The retreat of the right wing made it necessary for Lasalle on the

left to conform to the general movement. He also began to draw back

towards Medellin. ‘For two hours,’ writes one of his officers[183],

‘we gave back slowly and quietly, facing about at every fifty yards

to show a front, and to dispute the ground. Amid the endless whizzing

of bullets flying over our heads, and the deafening roar of the

shells, which rent the air and tore up the earth around us, we heeded

only the voice of our commanders. The further we retired the louder

shouted our foes. Their skirmishers were so numerous and daring that

they sometimes compelled ours to fall back for protection into our

ranks. They kept calling to us from a distance that no quarter should

be given, and that Medellin should be the Frenchman’s grave. General

Lasalle was riding backward and forward in front of his division,

with a lofty, fearless air. In the space which separated us there

might be seen the horses of disabled friends and foes, running on

every side, most of them wounded, some of them dragging their dead

masters by the stirrup, and struggling to free themselves from the

unmanageable load.’

[183] Rocca (of the 2nd Hussars), _Mémoires de la Guerre

d’Espagne_, 80.

In this fashion the French retired before the advancing army of

Cuesta, till they drew near the point where Victor intended to make

his stand. The right wing reached the new line of defence first: it

halted on the crest of the rising-ground to the north of the point

where Villatte’s infantry stood. The Marshal placed ten guns in

line, ordered the two German battalions to stand firm on each flank

of the artillery, and sent up the 94th of the Line from Villatte’s

division to aid them, as well as a battalion of picked grenadiers.

Latour-Maubourg’s horsemen, now all in good order again, covered

their flanks.

Then came the critical moment of the battle. If the Spaniards could

still push their advance, and thrust back the French infantry,

Victor’s position would be very serious. For a moment it seemed that

they might succeed. The battalions of Henestrosa and Del Parque came

forward with a steadiness that Spanish troops had not yet often

shown during the war. They closed upon the guns, in spite of their

rapid fire, and attacked the three battalions on their flanks, which

had been thrown into square for fear of cavalry attacks, and were

therefore not in very good order for defending themselves against

infantry.

The leading Spanish officers had actually ridden into the

battery[184], and were cutting down the gunners, when Latour-Maubourg

ordered his dragoons to charge. The moment that he saw them on the

move, Cuesta, who had been riding on this flank, with the three

regiments of cavalry which covered the end of his line, ordered a

counter-charge against the flank of the advancing French. Then

followed a disgraceful scene: the Spanish squadrons rode forward in

an irresolute way for a few score yards, and then suddenly halted,

turned, and galloped to the rear in a disorderly mass before they had

arrived anywhere near the French dragoons. They collided with Cuesta,

upset him and rode over him[185]: the old man was with difficulty

saved and set upon his horse by his aides-de-camp. The fugitives

never drew rein, and fled far away to the north, almost without

losing a man. Their conduct was all the more disgraceful, because

two of the three regiments were old troops from the Baltic, which

had come back with La Romana and had not shared in any of the early

disasters of the Spanish armies.

[184] Cuesta in his dispatch mentions that General Henestrosa,

Captain Yturrigarey, and the English Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin

D’Urban were the first three into the battery.

[185] In a dispatch in the Record Office, Cuesta says that the

particular corps which rode down himself and his staff was the

raw ‘Toledo’ regiment.

The result of this shameful panic was instant disaster to the whole

Spanish right wing. Of Latour-Maubourg’s division one brigade went

off in pursuit of the routed cavalry, but the other three regiments

charged in flank the battalions of Henestrosa and Del Parque, just

as they stormed the French battery on which they were intent. A

long line without supports, such as that which these two divisions

presented, was helpless when attacked by cavalry on the flank--it

suffered exactly the same fate which befell Colborne’s brigade at

Albuera two years later. While engaged in front with the three

battalions already before it, and with the regiment which Villatte

had sent up to aid them, it could not throw back its flank to face

the horsemen: nor had it any reserve whatever that could be utilized

to hold off Latour-Maubourg. The whole line was rolled up, and dashed

into atoms. Many men were cut down, a few captured, the remainder

fled in utter disorder towards the north. The French urged the

pursuit with cruel vigour, merciless all the more because they had

for a moment doubted of their victory.

While this struggle was raging on the northern part of the field,

Lasalle had been still falling back before the divisions of

Albuquerque, Portago, and Trias, across the plain which borders the

Guadiana. The Spanish line were still moving forward with great

steadiness, but had begun to fall into a sort of _échelon_ formation,

with the cavalry near the river most in advance, the infantry of

Albuquerque a little behind, and the Estremaduran battalions of the

centre still further to the rear. The fact was that General Eguia, to

whom Cuesta had given the charge of his whole right wing, was trying

to edge his cavalry between Lasalle and the Guadiana, in order to cut

him off from the bridge of Medellin. This end of the line, therefore,

was pushing forward very rapidly, while Trias, on the other hand, was

coming forward rather slowly, from a desire not to lose touch with

Del Parque’s division, the nearest troops to him in the other half of

the army.

Lasalle was keeping an anxious eye on the development of the action

further to the north, and the moment that he saw Latour-Maubourg

halt and prepare to charge, followed his example. His first blow was

delivered at the cavalry next the river: he flung against them the

2nd Hussars, with a chasseur regiment in support. These two corps,

charging with great fury, easily broke the Andalusian lancers,

who were leading the pursuit, and hurled them back upon the other

squadrons of the Spanish right. The whole body was thrown into

disorder and driven off the field, leaving the flank of Albuquerque’s

division completely uncovered. Lasalle then re-formed his men and

prepared to charge the infantry. He had been reinforced meanwhile

by one of Villatte’s brigades (63rd and 95th of the Line) and by

the one battalion of Leval’s Germans, which had hitherto remained

with the centre. While these seven battalions of fresh troops

delivered a frontal attack on Albuquerque and Trias, Lasalle hurled

his four regiments of cavalry upon their unprotected right flank.

The Spaniards were doomed to destruction, but for some time kept

up a show of resistance; Albuquerque had got two or three of his

battalions out of line into column, and for a moment these held back

Lasalle’s chasseurs. But the fight lasted for a few minutes only:

a new French force was coming up. Latour-Maubourg, returning from

the pursuit of Cuesta with two of his dragoon regiments, appeared

upon the flank and rear of Trias’ division and charged in upon it

from behind. This last assault was decisive: the whole Spanish line

broke up and fled eastward over the open ground along the river.

The six regiments of French cavalry were soon in pursuit, and rode

in among the flying horde, using the sabre with reckless cruelty,

and far more intent on slaughter than on taking prisoners. Lasalle’s

chasseurs were specially savage, having to avenge the bloody check

which they had received at Miajadas in the preceding week[186].

‘Our troops,’ says a French witness, ‘who had been threatened with

no quarter by the Spaniards if they had been overpowered, and who

were enraged by five hours of preliminary fighting, at first spared

no one. The infantry, following behind at a distance, dispatched

the wounded with their bayonets. Most of all they were pitiless to

such of the Spanish regiments as were without a proper military

uniform[187].’ Another eye-witness describes the pursuit as ‘one

continuous slaughter till night fell.’ Some of the Spanish battalions

dispersed in the most helpless confusion, and fled in all directions

when the line was broken. Others tried to close up and to defend

themselves: this made their flight slower, and sometimes led to their

complete extermination. Rocca says that he saw the two regiments of

Spanish and Walloon Guards lying dead _en masse_ in the order which

they had occupied at the moment of the breaking of the line[188].

The statement is borne out, at least as to the Walloons, by the fact

that the next morning-state of Cuesta’s army which has been preserved

shows that regiment with only 300 men surviving out of two whole

battalions[189]. If any of the infantry of the Spanish right wing

escaped at all, it was partly owing to the fact that the two cavalry

regiments in the centre of the line[190] showed a much better spirit

than their comrades on the wings, and protected the flight of some

battalions. Moreover a frightful thunderstorm swept over the plains

late in the afternoon, darkened the whole horizon, and caused the

French squadrons to halt and cease their pursuit.

[186] Half-a-dozen French authorities speak of the wrath of the

chasseurs as justifiable, because their comrades at Miajadas had

been murdered (_égorgés_, or _lâchement assassinés_). But the

Spaniards had killed them in fair fight.

[187] Rocca, _Mémoires_, p. 82.

[188] Ibid., p. 84.

[189] See the Table in Arteche, vi. 476.

[190] These were the hussar regiments ‘Volunteers of Spain’ and

‘Estremadura’ (late Maria Luisa). Cuesta says in his dispatch

that they saved the battalions of Merida, and Provincial of

Badajoz, which had been surrounded and nearly cut off.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF MEDELLIN

MARCH 28TH 1809]

The slaughter, nevertheless, had been terrible. Of the 10,000 men

whom the Spaniards lost on this fatal day three-fourths fell by the

edge of the sword: only 1,850 prisoners were sent back to Talavera,

and even if some others had succeeded in escaping during their march

to the rear, it is certain that the Spanish casualty-list amounted

to at least 7,500 men. Nine standards were taken--less than might

have been expected, for the twenty-three Spanish battalions present

must have brought forty-six to the field. Twenty pieces of artillery

fell into the hands of the French, out of the thirty which Cuesta had

possessed. Some few batteries therefore (perhaps the horse artillery

of the evasive cavalry brigades) had succeeded in escaping from the

rout.

Most French authors unite in stating that the total loss on their

side was only 300 men[191]. This figure is as absurd as that given

for Soult’s losses at Corunna: there were five hours of fighting,

and for a long time the battle had gone by no means in favour of

Victor’s men. It is improbable that they suffered less than 1,000

casualties, and the figure may have been higher, for one brigade

of Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons was beaten back while charging

guns--always a bloody business for cavalry--while the German

battalions which retired across the plain in column, played on by

artillery and harassed by skirmishers, must also have suffered

severely.

[191] This is the figure given by Jourdan, and General Sémélé,

who ought to have known the facts. It is, of course, reproduced

by Thiers, and the other historians. But I agree with Napier

(ii. 71) in considering the figure ‘scarcely credible.’ Rocca

says that the French lost 4,000 men, but from the context, I

suspect this to be a misprint for 400. Schepeler, always a very

well-informed and impartial writer, guesses at 2,000, and he may

not be far wrong.

Cuesta’s cavalry, owing to the disgraceful cowardice shown by the

majority of the regiments, had got off comparatively intact. The

whole of his dreadful losses had fallen on his infantry, and they

had been scattered so far and wide over the Estremaduran plain that

it was many days before he could get together a respectable force.

He took refuge at Monasterio[192] in the mountains in the direction

of Andalusia, and sent urgent appeals for reinforcements to the

Central Junta. It might have been expected that the Junta would

disgrace him and remove him from command, as they had Cartaojal,

Infantado, and Castaños. But apparently they were rather cheered

by the fact that Cuesta had seriously disputed the victory with

the French, than angered with the want of generalship which he had

shown. They voted that he and his army had deserved well of the

State, and distributed honours and promotion to all the officers whom

he recommended for good conduct during the action. Rocca remarks

that they must have had in their minds the doings of the Romans

after Cannae, when the steadfast Senate thanked the consul Varro

‘for not having despaired of the republic,’ instead of removing him

for rashness and incompetence[193]. At any rate, they conferred on

Cuesta the post of Captain-General of Estremadura, and hurried up to

reinforce him all the troops that they could spare, a strong brigade

of new Granadan levies[194], and a division drawn from the army of

Cartaojal consisting of nine old battalions of regular troops with a

force of 6,000 bayonets[195]. Thus reinforced the host of Cuesta was

as strong as on the eve of Medellin, and once more mustered 20,000

foot and 3,000 horse. By the middle of April the whole had been drawn

together, and reorganized into five divisions of foot and two of

horse. This was the army that was to co-operate with Wellesley in the

campaign of Talavera.

[192] By April 8 he had collected there 3,000 horse and 6,000 or

7,000 foot. Letter of D’Urban to Cradock, April 8.

[193] Rocca, _Mémoires_, p. 86.

[194] Regiment of Velez-Malaga (three batts.), and 2nd battalion

of Antequera, 3,600 bayonets in all.

[195] Also some stray squadrons of cavalry which had gone to the

rear to get horses in Andalusia (Letter of Frere to Castlereagh

in Record Office).

‘In any other country of Europe,’ wrote Marshal Jourdan, ‘the gaining

of two such successes as Medellin and Ciudad Real would have reduced

the country-side to submission, and have enabled the victorious

armies to press forward to new conquests. In Spain the reverse was

the case: the greater the disaster suffered by the national troops,

the more willing were the population to rise and take arms. Already

the communications between Victor and Sebastiani were cut: several

bearers of dispatches were massacred, and even some detachments cut

off. An insurrection almost burst out at Toledo, where a garrison

of insufficient strength had been left. It was only averted by the

providential arrival of an officer with a reinforcement of 500 men.

The communications of the 1st Corps with Madrid were in no better

state: bands of insurgents gathered in the valley of the Tietar, and

threatened to fall upon Almaraz and to break the bridge of boats. The

King had to send down in haste 600 bayonets from Madrid to preserve

this all-important post[196].’ At the same time the road from Almaraz

to Salamanca was closed by a trifling Spanish force of two battalions

under the brigadier Carlos d’España which had been levied about

Caceres and Bejar, and occupied the pass of Baños. It was aided by

a battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian legion, which Sir Robert Wilson

had sent forward from Almeida. Thus Lapisse at Salamanca could only

communicate with Victor at Merida by the circuitous route of Arevalo,

Madrid, and Almaraz.

[196] Jourdan, _Mémoires_, pp. 187-8.

The Duke of Belluno had been ordered by the Emperor to beat the Army

of Estremadura, and then to get into touch with Soult, who should

have been due at Lisbon long ere this. But no news of the 2nd Corps

had come to hand: it was known to have penetrated into northern

Portugal, but its exact position could not be learnt. Victor,

refusing to move till he had news of his colleague, cantoned his

army at Merida and Medellin, and put the old castles of both these

places, as well as that of Truxillo, in a state of defence. He would

probably have done well to utilize the time of necessary waiting in

laying siege to Badajoz. But he contented himself with watching that

fortress and observing the reorganized army of Cuesta, which had

now grown once more to a respectable force, and might have harassed

considerably any part of the 1st Corps which should attempt to molest

the capital of Estremadura. Instead of attacking the place, Victor

contented himself with sending to it vain summonses to surrender, and

with endeavouring to discover whether it might not contain traitors

ready to negotiate with King Joseph. He brought down from Madrid,

as his agent, a Spanish magistrate named Sotelo, who had become a

zealous _Afrancesado_. Through this person he addressed letters both

to the governor of Badajoz and to the Central Junta at Seville.

After setting forth all the evils which the continuance of the war

was bringing upon Spain, Sotelo stated that his king was ready to

grant the most liberal and benevolent terms to the Junta, in order

to spare further effusion of blood. The letter was duly forwarded

to Seville, where it was laid before the government. The ironical

answer was promptly returned ‘that if Sotelo possessed full powers to

negotiate for peace on the basis of the restoration of Ferdinand VII,

and the prompt evacuation of Spain by the French armies, peace would

be possible. If not, the Junta must continue to carry out the mandate

conferred upon it by the nation; according to which it could conclude

no truce or treaty except on the two conditions stated above.’ Sotelo

tried to continue the negotiation, but his offers were disregarded,

and Victor soon realized that he would obtain no further advantages

save by his sword. He remained at Merida waiting in vain for the news

of Soult’s advance on Lisbon, which was, according to Napoleon’s

orders, to be the signal for the 1st Corps to resume its advance.

N.B.--For the campaign of Medellin I have used the narratives of

Rocca and Sémélé (the latter often very inaccurate), the _Mémoires_

of Jourdan, the day-book of the Frankfort regiment of Laval’s

division, and Victor’s correspondence with King Joseph, and on the

Spanish side the dispatches of Cuesta, also two letters from D’Urban

(British attaché on Cuesta’s staff) to Cradock, and some enclosures

sent by Frere to Castlereagh.

SECTION XIII

SOULT’S INVASION OF PORTUGAL

CHAPTER I

SOULT’S PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS IN GALICIA

(JANUARY 19-MARCH 6, 1809)

After the departure of Bonaparte for Paris there were, as we have

already shown, only two points in the Peninsula where the strength

of the French armies was such as to allow them to continue the great

movement of advance which their master had begun. We have already

seen how Victor, after advancing from the Tagus to the Guadiana,

found his initiative exhausted, even after his victory at Medellin.

He had halted, and refused to take the offensive against Lisbon or

Andalusia till he should be heavily reinforced.

It remains to be seen how the other French army available for

immediate field operations had fared. Moore’s daring march and

the ensuing retreat had drawn up into the extreme north-west of

the Peninsula the 2nd, 6th, and 8th _corps d’armée_. Of these the

last-named had been dissolved at the new year, and the bulk of its

battalions had been transferred to Soult’s corps, which on January

20 had a nominal effective of more than 40,000 men. Ney’s Corps, the

6th, was much smaller, and does not seem to have amounted to more

than 16,000 or 18,000 sabres and bayonets. But between Astorga, the

rearmost point occupied by Ney, and Corunna, which Soult’s vanguard

had entered on January 19, there were on paper 60,000 men available

for active operations. Nor had they to guard their own communications

with Madrid or with France. Lapisse’s numerous division had been

left at Salamanca; there was a provisional brigade at Leon[197];

Bonnet held Santander with another division; there were detachments

in Zamora, Valladolid, and the other chief towns of the Douro valley.

Somewhat later, in April, the Emperor moved another whole army

corps, that of Mortier, into Old Castile, when it became available

after the fall of Saragossa. Even without this reinforcement he

thought that the rear of the army in Galicia was adequately covered.

The parting instructions of Bonaparte to Soult have already been

cited: when the English should have embarked, the Duke of Dalmatia

was to march on Oporto, and ten days later was to occupy Lisbon.

We have already seen that the scheme of dates which Napoleon laid

down for these operations was impossible, even to the borders of

absurdity: Oporto was to be seized by February 1, and Lisbon by

February 10! But putting aside this error, which was due to his

persistent habit of ignoring the physical conditions of Spanish roads

and Spanish weather, the Emperor had drawn up a plan which seemed

feasible enough. Ney’s corps was to move up and occupy all the chief

strategical points in Galicia, taking over both the garrison duty

and the task of stamping out any small lingering insurrections in

the interior. This would leave Soult free to employ the whole of his

four divisions of infantry and his three divisions of cavalry for the

invasion of Portugal. Even allowing for the usual wastage of men in a

winter campaign, the Emperor must have supposed that, with a nominal

effective of 43,000 men, Soult would be able to provide more than

30,000 efficients for the expedition against Lisbon[198]. Considering

that the Portuguese army was still in the making, and that no more

than 8,000 British troops remained in and about Lisbon, the task

assigned to the Duke of Dalmatia did not on the face of it appear

unreasonable.

[197] It was composed of the few battalions of the 8th Corps

which had not been drafted into the 2nd.

[198] When the Emperor looked at the half-monthly returns of the

army, which were forwarded to him as regularly as possible, and

which pursued him wheresoever he might go, he must have seen

the following statistics--those of Jan. 15 in the French War

Office--for the 2nd Corps, taking the gross totals:--

Infantry: Merle 12,119; Mermet 11,810; Delaborde 5,038; Heudelet

6,592: Total 35,559.

Cavalry: Lorges 1,769; Lahoussaye 3,087; Franceschi 2,512: Total

7,368. Artillery and Train 1,468.

Total of the whole corps 44,395. By Jan. 30, it had risen to

45,820.

But in Spain the old saying that ‘nothing is so deceptive as

figures--except facts,’ was pre-eminently true. No map--those of 1809

were intolerably bad--could give the Emperor any idea of the hopeless

condition of Galician or Portuguese mountain-roads in January. No

tables of statistics could enable him to foresee the way in which

the population would receive the invading army. We may add that

even an unrivalled knowledge of the realities of war would hardly

have prepared him to expect that the campaign of Galicia would, in

one month, have worn down Soult’s available effectives to a bare

23,000 men. Such was the modest figure at which the 2nd Corps stood

on January 30, for it had no less than 8,000 men detached, and the

incredible number of over 10,000--one man in four--in hospital.

For this figure it was not the muskets of Moore’s host which were

responsible: it was the cold and misery of the forced marches from

Astorga to Corunna, which seem to have tried the pursuer even more

than the pursued. The 8,000 ‘detached’ were strung out in small

parties all the way from Leon to Lugo--wherever the Marshal had been

obliged to abandon stores or baggage that could not travel fast, he

had been forced to leave a guard: he had also dropped small garrisons

at Villafranca, Lugo, and Betanzos, to await Ney’s arrival; but the

most important drain had been that of his dismounted dragoons[199].

In his cavalry regiments half the horses had foundered or perished:

the roads so deadly to Moore’s chargers had taken a corresponding

toll from the French divisions, and at every halting-place hundreds

of horsemen, unable to keep up with the main body, had been left

behind. In any other country than Spain these involuntary laggards

would have found their way to the front again in a comparatively

short time. But Soult was commencing to discover that one of the main

features of war in the Peninsula was that isolated men, or even small

parties, could not move about in safety. The peasantry were already

beginning to rise, even before Moore’s army took its departure; they

actually cut the road between Betanzos and Lugo, and between Lugo

and Villafranca, within a few days after the battle of Corunna. This

forced the stragglers to mass, under pain of being assassinated.

Hundreds of them were actually cut off: the rest gathered in small

wayside garrisons, and could not get on till they had been formed

into parties of considerable strength. The rearmost, who had been

collected at Astorga by General Pierre Soult, the Marshal’s brother,

did not join the corps for months--and this body was no less than

2,000 or 2,500 strong. The other detachments could not make their way

to Corunna even when Marshal Ney had come up: it was only by degrees,

and after delays covering whole weeks, that they began to rejoin.

The only solid reinforcement received by Soult, soon after the

departure of the English army, consisted of his rear division, that

of Heudelet, which came up from Lugo, not many days after the battle

of January 16.

[199] The state of the cavalry of the 2nd Corps on Jan. 30 gives

the following astounding result:--

_Present under Arms._ _Absent._ _Sick._

Lorges 809 617 108

Lahoussaye 1,130 1,400 256

Franceschi 1,120 991 208

----- ----- ---

3,059 3,008 572

The drain under the second column represents mainly the men who

had dropped to the rear, from losing their horses or being unable

to take them on.

Soult was still far from suspecting the full difficulty of the

task that was before him. He had been much encouraged by the tame

way in which the Governor of Corunna had surrendered on January

19. If Alcedo had made the least semblance of fight he could have

detained the Marshal before his walls for an indefinite time. The

city was only approachable by a narrow and well-fortified isthmus,

and the French could not have battered this formidable front to any

effect with the six-pounders which formed their only artillery.

The surrender of the place gave Soult some food, the considerable

resources of a rich harbour town, and (most important of all) a

large number of guns of position, suitable for use against the other

fortress which he must take ere he moved on against Portugal.

This place was Ferrol, the second naval arsenal of Spain, which

faces Corunna across the broad inlet of Ares Bay--only thirteen

miles distant by water, though the land road thither by Betanzos,

round the head of the fiord, is forty miles long. To make sure of

this place was obviously Soult’s first duty: if left unmolested it

would prove a dangerous nucleus round which the Galician insurgents

could concentrate. For it contained a regular garrison, consisting

of the dépôts and half-trained recruits of La Romana’s army, and

of 4,000 or 5,000 sailors. There were lying in the harbour, mostly

half-dismantled and unready for sea[200], no less than eight

line-of-battle ships and three frigates. Their crews, much depleted,

but still numerous, had been landed to assist the soldiers in

garrisoning the forts[201]. In addition several thousand citizens

and peasants had taken arms, for muskets abounded in Ferrol, from

the stores lately received from England. With these resources it is

clear that a governor of courage and resolution might have made a

long defence; they were far greater than those with which Palafox

had preserved Saragossa; and Ferrol was no open town, but a fortress

which had been kept in good repair for fear of the English. But,

for the misfortune of Galicia, the commander of Ferrol, Admiral

Melgarejo, was a traitor at heart. He was one of the old bureaucrats

who had only followed the patriotic cause because it seemed for

the moment to be in the ascendant; if patriotism did not pay, he

was perfectly prepared to come to terms and to do homage to Joseph

Bonaparte.

[200] For the state of this squadron see the report by Admiral De

Courcy in the _Parliamentary Papers_ for 1809, Spain, March 29,

1809, p. 4.

[201] The marines had been taken away in July, 1808, and formed

half a brigade in the division of the Army of Galicia. But the

seamen were available.

On January 23 Soult marched against Ferrol with the infantry division

of Mermet, the dragoons of Lorges, and the heavy guns which he

had found in Corunna. He left Delaborde in garrison at the latter

place, posted Merle at Betanzos, a half-way house between the two

fortresses, and directed Franceschi’s cavalry division on Santiago

and Lahoussaye’s on Mellid, in order to see whether there was any

Spanish field-force visible in western Galicia. On the twenty-fifth

the Marshal presented himself in front of Ferrol, and summoned the

place to surrender. Melgarejo was determined not to fight, and

several of his chief subordinates supported him. The armed citizens

persisted in their idea of defending the place, but when the French

broke ground in front of the walls and captured two small outlying

redoubts, they allowed themselves to be overpersuaded by their

treacherous chief. On January 26 the place surrendered, and on the

following day Soult was received within the walls. The capitulation

had two shameful clauses: by the first the civil and military

authorities undertook to take the oath of allegiance to King Joseph.

By the second the splendid men-of-war in the harbour were handed over

intact, a most valuable acquisition for the Emperor if Galicia was

to remain under his control. Any one but a traitor would have burnt

or scuttled them before surrendering. But Melgarejo, after receiving

high testimonials from Soult, hastened up to Madrid and took office

under the _Rey Intruso_[202]. Along with the squadron 1,500 naval

cannon, an immense quantity of timber, cordage, and other stores, and

20,000 muskets newly imported from England, fell into the hands of

the French.

[202] The Supreme Junta very properly condemned him and Alcedo,

the governor of Corunna, to the penalties of high treason.

On the day after Ferrol was occupied, Soult received the last

communication from the Emperor which was to reach him for many a

day[203]. It was dated from Valladolid on January 17. We have already

had occasion to refer to it more than once, while dealing with the

controversies of King Joseph and Marshal Victor. This dispatch

repeated the Emperor’s former orders, with some slight concession in

the matter of dates. Instead of reaching Oporto on February 1 the

Marshal was to be granted four extra days, and after taking Oporto

on February 5, he was to reach Lisbon on the sixteenth instead of

the tenth. Soult was also told that he would not have to depend

on his own resources alone: Victor with the 1st Corps would be at

Merida by the time that the 2nd Corps was approaching the Portuguese

capital: he would be instructed to send a column in the direction of

Lisbon, to make a diversion in favour of the attack from the north,

and at the same time Lapisse from Salamanca should move on Ciudad

Rodrigo and Almeida. Bessières was, so the Emperor said, under strict

orders to send Lapisse forward into Portugal the moment that the

news should reach him that the 2nd Corps had captured Oporto. This

combination sinned against the rules of strategy, as they had to be

practised in Spain. The Emperor had yet to realize that in order

to make operations simultaneous, when troops starting from bases

several hundred miles apart are to co-operate, it is necessary that

their generals should be in free communication with each other. But

Soult, when he had advanced into Portugal, was as much out of touch

with the other French corps as if he had been operating in Poland or

Naples. It was literally months before accurate information as to his

situation and his achievements reached Salamanca, Merida, or Madrid.

The movements of Victor and Lapisse being strictly conditioned by

the receipt of news concerning Soult’s progress, and that news being

never received, or received too late, the combination never did and

never could take place. Napoleon had forgotten to reckon with the

ubiquitous Spanish insurgent: here, as in so many cases, he was

unconsciously assuming that the bearer of dispatches could ride

freely through the country, as if he were in Saxony or Lombardy;

and that Soult could make known his movements and his desires as

often as he pleased. French critics of the Emperor generally confine

themselves to censuring him for sending the 2nd Corps to attempt

unaided a task too great for it[204]; this is not quite fair, for

he had intended to support Soult by two strong diversions. The real

fault lay in ignoring the fact that in Spain combined operations,

which presuppose constant communication between the participants,

were practically impossible. The same error was made in 1810, when

Drouet was told to co-operate in Masséna’s invasion of Portugal, and

in 1811 when Soult was directed to lend a helping hand to that same

invasion. It is impossible to give effective aid to a colleague whose

condition and whose whereabouts are unknown.

[203] Compare _Instructions de l’Empereur_ of Jan. 17, with

Berthier to Soult of Jan. 21.

[204] ‘Il faut croire,’ says St. Chamans, Soult’s senior

aide-de-camp, ‘que Napoléon, au moment où il ordonna une pareille

opération, était possédé d’un esprit de vertige. Comment

pouvait-il risquer, au milieu d’un royaume insurgé, un si faible

corps d’armée, sans communication avec ses autres troupes

d’Espagne?’ [_Mémoires_, p. 117]. ‘Tout était en erreur,’ says Le

Noble, another 2nd Corps writer, ‘dans le projet de soumettre le

Portugal en 1809 avec une armée si faible et dépourvue de moyens.

L’Empereur a montré une confiance aveugle’ (p. 65).

On January 29 the Duke of Dalmatia set to work to reorganize his

army for the great expedition that had been assigned to him. It was

impossible to march at once, as the Emperor had commanded, because

Ney had not yet arrived at the front, and it was necessary to turn

over the charge of Corunna and Ferrol to him before departing further

south. Moreover, there were many other arrangements to be made:

a base hospital had to be organized at Corunna for the thousands

of sick and wounded belonging to the 2nd Corps. Its transport had

to be reconstructed, for most of the animals had died during the

forced marches in pursuit of Moore[205]. A new stock of munitions

had to be served out from the stores so fortunately captured at

Ferrol. The military chest of the corps had been left behind at

Astorga, and showed no signs of appearing: to provide for the more

urgent day-by-day needs of the army, the Marshal had to squeeze

forced contributions out of the already exhausted towns of Corunna,

Ferrol, and Santiago, which had long ago contributed all their

surplus resources to the fitting out of Blake’s army of Galicia.

These same unhappy places had to submit to a heavy requisition of

cloth and leather, for the replacing of the garments and boots worn

out in the late marches. But even with the aid of 2,500 English

greatcoats discovered in store at Corunna, and other finds at Ferrol,

the wants of the army could not be properly supplied; it started

on the campaign in a very imperfectly equipped condition[206]. The

most dangerous point in its outfit was the want of mules: most of

the valleys of inner Galicia and northern Portugal are destitute

of carriage roads. To bring up the food and the reserve ammunition

pack-animals were absolutely necessary, and Soult could only collect

a few hundreds. Even if his men should succeed in living on the

country, and so solve the problem of carrying provisions, they could

not hope to pick up powder and lead in the same way. When, therefore,

the heavy baggage on wheels had to be left behind, the 2nd Corps was

only able to carry a very insufficient stock of cartridges: twice,

as we shall see, it almost exhausted its ammunition and was nearly

brought to a standstill on the way to Oporto.

[205] The authors, English and French, who express a humanitarian

horror at the shooting of 3,000 horses and mules before the

embarkation of Moore’s army, forget what a godsend these would

have been to Soult, if the English had left them to fall intact

into his hands. The slaughter was dreadful, but perfectly

necessary and justifiable.

[206] All these details come from Le Noble, who as

_Ordonnateur-en-Chef_ of the 2nd Corps, had full experience of

the difficulty of equipping it for the Portuguese expedition.

It was not till February had already begun that Soult was able to

move forward the whole of his army, for he refused to withdraw

Delaborde’s division from Corunna and Mermet’s from Ferrol, till Ney

should have brought up troops of the 6th Corps to relieve them. The

Duke of Elchingen, though apprised of the Emperor’s orders, lingered

long at Lugo, and it was not till he came down in person to the

coast that Soult could call up his rear divisions. Meanwhile a small

exchange of troops between the two corps was carried out: Ney, being

short of cavalry, received a brigade of Lorges’ dragoons to add to

his own inadequate force of two regiments of light horse. In return

he made over to the 2nd Corps three battalions of the 17th Léger,

which had accompanied him hitherto. They were added to Delaborde’s

division, which had been only eight battalions strong.

Even before the troops from Ferrol and Corunna were able to move,

Soult had put the rest of his army on the march for Portugal. On

January 30 Franceschi’s light horsemen started along the coast-road

from Santiago to Vigo and Tuy, while further inland Lahoussaye’s

division of dragoons, quitting Mellid, took the rough mountain path

across the Monte Testeyro, by Barca de Ledesma and Cardelle, which

leads to Rivadavia and Salvatierra on the lower Minho. Merle’s and

Heudelet’s infantry started several days later, and were many miles

behind the advanced cavalry.

Lahoussaye’s division met with no opposition in the rugged

region which it had to cross, and occupied Salvatierra without

difficulty. Franceschi scattered a few peasants at the defile of

Redondela outside Vigo, and then found himself at the gates of that

harbour-fortress. The governor, no less weak and unpatriotic than

those of Ferrol and Corunna, surrendered without firing a shot. His

excuse was that he had only recruits, and armed townsfolk, to man

his walls and handle his numerous artillery. But his misconduct

was even surpassed by that of the Governor of Tuy, who capitulated

to Franceschi’s 1,200 horsemen three days later in the same style,

though he was in command of 500 regular troops, and was implored

to hold out by the local junta. Throughout Galicia, in this unhappy

month, the officials and military chiefs showed a most deplorable

spirit, which contrasted unfavourably with that of the lower classes,

both in the towns and the country-side.

The way to the frontier of Portugal had thus been opened, with an

ease which seemed to justify Napoleon’s idea that the Spaniards

would not hold out, when once their field armies had been crushed.

Franceschi and Lahoussaye reported to the Duke of Dalmatia that

they had swept the whole northern bank of the Minho, and that there

was nothing in front of them save the swollen river and a few bands

of Portuguese peasantry, who were observing them from Valenza, the

dilapidated frontier fortress of the neighbouring kingdom.

Both the French and the Galicians of the coast-line might well have

forgotten the fact that there was still a Spanish army in existence

within the borders of the province. It is long since we have had

occasion to mention the fugitive host of the Marquis of La Romana.

After being hunted out of Ponferrada by Soult on January 3, he had

followed in the wake of Craufurd’s brigades on their eccentric

retreat down the valley of the Sil. But while the British troops

pushed on to Vigo and embarked, the Spaniards halted at Orense.

There the Marquis endeavoured to rally his demoralized and starving

host, with the aid of the very limited resources of the district. He

had only 6,000 men left with the colours, out of the 22,000 who had

been with him at Leon on December 25, 1808. But there were several

thousands more straggling after him, or dispersed in the side valleys

off the road which he had followed. Most of these men had lost

their muskets, many were frost bitten, or suffering from dysentery.

The surviving nucleus of the army was composed almost entirely of

the old regulars: the Galician militia and new levies had not been

able to resist the temptation to desert, when they found themselves

among their native mountains. The Marquis hoped that, when the

spring came round, they would find their way back to the army: in

this expectation, as we shall see, he was not deceived. For nearly

a fortnight the wrecks of the army were undisturbed, and La Romana

was able to collect enough efficients to constitute two small corps

of observation, one of which he posted in the valley of the Sil, to

watch for any signs of a movement of the French from the direction

of Ponferrada, while the other, in the valley of the Minho, kept

a similar look out in the direction of Lugo. The latter force was

unmolested, but on January 17 General Mendizabal, who was watching

the southern road, reported the approach of a heavy hostile column.

This was Marchand’s division of Ney’s corps: the Marshal had divided

his force at Ponferrada; he himself with Maurice Mathieu’s division

had kept the main road to Lugo, while Marchand had been told off to

clear the lateral valleys and seize Orense. La Romana very wisely

resolved that his unhappy army was unfit to resist 8,000 French

troops. On January 19 he evacuated Orense, and fled across the Sierra

Cabrera to Monterey on the Portuguese frontier. Here at last he found

rest, for Marchand did not follow him into the mountains, but, after

a short stay in Orense, marched to Santiago, where he was directed to

relieve Soult’s garrison.

The Marquis was completely lost to sight in his frontier fastnesses,

and was able to do his best to reorganize his battered host. By

February 13 he had 9,000 men under arms, nearly all old soldiers,

for the Galician levies were still scattered in their homes. His

dispatches during this period are very gloomy reading: he complains

bitterly of the apathy of the country-side and the indiscipline of

his officers. What could be expected of subalterns, he asks, when

a general (Martinengo of the 2nd division) had absconded without

asking leave or even reporting his departure? ‘I know not where the

patriotism, of which every one boasted, is now to be found, since

on the smallest reverse or misfortune, they lose their heads, and

think only of saving themselves--sacrificing their country and

compromising their commander.’ Much harassed for want of food, La

Romana kept moving his head quarters; he was sometimes at Verin and

Monterey, sometimes at Chaves just inside the Portuguese frontier,

more frequently at Oimbra. He had only nine guns left; there was

no reserve of ammunition, and the soldiers had but few cartridges

remaining in their boxes. The strongest battalion left in the army

had only 250 bayonets--many had but seventy or eighty, and others

(notably the Galician local corps) had completely disappeared. He

besought the Central Junta to obtain from the British money, muskets,

clothing, and above all ammunition, or the army would never be fit to

take the field[207]. A similar request in the most pressing terms was

sent to Sir John Cradock at Lisbon.

[207] Most of these details are from two interesting dispatches

of La Romana in the Foreign Office papers at the Record Office.

They are dated from Chaves on Jan. 28 and Feb. 13. They are

unpublished and seem to be unknown even to General Arteche, who

has made such a splendid collection of the materials in the

Spanish archives which bear on this obscure corner of the war.

There was an English officer, Captain Brotherton, with the army

of La Romana: but his reports, which Napier had evidently seen,

are now no longer to be found. No doubt they were bound up in the

January-March 1809 book of Portuguese dispatches, which since

Napier’s day has disappeared from the Record Office, leaving no

trace behind.

Soult could not but be aware that La Romana’s army, or some shadow

of it, was still in existence: but since it sedulously avoided any

contact with him, and had completely evacuated the coast-land of

Galicia, he appears to have treated it as a ‘negligible quantity’

during his first operations. Its dispersion, if it required any

further dispersing, would fall to the lot of Ney and the 6th Corps,

not to that of the army sent against Portugal.

Franceschi and Lahoussaye, as we have already seen, reached the Minho

and the Portuguese border on February 2. It was only on the eighth

that the Duke of Dalmatia set out from Santiago to follow them, in

company with the division of Merle. Those of Delaborde and Mermet,

released by the arrival of Ney, took the same route on the ninth and

tenth respectively. The rear was brought up by the reserve and heavy

artillery, and by that brigade of Lorges’ dragoons which had not

been handed over to the 6th Corps. The coast-road being very good,

Soult was able to concentrate his whole army within the triangle

Tuy, Salvatierra, Vigo by the thirteenth, in spite of the hindrances

caused by a week of perpetual storm and rain.

It was the Marshal’s intention to enter Portugal by the great

coast-road, which crosses the Minho at Tuy and proceeds to Oporto

by way of Valenza and Braga. But as Valenza was a fortress, and its

cannon commanded the broad ferry at which the usual passage was made,

it was clearly necessary to choose some other point for crossing

the frontier river. After a careful survey Soult fixed on a village

named Campo Saucos, only two miles from the mouth of the Minho,

as offering the best starting-point. He established a battery of

heavy guns on his own side of the river, and collected a number of

fishing-boats[208], sufficient to carry 300 men at a voyage. As he

could not discover that the Portuguese had any regular force opposite

him, he resolved to attempt the passage with these modest resources.

[208] These boats were brought to Campo Saucos overland, for

a full mile and more. They came from La Guardia and other

fishing-villages on the coast; but finding it impossible to

get them over the bar of the Minho in such furious weather,

and against the swollen stream, Soult dragged them from the

beach north of the mouth to the crossing-point on rollers, much

as Mohammed II did with his galleys at the famous siege of

Constantinople in 1453. But Soult’s vessels were, of course, much

smaller.

There would have been no great difficulty in the enterprise during

ordinary weather. But the incessant rains had so swelled the Minho

that it was now a wild, ungovernable torrent, which it was hard to

face and still harder to stem. When the heavy Atlantic surf met

the furious current of the stream, during the rising of the tide,

the conflict of the waters made the passage absolutely impossible.

It had to be attempted at the moment between the flow and the

ebb--though there was at that hour another danger--that the boats

might be carried past the appointed landing-place and wrecked on

the bar at the mouth of the river. But this chance Soult resolved

to risk: on February 16, long before daybreak, his twenty or thirty

fishing-boats, each with a dozen men on board, launched out from

the northern shore, and struck diagonally across the stream, as

the current bore them. They were at once saluted by a heavy but

ill-directed fire from the Portuguese bank, where hundreds of

peasants were at watch even during the hours of darkness. The

soldiers rowed and steered badly--Soult had only been able to give

them as guides a mere handful of men trained to the water[209]. The

furious current swept them away: probably also their nerve was much

tried by the fusillade, which, though more noisy than dangerous,

yet occasionally picked off a rower or a helmsman. The general

result was that only three boats with thirty-five or forty men got

to the appointed landing-place, where they were made prisoners by

the Portuguese. The rest were borne down-stream, and came ashore at

various points on the same side from which they had started, barely

avoiding shipwreck on the bar.

[209] Soult had got together a few dozen seamen, French prisoners

of war, found at Corunna and Ferrol, who had been captured at sea

by Spanish cruisers. They were not ‘marines’ as Napier calls them

(ii. 38), but _marins_ (see Le Noble, p. 75, and again p. 78).

The attempt to pass the Minho, therefore, ended in a ridiculous

fiasco: it showed the limitations of the French army, which among

its numerous merits did not possess that of good seamanship. Soult

was deeply chagrined, not because of the insignificant loss of men,

but because of the check to his prestige. He resolved that he would

not risk another such failure, and at once gave orders for the whole

army to march up-stream to Orense, the first point where there was a

bridge over the Minho. This entailed a radical change in his general

plan of operations, for he was abandoning the good coast-road by Tuy

and Valenza for a very poor mountain-way from Orense to Chaves along

the valley of the Tamega. There was another important result from

the alteration--the new route brought the French army down upon La

Romana’s camp of refuge: his cantonments in and about Monterey lay

right across its path. But neither he nor Soult had yet realized

the fact that they were about once more to come into collision. The

Marshal did not know where the Marquis was; the Marquis did not at

first understand the meaning of the Marshal’s sudden swoop inland.

Some of the Spanish officers, indeed, were sanguine enough to imagine

that the French, after their failure on the lower Minho, would

abandon Galicia altogether[210]!

[210] Letter of Captain Brotherton [now lost] quoted in Napier,

ii. 438, and dated from Oimbra on Feb. 21.

The whole French army had now made a half-turn to the left, and

was marching in a north-easterly direction. Lahoussaye’s dragoons,

starting from Salvatierra, led the advance, Heudelet’s division

marched at the head of the infantry; Delaborde, Mermet, and Merle,

each at a convenient interval from the preceding division, stretched

out the column to an interminable length. The heavy artillery and

wagon train brought up the rear. Nine hundred sick, victims of the

detestable weather of the first fortnight of February, were left

behind at Tuy under the guard of a half-battalion of infantry.

It was on the march from Tuy to Orense that Soult began to realize

the full difficulties of his task. He had already met with small

insurgent bands, but they had been dispersed with ease, and he had

paid little attention to them. Now however, along the steep and

tiresome mountain road above the Minho, they appeared in great force,

and showed a spirit and an enterprise which were wholly unexpected

by the French. The fact was that in the month which had now elapsed

since the battle of Corunna, the peasantry and the local notables

had found time to take stock of the situation. The first numbing

effect of the presence of a large hostile army in their midst had

passed away. Ruthless requisitions were sweeping off their cattle,

the only wealth of the country. Although Soult had issued pacific

proclamations, and had tried to keep his men in hand, he could not

restrain the usual plundering propensities of a French army on the

march. Enough atrocities had already been committed to make the

Galicians forget the misconduct of Moore’s men. La Romana, from his

refuge at Monterey, had been dispersing appeals to the patriotism

of the province, and sending out officers with local knowledge

to rouse the country-side. These probably had less effect on the

Galicians--the Marquis was a stranger and a defeated general--than

the exhortations of their own clergy. In the first rising of the

peasantry most of the leaders were ecclesiastics: in the region

which Soult was now traversing the peasantry were raised by Mauricio

Troncoso, Abbot of Couto, and a friar named Giraldez, who kept the

insurgents together until, some weeks later, they handed over the

command to military officers sent by La Romana or by the Central

Junta. In the valley of the Sil, beyond Orense, it was Quiroga,

Abbot of Casoyo, who first called out the country-side[211]. Every

narrative of the Galician insurrection, whether French or Spanish,

bears witness to the fact that in almost every case the clergy,

regular and secular, were the earliest chiefs of the mountaineers. It

was characteristic of the whole rising that many of the bands took

the field with the church-banners of their parishes as substitutes

for the national flag.

[211] All the details of the Galician insurrection may be found

in the very interesting _Los Guerrilleros Gallegos de 1809_, of

Pardo de Andrade, reprinted at Corunna in 1892. It is absolutely

contemporary and mainly composed of original documents written by

men who shared in the rising. But naturally it contains errors

and exaggerations.

This much is certain, that as soon as the violent February rains

showed signs of slackening, the whole of rural Galicia flew to arms.

From Corcubion on the surf-beaten headland of Finisterre, to the

remote headwaters of the Sil under the Sierra de Penamarella, there

was not a valley which failed to answer the appeal which La Romana

had made and which the clergy had circulated. From the weak and

sporadic movements of January there sprang in February a general

insurrection, which was all the more formidable because it had no

single focus, was based on no place of arms, and was directed not by

one chief but by fifty local leaders, each intimately acquainted with

the district in which he was about to operate.

The first result of this widespread movement was to complete the

severance of the communications between the various French divisions

in Galicia. From the earliest appearance of the invaders, as we

have already seen, there had been intermittent attempts to cut the

lines of road by which the 2nd and 6th Corps kept touch with each

other and with Madrid. But hitherto a convoy, or escort of a couple

of hundred men, could generally brush aside its assailants, and get

through from post to post. In February this power of movement ceased:

the insurgents became not only more numerous and more daring, but

infinitely more skilful in their tactics. Instead of endeavouring

to deliver combats in the open, they broke the bridges, burnt the

ferry-boats, cut away the road in rocky places, and then hung

persistently about any corps that was on the move, as soon as it

began to get among the obstacles. They fired on it from inaccessible

side-hills, attacked and detained its rearguard so as to delay its

march, thus causing a gap to grow between it and the main body, and

only closed when the column was beginning to get strung out into a

series of isolated groups. The convoys which were being sent up from

Astorga to the 2nd and 6th Corps were especially vulnerable to such

tactics: the shooting of a few horses in a defile would hopelessly

block the progress of everything that was coming on from behind. The

massing of men to repair or rehorse disabled wagons only gave the

lurking insurgent a larger and an easier target. Hence the bringing

up to the front of the heavy transport of the French army became such

a slow and costly business, that the attempt to move it was after

a time almost abandoned. Another point which the insurgents soon

perceived was the helplessness of the French cavalry among rocks

and defiles. A horseman cannot get at an enemy who lurks above his

head in precipitous crags, refuses to come down to the high-road,

and takes careful shots from his eyrie into the squadron below. If,

worried beyond endurance, the French officers dismounted some of

their men to charge the hillside, the lightly-equipped peasants fled

away, and were out of sight before the dragoons in their heavy boots

could climb the first fifty yards of the ascent. The copious annals

of the Galician guerrilla bands almost invariably begin with tales of

the annihilation of insufficiently guarded convoys, or of the defeat

and extermination of small bodies of cavalry caught in some defile. A

very little experience of such petty successes soon taught them the

right way to deal with the French. The invaders could not be beaten

_en masse_, but might be cut off in detail, harassed into exhaustion,

and so isolated one from the other that it would require the sending

out of a considerable expedition to carry a message between two

neighbouring garrisons, or to forward a dispatch down the high-road

to Madrid.

In a very short time intercommunication between the various sections

of the French army in Galicia became so rare and uncertain, that each

commander of a garrison or chief of a column found himself in the

condition of a man lost in a fog. His friends might be near or far,

might be faring ill or prosperously, but it was almost impossible

to get news of them. Every garrison was surrounded with a loose

screen of insurgents, which could only be pierced by a great effort.

Each column on the march moved on surrounded by a swarm of active

enemies, who closed around again in spite of all attempts to brush

them off. In March and April Ney, on whom the worst stress of the

insurrection fell, could only communicate with his outlying troops

by taking circular tours at the head of a force of several thousand

men. Sometimes he found, instead of the post which he had intended

to visit, only a ruined village full of corpses. Ere the Galician

rising was three months old, the bands had become bold and skilful

enough to cut off a strong detachment or to capture a place held by a

garrison several hundreds strong. In June they actually stopped the

Marshal himself, with a whole division at his back, in his attempt to

march from Santiago to recapture Vigo.

But these times were still far in the future: and when, on February

17, Soult started on his march along the Minho from Tuy to Orense,

the peasantry were far from being the formidable opponents that

they afterwards became. Nevertheless, the progress of the 2nd Corps

was toilsome and slow in the extreme. The troops had been divided

between two paths, of which the so-called high-road, a mile or

two from the river, was only a trifle less impracticable than the

rougher path along the water’s edge. Lahoussaye’s dragoons had been

put upon the latter track; Heudelet’s infantry division led the

advance on the upper road. All day long the march was harassed by

the insurgents, who descended from the hills and hung on the left

flank of Heudelet’s column, delivering partial attacks whenever

they thought that they saw an opportunity. The French advanced with

difficulty, much incommoded by the need of dragging on their cannon,

which could hardly be got forward even with the aid of the infantry.

Lahoussaye, on the other path, was assailed in a similar way, besides

being molested by the Portuguese, who moved parallel to him on the

south side of the Minho, taking long shots at his dragoons wherever

the path was close enough to the water’s edge to be within range of

their own bank. If the peasantry had confined themselves to these

tactics, they might have harassed Soult at small cost to themselves.

But they had not yet fully learnt the guerrilla’s trade. At Mourentan

on the path by the river, and at Francelos on the high-road, they

had resolved to offer direct resistance to the enemy, and so put

themselves within reach of the invader’s claws. At each place they

had barricaded the village, had run a rough entrenchment across the

road, and stood to receive the frontal shock of the French attack.

They were, of course, routed with great slaughter when they thus

exposed themselves in close combat: several hundred perished, among

whom were many of their clerical leaders. Thus Soult was able

to push on and occupy Rivadavia, which he found evacuated by its

inhabitants. His soldiery had sacked and burnt all the villages on

the way, and (according to the Spanish narratives) shot all adult

males whom they could catch, whether found with arms or not[212].

[212] Long details of all this fighting may he found in the

narrative of the Alcalde of Rivadavia, on pp. 130-44 of vol.

ii. of _Los Guerrilleros Gallegos_. The details are probably

exaggerated, but the reader can hardly refuse to believe that

there is a solid substratum of truth. The Alcalde notes that the

infantry were far better behaved than Lahoussaye’s dragoons, of

whom he tells tales of quite incredible ferocity, even alleging

that they burnt the wounded.

On the eighteenth, having cut his way as far as Rivadavia, the Duke

of Dalmatia came to the conclusion that it was hopeless to endeavour

to carry on with him his heavy artillery and his baggage. On such

roads as he had been traversing, and amid the continual attacks

of the insurgents, they would be of more harm than use. In all

probability they would ere long fall so far behind that, along with

their escort, they would become separated from the army, and perhaps

fall into the hands of the Spaniards. Accordingly he sent orders to

the rear of the column that Merle’s division should conduct back to

Tuy all the heavy baggage and thirty-six guns of large calibre. Only

twenty pieces, mostly four-pounders, were to follow the expedition.

When the wagons had been turned back, there were only pack-horses

and mules sufficient to carry 3,000 rounds for the guns, and 500,000

cartridges for the infantry. This was a dangerously small equipment

for an army which had a whole kingdom to conquer, and which was

forced to waste many shots every day on keeping off the irrepressible

insurgents. But Soult was determined that he should not be accused

of shrinking from the task imposed on him, or allowing himself to be

thwarted by bands of half-armed peasants.

The heavy guns and the train, therefore, were deposited at Tuy, along

with the large body of sick and wounded who had already been left

there. General Lamartinière, an officer in whom Soult placed much

confidence, was left in command. He was warned that he would have to

take care of himself, as his communication with the army would be

cut the moment that Merle’s troops resumed their march to join the

rear of the advancing column. Nor did Soult err in this: when the

2nd Corps had gone on its way, Tuy and the neighbouring post of Vigo

were immediately beset by a thick swarm of peasants, who kept them

completely blockaded.

Having thus freed himself from every possible incumbrance, the Duke

of Dalmatia pushed briskly on for Orense and its all-important

bridge. The insurgents had not fallen back very far, and on the

nineteenth Heudelet’s division had two smart engagements with them,

and drove them back to Masside, in the hills to the left of the road.

The valley was here wider and the route better than on the previous

day, and much more satisfactory progress was made. On the twentieth,

still pushing on, Soult found that the ferry of Barbantes, ten miles

below Orense, was passable. The Galicians had scuttled the ferry-boat

in an imperfect fashion: some voltigeurs crossed on a raft, repaired

the boat, and set it working again. Soult then pushed across the

river some of Mermet’s battalions, intending to send them to Orense

by the south bank, if it should be found that the bridge was broken.

Meanwhile Heudelet continued to advance by the road on the north

side: his column arrived at its goal, and found Orense undefended and

its bridge intact. The townsfolk made no attempt to resist: they had

not left their dwellings like the peasants, and their magistrates

came out to surrender the place in due form. They appealed to Soult’s

clemency, by showing him that they had kept safe and properly cared

for 136 sick French soldiers, left behind by Marchand when he had

marched through the town in the preceding month.

Where, meanwhile, it will be asked, was the army of La Romana? The

Marquis had now 9,000 men collected at Oimbra and Monterey, and it

might have been expected that he would have moved forward to defend

the line of the Minho and the bridge of Orense, as soon as he heard

of the eastward march of the 2nd Corps. He made no such advance: his

dispatches show that the sole precautions which he took were to send

some officers with fifty men to aid the peasants of the lower Minho,

and afterwards to order another party, only 100 strong, to make sure

that the ferry-boats between Tuy and Orense were all destroyed or

removed--a task which (as we have already seen) they did not fully

perform. If he had brought up his whole force, instead of sending

out these paltry detachments, he would have made the task of Soult

infinitely more bloody and dangerous, though probably he could not

have prevented the Marshal from carrying out his plan. His quiescence

is not to be explained as resulting from a reluctance to fight,

though he was fully conscious of the low _morale_ of his army, and

was at his wits’ end to complete its dilapidated equipment. It came

from another cause, and one much less creditable to his military

capacity. Underrating Soult’s force, which he placed at 12,000

instead of 22,000 men, he was labouring under the idea that the 2nd

Corps was about to retire from Galicia altogether, in face of the

general insurrection and the want of food. The march of the French to

Orense appeared in his eyes as the first stage of a retreat up the

valley of the Sil to Ponferrada and Astorga, and he imagined that the

province would soon be quit of them. Hence he contented himself with

stirring up the peasantry, and left to them the task of harassing

Soult’s columns, being resolved to make the proverbial ‘bridge of

gold’ for a flying enemy. From this vain dream he was soon to be

awakened.

From the 21st to the 24th of February the Duke of Dalmatia was busily

employed in bringing up the rear divisions of his army to Orense.

None of them reached that place without fighting, for the bands which

had been driven off by Heudelet and Lahoussaye returned to worry

the troops of Delaborde, Merle, and Mermet, when they traversed the

route from Salvatierra to Orense. Jardon’s brigade of the last-named

division had a sharp fight near Rivadavia, and Merle had to clear

his way at Crecente by cutting to pieces a body of insurgents which

had fortified itself in that village. When the whole army was

concentrated between Rivadavia and Orense, the Marshal sent out large

detachments to sweep the valleys in the immediate neighbourhood of

those places. They found armed peasantry in every direction, but in

each case succeeded in thrusting them back into their hills, and

returned to Orense driving before them large herds of cattle, and

dragging behind them country wagons with a considerable amount of

grain. The longest and most important of these expeditions was one

made by Franceschi, who marched, with his own horsemen and one of

Heudelet’s brigades, along the road which the whole army was destined

to take in its invasion of Portugal. They routed one band of peasants

at Allariz, and another at Ginzo, half way to Monterey [February 23].

Still there was no sign of La Romana’s army, which remained behind

the mountains of the Sierra Cabrera in complete quiescence, though

Franceschi’s advanced posts were only twenty miles away[213].

[213] Le Noble says (p. 96) that at Ginzo the peasants had with

them General Mahy and La Romana’s vanguard division. But General

Arteche gives documentary evidence (p. 347) to prove that on that

day Mahy and his troops were at Baltar, twenty miles away behind

the mountains. If there were regulars present they were only

detachments or stragglers.

Soult kept his head quarters at Orense for nine days, during which

he was busied in collecting stores of food, repairing his artillery,

whose carriages had been badly shaken by the villainous roads, and in

endeavouring to pacify the country-side by proclamations and circular

letters to the notables and clergy. In this last scheme he met with

little success; from the bishop of Orense downwards almost every

leading man had taken refuge in the hills, and refused to return.

Silence or defiant replies answered the Marshal’s epistolary efforts.

His promises of protection and good government were sincere enough;

but the commentary on them was given by the excesses and atrocities

which his troops were committing in every outlying village. It was

not likely that the Galicians would come down from their fastnesses

to surrender[214].

[214] For the bishop of Orense’s sarcastic reply see Arteche, v.

351. For the general effect of the proclamation see St. Chamans:

of the atrocities of the French, _Los Guerrilleros Gallegos_ give

ample and sometimes incredible accounts.

The general advance of the army towards Portugal had been fixed for

March 4. It was not made under the most cheerful conditions. Not

only were the neighbouring peasantry still defiant as ever, but

bad news had come from the north. An aide-de-camp of Marshal Ney,

who had struggled through to Orense in despite of the insurgents,

brought a letter from his chief, which reported that the rising had

become general throughout the province, and apparently expressed

strong doubts as to the wisdom of invading Portugal before Galicia

was subdued. The Duke of Elchingen, as it would seem, wished his

colleague to draw back, and to aid him in suppressing the bands of

the coast and the upper Minho [215]. He might well doubt whether the

6th Corps would suffice for this task, if the 2nd Corps marched far

away towards Oporto, and got completely out of touch. Soult, however,

had the Emperor’s orders to advance into Portugal in his pocket. He

knew that if he disobeyed them no excuse would propitiate his master.

Probably he was not sorry to leave to Ney the unenviable task of

dealing with the ubiquitous and irrepressible Galician insurgents.

He sent back the message that he should march southward on March 4,

and continued his preparations. This resolve was not to the liking

of some of his subordinates: many of the officers who had served

with Junot in Portugal by no means relished the idea of returning to

that country. They did not conceal their feelings, and made the most

gloomy prophecies about the fate of the expedition. It was apparently

Loison who formed the centre of this clique of malcontents: he found

many sympathizers among his subordinates. Their discontent was the

basis upon which, two months later, the strange and obscure ‘Oporto

Conspiracy’ of Captain D’Argenton was to be based. At the present

moment, however, they contented themselves with denunciations of

the madness of the Emperor in planning the expedition, and of the

blind obedience of the Marshal in undertaking it. They told their

comrades that the numbers, courage, and ferocity of the Galicians

were as nothing compared with those of their southern neighbours, and

that during the oncoming operations those who found a sudden death

upon the battle-field would be lucky, for the Portuguese not only

murdered but tortured the prisoners, the wounded, and the stragglers.

It was fortunate for Soult that the majority of his officers paid

comparatively little attention to these forebodings, which they

rightly ascribed to the feelings of resentment and humiliation with

which the members of Junot’s army remembered the story of their

former disasters[216]. But it did not make matters easier for the

Marshal that even a small section of his lieutenants disbelieved in

the feasibility of his undertaking, and expected disaster to ensue.

Yet the opening scenes of the invasion of Portugal were to be so

brilliant and fortunate, that for a time the murmurs of the prophets

of evil were hushed.

[215] See Le Noble (p. 98) for this dispatch and its effect on

the _morale_ of the army.

[216] For the malcontents and their views see Le Noble, pp.

98-9. St. Chamans, on the other hand (p. 119), says that the

army started in good spirits and with a great contempt for all

insurgents, Spanish or Portuguese. As a trusted staff officer of

the Marshal, he no doubt represents the optimistic view at head

quarters.

On March 4 the Marshal’s head quarters were moved forward from Orense

to Alariz, on the road to Monterey and the frontier. The main body of

the army accompanied him, but Franceschi and Heudelet were already

far in front at Ginzo, only separated from La Romana’s outposts by

the Sierra Cabrera. From that point there are two difficult but

practicable roads[217] into Portugal: the one descends the valley of

the Lima and leads to Oporto by Viana and the coast. It is easier

than the second or inland route, which after crossing the Sierra

Cabrera descends to Monterey and Chaves, the frontier town of the

Portuguese province of Tras-os-Montes. But every military reason

impelled Soult to choose the second alternative. By marching on Viana

he would leave La Romana, whose presence he had now discovered, far

in his rear. The Marquis would be a bad general indeed if he did not

seize the opportunity of slipping back into Galicia, reoccupying

Orense, and setting the whole country-side aflame. It was infinitely

preferable to fall upon him from the front, rout him, and fling him

back among the Portuguese. Accordingly Franceschi, leading the whole

army, crossed the mountains on the fifth, and came hurtling into La

Romana’s cantonments long ere he was expected. Heudelet was just

behind him, Mermet and Delaborde a march further back: Merle brought

up the rear, guarding a convoy of 800 sick and wounded whom the

Marshal had resolved to bring on with him, rather than to leave them

at Orense to fall a prey to the insurgents. The dragoons of Lorges

and Lahoussaye were kept out on the right and left respectively,

watching the one the valley of the Lima, the other the head waters of

the Tamega.

[217] There was also a third road, that by Montalegre and

Ruivaens, by which Soult ultimately evacuated Portugal; but as it

was not available for wheeled traffic, it could not be used by an

army with artillery.

Down to the last moment the Marquis had been giving out his intention

of retiring into Portugal and co-operating with General Silveira, the

commandant of the Tras-os-Montes, in the defence of Chaves and the

line of the Tamega. But he was on very strained terms with his ally,

who showed no great alacrity to receive the Spaniards across the

frontier: his troops had been quarrelling with the Portuguese, and

he was very reluctant to expose his half-rallied battalions to the

ordeal of a battle, which Silveira openly courted.

On the very day on which Soult started from Orense, La Romana made

up his mind that, instead of joining the Portuguese, he would

escape eastwards by the single road, over and above that of Chaves,

which was open to him. Accordingly his army suddenly started off,

abandoning the meagre magazines which it had collected at Oimbra

and Verin, and made for Puebla de Senabria, on the borders of the

province of Leon, by the road which coasts along the north side of

the Portuguese frontier, through Osoño and La Gudina. This sudden

move bore the appearance of a mean desertion of the Portuguese in

their day of peril: but it was in other respects wise and prudent.

It discomfited all Soult’s plans, since he failed to catch the

army of Galicia, which escaped him and placed itself on his flank

and rear instead of on his front. It was small consolation to the

Marshal that Franceschi came on the rearguard of the Spaniards at

La Trepa near Osoño and routed it. Seven skeleton regiments, only

1,200 bayonets in all, under General Mahy, were caught retiring along

a hillside and completely ridden down by the French cavalry. Three

standards and 400 prisoners were captured, 300 men more were killed,

the rest dispersed. But La Romana’s main body, meanwhile, had got

away in safety, and Soult had failed to strike the blow which he

intended[218]. He was soon to hear of the Marquis again, in quarters

where he little expected and still less desired to find him[219].

[218] Compare the narrative of the colonel of the Barcelona Light

Infantry, printed by Arteche in v. 359-61 of his _Guerra de la

Independencia_, with the highly-coloured account in Le Noble,

104-5. The seven Spanish Corps engaged were Segovia, Zamora,

Barcelona, Majorca, Orense, Betanzos, Aragon. None of them had

more than 200 bayonets in line: the Galician regiments far less.

The three last-named corps lost a flag each. [Betanzos should be

substituted for Tuy in the list in Le Noble, p. 105, line 10.]

[219] Napier (ii. 47) is wrong in saying that La Romana escaped

via Braganza; he did not enter Portugal, but kept on his own side

of the frontier, on the Monterey-La Gudina-Puebla de Senabria

road.

Meanwhile the Portuguese were left alone to bear the brunt of the

attack of the 2nd Corps. It is time to relate and explain their

position, their resources, and their designs.

SECTION XIII: CHAPTER II

PORTUGAL AT THE MOMENT OF SOULT’S INVASION: THE NATION, THE REGENCY,

AND SIR JOHN CRADOCK

Soult’s vanguard crossed the Portuguese frontier between Monterey and

Chaves on March 9, 1809: it was exactly five months since the last

of Junot’s troops had evacuated the realm on October 9, 1808. In the

period which had elapsed between those two dates much might have been

done to develop--or rather to create--a scheme of national defence

and a competent army. Unhappily for Portugal the Regency had not

risen to the opportunity, and when the second French invasion came

upon them the military organization of the realm was still in a state

of chaos.

During the autumn months of 1808 the Portuguese Government had been

almost as sanguine and as careless as the Spanish Supreme Junta.

They had seen Junot beaten and expelled: they still beheld a large

British army in their midst; and they did not comprehend the full

extent of the impending danger, when the news came that Bonaparte was

nearing the Pyrenees, and that the columns of the ‘Grand Army’ were

debouching into the Peninsula. It was not till Moore had departed

that they began to conceive certain doubts as to the situation: nor

was it till Madrid had fallen that they at last realized that the

invader was once more at their gates, and that they must prepare to

defend themselves.

There were still two months of respite granted to them.

Portugal--like Andalusia--was saved for a moment by Moore’s march to

Sahagun. The great field army which Napoleon had collected for the

advance on Lisbon was turned off northwards to pursue the British,

and on the New Year’s day of 1809 the only French force in proximity

to the frontier of the realm was the division of Lapisse, which

Bonaparte had dropped at Salamanca to form the connecting link

between Soult and Ney in Galicia, and the troops under Victor and

King Joseph in the vicinity of Madrid.

But the danger was only postponed, not averted, by Moore’s daring

irruption into Old Castile. This the Portuguese Regency understood;

and during the first two months of 1809 they displayed a considerable

amount of energy, though it was in great part energy misdirected.

Their chief blunder was that instead of straining every nerve to

complete their regular army, on which the main stress of the invasion

was bound to fall, they diverted much of their zeal to the task of

raising a vast _levée en masse_ of the whole able-bodied population

of the realm. This error had its roots in old historical memories.

The deliverance of Portugal from the Spanish yoke in the long war of

independence in the seventeenth century, had been achieved mainly

by the _Ordenanza_, the old constitutional force of the realm,

which resembled the English _Fyrd_ of the Middle Ages. It had done

good service again in the wars of 1703-12, and even in the shorter

struggle of 1762. But in the nineteenth century it was no longer

possible to reckon upon it as a serious line of defence, especially

when the enemy to be held back was not the disorderly Spanish army

but the legions of Bonaparte. When there were not even arms enough

in Portugal to supply the line-battalions with a musket for every

man, it was insane to summon together huge masses of peasantry, and

to make over to them some of the precious firearms which should

have been reserved for the regulars. The majority, however, of the

_Ordenanza_ were not even supplied with muskets, they were given

pikes--weapons with which their ancestors had done good service in

1650, but which it was useless to serve out in 1809. The Regency

had procured some 17,000[220] from the British Government, and had

caused many thousands more to be manufactured. Both on the northern

and the eastern frontier great hordes of country-folk, equipped with

these useless and antiquated arms, were gathered together. Destitute

of discipline and of officers, insufficiently supplied with food,

the prey of every rumour, true or false, that ran along the border,

they were a source of danger rather than of strength to the realm.

The cry of ‘treachery,’ which inevitably arises among armed mobs,

was always being raised in their encampments. Hence came tumults and

murders, for the peasantry had a strong suspicion of the loyalty of

the governing classes--the result of the subservience to the French

invader which had been displayed by many of the authorities, both

civil and military, in 1808. Orders which they did not understand,

or into which a sinister meaning could be read by a suspicious mind,

generally caused a riot, and sometimes the assassination of the

unfortunate commander whom the Regency had placed over the horde.

In Oporto the state of affairs was particularly bad: the bishop,

though a sincere patriot and a man of energy, had drunk too deeply

of the delights of power during his rule in the summer months. After

being made a member of the Regency by Dalrymple, he should have

remained at Lisbon and worked with his colleagues. But returning to

his own flock, he reassumed the authority which he had possessed

during the early days of the insurrection, and pursued a policy of

his own, which often differed from that of his Regency at large, and

was sometimes in flagrant opposition to it. His position, in fact,

was similar to that of Palafox at Saragossa, and like the Aragonese

general he often practised the arts of demagogy in order to keep

firm his influence over the populace. He was all for the system of

the _levée en masse_; and summoned together unmanageable bands which

he was able neither to equip nor to control. He praised their zeal,

was wilfully blind to their frequent excesses, and seldom tried to

turn their energies into profitable channels. Indeed, he was so

ignorant of military matters himself, that he had no useful orders

to give. He ignored the advice of the Portuguese generals in his

district, and got little profit from that of two foreign officers

whom the British Government sent him--the Hanoverian General Von

der Decken and the Prussian Baron Eben. These gentlemen he seems to

have conciliated, and to have played off against the native military

authorities. But if they gave him good counsel, there are no signs in

his actions that he turned it to account. All the British witnesses

who passed through Oporto in January and February 1809, describe the

place as being in a state of patriotic frenzy, and under mob law

rather than administered by any regular and legal government[221].

The only fruitful military effort made in this part of Portugal was

that of the gallant Sir Robert Wilson, who raised there in November

and December his celebrated ‘Loyal Lusitanian Legion.’ This was

intended to be the core of a subsidiary Portuguese division in

British pay, distinct from the national army. When Wilson arrived

in Oporto the bishop welcomed him, and forwarded in every way the

formation of the corps. In a few days the Legion had 3,000 recruits

of excellent quality, of whom Wilson could arm and clothe only some

1,300, for the equipment which he had brought with him was limited.

He soon discovered, however, that the bishop’s zeal in his behalf was

mainly due to the desire to have a solid force at hand which should

be independent of the Portuguese generals. He wished the Legion to

be, as it were, his own body-guard. Sir Robert was ill pleased, and

being unwilling to mix himself in the domestic feuds of the bishop

and the Regency, or to become the tool of a faction, quitted Oporto

as soon as his men could march. With one strong battalion, a couple

of squadrons of cavalry, and an incomplete battery--under 1,500 men

in all--he moved first to Villa Real (Dec. 14), and then to the

frontier, where he posted himself near Almeida and took over the task

of observing Lapisse’s division, which from its base at Salamanca

was threatening the Portuguese border. Of his splendid services in

this direction we shall have much to tell. The unequipped portion of

the Legion, left behind at Oporto, was handed over to Baron Eben,

and became involved in the tumultuous and unhappy career of the

bishop[222].

[220] List of Arms sent to Portugal on p. 9 of _Parliamentary

Papers_ for 1809.

[221] The Portuguese volume for December 1808 and

January-February 1809 in the Record Office being mysteriously

lost, Cradock’s correspondence and that of the other British

officers in Portugal is no longer available. But Napier took

copious notes from it, while it was still forthcoming; they will

be found on pp. 425-31 of his vol. ii, and bear witness to a

complete state of anarchy in Oporto.

[222] The first battalion used to call the second ‘Baron Eben’s

runaways’ when they met again, as Mayne assures us in his

_History of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion_.

Meanwhile Lisbon was almost as disturbed as Oporto, and might

have lapsed into the same state of anarchy, if a British garrison

had not been on the spot. The mistaken policy of the Regency had

led to the formation of sixteen so-called ‘legions[223]’ in the

capital and suburbs. These tumultuary levies had few officers and

hardly any arms but pikes. They were under no sort of discipline,

and devoted themselves to the self-imposed duty of hunting for

spies and ‘_Afrancesados_.’ Led by demagogues of the streets, they

paraded up and down Lisbon to beat of drum, arresting persons whom

they considered suspicious, especially foreign residents of all

nationalities. The Regency having issued a decree prohibiting this

practice [January 29], the armed levies only assembled in greater

numbers next night, and engaged in a general chase after unpopular

citizens, policemen, and aliens of all kinds. Many fugitives were

only saved from death by taking refuge in the guard-houses and the

barracks where the garrison was quartered. Isolated British soldiers

were assaulted, some were wounded, and parties of ‘legionaries’

actually stopped aides-de-camp and orderlies carrying dispatches,

and stripped them of the documents they were bearing. The mob was

inclined, indeed, to be ill-disposed towards their allies, from the

suspicion that they were intending to evacuate Lisbon and to retire

from the Peninsula. They had seen the baggage and non-combatants

left behind by Moore put on ship-board; early in February they

beheld the troops told off for the occupation of Cadiz embark and

disappear. When they also noticed that the forts at the Tagus mouth

were being dismantled[224] they made up their minds that the British

were about to desert them, without making any attempt to defend

Portugal. Hence came the malevolent spirit which they displayed. It

died down when their suspicions were proved unfounded by the arrival

of Beresford and other British officers, at the beginning of March,

with resources for the reorganization of the Portuguese army, and

still more when a little later heavy reinforcements from England

began to pour into the city. But in the last days of January and the

first of February matters at Lisbon had been in a most dangerous and

critical condition: the Regency, utterly unable to keep order, had

hinted to Sir John Cradock that he must take his own measures against

the mob, and for several days the British general had kept the

garrison under arms, and planted artillery in the squares and broader

streets--exactly as Junot had done seven months before. The ‘legions’

were cowed, and most fortunately no collision occurred: if a single

shot had been fired in anger, there would have been an end of the

Anglo-Portuguese alliance, and it is more than likely that Cradock--a

man of desponding temperament--would have abandoned the country.

[223] They were raised by a decree of Dec. 23, 1808.

[224] This was a proper precaution, as the sea-forts could be of

no use for defending Lisbon from a land attack, while, if Lisbon

got into French hands again, they would have been invaluable for

resisting an attack from the side of the sea. But Cradock was far

too precipitate in commencing an operation which betrayed such

want of confidence.

His force at this moment was by no means large: when Moore marched

for Salamanca in October he had left behind in Portugal six

battalions of British and four of German infantry[225], three

squadrons of the 20th Light Dragoons (the regiment that had been so

much cut up at Vimiero), one of the 3rd Light Dragoons of the King’s

German Legion, and five batteries, only one of which was horsed.

From Salamanca, when on the eve of starting on the march to Sahagun,

Sir John had sent back two regiments to Portugal, in charge of his

great convoys of sick and heavy baggage[226]. To compensate for this

deduction from his army he had called up a brigade of the troops left

in Portugal; but only one battalion of it--the 82nd--reached him

in time to join in his Castilian campaign[227]. The net result was

that seven British infantry regiments from Moore’s army were left

behind, in addition to the four German corps. Two more had arrived

from England in November[228], and a fresh regiment of dragoons in

December[229].

[225] These were the 2/9th, 29th, 1/40th, 1/45th, 82nd, 97th,

and 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 7th line battalions of the King’s German

Legion.

[226] The 1/3rd and 5/60th. The last battalion was mainly

composed of foreigners, and had received more than 200 recruits

from the deserters of Junot’s army. Moore would not trust it, and

sent it back. It afterwards did splendid service under Wellesley.

[227] The battalions that did not get up in time were the 1/45th

and 97th.

[228] These were the 3/27th and 2/31st, which had sailed with

Baird from Portsmouth, but were sent on from Corunna to Lisbon

when the rest of Baird’s expedition landed in Galicia.

[229] The 14th Light Dragoons.

Thus when Sir John Cradock took over the command at Lisbon on

December 14, 1808, he had at his disposal in all thirteen battalions

of infantry, seven squadrons of cavalry, and five batteries, a force

of about 12,000 men[230]. But not more than 10,000 were effective,

for Sir John Moore had left behind precisely those of his regiments

which were most sickly, when he marched for Spain. He had moreover

discharged more than 2,000 additional sick upon Portugal ere he began

field operations: they were encumbering the hospitals of Almeida and

Lamego when Cradock appeared. The 10,000 men fit for service were

scattered all over Portugal: the two battalions, which had just come

back from Spain, and the two others which had been too late to join

Moore, were in the north, at Almeida and Lamego[231]. One battalion

was in garrison at Elvas[232]. Six lay in Lisbon, as also did the

whole of the cavalry and guns[233]: two were on the march from

Abrantes to Almeida[234].

[230] Napier (ii. 5) much under-estimates when he calls the

whole ‘10,000 including sick.’ Cradock’s regiments add up to

about 12,133 men including those in hospital. In addition there

were all Moore’s sick, who, though many had died in the interim,

presented on Feb. 18 in Portugal convalescents to the number of

2,000 men.

[231] The 1/3rd, 1/45th, 5/60th, and 97th.

[232] The 1/40th.

[233] The four German battalions, the 3/27th and 2/31st.

[234] The 2/9th and 29th.

Such a dispersion of forces would have appalled the most enterprising

of generals, and this was a title to which Cradock had certainly no

claims. The two obvious courses between which he had to choose, were

either to concentrate his little army on the frontier and make as

much display of it in the face of the French as might be possible,

or to abandon all idea of protecting exterior Portugal, and collect

the scattered regiments in or about Lisbon. Cradock chose the second

alternative. He argued that he was too weak to be of any effectual

service on the frontier, and moreover found that there would be a

vast difficulty in moving forward even the Lisbon garrison, for

nearly all the available transport had been requisitioned for the

use of Moore’s army, and had been carried off into Spain. Neither of

these pleas is convincing: with regard to the first, it is merely

necessary to point out that Sir Robert Wilson, with 1,500 men of

the Lusitanian Legion, not yet three months old, made his presence

felt on the frontier, checked Lapisse, and kept the whole province

of Salamanca in a state of unrest. Ten thousand British bayonets

and sabres could have done much more. As to the food and supplies,

Cradock was arguing in the old eighteenth-century style, as if a

British army was bound to move with all its baggage and impedimenta,

its women and children. If he had chosen to ‘march light,’ and to

take the route through the fertile and well-peopled Estremadura, he

could have reached Abrantes or Almeida or any other goal that he

chose.

The fact was that the reasons for refusing to adopt a ‘forward

policy’ were moral and not physical. Cradock, in common with Sir John

Moore and many other British officers, believed that Portugal could

not be defended, and was thinking more of securing himself a safe

embarkation than of exercising any influence on the main current of

the war.

When Moore’s army had passed out of sight, and was known to be

retiring in the direction of Galicia, it seemed to Cradock that

his own position was hopeless. Even if granted time to concentrate

his scattered battalions, he would be forced to fly to the sea and

take shipping the moment that any serious French force crossed the

frontier. He had not sufficiently accurate information to enable him

to see that both Lapisse at Salamanca, and the weak divisions of the

4th Corps which lay in the valley of the Tagus, could not possibly

move forward against him. It would have been insane for either of

these forces to have attacked Portugal--the one was at this moment

less than 10,000, the other about 12,000 strong--they were without

communications, and separated by 100 miles of pathless sierras.

Moreover the troops in the valley of the Tagus were fully occupied in

observing the Spanish army of Estremadura. At the opening of the New

Year, therefore, Cradock was in absolutely no danger, and might have

gone forward either to Abrantes or to Almeida in perfect security. In

the first position he would have menaced the flank of the 4th Corps:

in the second he would have exercised a useful pressure on Lapisse.

In either case he would have encouraged the Portuguese and lent moral

support to the Spaniards.

But Cradock was possessed by that miserable theory which was so

frequently expounded by the men of desponding mind during the

early years of the Peninsular War, to the effect that Portugal was

indefensible, and would have to be evacuated whenever a strong French

force approached its frontier[235]. It was fortunate for England and

for Europe that Wellesley had other views. The history of the next

three years was to show that a British general could find something

better to do than to pack up his baggage and prepare to embark,

whenever the enemy came down in superior strength to the Portuguese

border.

[235] Sir John Moore himself ventilated this view in a letter

to Lord Castlereagh from Salamanca, Nov. 25, 1808. It is this

fact that explains Napier’s very tender treatment of Cradock,

who quoted Moore as his justifying authority. Moreover Cradock

had been very obliging in placing all his papers at Napier’s

disposal, a fact which prepossessed the historian in his favour.

No doubt Cradock would have had to take to his transports if the

French had possessed on January 1, 1809, an army of 40,000 men

available for the invasion of Portugal, and ready to advance. They

did not happen to own any such force; and till he was certain that

such a force existed, Cradock was gravely to blame for ordering every

British soldier to fall back on Lisbon, and for openly commencing to

destroy the sea-forts of the capital. It is true that the dispatches

which he received from home gave him many directions as to what he

was to do if the enemy appeared in overpowering strength: he was to

blow up the shore batteries, destroy all military and naval stores,

and embark with the British troops and as many Portuguese as could

be induced to follow. But this was only to take place ‘upon the

actual approach of the enemy towards Lisbon in such strength as may

render all further resistance ineffectual[236].’ To commence these

preparations when the nearest troops of the enemy were at Salamanca

and Almaraz was premature and precipitate in the highest degree. Till

the French began to move, every endeavour should have been made to

encourage the Portuguese and to maintain a show--even if it were but

a vain show--of an intention to defend the frontier. If Lapisse had

heard that Cradock was at Almeida he would have been nailed down to

Salamanca: if Victor had heard that he was at Alcantara, or even at

Abrantes, he would never have dared to pursue Cuesta into southern

Estremadura.

[236] Castlereagh to Cradock, Dec. 24, 1808. Napier makes on

this the curious remark that the ministry gave contradictory

orders when they told Cradock to make a show of preparation for

resistance, yet to get ready for embarkation if it should prove

necessary.

Cradock, however, drew into Lisbon every available man: Brigadier

Cameron, with the troops from Almeida and Oporto, started back on a

weary march from the north, via Coimbra, bringing not only his own

four battalions, but 1,500 convalescents and returned stragglers from

Moore’s army. Richard Stewart, with the two battalions that had been

at Abrantes, also came in to the capital, and all the British troops

were concentrated by the beginning of February, save the 40th regiment,

which still lay at Elvas. Having thus got together about 10,000 men,

Cradock, with almost incredible timidity, began to draw them back to

Passo d’Arcos, a place behind Lisbon near the mouth of the Tagus, from

which embarkation was easy. When Villiers, the British minister at

Lisbon, remonstrated with him on the deplorable political consequences

of assuming this ignoble position on the water’s edge, Cradock replied,

“I must object to take up a ‘false position,’ say Alcantara, or to

occupy the heights in front of Lisbon, which would only defend a

certain position, and leave the remainder [of Portugal?] to the power

of the enemy, one which we must leave upon his approach, and seek

another, bearing the appearance of flight, and yet not securing our

retreat. The whole having announced the intention of defending Lisbon,

but giving up that idea upon the approach of the enemy, for positions

liable to be turned on every side cannot be persevered in by an

inferior force.”

On the day [February 15] upon which Cradock wrote this extraordinary

piece of English prose composition, whose grammar is as astounding

as its argument, the nearest French troops were at Tuy in Galicia,

Salamanca in Leon, and the bridge of Arzobispo on the central Tagus,

points respectively 230, 250, and 240 miles distant from Lisbon as

the crow flies, and infinitely more by road. Further comment is

hardly necessary.

At this moment Cradock might have had at his disposal 2,000 more

British troops, but he had chosen to fall in with Sir George Smith’s

hasty and unauthorized scheme for the occupation of Cadiz[237],

and had sent off to that port a whole brigade[238], under General

Mackenzie. He also dispatched orders to Colonel Kemmis of the 40th

to hand over Elvas to the Portuguese, and march to Seville. The

battalion moved into Andalusia, and placed itself at the disposition

of Mr. Frere, who found it as useless as the force which Smith had

drawn off to Cadiz. It was several months before the 40th rejoined

the army of Portugal.

[237] See p. 27.

[238] The 3/27th, 2/9th, 29th, and some small details of

artillery, &c.

Influenced by the remonstrances of Mr. Villiers, and somewhat

comforted by the fact that the French armies had nowhere crossed the

Portuguese frontier, Cradock was at last persuaded to give up his

position at Passo d’Arcos; he fixed his head quarters at Lumiar, left

2,000 men in garrison at Lisbon, and cantoned the remainder of his

army at Saccavem and other places a few miles in front of the city.

This was better than leaving them on the sea-shore; but the move was

no more than a miserable half measure. It was almost as indicative

of an intention to depart without fighting as the retreat to Passo

d’Arcos had been. In short, from January to the end of April the

British army exercised no influence whatever on the military affairs

of the Peninsula. Yet by March it was beginning to grow formidable

in numbers: early in that month all the troops which had been drawn

off to Cadiz were sent to Lisbon, and by the addition of seven good

battalions to his corps[239] Cradock found himself at the head of

over 16,000 men. There were but 800 effective cavalry, and of the six

batteries only two, incredible as it may seem, were properly horsed,

though three months had passed by since the general had begun his

first complaints on this point[240]. But 16,000 British troops were

a force not to be despised, and if Wellesley or some other competent

officer had been in command, we cannot doubt that they would have

been turned to some profitable use. Under Cradock they remained

cantoned in the suburbs of Lisbon for the whole time during which

Soult was completing his conquest of Oporto and northern Portugal,

and Victor executing his invasion of Estremadura. It was not till

Soult’s advanced guard was on the Vouga [April 6] that Hill and

Beresford[241] succeeded in inducing the general to carry forward his

head quarters to Leiria and his outposts to Thomar[242]. Fortunately

his tenure of command was at last drawing to an end. On April 22 Sir

Arthur Wellesley arrived in Lisbon and took over charge of the troops

in Portugal. How startling were the consequences of this change of

generals we shall soon see: ere May was out the whole Peninsula

realized once more that there was a British Army within its limits--a

fact that might well have passed unnoticed during the last four

months.

[239] Not only Mackenzie’s brigade, but also Tilson’s brigade,

the 2/87th and 1/88th, and the stronger battalions of H.

Campbell, which had gone to Cadiz directly from England--the

first battalions of the 2nd (Coldstream) and 3rd (Scots Fusilier)

Guards.

[240] In a letter of March 20 to Mr. Villiers, Cradock makes the

astounding statement that after scouring all Portugal for horses

for three months, he was still unable to provide them for four

out of his six batteries.

[241] Cradock’s controversial letters to Lord Londonderry,

printed in the latter’s history (ii. 286-7), do no more than bear

out Londonderry’s accusations of torpidity against Sir John.

[242] Cradock contended that before the arrival of Hill and

Sherbrooke and the return of Mackenzie from Cadiz, he had only

10,225 men, and, deducting sick and garrisons for the Lisbon

forts, could only have marched out with 5,221. [Letter to

Londonderry on p. 302, vol. ii. of the latter’s work.] He had

sent 3,500 men to Cadiz and Seville, on Sir George Smith’s

unhappy inspiration, or his force would have been much larger.

As to the resolution to march against Soult, which he afterwards

claimed to have made, it is sufficient to say that Wellesley on

his arrival wrote to Castlereagh that ‘Sir John Cradock does

not appear to have entertained any decided intention of moving

forward: on the contrary he appears (by his letters to Mr.

Villiers) to have intended to go no further till he should hear

of Victor’s movements.’ [_Well. Corresp._, Lisbon, April 24.]

SECTION XIII: CHAPTER III

THE PORTUGUESE ARMY: ITS HISTORY AND ITS REORGANIZATION

While the Regency was wasting much of its energy on the arming of

the undisciplined masses of the _Ordenanza_, and while Cradock sat

supine at Passo d’Arcos and at Saccavem, one useful piece of work at

least was being taken in hand. This was the reorganization of the

Portuguese regular army, a task which the Regency determined, though

only so late as February, 1809, to hand over to a British general

officer.

To explain the chaotic condition of the force at the moment when

Soult was just about to enter Portugal, a short account of its

previous history is necessary. It had received its existing shape

from a foreign hand, that of the well-known ‘Conde de La Lippe,’

i.e. the German Marshal, Frederick Count of Lippe-Bückeburg, who

had been entrusted with its command during the short war with Spain

in 1762. He it was who first gave Portugal an army of the modern

type, modelled on the ordinary system of the eighteenth century,

and showing many traces of adaptations from a Prussian original.

The Marshal was a great organizer and a man of mark: his name is

perhaps best remembered in connexion with the citadel of Elvas,

which he rebuilt, and christened La Lippe after himself: under that

designation we shall repeatedly have to mention it while describing

the early years of the Peninsular War.

As he left it, the Portuguese army consisted of twenty-four regiments

of the line, each forming a single battalion of seven companies and

806 men. There were twelve regiments of cavalry, each originally

composed of no more than 240 sabres, and three regiments of artillery

of eight batteries each, besides a few garrison companies of that

arm. After La Lippe’s departure the army had shared in the general

decay of strength and organization in the kingdom, which prevailed

during the reign of the mad queen Maria, and her son the feeble

Prince-Regent John. But the lack of mere numerical strength was not

nearly so fatal to its efficiency as the rustiness and rottenness of

its internal machinery. Under an octogenarian commander-in-chief, the

Duke of Alafoens, every department of the army had been decaying in

the latter years of the eighteenth century. All the typical faults

of an army of the _ancien régime_ after a long period of peace were

developed to the highest possible pitch. Commissions were sold, or

given away by intrigue and corruption, often to persons of unsuitable

rank and education[243]: promotion was slow and perfectly arbitrary:

the pay of the officers was very low, while every incentive to petty

jobbing and embezzlement was afforded by the vicious system under

which the colonel contracted with the government for his regiment,

and the captain with the colonel for his company. In the Portuguese

army, as in all others where this antiquated practice prevailed, the

temptation to fill the muster-rolls with ‘dead-heads’ and absentees,

so that the contractor might save their food and pocket their pay,

had been too strong for the ordinary officer to resist. Hence came

the empty ranks of the battalions, the ludicrous disproportion

of horses to men in the cavalry, the depleted condition of the

regimental stores and equipment.

[243] All authorities agree as to the inferior character and

status of a great part of the Portuguese officers. Dumouriez

remarks [1766] that ‘their pay does not enable them to live

better than the common soldiers, whose comrades and relatives

they often are. The subaltern ranks are filled from the

inferior classes, and their hatred of foreigners prevents their

association with, or receiving any improvement from, them: hence

it is that they remain in such ignorance and wretchedness’ (p.

17). Halliday remarks (p. 106) that ‘even captains had not

the rank of gentlemen.’ Compare with this Patterson’s curious

note (vol. i. p. 250), ‘The familiarity that subsists between

the native officers and their men renders ineffective all

the authority of the former, at the same time defeating the

object to be attained by discipline. They eat, gamble, and

drink together. I have even seen them waltzing and figuring

off in the _contra-danza_, captains with corporals, majors

with drumboys--all Jack-fellows well met, and excellent boon

companions. They will not of themselves do anything, their good

qualities must be elicited by strangers. I know of nothing that

stamps the character of Lord Beresford as a man of energy and

perseverance, more than the way in which he has organized them,

and from a miserable undisciplined rabble produced, in course of

time, a fair body of fighting troops, who performed (encouraged

by their English officers) some spirited service during the war.’

The short Spanish war of 1801-2 had revealed the complete

disorganization of the army. Hasty measures were taken to strengthen

it: in the moment of panic every infantry regiment was ordered to

raise a second battalion, and though the number of companies per

battalion was lowered from seven to five, yet as each of them was

now to consist of 150 instead of 116 men, the total strength of each

infantry corps was raised to 1,500 officers and men. At the same time

the cavalry regiments were supposed to have been increased to 470

sabres[244], and a fourth regiment of artillery was created. Nor was

this all: an ‘Experimental Legion’ for light infantry service, eight

companies strong, with a couple of squadrons and a horse-artillery

battery attached to it, was soon afterwards raised by the Marquis

D’Alorna.

[244] Of these, twelve squadrons were originally cuirassiers

(Dumouriez, p. 18), but their armament had been discarded before

1800, and one regiment only was light horse.

But after the peace of Badajoz had been signed the army was allowed

to sink back into its old sloth and inefficiency. When Junot entered

Portugal in December, 1807, it is doubtful if there were as many

as 20,000 troops really embodied, though the nominal total of the

national army reached nearly 50,000 men[245].

[245]

Twenty-four regiments of infantry of two battalions each 36,000

twelve regiments of cavalry at 470 5,640

four regiments of artillery at 989 3,956

ten garrison companies of artillery (veterans) 1,300

‘Experimental Legion,’ engineers, &c. 1,500

------

Total 48,396

Halliday gives an even larger figure, 52,204.

Portugal had a few keen soldiers (such as Gomez Freire de Andrade,

and the renegade D’Alorna), who had received abroad a good military

education, and had even written military books. But the majority of

the officers were slack, ignorant, and incompetent; while the men

were half-drilled, badly disciplined, and ill-equipped. The only

attempt which had been made to introduce any of the modern military

discoveries which had been worked out in the wars of the French

Revolution, consisted in the creation of the already-mentioned

‘Experimental Legion’ which D’Alorna had been allowed to raise and

to train with a new light-infantry drill, adapted by himself from

French models. The main body of the army looked with some jealousy

and suspicion on this corps, and had made no effort to copy it.

The French invasion of Portugal had dashed to pieces the old regular

army. Junot, it will be remembered, had disbanded the greater part

of the men, and formed with the remainder a few battalions, which he

had begun to send off to France ere the insurrection of June, 1808,

broke out. Some of them took an involuntary share in the first siege

of Saragossa: others were hurled into the red holocaust of Wagram.

When Portugal rose against the invader, the local juntas endeavoured

to call back to arms all the dispersed officers and men, to serve as

a nucleus for the insurrectionary hosts. The system of recruiting

which La Lippe had introduced made this comparatively easy: he had

instituted regimental districts in a very complete form. Each corps

was named after a particular town or region[246], drew its conscripts

from that locality, and was usually quartered in it. When Junot

disbanded the old army, the men naturally returned to their homes.

It resulted that when, for example, the Oporto Junta summoned out

to service the late members of the 6th and 18th regiments of the

line, the two units belonging to the Oporto district, it could be

certain of finding the greater part of the rank and file without much

difficulty. To reconstitute in a hurry the corps of officers was a

much harder matter: a disproportionate number of the more competent

holders of commissions had been drafted into the contingent sent

to France: comparatively few resided in their proper regimental

districts, many in Lisbon, which was still in Junot’s hands. Hence

the battalions which fought under Leite at Evora, or accompanied

Wellesley to Vimiero, bore their old names indeed, but were not

merely ill-equipped and low in numbers, but lacked a due supply of

officers. Considering the inefficiency of the regiments even before

they were destroyed by Junot, they might now be described as no more

than ‘the shadow of a shade.’

[246] Except two Lisbon regiments, named Viera Tellez and Freire,

from former colonels of distinction [Nos. 4 and 16].

When the French had been driven out of Portugal, and the Junta of

Regency took in hand the reconstruction and enlargement of the army,

the problem of organization seemed almost insoluble. The government

decreed that the regiments of infantry of the line should be raised

to their full establishment of 1,500, a figure which they had never

really attained in the old days. It was also decided to create six

new battalions of riflemen (Cazadores), a class of infantry of

which D’Alorna’s ‘Experimental Legion’ had hitherto been the sole

representatives in Portugal. As to the cavalry and artillery, it was

an obvious fact that the dearth of horses in the kingdom made it

impossible to enlarge the number of units. The twelve old regiments

of horse[247], the thirty-two old batteries of artillery were to be

reconstructed, but no new ones were to be created.

[247] It was intended, however, to give each cavalry regiment an

extra squadron.

Considering that the old corps of officers in Portugal was

notoriously incompetent, it was hard to see how the expanded army was

to be drilled and disciplined. About 25,000 recruits were suddenly

shot into the old _cadres_; they could be readily procured, for

not only were volunteers forthcoming in great numbers, but if they

ran short a stringent conscription law was in existence. But how

were the regiments to be officered? It was true that a considerable

amount of the raw material for officers was obtainable, for patriotic

enthusiasm was driving the young men of the upper classes into the

army, in a way that had never before been seen--the service had not

hitherto been popular, owing to its poor pay and prospects. But one

cannot officer raw recruits with equally raw ensigns, and call the

result a regular army. Moreover, arms and equipment were lamentably

deficient: Junot had confiscated and destroyed almost all the store

of arms belonging to the old army: it is said that the insurgents

had not 10,000 serviceable muskets among them when Wellesley landed.

The British had distributed some 42,000 more between August and

December[248]; but what were these among so many? There were to be

over 50,000 regulars, when the establishment was completed, and

the Regency hoped to call out some 40,000 militia when the first line

of defence had been equipped, and after that to arm the vast masses

of the _Ordenanza_.

[248] _Parliamentary Papers_, 1309. Return No. 5, p. 9.

[Illustration: _Portuguese Dragoon of the 1st (Alcantara) Regiment_

_From a drawing of 1809._

_Walker & Cockerell Ph. Sc._]

The natural results followed. In obedience to the decree issued by

the Regency, a considerable number of men were collected at each

regimental dépôt. Of these about one-third, on an average, were old

soldiers: but the proportion varied, for some corps had suffered more

than others from the drafts of trained men which Junot had sent off

to France. A good many of the regiments succeeded, so far as numbers

went, in constituting their two battalions without much difficulty.

Others were less fortunate, and could only raise one: two were so

hopelessly incomplete that Beresford distributed the few hundred men

whom they could produce among other corps, and temporarily disbanded

them[249]. It was the same with the cavalry, of which two regiments

were wholly without horses, and several were so absurdly short of

mounts that they could not be used[250]. Even of the corps which

were not dissolved, several were so weak that they had not recruited

themselves up to half their nominal strength even by September[251].

This was more especially the case in the Alemtejo, where the

population displayed an apathy that contrasted strongly with the

turbulent enthusiasm prevalent in Lisbon and in the North.

[249] The 8th and 22nd, both Alemtejo regiments, were entirely

drafted off, and were raised again afresh with recruits in the

autumn.

[250] The 2nd and 3rd, both Alemtejo regiments, were never horsed

during the whole war, and did foot-service in garrisons of the

interior.

[251] In September the 3rd, 5th, 15th, 21st, and 24th had not

raised their second battalions. Of these the 5th and 15th were

Alemtejo regiments.

Two invaluable sets of Returns, in the Record Office, show us that,

as far as mere numbers went, the Regency had not done so much as

it should, in the way of increasing the total of men under arms,

during the two months that followed the Convention of Cintra. On

September 13, according to a report from Baron Decken, who had

gone round the insurrectionary armies of Freire, Leite, and the

Monteiro Mor, there were under arms 13,272 line infantry, 3,384 light

infantry (Cazadores), 1,812 cavalry, and 19,000 militia: the force

of artillery is not given. But of these 37,000 men only 13,600

had serviceable weapons and equipment, and were fit to take the

field[252].

[252] Report of Baron Decken, Sept. 13, 1808 (Record Office).

On November 26 these figures had risen to 22,361 infantry, 3,422

cavalry, 4,031 artillery, and 20,880 militia. But, owing to the

importation of English muskets during the last two months, there were

now 31,833 men properly equipped, of whom 2,052 were mounted men. The

remaining 19,000 had still nothing more than pikes, or non-military

firearms, such as fowling-pieces and blunderbusses: 1,400 cavalry

were still without horses[253].

[253] Return of the Portuguese army, Nov. 26 (Record Office).

The figures are very moderate, but the worst part of the situation

was that a collection of 1,000 or 1,500 men does not constitute

a regiment, even if 300 or 400 of them chance to have been old

soldiers. There were not, it is clear, muskets enough to arm more

than two-thirds of the rank and file: belts, pouches, knapsacks, and

other equipment were still more deficient. Yet the really fatal point

was that there was a wholly inadequate number of officers, and that

of those who were forthcoming the elder men were mostly incompetent,

and the younger entirely untrained. In the official correspondence of

the early months of 1809 the most prominent fact that emerges is the

difficulty that was found in discovering colonels and majors capable

of licking into shape the incoherent mass of men at the regimental

head quarters, and of teaching the newly-appointed junior officers

their duty. It seemed that their long peace-service in small garrison

towns had taken all energy and initiative out of the seniors of the

army of the _ancien régime_. They gazed with despair on the task

before them, and seemed quite incapable of coping with it. When a

British general took over the command of the Portuguese army, he

complained that ‘Long habits of disregard to duty, and consequent

laziness, make it not only difficult but almost impossible to induce

the senior officers of this service to enter into any regular and

continued attention to the duties of their situations, and neither

reward nor punishment will induce them to bear up against the

fatigue[254].’ It was only when a whole generation of colonels had

been cleared away that the army grew efficient, and the reorganized

regiments began to distinguish themselves in the field.

[254] Beresford to Wellesley, _Wellington Supplementary

Dispatches_, vi. p. 774.

For the purpose of mobilization every regiment had been sent in the

autumn of 1808 to its proper head quarters, in the centre of its

recruiting district. There they still lay in the end of February,

when Soult was drawing near the frontier. There was absolutely no

Portuguese army in the field, only a number of battalions, squadrons,

and batteries, in a more or less imperfect state of organization,

scattered broadcast over the country. They were, as we have already

seen, still insufficiently supplied with arms and equipment. Of

transport and train, to enable them to move, there was hardly a

trace. The only thing approaching a concentration of force was that

in Lisbon and its immediate vicinity there were seven regiments

of foot and three of horse, which were there assembled simply

because their head quarters and their recruiting ground lay in this

quarter[255]. Of the remainder of the infantry two regiments were in

Algarve, in the far south; five in the Alemtejo; four in Beira; two

in the Tras-os-Montes, four in Oporto and the adjoining province of

Entre-Douro-e-Minho. It was with the last six alone that Soult had to

deal when he invaded northern Portugal[256]: not one of the others

was moved up to aid the northern regiments in holding him back.

[255] These were the 1st, 4th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 19th of the

line, and the 1st, 4th, and 7th cavalry. Of the foot the 1st,

4th, 10th, and 16th were Lisbon regiments, the 7th was named from

and belonged to Setubal, the 13th to Peniche, the 19th to Cascaes.

[256] These were the 6th, 9th, 12th, 18th, 21st, and 24th. The

6th and 18th belonged to Oporto, the 9th to Viana, the 12th to

Chaves, the 21st to Valenza, the 24th to Braganza.