The Spanish right was annihilated, and--what was worse--Blake had

lost possession of the only road by which he could withdraw and

join Areizaga. Meanwhile Habert’s battalions had not followed the

cavalry in their charge, but had turned upon the exposed flank of

the Spanish centre, and were attacking it in side and rear. It is

greatly to Blake’s credit that his firmness did not give way in this

distressing moment. He threw back his right, and sent up into line

such of Lazan’s battalions from his rear line as had not yet been

drawn into the fight. Thus he saved himself from utter disaster, and

though losing ground all through the evening hours, kept his men

together, and finally left the field in a solid mass, retiring over

the hills and ravines to the southward. ‘The Spaniards,’ wrote an

eye-witness, ‘went off the field in perfect order and with a good

military bearing[532].’ But they had been forced to leave behind them

all their guns save two, for they had no road, and could not drag the

artillery up the rugged slopes by which they saved themselves. Blake

also lost 1,000 killed, three or four times that number of wounded,

and some hundreds of prisoners. The steadiness of the retreat is

vouched for by the small number of flags captured by the French--only

three out of the thirty-four that had been upon the field. Suchet,

according to his own account, had lost no more than between 700 and

800 men.

[532] ‘Ihr Rückzug geschah in aller Ordnung und militärischer

Haltung. Sie lagerten in der Nacht uns gegenüber, und hielten

am anderen Morgen die Höhen von Botorrita ganz in der Nähe des

Schlachtfeldes.’ [Von Brandt, i. 73.]

When safe from pursuit the beaten army crossed the Huerba far above

Maria, and rejoined Areizaga’s division at Botorrita on the right

bank of that stream.

Next morning, to his surprise, Suchet learnt that the enemy was still

in position at Botorrita and was showing a steady front. The victor

did not march directly against Blake, as might have been expected,

but ordered Laval, with the troops that had been guarding Saragossa,

to turn the Spaniards’ right, while he himself manœuvred to get round

their left. These cautious proceedings would seem to indicate that

the French army had been more exhausted by the battle of the previous

day than Suchet concedes. The turning movements failed, and Blake

drew off undisturbed at nightfall, and retired on that same road to

Belchite by which he had marched on Saragossa, in such high hopes,

only four days back.

The battle of Maria had been on the whole very creditable to

the Valencian troops. But the subsequent course of events was

lamentable. On the way to Belchite many of the raw levies began to

disband themselves: the weather was bad, the road worse, and the

consciousness of defeat had had time enough to sink into the minds

of the soldiery. When Blake halted at Belchite, he found that he had

only 12,000 men with him: deducting the losses of the fifteenth,

there should have been at least 15,000 in line. Of artillery he

possessed no more than nine guns, seven that had been with Areizaga,

and two saved from Maria[533].

[533] Suchet (i. 24) says that Blake had been reinforced by 4,000

Valencians, when he fought at Belchite. This seems to have been

an error, his reinforcement being Areizaga’s 6,000 men picked up

at Botorrita, who were all Aragonese.

It can only be considered therefore a piece of mad presumption on

the part of the Spanish general that he halted at Belchite and again

offered battle to his pursuers. The position in front of that town

was strong--far stronger than the ground at Maria. But the men were

not the same; on June 15 they had fought with confidence, proud of

their victory at Alcañiz and intending to enter Saragossa in triumph

next day. On June 18 they were cowed and disheartened--they had

already done their best and had failed: it seemed to them hopeless

to try the fortunes of war again, and they were half beaten before a

shot had been fired. The mere numerical odds, too, were no longer in

their favour: at Maria, Blake had 13,000 men to Suchet’s 9,000--if we

count only the troops that fought, and neglect the 3,000 French who

came up late in the day, and were never engaged. At Belchite, Blake

had about 12,000 men, and Suchet rather more, for he had gathered in

Laval’s and Robert’s brigades--full 5,000 bayonets, and could put

into line 13,000 men, even if allowance be made for his losses in the

late battle[534]. It is impossible to understand the temerity with

which the Spanish general courted a disaster, by resolving to fight a

second battle only three days after he had lost the first.

[534] He had twenty-two battalions and eight squadrons at

Belchite (as he says himself, _Mémoires_, i. p. 34), while at

Maria he had only fourteen battalions and seven squadrons.

Blake’s centre was in front of Belchite, in comparatively low-lying

ground, much cut up by olive groves and enclosures. His wings were

drawn up on two gentle hills, called the Calvary and El Pueyo: the

left was the weaker flank, the ridge there being open and exposed.

It was on this wing therefore that Suchet directed his main effort;

he sent against it the whole of Musnier’s division and a regiment

of cavalry, while Habert’s brigade marched to turn the right: the

centre was left unattacked. The moment that Musnier’s attack was well

pronounced, the whole of the Spanish left wing gave way, and fell

back on Belchite, to cover itself behind the walls and olive-groves.

Before the French division could be re-formed for a second attack,

an even more disgraceful rout occurred on the right wing. Habert’s

brigade had just commenced to close in upon the Spaniards, when a

chance shell exploded a caisson in rear of the battery in Blake’s

right-centre. The fire communicated itself to the other powder-wagons

which were standing near, and the whole group blew up with a terrific

report. ‘This piece of luck threw the whole line into panic,’ writes

an eye-witness, ‘the enemy thought that he was attacked in the rear.

Every man shouted Treason! whole battalions threw down their arms

and bolted. The disorder spread along the entire line, and we only

had to run in upon them and seize what we could. If they had not

closed the town-gates, which we found it difficult to batter in, I

fancy that the whole Spanish army would have been captured or cut to

pieces. But it took some time to break down the narrow grated door,

and then a battalion stood at bay in the Market Place, and had to be

ridden down by our Polish lancers before we could get on. Lastly, we

had to pass through another gate to make our exit, and to cross the

bridge over the Aguas in a narrow formation. This gave the Spaniards

time to show a clean pair of heels, and they utilized the chance with

their constitutional agility. We took few prisoners, but got their

nine guns, some twenty munition wagons, and the whole of their very

considerable magazines. General Suchet wrote up a splendid account of

the elaborate manœuvres that he made. But I believe that my tale is

nearer to the facts, and that the order of battle which he published

was composed _après coup_. The whole affair did not last long enough

for him to carry out the various dispositions which he details[535].’

[535] Certainly on reading Suchet’s report one would not be

inclined to think that the whole matter was such a disgraceful

rout as Von Brandt (i. 74-5) describes in the above paragraphs.

The whole Spanish army was scattered to the winds. It was some days

before the Aragonese and Catalans began to rally at Tortosa, and the

Valencians at Morella. The total loss in the battle had not been

large--Suchet says that only one regiment was actually surrounded and

cut to pieces, and only one flag taken[536]. But of the 25,000 men

who had formed the ‘Army of the Right’ on June 1, not 10,000 were

available a month later, and these were in a state of demoralization

which would have made it impossible to take them into action.

[536] _Mémoires_, p. 36.

Suchet was therefore able to set himself at leisure to the task of

reducing the plains of Aragon, whose control had passed out of his

hands in May. He left Musnier’s division at Alcañiz to watch all

that was left of Blake’s army, while he marched with the other two

to overrun the central valley of the Ebro. On June 23 he seized

Caspe and its long wooden bridge, and crossed the river. Next he

occupied Fraga and Monzon, and left Habert[537] and the 3rd division

to watch the valley of the Cinca. With the remaining division, that

of Laval, he marched back to Saragossa [July 1], sweeping the open

country clear of guerrilla bands. Then he sat down for a space in

the Aragonese capital, to busy himself in administrative schemes for

the governance of the kingdom, and in preparation for a systematic

campaign against the numerous insurgents of the northern and southern

mountains, who still remained under arms and seemed to have been

little affected by the disasters of Maria and Belchite.

[537] Morlot’s division had been handed over to Habert, who

resigned his brigade of Laval’s division to the Polish colonel

Chlopicki.

Thus ended Blake’s invasion of Aragon, an undertaking which promised

well from the day of Alcañiz down to the battle of June 15. It

miscarried mainly through the gross tactical error which the general

made in dividing his army, and fighting at Maria with only two-thirds

of his available force. His strategy down to the actual moment of

battle seems to have been well-considered and prudent. If he had put

the Aragonese division of Areizaga in line between the river and

the hill, instead of his handful of untrustworthy cavalry, it seems

likely that a second Alcañiz might have been fought on the fatal

fifteenth of June. For Suchet’s infantry attack had miscarried,

and it was only the onslaught of his cavalry that won the day. Had

that charge failed, Saragossa must have been evacuated that night,

and the 3rd Corps would have been forced back on Navarre--to the

entire dislocation of all other French operations in Spain. If King

Joseph had received the news of the loss of Aragon in the same week

in which he learnt that Soult and Ney had evacuated Galicia, and

Kellermann the Asturias, he would probably have called back Victor

and Sebastiani and abandoned Madrid. For a disaster in the valley of

the Douro or the Ebro, as Napoleon once observed, is the most fatal

blow of all to an invader based on the north, and makes central Spain

untenable. While wondering at Blake’s errors, we must not forget to

lay part of the blame at the door of his lieutenant Areizaga--the

incapable man who afterwards lost the fatal fight of Ocaña. An

officer of sound views, when left without orders, would have ‘marched

to the cannon’ and appeared on the field of Maria in the afternoon.

Areizaga sat quiescent, six miles from the battle-field, while the

cannon were thundering in his ears from eleven in the morning till

six in the afternoon!

As for Suchet, we see that he took a terrible risk, and came

safely through the ordeal. There were many reasons for evacuating

Saragossa, when Blake came down the valley of the Huerba to cut the

communications of the 3rd Corps. But an enterprising general just

making his début in independent command, could not well take the

responsibility of retreat without first trying the luck of battle.

Fortune favoured the brave, and a splendid victory saved Saragossa

and led to the reconquest of the lost plains of Aragon. Yet, with

another cast of the dice, Maria might have proved a defeat, and

Suchet have gone down to history as a rash officer who imperilled the

whole fate of the French army in Spain by trying to face over-great

odds.

SECTION XVI

THE TALAVERA CAMPAIGN

(JULY-AUGUST 1809)

CHAPTER I

WELLESLEY AT ABRANTES: VICTOR EVACUATES ESTREMADURA

When Wellesley’s columns, faint but pursuing, received the orders

which bade them halt at Ruivaens and Montalegre, their commander

was already planning out the details of their return-march to the

Tagus. From the first moment of his setting forth from Lisbon, he had

looked upon the expedition against Soult as no more than a necessary

preliminary to the more important expedition against Victor. He would

have preferred, as we have already seen[538], to have directed his

first blow against the French army in Estremadura, and had only been

induced to begin his campaign by the attack upon Soult because he saw

the political necessity for delivering Oporto. His original intention

had been no more than to manœuvre the 2nd Corps out of Portugal. But,

owing to the faulty dispositions of the Duke of Dalmatia, he had been

able to accomplish much more than this--he had beaten the Marshal,

stripped him of his artillery and equipment, destroyed a sixth of his

army, and flung him back into Galicia by a rugged and impracticable

road, which took him far from his natural base of operations. He had

done much more than he had hoped or promised to do when he set out

from Lisbon. Yet these ‘uncovenanted mercies’ did not distract him

from his original plan: his main object was not the destruction of

Soult, but the clearing of the whole frontier of Portugal from the

danger of invasion, and this could not be accomplished till Victor

had been dealt with. The necessity for a prompt movement against

the 1st Corps was emphasized by the news, received on May 19 at

Montalegre, that its commander was already astir, and apparently

about to assume the offensive. Mackenzie reported from Abrantes, with

some signs of dismay, that a strong French column had just fallen

upon Alcantara, and driven from it the small Portuguese detachment

which was covering his front.

[538] See p. 292.

Accordingly Wellesley turned the march of his whole army southward,

the very moment that he discovered that the 2nd Corps had not fallen

into the trap set for it at Chaves and Ruivaens. He had resolved to

leave nothing but the local levies of Silveira and Botilho to watch

Galicia, and to protect the provinces north of the Douro. ‘Soult,’

he wrote, ‘will be very little formidable to any body of troops

for some time to come.’ He imagined--and quite correctly--that the

Galician guerrillas and the army of La Romana would suffice to find

him occupation. He did not, however, realize that it was possible

that not only Soult but Ney also would be so much harassed by the

insurgents, and would fall into such bitter strife with each other,

that they might ere long evacuate Galicia altogether. This, indeed,

could not have been foreseen at the moment when the British turned

southwards from Montalegre. If Wellesley could have guessed that by

July 1 the three French Corps in Northern Spain--the 2nd, 5th, and

6th--would all be clear of the mountains and concentrated in the

triangle Astorga-Zamora-Valladolid, he would have had to recast his

plan of operations. But on May 19 such a conjunction appeared most

improbable, and the British general could not have deemed it likely

that a French army of 55,000 men, available for field-operations,

would be collected on the central Douro, at the moment when he had

committed himself to operations on the Tagus. Indeed, for some weeks

after he had departed from Oporto the information from the north

made any such concentration appear improbable. While he was on his

march to the south he began to hear of the details of Ney’s and

Kellermann’s expedition against the Asturias, news which he received

with complacency[539], as it showed that the French were entangling

themselves in new and hazardous enterprises which would make it

more difficult than ever for them to collect a force opposite the

frontier of Northern Portugal. Down to the very end of June Wellesley

had no reason to dread any concentration of French troops upon his

flank in the valley of the Douro. It was only in the following month

that Soult was heard of at Puebla de Senabria and Ney at Astorga. By

that time the British army had already crossed the frontier of Spain

and commenced its operations against Victor.

[539] See the letter to Colonel Bourke, _Wellington Dispatches_,

iv. 390-400.

At the moment when Wellesley turned back from Montalegre and set his

face southward, he had not yet settled the details of his plan of

campaign. There appeared to be two courses open to him. The first was

to base himself upon Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and advance upon

Salamanca. This movement, which he could have begun in the second

week of June, would undoubtedly have thrown into disorder all the

French arrangements in Northern Spain. There would have been no force

ready to oppose him save a single division of Mortier’s corps--the

rest of that marshal’s troops were absent with Kellermann in the

Asturias. This could not have held the British army back, and a bold

march in advance would have placed Wellesley in a position where he

could have intercepted all communications between the French troops

in Galicia and those in and about Madrid. The movement might appear

tempting, but it would have been too hazardous. The only force that

could have been used for it was the 20,000 troops of Wellesley’s

own army, backed by the 12,000 or 15,000 Portuguese regulars whom

Beresford could collect between the Douro and the Tagus. The

Spaniards had no troops in this direction save the garrison of Ciudad

Rodrigo, and a battalion or two which Carlos d’España had raised on

the borders of Leon and Portugal. On the other hand, the news that

the British were at Salamanca or Toro would certainly have forced

Ney, Soult, and Kellermann to evacuate Galicia and the Asturias and

hasten to the aid of Mortier. They would have been far too strong,

when united, for the 30,000 or 35,000 men of Wellesley and Beresford.

La Romana and the Asturians could have brought no corresponding

reinforcements to assist the British army, and must necessarily have

arrived too late--long after the French corps would have reached the

Douro[540]. The idea of a movement on Salamanca, therefore, did not

even for a moment enter into Wellesley’s mind.

[540] Napier (ii. 149) calls this alternative plan of campaign ‘a

movement in conjunction with Beresford, del Parque, and Romana

by Salamanca.’ This is a most inappropriate description of it:

about June 10, when operations might have commenced, Del Parque’s

army did not yet exist. There were only three or four of Carlos

d’España’s battalions at or near Rodrigo. La Romana, on the other

hand, was at Orense facing Soult, and could not have reached

Almeida or Rodrigo for weeks after the campaign would have begun.

The other alternative open to the British general, and that which

he had from the first determined to take in hand, was (as we have

already seen) a march against Victor. Such a movement might be

carried out in one of two ways. (1) It would be possible to advance

against his flank and rear by keeping north of the Tagus, and

striking, by Coria and Plasencia, at Almaraz and its great bridge of

boats, across which ran the communication between the 1st Corps and

Madrid. This operation would have to be carried out by the British

army alone, while the Spanish army of Estremadura, acting from a

separate base, kept in touch with Victor but avoided compromising

itself by any rash attack upon him. The Marshal, placed in a central

position between Wellesley’s and Cuesta’s forces, would certainly try

to beat one of them before they got the chance of drawing together.

(2) It was equally possible to operate against Victor not on separate

lines, but by crossing the Tagus, joining the Spaniards somewhere in

the neighbourhood of Badajoz, and falling upon the Marshal with the

united strength of both armies. This movement would be less hazardous

than the other, since it would secure the concentration of an army

of a strength sufficient to crush the 25,000 men at which the 1st

Corps might reasonably be rated. But it would only drive Victor back

upon Madrid and King Joseph’s reserves by a frontal attack, while the

other plan--that of the march on Almaraz--would imperil his flank and

rear, and threaten to cut him off from the King and the capital.

Before making any decision between the two plans, Wellesley wrote

to Cuesta, from Oporto on May 22, a letter requesting him to state

his views as to the way in which the operations of the British and

Spanish armies could best be combined. He informed him that the

troops which had defeated Soult were already on their way to the

south, that the head of the column would reach the Mondego on the

twenty-sixth, and that the whole would be concentrated near Abrantes

early in June. It was at that place that the choice would have to be

made between the two possible lines of attack on Victor--that which

led to Almaraz, and that which went on to Southern Estremadura.

A few days later Wellesley dispatched a confidential officer

of his staff--Colonel Bourke--to bear to the Spanish general a

definite request for his decision on the point whether the allied

armies should prepare for an actual junction, or should manœuvre

from separate bases, or should ‘co-operate with communication,’

i.e. combine their movements without adopting a single base or a

joint line of advance. Bourke was also directed to obtain all the

information that he could concerning the strength, morale, and

discipline of Cuesta’s army, and to discover what chance there was

of securing the active assistance of the second Spanish army in the

south--that which, under General Venegas, was defending the defiles

in front of La Carolina[541].

[541] See the ‘Memorandum for Lieut.-Col. Bourke’ in _Wellington

Dispatches_, iv. 372-3.

It was clear that some days must elapse before an answer could arrive

from the camp of the Estremaduran army, and meanwhile Wellesley

continued to urge the counter-march of his troops from the various

points at which they had halted between Oporto and Montalegre. All

the scattered British brigades were directed on Abrantes by different

routes: those which had the least distance to march began to arrive

there on the eleventh and the twelve of June.

The Commander-in-chief had resolved not to take on with him the

Portuguese regulars whom he had employed in the campaign against

Soult. Both the brigades which had marched on Amarante under

Beresford, and the four battalions which had fought along with

Wellesley in the main column, were now dropped behind. They were

destined to form an army of observation, lest Mortier and his 5th

Corps, or any other French force, might chance to assail the front

between the Douro and the Tagus during the absence of the British

in the south. Beresford, who was left in command, was directed to

arrange his troops so as to be able to support Almeida, and resist

any raid from the direction of Salamanca or Zamora. The main body

of the army lay at Guarda, its reserves at Coimbra. The Portuguese

division which had been lying on the Zezere in company with

Mackenzie’s troops, was also placed at Beresford’s disposition, so

that he had about eighteen battalions, four regiments of cavalry, and

five or six batteries--a force of between 12,000 and 15,000 men. It

was his duty to connect Wellesley’s left wing with Silveira’s right,

and to reinforce either of them if necessary. The Commander-in-chief

was inclined to believe, from his knowledge of the disposition of the

French corps at the moment, that no very serious attack was likely

to be directed against Northern Portugal during his absence--at the

most Soult might threaten Braganza or Mortier Almeida. But it was

necessary to make some provision against even unlikely contingencies.

The only Portuguese force which Wellesley had resolved to utilize for

the campaign in Estremadura was the battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian

Legion, under Colonel Mayne, which had been stationed at Alcantara

watching the movements of Victor. Sir Robert Wilson, now recalled

from Beresford’s column and placed once more with his own men, was

to take up the command of his old force, and to add to it the 5th

Cazadores, a regiment which had hitherto been lying with Mackenzie’s

division at Abrantes. With these 1,500 men he was to serve as the

northern flank-guard of the British army when it should enter Spain.

When Wellesley first started upon his march, he was under the

impression that his plan of campaign might be settled for him by

the movements of Victor rather than by the devices of Cuesta. The

rapidity of his progress was partly caused by the news of the

Marshal’s attack on Alcantara, an operation which might, as it

seemed, turn out to be the prelude of a raid in force upon Central

Portugal. That it portended an actual invasion with serious designs

Wellesley could not believe, being convinced that Victor would have

to leave so large a proportion of his army to observe Cuesta, that

he would not be able to set aside more than 10,000 or 12,000 men for

operations in the valley of the Tagus[542]. But such a force would be

enough to sweep the country about Castello Branco and Villa Velha,

and to beat up Mackenzie’s line of defence on the Zezere.

[542] Wellesley to Mackenzie, from San Tyrso, May 21.

The actual course of events on the Tagus had been as follows. Victor,

even after having received the division of Lapisse, considered

himself too weak either to march on Cuesta and drive him over the

mountains into Andalusia, or to fall upon Central Portugal by an

advance along the Tagus[543]. He had received vague information of

the formation of Mackenzie’s corps of observation on the Zezere,

though apparently he had not discovered that there was a strong

British contingent in its ranks. But he was under the impression that

if he crossed the Guadiana in force, to attack Cuesta, the Portuguese

would advance into Estremadura and cut his communications; while if

he marched against the Portuguese, Cuesta would move northward to

attack his rear. Accordingly he maintained for some time a purely

defensive attitude, keeping his three French infantry divisions

concentrated in a central position, at Torremocha, Montanches, and

Salvatierra (near Caceres), while he remained himself with Leval’s

Germans and Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons in the neighbourhood of

Merida, observing Cuesta and sending flying columns up and down the

Guadiana to watch the garrison of Badajoz and the guerrillas of the

Sierra de Guadalupe. He had not forgotten the Emperor’s orders that

he was to be prepared to execute a diversion in favour of Marshal

Soult, when he should hear that the 2nd Corps was on its way to

Lisbon. But, like all the other French generals, he was profoundly

ignorant of the position and the fortunes of the Duke of Dalmatia. On

April 22 the head-quarters staff at Madrid had received no more than

a vague rumour that the 2nd Corps had entered Oporto a month before!

They got no trustworthy information concerning its doings till May

was far advanced[544]. Victor, therefore, depending on King Joseph

for his news from Northern Portugal, was completely in the dark as

to the moment when he might be called upon to execute his diversion

on the Tagus. The Portuguese and Galician insurgents had succeeded

in maintaining a complete blockade of Soult, and thus had foiled all

Napoleon’s plans for combining the operations of the 1st and the 2nd

Corps.

[543] Compare the two dispatches of Victor to Jourdan of April 25

(acknowledging the receipt of Lapisse’s division) and of May 21.

[544] See King Joseph to Napoleon, of the dates April 22 and May

24, 1809.

Victor was only stirred up into a spasmodic activity in the second

week in May, by the news that a Portuguese force had crossed the

frontier and occupied Alcantara, where the great Roman bridge across

the Tagus provided a line of communication between North-Western

and Central Estremadura. This detachment--as we have already

seen--consisted of no more than Colonel Mayne’s 1st battalion of the

Loyal Lusitanian Legion, brought down from the passes of the Sierra

de Gata, and of a single regiment of newly-raised militia--that of

the frontier district of Idanha. They had with them the six guns

of the battery of the Legion and a solitary squadron of cavalry,

Wellesley had thrown forward this little force of 2,000 men to

serve as an outpost for Mackenzie’s corps on the Zezere. But rumour

magnified its strength, and Victor jumped to the conclusion that

it formed the vanguard of a Portuguese army which was intending

to concert a combined operation with Cuesta, by threatening the

communication of the 1st Corps while the Spaniards attacked its front.

Labouring under this delusion, Victor took the division of Lapisse

and a brigade of dragoons, and marched against Alcantara upon the

eleventh of May. As he approached the river he was met at Brozas

by Mayne’s vedettes, whom he soon drove in to the gates of the

little town. Alcantara being situated on the south side of the

Tagus, it was impossible to defend it: but Mayne had barricaded and

mined the bridge, planted his guns so as to command the passage,

and constructed trenches for his infantry along the northern bank.

After seizing the town, Victor opened a heavy fire of artillery and

musketry against the Portuguese detachment. It was met by a vigorous

return from the further bank, which lasted for more than three hours

before the defence began to flag. The Marshal very properly refused

to send forward his infantry to attempt the storm of the bridge

till his artillery should have silenced that of the defenders.

At about midday the Idanha militia, who had already suffered not

inconsiderable losses, deserted their trenches and fled. Thereupon

Mayne fired his mine in the bridge, but unhappily for him the tough

Roman cement defied even the power of gunpowder; only one side of the

arch was shattered; the crown of the vault held firm, and the passage

was still possible. The Legion still kept its ground, though it had

lost many men, and had seen one of his guns dismounted, and the rest

silenced by the French artillery. But when Victor hurled the leading

brigade of Lapisse’s division at the bridge he succeeded in forcing

it[545]. Mayne drew off his legionaries in good order and retreated

to the pass of Salvatierra, leaving behind him a gun and more than

250 killed and wounded[546] [May 14]--a heavy loss from the 1,000 men

of the single battalion which bore the whole brunt of the fighting.

[545] Compare Victor to Jourdan of May 21, with the account

of the combat in Appendix I of Mayne and Lillie’s _Lusitanian

Legion_.

[546] The exact losses of the L. L. L. were--killed, three

officers and 103 rank and file; wounded, five officers and 143

rank and file; missing, fifteen rank and file. Of the Idanha

militia, Mayne returned the whole as missing next morning.

Victor went no further than Alcantara, having satisfied himself that

the Portuguese force which had made such a creditable resistance

consisted of a single weak brigade, and did not form the vanguard of

an army bent on invading Estremadura. After remaining for no more

than three days at Alcantara, and trying in vain to obtain news of

the whereabouts of Soult--who was at that moment being hunted past

Guimaraens and Braga in the far north--the Marshal drew back his

troops to Torremocha near Caceres.

His advance, though it had only lasted for six days, and had not been

pushed more than a few miles beyond Alcantara, had much disturbed

General Mackenzie, who dreaded to find himself the next object of

attack and to see the whole of the 1st Corps debouching against him

by the road through Castello Branco. Wellesley wrote to him that he

need not be alarmed, that Victor could not spare more than 10,000

or 12,000 men for his demonstration, and that the 8,000 British and

Portuguese troops behind the Zezere were amply sufficient to maintain

defensive operations till the main army from the north should come

up. He expressed his opinion that the French force at Alcantara

was ‘a mere reconnoitring party, sent out for the purpose of

ascertaining what has become of Soult,’ a conclusion in which he was

perfectly right. Mackenzie[547], who betrayed an exaggerated want of

confidence in his Portuguese troops, was profoundly relieved to see

the enemy retire upon the seventeenth. He had advanced from Abrantes

and taken up a defensive position along the Sobreira Formosa to

resist the Marshal, but he had done so with many searchings of heart,

and was glad to see the danger pass away. When Victor had retired

into Central Estremadura, Mayne came back with all due caution, and

reoccupied the bridge of Alcantara.

[547] See Wellesley to Mackenzie, May 21, and also Wellesley to

Frere on the same day. _Wellington Dispatches_, iv. 350-1.

Wellesley, therefore, had been perfectly well justified in his

confidence that nothing was to be feared in this direction. The

French could not possibly have dared to undertake more than a

demonstration in the direction of Castello Branco. King Joseph’s

orders to Victor had prescribed no more[548], and the Marshal had

accomplished even less. In his letter of excuse to Jourdan he

explained that he would gladly have left Lapisse’s division at

Alcantara, or even have moved it forward for some distance into

Portugal[549], if he had not found it absolutely impossible to feed

it in the bare and stony district north of the Tagus, where Junot’s

army had been wellnigh starved in November 1807. The peasantry of the

villages for fifteen leagues round Alcantara had, as he declared,

gone off into the mountains with their cattle, after burying their

corn, and he had found it impossible to discover food for even three

days’ consumption of a single division.

[548] See Jourdan’s _Mémoires_, p. 190.

[549] A move by which he flattered himself that he would not only

‘inquiéter les Anglais,’ but also ‘dégager le duc de Dalmatie,’

an end which no raid with 8,000 or 10,000 men to Castello Branco

could possibly have accomplished. Victor to Jourdan, May 29.

During Victor’s absence at Alcantara, Cuesta had sent down a part of

his troops to make a raid on Merida, the Marshal’s advanced post on

the Guadiana. It failed entirely; the garrison, two battalions of

Leval’s German division, maintained themselves with ease in a large

convent outside that town, which Victor had patched up and turned

into a place of some little strength. On hearing that the Spaniards

were descending from the mountains, King Joseph ordered the Duke of

Belluno to attack them at once. But on the mere news of the Marshal’s

approach Cuesta called back his detachment into the passes, sweeping

off at the same time the inhabitants of all the villages along the

Guadiana, together with their cattle and their stores of provisions.

At the beginning of June Victor began to press the King and Jourdan

for leave to abandon his hold on Southern Estremadura, and to

fall back towards the Tagus. He urged that his position was very

dangerous, now that Cuesta’s army had been recruited up to a force

of 22,000 infantry and 6,000 horse, especially since the Portuguese

had once more got possession of Alcantara. His main contention was

that he must either be reinforced up to a strength which would

permit him to attack Andalusia, or else be permitted to withdraw

from the exhausted district between the Guadiana and the Tagus, in

order to seek a region where his men would be able to live. The only

district in this neighbourhood where the country-side was still

intact was that north of the Tagus, around the towns of Plasencia and

Coria--the valleys of the Alagon and Tietar. To move the army in this

direction would involve the evacuation of Central Estremadura--it

would be necessary to abandon Merida, Truxillo, and Caceres, with

the sacrifice of a certain amount of prestige. But unless the 1st

Corps could be reinforced--and this, as Victor must have known,

was impossible[550]--there was no other alternative. The internal

condition of the army was growing worse day by day. ‘The troops are

on half rations of bread: they can get little meat--often none at

all. The results of starvation are making themselves felt in the

most deplorable way. The men are going into hospital at the rate of

several hundreds a day[551].’ A few days later Victor adds, ‘If I

could even get together enough biscuit to feed the army for merely

seven or eight days I should not feel so uncomfortable. But we have

no flour to issue for a bread ration, so cannot bake biscuit[552].’

And again he adds, ‘The whole population of this region has retired

within Cuesta’s lines, after destroying the ovens and the mills, and

removing every scrap of food. It seems that the enemy is resolved to

starve us out, and to leave a desert in front of us if we advance....

Carefully estimating all my stores I find that I have barely enough

to last for five days in hand. We are menaced with absolute famine,

which we can only avoid by moving off, and there is no suitable

cantonment to be found in the whole space between Tagus and Guadiana:

the entire country is ruined.’

[550] He suggests in a letter of June 8, that Mortier’s corps

should be brought up to Plasencia to help him. But this was

wholly impracticable.

[551] Victor to Jourdan, from Torremocha, May 24.

[552] Victor to Jourdan, May 29.

Joseph and Jourdan replied to the first of these dismal letters by

promising to send the 1st Corps 300,000 rations of biscuit, and by

urging its commander to renew his attack on Alcantara, in order

to threaten Portugal and ‘disengage the Duke of Dalmatia’--who,

on the day when their dispatch was written, was at Lugo, in the

north of Galicia, some 300 miles as the crow flies from Victor’s

head quarters[553]. They received the answer that such a move was

impossible, as Mayne had just blown up the bridge of Alcantara, and

it was now impossible to cross the Tagus[554].

[553] Jourdan to Victor, June 1.

[554] Victor to Jourdan, June 8. Oddly enough he was wrong in his

statement by two days, for Mayne blew up the bridge on the tenth

only.

A few days later the news arrived at Madrid that Soult had been

defeated and flung out of Portugal[555]. It had taken three weeks

for information of this transcendent importance to reach the king!

Seriously alarmed, Joseph and Jourdan sent Victor his long-denied

permission to retire from Estremadura and place himself behind the

Tagus. They do not seem to have guessed that the victorious Wellesley

would make his next move against the 1st Corps, but imagined that

he would debouch into Old Castile by way of Rodrigo and Salamanca,

wherefore their main idea was to strengthen Mortier and the army

in the valley of the Douro[556]. Thus it fell in with their views

that Victor should draw back to the line of the Tagus, a general

concentration of all the French troops in the Peninsula seeming

advisable, in face of the necessity for resisting the supposed

attack on Old Castile. Another reason for assuming a defensive

attitude was the gloomy news from Aragon, where Suchet, after

his defeat at Alcañiz, had retired on Saragossa and was sending

despairing appeals for reinforcements to Madrid.

[555] June 10, Joseph to Napoleon.

[556] Cf. Joseph’s letters of June 10 and June 16 to Napoleon:

but there seems to be much vacillation in his decisions.

Accordingly, the 1st Corps evacuated Estremadura between the

fourteenth and the nineteenth of June, and, crossing the Tagus,

disposed itself in a position on the northern bank, with its right

wing at Almaraz and its left at Talavera. Here Victor intended to

make his stand, being confident that with the broad river in front of

him he could easily beat off any attack on the part of the Spanish

army.

But when Wellesley and Cuesta first began to correspond concerning

their joint movement against the French in Estremadura, Victor was

still in his old cantonments, and their scheme of operations had been

sketched out on the hypothesis that he lay at Merida, Torremocha, and

Caceres. It was with the design of assailing him while he still held

this advanced position, that Cuesta drew up his paper of answers to

Wellesley’s queries and dispatched it to Abrantes to meet the British

general on his arrival[557].

[557] Cuesta’s replies, sent on by Bourke, are dated June 4 and

June 6, i.e. ten and eight days respectively before Victor began

his retreat beyond the Tagus on June 14.

If the old Captain-General’s suggestions were by no means marked

with the stamp of genius, they had at least the merit of variety.

He offered Wellesley the choice between no less than three plans of

campaign. (1) His first proposal was that the British army should

descend into Southern Estremadura, and join him in the neighbourhood

of Badajoz. From thence the united host was to advance against Victor

and assail him in front. But meanwhile Cuesta proposed to send out

two subsidiary columns, to turn the Marshal’s flanks and surround

him. One was to base itself on Alcantara and march along the northern

bank of the Tagus to seize Almaraz: the other was to push by La

Serena through the Guadalupe mountains to threaten Talavera. By these

operations, if Victor would be good enough to remain quiet in his

present cantonments, he would be completely surrounded, his retreat

would be cut off, and he would finally be compelled to surrender.

The scheme was of course preposterous. What rational man could have

supposed it likely that the Marshal would remain quiescent while

his flanks were being turned? He would certainly have hastened to

retire and to throw himself upon the detached columns, one or both of

which he could have annihilated before the main armies of the allies

could get within touch of him[558]. Wellesley refused to listen for

a moment to this plan of campaign. (2) The second proposal of Cuesta

was that the British army should pass the Tagus at Alcantara and

operate against Victor’s flank, while the Spanish army attacked him

in front. To this the same objection could be urged: it presupposed

that the Frenchman would remain fixed in his present cantonments: but

he certainly would not do so when he heard that he was to be assailed

on both flanks; he would retire behind the Tagus at once, and the

British army would have wasted its march, and be obliged to return to

the north bank of that river: moreover, it would involve a very long

movement to the south to get in touch with Victor’s flank. Probably

it would be necessary to descend as far into Estremadura as Caceres,

and, when that point was reached, the Marshal could make the whole

manœuvre futile by retiring at once behind the Tagus at Almaraz. To

follow him to the north bank the British would have to retrace their

steps to Alcantara.

[558] Wellesley writes in commenting on this plan [_Wellington

Dispatches_, iv. 402]: ‘At all events these two detachments

on the two flanks appear to me to be too weak to produce any

great effect upon the movements of Victor.... I think it would

be nearly certain that the Marshal would be able to defend the

passage [of the Tagus] with a part only of his force, while with

the other part he would beat one or both of the detachments sent

round his flank. Indeed the detachment which should have been

sent from La Serena toward Talavera, being between the corps

of Victor and Sebastiani, could hardly escape.’ Wellesley also

points out that it is useless to expect that Victor would wait in

his present cantonments: at the first news of the approach of the

British army he will retire to Almaraz and Arzobispo.

The third proposal of Cuesta--the only one in which Wellesley could

find any prospect of success, was that the British army, keeping

north of the Tagus, should march by Castello Branco on Plasencia.

There it would be in the rear of Victor’s best line of retreat by

the bridge of Almaraz. If the manœuvre could be kept very secret,

and executed with great speed, Almaraz, perhaps also the subsidiary

passage at Arzobispo, might be seized. Should the Marshal get early

news of the movement, and hurry back across the Tagus to fend off

this stab in the rear, Wellesley was prepared to fight him in the

open with equal forces, conceiving that he was ‘sufficiently strong

to defend himself against any attack which Victor might make.’ He

hoped that Cuesta was able to guarantee that he also was competent

to hold his own, supposing that the Marshal, neglecting the British

diversion, should concentrate his corps and strike at the Spanish

army.

On the whole, therefore, Wellesley was not disinclined to fall in

with this plan, which had the extra merit of remaining feasible even

if Victor withdrew north of the Tagus before either of the allied

armies had completed its march. He made one countersuggestion, viz.

that Cuesta might move eastward, with the whole or part of his army,

join the army of Venegas in La Mancha, and attack Sebastiani, leaving

the British alone to deal with Victor. But he did not wish to press

this plan, thinking that an attack on the enemy’s left was on first

principles less advisable than one on his right, because it did not

offer any chance of cutting him off from Madrid[559].

[559] I print as an Appendix this all-important letter to Bourke,

regarding Cuesta’s three plans of campaign.

The answer to Cuesta’s proposals was sent off from Abrantes, which

Wellesley, preceding his army by three or four days’ march, reached

upon June 8. He had now under his hand Mackenzie’s Anglo-Portuguese

force, but the leading brigades of the troops who had fought at

Oporto could not arrive before the eleventh or twelfth. There

was thus ample time to concert the joint plan of campaign before

the whole army would be concentrated and ready to move. But when

Cuesta’s reply to the dispatch of June 8 came to hand upon June 13,

Wellesley was much vexed to find that the old Captain-General had

expressed a great dislike for the idea that the British army should

march upon Plasencia and Almaraz--though it had been one of his own

three suggestions. He now pleaded urgently in favour of the first

of his original alternatives--that Wellesley should come down to

Badajoz and join him in a frontal attack upon Victor. With much

reluctance the British general resolved to comply, apparently moved

by his ally’s openly expressed dislike to being left to face Victor

alone. ‘I must acknowledge,’ he wrote to Colonel Bourke, ‘that _I_

entertain no apprehension that the French will attack General Cuesta:

I am much more afraid that they are going away, and strengthening

themselves upon the Tagus[560].’ To the Spanish General he sent a

dispatch to the same effect, in which he pledged himself to march to

join the army of Estremadura, though he frankly stated that all his

information led him to believe that Victor had no intention of taking

the offensive, and that the junction was therefore unnecessary. He

expressed his hope that Cuesta would avoid all fighting till they had

met, the only possible danger to the allied cause being that one of

the two armies should suffer a defeat before the other had started on

the combined movement to which they were committed[561].

[560] Wellesley to Bourke, from Abrantes, June 14.

[561] Wellesley to Cuesta, from Abrantes, June 14.

Fortunately for all parties concerned, the march on Badajoz which

Wellesley so much disliked never had to be begun, for on the day

after he had sent off his dispatch to Cuesta he received reliable

information from several sources, to the effect that Victor had

evacuated and blown up the fortified convent of Merida, and had

sent off all his baggage and heavy artillery towards Almaraz.

During the next four days the whole of the 1st Corps marched for

that all-important bridge, and crossed it. On the nineteenth Victor

had established his entire army north of the Tagus, at Almaraz,

Arzobispo, and Talavera. Thus the whole face of affairs was changed,

and the advance of the British army into Southern Estremadura was

rendered unnecessary. It was fortunate that the news of the retreat

of the 1st Corps was received at Abrantes just in time to allow of

the countermanding of the march of Wellesley’s army on Badajoz, for

that fruitless movement would have begun if the Duke of Belluno had

been able to retain his starving army in its positions for a few days

longer.

SECTION XVI: CHAPTER II

WELLESLEY ENTERS SPAIN

The retreat of Victor beyond the Tagus forced Wellesley to concert

yet another plan of operation with Cuesta, since the position of

the French army, on which the whole of the recently adopted scheme

depended, had just suffered a radical change. It was clear that

every consideration now pointed to the necessity for adopting

the combination which Wellesley had urged upon his colleague in

his letter of June 8, viz. that the British army should move on

Plasencia and Almaraz. It would now be striking at the flank instead

of the rear of Victor’s corps, but it was clear that under the new

conditions it would still be in a position to roll up his whole army,

if he should endeavour to defend the passages of the Tagus against

the Spaniards, who were now approaching them from the front. For

Cuesta had descended from the mountains when he heard of Victor’s

retreat, and was now approaching Almaraz.

It took some time, however, to induce the Captain-General to consent

to this move. To the extreme vexation of his colleague he produced

other plans, so gratuitously impracticable that Wellesley wrote to

Castlereagh to say that he could conceive no explanation for the old

man’s conduct save a desire to refuse any scheme urged on him by

others, and a resolve to invent and advocate alternative plans of his

own out of mere pride and wrongheadedness. ‘The best of the whole

story,’ he added[562], was that Cuesta was now refusing to accept a

plan which he himself had suggested in one of his earlier letters,

merely because that plan had been taken up and advocated by his ally.

‘The obstinacy of this old gentleman,’ he concluded, ‘is throwing

out of our hands the finest game that any armies ever had[563].’

[562] Wellesley to Castlereagh, Abrantes, June 17. The real cause

of Cuesta’s angry and impracticable attitude will be shown in the

next chapter.

[563] Wellesley to Frere from the same place, June 14.

The necessity for working out a new scheme for the combined

operations of the British and Spanish armies, in view of Victor’s

retreat to Almaraz, entailed the loss of a few days. It would have

been impossible to start on the advance to Plasencia till Cuesta had

promised to accept that movement as part of the joint campaign. There

was also some time to be allowed for concluding an agreement with

Venegas, the General of the La Carolina army, whose connexion with

the campaign must become much more intimate, now that the fighting

was to take place not in Estremadura, but further north, in the

valley of the Tagus. For while Victor lay at Merida and Sebastiani at

Manzanares and Ciudad Real, the Spanish forces which faced them were

very far apart. But when Victor retired to Talavera, and Sebastiani

to Madridejos, in the end of June, Cuesta and Venegas--each following

the corps opposed to him--could draw closer together. It was evident

that the Andalusian army ought to be made to play an important part

in the combined operations of July.

It would be unfair to the Spanish generals to let it be supposed

that the necessity for settling on a common scheme of operations

with them was the sole cause which detained Wellesley at Abrantes

from the eighth to the twenty-seventh of June. The leading brigades

of the British troops from Oporto had begun to reach Abrantes on the

eleventh, and the more belated columns came up on the fourteenth and

fifteenth. But it would have been impossible to have moved forward

without some further delay, even if Wellesley had been in possession

of a complete and satisfactory plan of operations on the day upon

which his whole force was concentrated on the line of the Zezere. At

the least he would have required another week for preparations.

His hindrances at this moment were manifold. The first was the

distressed condition of those of his brigades which had seen

most service during the Oporto campaign. Many regiments had been

constantly on the march from May 9 to June 14, without obtaining

more than two days’ rest in the whole time. Their shoes were worn

out, their jaded baggage-animals had dropped to the rear, and they

were leaving so many stragglers on the way that it was absolutely

necessary to give them a moderate rest at Abrantes, in order to

allow the ranks to grow full and the belated baggage to come up.

The regiments which had followed Beresford in the forced march

from Amarante to Chaves were worst off--they had never completely

recovered from the fatigues of those three days of constant rain and

storm spent on the stony roads of the Tras-os-Montes[564]. In any

case some delay must have occurred before all the troops were ready

to march. But many circumstances conspired to detain the army at

Abrantes for several days after the moment at which Wellesley had

determined to start for Plasencia. The first was the non-arrival of

convoys of shoes and clothing which he had ordered up from Lisbon.

The transport of the army was not yet fully organized, its officers

were lacking in experience, if not in zeal, and orders were slowly

executed. Many corps had, in the end, to start for Spain without

receiving the much-needed stores, which were still trailing up from

Santarem to Abrantes when Wellesley gave the signal to advance.

Another hindrance was the lack of money: the army was obliged to pay

for its wants in coin, but hard cash was so difficult to procure

both in London and in Lisbon that arrears were already beginning to

grow up. At first they vexed the soul of Wellesley almost beyond

endurance, but as the war dragged on they only grew worse, and the

Commander-in-chief had to endure with resignation the fact that both

the pay of the men and the wages of the Portuguese muleteers and

followers were overdue for many months. In June 1809 he had not yet

reached this state of comparative callousness, and was endeavouring

to scrape together money by every possible device. He had borrowed

£3,000 in Portuguese silver from the merchants of the impoverished

city of Oporto: he was trying to exchange bills on England for

dollars at Cadiz, where the arrival of the American contribution had

produced a comparative plenty of the circulating medium. Yet after

all he had to start from Abrantes with only a comparatively moderate

sum in his military chest[565], the rest had not reached him on June

28, the treasure convoy having taken the unconscionable time of

eleven days to crawl forward from Lisbon to Abrantes--a distance of

no more than ninety miles[566].

[564] With regard to these regiments [5/60th, 2/87th, 1/88th],

Wellesley writes in very bitter terms to Donkin on June 16,

saying that the number of their stragglers was scandalous, and

that the laggards were committing all manner of disorders in the

rear of the army. It is fair to remember that the battalions

had suffered exceptional hardships, as may be seen from the

narratives of Gough of the 87th, and Grattan of the 88th.

[565] The main convoy only reached Abrantes when Wellesley had

advanced to Plasencia, in Spain. See letter to the officer

commanding Artillery at Castello Branco, dated July 8, from

Plasencia.

[566] Cf. Wellesley to Frere, June 14, to Commissary-General

Murray, June 16, both from Abrantes, and to Castlereagh, June 27.

A third cause of delay was the time spent in waiting for

reinforcements from Lisbon. Eight or nine regiments had landed, or

were expected to arrive within the next few days. It was in every

way desirable to unite them to the army before the campaign should

begin. This was all the more necessary because several corps had

to be deducted from the force which had been used in the Oporto

campaign. Under stringent orders from home, Wellesley had sent back

two infantry battalions and part of two cavalry regiments to Lisbon,

to be embarked for Gibraltar and Sicily[567]. In return he was to

receive a much larger body of troops. But while the deduction was

immediate, the addition took time. Of all the troops which were

expected to reinforce the army, only one battalion caught him up at

Abrantes, while a second and one regiment of Light Dragoons[568]

joined later, but yet in time for Talavera. Thus at the commencement

of the actual campaign the force in the field was, if anything,

slightly less in numbers than that which had been available in

May. It was particularly vexatious that the brigade of veteran

light infantry, for which Wellesley had made a special demand on

Castlereagh as early as April, did not reach Abrantes till long after

the army had moved forward. These three battalions, the nucleus of

the famous Light Division[569], had all gone through the experiences

of Moore’s campaign, and were once more under their old leader Robert

Craufurd. Detained by baffling winds in the Downs, the transports

that bore them only reached Lisbon at various dates between June 28

and July 2, though they had sailed on May 25. Their indefatigable

brigadier hurried them forward with all speed to the front, but in

spite of his exertions, they only came up with the main army after

the day of battle was over. The same was the fate of two batteries of

horse artillery[570]--an arm in which Wellesley was wholly deficient

when he marched into Spain. They arrived late, and were still far to

the rear when the march from Abrantes began.

[567] The 2/9th and 2/30th were sent to Gibraltar in May. The two

squadrons of the 20th Light Dragoons and the one squadron of the

3rd Hussars of the K. G. L. were sent to Sicily at the same time.

[568] The 1/48th, 1/61st, and 23rd Light Dragoons.

[569] 1/43rd, 1/52nd, 1/95th. Of these three units only 1/43rd

had been in Robert Craufurd’s old brigade, during the march

to Sahagun. The other two had been in Anstruther’s brigade of

Paget’s reserve; they had therefore fought at Corunna, while

Craufurd and the ‘flank brigade’ which includes the 1/43rd, had

been detached from the main army and had embarked at Vigo.

[570] A and I troops. The first joined in company with Craufurd.

The second only appeared much later.

It thus resulted that although there were over 33,000 British troops

in the Peninsula at the commencement of July 1809, less than 21,000

could be collected for the advance on Plasencia which was now about

to begin. More than 8,000 men lay at Lisbon, or were just starting

from that city, while 4,500 were in hospital[571]. The sick seemed

more numerous than might have been expected at the season of the

year: though the fatigues of the Oporto campaign accounted for

the majority of the invalids, yet Wellesley was of opinion that a

contributory cause might be found in the slack discipline of certain

regiments, where inefficient commanding officers had neglected

sanitary precautions, and allowed their men to neglect personal

cleanliness, or to indulge to excess in wine and unripe fruit and

vegetables. It was his opinion that the number of men in hospital

should never exceed ten per cent. of the total force. But all through

the war he found that this proportion was exceeded.

[571] Writing to Castlereagh on June 30, Wellesley remarks that

‘according to your account I have 35,000 men--according to my

own I have only 18,000,’ but this was before he had been joined

by the 1/61st, the 23rd Dragoons, and certain details. It is

certain, from the careful table of troops engaged at Talavera

which is to be found in the Record Office, that somewhat over

22,000 men entered Spain, and that after deducting sick left at

Plasencia and elsewhere, just 20,600 fought at Talavera.

With the internal condition of many of his regiments Wellesley was

far from satisfied. His tendency to use the plainest, indeed the

harshest, terms concerning the rank and file, is so well known that

we are not surprised to find him writing that ‘the army behave

terribly ill: they are a rabble who cannot bear success any more

than Sir John Moore’s army could bear failure[572].’ He complained

most of all of the recruits sent him from the Irish militia, who

were, he said, capable of every sin, moral or military. Though

he was ‘endeavouring to tame the troops,’ yet there were several

regiments in such bad order that he would gladly have sent them

home in disgrace if he could have spared a man. The main offence,

of course, was robbery of food from the Portuguese peasantry, often

accompanied by violence, and now and then by murder. The number of

assistant-provost-marshals was multiplied, some offenders were caught

and hanged, but marauding could not be suppressed, even while the

troops were receiving full rations in their cantonments at Abrantes.

When they were enduring real privation, in the wilds of Estremadura,

matters grew much worse. Though many regiments were distinguished

for their good behaviour, yet there were always some whose excesses

were a disgrace to the British army. Their Commander never shrank

from telling them so in the most incisive language; he was always

complaining that he could not get a sufficient number of the

criminals flogged or hanged, and that regimental court-martials were

far too lenient in their dealings with offenders[573].

[572] These topics occur in many dispatches to Castlereagh.

Perhaps the most notable is that of May 31, 1809, written at

Coimbra.

[573] Wellesley’s anxiety to make examples may be traced in

the series of letters concerning a private of the 29th which

occur in his July dispatches. The man had been acquitted by a

court-martial on the ground of insanity, but this did not satisfy

the Commander-in-chief, who sends repeated orders that the award

must be revised, and the man, if possible, executed.

It was at Abrantes that Wellesley first arranged his army in

divisions, and gave it the organization which, with certain

modifications, it was to maintain during the rest of the war. His six

regiments of cavalry were to form a single division consisting of one

heavy and two light brigades, commanded respectively by Fane, Cotton,

and Anson. The twenty-five battalions of infantry were distributed

into four divisions of unequal strength under Generals Sherbrooke,

Hill, Mackenzie, and A. Campbell. Of these the first was by far the

largest, counting four brigades of two battalions each: the first

(Henry Campbell’s) was formed of the two battalions of Guards, the

second (Cameron’s) of two line regiments, the third and fourth,

under Low and Langwerth, comprised the infantry of the King’s German

Legion. The second and third divisions each consisted of two brigades

of three battalions each[574]. The fourth, and weakest, showed only

five battalions in line. Of artillery there were only thirty guns,

eighteen English and twelve German: all were field-batteries, as none

of the much-desired horse artillery had yet reached the front[575].

They were all of very light calibre, the heaviest being a brigade of

heavy six-pounders belonging to the German Legion.

[574] Viz. 2nd, Tilson and Richard Stewart; 3rd, Mackenzie and

Donkin; 4th, A. Campbell and Kemmis.

[575] A and I batteries R. H. A. were both late for Talavera.

On June 28 the army at last moved forward: that day the head quarters

were at Cortiçada, on the Sobreira Formosa. On the thirtieth Castello

Branco, the last Portuguese town, was reached. On July 3 the leading

brigades passed the Elga, the frontier river, and bivouacked on

the same night around Zarza la Mayor, the first place in Spanish

Estremadura. At the same time Sir Robert Wilson’s small column of

1,500 Portuguese crossed the border a little further north, and

advanced in a direction parallel to that of the main army, so as to

serve as a flank guard for it in the direction of the mountains.

King Joseph meanwhile was in a state of the most profound ignorance

concerning the impending storm. As late as July 9 he wrote to his

brother that the British had not as yet made any pronounced movement,

and that it was quite uncertain whether they would invade Galicia,

or strike at Castile, or remain in the neighbourhood of Lisbon[576]!

On that day the head of the British army had entered Plasencia, and

was only 125 miles from Madrid. It is impossible to give any better

testimonial than this simple fact to the way in which the insurgents

and the guerrillas served the cause of the allies. Wellesley had

been able to march from Oporto to Abrantes, and from Abrantes to

Plasencia, without even a rumour of his advance reaching Madrid. All

that Joseph had learnt was that there was now an allied force of

some sort behind Alcantara, in the direction of Castello Branco. He

took it for granted that they were Portuguese, but in one dispatch

he broaches the theory that there might be a few English with

them--perhaps from having heard a vague report of the composition of

Mackenzie’s division on the Zezere in May. He therefore wrote in a

cheerful tone to the Emperor that ‘if we have only got to deal with

Cuesta and the Portuguese they will be beaten by the 1st Corps. If

they have some English with them, they can be beaten equally well by

the 1st Corps, aided by troops which I can send across the Tagus via

Toledo’ (i.e. the 5,000 or 6,000 men of the Central Reserve which

could be spared from Madrid). ‘I am not in the least disquieted,’

he continued, ‘concerning the present condition of military affairs

in this part of Spain[577].’ In another epistle to his brother he

added that ‘if the English should be at the back of Cuesta, it would

be the happiest chance in the world for the concluding of the whole

war[578].’

[576] Joseph to Napoleon, from Talavera, July 9, 1809.

[577] Joseph to Napoleon, from Almagro, July 2, 1809.

[578] Joseph to Napoleon, from Madridejos, July 3, 1809. It is

fair to the King to say that in this letter he concludes that he

had better call Mortier down into New Castile if the English are

really on the move.

It was lucky for the King that he was not induced to try the

experiment of falling upon Wellesley and Cuesta with the 28,000 men

of Victor and the Central Reserve. If he had done so, he would have

suffered a frightful disaster and have lost Madrid.

In the end of June and the first days of July Joseph’s main attention

had been drawn off to that part of his front where there was least

danger, so that he was paying comparatively little heed to the

movements of the allies on the lower Tagus. He had been distracted

by a rash and inexplicable movement of the Spanish army of La

Mancha. When General Venegas had heard of the retreat of Victor from

Estremadura, and had been informed that Cuesta was about to move

forward in pursuit of the 1st Corps, he had concluded that his own

troops might also advance. He argued that Sebastiani and the 4th

Corps must beat a retreat, when their right flank was uncovered by

Victor’s evacuation of the valley of the Guadiana. He was partly

justified in his idea, for Joseph had drawn back Sebastiani’s

main body to Madridejos when Victor abandoned Merida. It was safe

therefore to advance from the Despeña Perros into the southern skirts

of La Mancha, as far as Manzanares and the line of the Guadiana. But

to go further forward was dangerous, unless Venegas was prepared

to risk a collision with Sebastiani. This he was certainly not in

a condition to do: his troops had not yet recovered from the moral

effects of the rout of Ciudad Real, and his brigades were full of

new battalions of untried Andalusian reserves. He should have been

cautious, and have refused to move without concerting his operations

with Cuesta: to have had his corps put _hors de combat_ at the very

beginning of the joint campaign of the allied armies would have been

most disastrous.

Nevertheless Venegas came down from the passes of the Sierra Morena

with 18,000 infantry, 3,000 horse, and twenty-six guns, and proceeded

to thrust back Sebastiani’s cavalry screen and to push in his

outposts in front of Madridejos. The French general had in hand at

this moment only two infantry divisions and Milhaud’s dragoons; his

third division and his light cavalry were still absent with Victor,

to whom they had been lent in March for the campaign of Medellin. But

with 13,000 foot and 2,000 horse[579] he ought not to have feared

Venegas, and could have given a good account of him had he chosen to

attack. But having received exaggerated reports of the strength of

the Spanish army, he wrote to the King that he was beset by nearly

40,000 men and must be reinforced at once, or he would have to fall

back on Madrid[580]. Joseph, fully believing the news, sent orders to

Victor to restore to the 4th Corps the divisions of Leval and Merlin,

and then, doubting whether these troops could arrive in time, sallied

out of Madrid on June 22 with his Guards and half the division of

Dessolles--about 5,500 men.

[579] The July strength of Sebastiani’s corps, _présents sous les

armes_, was 1st division (French) 8,118, 2nd division (Valence’s

Poles) 4,784, Milhaud’s dragoons 2,249--total 15,151.

[580] Joseph to Napoleon, from Illescas, June 23: ‘Le général

Sebastiani a devant lui des forces triples des siennes.’ Joseph

to Napoleon, from Moral, July 1: ‘L’armée de 36,000 à 40,000

hommes qui menaçait le 4me Corps s’est enfuie et a repassé la

Sierre Morena.’

It was lucky for Venegas that Sebastiani had refused to fight him,

but still more lucky that the news of the King’s approach reached

him promptly. On hearing that Joseph had joined the 4th Corps on

June 25 he was wise enough to turn on his heel and retreat in all

haste towards his lair in the passes of the Sierra Morena. If he had

lingered any longer in the plains he would have been destroyed, for

the King, on the arrival of Leval’s and Merlin’s divisions, would

have fallen upon him at the head of 27,000 men. As it was, Venegas

retired with such promptitude to Santa Cruz de Mudela, at the foot of

the passes, that the French could never catch him. Joseph pursued him

as far as Almagro and El Moral, on the southern edge of La Mancha,

and there stopped short. He had received, on July 2, a dispatch

from Victor to the effect that Cuesta had repaired the bridge of

Almaraz and begun to cross the Tagus, while a body of 10,000 allied

troops, presumably Portuguese, had been heard of in the direction of

Plasencia[581]. (This was in reality the whole army of Wellesley!)

Rightly concluding that he had pushed the pursuit of Venegas too far,

the King turned back in haste, left Sebastiani and the 4th Corps

behind the Guadiana, and returned with his reserve to Toledo, in

order to be in a position to support Victor. His excursion to Almagro

had been almost as reckless and wrongheaded as Venegas’s advance to

Madridejos, for he had separated himself from Victor by a gap of 200

miles, at the moment when the British army was just appearing on

the Marshal’s flank, while Cuesta was in his front. If the allied

generals had concentrated their forces ten days earlier--a thing that

might well have happened but for the vexatious delays at Abrantes

caused by Cuesta’s impracticability--the 1st Corps might have been

attacked at the moment when Joseph lay at the foot of the Sierra

Morena, in a position too remote from Talavera to allow him to come

up in time to succour Victor.

[581] For all this see Joseph to Napoleon, from Moral [July 1],

and from Almagro [July 2].

While the King was absent on his expedition in pursuit of Venegas the

most important change in the situation of affairs on the Tagus was

that the Duke of Belluno had drawn back his troops from the line of

the Tagus, where they had been lying since June 19, and had retired

behind the Alberche. His retreat was not caused by any apprehension

as to the appearance of Wellesley on his flank--a fact which was

completely concealed from him--but by sheer want of provisions. On

June 25 he sent to the King to say that his army was again starved

out of its cantonments, and that he had eaten up in a week the small

remnant of food that could be squeezed out of the country-side

between the Tagus and the Tietar, and was forced to transfer himself

to another region. ‘The position,’ he wrote, ‘is desperate. The

1st Corps is on the eve of dissolution: the men are dropping down

from mere starvation. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to give

them. They are in a state of despair.... I am forced to fall back on

Talavera, where there are no more resources than here. We must have

prompt succour, but where can it be found? If your Majesty abandons

me in my present wretched situation, I lose my honour, my military

record--everything. I shall not be to blame for the disaster which

menaces my troops, but I shall have to bear the blame. Tomorrow

I shall be at Talavera, waiting your Majesty’s orders. The enemy

[Cuesta] has a pontoon-train: if he wishes to cross the Tagus he can

do so, for the 1st Corps can no longer remain opposite him. Never was

there a more distressing situation than ours[582].’

[582] Victor to King Joseph, from the head quarters of the 1st

Corps, Calzada, near Oropesa, June 25. Intercepted dispatch in

the Record Office.

On June 26, therefore, Victor transferred himself to Talavera, and

adopted a position behind the Alberche, after burning the materials

of the late pontoon bridge at Almaraz, which he had taken up and

stored in case they might again be needed. His movement was a lucky

one for himself, as it took him further away from Wellesley’s army,

which was just about to start from Abrantes with the object of

turning his flank. It puzzled Cuesta, who sought for some other

explanation of his departure than mere starvation, and was very

cautious in taking advantage of it. However, on the day after

the French had withdrawn, he pushed troops across the Tagus, and

prepared to construct another bridge at Almaraz to replace that

which the French had destroyed. His cavalry pushed out to Navalmoral

and Oropesa, and further to the east he passed some detachments

of infantry across the bridge of Arzobispo, which Victor--most

unaccountably--had left intact. Fortunately he did no more, and

refrained from advancing against Talavera, a step which from his

earlier record we should judge that he might well have taken into

consideration.

On the part of the allies things were now in a state of suspense

from which they were not to stir for a fortnight. Cuesta was waiting

for Wellesley, Wellesley was pushing forward from Zarza la Mayor to

join Cuesta. Venegas was recovering at Santa Cruz de Mudela from the

fatigues of his fruitless expedition into La Mancha.

But on the French side matters suffered a sudden change in the last

days of July--the hand of the Emperor was stretched out from the

banks of the Danube to alter the general dispositions of the army

of Spain. On June 12 he had dictated at Schönbrunn a new plan of

campaign, based on information which was already many weeks old

when it reached him. At this date the Emperor was barely aware that

Soult was being pressed by Wellesley in Northern Portugal. He had

no detailed knowledge of what was taking place in Galicia or the

Asturias, and was profoundly ignorant of the intrigues at Oporto

which afterwards roused his indignation. But he was convinced that

the English army was the one hostile force in Spain which ought to

engage the attention of his lieutenants. Acting on this belief he

issued an order that the 2nd, 5th, and 6th Corps--those of Soult,

Mortier, and Ney--were to be united into a single army, and to be

told off to the task of evicting Wellesley from Portugal. They were

to put aside for the present all such subsidiary enterprises as the

subjection of Galicia and the Asturias, and to devote themselves

solely to ‘beating, hunting down, and casting into the sea the

British army. If the three Corps join in good time the enemy ought

to be crushed, and then the Spanish war will come to an end. But the

troops must be moved in masses and not march in small detachments....

Putting aside all personal considerations, I give the command of

the united army to the Duke of Dalmatia, as the senior marshal. His

three Corps ought to amount to something between 50,000 and 60,000

men[583].’

[583] Napoleon to Clarke [Minister of War], from Schönbrunn, June

12, 1809.

This dispatch reached King Joseph at El Moral in La Mancha on July

1, and Soult at Zamora on July 2. It had been drawn up in view of

events that were taking place about May 15. It presupposed that the

British army was still in Northern Portugal, in close touch with

Soult, and that Victor was in Estremadura[584]. As a matter of fact

Soult was on this day leading his dilapidated corps down the Esla,

at the end of his retreat from Galicia. Ney, furious at the way

in which his colleague had deserted him, had descended to Astorga

three days before. Mortier was at Valladolid, just about to march

for Villacastin and Madrid, for the King had determined to draw him

down to aid in the defence of the capital. Finally, Cuesta, instead

of lying in the Sierra Morena, as he was when Napoleon drew up his

orders, was now on the Tagus, while Wellesley was no longer in touch

with Soult on the Douro, but preparing to fall upon Victor in New

Castile. The whole situation was so changed that the commentary which

the Emperor appended to his orders was hopelessly out of date--as was

always bound to be the case so long as he persisted in endeavouring

to direct the course of affairs in Spain from the suburbs of Vienna.

[584] The Emperor’s dispatch contained many rebukes to Victor for

not pushing towards the North, to join hands with Soult. Jourdan

very truly remarks that if the 1st Corps had been sent in that

direction, King Joseph must infallibly have lost Madrid.

Soult was overjoyed at receiving the splendid charge which the

Emperor’s decree put into his hands, though he must have felt secret

qualms at the idea that ere long some account of his doings at Oporto

must reach the imperial head quarters and provoke his master’s wrath.

There was a bad quarter of an hour to come[585]. But meanwhile he

was given a formidable army, and might hope to retrieve the laurels

that he had lost in Portugal, being now in a position to attack the

British with an overwhelming superiority of numbers. It must have

been specially delightful to him to find that Ney had been put under

his orders, so that he would be able to meet his angry colleague in

the character of a superior officer dealing with an insubordinate

lieutenant.

[585] The Emperor’s stormy dispatch came in due course, but only

in September, see pp. 276-7.

Soult’s first action, on finding himself placed in command of the

whole of the French forces in North-western Spain, was to issue

orders to Mortier to march on Salamanca, and to Ney to bring the

6th Corps down to Benavente. These dispositions clearly indicate an

intention of falling upon Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and assailing

Northern Portugal--the plan which the Duke of Dalmatia had broached

to the King in his letter from Puebla de Senabria on June 25, before

he had received the news that the 5th and 6th Corps had been added to

his command.

It is clear that on July 2 Soult had no knowledge of Wellesley’s

movements, and thought that the British army was quite as likely to

be aiming at Salamanca as at Madrid. It is also evident that he was

aware that he would be unable to move for some weeks. Till the 2nd

Corps should have received the clothing, munitions, and artillery

which had been promised it, it could not possibly take the field for

the invasion of Portugal.

Soult, therefore, was obliged to wait till his stores should be

replenished, and till the two corps from Astorga and Valladolid

should concentrate on his flanks. It was while he was remaining

perforce in this posture of expectation that the news of the real

condition of affairs in New Castile was at last brought to him.

SECTION XVI: CHAPTER III

WELLESLEY AND CUESTA: THE INTERVIEW AT MIRABETE

It was not till the third day of July that Wellesley had been able to

cross the Spanish border. Since Victor had assumed his new position

to the north of the Tagus as early as the nineteenth of the preceding

month, there was a perilous fortnight during which Cuesta and his

army were left alone to face the French. All through this time of

waiting, the British Commander-in-chief was haunted by the dread that

the old Captain-General might repeat his earlier errors, and once

more--as at Rio Seco and Medellin--court a pitched battle. Wellesley

had done his best to urge caution, by letters written not only to

Cuesta himself, but to his Chief-of-the-staff O’Donoju and to Colonel

Roche, who had now replaced Bourke as British representative at the

head quarters of the Army of Estremadura. Fortunately they were not

needed: the Spanish General was for once cautious: he followed Victor

at a respectful distance, and when he had reached the Tagus and

repaired the bridge of Almaraz, held back his army to the southern

bank and only pushed a few small detachments beyond the stream to

search for the enemy. Since the French had withdrawn to Talavera on

June 26 there was no collision. The cavalry of the 1st Corps were

discovered upon the upper Tietar and the Alberche, but they preserved

a defensive attitude, and the Spaniards did not provoke them by any

rash attempt to drive them back upon their main body. All remained

quiet, as Wellesley had rather desired than expected.

Cuesta’s strategical position, therefore, was perfectly secure,

since he kept his main body to the south of the river, and showed

no desire to meddle with Victor before the arrival of the British.

At this moment military affairs were not the only things that were

engaging the attention of the old Captain-General. He was watching

with considerable anxiety the course of events at Seville, where

he was aware that he had many enemies. Ever since his high-handed

action against the deputies of Leon in the preceding autumn, he knew

that the Central Junta, and especially its Liberal wing, viewed

him with suspicion and dislike. It was with great reluctance that

they had placed him in command of the Estremaduran army, and if he

had not been popular with the Conservative and clerical party and

with some of the military cliques, he would not have retained his

post for long. At this moment there were many intrigues stirring

in Andalusia, and if some of them were directed against the Junta,

others had no other end than the changing of the commanders of

the various armies. While the Junta were debating about forms of

government, and especially about the summoning of a national Cortes

in the autumn, there were a number of officers of damaged reputation

whose main object was to recover the military rank of which they had

been deprived after misfortunes in the field. Infantado, who thought

that it was absurd that he should have been disgraced after Ucles,

while Cuesta had been rewarded after Medellin, was at the head of one

party of intriguers, which included Francisco Palafox and the Conde

de Montijo, and had secured the aid of Colonel Doyle, late British

agent in Aragon and Catalonia, an officer who showed a lamentable

readiness to throw himself into the intestine quarrels of the Spanish

factions[586]. Their actions went to the very edge of high treason,

for Montijo stirred up a riot at Granada on April 16, attacked the

provincial authorities, and almost succeeded in carrying out a

_pronunciamiento_ which must have led to civil war. The Junta did no

more than banish him to San Lucar, from which place he continued his

plots with Infantado, in spite of the warning that he had received.

[586] Doyle, as his numerous letters in the Record Office show,

was such a furious partisan of the family of Palafox, that he

believed that all the Spanish authorities were in a conspiracy to

keep them down. He especially hated Blake.

In Seville, faction if not so openly displayed was equally violent.

There was, as we have already said, a large section of the Junta

whose dearest wish would have been to displace Cuesta: it was they

who had obtained the nomination of Venegas to take charge of the

troops in La Mancha, merely because he was known to be an enemy of

the elder general. Yet since the two armies would have to co-operate

in any attempt to recover Madrid, it was clearly inexpedient that

their commanders should be at enmity. Some of the politicians at

Seville were set on giving high command to the Duke of Albuquerque,

an energetic and ambitious officer, but one gifted with the talent

of quarrelling with every superior under whom he served: he was

now bickering with Cuesta just as in March he had bickered with

Cartaojal. The Duke was a great admirer of all things English, and

a personal friend of Frere, the British minister. The latter did

his best to support his pretensions, often expressing in official

correspondence with the Junta a desire that Albuquerque might be

given an independent corps, and entrusted with the charge of the

movement that was to be concerted in conjunction with Wellesley’s

army.

But it was not so much Albuquerque as Wellesley himself that Cuesta

dreaded as a possible successor. For Frere was possessed with the

notion that the time had now arrived at which it would be possible to

press for the appointment of a single Commander-in-chief of all the

Spanish armies. The obvious person to fill this post was the victor

of Vimiero and Oporto, if only Spanish pride would consent to the

appointment of a foreigner. Frere had sufficient sense to refrain

from openly publishing his idea. But he was continually ventilating

it to his private friends in the Junta, in season and out of season.

There can be no doubt that both from the military and the political

point of view the results of Wellesley’s exaltation to the position

of Generalissimo would have been excellent. If he had controlled

the whole of the Spanish armies in the summer of 1809, the course

of affairs in the Peninsula would have taken a very different turn,

and the campaign of Talavera would not have been wrecked by the

hopeless want of co-operation between the allied armies. But it was

not yet the time to press for the appointment: great as Wellesley’s

reputation already was, when compared with that of any Spanish

general, it was still not so splendid or so commanding as to compel

assent to his promotion[587]. Legitimate national pride stood in the

way, and even after Espinosa, and Tudela, and Medellin the Spaniards

could not believe that it was necessary for them to entrust the whole

responsibility for the defence of their country to the foreigner.

Only a few of the politicians of Seville showed any liking for the

project. Wellesley himself would have desired nothing so much as

this appointment, but being wiser and less hopeful than Frere, he

thought it useless to press the point. When the sanguine diplomat

wrote to him, early in June, to detail his attempts to bring home the

advisability of the project to his Spanish friends, the general’s

reply was cautious in the extreme. ‘I am much flattered,’ he said,

‘by the notion entertained by some of the persons in authority at

Seville, of appointing me to the command of the Spanish armies. I

have received no instruction from Government upon that subject: but

I believe that it was considered an object of great importance in

England that the Commander-in-chief of the British troops should

have that situation. But it is one more likely to be attained by

refraining from pressing it, and leaving it to the Spanish themselves

to discover the expediency of the arrangement, than by any suggestion

on our parts.’ He concluded by informing Frere that he could not

conceive that his insinuation was likely to have any effect, and that

the opinion of the British Ministry was probably correct--viz. that

at present national jealousy made the project hopeless[588].

[587] On June 9, Frere writes to tell Wellesley that if he could

only have destroyed Soult at Oporto, instead of merely chasing

him across the frontier, it would have been possible to secure

him the post of Generalissimo at once. This chance had gone by,

but ‘your friends here (among whom you may count Mr. de Garay)

are doing their best for you.’ [Record Office, from Seville, June

9, 1809.]

[588] Wellington to Frere, from Abrantes, June 16, 1809.

Now it was impossible that Frere’s well-meaning but mistaken

endeavours should escape the notice of Cuesta’s friends in Seville.

The British Minister had spoken to so many politicians on the

subject, that we cannot doubt that his colloquies were promptly

reported to the Captain-General of Estremadura. This fact goes far to

explain Cuesta’s surly and impracticable behaviour towards Wellesley

during the Talavera campaign. He disliked his destined colleague

not only because he was a foreigner, and because he showed himself

strong-willed and outspoken during their intercourse, but because

he believed that the Englishman was intriguing behind his back to

obtain the post of Generalissimo. This belief made him determined to

assert his independence on the most trifling matters, loth to fall

in with even the most reasonable plans, and suspicious that every

proposal made to him concealed some trap. He attributed to Wellesley

the design of getting rid of him, and was naturally determined to do

nothing to forward it.

The English officers who studied Cuesta’s conduct from the outside,

during the Talavera campaign, attributed his irrational movements and

his hopeless impracticability to a mere mixture of pride, stupidity,

and obstinacy. They were wrong; the dominant impulse was resentment,

jealousy, and suspicion--a combination far more deadly in its

results than the other. He awaited the approach of Wellesley with a

predisposition to quarrel and a well-developed personal enmity, whose

existence the British general had not yet realized.

We have dealt in the last chapter with the strength and organization

of the British army at the moment when Wellesley crossed the

frontier on July 3. It remains to speak of the two Spanish armies

which were to take part in the campaign. We have already seen that

Cuesta’s host had been reinforced after Medellin with a new brigade

of Granadan levies, and a whole division taken from the army of La

Mancha[589]. Since that date he had received large drafts both of

infantry and cavalry from Andalusia. Six more regiments of horse

had reached him, besides reinforcements for his old corps. All were

now strong in numbers, and averaged between 400 and 500 sabres, so

that by the middle of June he had fully 7,000 mounted men under his

orders. Eight or nine additional regiments of infantry had also come

to hand since April--some of them new Andalusian levies, others

old corps whose _cadres_ had been filled up since the disaster of

Ucles. His infantry counted about 35,000 bayonets, divided into five

divisions and a ‘vanguard’: the latter under Zayas was about 4,000

strong, each of the others exceeded 5,000. The cavalry formed two

divisions, under Henestrosa and Albuquerque, one composed of seven,

one of six regiments. There were thirty guns--some of heavy calibre,

nine-and twelve-pounders--with about 800 artillerymen. The whole

army, inclusive of sick and detached, amounted to 42,000 men, of whom

perhaps 36,000 were efficients present with the colours[590].

[589] I can nowhere find the date of the transference, but it

took place before July: the old regiments of Calatrava, Sagunto,

Alcantara, and Pavia, which were with Venegas’s army in March,

had been transferred to Cuesta’s by June, as also the new

regiments of Sevilla, and Cazadores de Madrid. My most valuable

source of information is an unpublished dispatch of Cuesta’s in

the Madrid War Office, which gives all the names of regiments,

but not their numbers.

[590] These totals may be regarded as certain, being drawn from

the dispatch of Cuesta’s alluded to above, which I was fortunate

enough to find at Madrid. Unfortunately no regimental figures are

given, only the gross total.

The second Spanish army, that of La Mancha under Venegas, was much

weaker, having furnished heavy detachments to reinforce Cuesta before

it took the field in June. Its base was the old ‘Army of the Centre,’

which had been commanded by Castaños and Infantado. Some twenty

battalions that had seen service in the campaign of Tudela were still

in its ranks: they had been recruited up to an average of 500 or

600 bayonets. The rest of the force was composed of new Andalusian

regiments, raised in the winter and spring, some of which had taken

part in the rout of Ciudad Real under Cartaojal, while others had

never before entered the field. The gross total of the army on June

16 was 26,298 men, of whom 3,383 were cavalry. Deducting the sick in

hospital, Venegas could dispose of some 23,000 sabres and bayonets,

distributed into five divisions. The horsemen in this army were not

formed into separate brigades, but allotted as divisional cavalry

to the infantry units. There was little to choose, in point of

efficiency, between the Estremaduran army and that of La Mancha; both

contained too many raw troops, and in both, as was soon to be proved,

the bulk of the cavalry was still as untrustworthy as it had shown

itself in previous engagements.

The Spaniards therefore could put into the field for the campaign

of July on the Tagus some 60,000 men. But the fatal want of unity

in command was to prevent them from co-ordinating their movements

and acting as integral parts of a single army guided by a single

will. Venegas was to a certain degree supposed to be under Cuesta’s

authority, but as he was continually receiving orders directly from

the Junta, and was treated by them as an independent commander, he

practically was enabled to do much as he pleased. Being a personal

enemy of Cuesta, he had every inducement to play his own game,

and did not scruple to do so at the most important crisis of the

campaign,--covering his disregard of the directions of his senior

by the easy pretext of a desire to execute those of the central

government.

On July 15, the day when his share in the campaign commenced, the

head quarters of Venegas were at Santa Cruz de Mudela, just outside

the northern exit of the Despeña Perros. His outposts lay in front,

at El Moral, Valdepeñas, and Villanueva de los Infantes. He was

divided by a considerable distance--some twenty-five miles--from the

advanced cavalry of Sebastiani’s corps, whose nearest detachment was

placed at Villaharta, where the high-road to Madrid crosses the river

Giguela.

Meanwhile we must return to Wellesley, who having crossed the

frontier on July 3, was now moving forward by short marches to

Plasencia. On the fourth the head quarters were at Zarza la Mayor,

on the sixth at Coria, on the seventh at Galisteo; on the eighth

Plasencia was reached, and the general halted the army, while

he should ride over to Almaraz and confer in person with Cuesta

on the details of their plan of campaign. In the valley of the

Alagon, where the country was almost untouched by the hand of war,

provisions were obtainable in some quantity, but every Spanish

informant agreed that when the troops dropped down to the Tagus they

would find the land completely devastated. Wellesley was therefore

most anxious to organize a great dépôt of food before moving on:

the local authorities professed great readiness to supply him, and

he contracted with the Alcaldes of the fertile Vera de Plasencia

for 250,000 rations of flour to be delivered during the next ten

days[591]. Lozano de Torres, the Spanish commissary-general sent

by the Junta to the British head quarters, promised his aid in

collecting the food, but even before Wellesley departed to visit

Cuesta, he had begun to conceive doubts whether supplies would be

easily procurable. The difficulty was want of transport--the army had

marched from Portugal with a light equipment, and had no carts to

spare for scouring the country-side in search of flour. The General

had relied on the assurances sent him from Seville to the effect

that he would easily be able to find local transport in the intact

regions about Coria and Plasencia: but he was disappointed: very

few carts could be secured, and the store of food in the possession

of the army seemed to shrink rather than to increase during every

day that the army remained in the valley of the Alagon, though the

region was fruitful and undevastated. It is certain that the British

commissaries had not yet mastered the art of gathering in provisions

from the country-side, and that the Spanish local authorities could

not be made to understand the necessity for punctuality and dispatch

in the delivery of the promised supplies.

[591] Wellesley to Frere, _Wellington Dispatches_, iv. 524.

On July 10 Wellesley started off with the head-quarters staff to

visit Cuesta, at his camp beyond the bridge of Almaraz, there to

concert the details of their joint advance. Owing to an error made

by his guides he arrived after dusk at the hamlet below the Puerto

de Mirabete, around which the main body of the Army of Estremadura

was encamped. The Captain-General had drawn out his troops in the

afternoon for the inspection of the British commander. When at

last he appeared they had been four hours under arms in momentary

expectation of the arrival of their distinguished visitor, and

Cuesta himself, though still lame from the effect of his bruises at

Medellin, had sat on horseback at their head during the greater part

of that time.

Two admirable accounts of the review of the Estremaduran host in the

darkness were written by members of Wellesley’s staff. It is well

worth while to quote one of them[592], for the narrative expresses

with perfect clearness the effect which the sight of the Spanish

troops made upon their allies:--

[592] That of Charles Stewart (Lord Londonderry) on pp. 382-3 of

the first volume of his _History of the Peninsular War_.

‘Our arrival at the camp was announced by a general discharge of

artillery, upon which an immense number of torches were made to blaze

up, and we passed the entire Spanish line in review by their light.

The effect produced by these arrangements was one of no ordinary

character. The torches, held aloft at moderate intervals, threw a

red and wavering light over the whole scene, permitting at the same

time its minuter parts to be here and there cast into the shade,

while the grim and swarthy visages of the soldiers, their bright arms

and dark uniforms, appeared peculiarly picturesque as often as the

flashes fell upon them. Nor was Cuesta himself an object to be passed

by without notice: the old man preceded us, not so much sitting upon

his horse as held upon it by two pages, at the imminent risk of being

overthrown whenever a cannon was discharged, or a torch flamed out

with peculiar brightness. His physical debility was so observable as

clearly to mark his unfitness for the situation which he held. As to

his mental powers, he gave us little opportunity of judging, inasmuch

as he scarcely uttered five words during the continuance of our

visit: but his corporal infirmities were ever at absolute variance

with all a general’s duties.

‘In this way we passed by about 6,000 cavalry drawn up in rank

entire, and not less than twenty battalions of infantry, each of 700

to 800 bayonets. They were all, without exception, remarkably fine

men. Some indeed were very young--too young for service--particularly

among the recruits who had lately joined. But to take them all

in all, it would not have been easy to find a stouter or more

hardy looking body of soldiers in any European service. Of their

appointments it was not possible to speak in the same terms of

commendation. There were battalions whose arms, accoutrements, and

even clothing might be pronounced respectable[593]: but in general

they were deficient, particularly in shoes. It was easy to perceive,

from the attitude in which they stood, and the manner in which they

handled their arms, that little or no discipline prevailed among

them: they could not but be regarded as raw levies. Speaking of them

in the aggregate they were little better than bold peasantry, armed

partially like soldiers, but completely unacquainted with a soldier’s

duty. This remark applied to the cavalry as much as to the infantry.

Many of the horses were good, but the riders manifestly knew nothing

of movement or of discipline: and they were on this account, as

also on that of miserable equipment, quite unfit for service. The

generals appeared to have been selected by one rule alone--that of

seniority. They were almost all old men, and, except O’Donoju and

Zayas, evidently incapable of bearing the fatigues or surmounting

the difficulties of a campaign. It was not so with the colonels and

battalion commanders, who appeared to be young and active, and some

of whom were, we had reason to believe, learning to become skilful

officers.... Cuesta seemed particularly unwilling that any of his

generals should hold any serious conversation with us. It is true

that he presented them one by one to Sir Arthur, but no words were

exchanged on the occasion, and each retired after he had made his

bow.’ Albuquerque, of whom the Captain-General was particularly

jealous, had been relegated with his division to Arzobispo, and did

not appear on the scene.

[593] As to the equipment of the Spaniards, the following

quotation from Leslie (p. 135) may be worth giving: ‘Their

uniforms were of every variety of colour, the equipment and

appointments of the most inferior description. One could

not but lament these defects, for the men were remarkably

fine, possessing all the essential qualities to make good

soldiers--courage, patience, and soberness. Their officers,

in general, were the very reverse! The line infantry were in

blue uniforms with red facings. The Provincial Corps, called

“Volunteers,” were mostly dressed in the brown Spanish cloth of

the country, with green or yellow facings. Some had chakoes,

others broad-brimmed hats with the rim turned up at one side:

all had cap-plates of tin announcing their designation. Some had

belts, others none. They had no pouches, but a broad belt of soft

leather, in which were placed a row of tin tubes, each holding a

cartridge, with a fold of leather to cover them, fastened round

the waist. The cavalry were heavy and light dragoons, with some

regiments of Hussars. Some were tolerably well dressed, in blue

or yellow uniforms with red facings. Some had boots, but more

long leather leggings, coming up above the knee. The horses were

small, active, and hardy, of the Spanish Barbary breed.’

The all-important plan of campaign was settled at a long

conference--it lasted for four hours--on the morning of the following

day. According to all accounts the scene at the interview must have

been curious. Cuesta could not, or would not, speak French: Wellesley

was not yet able to express himself fluently in Spanish. Accordingly,

O’Donoju, the chief of the staff of the Army of Estremadura, acted as

interpreter between them, rendering Wellesley’s views into Spanish

and Cuesta’s into English. The greater part of the discussion

consisted in the bringing forward of plans by the British commander

and their rejection by the Captain-General. Cuesta was full of

suspicion, and saw a trap in every proposal that was made to him:

he imagined that Wellesley’s main object was to edge him out of the

supreme command. He was almost silent throughout the interview, only

opening his lips to give emphatic negatives, for which O’Donoju

proceeded to find ingenious and elaborate explanations.

It was not the principles on which the campaign was to be conducted,

but the details of the distribution of the troops on which the

trouble arose. The enemy’s position and force was fairly well known

to both generals, except in one all-important particular. They were

aware that Victor lay behind the Alberche with not much more than

22,000 men, that Sebastiani was at Madridejos with a somewhat smaller

force[594], and that King Joseph with his central reserve, which they

over-estimated at 12,000 men, was able at any moment to join the

1st Corps. Hence they expected to find some 34,000 French troops at

Talavera, and rightly considered that with the 55,000 men of their

two armies they ought to give a good account of them. Sebastiani, as

they supposed, might be left out of the game, for occupation for him

would be found by the army of La Mancha, which was to be told off for

this purpose and directed to cling to the skirts of the 4th Corps and

never to lose sight of it. As Venegas would have, according to their

calculations, nearly double the numbers of Sebastiani, he would have

no difficulty in keeping him in check.

[594] They estimated him at only 10,000 men, but he had really

20,000, Wellesley to Castlereagh, July 15, from Plasencia.

But it was not only on the French troops in New Castile that watch

had to be kept. It was necessary to take into account the enemy

beyond the mountains, in the valley of the Douro. The allied generals

were aware that Mortier and Soult must both be considered. The former

they knew to be at Valladolid, and they had learnt that King Joseph

was proposing to bring him down towards Madrid--as was indeed the

fact. Accordingly they expected that he might turn up in a few days

somewhere in the direction of Avila. Soult they knew to be at Zamora,

and from the dispatches captured with General Franceschi ten days

before, they had a good knowledge of his force and intentions. A

study of these documents led them to conclude that he could not move

for many weeks, owing to the dilapidated state of his corps--which

he had painted in the most moving terms in his letters to King

Joseph[595]. They also gathered that if he moved at all, he would

be inclined to threaten Northern Portugal or Ciudad Rodrigo: in the

dispatches captured with Franceschi he had named Braganza as a point

at which he might strike. Accordingly they opined that he need not

be taken very seriously into consideration, especially as he was

wholly destitute of artillery[596]. Yet he might be drawn into the

field by the news that Madrid was in danger. If he were induced to

bring help to the King, he would almost certainly work by making

a diversion against the communications of the British army, and

not by directly joining himself to Joseph’s army by the long and

circuitous march from Zamora to Madrid. To carry out such a diversion

he would be obliged to cross the lofty Sierra de Francia by one of

the passes which lead from the Salamanca region into the valley of

the Alagon--perhaps by the defile of Perales, but much more probably

by the better known and more practicable pass of Baños. Wellesley

took the possibility of this movement into serious consideration,

but did not think that it would be likely to cause him much danger

if it should occur, for he believed that Soult would bring with him

no more than the 15,000 or 18,000 men of his own 2nd Corps. That he

would appear not with such a small force, but with Ney and Mortier

in his wake, leading an army of 50,000 bayonets, did not enter into

the mind of the British commander. Mortier was thought to be moving

in the direction of Avila: Ney was believed to be contending with the

Galician insurgents in the remote regions about Lugo and Corunna. The

news of his arrival at Astorga had not yet reached the allied camps,

and he was neglected as a factor in the situation. Wellesley and

Cuesta had no conception that any force save that of Soult was likely

to menace their northern flank and their line of communications when

they committed themselves to their advance on Madrid. To provide

against a possible movement of the 2nd Corps into the valley of the

Tagus, therefore, all that was necessary was to hold the defiles of

Perales and Baños. The former had already been seen to, for even

before the meeting of Wellesley and Cuesta, Carlos d’España had

blocked it with two or three battalions drawn from the garrison of

Ciudad Rodrigo. For the latter Wellesley hoped that Cuesta would

provide a sufficient garrison[597]. The old Captain-General promised

to do so, but only sent 600 men under the Marquis Del Reino, a wholly

inadequate detachment[598].

[595] Soult had written [from Puebla de Senabria, June 25]: ‘Je

me propose de reposer les troupes trois ou quatre jours: pendant

ce temps elles se prépareront des subsistances, on raccommodera

la chaussure, les chevaux seront ferrés, et je menacerai de

nouveau le Portugal: peut-être même je ferai faire une incursion

vers Bragance, afin d’opérer une diversion qui ne peut pas

manquer de produire quelque effet.... Je me fais précéder à

Zamora (où je compte être rendu le 2 juillet) par l’ordonnateur

Le Noble, qui doit réclamer près l’intendant-général de l’armée

des moyens en tout genre qui me manquent--tel que l’habillement,

chaussure, ambulance, officiers de santé, administration,

transport militaire, payeurs, argent pour solde et dépenses

extraordinaires, postes etc. J’ai l’honneur de supplier Votre

Majesté de daigner donner des ordres pour qu’il soit fait droit

a ses demandes: mes besoins sont très grands.... Il y a plus de

cinq mois que je n’ai reçu ni ordre, ni nouvelle, ni secours, par

conséquent je dois manquer de beaucoup de choses.’

[596] Wellesley’s views at this moment appear in his

correspondence, e.g. to Mr. Villiers, July 8: ‘I defy Soult to do

Beresford or Portugal any injury as long as his army is in its

present situation--or any amelioration of that situation which

can be produced in a short period of time.’ To Beresford, July 9:

‘I have no apprehension that Soult will be able to do anything

with his corps for some time, but I think that column ought to be

watched.’ To Beresford, July 14: ‘I do not believe that Ney has

quitted Galicia, at least we have not heard that he has. Soult

can do nothing against Portugal, for he is in a most miserable

state, without arms, artillery or ammunition, stores, &c.’

[597] Wellesley to Beresford, July 9: ‘I have not forgotten

either the Puerto de Baños or the Puerto de Perales, and have

called upon Cuesta to occupy both. The former is already

held, and the latter will be so in a day or two.’ [This was

unfortunately not to be the case.]

[598] I cannot discover the names of the two very weak

battalions, the smallest in Cuesta’s army, which were detached

for this purpose under Del Reino. They are _not_ the same as the

two battalions which joined Wilson (Merida and 3rd of Seville).

Wellesley’s first proposal to his Spanish colleague was that the

main bodies of both armies should advance against Victor, while

a detachment of 10,000 men should move out to the left, in the

direction of Avila, to look for Mortier, if he were to be found in

that direction, and if not to turn the enemy’s right and threaten

Madrid. He hoped that Venegas and the army of La Mancha might at the

same time move forward against Sebastiani, and keep him so fully

employed that he would not be able to spare a man to aid Victor and

King Joseph.

Cuesta at once refused to make any detachment in the direction of

Avila from his own army, and suggested that Wellesley should find

the 10,000 men required for this diversion. The English general

objected that it would take exactly half his force, and that he

could not split up such a small unit, while the Spaniards could

easily spare such a number of troops from their total of 36,000 men.

This argument failed to move Cuesta, and the project was dropped,

Wellesley thinking that it was not strictly necessary, though very

advisable[599].

[599] Wellesley to Frere, July 13: ‘You will see, in the

accompanying letter, an account of my endeavour to prevail on

General Cuesta to make a detachment upon Avila. I agree with you

that it would be a great advantage from a military point of view

... but I must at the same time inform you that I do not consider

the movement to be _necessary_ as a military measure.’ Frere and

Wellesley had hoped that Albuquerque might be placed in command

of this large detachment, and might distinguish himself at its

head.

The only flanking force which was finally set aside for operations on

the left wing, for the observation of the French about Avila and the

feint at Madrid, consisted of Sir Robert Wilson’s 1,500 Portuguese,

and a corresponding body of two battalions and one squadron from

the Spanish army[600]--about 3,500 men in all. It played a part of

some little importance in the campaign, but it is hard to see that

it would have exercised any dominant influence even if it had been

raised to the full strength that Wellesley had desired. Mortier, as

a matter of fact, was not near Avila, and so the 10,000 men sent in

this direction would not have served the end that the British general

expected. The 5th Corps had been called off by Soult, contrary to

the wishes of the King, and no body of troops was needed to contain

it, on this part of the theatre of war. It was ultimately to appear

at a very different point, where no provision had been made for its

reception.

[600] Battalions of Merida (1,170 bayonets) and 3rd of Seville

(810 bayonets).

Far more important were the arrangements which Wellesley and Cuesta

made for the diversion on their other flank. It was from the

miscarriage of this operation, owing to the wilful disobedience of

the officer charged with it, that the failure of the whole campaign

was to come about. They agreed that Venegas with the 23,000 men

of the army of La Mancha, was to move up the high-road from his

position at Santa Cruz de Mudela, and drive Sebastiani before him.

Having pushed back the 4th Corps to the Tagus, Venegas was then to

endeavour to force the passage of that river either at Aranjuez or

at Fuentedueñas, and to threaten Madrid. It was calculated that

Sebastiani would be forced to keep between him and the capital, and

would be unable to spare a man to reinforce Victor and King Joseph.

Thus Wellesley and Cuesta with 56,000 men would close on the King

and the Marshal, who could not have more than 35,000, and (as it was

hoped) defeat them or at least manœuvre them out of Madrid. A glance

at the map will show one peculiarity of this plan: it would have been

more natural to bid Venegas march by the bridge of Toledo rather than

by those of Aranjuez and Fuentedueñas; to use the latter he would

have to move towards his right, and to separate himself by a long

gap from the main army of the allies. At Toledo he would be within

thirty-five miles of them--at Aranjuez seventy, at Fuentedueñas 100

miles would lie between him and the troops of Wellesley and Cuesta.

It would appear that the two generals at their colloquy came to the

conclusion that by ordering Venegas to use the eastern passages of

the Tagus they would compel Sebastiani to remove eastward also,

so that he would be out of supporting distance of Victor. They

recognized the bare possibility that Sebastiani might refuse to

devote himself to the task of holding back the army of La Mancha,

might leave Madrid to its fate, and then hurry off to join the King

and the 1st Corps in an assault on the main Anglo-Spanish army. In

this case they settled that Venegas should march on the capital and

seize it, a move which (as they supposed) would force Joseph to

turn back or to re-divide his army[601]. But it is clear that they

did not expect to have to fight Victor, the King, and Sebastiani

combined, as they were ultimately forced to do at Talavera on July

28. They supposed that Venegas would find occupation for the 4th

Corps, and that they might count on finding only the 1st Corps and

Joseph’s Madrid reserves in front of them.

[601] All these details as to the joint plan are better expressed

in Cuesta’s Apologetic _Manifesto_, published after his

resignation, than in Wellesley’s _Dispatches_ to Castlereagh and

Frere.

When armies are working in a joint operation from separate bases

it is all-important that they should time their movements with the

nicest exactitude. This Wellesley and Cuesta attempted to secure,

by sending to Venegas an elaborate time-table. He was ordered to

be at Madridejos on July 19, at Tembleque on the twentieth, at

Santa Cruz de la Zarza on the twenty-first, and at the bridge of

Fuentedueñas on the twenty-second or twenty-third. All this was on

the supposition that Sebastiani would have about 12,000 men and would

give ground whenever pressed. If he turned out by some unlikely

chance--presumably by having rallied the King’s reserves--to be much

stronger, Venegas was to manœuvre in the direction of Tarancon, to

avoid a general action, and if necessary to retreat towards the

Passes from which he had started. It would be rather an advantage

than otherwise if (contrary to all probability) the French had

concentrated their main force against the army of La Mancha, for this

would leave Victor helpless in front of the united hosts of Wellesley

and Cuesta, which would outnumber him by two to one.

[Illustration: SPANISH COINS OF THE PERIOD OF THE PENINSULAR WAR]

What the allied generals never expected was that Venegas would let

Sebastiani slip away from his front, without any attempt to hold him,

and would then (instead of marching on Madrid) waste the critical

days of the campaign (July 24-29) in miserable delays between Toledo

and Aranjuez, when there was absolutely no French field-force between

him and Madrid, nor any hostile troops whatever in his neighbourhood

save a weak division of 3,000 men in garrison at Toledo. The failure

of the Talavera campaign is due even more to this wretched indecision

and disobedience to orders on the part of Venegas than to the

eccentricities and errors of Cuesta. If the army of La Mancha had

kept Sebastiani in check, and refused to allow him to abscond, there

would have been no battles on the Alberche on July 27-28, for the

French would never have dared to face the Anglo-Spaniards of the

main host without the assistance of the 4th Corps.

But to return to the joint plan of Wellesley and Cuesta: on July 23,

the day on which Venegas was to reach Fuentedueñas (or Aranjuez)

the 56,000 men of the grand army were to be assailing Victor behind

the Alberche. The British were to cross the Tietar at Bazagona on

the eighteenth and follow the high-road Navalmoral-Oropesa. The

Estremadurans, passing the Tagus at Almaraz and Arzobispo, were

to move by the parallel route along the river bank by La Calzada

and Calera, which is only five or six miles distant from the great

_chaussée_. Thus the two armies would be in close touch with each

other, and would not be caught apart by the enemy. On reaching

Talavera they were to force the fords of the Alberche and fall upon

Victor in his cantonments behind that stream. Sir Robert Wilson

and the 3,500 men of his mixed Spanish and Portuguese detachment

were to move up as the flank-guard of the allied host, and to push

by the head waters of the Tietar for Escalona on the side-road to

Madrid[602].

[602] Cuesta’s and Wellesley’s accounts of their joint plan on

the whole agree wonderfully well.

Criticisms of the most acrimonious kind have been brought to bear on

this plan by English, French, and Spanish writers. Many of them are

undeserved; in particular the tritest objection of all, made _ex post

facto_ by those who only look at the actual course of the campaign,

that Wellesley was exposing his communications to the united forces

of Soult, Ney, and Mortier. There was on July 10, when Cuesta and

Wellesley met, no reason whatever for apprehending the contingency

of the march of the three marshals upon Plasencia. Soult, as his own

letters of June 25 bore witness, was not in a condition to move--he

had not a single piece of artillery, and his troops were in dire

need of rest and re-equipment. Ney was believed to be at Corunna or

Lugo--Soult’s intercepted dispatches spoke of the 6th Corps as being

destined to remain behind in Galicia, and he (as the allied generals

supposed) ought best to have known what his colleague was about to

do. How could they have guessed that, in wrath at his desertion by

the Duke of Dalmatia, Ney would evacuate the whole kingdom, abandon

fortresses like Ferrol and Corunna, and march for Astorga? Without

Ney’s corps to aid him, Soult could not possibly have marched on

Plasencia--to have done so with the 2nd Corps alone would have

exposed him to being beset by Wellesley on one side and by Beresford

on the other. As to Mortier and the 5th Corps, Cuesta and Wellesley

undervalued their strength, being unaware that Kellermann had sent

back from the Asturias the division that had been lent him for his

expedition to Oviedo. They thought that the Duke of Treviso’s force

was more like 7,000 than 17,000 bayonets, and--such as it was--they

had the best of reasons for believing that it was more likely to

march on Madrid by Avila than to join Soult, for they had before them

an intercepted dispatch from the King, bidding Mortier to move down

to Villacastin in order to be in supporting distance of the capital

and the 1st Corps.

On the whole, therefore, the two generals must be excused for not

foreseeing the descent of 50,000 men upon their communications,

which took place three weeks after their meeting at the bridge of

Almaraz: the data in their possession on July 10 made it appear most

improbable.

A much more valid criticism is that which blames the method of

co-operation with Venegas which was employed. ‘Double external lines

of operations’ against an enemy placed in a central position are

notoriously perilous, and the particular movement on Fuentedueñas,

which the army of La Mancha was ordered to execute, was one which

took it as far as possible from Wellesley’s and Cuesta’s main body.

Yet it may be urged in their defence that, if they had drawn in

Venegas to join them, they would have got little profit out of having

23,000 more Spaniards on the Alberche. Sebastiani on the other hand,

who could join Victor at the same moment that the corps from La

Mancha joined the allies, would bring some 17,000 excellent troops to

Talavera. The benefit of drawing in Venegas would be much less than

the disadvantage of drawing in Sebastiani to the main theatre of war.

Hence came the idea that the army from the Passes must be devoted to

the sole purpose of keeping the 4th Corps as far as possible from

the Alberche. Even knowing that Venegas was hostile to Cuesta, and

that he was a man of no mark or capacity, Wellesley could not have

expected that he would disobey orders, waste time, and fail utterly

in keeping touch with Sebastiani or threatening Madrid.

The one irreparable fault in the drawing up of the whole plan of

campaign was the fundamental one that Wellesley had undertaken

to co-operate with Spanish armies before he had gauged the weak

points of the generals and their men. If he had held the post of

commander-in-chief of the allied forces, and could have issued

orders that were obeyed without discussion, the case would have been

different. But he had to act in conjunction with two colleagues,

one of whom was suspicious of his intentions and jealous of his

preponderant capacity, while the other deliberately neglected to

carry out clear and cogent orders from his superior officer. Cuesta’s

impracticability and Venegas’s disobedience could not have been

foreseen by one who had no previous experience of Spanish armies.

Still less had Wellesley realized all the defects of the Spanish

rank and file when placed in line of battle. That he did not hold an

exaggerated opinion of their merits when he started on the campaign

is shown by letters which he wrote nine months before[603]. But he

was still under the impression that, if cautiously handled, and not

exposed to unnecessary dangers, they would do good service. He had

yet to witness the gratuitous panic of Portago’s division on the

eve of Talavera, and the helplessness of the Spanish cavalry at the

combats of Gamonal and Arzobispo. After a month’s experience of

Cuesta and his men, Wellesley vowed never again to take part in grand

operations with a Spanish general as his equal and colleague. This

was the teaching of experience--and on July 10 the experience was yet

to come.

[603] See Wellington to Castlereagh, from Ramalhal, Sept. 1808.

The interview at the bridge of Almaraz had not been very satisfactory

to Wellesley, but it was far from having undeceived him as to the

full extent of the difficulties that lay before him. He wrote to

Frere at Seville that he had been on the whole well received, and

that Cuesta had not displayed any jealousy of him. As that sentiment

was at this moment the predominant feeling in the old man’s breast,

it is clear that he had succeeded in hiding it. But the obstinate

silence of Wellesley’s colleague had worried him. O’Donoju had done

all the talking, and ‘it was impossible to say what plans the general

entertains.’ He was moreover somewhat perturbed by the rumours

which his staff had picked up from the Estremaduran officers, to the

effect that Cuesta was so much the enemy of the Central Junta that he

was plotting a _pronunciamiento_ for its deposition[604]. As to the

fighting powers of the Spanish army, Wellesley wrote to Castlereagh

that ‘the troops were ill clothed but well armed, and the officers

appeared to take pains with their discipline. Some of the corps of

infantry were certainly good, and the horses of the cavalry were

in good condition.’ Only ten days later he was to utter the very

different opinion that ‘owing to their miserable state of discipline

and their want of officers properly qualified, these troops are

entirely incapable of performing any manœuvre however simple[605],’

and that ‘whole corps, officers and men, run off on the first

appearance of danger[606].’