moment that the hornwork had fallen into the power of the British,
the heavy guns of the Napoleon battery opened such an appalling fire
upon it, that the troops had to be withdrawn, save 300 men, who with
some difficulty formed a lodgement in its interior, and a communication
from its left front to the ‘dead ground’ on the north-west side of the
hill, by which reliefs could enter under cover.
The whole of the next day (September 20) the garrison kept up such a
searching fire upon the work that little could be done there, but on
the following night the first battery of the besiegers [battery 1 on
the map] was begun on a spot on the south-western side of the hill,
a little way from the rear face of the hornwork, which was sheltered
by an inequality of the ground from the guns of the Napoleon battery.
It was armed on the night of the 23rd with two of the 18-pounders and
three of the howitzers of the siege-train, with which it was intended
to batter the Castle in due time. They were not used however at
present, as Wellington, encouraged by his success at San Miguel, had
determined to try as a preliminary move a second escalade, without help
of artillery, on the outer _enceinte_ of the Castle. This was to prove
the first, and not the least disheartening, of the checks that he was
to meet before Burgos.
The point of attack selected was on the north-western side of the
lower wall, at a place where it was some 23 feet high. The choice was
determined by the existence of a hollow road coming out of the suburb
of San Pedro, from which access in perfectly dead ground, unsearched
by any of the French guns, could be got, to a point within 60 yards
of the ditch. The assault was to be made by 400 volunteers from the
three brigades of the 1st Division, and was to be supported and flanked
by a separate attack on another point on the south side of the outer
_enceinte_, to be delivered by a detachment of the caçadores of the
6th Division. The force used was certainly too small for the purpose
required, and it did not even get a chance of success. The Portuguese,
when issuing from the ruined houses of the town, were detected at once,
and being heavily fired on, retired without even approaching their
goal. At the main attack the ladder party and forlorn hope reached the
ditch in their first rush, sprang in and planted four ladders against
the wall. The enemy had been taken somewhat by surprise, but recovered
himself before the supports got to the front, which they did in a
straggling fashion. A heavy musketry fire was opened on the men in the
ditch, and live shells were rolled by hand upon them. Several attempts
were made to mount the ladders, but all who neared their top rungs
were shot or bayoneted, and after the officer in charge of the assault
(Major Laurie, 1/79th) had been killed, the stormers ran back to their
cover in the hollow road. They had lost 158 officers and men in all--76
from the Guards’ brigade, 44 from the German brigade, 9 from the Line
brigade of the 1st Division, while the ineffective Portuguese diversion
had cost only 29 casualties. The French had 9 killed and 13 wounded.
This was a deplorable business from every point of view. An escalade
directed against an intact line of defence, held by a strong garrison,
whose morale had not been shaken by any previous artillery preparation,
was unjustifiable. There was not, as at Almaraz, any element of
surprise involved; nor, as at the taking of the Castle of Badajoz, were
a great number of stormers employed. Four hundred men with five ladders
could not hope to force a well-built wall and ditch, defended by an
enemy as numerous as themselves. The men murmured that they had been
sent on an impossible task; and the heavy loss, added to that on San
Miguel three days before, was discouraging. Many angry comments were
made on the behaviour of the Portuguese on both occasions[37].
Irregular methods having failed, it remained to see what could be
done by more formal procedure, by battering and sapping up towards
the enemy’s defences on the west side of the Castle, the only one
accessible for approach by parallels and trenches. The plan adopted was
to work up from the hollow road (from which the stormers had started on
the last escalade) in front of the suburb of San Pedro. The hollow road
was utilized as a first parallel; from it a flying sap (_b_ on the map)
was pushed out uphill towards the outer _enceinte_ in a diagonal line.
The object was to arrive at it and to mine it (at the place marked I
on the map). When the working party had got well forward, a point was
chosen in the sap at a distance of 60 feet from the wall, and the mine
was started from thence. All this was done under very heavy fire from
the Castle, but it was partly kept down by placing marksmen all along
the parallel, who picked off many of the French gunners, and of the
infantry who lined the parapet of the outer _enceinte_. Sometimes the
return fire of the place was nearly silenced, but many of the British
marksmen fell. The work in the flying sap was made very costly by
the fact that the trench, being on very steep ground, had to be made
abnormally deep [September 23-6].
Meanwhile, on the hill of San Miguel, a second battery (No. 2 on the
map) was dug out behind the gorge of the dismantled hornwork, and
trenches for musketry (_a.a_ on the map) were constructed on the slope
of the hill, so as to bring fire to bear on the flank and rear of the
lower defences of the Castle. The French heavy guns of the Napoleon
battery devoted themselves to incommoding this work; their fire was
accurate, many casualties took place, and occasionally all advance
had to cease. A deep trench of communication between the batteries on
San Miguel and the attack in front of San Pedro was also started, in
order to link up the two approaches by a short line: the ground was all
commanded by the Castle, and the digging went slowly because of the
intense fire directed on it.
Meanwhile battery No. 1 on San Miguel at last came into operation,
firing with five howitzers (the 18-pounders originally placed there had
been withdrawn) against the palisades and flank of the north-western
angle of the outer _enceinte_ of the Castle. These inefficient guns
had no good effect; it was found that they shot so inaccurately and so
weakly that little harm was done. After firing 141 rounds they stopped,
it being evident that the damage done was wholly incommensurate with
the powder and shot expended [September 25]. This first interference
of the British artillery in the contest was not very cheering either
to the troops, or to the engineers engaged in planning the attack on
the Castle. The guns in battery 1 kept silence for the next five days,
while battery 2, where the 18-pounders had now been placed, had never
yet fired a single shot. Wellington was now staking his luck on the
mine, which was being run forward from the head of the flying sap.
This work, having to be cut very deep, as it was to go right under
the ditch, and being in the hands of untrained volunteers from the
infantry, who had no proper cutting tools, advanced very slowly. The
soil, fortunately, was favourable, being a stiff argillaceous clay
which showed no disposition to crumble up: the gallery was cut as if
in stone, with even and perpendicular sides and floor, and no props
or timbering were found necessary. The main hindrance to rapid work,
over and above the unskilfulness of the miners, was the foul air which
accumulated at the farther end of the excavation: many times it was
necessary to withdraw the men for some hours to allow it to clear away.
At noon on September 29 the miners declared that they had reached the
foundations of the wall, and this seemed correct enough, for they had
come to a course of large rough blocks of stone, extending laterally
for as far as could be probed. It is probable, however, that the
masonry was really the remains of some old advanced turret or outwork,
projecting in front of the modern _enceinte_. For when the end of the
mine was packed with twelve barrels, containing 90 lb. of powder each,
well tamped, and fired at midnight, the explosion brought down many
stones from the front of the wall, but did not affect the earth of the
rampart, which remained standing perpendicular behind it. There seemed,
however, to be places, at the points where the broken facing joined
the intact part of the wall, where men might scramble up. Accordingly
the storming-column of 300 volunteers who had been waiting for the
explosion, was let loose, under cover of a strong musketry fire from
the trenches. A sergeant and four men went straight for one of the
accessible points, mounted, and were cast down again, three of them
wounded. But the main body of the forlorn hope and its officer went
a little farther along the wall, reached a section that was wholly
impracticable for climbing, and ran back to the trenches to report that
the defences were uninjured. The supports followed their example. The
loss, therefore, was small--only 29 killed and wounded--but the moral
effect of the repulse was very bad. The men, for the most part, made
up their minds that they had been sent to a hopeless and impossible
task by the errors of an incompetent staff. The engineers declared that
the stormers had not done their best, or made any serious attempt to
approach the wall.
Wellington must by now have been growing much disquieted about the
event of the siege. He had spent ten days before Burgos, but since
the capture of the hornwork on the first night had accomplished
absolutely nothing. There were rumours that the Army of Portugal
was being heavily reinforced, and these were perfectly true. By the
coming up from the rear of drafts, convalescents, and stragglers,
it had received some 7,000 men of reinforcements, and by October 1
had 38,000 men with the colours--more than Wellington counted, even
including the Galicians. Souham was now in command: he had been on
leave in France at the time of the battle of Salamanca, but returned
in the last days of September and superseded Clausel. There had been
in August some intention of sending Masséna back to the Peninsula, to
replace the disabled Marmont. Clarke, the Minister of War, dispatched
him to Bayonne on his own responsibility, there being no time to
consult Napoleon, who was now nearing Moscow[38]. When the Emperor
had the question put to him he nominated Reille[39], but by the time
that his order got to Spain Souham was in full charge of the army, and
was not displaced till the campaign was over. Masséna never crossed
the frontier to relieve him, reporting himself indisposed, and unable
to face the toils of a campaign: his nomination by Clarke was never
confirmed, and he presently returned to Paris. Hearing of the gathering
strength of the Army of Portugal, Wellington remarked that he was
lucky--the French were giving him more time than he had any right to
expect[40] to deal with Burgos. Meanwhile he showed no intention, as
yet, either of abandoning the siege or of taking back to Madrid the
main part of his army, as he had repeatedly promised to do in his
letters of early September. Soult and the King were not yet showing in
any dangerous combination on the Valencian side, and till they moved
Wellington made up his mind to persevere in his unlucky siege. It is
clear that he hated to admit a failure, so long as any chance remained,
and that he was set on showing that he could ‘make bricks without
straw.’
The mine explosion of the 29th-30th had been a disheartening affair;
but Wellington had now resolved to repeat this form of attack, aiding
it however this time by the fire of his insignificant siege-train.
A second mine had already been begun, against a point of the outer
_enceinte_ (II in the map) somewhat to the south of that originally
attacked by the first. This was pushed with energy between September 30
and October 4; but at the same time an endeavour was made to utilize,
for what it was worth, the direct fire of artillery, at the shortest
possible distance from the walls. On the night of September 30-October
1 a battery for three guns (No. 3 in the map) was commenced, slightly
in advance of the 1st Parallel in the Hollow Road, no more than some
sixty-five yards from the French defences. The garrison, not having
been troubled with any battery-building on this front before, suspected
nothing, and at dawn on October 1 the earthwork was completed, and
the carpenters were beginning to lay the wooden platforms on which
the 18-pounders were to stand. With the coming of the light the enemy
discovered the new and threatening work, and began to concentrate upon
it every gun that he could bring to bear. The platforms however were
completed, and at 9 o’clock the artillery hauled the three heavy guns,
which were Wellington’s sole effective battering-tools, into their
places. The sight of them provoked the French to redoubled activity:
shot shell and musketry fire were directed upon the front of the
battery from many quarters, its parapet began to fly to pieces, and
the loss among the artillerymen was heavy. Before the embrasures had
been opened, or a single shot had been fired from the three guns, the
enemy’s fire had become so rapid and accurate that the work had become
ruined and untenable. Two of the 18-pounders had been cast down from
their carriages and put out of action--one had a trunnion knocked off,
the other (which had been hit eleven times) was split in the muzzle.
Only one of the three remained in working order. Without having fired
even once, two of the three big guns were disabled! It was a bad look
out for the future [October 1].
Wellington, however, ordered a second battery to be constructed,
somewhat to the left rear of the first (No. 4 in the map), and behind
instead of before the parallel. The position chosen was one on to which
many of the French guns could not be trained, while it was equally
good with battery No. 3 for playing on the outer _enceinte_. After
midnight [October 1-2] the two disabled and one intact 18-pounders
were dragged out of the abandoned battery and taken to the rear. Next
morning, however, a new disappointment was in store for Wellington: the
French detected battery No. 4, and opened upon it, with all guns that
could reach it, such an accurate and effective fire that the parapet,
though revetted with wool-packs, soon began to crumble, and the workmen
had to withdraw. ‘It became evident that under such a plunging fire
no guns could ever be served there[41].’ All hopes of breaching the
lower _enceinte_ from any point on its immediate front had to be
abandoned--and meanwhile the heavy artillery had been ruined.
The next order issued was that the solitary intact 18-pounder and
the other gun with the split lip--which had been mounted on a new
carriage--should be hauled back to the hill of San Miguel and put into
their original place, battery No. 1. The night during which they were
to be removed was one of torrential rain, and the working parties
charged with the duty gradually dropped aside and sought shelter,
with the exception of those detailed from the Guards’ brigade and
the artillery. At dawn on October 3 the guns had not reached their
destination, and had to be shunted beside the salient of the hornwork,
to hide them from the enemy during the day. Wellington, justly vexed
with the shirking, ordered the defaulters to be put on for extra duty,
and the names of their officers to be formally noted. This day was
lost for all work except that of the mine, which advanced steadily but
slowly, long intervals of rest having to be given in order to allow for
the evaporation of foul air in its inner depths (October 3). On the
following night, however, the 18-pounders were got into battery No. 1,
and about the same time the engineer officers reported that the mine
(now eighty-three feet long) had got well under the wall of the outer
_enceinte_. The 4th of October was therefore destined to be an eventful
day.
At dawn, battery No. 1 opened on the wall, where it had been damaged
by the first mine on September 29th, using the two 18-pounders and
three howitzers. The effect was much better than could have been
expected: the 18 lb. round-shot (of which about 350 were used) had
good penetrating power, and the already shaken wall crumbled rapidly,
so that by four in the afternoon there was a practicable breach sixty
feet long.
Wellington at once arranged for a third assault on the outer
_enceinte_, telling off for it not details from many regiments, as on
the previous occasion, but--what was much better--a single compact
battalion, the 2/24th. Only the supports were mixed parties. At 5 p.m.
the mine was fired, with excellent effect, throwing down nearly 100
feet of the rampart, and killing many of the French. Before the dust
had cleared away, the men of the 2/24th dashed forward toward both
breaches, with great spirit, and carried them with ease, and with
no excessive loss, driving the French within the second or middle
_enceinte_. The total loss that day was 224, of which the assault cost
about 190, the other casualties being in the batteries on San Miguel
and in the trenches. But the curious point of the figures is that
the 2/24th, forming the actual storming-column, lost only 68 killed
and wounded; the supports, and the workmen who were employed to form
a lodgement within the conquered space, suffered far more heavily.
Dubreton reports the casualties of the garrison at 27 killed and 42
wounded [October 4].
In the night after the storm the British, after entrenching the two
breaches, began to make preparations to sap forward to the second
_enceinte_, which being ditchless and not faced with masonry, looked
less formidable than that which had already been carried, though it was
protected by a solid row of palisades. Meanwhile the artillery officers
proposed that battery No. 2 on San Miguel should be turned against a
new objective, the point where the walls of the second and the inner
lines met, immediately in front of the hornwork, in the re-entering
angle marked III in the map. Battery No. 1 was meanwhile to play on the
palisades of the second _enceinte_. This it did with some success. At
5 o’clock in the evening, however, there was an unexpected tumult in
the newly-gained ground. Dubreton, misliking the look of the approaches
which the assailants were beginning to run out from the breaches,
ordered a sortie of 300 men, who dashed out most unexpectedly against
the lodgements in front of the northern breach (No. I), and drove away
the workmen with heavy loss, seizing most of their tools, overthrowing
the gabions, and shovelling earth into the trench. They gave way when
the covering party came up, and retired, having done immense mischief
and disabled 142 of the besiegers, while their own loss was only 17
killed and 21 wounded. This was an unpleasant surprise, as showing the
high spirit and resolution of the garrison; but the damage was not so
great but that one good night’s work sufficed to repair it: the loss
of tools was the most serious matter--the French had carried off 200
picks and shovels which could not be replaced, the stock (as usual in
Peninsular sieges) being very low[42].
On the 6th and 7th the besiegers again began to sap forward towards the
second _enceinte_, with the object of establishing a second parallel on
its glacis, but with no great success. There was little or no effective
fire from the batteries on San Miguel to keep down the artillery of the
besieged, and the work at the sap-head was so deadly that the engineers
could hardly expect the men to do much: however, the trench was driven
forward to within thirty yards of the palisades. So useless were the
howitzers in No. 2 battery that two of them were removed, and replaced
by two French field-pieces from those captured in the hornwork on
September 20; these, despite of their small calibre, worked decidedly
better. The heavy guns in the Napoleon Battery devoted themselves to
keeping down the fire of the two surviving 18-pounders in battery No.
2, and on the 7th knocked one from its carriage and broke off one of
its trunnions. This left only one heavy piece in working order! But
the artisans of the artillery park, doing their best, rigged up both
the gun injured on this day and that disabled on October 1 upon block
carriages, with a sort of cradle arrangement to hold them up on the
side where a trunnion was gone; and it was found that they could be
fired, if a very reduced charge was used. When anything like the full
amount of powder was employed, they jumped off their carriages, as was
natural, considering that they were only properly attached to them on
one side. Of course, their battering power was hopelessly reduced by
the small charge. The artillery diarists of the siege call them ‘the
two _lame_ guns’ during the last fortnight of their employment.
On October 8 Dubreton, growing once more anxious at the sight of the
advance of the trenches toward the second _enceinte_, ordered another
sally, which was executed by 400 men three hours after midnight. It
was almost as successful as that of October 5. The working party of
Pack’s Portuguese and the covering party from the K.G.L. brigade of the
1st Division were taken quite unawares, and driven out of the advanced
works with very heavy loss. The trench was completely levelled, and
many tools carried away, before the supports in reserve, under Somers
Cocks of the 1/79th--the hero of the assault on the Hornwork--came
up and drove the French back to their palisades. Cocks himself was
killed--he was an officer of the highest promise who would have gone
far if fate had spared him, and was the centre of a large circle of
friends who have left enthusiastic appreciations of his greatness of
spirit and ready wit[43]. The besiegers lost 184 men in this unhappy
business, of whom 133 belonged to the German Legion: 18 of them were
prisoners carried off into the Castle[44]. The French casualties were
no more than 11 killed and 22 wounded--only a sixth part of those of
the Allies.
We have now (October 8) arrived at the most depressing part of the
chronicle of a siege which had been from the first a series of
disappointments. After the storm of the lower _enceinte_ on October 4,
the British made no further progress. The main cause of failure was
undoubtedly the weakness of their artillery, which repeatedly opened
again from one or other of the two San Miguel batteries, only to be
silenced after an hour or two of conflict with the heavy guns on the
Donjon. But it was not only the small number of the 18-pounders which
was fatal to success--they had run out of powder and shot; a great
deal of the firing was done with second-hand missiles--French 16 lb.
shot picked out of the works into which they had fallen. The infantry
were offered a bonus for each one brought to the artillery park, and
426 were paid for. More than 2,000 French 8 lb. and 4 lb. shot were
also bought from the men, though these were less useful, being only
available for field-guns, which were of little use for battering. But
in order not to discourage the hunting propensities of the soldiers,
everything brought in was duly purchased. Shot of sorts never wholly
failed, but lack of powder was a far more serious problem--it cannot
be picked up second-hand. There would have been an absolute deficiency
but for a stock got from a most unexpected quarter. Sir Home Popham and
his ships were still on the Cantabrian coast, assisting the operations
of Longa and Mendizabal against the Army of the North. The squadron
had made its head-quarters at Santander, the chief port recovered from
the French, and communications with it had been opened up through
the mountains by the way of Reynosa. On September 26 Wellington had
written to Popham[45] to inquire whether powder could not be brought
from Santander to Burgos, by means of mule trains to be hired at the
port. The Commodore, always helpful, fell in with the idea at once,
and succeeded in procuring the mules. On October 5th 40 barrels of
90 lb. weight each were brought into camp: considering the distance,
the badness of the roads, and the disturbed state of the country, it
cannot be denied that Popham did very well in delivering it only ten
days after Wellington had written his request, and eight days after he
had received it. Other convoys from Santander came later. It is a pity
that Wellington did not think of asking for heavy ship guns at the same
time. But he had written to the Commodore on October 2 that ‘the means
of transport required to move a train either from the coast or from
Madrid (where we have plenty) are so extensive that the attempt would
be impracticable[46].’
The idea of requisitioning ship guns had been started on the very first
day of the siege (September 20) by Sir Howard Douglas, who had lately
come from Popham’s side, and maintained that by the use of draught
oxen, supplemented by man-handling in difficult places, the thing could
be done. But Wellington would hear nothing of it, maintaining that
matters would be settled one way or another before the guns could
possibly arrive. After the disaster to batteries 3 and 4 on October 2nd
he--too late--altered his opinion, and consented that an appeal should
be made to Popham. The Commodore rose to the occasion, and started off
two 24-pounders on October 9th, which by immense exertions were dragged
as far as Reynosa, only 50 miles from Burgos, by October 18th, and had
passed the worst part of the road. But at Reynosa they were turned
back, for Wellington was just raising the siege and preparing to retire
on Valladolid. It is clear that if they had been asked for on September
20 instead of October 3rd--as Howard Douglas had suggested--they and
no doubt another heavy gun or so, could have been brought forward
in time for the last bombardment, and might have turned it into a
success. But guns might also have come from Madrid: Wellington did not
think it wholly impossible to move artillery from the Retiro arsenal.
For, ere he left it on August 31, he had instructed Carlos de España
that the best guns there should be evacuated on to Ciudad Rodrigo,
if ever Soult and King Joseph should draw too close in[47]. It is
true that he observed that the transport would be a difficult matter,
and that much would have to be destroyed, and not carried off. But
it is clear that he thought that _some_ cannon could be moved. The
strangest part of the story is that his own brother-in-law, Pakenham,
wrote to him from Madrid offering to send him twelve heavy guns over
the Somosierra, pledging himself to manage the transport by means
of oxen got in the Madrid district. His offer was rejected[48]. It
seems that the conviction that the Castle of Burgos would be a hard
nut to crack came too late to Wellington. And when he did realize its
strength, he did not reconsider the matter of siege artillery at once,
but proceeded to try the methods of Badajoz and Almaraz, mere _force
majeure_ applied by escalade, instead of thinking of bringing up more
guns. He judged--wrongly as it chanced--that he would either take
the place by sheer assault, or else that the French field army would
interfere before October was far advanced. Neither hypothesis turned
out correct, and so he had the opportunity of a full month’s siege, and
failed in it for want of means that might have been procured, if only
he had made another resolve on August 31st, or even on September 20.
But even the greatest generals cannot be infallible prophets concerning
what they will require a month ahead. The mistake is explicable,
and the critic who censures it over-much would be presumptuous and
unreasonable[49].
But to return to the chronicle of the unlucky days between October
8th and October 21st. The working forward by sap from the third
_enceinte_ towards the second practically stood still, after the second
destructive sally of the French against the new approaches. This is
largely accounted for by the steepness of the ground, which made it
necessary to dig trenches of extraordinary depth, and by the setting
in after October 7 of very rainy weather, which made the trenches
muddy rivers, and the steep banks of earth and breaches so slippery
that it was with great difficulty that parties could find their way
about and move to their posts[50]. But the unchecked power of the
French artillery fire counted for even more, and not least of the
hindrances was the growing sulkiness of the troops. ‘Siege business
was new to them, and they wanted confidence; sometimes they would tell
you that you were taking them to be butchered. The loss, to be sure,
was sometimes heavy, but it was chiefly occasioned by the confused and
spiritless way in which the men set about their work, added to the
great depth we were obliged to excavate in the trenches, to obtain
cover from the commanding fire of the enemy[51].’
Meanwhile the batteries on San Miguel, when they had ammunition, and
when they could put in a few hours’ work before being silenced by the
fire from the Donjon, continued to pound away at the re-entering angle
in the second _enceinte_ (III in the map), and with more effect than
might have been expected, for this section of the defences turned out
to have been built with bad material, and crumbled even under such
feeble shooting as that of Wellington’s ‘lame’ 18-pounders. The French
on several days had first to silence the English battery, and then to
rebuild the wall with sandbags and earth under a musketry fire from the
trenches (_a-a_ in the map) upon San Miguel, from which they could not
drive the sharp-shooters of the besiegers. It was thought later--an _ex
post facto_ judgement--that the best chance of the Allies would have
been to attempt a storm on this breach when first it became more or
less practicable. The delay enabled the besieged to execute repairs,
to scarp down the broken front, and to cut off the damaged corner by
interior retrenchments.
Meanwhile, since doubts were felt as to the main operation of storming
the new breach, No. III, subsidiary efforts were made to incommode
the enemy in other ways. At intervals on the 9th, 10th, and 11th
red-hot shot were fired at the church of Santa Maria la Blanca, where
it was known that the French magazine of food lay. The experience of
the Salamanca forts had led the artillery officers to think that a
general conflagration might be caused. But the plan had no success; the
building proved to be very incombustible, and one or two small fires
which burst out were easily extinguished. Another device was to mine
out from the end houses of the city towards the church of San Roman, an
isolated structure lying close under the south-east side of the Castle,
which the French held as an outwork. Nothing very decisive could be
hoped from its capture, as if taken it could only serve as a base
for operations against the two _enceintes_ above it[52]. But, as an
eye-witness remarked, at this period of the siege any sort of irregular
scheme was tried, on the off chance of success. By October 17 the mine
had got well under the little church. A more feasible plan, which might
have done some good if it had succeeded, was to run out a small mine or
fougasse from the sap-head of the trench in front of breach I to the
palisades of the second _enceinte_. It was a petty business, no more
than two barrels of powder being used, and only slightly damaged an
angle of the work in front when fired on October 17. An attempt to push
on the sap after the explosion was frustrated by the musketry fire of
the besieged.
On the 18th the engineers reported that the church of San Roman was
completely undermined, and could be blown up at any moment. On the
same morning the one good and two lame 18-pounders in battery 2 on San
Miguel swept away, not for the first time, the sandbag parapets and
_chevaux de frise_ with which the French had strengthened the breach
III. They were then turned against the third _enceinte_, immediately
behind that breach, partly demolished its ‘fraises,’ and even did some
damage to its rampart. This was as much as could have been expected,
as the whole of the enemy’s guns were, as usual, turned upon the
battering-guns, and presently obtained the mastery over them, blowing
up an expense-magazine in No. 2, and injuring a gun in No. 1. But in
the afternoon the defences were in a more battered condition than
usual, and Wellington resolved to make his last attempt. Already
the French army outside was showing signs of activity; and, as a
precaution, some of the investing troops--two brigades of the 6th
Division--had been sent forward to join the covering army. If this
assault failed, the siege would have to be given up, or at the best
turned into a blockade.
The plan of the assault was drawn up by Wellington himself, who
dictated the details to his military secretary, Fitzroy Somerset, in
three successive sections, after inspecting from the nearest possible
point each of the three fronts which he intended to attack[53].
Stated shortly the plan was as follows:
(1) At 4.30 the mine at San Roman was to be fired, and the ruins of
the church seized by Brown’s caçadores (9th battalion), supported by
a Spanish regiment (1st of Asturias) lent by Castaños. A brigade of
the 6th Division was to be ready in the streets behind, to support the
assault, if its effect looked promising, i.e. if the results of the
explosion should injure the _enceinte_ behind, or should so drive the
enemy from it that an escalade became possible.
(2) The detachments of the Guards’ brigade of the 1st Division, who
were that day in charge of the trenches within the captured outer
_enceinte_, and facing the west front of the second _enceinte_, were
to make an attempt to escalade that line of defence, at the point
where most of its palisades had been destroyed, opposite and above the
original breach No. I in the lower _enceinte_.
(3) The detachments of the German brigade of the 1st Division, who
were to take charge of the trenches for the evening in succession to
the Guards, were to attempt to storm the breach III in the re-entering
angle, the only point where there was an actual opening prepared into
the inner defences.
From all the works, both those on St. Miguel and those to the west
of the Castle, marksmen left in the trenches were to keep up as hot
a musketry fire as possible on any of the enemy who should show
themselves, so as to distract their attention from the stormers.
The most notable point in these instructions was the small number of
men devoted to the two serious attacks. Provision was made for the use
of 300 men only in the attack to be made by the Guards: they were to
move forward in successive rushes--the first or forlorn hope consisting
of an officer and twenty men, the supports or main assaulting force, of
small parties of 40 or 50 men, each of which was to come forward only
when the one in front of it had reached a given point in its advance.
Similarly the German Legion’s assault was to be led by a forlorn
hope of 20, supported by 50 more, who were only to move when their
predecessors had reached the lip of the breach, and by a reserve of 200
who were to charge out of the trench only when the support was well
established on the rampart.
Burgoyne, the senior engineer present, tells us that he protested all
through the siege, at each successive assault, against the paucity of
the numbers employed, saying that the forlorn hope had, in fact, to
take the work by itself, since they had no close and strong column in
immediate support; and if the forlorn hope failed, ‘the next party,
who from behind their cover have seen them bayoneted, are expected
to valiantly jump up and proceed to be served in the same way.’
He reminded Wellington, as he says, that the garrison at Burgos
was as large as that at Ciudad Rodrigo, where two whole divisions
instead of 500 or 600 men had been thrown into the assault. The
Commander-in-Chief, condescending to argument for once, replied, ‘why
expose more men than can ascend the ladders [as at the Guards’ attack]
or enter the work [as at the breach in the K.G.L. attack] at one time,
when by this mode the support is ordered to be up in time to follow the
tail of the preceding party[54]?’ And his objection to the engineer’s
plea was clinched by the dictum, ‘if we fail we can’t lose many men.’
This controversy originally arose on the details of the abortive storm
of September 22, but Burgoyne’s criticism was even more convincing
for the details of the final assault on October 18. The number of men
risked was far too small for the task that was set them.
The melancholy story of the storm runs as follows. On the explosion of
the mine at San Roman, punctually at 4.30, all three of the sections
of the assault were duly delivered. At the breach the forlorn hope of
the King’s German Legion charged at the rough slope with great speed,
reached the crest, and were immediately joined by the support, led most
gallantly by Major Wurmb of the 5th Line Battalion. The first rush
cleared a considerable length of the rampart of its defenders, till it
was checked against a stockade, part of the works which the French had
built to cut off the breach from the main body of the place. Foiled
here, on the flank, some of the Germans turned, and made a dash at the
injured rampart of the third line, in their immediate front: three or
four actually reached the parapet of this inmost defence of the enemy.
But they fell, and the main body, penned in the narrow space between
the two _enceintes_, became exposed to such an overpowering fire of
musketry that, after losing nearly one man in three, they finally
had to give way, and retired most reluctantly down the breach to the
trenches they had left. The casualties out of 300 men engaged were no
less than 82 killed and wounded[55], among the former, Wurmb, who had
led the assault, and among the latter, Hesse, who commanded the forlorn
hope, and was one of the few who scaled the inner wall as well as the
outer.
The Guards in their attack, 100 yards to the right of the breach,
had an even harder task than the Germans, for their storm was a mere
escalade. It was executed with great decision: issuing from the front
trench they ran up to the line of broken palisades, passed through
gaps in it, and applied their ladders to the face of the rampart of
the second _enceinte_. Many of them succeeded in mounting, and they
established themselves successfully on the parapet, and seized a long
stretch of it, so long that some of their left-hand men got into touch
with the Germans who had entered at the breach. But they could not
clear the enemy out of the _terre-pleine_ of the second _enceinte_,
where a solid body of the French kept up a rolling fire upon them,
while the garrison of the upper line maintained a still fiercer
fusillade from their high-lying point of vantage. The Guards were for
about ten minutes within the wall, and made several attempts to get
forward without success. At the end of that time a French reserve
advanced from their left, and charging in flank the disordered mass
within the _enceinte_ drove them out again. The Guards retired as best
they could to the advanced trenches, having lost 85 officers and men
out of the 300 engaged. The French returned their casualties at 11
killed and 30 wounded.
Wellington’s dispatch, narrating the disaster, gives the most handsome
testimonial to the resolution of both the bodies of stormers. ‘It is
impossible to represent in adequate terms the conduct of the Guards and
the German Legion upon this occasion. And I am quite satisfied that
if it had been possible to maintain the posts which they gained with
so much gallantry, these troops would have maintained them[56].’ But
why were 600 men only sent forward, and no support given them during
the precious ten minutes when their first rush had carried them within
the walls? Where were the brigades to which the stormers belonged?
It is impossible not to subscribe to Burgoyne’s angry comment that
‘the miserable, doubting, unmilitary policy of small storming-parties’
caused the mischief[57]. He adds, ‘large bodies encourage one another,
and carry with them confidence of success: if the Castle of Badajoz
was stormed with ten or twelve ladders, and not more than 40 or 50 men
could mount at once, I am convinced that it was only carried because
the whole 3rd Division was there, and the emulation between the
officers of the different regiments got their men to mount; although we
lost 600 or 700 men, it caused success--which eventually saves men.’
The third section of the assault of October 18, the unimportant attack
on the church of San Roman, had a certain measure of success. The mine,
though it did not level the whole building, as had been hoped, blew up
the terrace in front of, and part of its west end. Thereupon the French
evacuated it, after exploding a mine of their own which brought down
the bell-tower and much more, and crushed a few of the caçadores and
Spaniards[58] who were ahead of their comrades. The besiegers were able
to lodge themselves in the ruins, but could make no attempt to approach
the actual walls of the second _enceinte_. So the 6th Division remained
behind, within the streets of Burgos, and never came forward or showed
themselves.
Such was the unhappy end of this most unlucky siege. All through the
day of the assault there had been heavy skirmishing going on at the
outposts of the covering army; Souham was at last on the move. On the
19th the Guards’ brigade and the K.G.L. brigade of the 1st Division
marched to join the 5th and 7th Divisions at the front, leaving only
the line brigade (Stirling’s) to hold the trenches on the north and
west sides of the Castle. Two-thirds of the 6th Division had already
gone off in the same direction before the storm: now the rest followed,
handing over the charge of Burgos city and the chain of picquets on the
east side of the Castle to Pack’s Portuguese. There was little doing
in the lines this day--the French built up the oft-destroyed parapet of
breach III with sandbags, and made an incursion into the church of San
Roman, driving out the Portuguese guard for a short time, and injuring
the lodgement which had been made in the ruins. But they withdrew when
the supports came up.
On the 20th, news being serious at the front--for Souham showed
signs of intending to attack in force, and it was ascertained that
he had been reinforced by great part of the Army of the North, under
Caffarelli in person--Wellington gave orders to withdraw the guns
from the batteries, leaving only two of the captured French pieces
to fire an occasional shot. All transportable stores and ammunition
were ordered to be loaded up. There was some bickering in San Roman
this day, but at night the Portuguese were again in possession of the
much-battered church.
On the 21st came the final orders for retreat. The artillery were
directed to burn all that could not be carried off--platforms,
fascines, &c.--to blow up the works on San Miguel, and to retire down
the high-road to Valladolid. The three 18-pounders were taken a few
miles only. The roads being bad from heavy rain, and the bullocks weak,
it was held that there was no profit in dragging about the two guns
which had lost trunnions and were practically useless. The surviving
intact gun shared the fate of its two ‘lame’ fellows: all three were
wrecked[59], their carriages were destroyed, and they were thrown out
on the side of the road. The artillery reserve, now reduced to the five
ineffective 24-lb. howitzers, then continued its retreat.
[Illustration: BURGOS]
On the night of the 21st-22nd, Pack’s brigade and the other troops left
to hold the works retired, the covering army being now in full retreat
by various roads passing through or around the city. The main column
crossed at the town bridge--the artillery with wheels muffled with
straw to deaden their rumbling--risking the danger of being shelled
in the darkness by the Castle, which had several guns that bore upon
it. The long series of mishaps which constituted the history of the
siege of Burgos ended by the failure of the plan for the explosions on
San Miguel: the French found there next day more than twenty barrels of
powder intact. The arsenal in the town was fired when the last troops
had passed, but was only partly consumed. Next morning (October 22) the
advanced guard of the Army of Portugal entered Burgos, and relieved
the garrison after thirty-five days of siege. Dubreton had still
nearly 1,200 effective men under arms: he had lost in his admirable
and obstinate defence 16 officers and 607 men, of whom 304 were killed
or died of their wounds. The corresponding total British casualty list
was no less than 24 officers and 485 men killed, 68 officers and 1,487
men wounded and missing [the last item accounting for 2 officers and
42 men]. Almost the whole of the loss came from the ranks of the 1st
Division and Pack’s Portuguese, the 6th Division troops having had
little to do with the trenches or assaults[60].
The external causes of the raising of the siege will be dealt with in
their proper place--the strategical narrative of the general condition
of affairs in both the Castiles which opens the next chapter. Here it
remains only to recapitulate the various reasons which made the siege
itself a failure. They have been summed up by several writers of weight
and experience--John Jones, the official historian of the sieges of
Spain, John Burgoyne the commanding engineer, William Napier, and
Belmas the French author, who (using Jones as a primary authority) told
its story from the side of the besieged. Comparing all their views with
the detailed chronicle of the operations of those thirty-five eventful
days, the following results seem to emerge.
(1) Burgos would not have been a strong fortress against an army
provided with a proper battering-train, such as that which dealt with
Ciudad Rodrigo or Badajoz. But Wellington--by his own fault as it
turned out in the end--had practically no such train at all: three
18-pound heavy guns were an absurd provision for the siege of a place
of even third-rate strength. If Wellington had realized on September 20
that the siege was to last till October 21, he might have had almost as
many guns as he pleased. But the strength of Burgos was underrated at
the first; and by the time that it was realized, Wellington considered
(wrongly, as it turned out) that it was too late to get the necessary
ordnance from the distant places where it lay.
(2) Encouraged by the experience of Badajoz and Almaraz, Wellington and
his staff considered that an imperfect fortification like the Castle of
Burgos might be dealt with by escalade without artillery preparation.
The Hornwork of San Miguel was taken on this irregular system; but the
attempts against the _enceintes_ of the Castle failed. Burgoyne is
probably right in maintaining that the repeated failures were largely
due to the general’s reluctance to put in large masses of men at once,
owing to his wish to spare the lives in units already worked down to a
low strength by long campaigning. The principle ‘if we fail we can’t
lose many men’ was ruinous. On October 18 the place _must_ have fallen
if 3,000 instead of 600 men had been told off for the assault.
(3) Notwithstanding the lack of artillery, Burgos might have been
taken if Wellington had owned a large and efficient body of engineers.
But (as at Badajoz, where he had made bitter complaints on this
subject[61]) the provision of trained men was ludicrously small--there
were just five officers of Royal Engineers[62] with the army, and
eight ‘Royal Military Artificers’. The volunteers from the Line, both
officers and men, used as auxiliaries, were not up to the work required
of them. It was a misfortune that none of the divisions before Burgos
had experience of siege-work, like that which the Light, 3rd, and 4th
Divisions (all left at Madrid) had been through.
(4) After the heavy losses in the early assaults the rank and file,
both the British and still more the Portuguese, were much discouraged.
As Burgoyne says, ‘the place might have been, and ought to have been,
taken if every one had done his duty[63].’ In the actual assaults
splendid courage was often displayed, but in the trench-work there was
much sulkiness, apathy, and even shirking. ‘Our undertaking, every
night that we broke ground, appeared most pitiful: there was scarcely
a single instance where at least double the work was not projected,
with sufficient men and tools collected, that was afterwards executed,
owing to the neglect and misconduct of the working parties. It was
seldom that the men could be induced to take out their gabions and set
to work, and I myself placed at different times hundreds of gabions
with my own hands, and then _entreated_ the men to go and fill them, to
no purpose. The engineers blamed the men--the men blamed the engineers,
who, as they grumbled, were by unskilful direction ‘sending them out
to be butchered[64].’ All this, in the end, was due to the want of
artillery for proper preparation, and of trained sappers.
(5) Burgoyne, D’Urban, and other observers are probably right in saying
that the failure of the assaults was partly due to the bad principle
of composing the storming-parties of drafts from many different corps,
collected, under officers whom they did not personally know, from
the units that chanced to be on duty that day. The one case where a
brilliant success was scored with small loss, was seen when a whole
battalion, the 2/24th, carried the outer _enceinte_ on October 4.
(6) Wellington’s doubts, expressed almost from the first, as to the
practicability of the affair that he had taken in hand, were known to
many officers, and affected the general morale.
(7) Dubreton deserves unstinted praise. A general of more ordinary
type, such as Barrois at Ciudad Rodrigo, would have lost Burgos for
want of the extraordinary resourcefulness, determination, and quick
decision shown by this admirable governor. His garrison must share his
glory: the French 34th certainly got in this siege a good _revanche_
for their last military experience, the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos.
SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER III
WELLINGTON’S RETREAT FROM BURGOS: OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1812. (1) FROM THE
ARLANZON TO THE DOURO: OCTOBER 22-OCTOBER 30
Having completed the depressing chronicle of the leaguer of the Castle
of Burgos, it is necessary that we should turn back for a week or two,
to examine the changing aspect of external affairs, which had affected
the general strategical position in Spain while the siege lingered
on. It will be remembered that the original scheme for the campaign
had been that, after the Army of Portugal had been pushed back to
the Ebro, a great part of Wellington’s field force should return to
Madrid, to pick up the divisions left there, and the corps of Hill,
before Soult and King Joseph should begin to give trouble on the side
of Valencia. Only a containing force was to have been left behind, to
aid Castaños and his Galicians in keeping Clausel (or his successor
Souham) out of mischief, while more important movements were on foot
in New Castile[65]. As to the command of this containing force there
was a difficulty: Wellington was not at all satisfied with the way in
which Clinton had handled the troops left on the Douro in August, and
it seems doubtful whether he wished to give him a far more important
commission in the first half of October, when he was the natural person
to be chosen for it. For at this time none of the other senior officers
who had served in the recent campaigns were available: Beresford,
Stapleton Cotton, and Picton were all three invalided at the moment.
Graham, the best of them all, had returned to England. Hill could not
be removed from the charge of his old army in the South. Of the five
divisions before Burgos four were commanded by brigadiers acting in
the position of _locum tenens_[66]: most of the brigades were, in a
similar fashion, being worked by colonels for want of a sufficient
number of major-generals to go round. But after October 11th the formal
difficulty was solved: there was now available an officer whom it was
fitting to leave in charge against Souham, viz. Sir Edward Paget,
who came up to the front on that day, after having been three years
absent from the Peninsula; he had last served under Wellington at the
Passage of the Douro in 1809, where he lost an arm. He had now come
out nominally to succeed Graham at the head of the 1st Division, but
also with the commission to act as second-in-command in the event of
the illness or disabling of the general-in-chief. Paget was known as
a good soldier, and had served with distinction during the Corunna
retreat; but he had never been trusted with the management of a large
force, and had little knowledge either of the army which Wellington had
trained, or of the parts of Spain in which the campaign was now going
on. Moreover, Wellington disliked on principle the idea of having a
second-in-command, occupying to a certain extent a position independent
of his own.
The separate containing force never came into existence, because
Wellington never left the North or returned to Madrid, though rumours
were afloat after Paget’s arrival that he was about to do so without
delay. Why, contrary to his own expressed intentions did he never go
South? The answer must certainly be that down to a very late period
of the siege he continued to keep in his mind the idea of returning
to Madrid[67], but that he was distracted from his purpose by several
considerations. The first was the abominable weather in October, which
made the prospect of a long forced march distasteful--the army was
sickly and would suffer. The second was his insufficient realization
of the nearness of the danger in the South: he thought that Hill was
in a less perilous position than was actually the case. The third was
that he was beginning to mark the growing strength of the Army of
Portugal, which lay in his own front, and to see that he could not hope
to ‘contain’ it by any mere detachment, if he departed for the South
with his main body. Souham’s host was no longer a spent force, which
could be ignored as a source of danger; if Wellington took away two or
three divisions, the officer left in charge in the North would be at
once assailed by very superior numbers. He did not like the idea of
trusting either Clinton or Paget with the conduct of a retreat before
an enemy who would certainly press him fiercely. In addition, there
was the lingering hope that Burgos might fall: if it were captured the
situation would be much improved, since the allies could use it as a
sort of _point d’appui_--to use the terminology of the day--on which
the containing army could rest; and the enemy would be forced to detach
heavily for the investment of the place.
By the day of the last assault (October 18) Wellington had clearly
lingered too long, for very large reinforcements had just come up to
join Souham, who on that morning was in a position to evict from before
Burgos not only any mere ‘covering force’ that might be left opposite
him, but the whole 35,000 men which formed the total of the allied
host. For by now the Army of Portugal was recruited up to a strength
of 38,000 men present with the colours: it had also just received
the disposable battalions of the Bayonne Reserve, a strong brigade
of 3,500 men under General Aussenac, and what was more important
still--Caffarelli had appeared at Briviesca with the main field-force
of the Army of the North. The operations of Home Popham, Mendizabal,
Mina and Longa, which had detained and confused the French troops in
Biscay and Navarre for the whole summer, had at last reached their
limits of success, and having patched up affairs on the coast, and left
some 20,000 men to hold the garrison places, and to curb the further
raids of the British commodore and the Spanish bands, Caffarelli had
come southwards with the whole of his cavalry--1,600 sabres,--three
batteries, and nearly 10,000 infantry, forming the greater part of the
divisions of Vandermaesen and Dumoustier. There were something like
50,000 French concentrated between Pancorbo and Briviesca on October
18th[68], while Wellington--allowing for his losses in the siege--had
not more than 24,000 Anglo-Portuguese and 11,000 Spaniards in hand. The
arrival of the Army of the North not only made the further continuance
of the siege of Burgos impossible, but placed Wellington in a condition
of great danger. It is clear that his campaign in the North had only
been able to continue for so long as it did because Popham, Mina, and
the Cantabrian bands had kept Caffarelli employed for a time that
exceeded all reasonable expectation. It was really surprising that a
small squadron and 10,000 half-organized troops, of whom a large part
were undisciplined guerrillero bands, and the rest not much better,
should have held the 37,000 men of the Army of the North in play for
three months. But the combination of a mobile naval force, and of
local levies who knew every goat-path of their native mountains, had
proved efficacious in the extreme. It had taken Caffarelli the whole
summer and much of the autumn to vindicate his position, and recover
the more important strategical points in his wide domain. Even when
he was marching on Burgos there was fierce fighting going on round
Pampeluna, on which Mina had pressed in more closely when he heard of
the departure of the general-in-chief. The Cantabrians and Navarrese
did marvels for Wellington, and their work has never been properly
acknowledged by British writers.
It is clear that the whole situation would have been different if
Wellington had brought up to the North in September the 16,000 veteran
British troops left at Madrid. For want of them he was in a state
of hopeless inferiority to his immediate opponents. And yet at the
same time they were useless at Madrid, because Hill--even with their
aid--was not nearly strong enough to keep Soult and King Joseph in
check. Wellington had in all at this time some 55,000 Anglo-Portuguese
troops under arms and at the front; but they were so dispersed that on
both theatres of war he was inferior to his enemies. He had 24,000
himself in Old Castile--Hill some 31,000 in New Castile; each of the
two halves of the army could count on the help of some 10,000 or 12,000
Spaniards[69]. But of what avail were the 35,000 men of all nations
at Burgos against the 50,000 French under Souham and Caffarelli, or
the 43,000 men of all nations near Madrid against the 60,000 of Soult
and the King? The whole situation would have been different if a
superiority or even an equality of numbers had been established against
one of the two French armies; and it is clear that such a combination
could have been contrived, if Wellington had adopted other plans.
There can be no doubt that the excessive tardiness of Soult’s
evacuation of Andalusia was the fact which caused the unlucky
distribution of Wellington’s forces in October. The Marshal, it will be
remembered, only left Granada on September 16th, and did not come into
touch with the outlying cavalry of the Valencian Army till September
29-30, or reach Almanza, where he was in full connexion with Suchet
and King Joseph, till October 2. There was, therefore, no threatening
combination of enemies on the Valencia side till thirteen days after
the siege of Burgos had begun; and Wellington did not know that it had
come into existence till October 9th, when he received a dispatch from
Hill informing him that the long foreseen, but long deferred, junction
had taken place. If it had occurred--as it well might have--three weeks
earlier, there would have been no siege of Burgos, and Wellington would
have been at Madrid, after having contented himself with driving the
army of Portugal beyond the Douro. It is probable that he would have
done well, even at so late a date as October 9th, if he had recognized
that the danger in front of Madrid was now pressing, and had abandoned
the siege of Burgos, in order to make new arrangements. Souham was not
yet in a condition to press him, and Caffarelli’s 10,000 men had not
arrived on the scene. But the last twelve days spent before Burgos
ruined his chances.
On getting Hill’s dispatch Wellington pondered much--but came to an
unhappy decision. In his reply he wrote, ‘I cannot believe that Soult
and the King can venture to move forward to attack you in the position
on the Tagus, without having possession of the fortresses in the
province of Murcia [Cartagena and Chinchilla] and of Alicante;--unless
indeed they propose to give up Valencia entirely. They would in that
case[70] bring with them a most overwhelming force, and you would
probably have to retire in the direction given to General Alten [i.e.
by the Guadarrama Pass, Villa Castin, and Arevalo] and I should then
join you on the Adaja. If you retire in that direction, destroy the
new bridge at Almaraz.... I write this, as I always do, to provide
for every event, not believing that these instructions are at all
necessary[71].’
In a supplementary letter, dated two days later, Wellington tells Hill
that he imagines that the autumn rains, which have made the siege of
Burgos so difficult, will probably have rendered the rivers of the
South impassable. ‘I should think that you will have the Tagus in
such a state as to feel in no apprehension in regard to the enemy’s
operations, be his numbers what they may[72].’ Yet though he does not
consider the danger in the South immediate or pressing, he acknowledges
that he ought to bring the siege of Burgos to an end, even though it be
necessary to raise it, and to give up the hope of its capture. But the
continual storms and rains induced him to delay his departure toward
the South: ‘I shall do so as soon as the weather holds up a little.’
On the same day (October 12) he wrote to Popham to say that if he had
to march towards Madrid, he expected that Souham would follow him, but
that Caffarelli must on no account be allowed to accompany Souham.
At all costs more trouble must be made in Cantabria and Biscay, to
prevent the Army of the North from moving. Popham must not withdraw
his squadron, or cease from stimulating the Northern insurgents[73].
Wellington was not aware that Caffarelli was already on the move, and
that the diversion in the North--through no fault of the officers in
charge of it--had reached its limit of success.
The moment had now arrived at which it was necessary at all costs to
come to some decision as to the movements of the Army at Burgos, for
Caffarelli (though Wellington knew it not) had started for Briviesca,
while Soult and King Joseph were also getting ready for an immediate
advance on Madrid, which must bring matters in the South to a head.
But relying on letters from Hill, dated October 10th, which stated
that there was still no signs of movement opposite him, Wellington
resolved on October 14 to stay yet another week in the North, and try
his final assault on Burgos: it came off with no success (as will be
remembered) on the 18th of that month. He was not blind to the possible
consequences to Hill of a prompt advance of the French armies from
Valencia, but he persuaded himself that the weather would make it
difficult, and that he had means of detaining Soult and Joseph, if they
should, after all, begin the move which he doubted that they proposed
to make.
The scheme for stopping any forward march on the part of the French
had two sections. The first was to be executed by the Anglo-Spanish
Army at Alicante. Maitland had fallen sick, and this force of some
16,000 men was now under the charge of General John Mackenzie. To this
officer Wellington wrote on October 13th: ‘In case the enemy should
advance from Valencia into La Mancha, with a view to attack our troops
on the Tagus, you must endeavour to obtain possession of the town and
kingdom of Valencia.’ He was given the option of marching by land from
Alicante, or of putting his men on shipboard and making a descent from
the sea on Valencia[74]. The second diversion was to be executed by
Ballasteros and the Army of Andalusia. Wellington wrote to him that
he should advance from Granada, cross the Sierra Morena with all his
available strength, and place himself at Alcaraz in La Mancha[75]. He
ought to have at least 12,000 men, as some of the Cadiz troops were
coming up to join him. Such a force, if placed on the flank of Soult
and the King, when they should move forward for Almanza and Albacete,
could not be ignored. And Wellington hoped to reinforce Ballasteros
with that part of the Murcian Army, under Elio and Freire, which had
got separated from the Alicante force, and had fallen back into the
inland. There were also irregular bodies, such as the division of the
Empecinado, which could be called in to join, and if 20,000 men lay at
Alcaraz, Soult could not go in full force to assail Hill in front of
Madrid. He must make such a large detachment to watch the Spaniards
that he would not have more than 30,000 or 35,000 men to make the
frontal attack on the Anglo-Portuguese force, which would defend the
line of the Tagus. Against such numbers Hill could easily hold his
ground.
It may be objected to these schemes that they did not allow sufficient
consideration to the power of Suchet in Valencia. Mackenzie’s force,
of a very heterogeneous kind, was not capable of driving in the
detachments of the Army of Aragon, which still lay cantoned along the
Xucar, facing the Allies at Alicante. Suchet was able to hold his own,
without detaining any of the troops of Soult or of King Joseph from
their advance upon Madrid. Mackenzie’s projected expedition against
the city of Valencia had no chance of putting a check upon the main
manœuvre that the French had in hand.
But the use of Ballasteros, whose movement must certainly have
exercised an immense restraining power upon Soult and King Joseph,
if only it had been carried out, was an experiment of a kind which
Wellington had tried before, nearly always with disappointing results.
To entrust to a Spanish general an essential part of a wide strategical
plan had proved ere now a doubtful expedient. And Ballasteros had
always shown himself self-willed if energetic; it was dangerous to
reckon upon him as a loyal and intelligent assistant in the great
game. And at this moment the captain-general of Andalusia was in
the most perverse of moods. His ill temper was caused by the recent
appointment of Wellington as commander-in-chief of all the Spanish
armies, a measure to which the Cortes had at last consented, after the
consequences of the battle of Salamanca and the occupation of Madrid
had prepared public opinion for this momentous step. It had been
bitterly opposed at the secret session when it was brought forward, but
there could no longer be any valid excuse for putting off the obviously
necessary policy of combining all military effort in the Peninsula, by
placing the control of the whole of the Spanish armies in the hands of
one who had shown himself such a master of the art of war.