had been in previous years, the answer must be that the cause was
moral and not material. It was not merely that many small places had
been evacuated for a time by the French during the Burgos campaign,
nor that the British fleet was throwing in arms and supplies at
Castro-Urdiales or Santander. The important thing was that for the
first time since 1808 the whole people had got a glimpse of hope:
the French had been driven out of Madrid; they had evacuated Biscay;
Old Castile and Leon had been in the power of Wellington for several
months. It was true that Madrid had been recovered, that Wellington
had been forced to retreat. But it was well known that the general
result of the campaign of 1812 had been to free all Southern Spain,
and that the French had been on the verge of ruin in the early
autumn. The prestige of the Imperial armies had received at Salamanca
a blow from which it never recovered. Wherefore the insurgents of
the North put forth during the winter of 1812-13 an energy such as
they had never before displayed, and the French generals gradually
discovered that they had no longer to do with mere guerrillero bands,
half-armed, half-fed wanderers in the hills, recruited only from the
desperate and the reckless, but with a whole people in arms. When
Caffarelli returned from Burgos, he found that the Spanish authorities
had re-established themselves in every town which had been left
ungarrisoned, that taxes and requisitions were being levied in a
regular fashion, and that new regiments were being formed and trained
in Biscay and Guipuzcoa. The nominal Spanish commander in this region
was Mendizabal, theoretically Chief of the ‘Seventh Army’--but he was
an officer of little resource and no authority. The real fighting man
was Longa, originally a guerrillero chief, but now gazetted a colonel
in the regular army. He was a gunsmith from the Rioja, a very resolute
and persistent man, who had taken to the hills early, and had outlived
most of his rivals and colleagues--a clear instance of the ‘survival
of the fittest.’ His useful co-operation with Sir Home Popham in the
last autumn has been mentioned above: his band, now reorganized as
four infantry battalions, was raised from the mountaineers of the
province of Santander and the region of the upper Ebro. His usual
beat lay between the sea and Burgos, and he was as frequently to be
found on the Cantabrian coast as at the defile of Pancorbo, where the
great Bayonne _chaussée_ crosses from the watershed of the Ebro to
that of the Douro. His force never much exceeded 3,000 men, but they
were tough material--great marchers and (as they proved when serving
under Wellington) very staunch fighters on their own ground. West of
Longa’s hunting grounds were those of Porlier, in the Eastern Asturias:
the star of the ‘Marquesito,’ as he was called, had paled somewhat
of late, as the reputation of Longa had increased. He had never had
again such a stroke of luck as his celebrated surprise of Santander in
1811[382], and the long French occupation of the Asturias in the days
of Bonnet had worn down his band to little over 2,000 men. At this
moment he was mainly engaged, under the nominal command of Mendizabal,
in keeping Santoña blockaded. To besiege it in form he had neither
enough men nor a battering train: but if driven away once and again by
Caffarelli, he never allowed himself to be caught, and was back again
to stop the roads, the moment that the relieving column had marched
off. In Biscay the leading spirit was Jauregui (El Pastor), another
old ally of Sir Home Popham, but in addition to his band there was now
on foot a new organization of a more regular sort, three Biscayan and
three Guipuzcoan battalions, who had received arms from the English
cruisers. They held all the interior of the country, had fortified the
old citadel of Castro-Urdiales on the coast, with guns lent them from
the fleet, and co-operated with Mendizabal and Longa whenever occasion
offered. They had held Bilbao for a time in the autumn, but were
chased out of it when Caffarelli returned from Burgos. In January they
made another attempt upon it, but were repulsed by General Rouget, in
command of the garrison.
Between the fields of operation of the Biscayans and Longa and that
of the Navarrese insurgents, there was the line of the great Bayonne
_chaussée_, held by a series of French garrisons at Tolosa, Bergara,
Mondragon, Vittoria, Miranda del Ebro, and the castle of Pancorbo.
This line of fortified places was a sore hindrance to the Spaniards,
but on many occasions they crossed it. Mina’s raiding battalions from
Navarre were frequently seen in the Basque provinces. And they had
made communication between one garrison and another so dangerous that
the post-commanders often refused to risk men on escorts between one
place and the next, and had long ceased to attempt requisitions on
the countryside. They were fed by convoys pushed up the high road,
with heavy forces to guard them, at infrequent intervals. In Navarre,
as has been already explained, Mina held the whole countryside, and
had set up an orderly form of government. He had at the most 8,000
or 9,000 men, but they spread everywhere, sometimes operating in one
column, sometimes in many, seldom to be caught when sought after,
and capable of turning on any rash pursuing force and overwhelming
it, if its strength was seen to be over-small. Mina’s sphere of
action extended far into Aragon, as far as Huesca, so that he was as
much a plague to Paris, the Governor of Saragossa, as to Thouvenot,
Governor of Vittoria, or Abbé, Governor of Pampeluna. His strategical
purpose, if we may ascribe such a thing to one who was, after all,
but a guerrillero of special talent and energy, was to break the line
of communication down the Ebro from Miranda to Saragossa, the route
by which the King and the Army of the North kept up their touch with
Suchet’s troops in Aragon. It was a tempting objective, since all down
the river there were French garrisons at short distances in Haro,
Logroño, Viana, Calahorra, Milagro, Tudela, and other places, none of
them very large, and each capable of being isolated, and attacked for
some days, before the Governor of Navarre could come to its aid with a
strong relieving column. And there were other garrisons, such as those
at Tafalla and Huesca, covering outlying road-centres, which were far
from succour and liable to surprise-attacks at any moment.
Nor was Mina destitute of the power to call in help for one of his
greater raids--he sometimes shifted towards the coast, and got in touch
with the Guipuzcoans and Biscayans, while he had also communication
with Duran, south of the Ebro. This officer who was theoretically a
division-commander in the Valencian Army, was really the leader of a
band of four or five thousand irregulars, who hung about the mountains
of Soria, and kept the roads from Madrid to Saragossa and the Ebro
blocked. And Duran was again in touch with the Empecinado, whose
beat lay on the east side of New Castile, and whose main object was
to molest the French garrisons of Guadalajara, Segovia, and Alcalá.
Temporary combinations of formidable strength could be made, when
several of these irregular forces joined for a common raid: but the
chiefs generally worked apart, each disliking to move very far from
his own district, where he was acquainted with the roads and the
inhabitants. For in a country of chaotic sierras, like Northern Spain,
local knowledge was all-important: to be aware of exactly what paths
and passes were practicable in January snow, or what torrents were
fordable in March rain, was the advantage which the guerrillero had
over his enemy. It is probable that in March or April 1813 the total
force of all the insurgent bands was no greater than that of the French
garrisons and movable columns with which they had to contend. But
the Army of the North was forced to tie down the larger half of its
strength to holding strategical points and long lines of communication,
while the guerrilleros could evacuate one whole region for weeks at a
time, in order to mass in another. They could be unexpectedly strong
in one district, yet lose nothing by temporary abandonment of another.
They were admirably served for intelligence, since the whole population
was by goodwill or by fear at their service: the French could only
depend on _afrancesados_ for information, and these were timid and
few; they grew fewer as Mina gradually discovered and hanged traitors.
When the French columns had gone by, it was easily to be guessed who
had guided them or given them news--and such people perished, or had
to migrate to the nearest garrison. But local knowledge was the real
strength of the guerrilleros: a French column-commander, guiding
his steps from the abominable maps of Lopez--the atlas which was
universally used for want of a better--was always finding his enemy
escape by a path unindicated on the map, or appear in his rear over
some unknown cross-road, which could not have been suspected to exist.
Hence the local Spanish traitor was absolutely necessary as a guide,
and often he could not be found--treachery having been discovered to
be a path that led inevitably to the gallows. The Army of the North
had acquired, from old and painful experience of counter-marches,
some general knowledge of the cross-roads between the Ebro and the
Pyrenees. But when troops from a distance--sections of the Bayonne
Reserve, or reinforcements from the Army of Portugal--were turned on to
the game of guerrillero-hunting, they found themselves very helpless.
As a rule, the most promising march ended in finding the lair still
warm, but the quarry invisible.
Napoleon and his mouthpiece, the War Minister Clarke, refused to the
end, as Marshal Marmont remarked[383], to see that the War of Spain
was unlike any other war that the French armies had waged since 1792.
The nearest parallels to it were the fighting in Switzerland in 1798
and against Hofer’s Tyrolese in 1809. But both of these earlier
insurrectionary wars had been fought on a very limited area, against
an enemy of no great numerical strength, practically unhelped from
without. In Spain the distances were very great, the mountains--if less
high than the Alps--were almost as tiresome, for in the Alps there were
vast tracts completely inaccessible to both sides, but the Sierras,
if rugged, are less lofty and better furnished with goat-tracks and
smugglers’ by-ways, where the heavily laden infantryman cannot follow
the evasive mountaineer. Moreover, the English cruisers continued to
drop in the arms and munitions without which the insurgents could not
have kept the field.
There can be no doubt that Napoleon undervalued the power of the
Spanish guerrilleros, just as he undervalued the resources and the
enterprise of Wellington. From the first moment of his return from
Russia he had continued to impress on Joseph and Jourdan the necessity
for pacifying the North, before the season for regular campaigning
should have arrived, and Wellington should have taken the field. But
his theory that the winter was the best time for dealing with the
bands was rather specious than correct. For although the short days,
the snow in the passes, and the swollen torrents were, no doubt,
great hindrances to that freedom of movement which was the main
strength of the guerrilleros, they were even greater hindrances to
combined operations by bodies of regular troops. Rapid marches are
impossible off the high roads in Northern Spain, during the midwinter
months; and it was only by combined operations and the use of large
forces that the insurgents could be dealt with. Indeed, the country
roads were practically impassable for any regular troops in many
regions. What officer would risk detachments in upland valleys that
might be found to be blocked with snow, or cut off from their usual
communication by furious streams that had overflowed the roads and made
fords impracticable? Winter marches in unexplored hills are the most
deadly expedients: all the weakly soldiers fall by the way--had not
Drouet lost 150 men in passing the Guadarrama during the early days
of December--and the Guadarrama was crossed by one of the few great
royal roads of Spain? What would be the losses of columns sent out on
cross-roads and caught in blizzards, or in those weeks of continuous
rain which are not uncommon in the sub-Pyrenean region?
The Emperor’s view was that Caffarelli had failed in his task from want
of resourcefulness. He was always trying to parry blows rather than to
strike himself: he allowed the insurgents to take the initiative, and
when they had executed some tiresome raid would set out in a pursuit
which was seldom useful, since they naturally outran him[384]. He was
always marching to deliver or revictual some threatened garrison,
anywhere between Santoña and Pampeluna, instead of setting himself to
destroy the main agglomeration of hostile forces. Now Caffarelli, it is
true, was no great general, and may have been on occasion wanting in
vigour. But the best reply to the criticism of him sent from Paris is
to observe that his successor, Clausel, universally acknowledged to be
the most active officer in Spain, failed in exactly the same way as his
predecessor, even when he had been lent 20,000 veteran troops to aid
him in his task.
Napoleon wanted a great general movement _pour balayer tout le Nord_.
He granted that Caffarelli had not enough troops both to furnish
garrisons for every important point, and to hunt down the guerrilleros
with a large field-force. Therefore he ordered Reille to furnish
Caffarelli’s successor with every man that he asked for. If necessary,
the whole Army of Portugal might be requisitioned, since those of the
South and Centre would be enough to keep Wellington in check. The
letter of instructions which Clarke was directed to give to Clausel,
when the latter took up his appointment, explains the Emperor’s views.
‘By a continual taking of the offensive it ought to be possible to
reach a prompt and happy result. The moment that the reinforcements
to be furnished by General Reille arrive (and possibly they have
already put themselves at your disposition) in Navarre and Biscay, I
am convinced that your usual activity will change the face of affairs.
Rapid pursuits, well directed, and above all properly adapted to the
topographical configuration of the district; raids made without warning
on the insurgents’ dépôts of provisions, their hospitals, their stores
of arms, and in general on all their magazines, will infallibly carry
confusion into their operations. After you have had some successful
engagements with them, it will only require politic measures to
complete their disorganization. When you have scattered their juntas,
all the young men they have enrolled by compulsion will melt home. If
you leave them no rest, and surprise them in their remotest places of
refuge, the matter should end by their going wholly to pieces.... As
to the keeping open your communication with France, one particular
device, to whose utility all the generals who have served in that
region bear witness, is to establish at regular distances and in well
chosen positions, especially where roads meet, small palisaded forts,
or blockhouses, which will form a chain of posts and support each
other. Owing to the wooded nature of the country they will not cost
much to build--the estimate for such a system of blockhouses has been
calculated to me at no more than 300,000 francs.
‘Santoña and Pampeluna must be held--the latter because its capture is
Mina’s main ambition, the former because it is a terror to the English,
who recently tried to have it besieged: General Caffarelli had to lead
an expedition to relieve it. Pampeluna is the more important for the
moment: when a division of the Army of Portugal reaches Navarre you
ought to be able to make Mina change his tone. Santoña can wait--it may
be reprovisioned by sea from the small ports of Biscay. As General
Caffarelli has inconsiderately evacuated most of them, you should
reoccupy them all, especially Bermeo and Castro-Urdiales. The latter is
said to have been fortified with the help of the English. For the sake
of the safety of Santoña all these places must be retaken at once: from
the mouth of the Bidassoa to Santander every maritime position should
be in French hands. Santander especially is, by the Emperor’s express
orders, to be permanently occupied by an adequate garrison.
‘It is necessary that all these operations should be carried out
simultaneously. The pursuit of Mina in Navarre should synchronize
with the operations in Biscay. The insurgents should be hunted in the
inland, at the same time that they are attacked on the coast. This is
the only way to disorganize them, to make them weak and divided at
all points.... It seems preferable to use every available man for a
general simultaneous attack, than to undertake each necessary operation
in succession, with a smaller force and more leisure--all the more so
because the reinforcements, which are to co-operate in your scheme, may
be called elsewhere by some unforeseen development of affairs[385].’
Clausel, in obedience to his instructions, tried to carry out the
whole of this scheme, and had small luck therewith. He built the
chain of blockhouses from Irun to Burgos, thereby tying up many
battalions to sedentary duty. He hunted Mina right and left, drove the
insurrectionary Junta of Biscay from its abode, occupied all the little
ports from Santander to San Sebastian, stormed the well-fortified
Castro-Urdiales, revictualled Pampeluna and Santoña, and at the end
of three months had to report that his task was unfinished, that the
insurrection was still unsubdued, and that although he had borrowed
20,000 infantry from the Army of Portugal, he must ask for another
20,000 men [where were they to be got?] in order to finish the
campaign. And by this time--the end of May--Wellington was loose, and
the King was falling back on the Ebro, vainly calling for the five
divisions that his brother had made over to the Army of the North.
But we must resume the chronicle of the Northern campaign, before
commenting on its inadequate and unhappy conclusion.
The operations may be said to have begun in January, when Palombini’s
Italian division marched from Old Castile to join the Army of the
North, in order to replace Dumoustier’s brigade of the Young Guard,
which was being recalled to France. After crossing the Guadarrama
Pass in a blizzard, which cost some lives, they got to Burgos on the
28th, driving away the Cura Merino and his band, who had been blocking
the road from Valladolid. From Burgos Palombini marched to Vittoria,
escorting a convoy of drafts returning to France, couriers, officials,
and convalescents. There he heard that Longa and Mendizabal had cut in
behind him, and had again stopped communications. Wherefore he turned
back, and swept the Bureba, where they were reported to be. Not finding
them, he marched as far as Poza de la Sal, not far from Briviesca, but
some leagues off the great _chaussée_. In this town his head-quarters
were fixed, while the bulk of his division was sent out in flying
columns to collect food. He had only 500 men with him, when on the
night of February 10-11 he found himself surrounded by three Spanish
columns, which had slipped through the intervals of the outlying
Italian regiments, and ran in on the town from different quarters. The
surprise, contrived by Longa, was complete; but Palombini, collecting
his men in a clump, held out till daylight, when his battalions
came flocking in to the sound of the musketry and relieved him. The
Spaniards disappeared, taking with them some baggage and prisoners
captured in the first rush, and were soon lost to sight in the
mountains.
The Italians, lucky to have escaped so cheaply, marched back to the
Ebro by way of Domingo Calzada, where there was a French garrison in
imminent danger of starvation, as it had long been blockaded by local
bands[386]. Palombini took it on with him, and blew up the castle, as
the place was inconveniently remote from any other French post. He
then returned to Vittoria by way of Haro (February 18) and next pushed
on to Bilbao, where he relieved Dumoustier’s brigade of the Imperial
Guard, which was at last able to obey the Emperor’s order to return to
France (February 21). Caffarelli used this force as his escort back
to Bayonne, and returned in some disgrace to Paris. Clausel assumed
command in his stead on the next day.
Pampeluna had been declared by the new commander’s letter of
instructions to be the place of which he should be most careful. But
seeing no chance of visiting and relieving it till his reinforcements
from the Army of Portugal should have come up, Clausel, while waiting
for their arrival, came to Bilbao, where he began to make preparations
for the siege of Castro-Urdiales, by far the most important, for the
moment, of the ports along the coast which the Emperor had commended to
him for destruction.
Meanwhile the Biscayan insurgents collected opposite Bilbao, on the
Eastern side, and Mendizabal brought up Longa’s troops and some of
the smaller bands to threaten it from the West. The idea was to give
Clausel so much trouble about his head-quarters that he would be
unable to march away against Castro. The days slipped by, and farther
East Mina was more active than ever in Navarre. He had at last become
the happy possessor of two siege guns, landed at Deba on the Biscay
coast, and dragged by incredible exertions across mountain paths to the
farthest inland. When they came to hand he set to work to beleaguer
the French garrison of Tafalla, an outlying place, but less than
thirty miles from Pampeluna. This was a challenge to General Abbé,
the Governor of Navarre: a force which has dug trenches and brought
up heavy guns is obviously asking for a fight, and not intending to
abscond. Abbé marched with 3,000 infantry and 150 chasseurs to raise
the siege, and found Mina with four of his battalions and his regiment
of cavalry drawn up across the high road, in a mountain position at
Tiebas, ten miles north of Tafalla. After a hard day’s fighting,
Abbé failed to break through, and had to fall back on Pampeluna[387]
(February 9). The news of his repulse disheartened the garrison, whose
walls were crumbling under the fire of Mina’s heavy guns, and they
surrendered on February 11th to the number of 11 officers and 317
men--the post-commander and many others had been killed during the
siege.
This success of Mina’s meant nothing less than that the whole open
country of Navarre was at his mercy, since Abbé had been beaten in the
field; wherefore Clausel hastened to dispatch the first reinforcements
from the Army of Portugal which reached him--Barbot’s division--to
this quarter. But the affair created less excitement than an exploit
of reckless courage carried out by one of Mina’s detachments in the
following month. The old castle of Fuenterrabia commands the passage of
the Bidassoa, and looks across its estuary into France: on March 11 it
was surprised by escalade by a handful of guerrilleros, the garrison
taken prisoner, the guns thrown into the water, and the whole building
destroyed by fire. The flames were visible far into France--troops
hurried up from Irun and Hendaye, but of course found the guerrilleros
gone[388].
This exploit was rather spectacular than harmful to the French--quite
otherwise was the last event of the month of March. Barbot’s division,
on entering Navarre, was directed to help Abbé to clear the country
between Pampeluna and the Ebro. Having reached Lodosa on March
30, Barbot sent out two battalions to raise requisitions in the
neighbouring town of Lerin. The place was being sacked, when the
scattered French were suddenly attacked by two of Mina’s battalions,
while two more and 200 Navarrese lancers cut in between the enemy and
Lodosa. The French, thoroughly surprised, lost heavily in the first
shock, but rallied and started to cut their way back to their division,
only eight miles away. In a running fight they were much mauled, and
finally had to form square to receive the cavalry. In this inconvenient
formation they were forced to a long musketry fight with the Navarrese,
which so shook the square that it finally broke when Mina’s lancers
charged. The two battalions were annihilated, 28 officers and 635 men
taken prisoners--the rest cut down. Gaudin, the colonel commanding
the detachment, escaped with a few mounted officers[389]. The
extraordinary part of the affair was that its last crisis took place at
only two miles from Lodosa, where Barbot was lying with his remaining
six battalions. The French general never stirred, but only put himself
in a posture of defence, thereby provoking Mina’s surprise[390], for
he could have saved the column by going out to its help. After the
disaster he retired to Pampeluna, with a division reduced to little
over 3,000 men. But not long after Taupin’s division of the Army of
Portugal also entered Navarre, and joined Abbé. This gave the latter a
very heavy force--at least 13,000 men, and when Clausel had finished
his own operations in the direction of Bilbao, and marched from Biscay
to encircle Mina on one side, while Abbé was to hold him on the other,
the great guerrillero was in grave danger. But this was only in late
April and May, and before the chronicle of these weeks is reached we
have to turn back westward for a space.
Napoleon’s orders had told Clausel to attack at all points at once,
and to lose no time in setting to work. But it was quite clear that
no general synchronized move could be made, until the divisions
borrowed from Reille had all arrived. What active operations meant,
before the reinforcements had come up, had been sufficiently proved
by Abbé’s defeat at Tiebas: and Clausel’s own doings in March were
equally discouraging, if not so disastrous. He had resolved to carry
out one of the Emperor’s urgent orders by capturing Castro-Urdiales,
the touching-place of British cruisers and the one fortified port which
the Allies possessed on the Biscay coast. Undervaluing its strength, he
marched out on March 21 with the bulk of Palombini’s Italian division
and a single French battalion, intending to take it by escalade.
For he had been told that its ancient walls had been indifferently
repaired, and were almost without guns. When, however, he had reached
the neighbourhood of Castro on the 22nd, he had to own on inspection
that the enterprise would be hopeless--his commanding engineer, the
historian Vacani[391]--maintained that it would take 6,000 men and a
siege train of at least six heavy guns to deal with the place. And,
as subsequent events showed, this was quite true. Castro is built on
a rocky spit projecting into the sea, with a stout wall 20 feet high
drawn across the isthmus which joins the headland to the coast. The
narrow front of this wall, from water to water, had been well repaired;
there were some 20 guns mounted, and an old castle on the extreme
sea-ward point of the spit served as a citadel or inner fortification.
Mendizabal and his lieutenant, Campillo, had come down from the
interior with three or four thousand men, and were visible on the
flank, ready to fall upon the Italian column if it should approach the
town, through the labyrinth of vineyards and stone fences which covered
its outskirts.
Clausel, always venturesome, was inclined at first to go on with his
enterprise, when news reached him that Bilbao, which he had left rather
weakly garrisoned, was threatened by the guerrillero Jauregui, and
the battalions of the volunteers of Biscay and Guipuzcoa. He returned
hastily to his head-quarters with his French battalion, but found that
the danger had been exaggerated for the moment, so sent out General
Rouget with two battalions to join Palombini, who had meanwhile on the
24th fought a severe action with Mendizabal. The Spaniard had tried
to surround him in his camp at San Pelayo, with several outflanking
columns--the Italian sallied out and drove him off with loss--but
suffered himself no less[392]. Clausel, on reaching the front, came
to the conclusion that Castro must not be attacked without heavy guns
and a larger field-force. He directed Palombini to burn the ladders,
fascines, &c., prepared for the assault, and to go off instead to raise
the blockade of Santoña, while he himself returned to Bilbao. The
Italian division therefore marched westward on Colindres, on the other
side of the bay on which Santoña stands, thrusting aside the Spanish
blockading forces, and communicated with the governor, General Lameth.
A supply of small arms and ammunition, money, and food was thrown into
the place. On the other hand, Lameth was ordered to get six heavy guns
on shipboard, and to be prepared to run them down the coast, when next
a French force should appear in front of Castro-Urdiales, along with a
provision of round shot, shells, and entrenching tools. Lameth got the
siege material ready, but was not asked for it till another full month
had gone by, for Clausel had other business pressed upon him.
Palombini thereupon turned back, and regained Bilbao in three forced
marches, unmolested by the Spaniards, for they had gone off in the
direction of Balmaseda, not expecting him to return so quickly. He
had only been in Bilbao for two days when Clausel sent him out again,
eastward this time and not westward, with two of his regiments, for
a surprise attack on Guernica, the head-quarters of the Biscayan
insurgents and the seat of their Junta. A French column of two
battalions of the 40th Line from Durango was to co-operate and to
assail the enemy in the rear. This expedition was quite in consonance
with Napoleon’s orders to strike at the enemy’s central dépôts in front
and rear by unexpected raids. But it also showed the difficulty of
carrying out such plans. Palombini reached Guernica, driving before him
bands which gave way, but were always growing stronger: behind Guernica
they made a stand--the French flanking column failed to appear--having
found troubles of its own--and Palombini was repulsed and forced to
cut his way back out of the hills. He reported his loss as only 80
men--but it was probably somewhat more[393] (April 2). Having picked up
the stray French column, and replenished his ammunition from Bilbao,
Palombini, with a laudable perseverance, attacked the Guernica position
again on April 5, and this time forced it. Thence pushing east, he
tried to drive the enemy before him along the coast road, on which, in
the neighbourhood of St. Sebastian, a brigade from the Bayonne reserve
had been set to block their flight. But the Biscayans and El Pastor
evaded him and slipped south into the hills: the Guipuzcoan battalions,
instinctively falling back on their own province, were in more danger.
But warned in time that the coast road was stopped, some of them took
refuge in the boats of English warships at Lequeytio and Motrico, and
were shipped off to Castro-Urdiales in safety, while others simply
dispersed. No prisoners were taken, but Palombini captured the petty
magazines of the Guipuzcoans at Aspeytia and Azcoytia, and thinking
that the insurrection was scotched returned to the Bayonne _chaussée_
at Bergara (April 9).
So far was this from ending the campaign, that while Palombini was
devastating Guipuzcoa, the Biscayans and El Pastor had concerted a new
attack on Bilbao with Longa and Mendizabal, who had been left with
no containing force in front of them when the enemy had retired from
before Castro-Urdiales.
Clausel had gone off from Bilbao on March 30, with a large escort,
to join at Vittoria the newly arrived divisions of the Army of
Portugal, those of Taupin and Foy, and was set on organizing a new
attack on Mina. In the absence of both the Commander-in-Chief and of
Palombini, Bilbao was very weakly garrisoned--not more than 2,000 men
were left to General Rouget to defend a rather extensive system of
outworks. On April 10th the Spaniards attacked him on both sides of
the Nervion river, and would probably have broken into Bilbao but for
the incapacity of Mendizabal, whose main body did not come up in time
to assist the attack of the Biscayans on the other bank of the river.
Rouget was still holding out when Palombini came to his rescue from
Bergara via Durango, in two forced marches. The Spaniards thereupon
dispersed, after their usual fashion, Mendizabal disappearing to
the east, the Biscayans falling back on their old head-quarters at
Guernica. Palombini was strong at the moment, having been joined by the
brigade from Bayonne, under General Aussenac, which had been blocking
the coast road. He therefore tried to surround the Biscayans with
converging columns--but when he thought that he had cut them off from
the inland, and was about to drive them into the water, the bulk of
them were picked up at Bermeo by English cruisers, and landed farther
down the coast. Only some baggage and a store of munitions fell into
the pursuer’s hands (April 14).
On this, Palombini, ‘convinced,’ says his admiring chronicler Vacani,
‘of the uselessness of trying to envelop or destroy local bands among
mountains which they knew too well, when he could only dispose of
columns of a few battalions for the pursuit,’ resolved to halt at
Bilbao, and prepare for the siege of Castro. He put the brigade from
Bayonne in charge of the high road to San Sebastian, and waited for
the arrival of Foy from Vittoria. For he had been informed that this
general, with his division of the Army of Portugal, was to be detailed
to help him in the subjection of Biscay. Meanwhile April was half over,
the insurgents had been often hunted but never caught, and Wellington
might be expected to be on the move any morning: it was strange that he
had not been heard of already.
Leaving Biscay to Palombini and Foy, Clausel had collected at Vittoria
one of his own divisions, hitherto scattered in small detachments, but
relieved by the reinforcements sent him from the Army of Portugal.
For beside the four divisions lent for active service, he had taken
over the whole Province of Burgos, to which Reille had sent the
division of Lamartinière. With his own newly-collected division, under
Vandermaesen, and Taupin’s of the Army of Portugal, Clausel set out for
Navarre on April 11th, to combine his operations with those of Abbé and
to hunt down Mina. As he had already sent forward to the Governor of
Navarre the division of Barbot, there was now a field-force of 20,000
men available for the chase, without taking into consideration the
troops tied down in garrisons. This was more than double the strength
that Mina could command, and the next month was one of severe trial for
the great guerrillero.
Clausel’s first idea was to catch Mina by a sweeping movement of all
his four divisions, which he collected at Puente la Reyna in the valley
of the Arga (April 24). Mina answered this move by dispersion, and
his battalions escaped through intervals in the cordon with no great
loss, and cut up more than once small detachments of their pursuers.
Clausel perceiving that this system was useless, then tried another,
one of those recommended by the Emperor in his letter of instruction of
March 9, viz. a resolute stroke at the enemy’s magazines and dépôts.
Mina kept his hospitals, some rough munition factories which he had
set up, and his store of provisions, in the remote Pyrenean valley
of Roncal, where Navarre and Aragon meet: it was most inaccessible
and far from any high road. Nevertheless Clausel marched upon it with
the divisions of Abbé, Vandermaesen, and Barbot, leaving Taupin alone
at Estella to contain Western Navarre. He calculated that Mina would
be forced to concentrate and fight, in order to save his stores and
arsenal, and that so he might be destroyed. He was partly correct in
his hypothesis--but only partly. Mina left four of his battalions in
Western Navarre, in the valleys of the Amescoas, to worry Taupin, and
hurried with the remaining five to cover the Roncal. There was heavy
fighting in the passes leading to it on May 12 and 13, which ended in
the Navarrese being beaten and dispersed with the loss of a thousand
men. Clausel captured and destroyed the factories and magazines,
and made prisoners of the sick in the hospitals, whom he treated
with unexpected humanity. Some of the broken battalions fled south
by Sanguesa into lower Navarre, others eastward into Aragon. Among
these last was Mina himself with a small party of cavalry--he tried
to fetch a compass round the pursuing French and to return to his own
country, but he was twice headed off, and finally forced to fly far
into Eastern Aragon, as far as Barbastro. This region was practically
open to him for flight, for the French garrison of Saragossa was too
weak to cover the whole country, or to stop possible bolt-holes. Mina
was therefore able to rally part of his men there, and called in the
help of scattered _partidas_. Clausel swept all North-Western Aragon
with his three divisions, making arrests and destroying villages which
had harboured the insurgents. But he did not wish to pursue Mina to the
borders of Catalonia, where he would have been quite out of his own
beat, and inconveniently remote from Pampeluna and Vittoria.
But meanwhile the division which he had left under Taupin in Navarre
was having much trouble with Mina’s four battalions in the Amescoas,
and parties drifting back from the rout in the Roncal vexed the
northern bank of the Ebro, while Longa and Mendizabal, abandoning
their old positions in front of Bilbao, had descended on to the
Bayonne _chaussée_, and executed many raids upon it, from the pass
of Salinas above Vittoria as far as the Ebro (April 25-May 10). The
communications between Bayonne and Burgos were once more cut, and the
situation grew so bad that Lamartinière’s division of the Army of
Portugal had to be moved eastward, to clear the road from Burgos to
Miranda, Sarrut’s to do the same between Miranda and Bilbao, while
Maucune detached a brigade to relieve Lamartinière at Burgos. Of the
whole Army of Portugal there was left on May 20th only one single
infantry brigade at Palencia which was still at Reille’s disposition.
Five and a half divisions had been lent to Clausel, and were dispersed
in the north. And Wellington was now just about to move! The worst
thing of all for the French cause was that the communications of the
North were as bad in May as they had been in January: after Clausel had
taken off the main field-army to the Roncal, and had led it from thence
far into Aragon, the roads behind him were absolutely useless. Only on
the line Bayonne-Vittoria, where the new blockhouses were beginning to
arise, was any regular passing to and fro possible. Clausel himself was
absolutely lost to sight, so far as King Joseph was concerned--it took
a fortnight or twenty days to get a dispatch through to him.
Meanwhile, before turning to the great campaign of Wellington on
the Douro, it is necessary to dispose of the chronicle of affairs
in Biscay. Foy and his division, as we have seen, had marched from
Vittoria to Bilbao and reached the latter place on April 21st[394]. On
the way they had nearly caught Mendizabal at Orduña, where he chanced
to be present with a guard of only 200 men; but, warned just in time,
he had the luck to escape, and went back to pick up his subordinates
Longa and Campillo nearer the coast.
Soon after Foy’s arrival at Bilbao he was joined by Sarrut’s division
of the Army of Portugal, which had followed him from Vittoria. He had
therefore, counting Palombini’s Italians, the brigade of Aussenac, and
the regular garrison of Bilbao, at least 16,000 men--ample for the task
that Clausel had commended to him, the capture of Castro-Urdiales,
with its patched-up mediaeval wall. The only thing presenting any
difficulty was getting a siege train to this remote headland: Lameth,
the Governor of Santoña, as it will be remembered, had been ordered to
provide one, and there were four heavy guns in Bilbao:--the roads on
both sides, however, were impracticable, and the artillery had to come
by water, running the chance of falling in with British cruisers.
On April 25th Foy marched out of Bilbao with his own, Sarrut’s, and
Palombini’s divisions, more than 11,000 men,[395] leaving Aussenac on
the Deba, to guard the road from San Sebastian, and Rouget in garrison
as usual. On the same evening he reached the environs of Castro, and
left Palombini there to shut in the place, while he went on himself
to look for Mendizabal, who was known to be watching affairs from the
hills, and to be blocking the road to Santoña, as he had so often
done before. Foy then moved on to Cerdigo where he established his
head-quarters for the siege, on a strong position between the sea and
the river Agaera. Mendizabal was reputed to be holding the line of
the Ason, ten miles farther on, but in weak force: he had only the
_partidas_ of Campillo and Herrero with him, Longa being absent in
the direction of Vittoria. On the 29th Foy drove off these bands at
Ampuero, and communicated with Santoña, into which he introduced a
drove of 500 oxen and other victuals. The governor Lameth was ordered
to ship the siege train that he had collected to Islares, under
the camp at Cerdigo, on the first day when he should find the bay
clear--for three English sloops, the _Lyra_, _Royalist_, and _Sparrow_,
under Captain Bloye, were lying off Castro and watching the coast. Foy
then established Sarrut’s division to cover the siege at Trucios, and
sent two Italian battalions to Portugalete to guard the road to Bilbao,
keeping his own division and the three other Italian battalions for the
actual trench work. The heavy guns were the difficulty--those expected
from Bilbao were stopped at the mouth of the Nervion by the English
squadron, which was watching for them--but in the absence of the sloops
on this quest, the governor of Santoña succeeded in running his convoy
across the bay on May 4th. The guns from Bilbao were afterwards brought
up by land, with much toil.
Foy then commenced three batteries on the high slopes which dominate
the town: two were completed on the 6th, despite much long-distance
fire from the British ships, and from a heavy gun which Captain Bloye
had mounted on the rocky islet of Santa Anna outside the harbour. On
the 7th fire was begun from two batteries against the mediaeval curtain
wall, but was ineffective--one battery was silenced by the British. On
the 10th, however, the third battery--much closer in--was ready, and
opened with devastating results on the 11th, two hours’ fire making a
breach 30 feet wide and destroying a large convent behind it.
The Governor, Pedro Alvarez, one of Longa’s colonels, had a garrison
of no more than 1,000 men--all like himself from Longa’s regiments of
Iberia; he made a resolute defence, kept up a continuous counter-fire,
and prepared to hold the breach. But it was obvious that the old wall
was no protection from modern artillery, and that Foy could blow down
as much of it as he pleased at leisure. On the afternoon of the 11th
part of the civil population went on board the British ships: the
governor made preparations for holding the castle, on the seaside of
the town projecting into the water, as a last stronghold: but it was
only protected by the steepness of the rock on which it stood--its
walls were ruined and worthless. Late in the day the British took
off the heavy gun which they had placed on the islet--it could not
have been removed after the town had fallen, and the fall was clearly
inevitable.
Foy, seeing the curtain-wall continuing to crumble, and a 60-foot
breach established, resolved to storm that night, and sent in at
7.20 three columns composed of eight French and eight Italian flank
companies for the assault--the former to the breach, the latter
to try to escalade a low angle near the Bilbao gate. Both attacks
succeeded, despite a heavy but ill-aimed fire from the defenders,
and the Spaniards were driven through the town and into the castle,
where they maintained themselves. Alvarez had made preparations for
evacuation--while two companies held the steep steps which were the
only way up to the castle, the rest of the garrison embarked at its
back on the boats of the British squadron. Some were killed in the
water by the French fire, some drowned, but the large majority got off.
By three in the morning there were only 100 men left in the castle:
Alvarez had detailed them to throw the guns into the sea, and to fire
the magazines, both of which duties they accomplished, before the early
dawn. When, by means of ladders, the French made their way into an
embrasure of the defences, some of this desperate band were killed. But
it is surprising to hear that most of them got away by boat from the
small jetty at the back of the castle. They probably owed their escape
to the fact that the stormers had spent the night in riotous atrocities
vying with those of Badajoz on a small scale. Instead of finishing off
their job by taking the castle, they had spent the night in rape and
plunder in the town[396].
The Spaniards declared that the total loss of their garrison was only
100 men, and the statement is borne out by the dispatch of Captain
Bloye of the _Lyra_. Foy wrote to Clausel that the whole business had
only cost him fifty men. The two statements seem equally improbable,
for the siege had lasted for six days of open trenches, and both sides
had fought with great resolution[397].
But the really important thing to note about this little affair is
that it absorbed three French divisions for sixteen days in the most
critical month of 1813. Eleven thousand men were tied down in a remote
corner of Biscay, before a patched-up mediaeval wall, while Longa was
running riot in Alava and breaking the line of communication with
France--and (what is more important) while Wellington’s columns were
silently gliding into place for the great stroke on the Douro. Colonel
Alvarez could boast that his thousand men had served a very useful and
honourable end during the great campaign. He and they were landed by
Captain Bloye at Bermeo, and went off over the hills to join Longa: the
majority of them must have been present at the battle of Vittoria,
some six weeks after their escape by sea.
Having discharged the first duty set him by Clausel, Foy left the
Italians at Castro, to guard the coast and keep up communications
with Santoña. He sent Sarrut southward to hunt for Longa, by way
of Orduña; but the Spaniard crossed the Ebro and moved into the
province of Burgos, evading pursuit. Then, finding that Lamartinière’s
division was guarding the great road in this direction, he turned off
north-westward, and escaped by Espinosa to the mountains of Santander.
Sarrut, having lost him, turned back to Biscay.
Meanwhile Foy himself, after retiring to Bilbao to give a few days of
rest to his division, started out again on May 27th for a circular
tour in Biscay. His object was to destroy the three Biscayan volunteer
battalions which had given his predecessor so much trouble. Two he
dispersed, but could not destroy, and they ultimately got together
again in somewhat diminished numbers. The third was more unlucky:
caught between three converging columns near Lequeytio, it was driven
against the seashore and nearly annihilated--360 men were taken, 200
killed, only two companies got off into the hills (May 30th). But to
achieve this result Foy had collected three brigades--5,000 men--who
would have been better employed that day on the Esla, for Wellington
was crossing that river at the moment--and where were the infantry of
the Army of Portugal, who should have stood in his way?
So while the British Army was streaming by tens of thousands into the
undefended plains of Leon, Foy and Sarrut were guerrillero-hunting in
Biscay, and Taupin and Barbot had just failed in the great chase after
Mina in Aragon and Navarre. Such were the results of the Emperor’s
orders for the pacification of the North.
[Illustration: Battle of CASTALLA April 13 1813]
SECTION XXXV: CHAPTER VI
AN EPISODE ON THE EAST COAST. CASTALLA, APRIL 1813
During the winter months, from November to February, affairs had been
quiet on the Mediterranean side of the Peninsula. The transient sojourn
of the Armies of Soult and King Joseph in the kingdom of Valencia,
which had so much troubled the mind of General Maitland, had lasted no
more than a few weeks. After they had marched off to retake Madrid, no
traces remained of them, in the end of October, save the mass of sick,
convalescents, and Spanish refugees which they had left behind--guests
most undesired--in charge of Suchet. There was no longer any fear
of a siege of Alicante, or of the expulsion of the Anglo-Sicilian
expeditionary corps from Spain.
When the shadow of this fear had passed, the Allied forces resumed
something like their old position. The Anglo-Sicilians had passed
under many commanders since the autumn: Maitland had resigned owing to
ill-health before October 1st: he was succeeded for six weeks by John
Mackenzie, the senior Major-General at Alicante, who was superseded
about November 20th by William Clinton (brother of Henry Clinton of
the 6th Division). But Clinton was only in charge of the expeditionary
force for twelve days, being out-ranked by James Campbell,
Adjutant-General of the Army of Sicily, who turned up with a large body
of reinforcements on December 2nd. Campbell, however, only bore rule
at Alicante for a period of three months, giving place to Sir John
Murray on February 25th. It was therefore on the last-named officer
that the stress of co-operating with Wellington in the campaign of 1813
was to fall. The unlucky man was quite unequal to the position, being
singularly infirm of purpose and liable to lose his head at critical
moments, as he had shown at Oporto on May 12th, 1809[398]. It is
surprising that Wellington, knowing his record, should have acquiesced
in the appointment--perhaps he thought that here at least was a
general who would take no risks, and have no dangerous inspirations of
initiative.
The strength of the Alicante army had risen by January 1813 to
something like 14,000 men, but it remained (as it had been from the
first) a most heterogeneous force, consisting in the early spring of
1813 of six British[399], three German[400], and two foreign battalions
belonging to the regular forces of the Crown[401], with four Italian
units[402] of various sorts. The cavalry consisted of one British and
one Sicilian regiment and an odd squadron of ‘Foreign Hussars.’ The
artillery was partly British, partly Sicilian, and partly Portuguese.
In addition to these troops the commander at Alicante had complete
control over General Whittingham’s ‘Majorcan division,’ a Spanish corps
which had been reorganized in the Balearic Islands by that officer, and
which had been clothed, armed, and paid from the British subsidy. It
consisted of six infantry battalions and two weak cavalry regiments,
and was in the spring about 4,500 strong. They were rightly esteemed
the best Spanish troops on the Eastern front, and justified their
reputation in the subsequent campaign. There was a second Spanish
division in the neighbourhood, that of General Roche, which, like
Whittingham’s, had been taken on to the British subsidy, and re-clothed
and re-armed. But this unit was not reckoned part of the Alicante
force, but belonged theoretically to Elio’s Murcian army, in which
it was numbered as the 4th Division. It counted only five battalions
and was at this time not more than 3,500 strong. But though it was
registered as part of the Army of Murcia, it often acted with Murray’s
Anglo-Sicilian troops, being cantoned alongside of them in the Alicante
region. When Wellington became Generalissimo of the Spanish armies,
he not infrequently gave orders to Roche to join Murray rather than
Elio--apparently conceiving that the fact that the division lived on
the British subsidy had placed it on a somewhat different footing from
the rest of the Murcians.
If we count Whittingham and Roche as attached to the Expeditionary
Army at Alicante, the strength of that heterogeneous host would have
been rather over 21,000 men--a total perceptibly greater than Suchet’s
field-force encamped over against it on the Xucar. And in addition
there lay close behind, within the borders of the kingdom of Murcia,
Elio and his ‘Second Army,’ which, even after deducting Roche’s
division, was a considerable accumulation of troops. But the Murcian
army’s record was more unhappy than that of any other Spanish unit, and
it had been dashed to pieces once more in the preceding July, at the
discreditable battle of Castalla. Though it nominally counted 30,000
men in its six divisions, only three of them were available[403],
for two were really no more than the old guerrillero bands of the
Empecinado and Duran, who hung about in Southern Aragon, and shifted
for themselves. They were both remote and disorganized. Since Roche’s
division was also often out of Elio’s control, he really had no more
than 13,000 infantry and 2,000 horse in hand.
There were facing Suchet, of allied troops of one sort and another,
some 35,000 men, a fact which the Marshal never ceased to utilize in
his correspondence with Madrid, when he wished to excuse himself from
lending aid to his neighbours. But the Murcian army had still not
recovered from the demoralization caused by the battle of Castalla, and
the Alicante army was suffering from two evils which reduced its value
as a campaigning force to a very low level. The first was a terrible
deficiency of transport. When Lord William Bentinck sent out the
first expeditionary force from Sicily, he intended it to equip itself
with mules, horses, and carts in Spain. But in the summer of 1812 the
Kingdom of Murcia was the only unoccupied region on the east side of
the Peninsula, and all its not too copious resources were wanted for
its own army. Successive captains-general refused, not unnaturally, to
help Maitland or Murray in the task of collecting sumpter-beasts, and
suggested that they ought to draw both animals and food from Sicily.
Food was indeed procured from thence, and even from Algeria and the
Levant, so that the army did not starve. But there was insufficient
means to move that food from the water’s edge. A certain number of
mules were collected by paying very heavy hire--not at all to the
gratification of the Spanish authorities, who wanted them for their
own use. But they were so few that the Army could make no long general
marches, and could count on little more than what the men carried in
their haversacks. The best that could be done was to move it forward
from the immediate neighbourhood of Alicante, so that it could live
upon the resources of the inland, where there were many fertile and
well-peopled valleys. The main object, indeed, of James Campbell’s
forward move was to get food for Whittingham’s and Roche’s divisions,
which were (though paid by the British subsidy) dependent for their
rations on the Spanish Government, and seldom received them. Local
food for these troops had to be sought, as the only possible means
of keeping them alive. In February the line of occupation reached
as far as Biar, Castalla, and Xixona, all held by Whittingham’s
division, while Roche and the Anglo-Sicilians were mostly in second
line, at Elda, Monforte, and Alicante. But the problem of making the
Anglo-Sicilian army a mobile force was not much further advanced in
March 1813 than it had been in October 1812.
The second weak point of the Alicante army was the extremely doubtful
quality of some of its foreign elements. It is true that the German
Legion battalions were as steady as those of the same corps in
Wellington’s own army. But all the others were crammed with deserters
from the enemy’s ranks, or prisoners of war who had enlisted in
order to escape the miseries of the prison-camp or the hulks. The
‘Calabrese Free Corps’ was a trifle better than the rest, being mostly
composed of genuine exiles. But the only difference between the recent
recruits of Dillon’s cosmopolitan regiment in the British service
and of the ‘Italian Levy’ and ‘Estero regiment’ was that the former
corps contained more French and Swiss deserters, and the latter pair
more Italians. All had the usual sprinkling of Poles, Dutch, Croats,
and other miscellaneous adventurers. A lurid light was thrown upon
their possibilities on February 11th, when 86 men of the 2nd Italian
Levy deserted to the French lines, bringing over their officer as a
prisoner. It was discovered that the rest of the battalion were in
a plot to betray Xixona to Suchet, and with it one of Whittingham’s
Spanish regiments, which was encamped beside them. There was just time
to march in the 1 /27th and a second Spanish battalion, who surrounded
and disarmed the Italians, before a French column appeared at dawn. It
directed itself to the quarters from which the traitors had just been
drawn off, was surprised to be received with a heavy fire, and rapidly
withdrew [404]. Such an incident was certainly not calculated to
inspire a timid general, like Sir John Murray, with any great craving
for a bold offensive.
On the other hand, Murray had a formidable force on paper, and when
Suchet reflected that there lay close behind him, first Elio’s army
in Murcia--at least 13,000 men without counting the Empecinado’s and
Duran’s bands--and farther back Del Parque’s Andalusian ‘3rd Army,’
which had also some 13,000 effectives, he could not but see that 50,000
men might march against his comparatively weak force in Valencia at
any moment. His strength on the Xucar was very modest--not much over
15,000 bayonets and sabres: for though he had 60,000 men of all arms
effective, and 75,000 on his rolls, including sick and detached, yet
such a force was not enough to control the whole of the ancient lands
of the Aragonese crown--Aragon Proper, Catalonia, and Valencia. He
was in possession of all of them save the Catalan inland, where the
‘First Army’ still maintained itself, the extreme southern region of
the Valencian kingdom round Alicante, and the mountains between Aragon
and Castile, which were the hunting ground of the guerrilleros of
Duran and the Empecinado. The garrison was small for such a widespread
occupation, and the only thing that made the Marshal’s position
tolerable was the fact that (unlike Catalonia) Aragon and Valencia had
shown themselves very ‘quiet’ regions. Suchet’s rule had been severe,
but at least orderly; there had been little of the casual plunder and
requisitioning which made French rule detested under other commanders.
The coast-plain of Valencia and the broad stretch of the Ebro valley
in Central Aragon were districts less suitable for the operations of
guerrilleros than almost any other part of Spain. On the Valencian
frontier there was only one active _partida_, that of the ‘Fraile’
(Agostin Nebot), whose welcome gift of 60 captured French transport
mules to the Alicante army is acknowledged in one of Wellington’s
dispatches. It is true that the sub-Pyrenean parts of Aragon were
exposed to Mina’s raids, and that the solid block of sierras round
Molina and Albaracin was always the refuge of Duran and Villacampa, but
these were not essential regions for the maintenance of the hold on
the Mediterranean coast. With the exception of these tracts the land
was fairly quiet: there was a general submission to the French yoke,
and an appreciable proportion of _afrancesados_. The blow inflicted
on public opinion by the fall of Valencia in January 1812 was still
a recent thing. Wellington’s army had been heard of, but never seen;
and the operations of the Alicante expeditionary force had hitherto
served to depress rather than to encourage insurrection. Hence it was
possible that 35,000 men could hold the broad lands that lay between
Tudela and Saragossa and Lerida on the North, and Denia and Xativa on
the South--though Decaen’s 28,000 had a much more precarious grip on
Catalonia. But the occupation was a _tour de force_ after all, and
was liable to be upset at any moment by an active and capable enemy.
Fortunately for Suchet his opponent on the East Coast during the spring
of 1813 was neither active nor capable.
As long as King Joseph kept his head-quarters at Madrid and occupied
the province of La Mancha, extending his line eastward to San Clemente,
he had been in touch with Suchet’s front, and communications were open.
Indeed Daricau’s division marched to the borders of Valencia in the end
of January, and took over from the Marshal the large body of Spanish
refugees and convalescents of the Army of the South, who had been under
his charge since October. But the whole situation was changed when the
orders of the Emperor compelled Joseph to draw back his head-quarters
to Valladolid, and to hold Toledo as his extreme post towards the
South. When this change was made, the touch between Valencia and Madrid
was lost--the Spanish cavalry of the Army of Andalusia advanced across
the Sierra Morena into La Mancha: Villacampa’s division descended from
the hills to occupy the more level parts of the province of Cuenca. For
the future the King and Suchet could only keep touch with each other
by the circuitous route through Saragossa. The situation of the French
Army of Valencia was rendered far more isolated and dangerous--it was
in a very advanced position, with no communication whatever with any
friendly force save through Aragon. And its inland flank was exposed
to all manner of possible molestation--if Villacampa, Duran, and the
Empecinado had represented a serious fighting force, capable of regular
action in the field, Suchet would have been bound to retire at once to
the line of the Ebro, on pain of finding himself surrounded and cut
off. But these irregular ‘divisions’ of the Army of Murcia were, as
a matter of fact, good for raids and the cutting of communications,
but useless for battle. They were local in their operations, seldom
combined, and only obeyed their nominal commander, Elio, when it
pleased them. It was very hard for any one of them to move far from its
accustomed ‘beat,’ because they had no magazines, and lived each on
their own region.
Suchet accordingly resolved to try the hazardous experiment of
preserving his old positions, even when communication with Madrid had
been cut off. He left on his inland flank only a flying brigade or
two, and the normal garrisons of the small fortified towns of upper
Aragon, and kept his main striking force still concentrated on the
line of the Xucar, in order to cover the plain of Valencia from the
one serious enemy, the Alicante army. The available troops consisted
of the three small infantry divisions of Habert, Harispe, and Musnier
(this last temporarily under Robert), and the cavalry division of
Boussard, the whole amounting to about 12,500 foot and 1,500 horse,
or a gross total of all arms of some 15,000 men. They were disposed
so as to cover the front of 50 miles from Moxente, at the foot of the
Murcian mountains, to the mouth of the Xucar, and were not scattered
in small parties, but concentrated in four groups which could easily
unite. The right wing was covered by an entrenched camp at Moxente, the
centre by another at San Felipe de Xativa. Denia on the sea-coast was
held as a cover to the left wing. Cavalry was out in front, and in a
rather exposed position a brigade of Habert’s division held Alcoy, a
considerable town in a fertile upland valley, whose resources Suchet
was anxious to retain as long as possible.
Soon after he had taken over command at Alicante on February 25th,
Murray obtained accurate local information as to the exact distribution
and numbers of the French, and noting the very exposed position of
the brigade at Alcoy, made an attempt to cut it off by the concentric
advance of four columns. The scheme failed, partly because of the late
arrival of the right-hand column (a brigade of Whittingham’s division),
partly because Murray, having got engaged with the French in front,
refused to support his advanced troops until the flanking detachments
should appear, and so allowed the enemy to slip away (March 6th)[405].
He then halted, though his movement must obviously have roused Suchet’s
attention, and rendered a counter-attack possible. But after a week,
finding the enemy still passive, he sent forward Whittingham to drive
the French outposts from Consentaina, and the pass of Albeyda, in the
mountain range which separates the valley of Alcoy from the lowland.
This was to ask for trouble, and should only have been done if Murray
was proposing to challenge Suchet to a decisive general action:
Whittingham indeed thought that this was the object of his commanding
officer[406]. At the same time two British battalions under General
Donkin made a demonstration against the French right, ten miles farther
east, in the direction of Onteniente. Habert, whose whole division was
holding the line of hills, gave way after a sharp skirmish, and allowed
Whittingham to seize the pass of Albeyda (March 15th). Every one
supposed that the Alicante army was now about to attack the French main
position between Moxente and Xativa.
But Murray’s plan was different: having, as he supposed, attracted
Suchet’s full notice, by his forward movement, he was proposing to
send out an expedition by sea, to make a dash at the town of Valencia,
which (as he calculated) must be under-garrisoned when heavy fighting
was expected on the Xucar. He told off for the purpose Roche’s
Spanish division, strengthened by the British provisional battalion
of grenadier companies and a regiment borrowed from Elio. The orders
were to land on the beach south of the city, make a dash for it, and
if that failed to seize Cullera at the mouth of the Xucar, or Denia,
farther down the coast. The project looked hazardous, for to throw
5,000 men ashore in the enemy’s country, far from their own main body,
was to risk their being cut up, or forced to a re-embarkation on a
bare beach, which could not fail to be costly. Unless Murray at the
same moment attacked Suchet, so that he should not be able to send a
man to the rear towards Valencia, the force embarked was altogether
too small. Murray’s calculation was that the Marshal would make a
heavy detachment, and that he would then attack the line of the Xucar
himself. With this object he invited Elio to co-operate, by turning
the French right on the inland on the side of Almanza. The Spanish
General, though he had been quarrelling with Murray of late, was now
in an obliging frame of mind[407] and so far consented that he brought
up one infantry division to Yecla, a place which would make a good
starting-point for a flank march round the extreme right of Suchet’s
positions.
Meanwhile, for ten days after the combat of Albeyda nothing happened
on the main front. Whittingham was still left in an advanced position
north of Alcoy, while the rest of the Alicante army was concentrated
at Castalla fifteen miles farther back. The marvel is that Suchet did
not make a pounce upon the isolated Spanish division pushed up so close
to his front. He had not yet taken the measure of his opponent, whose
failing (as the whole campaign shows) was to start schemes, and then to
abandon them from irresolution, at the critical moment when a decisive
move became necessary.
Meanwhile, on March 26th Roche’s division and the attached British
battalion were actually embarking at Alicante, for the dash at
Valencia, when Murray received a dispatch from Lord William Bentinck
at Palermo, informing him that a political crisis had broken out in
Sicily, that civil strife there had become probable, and that he was
therefore compelled to order the immediate recall of two regiments
of trustworthy troops from Spain. The fact was that the new Sicilian
constitution, proclaimed as the solution of all discontent in the
island in 1812, had failed to achieve its purpose. The old King
Ferdinand had carried out a sort of mild _coup d’état_, and proclaimed
his own restoration to absolute power (March 13th, 1813): the
Neapolitan troops who formed the majority of the armed force in the
island had accepted the position. The Sicilian constitutional party
seemed helpless, and the attitude of the local battalions under their
control was doubtful. Nothing could save the situation but a display of
overpowering force. Wherefore Bentinck directed Murray to send back to
Palermo, without delay, the 6th Line battalion K.G.L. and the battalion
of grenadier companies belonging to British regiments still quartered
in Sicily. This was not a very large order, so far as mere numbers
went--the force requisitioned being under 2,000 bayonets. But the
prospect of the outbreak of civil war in Sicily scared Murray--if the
strife once began, would not more of his best troops be requisitioned,
and the Alicante force be reduced to a residuum of disloyal foreign
levies? Moreover, one of the units requisitioned by name was the
battalion of grenadiers just about to sail for Valencia. Perhaps not
without secret satisfaction, for he hated making decisions of any sort,
Murray declared that Bentinck’s orders rendered the naval expedition
impossible, and countermanded it. He sent off, on the transports ready
in harbour, the grenadier battalion ordered to Sicily, and returned the
Spanish contingent to its old cantonments[408]. The K.G.L. battalion
was just embarking when news arrived (April 1st) that the Sicilian
crisis was now over, wherefore Murray retained it for a few more
day[409].
For the counter-revolution at Palermo had only lasted for four days!
Finding Lord William Bentinck firm, and prepared to use force, King
Ferdinand withdrew his proclamation, and resigned the administration
into the hands of his eldest son, the Prince Royal. The Queen, whose
strong will had set the whole affair on foot, promised to return to
her native Austria, and actually sailed for the Levant, to the intense
satisfaction of every one save the knot of intriguers in her Court. The
scare was soon over--its only result was the abandonment of the raid
on Valencia. Murray had now received orders from Wellington to await
the arrival of a detailed scheme for the way in which his army was to
be employed. Pending the receipt of these[410] directions he lapsed
into absolute torpidity--the only record of his doings in the last days
of March and early April being that he set the troops concentrated
at Castalla to entrenching the hillsides around that formidable
position--a clear sign that he had no further intention of taking the
offensive on his own account.
Suchet had been much puzzled by the advance of his enemy to Alcoy and
Albeyda, followed by subsequent inactivity for a whole month. When
he found that even the movement of Elio’s troops to Yecla did not
foreshadow a general assault upon his lines, he concluded that there
must be some unexplained reason for the quiescence of the Allies,
and that the opportunity was a good one for a bold blow, while they
remained inexplicably waiting in a disjointed and unconcentrated line
opposite his positions. The obvious and easy thing would have been to
fall upon Whittingham at Alcoy, but probably for that very reason the
Marshal tried another scheme. He secretly passed all his available
troops to Fuente la Higuera, on his extreme right flank, leaving only a
trifling screen in front of Murray’s army, and on April 10th marched in
two columns against the allied left. One consisting of six battalions
of Harispe’s division and two cavalry regiments aimed at the isolated
Murcian division at Yecla, the other and larger column four battalions
of Habert’s division, and seven of Musnier’s (under Robert during the
absence of its proper chief), with his cuirassier regiment, marched by
Caudete on Villena, to cut in between the Spaniards and Murray, and
intercept any aid which the latter might send from Castalla towards the
Spaniards.
The blow was unexpected and delivered with great vigour: Harispe
surprised General Mijares’ Murcians at Yecla at dawn; they were
hopelessly outnumbered, only four battalions being present-the fifth
unit of the division was at Villena. And there was but a single
squadron with them, Elio’s cavalry being in its cantonments thirty
miles away in the Albacete-Chinchilla country. Mijares, on finding
himself assailed by superior numbers, tried to march off towards
Jumilla and the mountains. Harispe pursued, and seeing the Spaniards
likely to get away, for the retreat was rapid and in good order, flung
his hussars and dragoons at them. The Spaniards turned up on to a
hillside, and tried a running fight. The two leading battalions of the
column made good their escape--the two rear battalions were cut off:
they formed square, beat back two charges with resolution, but were
broken by the third, and absolutely exterminated: 400 were cut down,
about 1,000 captured. Of these two unlucky regiments, 1st of Burgos
and Cadiz, hardly a man got away--the other two, Jaen and Cuenca, took
little harm[411]. The French lost only 18 killed and 61 wounded, mostly
in the two cavalry regiments, for Harispe’s infantry were but slightly
engaged.
Ill news flies quickly--the fighting had been in the early dawn, by
noon mounted fugitives had brought the tidings to Villena, fifteen
miles away. Here there chanced to be present both Elio and Sir John
Murray, who had ridden over to consult with his colleague on a rumour
that Suchet was concentrating at Fuente la Higuera. He had brought with
him the ‘light brigade,’ under Colonel Adam, which he had recently
organized[412], and 400 horse[413]. The Generals soon learned that
beside the force which had cut up Mijares, there was a larger column
marching on their own position. They were in no condition to offer
battle, Elio having with him only a single battalion, Murray about
2,500 men of all arms. They agreed that they must quit Villena and
concentrate their troops for a defensive action. Elio sent orders to
his cavalry to come in from the North and join the wrecks of Mijares’
division, and for the reserves which he had got in the neighbourhood
of Murcia to march up to the front[414]. But it would obviously take
some days to collect these scattered items. Meanwhile he threw the
single battalion that he had with him (Velez Malaga) into the castle
of Villena, which had been patched up and put into a state of defence,
promising that it should be relieved when his army was concentrated.
Murray, on the other hand, retired towards his main body at Castalla,
but ordered Adam’s ‘light brigade’ to defend the pass of Biar for as
long as prudence permitted, so as to allow the rest of the army to
get into position. Whittingham was directed to fall back from Alcoy,
Roche to come up from the rear, and by the next evening the whole
Alicante army would be concentrated, in a position which had been
partly entrenched during the last three weeks, and was very strong even
without fortification. Murray refused (very wisely) to send back Adam
to pick up the Spanish battalion left in Villena, which Elio (seized
with doubts when it was too late) now wished to withdraw.
Suchet reached Villena on the evening of the 11th, and got in touch
with the cavalry screen covering Adam’s retreat. Finding the castle
held, he started to bombard it with his field artillery, and on the
morning of the 12th blew in its gates and offered to storm. He sent
in a _parlementaire_ to summon the garrison, and to his surprise it
capitulated without firing a shot--a mutiny having broken out among
the men[415], who considered that they had been deserted by their
General. Suchet now intended to fall on Murray at Castalla, reckoning
that Elio’s concentration had been prevented by the blows at Yecla
and Villena, and that he would have the Alicante army alone to deal
with. He ordered the troops that were with him to drive in without
delay Adam’s light brigade, which his cavalry had discovered holding
the village of Biar and the pass above it. His other column, that of
Harispe, was not far off, being on the march from Yecla. Finding that
it was gone, Mijares cautiously reoccupied that place with his two
surviving battalions.
The combat of Biar, which filled the midday hours of April 12th, was
one of the most creditable rearguard actions fought during the whole
Peninsular War. Colonel Adam had only one British and two Italian
battalions, with two German Legion rifle companies, four mountain guns,
and one squadron of the ‘Foreign Hussars’--about 2,200 men in all.
He had prepared a series of positions on which he intended to fall
back in succession, as each was forced. At the commencement of the
action he occupied Biar village with the Calabrese Free Corps, flanked
by the light companies of the 2/27th and 3rd K.G.L. The rest of the
brigade was above, on the hills flanking the pass, with the guns on
the high road. The leading French battalion assaulted the barricaded
village, and was repulsed with heavy loss. Then, as was expected, the
enemy turned Biar on both flanks: its garrison retired unharmed, but
the turning columns came under the accurate fire of the troops on the
slopes above, and the attack was again checked. Suchet, angered at
the waste of time, then threw in no less than nine battalions[416]
intending to sweep away all opposition, and turning Adam’s left flank
with swarms of voltigeurs. The Light Brigade had, of course, to retire;
but Adam conducted his retreat with great deliberation and in perfect
order, fending off the turning attack with his German and British light
companies, and making the column on the high road pay very dearly for
each furlong gained. His four mountain guns, on the crest of the pass,
were worked with good effect to the last moment--two which had each
lost a wheel were abandoned on the ground. When the crest had been
passed, Suchet sent a squadron of cuirassiers to charge down the road
on the retreating infantry. Foreseeing this, when the cavalry had been
noted on the ascent, Adam had hidden three companies of the 2/27th
in rocks where the road made a sharp angle: the cuirassiers, as they
trotted past, received a flank volley at ten paces distance, which
knocked over many, and sent the rest reeling back in disorder on to
their own infantry. After this the pursuit slackened; ‘the enemy seemed
glad to be rid of us,’ and after five hours’ fighting the Light Brigade
marched back in perfect order to the position beside Castalla which had
been assigned to it[417]. Its final retirement was covered by three
battalions which Murray had sent out to meet it, at the exit from the
pass[418].
So ended a very pretty fight. Whittingham, who had witnessed the later
phases of it from the hill on the left of Castalla, describes it as
‘a beautiful field-day, by alternate battalions: the volleys were
admirable, and the successive passage of several ravines conducted
with perfect order and steadiness. From the heights occupied by my
troops it was one of the most delightful panoramas that I ever beheld.’
The allied loss was about 300[419], including Colonel Adam wounded
in the arm, yet not so much hurt but that he kept the command and
gave directions to the end. On the ground evacuated 41 ‘missing’ and
two disabled mountain guns were left in the enemy’s hands. The French
must have suffered much the same casualties--Suchet gives no estimate,
but Martinien’s invaluable lists show two officers killed and twelve
wounded, which at the usual rate between officers and men implies about
300 rank and file hit.
On emerging from the pass of Biar in the late afternoon Suchet could
see Murray’s army occupying a long front of high ground as far as the
town of Castalla, but could descry neither its encampment, behind the
heights, nor the end of its right wing, which was thrown back and
hidden by the high conical hill on which the castle and church of
Castalla stand. Seeing the enemy ready, and apparently resolved to
fight, the Marshal put off serious operations to the next day. He had
to wait for Harispe’s column, which was still coming up many miles in
his rear.
Murray had long surveyed his ground, and had (as we have seen) thrown
up barricades and entrenchments on the hill of Castalla and the ground
immediately to its right and left. He had very nearly every available
man of his army in hand, only a minimum garrison having been left in
Alicante[420]. The total cannot have been less than 18,000 men; he
had divided his own troops into the Light Brigade of Adam, and the
two divisions of Mackenzie and Clinton. The first named had three
and a quarter battalions--not quite 2,000 men after its losses at
Biar on the previous afternoon[421]. Mackenzie seems to have had one
British, two German Legion, and two Sicilian battalions[422]: Clinton
three British, one composite Foreign, and one Italian battalion[423].
Whittingham had six Spanish battalions with him[424]--Roche only
five[425]. The cavalry consisted of three squadrons of the 20th Light
Dragoons, two of Sicilian cavalry, one of ‘Foreign Hussars,’ and about
400 of Whittingham’s Spanish horse[426], under 1,000 sabres in all.
There were two British, two Portuguese, and a Sicilian battery on the
ground.
The sierra on the left, known as the heights of Guerra, was held by
Whittingham’s Spaniards for a mile, next them came Adam’s brigade,
above a jutting spur which projects from the sierra towards the plain,
then Mackenzie’s division, which extended as far as the hill on which
the castle of Castalla stands: this was occupied by the 1/58th of
Clinton’s division, and two batteries had been thrown up on the slope.
With this hill the sierra ends suddenly; but a depression and stream
running southward furnished a good protection for Murray’s right, which
was held by the rest of Clinton’s division. The stream had been dammed
up, and formed a broad morass covering a considerable portion of the
front. Behind it Clinton’s troops were deployed, with three of Roche’s
battalions as a reserve in their rear: two batteries were placed on
commanding knolls in this part of the line, which was so far thrown
back _en potence_ that it was almost at right angles to the front
occupied by Mackenzie, Adam, and Whittingham. The Spanish and Sicilian
cavalry was thrown out as a screen in front of Castalla, with two of
Roche’s battalions in support. The 20th Light Dragoons were in reserve
behind the town. The east end of the sierra, near Castalla, was covered
by vineyards in step-cultivation, each enclosure a few feet higher
than the next below it. Farther west there was only rough hillside,
below Whittingham’s front. The whole position was excellent--yet
Murray is said by his Quartermaster-General, Donkin, to have felt so
uncomfortable that he thrice contemplated issuing orders for a retreat,
though he could see the whole French army, and judge that its strength
was much less than his own[427]. But he distrusted both himself and
many battalions of his miscellaneous army.
Suchet, contrary to his wont, was slow to act. It is said that he
disliked the look of the position, and doubted the wisdom of attacking,
but was over-persuaded by some of his generals, who urged that the
enemy was a mixed multitude, and that the Spaniards and Sicilians would
never stand against a resolute attack. It was not till noon that the
French army moved--the first manœuvre was that the whole of the cavalry
rode out eastward, took position opposite the angle _en potence_ of
Murray’s position, and sent exploring parties towards Clinton’s front.
Evidently the report was that it was inaccessible. While this was
happening the infantry deployed, and Habert’s and Robert’s division
advanced and occupied a low ridge, called the Cerro del Doncel, in the
plain facing Murray’s left and left-centre. Harispe’s division, minus
a detachment left behind the pass of Biar to watch for any possible
appearance of Elio’s troops on the road from Sax, formed in reserve.
The whole of Suchet’s infantry was only 18 battalions, individually
weaker than Murray’s 24; he was outnumbered in guns also--24 to 30
apparently--but his 1,250 cavalry were superior in numbers and quality
to Murray’s. He had certainly not more than 13,000 men on the ground to
the Allies’ 18,000.
His game was to leave Clinton’s division and Castalla alone, watched
only by his cavalry; to contain Mackenzie by demonstrations, which were
not to be pushed home; but to strike heavily with Robert’s division
at the Spaniards on the left. If he could break down Whittingham’s
defence, and drive him off the sierra, he would attack the allied
centre from flank and front alike--but meanwhile it was not to be
pressed. When, therefore, Habert faced Mackenzie nothing serious
happened, the French sent out swarms of tirailleurs, brought up eight
guns and shelled the position with grape. Mackenzie’s light companies
and guns replied, ‘but there was nothing more than a skirmish: the
columns shifted their ground indeed more than once, but they did not
deploy, and their officers took good care not to bring them under the
fire of our line[428].’
On the left, however, there was hard fighting. Suchet first sent out
five light companies to endeavour to turn the extreme western end of
Whittingham’s line, and, when they were far up the slope, delivered a
frontal attack on the heights of Guerra with six battalions of Robert’s
division: the 3rd Léger and 114th and 121st Line[429]: of these the
left-hand battalions (belonging to the 121st) came up the projecting
spur mentioned above, and faced the 2/27th on the left of Adam’s
brigade. The other four were opposed to the Spaniards.
Whittingham was caught in a rather dangerous position, for a little
while before the attack developed, he had received an order from
head-quarters bidding him execute against Robert’s division precisely
the same manœuvre that Suchet was trying against himself, viz. to
send troops to outflank the extreme French right. He was told by the
bearer of the orders, a Sicilian colonel, that this was preliminary
to a general attack downhill upon the French line, which Murray was
intending to carry out. The Spanish division was to turn its flank,
while Adam and Mackenzie went straight at its front. There is some
mystery here--Murray afterwards denied to Whittingham that he had given
any such order[430], and Donkin, his Chief of the Staff, maintained
that his general was thinking of a retreat all that morning rather than
of an attack. Yet Colonel Catanelli was a respectable officer, who was
thanked in dispatches both by Murray and Whittingham for his services!
Three hypotheses suggest themselves: (1) that Murray at one moment
meditated an attack, because he saw Suchet holding back, and then (with
his usual infirmity of purpose) dropped the idea, and denied having
made any such plan to Whittingham, whose position had been gravely
imperilled by its execution. This is quite in accordance with his
mentality, and he often tampered with the truth--as we shall see when
telling the tale of Tarragona. (2) That Donkin and the head-quarters
staff, enraged with Murray’s timidity, were resolved to commit him to
a fight, and gave unauthorized orders which must bring it on. (3) That
Catanelli, from lack of a good command of English, misunderstood the
General’s language, and gave complete misdirections to Whittingham. I
must confess that I incline to the first solution[431].
Whatever the source of these orders may have been, Whittingham began to
carry them out, though they seemed to him very ill-advised. But noting
that if he completely evacuated the heights of Guerra there would be
a broad gap in the allied line, he left his picquets in position and
two battalions on the crest of the hill[432], with another in support
behind[433], while with the remaining three[434] he moved off to the
left. The march was executed, out of sight of the enemy, by a mountain
path which ran along the rear of the heights.
Whittingham had been moving for some half an hour, and slowly, for the
path was steep and narrow, when the sound of musketry on the other side
of the crest reached his ears, and soon after a message that the enemy
was attacking the whole of the front of his old position. On its left
the voltigeur companies had got very near the top of the hill--farther
east the assault was only developing. It was lucky that the marching
column had not gone far--Whittingham was able to send his hindmost
battalion straight up the hill against the voltigeurs, to strengthen
his flank--with the other two he counter-marched to the rear of the
heights of Guerra, and fed the fighting line which he had left there,
as each point needed succour.
The contest all along the heights was protracted and fierce. At
several points the French reached the crest, but were never able to
maintain themselves there, as Whittingham had always a reserve of a
few companies ready for a counter-stroke. The troops of the Army of
Aragon had never before met with such opposition from Spaniards, and
for a long time refused to own themselves beaten. There was still one
regiment of Robert’s division in reserve[435], but evidently Suchet
shrank from committing the last fraction of his right wing to the
attack, which was obviously not making any decisive headway.
Meanwhile the easternmost column of the French advance suffered a
complete defeat: this body, composed of two battalions of the 121st
regiment, had mounted the heights, not at their steepest, but at the
point where a long projecting spur falls down from them into the plain.
But even so there was a sudden rise in the last stage of the ascent,
before the crest was reached. On coming to it the French colonel
(Millet by name) began to deploy his leading companies, which found
themselves opposite the 2/27th, on the left of Adam’s brigade. This
manœuvre had always failed when tried against British infantry--notably
at Albuera, for deployment at close quarters under the deadly fire of
a British line was impracticable, and always led to confusion. There
was a pause[436], many casualties, and much wavering; then, seeing the
enemy stationary and discouraged, Colonel Reeves flung his battalion at
them in a downhill bayonet charge--like Craufurd at Bussaco. The effect
was instantaneous and conclusive--the French column broke and raced
headlong down the slopes, arriving in the valley as a disorganized mob.
It had lost 19 officers and probably 350 men in five minutes.
Either in consequence of this rout, or by mere chance at the same
moment[437], the columns which had been assailing Whittingham so long
and ineffectively, also recoiled in disorder before a charge of the
last four companies of the Spanish reserve. The whole of the French
right wing had suffered complete and disastrous defeat. The left
division, Habert’s, was still intact and had never committed itself
to any serious approach to Mackenzie’s front. But six of the eighteen
French battalions in the field were in absolute rout at half-past four
o’clock, and Suchet’s right wing was completely exposed--his cavalry
were two miles away to the left, and out of reach for the moment. All
eye-witnesses agree that if Murray had ordered an immediate general
advance of the line from Castalla westward, the Marshal would have been
lost, and cut off from his sole line of retreat on the pass of Biar.
Murray, however, refused to move till he had brought up his unengaged
right wing to act as a reserve, and only when they had filed up through
the streets of Castalla, gave the order for the whole army to descend
from the heights and push forward.
It was far too late: Suchet had retreated from the Cerro del Doncel
the moment that he saw his attack repulsed, Habert’s division and the
guns covering Robert’s routed wing. The cavalry came galloping back
from the east, and long before Murray was deployed, Suchet took up a
new and narrow front covering the entry of the pass of Biar. The only
touch with his retreating force was kept by Mackenzie, who (contrary
to Murray’s intention) pushed forward with four of his battalions in
front of the main body, and got engaged with Suchet’s rearguard. He
might probably have beaten it in upon the disordered troops behind, if
he had not received stringent orders to draw back and fall in to the
general front of advance. By the time that the whole allied army was
deployed, the French, save a long line of guns across the mouth of the
pass, with infantry on the slopes on each side, had got off. Thereupon,
after making a feeble demonstration with some light companies against
the enemy’s left flank, Murray halted for the night. The enemy used the
hours of darkness to make a forced march for Fuente la Higuera, and
were invisible next day.
Suchet declared that he had lost no more than 800 men in the three
combats of Yecla, Biar, and Castalla, an incredible statement, as
the French casualty rolls show 65 officers killed and wounded on the
11th-12th-13th of April; and such a loss implies 1,300 rank and file
hit--possibly more, certainly not many less. It is certain that his
800 casualties will not suffice even for Castalla alone, where with 47
officers _hors de combat_ he must have lost more probably 950 than 800
men. But the 14 officer-casualties at Biar imply another 280 at the
least, and we know from his own narrative that he lost 4 officers and
80 men in destroying Mijares’ unfortunate battalions at Yecla[438].
Murray, writing a most magniloquent and insincere dispatch for
Wellington’s eye, declared that Suchet had lost 2,500 or even 3,000
men, and that he had buried 800 French corpses. But Murray had
apparently been taking lessons in the school of Soult and Masséna,
those great manipulators of casualty lists! His dispatch was so absurd
that Wellington refused to be impressed, and sent on the document
to Lord Bathurst with the most formal request that the attention of
the Prince Regent should be drawn to the conduct of the General and
his troops, but no word of praise of his own[439]. The allied loss,
indeed, was so moderate that Murray’s 2,500 French casualties appeared
incredible to every one. After we have deducted the heavy losses to
Adam’s brigade at Biar on the preceding day, we find that Whittingham’s
Spaniards had 233 casualties, Mackenzie’s division 47, Clinton’s
about 20, Adam’s brigade perhaps 70, the cavalry and artillery 10
altogether--the total making some 400 in all[440].
Having discovered that the Alicante army was formidable, if its general
was not, Suchet was in some fear that he might find himself pursued
and attacked, for the enemy seemed to be concentrating against him.
Murray advanced once more to Alcoy, Elio brought up his reserve
division and his cavalry to join the wrecks of Mijares’ column, and
extended himself on Murray’s left. Villacampa, called down from the
hills, appeared on the Upper Guadalaviar on the side of Requeña. But
all this meant nothing--Murray was well satisfied to have won a success
capable of being well ‘written up’ at Castalla, and covered his want of
initiative by complaining that he was short of transport, and weakened
in numbers--for after the battle he had sent off the 6th K.G.L. to
Sicily, in belated obedience to Bentinck’s old orders. He asked
Wellington for more men and more guns, and was given both, for he was
told that he might draw the 2/67th from the garrison of Cartagena[441],
and was sent a field battery from Portugal. But his true purpose was
now to wait for the arrival of the promised ‘plan of campaign’ from
Freneda, and thereby to shirk all personal responsibility. Anything was
better than to risk a check--or a reprimand from the caustic pen of the
Commander-in-Chief.
Suchet, then, drew down Pannetier’s brigade from Aragon to strengthen
his position on the Xucar, and waited, not altogether confidently, for
the next move on the part of the enemy. But for a month no such move
came. He had time to recover his equanimity, and to write dispatches
to Paris which described his late campaign as a successful attempt
to check the enemy’s initiative, which had brought him 2,000 Spanish
prisoners at Yecla and Villena, and two British guns at the pass of
Biar. Castalla was represented as a partial attack by light troops,
which had been discontinued when the enemy’s full strength had been
discovered, and the losses there were unscrupulously minimized. And,
above all, good cause had been shown that the Army of Aragon and
Valencia could not spare one man to help King Joseph in the North.
But the ‘plan of campaign’ was on its way, and we shall see how, even
in Murray’s incompetent hands, it gave the Marshal Duke of Albufera
full employment for May and June.
SECTION XXXVI
THE MARCH TO VITTORIA
CHAPTER I
WELLINGTON’S PLAN OF CAMPAIGN
Good generals are very properly averse to putting on paper, even for
the benefit of premiers or war ministers, the plan of their next
campaign. Points of leakage are so inscrutable, and so hard to detect,
that the less that is written the better is it for the projected
enterprise. And Wellington was the most reticent of men--even going to
the length of hiding from his own responsible subordinates intentions
that they much desired to learn, and of giving orders that seemed
eccentric while the secret reason for them was kept concealed. He never
wrote autobiographical memoirs--the idea was repulsive to him--nor
consented to open up (even to William Napier, who much desired it) his
full confidence. For the genesis of the plan of the Vittoria Campaign
we are compelled to rely mainly on the careful collection of hints from
his contemporary dispatches, supplemented by certain rare confidential
letters, and some _obiter dicta_ of his later years, which may or may
not have been reproduced with perfect accuracy by admirers like Croker
or Lord Stanhope.
One thing is clear--he was conscious of the mistakes of 1812, and was
not going to see them repeated in 1813. When the Burgos campaign was
just over he wrote two short comments[442] on it, for the benefit
of persons whom he judged capable of appreciating his difficulties.
He owned up to his errors--he acknowledged four. The first was that
he had tried to take Burgos by irregular means, without a proper
battering train: the second that he had under-estimated the strength
of the united French armies of Portugal and the North: the third that
he had kept his army in two equal halves over-long--Hill should have
been called in from Madrid to join the main body much sooner than he
actually was: the fourth and most notable was that he had entrusted a
crucial part of his plan of campaign to a Spanish general, over whom
he had no formal authority--Ballasteros, who should have advanced from
Andalusia to distract and hinder Soult. ‘If the game had been well
played it would have answered my purpose. Had I any reason to suppose
that it would be well played? Certainly not. I have never yet known the
Spaniards do _anything_, much less do anything _well_.... But I played
a game which _might_ succeed (the only one that _could_ succeed) and
pushed it to the last. The parts having failed--as I admit was to be
expected--I at least made a handsome retreat to the Agueda, with some
labour and inconvenience but without material loss.’
The interest of these confessions is that we find Wellington in his
next campaign making a clear effort to avoid precisely these four
mistakes. He made elaborate preparations long beforehand for getting up
a battering train: he rather over- than under-estimated his adversary’s
numbers by way of caution: he never divided his army at all during his
great advance of May-June 1813; after the first six days it marched in
close parallel columns all in one mass, till Vittoria had been reached:
and, last but not least, he entrusted no important part of the scheme
to any Spanish general, and indeed used a much smaller proportion of
Spanish troops than he need have done, although he had now become
Generalissimo of all the allied armies, and could command where he
could formerly only give advice.
Immediately after the termination of the Burgos retreat Wellington’s
views for the future do not seem to have been very optimistic. He wrote
to the Prime Minister that at present he could do nothing against an
enemy whose numbers had proved too great for him to contend with[443].
Next spring he hoped to take the field with a larger force than he had
ever had before, but unless the Spaniards could display a discipline
and efficiency which it seemed impossible to teach them, he saw no
prospect of ever obliging the French to quit the Peninsula by force of
arms. To Lord Bathurst he wrote in much the same terms--the French,
he thought, would canton their army in Old Castile and wait for the
arrival of fresh reinforcements from France.
But the whole aspect of affairs was changed when the news of Napoleon’s
Russian _débâcle_ came to hand. It soon became clear that so far from
any French reinforcements coming to Spain, it would be King Joseph who
would be asked to send reinforcements to Germany. Lord Liverpool’s
letter, enclosing the 29th Bulletin, reached Wellington at Lisbon on
January 18th, and put him in a more cheerful mood. Moreover, he thought
that his visit to Cadiz to accept the position of Generalissimo had
been a success, and that he would get more help out of the Spaniards
now that he had the formal power of issuing orders to their generals,
‘though I am not sanguine enough to hope that we shall derive much
advantage from Spanish troops _early_ in the campaign.’ But he intended
to start betimes, ‘and at least to put myself in Fortune’s way[444].’
The French would be compelled to stand on the defensive; if they
continued to hold the immense line that they were still occupying in
January, they must be weak somewhere, and it was impossible that they
should be reinforced.
It is on February 10th[445] that we get the first hint that
Wellington’s scheme for the campaign of 1813 was going to be a very
ambitious one--aiming not at local successes in Castile, or on
recovering Madrid, but at driving the French right up to the Pyrenees.
On that day he wrote to Lord Bathurst to say that ‘the events of the
next campaign may render it necessary for the army to undertake one or
more sieges in the North of Spain,’ wherefore he wished certain heavy
guns and munitions to be sent by sea to Corunna, to be at his disposal,
as soon as might be convenient, and twice the quantity of each to be
prepared in England to be shipped when asked for.
The mention of ‘one or more sieges in the North of Spain’ for which
guns had better be sent by sea to Corunna, can only mean that
Wellington was thinking of Burgos and St. Sebastian--perhaps also of
Santoña and Pampeluna. There were no other fortresses needing the
attention of a heavy battering train in that direction. It is clear
that, even in February, Wellington’s mind was travelling far afield;
and on June 26th, Vittoria having been now won, he wrote to remind Lord
Bathurst of his demand, and to point out that his forecast had come
true[446].
In March, as was shown in an earlier chapter, Wellington began to get
the news which proved that the French were making large drafts from
Spain for the new Army of Germany, and that Soult, Caffarelli, and
other generals were summoned to Paris. He knew, a few days later, that
the enemy was evacuating La Mancha, and that the King was moving his
head-quarters from Madrid to Valladolid. Everything indicated conscious
weakness on the part of the enemy--it would be well to take instant
advantage of it: Wellington wrote to his brother on March 28 that he
hoped to start out in force on May 1st[447]--giving no hint where that
force would be employed. At the same time he expressed his doubt as to
whether any of the Spanish corps which were to join him could be ready
by that date. But he was depending so much on the sole exertions of the
Anglo-Portuguese army, that the tardiness of the Spaniards would not
put a complete stop to his projected operations. Two other practical
hindrances were a late spring, which made green forage for the horses
harder to procure than it normally was in April, and accidents from
bad roads and bad weather to his pontoon train, which he was secretly
bringing up from the Tagus to the Douro, as it was to play a most
essential part in the commencement of the campaign[448]. These mishaps
appear mere matters of detail, but (as we shall see) there were immense
consequences depending upon them--the presence of a large pontoon train
on the Esla and the Douro, when its normal habitat was on the lower
Tagus, was one of the first surprises in the wonderful campaign of
May-June 1813. Starting from Abrantes in the end of April, it did not
reach Miranda de Douro till the 20th of May[449].
The first definite revelation as to what Wellington’s plan was to be,
is contained in a letter to Beresford of April 24th. ‘I propose to
put the troops in motion in the first days of May: my intention is to
make them cross the Douro, in general within the Portuguese frontier,
covering the movement of the left by that of the right of the Army
toward the Tormes, which right shall then cross the Douro, over the
pontoons, in such situation as may be convenient. I then propose to
seize Zamora and Toro, which will make all future operations easy to
us[450].’
Here the first half of the great movement is accurately set forth, just
as it was executed, though owing to the delays spoken of above, the
general orders for the marching out of all the allied divisions were
issued on May 13th instead of on May 1st-2nd. But in all other respects
we have the exact analysis of the scheme: the ‘Left’--Graham with the
equivalent of six divisions--crossed the Douro far inside Portugal
at various points, and was in and about Braganza and Miranda by May
21st-24th: meanwhile the ‘Right’--Hill with three divisions--moved
forward from the Agueda to the Tormes, attracting the main attention of
the French between the 20th and the 26th, till it reached Salamanca,
from whence it swerved off to the left, and joined Graham’s wing by
the bridge of Toro, thus establishing the whole army in one mass north
of the Douro, and completely turning the western flank of the entire
French front of defence. On May 12 only, three weeks after he had
communicated the secret to Beresford, did Wellington divulge it to the
Ministers at home: evidently he dreaded leakage somewhere in London,
such as he had discovered in the preceding autumn[451]. For Lord
Bathurst’s benefit he descends a little more into detail:
‘I propose to commence our operations by turning the enemy’s position
on the Douro, by passing the left of our army over that river within
the Portuguese frontier. I should cross the Right in the same manner,
only that I have been obliged to throw the Right very forward during
the winter, in order to cover and connect our cantonments, and I could
not well draw them back without exposing a good deal of country, and
risking a counter-movement on the part of the enemy. I therefore
propose to strengthen the Right, and move with it myself across the
Tormes, and to establish a bridge on the Douro below Zamora. The two
wings of the army will thus be connected, and the enemy’s position on
the Douro will be turned. The Spanish Army of Galicia will be on the
Esla, to the left of our army, at the same time that our army reaches
that river.
‘Having turned the enemy’s position on the Douro, and established
our communications across it, our next operation will depend on
circumstances. I do not know whether I am now stronger than the enemy,
even including the Army of Galicia. But of this I am very certain, that
I shall never be stronger throughout the campaign, or more efficient,
than I am now: and the enemy will never be weaker. I cannot have a
better opportunity for trying the fate of a battle, which if the enemy
should be unsuccessful, must oblige him to withdraw entirely. We have
been sadly delayed by the pontoon bridge, without which it is obvious
we can do nothing[452].’
Neither in the letter to Beresford nor in that to Bathurst
does Wellington make a forecast beyond the first stage of his
advance--obviously it would be impossible to do so till it was seen how
the French would act. If they should be tempted to fight--say in front
of Valladolid--when their flank was turned, in order to keep their hold
on Castile, Wellington would welcome the decisive engagement. But of
course they might refuse to fight, as indeed did they. They retired on
Burgos, as we shall see, without taking any risks.
But that Wellington already foresaw the possibility of a victorious
march to the Pyrenees is, I think, proved not only by his letter of
February 10th concerning the siege of fortresses in Northern Spain,
quoted above, but by similar hints on May 6 concerning the absolute
necessity for naval co-operation in the North. He asks Lord Bathurst
to insist on the presence of a squadron under an admiral in the Bay of
Biscay, and for careful supervision of the whole coast from Bayonne
to Corunna, which must absolutely stop French enterprise at sea, and
‘simplify arrangements for convoy and naval operations in concert with
the army during the ensuing campaign[453].’ Taking this in conjunction
with the letter of February 10, it seems certain that Wellington was
thinking of stores to be landed at Santander, and a battering train to
destroy San Sebastian--which was to look forward some way! There was,
however, a secondary reason for requiring more naval supervision in the
Bay of Biscay: American privateers had been putting in an appearance in
these waters, and had captured several small transports.
A plan of campaign that contemplated the driving back of the French to
the Pyrenees must, of course, embrace a good deal more than the mere
reorganization of the Anglo-Portuguese army for a great push north of
the Douro. There were many minor factors to be taken into consideration
and utilized. First and foremost came the question as to how far the
position of Generalissimo of the Spanish Armies could be turned to
account. After his experiences in 1812 Wellington was determined to
entrust to his Allies no crucial part of the operations, whose failure
could wreck the whole scheme. With his own striking-force he intended
to take only one Spanish army, that which was under the sole Spanish
general whom he could trust for willing co-operation, even though he
knew him to be no great military genius. Castaños had, by his influence
at Cadiz, been nominated as Captain-General alike in Galicia, Castile,
and Estremadura, and all the troops in those provinces now formed part
of the new ‘4th Army.’ They included Morillo’s division, now cantoned
about Caçeres, Carlos de España’s in the mountains between Ciudad
Rodrigo and the pass of Perales, the lancers of Julian Sanchez--now
counted a brigade of regular cavalry and not a _partida_--on the front
between the Agueda and the Douro, and the two Galician divisions of
Losada and Barcena, with their weak attendant cavalry brigade: to
bring this up to strength two extra regiments[454] had filed up the
Portuguese frontier during the winter from Estremadura. All these
were in touch with the Anglo-Portuguese army, and were intended to
move with it. They made up 18,000 foot and 3,000 horse. In addition
there were many other troops theoretically belonging to the 4th Army,
but at present cut off from it by the intervening zone of French
occupation--viz. Porlier’s division in the Eastern Asturias, and
Mendizabal’s irregular forces in Biscay and Cantabria--the troops of
Longa and the Biscayan volunteers with other smaller bands. These
scattered units, which could only come under Wellington’s real control
when he should have beaten the French back to the Ebro, might make up
10,000 or 12,000 men. But they could not be counted upon for the first
month of the campaign.
In addition, Castaños had a number of immovable troops--the garrisons
of Rodrigo and Badajoz, a dépôt of unhorsed cavalry in Estremadura, and
a sedentary unit called the ‘Army of Reserve of Galicia,’ consisting
of all the most depleted corps of the old Galician army: its six
battalions only made up 2,000 men, and it stopped at Vigo or Corunna
all through the year 1813. Two other Galician battalions[455] had been
sent round by sea during the winter, to join the much-tried Army of
Catalonia. This small transference of troops had reached the knowledge
of the French in an exaggerated shape, and caused much speculation at
Madrid.
Beside the 21,000 men of the 4th Army, who marched in the
Anglo-Portuguese line under Castaños’s nephew General Giron[456],
there was only one other Spanish force which Wellington intended to
employ in his own operations. This was the so-called ‘Army of Reserve
of Andalusia,’ which had to come up all the way from Seville, and
was far too late to join in the campaign of Vittoria: it did not get
to the front till July: even later than the Generalissimo expected.
The origin of this corps was that, when Soult evacuated Andalusia in
September 1812, the best-equipped of the Cadiz garrison troops joined
the field-army of Ballasteros, and advanced with him to Granada.
This body was in April 1813 known as the ‘Third Army’ and was now
commanded by the Duque del Parque, the successor of the cashiered
Ballasteros. But the remainder of the Cadiz garrison, which had not
gone to the front, was organized during the winter into a separate
unit, under Henry O’Donnell, the Conde d’Abispal. It was rather a
miscellaneous assembly--seven of its fourteen battalions having been
regiments which did not march in October 1812 because they were low
in numbers or equipment, and three more newly-raised units, formed to
replace in the Army List old regiments which had perished in previous
campaigns. However, they were filled up with recruits, re-clothed and
re-equipped, and Wellington intended to use them with his own army, as
_étape_ and blockade troops. He preferred to take them with him rather
than the 3rd Army, which was suspected of having many officers who
had been devoted to Ballasteros, and who had resented the appointment
of the new British generalissimo[457]. Moreover, O’Donnell was in
every way a better officer than Del Parque, and had a good fighting
reputation, though he was noted as impetuous and quarrelsome. The Army
of Reserve of Andalusia was 14,000 strong, in two infantry divisions
under Generals Echevari and Creagh and a weak cavalry brigade under
Freire--late second in command of the Murcian army. The slow equipment
of this corps, its late start, and its frequent halts for want of
provisions, formed a perpetual source of dispute between Wellington and
the Minister of War at Cadiz. But as it was not destined to form part
of the original striking-force at the opening of the campaign, or to
discharge any essential duty in the general scheme, its absence was not
much felt. When it did appear, after Vittoria, it was usefully employed
in blockading Pampeluna.
But in the summer campaign of 1813 it must be remembered that
Wellington employed no Spanish troops save the original 21,000
Galicians and Estremadurans under Giron, and Longa’s 4,000 Cantabrians,
who joined in from the North ten days before Vittoria, and took a
creditable share in that battle.
It remains to be explained how Wellington intended to get an indirect
profit out of the existence of the other Spanish corps--the re-named
First, Second, and Third Armies, as well as out of the Anglo-Sicilian
expeditionary force at Alicante, whose conduct had given him so many
just causes of complaint during the autumn of 1812.
As to the ‘First Army,’ now commanded by General Copons (the
defender of Tarifa), this gallant remnant of the old Catalan levies
could not take the field 10,000 strong, was almost destitute of
cavalry and artillery, and had no large town or secure fortress in
its possession[458]. It held, in a rather precarious fashion, a
considerable portion of the mountainous inland of Catalonia--the
head-quarters were usually at Vich--but had no safe communications
with the sea, or certainty of receiving succours, though it was
intermittently in touch with Captain Codrington’s cruising squadron.
Copons, who took over command in March 1813, though less disliked than
his arbitrary and ill-tempered predecessor Lacy, was not popular with
the Catalans. They would have liked to see their local hero, the Baron
de Eroles, who had been in charge of the principality for some months
after Lacy’s departure, made captain-general[459]. Weak in numbers
as it was, the Army of Catalonia could obviously do no more than
detain and keep employed General Decaen’s French army of occupation,
which had more than double its strength. The garrisons of Barcelona,
Tarragona, Figueras, Lerida, and Tortosa absorbed 13,000 of Decaen’s
men. But he had 15,000 more available for field service, and his
flying columns often put Copons in danger, for the Catalan army had to
scatter its cantonments far and wide in order to live, and a sudden
hostile concentration might easily cut off some fraction of it, when
one part was as far north as the Ampurdam and the passes into France,
and another as far east as the Aragonese border[460]. Normally the
Catalans employed themselves in cutting the communications between the
great fortresses, with an occasional foray into Roussillon. Wellington
thought that they could not be better employed, and that nothing more
could be expected of them. He sent them a small reinforcement of 2,000
men from the suppressed third division of the Army of Galicia, and
urged that munitions should be thrown in from the side of the sea
whenever possible.
There was little to be expected from the exertions of the Catalan
army, persevering and meritorious though they were. It remained to be
seen, however, whether something could not be done in the Principality
with external help. Here came in the main problem of the Eastern
Coast: Suchet must be kept employed at all costs, while the main
blow was being delivered by Wellington himself on the other side of
the Peninsula. Murray’s and Elio’s futile operations of April had
accomplished little: the Marshal, though frightened at first by their
movements, and though he had suffered the bloody check of Castalla, had
been able to preserve his forward position on the Xucar: he retained
complete possession of the Valencian coast-land, and his army was
intact as a striking force. If, during the forthcoming campaign north
of the Douro, he chose to draw off his main force towards Aragon, and
to come in to join the King, there was at present nothing on foot
that could stop him from such a course. Wellington resolved that this
possibility must be averted, by giving the Marshal a problem of his
own, which should absorb all his attention, and keep him from thinking
of his neighbour’s needs. And this was all the more easy because Suchet
was notoriously a selfish commander, who thought more of his own
viceroyalty and his own military reputation than of the general cause
of France: his intercepted dispatches, of which Wellington had a fair
selection in his file of cyphers, showed that he was always ready to
find plausible excuses for keeping to his own side of the Peninsula.
The plan which Wellington formulated for the use of Sir John Murray,
in two dispatches dated on the 14th and 16th of April, was one which
depended entirely on the judicious use of naval power. The British
fleet being completely dominant in the Mediterranean, and Murray having
at his disposition the large squadron of transports which had brought
his troops from Sicily, it was clearly possible to land as many men
as the transports could carry, at any point on the immensely long
coast-line of Valencia and Catalonia that might be selected. They would
have a local superiority on the selected point until the French troops,
dispersed in many garrisons and cantonments, could mass in sufficient
strength to attack them: and meanwhile the Catalan army would join
Murray. If the French should draw together in overwhelming power, the
expedition could, if proper precautions were taken, re-embark before
its position became dangerous. The farther north that the landing
took place, the more inconvenient would it be for Suchet, who would
obviously have to draw on his field army in Valencia for numbers that
would enable him to deal with the Anglo-Sicilian force. But the moment
that Suchet should be forced to deplete his field army in the South,
which was already too weak for the task set it, the Spaniards could
advance on the line of the Xucar, and make a dash at Valencia during
the Marshal’s absence. In order to give them an irresistible numerical
preponderance over the divisions that Suchet might leave behind him,
Del Parque should bring up the Andalusian army to reinforce Elio’s
Murcians. Between them they would have some 30,000 regular troops,
besides the bands of the Empecinado and Duran, who would operate on the
side of the mountains against the French rear. It would be hard if such
an accumulation of force could not thrust back the thinned line of the
enemy on to and beyond Valencia.
Finally, the point at which the expeditionary force was to make its
thrust was to be Tarragona, which was known to be in a state of bad
repair, and thinly garrisoned, while it had also the advantage of being
a very isolated post, and remote both from Decaen’s head-quarters at
Gerona, and from Suchet’s at Valencia. Moreover, it was conveniently
placed for communication with the Catalan army, but separated by
difficult defiles both from Tortosa southward and Barcelona northward,
at which French relieving forces would have to gather.
If the whole plan worked, and Tarragona were to fall in a few days, the
Catalan army would once more have a safe debouch to the sea, and the
Allies would gain a foothold such as they had never owned north of the
Ebro since 1811, while at the same time Valencia ought to fall into
the hands of Elio and Del Parque during Suchet’s enforced absence. But
supposing that Tarragona held out firmly, and Decaen and Suchet united
to relieve it, the expeditionary force could get away unharmed, and
meanwhile Valencia ought to have been taken. And even if the blow at
Valencia failed also, yet at least the whole French army on the East
Coast would be occupied for a month or more, and would certainly not be
able to spare a single man to help King Joseph or Jourdan.
As we shall see, a long series of blunders, for which Murray was
mainly responsible, though Elio and Del Parque each took his share
in the muddle, prevented all Wellington’s schemes for active profit
from coming to a successful end. Nevertheless, the main purpose was
achieved--not a Frenchman from the East Coast took any share in the
campaign of Vittoria.
To descend to details. Murray was directed to ship off every man of the
Alicante army for whom he could find transport, provided that the total
of infantry and artillery embarked should not fall short of 10,000 of
all ranks. He was to take with him both the Anglo-Sicilians and as many
of Whittingham’s Spaniards as could be carried: if the ships sufficed,
he might take all or some of Roche’s Spaniards also. Less than 10,000
men must not sail--the force would then be too small to cause Suchet to
detach troops from Valencia. Elio and Del Parque would remain behind,
with such (if any) of Roche’s and Whittingham’s battalions as could
not be shipped. They were to keep quiet, till they should learn that
Suchet had weakened his forces in Valencia. When it became certain that
the French opposite them were much reduced in numbers, they were to
advance, always taking care to turn the enemy’s positions rather than
to make frontal attacks upon them.
If, which was quite possible, Murray should fail to take Tarragona,
and should find very large French forces gathering around him, such as
he and Copons could not reasonably hope to hold in check, he was to
re-embark, and bring the Expeditionary Force back to the kingdom of
Valencia, landing it at such a point on the coast as should put him in
line with the front reached by Elio and Del Parque in their advance.
There was a subsidiary set of directions for a policy to be
carried out if the transports available at Alicante should be found
insufficient to move so many as 10,000 men. But as the shipping
proved enough to carry 14,000, these directions have only an academic
interest. In this case Murray and Elio were to threaten the line
of the Xucar frontally, while Del Parque turned it on the side of
the mountains of the interior. Duran and Villacampa were to devote
themselves to cutting the line of communications between Suchet and the
King. In this way employment would be found for all the French on the
East Coast, for Copons was to receive a reinforcement of 3,000 men, and
was to keep Decaen on the move by raids and forays.
Finally, and this clause governed the whole of the instructions, ‘the
General Officers at the head of the troops must understand that the
success of all our endeavours in the ensuing campaign depends on _none
of the corps being beaten_. They must not attack the enemy in strong
positions: I shall forgive _anything_ excepting that one of the corps
should be beaten and dispersed.’ Wellington afterwards said that
this warning was intended for Elio and Del Parque only, but it had a
deleterious effect during the ensuing operations on all the actions
of the timid and wavering Murray. To say to such an officer that it
would be a sin not to be forgiven if he let his corps get beaten under
any circumstances, was to drive him to a policy of absolute cowardice.
Wellington was an austere master, and the mental effect of such a
threat was to make Murray resolve that he would not take even small
and pardonable risks. The main idea that he had in his head in May
and June 1813 was that he ‘must not allow his corps to be beaten and
dispersed.’ Hence, like the unprofitable servant in the parable, he
was resolved to wrap it up in a napkin, and have it ready to return
to his master intact--though thereby he might condemn himself to make
no worthy use of it whatever while it was in his hands. The threat of
the Commander-in-Chief might have been addressed profitably to Robert
Craufurd; when administered to John Murray it produced terror and a
sort of mental paralysis.
It is true that Murray’s weakness of will and instability of purpose
were so great that he would probably, in any case, have made a very
poor game from the splendid cards put into his hand. But that the
Tarragona expedition ended in the discreditable fiasco which we shall
have to narrate, was undoubtedly the result in part of the impression
which Wellington’s orders produced on his wavering mind. Yet,
contemptible as his conduct of operations was, still Suchet was kept
employed in the East and gave no help to King Joseph. That much was
secured by Wellington’s knowledge of how sea-power can be used.
By the 1st of May everything should have been ready, but the late
spring and the slow-moving pontoons delayed the start. On the
12th-13th-14th, however, every soldier, British and Portuguese, was
ready to march. Every available unit was being brought up--there
remained behind only the fever-ridden Guards’ brigade at Oporto; the
weak 77th, which provided, along with one Veteran Battalion, a skeleton
garrison for Lisbon; three Portuguese line regiments, two in Elvas,
one in Abrantes, and the dismounted dragoons of the same nation, who
had not taken the field for three years: only D’Urban’s and Campbell’s
squadrons marched in 1813. The infantry consisted of 56 British and
53 Portuguese battalions--making about 67,000 bayonets. The British
battalions were of very unequal size--a few as low as 450 men, a few
others as strong as 900: the average was 700. The Portuguese battalions
were rather weaker, some of the regiments never having recovered from
the privations of the Burgos retreat, and did not exceed on an average
500 bayonets or 550 of all ranks. Of cavalry there were 22 regiments,
of which four only were Portuguese--total 8,000 sabres. Of artillery
there were 102 guns, in seventeen batteries, of which three were
Portuguese and one belonged to the King’s German Legion[461]. Adding
Engineers, Staff Corps, Wagon Train, &c., the whole represented 81,000
men of all ranks and all arms.
SECTION XXXVI: CHAPTER II
OPERATIONS OF HILL’S COLUMN: MAY 22-JUNE 3
The concentration of the southern wing of Wellington’s army for the
great advance was in some ways a more difficult, in others an easier,
problem than the concentration of the northern wing.
On the one hand, the distances from which the various elements of
Hill’s force were to be drawn were in many cases shorter than those of
Graham’s force; the roads were well known to all the troops, who had
used them repeatedly in their moves up and down the Spanish-Portuguese
frontier in 1811-12; and, though poor enough, they were on the whole
better than those of the Tras-os-Montes, which the northern column had
to employ. No part of the British army had tried these latter routes
since the pursuit of Soult in 1809, and few remembered how bad they
were. But, on the other hand, the concentration of the southern column
was from points more remote from each other than those of the northern:
the divisions of the latter had all been collected in the Douro country
during the course of the spring, and started on their final march from
a single area: moreover, they were moving well inside Portugal, by
routes very remote from the enemy. But the larger half of the southern
force had to be brought up from a region far distant from that where
the smaller half was cantoned in May. For Hill’s two divisions, the
British 2nd and the Portuguese independent division (so long commanded
by Hamilton, but now under Silveira, the Conde de Amarante), had been
sent back to the borders of Estremadura at the end of the Burgos
campaign, and were lying, much scattered, at points so remote from each
other as Coria, Plasencia, Bejar, Bohoyo, and Brozas. Morillo’s Spanish
division, so often associated before with Hill, was even farther off,
south of the Tagus, in the Caçeres-Alcantara country. All these troops
would have to move up, in order to join Wellington, by routes not
very remote from the French division at Avila, which (as it will be
remembered) had tried to beat up Hill’s winter-quarters as late as the
preceding February. And there was a chance that, if the enemy were
alert and well-informed, he might try to block Hill’s march, by coming
out from the Puente de Congosto or some such point. If Wellington had
only known it, the French higher command had actually been fearing that
Hill might make a stroke at Avila by some of the passes leading from
the upper Tormes to the upper Adaja, and was nervous about this line of
country.
The plan for the concentration of the southern force was that Hill
should unite the 2nd Division, Morillo’s Spaniards, and Long’s
Cavalry[462] at Bejar, and then march by the pass through the Sierra
de Francia to Miranda de Castanar and Tamames. Silveira, with the
independent Portuguese division, was to take a parallel route farther
west, by the pass of Perales, Peñaparda, and Moras Verdes, to the same
point[463]. These troops on arriving near Tamames would find themselves
in touch with another column, which was already on the ground where
operations were to begin. It consisted of the Light Division, which
had been cantoned on the Coa and Agueda during the winter, and Victor
Alten’s, Fane’s, and Robert Hill’s cavalry brigades--the last-named
a unit new to the army, and lately arrived from Lisbon: it consisted
of six squadrons from the three regiments of Household Cavalry. To
join these British troops came Julian Sanchez’s Castilian lancers--now
reckoned regular cavalry and not a _partida_--and Carlos de España’s
Castilian division, which had been wintering in the valleys above
Ciudad Rodrigo. When united, the whole strength of the southern wing of
Wellington’s army would be about 30,000 sabres and bayonets, including
only five brigades of British infantry, the equivalent of four brigades
of Portuguese, and two Spanish divisions. The cavalry was very strong
in proportion--this was intentional, as Wellington intended to keep
out in his front such a strong cavalry screen that the enemy should
have no chance of discovering for some time that the column was not
the main Anglo-Portuguese army, but in fact a demonstrating force. The
real strength of his army, six of his old eight divisions, was marching
under Graham to turn the line of the Douro, far to the north.
On the 22nd Wellington abandoned his head-quarters at Freneda, where he
had stopped ever since his return from Cadiz in January, and rode out
to Ciudad Rodrigo; the Light Division and three cavalry brigades had
preceded him to Santi Espiritus, ten miles in front, where they were in
touch with Silveira’s Portuguese, who formed Hill’s left-hand column,
and had reached Tamames. Hill himself with the 2nd Division was a march
behind Silveira: Morillo’s Spaniards keeping more to the right, on the
road along the mountains, was moving from Los Santos and Fuenteroble,
by the track which leads straight to Salamanca from the direct south.
Far out on the left Julian Sanchez’s lancers were feeling their way
towards Ledesma and watching the western flank.