Paget indeed was so effectively gone, that though French cavalry by

the thousand crossed the ford that night they could do nothing. And

Crawfurd had so thoroughly destroyed the bridge of Castro Gonzalo--he

had blown up the central pier, and not merely cut the crowns of the

arches--that infantry and guns could not cross till the thirtieth. It

was only on that day that the heads of Ney’s corps and of the Imperial

Guard came up: Lapisse’s division was still far behind, at Toro. All

that the rapid forced marches of the Emperor had brought him was the

privilege of assisting at Paget’s departure, and of picking up in

Benavente some abandoned carts, which Moore had caused to be broken

after burning their contents.

Napoleon still consoled himself with the idea that it was possible that

Soult might have been more fortunate than himself, and might perhaps

already be attacking the English at Astorga. This was not the case:

after learning that Moore had disappeared from his front, the Duke of

Dalmatia had taken the road Sahagun-Mansilla, as the shortest line

which would bring him to Astorga, the place where any army intending

to defend Galicia would make its first stand. This choice brought him

upon the tracks of La Romana’s army, not of the British. The Marquis,

when Moore retired, had moved back on Leon, but had sent to his ally a

message to the effect that he could not accept the suggestion to make

the Asturias his base, and would be forced, when the enemy advanced, to

join the British at Astorga. It was absolutely impossible, he said, to

repair to the Asturias, for the pass of Pajares, the only coach-road

thither, was impassable on account of the snow[666]. La Romana left as

a rearguard at the all-important bridge of Mansilla, his 2nd Division,

3,000 strong, with two guns. Contrary to Moore’s advice he would not

blow up the bridge, giving as his reason that the Esla was fordable

in several places in its immediate neighbourhood. This was a blunder;

but the officer in command of the 2nd Division committed a greater

one, by drawing up his main body in front of the bridge and not behind

it--a repetition of Cuesta’s old error at Cabezon. Soult did not come

in contact with the Spanish rearguard till four days after he had left

Carrion: so heavy had been the rain, and so vile the road, that it took

him from the twenty-sixth to the twenty-ninth to cover the forty-five

miles between Carrion and Mansilla. But on the morning of December 30

he delivered his attack: a tremendous cavalry-charge by the chasseurs

and dragoons of Franceschi broke the Spanish line, and pursuers

and pursued went pell-mell over the bridge, which was not defended

for a moment. The French captured 1,500 men--who were cut off from

re-crossing the river--two guns, and two standards. Hearing of this

disaster La Romana at once evacuated Leon, which Soult seized on the

thirty-first. The place had been hastily fortified, and there had been

much talk of the possibility of defending it[667]; but at the first

summons it opened its gates without firing a shot. The Marquis--leaving

2,000 sick in the hospitals, and a considerable accumulation of food in

his magazines--fell back on Astorga, much to the discontent of Moore,

who had not desired to see him in that direction. Soult at Leon was

only twenty-five miles from Astorga: he was now but one march from

Moore’s rearguard, and in close touch with the Emperor, who coming up

from the south reached La Baneza on the same day--the last of the old

year, 1808.

[666] Symes to Moore, from La Romana’s camp at Mansilla, Dec. 25.

[667] Ibid.

The divisions of Baird, Hope, and Fraser, as we have already seen,

had reached Astorga on the twenty-ninth, the reserve division and the

light brigades (after a most fatiguing march from Benavente) on the

thirtieth, while the cavalry was, as always, to the rear, keeping

back the advancing squadrons of Bessières. Thus on the thirtieth the

English and Spanish armies were concentrated at Astorga with every

available man present--the British still 25,000 strong; for they had

suffered little in the fighting, and had not yet begun to straggle--but

Romana with no more than 9,000 or 10,000 of the nominal 22,000 which

had been shown in his returns of ten days before. His 2nd Division

had been practically destroyed at Mansilla: he had left 2,000 sick at

Leon, and many more had fallen out of the ranks in the march from that

place--some because they wished to desert their colours, but more from

cold, disease, and misery; for the army was not merely half naked,

but infected with a malignant typhus fever which was making terrible

ravages in its ranks[668].

[668] All witnesses agree that the army of Galicia was in a most

distressing condition. ‘This army was literally half naked and

half starved,’ says Adam Neale. ‘A malignant fever was raging

among them, and long fatigues, privation, and this mortal

distemper made them appear like spectres issuing from a hospital

rather than an army’ (p. 181). ‘T.S.’ describes them as ‘looking

more like a large body of peasants driven from their homes, and

in want of everything, than a regular army ’ (p. 56). The men fit

for service are described as being no more than 5,000 strong.

Moore had told La Romana on the twenty-fourth that he hoped to make

a stand at Astorga. The same statement had been passed round the

army, and had kept up the spirits of the men to some extent, though

many had begun to believe that ‘Moore would never fight[669].’ There

were magazines of food at Astorga, and much more considerable ones of

military equipment: a large convoy of shoes, blankets, and muskets

had lately come in from Corunna, and Baird’s heavy baggage had been

stacked in the place before he marched for Sahagun. The town itself was

surrounded with ancient walls, and had some possibilities of defence:

just behind it rises the first range of the Galician mountains, a steep

and forbidding chain pierced only by the two passes which contain

the old and the new high-roads to Corunna. The former--the shorter,

but by far the more rugged--is called the defile of Foncebadon; the

latter--longer and easier--is the defile of Manzanal.

[669] ‘We all wished it, but none believed it,’ writes ‘T.S.’

‘We had been told the same at Benavente, but our movement had

no appearance of a retreat in which we were to face about and

make a stand: it was more like a shameful flight’ (p. 56). This

undoubtedly was the prevailing view in the ranks.

The question was at once raised as to whether the position in rear

of Astorga should not be seriously defended. The town itself would

naturally have to be given up, if the French chose to press on in

force; but the two defiles might be fortified and held against very

superior numbers. To turn 25,000 British troops out of them would have

been a very serious task, and the Spaniards meanwhile could have been

used for diversions on the enemy’s flank and rear. La Romana called

upon Moore, at the moment of the latter’s arrival at Astorga, and

proposed that they should join in defending the passes. To give them

up meant, he said, to give up also the great upland valley behind

them--the Vierzo--where lay his own dépôts and his park of artillery at

Ponferrada, and where Moore also had considerable stores and magazines

at Villafranca. The proposal was well worthy of being taken into

account, and was far from being--as Napier calls it--‘wilder than the

dreams of Don Quixote!’ for the positions were very strong, and there

was no convenient route by which they could be turned. The only other

way into Galicia, that by Puebla de Sanabria, is not only far away, but

almost impassable at midwinter from the badness of the road and the

deep snow. Moreover it leads not into the main valley of the Minho, but

into that of the Tamega on the Portuguese frontier, from which another

series of difficult defiles have to be crossed in order to get into the

heart of Galicia. La Romana thought that this road might practically be

disregarded as an element of danger in a January campaign.

The suggestion of the Marquis deserved serious consideration. Moore’s

reasons for a summary rejection of the proposal are not stated by him

at any length[670]. He wrote to Castlereagh merely that there was only

two days’ bread at Astorga, that his means of carriage were melting

away by the death of draught beasts and the desertion of drivers, and

that he feared that the enemy might use the road upon his flank--i.e.

the Puebla de Sanabria route--to turn his position. He purposed

therefore to fall back at once to the coast as fast as he could, and

trusted that the French, for want of food, would not be able to follow

him further than Villafranca. To these reasons may be added another,

which Moore cited in his conversation with La Romana, that the troops

required rest, and could not get it in the bleak positions above

Astorga[671].

[670] Moore to Castlereagh, from Astorga, Dec. 31, 1808.

[671] This plea is not to be found in any of Moore’s dispatches,

but only in La Romana’s account of the interview which he sent to

the Junta.

Some of these reasons are not quite convincing: though there were only

two days’ rations at Astorga, there were fourteen days’ at Villafranca,

and large dépôts had also been gathered at Lugo and Corunna. These

could be rendered available with no great trouble, if real energy were

displayed, for there was still (as the disasters of the retreat were to

show) a good deal of wheeled transport with the army. The flanking road

by Puebla de Sanabria was (as we have said) so difficult and so remote

that any turning corps that tried it would be heard of long before it

became dangerous. There would be great political advantage in checking

Bonaparte at the passes, even if it were only for a week or ten days.

Moreover, to show a bold front would raise the spirits of the army,

whose growing disorders were the marks of discontent at the retreat,

and whose one wish was to fight the French as soon as possible. As to

the rest which Moore declared to be necessary for the troops, this

could surely have been better given by halting them and offering to

defend the passes, than by taking them over the long and desolate road

that separated them from Corunna. The experiences of the next eleven

days can hardly be called ‘rest.’

Though clearly possible, a stand behind Astorga may not have been the

best policy. Napoleon had a vast force in hand after his junction with

Soult, and he was a dangerous foe to brave, even in such a formidable

position as that which the British occupied. But it is doubtful whether

this fact was the cause of Moore’s determination to retreat to the

sea. If we may judge from the tone of his dispatches, his thought was

merely that he had promised to make a diversion, under strong pressure

from Frere and the rest; that he had successfully carried out his

engagement, and lured the Emperor and the bulk of the French forces

away from Madrid; and that he considered his task completed. In his

letter of December 31 to Castlereagh, he harks back once more to his

old depreciation of the Spaniards--they had taken no advantage of the

chance he had given them, they were as apathetic as ever, his exertions

had been wasted, and so forth[672]. In so writing he made a mistake:

his campaign was so far from being wasted that he had actually saved

Spain. He had caused the Emperor to lose the psychological moment

for striking at Seville and Lisbon, when the spirits of the patriots

were at their lowest, and had given them three months to rally. By

the time that the southward move from Madrid was once more possible

to the French, Spain had again got armies in the field, and the awful

disasters of November and December, 1808, had been half forgotten.

[672] ‘Abandoned from the beginning by everything Spanish, we

were equal to nothing by ourselves. From a desire to do what I

could, I made the movement against Soult. As a diversion it has

answered completely: but as there is nothing to take advantage of

it, I have risked the loss of an army to no purpose. I find no

option now but to fall down to the coast as fast as I am able....

The army would, there cannot be a doubt, have distinguished

itself, had the Spaniards been able to offer any resistance. But

from the first it was placed in situations in which, without the

possibility of doing any good, it was itself constantly risked’

(Moore to Castlereagh, from Astorga, Dec. 31).

It seems improbable, from Moore’s tone in his dispatch of December 31,

that he ever had any serious intention of standing behind Astorga.

He had fallen back upon his old desponding views of the last days

of November, and was simply set on bringing off the British army in

safety, without much care for the fate of the Spaniards whom he so

much disliked and contemned. The only sign of his ever having studied

the intermediate positions between Astorga and Corunna lies in a

report addressed to him on December 26, by Carmichael Smith of the

Royal Engineers. This speaks of the Manzanal--Rodrigatos position as

presenting an appearance of strong ground, but having the defect of

possessing a down-slope to the rear for six miles, so that if the line

were forced, a long retreat downhill would be necessary in face of the

pursuing enemy. The engineer then proceeded to recommend the position

of Cacabellos, a league in front of Villafranca, as being very strong

and safe from any turning movement. But Moore, as we shall see, refused

to stand at the one place as much as at the other, only halting a

rearguard at Cacabellos to keep off the pursuing horse for a few hours,

and never offering a pitched battle upon that ground. It is probable

that nothing would have induced him to fight at either position, after

he had once resolved that a straight march to the sea was the best

policy.

So little time did Moore take in making up his mind as to the

desirability of holding the passes above Astorga, that he pushed on

Baird’s, Fraser’s, and Hope’s divisions towards Villafranca on the

thirtieth, while Paget’s reserve with the two light brigades followed

on the thirty-first. The whole British army was on the other side of

Astorga, and across the passes, when Soult and Bonaparte’s columns

converged on La Baneza. Their infantry did not enter Astorga till the

first day of the new year, thirty-six hours after Moore’s main body had

evacuated the place.

But this easy escape from the Emperor’s clutches had been bought

at considerable sacrifices. Astorga was crammed with stores of all

kinds, as we have already had occasion to mention: food was the only

thing that was at all short. But there was not sufficient transport

in the place, and the retreating army was already losing wagons and

beasts so fast that it could not carry off much of the accumulated

material that lay before it. A hasty attempt was made to serve out to

the troops the things that could be immediately utilized. La Romana’s

Spaniards received several thousand new English muskets to replace

their dilapidated weapons, and a quantity of blankets. Some of the

British regiments had shoes issued to them; but out of mere hurry and

mismanagement several thousand pairs more were destroyed instead of

distributed, though many men were already almost barefoot. There were

abandoned all the heavy baggage of Baird’s division (which had been

stacked at Astorga before the march to Sahagun), an entire dépôt of

entrenching tools, several hundred barrels of rum, and many scores of

carts and wagons for which draught animals were wanting. A quantity

of small-arms ammunition was blown up. But the most distressing thing

of all was that those of the sick of the army who could not bear to

be taken on through the January cold in open wagons had to be left

behind: some four hundred invalids, it would seem, were abandoned in

the hospital and fell into the hands of the French[673].

[673] Compare Moore to Castlereagh (from Astorga, Dec. 31) with

_Nap. Corresp._, 14,637, and with James Moore’s memoir (p. 184),

and ‘T.S.’s autobiography (p. 57).

The most deplorable thing about these losses was that all the

evacuation and destruction was carried out under difficulties, owing to

the gross state of disorder and indiscipline into which the army was

falling. The news that they were to retreat once more without fighting

had exasperated the men to the last degree. Thousands of them got loose

in the streets, breaking into houses, maltreating the inhabitants, and

pillaging the stores, which were to be abandoned, for their private

profit. The rum was naturally a great attraction, and many stragglers

were left behind dead drunk, to be beaten out of the place by the

cavalry when they left it on the night of the thirty-first. La Romana

had to make formal complaint to Moore of the misbehaviour of the

troops, who had even tried to steal his artillery mules and insulted

his officers. There can be no doubt that if the rank and file had been

kept in hand many valuable stores could have been distributed instead

of destroyed, and the straggling which was to prove so fatal might

have been nipped in the bud. But the officers were as discontented as

the men, and in many regiments seem to have made little or no effort

to keep things together. Already several battalions were beginning to

march with an advanced guard of marauders and a rearguard of limping

stragglers, the sure signs of impending trouble.

By the thirty-first, however, Astorga was clear of British and Spanish

troops. Moore marched by the new high-road, the route of Manzanal: La

Romana took the shorter but more rugged defile of Foncebadon. But he

sent his guns along with the British, in order to spare the beasts

the steeper ascents of the old _chaussée_. The terrible rain of the

last week was just passing into snow as the two columns, every man

desperately out of heart, began their long uphill climb across the

ridge of the Monte Teleno, towards the uplands of the Vierzo.

NOTE

This account of the retreat from Sahagun is constructed from a

careful comparison of the official documents with the memoirs

and monographs of the following British eye-witnesses:--Robert

Blakeney (of the 28th), Rifleman Harris and Sergeant Surtees

(of the 2/95th), Lord Londonderry, and Lord Vivian of the

Cavalry Brigade, Leith Hay (Aide-de-Camp to General Leith),

Charles and William Napier, T.S. of the 71st, Steevens of

the 20th, the Surgeon Adam Neale, and the Chaplain Ormsby.

Bradford, another chaplain, has left a series of admirable

water-colour drawings of the chief points on the road as far as

Lugo, made under such difficulties as can be well imagined. Of

French eye-witnesses I have used the accounts of St. Chamans,

Fantin des Odoards, Naylies, De Gonneville, Lejeune, and the

detestably inaccurate Le Noble.

SECTION VIII: CHAPTER V

SOULT’S PURSUIT OF MOORE: ASTORGA TO CORUNNA

When he found that Moore had escaped from him, Napoleon slackened down

from the high speed with which he had been moving for the last ten

days. He stayed at Benavente for two nights, occupying himself with

desk-work of all kinds, and abandoning the pursuit of the British to

Bessières and Soult. The great _coup_ had failed: instead of capturing

the expeditionary force he could but harass it on its way to the sea.

Such a task was beneath his own dignity: it would compromise the

imperial reputation for infallibility, if a campaign that had opened

with blows like Espinosa, Tudela, and the capture of Madrid ended in a

long and ineffectual stern-chase. If Bonaparte had continued the hunt

himself, with the mere result of arriving in time to see Moore embark

and depart, he would have felt that his prestige had been lowered. He

tacitly confessed as much himself long years after, when, in one of his

lucubrations at St. Helena, he remarked that he would have conducted

the pursuit in person, if he had but known that contrary winds had

prevented the fleet of British transports from reaching Corunna. But

of this he was unaware at the time; and since he calculated that Moore

could be harassed perhaps, but not destroyed or captured, he resolved

to halt and turn back. Soult should have the duty of escorting the

British to the sea: they were to be pressed vigorously and, with luck,

the Emperor trusted that half of them might never see England again.

But no complete success could be expected, and he did not wish to

appear personally in any enterprise that was but partially successful.

Other reasons were assigned both by Napoleon himself and by his

admirers for his abandonment of the pursuit of Moore. He stated that

Galicia was too much in a corner of the world for him to adventure

himself in its mountains--he would be twenty days journey from Paris

and the heart of affairs. If Austria began to move again in the spring,

there would be an intolerable delay before he could receive news or

transmit orders[674]. He wished to take in hand the reorganization of

his armies in Italy, on the Rhine, and beyond the Adriatic. All this

was plausible enough, but the real reason of his return was that he

would not be present at a fiasco or a half-success. It would seem,

however, that there may have been another operating cause, which the

Emperor never chose to mention; the evidence for it has only cropped

up of late years[675]. It appears that he was somewhat disquieted by

secret intelligence from Paris, as to obscure intrigues among his

own ministers and courtiers. The Spanish War had given new occasions

to the malcontents who were always criticizing the Empire. Not much

could be learnt by the French public about the affair of Bayonne, but

all that had got abroad was well calculated to disgust even loyal

supporters of the Empire. The talk of the _salons_, which Napoleon

always affected to despise, but which he never disregarded, was more

bitter than ever. It is quite possible that some hint of the conspiracy

of the ‘Philadelphes,’ which four months later showed its hand in the

mysterious affair of D’Argenteau, may have reached him. But it is

certain that he had disquieting reports concerning the intrigues of

Fouché and Talleyrand. Both of those veteran plotters were at this

moment in more or less marked disgrace. For once in a way, therefore,

they were acting in concert. They were relieving their injured feelings

by making secret overtures in all directions, in search of allies

against their master. Incredible as it may appear, they had found a

ready hearer in Murat, who was much disgusted with his brother-in-law

for throwing upon him the blame for the disasters of the first Spanish

campaign. Other notable personages were being drawn into the cave

of malcontents, and discourses of more than doubtful loyalty were

being delivered. Like many other cabals of the period, this one was

destined to shrink into nothingness at the reappearance of the master

at Paris[676]. But while he was away his agents were troubled and

terrified: they seem to have sent him alarming hints, which had far

more to do with his return to France than any fear as to the intentions

of Austria[677].

[674] These reasons will be found set forth at length in _Nap.

Corresp._, 14,684 (to King Joseph, Jan. 11), and 14,692 (to

Clarke, Jan. 13).

[675] There is a distinct allusion to the matter, however, in

Fouché’s _Mémoires_ (i. 385).

[676] For a long account of all this intrigue see the _Mémoires_

of Chancellor Pasquier (i. 355, &c.). He says that it was

discovered by Lavalette, the Postmaster-General, who sent

information to the Viceroy of Italy, in consequence of which

a compromising letter from Caroline Bonaparte (at Naples)

to Talleyrand was seized. The reproaches which he puts into

Napoleon’s mouth must, I fancy, be taken as about as authentic as

an oration in Thucydides.

[677] There was also at this moment a slight recrudescence of the

old agitation of the _chouans_ in the west of France. Movable

columns had to be sent out in the departments of the Mayenne and

Sarthe. See _Nap. Corresp._, 14,871-2.

An oft-repeated story says that the Emperor received a packet of

letters from Paris while riding from Benavente to Astorga on January

1, 1809, and, after reading them by the wayside with every sign of

anger, declared that he must return to France. If the tale be true, we

may be sure that the papers which so moved his wrath had no reference

to armaments on the Danube, but were concerned with the intrigues in

Paris. There was absolutely nothing in the state of European affairs

to make an instant departure from Spain necessary. On the other hand,

rumours of domestic plots always touched the Emperor to the quick, and

it must have been as irritating as it was unexpected to discover that

his own sister and brother-in-law were dabbling in such intrigues,

even though ostensibly they were but discussing what should be done if

something should happen in Spain to their august relative.

Already ere leaving Benavente the Emperor had issued orders which

showed that he had abandoned his hope of surrounding and crushing

Moore. He had begun to send off, to the right and to the left, part of

the great mass of troops which he had brought with him. On December

31 he wrote to Dessolles, and ordered him to give his division a

short rest at Villacastin, and then to return to Madrid, where the

garrison was too weak. On January 1, the whole of the Imperial Guard

was directed to halt and return to Benavente, from whence it was soon

after told to march back to Valladolid. Lapisse’s division of Victor’s

corps, which had got no further than Benavente in its advance, was

turned off to subdue the southern parts of the kingdom of Leon. To the

same end were diverted D’Avenay’s[678] and Maupetit’s[679] brigades of

cavalry. Quite contrary to Moore’s expectations and prophecies, the

people of this part of Spain displayed a frantic patriotism, when once

the enemy was upon them. Toro, an open town[680], had to be stormed:

Zamora made a still better resistance, repulsed a first attack, and

had to be breached and assaulted by a brigade of Lapisse’s division.

The villagers of Penilla distinguished themselves by falling upon and

capturing a battery of the Imperial Guard, which was passing by with an

insufficient escort. Of course the guns were recovered, and the place

burnt, within a few days of the exploit[681].

[678] This was a temporary brigade, made up of the 3rd Dutch

Hussars and a provisional regiment of dragoons.

[679] 5th Dragoons and part of the regiment of Westphalian

_Chevaux-Légers_; they belonged to the corps-cavalry of Lefebvre.

[680] The defence of Toro was headed by a stray English officer.

The place was taken by D’Avenay, not by Maupetit as Arteche says.

See the _Mémoires_ of De Gonneville, i. 207.

[681] For information on these rather obscure operations consult

the _Mémoires_ of De Gonneville (of D’Avenay’s brigade) and _Nap.

Corresp._, 14,685.

Having sent off the Guards, Lapisse, Dessolles, and Maupetit’s and

D’Avenay’s cavalry, the Emperor had still a large force left in hand

for the pursuit of Moore. There remained Soult’s and Ney’s corps,

the horsemen of Lahoussaye, Lorges, and Franceschi, and the greater

part of Junot’s 8th Corps. The Emperor had resolved to break up this

last-named unit: it contained many third-battalions belonging to

regiments which were already in Spain: they were directed to rejoin

their respective head quarters. When this was done, there remained only

enough to make up two rather weak divisions of 5,000 men each. These

were given to Delaborde and Heudelet, and incorporated with Soult’s

2nd Corps. Loison’s division, the third of the original 8th Corps,

was suppressed[682]. Junot himself was sent off to take a command

under Lannes at the siege of Saragossa. When joined by Delaborde and

Heudelet, Soult had a corps of exceptional strength--five divisions

and nearly 30,000 bayonets. He could not use for the pursuit of Moore

Bonnet’s division, which had been left to garrison Santander. But

with the remainder, 25,000 strong, he pressed forward from Astorga in

pursuance of his master’s orders. His cavalry force was very large

in proportion: it consisted of 6,000 sabres, for not only were three

complete divisions of dragoons with him, but Ney’s corps-cavalry (the

brigade of Colbert) was up at the front and leading the pursuit. Ney

himself, with his two infantry divisions, those of Maurice Mathieu and

Marchand, was a march or two to the rear, some 16,000 bayonets strong.

If Soult should suffer any check, he was sure of prompt support within

three days. Thus the whole force sent in chase of Moore mustered some

47,000 men[683].

[682] There were only two battalions remaining with Loison by

Jan. 10.

[683] A month after the pursuit of Moore had ended, and the

battle of Corunna had been fought, the four infantry divisions of

Soult’s corps which were in Galicia had still 19,000 effective

bayonets for the invasion of Portugal. The three cavalry

divisions were some 5,300 strong. Ney’s corps, which had hardly

been engaged, had 16,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry. There were

still, therefore, 41,300 men in hand of the two corps. It is

impossible to make the losses from the long pursuit in the snow

and the battle of Corunna less than 4,500 or 5,000 men, when we

reflect that Moore lost 6,000, of whom only 2,000 were prisoners,

and that Soult suffered at least 1,500 casualties in the Corunna

fighting.

The head of the pursuing column was formed by Lahoussaye’s dragoons and

Colbert’s light cavalry: in support of these, but always some miles to

the rear, came Merle’s infantry. This formed the French van: the rest

of Soult’s troops were a march behind, with Heudelet’s division for

rearguard. All the 2nd Corps followed the English on the Manzanal road:

only Franceschi’s four regiments of cavalry turned aside, to follow the

rugged pass of Foncebadon, by which La Romana’s dilapidated host had

retired. The exhausted Spaniards were making but slow progress through

the snow and the mountain torrents. Franceschi caught them up on

January 2, and scattered their rearguard under General Rengel, taking

a couple of flags and some 1,500 men: the prisoners are described as

being in the last extremity of misery and fatigue, and many of them

were infected with the typhus fever, which had been hanging about this

unfortunate corps ever since its awful experience in the Cantabrian

hills during the month of November[684].

[684] _Nap. Corresp._, 14,662. ‘Les hommes pris sur La Romana

étaient horribles à voir,’ says Napoleon, who saw them at Astorga.

Moore’s army, as we have already seen, had marched out from

Astorga--the main body on December 30, the rearguard on the

thirty-first. After determining that he would not defend the passes

of Manzanal and Foncebadon, the general had doubted whether he should

make his retreat on Corunna by the great _chaussée_, or on Vigo, by

the minor road which goes via Orense and the valley of the Sil. It is

strange that he did not see that his mind must be promptly made up, and

that when once he had passed the mountains he must commit himself to

one or the other route. But his dispatches to Castlereagh show that it

was not till he had reached Lugo that he finally decided in favour of

the main road[685]. He must have formed the erroneous conclusion that

the French would not pursue him far beyond Astorga[686]: he thought

that they would be stopped by want of provisions and by fatigue. Having

formed this unsound hypothesis, he put off the final decision as to his

route till he should reach Lugo. Meanwhile, to protect the side-road

to Vigo he detached 3,500 of his best troops, Robert Crawfurd’s

light brigade [the 43rd (1st batt.), 52nd (2nd batt.), and 95th (2nd

batt.)], and Alten’s brigade of the German Legion. They diverged from

the main road after leaving Astorga, and marched, by Ponferrada and

La Rua, on Orense. How much they suffered on the miserable bypaths

of the valley of the Sil may be gathered in the interesting diaries

of Surtees and Harris: but it was only with the snow and the want of

food that they had to contend. They never saw a Frenchman, embarked

unmolested at Vigo, and were absolutely useless to Moore during the

rest of the campaign. It is impossible to understand how it came that

they were sent away in this fashion, and nothing can be said in favour

of the move. Unless the whole army were going by the Orense road, no

one should have been sent along it: and the difficulties of the track

were such that to have taken the main body over it would have been

practically impossible. As it was, 3,500 fine soldiers were wasted for

all fighting purposes. The duty of covering the rear of the army, which

had hitherto fallen to the lot of Crawfurd, was now transferred to

General Paget and the ‘Reserve Division[687].’ One regiment of hussars

[the 15th] was left with them: the other four cavalry corps pushed on

to the front, as there was no great opportunity for using them, now

that the army had plunged into the mountains.

[685] This is made absolutely certain by his letter of Jan.

13, in which he says that ‘at Lugo I became sensible of the

impossibility of reaching Vigo, which is at too great a

distance.’ On starting from Astorga, then, he still thought

that he might be able to embark at that port. A glance at the

map shows that the march Astorga-Lugo-Vigo is two sides of a

triangle. If the Vigo route was to be taken, the only rational

places to turn on to it are Astorga and Ponferrada.

[686] ‘After a time the same difficulties which affect us must

affect him [Soult]: therefore the rear once past Villafranca,

I do not expect to be molested’ (Moore to Castlereagh, from

Astorga, Dec. 31).

[687] Consisting of the 20th Foot, and the first battalions of

the 28th, 52nd, 91st, and 95th.

Colbert and Lahoussaye took some little time, after leaving Astorga,

before they came upon the rear of Moore’s army. But they had no

difficulty in ascertaining the route that the English had taken: the

steep uphill road from Astorga into the Vierzo was strewn with wreckage

of all kinds, which had been abandoned by the retreating troops. The

long twelve-mile incline, deeply covered with snow, had proved fatal

to a vast number of draught animals, and wagon after wagon had to

be abandoned to the pursuers, for want of sufficient oxen and mules

to drag them further forward. Among the derelict baggage were lying

no small number of exhausted stragglers, dead or dying from cold or

dysentery.

The whole _morale_ of Moore’s army had suffered a dreadful

deterioration from the moment that the order to evacuate Astorga was

issued. As long as there was any prospect of fighting, the men--though

surly and discontented--had stuck to their colours. Some regiments had

begun to maraud, but the majority were still in good order. But from

Astorga onward the discipline of the greater part of the corps began to

relax. There were about a dozen regiments[688] which behaved thoroughly

well, and came through the retreat with insignificant losses: on the

other hand there were many others which left from thirty to forty

per cent. of their men behind them. It cannot be disguised that the

enormous difference between the proportion of ‘missing’ in battalions

of the same brigade, which went through exactly identical experiences,

was simply due to the varying degrees of zeal and energy with which the

officers kept their men together. Where there was a strong controlling

will the stragglers were few, and no one fell behind save those who

were absolutely dying. The iron hand of Robert Crawfurd brought the

43rd and 95th through their troubles with a loss of eighty or ninety

men each. The splendid discipline of the Guards brigade carried them to

Corunna with even smaller proportional losses. There is no mistaking

the coincidence when we find that the battalion which Moore denounced

at Salamanca as being the worst commanded and the worst disciplined

in his force, was also the one which left a higher percentage of

stragglers behind than any other corps. The fact was that the toils

of the retreat tried the machinery of the regiments to the utmost,

and that where the management was weak or incompetent discipline broke

down. It was not the troops who had the longest marches or the most

fighting that suffered the heaviest losses: those of Paget’s division,

the rearguard of the whole army, which was constantly in touch with

the French advance, compare favourably with those of some corps which

never fired a shot between Benavente and Corunna. It is sad to have

to confess that half the horrors of the retreat were due to purely

preventible causes, and that if the badly-managed regiments had been up

to the disciplinary standard of the Guards or the Light Brigade, the

whole march would have been remembered as toilsome but not disastrous.

Moore himself wrote, in the last dispatch to which he ever set his

hand, that ‘he would not have believed, had he not witnessed it,

that a British army would in so short a time have been so completely

demoralized. Its conduct during the late marches was infamous beyond

belief. He could say nothing in its favour but that when there was a

prospect of fighting the men were at once steady, and seemed pleased

and determined to do their duty[689].’ This denunciation was far too

sweeping, for many corps kept good order throughout the whole campaign:

but there was only too much to justify Moore’s anger.

[688] The reader should note, in the Appendix dealing with the

numbers of Moore’s army, the very small proportional losses

suffered by the two battalions of the Guards, the 43rd (1st

batt.), 4th, 42nd, 71st, 79th, 92nd, 95th (2nd batt.), and the

cavalry.

[689] I quote from the original in the Record Office, not from

the mutilated version printed in the _Parliamentary Papers_ and

elsewhere.

The serious trouble began at Bembibre, the first place beyond the pass

of Manzanal, where Hope’s, Baird’s, and Fraser’s divisions had encamped

on the night of the thirty-first. The village was unfortunately a

large local dépôt for wine: slinking off from their companies, many

hundreds of marauders made their way into the vaults and cellars.

When the divisions marched next morning they left nearly a thousand

men, in various stages of intoxication, lying about the houses and

streets. The officers of Paget’s Reserve, who came up that afternoon,

describe Bembibre as looking like a battle-field, so thickly were the

prostrate redcoats strewn in every corner. Vigorous endeavours were

made to rouse these bad soldiers, and to start them upon their way;

but even next morning there were multitudes who could not or would not

march[690]. When the Reserve evacuated the place on January 2, it

was still full of torpid stragglers. Suddenly there appeared on the

scene the leading brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons, pushing down from

the pass of Manzanal, and driving before them the last hussar picket

which Paget had left behind. The noise of the horsemen roused the

lingerers, who began at last to stagger away, but it was too late: ‘the

cavalry rode through the long line of these lame defenceless wretches,

slashing among them as a schoolboy does among thistles[691].’ Most of

the stragglers, it is said, were still so insensible from liquor that

they made no resistance, and did not even get out of the road[692]. A

few, with dreadful cuts about their heads and shoulders, succeeded in

overtaking the Reserve. Moore had the poor bleeding wretches paraded

along the front of the regiments, as a warning to drunkards and

malingerers.

[690] Blakeney, of the 28th, says: ‘We employed the greater part

of Jan. 1 in turning or dragging the drunken men out of the

houses into the streets, and sending forward as many as could

be moved. Yet little could be effected with men incapable of

standing, much less of marching’ (p. 50).

[691] ‘T.S.’ of the 71st (_Journal_, p. 58).

[692] Adam Neale, p. 188. Both he and ‘T.S.’ mention the parading

of the wounded men along the lines.

Meanwhile Baird and Hope’s divisions had reached Villafranca on the

first, and scenes almost as disgraceful as those of Bembibre were

occurring. The town was Moore’s most important dépôt: it contained

fourteen days’ rations of biscuit for the whole army, an immense amount

of salt-beef and pork, and some hundreds of barrels of rum. There

was no transport to carry off all this valuable provender, and Moore

ordered it to be given to the flames. Hearing of this the troops broke

into the magazines, and began to load themselves with all and more than

they could carry, arguing, not unnaturally, that so much good food

should not be burnt. Moore ordered one man--who was caught breaking

into the rum store--to be shot in the square. But it was no use; the

soldiers burst loose, though many of their officers cut and slashed at

them to keep them in the ranks, and snatched all that they could from

the fires. Some forced open private houses and plundered, and in a few

cases maltreated, or even murdered, the townsfolk who would not give

them drink. A great many got at the rum, and were left behind when the

divisions marched on January 3[693].

[693] Cf. Blakeney, Neale, Londonderry, and James Moore.

While these orgies were going on at Villafranca, Paget and the Reserve

had been halted six miles away, at Cacabellos, where the high-road

passes over the little river Cua[694]. There was here a position in

which a whole army could stand at bay, and Moore’s engineers had

pointed it out to him as the post between Astorga and Lugo where there

was the most favourable fighting-ground. It is certain that if he had

chosen to offer battle to Soult on this front, the Marshal would have

been checked for many days--he could not have got forward without

calling up Ney from Astorga, and there is no good road by which the

British could have been outflanked. But Moore had no intention of

making a serious defence: he was fighting a rearguard action merely to

allow time for the stores at Villafranca to be destroyed.

[694] Not the Guia, as the English generally call it.

The forces which were halted at Cacabellos consisted of the five

battalions of the Reserve (under Paget), the 15th Hussars, and a

horse-artillery battery. A squadron of the cavalry and half of the

95th Rifles were left beyond the river, in observation along the road

towards Bembibre: the guns were placed on the western side of the Cua,

commanding the road up from the bridge. The 28th formed their escort,

while the other three battalions of the division were hidden behind a

line of vineyards and stone walls parallel with the winding stream[695].

[695] I take my account of the skirmish mainly from Blakeney,

whose narrative is admirable. Those of Londonderry, Napier, and

Neale do not give so many details.

About one o’clock in the afternoon the French appeared, pushing

cautiously forward from Bembibre with Colbert’s cavalry brigade of

Ney’s corps now at their head, while Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons

was in support. The infantry were not yet in sight. Colbert, a young

and very dashing officer, currently reputed to be the most handsome man

in the whole French army, was burning to distinguish himself. He had

never before met the British, and had formed a poor opinion of them

from the numerous stragglers and drunkards whom he had seen upon the

road. He thought that the rearguard might be pushed, and the defile

forced with little loss. Accordingly he rode forward at the head of

his two regiments[696], and fell upon the squadron of the 15th Hussars

which was observing him. They had to fly in hot haste, and, coming in

suddenly to the bridge, rode into and over the last two companies of

the 95th Rifles, who had not yet crossed the stream. Colbert, sweeping

down close to their heels, came upon the disordered infantry and took

some forty or fifty prisoners before the riflemen could escape across

the water[697]. But, seeing the 28th and the guns holding the slope

above, he halted for a moment before attempting to proceed further.

[696] They were the 15th Chasseurs and the 3rd Hussars.

[697] Forty-eight is the number given in Cope’s excellent

_History of the Rifle Brigade_.

Judging however, from a hasty survey, that there were no very great

numbers opposed to him, the young French general resolved to attempt to

carry the bridge of Cacabellos by a furious charge, just as Franceschi

had forced that of Mansilla five days before. This was a most hazardous

and ill-advised move: it could only succeed against demoralized troops,

and was bound to fail when tried against the steady battalions of

the Reserve division. But ranging his leading regiment four abreast,

Colbert charged for the bridge: the six guns opposite him tore the head

of the column to pieces, but the majority of the troopers got across

and tried to dash uphill and capture the position. They had fallen

into a dreadful trap, for the 28th blocked the road just beyond the

bridge, while the 95th and 52nd poured in a hot flanking fire from

behind the vineyard walls on either side. There was no getting forward:

Colbert himself was shot as he tried to urge on his men[698], and his

aide-de-camp Latour-Maubourg fell at his side. After staying for no

more than a few minutes on the further side of the water, the brigade

turned rein and plunged back across the bridge, leaving many scores of

dead and wounded behind them.

[698] He was shot by Tom Plunket, a noted character in the 95th,

from a range that seemed extraordinary to the riflemen of that

day.

Lahoussaye’s dragoons now came to the front: several squadrons of

them forded the river at different points, but, unable to charge

among the rocks and vines, they were forced to dismount and to act as

skirmishers, a capacity in which they competed to no great advantage

against the 52nd, with whom they found themselves engaged. It was

not till the leading infantry of Merle’s division came up, not long

before dusk, that the French were enabled to make any head against

the defenders. Their voltigeurs bickered with the 95th and 52nd for

an hour, but when the formed columns tried to cross the bridge, they

were so raked by the six guns opposite them that they gave back in

disorder. After dark the firing ceased, and Moore, who had come up in

person from Villafranca at the sound of the cannon, had no difficulty

in withdrawing his men under cover of the night. In this sharp skirmish

each side lost some 200 men: the French casualties were mainly in

Colbert’s cavalry, the British were distributed unequally between the

95th (who suffered most), the 28th, and 52nd: the other two regiments

present (the 20th and 91st) were hardly engaged[699].

[699] Napoleon’s not very convincing account of the combat (_Nap.

Corresp._, 14,647) runs as follows: ‘Trois mille Ecossais,

voulant défendre les gorges de Picros près de Villafranca, pour

donner le temps à beaucoup de choses à filer, ont été culbutés.

Mais le général Colbert pétillant de faire avancer sa cavalerie,

une balle l’a frappé au front, et l’a tué.’

Marching all through the night of 3rd-4th of January the Reserve

division passed through Villafranca, where stores of all kinds were

still blazing in huge bonfires, and did not halt till they reached

Nogales, eighteen miles further on. They found the road before them

strewn with one continuous line of wreckage from the regiments of

the main body. The country beyond Villafranca was far more bare and

desolate than the eastern half of the Vierzo: discipline grew worse

each day, and the surviving animals of the baggage-train were dying

off wholesale from cold and want of forage. The cavalry horses were

also beginning to perish very fast, mainly from losing their shoes on

the rough and stony road. As soon as a horse was unable to keep up

with the regiment, he was (by Lord Paget’s orders) shot by his rider,

in order to prevent him from falling into the hands of the French.

Many witnesses of the retreat state that the incessant cracking of the

hussars’ pistols, as the unfortunate chargers were shot, was the thing

that lingered longest in their memories of all the sounds of these

unhappy days.

Beyond Villafranca the Corunna road passes through the picturesque

defile of Piedrafita, by which it reaches the head waters of the Nava

river, and then climbing the spurs of Monte Cebrero comes out into

the bleak upland plain of Lugo. This fifty miles contained the most

difficult and desolate country in the whole of Moore’s march, and

was the scene of more helpless and undeserved misery than any other

section of the retreat. It was not merely drunkards and marauders who

now began to fall to the rear, but steady old soldiers who could not

face the cold, the semi-starvation, and the forced marches. Moore

hurried his troops forward at a pace that, over such roads, could only

be kept up by the strongest men. On January 5 he compelled the whole

army to execute a forced march of no less than thirty-six continuous

hours, which was almost as deadly as a battle. This haste seems all

the less justifiable because the district abounded with positions

at which the enemy could be held back for many hours, whenever the

rearguard was told to stand at bay. At Nogales and Constantino, where

opposition was offered, the French were easily checked, and there were

many other points where similar stands could have been made. It would

seem that Moore, shocked at the state of indiscipline into which his

regiments were falling, thought only of getting to the sea as quickly

as possible. Certainly, the pursuit was not so vigorous as to make

such frantic haste necessary. Whenever the Reserve division halted and

offered battle, the French dragoons held off, and waited, often for

many hours, for their infantry to come up.

‘All that had hitherto been suffered by our troops was but a prelude

to this time of horrors,’ wrote one British eye-witness. ‘It had still

been attempted to carry forward our sick and wounded: here (on Monte

Cebrero) the beasts which dragged them failed, and they were left in

their wagons, to perish among the snow. As we looked round on gaining

the highest point of these slippery precipices, and observed the rear

of the army winding along the narrow road, we could see the whole track

marked out by our own wretched people, who lay expiring from fatigue

and the severity of the cold--while their uniforms reddened in spots

the white surface of the ground. Our men had now become quite mad with

despair: excessive fatigue and the consciousness of disgrace, in thus

flying before an enemy whom they despised, excited in them a spirit

which was quite mutinous. A few hours’ pause was all they asked, an

opportunity of confronting the foe, and the certainty of making the

pursuers atone for all the miseries that they had suffered. Not allowed

to fight, they cast themselves down to perish by the wayside, giving

utterance to feelings of shame, anger, and grief. But too frequently

their dying groans were mingled with imprecations upon the General, who

chose rather to let them die like beasts than to take their chance on

the field of battle. That no degree of horror might be wanting, this

unfortunate army was accompanied by many women and children, of whom

some were frozen to death on the abandoned baggage-wagons, some died

of fatigue and cold, while their infants were seen vainly sucking at

their clay-cold breasts[700].’ It is shocking to have to add that the

miserable survivors of these poor women of the camp were abominably

maltreated by the French[701].

[700] From Adam Neale’s _Spanish Campaign of 1808_, pp. 190, 191.

[701] For French evidence of this see the journal of Fantin des

Odoards of the 31st Léger: ‘Plusieurs jeunes Anglaises devenues

la proie de nos cavaliers étaient mises à l’encan en même temps

que les chevaux pris avec elles. J’ai vu, à mon grand scandale,

qu’elles n’avaient pas toujours la préférence’ (p. 196). Cf. the

miserable story of Mrs. Pullen in the _Recollections of Rifleman

Harris_, p. 142.

Not only was the greater part of the baggage-train of the army lost

between Villafranca and Lugo, but other things of more importance. A

battery of Spanish guns was left behind on the crest of Monte Oribio

for want of draught animals, and the military chest of the army was

abandoned between Nogales and Cerezal. It contained about £25,000 in

dollars, and was drawn in two ox-wagons, which gradually fell behind

the main body as the beasts wore out. General Paget refused to fight

a rearguard action to cover its slow progress, and ordered the 28th

Regiment to hurl the small kegs containing the money over a precipice.

The silver shower lay scattered among the rocks at the bottom: part was

gathered up by Lahoussaye’s dragoons, but the bulk fell next spring,

when the snow melted, into the hands of the local peasantry [Jan. 4].

On the further side of the mountains, between Cerezal and Constantino,

the army was astounded to meet a long train of fifty bullock-carts

moving southward. It contained clothing and stores for La Romana’s

army, which the Junta of Galicia, with incredible carelessness, had

sent forward from Lugo, though it had heard that the British were

retreating. A few miles of further advance would have taken it into the

hands of the French. Very naturally, the soldiery stripped the wagons

and requisitioned the beasts for their own baggage. The shoes and

garments were a godsend to those of the ragged battalions who could lay

hands on them, and next day at Constantino many of the Reserve fought

in whole- or half-Spanish uniforms.

The skirmish at Constantino, on the afternoon of January 5, was the

most important engagement, save that of Cacabellos, during the whole

retreat. It was a typical rearguard action to cover a bridge: the

British engineers having failed in their endeavour to blow up the

central arch, Paget placed his guns so as to command the passage,

extended the 28th and the 95th along the nearer bank of the deep-sunk

river, and held out with ease till nightfall. Lahoussaye’s dragoons

refused, very wisely, to attempt the position. Merle’s infantry tried

to force the passage by sending forward a regiment in dense column,

which suffered heavily from the guns, was much mauled by the British

light troops ranged along the water’s edge, and finally desisted from

the attack, allowing Paget to withdraw unmolested after dark. The

French were supposed to have lost about 300 men--a figure which was

probably exaggerated: the British casualties were insignificant.

On January 6 Paget and the rearguard reached Lugo, where they found

the main body of the army drawn out in battle order on a favourable

position three miles outside the town. The fearful amount of straggling

which had taken place during the forced marches of the fourth and fifth

had induced Moore to halt on his march to the sea, in order to rest his

men, restore discipline, and allow the laggards to come up. A tiresome

_contretemps_ had made him still more anxious to allow the army time to

recruit itself. He had made up his mind at Herrerias (near Villafranca)

that the wild idea of retiring on Vigo must be given up. The reports

of the engineer officers whom he had sent to survey that port, as well

as Ferrol and Corunna, were all in favour of the last-named place.

Accordingly he had sent orders to the admiral at Vigo, bidding him

bring the fleet of transports round to Corunna. At the same time Baird

was directed to halt at Lugo, and not to take the side-road to Vigo

via Compostella. Baird duly received the dispatch, and should have

seen that it was sent on to his colleagues, Hope and Fraser. He gave

the letter for Fraser to a private dragoon, who got drunk and lost

the important document. Hence the 3rd Division started off on the

Compostella road, a bad bypath, and went many miles across the snow

before it was found and recalled. Baird’s negligence cost Fraser’s

battalions 400 men in stragglers, and having marched and countermarched

more than twenty miles, they returned to Lugo so thoroughly worn

out that they could not possibly have resumed their retreat on the

sixth[702].

[702] The whole of this story may be found in Londonderry (i.

272), Ormsby (ii. 140), James Moore (p. 190), as well as in

Napier.

Moore had found in Lugo a dépôt containing four or five

days’ provisions for the whole force, as well as a welcome

reinforcement--Leith’s brigade of Hope’s division, which had never

marched to Astorga, and had been preceding the army by easy stages

in its retreat. Including these 1,800 fresh bayonets, the army now

mustered about 19,000 combatants. Since it left Benavente it had been

diminished by the strength of the two Light Brigades detached to Vigo

(3,500 men), by 1,000 dismounted cavalry who had been sent on to

Corunna, by 500 or 600 sick too ill to be moved, who had been left in

the hospitals of Astorga and Villafranca, and by about 2,000 men lost

by the way between Astorga and Lugo. Moore imagined that the loss under

the last-named head had been even greater: but the moment that the

army halted and the news of approaching battle flew round, hundreds of

stragglers and marauders flocked in to the colours, sick men pulled

themselves together, and the regiments appeared far stronger than had

been anticipated. The Commander-in-chief issued a scathing ‘General

Order’ to the officers commanding corps with regard to this point.

‘They must be as sensible as himself of the complete disorganization

of the army. If they wished to give the troops a fair chance of

success, they must exert themselves to restore order and discipline.

The Commander of the Forces was tired of giving orders which were never

attended to: he therefore appealed to the honour and feelings of the

army: if those were not sufficient to induce them to do their duty, he

must despair of succeeding by any other means. He had been obliged to

order military executions, but there would have been no need for them

if only officers did their duty. It was chiefly from their negligence,

and from the want of proper regulations in the regiments, that crimes

and irregularities were committed[703].’

[703] General Orders (Lugo, Jan. 6, 1809).

The Lugo position was very strong: on the right it touched the

unfordable river Minho, on the left it rested on rocky and inaccessible

hills. All along the front there was a line of low stone walls, the

boundaries of fields and vineyards. Below it there was a gentle

down-slope of a mile, up which the enemy would have to march in order

to attack. The army and the general alike were pleased with the

outlook: they hoped that Soult would fight, and knew that they could

give a good account of him.

The Marshal turned out to be far too circumspect to run his head

against such a formidable line. He came up on the sixth, with the

dragoons of Lahoussaye and Franceschi and Merle’s infantry. On the

next morning Mermet’s and Delaborde’s divisions and Lorges’s cavalry

appeared. But the forced marches had tried them no less than they

had tried the British. French accounts say that the three infantry

divisions had only 13,000 bayonets with the eagles, instead of the

20,000 whom they should have shown, and that the cavalry instead of

6,000 sabres mustered only 4,000. Some men had fallen by the way in

the snow, others were limping along the road many miles to the rear:

many were marauding on the flanks, like the British who had gone before

them. Heudelet’s whole division was more than two marches to the rear,

at Villafranca.

On the seventh, therefore, Soult did no more than feel the British

position. He had not at first been sure that Moore’s whole army was in

front of him, and imagined that he might have to deal with no more than

Paget’s Reserve division, with which he had bickered so much during

the last four days. He was soon undeceived: when he brought forward

a battery against Moore’s centre, it was immediately silenced by the

fire of fifteen guns. A feint opposite the British right, near the

river, was promptly opposed by the Brigade of Guards. A more serious

attack by Merle’s division, on the hill to the left, was beaten back by

Leith’s brigade, who drove back the 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line by a

bayonet-charge downhill, and inflicted on them a loss of 300 men.

On the eighth many of Soult’s stragglers came up, but he still

considered himself too weak to attack, and sent back to hurry up

Heudelet’s division, and to request Ney to push forward his corps to

Villafranca. He remained quiescent all day, to the great disappointment

of Moore, who had issued orders to his army warning them that a

battle was at hand, and bidding them not to waste their fire on the

tirailleurs, but reserve it for the supporting columns. As the day wore

on, without any sign of movement on the part of the French, the British

commander began to grow anxious and depressed. If Soult would not move,

it must mean that he had resolved to draw up heavy reinforcements from

the rear. It would be mad to wait till they should come up: either the

Marshal must be attacked at once, before he could be strengthened,

or else the army must resume its retreat on Corunna before Soult was

ready. To take the offensive Moore considered very doubtful policy--the

French had about his own numbers, or perhaps even more, and they were

established in a commanding position almost as strong as his own. Even

if he beat them, they could fall back on Heudelet and Ney, and face

him again, in or about Villafranca. To win a second battle would be

hard work, and, even if all went well, the army would be so reduced in

numbers that practically nothing would remain for a descent into the

plains of Leon.

Accordingly Moore resolved neither to attack nor to wait to be

attacked, but to resume his retreat towards the sea. It was not a very

enterprising course; but it was at least a safe one; and since the

troops were now somewhat rested, and (as he hoped) restored to good

spirits, by seeing that the enemy dared not face them, he considered

that he might withdraw without evil results. Accordingly the evening of

the eighth was spent in destroying impedimenta and making preparations

for retreat. Five hundred foundered cavalry and artillery horses were

shot, a number of caissons knocked to pieces, and the remainder of

the stores of food destroyed so far as was possible. At midnight on

January 8-9 the army silently slipped out of its lines, leaving its

bivouac fires burning, so as to delude the enemy with the idea that it

still lay before him. Elaborate precautions had been taken to guide

each division to the point from which it could fall with the greatest

ease into the Corunna road. But it is not easy to evacuate by night a

long position intersected with walls, enclosures, and suburban bypaths.

Moreover the fates were unpropitious: drenching rain had set in, and

it was impossible to see five yards in the stormy darkness. Whole

regiments and brigades got astray, and of all the four divisions only

Paget’s Reserve kept its bearings accurately and reached the _chaussée_

exactly at the destined point. For miles on each side of the road

stray battalions were wandering in futile circles when the day dawned.

Instead of marching fifteen miles under cover of the night, many

corps had got no further than four or five from their starting-point.

Isolated men were scattered all over the face of the country-side,

some because they had lost their regiments, others because they had

deliberately sought shelter from the rain behind any convenient wall or

rock.

Continuing their retreat for some hours after daybreak, the troops

reached the village of Valmeda, where their absolute exhaustion made

a halt necessary. The more prudent commanders made their men lie down

in their ranks, in spite of the downpour, and eat as they lay. But

Baird, from mistaken kindness, allowed his division to disperse and to

seek shelter in the cottages and barns of neighbouring hamlets: they

could not be got together again when the time to start had arrived, and

Bentinck and Manningham’s brigades left an enormous proportion of their

men behind. The same thing happened on a smaller scale with Hope’s

and Fraser’s divisions: only Paget’s regiments brought up the rear

in good order. But behind them trailed several thousand stragglers,

forming a sort of irregular rearguard. There was more dispersion,

disorder, and marauding in this march than in any other during the

whole retreat. The plundering during this stage seems to have been

particularly discreditable: the inhabitants of the villages along the

high-road had for the most part gone up into the hills, in spite of

the dreadful weather. The British seem to have imputed their absence

to them as a crime, and to have regarded every empty house as a fair

field for plunder. As a matter of fact it was not with the desire of

withholding aid from their friends that the Galicians had disappeared,

but from fear of the French. If they had remained behind they would

have been stripped and misused by the enemy. But the unreasoning

soldiery chose to regard the unfortunate peasants as hostile[704]:

they wantonly broke up doors and furniture, and stole all manner of

useless household stuff. Even worse outrages occasionally happened:

where the inhabitants, in outlying farms and hamlets, had remained

behind, they turned them out of their houses, robbed them by force,

and even shot those who resisted. In return, it was but natural that

isolated marauders should be killed by the angry country-folk. But the

good spirit of the Galicians was displayed in many places by the way

in which they fed stragglers[705], and saved them from the French by

showing them bypaths over the hills. No less than 500 men who had lost

their way were passed on from village to village by the peasants, till

they reached Portugal.

[704] In defence of the unfortunate Galicians, whose patriotism

and good faith has been impugned by so many English narrators

of the retreat, it is only necessary to quote the reflections

of two dispassionate eye-witnesses. Leith Hay (i. 132) writes:

‘To expect that the peasantry were to rush from their houses,

and supply the wants of our soldiers with the only provision

that they possessed for their own families--who might in

consequence be left in the midst of the mountains, at midwinter,

to starve--was imagining friendly feeling carried to an unnatural

extent, and just as likely to happen as it would have been

if, Napoleon having invaded Britain, an English yeoman should

have earnestly requested one of our own soldiers to accept the

last morsel of bread he had the means of obtaining for his

children.’ Ormsby (ii. 162) says, to much the same effect: ‘As

to their inhospitable reception of us, and the concealment of

provisions, in candour I must be their apologist, and declare

my conviction that the charge in many instances is unfounded

and in others exaggerated. Do those who are most loud in their

complaints honestly think that an army of 30,000 Spaniards would

be better received in England than we were in Spain? I doubt

it much. The people, dispirited and alarmed, began to look to

self-preservation as the primary or sole object of their care.

Add to this the horror and dismay which the excesses of our

soldiers struck, and you will not be surprised that villages and

houses were frequently deserted. Is it a matter of astonishment

that the peasantry fled into the recesses of their mountains,

intimidated by our presence and confounded by our crimes?’

[705] For instances of kindness shown by the peasantry see Ormsby

(ii. 139). On the other hand the educated classes were often

sulky, and even insolent, because they thought that Moore was

deliberately abandoning Spain from cowardice. See in Ormsby the

anecdotes of the Alcalde of Pinhalla (ii. 79) and the Alcalde of

Villafranca (ii. 127), as also of the abuse which he got from a

‘furious canon of Lugo,’ on whom he was billeted (ii. 147, 148).

What between deliberate marauding for food or plunder[706], and

genuine inability to keep up with the regiment on the part of weakly

men, Moore’s main body accomplished the march from Lugo to Betanzos

in the most disorderly style. Paget’s rearguard kept their ranks, but

the troops in front were marching in a drove, without any attempt

to preserve discipline. An observer counted one very distinguished

regiment in Manningham’s brigade of Baird’s division, and reports that

with the colours there were only nine officers, three sergeants, and

three privates when they reached the gates of Betanzos[707].

[706] Outside Betanzos Paget halted, stopped the marauding

stragglers, and had them stripped of their plunder. Blakeney of

the 28th saw 1,500 men searched. ‘It is impossible to enumerate

the different articles of plunder which they had crammed into

their packs and haversacks--brass candlesticks bent double,

bundles of common knives, copper saucepans, every kind of

domestic utensil, without regard to weight or value’ (p. 92).

[707] Adam Neale, p. 196. The same battalion could show 500

bayonets for the battle of Corunna, so the men were not far off,

as it would seem.

Fortunately for Moore, the French pursued the retreating army with the

greatest slackness. It was late on the morning of the ninth before

Soult discovered that the British were gone: the drenching rain which

had so incommoded them had at least screened their retreat. After

occupying Lugo, which was full of dead horses, broken material, and

spoiled provisions, the Marshal pushed on Franceschi’s cavalry in

pursuit. But he had lost twelve hours, and Moore was far ahead: only

stragglers were captured on the road, and the British rearguard was

not sighted till the passage of the Ladra, nearly halfway from Lugo to

Betanzos[708]. This was late in the day, and Paget was not seriously

molested, though the engineers who accompanied him failed to blow up

the bridges over the Ladra and the Mendeo, partly because their powder

had been spoilt by the rain, partly (as it would seem) from unskilful

handiwork.

[708] Le Noble (_Campagne du Maréchal Soult_, p. 24) says that

Franceschi made a ‘charge’ here and took 500 prisoners. The

number of prisoners is very probably correct, but it is hardly a

‘charge’ when isolated stragglers are picked up. The rearguard

was never molested, and retired without having to fire a shot.

The fatiguing retreat was continued through part of the night of

January 9-10, and on the following morning all the regiments reached

Betanzos, on the sea-coast. The indefatigable Reserve division took up

a position on a low range of heights outside the town, to cover the

incoming of the thousands of stragglers who were still to the rear.

From this vantage-ground they had the opportunity of witnessing a

curious incident which few of the narrators of the retreat have failed

to record. Franceschi’s cavalry had resumed the pursuit, and after

sweeping up some hundreds of prisoners from isolated parties, came to

the village at the foot of the hills where the stragglers had gathered

most thickly. At the noise of their approach, a good number of the more

able-bodied men ran together, hastily formed up in a solid mass across

the road, and beat off the French horsemen by a rolling fire. This had

been done more by instinct than by design: but a sergeant of the 43rd,

who assumed command over the assembly, skilfully brought order out of

the danger[709]. He divided the men into two parties, which retired

alternately down the road, the one facing the French while the other

pushed on. The chasseurs charged them several times, but could never

break in, and the whole body escaped to the English lines[710]. They

had covered the retreat of many other stragglers, who ran in from all

sides while the combat was going on. Yet in spite of this irregular

exploit, the army lost many men: on this day and the preceding ninth,

more than 1000 were left behind--some had died of cold and fatigue,

some had been cut down by the French. But the majority had been

captured as they straggled along, too dazed and worn out even to leave

the road and take to the hillside when the cavalry got among them[711].

[709] This sergeant’s name was William Newman. He was rewarded by

an ensign’s commission in the 1st West India Regiment.

[710] I think that it must be to this combat that one of the

reminiscences of ‘T.S.’ of the 71st relates, though he is vague

in his dates. ‘Sleep was stealing over me when I perceived

a bustle around me. It was an advanced party of the French.

Unconscious of my action I started to my feet, levelled my

musket, which I still retained, fired and formed with the other

stragglers. There were more of them than of us, but the action

and the approach of danger in a shape which we could repel roused

our downcast feelings.... While we ran they pursued, the moment

we faced about they halted. We never fought but with success,

never were attacked but we forced them to retire’ (p. 60).

[711] The stragglers’ battle in front of Betanzos is described by

Adam Neale (p. 196), Blakeney (pp. 90, 91), and Steevens of the

20th (p. 70), as well as by Napier and the other historians. I

find no account of it in Le Noble or the other French narrators,

such as Naylies, St. Chamans, or Fantin des Odoards. Le Noble

gives instead a wholly fictitious account of an engagement of

Franceschi with English _cavalry_, in which the latter lost a

thousand men and five guns (p. 34). As the cavalry had marched

for Corunna before Franceschi came up, and lost only about 200

men in the whole campaign, I am quite at a loss to understand

what can be the foundation of this romance.

Soult had as yet no infantry to the front, and Moore remained for a day

at Betanzos, observed by Franceschi’s and Lahoussaye’s cavalry, which

dared not molest him. On January 11 he resumed his march to Corunna,

with his army in a far better condition than might have been expected.

The weather had turned mild and dry, and the climate of the coastland

was a pleasant change from that of the mountains[712]. The men had been

well fed at Betanzos with food sent on from Corunna, and, marching

along the friendly sea with their goal in sight, recovered themselves

in a surprising manner. Their general was not so cheerful: he had heard

that the fleet from Vigo had failed to double Cape Finisterre, and was

still beating about in the Atlantic. He had hoped to find it already in

harbour, and was much concerned to think that he might have to stand at

bay for some days in order to allow it time to arrive.

[712] Fantin des Odoards gives a vivid and picturesque account of

the relief caused to the pursuers, by the sudden plunge into fine

spring-like weather, on descending from the snows of the interior

(p. 198).

At Betanzos more sacrifices of war-material were made by the retiring

army. Moore found there a large quantity of stores intended for La

Romana, and had to spike and throw into the river five guns and some

thousands of muskets. A considerable amount of food was imperfectly

destroyed, but enough remained to give a welcome supply to the

famishing French. It had been intended to blow up Betanzos bridge,

but the mines were only partially successful, and the 28th Regiment

from Paget’s Reserve division had to stay behind and to guard the

half-ruined structure against Franceschi’s cavalry, till the main body

had nearly reached Corunna, and the French infantry had begun to appear.

On the night of the eleventh, the divisions of Hope, Baird, and Fraser

reached Corunna, while that of Paget halted at El Burgo, four miles

outside the town, where the _chaussée_ crosses the tidal river Mero.

Here the bridge was successfully blown up: it was only the second

operation of the kind which had been carried out with efficiency during

the whole retreat. Another bridge at Cambria, a few miles further up

the stream, was also destroyed. Thus the French were for the moment

brought to a stand. On the twelfth their leading infantry column came

up, and bickered with Paget’s troops, across the impassable water, for

the whole day[713]. But it was not till the thirteenth that Franceschi

discovered a third passage at Celas, seven miles inland, across which

he conducted his division. Moore then ordered the Reserve to draw back

to the heights in front of Corunna. The French instantly came down to

the river, and began to reconstruct the broken bridge. On the night of

the thirteenth infantry could cross: on the fourteenth the artillery

also began to pass over. But Soult advanced with great caution: here,

as at Lugo, he was dismayed to see how much the fatigues of the march

had diminished his army: Delaborde’s division was not yet up: those

of Merle and Mermet were so thinned by straggling that the Marshal

resolved not to put his fortune to the test till the ranks were again

full.

[713] There is a good account of the bickering in Blakeney, pp.

102-5.

This delay gave the British general ample time to arrange for his

departure. On the thirteenth, he blew up the great stores of powder

which the Junta of Galicia had left stowed away in a magazine three

miles outside the town. The quantity was not much less than 4,000

barrels, and the explosion was so powerful that wellnigh every window

in Corunna was shattered.

On the afternoon of the fourteenth the long-expected transports at

last ran into the harbour, and Moore began to get on board his sick

and wounded, his cavalry, and his guns. The horses were in such a

deplorable state that very few of them were worth reshipping: only

about 250 cavalry chargers and 700 artillery draught-cattle were

considered too good to be left behind[714]. The remainder of the poor

beasts, more than 2,000 in number, were shot or stabbed and flung into

the sea. Only enough were left to draw nine guns, which the general

intended to use if he was forced to give battle before the embarkation

was finished. The rest of the cannon, over fifty in number, were safely

got on board the fleet. The personnel of the cavalry and artillery went

on shipboard very little reduced by their casualties in the retreat.

The former was only short of 200 men, the latter of 250: they had come

off so easily because they had been sent to the rear since Cacabellos,

and had retreated to Corunna without any check or molestation. Along

with the hussars and the gunners some 2,500 or 3,000 invalids were

sent on board. A few hundred more, too sick to face a voyage, were

left behind in the hospitals of Corunna. Something like 5,000 men had

perished or been taken during the retreat; 3,500 had embarked at Vigo,

so that about 15,000 men, all infantry save some 200 gunners, remained

behind to oppose Soult. Considering all that they had gone through,

they were now in very good trim: all the sick and weakly men had

been sent off, those who remained in the ranks were all war-hardened

veterans. Before the battle they had enjoyed four days of rest and

good feeding in Corunna. Moreover, they had repaired their armament:

there were in the arsenal many thousand stand of arms, newly arrived

from England for the use of the Galician army. Moore made his men

change their rusty and battered muskets for new ones, before ordering

the store to be destroyed. He also distributed new cartridges, from an

enormous stock found in the place. The town was, in fact, crammed with

munitions of all sorts. Seeing that there would be no time to re-embark

them, Moore utilized what he could, and destroyed the rest.

[714] I obtain these figures from the _Parliamentary Returns_ of

1809.

SECTION VIII: CHAPTER VI

THE BATTLE OF CORUNNA

When Sir John Moore found that the transports were not ready on the

twelfth, he had recognized that he might very probably have to fight

a defensive action in order to cover his retreat, for two days would

allow Soult to bring up his main-body. He refused to listen to the

timid proposal of certain of his officers that he should negotiate

for a quiet embarkation, in return for giving up Corunna and its

fortifications unharmed[715]. This would have been indeed a tame line

of conduct for a general and an army which had never been beaten in the

field. Instead he sought for a good position in which to hold back the

enemy till all his impedimenta were on shipboard. There were no less

than three lines of heights on which the army might range itself to

resist an enemy who had crossed the Mero. But the first two ranges, the

Monte Loureiro just above the river, and the plateaux of Palavea and

Peñasquedo two miles further north, were too extensive to be held by

an army of 15,000 men. Moore accordingly chose as his fighting-ground

the Monte Moro, a shorter and lower ridge, only two miles outside

the walls of Corunna. It is an excellent position, about 2,500 yards

long, but has two defects: its western and lower end is commanded at

long cannon-range by the heights of Peñasquedo. Moreover, beyond this

extreme point of the hill, there is open ground extending as far as

the gates of Corunna, by which the whole position can be turned. Fully

aware of this fact, Moore told off more than a third of his army to

serve as a flank-guard on this wing, and to prevent the enemy from

pushing in between the Monte Moro and the narrow neck of the peninsula

on which Corunna stands.

[715] There can be no doubt that this strange suggestion was

made, as Moore himself mentions it in his dispatch of Jan. 13,

the last which he wrote.

Soult, even after he had passed the Mero and repaired the bridges, was

very circumspect in his advances. He had too much respect for the

fighting power of the English army to attack before he had rallied his

whole force. When Delaborde’s division and a multitude of stragglers

had joined him on the fifteenth, he at last moved forward and seized

the heights of Palavea and Peñasquedo, overlooking the British

position. There was some slight skirmishing with the outposts which had

been left on these positions, and when the French brought down two guns

to the lower slopes by Palavea, and began to cannonade the opposite

hill, Colonel McKenzie, of the 5th Regiment, made an attempt to drive

them off, which failed with loss, and cost him his life.

[Illustration: Battle of Corunna. January 16, 1809.]

As the French pressed westward along these commanding heights, Moore

saw that he might very possibly be attacked on the following day, and

brought up his troops to their fighting-ground, though he was still

not certain that Soult would risk a battle. The divisions of Hope and

Baird were ranged along the upper slopes of the Monte Moro: the ten

battalions of the former on the eastern half of the ridge, nearest

the river, the eight battalions of the latter on its western half,

more towards the inland. Each division had two brigades in the first

line and a third in reserve. Counting from left to right, the brigades

were those of Hill and Leith from Hope’s division, and Manningham and

Bentinck from Baird’s. Behind the crest Catlin Crawfurd supported the

two former, and Warde’s battalions of Guards the two latter. Down in

the hollow behind the Monte Moro lay Paget’s division, close to the

village of Eiris[716]. He was invisible to the French, but so placed

that he could immediately move out to cover the right wing if the enemy

attempted a turning movement. Lastly, Fraser’s division lay under cover

in Corunna, ready to march forth to support Paget the moment that

fighting should begin[717]. Six of the nine guns (small six-pounders),

which Moore had left on shore, were distributed in pairs along the

front of Monte Moro: the other three were with Paget’s reserve.

[716] Paget had just lost his senior brigadier, Anstruther, who

died of dysentery in Corunna that day. His second brigade was

commanded by Disney.

[717] His two brigadiers were Beresford and Fane.

After surveying the British position from the Peñasquedo heights, Soult

had resolved to attempt the manœuvre which Moore had thought most

probable--to assault the western end of the line, where the heights are

least formidable, and at the same moment to turn the Monte Moro by a

movement round its extreme right through the open ground. Nor had it

escaped him that the ground occupied by Baird’s division was within

cannon-shot of the opposite range. He ordered ten guns to be dragged

up to the westernmost crest of the French position, and to be placed

above the village of Elvina, facing Bentinck’s brigade. The rest of

his artillery was distributed along the front of the Peñasquedo and

Palavea heights, in situations that were less favourable, because they

were more remote from the British lines. The hills were steep, no road

ran along their summit, and the guns had to be dragged by hand to the

places which they were intended to occupy. It was only under cover

of the night that those opposite Elvina were finally got to their

destination.

Soult’s force was now considerably superior to that which was opposed

to him, sufficiently so in his own estimation to compensate for the

strength of the defensive positions which he would have to assail. He

had three infantry divisions with thirty-nine battalions (Heudelet

was still far to the rear), and twelve regiments of cavalry, with

about forty guns[718]. The whole, even allowing for stragglers still

trailing in the rear, and for men who had perished in the snows of the

mountains, must have been over 20,000 strong. The cavalry had 4,500

sabres, and the infantry battalions must still have averaged over 500

men, for in November they had nearly all been up to 700 bayonets, and

even the toilsome march in pursuit of Moore cannot have destroyed so

much as a third of their numbers: only Merle’s division had done any

fighting. It is absurd of some of the French narrators of the battle to

pretend that Soult had only 13,000 infantry--a figure which would only

give 330 bayonets to each battalion[719].

[718] The force stood as follows:--

Infantry--1st Division, Merle (Brigades Reynaud, Sarrut, Thomières).

} Each of Merle’s regiments (of which

2nd Léger (three batts.) } three were originally two battalions

4th Léger (four batts.) } and one three battalions strong) had

15th of the Line (three batts.) } received an additional battalion from

36th of the Line (three batts.) } the dissolved corps of Junot, before

} leaving Astorga.

2nd Division, Mermet (Brigades Gaulois, Jardon, Lefebvre).

} The 47th had received two, and the

31st Léger (four batts.) } 31st Léger and 2nd Swiss each one

47th of the Line (four batts.) } battalion from Junot’s corps. The

122nd of the Line (four batts.) } 122nd was a new regiment,

2nd Swiss Regiment (two batts.) } consolidated from six battalions of

3rd Swiss Regiment (one batt.) } the ‘Supplementary Legions of

} Reserve.’

3rd Division, Delaborde (Brigades Foy and Arnaud).

} The 70th and 86th, from Portugal,

17th Léger (three batts.) } had each received a battalion from

70th of the Line (four batts.) } Merle’s division, where they had been

86th of the Line (three batts.) } serving in the autumn. The 17th

4th Swiss Regiment (one batt.) } Léger had been transferred from the

} 6th Corps to the 2nd.

Cavalry--Lahoussaye’s Division of Dragoons (Brigades Marisy and

Caulaincourt).

17th, 18th, 19th, and 27th Dragoons--four regiments.

Lorges’s Division of Dragoons (Brigades Vialannes and Fournier).

13th, 15th, 22nd, and 25th Dragoons--four regiments.

Franceschi’s Mixed Division (Brigades Debelle and Girardin [?]).

1st Hussars, 8th Dragoons, 22nd Chasseurs, and Hanoverian

Chasseurs--four regiments.

Artillery--600 men (?): exact figures not available.

[719] e.g. Le Noble in his _Campagne du Maréchal Soult_, 1808-9,

p. 41.

Soult’s plan was to contain the British left and centre with two of his

divisions--those of Delaborde and Merle--while Mermet and the bulk of

the cavalry should attack Moore’s right, seize the western end of Monte

Moro, and push in between Baird’s flank and Corunna. If this movement

succeeded, the British retreat would be compromised: Delaborde and

Merle could then assail Hope and prevent him from going to the rear: if

all went right, two-thirds of the British army must be surrounded and

captured.

The movement of masses of infantry, and still more of cavalry and

guns, along the rugged crest and slopes of the Peñasquedo heights, was

attended with so much difficulty, that noon was long passed before the

whole army was in position. It was indeed so late in the day, that

Sir John Moore had come to the conclusion that Soult did not intend

to attack, and had ordered Paget’s division, who were to be the first

troops to embark, to march down to the harbour[720]. The other corps

were to retire at dusk, and go on shipboard under cover of the night.

[720] Blakeney, p. 114.

But between 1.30 and 2 o’clock the French suddenly took the offensive:

the battery opposite Elvina began to play upon Baird’s division,

columns descending from each side of it commenced to pour down into the

valley, and the eight cavalry regiments of Lahoussaye and Franceschi,

pushing out from behind the Peñasquedo heights, rode northward along

the lower slopes of the hills of San Cristobal, with the obvious design

of cutting in between the Monte Moro and Corunna.

Moore welcomed the approach of battle with joy: he had every confidence

in his men and his position, and saw that a victory won ere his

departure would silence the greater part of the inevitable criticism

for timidity and want of enterprise, to which he would be exposed

on his return to England. He rode up to the crest of his position,

behind Baird’s division, took in the situation of affairs at a glance,

and sent back orders to Paget to pay attention to the French turning

movement, and to Fraser to come out from Corunna and contain any

advance on the part of the enemy’s cavalry on the extreme right.

For some time the English left and centre were scarcely engaged, for

Merle and Delaborde did no more than push tirailleurs out in front

of their line, to bicker with the skirmishers of Hill, Leith, and

Manningham. But Bentinck’s brigade was at once seriously assailed: not

only were its lines swept by the balls of Soult’s main battery, but a

heavy infantry attack was in progress. Gaulois and Jardon’s brigades of

Mermet’s division were coming forward in great strength: they turned

out of the village of Elvina the light company of the 50th, which had

been detached to hold that advanced position, and then came up the

slope of Monte Moro, with a dense crowd of tirailleurs covering the

advance of eight battalion columns. Meanwhile the third brigade of

Mermet’s division was hurrying past the flank of Bentinck’s line, in

the lower ground, with the obvious intention of turning the British

flank. Beyond them Lahoussaye’s dragoons were cautiously feeling their

way forward, much incommoded by walls and broken ground.

All the stress of the first fighting fell on the three battalions of

Bentinck, on the hill above Elvina. Moore was there in person to direct

the fight: Baird, on whom the responsibility for this part of the

ground would naturally have fallen, was wounded early in the day, by

a cannon-ball which shattered his left arm[721], and was borne to the

rear. When the French came near the top of the slope, driving in before

them the British skirmishing line, the Commander-in-chief ordered the

42nd and 50th to charge down upon them. The 4th, the flank regiment

of the whole line, could not follow them: it was threatened by the

encircling movement of the French left, and Moore bade it throw back

its right wing so as to form an angle _en potence_ with the rest of the

brigade, while still keeping up its fire. The manœuvre was executed

with such precision as to win his outspoken approval--‘That is exactly

how it should be done,’ he shouted to Colonel Wynch, and then rode off

to attend to the 50th and 42nd, further to his left.

[721] His dispatch to Castlereagh, of Jan. 18, proves that he was

wounded before Moore fell.

Here a very heavy combat was raging. Advancing to meet the French

attack, these two battalions drove in the tirailleurs with the

crushing fire of their two-deep line, and then became engaged with the

supporting columns on the slopes above Elvina. For some time the battle

stood still, but Moore told the regiments that they must advance to

make their fire tell, and at last Colonel Sterling and Major Charles

Napier led their men over the line of stone walls behind which they

were standing, and pressed forward. The head of the French formation

melted away before their volleys, and the enemy rolled back into

Elvina. The 42nd halted just above the village, but Napier led the

50th in among the houses, and cleared out the defenders after a sharp

fight. He even passed through with part of his men, and became engaged

with the French supports on the further side of the place. Presently

Mermet sent down his reserves and drove out the 50th, who suffered very

heavily: Charles Napier was wounded and taken, and Stanhope the junior

major was killed[722]. While the 50th was reforming, Moore brought up

the divisional reserve, Warde’s two magnificent battalions of Guards,

each of which, in consequence of their splendid discipline during the

retreat, mustered over 800 bayonets. With these and the 42nd he held

the slope above Elvina in face of a very hot fire, not only from the

enemy’s infantry but from the battery on the opposite heights, which

swept the ground with a lateral and almost an enfilading fire. It was

while directing one of the Guards’ battalions to go forward and storm

a large house on the flank of the village that Moore received a mortal

wound. A cannon-ball struck him on the left shoulder, carrying it away

with part of the collar-bone, and leaving the arm hanging only by

the flesh and muscles above the armpit[723]. He was dashed from his

horse, but immediately raised himself on his sound arm and bade his

aide-de-camp Hardinge see that the 42nd should advance along with the

Guards. Then he was borne to the rear, fully realizing that his wound

was mortal: his consciousness never failed, in spite of the pain and

the loss of blood, and he found strength to send a message to Hope to

bid him take command of the army. When his bearers wished to unbuckle

his sword, which was jarring his wounded arm and side, he refused to

allow it, saying ‘in his usual tone and with a very distinct voice,

“It is well as it is. I had rather that it should go out of the field

with me.”’ He was borne back to Corunna in a blanket by six men of the

Guards and 42nd. Frequently he made them turn him round to view the

field of battle, and as he saw the French line of fire rolling back, he

several times expressed his pleasure at dying in the moment of victory,

when his much-tried army was at last faring as it deserved.

[722] Every student of the Peninsular War should read Charles

Napier’s vivid and thrilling account of the storm of Elvina.

William Napier reprinted it in vol. i of his brother’s biography.

Charles was within an ace of being murdered after surrender, and

was saved by a gallant French drummer.

[723] Letter of his aide-de-camp Hardinge in James Moore’s

_Life_, p. 220.

While Bentinck’s brigade and the Guards were thus engaged with Mermet’s

right, a separate combat was going on more to the west, where Edward

Paget and the Reserve division had marched out to resist the French

turning movement. The instant that Moore’s first orders had been

received, Paget had sent forward the 95th Rifles in extended order to

cover the gap, half a mile in breadth, between the Monte Moro and the

heights of San Cristobal. Soon afterwards he pushed up the 52nd into

line with the riflemen. The other three battalions of the division

moved out soon after. Paget had in front of him a brigade--five

battalions--of Mermet’s division, which was trying to slip round the

corner of Monte Moro in order to take Baird in the flank. He had also

to guard against the charges of Lahoussaye’s cavalry more to his right,

and those of Franceschi’s chasseurs still further south. Fortunately

the ground was so much cut up with rough stone walls, dividing the

fields of the villages of San Cristobal and Elvina, that Soult’s

cavalry were unable to execute any general or vigorous advance. When

the British swept across the low ground, Lahoussaye’s dragoons made two

or three attempts to charge, but, forced to advance among walls and

ravines, they never even compelled Paget’s battalions to form square,

and were easily driven off by a rolling fire. The Reserve division

steadily advanced, with the 95th and 52nd in its front, and the

horsemen gave back. It was in vain that Lahoussaye dismounted the 27th

Dragoons and ranged them as _tirailleurs_ along the lower slopes of the

heights of San Cristobal. The deadly fire of Paget’s infantry thinned

their ranks, and forced them back. It would seem that the 95th, 28th,

and 91st had mainly to do with Lahoussaye, while the 52nd and 20th

became engaged with the infantry from the division of Mermet, which was

bickering with the 4th Regiment below the Monte Moro, and striving to

turn its flank. In both quarters the advance was completely successful,

and Paget pushed forward, taking numerous prisoners from the enemy’s

broken infantry. So far did he advance in his victorious onslaught that

he approached from the flank the main French battery on the heights of

Peñasquedo, and thought that (if leave had been given him) he would

have been able to capture it: for its infantry supports were broken,

and the cavalry had gone off far to the right. But Hope sent no orders

to his colleague, and the Reserve halted at dusk at the foot of the

French position.

Franceschi’s horsemen meanwhile, on the extreme left of the French

line, had at first pushed cautiously towards Corunna, till they saw

Fraser’s division drawn up half a mile outside the gates, on the low

ridge of Santa Margarita, covering the whole neck of the peninsula.

This checked the cavalry, and presently, when Paget’s advance drove

in Lahoussaye, Franceschi conformed to the retreat of his colleague,

and drew back across the heights of San Cristobal till he had reached

the left rear of Soult’s position, and halted in the upland valley

somewhere near the village of Mesoiro.

We left Bentinck’s and Warde’s brigades engaged on the slopes above

Elvina with Mermet’s right-hand column, at the moment of the fall of

Sir John Moore. The second advance on Elvina had begun just as the

British commander-in-chief fell: it was completely successful, and the

village was for the second time captured. Mermet now sent down his last

reserves, and Merle moved forward his left-hand brigade to attack the

village on its eastern side. This led to a corresponding movement on

the part of the British. Manningham’s brigade from the right-centre of

the British line came down the slope, and fell upon Merle’s columns as

they pressed in towards the village. This forced the French to halt,

and to turn aside to defend themselves: there was a long and fierce

strife, during the later hours of the afternoon, between Manningham’s

two right-hand regiments (the 3/1st and 2/81st) and the 2nd Léger and

36th of the Line of Reynaud’s brigade. It was prolonged till the

2/81st had exhausted all its ammunition, and had suffered a loss of 150

men, when Hope sent down the 2/59th, the reserve regiment of Leith’s

brigade, to relieve it. Soon afterwards the French retired, and the

battle died away at dusk into mere distant bickering along the bottom

of the valley, as a few skirmishers of the victorious brigade pursued

the retreating columns to the foot of their position.

Further eastward Delaborde had done nothing more than make a feeble

demonstration against Hope’s very strong position on the heights above

the Mero river. He drove in Hill’s pickets, and afterwards, late in

the afternoon, endeavoured to seize the village of Piedralonga[724],

at the bottom of the valley which lay between the hostile lines. Foy,

who was entrusted with this operation, took the voltigeur companies of

his brigade, and drove out from the hamlet the outposts of the 14th

Regiment. Thereupon Hill sent down Colonel Nicholls with three more

companies of that corps, supported by two of the 92nd from Hope’s

divisional reserve. They expelled the French, and broke the supports on

which the voltigeurs tried to rally, taking a few prisoners including

Foy’s brigade-major. Delaborde then sent down another battalion,

which recovered the southern end of the village, while Nicholls held

tightly to the rest of it. At dusk both parties ceased to push on,

and the firing died away. The engagement at this end of the line was

insignificant: Foy lost eighteen killed and fifty wounded from the 70th

of the Line, and a few more from the 86th. Nicholls’s casualties were

probably even smaller[725].

[724] Erroneously called in most British and French accounts

Palavea Abaxo. The latter village is at the foot of the French

line, a little to the north.

[725] For an account of this combat from the French side see

Foy’s report to Delaborde, printed in Girod de l’Ain’s _Vie

militaire du Général Foy_ (appendix), where the losses of the

brigade are given. On the English side the 92nd lost three killed

and five wounded (see Gardyne’s _History of the 92nd Regiment_).

The 14th do not separate their battle-losses from those of the

retreat in their casualty-returns. They had sixty-six dead and

missing in the whole campaign, and put on board at Corunna

seventy-two sick and wounded. Probably not more than ten of

the former and thirty of the latter were hit in the battle; if

the casualties were any larger on January 16 the losses in the

retreat must have been abnormally small in the 14th Regiment.

Soult had suffered such a decided reverse that he had no desire to

prolong the battle, while Hope--who so unexpectedly found himself in

command of the British army--showed no wish to make a counter-attack,

and was quite contented to have vindicated his position. He claimed,

in his dispatch, that at the end of the engagement the army was

holding a more advanced line than at its commencement: and this was

in part true, for Elvina was now occupied in force, and not merely

by a picket, and Paget on the right had cleared the ground below the

heights of San Cristobal, which Lahoussaye had been occupying during

the action. Some of the French writers have claimed that Soult also

had gained ground[726]: but the only fact that can be cited in favour

of their contention is that Foy was holding on to the southern end of

Piedralonga[727]. All the eye-witnesses on their side concede that

at the end of the action the marshal’s army had fallen back to its

original position[728].

[726] Of course the untrustworthy Le Noble does so, and falsifies

his map accordingly.

[727] Foy’s brigade engaged two battalions of the 70th Regiment,

besides three companies of _voltigeurs_ of the 86th; this was all

that Delaborde sent forward. There were two _chefs de bataillon_

among the wounded.

[728] ‘Chaque armée resta sur son terrain,’ says St. Chamans,

Soult’s senior aide-de-camp (the man who so kindly entreated

Charles Napier, as the latter’s memoirs show). ‘A la nuit, qui

seule a pu terminer cette lutte opiniâtre, nous nous sommes

retrouvés au point d’où nous étions partis à 3 heures,’ says

Fantin des Odoards, of Mermet’s division (p. 200). ‘Nos troupes

furent obligées, par des forces supérieures, de rentrer dans

leurs premiers postes,’ says Naylies, of Lahoussaye’s dragoons

(p. 46).

English critics have occasionally suggested that the success won by

Paget and Bentinck might have been pressed, and that if the division

of Fraser had been brought up to their support, the French left might

have been turned and crushed[729]. But considering that Soult had

fourteen or fifteen intact battalions left, in the divisions of Merle

and Delaborde[730], it would have been well in his power to fight a

successful defensive action on his heights, throwing back his left

wing, so as to keep it from being encircled. Hope was right to be

contented with his success: even if he had won a victory he could have

done no more than re-embark, for the army was not in a condition to

plunge once more into the Galician highlands in pursuit of Soult, who

would have been joined in a few days by Heudelet, and in a week by Ney.

[729] Blakeney urges this very strongly (pp. 117, 118); Graham

also.

[730] It would seem that only the 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line

of Merle, and the 70th of Delaborde, had been seriously engaged.

The losses suffered by the two armies at the battle of Corunna are not

easy to estimate. The British regiments, embarking on the day after

the fight, did not send in any returns of their casualties till they

reached England. Then, most unfortunately, a majority of the colonels

lumped together the losses of the retreat and those of the battle.

It is lucky, however, to find that among the regiments which sent in

proper returns are nearly all those which fought the brunt of the

action. The 50th and 42nd of Bentinck’s brigade were by far the most

heavily tried, from the prolonged and desperate fighting in and about

Elvina. The former lost two officers killed and three wounded, with

180 rank and file: the Highland battalion thirty-nine rank and file

killed and 111 (including six officers) wounded. The Guards’ brigade,

on the other hand, which was brought up to support these regiments,

suffered very little; the first battalion of the 1st Regiment had

only five, the second only eight killed, with about forty wounded

between them. In Manningham’s brigade the 81st, with its loss of three

officers and twenty-seven men killed, and eleven officers and 112 men

wounded, was by far the heaviest sufferer: the Royals may also have

had a considerable casualty-list, but its figures are apparently not

to be found, except confused with those of the whole retreat. Paget’s

division in its flank march to ward off the French turning movement

suffered surprisingly little: of its two leading regiments the 1/95th

had but twelve killed and thirty-three wounded, the 1/52nd five killed

and thirty-three wounded. The other three battalions, which formed the

supports, must have had even fewer men disabled. Hope’s division, with

the exception of the 14th and the 59th, was not seriously engaged: the

few battalions which sent in their battle-losses, apart from those of

the retreat, show figures such as six or ten for their casualties on

January 16. Fraser’s whole division neither fired a shot nor lost a

man. It is probable then that Hope, when in his dispatch he estimated

the total loss of the British army at ‘something between 700 and 800,’

was overstating rather than understating the total.

Soult’s losses are even harder to discover than those of Moore’s army.

His chronicler, Le Noble[731], says that they amounted to no more

than 150 killed and 500 wounded. The ever inaccurate Thiers reduces

this figure to 400 or less. On the other hand Naylies, a combatant in

the battle, speaks of 800 casualties; and Marshal Jourdan, in his

_précis_ of the campaign, gives 1,000[732]. But all these figures

must be far below the truth. Fantin des Odoards has preserved the

exact loss of his own corps, the 31st Léger, one of the regiments of

Mermet’s division, which fought in Elvina. It amounted to no less

than 330 men[733]. The other four regiments of the division were not

less deeply engaged, and it is probable that Mermet alone must have

lost over 1,000 in killed and wounded. Two of his three brigadiers

went down in the fight: Gaulois was shot dead, Lefebvre badly hurt.

Of Merle’s division, one brigade was hotly engaged in the struggle

with Manningham’s battalions, in which our 2/81st lost so heavily.

The French cannot have suffered less, as they were the beaten party.

Lahoussaye’s dragoons must also have sustained appreciable loss: that

of Delaborde (as we have already seen) was limited to about eighteen

killed and fifty wounded. Of unwounded prisoners the British took seven

officers and 156 men. If we put the total of Soult’s casualties at

1,500, we probably shall not be far wrong. All the later experience of

the war showed that, when French troops delivered in column an uphill

attack on a British position and failed, they suffered twice or thrice

the loss of the defenders: we need only mention Vimiero and Busaco.

On this occasion there was the additional advantage that Moore’s army

had new muskets and good ammunition, while those of Soult’s corps

were much deteriorated. A loss of 1,500 men therefore seems a fair

and rational estimate. The impression left by the battle on Soult’s

mind was such that, in his first dispatch to the Emperor, he wrote

that he could do no more against the English till he should have

received large reinforcements[734]. But two days later, when Hope had

evacuated Corunna, he changed his tone and let it be understood that

he had gained ground during the battle, and had so far established

an advantage that his position forced the English to embark. This

allegation was wholly without foundation. Hope simply carried out the

arrangements which Moore had made for sending off the army to England,

and his resolve was dictated by the condition of his troops, who

urgently needed reorganization and repose, and not by any fear of what

the Marshal could do against him.

[731] Belmas gives the same number, probably copying Le Noble.

[732] Jourdan’s _Mémoires_, p. 126.

[733] Fantin des Odoards, p. 201.

[734] See Marshal Jourdan’s very judicious remark on Soult’s

bulletins in his _Mémoires militaires_ (p. 127). ‘His first

dispatch was not that of a general who imagined that he had been

successful.’

Moore, borne back to his quarters in Corunna, survived long enough to

realize that his army had completely beaten off Soult’s attack, and had

secured for itself a safe departure. In spite of his dreadful wound he

retained his consciousness to the last. Forgetful of his own pain, he

made inquiries as to the fate of his especial friends and dependants,

and found strength to dictate several messages, recommending for

promotion officers who had distinguished themselves, and sending

farewell greetings to his family. He repeatedly said that he was dying

in the way he had always desired, on the night of a victorious battle.

The only weight on his mind was the thought that public opinion at

home might bear hardly upon him, in consequence of the horrors of the

retreat. ‘I hope the people of England will be satisfied,’ he gasped;

‘I hope my country will do me justice.’ And then his memory wandered

back to those whom he loved: he tried in vain to frame a message to

his mother, but weakness and emotion overcame him, and a few minutes

later he died, with the name of Pitt’s niece (Lady Hester Stanhope)

on his lips. Moore had expressed a wish to be buried where he fell,

and his staff carried out his desire as far as was possible, by laying

him in a grave on the ramparts of Corunna. He was buried at early dawn

on the seventeenth, on the central bastion that looks out towards the

land-side and the battle-field. Hard by him lies General Anstruther,

who had died of dysentery on the day before the fight. Soult, with a

generosity that does him much credit, took care of Moore’s grave, and

ordered a monument to be erected over the spot where he fell[735]. La

Romana afterwards carried out the Marshal’s pious intentions.

[735] The inscription was to run: ‘Hic cecidit Iohannes Moore dux

exercitus Britannici, in pugna Ianuarii xvi, 1809, contra Gallos

a duce Dalmatiae ductos.’

Little remains to be said about the embarkation of the army. At

nine o’clock on the night of the battle the troops were withdrawn

from the Monte Moro position, leaving only pickets along its front.

Many regiments were embarked that night, more on the morning of

the seventeenth. By the evening of that day all were aboard save

Beresford’s brigade of Fraser’s division, which remained to cover the

embarkation of the rest.

Soult, when he found that the British had withdrawn, sent up some

field-pieces to the heights above Fort San Diego, on the southern end

of the bay. Their fire could reach the more outlying transports, and

created some confusion, as the masters hastily weighed anchor and

stood out to sea. Four vessels ran on shore, and three of them could

not be got off: the troops on board were hastily transferred to other

ships, with no appreciable loss: from the whole army only nine men of

the Royal Wagon Train are returned as having been ‘drowned in Corunna

harbour,’ no doubt from the sinking of the boat which was transhipping

them. General Leith records, in his diary, that on the vessel which

took him home there were fragments of no less than six regiments: we

can hardly doubt that this must have been one of those which picked up

the men from the stranded transports.

Beresford’s brigade embarked from a safe point behind the citadel

on the eighteenth, leaving the town in charge of the small Spanish

garrison under General Alcedo, which maintained the works till all the

fleet were far out to sea, and then rather tamely surrendered. This was

entirely the doing of their commander, a shifty old man, who almost

immediately after took service with King Joseph[736].

[736] St. Chamans calls him ‘un vieux faible et sans moyens, mené

par une espèce de courtisane.’ Mr. Stuart (in a note to Vaughan)

describes him as an ‘unscrupulous old rascal.’

The returning fleet had a tempestuous but rapid passage: urged on by a

raging south-wester the vessels ran home in four or five days, and made

almost every harbour between Falmouth and Dover. Many transports had a

dangerous passage, but only two, the _Dispatch_ and the _Smallbridge_,

came to grief off the Cornish coast and were lost, the former with

three officers and fifty-six men of the 7th Hussars, the latter with

five officers and 209 men of the King’s German Legion[737]. So ended

the famous ‘Retreat from Sahagun.’

[737] Cf. for their losses the _Parliamentary Papers for 1809_

(pp. 8, 9), and Beamish’s _History of the German Legion_.

Moore’s memory met, as he had feared, with many unjust aspersions when

the results of his campaign were known in England. The aspect of the

26,000 ragged war-worn troops, who came ashore on the South Coast,

was so miserable that those who saw them were shocked. The state of

the mass of 3,000 invalids, racked with fever and dysentery, who were

cast into the hospitals was eminently distressing. It is seldom that

a nation sees its troops returning straight from the field, with the

grime and sweat of battle and march fresh upon them. The impression

made was a very unhappy one, and it was easy to blame the General.

Public discontent was roused both against Moore and against the

ministry, and some of the defenders of the latter took an ungenerous

opportunity of shifting all the blame upon the man who could no longer

vindicate himself. This provoked his numerous friends into asserting

that his whole conduct of the campaign had been absolutely blameless,

and that any misfortunes which occurred were simply and solely the

fault of maladministration and unwise councils at home. Moore was the

hero of the Whig party, and politics were dragged into the discussion

of the campaign to a lamentable extent. Long years after his death the

attitude of the critic or the historian, who dealt with the Corunna

retreat, was invariably coloured by his Whig or Tory predilections.

The accepted view of the present generation is (though most men

are entirely unacquainted with the fact) strongly coloured by the

circumstance that William Napier, whose eloquent history has superseded

all other narratives of the Peninsular War, was a violent enemy of

the Tory ministry and a personal admirer of Moore. Ninety years and

more have now passed since the great retreat, and we can look upon the

campaign with impartial eyes. It is easy to point out mistakes made by

the home government, such as the tardy dispatch of Baird’s cavalry,

and the inadequate provision of money, both for the division which

started from Lisbon and for that which started from Corunna. But these

are not the most important causes of the misfortunes of the campaign.

Nor can it be pleaded that the ministry did not support Moore loyally,

or that they tied his hands by contradictory or over-explicit orders.

A glance at Castlereagh’s dispatches is sufficient to show that he

and his colleagues left everything that was possible to be settled by

the General, and that they approved each of his determinations as it

reached them without any cavilling or criticism[738].

[738] In fairness to the government Castlereagh’s dispatches,

92-105 in the _Parliamentary Papers for 1809_, should be

carefully studied.

Moore must take the main responsibility for all that happened. On

the whole, the impression left after a study of his campaign is

very favourable to him. His main conception when he marched from

Salamanca--that of gaining time for the rallying of the Spanish

armies, by directing a sudden raid upon the Emperor’s communications

in Castile--was as sound as it was enterprising. The French critics

who have charged him with rashness have never read his dispatches,

nor realized the care with which he had thought out the retreat, which

he knew would be inevitable when his movement became known at Madrid.

He was never for a moment in any serious danger of being surrounded by

the Emperor, because he was proceeding (as he himself wrote) ‘bridle in

hand,’ and with a full knowledge that he must ‘have a run for it’ on

the first receipt of news that Napoleon was upon the march. His plan

of making a diversion was a complete success: he drew the Emperor,

with the 70,000 men who would otherwise have marched on Lisbon, up

into the north-west of the Peninsula, quite out of the main centre

of operations. Napoleon himself halted at Astorga, but 45,000 men

marched on after the British, and were engulfed in the mountains of

Galicia, where they were useless for the main operations of the war.

Spain, in short, gained three months of respite, because the main

disposable field-army of her invaders had been drawn off into a corner

by the unexpected march of the British on Sahagun. ‘As a diversion the

movement has answered completely,’ wrote Moore to Castlereagh from

Astorga[739], and with justice. That the subsequent retreat to Corunna

was also advisable we must concede, though the arguments in favour of

attempting a defence of Galicia were more weighty than has generally

been allowed[740].

[739] Moore to Castlereagh, from Astorga, Dec. 31, 1808.

[740] See the arguments stated on pp. 554-5.

But when we turn to the weeks that preceded the advance from Salamanca,

and that followed the departure from Astorga, it is only a very

blind admirer of Moore who will contend that everything was arranged

and ordered for the best. That the army, which began to arrive at

Salamanca on November 13, did not make a forward move till December

12 is a fact which admits of explanation, but not of excuse. The main

governing fact of its inactivity was not, as Moore was always urging,

the disasters of the Spaniards, but the misdirection of the British

cavalry and artillery on the roundabout route by Elvas, Talavera, and

the Escurial. For this the British general was personally responsible:

we have already shown that he had good reasons for distrusting the

erroneous reports on the roads of Portugal which were sent in to him,

and that he should not have believed them[741]. He ought to have

marched on Almeida, with his troops distributed between the three

available roads, and should have had a compact force of all arms

concentrated at Salamanca by November 15. Even without Baird he could

then have exercised some influence on the course of events. As it was,

he condemned himself--by the unmilitary act of separating himself from

his guns and his horsemen--to a month of futile waiting, while the fate

of the campaign was being settled a hundred and fifty miles away.

[741] See the facts stated on pp. 493-5.

The chance that Napoleon turned his whole army upon Madrid, and did

not send a single corps in search of the British, gave Moore the grand

opportunity for striking at the French communications, which he turned

to such good account in the middle of December. But, though he so

splendidly vindicated his reputation by this blow, we cannot forget the

long hesitation at Salamanca by which it was preceded, nor the unhappy

project for instant retreat on Portugal, which was so nearly put into

execution. If it had been carried out, Moore’s name would have been

relegated to a very low place in the list of British commanders, for

he would undoubtedly have evacuated Lisbon, just as he had prepared

to evacuate Corunna on the day before he was slain. We have his own

words to that effect. On November 25 he put on paper his opinion as to

the defence of Portugal. ‘Its frontier,’ he wrote, ‘is not defensible

against a superior force. It is an open frontier, all equally rugged,

but all equally to be penetrated. If the French succeed in Spain, it

will be vain to attempt to resist them in Portugal. The British must

in that event immediately take steps to evacuate the country[742].’

It is fortunate that Sir Arthur Wellesley was not of this opinion, or

the course of the Peninsular War, and of the whole struggle between

Bonaparte and Britain, might have been modified in a very unhappy

fashion.

[742] Moore to Castlereagh, from Salamanca, Nov. 25.