The cannonade at Alba settled nothing: on its second day the French

commanders were taking counsel together, Soult, the King, Jourdan,

with Souham and Clausel (representing the Army of Portugal) were all

riding up and down the eastern bank of the Tormes, and seeking for the

facts which must determine their next move[162]. Fortunately for the

historian, after the debate, which was long and indecisive, Jourdan and

Soult each wrote a formal letter of advice to the King that evening. On

one point only were they agreed: it would be mad to attack Wellington

on the position of San Cristobal, whose strength was well known to all

the officers of the Army of Portugal, and had been increased during

the last two days by the throwing up of a chain of redoubts armed with

artillery. There remained two plans--Jourdan’s was a proposal to force

the line of the Tormes between Huerta and Alba, by a frontal attack

across the numerous fords which Marmont had used in the campaign of the

previous July; Soult’s was a plan for turning Wellington’s right by

going some distance up-stream south of Alba, and utilizing the fords

of the Tormes between Alba and Salvatierra. In the main the question

turned on the practicability of the fords, and this was varying from

hour to hour. The rain, which had made Hill’s retreat and Soult’s

advance so miserable to the troops, had stopped for the moment, and

the river was falling. Of the numerous passages about Huerta, La

Encina and Villa Gonzalo, Wellington had considered on the 9th that

none were really practicable: on the 10th he wrote to Hill that ‘the

river has certainly fallen since yesterday evening, but I believe that

no infantry soldier can pass yet, even if a cavalry soldier can, and

small picquets guarding the fords and charging resolutely the first

men who pass, will effectually prevent the passage[163].’ Hill was not

so certain that the enemy could not force his way over the river, and

on the 11th Wellington conceded that some of the fords had certainly

become practicable for cavalry, if not for infantry[164]. Considering

the immense superiority of the French in the mounted arm, it was

conceivable that they might attack many fords at once, drive in the

inferior cavalry-screen of the Allies, and then throw bridges across

and attack the British centre. In that case the army would stand to

fight, not behind the river bank but in front of the position of the

Arapiles. It would be necessary to close in the flanks for a battle;

all or most of the troops on the San Cristobal position would cross

the Tormes, just as they had done in July, and at the same time Hill

would draw in from Alba and form the southern wing of the line, in

the woods which had sheltered Marmont’s beaten army on the night of

the great victory. But Alba was not to be abandoned[165]: its castle

was susceptible of a long defence, and effectually blocked the best

passage of the Tormes. Wellington selected a battalion of Galician

infantry (Monterey, under Major José Miranda) which was to be placed

in the castle, and to hold it as long as possible, even when it should

(as was inevitable) be cut off from the allied army by the advance

of the French. The position was explained to the Spanish major, who

(as we shall see) behaved most admirably, blocked the Alba line of

communication for many days, and finally escaped by a sudden sally from

what looked like an inevitable surrender.

The two plans which were submitted to King Joseph on the evening

of November 11 both presupposed the practicability of the fords of

the Tormes. The river must evidently have fallen considerably since

Wellington surveyed it on the 9th, and drew his conclusion that it was

a barrier not to be crossed by any body of troops, but at most passable

by individual horsemen.

Jourdan wrote: ‘When we arrived on the heights above the right bank

of the Almar, Your Majesty was struck with the advantages that the

ground presented. I myself at once conceived the hope of forcing the

English Army to a general action which must involve its destruction.

Wellington’s position is too long--extending from the heights of San

Cristobal on the right bank of the Tormes as far as Alba. The Imperial

Army could pass the river at almost any spot between Huerta and the

point where the Almar flows into the Tormes. The immense plain on the

opposite bank would permit the whole of our cavalry to cross and form

up in front, to protect the passage of our infantry. After that, the

Army would march in mass against the English centre (which appears

to be between Calvarisa de Abaxo and Calvarisa de Arriba), and would

break through the enemy’s line. I do not disguise from myself that the

piercing of the hostile centre has its difficulties, but I should think

that 80,000 French troops could surmount them. Your Majesty must have

remarked that Soult, who at first was all for marching toward the upper

Tormes, was struck with the advantages which this ground offered, and

came round to my opinion. But subsequently he got talking with General

Clausel, about the plan for marching up the river, and returned to

his first view, which he induced Clausel to support. Both of them are

acquainted with the localities over which they wish to move the armies,

which gives weight to their opinion. I do not wish to deny that Soult’s

proposition is the more prudent, and if we want to fight we ought to

do so on ground which Wellington has not chosen, and which is less

advantageous to the enemy than that which he now occupies. But I fear

that we should not obtain from this movement so much advantage as Soult

appears to expect.

‘For he seems to think that Wellington will be forced to retreat on

Ciudad Rodrigo, while it is quite possible that he may choose to

retreat on San Felices, in which case our movement to the upper Tormes

compels him to retire indeed, but enables him to avoid a battle. For my

part I think that our superior numbers make a general action desirable.

I conclude, then, that Your Majesty may adopt Soult’s proposition so

far as the movement up the Tormes goes. If so, I believe that the Army

of Portugal must follow the Army of the South. The enemy has all his

forces united: it would be too dangerous for us to divide ours[166].’

Soult’s letter of the evening of the 12th, to the King, runs as follows:

‘The passage which we reconnoitred a little below Villa Gonzalo unites

all the qualities which one could desire, and I should be in favour

of it, were it not for the fact that after debouching on this point

we should have to form up for the attack under the fire of the enemy,

and should be compelled immediately to assail his whole army, in a

position which he knows and has thought out, and where very probably

he has entrenched himself. I think, therefore, that it would be more

prudent and more advantageous to force him to shift his position, and

to commit himself to an action on ground which we and not he will have

chosen--or else to retreat[167]. I have sent three officers along the

upper Tormes: they have reconnoitred and found practicable three fords

between Exeme and Galisancho[167].’

From the comparison of these two interesting dispatches we see that

Jourdan desired a battle in the style of Wagram, where the attacking

army crosses a river, and breaks through the over-long line of an

enemy deployed along heights at some distance from the water’s edge.

But Soult (to use an anachronism) feared a battle in the style of

Fredericksburg, where the assailant, debouching from narrow fords or

bridges, attacks in heavy masses a well-prepared position, held by

an enemy who has had time to settle down comfortably into it, and to

entrench the most suitable points. Soult was eminently justified in his

criticism of Jourdan’s plan: the most noteworthy remark to be made upon

it is that this was the battle which Wellington wanted. He wished to be

attacked frontally by the fords between Alba and Huerta, and had made

all his arrangements. On the other hand, Jourdan’s criticism of Soult

was equally cogent. If the French armies, keeping in a mass, crossed

the upper Tormes far above Alba, Wellington had the choice between

fighting in a new position (e. g. behind the river Zurgain), and

absconding, before his flank should be threatened seriously. He could,

indeed, move off, practically unmolested, towards Ciudad Rodrigo, and

not merely (as Jourdan suggested) by the more northern line toward San

Felices and Almeida.

Joseph, as was perhaps natural, gave his final decision in favour of

Soult’s plan. It was true that he had a marked superiority in numbers,

and that a defeat of a crushing sort inflicted on Wellington would go

far to end the Peninsular War. No such army on the French side had ever

been in line on a single field before in Spain. Jourdan’s estimate of

80,000 men was a decided understatement, even allowing for the fact

that Soult’s divisions had already many stragglers, and that Souham

had left a ‘minimum’ garrison at Valladolid. Something much more like

the 90,000 men at which Wellington estimated the three united French

armies must have been collected[168]. On the other hand there is a

dreadful risk taken when an army endeavours to cross a group of fords,

supplemented at the best by some hastily constructed bridges, in face

of an enemy known to be wary, active, and determined. What might not

happen if Wellington fell upon the leading divisions, while the rest

were crowding down to their crossing points? Or who could guarantee

that sudden rain in the Sierra de Francia might not cause the Tormes

to rise three feet on the battle day, and separate the troops who had

crossed from those still on the eastern bank? Every one at the French

head-quarters must have remembered Essling, and the narrow escape from

supreme disaster there suffered from the caprice of the Danube.

On the whole, the prospect of the enormous advantage to be got by

inflicting a complete disaster on Wellington did not balance the

possibility of loss that might follow an unsuccessful frontal attack

upon his position. Joseph made his choice in favour of Soult’s plan for

a flank march to the upper Tormes. This manœuvre would take several

days to execute, as the Army of the South had to be moved to its left

from all its cantonments facing Alba, while the Armies of the Centre

and Portugal had to wait till this flank march was finished, in order

to come up and take over the former positions of Soult’s divisions. For

all the French chiefs were agreed that the armies must keep closed up,

and that no gap must be allowed to come into existence between them.

When the Army of the South should begin to cross the Tormes, the Army

of Portugal must be in direct support of it, and must make no separate

attack of its own to the north of Alba, in the localities which Jourdan

had found so tempting. The whole of the 12th and 13th November was

expended in making this shift of troops southward. Soult moved his

army up-stream and placed his head-quarters at Anaya, six miles south

of Alba, above the fords of Galisancho, where the crossing was to take

place. The King moved to Valdecarros, a little to Soult’s right, with

the Army of the Centre. The Army of Portugal, leaving its cavalry and

two infantry divisions[169] as a rearguard about Huerta, moved the

other six to the heights above Alba, where it was hoped that it might

cross, when Soult’s manœuvre should force Hill to abandon that place

and draw back.

The King took two unexpected measures before passing the Tormes. The

first was to supersede Souham as commander of the Army of Portugal--the

excuse used was that he was indisposed, and not up to his task: the

real cause was that he was considered to have shown tardiness and

over-caution in his manœuvres since October 30th.[170] Drouet was

taken from the command of the Army of the Centre, and given the more

important charge of that of Portugal. The other, and more surprising,

order was one which made over--as a temporary arrangement--the charge

of the Army of the Centre to Soult, who thus had nearly 60,000 men

put at his disposition. The object was, apparently, to give him ample

forces for the move now about to be made at his request, and on his

responsibility.

Wellington was evidently somewhat puzzled at the posture of the French

on the 12th-13th November. He could not make out any reduction of

the French forces between Huerta and Alba, where indeed the whole

Army of Portugal still lay, but now with an accumulation of forces

on its left and a weaker right. Yet so long as the enemy was still

in force at Huerta he could not evacuate the San Cristobal position,

in order to send reinforcements to Hill. Reconnaissances by French

cavalry above Alba were reported each day by outlying picquets of

Hamilton’s Portuguese, who were watching the course of the upper

Tormes[171]. But no solid force was sent to back these outlying

posts: Wellington considered it unsafe to extend his already lengthy

front. The disposition of the troops on his right wing was still that

Hill lay in the woods behind Alba, with the 3rd and 4th Divisions at

Calvarisa de Abaxo as a reserve for him, while Long’s and D’Urban’s

cavalry carefully watched the course of the river from Alba to opposite

Huerta. On the north of the Tormes Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese

were on the river-bank at Aldea Lengua and Cabrerizos, watching the

two French divisions at Huerta. The 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th Divisions and

the Galicians held the San Cristobal position, with Anson’s, Victor

Alten’s, and Ponsonby’s cavalry far out in their front. Nothing hostile

could be discovered in this direction nearer than the two divisions

of the Army of Portugal at Huerta. Yet Wellington did not like to

weaken his left flank: at any moment the enemy at Huerta might come

forward, and might prove to be the vanguard of an advancing army, not

the rearguard of one about to go off southward. This hypothesis seemed

all the more possible because Maucune, on the morning of the 12th, had

made a reconnaissance in force against Pack’s Portuguese, at Aldea

Lengua: he deployed three brigades, engaged in a lively skirmish, and

only retreated when British reinforcements began to come up. On the

following day Wellington, wishing to see whether Maucune was on the

move, beat up his quarters with strong reconnaissances of cavalry, and

found him still in position[172]. Till Maucune should leave Huerta,

in advance or retreat, the situation was not clear. For these two days,

it seems, Wellington was still thinking it possible that he might be

attacked either on the San Cristobal position or by the fords between

Huerta and Alba. But he was quite aware that the other possibility (a

flank movement of Soult by the upper Tormes) existed, and had sent a

staff officer with a party of the 13th Light Dragoons to cross the

river at Salvatierra and ascertain the southernmost point to which

the French had moved[173]. And he had given Hill elaborate orders as

to what should be done if he were turned and driven in. Whether there

would be a battle to follow, or a retreat on Ciudad Rodrigo, depended

on the exact movements of the enemy, and the force that he brought up

to the crucial point. If the French split themselves into many columns,

with long gaps between them, there was still a chance of administering

a second lesson like that of July 22nd on much the same ground.

[Illustration: The Roads of the SALAMANCA ALMEIDA REGION illustrating

the SALAMANCA Retreat of November 1812]

On the early morning of the 14th the crisis came. At dawn Pierre

Soult’s Light Cavalry crossed the Tormes in force at three fords

between Galisancho and Lucinos, which were perfectly passable, the

water only coming up to the horses’ bellies. The Portuguese picquets

beyond the river gave the alarm, but had to retire at once; some few

were cut off by the chasseurs. Two divisions of dragoons followed

Vinot’s and Avy’s light horse, and when they had scoured the west bank

of the Tormes up and down and found no enemy in force, the infantry

began to pass, not only by the fords but by several trestle bridges

which were constructed in haste. As soon as there were a couple of

divisions across the river, they advanced to a line of heights a couple

of miles ahead, where there was a fair defensive position above the

village of Martin Amor. By the afternoon the whole Army of the South

was across the water, and had taken up a more advanced line towards

Mozarbes, while the Army of the Centre was beginning to follow. It

had been hoped that the Army of Portugal would be able to cross at or

near Alba, for Soult supposed it likely that Hill would evacuate that

town, when he saw 40,000 men arrayed behind his left flank. But though

Hill did withdraw Howard’s and da Costa’s brigades in the afternoon,

he left Miranda’s Spanish battalion in the castle, and blew up the

bridge. As the castle commanded the ruined structure and the ford near

it, and fired furiously on both, there was no chance of passing here

or of repairing the ruined arch. Drouet found that he would have to

march up-stream, and made his crossing at Torrejon, four miles south

of Alba and near the fords that Soult had employed. He had the bulk of

his army over the river by the afternoon, and his two rear divisions

under Maucune, which had arrived late after a forced march from Huerta,

crossed at dusk[174]. The whole 90,000 men of the French Army were over

the Tormes that night, bivouacking on the heights from Torradillos to

Valdenuerque, in front of Martin Amor. The operation had been neatly

carried out, and was quite successful.

Wellington had early knowledge of the French movement from two

sources--his cavalry told him almost at daybreak that the French camps

above Huerta were empty, and soon after came Hill’s news that Soult

had begun to cross the Tormes in force at Galisancho. Quite early in

the morning Wellington rode out in haste, to take command in person

on the threatened front, after having issued orders that the whole of

the troops on the San Cristobal position should follow him. He himself

pushed on with his staff, met Hill in the wood south of the Arapiles,

and told him to watch the roads from Alba with the 4th Division and

Hamilton’s Portuguese. Then, taking the strong 2nd Division--8,000

infantry--and all the cavalry brigades that had been watching the

middle Tormes (Slade’s, Long’s, and D’Urban’s, and Penne Villemur’s

Spaniards) he pushed on to ‘contain’ and possibly to attack Soult[175].

But on arriving in front of Mozarbes a little before noon, he saw that

the enemy had already three or four divisions and 4,000 horse drawn up

in line to cover the passage of the Tormes by the rest of his army. He

had arrived too late to check Soult’s leading columns, and if he sent

for Hill and the other troops which lay to his rear, he would, even

when they arrived, have only 25,000 men available to attack an enemy

who had already as great a force in line, and who was receiving fresh

troops every moment from the fords[176]. Nothing could be done till the

great reserve from the San Cristobal position came up, and they were

not due till late in the day--the last of them indeed did not cross the

bridge of Salamanca till the following morning.

At dusk Wellington ordered Hill to fall back with his infantry from the

woods in front of Alba to the old position of the Arapiles, but kept

his cavalry to the front, to cover his own line of battle as long as

possible. Their screen of vedettes was placed in the line of woods from

Miranda de Azan to Utrera, south of the heights on which Marmont’s army

had taken up its position upon July 22nd. Till this cavalry was driven

in, the French, on the rising ground above Mozarbes, could not make out

the British position.

On the morning of the 15th Wellington had all his troops in hand,

though the last divisions from San Cristobal did not come up till some

hours after daybreak. But the enemy had also brought up every man to

the front, being resolved to sacrifice not even the smallest part of

his numerical superiority. Some critics, among them Jourdan[177],

hold that Wellington, since he was determined not to fight save at

advantage, should have commenced his retreat on Ciudad Rodrigo the

moment that he saw the whole of the three hostile armies massed in his

front, and before they could begin to debouch from their position on

the heights of Mozarbes. And it is probable that if he had directed the

troops from San Cristobal to take the roads towards the Agueda, instead

of bringing them up to the Arapiles position, and if he had used Hill’s

corps and all his cavalry as a rearguard only, he would have reached

Ciudad Rodrigo with a smaller loss of life than was actually to be

spent. The French would have had to start their pursuit from a more

distant and a less favourable point.

It seems, however, that Wellington was prepared to risk a battle, even

against the superior numbers opposed to him, supposing that the enemy

played his game badly. He resolved to take up the excellent position

along the Arapiles heights which he had held on July 22nd, and to stand

to fight against any frontal assault--the advantage of the ground, with

its bold slopes, good cover for reserves, and favourable emplacements

for artillery, were evidently in his eyes so great that he was prepared

to risk a general engagement with 20,000 men less in line than had

his adversaries. As the morning drew on, he had his army formed up

from Calvarisa de Arriba to a point not far from Miranda de Azan.

The line was longer than in the battle of July 22nd, for the troops

were much more numerous. The extreme left wing was formed by the 4th

Division holding the heights and village of Calvarisa de Arriba (which

had been in Foy’s hands on July 22). The 2nd Division and Hamilton’s

Portuguese were holding both the Arapiles--the French as well as the

English--and the ground from thence as far as the village of the same

name. Westward of Hill’s troops lay the 3rd Division and Morillo’s

Spaniards. The second line, composed of troops which had come down from

San Cristobal, consisted of the Light Division (on the left), Pack and

Bradford, the Galicians, and the 5th, 6th, and 7th Divisions. The 1st

Division was placed as a somewhat ‘refused’ right flank protection

for the whole army--much as Pakenham and the 3rd Division had been in

July. It lay about Aldea Tejada on the Zurgain river, several miles

to the right rear of the 3rd Division. The object for which it was

detailed to this separate duty was the same as that for which Pakenham

had been told off at the earlier crisis--to protect the Ciudad Rodrigo

road, and to be ready to outflank and intercept any attempt which the

French might make to turn the British position in this direction. The

bulk of the cavalry was also placed on the right wing, to cover the

end of the infantry line. Only the Portuguese horse of D’Urban and

Campbell, Penne Villemur’s Spaniards, and Long’s brigade were on the

left beyond Calvarisa de Arriba. The rest, five British brigades, lay

out in the direction of Miranda de Azan and in front of Aldea Tejada.

Bock’s brigade on the extreme right long remembered their position of

this morning because they were placed on ‘Pakenham’s Hill’, the spot

where the 3rd Division had fallen upon Thomières in the old battle.

The ground was thickly strewn with the skeletons of the French who had

then fallen, still lying unburied and in a horrible state of complete

preservation: the horses’ hoofs were continually setting the skulls

rolling[178]. Behind Bock were Ponsonby’s, Victor Alten’s, Anson’s,

and Slade’s brigades, a formidable mass, yet far less in strength

than the innumerable cavalry of the Armies of the South and Centre,

which lay opposite them 7,000 strong[179]. Nothing was more uncertain

than the move which the French would next make. If it should turn out

to be one which did not fit in with Wellington’s plans, there would

be no alternative but a retreat on Ciudad Rodrigo. Wherefore all the

divisions were directed to send off their baggage half a march to the

west, and preparations were made to destroy so much of the magazines in

Salamanca city as could not be carried off. The commissariat officers

were already packing up all for which transport could be found, and

sending it forward. By an error of judgement on the part of the

Quartermaster-General, James Willoughby Gordon--not the first of his

blunders in this campaign--all this valuable store was started on the

road Salamanca-Rollan-San Felices, which was the safest by far of all

those open to the Army if a retreat should become necessary, and the

farthest from any probable line of advance that the French could take.

But it had the disadvantage of being far away from the other roads by

which the Allied Army might have to move, and the unfortunate result

followed on the 16th-17th-18th that the food was moving on the northern

road, and the troops--starving for want of it--on three other roads

parallel to it at a distance of twenty miles to the south. Soldiers

must be fed, or they straggle and turn to marauding, and it is of

no profit to have food if it be not in the right place at the right

moment. These simple facts were to cause dire trouble during the next

three days.

Meanwhile, from a comparatively early hour on the 15th it became

evident that Soult was not going to play the game that Wellington

desired. It was a miserable morning of drifting rain, and

reconnaissances had to be pushed far forward to get any clear

information. But the reports soon began to come in, to the effect that

the enemy was keeping closed up, that he was constructing trenches and

_abattis_ on the heights of Mozarbes[180] and that he had pushed out

an immense force of cavalry on his left wing, under cover of which

infantry divisions were clearly to be seen working westward. Evidently

Soult was aiming at the roads toward Ciudad Rodrigo; but he was not

(like Marmont on July 22) letting his army break up into unconnected

sections, and was keeping it in an unbroken line. The entrenchments

on the hills showed that he was prepared to receive in position any

frontal attack that Wellington might be prepared to direct against

him. His motions were slow, not only because of his cautious method of

procedure, but from the badness of the country roads, already made deep

and miry from the rain, over which he was moving his left wing towards

the west. The Army of Portugal was now in line on his right, and its

cavalry was feeling its way forward towards Hill’s flank. But obviously

the danger was not on this side, where the bulk of the French infantry

was standing fast in position: it was the other wing, Soult’s troops

alone, which was in decided motion, and that for a flank march, not for

anything approaching a frontal attack.

All this was most disappointing: Wellington at once made up his mind

that since the enemy was not about to attack his position, and since

it would be madness on his part to take the offensive and assail the

well-placed array of the French, there was no alternative save instant

retreat. It must not be delayed, because, when Soult should have moved

his left wing a little farther on, he would be controlling the road

that runs from Mozarbes to Tamames and Ciudad Rodrigo, parallel to

that via Matilla and San Muñoz to the same destination, over which

Wellington’s natural line of retreat lay.

At about two o’clock in the afternoon on the 15th the British

commander-in-chief made up his mind that he must delay no longer, and

ordered his army to march to its right, in the two lines in which it

was already arranged. The mass of cavalry in front of Aldea Tejada

remained stationary, to cover the movement of the infantry behind its

rear: the smaller body of horse on the left held its ground about the

Arapiles, till all the divisions had passed on, and then followed as

a rearguard. The entire army marched in fighting trim: if attacked

at any moment it had only to front to its left flank, and then would

be in order of battle. The movement had to be slow for the first few

miles, since neither the front nor the rear column was on a good

track until it reached the river Zurgain, and there fell into one of

the three parallel roads which run from Salamanca to Ciudad Rodrigo.

Moreover the rain, which had been a mere drizzle in the morning, turned

to a heavy torrential downpour just as the army was starting. The

country paths became quagmires in a few minutes; and when the usually

insignificant Zurgain came in sight it was already a roaring river,

only to be forded with care. The march was toilsome in the extreme,

and the troops, who had expected and desired a general action, were

sodden and sulky. ‘I never saw the men in such a bad humour,’ observes

one intelligent eye-witness[181]. The march was absolutely unmolested

by the French, and the columns, having crossed the Zurgain, fell into

the three parallel roads which run side by side for many miles from

Salamanca--the southern one to Matilla, the central one to Maza de

San Pedro and San Muñoz, the northern one (the so-called Calzada de

Don Diego) to Aldehuela de la Boveda[182]. Of these the second is

the regular high road from Salamanca to the frontier, the other two

secondary lines of communication. They are extraordinarily convenient

for the retreat of an army which must be kept together, the distance

between the two side-roads and the central one being seldom over five

miles, and often no more than three. The only misfortune was that the

train of transport had gone off, by Colonel Gordon’s error[183], on an

entirely different and divergent route, towards Rollan and San Felices.

The army, after falling into the designated roads, pursued its way till

after dark and bivouacked in the patches of forest on the farther side

of the Valmusa river, about 10 miles from Salamanca. The head-quarters

were at the village of Carnero on the central road[184]. The night was

miserable, no food was distributed, and though wood was abundant it was

hard to light fires, owing to the incessant rain. The troops were tired

and footsore, and straggling had once more begun.

Meanwhile there was quite as much discontent in the French ranks as

in those of Wellington. There had been a general feeling that since

the whole force of the three armies of the South, Centre, and Portugal

had been successfully concentrated on the Mozarbes position, and since

the enemy was known to be much inferior in numbers, something decisive

ought to have happened on the 15th November. That no collision whatever

took place must be attributed partly to the bad weather, but much more

to the caution of Soult, who was this day determined above all things

that he would not suffer the fate of Marmont on this same ground, by

allowing any dislocation to take place between the various sections of

his army.

At nine o’clock in the morning it had been reported that--so far as the

misty rain allowed of certain observation--Wellington was in line of

battle on the Arapiles position. Soult continued to move his cavalry

forward with caution, and to extend his left towards Azan. A little

before noon Joseph and Jourdan joined Soult on the heights above

Mozarbes, the Allies being still stationary. Jourdan suggested that

the Army of Portugal should move forward on the right and attack that

flank of the hostile line which rested on the Arapiles[185]: this was

tried in a tentative way, apparently with the object of holding Hill’s

divisions to their ground, and preventing them from moving off. But it

led to no more than some bickering between the caçadores of the 2nd

Division and the advanced light cavalry and voltigeurs of the French

right, in the woods south of the greater Arapile. The Army of Portugal

made no real attempt to close in. A partial attack on Wellington’s line

would, indeed, have been unwise. The only chance would have been for

Soult to march in upon its right while D’Erlon was pressing in with

decision against its left. But Soult, though requested by King Joseph

to move forward in force, continued his cautious flanking movement

to the westward, and did not carry out a precise and definite order

to push out his cavalry and drive in the British squadrons which lay

in front of Wellington’s right. Then came the torrential rain which

set in about two o’clock, just as Wellington ordered his army to move

off, still preserving its battle order, toward the river Zurgain.

His departure was only partially visible, and no attempt was made to

incommode it. A cavalry officer of the Army of the South writes: ‘The

rain falling in deluge soon rendered the whole field of operations

one vast and deep quagmire. The smallest dips in the ground became

dangerous precipices. The darkness, continually growing blacker, soon

added to the horror of the scene, and made us absolutely unable to act.

The muskets of the infantry were no longer capable of being discharged.

The cavalry was not only unable to manœuvre, but even to advance on the

slippery, sodden, and slimy soil.... We lay down on the field drenched

by the rain, with the mud up to our knees[186].’

Jourdan says that it was pitch dark by four o’clock, the gloom of the

terrible downpour melting early into the darkness of the night. There

was much recrimination between the French leaders. Joseph wrote to

the Minister of War that he tried to bring on decisive action between

eleven o’clock and two, and failed entirely by the fault of Soult. He

accused him of deliberately wasting two hours by vain excuses, and

suggested that the real explanation of his sluggishness was that he

knew the incapacity of his brother Pierre Soult, commanding the light

horse of the left wing, and thought that he would get matters into a

mess if he were charged with the duty of pressing Wellington’s cavalry

in front of him[187]. ‘He knows the extent of his brother’s capacity,

and fears to compromise him. For this reason his light horse is always

kept close in to the rest of the army, and never advances without being

immediately supported by the remainder of his cavalry, while the Duke

of Dalmatia always marches himself in his brother’s company.’

Such a theory is, of course, quite insufficient to explain Soult’s

reluctance to engage on this day. The simple fact was that, after

Albuera, he had a wholesome dread of attacking a British army in

position, if it could be avoided, and preferred to manœuvre it from its

chosen ground, even if he thereby sacrificed the possibility of a great

victory, and secured only an illusory advantage.

On finding that Wellington had got off unmolested, and that Soult had

made no attempt to drive in the cavalry which was covering his retreat,

King Joseph, by Jourdan’s advice, issued orders which proved that both

he and his mentor thought that the game was up. Instead of setting

every man upon the track of the allied columns, Joseph ordered the

whole Army of Portugal, as well as his own Guard, to march upon the

deserted town of Salamanca, while Soult alone was permitted to pursue

the retreating foe. Now since the King was as much convinced as either

of the Marshals that, if Wellington was to be brought to book, every

man of the 90,000 French troops must be ready to attack him, it is

clear that the order to the Army of Portugal to desist from the pursuit

meant that no general action was now to be hoped for. Jourdan could

indulge in the malicious satisfaction of the adviser who, having seen

his counsel rejected, is able to say ‘I told you so!’ to his comrade,

when bad luck has supervened. He had prophesied that, if Soult were

allowed to try his flank move to the upper Tormes, Wellington would

get off without harm[188]. This had now happened; it was judged that

a further pursuit by the whole army was useless, and the 40,000 men

of the Army of Portugal and the Royal Guards were directed to seize

Salamanca and halt there. Clearly if Soult’s 50,000 men went on, and

Wellington suddenly turned to bay, the pursuers could not dare to bring

him to action, since they would be much outnumbered. Evidently, all

that could now be hoped was that Soult might worry the rear of the

retreating enemy, and pick up stragglers and baggage.

After dark the light cavalry of the Army of Portugal and Foy’s infantry

division marched on Salamanca, and reached it that night, after much

toilsome trudging over inundated paths: ‘The plain was under water:

for half the way our infantry were walking through water knee deep:

if the moon had not risen we should never have found our way there.’

The bridge of Salamanca was discovered to be unbroken, and some

half-emptied magazines of flour and rum were captured. A rearguard

of British cavalry--half a troop of the 2nd Hussars of the German

Legion--evacuated the place on the arrival of the French, covering a

mass of stragglers, sutlers, and Spanish refugees, who found their

way to Ledesma and from thence to the Portuguese frontier[189]. Foy,

following them forty-eight hours later, moved to Ledesma, and then

to Zamora, where he took up cantonments. The cavalry of the Army of

Portugal, starting earlier, went to feel for Wellington’s rear on

the road towards Aldehuela de la Boveda, leaving the pursuit on the

other two routes to Soult. The rest of the Army remained cantoned at

Salamanca, which had been well plundered by the first division that

arrived[190]. King Joseph reviewed it, outside the city, on November

17--all in the rain--a melancholy ceremony. The men and officers were

alike weary and discontented. ‘We had an army stronger by a third than

Wellington’s, infinitely superior in cavalry and artillery. Confident

expectation of victory was in every man’s head. The chance had come

of beating the English--perhaps of driving them from the Peninsula.

This fine opportunity, so splendid, so decisive, with so few adverse

chances, has been let slip[191].’ So wrote the disappointed Foy. He

adds, ‘The King does not know how to show to advantage before his

troops; he can speak with effect neither to the officers nor to the

rank and file: he got absolutely wet through, rode home, and went to

bed.’

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER VI

FROM THE TORMES TO THE AGUEDA

The last crisis of the campaign of 1812 was now over, and, but for two

unlucky circumstances, the four days of operations which still remained

would have required little notice from the annalist. But these two

mishaps, the continuance of the exceptionally severe and tempestuous

weather which had set in upon the 15th November, and the misdirection

of the supply column, which had got completely separated from the

marching troops, were to have most disastrous results. They cost the

army 3,000 men, much misery, and some humiliation, and Wellington great

vexation of spirit, leading to one of his rare outbursts of violent

rage--his angry words committed to paper, and published abroad by

misadventure, were always remembered with a grudge by his officers and

men.

It must be remembered that there was no really dangerous pursuit. Soult

was not strong enough to press Wellington to a general action, and knew

it. On the 16th he wrote to King Joseph: ‘I think that your Majesty’s

intention is that the enemy should only be followed up to the frontier.

In two days the campaign will probably be at an end in these parts,

for if the enemy’s army goes behind the Agueda, I cannot think that it

would be at present possible to pursue it any further. I await your

orders for the future destination of the Army of the South, which would

be unable to stop two days in position for want of bread and forage. I

propose to establish it on the upper Tormes, below Salvatierra and El

Barco, where I could rest eight or ten days, to allow the men repose

and to collect food[192].’ Clearly there was no offensive spirit in the

Marshal, who only wished to see Wellington upon his way to Rodrigo, and

then contemplated turning back to the upper Tormes.

On the 16th there was little to record in the way of military

operations. The British Army started at dawn from its wet bivouacks

behind the Valmusa river, having received no distribution of food. The

side roads, on which the larger part of the troops were moving, grew

worse and worse as the rain continued. The weakly men began to fall

behind, the shirkers to slip away into the woods, to look for peasants

to plunder and roofs to shelter them from the drenching rain. After the

usual midday halt the bad news went round that the supply column had

gone off on the wrong road--via Ledesma--and that there would again be

no distribution of rations that evening. All that the troops got was

the carrion-like meat of over-driven bullocks hastily slaughtered, and

acorns gathered in the oak woods through which the roads ran. These,

we are assured, though bitter and hard, were better than nothing. It

was only in the evening, after the infantry had encamped behind the

brook that gets its name from the village of Matilla, that the pursuing

French cavalry came up on the two southern roads, and engaged in a

bickering skirmish with the screen of allied horse covering the rear.

The Polish Lancers, 2nd Hussars, and 5th and 27th Chasseurs engaged

in an interchange of partial charges with the 14th Light Dragoons and

K.G.L. Hussars of Victor Alten’s brigade, in front of the camps of the

2nd Division. It was brought to a sudden end by the light company of

the 28th and two guns opening fire on the French from under the cover

of a woodside, on which the enemy went off, with a loss of some 50 men,

mostly wounded prisoners[193]. Alten’s brigade suffered much less.

The centre column saw very little of the pursuing French--Digeon’s

Dragoons--who made no attempt to press in. The cavalry of the Army

of Portugal acted even more feebly on the northernmost of the three

parallel roads. Yet the retreating army lost several hundred ‘missing’

this day, all stragglers or weakly men captured singly on the road,

or in villages at its sides, whither they had betaken themselves for

shelter or marauding. The rearguard cavalry vainly attempted to whip

them all into the tail of the retreating column--some were really

unable to move--others escaped notice in hiding-places, and were taken

by the French when they emerged for a tardy attempt to follow the army.

The camp-followers, and the unfortunate women and children whom the

evil custom of the time allowed to remain with the regiments, suffered

most of all. Soult in his dispatch to King Joseph of the night of the

16th says that he had gathered in 600 prisoners this day, and is very

probably correct.

The 17th November was an even worse day--the rain still continued to

fall, and stomachs were still more empty than on the preceding morning.

The march of the retreating army was still in three columns, but the

2nd Division replaced the 4th as the rearguard of the southern column

(2nd, 3rd, 4th Divisions; Hamilton’s Portuguese; Morillo’s Spaniards),

which marched unmolested from Matilla by Villalba to Anaya on the

Huebra, turning off towards the end of the day from the high road to

Tamames[194], in order not to get too far from the central column,

which was marching on San Muñoz: for Wellington intended to have his

whole army arrayed behind the Huebra, a good fighting position, that

evening. This was a most miserable journey. ‘The effects of hunger and

fatigue were even more visible than on the preceding day. A savage sort

of desperation had taken possession of our minds, and those who lived

on the most friendly terms in happier times now quarrelled with each

other, using the most frightful imprecations, on the slightest offence.

A misanthropic spirit was in possession of every bosom. The streams

which fell from the hills were swelled into rivers, which we had to

wade, and many fell out, including even officers. It was piteous to see

some of the men, who had dragged their limbs after them with determined

spirit, fall down at last among the mud, unable to proceed further,

and sure of being taken prisoners if they escaped death. Towards night

the rain had somewhat abated, but the cold was excessive, and numbers

who had resisted the effect of hunger and fatigue with a hardy spirit

were now obliged to give way, and sank to the ground praying for death

to deliver them from their misery. Some prayed not in vain, for next

morning before daylight, in passing from our halting-ground to the

road, I stumbled over several who had died in the night[195].’

The only food that the southern marching column got this day was

procured from the celebrated raid upon the swine, which so much enraged

Wellington. It is recorded in many 3rd and 4th Division diaries. The

main wealth of the peasantry of this forest region lay in their pigs,

which had been driven into the heart of the woods, to hide them from

the passing armies. From some unknown cause a stampede broke out in one

vast herd of the creatures, which ran across the road cutting through

the middle of the 3rd Division. The starving soldiers opened up a

lively fusillade upon them, and whole battalions broke their ranks and

pursued them with the bayonet, cutting up the creatures before they

were dead, each man going off with a gory limb or rib. Many officers

farther to the rear thought from the firing that the French had cut

into the head of the column. Later in the day the same or another herd

charged the camp of a brigade of the 2nd Division, and gave many a

hungry man an unexpected meal[196].

The southern column had no enemy but hunger and cold on the 17th,

but the experiences of the centre column were more military. This

corps, consisting of the 1st, 6th, 5th, 7th, Light Divisions, moving

in that order, had a tiresome alarm before the rearguard had started

in the morning from behind the Matilla brook. By some blunder--on

the part of Gordon the Quartermaster-General as was said[197]--the

covering cavalry marched off before the Light Division, the rear of

the infantry column, had left its ground. There was nothing but the

picquets from the 95th Rifles between the camp, where the battalions

were just getting under arms, and two divisions of French Dragoons,

cautiously advancing along the road and with their flanking parties out

in the woods. There was barely time to form close column and start off

before the enemy were riding in from all sides. They did not attempt

to close, but while keeping their main body on the road, at a safe

distance, sent out many detached squadrons, along by-paths in the

woods, which from time to time came out unexpectedly not only upon the

flank of the Light Division, acting as rearguard, but much farther up

the line, where the 7th Division, and the 5th in front of them, were

moving along the road to San Muñoz. Hardly any of the allied cavalry

appeared to curb these incursions--the main body appears to have gone

off too much to the south, in the direction of Hill’s column. Hence

came the extraordinary chance that small bodies of the French got into

the interval between the Light Division and the 7th, and even into that

between the 7th Division and the 5th, though the troops themselves were

all closed up and perfectly safe in their dense columns. Great part

of the baggage of the 7th Division was intercepted and plundered by

one party. But the most tiresome incident was that a patrol of three

men from Vinot’s light cavalry captured the one-armed General Edward

Paget, the newly-arrived second-in-command of the Army, as he was

riding--accompanied by his Spanish servant alone--from the rear brigade

of the 5th Division to the front brigade of the 7th, in order to bid

the latter close up rapidly. The French pounced on him out of a corner

of the wood, and as he could not defend himself, and had no escort, he

was hurried off a prisoner, and it was some time before his absence was

noted[198]. A good many isolated soldiers were picked up in the same

fashion by the French cavalry, before the central column emerged from

the woods and found itself above the broad ravine of the Huebra river,

and the town of San Muñoz, in the late afternoon[199].

The whole column had been ordered to encamp on the farther side of the

Huebra, on the plateau in front of Boadilla and Cabrillas, and each

division as it passed the river made its way to the ground allotted

to it. There was wood to be had in abundance, and fires were lit--the

rain had abated in the afternoon--but there was little to cook. Again

there was no distribution save of beef from the droves of half-starved

oxen which accompanied the divisions, and acorns which turned out more

palatable when roasted than when eaten raw.

The 7th Division had just crossed the Huebra, and the Light Division

and a few squadrons of cavalry alone were on the farther bank, when

a new turn was given to the day by the appearance of infantry behind

the French Dragoons, who had been following the retreating centre

column since dawn. Soult had at last succeeded in getting his leading

division, that of Daricau, to the front. Hitherto the bad roads and

the fatigue of the long marches had prevented them from picking up

the cavalry of the advanced guard. The Marshal by no means intended

to commit himself to a general action, but thought that he had the

chance of falling upon the rear of Wellington’s retreating central

column, as it passed the defile of the Huebra. ‘I thought,’ he wrote

that evening to King Joseph, ‘that I might bring off a combat of

infantry, and a cavalry affair, to advantage, but had to give up the

idea, and to limit my efforts to cannonading the masses of the English

Army across the Huebra. The enemy showed us 20,000 men in position,

including 3,000 horse, and more than 20 guns--we could see other masses

debouching across the bridge of Castillejo de Huebra, and the glare of

camp fires announced the presence of more divisions on the plateau of

Cabrillas[200].’

What happened at this rearguard action, whose details Soult slurs

over, was that the Light Division, suddenly attacked by the French

infantry as it was about to cross the Huebra, had to throw out a strong

skirmishing line to its rear, while the main column plunged down the

ravine and over the fords. Three companies of the 43rd and one of the

95th[201] held back Daricau’s voltigeurs till their comrades had waded

across the water, and then had the dangerous task of withdrawing from

the woodside and rushing down to the fords sharply pursued. Soult

showed at first every sign of desiring to cross the Huebra in their

wake, brought up four batteries to his side of the ravine, and began to

play upon the Light and 7th Divisions, which had formed up to defend

the passage. His skirmishers swarmed down to the river bank, under

cover of the fire of the guns, engaged in a lively _tiraillade_ across

the rapid stream, and would certainly have attempted to cross if the

return fire had not been as strong and rapid as their own. The 7th

Division, drawn up in three lines of brigades on the higher slopes, was

much shelled by the French artillery, and would have suffered severely

but for the fact that the rain-sodden ground ‘swallowed the shot and

smothered the shells[202].’ It is an extraordinary fact that after

‘four hours of standing up to the ankles in mud and water, completely

exposed, having nothing to shelter us[203]’ the regiments in the front

brigade were hardly touched at all: the 68th had no loss whatever,

the 51st had one officer killed and eight men wounded, and the total

casualties in the division were under 30. Soult’s report that ‘notre

feu d’artillerie a été très meurtrier pour l’ennemi’ was plausible

enough to any French officer watching the artillery practice, which was

good--but happened to be incorrect.

At dusk the firing ceased, and the French drew off from the river

and encamped in the woods behind them, as did the Light and 7th

Divisions on the opposite bank. The losses on both sides in this

skirmish--sometimes called the combat of San Muñoz, sometimes the

combat of the Huebra--were very moderate. Daricau’s division had 226

casualties (mostly in the 21st Léger and 100th Line), and the French

cavalry a few more. On the British side the Light and 7th Divisions

and the cavalry of the rearguard lost 365 men--but this included 178

prisoners not taken in action but individually as stragglers during the

long retreat through the woods since dawn[204]. In the actual fighting

the loss was only 2 officers and 9 men killed, and 4 officers and 90

men wounded in the British brigades, with 1 officer and 36 men killed

and 2 officers and 43 men wounded in the Portuguese--a total of 187.

Next morning it was expected that the French, having now several more

infantry divisions at the front, would make an attempt to force the

line of the Huebra at dawn. Nothing of the kind happened. ‘Daylight

came at last,’ writes the cavalry officer in charge of the line of

vedettes along the river, ‘the French drums beat, and the troops stood

to arms. I took my place to observe their movements, and expected every

moment to see the columns leaving the camp for the different fords.

But no! after having had a good opportunity to observe their strength,

and to see their cavalry water their horses, I witnessed with no small

satisfaction the whole, after remaining under arms about two hours,

disperse to their respective bivouacks[205].’ The pursuit was over.

Wellington, in short, had offered battle on the Huebra, on the evening

of the 17th, and Soult had refused it, seeing that the bulk of the

allied army was concentrated close behind that river, while his own

infantry divisions were still straggling up from the rear. Nor had

he any intention of following next day--he wrote to King Joseph that

‘I told your Majesty that seeing the retreat of the enemy upon the

Agueda well pronounced, and having no hope of being able to engage him

in a general action before he has terminated his movement, I should

put a limit to my pursuit after passing the Huebra, and should move

off towards the upper Tormes, to enable the army to collect the food

which it lacks.’ The regret expressed at being unable to force on a

battle was of course insincere. All that Soult did was to wait till the

British rearguard had abandoned the line of the Huebra, and then move

his advanced cavalry to Cabrillas, from which some small reconnoitring

parties pushed as far as the Yeltes river[206], and then came back,

reporting that it was impossible to pass that flooded stream without

bridges, and that the British were all across it. On the morning of the

19th the whole French army retired eastward, marching by Tamames and

Linares towards Salvatierra. The truth was that the French were by now

suffering almost as much from fatigue and want of food as the British.

They could not ‘live on the country’, and the diet of acorns, of which

several diarists speak, was as repugnant to the pursuers as to the

pursued.

On the 18th the British Army had an unmolested retreat. This did not

prevent many losses of men who dropped to the rear and died of fatigue

and starvation. The carcasses of dead horses all along the road had

been hacked up for food. One observer saw thirteen corpses lying round

a single fire: another counted so many as fifty men sitting in a clump,

who declared their absolute incapacity to march a foot farther, and

could not be induced to move. But the stragglers who did not perish

hobbled on to the camps in the evening for the most part. The cavalry

swept up large numbers of them into safety. That night the column

of Hill reached Tenebron and Moras Verdes: the centre column lodged

about Santi Espiritus and Alba de Yeltes. The Galicians, forming the

northern column, were about Castillo de Yeltes and Fuenteroble. The

march of the centre column was accompanied by the curious case of

insubordination by three divisional generals (those commanding the

1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions[207]) of which Napier makes such scathing

notice. Their orders gave an itinerary involving a march over fords in

flooded fields; they consulted together, judged the route hopeless, and

turned off towards the bridge of Castillo de Yeltes, which they found

blocked by the Army of Galicia. Wellington, failing to find them on

the prescribed path, set out to seek them, and came upon them waiting

miserably in the mud. He is said to have given them no more rebuke

than a sarcastic ‘You see, gentlemen, I know my own business best’ and

allowed them to cross after the Spaniards, many hours late[208]. The

insubordination was inexcusable--yet perhaps it would not have been

beneath Wellington’s dignity to have prefaced his original order with

an explanatory note such as ‘the main road by Castillo bridge being

reserved for the Spanish divisions.’ But this would not have been in

his normal style. Like Stonewall Jackson fifty years after, he was not

prone to give his reasons to subordinates, even when his orders would

appear to them very inexplicable.

On the 19th a march of a few miles brought all the columns within a

short distance of Ciudad Rodrigo, and the commissariat transport having

reached that place on the preceding day, quite unmolested, arrangements

had already been made to send out food to meet the approaching columns.

‘About dusk we took up our ground on the face of the hill near

Rodrigo--the weather now changing to a severe frost was intensely cold.

We had not long been halted when the well-known summons of “turn out

for biscuit” rang in our ears. The strongest went for it, and received

two days’ rations for every man. It was customary to make an orderly

division, but that night it was dispensed with, each man eagerly seized

what he could get, and endeavoured to allay the dreadful gnawing which

had tormented us during four days of unexampled cold and fatigue. In a

short time two more rations were delivered, and the inordinate eating

that ensued threatened to do more mischief than the former want[209].’

On the 20th the army was distributed in quarters around and behind

Rodrigo--Hill’s column about Martiago, Zamorra, Robledo, Cespedosa, and

other villages on the Upper Agueda; the centre column about Gallegos,

Carpio, Pastores, El Bodon, Campillo, and other cantonments well known

from the long tarrying of the army there in 1811. The Galicians were

left out in the direction of San Felices and the Lower Agueda. Every

one was now under cover, and food was abundant--almost too abundant

at first. Rest, warmth, and regular rations were indeed necessary.

‘Scarcely a man had shoes--not that they had not been properly supplied

with them before the retreat began, but the state of the roads had

been such that as soon as a shoe fell off or stuck in the mud, in

place of picking it up, the man kicked its fellow-companion after it.

Yet the infantry was still efficient and fit to do its duty. But the

cavalry and artillery were in a wretched state: the batteries of the

3rd, 6th, and 7th Divisions, the heavy cavalry, with the 11th and 12th

Light Dragoons were nearly a wreck--the artillery of the 3rd Division

lost 70 horses between Salamanca and Rodrigo.... The cavalry was half

dismounted, the artillery without the proper number of horses to draw

the guns, much less the ammunition cars--many died from cold and famine

under the harness of the artillery and the saddles of the dragoons....

The batteries could with difficulty show three horses in place of eight

to a gun[210].’

Stragglers continued to come in for several days. Julian Sanchez was

sent out with his lancers to search the woods for them, and brought in

800 mounted on the horses of his men. But when the divisional returns

were prepared on November 29th, it was found that besides killed and

wounded in action and sick in hospital, there was a melancholy deficit

of 4921 ‘missing’ since October 23rd. The killed and wounded in action,

as opposed to the missing, were very few considering the dangers which

the Army had gone through: some 160 at Villadrigo, 440 at Villamuriel

and Palencia, 70 at the Puente Larga, 113 at Alba de Tormes, 187 at

the combat of the Huebra--smaller fights such as the skirmishes at

Tordesillas, Aldea Lengua, and Matilla can hardly account for 200 more

between them--the total cannot have exceeded 1,200 casualties in

action. But nearly 5,000 missing was a sad record. How many of them

were dead, how many had deserted, and how many were prisoners in the

hands of the French, it is hard to determine. The losses in missing

before Salamanca had been insignificant--perhaps 500 in each of the

two columns of Wellington and Hill--there had been many drunkards and

malingerers taken both at Torquemada and at Valdemoro. But the main

loss was suffered between the 16th and the 18th of November, in the

woods and mires between Salamanca and the Yeltes river. Soult, in

his daily letters to King Joseph, claims to have taken 600 prisoners

on the 16th, 1,000 to 1,200 on the 17th, and 100 on the 18th. These

figures do not appear incredible, and would allow in addition for well

over a thousand men dead, and some hundreds of deserters. The latter

were certainly numerous in the foreign corps--the Brunswick-Oels and

Chasseurs Britanniques show losses in ‘missing’ out of proportion

to all the other regiments[211]. It is noteworthy, when comparing

the lists of the ‘missing’ in the various divisions, to see that the

Portuguese units suffered far more severely in proportion to their

numbers than the British. They showed the total of 2,469 as against

2,477, but this was out of 22,000 men only, while the similar British

figure was out of a total of 32,000 or thereabouts--i. e. their loss

was about 10·8 per cent. as against about 8 per cent. Several observers

of the retreat note that the cold and perpetual rain told much more

heavily upon the stamina of the Portuguese, whose native climate is far

more mild than that of the plateaux of Leon. They simply sank by the

wayside, and died, or suffered themselves to be taken prisoners without

attempting to get away. The unit in the whole army which suffered most

heavily in the way of ‘missing’ was Bradford’s Portuguese brigade,

which lost 514 men out of 1,645. In the Light and 3rd Divisions the

Portuguese battalions were little more than a third of the British in

numbers, but had more missing than their comrades in the proportion

of 163 to 92 in one case and 230 to 184 in the other. The worst

divisional records were those of the 5th and 7th Divisions, which

lost 800 and 600 men respectively: the best those of the 1st, 6th,

and Light Divisions with only 283, 170, and 255. Individual British

regiments differed much: the most unsatisfactory figures were those of

a battalion which had only landed at Lisbon that summer, and had not

been present at Salamanca. The 1/82nd distinguished itself by leaving

more drunken stragglers at Valdemoro than any other corps, and had

dropped a terrible proportion of its men between Salamanca and Rodrigo.

Wellington put the colonel under arrest, and proposed to try him before

a court martial for ‘gross neglect of duty,’ but in the end did not

press matters to a formal prosecution[212].

For the first few days after the arrival of the army at Ciudad Rodrigo

Wellington was not quite certain that the enemy, after resting on

the Tormes for a few days, might not resume his advance[213]. This

was unlikely, owing to the weather and the obvious difficulty of

finding food for 90,000 men in a devastated countryside. Still, it was

conceivable, and a further advance on Soult’s part would have been very

tiresome, when the allied troops so much required rest, and when some

dangerous cracks seemed to threaten the stability of parts of the newly

repaired sections of the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo[214]. For six days the

army was held together, till on November 26th arrived certain news that

Soult was on his way to the province of Avila, and that the greater

part of the Army of Portugal was leaving Salamanca for the rear, and

distributing itself in its old cantonments in the direction of Toro and

Valladolid[215], while King Joseph with the Army of the Centre was on

his march for Madrid. Since the French were certainly dispersing, there

was no longer any necessity for keeping the allied army concentrated.

On the 27th Wellington ordered a general dislocation of the divisions

into winter quarters. Only the Light Division and Victor Alten’s

cavalry remained about Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. Of the rest of the

army, Hill, with his old corps--the 2nd Division, Hamilton’s Portuguese

and Erskine’s cavalry--marched for Coria and Zarza, being directed

to canton themselves in the valley of the Alagon with an advanced

post at Bejar. Campbell’s Portuguese cavalry went to their old haunts

about Elvas in the Alemtejo, and Penne Villemur and Morillo, with the

Estremaduran Divisions, returned to their native regions. Castaños and

the Galician army retired also to their own province, marching through

the Tras-os-Montes by way of Braganza. D’Urban’s Portuguese horse were

cantoned for the winter north of the Douro, but the rest of the allied

cavalry (Bock, Ponsonby, and Anson) were sent far to the rear, to look

for comfortable quarters in the Mondego valley and the villages south

of Oporto. The remaining British infantry divisions (the 1st, 3rd,

4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th) were distributed about the province of Beira,

in various quarters from Lamego to Guarda, at distances of thirty or

fifty miles from the frontier[216]. The general disposition of the

cantonments of the army was not much different from what it had been in

the first days of 1812, before the long eleven months’ campaign began.

Only Hill was no longer on the Guadiana, but north of the Tagus, since

there was no enemy left in Andalusia to require his attention.

While the dispersion was in progress Wellington issued (November 28)

the _Memorandum to Officers commanding Divisions and Brigades_ which

caused so many heart-burnings among his subordinates. It was intended

to go no further than those officers; but some of them dispatched

copies to the colonels of the regiments under their charge, and so it

became public property. Written in a moment of intense irritation,

it contained much rebuke that was merited, but was unjust from the

sweeping and general character of the blame that it distributed to

the whole army, and most certainly failed to take account of the

exceptional conditions of the 15th to the 19th of November. Wellington

wrote:

‘I am concerned to have to observe that the army under my command

has fallen off in the respect of discipline in the late campaign, to

a greater degree than any army with which I have ever served, or of

which I have ever read. Yet this army has met with no disaster: it has

suffered no privations which but trifling attention on the part of

the officers could not have prevented, and for which there existed no

reason in the nature of the service. Nor has it suffered any hardships,

excepting those resulting from the necessity of being exposed to the

inclemencies of the weather at a time when they were most severe.

It must be obvious to every officer that from the moment the troops

commenced their retreat from the neighbourhood of Burgos on the one

hand, and of Madrid on the other, the officers lost all control over

their men. Irregularities and outrages were committed with impunity.

Yet the necessity for retreat existing, none was ever made on which

the troops had such short marches; none on which they made such long

and repeated halts; and none on which the retreating army was so

little pressed on their rear by the enemy.... I have no hesitation in

attributing these evils to the habitual inattention of the officers of

the regiments to their duty, as prescribed by the standing regulations

of the service, and the orders of this army.... The commanding officers

of regiments must enforce the order of the army regarding the constant

inspection and superintendence of the officers over the conduct

of the men in their companies, and they must endeavour to inspire

the non-commissioned officers with a sense of their situation and

authority. By these means the frequent and discreditable resort to the

authority of the Provost, and to punishments by courts martial, will be

prevented, and the soldiers will not dare to commit the offences and

outrages of which there are so many complaints, when they well know

that their officers and non-commissioned officers have their eyes on

them.

‘In regard to the food of the soldier, I have frequently observed and

lamented in the late campaign the facility and celerity with which

the French cooked in comparison with our army. The cause of this

disadvantage is the same with that of every other--want of attention of

the officers to the orders of the army and the conduct of their men....

Generals and field officers must get the captains and subalterns of

their regiments to understand and perform the duties required of them,

as the only mode by which the discipline and efficiency of the army can

be restored and maintained during the next campaign.’

There was undoubtedly much to justify the strong language which

Wellington used as to the grievous relaxation of discipline in

some of the regiments. Unfortunately he made no exceptions to his

general statement, and wrote as if the whole army had been guilty

of straggling, drunkenness, and marauding in the same degree. There

was not the slightest hint that there were many corps which had

gone through the retreat with small loss of men and none of credit.

But Wellington had seen with his own eyes the disgraceful scenes at

Torquemada, had been roused from his uneasy slumbers by the sound of

the pig-shooting on the night of November 17, and he had witnessed

the devastation of San Muñoz and other villages by men who were

tearing whole houses to pieces to get firewood. He had ordered the

Provost-Marshal to hang on the spot two soldiers caught red-handed in

plunder, and sent three officers whose men had pulled down cottages,

when collecting fuel, to be court-martialled[217]. The figures of the

‘missing’ in some regiments had rightly provoked his indignation.

But he might at the same time have noticed that there were not only

battalions but whole brigades where their number was insignificant.

In one division of 5,000 men there were but 170--in the five British

battalions of the Light Division no more than 96. In both these cases

the deficiency represented only weakly men who had fallen by the way

from fatigue and disease, and cannot afford any margin for stragglers

and marauders.

The general feeling in the army was that nearly all the loss and

mischief had happened in the inclement days of November 15-18, previous

disorders having been comparatively insignificant; and as regards

those days they questioned the justice of Wellington’s indictment of

the troops. To say that ‘the army had suffered no privations which

but trifling attention on the part of the officers could not have

prevented’ was simply not true. What ‘trifling attention’ on the part

of the regimental officers could have made up for the fact that some

divisions had received absolutely no distribution of food of any sort

for four continuous days, and others in the same four days nothing

but two rations of beef, and no biscuit or other food at all?[218]

It was useless to tell them that they had suffered no privations, or

that they could by care have avoided them. As an intelligent general

officer wrote on November 20: ‘During the whole of this retreat from

the 15th inclusive, not only has the weather been dreadfully severe,

but the commissariat arrangements having failed, the troops have been

mostly without any issue of rations, and have suffered the extremity

of privation, having lived upon acorns and hogs killed occasionally

in the woods. The natural result of this has been great disorder and

confusion, and the roads in the rear of the columns of march are

covered with exhausted stragglers left to the enemy. In fact, by some

inconceivable blunder, which the Quartermaster-General’s department

attribute to that of the Commissary-General, and which the latter throw

back on the former, the supplies of the army, which were adequate for

much larger numbers, on the morning that we broke up from the Arapiles

were sent down the Tormes, by Ledesma toward Almeida, while the army

marched on Ciudad Rodrigo--_hinc illae lachrymae_[219].’

There is no doubt that sheer lack of food during inclement weather,

and in a desolate and thinly peopled forest-country did most of the

mischief. As an indignant subaltern writes: ‘The officers asked each

other, and asked themselves, how or in what manner they were to blame

for the privations of the retreat. The answer uniformly was--in no way

whatever. Their business was to keep the men together, and if possible

to keep up with their men themselves--and this was the most difficult

duty--many of these officers were young lads badly clothed, with

scarcely a shoe or a boot left--some attacked with dysentery, others

with ague, more with a burning fever raging through their system; they

had scarce strength to hobble along in company with their more hardy

comrades, the rank and file[220].’

Wellington’s memorandum stated that the marches were short in miles,

and this was generally true, though on October 23 the infantry had to

do 29 miles. But mileage is not the only thing to be considered in

calculating the day’s work--the time spent on the miry roads, where

every step was ankle deep in slime that tore the shoes from the feet,

was inordinate: several of the marches were from 4 o’clock, before

dawn, to the same hour in the afternoon. This on an empty stomach and

with the regulation 60 lb. of weight on the soldier’s back was no

mean task. And sometimes the journey ended, as for the Light and 7th

Divisions on November 17th, in the troops being deployed in battle

order in the drifting rain, and kept for some hours more under arms, to

resist a possible advance of the French. The strain was too much for

many willing men whose constitution was not over robust. It was not

only shirkers who fell out and collapsed.

As to the matter of the cooking, one capable subaltern remarked in his

diary, ‘if _we_ were allowed to tear down doors, &c., in every village,

as the enemy do, without having to go miles for wood, we could cook

in as short a time as they[221].’ And another remarks with justice

that when the companies had to prepare their food in the vast Flanders

cauldrons, carried on mules which dragged at the tail of the regimental

baggage train, they could never be sure of getting them up to their

bivouacs in good time. There was an immense improvement in 1813, when

light tin camp-kettles carried alternately by the men of each squad,

were introduced. These were always at hand, and could be got to boil

‘without needing a whole tree or half a church door to warm them.’

Wellington might have spared this criticism on his soldiers’ cooking

when he had already, as his dispatches show, asked for the small

kettles to be made, precisely because the cauldrons were too heavy,

and seldom got up in good time[222]. He did well to lament the slow

cooking, but knowing its cause, and having been in command of the army

since April 1809, might he not have indented for portable kettles

before May 1812?

The real truth with regard to much of the objurgatory language of

the ‘Memorandum’ is that, loth though one may be to confess it, the

staff officer--commander-in-chief or whatever his rank--who has slept

under cover and had adequate food during such awful days as those of

November 15 to November 19, 1812, may easily underrate the privations

of the man in the ranks, who has faced the weather unsheltered and

with no rations at all. This observation does not in the least affect

the points on which Wellington did well to be angry--the disgraceful

scenes of drunkenness at Torquemada and Valdemoro, the plundering of

villages at more points than one, and the excessive straggling from

some ill-commanded battalions. And, as we have had occasion to point

out before, there was a residuum of bad soldiers in well-nigh every

regiment--Colborne estimates it at 50 or 100 men on the average--and

exceptional circumstances like the storm of Badajoz or the hardships of

the Salamanca retreat brought this ruffianly element to the surface,

and led to deplorable incidents. Presumably many corps got rid of the

majority of their _mauvais sujets_ by straggling and desertion on those

wretched November days upon the Valmusa, the Huebra, and the Yeltes.

Here we may leave the main armies at the end of the campaign. It

remains only to speak of Suchet and his opponents on the coast of

the Mediterranean. After the departure of Soult and King Joseph from

Valencia in the middle of October, it might have been supposed that

the Duke of Albufera, now left to his own resources, would have been

in some danger. For not only had he in front of him the Anglo-Sicilian

troops who had landed under Maitland at Alicante, and his old

adversaries of Joseph O’Donnell’s Army, but--since there were now

no French left in Andalusia--all the Spanish detachments which had

formerly watched the eastern flank of that kingdom were available

against him. After Soult had occupied Madrid, Elio, Freire, and

Bassecourt all came down to Albacete and Chinchilla, to link themselves

with the Alicante troops. Leaving out the Empecinado and Duran, who did

not move southward from their mountains on the borders of Aragon and

Castile, there were still 25,000 Spanish troops of the ‘second’ and

‘third’ armies--the old Valencian and Murcian corps, disposable for

use against Suchet in November[223]. And what was still more ominous

for the French on the East Coast, a second reinforcement was getting

together at Palermo to strengthen the Anglo-Sicilian corps at Alicante.

General Campbell with about 4,000 men sailed on November 14th; this

force consisted of two British battalions[224], a foreign battalion of

light companies, 1,500 Italians, and some miscellaneous details. Though

the Italians (as their conduct proved next spring[225]) were eminently

untrustworthy material, the rest were an appreciable addition to the

strength of the expeditionary force, which was now swelled to an army

corps rather than a large division. They only came to hand on December

2, however, and the best opportunity for attacking Suchet had passed

before their landing, since obviously he was most vulnerable when

all the rest of the French armies had passed on to Salamanca, after

November 6th, and before King Joseph had come back to Madrid and Soult

to Toledo in the early days of December. The four weeks between those

dates, however, were wasted by the British and Spanish generals on the

East Coast.

Suchet had recognized his danger, and had taken up a defensive position

in front of the Xucar, with Harispe’s division at Almanza, Fuente la

Higuera, and Moxente, Habert’s at Albayda across the high-road from

Valencia to Alicante, and Musnier’s in reserve, at Alcira and Xativa.

Here he waited on events, having lost touch completely with Soult and

the King, from whom he received no dispatch for eighty days after their

departure from Albacete and Cuenca in October. It was only by way of

Saragossa that he learnt, some weeks later, that they had recaptured

Madrid and then marched for the Tormes[226]. He had only 15,000 men in

line beyond the Xucar, and knew that in front of him there were 7,000

Anglo-Sicilians, 8,000 of Roche and Whittingham’s men, and more than

that number of the Murcians, all grouped round Alicante, while Elio,

Freire, and Bassecourt, with 8,000 or 9,000 men, were coming in from

the direction of Madrid, and Villacampa with 3,000 more might appear

from Southern Aragon. This was a formidable combination, though the

Spanish troops were badly organized, and had a long record of defeat

behind them. The disaster of Castalla had shown a few months before

the incapacity of the leaders and the unsteadiness of the men of the

Murcian army. Yet the number of troops available was large, and the

5,000 English and German Legionary infantry of the Alicante Army

provided a nucleus of trustworthy material, such as in firm hands might

have accomplished much.

Unity and continuity of command, however, was completely wanting. On

September 25th Maitland had fallen sick, and the charge of the troops

at Alicante passed to his second-in-command, General Mackenzie. This

officer showed signs of wishing to adopt a timid offensive attitude

against Suchet. He pushed his own and Whittingham’s divisions out as

far as Alcoy, opposite Habert’s position at Albayda, and contrived

some petty naval demonstration against the Valencian coast. Of these

the most important was an expedition which tried on October 5th to

capture the town of Denia, the southernmost place in the possession

of the French. It was composed of a wing of the 1/81st, and a company

each of De Roll’s regiment and of marines--about 600 men--under General

Donkin. These troops, carried on the _Fame_ and _Cephalus_, landed

near Denia, and drove the small French garrison into the castle. This

was found to be a more formidable work than had been expected, and to

require battering by heavy guns. Some cannons were, with difficulty,

landed from the ships, and a siege would have been commenced but for

the news that Habert was sending up a relieving force. Whereupon the

little expedition re-embarked, men and guns being reshipped with much

difficulty under the fire of the French on a rocky beach[227]. The loss

was trifling, but the whole plan was obviously feeble and useless. To

have turned Suchet’s sea-ward flank with 5,000 men, while threatening

his front with the rest of the British and Spanish troops available

might have been a conceivable operation. But what could 600 men,

entirely isolated, hope to accomplish?

It must have been long after this fruitless demonstration that

Mackenzie received a formal order from Wellington dated from before

Burgos on October 13th[228], bidding him attack Valencia, either by

land or by sea, if Soult and King Joseph should have marched their

armies against Madrid. He was instructed not to accept a general action

with Suchet, unless he was very superior in numbers, and to beware

of fighting in ground favourable to cavalry. His own mounted force

consisted only of 230 sabres[229], and 500 belonging to Whittingham and

to the Murcian army were of doubtful efficiency. But it was thought

that Suchet was very weak, and a little while later Wellington received

false information that the Marshal had lent a considerable part of his

army to King Joseph for the march on Madrid[230]. He therefore hoped

that a bold advance against Valencia might shake the hold of the French

on the Mediterranean coast.

The letter directed to Mackenzie was received not by him but by General

William Clinton (the brother of H. Clinton of the 6th Division), who

had arrived at Alicante and taken command--superseding Mackenzie--on

October 25th. Lord William Bentinck had sent him out from Palermo on

hearing of Maitland’s illness. The change of generals had no good

results--Clinton fell at once into a fierce quarrel with Cruz the

Spanish governor of Alicante. He opined that he ought not to start to

attack Suchet without receiving over control of the Alicante forts,

and placing them in the charge of a British garrison. The Governor

refused to give up the keys, and much friction ensued, causing an

angry interchange of letters which wasted many days. Wellington, when

he heard of it, declared that Clinton seemed to have been wholly

unreasonable in his demand[231]. Meanwhile Clinton drew in Mackenzie’s

troops from the front, instead of making an advance toward Valencia.

Suchet, hearing that there were no red-coated battalions left opposite

Habert, resolved to try the effect of a reconnaissance in force, and

moved forward against Roche and Whittingham, who still lay at Alcoy.

The English and Spanish divisions at once drew back to Xixona, twenty

miles nearer to Alicante. Impressed by this activity on the part of

the enemy, Clinton wrote to Wellington that Suchet was too strong to

be meddled with, and that he dared attempt no offensive move toward

Valencia[232]. Yet counting Roche, Whittingham, and the Murcian troops

at Alicante, he must have outnumbered the French by nearly two to one.

And on November 22 the Governor of Alicante actually surrendered the

keys of the citadel--the point on which Clinton had insisted as the

necessary preliminary for active operations.

Nothing had yet been done on the East Coast when on December 2 General

Campbell landed at Alicante with the 4,000 Sicilian troops already

mentioned a few pages back. He was senior to Clinton, and relieved him

of the command. Thus in the 70 days since September 23rd there had

been four general officers in successive charge of the force which

was intended to keep Suchet in check. It would have been difficult to

contrive a more inconvenient arrangement--both Clinton and Campbell

were new to the army and the district, and each took many days to make

out his situation, and arrive at a conclusion as to what could and what

could not be done. Campbell, immediately on his arrival, was solicited

by Elio to attack Suchet, in combination with his own army, which

should strike in from Albacete on the Marshal’s flank. He offered to

bring up 10,000 men of his own (Freire, Bassecourt, and Villacampa)

and said--apparently without authorization--that Del Parque would

assist, at the head of the Army of Andalusia. But Campbell refused to

stir, and possibly was right, when such cases as Barrosa and Talavera

are taken into consideration. Yet Wellington, his commander-in-chief,

had ordered the offensive to be taken in no hesitating terms, and the

force available was undoubtedly too large to be wasted. As Wellington

himself remarked, most British generals of that day, though bold

enough in action, and capable of acting as efficient lieutenants,

seemed stricken with a mental paralysis when placed in an independent

position, where the responsibility of taking the initiative was thrown

upon them. It was only exceptional men like Craufurd and Graham who

welcomed it. The general effect of the Anglo-Sicilian expedition was

disappointing in the extreme. Suchet had thought, and with reason, that

it would be ruinous to him, both in July and again in November. It

turned out to be a negligible quantity in the game, except so far as it

prevented the French Army of Valencia from moving any of its 15,000 men

to co-operate with Soult or King Joseph. Wellington had hoped for much

greater profit from the diversion.

After all, a much larger body of French troops than Suchet’s field

force in front of Valencia was being at this time kept completely

employed, by enemies who owned a far less numerous following than

Campbell or Elio. The little Army of Catalonia, not 8,000 strong, was

finding employment all through the autumn and winter for Decaen’s

20,000 men; and Duran and Villacampa in Aragon--aided occasionally

by Mina from the side of Navarre, and Sarsfield from the side of

Catalonia--were keeping the strong force under Reille, Severoli, and

Caffarelli in constant movement, and occasionally inflicting severe

loss on its flying columns. Their co-operation in the general cause

was useful and effective--that of the Alicante Army was not. To sum up

all the operations on the eastern side of Spain we may say that there

had been practically no change in the situation of the adversaries

since February. The amount of territory occupied by the French was

unchanged--they had made no progress in the pacification of Aragon

or Catalonia; but on the other hand Suchet’s hold on Valencia still

remained entirely unshaken.

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER VII

CRITICAL SUMMARY OF THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1812

Though Wellington’s divisions took up in December 1812 almost the

same cantonments that they had occupied in December 1811, ere they

marched out at midwinter to the leaguer of Ciudad Rodrigo, the aspect

of affairs in the Peninsula had been completely transformed during

the intervening twelve months. It was not merely that Andalusia,

Estremadura, and Asturias had been freed from the presence of the

French armies, who were never to return. Nor was it merely that--to use

Wellington’s own words[233]--‘we have sent to England little less than

20,000 prisoners,[234] have taken and destroyed, or have now ourselves

the use of, the enemy’s arsenals in Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca,

Valladolid, Madrid, Astorga, Seville, and the lines before Cadiz, and

upon the whole have taken or destroyed, or now possess, little short of

3,000 pieces of their cannon[235].’ Nor was it the all-important thing

that the Armies of Portugal, the Centre, and the South, Wellington’s

immediate enemies, were in November weaker by 30,000 men than they

had been in March, and this though they had received 10,000 men in

drafts since the summer ended. The fact that really counted was that

the whole French system in Spain had been shaken to its foundations.

It was useless to pretend any longer that King Joseph was a legitimate

sovereign, and the Cadiz government a mere knot of rebels driven

into their last and remotest place of refuge. The dream of complete

conquest, which had lingered on down to the moment of Suchet’s capture

of Valencia, was gone for ever. The prestige of the French arms was

shattered: the confidence of the officers in the marshals, that of the

men in their officers, had disappeared. As Foy, the most intelligent

of the French observers, sums up the matter, what hope was there for

the future when the whole available field force of the French armies

of Spain, superior in number by a third to Wellington’s army, had been

collected on a single field, and had allowed the enemy to march away

practically unmolested? ‘Wellington goes off unbeaten, with the glory

of his laurels of the Arapiles untarnished, after having restored to

the Spaniards all the lands south of the Tagus, after having forced us

to destroy our own magazines and fortifications, and deprived us of all

the resources that resulted from our former conquests and ought to have

secured their retention[236].’ There was a profound dissatisfaction

throughout the French Army; and as the winter drew on, and the ill

news from Russia began slowly to drift in, it became evident that the

old remedy for all ills so often suggested in 1810-11--the personal

appearance of the Emperor in Spain with large reinforcements--was never

likely to come to pass. Indeed, troops would probably be withdrawn

from Spain rather than sent thither, and the extra subsidies in money,

for which King Joseph was always clamouring, were never likely to be

forthcoming from the Imperial Exchequer.

As to the past campaign, belated recriminations continued to fly about:

Clarke--the Minister of War at Paris--was the central point round which

they revolved, since it was through him that the reports went to the

Emperor from Spain, and to him that the rare answers came back from

some Russian bivouac, when the master had a moment’s leisure from his

own troubles. Generally he wrote in a very discouraging strain: ‘vous

sentez qu’éloigné comme je suis, je ne puis rien faire pour les armées

d’Espagne[237].’ His occasional comments were scathing--Marmont’s

reports were all lies, he was to be interrogated in a formal series of

questions, as to why he had dared to fight at Salamanca. The quarrels

of Joseph and Soult were unworthy of serious attention: ‘il ne pouvait

pas s’occuper de semblables pauvretés dans un moment où il était à la

tête de 500,000 hommes, et faisait des choses immenses.’ Considering

the way in which Soult had wrecked all the plans of the King and Joseph

in June-July, by deliberate disobedience to a long series of orders

sent by his hierarchic superior, it was poor comfort to Joseph to be

told that he must continue to put up with him. ‘Le Maréchal Soult

est la seule tête militaire qu’il y eût en Espagne: on ne pouvait

l’en retirer sans compromettre l’armée[238].’ ‘Why had the King ever

returned to Spain in 1811?’ said the Emperor--though a reference to

the correspondence between them in that year tends to show that Joseph

had offered to abdicate, or take any other step prescribed to him,

and that it was his brother who preferred to keep him at Madrid as a

figure-head. Napoleon, it is clear, was vexed at being worried by the

affairs of the Peninsula at a moment when he required all his time

for the contemplation of his own problems, and discharged his wrath,

deserved or undeserved, in all directions. It may be doubted whether he

ever thought of himself as perhaps the greatest offender of all; but

it was--as we have already shown at great length[239]--precisely his

own elaborate orders which led first to the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo and

then to that of Badajoz. But for these initial strokes Wellington’s

task in the later spring would have been far more difficult. And it

is certainly the fact that if Marmont had been allowed to follow his

own inspiration in February and March, Badajoz at least might have

been saved. As to what followed in June and July, Soult must take the

main share of the blame. Wellington’s game would have been far harder

if the Army of the South had obeyed the King’s orders, and come up

to the Tagus in June. Soult would have had to evacuate Andalusia,

it is true; but he none the less had to abandon it in the end, and

it would have made all the difference in the world to the fate of

the campaign if he had come northward while Marmont’s Army was still

intact, and not after it had received the crushing blow of July 22nd

at Salamanca. No rational student of the events of that summer can fail

to recognize that Jourdan and the King had found the right conclusion,

and issued the right orders, and that Soult’s determination to hang on

to Andalusia till the last moment showed as much mental perversity as

military insubordination. His counter-plan for inducing the King to

come to Seville, abandoning Madrid before Marmont had even tried the

fortune of battle, was simply the wild project of a viceroy loth to

abandon his realm, and convinced that every one else ought to give way

for his own personal profit[240]. To surrender Central and Northern

Spain to Wellington, and to allow all communications between Andalusia

and France to be cut would have been insane. The King would only have

brought 15,000 men with him: Soult could not have added a greater field

force than 25,000 men more--as was repeatedly shown when he tried to

concentrate in Estremadura. Their joint 40,000 would have neither been

enough to face Wellington nor to threaten Portugal. Meanwhile Spain

from the Ebro to the Sierra Morena would have passed into the hands of

the Allies. It is unnecessary to dilate further on the topic.

A more interesting problem, and one into which Napier went at great

length, is the criticism of the campaigns of 1812 from the other

point of view, that of Wellington. It is clear that there is nothing

but praise to be bestowed on the masterly strategical combination

of January and March, which brought about the captures of Ciudad

Rodrigo and Badajoz. Each fell before a blow delivered at the precise

moment when it must be most effective. The position of the enemy had

been carefully calculated, and every adverse possibility taken into

consideration. It is obvious that Rodrigo was doomed without fail

from the first, because Wellington had realized and demonstrated to

himself the inability of the French to hinder his enterprise, after the

Imperial orders had sent Montbrun off to the borders of Valencia. And

Badajoz was destined to fall also, unless Marmont should help Soult at

the earliest possible moment and with the greatest possible force.

There was in this case an adverse chance, though not a very great one:

that it never came near to occurring was due to the Emperor’s removal

of Marmont’s southern divisions from the Tagus valley. But even if

this fortunate intervention of Napoleon had not simplified the task of

the Allied Army, it was still improbable that Marmont would appear in

time; and the improbability had been ascertained by careful study of

the state of the magazines and the distribution of the cantonments of

the Army of Portugal. Soult without Marmont could accomplish nothing,

and on this fact Wellington based his plan. If the Duke of Dalmatia

had brought up 10,000 men more than he actually did, his advance would

still have been insufficient to save Badajoz.

As to the details of the siege of that fortress, we have seen that

things by no means went as Wellington desired. He himself threw the

blame on the want of trained sappers, and the inexpertness of his

engineer officers[241]. The engineers’ reply was that they were

directed to work ‘against time’, and not given sufficient days or

means to carry out their operations according to the regular methods

of their craft. ‘The project of attack adopted would not stand the

test of criticism as a scientific operation, but possessed merit as a

bold experiment to reduce in an unusually short time a considerable

fortress, well armed and well countermined, by the agency of unskilled

sappers, no miners, and insufficient ordnance[242].’ Probably the

verdict of the historian must be that the time-problem was the

dominating fact, and that had there been no relieving armies in the

field other methods would have been pursued[243]. It is at least

certain that the rapidity with which the place was taken disconcerted

Soult[244], and upset all the plans of the French in Spain.

After the fall of Badajoz Wellington had his choice between the

invasion of Andalusia and that of the valley of the Douro. It can

hardly be doubted that he was right in choosing the latter, not

only on the ground which he himself stated, that Marmont’s was the

‘operating army’[245] and the more dangerous of the two, but because

(as Marmont put it) a disaster in the North would compel the French to

evacuate the South, while a disaster in the South would have no such

effect in the North. The victory of Salamanca liberated Andalusia and

Madrid as well as the Douro valley--a similar victory somewhere in

front of Seville would have cleared Andalusia, no doubt, but would not

have sufficed to deliver the Castiles and Leon. The Northern operation

was the most decisive. The well-timed storm of the Almaraz forts

secured for that operation a reasonable amount of time, during which it

could not be disturbed by the appearance of reinforcements for the Army

of Portugal.

The irruption into Leon in June, for which such careful subsidiary

operations had been made on all sides--in Andalusia and Catalonia, on

the Bay of Biscay and in Navarre--had at first all the results that

could have been expected. But it can hardly be denied that a grave

mistake was made when no adequate preparations were made for the siege

of the Salamanca forts--and this was a mistake that was to be repeated

under very similar circumstances before Burgos in September. There was

nothing to prevent a proper battering-train from being brought out from

Rodrigo or Almeida. Yet a worse slip, most certainly, was made when

on June 21st Wellington refused the battle that Marmont most rashly

offered. He could have fought with the advantage of numbers, position,

and superiority in cavalry, in a measure that he was not to enjoy

again during the Salamanca campaign. Why he held back we now know--he

thought (and not without good reason) that if he did not attack

Marmont, the presumptuous Marshal would attack him. Such a project

indeed was in his adversary’s mind, and if it had been carried out

the result would undoubtedly have been a second Bussaco. But Marmont

hesitated--and was saved for the moment. That he was able to retire

with an intact army behind the Douro was a terrible disappointment

to Wellington; for, during the deadlock that ensued for nearly three

weeks, the French Armies of the North, South, and Centre might have

spared reinforcements for the Army of Portugal. Soult’s perversity,

Caffarelli’s want of perception of the relative importance of things,

and King Joseph’s tardiness prevented these possible reinforcements

from getting up in time. But this Wellington could not foresee, and

he was under the impression that nothing was more possible than the

arrival of Marmont’s expected succours. If the French should play the

right game, Wellington thought it probable that he might have had to

evacuate Salamanca and his other recent conquests, and to retire to the

Agueda and the protection of Ciudad Rodrigo. Fortunately there turned

out to be no necessity for this heart-breaking move. Marmont came

forward on July 15th, without having received any of the assistance

that he had expected from the other armies, and involved himself in the

manœuvres that were to end in complete disaster. By his first movement,

the ingenious demonstration on the side of Toro, ending by the passage

of the whole French army over the Douro at the distant Tordesillas,

he distinctly scored a point over his adversary. Wellington was only

prepared to fight a defensive battle at this moment; and when the Duke

of Ragusa refused, on the Guarena (July 18), to indulge him in such a

fashion, and continued to turn his right flank on several successive

days, he always gave back, awaiting an opportunity that seemed never

about to arrive. The head-quarters staff of the allied army marvelled

at their leader’s caution, on the days (July 19-20) when the two armies

were executing their parallel marches about Vallesa and Cantalapiedra.

At any moment a battle on equal terms could have been brought about,

but it was refused. Yet Wellington had recently acquired the knowledge

that King Joseph was just starting from Madrid to join Marmont with

15,000 men; and a victory over the Army of Portugal before it should be

reinforced was the only way out of the dangerous situation. He would

not commit himself to the chance of an offensive battle, and--as his

dispatches show--made up his mind to abandon Salamanca and fall back

upon the Agueda, unless his adversary should oblige him by making some

obvious blunder.

The psychology of the moment--as has been shown above--was that he

considered that an indecisive victory, entailing heavy loss in his

own ranks, would have availed him little. Unless he could put Marmont

completely out of action by a very crushing blow, the Marshal would be

joined by the Army of the Centre and other reinforcements, and would

still be able to make head against him. At the bottom of his mind,

it is clear, lay the consideration that he had in his hands the only

field-army that Great Britain possessed, that in risking it he would

risk everything--even the loss of Portugal,--and that the total force

of the French in the Peninsula was so great that he must not fight

save at a marked advantage. His own 50,000 men were the sole hope of

the allied cause--Marmont’s Army was but one of several bodies whose

existence he had to bear in mind. As long as he kept his army intact,

the enemy could do no more than push him back to the Agueda: when they

had got him thus far, they would have to disperse again, for they could

not feed on the countryside, nor invade Portugal with less than 100,000

men. But if he were to wreck his army by suffering a check, or even by

winning a bloody and indecisive success, he could not calculate where

his retreat might end, or how great the disaster might be.

Wellington’s caution was rewarded on the 22nd July, when his adversary

at last fell into reckless over-confidence, and invited defeat, by

stringing out his army along an arc of six miles opposite the strong

and concentrated line of the Allies. The punishment was prompt and

crushing--the sudden advance of Wellington was a beautiful piece of

tactics, ‘a battle in the style of Frederic the Great’ as the sagacious

Foy observed, in a fit of enthusiasm wherein the admiration of the

skilled soldier prevailed over the national pride of the Frenchman.

Marmont’s host was not merely beaten, but scattered and demoralized: it

was put out of action for some time, and if Carlos de España had only

maintained the castle of Alba de Tormes there would have been nothing

left worth mentioning of the Army of Portugal. Even as things actually

fell out, the victory was absolutely complete, and placed all the

valley of the Douro and Central Spain in Wellington’s hands.

After Salamanca he had it in his power to choose between thrusting

Clausel and the battered Army of Portugal behind the Ebro, and marching

on Madrid to deal with King Joseph and Soult. His choice of the second

alternative has often been criticized, and ascribed to motives which

were far from his mind. The real cause of his turn to the South was

his belief that Soult must now evacuate Andalusia, and that he would

therefore have all his army concentrated, and no longer frittered away

in garrisons, as it had been for the last two years. Instead of being

able to collect 25,000 men only for the field, the Duke of Dalmatia

would have 50,000 available, and when joined by the King and perhaps by

Suchet, he would need to be faced by the whole allied army. Wellington

therefore intended that Hill should join him; together they could deal

with the largest block of French troops still left in the Peninsula.

His intention was to force matters to a decision in the South, and he

thought it likely that he might find Soult already marching upon Toledo

with his whole army. In this expectation he was entirely disappointed;

the Marshal--as we have seen--refused for a month to evacuate his

viceroyalty, and stayed there so long that Wellington began to think

that he would have to go down to Andalusia to evict him. ‘I suspect,’

he wrote at last on August 18, ‘that he will not stir, till I force him

out, by a direct movement upon him, and I think of making that movement

as soon as I can take the troops to the South without injuring their

health.’

This was an unexpected development: ‘any other but a modern French Army

would now leave the province (Andalusia), as they have absolutely no

communication of any kind with France, or with any other French army,

and are pressed on all sides,’ wrote Wellington. Yet Soult lingered,

and meanwhile the Army of Portugal, rallied in a shorter time than

could have been expected, returned to Valladolid, and assumed the

offensive in the valley of the Douro. The trouble in that direction

became so acute that Wellington resolved to march against Clausel, with

a force sufficient to drive him back to the Ebro, intending afterwards

to return to Madrid to pick up the other half of his own army, to join

with Hill, and then to deal with Soult, whose tardy resolve to evacuate

Andalusia was only just becoming evident.

The march against Clausel was necessary; and it seems a misfortune

that Wellington left three of his best divisions at Madrid--which was

obviously in no danger for the present, and where Hill was expected to

arrive ere long. It turned out that the force put in motion against

Valladolid and Burgos was too small--even after it had been joined by

Clinton and the Galicians--to secure the complete predominance in the

North which was necessary. Clausel retreated, but was pursued in a

somewhat cautious fashion, and only as far as Burgos. It would appear

that if Wellington had brought 10,000 men more with him from Madrid,

and if he had invested Burgos with the Galician Army, and followed hard

upon Clausel with all his Anglo-Portuguese, he might have driven the

French not only beyond the Ebro, but as much farther as he pleased.

For Clausel could not have stood for a moment if Wellington’s power

had been a little greater, and Caffarelli was in September so entirely

taken up with the operations of Home Popham, Mina, and Mendizabal that

he had not a man to spare.

But Wellington advanced no farther than Burgos, and allowed Clausel

to lie opposite him at Briviesca unmolested, till he had drawn great

reinforcements from France, and had at last induced Caffarelli to

come to his aid with 10,000 men. Meanwhile, he was devoting himself

to the siege of Burgos, where, by his own fault, he had no sufficient

artillery resources to subdue an improvised fortress of the third

class. The fault was exactly the same as that which had been committed

before the Salamanca Forts in June. And--as has been demonstrated

above--Wellington had been pressed to take more heavy guns with him,

both by Sir Home Popham and by officers at Madrid. And if he had called

for them, even after the siege began, they could have reached him in

time. His own curious comments on the facts are not convincing:

‘I see that a disposition exists to blame the Government for the

failure of the siege of Burgos. The Government had nothing to say

to the siege: it was entirely my own act. In regard to means, there

were ample means, both at Madrid and at Santander, for the siege of

the strongest fortress. That which was wanting at both places was the

means of transporting ordnance and military stores.... I could not find

means for moving even one gun from Madrid. Popham is a gentleman who

picques himself on overcoming all difficulties. He knows the time it

took to find transport even for about 100 barrels of powder and a few

hundred thousand rounds of musket ammunition that he sent me. As for

the two guns that he endeavoured to send me, I was obliged to send my

own cattle to draw them, and felt great inconvenience from the want of

those cattle in subsequent movements of the Army[246].’

The answer that must be made to these allegations is that when matters

came to a crisis at Madrid, on Soult’s approach, enough transport was

found there to send off to Ciudad Rodrigo great part of the Retiro

stores--though much of the material there had to be blown up. If

there were not draught animals for even half a dozen guns to be got

at Madrid, why did Wellington write on August 31st that ‘if the enemy

shall advance, all arrangements must be made for the evacuation of

Madrid, such as sending away sick, _stores_, &c., and eventually for

the destruction of what cannot be carried off[247].’ Considerable

convoys marched with Hill when the Spanish capital was evacuated,

and it is impossible to believe that the 322 draught mules which, by

Dickson’s estimate, were the proper allowance for a 24-pound battery

of six guns with 180 rounds per gun, could not have been procured at

Madrid in September. A requisition on the batteries and transport

train of the four divisions left round Madrid could have been made to

supplement local resources. But Wellington had made up his mind to risk

the Burgos campaign with no more than Dickson’s trifling ‘artillery

reserve’--of which the only efficient part was precisely three iron

18-pounders. As to the allusions to Home Popham, they must--with all

regret--be described as ungrateful. And they conceal the fact that the

two heavy ship-guns which Popham had sent forward were only brought

_from Reynosa_ by Wellington’s own draught beasts. Popham got them

across the mountains from Santander by his own exertions, and would

have sent them some weeks earlier but for Wellington’s refusal to ask

for them. And it was the ammunition sent by Popham which alone enabled

the siege to go on for as long as it did.

The calculations--miscalculations rather--which kept the main Army

in front of Burgos to such a late day in the season as October 20th,

have been dealt with in a previous chapter. The united force of Souham

and Caffarelli was undervalued; it was not till Wellington saw their

two armies deployed that he recognized that they had 20,000 men more

in hand than he had supposed. And on the other front he relied too

much on the strength of the line of the Tagus for defence. We must

concede that if the weather had been the same in New Castile as it

was in Wellington’s own region, if the Tagus had been in flood like

the Arlanzon and the Pisuerga, and the desperate rains that prevailed

at Burgos had prevailed also at Toledo and Aranjuez, his plan would

probably have been successful. But who dares make the weather a fixed

point in military calculations? The season disappointed him, and

Soult was lucky enough to find bright days and hard roads and streams

half dry as he advanced on Madrid[248], though Wellington was almost

embogged and moved among perpetual fogs in the North.

Still, the cardinal fact at the bottom of the unfortunate Burgos

campaign was that the Anglo-Portuguese Army was not strong enough

for the task in hand, when Soult’s whole force, and great part of

the Army of the North also, came into the field to aid the armies of

Portugal and the Centre. The permanent evacuation of Andalusia and the

temporary evacuation of Biscay put into movement 60,000 men who had

hitherto been for the most part locked up in the occupation of those

regions. When they became an ‘operating army’ Wellington was hopelessly

outnumbered. He himself thought that he might yet have pulled through

the crisis, without being compelled to evacuate Madrid and the two

Castiles, if only Ballasteros had obeyed orders, and distracted Soult

by an irruption into La Mancha against the flank of the advancing

enemy. Undoubtedly that General was most perverse and disloyal; but it

seems quite possible that if he had advanced, as ordered, he would only

have let himself in for one of those crushing defeats which commanders

of his type so often suffered during the war. The fact was that the

French armies, when once concentrated, were too numerous to be held

in check. Wellington’s only real chance of success would have been

to concentrate every man either against Souham and Caffarelli on the

one side, or against Soult and the King on the other. This was made

difficult by the initial division of his army into two nearly equal

halves--which resulted in his own force being too weak to deal with the

French Northern Army, and Hill’s similarly too weak to deal with the

Southern Army. He had intended, when he left Madrid on August 31st, to

return thither with the bulk of his marching force, after disposing

of the northern enemy, and (as we have seen) this idea was still in

his head even as late as early October. But he failed to carry out his

intention, partly because he had allowed himself to get entangled in

the siege of Burgos, partly because the French army in front of him

proved much stronger than he had originally calculated.

The only occasion on which it was actually in his power for a few

days to combine Hill’s force and his own for a blow at one of the two

hostile armies, while the other was still far off, was on the 3rd-5th

of November. He saw the chance, but deliberately refused to take it,

for reasons which we have seen set forth[249], and which were perfectly

convincing. If he had concentrated against either of the French armies,

it might have refused to fight and drawn back, while the other was in

a position to cut off his line of communication with Salamanca and

Portugal.

He resolved, and at this moment the resolve was wise, not to attempt

any such blow, but to fall back on the well-known and formidable

positions round Salamanca. Here he thought that he could defend the

line of the Tormes, even against a combined force that outnumbered

him by 25,000 men. Probably he would have succeeded if the enemy

had delivered a frontal attack, as Jourdan and the majority of the

French generals desired. But Soult’s safe but indecisive policy of

refusing to make such an attack, and turning the Allied flank by the

fords of the upper Tormes, was adopted. The only counter to this move

would have been to assail the French while they were in the midst of

their manœuvre, even as Marmont had been assailed at the battle of

the Arapiles. But the disparity of numbers was on this occasion too

great for such a stroke to be prudent, and Wellington was forced, most

unwillingly, to retreat to the frontier of Portugal.

But for two mishaps--the coming on of absolutely abominable weather and

the misdirection of the food-supplies by Colonel Gordon--this retreat

would have been uneventful, and would have been attended with little

or no loss. For the French pursuit was timid and ineffective, and only

carried out by a fraction of the enemy’s army--nearly half of it halted

at Salamanca, and the remaining part was not strong enough to attack

Wellington. As it chanced, Gordon’s errors and the plague of immoderate

rains not only cost Wellington several thousand men, but produced an

impression of disaster both on the minds of those who took part in the

miserable march and on those of the captious critics in London. What

should have been ‘a good clean retreat’ became a rather disastrous

affair. But this was not due to the enemy, and the French observers

got small comfort from it--as we have already shown by quoting Foy’s

perspicuous and angry comments on the operations around Salamanca[250].

Wellington got off with ‘an army in being,’ and if it was tired out,

so was that of his opponents. A hundred thousand men had been scraped

together from every corner of the Peninsula to overwhelm him, but

had failed to do so. Meanwhile he had cleared all Spain south of the

Tagus valley from the enemy, had broken their prestige, and had shaken

to pieces the pretension of King Joseph to be taken seriously as the

monarch of the greatest vassal-kingdom of his brother’s empire.

SECTION XXXV

CHAPTER I

WINTER QUARTERS. DECEMBER 1812-JANUARY 1813

When the Anglo-Portuguese Army halted at Ciudad Rodrigo, and came back

once more to regular rations and marches that were no longer forced,

it was of course in very bad condition. The cold and wet of the last

ten days’ retreat from Salamanca had caused many a man to drop dead

by the way, and had sent thousands of sick to the hospitals, riddled

with dysentery and rheumatism. And the hospitals and dépôts were even

before this last influx loaded up with convalescents not fit for

service, from the casualties of Salamanca and Burgos. The December

morning states were enough to fill Wellington with dismay; of his

64[251] British battalions there were only 30,397 men present with the

colours--an average of much less than 500 bayonets to the battalion.

There were no less than 18,000 men in hospital--more than a third of

the total strength of the infantry arm. Thirteen regiments had more men

‘sick’ than ‘effective’; twelve were down to under 300 strong[252].

The cavalry had not lost so many in proportion--they had 5,700 present

under arms to 1,436 sick, but could not mount more than 5,000, owing to

the loss of horses during the retreat, and the surviving horses were

for the most part in bad condition.

The first thing necessary was to get the troops under cover and well

fed: a very long rest was obviously necessary to allow the way-worn and

exhausted men time to recover their strength, and the convalescents to

rejoin from the hospitals. With the winter drafts known to be ready and

starting from England, to the number of some 5,000[253], beside one or

two more complete battalions promised for the Peninsula, there might

be an army in April 1813 no less strong than that which had opened

the campaign of 1812. But clearly the only movement to be thought of

at present was that of getting the divisions into comfortable winter

quarters. Accordingly the army broke up a few days after reaching

Ciudad Rodrigo, and spread itself out in dispositions not unlike those

of the December previous, save that nothing was left so far to the

South as had been the custom in other years. For Soult was no longer

in Andalusia, and the right wing of the Allied army had no reason to

descend as far as the Guadiana.

By December the 1st Division had distributed itself on the upper

Mondego around Guarda and Vizeu[254]; the 3rd Division was farther

north, about Moimento de Beira; the 4th, with head-quarters at S.

João de Pesqueira, occupied cantonments along the Douro; the 5th was

a little lower down the same river in Lamego and the neighbouring

villages. The 6th Division lay somewhat farther back on the northern

slope of the Serra de Estrella, along the high road parallel with the

middle Mondego, with head-quarters at Cea; the 7th at Moimento da Serra

and Santa Marinha, also under the Estrella. Pack’s and Bradford’s

Portuguese went north of the Douro, to Penafiel and Villa Real

respectively. Only the much-enduring Light Division was left in rather

cold and bare quarters on the frontier, occupying familiar billets at

Fuentes de Oñoro, Alameda, Gallegos, and other villages between the Coa

and the Agueda. The cavalry was all sent back to the rear, even so far

as the coast-plain at the mouths of the Vouga and the Mondego, save

V. Alten’s brigade, which remained on the Agueda in company with the

Light Division, and D’Urban’s Portuguese, who went back to Braganza, in

the far north-east of the Tras-os-Montes, on the Spanish frontier. Any

observer noting these dispositions as a whole could not but conclude

that they were most easily explained by an intention to resume in the

next spring the old line of the Allied advance of 1812; since all

the British troops were conveniently placed for a concentration on

the Agueda, and a march on Salamanca. The fact that the three small

Portuguese units had been sent north of the Douro would attract little

attention. And this no doubt was the impression which Wellington wished

to produce on any secret agents of the French who might report the

location of his winter quarters.

Meanwhile, as in earlier years, Hill took the old Army of Estremadura,

the British 2nd Division, Hamilton’s Portuguese division, and Erskine’s

two cavalry brigades, back to the South, but only as far as the Tagus

and the Alagon, not to the Guadiana. He fixed his head-quarters at

Coria, and distributed the brigades of the 2nd Division in the mountain

villages above, covering the great passes of the Sierra de Francia and

the Sierra de Gata, the Puerto de Baños and the Puerto de Perales[255].

Hamilton’s division lay inside its own country, at Moraleja, Idanha,

and Penamacor. The cavalry head-quarters were at Brozas in the valley

of the Tagus, near Alcantara and its Roman bridge. Here Erskine,

the cavalry divisional general, committed suicide by jumping out of

a high window in a state of frenzy. Wellington had long wanted to

get rid of him--though not in this sad way--and for good reason, as

is explained by several incidents of 1811 and 1812 which have been

noticed in previous volumes. Yet he had never been able to obtain his

departure--political influences at home stood in the way. Erskine being

thus removed, the Commander-in-Chief at once dissolved the 2nd Cavalry

Division, and its two British brigades (Long’s and Fane’s) ceased to

have any other connexion with each other, beyond that of being both

attached to Hill’s Corps.

The disposition for Hill’s winter quarters was obviously intended not

merely to cover the great passes between the valleys of the Douro and

the Tagus, but also to give the enemy cause to think that Wellington

might some day attack on the southern front, either by a sudden advance

up the Tagus on Talavera and Madrid, or by a blow at Avila across the

Puente de Congosto defile. Either operation would be equally possible

to a force based on Coria. And repeatedly during the spring rumours ran

through the French lines that Hill had advanced to Plasencia or the

bridge of Almaraz.

Behind the long front that lay between D’Urban’s horse at Braganza and

Erskine’s horse at Brozas, the British army settled down for a very

protracted period of rest and reorganization--it was to be much longer

than Wellington had intended, owing to unforeseen chances. The Spanish

auxiliary forces which had marched with the Allies in the autumn also

dispersed: Castaños led the Army of Galicia back from the Agueda to

its own country, by a long march through the Tras-os-Montes. Carlos de

España put part of his division as a garrison in Ciudad Rodrigo, and

lay with the rest in the mountain villages of the Sierra de Francia.

Morillo, sticking close to Hill’s side, as he had done all through

1812, went back with him to the South, and wintered once more in

Estremadura, at Caçeres and the neighbouring places.

On the other side, King Joseph and Marshal Soult had also to place

their armies--as worn out as were those of their enemy--in winter

quarters. And the choice of theirs was a much more difficult problem

than that which lay before Wellington, since King Joseph had to settle

not only a military but a political problem. The whole fabric of the

French occupation of Spain had been dashed to pieces in the preceding

summer by the loss of Andalusia, the temporary occupation of Madrid

by the Allies, and the advance of the Anglo-Portuguese Army as far as

Burgos. It had now to be reconstructed--but on what lines? There was

clearly no possibility of reoccupying Andalusia or Estremadura: to do

so would have involved a winter campaign--which was unthinkable--and

an intolerable dispersion of the army which had been collected with so

much difficulty for the repression of Wellington. The real alternatives

possible were either (1) to reconstruct King Joseph’s Spanish kingdom,

as it had existed in the spring of 1812, minus Andalusia, making Madrid

the political capital and the military base of operations, or (2)

to recognize that the total strength of the French armies no longer

sufficed for such an ambitious scheme, and to occupy in strength

only Old Castile and Leon, with the provinces beyond the Ebro, making

Valladolid both the political and the military centre of operations,

and abandoning Madrid altogether, or only holding it as an advanced

post towards the south, on the extreme limit of French occupation.

After much debate Joseph and Jourdan chose the former plan, influenced

mainly, as the Marshal writes in his Memoirs, by the fact that to

give up Madrid as the capital, and to remove to Valladolid, would be

a death-blow to the prestige of the Franco-Spanish monarchy. It would

matter little whether Madrid were actually abandoned, or held as a

precarious outpost: in either case Joseph could no longer pretend

to be King of Spain[256]. In addition it must be remembered that to

give up New Castile and La Mancha would leave Suchet in a position of

isolation at Valencia, far too much advanced, and quite out of touch

with the other armies, and also that from the administrative point of

view Joseph had always regarded the revenues which he drew from Madrid

and New Castile as the only solid part of his very modest and irregular

budget. That a great error of choice was made is undoubted; but its

ruinous nature was only to be revealed by circumstances which the King

and the Marshal could not possibly have foreseen on November 20, 1812.

When they made their decision neither they nor any one at Paris, or

elsewhere in Western Europe, had a notion of the awful _débâcle_ which

was in progress in Russia. Napoleon had evacuated Moscow a month back;

he was now in disastrous retreat from Smolensk toward the Berezina,

with an army that was already crumbling under his hands. But that

the whole of it was destined to perish during the next few days, and

that France was to be left unguarded by any _Grande Armée_ when the

new year came, seemed an incredible contingency. Joseph and Jourdan

expected to draw from the Emperor drafts and reinforcements in 1813, as

they had even in 1812. If they had guessed that, instead, he would be

drawing drafts and reinforcements from them, they would have adopted

a different policy. But the celebrated ‘29th Bulletin’ was published

in Paris only on December 3rd, and did not get to Madrid till January

6th,[257] and even that dismal document did not reveal the full extent

of the ruin. It was not, indeed, till private letters from survivors

of the Moscow retreat began to drift in, three weeks later, that the

French head-quarters in Spain realized what the month of November had

meant in Russia.

It was quite natural, then, that King Joseph should have made up

his mind, at the end of the Burgos retreat, that he would occupy so

much of the regained regions as was possible, and would make Madrid

once more his residence and the centre of his operations. He was

right in believing that he had at least four months before him for

reorganization and reconstruction: Wellington was too hard hit to be

able to move before April at the earliest.

It was some weeks before the King was able to spread the three French

armies in the final positions which he had chosen for them. He left

Salamanca himself at the head of his Guard on November 23rd, and

moved on Madrid by way of Peñaranda, Arevalo and the Guadarrama Pass.

He reached the capital on December 2nd, to find that it had been

occupied a few days after he had left it on his march to Salamanca

by the Empecinado and his _partida_[258]. The guerrillero chief had

administered the city with the aid of an extemporized junta for

more than three weeks[259]. On the approach of the King he retired,

taking with him some citizens who had compromised themselves in

the patriotic cause. Joseph, however, showed himself particularly

gracious on his return, and endeavoured to produce an impression of

the restored solidity of his régime, by holding court functions,

reopening the theatres, and visiting hospitals and public institutions.

The demonstration had little effect, all the more because it was

accompanied by increased market-dues and the collection of arrears of

taxation. It was impossible to persuade the Madrileños that the King’s

return was for good, and confidence in his power was never restored.

Meanwhile the Army of the Centre reoccupied the provinces of

Segovia and Guadalajara with the northern part of that of Toledo.

While crossing the Guadarrama a few days after the King, its leading

division was caught in a blizzard similar to that which, on the same

spot, had impeded Napoleon on December 22nd, 1808, and lost a hundred

men frozen or buried in the snow[260]. Soult was directed to place

his head-quarters at Toledo, and to occupy that province and Avila,

with so much of La Mancha as he thought proper. The Army of Portugal

was allotted the provinces of Zamora, Leon, Salamanca, Palencia, and

Valladolid, with head-quarters at the last-named city. The front

towards Portugal and Galicia was held by one division at Leon, another

at Zamora, and two at Salamanca, the rest of the eight divisions of

this army being écheloned in reserve at various points in Old Castile.

But at the end of December the King determined that there must be a

shifting of cantonments, in order to tighten up his connexion with

Suchet at Valencia. He ordered Soult to send a division to Cuenca, as a

half-way house to the East Coast. To enable him to spare these troops

he was relieved of the charge of the province of Avila, which was taken

over by Foy, with the 1st Division of the Army of Portugal.

The extent of the French occupation in central and northern Spain at

the commencement of the new year, 1813, may best be defined by a list

of the Divisional head-quarters of the armies, which were, on January

15, Army of the South, 1st Division (Leval), Toledo[261]; 3rd Division

(Villatte), Talavera; 4th Division (Conroux), Madridejos; 5th Division

(Pécheux), Daymiel in La Mancha; 6th Division (Daricau), San Clemente

in the province of Cuenca. Of the cavalry Pierre Soult’s light horse

and Digeon’s dragoons were in a forward position in La Mancha, Tilly’s

dragoons in reserve at Toledo. The effective total of Soult’s army was

on this day 36,000 officers and men effective, beside men in hospital

or detached.

Of the Army of the Centre, Darmagnac’s Division, as also the Royal

Guard, was at Madrid, Cassagne’s Division at Arganda (twenty miles

farther east), the Franco-Spanish Division of Casapalacios at Segovia,

the cavalry dispersed at various points in a circle round Madrid. This

army had just lost Palombini’s Italian Division, which had served with

it during the autumn campaign of 1812. It was on its way to Burgos, to

join the Army of the North, to which it properly belonged. With this

deduction the Army of the Centre had still 12,000 French troops, plus

Joseph’s Guards and Spaniards, who must have made up at least 5,000

more.

The Army of Portugal was much more widely dispersed. It showed the

1st Division (Foy) at Avila, 2nd Division (Barbot) at Valladolid,

3rd Division (Sarrut) at Leon, 4th Division (Fririon) at Saldaña,

5th Division (Maucune) and 8th Division (Chauvel) at Salamanca, with

detachments at Ledesma and Zamora. The 6th and 7th Divisions, both

weak, were in process of being cut up to strengthen the others, as will

be explained later, when reorganization is in question. Of the two

cavalry divisions of the Army of Portugal both Boyer’s dragoons, with

head-quarters at Mayorga, and Curto’s light horse, with head-quarters

at Medina de Rio Seco, were keeping a line of advanced posts on the

Esla, to watch the Spanish army of Galicia. The total effective

strength, omitting sick, was 42,000 men.

The three armies had thus about 95,000 men under arms to cover the

enormous block of territory which they occupied. The distance from

Salamanca to San Clemente is 250 miles; that from Leon to Daymiel 280

miles. It is clear that a concentration on Madrid or Valladolid would

be comparatively easy. On the other hand there would be an intolerable

distance for the Army of the South to cover, if Salamanca were the

point chosen by an enemy for assault, or for the remoter divisions of

the Army of Portugal to traverse, if Talavera were selected. But, as

was obvious, there was no chance of any such blow being delivered at

present, since Wellington could not possibly stir till the spring,

while the Spanish regular forces in Andalusia and Murcia were

negligible quantities until the Anglo-Portuguese army should be able to

move.

All round the position of the French there was at this moment a

broad ‘no man’s land’; for their farthest outposts were nowhere in

direct touch with the enemy, but separated from him by many miles of

unoccupied ground, in which neither party kept permanent posts. Between

Astorga--the farthest advanced post of the Galicians--and the line

of the Esla, between Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, between Avila and

Bejar, between Talavera and Coria, between Daymiel and San Clemente

and the northern foot-hills of the Sierra Morena, this broad debatable

land was in possession neither of the French nor of the regular armies

of their enemy, but of the guerrillero bands, under a score of leaders

small and great. And the difficulty of the situation for King Joseph

was that, while Wellington and Castaños and Del Parque and Elio were

quiet perforce at midwinter, the guerrilleros were not. Having ample

spaces of unoccupied border, in which they could take refuge when

pursued, and many mountain recesses, even within the zone of French

occupation, where they could lie safe against anything less than a

considerable flying column, they seemed to defy extermination. Even

in King Joseph’s most prosperous days, when the final triumph of the

French seemed probable, there had always been guerrilleros; but since

Wellington’s march to Madrid and Soult’s evacuation of Andalusia, it

no longer looked as if the national cause was hopeless. To collect the

army which drove Wellington back to Portugal in November every district

in Spain, from Biscay to La Mancha, had been stripped for a time of

its army of occupation. Regions long tamed had been out of hand for

four or five months, enjoying an unruly and uncomfortable freedom,

in which local juntas and guerrillero chiefs, who took the pose of

military governors, contended for authority. And when the French came

back they found that their old prestige was gone and that it could

only be restored, if it could be restored at all, by ceaseless acts of

repression of the most drastic sort. For if any town or village showed

any signs of willing submission, the guerrilleros descended upon it

when its garrison was absent, and hung or arrested ‘Afrancesados’:

while if the population (as was more usual) showed ill-will and offered

passive resistance, the French imprisoned or shot the magistrates, and

imposed heavy fines for disloyalty[262].