Badajoz, far to the south, in Spanish Estremadura, stood to the

defence of Southern Portugal exactly as Ciudad Rodrigo to the defence

of Northern Portugal. It possessed also in Elvas a counterpart to

Almeida. But Badajoz is immensely larger and stronger than Rodrigo,

just as Elvas is infinitely more formidable than Almeida. The two

fortresses on the frontier of Leon are small places crowning mere

mounds set in a plain. Badajoz and Elvas have towering citadels

set on rugged hills, and overlooking the whole country-side. They

have also strong detached forts on dominant positions: the circuit

of ground that must be taken up by an army that intends to besiege

them is very large, and at Badajoz there is a first-class river,

the Guadiana, which cuts in two the lines which the assailant must

occupy. It may be added that based on Badajoz there was a whole

Spanish army of 15,000 men, not a mere division of 3,000, like that

which lurked in the mountains above Rodrigo. Noting the strength of

Badajoz and Elvas, the Emperor had made up his mind that they should

be observed and ‘contained’ by troops from the Army of Andalusia,

but not attacked till Lisbon had been conquered and the English

expelled from Portugal. ‘Les Anglais une fois battus et rembarqués,

Badajoz et Elvas tombent d’eux-mêmes,’ he wrote in a holograph minute

addressed to Masséna, just before the advance across the Portuguese

frontier began[164]. It was only when the invasion had been brought

to a standstill before the lines of Torres Vedras, that he came to

the conclusion that pressure must be applied south of the Tagus, to

distract Wellington, and that Soult, as a preliminary to an attack

on the Alemtejo, must capture Badajoz and Elvas, and disperse the

Spanish Army of Estremadura. The idea came to him tardily: thanks to

Wellington’s careful starvation of the main French army, Masséna was

forced to retreat into Leon when Soult had only recently captured

Badajoz, and had not yet shown a man in front of Elvas. The scheme

was hatched, like so many of Napoleon’s Spanish plans, about three

months too late for effective realization. As late as November 1810

the orders to Soult are merely to demonstrate against Badajoz, and

to hinder the departure of La Romana’s army for the lines of Torres

Vedras, but not to besiege the Estremaduran fortress. Probably it was

Foy’s information as to the existence and strength of the unsuspected

lines of Torres Vedras, which reached him late in November, that made

the Emperor realize the advisability of that secondary attack by

the south bank of the Tagus which Wellington had foreseen and taken

means to meet a full year before. Fortunately a capable general on

the defensive always knows his own weak spots long before they are

discovered by the enemy. By the time that Soult had at last captured

Badajoz and the small dependent places--Olivenza, Albuquerque, Campo

Mayor--Wellington had got rid of Masséna from the neighbourhood of

Lisbon, and was preparing to chase him home across Northern Portugal.

Within a few weeks of its surrender by the traitor Imaz, Badajoz was

being besieged by a detachment of the British army, and Soult had

his hands full, as he strove at once to hold down Andalusia and to

relieve the beleaguered fortress.

[164] Napoleon to Masséna, July 29, 1810, _Corresp._, xx. p. 552.

SECTION XIX: CHAPTER II

WELLINGTON’S PREPARATIONS FOR DEFENCE

As far back as September 1809, while his army still lay at Badajoz

and the Talavera campaign was hardly over, Wellington had foreseen

the oncoming invasion of Portugal, which did not actually begin till

August 1810[165]. Writing to his brother, then on his special mission

to Seville, he had laid down his conclusions. Bonaparte would, in

consequence of the cessation of the Austrian war, be enabled to

pour unlimited reinforcements into Spain. The British army, even

if raised to 40,000 men, would not be strong enough to cover both

Seville and Lisbon. Considering the temper of the Spanish government

and the Spanish troops, he thought it would be most unadvisable to

commit himself to the defence of Andalusia. But he was prepared to

undertake the defence of Portugal. He implored the British Ministry

not to sacrifice its strong position on the Tagus in order to

embark upon a hazardous campaign in the South[166]. His views as to

Portugal were simply the development of those which he had drawn up

for Castlereagh’s eye on his first sailing for the Peninsula[167].

Portugal though ‘all frontier’ might be defended against any French

army of less than 100,000 men, if its resources were placed at his

disposal, and he were given a free hand to utilize them according

to his own plan. The Portland Cabinet, though much doubting whether

Wellington could carry out his pledge, and though reluctant to

abandon the idea that Andalusia might be defended and Cadiz made

secure by British troops, finally yielded to the General’s appeal.

[165] For his views just after Talavera see vol. ii. of this

work, pages 609-10.

[166] ‘I strongly recommend to you, unless you mean to incur the

risk of the loss of your army, not to have anything to do with

Spanish warfare, on any ground whatever, in the existing state

of things.... If you should take up Cadiz you must lay down

Portugal.’ Wellington to Castlereagh, _Dispatches_, v. 90.

[167] See vol. ii. pages 286-8.

But on December 2, 1809, the Portland Cabinet gave place to Spencer

Perceval’s new administration, and Wellington had to reiterate

the arguments which he had used to Castlereagh and Canning to new

correspondents, Lord Liverpool and Lord Bathurst. Fortunately the

incoming ministers resolved to adhere to the promises made by their

predecessors, and to persist in the defence of Portugal. It was of

immense value to Wellington that his brother Wellesley soon replaced

Lord Bathurst at the Foreign Office, so that he could command in

this Ministry a supporter as firm as Castlereagh had been in the

last. Nevertheless his position was not entirely fortunate: the

new administration was being fiercely assailed by the Whigs over

the general policy of risking British armies on the Continent. The

calamities of the Walcheren expedition supplied a text on which the

Opposition could preach interminable sermons. The men who were not

ashamed to allege, for party reasons, that Wellington was a rash

general, and that the Talavera campaign had been a disaster, were

continually harassing the Ministry, by their suggestions that when

the French Emperor marched in person to Spain the British army in the

Peninsula must inevitably be destroyed. It was probably to aid them

that Napoleon kept inserting in the _Moniteur_ articles in which it

was asserted that the maintenance of the incapable ‘Sepoy General’ at

the head of the British forces was the thing which France must most

desire. In Lord Liverpool’s correspondence with Wellington it is easy

to see that the idea that it might be necessary to evacuate Portugal,

when the French attack was delivered, almost preponderated over that

of preparing for the defence of that realm. While Wellington’s whole

mind is set on working out the details of a campaign from which he

hopes great things, his correspondent is always thinking of the

possibility of a disastrous embarkation at the end of it. The General

could not pledge himself that Portugal might be defended against any

odds whatever: it was possible that the Emperor might lead or send

against him an army of absolutely overpowering strength, though he

did not think such a contingency probable. But since he could not

say that his position was impregnable, he was being continually

worried with suggestions as to all the possible contingencies that

might occur to his discomfiture. The ministers dreaded that the

Peninsular venture might end in a fiasco, like the Duke of York’s

Dutch expedition of 1799, and thought that such a failure would lose

them their offices. Hence they were nervous about every false rumour

that reached them from France concerning the Emperor’s approaching

departure; and the more certain information about the immense numbers

of troops that were passing the Pyrenees filled them with dread.

It required all Wellington’s robust self-confidence to keep them

reassured. He had to be perpetually repeating to them that all his

preparations for retreat and embarkation, if the worst should happen,

had been already thought out--they might make up their minds that he

would do nothing rash. But he was inclined to think that there would

in the end be no need to depart. ‘I shall delay the embarkation,’ he

wrote, ‘as long as it is in my power, and shall do everything that is

in my power to avert the necessity of embarking at all. If the enemy

should invade this country with a force less than that which I should

think so superior to ours as to create a necessity for embarking, I

shall fight a battle to save the country, and for this I have made

the preparations.’ He did not think he could be beaten; but if, by

some mischance, the fortune of war went against him, he had still

no doubt that he could bring off the army in safety. ‘If we do go,

I feel a little anxiety to go like gentlemen, out of the hall door

(particularly after all the preparations I have made to enable us to

do so), and not out of the back door or by the area.’

It is curious to find that in this most interesting dispatch to

Lord Liverpool Wellington distinctly asserts that his worst enemy

was the ghost of Sir John Moore[168]. ‘The great disadvantage under

which I labour is that Sir John Moore, who was here before me, gave

his opinion that Portugal could not be defended by the army under

his command. It is obvious that the country was in a very different

situation at that time from what it is at present, and that I am in a

very different situation from that in which he found himself ..., yet

persons who ought to be better acquainted with these facts entertain

a certain prejudice against the adoption of any plan for opposing

the enemy of which Portugal is to be the theatre. I have as much

respect as any man for the opinion and judgement of Sir John Moore,

and I should mistrust my own if it were opposed to his in a case

where he had had the opportunity of knowing and considering. But he

positively knew nothing about Portugal, and could know nothing about

its existing state[169].’

[168] See also vol. ii. page 286, of this book.

[169] All these quotations are from Wellington to Lord Liverpool,

April 2, 1810, a long dispatch written from Vizeu, every word of

which is well worth study.

The most vexatious thing for Wellington was that ‘the persons who

ought to have known better,’ yet were perpetually uttering melancholy

vaticinations as to the approach of disaster, included some of

his own senior officers. I have seen a letter from a general in

Portugal to his friend in England containing such phrases as this:

‘I most strongly suspect that before many months are over our heads

there will be no opportunity for this employment (that of a cavalry

brigadier) left to _any one_, on the Continent at least. The next

campaign will close the eventful scene in the Peninsula, as far as we

are concerned; for I am decidedly of opinion that neither (Marshal)

Wellington nor (Marshal) Beresford will prevent the approaching

subjugation of Portugal.’ Or again: ‘I am quite surprised at Lord

W.’s pliant disposition. I suspect he feels himself tottering on his

throne, and wishes to conciliate at any sacrifice[170].’ The frequent

complaints in Wellington’s correspondence as to the sort of letters

that were going home to England in the spring of 1810 sufficiently

show that these down-hearted views were not uncommon among his

subordinates. If the generals on the spot foresaw disaster, it is no

wonder that the ministers in London felt anxious, and refused to be

comforted by the confident dispatches of the Commander-in-Chief.

[170] I found these passages in letters to Sir John Le Marchant,

then in command at the Staff College at High Wycombe, from a

highly-placed friend in Portugal. It is notable that other

contemporary epistles from younger men, old pupils of Le

Marchant, show a far more cheery spirit. The correspondence (from

which I shall have many other passages to quote) was placed at my

disposition by the kindness of Sir Henry Le Marchant, grandson of

Sir John.

The preparations which Wellington was making during the winter of

1809-10 and the ensuing spring, for the reception of the inevitable

French invasion, may be arranged, in the main, under three heads. We

must first treat of the complete reorganization of the Portuguese

military forces, not only the regulars but the militia, and the old

_levée en masse_ of the Ordenança. Second come the elaborate plans

for the construction of enormous field-works for the protection of

Lisbon, the famous lines of Torres Vedras, and the fortification of

certain other, and more advanced, points. The third, and in some

ways the most important of all, was the arrangement of the great

scheme for devastating the country-side in front of the invader, and

fighting him by the weapon of starvation, a device new to the French,

but not unprecedented in the earlier history of Portugal.

The Portuguese regular army had taken hardly any part in the

campaigns of 1809. The only sections of it that had been under fire

were Silveira’s two regiments, the four battalions that marched with

Wellington to Oporto in May, and Wilson’s Loyal Lusitanian Legion,

which had fought with more valour than success at the bridge of

Alcantara and the Pass of Baños[171]. Beresford, with the greater

part of the troops that were in a condition to take the field, had

been out on the border in July, and had remained for some days in

Spain, on the side of Coria and Zarza Mayor, but he had never been in

contact with the enemy[172]. The fighting power of the reorganized

Portuguese army was still a doubtful quantity.

[171] See vol. ii. pages 440-1 and 620.

[172] See vol. ii. pages 600-1. Beresford had some 18,000 men

with him.

The field-strength of the Portuguese regular forces should have

been, according to its establishments, 56,000 men. In September 1809

there were only 42,000 men with the colours[173], and of these much

more than half were recruits, who had recently been thrust into the

depleted _cadres_ of the old army. There were many regiments which

had been practically destroyed by the French, and which showed,

when Beresford first marched out to the frontier, only 200 or 300

men instead of their normal 1,500[174]. Many others had less than

half their complement. The first thing that required to be done was

to fill up the gaps, and this was accomplished during the winter

of 1809-10 by a stringent use of the conscription law already

existing. The line regiments in the Bussaco campaign showed, with

hardly an exception, 1,200 or 1,300 effectives present--i.e. if the

sick and ‘details’ are added they were nearly or quite up to their

establishment of 1,500[175]. The cavalry was less effective: the

number of men could be filled up, but horses were hard to find,

and in the end Wellington sent four of the twelve regiments to do

dismounted duty in garrison, and served out their mounts to the

remaining eight, which nevertheless could never show more than 300

or 400 sabres present, out of their nominal 594. Portugal is not a

horse-breeding country, and the British cavalry was competing with

the native for the small supply of remounts that could be procured.

The artillery, on the other hand, was high in strength and very

satisfactory.

[173] See tables in vol. ii. pages 629-31.

[174] On Sept. 15, 1809, the 22nd, which had been destroyed by

Soult at Oporto, had only 193 men. The 8th had but 369, the 15th

577, the 24th 505.

[175] Ten regiments present at Bussaco had over 1,100 men each,

only one less than 800. This was the 22nd, mentioned above as

practically non-existent a year before. It had only recruited

up to the strength of one battalion: all the rest had two. The

strongest regiment was the 11th with 1,438 men.

Mere numbers are no test of the efficiency of a host. The weak

point of the old national army had been--as we mentioned in

another place--the effete and unmilitary character of its body of

officers--more especially of its senior officers[176]. The junior

ranks, filled up since the French invasion with young men who had

taken up the military career from patriotic motives, were infinitely

better. By the second year of the war there were many admirable

officers among them. But it was men capable of handling a battalion

or a regiment that were wanting. We saw how Beresford had been forced

to introduce many British officers into the service, though he was

aware that the personal pride of the Portuguese officers was bitterly

hurt thereby. His justification may be deduced from a confidential

memorandum written for him by his chief-of-the-staff, Benjamin

D’Urban[177], which is well worth quoting:--

[176] See vol. ii. pages 210-15.

[177] This unpublished document here quoted, along with the whole

of Sir Benjamin’s journal and correspondence, has been placed at

my disposal by his grandson, Mr. D’Urban. They are invaluable for

the Portuguese aspect of the War.

‘There are yet among the field officers, captains, and older

subalterns a number of incorrigible officers of the old school, who

are a dead weight upon their respective regiments, and mischievous in

the way of example. Whenever it may be thought expedient, from time

to time, to get rid of them, there will be no difficulty in finding

excellent young men to replace them from the ranks respectively

below.... But I feel it incumbent upon me to give it you as my

decided opinion, resulting from a close investigation into the causes

of the defects of the Portuguese, that it will be utterly impossible

either to make a regiment fit for service, or to preserve it when

made so, without giving it an English commanding-officer and at least

two English captains.

‘The Portuguese soldier is naturally indolent. He falls with the

greatest facility into slouching and slovenly habits, unless he is

constantly roused and forced to exert himself. But many a Portuguese

officer, if not constantly spurred and urged to do his duty, is at

least as indolent as his men. Nothing (I am persuaded by experience)

will counteract this, and create activity among the officers and

consequent diligence and care among the men, but the strictness,

energy and vigilance of an English commanding-officer.

‘Even supposing a sufficient energy of character in the native

officer, he does not and will not, if he be not a _Fidalgo_ himself,

exercise coercive or strong measures to oblige one of that class

to do his duty. He is aware that in doing so he makes a powerful

enemy, and all the habits of thought in which he has been educated

inspire him with such a dread of this, that no sense of duty will

urge him to encounter it. Thus, whenever a regiment is commanded by a

non-Fidalgo, it never fails to suffer extremely: for the noblemen are

permitted to do as they please, and afford a very bad example, for

they are at least as indolent as the ordinary Portuguese.

‘The English captains will be found invaluable, especially in the

hands of an English commandant. Their example is infinitely useful.

The Portuguese captains are piqued into activity and attention,

when they see their companies excelled in efficiency by those

of the English, and they do from emulation what a sense of duty

would perhaps never bring them to. There are a variety of by-paths

and oblique means by which the parts of a Portuguese corps are

constantly, and almost insensibly, endeavouring to return to the old

habits that they are so much attached to. To nip this, from time to

time, in the bud, it is necessary to be aware of it: without the

faithful surveillance of English subordinate officers (who, ever

mixing with the mass of the men, can’t well be ignorant of what is

going on) the commanding-officer can rarely be warned in time.’

Beresford replied that all this was true, but that ‘the national

feeling required management,’ and that to place every regimental

or brigade command in British hands would provoke such fierce

jealousy that he was ‘compelled to humour the prejudices and satisfy

the pride of the nation.’ His device for doing this was to make

a general rule that wherever a Portuguese officer was in chief

command he should have a British officer second in command under

him, and vice versa[178]. When a brigade was given to a Portuguese,

he managed that the two colonels of the regiments forming it should

be Englishmen; similarly, if a Portuguese commanded a regiment

his senior major was always an Englishman. By this means it was

secured that a fair half of the higher pieces of promotion should

be left to the native officers, but that every Portuguese placed

in a responsible position should have a British officer at his

back. In addition there were from two to four British captains in

each battalion, but no subalterns; for, to encourage good men to

volunteer into the Portuguese service, it was provided that all who

did so should receive a step of promotion, and a British lieutenant

became a Portuguese captain on exchange, and a British captain a

Portuguese major. The system seems to have worked well, and with

far less friction than might have been expected[179]. The better

class of native officers were piqued into emulation, just as D’Urban

had expected; the worst was gradually eliminated[180]. It must be

noted that to every battalion there were added one or two British

sergeants, whose services were needed for the drilling of the men in

the English exercises, which now superseded the old German system

left behind by La Lippe, the last reorganizer of the Portuguese army.

For the whole drill of the infantry was changed, and the British

formations and manœuvres introduced. Dundas’s ‘Eighteen Manœuvres’

were translated, and became the Bible of the Lusitanian no less than

the British officer[181]. The employment of the two-deep line, the

essential feature of the system, was made the base of all Portuguese

drill; at Bussaco it justified itself. The Caçadores were trained

on the ‘Rifle Regulations’ of Coote Manningham, and their uniform

was modified in cut, though not in colour, to a close resemblance

of that of the British rifleman[182]. The net result of all these

changes was that for the future the British and Portuguese units of

Wellington’s army could be moved by the same words of command, and in

the same formations, and that all the disadvantages resulting from

the coexistence of two different systems of drill disappeared.

[178] This rule I find definitely laid down in a letter of

Hardinge, Beresford’s Quartermaster-general, written as late as

1812, but the practice was already in full use by 1810.

[179] For narratives of the daily life of a British officer in a

Portuguese regiment see Bunbury’s _Reminiscences of a Veteran_,

and Blakiston’s _Twelve Years of Military Adventure_. Both had

their difficulties, but both, on the whole, got on well with

their colleagues. D’Urban’s correspondence supplies a frequent

commentary on regimental problems.

[180] How this was done may be read in Blakiston.

[181] See Bunbury, p. 54.

[182] They were dressed in dark brown instead of in the rifle

green. The shako, coat, and trousers were of the British model.

Two principal difficulties still remained in the administration of

the Portuguese army. The first was, what to do with the few senior

officers of undoubted patriotism but more doubtful capacity, who

were too important and influential to be placed upon the shelf,

yet might cause a disaster if placed in a critical position of

responsibility. The most notable of them was Silveira, who had

acquired much popularity by his obstinate, if ill-managed, resistance

to Soult in the spring of 1809. Wellington, with many searchings

of heart, placed him in command of the Tras-os-Montes, where it

was most unlikely that any serious irruption of the French would

take place[183]. He had a large force placed under him, but it did

not include a single regular regiment, and, with militia only at

his disposition, it was hoped that he would be discouraged from

attempting any hazardous experiments. Moreover, he was given a

British second-in-command, first John Wilson and afterwards Miller,

to curb his eccentricities so far as was possible. Baccelar, another

officer of doubtful merit, but more dangerous from torpidity than

from rashness, was given charge of the militia of the three northern

provinces, so that Silveira was technically under his orders--though

the nominal subordinate would seem to have paid little attention

to his superior. The most important post, however, assigned to a

Portuguese officer was the governorship of Elvas, the strongest

fortress of Portugal, and one which would stand in the forefront of

the battle if the French made the subsidiary invasion south of the

Tagus, which Wellington was inclined to expect. The command of this

great stronghold and the 6,000 men of its garrison (of whom half

were regulars) was given to General Leite, an active and ingenious

officer, and (what was more important) a man who obeyed orders. Of

all the Portuguese he was the one whom Wellington most trusted; every

British narrator of the war who came in contact with him has a word

of praise in his behalf. Of the other native generals, Lecor, in

command of a division, and Fonseca, in command of a brigade, were

with the field army. Miranda was given charge of the militia of

Northern Estremadura, who were likely to be in the thickest of the

trouble. But the other Portuguese units of the allied host were under

British officers: Pack, Archibald and Alexander Campbell, MacMahon,

Coleman, Harvey, Collins, and Bradford had charge of the regular

brigades of the field army. The native generals, save those above

mentioned, were placed in administrative posts, or in charge of

those sections of the militia which were probably destined to see no

service.

[183] Silveira was the despair of Beresford and his

chief-of-the-staff D’Urban. The latter writes (Apr. 19, 1810):

‘This general is the most extraordinary of all the people in this

extraordinary country. Perpetually fluctuating--incapable of

standing still--always wishing to move backward or forward--all

his movements to no purpose but that of harassing his troops. The

man is either very weak or very designing--perhaps both. Anyhow

he is a mischievous charlatan, and I wish the Marshal would not

yield to the prejudices of the people by employing him.’

The second point of difficulty in the organization of the Portuguese

army was the commissariat. In the old days it had been a purely

civilian branch of the service, non-military intendants dealing with

contractors and merchants. For this had been substituted a _Junta de

Viveres_ mainly composed of officers, which proved as ineffective,

if not as corrupt, as the body which had preceded it. The British

government had taken over the responsibility of paying half the

Portuguese army[184], but not that of feeding it, and despite of

the handsome subsidies that it paid to the Regency for the general

purposes of the war, the native troops, especially those quartered

far from Lisbon, were often in a state of semi-starvation. ‘The

Portuguese corps ought to have a commissariat attached to them, and

I believe each brigade has a commissary,’ wrote Wellington, ‘but

they have no magazines and no money to purchase supplies[185].’ One

main difficulty arose from the fact that the Junta de Viveres shrank

from the heavy expense of organizing a proper transport train, and

tried to make shift with requisitioned carts and oxen, which were

difficult to get (since the British army was competing with the

Portuguese for draught animals) and still harder to retain--for the

peasant driver always absconded with his beasts when he found an

opportunity. Another difficulty was that the Junta tried to feed

the troops with requisitioned corn, instead of paying for it with

money down; hence it got grudging service. ‘I know from experience,’

observes Wellington, ‘that the Portuguese army could not be in the

distress under which it suffers, from want of provisions, if only

a part of the food it receives from the country were paid for.’

And he suggested as a remedy that the British ministers should

earmark part of the subsidy for use on the commissariat and no other

purpose[186]. It was long before this matter was set to rights.

Beresford’s correspondence in 1810 bristles with complaints as to the

inefficiency of the Junta de Viveres[187].

[184] Viz. the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th,

15th, 16th, 19th of the line, and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Caçadores.

[185] Wellington to Hill, Jan. 24, 1810.

[186] Wellington to Villiers, Jan. 25, 1810.

[187] D’Urban writes, May 4, ‘Such is the poverty, imbecility,

and want of arrangement of the Portuguese government, that any

regular system of supply is not to be expected. The whole civil

branch of the army is in such a state of confusion, that I hold

it impossible to carry on active operations for more than a few

weeks.’

If the regular army was badly fed, so that desertion and sickness

were both too prevalent in some corps, it was not to be expected

that the militia would fare better. Wellington had ordered, and

Beresford had arranged for, the embodiment of every one of the 48

militia regiments of the national establishment. They should properly

have given 70,000 men, but such a figure was never reached. Some of

the regimental districts were too thinly peopled to give the full

1,500 men at which each was assessed. In others the officers placed

in charge were incapable, or the local magistrates recalcitrant.

Many regiments could show only 500 or 600 bayonets in 1810, few over

1,000[188]. The total number under arms at the time of Masséna’s

invasion may have reached 45,000 bayonets. Of the 48 regiments eight

belonged to the lands south of the Tagus, and were never brought up

to the front; they furnished the garrisons of Elvas and Campo Mayor,

and a corps of observation on the lower Guadiana, destined to watch

the French in the direction of Ayamonte and the Condado de Niebla,

lest any unexpected raid might be made in that quarter[189]. The

five regiments from the district immediately round the capital were

at work on the ever-growing lines of Torres Vedras. One regiment

was in garrison at Peniche, two at Abrantes, three at Almeida. The

main force, consisting of the remaining units contributed by the

North and the Beira, was divided into five corps, destined partly

for active operations against the enemy’s flanks and rear, when

he should enter Portugal, partly for the defence of Oporto and

the Tras-os-Montes, if any assault should be threatened in that

direction. These divisions stood as follows:--three regiments under

Lecor were left in the Castello Branco country, to protect it against

raids from Spanish Estremadura. Seven under Trant, all corps from

the coast-land between the Douro and the Mondego, were to cover

Oporto from the south, or to operate against the rear of the invading

army, if it should leave that city alone and keep on the direct

road to Lisbon. Six under Silveira guarded the Tras-os-Montes, and

watched the French detachments in the northern part of the plains of

Leon. Eight under Miller lay around Oporto, ready to support either

Silveira or Trant if occasion should arise[190]. After the campaign

began, and Masséna’s intention to leave the North alone became

evident, half Miller’s division was placed under John Wilson (who had

originally been Silveira’s chief-of-the-staff and second-in-command)

and sent south into the Beira to co-operate with Trant. Finally,

four regiments under the Portuguese brigadier Miranda lay at Thomar,

apparently for the purpose of aiding Lecor or strengthening the

garrison of Abrantes. This division ultimately retreated into the

lines of Torres Vedras.

[188] I note in D’Urban’s diary, when he was making an inspection

tour with Beresford at the end of the winter, ‘At Sardão a very

good regiment of militia, 1,100 strong, that of Maia.’ ‘Abrantes,

two regiments of militia, Lousão 1,035, Soure 1,035, all armed.’

But, on the other hand, ‘Vizeu, Arganil, Trancoso, ordered to be

assembled at Almeida, have only--the first 867, the second 600,

the last 505 firelocks, and the description of troops the very

worst.’ Of course the numbers were somewhat higher by the next

August.

[189] These regiments were Lagos, Tavira, Beja, Evora,

Villaviciosa, Portalegre, Alcazar do Sul, Setubal.

[190] It may be well to name, once for all, the composition of

these Militia Brigades. They were distributed as follows:--

Garrison of Abrantes:

Lousão

Soure

Garrison of Almeida:

Vizeu

Arganil

Trancoso

In the Lines:

1, 2, 3, 4 of Lisbon

Torres Vedras

With Lecor about Castello Branco:

Idanha

Covilhão

Castello Branco

Under Miller about Oporto:

Guimaraens

Viana

Braga

Basto

Villa do Conde

Arcos

Barcellos

Barco

With Trant, between the Douro and the Mondego:

Aveiro

Feira

Coimbra

Porto

Maia

Penafiel

Oliveira do Azemis

With Silveira about Braganza:

Lamego

Chaves

Villa Real

Braganza

Miranda

Moncorvo

With Miranda about Thomar:

Tondella

Santarem

Thomar

Leiria

Of Miller’s division, I think, but am not sure, that the last

four were those detached under Wilson in September.

All these troops were entirely unfitted for a place in the line of

battle; Wellington refused to mix them with the regular brigades,

save in the garrisons of Almeida, Abrantes, and Elvas. He directed

the brigadiers never to risk them in battle, even against a much

inferior force of the French. Their sole purpose was to cut lines of

communication, to render marauding by the enemy’s small detachments

impossible, and to restrict his power of making reconnaissances far

afield. They were told that they might defend a pass or a ford for

a time, so as to delay the advance of a hostile column, but that

they were never to commit themselves to a serious combat with any

considerable body. Convoys, stragglers, small detachments, were the

game on which they must prey. The programme was not a brilliant

one to lay down before an ambitious officer, and more than once

Silveira, Trant, and Wilson disobeyed orders, and tried to withstand

a full French division in some chosen position. Such experiments

almost always ended in a disaster. It was not surprising, for the

militia were not troops from whom much could be expected. The best

men in every district had been taken for the regular army; all

the trained officers were also needed there. The militia _cadres_

were composed of civilians who had to learn their duties just as

much as the privates whom they were supposed to instruct. All the

patriotic and energetic young men of the governing classes had

sought commissions in the line; the less willing and active were

driven into the militia. Service therein brought neither much credit

nor much promotion. If the Regency half-starved the regulars, it

three-quarter-starved the militia, which was normally in a state

of destitution of clothing, shoes, and food. Hardly a regiment was

provided with uniforms; as a rule only the officers showed the

regulation blue and silver. As long as the corps was in its own

district it was fed somehow, but when moved to some strategical point

in the rugged mountains of the Beira, it was liable to go wholly

to pieces from sheer privation. Fortunately the Portuguese peasant

led a frugal life at all times, and expected little; the desertion,

though large, was not nearly so great as might have been expected.

The fact was that the men were essentially loyal, and hated the

French with a perfect hatred. They might be very poor soldiers, but

they were very bitter personal enemies of the invader. Nevertheless,

they were liable to panics on very slight provocation. ‘At the best

they are a very daily and uncertain sort of fighting people[191],’

remarked one of their leaders. Another wrote in a more forcible

language, ‘Scripture says, Put not your trust in princes--I say,

Fool is the man who puts his trust in a damnable militia.’ Each of

these sentences was indited the day after a disastrous and wholly

unnecessary rout.

[191] D’Urban to Wilson, and Trant to Wilson, after two

unfortunate incidents in 1812, when the militia had been more or

less under arms for two whole years. The former are in D’Urban’s,

the latter in Wilson’s correspondence.

Over and above the regular army and the militia, the Portuguese

military system contemplated the utilization of the whole _levée

en masse_ of the nation under the name of the Ordenança. This was

no foreshadowing of the modern idea of universal service, but a

survival of the mediaeval practice which, in Portugal as in England,

made every freeman liable to be called out in time of extremity,

at his own cost and with his own weapons. Every peasant between

sixteen and sixty was theoretically supposed to be enrolled in one

of the companies of 250 which each group of villages was supposed

to possess. The organization had been effective enough in the old

mediaeval wars with Castile: it had even proved serviceable in the

‘War of Independence’ that followed the successful rising of 1640.

But against modern regular armies it was comparatively useless; when

called out in the war of 1762 the Ordenança had not justified its

old reputation. Little could be expected of mobs armed with pikes

and fowling-pieces, save that they should cut off a few convoys and

stragglers, or occasionally obstruct a defile. A French officer who

deeply studied this forgotten campaign wrote that, ‘whatever the

Spaniards may say to the contrary, this war of the peasantry is

by no means important, except against ignorant and undisciplined

troops[192].’

[192] Dumouriez, _State of Portugal_, page 22. There was,

however, one notable combat at Villa Pouca in the Tras-os-Montes

where a whole Spanish column of 3,000 men was defeated by the

Ordenança.

When Wellington resolved to call out the Ordenança in 1810 he was

ignorant of none of these facts. Nevertheless, he insisted that

the Regency should issue the old royal ‘Ordinance’ to call out the

levy. His object was threefold: from the political and moral point

of view it was necessary to take this measure, because it was the

ancient and established method of proclaiming that the country was

in danger. It was so understood by the peasantry, in whose memories

the traditions of the Spanish invasions were still fresh; they

expected to be summoned, and would have doubted the imminence of the

emergency if they had not been. The call was at once an appeal to

their patriotism, and equivalent to a proclamation of martial law.

Secondly, Wellington hoped to find assistance to a certain degree

for the work which he had set aside for the militia, by the aid of

the Ordenança. Pervading the whole country-side, and knowing every

goat-track and inaccessible fastness, their motley companies would

surround the invading army as it marched, prevent marauding by small

parties, and render inter-communication between columns impossible,

save by large detachments. French narrators of the campaign speak of

‘the cruel callousness with which Wellington exposed these half-armed

peasants to the wrath of the most efficient army in the world,’ and

wax sentimental over the miseries of the Portuguese. But sentiment

from such a quarter is suspicious: it is absurd to find old soldiers

writing as if the main duty of a general defending a country were

to spare its peasantry as much inconvenience as possible. Did not

Napoleon in 1814 make every endeavour to raise Lorraine and Champagne

_en masse_ in the rear of the Allies, and has any French critic

ever blamed him for doing so? Was the actual misery suffered by

the inhabitants of Beira so much greater than what they would have

endured if they had remained at home, and offered no resistance? The

country-side would have been stripped bare by an army forced to make

‘war support war,’ and one can hardly believe, judging from parallel

incidents in Spain, that outrages would have been conspicuous by

their absence.

But it would seem that the third of Wellington’s reasons for calling

out the Ordenança was far more cogent, and lay nearer to the heart

of his scheme than the other two. Throughout Portuguese history the

summons to the levy _en masse_ had always been combined with another

measure, from which indeed it could not be disentangled--the order

to the whole population to evacuate and devastate the land in face

of the advancing enemy. The use of the weapon of starvation against

the French was an essential part of Wellington’s plan for defending

Portugal. When he told the British Ministry that he would undertake

the defence of the realm, this was one of the main conditions of his

pledge. He had realized the great fact that the conduct of the war

in the Peninsula depended on supplies: the old aphorism that ‘beyond

the Pyrenees large armies starve and small armies get beaten’ was

at the back of all his schemes for the year 1810. He calculated

that the French would find the greatest difficulty in accumulating

stores sufficient to feed an army of invasion large enough to attack

Portugal, and that, even if such stores could be gathered, there

would be a still greater difficulty in getting them to the front as

they were needed. For not only would it be hard to collect the mass

of transport required for an army of 70,000, 80,000, or 100,000 men,

but the convoys which it formed would find it impossible to move

over the vast stretch of bad roads between Salamanca and Lisbon,

when the communications were cut and the Militia and Ordenança were

infesting every pass and hillside. It was almost certain that the

invaders would make no such attempt to feed themselves from the

rear, but would start with a moderate train, carrying no more than

provisions for a week or two, and hoping to subsist (in the usual

French style) on the resources of the invaded country. Such resources

Wellington was determined that they should not find. They would ere

long be starved out, and forced to fall back on their magazines,

certainly losing a large proportion of their men from privations by

the way. If this scheme had been carried out with rigid perfection,

Masséna’s invasion would have amounted to no more than a promenade

to Torres Vedras, and a prompt return to the borders of Spain with

a famished army. Unfortunately the device, though it worked well

and was ultimately quite successful, was not perfectly executed in

every corner and by every subordinate, so that the French, showing

a magnificent obstinacy, and suffering untold privations, remained

before the Lines for three months before they retired. But retire

they did, and with a loss of a third of their army, and a deplorable

decadence of their morale, so that Wellington’s scheme was fully

justified[193].

[193] Unlike the many French writers who content themselves

with denouncing Wellington’s inhumanity, Pelet (Masséna’s

chief confidant) confesses that the English general’s plan was

perfectly logical. In his _Aperçu de la Campagne de Portugal_,

he writes, ‘On a critiqué sans raison son système de guerre.

Il était à peu près infaillible contre un ennemi inférieur en

nombre. Mais peu de généraux oseront “sauver un pays” d’une telle

manière.’

The plan for defeating the enemy by the system of devastation was

neither ‘dictated by the hard heart of a general trained in the

atrocious wars of the East,’ as certain French authors have written,

nor was it (as some of the English authors have supposed) suggested

to Wellington by the measures which had been taken in 1803-4 for

withdrawing all food and transport from the south coast of England,

if Napoleon should be successful in crossing from Boulogne. It was

an ancient Portuguese device, practised from time immemorial against

the Castilian invader, which had never failed of success. Nor had

it come to an end with the War of Independence of 1640, or the war

of the Spanish Succession of 1704. When Spain had made her last

serious assault on Portugal in 1762 (Godoy’s miserable mock-war of

1801 does not deserve to be counted), the plan had worked admirably.

When the Conde d’Aranda invaded the Beira ‘the country had been

“driven” in the most systematic style, and everything that could

not be carried off had been destroyed, so that the Spaniard found

himself in a desert, being unable to discover either provisions,

cars, or peasants: the inhabitants had abandoned their villages,

and carried off everything. The enemy had to be supplied with every

necessary from Spain: the infantry were harassed with fatigue in

remaking the roads, and the cavalry-horses destroyed in conducting

provisions. At last d’Aranda retreated, leaving his sick and wounded

at Castello Branco, with a letter commending them to the attention

of the allies[194].’ Of this same war Dumouriez wrote: ‘As soon as

the Spaniards enter Portugal the King publishes a declaration, by

which he enjoins on his subjects to fall upon the invaders, and the

national hatred always excites them to execute the “Ordinance.” As

the Spanish army pushes on, the villages are depopulated, and the

inhabitants fall back on the capital. The peasantry arrive there in

crowds with wives and children, so that the king at the end of three

months has 200,000 or 300,000 extra mouths to feed[195].’

[194] Continuation of Vertot’s _History of Portugal_, ii. 51.

[195] Dumouriez’s _State of Portugal_, p. 21, _n._

This sounds like a description of the great migration of 1810, but

was actually written in 1766. It is clear, then, that Wellington

did not invent the system of devastation, but simply utilized, and

carried out to its logical end, an old custom essentially national,

and familiar to the Portuguese from time immemorial. It was the

regular device of the weak against the strong in the Middle Ages,

and differed in nothing from ‘Good King Robert’s Testament,’ the

time-honoured system applied by the Scots to the English in the

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

‘In strait placis gar hide all store,

And byrnen ye plaineland thaim before,

Thanne sall thei pass away in haist,

When that thai find na thing but waist,

So sall ye turn thaim with gret affrai,

As thai were chasit with swerd awai.’

Fortunately for himself, for England, and for Europe, Wellington

had to deal with a peasantry almost as frugal, as tough, and as

stubborn in their hatred as the mediaeval Scot. They saw nothing

strange in the demand now made to them, and obeyed. The difficulty

lay with the townsfolk of large places, such as Coimbra, Thomar,

or Santarem, which lay far from the frontier, and had not the

old traditions of the peasantry, since the Spaniards had never

penetrated to their doors since the seventeenth century. Here

there was much recalcitrance, as was but natural; the burgher had

much to abandon where the peasant had little. Yet, as we shall see,

the scheme was carried out in the end, and those who stayed behind

to greet the French could be counted on one hand in places of the

size of Vizeu, Coimbra, or Leiria. That fanatical patriotism went

far towards producing such a result is true, but does not explain

the whole matter: quite as strong a motive was the unforgotten tale

of the horrors that had followed Soult’s entry into Oporto. To the

Portuguese citizens the approach of the French meant probable murder

and rape, hence came the readiness that they showed to depart. There

were exaggerated rumours abroad of the ruthlessness of the French:

was not Loison, the ‘Maneta’ of whom so many atrocious (and mostly

false) stories were told, known to be in high command?

Wellington’s scheme for the clearing of the country-side in face

of the enemy had long been thought out. It included not merely the

evacuation of the towns and villages, but the destruction of bridges,

mills, even ovens; the removal of all animals and means of transport,

the destruction of all food-stuff that could not be carried off, the

burning of all ferry-boats and other small craft on the navigable

rivers. ‘The moment that the enemy crosses the frontier,’ he wrote to

Beresford, ‘the governor of the province of Estremadura must be told

that it is necessary to order all carts, carriages, and other means

of conveyance, with all the provisions they can carry, away. He ought

to have all his arrangements prepared for ordering them off as soon

as the French approach. The Captains Mor[196] and their Ordenança

must be prepared to give the enemy all the opposition in their power,

not by assembling in large bodies, but by lying out in the mountains

and the strong parts of the roads, annoying their patrols and small

parties, and interrupting their communications[197].’ This comes from

an order of February: by August, when a new harvest had been gathered

in, the question of the destruction of food stuffs became more

difficult. The peasantry, as was natural, persisted in hiding rather

than burning what could not be carried off. By one means or another

a certain number of these concealed stores, even when buried in pits

or removed to remote ravines, were discovered by the French, and

enabled them to prolong their precarious stay in front of the Torres

Vedras lines.

[196] For these officers and their duties see vol. ii. pp. 221-2.

[197] Wellington to Beresford, Vizeu, Feb. 28, 1810, long before

the actual invasion.

As to the displacement of the population, Wellington considered

that in many parts it would be sufficient if it took to the hills

for a few days, while the French army was passing. His military

arrangements were such that he thought it impossible that the enemy

would be able either to leave small posts behind him, or to maintain

his lines of communication with Spain. It would suffice, therefore,

that the peasantry in parts off the main roads, and remote from large

towns or points of strategical importance, should make ready for a

merely temporary migration. They must always, however, be ready to

flit again, if fresh columns of the enemy, advancing or retreating,

should come near their abodes. The townsfolk and the inhabitants

of the fertile coast plains of Estremadura and Western Beira were

recommended to retire either to Lisbon or to Oporto, according as

they were nearer to one or to the other. It was clear that the

problem of feeding them there would be a matter for the Government,

for individuals of the poorer classes could not be expected to carry

or to buy provisions for many weeks. Hence there was a need for the

accumulation of immense stores, over and above those required for

the army. The Portuguese Regency did what it could, but in its usual

slip-shod and inefficient fashion, and there is no doubt that much

misery and a certain amount of starvation fell to the lot of the

unhappy emigrants. Fortunately Lisbon and Oporto were great ports

and full of food; but despite of this, the position of the refugees

became deplorable, when Masséna tarried at Santarem two months longer

than Wellington had considered probable. But their suffering was not

in vain: the French were starved out, even if it was a few weeks

later than had been expected.

Having dealt with the organization of the military force of Portugal,

and the arrangements for the depopulation of the country, we have

still to explain the third section of Wellington’s great scheme of

defence--that consisting of fortifications. We have already mentioned

that Almeida and Elvas had been repaired and garrisoned, the former

with 5,000 men, consisting of one regiment of regulars and three of

militia, under the English general William Cox, the other by 8,000

men,--two regiments of regulars and five of militia,--under General

Leite. These were the outer bulwarks of the realm. Campo Mayor, a

small and antiquated fortress, a sort of outlying dependency of

Elvas, was held by one militia battalion under a Colonel Talaya,

a retired engineer officer. It was not expected to make a serious

resistance, but did so in the time of need, and detained a French

division before its walls for some precious days in the spring of

1811, to the great glory and credit of its governor.

Only two other of the ancient fortresses of Portugal were placed in

a state of defence, and made to play a notable part in Wellington’s

general scheme for checking the French. These were Peniche and

Abrantes. The former is a very strong isolated sea-fortress, on a

projecting headland in the Atlantic, forty miles north of Lisbon. It

commands several good creeks and landing-places, suitable for the

embarkation and disembarkation of troops, and is nearly impregnable,

because of the narrowness of the isthmus connecting it with the

mainland. Placed where it is, just in the rear of the position which

an enemy must take who is meditating an attack on Lisbon, it offers

unique opportunities for making incursions on his rear and his

communications. Moreover, it afforded a refuge and a safe point of

departure by sea, for any section of the allied troops which might

become isolated, and be pressed towards the water by the advancing

enemy. Some of Wellington’s officers considered that it was an even

better place for embarkation than Lisbon, if the French should

prove too strong, and the British should be compelled to abandon

Portugal. The Commander-in-Chief thought otherwise, but caused its

fortification to be carefully restored, and garrisoned it with a

picked regiment of militia[198].

[198] D’Urban says in his diary (Dec. 8, 1809): ‘Inspected

Peniche. The isthmus over which the peninsula is approached is

covered with water at high tide, and from the line of works

describing a sort of arc, very powerful cross-fires may be

established upon every part of it. There are nearly 100 good

guns upon the work, the brass ones especially good. This is the

most favourable position that can he conceived for embarking

the British army, should it ever be necessary to do so. The

circumference abounds with creeks and clefts in the rocks, inside

which there is always smooth water, and easy egress for boats.

They are out of the reach of fire from the mainland: indeed,

there is sufficient room to encamp a large force perfectly beyond

the range of the enemy. If it should be thought worth while, this

peninsula could be held by England, even if Portugal otherwise

were in the power of the enemy. There is abundance of water. If

it be the wish of Lord Wellington he can retire upon Lisbon, give

battle in front of it, and, if the day go against him, retreat

upon Peniche and defend it so long as he pleases.’

Even more important than Peniche was Abrantes, the one great

crossing-place of the Tagus above Lisbon where there was a permanent

bridge, and free communication by good roads between Beira and

Alemtejo. It lies at the point where the road from Spain by way

of Castello Branco crosses the road from north to south down the

Portuguese frontier, from Almeida and Guarda to Evora and Elvas. An

invader who has advanced towards Lisbon through Beira has it on his

flank and rear, equally so an invader who has advanced on the same

objective from Badajoz and the Guadiana. It is the natural point

at which to move troops north and south along the frontier, though

Wellington had established an alternative temporary crossing-point at

Villa Velha, thirty miles higher up the river, by means of pontoons.

But this secondary passage was inferior in safety, since it was not

protected by a fortress like Abrantes. Orders were given to burn the

pontoons if ever a French force from the East should came near. At

Abrantes, on the other hand, the boat-bridge could be pulled up and

stacked under the city walls in the event of an attack, and did not

need to be destroyed. The town is situated on a lofty eminence upon

the north bank of the Tagus. Its fortifications were antiquated in

1809, but had been for many months in process of being rebuilt and

strengthened by the English engineer Patton. With new earthworks

and redoubts it had been made a strong place, which could not be

taken without a regular siege and plenty of heavy artillery. Here

Wellington had placed a garrison of two militia regiments under the

Portuguese general Lobo, whose orders were to resist to the last,

and to make sure of burning the boat-bridge, down to the last plank,

before surrendering. The French never put him to the test, since they

had no heavy guns with them, and therefore regarded it as hopeless

to attempt an attack on the place[199].

[199] D’Urban has a long disquisition on Abrantes in his diary.

Its weak points, he says, were an outlying hill on the Punhete

road, which gave a favourable position for hostile batteries, and

the friable nature of the gravelly soil, which did not bind well

in trenches and outworks.

Almeida and Elvas, Peniche and Abrantes, were regular fortresses with

large garrisons. There were, however, other points where Wellington

ordered fortifications of a less permanent kind to be thrown up,

because he thought them of first-rate strategical importance. The two

most important were one on the northern line of advance which the

French might take, the other on the central or Castello Branco line.

The first was a line of redoubts behind the river Alva, just where it

joins the Mondego, on either side of the bridge and village of Ponte

de Murcella. It was here, he thought, that Masséna would choose his

road, along the south bank of the Mondego, if he marched on Lisbon

by the Beira line. But the Marshal moved by Vizeu, partly (as it

seems) because he had heard of the fortifications of this defile, and

the works were never used. Equally unprofitable (so it chanced) was

another important series of field-works, constructed to cover the

lowest reach of the Zezere against an invader who should come by the

Castello Branco road, and should have masked or taken Abrantes. This

was a line of redoubts and trenches, almost a fortified camp, on the

east bank of the river from Tancos to opposite Martinchel, blocking

both the roads which lead from Castello Branco into Estremadura.

Masséna, coming not by the route which was guarded against, but from

Leiria and Thomar, took the lines of Zezere in the rear, and they

proved useless.

Along with the precautions taken on the banks of the Alva and the

Zezere, two other pieces of engineering must be mentioned. The one,

the destruction of the _Estrada Nova_,--the mountain-road which leads

from Fundão and Belmonte to the lower Zezere without passing through

Castello Branco,--has already been noticed, when we were dealing

with the possible lines of invasion in Portugal. The other move was

constructive, not destructive, in character. Foreseeing that Abrantes

might be masked, or besieged on the northern bank of the Tagus, and

all the roads in that direction thereby blocked, while it might

still be very profitable to have free communication between Lisbon

and the Castello Branco region, he caused the road above the south

bank of the Tagus, from opposite Abrantes to the flying-bridge at

Villa Velha, to be thoroughly reconstructed. This route, by Gavião

and Niza, was so much easier in its slopes than the old high-road

Abrantes-Castello Branco, that, even when the latter was safe, troops

moving from east to west, along the Tagus often used it during the

next two years of the war, though it involved two passages of the

river instead of one.

But all the matters of engineering hitherto mentioned were

unimportant and merely subsidiary, when placed beside the one great

piece of work which formed the keystone of Wellington’s plan for

the defence of Portugal. His whole scheme depended on the existence

of an impregnable place of refuge, available both for his army, and

for the emigrant population of the country-side which he was about

to devastate. He must have a line on which the invader could be

finally checked and forced to halt and starve. If such a line had not

existed, his whole scheme would have been impracticable, and after

a lost battle he might have been driven to that hurried embarkation

which the ministers in London foresaw and dreaded. But his eye had

been fixed upon the ground in front of Lisbon ever since his second

landing in the Peninsula in April 1809, and there he thought that the

necessary stronghold might be found. A full year before Masséna’s

invasion he had informed the British cabinet that though he could not

undertake to defend all Portugal, ‘for the whole country is frontier,

and it would be difficult to prevent the enemy from entering by

some point or other,’ he yet conceived that he might protect the

essential part of the realm, the capital, against anything save the

most overwhelming odds[200]. The scheme had taken definite shape in

his head when, on October 20, 1809, he wrote his famous dispatch to

Colonel Fletcher, the commanding engineer at Lisbon, directing him to

draw up without delay a scheme for the construction of two successive

lines of trenches and redoubts, covering the whole stretch of country

from the Atlantic to a point on the estuary of the Tagus twenty miles

or more north of the capital. This was, in its essentials, the order

for the construction of the lines of Torres Vedras, for though the

front designated does not exactly tally with that ultimately taken

up, it only differs from it in points of detail. Fletcher is directed

to survey a line from the mouth of the Castanheira brook to the mouth

of the Zizandre, and another, a few miles behind, from Alhandra on

the Tagus by Bucellas and Cabeça de Montechique towards Mafra. These

roughly represent the two lines of defence ultimately constructed,

though in the end the extreme right flank was drawn back from the

Castanheira to the Alhandra stream. Fletcher is told that the works

will be on the largest scale: the fortified camp above Torres Vedras

is to hold 5,000 men, the works at Cabeça de Montechique alone will

require 5,000 workmen to be set to dig at once; great operations,

such as the damming up of rivers and the creation of marshes many

miles long, are suggested.

[200] For these views of Aug. and Sept. 1809, see vol. ii. p. 610.

How the great scheme worked out, and how the works stood when

Masséna’s long-expected army at last appeared in front of them, will

be told in a later chapter, in its due place. Suffice it here to say

that all through the spring and summer of 1810 they were being urged

forward with feverish haste.

It must not be supposed that it was an easy matter to carry out all

these preparations. The Portuguese government ended by adopting

all Wellington’s suggestions: but it was not without friction that

he achieved his purpose. While he was planning works at the very

gates of Lisbon, and making provisions for the devastation of

whole provinces in view of the approaching invasion, he was often

met by suggestions that it would be possible to defend the outer

frontiers of the realm, and that his schemes were calculated to

dishearten the Portuguese people, rather than to encourage them to

a firm resistance. The Regency, moreover, had enough national pride

to resent the way in which a policy was dictated to them, without

any reference to their own views. The governing party in Portugal

had accepted the English alliance without reserve, but it often

winced at the consequences of its action. There was a view abroad

that the little nation was being set in the forefront of the battle

of European independence mainly for the benefit of Great Britain.

Fortunately the memory of Junot’s dictatorship and Soult’s ravages

was still fresh enough to overcome all other considerations. A

moment’s reflection convinced Wellington’s most ardent critics that

though the British yoke might sometimes seem hard, anything was

better than a return to French servitude. The Regency murmured, but

always ended by yielding, and issued the edicts necessary to confirm

all the orders of the general.

The state of the Portuguese government at this moment requires a

word of explanation. The original Regency confirmed by Sir Hew

Dalrymple in 1808 had been somewhat changed in its personnel. It

was now a more numerous body than at its first installation; of the

original members, only the Patriarch (Antonio de Castro, late bishop

of Oporto), and the Marquez de Olhão (Francisco de Mello e Menezes,

the Constable or Monteiro Mor, as he is more frequently called), now

survived. But four new members had been appointed in 1810. The most

important of them was José Antonio de Menezes e Sousa, generally

known as the ‘Principal Sousa,’ an ecclesiastic who was one of

the band of three Sousa brothers, who formed the backbone of the

anti-French party in Portugal. The eldest of them, Rodrigo de Sousa

Coutinho, Conde de Linhares, was prime minister of the Prince Regent

at Rio de Janeiro. The third, Domingos Antonio de Sousa Coutinho,

afterwards Conde de Funchal, was Portuguese minister in London. Thus

when the Principal entered the Regency, this busy and capable family

could pull the strings alike at Rio, London, and Lisbon, in the

interests of their relations and dependants. This they did without

scruple and without ceasing. Domestic politics in Portugal had always

been a matter of family alliances, as much as of principles. They

presented, indeed, a considerable resemblance to those of Great

Britain during the Whig domination of the eighteenth century. Hence

there was considerable danger that the policy of the alliance against

Napoleon might become identified in the eyes of the Portuguese nation

with the domination of the Sousa faction. That this peril was avoided

was not their fault: they did their best to keep all promotion,

civil and military, for their own adherents; hence came interminable

quarrels on petty personal questions both with Wellington and

Beresford. Fortunately the two Marshals could generally get their way

in the end, when large interests were at stake, because the Sousas

were pledged to the British alliance, and dared not break with it.

To do so would have brought other politicians to the front. But,

meanwhile, unending controversies wasted Wellington’s time and soured

his temper: more than once he is found writing in his dispatches

to Lord Liverpool that the ‘impatient, meddling, mischievous’[201]

Principal ought to be got out of the Regency and promoted to some

foreign embassy, or great civil post, where he could do less harm.

But the British government thought, and probably was right in

thinking, that it was better to bear with known evils than to quarrel

with the Sousa family, and thereby to break up the pro-British party

in Portugal. Wellington had to endure the Principal’s small intrigues

and petty criticism till the end.

[201] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, _Dispatches_, vi. p. 435.

The other members who entered the Regency in 1810 were the Conde

de Redondo, Fernando Maria de Sousa Coutinho--another of the Sousa

clan--Doctor Raymundo Nogueira, a law professor of the University of

Coimbra[202] and--far the most important of all--the newly appointed

British Minister at Lisbon, Mr. Charles Stuart. The nomination of

a foreigner to such a post touched Portuguese pride to the quick,

and was looked upon by all enemies of the Sousa faction as an act

of miserable weakness on the part of the Conde de Linhares and the

Prince Regent. It was considered doubtful policy on the part of the

Perceval Cabinet to consent to the appointment, considering the

offence which it was certain to give. In their justification it must

be pleaded that both the Patriarch and the Principal Sousa were men

capable of causing any amount of difficulty by their ill-considered

plans and their personal intrigues, and that a colleague who could

be trusted to keep an eye upon their actions, and to moderate their

ambitions was much needed. Stuart was a man of moderate and tactful

bearing, but could be neither cajoled nor overruled. It was on his

influence in the Regency that Wellington relied most for support. At

this moment there were two questions in process of discussion which

rendered it most necessary that the Portuguese government should

not be left entirely to its own guidance. Taking advantage of the

unhappy condition of Spain, and the weakness of the newly appointed

executive at Cadiz, the Portuguese were pressing for the restoration

of Olivenza, Godoy’s old conquest of 1801, and for the recognition

of the Princess Carlotta of Spain, the wife of the Prince of the

Brazils, as the person entitled to act as Regent of Spain during the

captivity of her brothers at Valençay. Dom Pedro de Sousa Holstein,

the Portuguese minister at Cadiz--a kinsman of Linhares and the

Principal--was actively urging both these demands on the Spanish

government. If he had succeeded in imposing them on Castaños and

his colleagues there would have been desperate friction between the

allies. But by promising the active support of the Portuguese army

within the Spanish frontiers--which he had no power to guarantee, and

which Wellington had absolutely refused to grant--the minister won

some support at Cadiz. Extra pressure was brought to bear upon the

Spaniards by the massing of Brazilian troops on the South American

frontier, on the side of Rio Grande do Sul--a most unjustifiable act,

which might have led to an actual rupture, a thing which the British

government was bound to prevent by every means in its power. The

only way to prevent an open breach between Spain and Portugal was

to check the activity of Sousa Holstein, an end which Stuart found

much difficulty in accomplishing, because the objects for which the

minister was striving, and especially the restoration of Olivenza

to its old owners, were entirely approved by his colleagues in the

Regency. When it is added that there were numerous other points of

friction between the British and the Portuguese governments--such as

the question of free trade with Brazil, that of the suppression of

the slave trade, and that of the form to be adopted for the payment

of the subsidies which maintained the Portuguese army--it is easy

to understand that Stuart’s position on the Council of Regency was

no easy one. He often found himself in a minority of one when a

discussion started: he frequently had to acquiesce in decisions

which he did not approve, merely in order to avoid friction on

matters of secondary importance. But in matters of really primary

moment he generally succeeded in getting his way, owing to the simple

fact that Portugal was dependent on Great Britain for the continuance

of her national existence. Conscious of this, the other members of

the Regency would generally yield a reluctant assent at the last

moment, and Wellington’s plans, when set forth by Stuart, though

often criticized, delayed, and impeded, were in the end carried out

with more or less completeness.

[202] A man of whom all Portuguese writers speak with

respect; even Napier notes him (ii. 386) as ‘a man of talent

and discretion.’ But Wellington seems to have disliked him.

‘The admission of Dr. Raymundo Nogueira to the Regency, and

the reasons of his admission, were truly ludicrous ... his

appointment is to be agreeable to the lower orders--from among

whom he is selected!’ (Wellington to Charles Stuart, Celorico,

Aug. 4, 1810.)

SECTION XIX: CHAPTER III

THE FRENCH PREPARATIONS: MASSÉNA’S ARMY OF PORTUGAL

During the summer campaign of 1809 the French Army of Spain had

received hardly any reinforcements from beyond the Pyrenees. Every

man that the Emperor could arm was being directed against Austria

in May and June. But when Wagram had been won, and the armistice

of Znaym signed, and when moreover it had been discovered that the

British expedition to the Isle of Walcheren need not draw off any

part of the Army of Germany, the Emperor began to turn his attention

to the Peninsula. The armistice with Austria had been signed on July

12: only six days later, on the 18th of the same month, Napoleon

was already selecting troops to send to Spain, and expressing

his intention of going there himself to ‘finish the business’ in

person[203]. But he had made up his mind that it was too late in the

year for him to transport any great mass of men to the Peninsula in

time for operations in the autumn, and had settled that the expulsion

of the English and the conquest of Cadiz, Seville, and Valencia must

be delayed to the spring of 1810. On September 7 he wrote[204] to

approve King Joseph’s decision that Soult should not be allowed to

make any attempt on Portugal in the autumn, and a month later he

advised his brother to defend the line of the Tagus, and drive back

Spanish incursions, but to defer all offensive movements till the

reinforcements should have begun to arrive[205].

[203] ‘Faites-moi connaître la marche que vous faites faire aux

66e, 82e, 26e, etc., etc.: _lorsque j’entrerai en Espagne_ cela

me pourra faire une force de 18,000 hommes.’ Napoleon to Clarke,

Schönbrunn, July 18.

[204] Napoleon to Clarke, Schönbrunn, Sept. 7.

[205] Napoleon to Clarke, memoranda for King Joseph, Oct. 3, 1809.

The composition of the new army that was to enter Spain was dictated

in a minute to the Minister of War on October 7, in which the

Emperor stated that the total force was to be about 100,000 men,

including the Guard, that it was all to be on the roads between

Orleans and Bayonne by December, and that he should take command

in person[206]. It may be noted that the troops designated in this

memorandum were actually those which took part in the campaign of

1810, with the exception of the Old Guard, which was held back when

Napoleon determined to remain behind, and to send a substitute as

commander-in-chief in Spain. Since the bulk of the immense column was

only directed to reach Bayonne at the end of the year, it was clear

that it would not be within striking distance of the enemy till March

1810.

[206] Same to same, Oct. 7, 1809.

Down to the month of December 1809, Napoleon’s correspondence

teems with allusions to his approaching departure for Spain. They

were not merely intended to deceive the public, for they occur in

letters to his most trusted ministers and generals. We might be

inclined to suspect an intention to cajole the English Ministry in

the magnificent phrases of the address to the Corps Législatif on

December 3, when the Emperor declares that ‘the moment he displays

himself beyond the Pyrenees the Leopard in terror will seek the Ocean

to avoid shame, defeat, and death.’ But business was certainly meant

when Berthier was advised to send forward his carriages and horses

to Madrid, and when the Old Guard’s departure for the frontier was

ordered[207]. Suddenly, in the third week of December, the allusions

to the Emperor’s impending departure cease. It would appear that his

change of purpose must be attributed not to the news of Ocaña, where

the last great Spanish army had perished, but to a purely domestic

cause: this was the moment at which the question of the Imperial

Divorce came into prominence. It would seem that when Napoleon had

conceived the idea of the Austrian marriage, and had learnt that

his offers were likely to be accepted, he gave up all intention of

invading Spain in the early spring in person. The divorce was first

officially mooted when the ‘protest’ was laid before a Privy Council

on December 15[208], and after that day there is no more mention of

a departure for the South. All through January, February, and March

the negotiations were in progress, and on April 1-2[209] the Emperor

married his new wife. The festivities which followed lasted many

days, and when they were over the Emperor conducted his spouse on a

long tour through the Northern Departments in May, and did not return

to the vicinity of Paris till June, when the army of invasion, which

had long since reached the Peninsula, had been already handed over to

a new chief.

[207] Napoleon to Berthier, Nov. 28.

[208] Napoleon to Clarke, Dec. 5. Minute for the Privy Council

dated Dec. 15, in the _Correspondance_.

[209] The civil ceremony took place on the first, the religious

on the second of these two days.

In the months during which the marriage negotiations were in

progress, and the columns of reinforcements were pouring into

Navarre and Old Castile, it is not quite certain what were the

Emperor’s real intentions as to the allocation of the command.

Nothing clear can be deduced from an order given to Junot in the

middle of February ‘to spread everywhere the news of the arrival of

the Emperor with 80,000 men, in order to disquiet the English and

prevent them from undertaking operations in the South[210].’ This

is but a _ruse de guerre_; the marriage project was so far advanced

that the ratifications of the contract were signed only four days

later than the date of the dispatch[211], and Napoleon must have

known that he could not get away from Paris for another two months

at the least. But it was only on April 17 that an Imperial Decree,

dated at Compiègne, was published, announcing that not the whole

French force in Spain, but three army corps (the 2nd, 6th, and 8th),

with certain other troops, were to form the Army of Portugal and to

be placed under the command of Masséna, Duke of Rivoli and Prince of

Essling. After this it was certain that the Emperor would not cross

the Pyrenees. Five days later this was made still more clear by an

order to the Commandant of the Guard to recall the old Chasseur and

Grenadier regiments of that corps from the various points that they

had reached on the way to Bayonne, and to send on to Spain only the

Tirailleur and Voltigeur regiments recently raised in 1809, and

generally known as the ‘Young Guard’[212]. Napoleon never took the

field in person without the veteran portion of his body-guard.

[210] Napoleon to Berthier, Paris, Feb. 12.

[211] On Feb. 16: see Napoleon to King Joseph, Paris, Feb. 23.

[212] Napoleon to Clarke, April 22, 1810. Not in the

_Correspondance_, but given at length by Ducasse in his _Memoirs

of King Joseph_, vii. 275.

The non-appearance of the Emperor had one most important result. If

he had taken the field, every marshal and general in Spain would have

been subject to a single directing will, and would have been forced

to combine his operations with those of his neighbours, whether he

wished or no. On determining to devote the spring and summer of 1810

to nuptial feasts and state progresses, instead of to a campaign

on the Tagus, he did not nominate any single commander-in-chief

to take his place. Masséna, from his seniority and his splendid

military record, might have seemed worthy of such promotion. He was

not given it, but only placed in charge of three army corps, and of

certain parts of Old Castile and Leon and the garrison troops there

residing. This was a vast charge, embracing in all the command of

138,000 men. But it gave Masséna no control over the rest of the

armies of Spain, and no power to secure their co-operation, save

by the tedious method of appeals to Paris. Indeed, the Emperor had

chosen the precise moment of King Joseph’s conquest of Andalusia to

break up such hierarchical organization of command as existed in

the Peninsula. By a decree of February 8 he took the provinces of

Aragon and Catalonia, with the army corps there employed, completely

out of the sphere of the authority of King Joseph: Augereau and

Suchet were forbidden to hold any communication with Madrid, and

were directed to make every report and request to Paris. This would

not have been fatal to the success of the main operations of the

French army, for Aragon and Catalonia were a side-issue, whose

military history, all through the war, had little connexion with

that of Castile and Portugal. But their severance from the military

hierarchy dependent on the King was followed by that of Navarre,

the Basque provinces, Burgos, Valladolid, Palencia, and Toro, which

were formed into four ‘Military Governments’ under Generals Dufour,

Thouvenot, Dorsenne, and Kellermann. These governors were given

complete civil and military autonomy, with power to raise taxes,

administer justice, to name and displace Spanish functionaries, and

to move their troops at their own pleasure, under responsibility to

the Emperor alone. The ‘6th Government’ (Valladolid, Palencia, Toro)

was afterwards placed under the authority of Masséna; the others

remained independent Viceroyalties. Thus military authority in the

Peninsula was divided up for the future between (1) the Commander of

the Army of Portugal, who controlled not only his army but all the

regions which it occupied--Leon, the greater part of Old Castile, and

part of Estremadura; (2) the military governors of Catalonia, Aragon,

Navarre, Biscay, Burgos; (3) the King, who practically controlled his

Army of the Centre and the kingdom of New Castile alone, since Soult,

in Andalusia, though not formally created a ‘military governor,’

practically acted on his own responsibility, without any reference

to the King’s wishes. All the viceroys reported directly to Paris,

and kept the Emperor fully employed with their perpetual bickerings.

How Napoleon came to create and continue such a vicious system it

is hard to conceive. Apparently the explanation must be sought in

the fact that he feared servants with too great power, and acted on

the principle of _divide et impera_, despite of the fact that he

knew, as a soldier, that the want of a commander-in-chief is ruinous

in practical war. At the bottom was the idea that he himself could

manage everything, even when his armies were a thousand miles away,

and when it took three weeks or a month to transmit orders to them.

He sometimes acknowledged in a moment of self-realization that this

was a bad arrangement, and that it was impossible for him to conduct

or criticize the details of strategy at such a distance, or under

such conditions. But after a lucid moment he would fall back into

his usual ways of thought, and proceed to give orders and directions

which were obsolete before the dispatches that conveyed them could be

delivered to the hands of his marshals.

To proceed to details--the old Army of Spain had come to a standstill

after it had overrun Andalusia in February 1810. Three corps

under Soult were absorbed by that new conquest, some 73,000 men

in all[213]. Suchet with his 3rd Corps, 26,000 men, held Aragon;

Augereau with the vast 7th Corps, 56,900 in all, did not hold down,

but was executing military promenades in, the turbulent Catalonia.

The 2nd and 6th Corps lay observing Portugal, the former with head

quarters at Talavera, the latter with head quarters at Salamanca. Ney

had now returned to take charge of the 6th Corps, and Reynier (an old

enemy of the English, who had beaten him at Alexandria and Maida) was

named chief of the 2nd Corps. This last had now been shorn of its

third division,--that which had been composed of so many fractional

units in 1809; these had been made over to the 6th Corps, which in

1810 possessed three divisions[214] and no longer two. Reynier had

about 18,000 men, Ney no less than 38,000 after this rearrangement;

he had been assigned Lorges’ dragoon-division as well as the troops

transferred from the 2nd Corps. The King had 14,000 men in Madrid

and New Castile: the old garrisons of the Northern Provinces,

excluding the newly arrived reinforcements, made up nearly 20,000 men

more. This 237,000 sabres and bayonets represents the old army of

1809[215]; the troops sent down by the Emperor after the termination

of the Austrian War had not, for the most part, been absorbed into

the old units, though they had crossed the Pyrenees in December and

January.

[213] Note that the 4th Corps had left behind in Madrid 6,000

men of its 1st division (the 28th Léger, 32nd and 75th Line) and

taken on instead 8,000 men of the division Dessolles, properly

forming part of the ‘Army of the Centre.’

[214] Loison’s division of the 6th Corps received these stray

battalions, which were united to those of the same regiments

which had crossed the Pyrenees with him. They consisted of

a battalion each of the _Légion du Midi_, of the _Légion

Hanovrienne_, the 26th, 66th, 82nd of the line, and the 32nd

Léger.

[215] All these figures are _inclusive_ of men sick and detached,

the former about 16,000, the latter 44,000.

It is now time to see what troops constituted these succours, the

100,000 men with whom the Emperor had originally intended to march

in person to the conquest of the Peninsula. On looking through

their muster roll the first thing that strikes the eye is that very

little--almost nothing indeed--had been taken from the Army of

Germany. The Emperor, though Austria was tamed and Prussia was under

his feet, did not think it safe to cut down to any great extent the

garrisons of Central Europe and Eastern France:

(1) Of all the corps that had taken part in the Wagram campaign only

one had been directed on Spain, and this was a force of the second

line, a unit originally called the ‘Corps de Réserve de l’Armée

d’Allemagne’ and afterwards the 8th Corps. It had played only a small

part in the late war, and was mostly composed of the newly raised 4th

battalions of regiments serving elsewhere. Recruited up to a strength

of 30,000 men by the addition of some stray battalions from Northern

Germany, it was the first of all the new reinforcements to reach

Spain[216]. Indeed, the head of its column reached Burgos by the 1st of

January, 1810. It was assigned to the Army of Portugal. By the drafting

away of some of its 4th battalions to join the regiments to which they

appertained it ultimately came down to about 20,000 men.

[216] Junot’s original corps was reinforced by the 22nd of the

line (4 batts.) drawn from the Prussian fortresses, and by some

units which had hitherto been doing garrison duty in Navarrese

and Biscayan fortresses, where they were now replaced by the

Young Guard. Among these were the Irish Brigade (2 batts.) and

the Prussian regiment which had formed the original garrison of

Pampeluna.

(2) Next in point of importance were the two divisions of the Young

Guard under Generals Roguet and Dumoustier, nineteen battalions,

with three provisional regiments of the Guard Cavalry, nearly 15,000

men in all. These units had been formed in 1809, just in time for

some of them to take their share in the bloody days of Essling and

Wagram. The Emperor did not make them over to the Army of Portugal,

but retained them in Biscay and Navarre, close under the Pyrenees.

Apparently he disliked sending any of his Guards so far afield as

to render it difficult to draw them back to France, in the event

(unlikely as it was at this moment) of further troubles breaking out

in Central Europe. The Guard divisions stayed in Spain two years, but

were never allowed to go far forward into the interior.

(3) Deeply impressed with the danger and difficulty of keeping up the

lines of communication between Bayonne and Madrid, since Mina and

his coadjutors had set the guerrilla war on foot in Navarre and Old

Castile, Napoleon had formed a corps whose special duty was to be

the keeping open of the roads, and the policing of the country-side

between the frontier and the Spanish capital. This was composed of

twenty squadrons of _Gendarmes_, all veterans and picked men, each

with a total strength of seven officers and 200 troopers. The decree

ordering their selection from among the _gendarmerie_ of Southern

and Central France was published on November 24, 1809: but the first

squadrons only began to pass the Pyrenees in February 1810, and many

did not appear till April and May. Yet 4,000 men were in line by the

summer[217].

[217] For details of this corps and its services see the

monograph, _La Gendarmerie en Espagne et Portugal_, by E. Martin,

Paris, 1898.

(4) A few new regiments which had not hitherto been represented in

the Peninsula were moved down thither. Among these were the Neuchâtel

troops from Berthier’s principality, a German division from the minor

states of the Confederation of the Rhine under General Rouyer[218],

which went to Catalonia, the 7th, 13th, and 25th _Chasseurs à

Cheval_, with two battalions of Marines. The total did not amount to

more than some 10,000 men.

[218] Nine battalions as follows: Two of Nassau, the others from

Gotha, Weimar, Altenburg, Waldeck, Reuss, Schwarzburg, Anhalt,

and Lippe; strength about 6,000 men.

(5) By far the largest item in the reinforcements was composed of

the 4th battalions of wellnigh every regiment which was already

serving in Spain. The army which had marched across the Pyrenees

in 1808 had been organized on the basis of three field-battalions

to the regiment, the 4th battalion being the dépôt battalion. But

Napoleon had now raised the standard to four (or in a few cases more)

field-battalions, over and above the dépôt. All the fourth battalions

were now existing and available; a few had served in the Austrian

War, many of the others had been lying in the camps which the

Emperor had formed at Boulogne, Pontivy, and elsewhere, to protect

his coasts against possible English descents. Those belonging to 40

regiments already in Spain, with the full complement of 840 men each,

were first ordered to cross the Pyrenees: they numbered 33,600 men:

these were all at the front by May 1810. The Emperor somewhat later

dispatched the fourth battalions of twenty-six regiments more to the

Peninsula, giving to the temporary organization the name of the 9th

Corps. This should have given another 21,840 men, and nearly did so;

their gross total, when all had reached Vittoria in September 1810,

was 20,231. But the 9th Corps should not be reckoned in the first

100,000 men which the Emperor set aside for the spring campaign of

1810, it was a supplementary addition[219].

[219] The 4th battalions ultimately retained in Junot’s corps did

not for the most part belong to regiments of the Spanish army,

but to regiments in Germany or the colonies. They are over and

above the 66 fourth battalions accounted for in the list above.

For details of the whole set of reinforcements see Tables in

Appendix.

(6) The Emperor dealt in a similar way with the cavalry; the

regiments already in Spain had been reduced to a strength of two or

three squadrons by the wear and tear of eighteen months of war. The

dépôts had now got ready two squadrons fit for field service. Those

belonging to sixteen regiments of dragoons, organized into eight

provisional regiments, were sent early to the front, and were all in

Spain by January 1810.

(7) In addition to units like 4th battalions and 3rd and 4th

squadrons added to the strength of each dragoon or infantry regiment,

the Emperor did not neglect to send drafts to fill up the depleted

1st, 2nd, and 3rd battalions and 1st and 2nd squadrons. In the early

months of 1810, 27,000 men, in small drafts not amounting to the

strength of a battalion or squadron were forwarded to recruit the old

units. They went forward in ‘régiments de marche,’ which were broken

up on reaching the head quarters of the corps to which each party

belonged.

Adding together all the units, with an extra allowance of 3,500

artillery for the new batteries that came in with Junot’s Corps,

the Guard divisions, and the 9th Corps, we get as a total of the

reinforcements poured into Spain between December 1809, and September

1810, the following figures:--

Junot’s corps, at its final strength in June,

infantry only 20,000

Young Guard divisions 15,000

Gendarmerie 4,000

New regiments 10,000

4th battalions, the first arrivals 33,600

4th battalions forming the 9th Corps 20,000

Cavalry in organized squadrons 5,000

Artillery in complete batteries 3,500

Drafts, not in permanent units, for Infantry,

Cavalry, and Artillery 27,000

-------

138,100

This total far exceeds the original 100,000 of which Napoleon had

spoken in the autumn of 1809, but is certainly rather below the

actual number of men received into the Peninsula; the figure for

drafts, in especial, is hard to verify. But as the total strength

of the Army of Spain in the autumn of 1809 was 237,000 men, and in

September 1810, 353,000 men, while at least 25,000 had been lost in

the interval[220], the figures cannot be far out.

[220] Over and above the ordinary death-rate for French troops

quartered in Spain, which was very high, we have to allow for the

losses at Tamames, Ocaña, the conquest of Andalusia, the sieges

of Astorga, Gerona, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Almeida, and all smaller

engagements.

Of this total, as we have already said, the 2nd, 6th, and 8th Corps

and the troops under Kellermann and Bonnet occupying the provinces

of Toro, Palencia, Valladolid, and Santander formed the ‘Army of

Portugal’ assigned to Masséna; he was also given an extra unattached

division under Serras[221], and promised the use of the 9th Corps

when it should have crossed the Pyrenees. The gross total of this

force was in May, when the new Commander-in-Chief had taken up his

post, about 130,000 men, of whom some 86,000 were effective and

available for active operations at the moment. Serras, Kellermann,

and Bonnet were tied down to their local duties--the first had to

look after the Spanish army of Galicia, the second to keep the plains

of Valladolid quiet, the third to hold Santander and (when it was

fully subdued) to enter and overrun the Asturias. The 20,000 men of

the 9th Corps were not yet arrived in Spain[222]. The troops in the

provinces of Burgos, Biscay, and Navarre, though not placed under the

Marshal’s actual command, were yet in existence to cover his rear and

his communications with France. If they are added to the total of the

force which, directly or indirectly, was employed for the conquest

of Portugal, some 30,000 more must be taken into consideration. But,

though they were useful, indeed indispensable, for the conquest of

Portugal, it is fairer to leave them out of consideration.

[221] This division had charge of the Provinces of Leon, Zamora,

and Salamanca, which were not a ‘military government.’

[222] Roughly, on May 15, 2nd Corps 20,000 men, 6th ditto 35,000,

8th ditto 26,000, Cavalry reserve 5,000, effectives present under

arms, besides the sick, who made up about 12,000 more, and some

6,000 men detached. See Tables in Appendix.

But the exact total of an army is, after all, less important than

the character and capacity of its generals. The individuality of

Masséna was the most important factor in the problem of the invasion

of Portugal. He was fifty-two years of age--very nearly the eldest

of all the Marshals--and he was the only one of those on active

service, save Jourdan, who had achieved greatness in the days

before Napoleon arrived at supreme power. He had led an army of

60,000 men when, of the three corps-commanders now under him, Ney

was but a lieutenant-colonel, Junot a young captain, and Reynier a

brigadier-general. Like nearly all the men of the Revolution he had

risen from below; he sprang from a poor family in Genoa: according to

his enemies they were Jews, and his name was but Manasseh disguised.

His personal character was detestable; many of the marshals had an

evil reputation for financial probity, but Masséna’s was the worst

of all. ‘He plundered like a _condottiere_ of the Middle Ages,’

wrote one of his lieutenants. He had been in trouble, both with

the Republican government and with the Emperor, for his shameless

malversations in Italy, and had piled up a large private fortune by

surreptitious methods[223]. Avarice is not usually associated with

licentiousness, but he shocked even the easy-going public opinion

of the French army by the way in which he paraded his mistress at

unsuitable moments and in unsuitable company. He took this person,

the sister of one of his aides-de-camp, with him all through the

dangers of the Portuguese campaign, where her presence often caused

friction and delays, and occasionally exposed him to insults[224].

Masséna was hard, suspicious, and revengeful; an intriguer to the

finger-tips, he was always prone to suppose that others were

intriguing against himself[225]. Though an old Republican, who had

risen from the ranks early in the revolutionary war, he had done

his best to make himself agreeable to Napoleon by the arts of the

courtier. Altogether, he was a detestable character--but he was a

great general. Of all the marshals of the Empire he was undoubtedly

the most capable; Davoust and Soult, with all their abilities, were

not up to his level. As a proof of his boldness and rapid skill in

seizing an opportunity the battle of Zurich is sufficient to quote;

for his splendid obstinacy the defence of Genoa at the commencement

of his career has its parallel in the long endurance before the lines

of Torres Vedras at its end. His best testimonial is that Wellington,

when asked, long years after, which of his old opponents was the best

soldier, replied without hesitation that Masséna was the man, and

that he had never permitted himself to take in his presence the risks

that he habitually accepted when confronted with any of the other

marshals[226].

[223] The Emperor once confiscated 3,000,000 francs which Masséna

had collected by selling licences to trade with the English at

Leghorn and other Italian ports. See the Memoirs of General

Lamarque, who carried out the seizure.

[224] See Thiébault, iv. 375; Marbot, ii. 380-1; Duchesse

d’Abrantes, viii. 50. All these may be called scandal-mongers,

but the lady’s presence, and the troubles to which it gave rise,

are chronicled by more serious authorities.

[225] See Foy’s complaints on p. 114 of his _Vie Militaire_ (ed.

Girod de L’Ain) as to the way in which the Marshal suspected him

of undermining his favour with the Emperor.

[226] See Lord Stanhope’s _Conversations with the Duke of

Wellington_, p. 20.

[Illustration:

ANDRÉ MASSÉNA, DUC DE RIVOLI PRINCE D’ESSLING,

Né à Nice, en 1755,

Mort à sa Terre près Paris, en Avril 1817.]

The fatigues of the late Austrian war, in which he had borne such

an honourable part, had tried Masséna’s health; it was not without

difficulty that the Emperor had persuaded him to undertake the

Portuguese campaign. When he first assembled round him at Salamanca

the staff which was to serve him in the invasion, he astonished

and somewhat disheartened his officers by beginning his greetings

to them with the remark, ‘Gentlemen, I am here contrary to my own

wish; I begin to feel myself too old and too weary to go on active

service. The Emperor says that I must, and replied to the reasons for

declining this post which I gave him, by saying that my reputation

would suffice to end the war. It was very flattering no doubt, but

no man has two lives to live on this earth--the soldier least of

all[227].’ Those who had served under the Marshal a few years back,

and now saw him after an interval, felt that there was truth in what

he said. Foy wrote in his diary, ‘He is no longer the Masséna of the

flashing eyes, the mobile face, and the alert figure whom I knew

in 1799, and whose head then recalled to me the bust of Marius. He

is only fifty-two, but looks more than sixty; he has got thin, he

is beginning to stoop; his look, since the accident when he lost

his eye by the Emperor’s hand[228], has lost its vivacity. The tone

of his voice alone remains unchanged.’ But if the Marshal’s bodily

vigour was somewhat abated, his will was as strong as ever. He needed

it at this juncture, for he had to command subordinates who were

anything but easy to deal with. Ney, though an honest man and an

admirable soldier, had the fault of insubordination in the highest

degree. He never obeyed any one save the Emperor in the true military

fashion. He quarrelled with every colleague that he met--notably

with Soult--and had an old and very justifiable personal dislike for

Masséna. Even before the latter appeared at the front, he had been

heard to use threatening language concerning him. Junot was almost as

bad; having held the chief command in the last Portuguese expedition

he had a strong, if a mistaken, belief that it was becoming that he

should be placed in charge of the second. His record rendered the

idea absurd, but this he was the last to understand, being of an

overweening and self-confident disposition. He was stupid enough to

regard Masséna as his supplanter, and to show sullen resentment. Of

the three chiefs of the army corps about to invade Portugal, Reynier

was the only one on decent terms with his Commander-in-Chief, but

even he was not reckoned his friend[229].

[227] This comes from an eye-witness with no grudge against

Masséna, Hulot, commanding the artillery of the 8th Corps. See

his _Mémoires_, p. 303.

[228] Foy, p. 101. The Emperor, a notoriously bad shot, lodged

some pellets in the Marshal’s left eye while letting fly at

a pheasant. Napoleon turned round and accused his faithful

Berthier of having fired the shot: the Prince of Neuchâtel was

courtier enough to take the blame without a word, and in official

histories appears as the culprit (see e. g. Amic’s _Masséna_,

p. 272); for other notes see Guingret, p. 250. What is most

astonishing is that Masséna was complaisant enough to affect to

blame Berthier for the disaster.

[229] See the admirable summary of all this in Foy’s diary (Girod

de L’Ain), p. 101. Marbot gives the same views at bottom, but

with his usual exaggeration, and with ‘illustrative anecdotes,’

occasionally of doubtful accuracy.

Masséna’s chief of the staff was Fririon, a scientific soldier and

a man well liked by his colleagues; but it is said that he was not

so much in the Marshal’s confidence as Lieut.-Colonel Pelet, the

senior aide de camp of his staff. Complaints are found, in some

of the letters and memoirs of the time, that Masséna would talk

matters over with Pelet, and issue orders without letting even his

chief of the staff know of his change of plan or new inspiration.

Pelet’s own indiscreet statements on this point seem to justify the

complaints made by others against him[230]. There was friction,

therefore, even within the staff itself, and all that the Marshal

did, or said, was criticized by some of those who should have been

his loyal subordinates, under the notion that it had been inspired by

others, who were accorded a more perfect confidence by their common

chief. Exact knowledge of the disputes in the _État Major_ is hard

to obtain, because, when the campaign was over, every man tried to

make out that its failure had been due to the advice given to Masséna

by those of whom he was jealous. At the bottom, however, all this

controversy is not very important--there is no doubt that the Marshal

himself was responsible for all that had happened--he was not the man

to be led by the nose or over-persuaded by ambitious or intriguing

underlings.

[230] Note Pelet’s _Aperçu sur la Campagne de Portugal_, nearly

forty pages in the Appendix to _Victoires et Conquêtes_, vol.

xxi: for his disputes with Baron Fririon see the _Spectateur

Militaire_ for 1841. Pelet says, ignoring the chief of the staff

entirely, ‘qu’il était investi de la confiance _absolue_ du

maréchal: qu’il faisait _seul_ auprès de lui tout le travail

militaire et politique, qu’il dirigeait la haute correspondance

avec le major-général (Berthier) et les chefs de corps, etc.,

etc.’ For Fririon’s comparative impotence see a story on p. 387

of Marbot’s vol. ii, which may or may not be true--probably the

former.

Pelet’s writings give a poor impression of his brain-power and

his love of exact truth. He says, for example, in his _Aperçu_

that Masséna had only 40,000 men in his army of invasion, when it

is certain that he had 64,000. See Baron Fririon’s remarks on him

in _Spectateur Militaire_, June 1841, pp. 1-5.

Failure or success is not the sole criterion of merit. Masséna’s

campaign was a disastrous business; yet on investigating the

disabilities under which he laboured, we shall be inclined in the

end to marvel that he did so much, not that he did no more. The

fundamental error was the Emperor’s, who gave him too few men for

the enterprise with which he was entrusted. Napoleon refused to

take the Portuguese troops into consideration, when he weighed the

needs of the expedition. He repeatedly wrote that ‘it was absurd

that his armies should be held in check by 25,000 or 30,000 British

troops,’ as if nothing else required to be taken into consideration.

He did not realize that Wellington had turned the Portuguese regular

army into a decent fighting machine, capable of holding back French

divisions in line of battle--as was shown at Bussaco. He had not

foreseen that the despised militia required to be ‘contained’ by

adequate numbers of troops on the line of communications. Still less

had he dreamed of the great scheme for the devastation of Portugal,

which was to be not the least effective of the weapons of its

defender. But of this more will be said in the proper place.

SECTION XIX: CHAPTER IV

THE MONTHS OF WAITING: SIEGE OF ASTORGA (MARCH-MAY 1810)

Masséna, as we have seen, was only appointed Commander-in-Chief

of the Army of Portugal on April 17, 1810, and did not appear at

Valladolid, to take up his charge, till May. The campaign, however,

had begun long before under the Emperor’s own directions. There

were preliminary operations to be carried out, which could be

finished before either the new General-in-Chief or the main body

of the reinforcements from beyond the Pyrenees had arrived. These

were the repression of the insurgent bands of Navarre, Biscay, and

Old Castile, the firm establishment of the line of communications

between Salamanca and Bayonne, and the capture of the outlying

Spanish fortresses, Astorga and Ciudad Rodrigo, which served as

external defences for the Portuguese frontier. ‘Les besoins en

Espagne sont successifs,’ wrote the Emperor early in the winter of

1809-10[231], ‘il faut d’abord un corps qui soumette les derrières.

Étant en Novembre il serait impossible de réunir tous les moyens

avant du commencement de janvier. Et dans cette presqu’île coupée de

montagnes les froids et les neiges de janvier ne permettront de rien

faire.’ All that he could do before spring would be to send forward

Junot’s corps, and the other earlier reinforcements, to positions

from which they should be ready to strike, the moment that the fine

weather began. With the coming of the new year, when these corps had

reached their destined positions, the imperial orders begin to abound

in elaborate directions for the extermination of the guerrillas of

the Upper Ebro and the Upper Douro[232], orders which led to much

marching and counter-marching of the newly arrived troops, but to

little practical effect in the way of repression, for skilled leaders

like Mina, the Empecinado, and Julian Sanchez, nearly always slipped

between the fingers of their pursuers, and on the few occasions when

they were pressed into a corner, simply bade their men disperse and

unite again at some distant rendezvous. These operations, however,

were wholly subsidiary: the actual advance against Portugal only

commences with the orders given to Junot in February to concentrate

his corps at Valladolid, to hand over the charge of Salamanca and Old

Castile to Kellermann’s dragoons and the divisions of the 6th Corps,

and then to subdue the whole of the plain-land of Leon, as far as the

foot of the Asturian and Galician mountains, including the towns of

Benavente, Leon, and Astorga. Bonnet and his division, now as always

based on Santander, were already advancing to invade the Asturias,

and to threaten Galicia from the east. Ney with the 6th Corps was

ordered to draw near to the frontier of Portugal on the side of

Ciudad Rodrigo, ‘to inundate all the approaches to that kingdom with

his cavalry, disquiet the English, and prevent them from dreaming

of transferring themselves back to the south.’ The news of the near

approach of the Emperor himself with 80,000 men was to be spread in

every direction[233].

[231] Napoleon to Clarke, Oct. 30, 1809.

[232] See for example Jan. 20, 1810, to Berthier; Jan. 31, to

same; Feb. 12, to same.

[233] _Correspondance_, vol. xx, Napoleon to Berthier, Feb. 12,

1810.

Meanwhile the third great unit which was to form part of the

projected Army of Portugal, the 2nd Corps (under the temporary

command of General Heudelet[234]), was taking part in a separate and

remote series of operations, far to the South. This corps, it will be

remembered, had been left on the Tagus about Talavera and Oropesa,

to protect the rear of Soult and King Joseph, when they marched

in January with the 1st, 4th, and 5th Corps to conquer Andalusia.

That exploit having been accomplished, Mortier went, with half of

the 5th Corps, to attack Badajoz, and to subdue Estremadura, which

Soult imagined to be defenceless, since Albuquerque had marched

with the old Estremaduran army to save Cadiz. Mortier advanced

unopposed to the walls of Badajoz, which he reached on February 12,

but found himself unable to undertake its siege with his small force

of 9,000 men, because a new Spanish host had just appeared upon

the scene. La Romana, with three of the divisions of the army that

had been beaten at Alba de Tormes in November, had marched down the

Spanish-Portuguese frontier by the Pass of Perales; and on the same

day that Mortier appeared in front of Badajoz, his vanguard arrived

at Albuquerque, only twenty miles away. These divisions were 13,000

strong: La Romana could add to this force a few thousands more left

behind by Albuquerque. Mortier rightly felt that he dare not commence

the regular siege of Badajoz when he had such superior numbers in

his front. He therefore asked for reinforcements, both from Soult

and from King Joseph. The former could spare nothing from Andalusia

at this moment, but the 2nd Corps was ordered to leave the Tagus

and place itself in communication with Mortier. Heudelet had other

projects on hand at the moment: he had just seized Plasencia on

February 10, and was engaged in bickering with Carlos d’España and

Martin Carrera, whom La Romana had left in the Sierra de Gata. But,

in obedience to his orders, he called in his detachments, and marched

by Deleytosa and Truxillo into the valley of the Guadiana. This

movement, from the French point of view, was a hazardous one; by the

transference southward of the 2nd Corps, a long gap was left between

Ney at Salamanca and Heudelet and Mortier in Estremadura. No troops

whatever covered Madrid from the side of the south-west and the

valley of the Tagus, and an irruption of the English on this line was

one of the dangers which Napoleon most dreaded[235]. He was unaware

of Wellington’s deeply-rooted determination to commit himself to no

more Spanish campaigns.

[234] Soult had given up the 2nd Corps when he became King

Joseph’s Major-General: Reynier, appointed to command it, had not

yet appeared.

[235] ‘Il faut prévoir que les Anglais peuvent marcher sur

Talavera pour faire diversion,’ wrote Napoleon on Jan. 31 to

Berthier. But Heudelet had been moved before his caution could

reach Madrid.

Long before Heudelet approached the Guadiana, Mortier had been

compelled, partly by want of supplies, partly by the threatening

attitude of La Romana, who began cautiously to turn his flanks, to

retire from in front of the walls of Badajoz. He gave back as far

as Zafra on the road to the south, and six days after marched for

Seville, leaving only a rearguard at Santa Ollala, on the extreme

border of Estremadura. Soult required his presence, for, on account

of a rising in Granada, and a threatening movement by the Spanish

army of Murcia, the French reserves in Andalusia had been moved

eastward, and its capital was almost stripped of troops. Hence when

the 2nd Corps reached Caçeres on March 8, and appeared in front of

Albuquerque on March 14, it found that the 5th Corps had departed,

and that it was nearly 100 miles from the nearest friendly post.

Heudelet, therefore, having all La Romana’s army in his front, and

no orders to execute (since the junction with Mortier had failed),

retired to Merida, where Reynier arrived from the north, superseded

him, and took command. Here the 2nd Corps remained practically

passive for the rest of the spring, keeping open, but with difficulty

and at long intervals, the communications between Madrid and Seville,

by means of detachments at Truxillo and Almaraz. To a certain

extent Reynier kept La Romana’s army in check, but he did not fully

discharge even that moderate task, for the Spanish general detached

southward two of his divisions, those of Contreras and Ballasteros,

to threaten the frontiers of Andalusia and stir up an insurrection

in the Condado de Niebla and the other regions west of Seville.

Ballasteros surprised the cavalry brigade of Mortier’s corps at

Valverde, at midnight on February 19, and scattered it, killing

Beauregard, the brigadier. He then advanced to Ronquillo, only twenty

miles from Seville, where, on March 25-6, he had an indecisive

engagement with one of Gazan’s brigades, after which he retired into

the Condado. Mortier, thereupon, came out against him from Seville at

the head of a whole division. Unwisely offering battle at Zalamea,

on the Rio Tinto, on April 15, Ballasteros was beaten, and retired

into the mountains. Thither, after some time, he was pursued by

Mortier’s columns, and again defeated at Araçena on May 26. But he

rallied his broken force in the Sierra de Araçena, where he remained

for long after, a thorn in the side of the Army of Andalusia, always

descending for a raid in the plains of Seville when he was left

unwatched. Soult was forced to keep a considerable part of the 5th

Corps in observation of him--a detachment that he was loth to spare.

La Romana’s central divisions, meanwhile, those of Charles O’Donnell

(brother of the Henry O’Donnell who had distinguished himself at

Gerona in the previous autumn), Mendizabal, and Contreras, bickered

with the 2nd Corps in the direction of Caçeres and Torresnovas,

without any notable advantage on either side. But as long as Reynier

lay at Merida, and Mortier might at any moment come up from Seville

to his aid, Wellington felt uneasy as to the possibility of a French

advance between Tagus and Guadiana, and, regarding La Romana’s army

as an insufficient security on this side, moved Hill with a force

of 12,000 men to Portalegre, close to the rear of Badajoz. Hill had

with his own British division, now consisting of three brigades[236],

another division composed of Portuguese, under General Hamilton[237],

the English heavy cavalry brigade of Slade, a weak Portuguese cavalry

brigade under Madden[238], and three batteries. He was ordered not

to countenance any offensive movements on the part of La Romana, but

to support him, and to endeavour to cover Badajoz, if the French

should unite the 2nd and 5th Corps, and make a serious move westward.

There was no need, as matters turned out, for any such support,

for Reynier, though he executed some rather useless feints and

counter-marches in April and May, undertook nothing serious. One of

his demonstrations drew Hill to Arronches, close to Elvas, on May 14,

but it turned out to be meaningless, and the British troops returned

to their usual head quarters at Portalegre a few days later. There

seems to have been some uncertainty of purpose in all this manœuvring

of the French in Estremadura. Reynier was not strong enough to offer

to fight La Romana and Hill combined; he might have done so with good

prospect of success if Mortier could have been spared from Andalusia;

but half the 5th Corps was usually detached far to the south,

hunting the insurgents of the Sierra de Ronda, and the other half

had to garrison Seville and watch Ballasteros. Hence Reynier, left

to himself, did no more for the common cause of the French in Spain

than detain Hill’s two divisions in the Alemtejo. That Wellington

was thus obliged to divide his army was no doubt a permanent gain

to the enemy: yet they obtained it by the very doubtful expedient of

leaving nothing on the Tagus; a push in the direction of Plasencia

and Almaraz by even a small Spanish force would have been a very

tiresome and troublesome matter for King Joseph, who would have been

forced either to bring down Ney from Salamanca, or to call Reynier

back from the Guadiana, for Madrid was entirely uncovered on the

West. But nothing of the sort happened; La Romana kept his main

body concentrated in front of Badajoz, and had the full approval of

Wellington for doing so.

[236] Hill’s division, two brigades strong at Talavera in August,

had received a third brigade in September under Catlin Craufurd,

consisting of the 2/28th, 2/34th, and 2/39th.

[237] Composed of the 2nd, 4th, 10th, and 14th regiments, each

two battalions strong, with 4,500 bayonets.

[238] 1st and 4th Portuguese cavalry.

At the extreme opposite flank of the French front, on the shores

of the Bay of Biscay, there was going on at this same time a

side-campaign conducted with a much greater degree of vigour, but

equally indecisive in the end. The Asturias had been almost stripped

of troops by Del Parque, in order to reinforce the army that fought

at Tamames and Alba de Tormes. When the Duke moved his main force

southward after the last-named fight, he carried off with him the

division of Ballasteros, which had been the core of the old Asturian

Army. General Antonio Arce was left in the principality with some

4,000 men, whom he kept at Colombres, behind the Deba, under General

Llano-Ponte, watching the French force in the province of Santander.

New levies, little more than 2,000 strong, were being collected

at Oviedo. In the end of January General Bonnet, whose division

at Santander had received its drafts, and had been strengthened

up to 7,000 men[239], thought himself strong enough to drive in

Arce’s weak line and to make a dash at the Asturian capital. On

the 25th he attacked the lines of Colombres, and carried them with

no difficulty. On the 31st he captured Oviedo, which was evacuated

by the Captain-General Arce and the local Junta without serious

fighting. But that active partisan Juan Porlier at once cut off his

communication with Santander, by seizing Infiesto and Gijon. Bonnet

at once evacuated Oviedo, and turned back to clear his rear. Porlier

escaped along the coast to Pravia, and meanwhile the main body of

the Asturians, under General Barcena, reoccupied the capital. Having

driven off Porlier, the French general marched westward once more,

beat Barcena at the bridge of Colleto on February 14, and again made

himself master of Oviedo. The Asturians rallied behind the Narcea,

where they were joined by a brigade of 2,000 men sent to their aid by

Mahy, the Captain-General of Galicia.

[239] He had 7,094 men with the colours, besides sick and

detached, by the imperial muster rolls of Jan. 15, 1810.

That province, like the Asturias, had been left almost ungarrisoned

by Del Parque, when he took the old ‘Army of Galicia’ across the

Sierra de Gata, and transferred it to Estremadura. Mahy had been left

behind with the skeleton of one division, which he was to recruit, as

best he could, by new levies. His main preoccupation at this moment

was the defence of the newly fortified stronghold of Astorga, which

was already threatened by the French troops in the plains of Leon.

But seeing his flank menaced by Bonnet’s advance, he lent what men he

could spare to aid in the defence of the Asturias.

The Asturian junta, having deposed General Arce for incapacity

and corruption, and appointed Cienfuegos to take over his troops,

ordered the resumption of offensive operations against Bonnet in

March. Porlier, their great partisan-hero, made a circuit along the

coast, and threatened the French communications with Santander.

At the same time their main force advanced against Oviedo by the

valley of the Nalon. Bonnet’s advanced brigade was driven in, after

a sharp skirmish at Grado on March 19, and disquieted by Porlier’s

simultaneous attack on his rear, he evacuated the Asturian capital

for the _third_ time, and gave back as far as Cangas de Onis, in the

valley of the Ona. He then called up all the reinforcements that

he could obtain from Santander, and marched--for the fourth time

in three months!--on Oviedo with his whole division; the Spaniards

retired without offering serious opposition, and took up a line

behind the Narcea [March 29]. This time Bonnet left them no time to

rally, but forced the passage of that river, whereupon the Asturians

ascended to Tineo in the mountains, while the Galician succours

gave back to Navia, almost on the edge of their own principality

[April 25-26]. After this, Bonnet’s offensive force was spent;

having to occupy Oviedo and its ports of Gijon and Aviles, as well

as all the central and eastern Asturias, and, moreover, to defend

his communication with Santander from new attacks of Porlier, his

strength sufficed for no more. His 7,000 men were immobilized for

the rest of the year: he had conquered two-thirds of the Asturias,

and barely succeeded in keeping it down. But he was quite unable to

spare a man to aid in French operations in the plains of Leon, or

even to make a serious attempt to threaten Galicia. Once or twice he

succeeded in communicating with the forces which Junot (and after him

Kellermann and Serras) commanded in the plains beyond the Cantabrian

range, by expeditions pushed down through the pass of Pajares on

to Leon; but the road was always closed again by the guerrillas,

and no co-operation could take place. In short, the Spaniards lost

the greater part of the Asturias, and the French lost the further

services of Bonnet’s division[240]. It had no power to threaten

Galicia, because it was forced to keep garrisons in Gijon, Aviles,

Lastres, Santona, and all the sea-ports, with a full brigade at

Oviedo in the centre, to support them. Any concentration of troops,

leading to the evacuation of the smaller garrisons, at once let loose

the guerrillas from their mountains. Bonnet had but 7,000 men in

all: of these, not more than half could be used for an expedition,

and such a force was too small to have any practical effect on the

general course of events in north-western Spain.

[240] I cannot understand Napier’s narrative of this little

campaign, on pages 352-4 of his vol. ii. It runs as follows,

and seems to have no relation to the facts detailed by Belmas,

Toreno, Arteche, or any other historian. No mention is made of

the four captures of Oviedo!

‘Mahy was organizing a second army at Lugo and in the Asturias.

D’Arco [Arce] commanded 7,000 men, 3,000 of whom were posted at

Cornellana under General Ponte.... Bonnet, from the Asturias,

threatened Galicia by the Concija d’Ibas: having destroyed

Ponte’s force at Potes de la Sierra [30 miles from Colombres,

where the actual fight took place], he menaced Galicia by the

pass of Nava de Suarna [a place which his vanguard did not

approach by a matter of 40 miles].... But he did not pass Nava

de Suarna, and General D’Arco rallied the Asturian fugitives at

Louarca. It seems probable that while Bonnet drew the attention

of the Galician army towards Lugo [he was never within 100 miles

of that place], Junot thought to penetrate by Puebla Senabria.

But finally Junot, drawing a reinforcement from Bonnet, invested

Astorga with 10,000 infantry,’ &c. [No troops from Bonnet’s force

ever appeared before Astorga.]

This last blunder is apparently borrowed from _Victoires et

Conquêtes_, xx. 12, which states that General Bonnet detached

Jeannin’s brigade, the 46th and 65th, to Astorga. But these regiments

did not belong to Bonnet, but were, from the first to the last,

parts of Junot’s own corps, and never entered the Asturias. Compare

Napoleon, _Correspondance_, xx. 21, the muster rolls of Jan. 1, Feb.

15, and Belmas, iii. p. 46.