A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 6, September 1, 1812-August 5, 1813

by Charles Oman

CHAPTER I

WELLINGTON IN THE NORTH: BURGOS INVESTED
AUGUST 31st-SEPTEMBER 20th, 1812

The year 1812 was packed with great events, and marked in Spain no less than in Russia the final turn of the tide in the history of Napoleon’s domination. But the end was not yet: when Wellington entered Madrid in triumph on August 12th, the deliverance of the Peninsula was no more certain than was the deliverance of Europe when the French Emperor evacuated Moscow on October 22nd. Vittoria and Leipzig were still a year away, and it was not till they had been fought and won that the victory of the Allies was secure. The resources of the great enemy were so immense that it required more than one disaster to exhaust them. No one was more conscious of this than Wellington. Reflecting on the relative numbers of his own Anglo-Portuguese army and of the united strength of all the French corps in Spain, he felt that the occupation of Madrid was rather a tour de force, an admirable piece of political propaganda, than a decisive event. It would compel all the scattered armies of the enemy to unite against him, and he was more than doubtful whether he could make head against them. ‘I still hope,’ he wrote to his brother Henry, the Ambassador at Cadiz, ‘to maintain our position in Castile, and even to improve our advantages. But I shudder when I reflect upon the enormity of the task which I have undertaken, with inadequate powers myself to do anything, and without assistance of any kind from the Spaniards[1].... I am apprehensive that all this may turn out but ill for the Spanish cause. If, for any cause, I should be overpowered, or should be obliged to retreat, what will the world say? What will the people of England say?... That we made a great effort, attended by some glorious circumstances; that from January 1st, 1812, we had gained more advantages for the cause, and had acquired more extent of territory by our operations than any army ever gained in such a period of time against so powerful an enemy; but that unaided by the Spanish army and government, we were finally overpowered, and compelled to withdraw within our old frontier.’

It was with no light heart that Wellington faced the strategical problem. In outline it stood as follows. Soult was now known to be evacuating Andalusia, and it was practically certain that he would retire on Valencia, where he would join King Joseph and Suchet. Their three armies would produce a mass of veteran troops so great that even if every division of the Anglo-Portuguese army were concentrated, if Hill came up from Estremadura and Skerrett’s small force from Cadiz, it would be eminently doubtful whether Madrid could be held and the enemy thrust back. The French might advance 85,000 strong, and Wellington could only rely on 60,000 men of his own to face them—though he might scrape together three or four divisions of Spanish troops in addition[2]. It was true that Suchet might probably refuse to evacuate his Valencian viceroyalty, and that occupation for him might be found by utilizing Maitland’s expeditionary force at Alicante, and Elio’s Murcian army. But even if he did not join Soult and King Joseph in a march on Madrid, the armies of the South and Centre might put 65,000 men into the field.

But this was only half the problem. There was Clausel’s Army of Portugal, not to speak of Caffarelli’s Army of the North, to be taken into consideration. Clausel had some 40,000 men behind the Douro—troops recently beaten it is true, and known to be in bad order. But they had not been pursued since the Allied army turned aside for the march on Madrid, and had now been granted a month in which to pull themselves together. Nothing had been left in front of them save Clinton’s 6th Division at Cuellar, and a division of the Galicians at Valladolid. And now the vexatious news had come that Clausel was on the move, had chased the Galicians out of Valladolid, and was sending flying columns into the plains of Leon. It was clear that he must be dealt with at once, and there was no way to stop his annoying activity, save by detaching a considerable force from Madrid. If unopposed, he might overrun all the reconquered lands along the Douro, and even imperil the British line of communication with Salamanca and Portugal. If, as was possible, Caffarelli should lend him a couple of divisions from the Army of the North, he might become a real danger instead of a mere nuisance.

This was the reason why Wellington departed from Madrid on August 31st, and marched with the 1st, 5th and 7th Divisions, Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese, and Bock’s and Ponsonby’s dragoons—21,000 sabres and bayonets—to join Clinton, and thrust back Clausel to the North, before he should have leisure to do further mischief. There was, as he conceived, just time enough to inflict a sharp check on the Army of Portugal before the danger from the side of Valencia would become pressing. It must be pushed out of the way, disabled again if possible, and then he would return to Madrid for the greater game, leaving as small a containing force as possible in front of the Northern army. He summed up his plan in a confidential letter in the following terms: ‘All the world [the French world] seems to be intending to mass itself in Valencia; while I am waiting for their plans to develop, for General Hill to march up from Estremadura, and for the Spanish armies to get together, I shall hunt away the elements of Marmont’s [i. e. Clausel’s] army from the Douro. I shall push them as far off as I can, I shall try to establish proper co-operation between the Anglo-Portuguese detachment which I must leave on this side and the Galician Army, and so I shall assure my left flank, when I shall be engaged on the Valencian side[3].’

Here then, we have a time-problem set. Will it be possible to deal handsomely with the Army of Portugal, to put it completely out of power to do harm, before Soult shall have reached Valencia, reorganized his army, and joined King Joseph in what Wellington considered the inevitable scheme of a march on Madrid? The British general judged that there would be sufficient time—and probably there might have been, if everything had worked out in the best possible way. But he was quite conscious that events might prove perverse—and he shuddered at the thought—as he wrote to his brother in Cadiz.

The last precautions taken before departing for the Douro were to draw up three sets of instructions. One was for Charles Alten, left in command of the four divisions which remained in and about Madrid[4], foreseeing the chance of Soult’s marching on the capital without turning aside to Valencia—‘not at all probable, but it is necessary to provide for all events.’ The second was for Hill, who was due to arrive at Toledo in about three weeks. The third was for General Maitland at Alicante, whose position would obviously be very unpleasant, now that Soult was known to be evacuating Andalusia and marching on Valencia to join Suchet and King Joseph. Soult’s march altered the whole situation on the East Coast: if 50,000 more French were concentrated in that direction, the Alicante force must be in some danger, and would have to observe great caution, and if necessary to shut itself up in the maritime fortresses. ‘As the allied forces in Valencia and Murcia’—wrote Wellington to Maitland—‘will necessarily be thrown upon the defensive for a moment, while the enemy will be in great strength in those parts, I conclude that the greater part of those forces will be collected in Alicante, and it would be desirable to strengthen our posts at Cartagena during this crisis, which I hope will be only momentary[5].’ Another dispatch, dated four days later, adverts to the possibility that Soult may fall upon Alicante on his arrival in the kingdom of Valencia. Maitland is to defend the place, but to take care that all precautions as to the embarking his troops in the event of ill-success are made. He is expected to maintain it as long as possible; and with the sea open to him, and a safe harbour, the defence should be long and stubborn, however great the numbers of the besiegers[6].

With these instructions drawn out for Maitland, Wellington finally marched for the North. His conception of the situation in Valencia seems to have been that Soult, on his arrival, would not meddle with Alicante: it was more probable that he and King Joseph would rather take up the much more important task of endeavouring to reconquer Madrid and New Castile. They would leave Suchet behind them to contain Maitland, Elio and Ballasteros. It would be impossible for him to lend them any troops for a march on Madrid, while such a large expeditionary force was watching his flank. The net result would be that ‘by keeping this detachment at Alicante, with Whittingham’s and Roche’s Spaniards, I shall prevent too many of the gentlemen now assembled in Valencia from troubling me in the Upper Country [New Castile][7].’

Travelling with his usual celerity, Wellington left Madrid on August 31st, was at Villa Castin on the northern side of the Guadarrama pass on September 2nd, and had reached Arevalo, where he joined Clinton and the 6th Division on September 3rd. The divisions which he was bringing up from Madrid had been started off some days before he himself left the capital. He passed them between the Escurial and Villa Castin, but they caught him up again at Arevalo early on the 4th, so that he had his fighting force concentrated on that day, and was prepared to deal with Clausel.

The situation of affairs on the Douro requires a word of explanation. Clausel, it will be remembered, had retired from Valladolid on July 30, unpursued. He was prepared to retreat for any length—even as far as Burgos—if he were pressed. But no one followed him save Julian Sanchez’s lancers and some patrols of Anson’s Light Cavalry brigade. Wherefore he halted his main body on the line of the Arlanza, with two divisions at Torquemada and two at Lerma; some way to his left Foy, with two divisions more, was at Aranda, on the Upper Douro, where he had maintained his forward position, because not even a cavalry patrol from the side of the Allies had come forward to disquiet him. In front of Clausel himself there was soon nothing left but the lightest of cavalry screens, for Julian Sanchez was called off by Wellington to New Castile: when he was gone, there remained Marquinez’s guerrilleros at Palencia, and outposts of the 16th Light Dragoons at Valtanas: the main body of G. Anson’s squadrons lay at Villavanez, twenty miles behind[8]. The only infantry force which the Allies had north of the Douro was one of the divisions of the Army of Galicia, which (with Santocildes himself in command) came up to Valladolid on August 6th, not much over 3,000 bayonets strong. The second of the Galician divisions which had descended into the plain of Leon was now blockading Toro. The third and most numerous was still engaged in the interminable siege of Astorga, which showed at last some signs of drawing to its close—not because the battering of the place had been effective, but simply because the garrison was growing famished. They had been provisioned only as far as August 1, and after that date had been forced upon half and then quarter rations. But the news of the disaster of Salamanca had not, as many had hoped among the Allies, scared their commander into capitulation.

Clausel on August 1 had not supposed it possible that he would be tempted to take the offensive again within a fortnight. His army was in a most dilapidated condition, and he was prepared to give way whenever pressed. It was not that his numbers were so very low, for on August 1st the Army of Portugal only counted 10,000 less effectives than on July 15th. Though it had lost some 14,000 men in the Salamanca campaign, it had picked up some 4,000 others from the dépôt at Valladolid, from the many small garrisons which it had drawn in during its retreat, and from drafts found at Burgos.[9] Its loss in cavalry had been fully repaired by the arrival of Chauvel’s two regiments from the Army of the North, and most of the fugitives and marauders who had been scattered over the countryside after the battle of July 22nd gradually drifted back to their colours. It was not so much numbers as spirit that was wanting in the Army of Portugal. On August 6 Clausel wrote to the Minister of War at Paris that he had halted in a position where he could feed the troops, give them some days of repose, and above all re-establish their morale[10]. ‘I must punish some of the men, who are breaking out in the most frightful outrages, and so frighten the others by an example of severity; above all I must put an end to a desire, which they display too manifestly, to recross the Ebro, and get back nearer to the French frontier. It is usual to see an army disheartened after a check: but it would be hard to find one whose discouragement is greater than that of these troops: and I cannot, and ought not, to conceal from you that there has been prevailing among them for some time a very bad spirit. Disorders and revolting excesses have marked every step of our retreat. I shall employ all the means in my power to transform the dispositions of the soldiers, and to put an end to the deplorable actions which daily take place under the very eyes of officers of all grades—actions which the latter fail to repress.’

Clausel was as good as his word, and made many and severe examples, shooting (so he says) as many as fifty soldiers found guilty of murders, assaults on officers, and other excesses[11]. It is probable, however, that it was not so much his strong punitive measures which brought about an improved discipline in the regiments, as the fortnight of absolutely undisturbed repose which they enjoyed from the 1st to the 14th of August. The feeling of demoralization caused by the headlong and disorderly retreat from Salamanca died down, as it became more and more certain that the pursuit was over, and that there was no serious hostile force left within many miles of the line of the Arlanza. The obsession of being hunted by superior forces had been the ruinous thing: when this terror was withdrawn, and when the more shattered regiments had been re-formed into a smaller number of battalions, and provided in this fashion with their proper proportion of officers[12], the troops began to realize that they still formed a considerable army, and that they had been routed, but not absolutely put out of action, by the Salamanca disaster.

Yet their morale had been seriously shaken; there was still a want of officers; a number of the rejoining fugitives had come in without arms or equipment; while others had been heard of, but had not yet reported themselves at their regimental head-quarters. It therefore required considerable hardihood on Clausel’s part to try an offensive move, even against a skeleton enemy. His object was primarily to bring pressure upon the allied rear, in order to relieve King Joseph from Wellington’s attentions. He had heard that the whole of the Anglo-Portuguese army, save a negligible remnant, had marched on Madrid; but he was not sure that the Army of the Centre might not make some endeavour to save the capital, especially if it had been reinforced from Estremadura by Drouet. Clausel knew that the King had repeatedly called for succours from the South; it was possible that they might have been sent at the last moment. If they had come up, and if Wellington could be induced to send back two or three divisions to the Douro, Madrid might yet be saved. The experiment was worth risking, but it must take the form of a demonstration rather than a genuine attack upon Wellington’s rear. The Army of Portugal was still too fragile an instrument to be applied to heavy work. Indeed, when he moved, Clausel left many shattered regiments behind, and only brought 25,000 men to the front.

There was a second object in Clausel’s advance: he hoped to save the garrisons of Astorga, Toro, and Zamora, which amounted in all to over 3,000 men. Each of the first two was being besieged by a Spanish division, the third by Silveira’s Portuguese militia. The French general judged that none of the investing forces was equal to a fight in the open with a strong flying column of his best troops. Even if all three could get together, he doubted if they dared face two French divisions. His scheme was to march on Valladolid with his main body, and drive out of it the small Spanish force in possession, while Foy—his senior division-commander—should move rapidly across country with some 8,000 men, and relieve by a circular sweep first Toro, then Astorga, then Zamora. The garrisons were to be brought off, the places blown up: it was useless to dream of holding them, for Wellington would probably come to the Douro again in force, the sieges would recommence, and no second relief would be possible in face of the main British army.

On August 13th a strong French cavalry reconnaissance crossed the Arlanza and drove in the guerrilleros from Zevico: on the following day infantry was coming up from the rear, pushing forward on the high-road from Torquemada to Valladolid. Thereupon Anson, on that evening, sent back the main body of his light dragoons beyond the Douro, leaving only two squadrons as a rearguard at Villavanez. The Galician division in Valladolid also retired by the road of Torrelobaton and Castronuevo on Benavente. Santocildes—to Wellington’s disgust when it reached his ears—abandoned in Valladolid not only 400 French convalescents in hospital, but many hundred stand of small arms, which had been collected there from the prisoners taken during the retreat of Clausel in the preceding month. This was inexcusable carelessness, as there was ample time to destroy them, if not to carry them off. French infantry entered Valladolid on the 14th and 15th, apparently about 12,000 strong: their cavalry, a day’s march ahead, had explored the line of the Douro from Simancas to Tudela, and found it watched by G. Anson’s pickets all along that front.

The orders left behind by Wellington on August 5th, had been that if Clausel came forward—which he had not thought likely—G. Anson was to fall back to the Douro, and if pressed again to join Clinton’s division at Cuellar. The retreat of both of them was to be on Segovia in the event of absolute necessity. On the other hand, if the French should try to raise the sieges of Astorga or Zamora, Santocildes and Silveira were to go behind the Esla[13]. Clausel tried both these moves at once, for on the same day that he entered Valladolid he had turned off Foy with two divisions—his own and Taupin’s (late Ferey’s)—and a brigade of Curto’s chasseurs, to march on Toro by the road through Torrelobaton. The troops in Valladolid served to cover this movement: they showed a division of infantry and 800 horse in front of Tudela on the 16th, and pushed back Anson’s light dragoons to Montemayor, a few miles beyond the Douro. But this was only a demonstration: their cavalry retired in the evening, and Anson reoccupied Tudela on the 20th. It soon became clear that Clausel was not about to cross the Douro in force, and was only showing troops in front of Valladolid in order to keep Anson and Clinton anxious. He remained there with some 12,000 or 15,000 men from August 14th till September 7th, keeping very quiet, and making no second attempt to reconnoitre beyond the Douro. Anson, therefore, watched the line of the river, with his head-quarters at Valdestillas, for all that time, while the guerrilleros of Saornil and Principe went over to the northern bank and hung around Clausel’s flank. Clinton, on his own initiative, moved his division from Cuellar to Arevalo, which placed him on the line of the road to Madrid via the Guadarrama, instead of that by Segovia. This Wellington afterwards declared to be a mistake: he had intended to keep the 6th Division more to the right, apparently in order that it might cross the Douro above Valladolid if required[14]. It should not have moved farther southward than Olmedo.

Foy meanwhile, thus covered by Clausel, made a march of surprising celerity. On the 17th he arrived at Toro, and learned that the Galicians blockading that place had cleared off as early as the 15th, and had taken the road for Benavente. He blew up the fort, and took on with him the garrison of 800 men. At Toro he was much nearer to Zamora than to Astorga, but he resolved to march first on the remoter place—it was known to be hard pressed, and the French force there blockaded was double that in Zamora. He therefore moved on Benavente with all possible speed, and crossed the Esla there, driving away a detachment of the Galician division (Cabrera’s) which had come from Valladolid, when it made an ineffectual attempt to hold the fords. On the 20th August he reached La Baneza, some sixteen miles from Astorga, and there received the tiresome news that the garrison had surrendered only thirty-six hours before to Castaños. The three battalions there, worn down by famine to 1,200 men, had capitulated, because they had no suspicion that any help was near. The Spanish general had succeeded in concealing from them all knowledge of Foy’s march. They laid down their arms on the 18th, and were at once marched off to Galicia: Castaños himself accompanied them with all his force, being fully determined not to fight Foy, even though his numbers were superior.

The French cavalry pushed on to Astorga on the 21st, and found the gates open and the place empty, save for seventy sick of the late garrison, who had been left behind under the charge of a surgeon. It was useless to think of pursuing Castaños, who had now two days’ start, wherefore Foy turned his attention to Zamora. Here Silveira, though warned to make off when the enemy reached Toro, had held on to the last moment, thinking that he was safe when Foy swerved away toward Astorga. He only drew off when he got news on the 22nd, from Sir Howard Douglas, the British Commissioner with the Galician army, to the effect that Foy, having failed to save Astorga, was marching against him. He retired to Carvajales behind the Esla, but was not safe there, for the French general, turning west from Benavente, had executed a forced march for Tabara, and was hastening westward to cut in between Carvajales and the road to Miranda de Douro on the Portuguese frontier. Warned only just in time of this move, Silveira hurried off towards his own country, and was within one mile of its border when Foy’s advanced cavalry came up with his rearguard near Constantin, the last village in Spain. They captured his baggage and some stragglers, but made no serious endeavour to charge his infantry, which escaped unharmed to Miranda. Foy attributed this failure to Curto, the commander of the light horse: ‘le défaut de décision et l’inertie coupable du général commandant la cavalerie font perdre les fruits d’une opération bien combinée’ (August 23rd)[15]. This pursuit had drawn Foy very far westward; his column turning back, only reached Zamora on August 26th: here he drew off the garrison and destroyed the works. He states that his next move would have been a raid on Salamanca, where lay not only the British base hospital, but a vast accumulation of stores, unprotected by any troops whatever. But he received at Zamora, on the 27th, urgent orders from Clausel to return to Valladolid, as Wellington was coming up against him from Madrid with his whole army. Accordingly Foy abandoned his plan, and reached Tordesillas, with his troops in a very exhausted condition from hard marching, on August 28th. Clausel had miscalculated dates—warned of the first start of the 1st and 7th Divisions from Madrid, he had supposed that they would be at Arevalo some days before they actually reached it on September 4th. Foy was never in any real danger, and there had been time to spare. His excursion undoubtedly raised the spirit of the Army of Portugal: it was comforting to find that the whole of the Galicians would not face 8,000 French troops, and that the plains of Leon could be overrun without opposition by such a small force. On his return to join the main body Foy noted in his diary that Clausel had been very inert in face of Anson and Clinton, and wrote that he himself would have tried a more dashing policy—and might possibly have failed in it, owing to the discouragement and apathy still prevailing among many of the senior officers of the Army of Portugal[16].

Wellington had received the news of Clausel’s advance on Valladolid as early as August 18th, and was little moved by it. Indeed he expressed some pleasure at the fact. ‘I think,’ he wrote to Lord Bathurst, ‘that the French mean to carry off the garrisons from Zamora and Toro, which I hope they will effect, as otherwise I must go and take them. If I do not, nobody else will, as is evident from what has been passing for the last two months at Astorga[17].’ He expressed his pleasure on hearing that Santocildes had retired behind the Esla without fighting, for he had feared that he might try to stop Foy and get beaten. It was only, as we have already seen, after he obtained practical certainty that Soult had evacuated Andalusia, so that no expedition to the South would be necessary, that he turned his mind to Clausel‘s doings. And his march to Arevalo and Valladolid was intended to be a mere excursion for a few weeks, preparatory to a return to New Castile to face Soult and King Joseph, when they should become dangerous. From Arevalo he wrote to Castaños to say that ‘it was necessary to drive off Marmont’s (i.e. Clausel’s) army without loss of time, so as to make it possible to turn the whole of his forces eventually against Soult.’ He should press the movement so far forward as he could; perhaps he might even lay siege to Burgos. But the Army of Galicia must come eastward again without delay, and link up its operations with the Anglo-Portuguese. He hoped to have retaken Valladolid by September 6th, and wished to see Castaños there, with the largest possible force that he could gather, on that date[18]. The Galician army had returned to Astorga on August 27th, and so far as distances went, there was nothing to prevent it from being at Valladolid eleven days after, if it took the obvious route by Benavente and Villalpando.

The troops from Madrid having joined Clinton and the 6th Division at Arevalo, Wellington had there some 28,000 men collected for the discomfiture of Clausel, a force not much more numerous than that which the French general had concentrated behind the Douro, for Foy was now back at Tordesillas, and the whole Army of Portugal was in hand, save certain depleted and disorganized regiments which had been left behind in the province of Burgos. But having the advantage of confidence, and knowing that his enemy must still be suffering from the moral effects of Salamanca, the British general pushed on at once, not waiting for the arrival on the scene of the Galicians. On the 4th the army marched to Olmedo, on the 5th to Valdestillas, on the 6th to Boecillo, from whence it advanced to the Douro and crossed it by various fords between Tudela and Puente de Duero—the main body taking that of Herrera. The French made no attempt to defend the line of the river, but—rather to Wellington’s surprise—were found drawn up as if for battle a few miles beyond it, their right wing holding the city of Valladolid, whose outskirts had been put in a state of defence, their left extending to the ground about the village of La Cisterniga. No attempt was made to dislodge them with the first divisions that came up: Wellington preferred to wait for his artillery and his reserves; the process of filing across the fords had been tedious, and occupied the whole afternoon.

On this Clausel had calculated: he was only showing a front in order to give his train time to move to the rear, and to allow his right wing (Foy) at Simancas and Tordesillas to get away. A prompt evacuation of Valladolid would have exposed it to be cut off. On the following morning the French had disappeared from La Cisterniga, but Valladolid was discovered to be still held by an infantry rearguard. This, when pushed, retired and blew up the bridge over the Pisuerga on the opposite side of the city, before the British cavalry could seize it. The critics thought that Clausel might have been hustled with advantage, both on the 6th and on the morning of the 7th, and that Foy might have been cut off from the main body by rapid action on the first day[19]. Wellington’s cautious movements may probably be explained by the fact that an attack on Clausel on the 6th would have involved fighting among the suburbs and houses of Valladolid, which would have been costly, and he had no wish to lose men at a moment when the battalion-strengths were very low all through the army. Moreover, the capture of Valladolid would not have intercepted the retreat of the French at Simancas, but only have forced them to retire by parallel roads northward. At the same time it must be owned that any loss of life involved in giving Clausel a thorough beating on this day would have been justified later on. He had only some 15,000 men in line, not having his right-wing troops with him that day. If the Army of Portugal had been once more attacked and scattered, it would not have been able to interfere in the siege of Burgos, where Wellington was, during the next few weeks, to lose as many men as a general action would have cost. But this no prophet could have foreseen on September 6th.

It cannot be said that Wellington’s pursuit of Clausel was pressed with any earnestness. On the 8th his advanced cavalry were no farther forward than Cabezon, seven miles in front of Valladolid, and it was not till the 9th that the 6th Division, leading the infantry, passed that same point. Wellington himself, with the main body of his infantry, remained at Valladolid till the 10th. His dispatches give no further explanation for this delay than that the troops which had come from Madrid were fatigued, and sickly, from long travel in the hot weather, and that he wished to have assurance of the near approach of the Army of Galicia, which was unaccountably slow in moving forward from Astorga[20]. Meanwhile he took the opportunity of his stay in Valladolid to command, and be present at, a solemn proclamation of the March Constitution. This was a prudent act; for though the ceremony provoked no enthusiasm whatever in the city[21], where there were few Liberals in existence, it was a useful demonstration against calumnies current in Cadiz, to the effect that he so much disliked the Constitution that he was conspiring with the serviles, and especially with Castaños, to ignore or even to overthrow it.

While Wellington halted at Valladolid, Clausel had established himself at Dueñas, fifteen miles up the Pisuerga. He retired from thence, however, on the 10th, when the 6th Division and Anson’s cavalry pressed in his advanced posts, and Wellington’s head-quarters were at Dueñas next day. From thence reconnaissances were sent out both on the Burgos and the Palencia roads. The latter city was found unoccupied and—what was more surprising—not in the least damaged by the retreating enemy. The whole of Clausel’s army had marched on the Burgos road, and its rearguard was discovered in front of Torquemada that evening. The British army followed, leaving Palencia on its left, and head-quarters were at Magaz on the 12th. Anson’s light dragoons had the interesting spectacle that afternoon of watching the whole French army defile across the bridge of the Pisuerga at Torquemada, under cover of a brigade of chasseurs drawn up on the near side. Critics thought that the covering force might have been driven in, and jammed against the narrow roadway over the bridge[22]. But the British brigadier waited for artillery to come up, and before it arrived the enemy had hastily decamped. He was pursued as far as Quintana, where there was a trifling cavalry skirmish at nightfall.

At Magaz, on the night of the 12th, Wellington got the tiresome news that Santocildes and Castaños, with the main body of the Army of Galicia, had passed his flank that day, going southward, and had continued their way towards Valladolid, instead of falling in on the British line of march. Their junction was thus deferred for several days. Wellington wrote in anger, ‘Santocildes has been six days marching: he was yesterday within three leagues of us, and knew it that night; but he has this morning moved on to Valladolid, eight leagues from us, and unless I halt two days for him he will not join us for four or five days more[23].’ As a matter of fact the Galicians did not come up till the 16th, while if Santocildes had used a little common sense they would have been in line on the 12th September.

The pursuit of Clausel continued to be a very slow and uninteresting business: from the 11th to the 15th the army did not advance more than two leagues a day. On the 13th the British vanguard was at Villajera, while the French main body was at Pampliega: on the 14th Anson’s cavalry was at Villadrigo, on the 15th at Villapequeña, on the 16th near Celada, where Clausel was seen in position. On this day the Galicians at last came up—three weak divisions under Cabrera, Losada, and Barcena, with something over 11,000 infantry, but only one field-battery and 350 horse. The men looked fatigued with much marching and very ragged: Wellington had hoped for 16,000 men, and considering that the total force of the Galician army was supposed to be over 30,000 men, it seems that more might have been up, even allowing for sick, recruits, and the large garrisons of Ferrol and Corunna.

The 16th September was the only day on which Clausel showed any signs of making a stand: in the afternoon he was found in position, a league beyond Celada on favourable ground. Wellington arranged to turn his left flank next morning, with the 6th Division and Pack’s brigade; but at dawn he went off in haste, and did not stop till he reached Villa Buniel, near Burgos. Here, late in the afternoon, Wellington again outflanked him with the 6th Division, and he retreated quite close to the city. On the 18th he evacuated it, after throwing a garrison into the Castle, and went back several leagues on the high-road toward the Ebro. The Allies entered Burgos, and pushed their cavalry beyond it without meeting opposition. On the 19th the Castle was invested by the 1st Division and Pack’s brigade, while the rest of Wellington’s army took position across the road by which the French had retreated. A cavalry reconnaissance showed that Clausel had gone back many miles: the last outposts of his rear were at Quintanavides, beyond the watershed which separates the basin of the Douro from that of the Ebro. His head-quarters were now at Briviesca, and it appeared that, if once more pushed, he was prepared to retreat ad infinitum. Wellington, however, pressed him no farther: throwing forward three of his own divisions and the Galicians to Monasterio and other villages to the east of Burgos, where a good covering position was found, he proceeded to turn his attention to the Castle.

This short series of operations between the 10th and the 19th of September 1812 has in it much that perplexes the critical historian. It is not Clausel’s policy that is interesting—he simply retired day after day, whenever the enemy’s pursuing infantry came within ten miles of him. Sometimes he gave way before the mere cavalry of Wellington’s advanced guard. There was nothing in his conduct to remind the observer of Ney’s skilful retreat from Pombal to Ponte Murcella in 1811, when a rearguard action was fought nearly every afternoon. Clausel was determined not to allow himself to be caught, and would not hold on, even in tempting positions of considerable strength. As he wrote to Clarke before the retreat had begun, ‘Si l’ennemi revient avec toute son armée vers moi, je me tiendrai en position, quoique toujours à peu de distance de lui, afin de n’avoir aucun échec à éprouver.’ He suffered no check because he always made off before he was in the slightest danger of being brought to action. It is difficult to understand Napier’s enthusiasm for what he calls ‘beautiful movements’[24]; to abscond on the first approach of the enemy’s infantry may be a safe and sound policy, but it can hardly be called brilliant or artistic. It is true that there would have been worse alternatives to take—Clausel might have retreated to the Ebro without stopping, or he might have offered battle at the first chance; but the avoidance of such errors does not in itself constitute a very high claim to praise. An examination of the details of the march of the British army during this ten days plainly fails to corroborate Napier’s statement that the French general ‘offered battle every day’ and ‘baffled his great adversary.’ His halt for a few hours at Celada on September 16th was the only one during which he allowed the allied main body to get into touch with him late in the day; and he absconded before Wellington’s first manœuvre to outflank him[25].

The thing that is truly astonishing in this ten days is the extraordinary torpidity of Wellington’s pursuit. He started by waiting three days at Valladolid after expelling the French; and he continued, when once he had put his head-quarters in motion, by making a series of easy marches of six to ten miles a day, never showing the least wish to hustle his adversary or to bring him to action[26]. Now to manœuvre the French army to beyond Burgos, or even to the Ebro, was not the desired end—it was necessary to put Clausel out of action, if (as Wellington kept repeating in all his letters) the main allied army was to return to Madrid within a few weeks, to watch for Soult’s offensive. To escort the Army of Portugal with ceremonious politeness to Briviesca, without the loss to pursuers or pursued of fifty men, was clearly not sufficient. Clausel’s troops, being not harassed in the least, but allowed a comfortable retreat, remained an ‘army in being’: though moved back eighty miles on the map, they were not disposed of, and could obviously come forward again the moment that Wellington left the north with the main body of his troops. Nothing, therefore, was gained by the whole manœuvre, save that Clausel was six marches farther from the Douro than he had been on September 1st. To keep him in his new position Wellington must have left an adequate containing army: it does not seem that he could have provided one from the 28,000 Anglo-Portuguese and 11,000 Galicians who were at his disposition, and yet have had any appreciable force to take back to Madrid. Clausel had conducted his raid on Valladolid with something under 25,000 men; but this did not represent the whole strength of the Army of Portugal: after deducting the sick and the garrisons there were some 39,000 men left—of these some were disarmed stragglers who had only just come back to their colours, others belonged to shattered corps which were only just reorganizing themselves in their new cadres. But in a few weeks Clausel would have at least 35,000 men under arms of his own troops, without counting anything that the Army of the North might possibly lend him. To contain him Wellington would have to leave, in addition to the 11,000 Galicians, at least three British divisions and the corresponding cavalry—say 16,000 or 18,000 men. He could only bring back some 10,000 bayonets to join Hill near Madrid. This would not enable him to face Soult.

But if Clausel had been dealt with in a more drastic style, if he had been hunted and harassed, it is clear that he might have been disabled for a long time from taking the offensive. His army was still in a doubtful condition as regards morale, and there can be little reason to doubt, that if hard pressed, it would have sunk again into the despondency and disorder which had prevailed at the beginning of the month of August. The process of driving him back with a firm hand might, no doubt, have been more costly than the slow tactics actually adopted; but undoubtedly such a policy would have paid in the end.

There is no explanation to be got out of Wellington’s rather numerous letters written between the 10th and the 21st. In one of them he actually observes that ‘we have been pushing them, but not very vigorously, till the 16th[27],’ without saying why the pressure was not applied more vigorously. From others it might perhaps be deduced that Wellington was awaiting the arrival of the Galician army, because when it came up he would have a very large instead of a small superiority of force over the French. But this does not fully explain his slowness in pursuing an enemy who was evidently on the run, and determined not to fight. We may, as has been already mentioned, speak of his wish to avoid loss of life (not much practised during the Burgos operations a few days later on!) and of the difficulty of providing for supplies in a countryside unvisited before by the British army, and very distant from its base-magazines. But when all has been said, no adequate explanation for his policy has been provided. It remains inexplicable, and its results were unhappy.

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER II

THE SIEGE OF BURGOS.
SEPTEMBER 19th-OCTOBER 20th, 1812

The Castle of Burgos lies on an isolated hill which rises straight out of the streets of the north-western corner of that ancient city, and overtops them by 200 feet or rather more. Ere ever there were kings in Castile, it had been the residence of Fernan Gonzalez, and the early counts who recovered the land from the Moors. Rebuilt a dozen times in the Middle Ages, and long a favourite palace of the Castilian kings, it had been ruined by a great fire in 1736, and since then had not been inhabited. There only remained an empty shell, of which the most important part was the great Donjon which had defied the flames. The summit of the hill is only 250 yards long: the eastern section of it was occupied by the Donjon, the western by a large church, Santa Maria la Blanca: between them were more or less ruined buildings, which had suffered from the conflagration. Passing by Burgos in 1808, after the battle of Gamonal, Napoleon had noted the commanding situation of the hill, and had determined to make it one of the fortified bases upon which the French domination in northern Spain was to be founded. He had caused a plan to be drawn up for the conversion of the ruined mediaeval stronghold into a modern citadel, which should overawe the city below, and serve as a half-way house, an arsenal, and a dépôt for French troops moving between Bayonne and Madrid. Considered as a fortress it had one prominent defect: while its eastern, southern, and western sides look down into the low ground around the Arlanzon river, there lies on its northern side, only 300 yards away, a flat-topped plateau, called the hill of San Miguel, which rises to within a few feet of the same height as the Donjon, and overlooks all the lower slopes of the Castle mount. As this rising ground—now occupied by the city reservoir of Burgos—commanded so much of the defences, Napoleon held that it must be occupied, and a fort upon it formed part of his original plan. But the Emperor passed on; the tide of war swept far south of Madrid; and the full scheme for the fortification of Burgos was never carried out; money—the essential thing when building is in hand—was never forthcoming in sufficient quantities, and the actual state of the place in 1812 was very different from what it would have been if Napoleon’s orders had been carried out in detail. Enough was done to make the Castle impregnable against guerrillero bands—the only enemies who ever came near it between 1809 and 1812—but it could not be described as a complete or satisfactory piece of military engineering. Against a besieger unprovided with sufficient artillery it was formidable enough: round two-thirds of its circuit it had a complete double enceinte, enclosing the Donjon and the church on the summit which formed its nucleus. On the western side, for about one-third of its circumference, it had an outer or third line of defence, to take in the lowest slopes of the hill on which it lies. For here the ground descended gradually, while to the east it shelved very steeply down to the town, and an external defence was unnecessary and indeed impossible.

The outer line all round (i.e. the third line on the west, the second line on the rest of the circumference) had as its base the old walls of the external enclosure of the mediaeval Castle, modernized by shot-proof parapets and with tambours and palisades added at the angles to give flank fire. It had a ditch 30 feet wide, and a counterscarp in masonry, while the inner enceintes were only strong earthworks, like good field entrenchments; they were, however, both furnished with palisades in front and were also ‘fraised’ above. The Donjon, which had been strengthened and built up, contained the powder magazine in its lower story. On its platform, which was most solid, was established a battery for eight heavy guns (Batterie Napoléon), which from its lofty position commanded all the surrounding ground, including the top of the hill of San Miguel. The magazine of provisions, which was copiously supplied, was in the church of Santa Maria la Blanca. Food never failed—but water was a more serious problem; there was only one well, and the garrison had to be put on an allowance for drinking from the commencement of the siege. The hornwork of San Miguel, which covered the important plateau to the north, had never been properly finished. It was very large; its front was composed of earthwork 25 feet high, covered by a counterscarp of 10 feet deep. Here the work was formidable, the scarp being steep and slippery; but the flanks were not so strong, and the rear or gorge was only closed by a row of palisades, erected within the last two days. The only outer defences consisted of three light flèches, or redans, lying some 60 yards out in front of the hornwork, at projecting points of the plateau, which commanded the lower slopes. The artillery in San Miguel consisted of seven field-pieces, 4- and 6-pounders: there were no heavy guns in it.

The garrison of Burgos belonged to the Army of the North, not to that of Portugal. Caffarelli himself paid a hasty visit to the place just before the siege began, and threw in some picked troops—two battalions of the 34th[28], one of the 130th; making 1,600 infantry. There were also a company of artillery, another of pioneers, and detachments which brought up the whole to exactly 2,000 men—a very sufficient number for a place of such small size. There were nine heavy guns (16- and 12-pounders), of which eight were placed in the Napoleon battery, eleven field-pieces (seven of them in San Miguel), and six mortars or howitzers. This was none too great a provision, and would have been inadequate against a besieger provided with a proper battering-train: Wellington—as we shall see—was not so provided. The governor was a General of Brigade named Dubreton, one of the most resourceful and enterprising officers whom the British army ever encountered. He earned at Burgos a reputation even more brilliant than that which Phillipon acquired at Badajoz.

The weak points of the fortress were firstly the unfinished condition of the San Miguel hornwork, which Dubreton had to maintain as long as he could, in order that the British might not use the hill on which it stood as vantage ground for battering the Castle; secondly, the lack of cover within the works. The Donjon and the church of Santa Maria could not house a tithe of the garrison; the rest had to bivouac in the open, a trying experience in the rain, which fell copiously on many days of the siege. If the besiegers had possessed a provision of mortars, to keep up a regular bombardment of the interior of the Castle, it would not long have been tenable, owing to the losses that must have been suffered. Thirdly must be mentioned the bad construction of many of the works—part of them were mediaeval structures, not originally intended to resist cannon, and hastily adapted to modern necessities: some of them were not furnished with parapets or embrasures—which had to be extemporized with sandbags. Lastly, it must be remembered that the conical shape of the hill exposed the inner no less than the outer works to battering: the lower enceintes only partly covered the inner ones, whose higher sections stood up visible above them. The Donjon and Santa Maria were exposed from the first to such fire as the enemy could turn against them, no less than the walls of the outer circumference. If Wellington had owned the siege-train that he brought against Badajoz, the place must have succumbed in ten days. But the commander was able and determined, the troops willing, the supply of food and of artillery munitions ample—Burgos had always been an important dépôt. Dubreton’s orders were to keep his enemy detained as long as possible—and he succeeded, even beyond all reasonable expectations.

Wellington had always been aware that Burgos was fortified, but during his advance he had spoken freely of his intention to capture it. On September 3rd he had written, ‘I have some heavy guns with me, and have an idea of forcing the siege of Burgos—but that still depends on circumstances[29].’ Four days later he wrote at Valladolid, ‘I am preparing to drive away the detachments of the Army of Portugal from the Douro, and I propose, if I have time, to take Burgos[30].’ Yet at the same moment he kept impressing on his correspondents that his march to the North was a temporary expedient, a mere parergon; his real business would be with Soult, and he must soon be back at Madrid with his main body. It is this that makes so inexplicable his lingering for a month before Dubreton’s castle, when he had once discovered that it would not fall, as he had hoped, in a few days. After his first failure before the place, he acknowledged it might possibly foil him altogether. Almost at the start he ventured the opinion that ‘As far as I can judge, I am apprehensive that the means I have are not sufficient to enable me to take the Castle.’ Yet he thought it worth while to try irregular methods: ‘the enemy are ill-provided with water; their magazines of provisions are in a place exposed to be set on fire. I think it possible, therefore, that I have it in my power to force them to surrender, although I may not be able to lay the place open to assault[31].’

The cardinal weakness of Wellington’s position was exactly the same as at the Salamanca forts, three months back. He had no sufficient battering-train for a regular siege: after the Salamanca experience it is surprising that he allowed himself to be found for a second time in this deficiency. There were dozens of heavy guns in the arsenal at Madrid, dozens more (Marmont’s old siege-train) at Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. But Madrid was 130 miles away, Rodrigo 180. With the army there was only Alexander Dickson’s composite Anglo-Portuguese artillery reserve, commanded by Major Ariaga, and consisting of three iron 18-pounders, and five 24-pounder howitzers, served by 150 gunners—90 British, 60 Portuguese. The former were good battering-guns; the howitzers, however, were not—they were merely short guns of position, very useless for a siege, and very inaccurate in their fire. They threw a heavy ball, but with weak power—the charge was only two pounds of powder: the shot when fired at a stout wall, from any distance, had such weak impact that it regularly bounded off without making any impression on the masonry. The only real use of these guns was for throwing case at short distances. ‘In estimating the efficient ordnance used at the Spanish sieges,’ says the official historian of the Burgos failure, ‘these howitzers ought in fairness to be excluded from calculation, as they did little more than waste invaluable ammunition[32].’ This was as well known to Wellington as to his subordinates, and it is inexplicable that he did not in place of them bring up from Madrid real battering-guns: with ten more 18-pounders he would undoubtedly have taken the Castle of Burgos. But heavy guns require many draught cattle, and are hard to drag over bad roads: the absolute minimum had been taken with the army, as in June. And it was impossible to bring up more siege-guns in a hurry, as was done at the siege of the Salamanca forts, for the nearest available pieces were not a mere sixty miles away, as on the former occasion, but double and triple that distance. Yet if, on the first day of doubt before Burgos, Wellington had sent urgent orders for the dispatch of more 18-pounders from Madrid, they would have been up in time; though no doubt there would have been terrible difficulties in providing for their transport. It was only when it had grown too late that more artillery was at last requisitioned—and had to be turned back not long after it had started.

Other defects there were in the besieging army, especially the same want of trained sappers and miners that had been seen at Badajoz, and of engineer officers[33]. Of this more hereafter:—the first and foremost difficulty, without which the rest would have been comparatively unimportant, was the lack of heavy artillery.

But to proceed to the chronicle of the siege. On the evening on which the army arrived before Burgos the 6th Division took post on the south bank of the Arlanzon: the 1st Division and Pack’s Portuguese brigade swept round the city and formed an investing line about the Castle. It was drawn as close as possible, especially on the side of the hornwork of San Miguel, where the light companies of the first Division pushed up the hill, taking shelter in dead ground where they could, and dislodged the French outposts from the three flèches which lay upon its sky-line. Wellington, after consulting his chief engineer and artillery officers, determined that his first move must be to capture the hornwork, in order to use its vantage-ground for battering the Castle. The same night (September 19-20) an assault, without any preparation of artillery fire, was made upon it. The main body of the assailing force was composed of Pack’s Portuguese, who were assisted by the whole of the 1/42nd and by the flank-companies[34] of Stirling’s brigade of the 1st Division, to which the Black Watch belonged. The arrangement was that while a strong firing party (300 men) of the 1/42nd were to advance to the neighbourhood of the horn work, ‘as near to the salient angle as possible,’ and to endeavour to keep down the fire of the garrison, two columns each composed of Portuguese, but with ladder parties and forlorn hopes from the Highland battalion, should charge at the two demi-bastions to right and left of the salient, and escalade them. Meanwhile the flank-companies of Stirling’s brigade (1/42nd, 1/24th, 1/79th) were to make a false attack upon the rear, or gorge, of the hornwork, which might be turned into a real one if it should be found weakly held.

The storm succeeded, but with vast and unnecessary loss of life, and not in the way which Wellington had intended. It was bright moonlight, and the firing party, when coming up over the crest, were at once detected by the French, who opened a very heavy fire upon them. The Highlanders commenced to reply while still 150 yards away, and then advanced firing till they came close up to the work, where they remained for a quarter of an hour, entirely exposed and suffering terribly. Having lost half their numbers they finally dispersed, but not till after the main attack had failed. On both their flanks the assaulting columns were repulsed, though the advanced parties duly laid their ladders: they were found somewhat short, and after wavering for some minutes Pack’s men retired, suffering heavily. The whole affair would have been a failure, but for the assault on the gorge. Here the three light companies—140 men—were led by Somers Cocks, formerly one of Wellington’s most distinguished intelligence officers, the hero of many a risky ride, but recently promoted to a majority in the 1/79th. He made no demonstration, but a fierce attack from the first. He ran up the back slope of the hill of St. Miguel, under a destructive fire from the Castle, which detected his little column at once, and shelled it from the rear all the time that it was at work. The frontal assault, however, was engrossing the attention of the garrison of the hornwork, and only a weak guard had been left at the gorge. The light companies broke through the 7-foot palisades, partly by using axes, partly by main force and climbing. Somers Cocks then divided his men into two bodies, leaving the smaller to block the postern in the gorge, while with the larger he got upon the parapet and advanced firing towards the right demi-bastion. Suddenly attacked in the rear, just as they found themselves victorious in front, the French garrison—a battalion of the 34th, 500 strong—made no attempt to drive out the light companies, but ran in a mass towards the postern, trampled down the guard left there, and escaped to the Castle across the intervening ravine. They lost 198 men, including 60 prisoners, and left behind their seven field-pieces[35]. The assailants suffered far more—they had 421 killed and wounded, of whom no less than 204 were in the 1/42nd, which had suffered terribly in the main assault. The Portuguese lost 113 only, never having pushed their attack home. This murderous business was the first serious fighting in which the Black Watch were involved since their return to Spain in April 1812; at Salamanca they had been little engaged, and were the strongest British battalion in the field—over 1,000 bayonets. Wellington attributed their heavy casualties to their inexperience—they exposed themselves over-much. ‘If I had had some of the troops who have stormed so often before [3rd and Light Divisions], I should not have lost a fourth of the number[36].’

The moment that the hornwork had fallen into the power of the British, the heavy guns of the Napoleon battery opened such an appalling fire upon it, that the troops had to be withdrawn, save 300 men, who with some difficulty formed a lodgement in its interior, and a communication from its left front to the ‘dead ground’ on the north-west side of the hill, by which reliefs could enter under cover.

The whole of the next day (September 20) the garrison kept up such a searching fire upon the work that little could be done there, but on the following night the first battery of the besiegers [battery 1 on the map] was begun on a spot on the south-western side of the hill, a little way from the rear face of the hornwork, which was sheltered by an inequality of the ground from the guns of the Napoleon battery. It was armed on the night of the 23rd with two of the 18-pounders and three of the howitzers of the siege-train, with which it was intended to batter the Castle in due time. They were not used however at present, as Wellington, encouraged by his success at San Miguel, had determined to try as a preliminary move a second escalade, without help of artillery, on the outer enceinte of the Castle. This was to prove the first, and not the least disheartening, of the checks that he was to meet before Burgos.

The point of attack selected was on the north-western side of the lower wall, at a place where it was some 23 feet high. The choice was determined by the existence of a hollow road coming out of the suburb of San Pedro, from which access in perfectly dead ground, unsearched by any of the French guns, could be got, to a point within 60 yards of the ditch. The assault was to be made by 400 volunteers from the three brigades of the 1st Division, and was to be supported and flanked by a separate attack on another point on the south side of the outer enceinte, to be delivered by a detachment of the caçadores of the 6th Division. The force used was certainly too small for the purpose required, and it did not even get a chance of success. The Portuguese, when issuing from the ruined houses of the town, were detected at once, and being heavily fired on, retired without even approaching their goal. At the main attack the ladder party and forlorn hope reached the ditch in their first rush, sprang in and planted four ladders against the wall. The enemy had been taken somewhat by surprise, but recovered himself before the supports got to the front, which they did in a straggling fashion. A heavy musketry fire was opened on the men in the ditch, and live shells were rolled by hand upon them. Several attempts were made to mount the ladders, but all who neared their top rungs were shot or bayoneted, and after the officer in charge of the assault (Major Laurie, 1/79th) had been killed, the stormers ran back to their cover in the hollow road. They had lost 158 officers and men in all—76 from the Guards’ brigade, 44 from the German brigade, 9 from the Line brigade of the 1st Division, while the ineffective Portuguese diversion had cost only 29 casualties. The French had 9 killed and 13 wounded.

This was a deplorable business from every point of view. An escalade directed against an intact line of defence, held by a strong garrison, whose morale had not been shaken by any previous artillery preparation, was unjustifiable. There was not, as at Almaraz, any element of surprise involved; nor, as at the taking of the Castle of Badajoz, were a great number of stormers employed. Four hundred men with five ladders could not hope to force a well-built wall and ditch, defended by an enemy as numerous as themselves. The men murmured that they had been sent on an impossible task; and the heavy loss, added to that on San Miguel three days before, was discouraging. Many angry comments were made on the behaviour of the Portuguese on both occasions[37].

Irregular methods having failed, it remained to see what could be done by more formal procedure, by battering and sapping up towards the enemy’s defences on the west side of the Castle, the only one accessible for approach by parallels and trenches. The plan adopted was to work up from the hollow road (from which the stormers had started on the last escalade) in front of the suburb of San Pedro. The hollow road was utilized as a first parallel; from it a flying sap (b on the map) was pushed out uphill towards the outer enceinte in a diagonal line. The object was to arrive at it and to mine it (at the place marked I on the map). When the working party had got well forward, a point was chosen in the sap at a distance of 60 feet from the wall, and the mine was started from thence. All this was done under very heavy fire from the Castle, but it was partly kept down by placing marksmen all along the parallel, who picked off many of the French gunners, and of the infantry who lined the parapet of the outer enceinte. Sometimes the return fire of the place was nearly silenced, but many of the British marksmen fell. The work in the flying sap was made very costly by the fact that the trench, being on very steep ground, had to be made abnormally deep [September 23-6].

Meanwhile, on the hill of San Miguel, a second battery (No. 2 on the map) was dug out behind the gorge of the dismantled hornwork, and trenches for musketry (a.a on the map) were constructed on the slope of the hill, so as to bring fire to bear on the flank and rear of the lower defences of the Castle. The French heavy guns of the Napoleon battery devoted themselves to incommoding this work; their fire was accurate, many casualties took place, and occasionally all advance had to cease. A deep trench of communication between the batteries on San Miguel and the attack in front of San Pedro was also started, in order to link up the two approaches by a short line: the ground was all commanded by the Castle, and the digging went slowly because of the intense fire directed on it.

Meanwhile battery No. 1 on San Miguel at last came into operation, firing with five howitzers (the 18-pounders originally placed there had been withdrawn) against the palisades and flank of the north-western angle of the outer enceinte of the Castle. These inefficient guns had no good effect; it was found that they shot so inaccurately and so weakly that little harm was done. After firing 141 rounds they stopped, it being evident that the damage done was wholly incommensurate with the powder and shot expended [September 25]. This first interference of the British artillery in the contest was not very cheering either to the troops, or to the engineers engaged in planning the attack on the Castle. The guns in battery 1 kept silence for the next five days, while battery 2, where the 18-pounders had now been placed, had never yet fired a single shot. Wellington was now staking his luck on the mine, which was being run forward from the head of the flying sap.

This work, having to be cut very deep, as it was to go right under the ditch, and being in the hands of untrained volunteers from the infantry, who had no proper cutting tools, advanced very slowly. The soil, fortunately, was favourable, being a stiff argillaceous clay which showed no disposition to crumble up: the gallery was cut as if in stone, with even and perpendicular sides and floor, and no props or timbering were found necessary. The main hindrance to rapid work, over and above the unskilfulness of the miners, was the foul air which accumulated at the farther end of the excavation: many times it was necessary to withdraw the men for some hours to allow it to clear away. At noon on September 29 the miners declared that they had reached the foundations of the wall, and this seemed correct enough, for they had come to a course of large rough blocks of stone, extending laterally for as far as could be probed. It is probable, however, that the masonry was really the remains of some old advanced turret or outwork, projecting in front of the modern enceinte. For when the end of the mine was packed with twelve barrels, containing 90 lb. of powder each, well tamped, and fired at midnight, the explosion brought down many stones from the front of the wall, but did not affect the earth of the rampart, which remained standing perpendicular behind it. There seemed, however, to be places, at the points where the broken facing joined the intact part of the wall, where men might scramble up. Accordingly the storming-column of 300 volunteers who had been waiting for the explosion, was let loose, under cover of a strong musketry fire from the trenches. A sergeant and four men went straight for one of the accessible points, mounted, and were cast down again, three of them wounded. But the main body of the forlorn hope and its officer went a little farther along the wall, reached a section that was wholly impracticable for climbing, and ran back to the trenches to report that the defences were uninjured. The supports followed their example. The loss, therefore, was small—only 29 killed and wounded—but the moral effect of the repulse was very bad. The men, for the most part, made up their minds that they had been sent to a hopeless and impossible task by the errors of an incompetent staff. The engineers declared that the stormers had not done their best, or made any serious attempt to approach the wall.

Wellington must by now have been growing much disquieted about the event of the siege. He had spent ten days before Burgos, but since the capture of the hornwork on the first night had accomplished absolutely nothing. There were rumours that the Army of Portugal was being heavily reinforced, and these were perfectly true. By the coming up from the rear of drafts, convalescents, and stragglers, it had received some 7,000 men of reinforcements, and by October 1 had 38,000 men with the colours—more than Wellington counted, even including the Galicians. Souham was now in command: he had been on leave in France at the time of the battle of Salamanca, but returned in the last days of September and superseded Clausel. There had been in August some intention of sending Masséna back to the Peninsula, to replace the disabled Marmont. Clarke, the Minister of War, dispatched him to Bayonne on his own responsibility, there being no time to consult Napoleon, who was now nearing Moscow[38]. When the Emperor had the question put to him he nominated Reille[39], but by the time that his order got to Spain Souham was in full charge of the army, and was not displaced till the campaign was over. Masséna never crossed the frontier to relieve him, reporting himself indisposed, and unable to face the toils of a campaign: his nomination by Clarke was never confirmed, and he presently returned to Paris. Hearing of the gathering strength of the Army of Portugal, Wellington remarked that he was lucky—the French were giving him more time than he had any right to expect[40] to deal with Burgos. Meanwhile he showed no intention, as yet, either of abandoning the siege or of taking back to Madrid the main part of his army, as he had repeatedly promised to do in his letters of early September. Soult and the King were not yet showing in any dangerous combination on the Valencian side, and till they moved Wellington made up his mind to persevere in his unlucky siege. It is clear that he hated to admit a failure, so long as any chance remained, and that he was set on showing that he could ‘make bricks without straw.’

The mine explosion of the 29th-30th had been a disheartening affair; but Wellington had now resolved to repeat this form of attack, aiding it however this time by the fire of his insignificant siege-train. A second mine had already been begun, against a point of the outer enceinte (II in the map) somewhat to the south of that originally attacked by the first. This was pushed with energy between September 30 and October 4; but at the same time an endeavour was made to utilize, for what it was worth, the direct fire of artillery, at the shortest possible distance from the walls. On the night of September 30-October 1 a battery for three guns (No. 3 in the map) was commenced, slightly in advance of the 1st Parallel in the Hollow Road, no more than some sixty-five yards from the French defences. The garrison, not having been troubled with any battery-building on this front before, suspected nothing, and at dawn on October 1 the earthwork was completed, and the carpenters were beginning to lay the wooden platforms on which the 18-pounders were to stand. With the coming of the light the enemy discovered the new and threatening work, and began to concentrate upon it every gun that he could bring to bear. The platforms however were completed, and at 9 o’clock the artillery hauled the three heavy guns, which were Wellington’s sole effective battering-tools, into their places. The sight of them provoked the French to redoubled activity: shot shell and musketry fire were directed upon the front of the battery from many quarters, its parapet began to fly to pieces, and the loss among the artillerymen was heavy. Before the embrasures had been opened, or a single shot had been fired from the three guns, the enemy’s fire had become so rapid and accurate that the work had become ruined and untenable. Two of the 18-pounders had been cast down from their carriages and put out of action—one had a trunnion knocked off, the other (which had been hit eleven times) was split in the muzzle. Only one of the three remained in working order. Without having fired even once, two of the three big guns were disabled! It was a bad look out for the future [October 1].

Wellington, however, ordered a second battery to be constructed, somewhat to the left rear of the first (No. 4 in the map), and behind instead of before the parallel. The position chosen was one on to which many of the French guns could not be trained, while it was equally good with battery No. 3 for playing on the outer enceinte. After midnight [October 1-2] the two disabled and one intact 18-pounders were dragged out of the abandoned battery and taken to the rear. Next morning, however, a new disappointment was in store for Wellington: the French detected battery No. 4, and opened upon it, with all guns that could reach it, such an accurate and effective fire that the parapet, though revetted with wool-packs, soon began to crumble, and the workmen had to withdraw. ‘It became evident that under such a plunging fire no guns could ever be served there[41].’ All hopes of breaching the lower enceinte from any point on its immediate front had to be abandoned—and meanwhile the heavy artillery had been ruined.

The next order issued was that the solitary intact 18-pounder and the other gun with the split lip—which had been mounted on a new carriage—should be hauled back to the hill of San Miguel and put into their original place, battery No. 1. The night during which they were to be removed was one of torrential rain, and the working parties charged with the duty gradually dropped aside and sought shelter, with the exception of those detailed from the Guards’ brigade and the artillery. At dawn on October 3 the guns had not reached their destination, and had to be shunted beside the salient of the hornwork, to hide them from the enemy during the day. Wellington, justly vexed with the shirking, ordered the defaulters to be put on for extra duty, and the names of their officers to be formally noted. This day was lost for all work except that of the mine, which advanced steadily but slowly, long intervals of rest having to be given in order to allow for the evaporation of foul air in its inner depths (October 3). On the following night, however, the 18-pounders were got into battery No. 1, and about the same time the engineer officers reported that the mine (now eighty-three feet long) had got well under the wall of the outer enceinte. The 4th of October was therefore destined to be an eventful day.

At dawn, battery No. 1 opened on the wall, where it had been damaged by the first mine on September 29th, using the two 18-pounders and three howitzers. The effect was much better than could have been expected: the 18 lb. round-shot (of which about 350 were used) had good penetrating power, and the already shaken wall crumbled rapidly, so that by four in the afternoon there was a practicable breach sixty feet long.

Wellington at once arranged for a third assault on the outer enceinte, telling off for it not details from many regiments, as on the previous occasion, but—what was much better—a single compact battalion, the 2/24th. Only the supports were mixed parties. At 5 p.m. the mine was fired, with excellent effect, throwing down nearly 100 feet of the rampart, and killing many of the French. Before the dust had cleared away, the men of the 2/24th dashed forward toward both breaches, with great spirit, and carried them with ease, and with no excessive loss, driving the French within the second or middle enceinte. The total loss that day was 224, of which the assault cost about 190, the other casualties being in the batteries on San Miguel and in the trenches. But the curious point of the figures is that the 2/24th, forming the actual storming-column, lost only 68 killed and wounded; the supports, and the workmen who were employed to form a lodgement within the conquered space, suffered far more heavily. Dubreton reports the casualties of the garrison at 27 killed and 42 wounded [October 4].

In the night after the storm the British, after entrenching the two breaches, began to make preparations to sap forward to the second enceinte, which being ditchless and not faced with masonry, looked less formidable than that which had already been carried, though it was protected by a solid row of palisades. Meanwhile the artillery officers proposed that battery No. 2 on San Miguel should be turned against a new objective, the point where the walls of the second and the inner lines met, immediately in front of the hornwork, in the re-entering angle marked III in the map. Battery No. 1 was meanwhile to play on the palisades of the second enceinte. This it did with some success. At 5 o’clock in the evening, however, there was an unexpected tumult in the newly-gained ground. Dubreton, misliking the look of the approaches which the assailants were beginning to run out from the breaches, ordered a sortie of 300 men, who dashed out most unexpectedly against the lodgements in front of the northern breach (No. I), and drove away the workmen with heavy loss, seizing most of their tools, overthrowing the gabions, and shovelling earth into the trench. They gave way when the covering party came up, and retired, having done immense mischief and disabled 142 of the besiegers, while their own loss was only 17 killed and 21 wounded. This was an unpleasant surprise, as showing the high spirit and resolution of the garrison; but the damage was not so great but that one good night’s work sufficed to repair it: the loss of tools was the most serious matter—the French had carried off 200 picks and shovels which could not be replaced, the stock (as usual in Peninsular sieges) being very low[42].

On the 6th and 7th the besiegers again began to sap forward towards the second enceinte, with the object of establishing a second parallel on its glacis, but with no great success. There was little or no effective fire from the batteries on San Miguel to keep down the artillery of the besieged, and the work at the sap-head was so deadly that the engineers could hardly expect the men to do much: however, the trench was driven forward to within thirty yards of the palisades. So useless were the howitzers in No. 2 battery that two of them were removed, and replaced by two French field-pieces from those captured in the hornwork on September 20; these, despite of their small calibre, worked decidedly better. The heavy guns in the Napoleon Battery devoted themselves to keeping down the fire of the two surviving 18-pounders in battery No. 2, and on the 7th knocked one from its carriage and broke off one of its trunnions. This left only one heavy piece in working order! But the artisans of the artillery park, doing their best, rigged up both the gun injured on this day and that disabled on October 1 upon block carriages, with a sort of cradle arrangement to hold them up on the side where a trunnion was gone; and it was found that they could be fired, if a very reduced charge was used. When anything like the full amount of powder was employed, they jumped off their carriages, as was natural, considering that they were only properly attached to them on one side. Of course, their battering power was hopelessly reduced by the small charge. The artillery diarists of the siege call them ‘the two lame guns’ during the last fortnight of their employment.

On October 8 Dubreton, growing once more anxious at the sight of the advance of the trenches toward the second enceinte, ordered another sally, which was executed by 400 men three hours after midnight. It was almost as successful as that of October 5. The working party of Pack’s Portuguese and the covering party from the K.G.L. brigade of the 1st Division were taken quite unawares, and driven out of the advanced works with very heavy loss. The trench was completely levelled, and many tools carried away, before the supports in reserve, under Somers Cocks of the 1/79th—the hero of the assault on the Hornwork—came up and drove the French back to their palisades. Cocks himself was killed—he was an officer of the highest promise who would have gone far if fate had spared him, and was the centre of a large circle of friends who have left enthusiastic appreciations of his greatness of spirit and ready wit[43]. The besiegers lost 184 men in this unhappy business, of whom 133 belonged to the German Legion: 18 of them were prisoners carried off into the Castle[44]. The French casualties were no more than 11 killed and 22 wounded—only a sixth part of those of the Allies.

We have now (October 8) arrived at the most depressing part of the chronicle of a siege which had been from the first a series of disappointments. After the storm of the lower enceinte on October 4, the British made no further progress. The main cause of failure was undoubtedly the weakness of their artillery, which repeatedly opened again from one or other of the two San Miguel batteries, only to be silenced after an hour or two of conflict with the heavy guns on the Donjon. But it was not only the small number of the 18-pounders which was fatal to success—they had run out of powder and shot; a great deal of the firing was done with second-hand missiles—French 16 lb. shot picked out of the works into which they had fallen. The infantry were offered a bonus for each one brought to the artillery park, and 426 were paid for. More than 2,000 French 8 lb. and 4 lb. shot were also bought from the men, though these were less useful, being only available for field-guns, which were of little use for battering. But in order not to discourage the hunting propensities of the soldiers, everything brought in was duly purchased. Shot of sorts never wholly failed, but lack of powder was a far more serious problem—it cannot be picked up second-hand. There would have been an absolute deficiency but for a stock got from a most unexpected quarter. Sir Home Popham and his ships were still on the Cantabrian coast, assisting the operations of Longa and Mendizabal against the Army of the North. The squadron had made its head-quarters at Santander, the chief port recovered from the French, and communications with it had been opened up through the mountains by the way of Reynosa. On September 26 Wellington had written to Popham[45] to inquire whether powder could not be brought from Santander to Burgos, by means of mule trains to be hired at the port. The Commodore, always helpful, fell in with the idea at once, and succeeded in procuring the mules. On October 5th 40 barrels of 90 lb. weight each were brought into camp: considering the distance, the badness of the roads, and the disturbed state of the country, it cannot be denied that Popham did very well in delivering it only ten days after Wellington had written his request, and eight days after he had received it. Other convoys from Santander came later. It is a pity that Wellington did not think of asking for heavy ship guns at the same time. But he had written to the Commodore on October 2 that ‘the means of transport required to move a train either from the coast or from Madrid (where we have plenty) are so extensive that the attempt would be impracticable[46].’

The idea of requisitioning ship guns had been started on the very first day of the siege (September 20) by Sir Howard Douglas, who had lately come from Popham’s side, and maintained that by the use of draught oxen, supplemented by man-handling in difficult places, the thing could be done. But Wellington would hear nothing of it, maintaining that matters would be settled one way or another before the guns could possibly arrive. After the disaster to batteries 3 and 4 on October 2nd he—too late—altered his opinion, and consented that an appeal should be made to Popham. The Commodore rose to the occasion, and started off two 24-pounders on October 9th, which by immense exertions were dragged as far as Reynosa, only 50 miles from Burgos, by October 18th, and had passed the worst part of the road. But at Reynosa they were turned back, for Wellington was just raising the siege and preparing to retire on Valladolid. It is clear that if they had been asked for on September 20 instead of October 3rd—as Howard Douglas had suggested—they and no doubt another heavy gun or so, could have been brought forward in time for the last bombardment, and might have turned it into a success. But guns might also have come from Madrid: Wellington did not think it wholly impossible to move artillery from the Retiro arsenal. For, ere he left it on August 31, he had instructed Carlos de España that the best guns there should be evacuated on to Ciudad Rodrigo, if ever Soult and King Joseph should draw too close in[47]. It is true that he observed that the transport would be a difficult matter, and that much would have to be destroyed, and not carried off. But it is clear that he thought that some cannon could be moved. The strangest part of the story is that his own brother-in-law, Pakenham, wrote to him from Madrid offering to send him twelve heavy guns over the Somosierra, pledging himself to manage the transport by means of oxen got in the Madrid district. His offer was rejected[48]. It seems that the conviction that the Castle of Burgos would be a hard nut to crack came too late to Wellington. And when he did realize its strength, he did not reconsider the matter of siege artillery at once, but proceeded to try the methods of Badajoz and Almaraz, mere force majeure applied by escalade, instead of thinking of bringing up more guns. He judged—wrongly as it chanced—that he would either take the place by sheer assault, or else that the French field army would interfere before October was far advanced. Neither hypothesis turned out correct, and so he had the opportunity of a full month’s siege, and failed in it for want of means that might have been procured, if only he had made another resolve on August 31st, or even on September 20. But even the greatest generals cannot be infallible prophets concerning what they will require a month ahead. The mistake is explicable, and the critic who censures it over-much would be presumptuous and unreasonable[49].

But to return to the chronicle of the unlucky days between October 8th and October 21st. The working forward by sap from the third enceinte towards the second practically stood still, after the second destructive sally of the French against the new approaches. This is largely accounted for by the steepness of the ground, which made it necessary to dig trenches of extraordinary depth, and by the setting in after October 7 of very rainy weather, which made the trenches muddy rivers, and the steep banks of earth and breaches so slippery that it was with great difficulty that parties could find their way about and move to their posts[50]. But the unchecked power of the French artillery fire counted for even more, and not least of the hindrances was the growing sulkiness of the troops. ‘Siege business was new to them, and they wanted confidence; sometimes they would tell you that you were taking them to be butchered. The loss, to be sure, was sometimes heavy, but it was chiefly occasioned by the confused and spiritless way in which the men set about their work, added to the great depth we were obliged to excavate in the trenches, to obtain cover from the commanding fire of the enemy[51].’

Meanwhile the batteries on San Miguel, when they had ammunition, and when they could put in a few hours’ work before being silenced by the fire from the Donjon, continued to pound away at the re-entering angle in the second enceinte (III in the map), and with more effect than might have been expected, for this section of the defences turned out to have been built with bad material, and crumbled even under such feeble shooting as that of Wellington’s ‘lame’ 18-pounders. The French on several days had first to silence the English battery, and then to rebuild the wall with sandbags and earth under a musketry fire from the trenches (a-a in the map) upon San Miguel, from which they could not drive the sharp-shooters of the besiegers. It was thought later—an ex post facto judgement—that the best chance of the Allies would have been to attempt a storm on this breach when first it became more or less practicable. The delay enabled the besieged to execute repairs, to scarp down the broken front, and to cut off the damaged corner by interior retrenchments.

Meanwhile, since doubts were felt as to the main operation of storming the new breach, No. III, subsidiary efforts were made to incommode the enemy in other ways. At intervals on the 9th, 10th, and 11th red-hot shot were fired at the church of Santa Maria la Blanca, where it was known that the French magazine of food lay. The experience of the Salamanca forts had led the artillery officers to think that a general conflagration might be caused. But the plan had no success; the building proved to be very incombustible, and one or two small fires which burst out were easily extinguished. Another device was to mine out from the end houses of the city towards the church of San Roman, an isolated structure lying close under the south-east side of the Castle, which the French held as an outwork. Nothing very decisive could be hoped from its capture, as if taken it could only serve as a base for operations against the two enceintes above it[52]. But, as an eye-witness remarked, at this period of the siege any sort of irregular scheme was tried, on the off chance of success. By October 17 the mine had got well under the little church. A more feasible plan, which might have done some good if it had succeeded, was to run out a small mine or fougasse from the sap-head of the trench in front of breach I to the palisades of the second enceinte. It was a petty business, no more than two barrels of powder being used, and only slightly damaged an angle of the work in front when fired on October 17. An attempt to push on the sap after the explosion was frustrated by the musketry fire of the besieged.

On the 18th the engineers reported that the church of San Roman was completely undermined, and could be blown up at any moment. On the same morning the one good and two lame 18-pounders in battery 2 on San Miguel swept away, not for the first time, the sandbag parapets and chevaux de frise with which the French had strengthened the breach III. They were then turned against the third enceinte, immediately behind that breach, partly demolished its ‘fraises,’ and even did some damage to its rampart. This was as much as could have been expected, as the whole of the enemy’s guns were, as usual, turned upon the battering-guns, and presently obtained the mastery over them, blowing up an expense-magazine in No. 2, and injuring a gun in No. 1. But in the afternoon the defences were in a more battered condition than usual, and Wellington resolved to make his last attempt. Already the French army outside was showing signs of activity; and, as a precaution, some of the investing troops—two brigades of the 6th Division—had been sent forward to join the covering army. If this assault failed, the siege would have to be given up, or at the best turned into a blockade.

The plan of the assault was drawn up by Wellington himself, who dictated the details to his military secretary, Fitzroy Somerset, in three successive sections, after inspecting from the nearest possible point each of the three fronts which he intended to attack[53].

Stated shortly the plan was as follows:

(1) At 4.30 the mine at San Roman was to be fired, and the ruins of the church seized by Brown’s caçadores (9th battalion), supported by a Spanish regiment (1st of Asturias) lent by Castaños. A brigade of the 6th Division was to be ready in the streets behind, to support the assault, if its effect looked promising, i.e. if the results of the explosion should injure the enceinte behind, or should so drive the enemy from it that an escalade became possible.

(2) The detachments of the Guards’ brigade of the 1st Division, who were that day in charge of the trenches within the captured outer enceinte, and facing the west front of the second enceinte, were to make an attempt to escalade that line of defence, at the point where most of its palisades had been destroyed, opposite and above the original breach No. I in the lower enceinte.

(3) The detachments of the German brigade of the 1st Division, who were to take charge of the trenches for the evening in succession to the Guards, were to attempt to storm the breach III in the re-entering angle, the only point where there was an actual opening prepared into the inner defences.

From all the works, both those on St. Miguel and those to the west of the Castle, marksmen left in the trenches were to keep up as hot a musketry fire as possible on any of the enemy who should show themselves, so as to distract their attention from the stormers.

The most notable point in these instructions was the small number of men devoted to the two serious attacks. Provision was made for the use of 300 men only in the attack to be made by the Guards: they were to move forward in successive rushes—the first or forlorn hope consisting of an officer and twenty men, the supports or main assaulting force, of small parties of 40 or 50 men, each of which was to come forward only when the one in front of it had reached a given point in its advance. Similarly the German Legion’s assault was to be led by a forlorn hope of 20, supported by 50 more, who were only to move when their predecessors had reached the lip of the breach, and by a reserve of 200 who were to charge out of the trench only when the support was well established on the rampart.

Burgoyne, the senior engineer present, tells us that he protested all through the siege, at each successive assault, against the paucity of the numbers employed, saying that the forlorn hope had, in fact, to take the work by itself, since they had no close and strong column in immediate support; and if the forlorn hope failed, ‘the next party, who from behind their cover have seen them bayoneted, are expected to valiantly jump up and proceed to be served in the same way.’ He reminded Wellington, as he says, that the garrison at Burgos was as large as that at Ciudad Rodrigo, where two whole divisions instead of 500 or 600 men had been thrown into the assault. The Commander-in-Chief, condescending to argument for once, replied, ‘why expose more men than can ascend the ladders [as at the Guards’ attack] or enter the work [as at the breach in the K.G.L. attack] at one time, when by this mode the support is ordered to be up in time to follow the tail of the preceding party[54]?’ And his objection to the engineer’s plea was clinched by the dictum, ‘if we fail we can’t lose many men.’ This controversy originally arose on the details of the abortive storm of September 22, but Burgoyne’s criticism was even more convincing for the details of the final assault on October 18. The number of men risked was far too small for the task that was set them.

The melancholy story of the storm runs as follows. On the explosion of the mine at San Roman, punctually at 4.30, all three of the sections of the assault were duly delivered. At the breach the forlorn hope of the King’s German Legion charged at the rough slope with great speed, reached the crest, and were immediately joined by the support, led most gallantly by Major Wurmb of the 5th Line Battalion. The first rush cleared a considerable length of the rampart of its defenders, till it was checked against a stockade, part of the works which the French had built to cut off the breach from the main body of the place. Foiled here, on the flank, some of the Germans turned, and made a dash at the injured rampart of the third line, in their immediate front: three or four actually reached the parapet of this inmost defence of the enemy. But they fell, and the main body, penned in the narrow space between the two enceintes, became exposed to such an overpowering fire of musketry that, after losing nearly one man in three, they finally had to give way, and retired most reluctantly down the breach to the trenches they had left. The casualties out of 300 men engaged were no less than 82 killed and wounded[55], among the former, Wurmb, who had led the assault, and among the latter, Hesse, who commanded the forlorn hope, and was one of the few who scaled the inner wall as well as the outer.

The Guards in their attack, 100 yards to the right of the breach, had an even harder task than the Germans, for their storm was a mere escalade. It was executed with great decision: issuing from the front trench they ran up to the line of broken palisades, passed through gaps in it, and applied their ladders to the face of the rampart of the second enceinte. Many of them succeeded in mounting, and they established themselves successfully on the parapet, and seized a long stretch of it, so long that some of their left-hand men got into touch with the Germans who had entered at the breach. But they could not clear the enemy out of the terre-pleine of the second enceinte, where a solid body of the French kept up a rolling fire upon them, while the garrison of the upper line maintained a still fiercer fusillade from their high-lying point of vantage. The Guards were for about ten minutes within the wall, and made several attempts to get forward without success. At the end of that time a French reserve advanced from their left, and charging in flank the disordered mass within the enceinte drove them out again. The Guards retired as best they could to the advanced trenches, having lost 85 officers and men out of the 300 engaged. The French returned their casualties at 11 killed and 30 wounded.

Wellington’s dispatch, narrating the disaster, gives the most handsome testimonial to the resolution of both the bodies of stormers. ‘It is impossible to represent in adequate terms the conduct of the Guards and the German Legion upon this occasion. And I am quite satisfied that if it had been possible to maintain the posts which they gained with so much gallantry, these troops would have maintained them[56].’ But why were 600 men only sent forward, and no support given them during the precious ten minutes when their first rush had carried them within the walls? Where were the brigades to which the stormers belonged? It is impossible not to subscribe to Burgoyne’s angry comment that ‘the miserable, doubting, unmilitary policy of small storming-parties’ caused the mischief[57]. He adds, ‘large bodies encourage one another, and carry with them confidence of success: if the Castle of Badajoz was stormed with ten or twelve ladders, and not more than 40 or 50 men could mount at once, I am convinced that it was only carried because the whole 3rd Division was there, and the emulation between the officers of the different regiments got their men to mount; although we lost 600 or 700 men, it caused success—which eventually saves men.’

The third section of the assault of October 18, the unimportant attack on the church of San Roman, had a certain measure of success. The mine, though it did not level the whole building, as had been hoped, blew up the terrace in front of, and part of its west end. Thereupon the French evacuated it, after exploding a mine of their own which brought down the bell-tower and much more, and crushed a few of the caçadores and Spaniards[58] who were ahead of their comrades. The besiegers were able to lodge themselves in the ruins, but could make no attempt to approach the actual walls of the second enceinte. So the 6th Division remained behind, within the streets of Burgos, and never came forward or showed themselves.

Such was the unhappy end of this most unlucky siege. All through the day of the assault there had been heavy skirmishing going on at the outposts of the covering army; Souham was at last on the move. On the 19th the Guards’ brigade and the K.G.L. brigade of the 1st Division marched to join the 5th and 7th Divisions at the front, leaving only the line brigade (Stirling’s) to hold the trenches on the north and west sides of the Castle. Two-thirds of the 6th Division had already gone off in the same direction before the storm: now the rest followed, handing over the charge of Burgos city and the chain of picquets on the east side of the Castle to Pack’s Portuguese. There was little doing in the lines this day—the French built up the oft-destroyed parapet of breach III with sandbags, and made an incursion into the church of San Roman, driving out the Portuguese guard for a short time, and injuring the lodgement which had been made in the ruins. But they withdrew when the supports came up.

On the 20th, news being serious at the front—for Souham showed signs of intending to attack in force, and it was ascertained that he had been reinforced by great part of the Army of the North, under Caffarelli in person—Wellington gave orders to withdraw the guns from the batteries, leaving only two of the captured French pieces to fire an occasional shot. All transportable stores and ammunition were ordered to be loaded up. There was some bickering in San Roman this day, but at night the Portuguese were again in possession of the much-battered church.

On the 21st came the final orders for retreat. The artillery were directed to burn all that could not be carried off—platforms, fascines, &c.—to blow up the works on San Miguel, and to retire down the high-road to Valladolid. The three 18-pounders were taken a few miles only. The roads being bad from heavy rain, and the bullocks weak, it was held that there was no profit in dragging about the two guns which had lost trunnions and were practically useless. The surviving intact gun shared the fate of its two ‘lame’ fellows: all three were wrecked[59], their carriages were destroyed, and they were thrown out on the side of the road. The artillery reserve, now reduced to the five ineffective 24-lb. howitzers, then continued its retreat.

On the night of the 21st-22nd, Pack’s brigade and the other troops left to hold the works retired, the covering army being now in full retreat by various roads passing through or around the city. The main column crossed at the town bridge—the artillery with wheels muffled with straw to deaden their rumbling—risking the danger of being shelled in the darkness by the Castle, which had several guns that bore upon it. The long series of mishaps which constituted the history of the siege of Burgos ended by the failure of the plan for the explosions on San Miguel: the French found there next day more than twenty barrels of powder intact. The arsenal in the town was fired when the last troops had passed, but was only partly consumed. Next morning (October 22) the advanced guard of the Army of Portugal entered Burgos, and relieved the garrison after thirty-five days of siege. Dubreton had still nearly 1,200 effective men under arms: he had lost in his admirable and obstinate defence 16 officers and 607 men, of whom 304 were killed or died of their wounds. The corresponding total British casualty list was no less than 24 officers and 485 men killed, 68 officers and 1,487 men wounded and missing [the last item accounting for 2 officers and 42 men]. Almost the whole of the loss came from the ranks of the 1st Division and Pack’s Portuguese, the 6th Division troops having had little to do with the trenches or assaults[60].

The external causes of the raising of the siege will be dealt with in their proper place—the strategical narrative of the general condition of affairs in both the Castiles which opens the next chapter. Here it remains only to recapitulate the various reasons which made the siege itself a failure. They have been summed up by several writers of weight and experience—John Jones, the official historian of the sieges of Spain, John Burgoyne the commanding engineer, William Napier, and Belmas the French author, who (using Jones as a primary authority) told its story from the side of the besieged. Comparing all their views with the detailed chronicle of the operations of those thirty-five eventful days, the following results seem to emerge.

(1) Burgos would not have been a strong fortress against an army provided with a proper battering-train, such as that which dealt with Ciudad Rodrigo or Badajoz. But Wellington—by his own fault as it turned out in the end—had practically no such train at all: three 18-pound heavy guns were an absurd provision for the siege of a place of even third-rate strength. If Wellington had realized on September 20 that the siege was to last till October 21, he might have had almost as many guns as he pleased. But the strength of Burgos was underrated at the first; and by the time that it was realized, Wellington considered (wrongly, as it turned out) that it was too late to get the necessary ordnance from the distant places where it lay.

(2) Encouraged by the experience of Badajoz and Almaraz, Wellington and his staff considered that an imperfect fortification like the Castle of Burgos might be dealt with by escalade without artillery preparation. The Hornwork of San Miguel was taken on this irregular system; but the attempts against the enceintes of the Castle failed. Burgoyne is probably right in maintaining that the repeated failures were largely due to the general’s reluctance to put in large masses of men at once, owing to his wish to spare the lives in units already worked down to a low strength by long campaigning. The principle ‘if we fail we can’t lose many men’ was ruinous. On October 18 the place must have fallen if 3,000 instead of 600 men had been told off for the assault.

(3) Notwithstanding the lack of artillery, Burgos might have been taken if Wellington had owned a large and efficient body of engineers. But (as at Badajoz, where he had made bitter complaints on this subject[61]) the provision of trained men was ludicrously small—there were just five officers of Royal Engineers[62] with the army, and eight ‘Royal Military Artificers’. The volunteers from the Line, both officers and men, used as auxiliaries, were not up to the work required of them. It was a misfortune that none of the divisions before Burgos had experience of siege-work, like that which the Light, 3rd, and 4th Divisions (all left at Madrid) had been through.

(4) After the heavy losses in the early assaults the rank and file, both the British and still more the Portuguese, were much discouraged. As Burgoyne says, ‘the place might have been, and ought to have been, taken if every one had done his duty[63].’ In the actual assaults splendid courage was often displayed, but in the trench-work there was much sulkiness, apathy, and even shirking. ‘Our undertaking, every night that we broke ground, appeared most pitiful: there was scarcely a single instance where at least double the work was not projected, with sufficient men and tools collected, that was afterwards executed, owing to the neglect and misconduct of the working parties. It was seldom that the men could be induced to take out their gabions and set to work, and I myself placed at different times hundreds of gabions with my own hands, and then entreated the men to go and fill them, to no purpose. The engineers blamed the men—the men blamed the engineers, who, as they grumbled, were by unskilful direction ‘sending them out to be butchered[64].’ All this, in the end, was due to the want of artillery for proper preparation, and of trained sappers.

(5) Burgoyne, D’Urban, and other observers are probably right in saying that the failure of the assaults was partly due to the bad principle of composing the storming-parties of drafts from many different corps, collected, under officers whom they did not personally know, from the units that chanced to be on duty that day. The one case where a brilliant success was scored with small loss, was seen when a whole battalion, the 2/24th, carried the outer enceinte on October 4.

(6) Wellington’s doubts, expressed almost from the first, as to the practicability of the affair that he had taken in hand, were known to many officers, and affected the general morale.

(7) Dubreton deserves unstinted praise. A general of more ordinary type, such as Barrois at Ciudad Rodrigo, would have lost Burgos for want of the extraordinary resourcefulness, determination, and quick decision shown by this admirable governor. His garrison must share his glory: the French 34th certainly got in this siege a good revanche for their last military experience, the surprise of Arroyo dos Molinos.

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER III

WELLINGTON’S RETREAT FROM BURGOS: OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1812. (1) FROM THE ARLANZON TO THE DOURO: OCTOBER 22-OCTOBER 30

Having completed the depressing chronicle of the leaguer of the Castle of Burgos, it is necessary that we should turn back for a week or two, to examine the changing aspect of external affairs, which had affected the general strategical position in Spain while the siege lingered on. It will be remembered that the original scheme for the campaign had been that, after the Army of Portugal had been pushed back to the Ebro, a great part of Wellington’s field force should return to Madrid, to pick up the divisions left there, and the corps of Hill, before Soult and King Joseph should begin to give trouble on the side of Valencia. Only a containing force was to have been left behind, to aid Castaños and his Galicians in keeping Clausel (or his successor Souham) out of mischief, while more important movements were on foot in New Castile[65]. As to the command of this containing force there was a difficulty: Wellington was not at all satisfied with the way in which Clinton had handled the troops left on the Douro in August, and it seems doubtful whether he wished to give him a far more important commission in the first half of October, when he was the natural person to be chosen for it. For at this time none of the other senior officers who had served in the recent campaigns were available: Beresford, Stapleton Cotton, and Picton were all three invalided at the moment. Graham, the best of them all, had returned to England. Hill could not be removed from the charge of his old army in the South. Of the five divisions before Burgos four were commanded by brigadiers acting in the position of locum tenens[66]: most of the brigades were, in a similar fashion, being worked by colonels for want of a sufficient number of major-generals to go round. But after October 11th the formal difficulty was solved: there was now available an officer whom it was fitting to leave in charge against Souham, viz. Sir Edward Paget, who came up to the front on that day, after having been three years absent from the Peninsula; he had last served under Wellington at the Passage of the Douro in 1809, where he lost an arm. He had now come out nominally to succeed Graham at the head of the 1st Division, but also with the commission to act as second-in-command in the event of the illness or disabling of the general-in-chief. Paget was known as a good soldier, and had served with distinction during the Corunna retreat; but he had never been trusted with the management of a large force, and had little knowledge either of the army which Wellington had trained, or of the parts of Spain in which the campaign was now going on. Moreover, Wellington disliked on principle the idea of having a second-in-command, occupying to a certain extent a position independent of his own.

The separate containing force never came into existence, because Wellington never left the North or returned to Madrid, though rumours were afloat after Paget’s arrival that he was about to do so without delay. Why, contrary to his own expressed intentions did he never go South? The answer must certainly be that down to a very late period of the siege he continued to keep in his mind the idea of returning to Madrid[67], but that he was distracted from his purpose by several considerations. The first was the abominable weather in October, which made the prospect of a long forced march distasteful—the army was sickly and would suffer. The second was his insufficient realization of the nearness of the danger in the South: he thought that Hill was in a less perilous position than was actually the case. The third was that he was beginning to mark the growing strength of the Army of Portugal, which lay in his own front, and to see that he could not hope to ‘contain’ it by any mere detachment, if he departed for the South with his main body. Souham’s host was no longer a spent force, which could be ignored as a source of danger; if Wellington took away two or three divisions, the officer left in charge in the North would be at once assailed by very superior numbers. He did not like the idea of trusting either Clinton or Paget with the conduct of a retreat before an enemy who would certainly press him fiercely. In addition, there was the lingering hope that Burgos might fall: if it were captured the situation would be much improved, since the allies could use it as a sort of point d’appui—to use the terminology of the day—on which the containing army could rest; and the enemy would be forced to detach heavily for the investment of the place.

By the day of the last assault (October 18) Wellington had clearly lingered too long, for very large reinforcements had just come up to join Souham, who on that morning was in a position to evict from before Burgos not only any mere ‘covering force’ that might be left opposite him, but the whole 35,000 men which formed the total of the allied host. For by now the Army of Portugal was recruited up to a strength of 38,000 men present with the colours: it had also just received the disposable battalions of the Bayonne Reserve, a strong brigade of 3,500 men under General Aussenac, and what was more important still—Caffarelli had appeared at Briviesca with the main field-force of the Army of the North. The operations of Home Popham, Mendizabal, Mina and Longa, which had detained and confused the French troops in Biscay and Navarre for the whole summer, had at last reached their limits of success, and having patched up affairs on the coast, and left some 20,000 men to hold the garrison places, and to curb the further raids of the British commodore and the Spanish bands, Caffarelli had come southwards with the whole of his cavalry—1,600 sabres,—three batteries, and nearly 10,000 infantry, forming the greater part of the divisions of Vandermaesen and Dumoustier. There were something like 50,000 French concentrated between Pancorbo and Briviesca on October 18th[68], while Wellington—allowing for his losses in the siege—had not more than 24,000 Anglo-Portuguese and 11,000 Spaniards in hand. The arrival of the Army of the North not only made the further continuance of the siege of Burgos impossible, but placed Wellington in a condition of great danger. It is clear that his campaign in the North had only been able to continue for so long as it did because Popham, Mina, and the Cantabrian bands had kept Caffarelli employed for a time that exceeded all reasonable expectation. It was really surprising that a small squadron and 10,000 half-organized troops, of whom a large part were undisciplined guerrillero bands, and the rest not much better, should have held the 37,000 men of the Army of the North in play for three months. But the combination of a mobile naval force, and of local levies who knew every goat-path of their native mountains, had proved efficacious in the extreme. It had taken Caffarelli the whole summer and much of the autumn to vindicate his position, and recover the more important strategical points in his wide domain. Even when he was marching on Burgos there was fierce fighting going on round Pampeluna, on which Mina had pressed in more closely when he heard of the departure of the general-in-chief. The Cantabrians and Navarrese did marvels for Wellington, and their work has never been properly acknowledged by British writers.

It is clear that the whole situation would have been different if Wellington had brought up to the North in September the 16,000 veteran British troops left at Madrid. For want of them he was in a state of hopeless inferiority to his immediate opponents. And yet at the same time they were useless at Madrid, because Hill—even with their aid—was not nearly strong enough to keep Soult and King Joseph in check. Wellington had in all at this time some 55,000 Anglo-Portuguese troops under arms and at the front; but they were so dispersed that on both theatres of war he was inferior to his enemies. He had 24,000 himself in Old Castile—Hill some 31,000 in New Castile; each of the two halves of the army could count on the help of some 10,000 or 12,000 Spaniards[69]. But of what avail were the 35,000 men of all nations at Burgos against the 50,000 French under Souham and Caffarelli, or the 43,000 men of all nations near Madrid against the 60,000 of Soult and the King? The whole situation would have been different if a superiority or even an equality of numbers had been established against one of the two French armies; and it is clear that such a combination could have been contrived, if Wellington had adopted other plans.

There can be no doubt that the excessive tardiness of Soult’s evacuation of Andalusia was the fact which caused the unlucky distribution of Wellington’s forces in October. The Marshal, it will be remembered, only left Granada on September 16th, and did not come into touch with the outlying cavalry of the Valencian Army till September 29-30, or reach Almanza, where he was in full connexion with Suchet and King Joseph, till October 2. There was, therefore, no threatening combination of enemies on the Valencia side till thirteen days after the siege of Burgos had begun; and Wellington did not know that it had come into existence till October 9th, when he received a dispatch from Hill informing him that the long foreseen, but long deferred, junction had taken place. If it had occurred—as it well might have—three weeks earlier, there would have been no siege of Burgos, and Wellington would have been at Madrid, after having contented himself with driving the army of Portugal beyond the Douro. It is probable that he would have done well, even at so late a date as October 9th, if he had recognized that the danger in front of Madrid was now pressing, and had abandoned the siege of Burgos, in order to make new arrangements. Souham was not yet in a condition to press him, and Caffarelli’s 10,000 men had not arrived on the scene. But the last twelve days spent before Burgos ruined his chances.

On getting Hill’s dispatch Wellington pondered much—but came to an unhappy decision. In his reply he wrote, ‘I cannot believe that Soult and the King can venture to move forward to attack you in the position on the Tagus, without having possession of the fortresses in the province of Murcia [Cartagena and Chinchilla] and of Alicante;—unless indeed they propose to give up Valencia entirely. They would in that case[70] bring with them a most overwhelming force, and you would probably have to retire in the direction given to General Alten [i.e. by the Guadarrama Pass, Villa Castin, and Arevalo] and I should then join you on the Adaja. If you retire in that direction, destroy the new bridge at Almaraz.... I write this, as I always do, to provide for every event, not believing that these instructions are at all necessary[71].’

In a supplementary letter, dated two days later, Wellington tells Hill that he imagines that the autumn rains, which have made the siege of Burgos so difficult, will probably have rendered the rivers of the South impassable. ‘I should think that you will have the Tagus in such a state as to feel in no apprehension in regard to the enemy’s operations, be his numbers what they may[72].’ Yet though he does not consider the danger in the South immediate or pressing, he acknowledges that he ought to bring the siege of Burgos to an end, even though it be necessary to raise it, and to give up the hope of its capture. But the continual storms and rains induced him to delay his departure toward the South: ‘I shall do so as soon as the weather holds up a little.’ On the same day (October 12) he wrote to Popham to say that if he had to march towards Madrid, he expected that Souham would follow him, but that Caffarelli must on no account be allowed to accompany Souham. At all costs more trouble must be made in Cantabria and Biscay, to prevent the Army of the North from moving. Popham must not withdraw his squadron, or cease from stimulating the Northern insurgents[73]. Wellington was not aware that Caffarelli was already on the move, and that the diversion in the North—through no fault of the officers in charge of it—had reached its limit of success.

The moment had now arrived at which it was necessary at all costs to come to some decision as to the movements of the Army at Burgos, for Caffarelli (though Wellington knew it not) had started for Briviesca, while Soult and King Joseph were also getting ready for an immediate advance on Madrid, which must bring matters in the South to a head. But relying on letters from Hill, dated October 10th, which stated that there was still no signs of movement opposite him, Wellington resolved on October 14 to stay yet another week in the North, and try his final assault on Burgos: it came off with no success (as will be remembered) on the 18th of that month. He was not blind to the possible consequences to Hill of a prompt advance of the French armies from Valencia, but he persuaded himself that the weather would make it difficult, and that he had means of detaining Soult and Joseph, if they should, after all, begin the move which he doubted that they proposed to make.

The scheme for stopping any forward march on the part of the French had two sections. The first was to be executed by the Anglo-Spanish Army at Alicante. Maitland had fallen sick, and this force of some 16,000 men was now under the charge of General John Mackenzie. To this officer Wellington wrote on October 13th: ‘In case the enemy should advance from Valencia into La Mancha, with a view to attack our troops on the Tagus, you must endeavour to obtain possession of the town and kingdom of Valencia.’ He was given the option of marching by land from Alicante, or of putting his men on shipboard and making a descent from the sea on Valencia[74]. The second diversion was to be executed by Ballasteros and the Army of Andalusia. Wellington wrote to him that he should advance from Granada, cross the Sierra Morena with all his available strength, and place himself at Alcaraz in La Mancha[75]. He ought to have at least 12,000 men, as some of the Cadiz troops were coming up to join him. Such a force, if placed on the flank of Soult and the King, when they should move forward for Almanza and Albacete, could not be ignored. And Wellington hoped to reinforce Ballasteros with that part of the Murcian Army, under Elio and Freire, which had got separated from the Alicante force, and had fallen back into the inland. There were also irregular bodies, such as the division of the Empecinado, which could be called in to join, and if 20,000 men lay at Alcaraz, Soult could not go in full force to assail Hill in front of Madrid. He must make such a large detachment to watch the Spaniards that he would not have more than 30,000 or 35,000 men to make the frontal attack on the Anglo-Portuguese force, which would defend the line of the Tagus. Against such numbers Hill could easily hold his ground.

It may be objected to these schemes that they did not allow sufficient consideration to the power of Suchet in Valencia. Mackenzie’s force, of a very heterogeneous kind, was not capable of driving in the detachments of the Army of Aragon, which still lay cantoned along the Xucar, facing the Allies at Alicante. Suchet was able to hold his own, without detaining any of the troops of Soult or of King Joseph from their advance upon Madrid. Mackenzie’s projected expedition against the city of Valencia had no chance of putting a check upon the main manœuvre that the French had in hand.

But the use of Ballasteros, whose movement must certainly have exercised an immense restraining power upon Soult and King Joseph, if only it had been carried out, was an experiment of a kind which Wellington had tried before, nearly always with disappointing results. To entrust to a Spanish general an essential part of a wide strategical plan had proved ere now a doubtful expedient. And Ballasteros had always shown himself self-willed if energetic; it was dangerous to reckon upon him as a loyal and intelligent assistant in the great game. And at this moment the captain-general of Andalusia was in the most perverse of moods. His ill temper was caused by the recent appointment of Wellington as commander-in-chief of all the Spanish armies, a measure to which the Cortes had at last consented, after the consequences of the battle of Salamanca and the occupation of Madrid had prepared public opinion for this momentous step. It had been bitterly opposed at the secret session when it was brought forward, but there could no longer be any valid excuse for putting off the obviously necessary policy of combining all military effort in the Peninsula, by placing the control of the whole of the Spanish armies in the hands of one who had shown himself such a master of the art of war.

Wellington’s nomination as Generalissimo of the Spanish armies had been voted by the Cortes on September 22nd, and conveyed to him before Burgos on October 2nd. He had every intention of accepting the offer, though (as he wrote to his brother Henry[76]) the change in his position would not be so great in reality as in form, since Castaños and most of the other Spanish generals had of late been wont to consult him on their movements, and generally to fall in with his views. There had been exceptions, even of late, such as Joseph O’Donnell’s gratuitous forcing on of battle at Castalla, when he had been specially asked to hold back till the Anglo-Sicilian expedition began to work upon the East Coast. But it would certainly be advantageous that, for the future, he should be able to issue orders instead of advice. Meanwhile he could not formally accept the post of general-in-chief without the official leave of the Prince Regent, and prompt information of the offer and a request for permission to accept it, were sent to London. The Cortes, foreseeing the necessary delay, had refrained from publishing the decree till it should be certain that Wellington was prepared to assume the position that was offered him. But the fact soon became known in Cadiz, and was openly spoken of in the public press. Wellington continued to write only letters of advice to the Spanish generals, and did not assume the tone of a commander-in-chief as yet, but his advice had already a more binding force. There was no opposition made to him, save in one quarter—but that was the most important one. Ballasteros, as Commander of the 4th Army and Captain-General of Andalusia, burst out into open revolt against the Cortes, the Regency, and the commander-in-chief elect.

This busy and ambitious man had taken up his abode in Granada, after Soult’s departure on September 23rd, and since then had not stirred, though Wellington had repeatedly asked him to advance into La Mancha with his available force, and to put himself in touch with Elio, Penne Villemur, and Hill. But Ballasteros was suffering from an acute attack of megalomania: after years of skulking in the mountains and forced marches, he was now in the position of a viceroy commanding the resources of a great province. Though Andalusia had been cleared of the French by no merit of his, but as a side-effect of the battle of Salamanca, he gave himself the airs of a conqueror and deliverer, and fully believed himself to be the most important person in Spain. As an acute observer remarked, ‘Ballasteros wanted to begin where Bonaparte ended, by seizing supreme authority, though he had performed no such services for his fatherland as the French general. He spared no effort to attach his army to his person, and to win its favour sacrificed without hesitation the whole civil population. The land was drained of all resources, but he found new means of extorting money. His officers went from town to town exacting a so-called “voluntary contribution” for the army. Those who gave much were put in his white book as patriots—those who did not were enrolled in his black book as supporters of King Joseph. He wanted to collect all the troops in Andalusia into a great army, with himself as commander. But the Regency directed him, in accordance with Wellington’s advice, to march at once with the troops immediately available and take post in La Mancha[77].’

Then came the news of Wellington’s nomination as commander-in-chief. Ballasteros thought the moment favourable for an open bid for the dictatorship. Instead of obeying the orders sent, he issued on October 23rd a manifesto directed to the Regency, in which he declared that Wellington’s appointment to supreme power was an insult to the Spanish nation, and especially to the Spanish Army. He openly contemned the decree, as dishonourable and debasing—Spaniards should never become like Portuguese the servants of the foreigner. If—what he could not believe—the national army and the nation itself should ratify such an appointment, he himself would throw up his post and retire to his home. At the same time there was an outburst of pamphlets and newspaper articles inspired by him, stating that England was to be feared as an oppressor no less than France; and all sorts of absurd rumours were put about as to the intentions of the British Government and the servility of the Cortes.

Ballasteros, however, had altogether mistaken his own importance and popularity: budding Bonapartes must be able to rely on their own troops, and he—as the event showed—could not. The Cortes took prompt measures for his suppression: one Colonel Rivera, a well-known Liberal, was sent secretly to Granada to bear to Virues, the second in command of the 4th Army, orders to arrest his chief, and place him in confinement. And this was done without any difficulty, so unfounded was the confidence which Ballasteros had placed in his omnipotence with the army. Virues and the Prince of Anglona, his two divisional generals, carried out the arrest in the simplest fashion. On the morning of October 30th they ordered out their troops for a field day on the Alcalá road, save a battalion of the Spanish Guards, who had not belonged to Ballasteros’s old army, and had no affection for him. This regiment surrounded his residence, and when he issued out the picquet refused him passage, and Colonel Rivera presented him with the warrant for his arrest. There was some little stir in Granada among the civil population, but the army made no movement when Virues read the decree of the Cortes to them. Before he well understood what had happened, Ballasteros was on his way under a guard to the African fortress of Ceuta. He was afterwards given Fregenal in Estremadura as the place of his detention.

But all this happened on October 30th, and meanwhile the Army of Andalusia had remained motionless, though Wellington had believed that it had marched for La Mancha as early as October 5th[78]. Nearly a month had been lost by Ballasteros’s perversity, and when he was finally arrested and his troops became available, it was too late; for Hill had been forced to retreat, and Madrid was about to fall into the hands of the French, who had advanced through La Mancha unmolested. The Fourth Army was put under the command of the Duke del Parque, the victor of Tamames, but the vanquished of Alba de Tormes in the campaign of 1809. It marched early in November to its appointed position at Alcaraz; but it was of no use to have it there when the enemy had changed all his positions, and had driven Hill beyond the Guadarrama into the valley of the Douro.

Wellington’s arrangements for the defence of Madrid were therefore insufficient as the event proved, for three reasons. The diversion from Alicante was too weak—Suchet alone was able to keep Maitland in check. The main Spanish force which was to have co-operated with Hill never put in an appearance, thanks to the disloyal perversity of its general. And, thirdly, the autumn rains, which had so incommoded Wellington before Burgos, turned out to be late and scanty in New Castile. The Tagus and its affluents remained low and fordable almost everywhere.

As late as the 17th October Wellington had no fears about Hill’s position. The probability that the enemy from Valencia would advance upon Madrid, as he wrote on that morning, seemed diminishing day by day—reinforcements were coming up from the South to Hill, and Ballasteros was believed to be already posted in La Mancha, ‘which renders the enemy’s movement upon the Tagus very improbable[79].’ On the 19th, when his last assault on the Castle of Burgos had just been beaten off, and he was thinking of retreat, came much less satisfactory news from Hill. The enemy seemed to be drawing together: they had laid siege to the Castle of Chinchilla, and it was not impossible that they were aiming at Madrid, perhaps only with a view of forcing the abandonment of the siege of Burgos, perhaps with serious offensive intention. If so, Wellington might be caught with not one but both of the halves of his army exposed to immediate attack by a superior enemy, who was just assuming the offensive. And the total force of the French was appalling—50,000 men on the Northern field of operations, 60,000 on the other—while the united strength of all the available troops under Wellington’s orders was about 80,000, of whom 25,000 were Spaniards, whose previous record was not in many cases reassuring. He had often warned the ministers at home that if the French evacuated outlying provinces, and collected in great masses, they were too many for him[80]. But that ever-possible event had been so long delayed, that Wellington had gone on, with a healthy and cheerful opportunism, facing the actual situation of affairs without taking too much thought for the morrow. Now the conjunction least to be desired appeared to be at length coming into practical existence and it remained to be seen what could be done.

As for his own army, there was no doubt that prompt retreat, first beyond the Pisuerga, then beyond the Douro, was necessary. Souham had already made his first preliminary forward movement. On the evening of October 18th a strong advance guard, consisting of a brigade of Maucune’s division, pushed in upon the front of the allied army at the village of Santa Olalla, and surprised there the outlying picket of an officer and thirty men of the Brunswick-Oels, who were nearly all taken prisoners. The heights above this place commanded the town of Monasterio, wherefore Wellington directed it to be evacuated, and drew in its line to a position slightly nearer Burgos, for it was clear that there were heavy forces behind the brigade which had formed the French attacking force[81].

On the 19th he was in order of battle with all his army except the troops left before Burgos—Pack’s Portuguese, a brigade of the 6th Division, and three weak battalions from the 1st Division. The position extended from Ibeas on the Arlanzon, through Riobena to Soto Palacios, and was manned by the 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions, two brigades of the 6th, Bradford’s Portuguese, Castaños’s Galicians, and all the cavalry—about 30,000 men. Wellington expected to be attacked on the 20th, and was not prepared to give back till he had ascertained what force was in his front. He knew that the Army of Portugal had been reinforced, but was not sure whether the report that Caffarelli had come up with a large portion of the Army of the North was correct or no.

Souham’s movement on the 18th had been intended as the commencement of a general advance: he brought up his whole force to Monasterio, and he would have attacked on the 20th if he had not received, before daybreak, and long ere his troops were under way, a much-delayed dispatch from King Joseph. It informed him that the whole mass of troops from Valencia was on the march for Madrid, that this movement would force Wellington to abandon the siege of Burgos and to fall back, and that he was therefore not to risk a general action, but to advance with caution, and pursue the allied force in front of him so soon as it should begin to retreat, when it might be pressed with advantage.[82] He was to be prepared to link his advance with that of the armies from the South, which would have columns in the direction of Cuenca. Souham was discontented with the gist of this dispatch, since he had his whole army assembled, while Caffarelli was close behind, within supporting distance, at Briviesca. He thought that he could have fought with advantage, and was probably right, since he and Caffarelli had a marked superiority of numbers, though Wellington’s positions were strong.

Balked of the battle that he desired, he resolved to make a very strong reconnaissance against the allied centre, to see whether the enemy might already be contemplating retreat, and might consent to be pushed back, and to abandon Burgos. This reconnaissance was conducted by Maucune’s and Chauvel’s (late Bonnet’s) divisions and a brigade of light cavalry: it was directed against Wellington’s centre, in front of the villages of Quintana Palla and Olmos, where the 7th division was posted. Maucune’s troops, forming the front line of the French, were hotly engaged in this direction, when Wellington, seeing that the main body of the enemy was very remote, and that the two vanguard divisions had ventured far forward into his ground, directed Sir Edward Paget with the 1st and 5th divisions—forming his own left wing—to swing forward by a diagonal movement and take Maucune in flank. The French general discovered the approaching force only just in time, and retreated in great haste across the fields, without calling in his tirailleurs or forming any regular order of march. Each regiment made off by its own way, just early enough to escape Paget’s turning movement. The British horse artillery arrived only in time to shell the last battalions; the infantry was too far off to reach them. Dusk fell at this moment, and Paget halted: if there had been one hour more of daylight Maucune and Chauvel would have been in an evil case, for they were still some distance from their own main body on the Monasterio position, and the British cavalry was coming up in haste. The reconnaissance had been pushed recklessly and too far—in accordance with the usual conduct of Maucune, who was (as his conduct at Salamanca had proved) a gallant but a very rash leader. The losses on both sides were trifling—apparently about 80 in the French ranks[83], and 47 in the British 7th division. Paget’s troops did not come under fire.

On the morning of the 21st Wellington received a letter of Hill’s, written on the 17th, which made it clear to him that he must delay no longer. It reported that the enemy were very clearly on the move—the whole of Drouet’s corps was coming forward from Albacete, the castle of Chinchilla had fallen into the hands of the French on Oct. 9th, and—what was the most discomposing to learn—Ballasteros had failed to advance into La Mancha: by the last accounts he was still at Granada. He would certainly come too late, if he came at all. The only compensating piece of good news was that Skerrett’s brigade from Cadiz was at last near at hand, and would reach Talavera on the 20th. Elio, from his forward position at Villares, reported that Suchet’s troops opposite Alicante were drawing back towards Valencia; possibly they were about to join Soult and King Joseph, who were evidently coming forward. Hill was inclined to sum up the news as follows: ‘The King, Soult, and Suchet having united their armies are on the frontiers of Murcia and Valencia, and appear to be moving this way. It is certain that a considerable force is advancing toward Madrid, but I think it doubtful whether they will attempt to force their way to the capital.’ Meanwhile he had, as a precautionary measure, brought up the troops in cantonments round Madrid to Aranjuez and its neighbourhood, and had thrown forward a cavalry screen beyond the Tagus, to watch alike the roads from Albacete and those from Cuenca.

The mere possibility that Soult and the King were advancing on Madrid was enough to move Wellington to instant retreat: if he waited for certainty, he might be too late. And his own position in front of Souham and Caffarelli was dangerous enough, even if no more bad news from the South should come to hand. Accordingly on the afternoon of the 21st orders were sent to Pack to prepare to raise the siege of Burgos, when the main army in its backward movement should have passed him. The baggage was to be sent off, the stores removed or burned in the following night. The divisions in line opposite Souham were to move away, after lighting camp fires to delude the enemy, in two main columns, one on each side of the Arlanzon. The northern column, composed of the 5th Division, two-thirds of the Galician infantry, the heavy dragoons of Ponsonby (late Le Marchant’s brigade) and the handful of Spanish regular cavalry, was to skirt the northern side of the city of Burgos, using the cross-roads by Bivar and Quintana Dueñas, and to retire to Tardajos, beside the Urbel river. The southern and larger column, consisting of the 1st, 7th, and 6th Divisions (marching in that order), of Bradford’s Portuguese and the remainder of the Galicians, was to move by the high road through Villa Fria, to cross the town-bridge of Burgos (with special caution that silence must be observed, so as not to alarm the garrison of the Castle) to Frandovinez and Villa de Buniel. Here they would be in touch with the other column, which was to be only two miles away at Tardajos. Anson’s cavalry brigade was to cover the rear of this column, only abandoning the outposts when the infantry should have got far forward. They were to keep the old picquet-line till three in the morning. Bock’s German dragoons and the cavalry of Julian Sanchez formed a flank guard for the southern column: they were to cross the Arlanzon at Ibeas, five miles east of Burgos, and to retire parallel to the infantry line of march, by a circuit on cross-roads south of Burgos, finally joining the main body at Villa de Buniel[84].

All this complicated set of movements was carried out with complete success: the army got away without arousing the attention of the French of Souham, and the column which crossed the bridge of Burgos, under the cannon of the Castle[85], was never detected, till a Spanish guerrilla party galloped noisily across the stones and drew some harmless shots. Since the enemy was alarmed, the rear of the column had to take a side-path. Pack filed off the troops in the trenches, and got away quietly from the investment line. In the morning the two infantry columns were safely concentrated within two miles of each other at Tardajos and Villa de Buniel. There being no sign of pursuit, they were allowed some hours’ rest in these positions, and then resumed their retreat, the northern column leading, with the 5th Division at its head, the southern column following, and falling into the main road by crossing the bridge of Buniel. The 7th Division formed the rearguard of the infantry; it was followed by Bock’s dragoons, Anson and Julian Sanchez bringing up the rear. On the night of the 22nd the army bivouacked along the road about Celada, Villapequeña, and Hornillos; the light cavalry, far behind, were still observing the passages of the Arlanzon at Buniel and of the Urbel at Tardajos.

The French pursuit was not urged with any vigour on this day. The departure of Wellington had only been discovered in the early morning hours by the dying down of the camp fires along his old position[86]. At dawn Souham advanced with caution; finding nothing in front of it, his vanguard under Maucune entered Burgos about 10 o’clock in the morning, and exchanged congratulations with Dubreton and his gallant garrison. The light cavalry of the Army of Portugal pushed out along the roads north and south of the Arlanzon: those on the right bank found the three broken 18-pounders of Wellington’s battering train a few miles outside of Burgos, and went as far as the Urbel, where they came on the rear vedettes of the Allies. Those on the left bank obtained touch with Anson’s outlying picquet at San Mames, and drove it back to the Buniel bridge.

The 23rd October, however, was to be a day of a much more lively sort. Souham and Caffarelli, having debouched from Burgos, brought all their numerous cavalry to the front, and at dawn it was coming up for the pursuit, in immense strength. There were present of the Army of Portugal Curto’s light horse, Boyer’s dragoons, and the brigade formerly commanded by Chauvel now under Colonel Merlin of the 1st Hussars. These, by the morning state of October 15th, made up 4,300 sabres. The Army of the North contributed the bulk of its one—but very powerful—cavalry brigade, that of Laferrière, 1,650 strong.[87] Thus there were nearly 6,000 veteran horsemen hurrying on to molest Wellington’s rear, where the covering force only consisted of Anson’s and Bock’s two brigades and of the lancers of Julian Sanchez—1,300 dragoons British and German[88], and 1,000 Spaniards admirable for raids and ambushes but not fit to be placed in battle line. Ponsonby’s dragoons and the regular squadrons of the Galician army were far away with the head of the column. To support the cavalry screen were the two horse-artillery batteries of Downman and Bull, and the two Light Battalions of the German Legion from the 7th Division, under Colonel Halkett, which were left behind as the extreme rearguard of the infantry.

All day the main marching column of the allied army laboured forward unmolested along the muddy high road from Celada del Camino to Torquemada, a very long stage of some 26 miles: Wellington seldom asked his infantry to make such an effort. What would have happened to Clausel’s army if the British had marched at this rate in the week that followed the battle of Salamanca? Behind the infantry column, however, the squadrons of the rearguard were fighting hard all day long, to secure an unmolested retreat for their comrades. This was the most harassing and one of the most costly efforts that the British cavalry was called upon to make during the Peninsular War. The nearest parallel to it in earlier years was the rearguard action of El Bodon in September 1811[89]. But there the forces engaged on both sides had been much smaller.

The French advanced guard consisted of Curto’s light cavalry division of the Army of Portugal, supported by Maucune’s infantry division. It had started at dawn, and found the British cavalry vedettes where they had been marked down on the preceding night, at the bridge of Villa Buniel. They retired without giving trouble, being in no strength, and the morning was wearing on when the French came upon Wellington’s rearguard, the horsemen of Anson and Julian Sanchez, and Halkett’s two German battalions, a mile or two east of Celada, holding the line of the Hormaza stream. Anson was in position behind its ravine, with a battalion of the light infantry dispersed along the bushes above the water, and the cavalry in support. Julian Sanchez was visible on the other side of the Arlanzon, which is not here fordable, beyond Anson’s right: on his left, hovering on hills above the road, was a small irregular force, the guerrilla band of Marquinez[90]. The ground along the Hormaza was strong, and the infantry fire surprised the enemy, who were stopped for some time. They came on presently in force, and engaged in a bickering fight: several attempts to cross the ravine were foiled by partial charges of some of Anson’s squadrons. Wellington says in his dispatch that the skirmishing lasted nearly three hours, and that Stapleton Cotton, who had recently come up from the Salamanca hospital cured of his wound, made excellent dispositions. But the odds—more than two to one—were far too great to permit the contest to be maintained for an indefinite period; and when, after much bickering, the French (O’Shee’s brigade of Curto’s division) at last succeeded in gaining a footing beyond the Hormaza, Anson’s squadrons went off in good order. The ground for the next five or six miles was very unfavourable for a small detaining force, as the valley of the Arlanzon widened out for a time, and allowed the enemy space to deploy his superior numbers. Nevertheless the light dragoons turned again and again, and charged with more or less success the pursuing Chasseurs. While Curto’s division was pressing back the British brigade in front, Merlin’s brigade, pushing out on the French right, ascended the hills beyond Anson’s left flank, and there found and drove off the partida of Marquinez. The fugitive guerrilleros, falling back for support towards the British, came in upon the flank of the 16th Light Dragoons with French hussars in close pursuit, and mixed with them. The left squadron of the 16th was thrown into confusion, and suffered heavily, having some thirty casualties; and the commander of the regiment, Colonel Pelly, and seven of his men were taken prisoners. As Curto was pushing on at the same time, Anson’s brigade was much troubled, and was greatly relieved when it at last came in sight of its support, Bock’s German Heavy Dragoons and Bull’s battery, posted behind a bridge spanning a watercourse near the lonely house called the Venta del Pozo. The two battalions of Halkett, who had been retiring under cover of Anson’s stubborn resistance, were now some little way behind Bock, near the village of Villadrigo. On seeing the obstacle of the watercourse in front of them, and the British reserves behind it, the cavalry of the Army of Portugal halted, and began to re-form. Anson’s harassed brigade was permitted to cross the bridge and to join Bock.

At this moment there came on the scene the French cavalry reserves, Boyer’s dragoons and the three regiments of the Army of the North, which were commanded that day not by their brigadier Laferrière (who had been injured by a fall from his horse) but by Colonel Faverot of the 15th Chasseurs. Souham, who had arrived in their company as had Caffarelli also, gave orders that the pursuit was not to slacken for a minute. While the cavalry of Curto and Merlin were re-forming and resting, the newly arrived squadrons were directed to drive in the British rearguard from its new position. The brigade of Faverot was to attack in front, the dragoons of Boyer were to turn the hostile line, by crossing the watercourse some way to their right, and to fall on its flank and rear. So great was the superiority in numbers of the attacking party that they came on with supreme confidence, ignoring all disadvantages of ground. Faverot’s brigade undertook to pass the bridge in column, in face of Bock’s two regiments drawn up at the head of the slope, and of Bull’s battery placed on the high road so as to command the crossing. Boyer’s dragoons trotted off to the right, to look for the first available place where the water should allow them a practicable ford.

What followed was not in accordance with the designs of either party. Souham had intended Boyer and Faverot to act simultaneously; but the former found the obstacle less and less inviting the farther that he went on: he rode for more than a mile without discovering a passage, and finally got out of sight of Souham and the high road[91]. Meanwhile Faverot had advanced straight for the bridge, and had begun to cross it. Of his three regiments the Berg lancers led, the 15th Chasseurs came next, the Legion of Gendarmerie brought up the rear. They were ten squadrons in all, or some 1,200 sabres. As each squadron got quit of the bridge it formed up in line, the first to pass to the right of the road, while those which followed successively took ground to the left, between the chaussée and the bank of the Arlanzon. Eight squadrons had got into position before the British line gave any signs of movement on the hillside above.

It is clear that to cross a bridge in this fashion was a reckless manœuvre. If Bock had charged when two or three squadrons only had passed[92], he must have crushed them in the act of deployment, and have jammed the rest of the French column at the bridgehead in a position of helpless immobility. That no such charge was made resulted from a curious chance. Stapleton Cotton, who was still conducting the retreat, had placed Bull’s battery at a point on the slope where he judged that it fully commanded the bridge, with Bock’s four squadrons on its right. Then Anson’s brigade, not in the best of order after its long pursuit by the enemy, trotted over the bridge and came up the slope. Cotton intended that it should deploy on the left of the guns, but the retreating regiments, before the directions reached them, turned to the right and began to form up behind Bock’s line. The general at once sent them orders to cross to the left and prolong the line on the other side of Bull’s battery. By some extraordinary blunder the leading regiment (perhaps to shorten its route) passed to the left in front of the guns, instead of moving behind them. It was thus masking the battery just at the moment that the French, to the surprise of every one, began to cross the bridge. There was considerable confusion in changing the march of the light dragoons, and before they were cleared off and the front of the battery was free, several French squadrons were across the ravine and forming up. The artillerymen then opened, but in their hurry they misjudged the elevation, and not one shot of the first discharge told. The second did hardly better; more French were passing every moment, and Cotton then directed the cavalry to charge, since the enemy was becoming stronger and stronger on the near side of the bridge.

The charge was delivered in échelon of brigades; Bock’s two regiments, who had been awaiting orders for some time, got away at once, and fell upon the left of the French—the gendarmes and the left squadrons of the Chasseurs. Anson’s six squadrons started somewhat later, and having tired horses—after their long morning’s fight—came on at a much slower pace. They found themselves opposed to the Lancers and the right squadrons of the Chasseurs. There was such a perceptible space between the two attacks, that some of the French narratives speak of the British charge as being made by a front line and a reserve. The numbers engaged were not very unequal[93]—probably 1,200 French to 1,000 British—but the former were all fresh, while the larger half of the latter (Anson’s brigade) were wearied out—man and horse—by long previous fighting.

All accounts—English and French—agree that this was one of the most furious cavalry mêlées ever seen: the two sides broke each other’s lines at various points—the 1st K.G.L. Dragoons rode down their immediate opponents, the 2nd got to a standing fight with theirs: Anson’s regiments, coming on more slowly on their jaded mounts, made no impression on the Lancers and Chasseurs opposite them. The whole mass fell into a heaving crowd ‘so completely mixed that friend could hardly be distinguished from foe—the contest man to man lasted probably a long minute, during which the ground was strewn with French, and our own loss was heavy in the extreme.’ General Bock was at one time seen defending himself against six Frenchmen, and was barely saved by his men. Beteille, the Colonel of the French Gendarme Legion, received, it is said, twelve separate wounds, and was left for dead. The combat was ended by the intervention of the two rear squadrons of the Gendarmes, who had not crossed the bridge when the charge began; they came up late, and fell upon the flank and rear of the 2nd Dragoons of the K.G.L. This last push settled the matter, and the British brigades broke and fell back[94].

They were not so disheartened, however, but that they rallied half a mile to the rear, and were showing fight when Boyer’s dragoons came tardily upon the scene—they had at last found a passage over the ravine, and appeared in full strength on the flank. It was hopeless to oppose them, and the wrecks of the two British brigades fell back hastily towards their infantry support, Halkett’s two Light Battalions of the German Legion, which had been retreating meanwhile towards Villadrigo, marching in column at quarter distance and prepared to form square when necessary. The need now came—the leading regiment of Boyer’s Dragoons turned upon the rear battalion—the 1st—and charged it: the square was formed in good time, and the attack was beaten off. The battalion then retired, falling back upon the 2nd, which had nearly reached Villadrigo. Both then retreated together, covering the broken cavalry, and had gone a short distance farther when the French renewed the attack. Both battalions formed square, both were charged, and both repulsed the attack of the dragoons with loss. The enemy, who had still plenty of intact squadrons, seemed to be contemplating a third charge, but hesitated, and finally Bock’s and Anson’s men having got back into some sort of order, and showing a front once more, the squares retired unmolested, and marched off in company with the cavalry. The French followed cautiously and gave no further trouble. It was now dark, and when the pursuit ceased the rearguard halted for two hours, and resuming its march about ten o’clock, finally reached the bridge of Quintana del Puente, outside Torquemada, at two o’clock next morning.

Thus ended a costly affair, which might have proved much more perilous had the French been better managed. But though their troopers fought well enough, their generals failed to get such advantage as they should out of their superior numbers. It is to be noted that both Curto and Boyer have very poor records in the memoirs of Marmont, Foy, and other contemporary writers, who speak on other occasions of the ‘inertie coupable’ and ‘faute de décision’ of the one, and call the other ‘bon manœuvrier, mais n’ayant pas la réputation qui attire la confiance aveugle du soldat’: Napoleon once summed them up as ‘mauvais ou médiocres[95], along with several other generals. It seems clear, at any rate, that they should have accomplished more, with the means at their disposal. The damage inflicted on the British rearguard was much smaller than might have been expected—only 230 in all, including 5 officers and 60 men taken prisoners[96]. It is probable indeed that the pursuers suffered no less; for, though their official report spoke of no more than about a hundred and fifty casualties, Faverot’s Brigade alone had almost as many by itself, showing a list of 7 killed and 18 officers and 116 men wounded. But the regimental lists give 35 French cavalry officers in all disabled that day, 5 in Curto’s division, 5 in Merlin’s Brigade, 5 in Boyer’s Dragoons, and 2 on the staff, beside the 18 in Faverot’s Brigade. This must indicate a total loss of nearly 300, applying the very moderate percentage of casualties of men to officers that prevailed in Faverot’s regiments to the other corps. The engagement had been most honourable to the two cavalry brigades of Wellington’s rearguard, and not less so to the German Legion light infantry. An intelligent observer—not a soldier—who saw the whole of the fighting that day remarked, ‘I twice thought Anson’s Brigade (which was weak in numbers and much exhausted by constant service) would have been annihilated; and I believe we owe the preservation of that and of the heavy German brigade to the admirable steadiness of Halkett’s two Light Battalions.... We literally had to fight our way for four miles, retiring, halting, charging, and again retiring. I say we because I was in the thick of it, and never witnessed such a scene of anxiety, uproar, and confusion. Throughout the whole of this trying occasion Stapleton Cotton behaved with great coolness, judgement, and gallantry. I was close to him the whole time, and did not observe him for an instant disturbed or confused[97].’ At the end of the fight one officer in a jaded regiment observed to another that it had been a bad day. His friend replied that it had been a most honourable day for the troops, for at nightfall every unwounded man on an efficient horse was still in line and ready to charge again. There had been no rout, no straggling, and no loss of morale.

While the combat of Venta del Pozo was in progress the main body of the army had been resting in and about Torquemada, undisturbed by any pursuit, so well had the rearguard played its part. Next morning (October 24th) it marched off and crossed the Carrion river by the bridges of Palencia, Villamuriel, and Dueñas. Behind this stream Wellington was proposing to check the enemy for at least some days. He chose it, rather than the Pisuerga, as his defensive line for tactical reasons. If he had stayed behind the Pisuerga, he would have had the Carrion and its bridges in his immediate rear, and he was determined not to fight with bridge-defiles behind him. In the rear of the Carrion there were no such dangerous passages, and the way was clear to Valladolid. It was fortunate that, after the lively day on the 23rd, the French made no serious attempt at pursuit upon the 24th, for there were many stragglers that morning from the infantry. Torquemada was the centre of a wine-district and full of barrels, vats, and even cisterns of the heady new vintage of 1812; many of the men had repaid themselves for a twenty-six mile march by over-deep potations, and it was very hard to get the battalions started next morning.[98] Napier says that ‘twelve thousand men at one time were in a state of helpless inebriety:’ this is no doubt an exaggeration, but the diaries of eye-witnesses make it clear that there was much drunkenness that day.

Wellington’s new position extended from Palencia on the Carrion to Dueñas on the Pisuerga, below its junction with the first-named river. He intended to have all the bridges destroyed, viz. those of Palencia, Villa Muriel, and San Isidro on the Carrion, and those of Dueñas and Tariego on the Pisuerga. He placed one of the Galician divisions (Cabrera’s) in Palencia and south of it, supported by the 3/1st from the 5th Division. Another Galician division (Losada’s) continued the line southward to Villa Muriel, where it was taken up by the 5th Division—now under General Oswald who had recently joined. The 1st, 6th, and 7th Divisions prolonged the line down the Pisuerga. Behind the rivers, all the way, there was a second line of defence, formed by the dry bed of the Canal of Castile, which runs for many miles through the valley: it was out of order and waterless, but the depression of its course made a deep trench running parallel with the Carrion and Pisuerga, and very tenable. It must be noted that Palencia lay to the wrong side of the Carrion for Wellington’s purpose, being on its left or eastern bank. It had, therefore, either to be held as a sort of tête de pont, or evacuated before the enemy should attack. The Spanish officer in command resolved to take the former course, though the town was indefensible, with a ruinous mediaeval wall: he occupied it, and made arrangements for the blowing up of the bridge only when his advanced guard should have been driven out of Palencia and should have recrossed the river.

Souham, who had pushed his head-quarters forward to Magaz this day, resolved to try to force the line of the Carrion. Two divisions under Foy—his own and that of Bonté (late Thomières)—were to endeavour to carry Palencia and its bridge. Maucune, with the old advanced guard, his own division and that of Gauthier[99], was to see if anything could be done at the bridges of Villa Muriel and San Isidro. Foy had Laferrière’s cavalry brigade given him, Maucune retained Curto’s light horse. The main body of the army remained in a mass near Magaz, ready to support either of the advanced columns, if it should succeed in forcing a passage.

Unfortunately for Wellington, everything went wrong at Palencia. Foy, marching rapidly on the city, drove away the few squadrons of Galician cavalry which were observing his front, and then burst open one of its rickety gates with artillery fire, and stormed the entry with Chemineau’s brigade. The Galician battalions in the town, beaten in a short street fight, were evicted with such a furious rush that the British engineer officer with the party of the 3/1st, who were working at the bridge, failed[100] to fire the mine, whose fuse went wrong. Most of them were taken prisoners. Colonel Campbell of the 3/1st, who had been sent to support the Spaniards, fell back towards Villa Muriel, judging the enemy too strong to be resisted, and the routed Galicians had to be covered by Ponsonby’s heavy dragoons from the pursuit of the French cavalry, who spread over the environs of Palencia and captured some baggage trains, British and Spanish, with their escorts.

Thus Souham had secured a safe passage over the Carrion and it mattered little to him that his other attack farther south had less decisive success. Here Maucune, always a very enterprising—not to say reckless—commander had marched against the two bridges of Villa Muriel and San Isidro. He led his own division towards the former, and sent that of Gauthier against the latter. The 5th Division had an infantry screen of light troops beyond the river—this was pushed in, with some loss, especially to the 8th Caçadores. Both bridges were then attacked, but each was blown up when the heads of the French columns approached, and a heavy fire, both of artillery and of musketry, from the other bank checked their further advance. Gauthier then turned east in search of a passage, and went coasting along the bank of the Pisuerga for some miles, as far as the bridge of Tariego (or Baños, as the British accounts call it). This had been prepared for destruction like the other bridges, but the mine when exploded only broke the parapets and part of the flooring. The French charged across, on the uninjured crown of the arch, and captured some 40 of the working party[101]: they established themselves on the opposite bank, but advanced no farther; here the British had still the lower course of the Pisuerga to protect them, while Gauthier had no supports near, and halted, content to have captured the bridge, which he began to repair.

Meanwhile, the bridge of Villa Muriel having been more efficiently blown up, Maucune dispersed his voltigeur companies along the river-bank, brought his artillery up to a favourable position, and entered on a long desultory skirmish with Oswald, which lasted for some hours. During this time he was searching for fords—several were found[102], but all were deep and dangerous. About three o’clock in the afternoon a squadron of cavalry forded one of them, apparently unobserved, reached the western bank, and rolled up a company of the 1/9th which it caught strung out along the river bickering with the skirmishers on the other side. An officer and 33 men were taken prisoners[103]. This passage was followed by that of eight voltigeur companies, who established themselves on the other side, but clung to the bank of the river, the British light troops having only retired a few score of yards from it. Having thus got a lodgement beyond the Carrion, Maucune resolved to cross in force, in support of his voltigeurs. Arnauld’s brigade passed at the ford which had first been used, Montfort’s at another, to the left of the broken bridge, farther down the stream. The French seized the village of Villa Muriel, and established themselves in force along the dry bed of the canal, a little to its front. Wellington had expected that Maucune would come on farther, and intended to charge him with the whole 5th Division when he should begin to ascend the slope above the canal. But when, after an hour or more, the enemy made no advance, it became necessary to assume the offensive against him, since Foy was now across the Carrion at Palencia, and, if he commenced to push forward, he might drive the Spanish troops between him and Villa Muriel into Maucune’s arms. The latter must be expelled before this danger should arise: wherefore at about 4 o’clock a brigade of Losada’s Spaniards was sent against the right of the French division, while Pringle’s brigade attacked its front along the bed of the canal. The Spaniards made no progress—they were indeed driven back, and rallied with difficulty by Wellington’s friend General Alava, who was severely wounded. To replace them the British brigade of Barnes was brought up, and told to storm Villa Muriel—Spry’s Portuguese supporting. After a stiff fight Pringle and Barnes swept all before them: the enemy yielded first on the right, but held out for some time in the village, where he lost a certain number of prisoners. He finally repassed the fords, and sought safety in the plain on the eastern bank, where the French reserves were now beginning to appear in immense force. ‘Their numbers were so great that the fields appeared to our view almost black[104].’ Wellington wrote home that he had hitherto under-estimated Souham’s force, and only now realized that the Army of the North had brought up its infantry as well as its cavalry. He, naturally, made no attempt to pursue the enemy beyond the Carrion, and the fight died down into a distant cannonade across the water[105].

The combat of Villa Muriel cost the 5th Division some 500 casualties—not including 43 men of the 3/1st, hurt or taken in the separate fight at Palencia, or a few casualties in Ponsonby’s dragoons in that same quarter. Maucune’s losses were probably not far different—they must certainly have exceeded the ‘250 killed or wounded, 30 prisoners and 6 drowned’ of the official report: for one of Maucune’s regiments—the 15th Line—had 200 casualties by itself[106]. Foy at Palencia lost very few men—though his statement of ‘three or four’ as their total can hardly be correct. He had taken 100 prisoners (27 of them British), and killed or wounded 60 more, mostly Galicians[107]. The balance of the day’s losses was certainly against the Allies.

Moreover, despite of Maucune’s repulse, the result of the day’s fighting was much to Wellington’s detriment, since (though the loss of the bridge of Tariego mattered little) the capture of Palencia ruined his scheme for defending the line of the Carrion. Souham’s whole army could follow Foy, and turn the left flank of the Allies behind that river. Wherefore Wellington first threw back the left flank of the 5th Division en potence, to make a containing line against Foy, while its right flank still held the line of the river about Villa Muriel. Under cover of this rearguard, the remainder of the army evacuated its positions on each side of Dueñas at dawn on the 26th, and marched down the Pisuerga to Cabezon, where it passed the river at the bridge of that place and retired to the opposite side. The 5th Division followed (unmolested by the enemy) in the early morning: at night the entire allied army had retired across the broad stream, and was lining its left bank from Valladolid upward, with that city (held by the 7th Division) as the supporting point of its southern flank, and its northern resting on the Cubillas river. This was one of the most surprising and ingenious movements that Wellington ever carried out. On the 23rd he was defending the right bank of the Pisuerga—on the 24th he was on the other side and defending its left bank in a much stronger position. He was in no way sacrificing his communications with Portugal or Madrid, since he had behind him two good bridges over the Douro, those of Tudela and Puente Duero, with excellent roads southward and westward to Medina del Campo, Arevalo, and Olmedo. The enemy might refuse to attack him, and march down the west bank of the Pisuerga towards the Douro, but Wellington had already provided for the destruction of the three bridges of Simancas, Tordesillas, and Toro, and the Douro was now a very fierce and broad barrier to further progress, twice as difficult to cross as the Pisuerga. On the other hand, if Souham should make up his mind to come down the Pisuerga on its eastern bank, by the restored bridge of Tariego, there was an excellent fighting position along the Cubillas river. But the roads on this side of the Pisuerga were bad, and the country rough, while on the western bank the ground was flat and fertile, and the line of march easy.

Souham, therefore, advanced as was natural from Palencia southward, on the right bank of the Pisuerga; on the 26th he withdrew Maucune and Gauthier to that side, and on the 27th felt the position of Cabezon, which he decided to be impregnable, and left alone. He placed the infantry of the Army of the North opposite it, and moved southward with the rest of his forces. On the 28th he tried the passage of Valladolid, after driving out a battalion of Portuguese caçadores from the suburb beyond the Pisuerga, and cannonading the 51st across the bridge. Here too the obstacles looked most formidable, and the French, pursuing their march, came to the bridge of Simancas, which was blown up in their faces by Colonel Halkett, whose brigade of the 7th Division had been placed in this part of the British line. Halkett then sent on one of his three battalions (the Brunswick-Oels) to Tordesillas.

This was all quite satisfactory to Wellington, who had been able to give his troops two days’ rest, and who saw that the enemy, despite of his superior numbers, seemed to be brought to a nonplus by the position behind the Pisuerga. But the next evening (October 29) brought very untoward news. Foy’s division now formed the advance-guard of the Army of Portugal: it reached and occupied Tordesillas, where the bridge (like that of Simancas) had its main arch destroyed. A mediaeval tower on the south bank of the ruined structure was held by a half-company of the Brunswick-Oels infantry as an outlying picquet: the rest of the battalion was encamped in a wood some hundreds of yards behind. Considering that the river was broad and swift, and that all boats had been carefully destroyed, it was considered that the passage was impossible. Foy thought, however, that it was worth making the hazardous attempt to cross: he called for volunteers, and collected 11 officers and 44 men, who undertook to attempt to ford the Douro by swimming and wading. Their leader was Captain Guingret of the 6th Léger, one of the minor historians of the war. They placed their muskets and ammunition on a sort of raft formed of planks hastily joined, which certain good swimmers undertook to tow and guide. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon the 55 adventurers pushed off the raft, and plunged into the water, striking out in a diagonal direction. Meanwhile Foy brought down his divisional battery to the shore, and began shelling the tower at the bridge-end. The starting-point had been well chosen, and the raft and swimmers were borne across the stream with surprising speed, and came ashore a few yards from the tower, which, all naked and with arms many of which had been soaked in the water and would not fire, they proceeded to attack. The lieutenant in charge of the Brunswick picquet and his men lost their heads in the most disgraceful fashion; perhaps they were demoralized by the artillery playing on them—at any rate, after firing some ill-directed shots, they ran off—two were captured in the tower, nine others outside it. The swimmers, now shivering with cold, for the afternoon was bleak, took possession of the bridgehead, and Foy’s sappers at the other end of the broken arch began to hurry forward ropes to establish a communication with the captured tower[108].

The major in command of the Brunswick battalion, half a mile off, behaved as badly as the subaltern at the tower. He should have come down in force and thrown the handful of naked men into the river. Instead of doing so he put his corps under arms in the edge of the wood, and sent information to his brigadier asking for orders. By the time that Halkett heard of the matter, a rough communication had been made across the shattered bridge, and the French were streaming over. Nothing was done, save to move reinforcements from the 7th Division to block the two roads that diverge from the bridgehead south and west.

This extraordinary feat of Guingret’s party, one of the most dashing exploits of the Peninsular War, altered Wellington’s position, much for the worse. The enemy had now secured a crossing on the Douro opposite his extreme left wing. He had already begun to move troops in this direction, when he saw Foy pushing forward past Simancas, and on the morning of the 29th had resolved to leave Valladolid and make a general shift westward, parallel to the enemy. Soon after dawn the bridge of Cabezon was blown up, and the British right wing retired, under cover of the troops still holding Valladolid. When the right wing (the 5th Division and the Galicians) had passed to the rear of that city, and were nearing the Douro bridges (Tudela and Puente de Duero) behind it, the centre of the British line (1st, 6th, and Pack’s Portuguese) followed, and finally the left (two brigades of the 7th Division) evacuated Valladolid after destroying the Pisuerga bridge, and passed the Douro in the wake of the centre. All this was done with no molestation from the enemy, and at nightfall on the 29th every man was on the south of the Douro, and its bridges had been blown up after the rearguards had passed.

Wellington had been intending to hold the line of that great river till he should have certain news of how Hill—of whose operations the next chapter treats—was faring in the south. Since he knew that the troops from Madrid were coming to join him, he had purposed to maintain himself behind the Douro till Hill came up to the Adaja. The news of the passage of Foy at Tordesillas was therefore very vexatious; but his counter-move was bold and effective. Before the enemy had fully repaired the bridge, or got any large force across it, he marched to Rueda with the 1st, 6th, and 7th Divisions, and advanced from thence to the heights opposite Tordesillas, where he formed line of battle only 1,200 yards from the Douro, and threw up a line of redoubts, so strong that the enemy dared not push on. The first brigade to move out from the bridge would obviously be destroyed, and there was no room for large forces to deploy and attack. The enemy saw this, and instead of debouching constructed a defensive bridgehead at Tordesillas[109].

Souham indeed, having occupied Valladolid and drawn up to the line of the Douro, remained quiescent for six days. It looked as if his offensive movement had come to an end. The main cause of his halt was that Caffarelli, having assisted him in driving Wellington back to the Douro, refused to follow him further, declaring that he must go back at once to the North, from whence the most unsatisfactory news was reaching him day by day. Both about Pampeluna, and round Bilbao, which the Spaniards had once more seized, things were in a most dangerous condition. After barely visiting Valladolid he turned on his heel, and marching fast was back at Burgos again on November 6th[110]. Deprived of the strong cavalry brigade and the two infantry divisions of the Army of the North, Souham was no longer in a condition to press Wellington recklessly. He had now well under 40,000 men, instead of nearly 50,000, with which to assail the Allies in their new and strong position. Wherefore, he resolved to wait till he had news that Soult and King Joseph were drawing near from the South. The King’s dispatches had told him to avoid a general action, and to wait for the effect of the great diversion that would soon be developing against Wellington’s rear. Hence, mainly, came the halt, which caused his adversary to think for some days that he might be able to draw at the line of the Douro the limit of the French advance.

The first half of the retreat from Burgos was now at an end. To understand the manœuvres of the second half, we must first explain the doings of Soult, King Joseph, and General Hill in New Castile during the last week of October.

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER IV

HILL’S RETREAT FROM MADRID

The crisis in front of Madrid, where Hill stood exposed to attack from the mass of French forces in the kingdom of Valencia, developed late. We have already seen that the first dispatch from the South which disquieted Wellington only reached him on the 19th October, and that it was not till the 21st that he realized that all his plans for hindering a French advance on Madrid were ineffective, and that Hill was in serious danger.

The long delay in Soult’s evacuation of Andalusia was—as has been already remarked—the ultimate cause of the late appearance of the advancing columns of the enemy in front of Madrid. It was not till September 30 that the advanced cavalry of the Army of the South got into touch with the outlying vedettes of Treillard’s dragoons, at Tobarra near Hellin. Four days later Soult was in conference with King Joseph, and the Marshals Jourdan and Suchet who had come out to meet him, at Fuente la Higuera, some fifty miles farther on the road toward Valencia. They met with various designs, though all were agreed that the Allies must be driven out of the capital as soon as possible. Suchet was mainly anxious to get the Army of the South, and the King also, out of his own viceroyalty. Joseph’s troops were wasting his stores, and harrying the peasantry, whose shearing he wished to reserve for himself. Soult’s men were notoriously unruly, and at the present moment half famished, after their long march through a barren land. The Duke of Albufera was anxious to see them all started off for Madrid at the earliest possible moment. His only personal demand was that he should be allowed to borrow a division from one or the other army; for, when they should be gone, he thought that he would have barely enough men to hold off Mackenzie and the Spaniards of the Murcian army. He promised, and produced, large convoys of food for the service of the Armies of the South and Centre, but pleaded that in order to make his only base and arsenal—the city of Valencia—quite safe, it was necessary that they should leave him 5,000 extra troops: in especial he pleaded for Palombini’s division, which had originally been borrowed from his own army of Aragon. Jourdan—as he tells us in his memoirs[111]—maintained that it was necessary to turn every possible man upon Madrid, and that Suchet could defend himself against his old enemies with his own army alone. He might, if hard pressed, call down some troops from Catalonia.

But the real quarrel was between Soult and King Joseph. The first was in a sullen and captious mood, because the King had caused him to evacuate his much-prized viceroyalty in Andalusia, by refusing to join him there in September. But Joseph was at a much higher pitch of passion; not only did he still remember all Soult’s disobedience in July and August, which (as he thought) had led to the unnecessary loss of Madrid, but he had a new and a much more bitter grievance. Some time before the Army of the South reached Valencia, he had become possessed of the dispatch to the minister of war which Soult had written on August 12th, in which he hinted that the King was meditating treachery to his brother the Emperor, and had opened up negotiations with the Cortes in order to betray the French cause[112]. This document—as has been explained above—had been given by Soult to a privateer captain bound from Malaga to Toulon, who had been forced to run into the harbour of Valencia by the British blockading squadron. Not knowing the contents of the document, the captain had handed it over to the King, when he found him at Valencia. Thus Joseph was aware that the Marshal had accused him, on the most flimsy evidence, of betraying his brother. He was justly indignant, and had contemplated, in his first outburst of rage, the arrest and supersession of Soult. His next impulse had been to send off his confidential aide-de-camp Colonel Deprez, to seek first the minister of war at Paris, and then the Emperor himself in Russia[113], with his petition for vengeance. ‘Je demande justice. Que le Maréchal Soult soit rappelé, entendu, et puni[114].’ If his enemy had appeared at Valencia early in September, he would probably have taken the most extreme measures against him. But three weeks had gone by, his anger had had time to cool, and he could realize the danger of attempting to seize and deport a marshal whose army was double the size of his own and Suchet’s combined, and who had a powerful faction to support him among his own generals. Joseph hoped that a mandate for Soult’s recall and disgrace would soon be on its way from Russia, and meanwhile curbed his temper, ignored the Marshal’s recent charges of treachery, and contented himself with treating him with coldness, and overruling many of his proposals, on the mere formal ground of discipline. He was the commander-in-chief, and could accept or reject the suggestions of a subordinate as he pleased. Soult was no longer three hundred miles away, as he had been in June, and orders given by a superior on the spot could be enforced, unless the Marshal were prepared to break out into open insubordination.

There was no difference of opinion as to the necessity for marching on Madrid. But wrangling arose as to the amount of troops that would be needed for the operation. Soult said that every possible man would be required, and wished to march with the entire Army of the South on San Clemente and Ocaña, while he suggested that the King, with the Army of the Centre and a large detachment taken from Suchet, should move by Requeña and Cuenca. Suchet protested in the most vigorous fashion against being stripped of any of his divisions, and maintained that it was rather necessary that he should be lent 5,000 men from the Armies of the Centre of the South. The King and Jourdan refused to consider the latter proposition, but agreed that Suchet would require all his own troops, and that none should be taken from him. Yet approving of the double movement on Madrid, they declared that the Army of the Centre was too small to operate by itself, and that Soult should make over to it Barrois’s division and a brigade of light cavalry, to bring it up to the necessary strength. Soult protested loudly: the Emperor had entrusted the army of the South to him; he was responsible for it; it was one and indivisible, and so forth[115].

Joseph then put the matter to him in the form of a simple order to set these troops on a certain route on a certain day. The Marshal did not dare to disobey, but stated that he regarded them as still belonging to his army, and should continue to expect reports from their commanders. This left him with a force of five infantry and three cavalry divisions, disencumbered of his sick, and of 2,000 old, weakly, or time-expired men, who marched to Valencia to join the next convoy that Suchet should send to France. Their total (omitting Barrois and the cavalry taken off by Joseph) made up 30,000 infantry, 6,000 horse, and with engineers, artillery, train, &c., just 40,000 men. The Army of the Centre on October 15th showed (including Palombini, the King’s Guard and the Spaniards) about 15,000 present under arms, to which must be added Barrois and the two cavalry regiments that accompanied him[116], making 6,000 men between them. Thus the total force with which Joseph and Soult marched on Madrid was over 60,000 men[117].

The object of dividing the advancing army into two columns was not merely to make it more easy for the troops to find food in a desolate country, but much more to carry out a strategical plan. If the whole army had moved by the high road through La Mancha, it would have had no power to communicate with the Army of Portugal. The King’s idea was that the northern column, which marched by Cuenca, and which he himself accompanied, would ultimately get into touch with Souham, who had been directed—by dispatches which reached him too late or not at all—to follow Wellington in such a way that he would be able to outflank him on the Upper Douro, and open up communications by the route of Aranda, the Somosierra Pass, and Guadalajara, with the main French Army. But Souham, when he commenced his advance against Wellington on October 18th, had no order from the King later than a letter of October 1st, written before Soult had arrived in the kingdom of Valencia. He received no more dispatches while engaged in his pursuit of Wellington, and was unaware of Joseph’s later plans, so that when he reached Valladolid he made no endeavour to feel to his left, towards Aranda, but rather extended himself to his right, in the direction of Tordesillas and Toro, a movement which took him entirely away from the direction in which the King hoped to find him. They did not get into touch, or combine their operations in any way, till November had arrived. At the same time the advance of a large body of troops by the route of Cuenca turned out most profitable in the end to the French strategy, for it was precisely this flanking column, of great but unknown strength, which compelled Hill to abandon his intention of defending the lines of the Tagus or the Tajuna. However he might place himself opposite Soult’s army coming from the South, he had this threatening force beyond his eastern flank, turning his positions by roads too remote for him to guard.

King Joseph had proposed to commence his march upon Madrid at the earliest possible moment—at the interview with the three marshals at Fuente la Higuera he had named the 9th October as the date for starting. But Soult declared, after a few days, that this was impossible, owing to the necessity for collecting the convoys that Suchet was sending him, replenishing his ammunition, and bringing up his rearmost troops. The division of Conroux had picked up the yellow fever, by plundering out of its route, during the march through Murcia. It had been left in quarantine, some days behind the rest of the army, and would take time to come up. It is probable that Soult was not really wasting time of set purpose; but the King was certainly under the impression that he was doing so, and their correspondence was most acrimonious[118]. Special offence was given by Joseph’s withdrawing Drouet from the Army of the South, and entrusting him with the command of that of the Centre. But when Soult murmured at this and other things, the King sent him a laconic letter of ten lines, telling him that if he refused to obey orders he had better resign his command and go to Paris, where he would have to give account for all his doings. The Marshal, as on previous occasions when the question of his resignation had been pressed home[119], avoided this simple solution of the problem, and yielded a grudging obedience in the end.

Soult’s army was at this time cantoned with its right wing about Almanza, Yecla, and Fuente la Higuera, and its left wing—now about to become its advanced guard—in and around the large town of Albacete. A detachment from this wing had been for the last ten days attacking the isolated rock-fortress of Chinchilla, the only inland stronghold which was held by the Spaniards in the kingdom of Murcia. It was a Gothic donjon on an inaccessible cliff, only formidable because of its position, and manned by a trifling garrison. It might have held out indefinitely, having a resolute governor, a certain Colonel Cearra. But on October 9th, in a frightful thunderstorm, lightning struck the donjon, killed 15 soldiers, wounded many more, set the place on fire, and disabled the governor[120]. The garrison capitulated in sheer dismay, and the use by the French of the high road between Albacete and Almanza was no longer incommoded by the existence of this petty fortress.

King Joseph with the Army of the Centre marched out from Valencia on October 17th, and had his head-quarters at Requeña on the road to Cuenca on the 19th. On the 23rd he reached that ancient and much dilapidated city, and found it already in the hands of Drouet, who had arrived there on the 20th with Barrois’s division and the cavalry brigade of Avy from the Army of the South: he had expelled from it Bassecourt’s 3,000 Murcian troops. Soult had started on the 15th from Albacete, and had sent off Drouet’s detachment from San Clemente to Cuenca, while he himself marched by Belmonte on Tarancon and Santa Cruz de la Zarza, which he reached on October 25th. He had not got into real touch with the enemy till, on the last-named day, the cavalry on the right of his advance came into contact with Freire’s Murcian horse in front of Tarancon, and those on his left ran into the vedettes of Long’s British dragoons in front of Ocaña. During the time of his advance these troops had been retiring in front of him, from Consuegra, Toboso, Almonacid, Belmonte, and other places in La Mancha, where they had been providing a long screen of posts to observe his movements. They had, by Hill’s orders, retired from the 18th onward before the French cavalry, without allowing themselves to be caught up. It was only immediately in front of the Tagus that they slackened down their pace, and allowed the French to discover them. There was a smart skirmish in front of Ocaña on October 25th, between Bonnemain’s brigade and the 9th and 13th Light Dragoons and 10th Portuguese cavalry. The allied squadrons were pushed back towards Aranjuez with the loss of some 30 men, Erskine, who was in command of the cavalry division, refusing to make a stand or to bring up his reserves. His management of the troops was (not for the first time) much criticized by eye-witnesses[121], but it must be remembered that Hill had directed him not to commit himself to a serious action. On the same day Freire’s horse were turned out of Tarancon by Perreymond’s chasseurs.

The position of the commander of Wellington’s detached corps in front of Madrid had become a very responsible one between the 15th, when Soult’s advance began, and the 24th, when the enemy came up to the line of the Tagus and developed his attack. Fortunately Hill was in close touch with his chief: so well was the line of communication between them kept up, that it only took two days for a letter from Burgos to reach Madrid—and vice versa. When the army had come back from the Arlanzon to the Douro, the time became even shorter. Wellington received at Cabezon on the evening of October 27th dispatches that Hill had written on the morning of the 26th[122]. This contrasts wonderfully with the slow travelling of French correspondence—Souham got at Briviesca on October 17 a letter written by King Joseph at Valencia on October 1st. It had been obliged to travel by the absurdly circuitous route of Tortosa, Saragossa and Tudela. Truly the guerrilleros made concerted movements of French armies singularly difficult.

On the 17th October Hill had already got off his first letter of alarm to Wellington, saying that Soult was certainly on the move; by the 19th he knew that there was a column moving upon Cuenca, as well as the larger force which was advancing by San Clemente and Belmonte. He asked for orders, but meanwhile had to issue his own, in consonance with earlier directions received from Wellington. These presupposed two conditions which had not been realized—that the fords of the Tagus would be impassable, and that Ballasteros’s Andalusian army would already have crossed the Sierra Morena to Alcaraz and be lying on Soult’s flank. But their general directions were still practicable: the line of the Tagus was to be defended unless the enemy were in overwhelming strength: if (contrary to Wellington’s expectation) the whole French force in Valencia should advance, and its numbers prove greater than Hill could hope to check, he had been directed to evacuate Madrid, and to fall back beyond the Guadarrama, in order to join his chief on the Adaja, south of Valladolid, in Old Castile[123]. The first thing necessary was to discover the strength of the enemy—all accounts sent in by the Spaniards agreed that it was very great, and in particular, that the column going by Cuenca was no mere detachment, but a solid and considerable force. Meanwhile Wellington, even as late as October 12[124], had been informing Hill that his design of marching down on Madrid with three divisions, when the siege of Burgos should be either successfully concluded or else abandoned, was still retained. Any morning a dispatch might come to say that the commander-in-chief, with 15,000 men, was on his way to Valladolid; and therefore the army in front of Madrid must be ready for him, concentrated and in marching order. For if he came in person with such a reinforcement, Soult and King Joseph could be fought and beaten, whenever they made their appearance.

On October 15th, when the French advance had actually begun, the allied troops in New Castile were disposed with an outer screen, mainly consisting of Spanish troops, and a central nucleus of Hill’s own Anglo-Portuguese placed in cantonments between Madrid and the Tagus. Bassecourt was at Cuenca with 3,000 men; Elio, with Freire’s Murcian horse and a weak division of infantry—5,000 men in all—was watching the high roads from Albacete and Requeña to Madrid, in front of Tarancon. Penne Villemur’s cavalry with Morillo’s infantry—3,500 men at the most—lay across the great chaussée from Andalusia, about Herencia and Madridejos[125]. These troops formed the outer screen—not taking account of the Empecinado, who was (as usual) on the borders of New Castile and Aragon, worrying Suchet’s garrisons in the latter kingdom. Behind Penne Villemur, and south of the Tagus, were Long’s British and H. Campbell’s Portuguese cavalry brigades, in La Mancha, at Toboso, Villacanas, and other places. All the rest of the British troops were north of the Tagus, in the triangle Madrid-Toledo-Fuentedueñas, as were also D’Urban’s Portuguese horse and Carlos de España’s Spanish infantry division. When the advance of Soult and King Joseph developed itself, Hill drew everything back behind the Tagus, save Bassecourt’s division at Cuenca, which being evicted from that place by Drouet on the 20th did not retire towards Madrid, but went up into the mountains, and ultimately by circuitous routes rejoined the Alicante army.

On the 25th October, when Soult’s advanced cavalry had driven Long and Freire from Ocaña and Tarancon, Hill had his whole force, British, Portuguese and Spanish, arrayed in what he intended to be his preliminary fighting position along the Tagus. The extreme right was formed by Skerrett’s 4,000 men from Cadiz, who had got up to the front just in time to take their share in the fighting. They lay at Toledo and Añover. Then came the four brigades of the British 2nd Division, two of them at Aranjuez—which was held as a sort of tête de pont south of the river—and two at Colmenar de Orija. The line beyond them was prolonged by Penne Villemur and Morillo about Belmonte de Tajo and the fords of Villamanrique. Elio and Freire, who had retired across the bridge of Fuentedueñas after being driven out of Tarancon, was in charge of the upper Tagus from that point to Sacedon. Behind this front line lay the reserves—the 3rd and 4th Divisions close together at Valdemoro and Cienpozuelos, behind Aranjuez; the Light Division at Arganda; Carlos de España at Camporeal; Hamilton’s Portuguese division at Chinchon. Of the cavalry, Long and Campbell’s Portuguese, after being turned out of Ocaña, had fallen back on Aranjuez: D’Urban’s Portuguese were at Arganda, Slade’s brigade at Morata, Victor Alten’s at Getafe[126]. One march would concentrate the whole of the Allies, horse and foot—save Elio and Skerrett’s detachment alone—to defend the passage of the Tagus at either Aranjuez or Fuentedueñas, the two crossing-places which Hill judged that Soult would take into consideration, when he attempted to force the line of the river. About 36,000 men would be available, of whom 28,000 were Anglo-Portuguese and 8,000 Spaniards.

Soult, however, kept perfectly quiescent in front of Aranjuez and Fuentedueñas on the 26th-27th. He had still his cavalry to the front, but his infantry divisions were only coming up in succession: Conroux’s in especial, being still in quarantine owing to the yellow fever, was very far behind. But it was not merely the late arrival of his rear that kept Soult motionless: he was waiting for the Cuenca column to bring pressure to bear upon Hill’s flank, and did not intend to commit himself to any important engagements until the whole French army was in line. He expressed to King Joseph his opinion that the Allies were drawn out upon too long a front, and that a bold thrust at Aranjuez would probably succeed, when the attention of Hill should be drawn away to the East by the appearance of the Cuenca column in the direction of Fuentedueñas. Meanwhile he proceeded to make his preparations for attacking Aranjuez on the 28th.

Such an attack was never delivered, because Hill, on the evening of the 27th, made up his mind that he must not fight upon the Tagus[127]. For this determination there were three causes. The first was that the river still remained so low, the autumn rains having been very scanty hitherto, that it was fordable in many places. The mere breaking of the bridges at Aranjuez and Fuente Dueñas did not make it impassable, as Wellington and Hill himself had expected would be the case by the end of October. Secondly, if the line of the Tagus were forced at any point, the troops strung out along it had a very dangerous retreat before them, owing to the fact that the Tajuna, a stream not much smaller than the Tagus itself in this part of its course, runs behind it and parallel to it at a distance of only eight or ten miles. The number of spots where the Tajuna could be crossed, by fords, bridges, or ferries, were very few, and it was to be feared that bodies of troops abandoning positions on the Tagus, and retreating to the next line, might find themselves pressed against the Tajuna at impassable sections of its course, and so might be destroyed or captured if the enemy pursued with vigour. Thirdly—as Soult expected—the movement of the King and the column from Cuenca had now begun to exercise pressure on Hill’s mind. He had already moved two British brigades of the 2nd Division to Fuente Dueñas, replacing them at Aranjuez by Skerrett’s force, which left Toledo. But what if the King should cross the Tagus not at Fuente Dueñas but above it, where the river was only observed by Elio’s Murcians? They certainly could not stop him, and the whole Tagus line would be turned.

Hill’s resolve was now to defend not the Tagus but the line, running North and South, of the Henares and the Jarama (the river formed by the union of the Tajuna and Manzanares), from Guadalajara to the point near the Puente Larga where the Jarama falls into the Tagus. On the 28th Skerrett evacuated Aranjuez, and all the other troops fell back in similar fashion. This position left the allied army still covering Madrid, and with a safe retreat to the passes above it, should things go ill. The new disposition of forces was as follows: Toledo had been handed over to the partida of El Medico, since no French reconnaissances had come in this direction, and it was clear that the enemy had no serious intentions on this flank. The extreme right wing of the army was formed by the 4th Division, now once more under General Cole, who had come up, cured of his wound, from the Salamanca hospital. It lay at Añover, behind the point where the Jarama flows into the Tagus, with its flank covered by the Gunten river and some of Long’s dragoons. Next in line, six miles to the North, was Skerrett’s force, holding the Puente Larga, the main passage over the Jarama river, two miles north of Aranjuez. Beyond him were the 3rd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese about Valdemoro and St. Martin de la Vega. Then came the Light Division at Alcalá de Henares[128]: Carlos de España’s and Morillo’s Spaniards were in their company. Elio’s Murcians were directed to fall back on Guadalajara. So much for the infantry: the cavalry was kept out in front, with orders to keep a line of vedettes on the Tagus till they should be driven in, and then to hold the course of the Tajuna in a similar fashion, before breaking its bridges and falling back on to the Henares and Jarama, the real fighting line. But nothing was to be risked, and the main body of each brigade was to keep itself in front of a practicable crossing, by which it could retreat when the enemy should have shown himself in force. ‘Sir Rowland,’ wrote his Quartermaster-General, ‘wishes you to keep the posts on the Tajuna, and those in front of it (on the Tagus), as long as you can with safety. Cover the line of the Henares as long as you can.’[129] Slade’s, Long’s, and Campbell’s Portuguese squadrons had the right, covering the river bank from Aranjuez to Villamanrique with their vedettes, D’Urban, Victor Alten, and Penne Villemur held the left, from Villamanrique up stream.

On Oct. 28th the French cavalry, having detected the disappearance of Hill’s infantry, crossed the Tagus both at Aranjuez and Fuente Dueñas in force, whereupon the allied horse retired behind the Tajuna and broke all of its bridges. Soult at once commenced to repair the bridges of Aranjuez, and brought an infantry division forward into the town on the 29th, but made no serious effort to feel Hill’s position behind the Jarama and Tajuna, being determined not to involve himself in heavy fighting till King Joseph and the column from Cuenca were up in line. The head of the Army of the Centre, however, reached Fuente Dueñas this same day, and began to pass[130], meeting (of course) with no opposition. But the reconstruction of the bridge took some time, and D’Erlon’s infantry was not across the Tagus in any force till the next day. The King himself rode to Ocaña, conferred there with Soult, and made arrangements for a general forward movement upon the 30th. There would have been heavy fighting upon the 30th-31st, if Hill had been permitted to make a stand on his chosen position with the 40,000 men whom he had placed in line between Alcalá and Añover. He had now all his troops concentrated except Elio’s Murcians, who lay out in the direction of Guadalajara with no enemy in front of them. But on the morning of the 29th Hill received a dispatch from Wellington, dated from Cabezon on the night of the 27th, which upset all the arrangements made hitherto. The important paragraph of it ran as follows: ‘The enemy are infinitely superior to us in cavalry, and from what I saw to-day very superior in infantry also. We must retire, and the Douro is no barrier for us. If we go, and cannot hold our ground beyond the Douro, your situation will become delicate. We certainly cannot stand against the numbers opposed to us in any situation, and it appears to me to be necessary that you, as well as we, should retire. The only doubt which I entertain is about the road which you should take, and that doubt originates in the insufficiency of this army to stop the army opposed to it for a sufficient time to allow you to reach the Adaja. I propose to remain on the Pisuerga to-morrow (October 28) and as long as I can upon the Douro, and then to retire by Arevalo. God knows whether I shall be able to remain on either river!; and if I cannot, your retreat should be by the valley of the Tagus. If I can remain, we should join as arranged by previous letters. If I can remain on the Pisuerga to-morrow, I shall pass the Douro on the 29th, and shall probably be able to prevent the enemy from crossing in force till the 1st November, in which case I shall reach Arevalo on the 3rd. You will not receive this letter till the 29th. You will arrive at the Escurial, probably on the 31st, at Villacastin on the 2nd, at Arevalo on the 4th.... If I should not be able to hold my ground either on the Pisuerga or the Douro, I shall apprise you of it at the first moment, and shall suggest your line of retreat.... Your march, as proposed (i.e. via the Guadarrama) at least as far as Villacastin, would be secure, whereas that by Talavera, &c., would not, till you shall cross the Tagus. Do not order the bridge at Almaraz to be taken up or destroyed, till you are certain you do not want it.’[131] The dispatch ended by directing Hill to bring on with him Carlos de España’s, Morillo’s, and Penne Villemur’s Spaniards, but to order Freire, Elio, and Bassecourt to join Ballasteros by the route of Toledo, while the Empecinado had better go to his old haunts in the mountains beyond Guadalajara.

This was a most alarming dispatch for Hill. Just as he had assumed his fighting position, and was expecting to be attacked by Soult on the following day, he received orders to retire without a moment’s delay. And what was worst of all, he was told that the line of retreat indicated to him would not improbably prove dangerous or impossible, and that he might, within the next day or so, get a counter-order, directing him to retire by the line of the Tagus and Almaraz, since a junction with Wellington behind the Adaja might prove impossible. But a retreat across the front of the enemy, on the route Navalcarnero-Talavera-Almaraz, would clearly be most dangerous, since the left wing of the Army (the Light Division, D’Urban, Alten and the Spaniards) would have forty miles to march before they were clear of the advancing columns of the French, debouching from Aranjuez. And to make matters worse, the enemy was terribly strong in cavalry, and the countryside south of Madrid was very favourable to the mounted arm. If the army should march at once for the road by the Guadarrama, and when it had reached the neighbourhood of Madrid or the Escurial should get the news that the route to Villacastin and Arevalo had been blocked, it would be almost impossible to turn off on to the Tagus line or to make for Almaraz. The only chance left would be to take the bad mountain-road to Avila, and thence to the upper Tormes, a choice that no officer could contemplate without dismay in October.

There was one plea that might have been urged in favour of an instant move toward Talavera and the Tagus route (the right wing to march by Illescas and Fuensalida, the left by Madrid and Navalcarnero), but it was a plea of which neither Wellington nor Hill seems to have thought. Supposing that Hill’s 40,000 men after uncovering and evacuating Madrid should place themselves behind the Alberche, in and about Talavera, it was difficult to believe that Soult and King Joseph would dare to march north to join Souham and to trouble Wellington. They could hardly leave 40,000 men behind them uncontained, and would probably have to halt and to face toward Hill, so as to cover the capital. This threat to their flank and their rear might force the enemy to come to a stop, and might secure Wellington’s rear as effectually as a junction with him at Arevalo behind the Adaja. But on the other hand there were two considerations which tended to make any use of the Tagus route undesirable, save on compulsion and as a pis aller. The first was that the whole valley from Toledo to Almaraz was in a state of dreadful exhaustion, with half its land untilled and its population living on the edge of starvation. To subsist there would be difficult. The second and more important was that the enemy might conceivably leave Soult and the Army of the South to hold Madrid and contain Hill’s force, and then would still possess 20,000 men—of the Cuenca column—who might be sent by the Guadarrama and Villacastin to take Wellington in the rear. It would be of little use to bring the enemy to a standstill in the direction of Madrid, if he could still spare a detachment which would make Wellington’s position in Old Castile hopelessly untenable, and might even put him in grave danger of being overwhelmed.

But ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof’ was no doubt the reflection of Rowland Hill, a pious man well acquainted with his Bible. He had for the present a clear order to march for the Escurial, the Guadarrama, and Arevalo. That it might be cancelled if certain circumstances, over which he had no control, should occur on the Douro, was an unpleasant possibility, which did not come into consideration on the 29th of October. Accordingly he gave orders for instant retreat. There was little immediate danger to his left wing, since the French column in front of it, at Fuente Dueñas, had to pass first the defiles of the Tajuna and then those of the Jarama, and all the bridges on both were destroyed or ready for destruction. The right wing was in a much more delicate situation, since it was separated from Soult at Aranjuez only by the Jarama. The outposts of the two armies were in close touch with each other at the Puente Larga, with nothing but the river between; and the 4th Division at Añover had to pass behind the force holding the Puente Larga in order to get into the Madrid road. Supposing that bridge were forced too soon, Cole would be driven off in an eccentric line of retreat toward Toledo and Talavera.

While, therefore, all the rest of the army was set in motion for the Escurial at dawn on the 30th, Skerrett was ordered to stand still at the Puente Larga, and to hold it at all costs till the rest of the allied right wing should have got clear. Meanwhile the troops about Alcalá (the Light Division, España and Morillo) marched round the north side of Madrid without entering the city, and continuing their course all day and part of the night, were on the upper Manzanares, about the palace of El Pardo by 12 p.m. At the same time the troops about Valdemoro (3rd Division, Hamilton’s Portuguese, and the bulk of the cavalry) retired past the south side of Madrid, and reached Aravaca, on its west side two miles out, by night. Here Hill established his head-quarters. The 4th Division, from Añover, which had the longest march of all, had been started off before the bulk of the army, on the night of the 29th, not at dawn on the 30th like the rest. It fell into the main road at Valdemoro before daybreak, much fatigued; while halting there the weary men discovered more wine than was good for them—the population had fled and left their cellars exposed for the first comer. There was a terrible amount of drunkenness, and so much straggling, when the division marched off at noon, that many hundreds of men, hidden in houses in a state of absolute incapacity to move, were left behind[132]. The division, minus its drunkards, joined the rest of the right wing at Aravaca that night. Cole remained behind himself—while his troops marched on—to supervise the defence of the Puente Larga. He had been told to take on Skerrett’s brigade as a part of his division till further orders, and naturally stopped with the rearguard.

By the night of the 30th all the army was concentrated beyond Madrid, without having seen an enemy or suffered any molestation, save Skerrett’s detachment, which was fighting all day at the Puente Larga for the protection of the rest. Soult, as Hill had expected, had resolved to force the line of the Jarama and Tajuna that day. But while on the right his cavalry felt forward only to the Tajuna and its broken bridges, on the left he was already in touch with his enemy, for the Puente Larga is only two miles outside Aranjuez, from which the approach to it lies along one of the great avenues of planes that form part of the royal Park between the Tagus and Jarama.

The Puente Larga is an immensely long bridge of 16 arches, for the Jarama in winter is a very broad river. Its southern end is commanded by a slight rising ground, its northern lies in the flat and ends in a causeway, by which the road finally mounts up on to the plateau of Valdemoro. Thus it would have been easier to defend from the south than from the north, as Skerrett had to do. An attempt had been made to blow up one of the centre arches of the bridge, but though two mines had been laid, their explosion on the morning of the 30th did not make a complete breach, one parapet and a broad section of the footway beside it remaining intact. The engineer officer in charge, holding that there was no time to make another mine, had a breastwork covered by an abattis thrown up across the northern end of the bridge. Here then was a sort of terrace with balustrades and stone seats, where the bridge and causeway met. Behind the breastwork and the terrace Skerrett placed his two companies of the 95th Rifles and part of the 2/47th, while behind the nearer part of the causeway there was room for the supports, the rest of the 47th and the 2/87th in close column. The ridge of the causeway almost completely sheltered them from fire from the French side of the river, even from the most elevated ground. Three guns of Braun’s Portuguese battery were prepared for action on the right end of the terrace, behind the hastily extemporized breastwork. Half a mile to the rear, at the north end of the causeway, was Skerrett’s reserve, composed of the 3rd batt. of the First Guards, the 20th Portuguese, and the remaining three pieces of Braun’s battery. The whole defending force of five battalions and six guns was somewhat under 4,000 strong.

Soult was not certain whether Hill was intending to fight on the line of the Jarama, or whether he had merely to drive in a rearguard. The day was very misty from dawn onward, and at 9 o’clock in the morning rain began, and fell continuously till night. Thus the Marshal could not see in the least what sort of a force was opposed to him, and his cavalry, exploring up and down the river bank, were unable to find any practicable fords, or to give him any information as to whether there were allied troops holding the entire course of the Jarama. After some hours, therefore, Soult sent forward Reymond’s division[133] with orders to force the Puente Larga, as he had been informed that it was still passable owing to the failure of the mines. A battery took post on the rising ground at the south end of the bridge, and shelled the breastwork and the Portuguese guns, while the voltigeur companies of the 12th Léger strung, themselves out along the river bank, and commenced a long bickering fusillade with Skerrett’s men across the water. The artillery and musketry fight went on for some hours, till Braun’s three pieces ceased firing for want of ammunition. Thinking this a favourable moment, Soult sent part of the 12th Léger against the bridge—the head of the column never reached the narrow pass at the half-broken eighth arch, suffering so much from the musketry that it fell back in disorder before getting half-way across. Another regiment, or the same re-formed, attempted a similar rush a few minutes later, and was repulsed in the same fashion. Thereupon Soult ordered the attack to cease, ‘seeing,’ as he says in his dispatch, ‘that we were wasting ammunition to no effect.’ He drew off both his guns and his voltigeurs, and the combat came to an end. A French officer appeared on to the bridge with a white flag a little later, and got permission to remove the many wounded lying at its south end. After dark Skerrett withdrew very quietly, leaving dummy sentries on the bridge head and the causeway, who were only detected as straw-stuffed great-coats at dawn next morning. The brigade, therefore, had an undisturbed march all night, and halted next morning on the Prado of Madrid, where it was allowed a few hours of rest. Its loss had been about 3 officers and 60 men killed and wounded, of whom 40 were in the 2/47th and 11 in the rifle companies. The French had five officers and about 100 men killed and wounded[134]. The whole fight was much what the combat of the Coa would have been in 1810, if Craufurd had fought behind and not before the bridge of Almeida.

Soult had deduced, from the stubborn way in which the Puente Larga was defended, that Hill was standing to fight a general action behind the Jarama. He made during the night preparations for bringing up much artillery and constructing bridges, but discovered at dawn that his exertions had been unnecessary. Cavalry under Pierre Soult were pushed out as far as Valdemoro, and captured there some 300 drunken stragglers belonging to the 4th Division, who had not thought fit to follow Skerrett when he passed through. The day was one of dense fog, and the younger Soult never got in touch with Hill’s rearguard, but picked up a rumour that Wellington was expected at Madrid that day, with two divisions from Burgos, and that the whole allied army was prepared to deliver battle in a position outside the capital. In consequence, his brother the Marshal held back, and contented himself with bringing up the entire Army of the South to the Jarama, while he sent his false news to King Joseph and Jourdan. He proposed that the Cuenca column should make no attempt to force the higher course of the Tajuna, where all the bridges were broken, and behind which lay the equally tiresome obstacle of the Henares, but should come round to Aranjuez and cross by the Puente Larga. Jourdan advised compliance, remarking that the forcing of the lines of the Tajuna and Henares and the making of bridges upon them might take many days. To save time the right wing came round to join the left[135].

This was a godsend to Hill, as it resulted in no pursuit being made on the 31st; the French advanced cavalry only entered Madrid on the 1st November, and the second of that month had arrived before any infantry reached the capital. By that day the allied army was over the Guadarrama, and well on its way to Villacastin and Arevalo. The evacuation of Madrid was accompanied with many distressing incidents: the people were in despair at seeing themselves about to fall back once more into the power of the ‘Intrusive King’. Many of the notables had committed themselves so openly to the patriotic cause that they thought it wise to depart in company with Hill’s army. An order to burn the considerable stores of provisions which could not be brought off led to a riot—the lower classes were on the edge of starvation, and the sight of good food being wasted led them to make a disorderly rush on the magazines, to drive away the commissaries, and to carry off the flour and salt meat which was being destroyed. Probably it would have been wise to permit them to do so without making difficulties; as the stores, once dispersed, could hardly have been gathered in again by the enemy. The explosion of the Arsenal in the Retiro fort was a more absolute necessity, but the Madrileños murmured greatly that the large building of La China, the porcelain manufactory, was blown up along with the surrounding earthworks. The mines, it may be incidentally remarked, were so carelessly laid that two commissariat officers were killed by the first of them that went off, and the last nearly made an end of Captain Cleeves, K.G.L., the artillery officer in charge of the business. He was severely scorched, and barely escaped with his life[136].

The rearguard of the British Army quitted the mourning city by noon on the 31st October: the head of the column was already on that day at the Escurial. On November 1st the passage of the Guadarrama began, and on the 3rd the last cavalry brigade, bringing up the rear, was over the mountains. Not a sign had been seen of the enemy, whose advanced light cavalry only reached Galapagar, five miles south of the Escurial upon the 2nd. The weather, however, was very bad, rain falling day after day, and this must serve as an inadequate excuse for the fact that straggling had already begun, and that a certain number of men dropped so far behind that they fell into the hands of the tardily-appearing enemy. But the loss of these laggards, for the most part the selected bad characters of each battalion, was a small price to pay for an unmolested retreat. Hill’s spirits rose, hour by hour, as he received no letter from Wellington to say that the retreat to Arevalo had become impossible, or that the line of the Douro had been lost. These terrible possibilities might—so far as he knew—have come into existence at any moment on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd of November. On the 4th the whole army from Madrid was concentrated at Villacastin, so close to Wellington’s position behind the Douro at Rueda that dispatches could now get through from him to Hill in less than twelve hours. The cavalry of the extreme rearguard—the 2nd Hussars K.G.L., who had left the Escurial only on the 3rd, had barely seen the enemy’s advanced vedettes on that day, and were not overtaken by them till late on the 4th. The pursuit was slow, cautious, and not executed by any very large body of horse. Hill, therefore, granted his troops a very necessary rest of twelve hours at Villacastin.

At last, however, on the evening of November 4th, when the worst possibilities seemed to have passed by, and nothing could any longer prevent Hill from joining Wellington, discouraging news, so long expected, at last came to hand. A dispatch from Rueda informed Hill that his chief had determined to retreat from the line of the Douro, for reasons which will be explained in the next chapter, and that the position in which he intended to fight was that in front of Salamanca, where he had faced and beaten Marmont in July. This being so, there was no reason to bring up Hill’s corps to Arevalo. Since a junction between the two halves of the army was now secure, the troops from Madrid should save themselves an unnecessary détour to the north, by turning off the chaussée to Valladolid and taking the cross-road by Belayos, Villanueva de Gomez, and Peñaranda. This would bring them to Alba de Tormes, where they would find themselves in touch with Wellington’s own troops, which would move, by La Nava and Cantalpino, to the San Cristobal position outside Salamanca.

This march therefore Hill executed. On the 4th he had at last heard of the appearance of Soult’s cavalry, and that same evening his extreme rearguard, the 2nd Hussars of the K.G.L. had a slight engagement with French squadrons near Villacastin. But nothing was known of the main body of the enemy’s infantry, nor was it even certain whether the Army of the South and the Army of the Centre were both pursuing by the route of the Guadarrama. Soult, as a matter of fact, had only made up his mind to cross the mountains by that route on the 3rd, and nothing but the light cavalry of his brother was near Hill’s rear. On the 4th, 5th, and 6th November his main body was coming up, and he was in force at Arevalo on the last-named day. Only the horse of his advanced guard had followed Hill on the Peñaranda road. The object of the move on Arevalo was to seek for the Army of Portugal, of which no certain news had yet been obtained. The Duke of Dalmatia supposed however that it had to be looked for on the side of Tordesillas, and wished to communicate with it before he pressed Hill too closely. For if the latter had united with Wellington—as was very possible—he might have found himself in face of more than 60,000 men, and he had but 40,000 of his own, since the Army of the Centre was not yet up in line. The King himself with his Guards followed Soult after a short interval, but the three infantry divisions (Barrois, Palombini, Darmagnac) which had formed the column that marched from Cuenca, were far behind. Palombini’s division, which had been told off to act as the rearguard, was observing the accumulation of Spanish troops near Guadalajara, where Elio and Freire had now been joined by the Empecinado, who had come in from the direction of Aragon. They had united at the Puente de Aunion and Sacedon, a few miles south-east of Guadalajara, on the upper Tagus. There were now 8,000 or 9,000 enemies in this quarter, still quite close to Madrid, and Joseph and Jourdan had to come to a difficult decision. If a garrison were left in Madrid, and a strong column sent to evict Elio from his position, the Army of the Centre would have few troops left who could follow Soult in the pursuit of Wellington. But if the whole Army of the Centre marched by the Guadarrama, there was nothing to prevent Elio from coming down to reoccupy Madrid, and the political effect of the evacuation of the capital would be detestable, for it would look as if the whole French army was but a flying column incapable of holding what it had won[137]. After some hesitation the King and Jourdan resolved that the military necessity of taking forward every available man to crush Wellington was all-important. If Soult alone joined the Army of Portugal in Old Castile the French in this direction would not outnumber the combined forces of Wellington and Hill, and might be brought to a stand—perhaps even beaten. The 20,000 men of the Cuenca column must be brought forward at all costs to secure a numerical superiority for the French arms in the North. Madrid therefore must be abandoned, and the infantry of the King’s army marched out of it on the 6th and 8th November, Palombini bringing up the rear once more. Even the sick and Joseph’s Spanish courtiers had to be taken on, with a comfortless assurance that they might in the end be dropped at Valladolid[138]. On the 8th the leading division of the Army of the Centre reached Villacastin by forced marches, the rear did not get up till the 10th[139]. Thus it is clear that on November 5th, when Hill executed his flank movement on Fontiveros and Peñaranda, there was nothing near him save Soult’s advanced cavalry, supported at an interval by the infantry of the Army of the South, while the Army of the Centre had not even left Madrid. If Wellington had but known this, it might have brought about a change in his orders; but—as cannot too often be repeated—the ‘fog of war’ sometimes lies very thick around a general at the moment when he has to make his crucial decision, and on these two days the enemy might have been closed up, instead of being strung out in detachments over a hundred miles of mountain roads. A few days after the French left Madrid the Empecinado came down to the capital and occupied it—Elio had gone off, according to Wellington’s original orders, to place himself in communication with the Army of Andalusia (now no longer under Ballasteros) and took post in La Mancha. Bassecourt reoccupied Cuenca. There was not a French soldier left in New Castile, and all communication between Soult and King Joseph on one side and Suchet in Valencia on the other, were completely broken off.

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER V

THE BURGOS RETREAT. THE OPERATIONS ROUND SALAMANCA. NOVEMBER 1-NOVEMBER 15, 1812

When we turned aside to narrate the operations round Madrid, and Hill’s retreat across the Guadarrama Pass, we left Wellington and his army on November 1st drawn up on the south side of the Douro, with head-quarters at Rueda. Their right flank was covered by the Adaja, the cavalry of their left flank was opposite Toro, where the French were visible in some force, and were known to be repairing the bridge which had been destroyed on October 30th. It was evident that the main body of the enemy still lay about Tordesillas, Simancas, and Valladolid, but its exact strength was not ascertainable. A rumour had crossed the river that Caffarelli and the Army of the North were already returning to their own regions beyond Burgos; it was a true rumour, but Wellington could get no confirmation for it[140]. Till the facts were ascertained, he was bound to consider it probable that the whole body of the enemy—nearly 50,000 strong—which had pursued him since October 22nd was still in his front[141]. With such a force he considered himself unable to cope, if once it crossed the river whose line he was defending. ‘They are infinitely superior to us in cavalry, and from what I saw to-day (October 27) were superior in infantry also. We must retire therefore, and the Douro is no barrier for us.’ He held on however in the position that he had taken up on October 30 till November 5, partly because he was wishing to cover as long as possible Hill’s march to join him from Madrid, partly because Souham made no attempt for some days to debouch in force across the bridges of Tordesillas or Toro.

Meanwhile the near approach of Hill and the force from Madrid, with Soult’s army in pursuit, was modifying the position from day to day. By November 4th Hill, as we have already seen, was at Villacastin with all his five infantry divisions, and the 7,000 or 8,000 Spaniards of Morillo and Carlos de España. He was being followed by the French, but reported that day that he had so far seen no more than four regiments of cavalry and two battalions of infantry. Was this the advanced guard of the whole 60,000 men whom Soult and King Joseph had brought against Madrid, or was it a mere corps of observation? ‘I do not think it clear,’ wrote Wellington to Hill, at 9 o’clock on the morning of November 5th, ‘that the enemy is following you in force. I conceive these four regiments and two battalions to have been sent only to see what you are doing.’[142] This day Wellington could have united himself to Hill without any fear of being hindered by either of the French armies, and could have had the whole of his 65,000 men concentrated between Medina del Campo and Arevalo within thirty-six hours. The enemy, though their two armies taken together outnumbered him by more than 25,000 men, could not possibly unite within a similar time. He had, therefore, the position which enterprising generals most desire, that of lying between the two fractions of a hostile force, which cannot combine easily, and of being able to bring superior numbers against either one of them. One can speculate without much difficulty as to what Napoleon would have done in a similar posture of affairs.

But Wellington, after mature consideration, resolved that it would not be prudent to unite the two halves of his army and to march against one or other of his enemies. It is fortunate that he has left a record of the reasons which prevented him from doing so. They are contained in a dispatch to Lord Bathurst dated November 8th, when he had already committed himself to a wholly different policy. If he were to march with his own army, he wrote, to join Hill about Arevalo, with the object of falling upon the heads of Soult’s columns as they debouched on Villacastin, Souham could cross the Douro unopposed behind him at Toro, whose bridge was now repaired, and get behind his left flank. While he was engaged with Soult and the King, who might conceivably have 50,000 men at the front[143], and be able to offer a good resistance, Souham could close in on his rear, and after cutting him off from Salamanca and his magazines, could attack him, while he was committed to the contest with the army from Madrid.

On the other hand, if he took the second alternative, and brought Hill’s column up to Medina del Campo and Tordesillas, Souham would keep north of the Douro, and could not be assailed: ‘the enemy would not attempt to pass so long as we remained in our position.’ But meanwhile Soult and the King, being unopposed by Hill, might cut him off from his base and magazines, because the line Villacastin-Fontiveros-Salamanca is shorter than that from Tordesillas to Salamanca. ‘The enemy would have had the shortest line to the Tormes by Fontiveros, if they had preferred to march in that direction rather than to follow the march of Sir Rowland Hill’s troops.’

This last argument, it must be confessed, seems disputable, for not only are the roads Rueda-Fuentesauco-Salamanca and Rueda-Pitiegua-Salamanca as a matter of fact no longer than the road Villacastin-Fontiveros-Peñaranda-Salamanca[144], but they were in all respects better roads, through a level country, while the route which Wellington assigns to the enemy (and which Hill actually pursued) passes through much more difficult and hilly regions, and was but a cross-country line of communications. It would seem doubtful also whether there was any probability that the enemy, granting that he had his whole force concentrated at the front, would dare to take this route, since it was the one which made a junction with Souham and the Army of Portugal most difficult to him. Soult and Joseph were very badly informed as to the exact situation of their friends from the North, but it was clear that they would have to be looked for rather in the direction of Tordesillas and Valladolid than in that of Salamanca. As a matter of fact, even after Wellington’s retreat, Soult took the trouble to move on Arevalo, instead of marching on Fontiveros and Peñaranda, for the sole purpose of getting into communication with Souham, whose co-operation was all-important to him.

But putting this particular objection aside, it seems certain that if Wellington had concentrated opposite Souham, behind the Douro, Soult and the King could not have been prevented from getting into touch with the Army of Portugal by taking the route Villacastin, Segovia, Olmedo, keeping the Adaja between them and the Allies, and making for the upper passages of the Douro (Tudela, &c.), which Wellington had surrendered to Souham on October 30th. This fact is conclusive against the policy of drawing up Hill to Rueda and making a move against the northern enemy. Though a march by Soult and Joseph against Salamanca was improbable, there were perfectly sound reasons for rejecting this particular combination.

As much cannot be said on purely strategical grounds for Wellington’s resolution to retreat on Salamanca instead of making a blow at Soult—his old original plan of September and October. Supposing that he had left nothing more than a screen along the Douro to ‘contain’ Souham—say the Galicians and a little cavalry—he could have joined Hill at or near Arevalo on the 5th or 6th, and have calculated on a couple of days’ start before the Army of Portugal could have followed him—it had to concentrate from scattered cantonments and to cross on one or other of two ill-repaired bridges. Meanwhile Soult would have been caught on the 6th with his 40,000 men strung out on many miles of mountain road, and with his supports (the Army of the Centre) still at Madrid—they did not even start for the Guadarrama till that same day. It is clear that the Duke of Dalmatia would have had to retreat in haste, under pain of suffering a disaster: his advance guard might very possibly have been cut up and maltreated, and he would have had to fall back on the passes, where food was unobtainable, and long sojourn impossible.

This would have been the Napoleonic method of dealing with the situation. But it would be absurd to blame Wellington for not adopting such a plan. Now, as always, he had to play the safer game, simply because he could not afford to take risks. Napoleon could face with indifference the loss of 5,000 or 10,000 men from a forced march in bad weather, ending in an operation that miscarried—such had been his march against Sir John Moore in December 1808. Wellington could not. The season at the moment was singularly unfavourable for a sudden offensive stroke, involving rapid movement. The troops were almost worn out: Hill’s column had only just terminated a fatiguing retreat, the troops from Burgos had only been granted five days’ rest since the end of a similar march. The number of sick (about 17,000) was alarming, and many battalions were already reduced to 250 or 300 bayonets. What was worse, straggling had shown itself in the most vexatious form, not only among the troops of Wellington’s own column, but among Hill’s divisions, which ought to have done better after their long sojourn in quiet cantonments round Madrid. A sudden dash to surprise Soult by forced marches upon Villacastin would have been very costly, even before the fighting began. And if the Marshal refused to stand, and simply retired in haste toward the Army of the Centre, it would be impossible to push him far. Meanwhile Souham would be across the Douro, and threatening Salamanca, or approaching Wellington’s own rear. After all there remained the cardinal fact that the enemy had a great numerical superiority: it was even over-estimated in Wellington’s own mind, since he thought that Caffarelli and the Army of the North were still at Valladolid.

Hence came his final decision to retreat by easy marches toward the strong positions about Salamanca, leaving the offensive to the enemy, and granting them the opportunity of uniting their two long-separated armies. Wellington’s own plea in favour of this resolve must be quoted—‘The two corps of this army, particularly that which has been in the North, are in want of rest. They have been continually in the field, and almost continually marching, since the month of January last; their clothes and equipments are much worn, and a period in cantonments would be very useful to them. The cavalry likewise are weak in numbers, and the horses rather low in condition. I should wish to be able to canton the troops for a short time, and I should prefer the cantonments on the Tormes to those farther in the rear. I do not know exactly what the force of the enemy is. The Army of Portugal have about 36,000 men, of which 4,000 is cavalry[145]. The Army of the North have 10,000 men, of which 1,200 is cavalry. It is hard to judge of the exact extent of Soult’s force. It is reported that the enemy brought from Valencia to the Tagus from 40,000 to 45,000 men, but I should consider this to be rather below the number that the Armies of Andalusia and the Centre could bring up, without any troops from the Armies of Aragon and Valencia[146]. Soult is particularly strong in good cavalry, and there are several more regiments in the Army of the Centre. It will remain to be seen what number of troops can be brought to operate against our position (on the Tormes): as unless Madrid should be again abandoned to its fate by the King, he must make arrangements to resist the attacks which Elio and the guerrilleros (the Empecinado, El Medico, &c.) will make on that city, even if General Ballasteros should not move forward in La Mancha. I propose therefore to wait at present on the Tormes, till I shall ascertain more exactly the extent of the enemy’s force. If they should move forward, I can either bring the contest to a crisis on the positions of San Christoval, or fall back to the Agueda, according to what I shall at the time consider to be best for the cause[147].’

Wellington’s estimate of a total force for the enemy of rather more than 90,000 men was not far out, for if he wrongly supposed that Caffarelli might still be at the front with his 10,000 men, he underrated the total of the Armies of the South and Centre very considerably. They had not merely the something over 45,000 men of which he wrote, but nearly 60,000. But he was under the impression that King Joseph would probably leave a large detachment to defend Madrid; and if the enemy came forward against the line of the Tormes with anything less than 70,000 men, he was prepared to defend it. His own force, counting Hill, but allowing for the losses on the retreats from Burgos and Madrid, which would amount to about 2,000 at the most, would be not far below that same figure, including 18,000 Spaniards. But the strength of the position would compensate for the inferior value of these auxiliaries in line of battle. Just at this moment Wellington was not at all contented with the Galicians, whose conduct at Palencia and Villa Muriel had irritated him. ‘I was sorry to observe,’ he wrote to Lord Bathurst, ‘that in the affair of the 25th October, although the Spanish soldiers showed no want of spirit or of disposition to engage the enemy, they were totally unable to move with the regularity and order of a disciplined body—by which alone success can be hoped for in any contest with the French[148].’

There were three possibilities before Wellington when he had made up his mind to retire to the Tormes. The French might be contented with having driven him out of New Castile and away from the Douro, and press him no farther. This would be quite probable, if they had made up their minds to detach a large force to hold Madrid. Or, secondly, they might come up against him to Salamanca, with a force no greater than his own. In this case he was prepared to fight, and hoped to come well out of the business. Thirdly, there was the chance that they might bring forward every available man, and try to evict him from his chosen position: if they were in very great strength he must yield, and go back to the Agueda and the shelter of Ciudad Rodrigo, much contrary to his desire. But he was not intending to give way, and to involve himself in the difficulties of a retreat during the cold and rainy month of November, until he should be convinced that the French were too strong for him and that a rearward move was inevitable. In the Salamanca positions he could force them to show their strength, and yet have the power to draw off if that strength proved to be overpowering.

The retreat towards Salamanca commenced on November 5th, when Wellington both directed Hill to move on Fontiveros and Flores de Avila instead of on Arevalo, and also began to shift his own troops south-westward from the position about Rueda. On this day the 5th Division and Ponsonby’s cavalry brigade marched for Alaejos. The rest of the Army were warned that their movement would begin next day[149]. It was well to keep Souham beyond the Douro, by continuing to show great strength in his front, till Hill should have got some way westward. There was no sign of activity in the enemy’s cantonments, save that troops seemed to be moving towards Toro along the road on the north bank parallel with the river[150]. The retreat was therefore carried out in a leisurely fashion on the 6th-7th-8th: on the 6th Wellington’s head-quarters were at Torrecilla de la Orden, on the 7th and 8th at Pitiegua. The divisions, covered by a cavalry rearguard, and with other cavalry on their flank, thrown out to observe the French at Toro, marched by several converging roads, some going through Alaejos, others through Castrejon and Vallesa, others by Fresno and Cantalpino[151]. There was no hurry, as there was no pursuit, and by the evening of the 8th all were safely placed in their old positions of June, north of the Tormes, in a semicircle from Aldea Lengua to San Cristobal. The weather being still very cold and rainy, as many of the troops were quartered in the villages as possible, and some as far back as Salamanca town; but many had to bivouac in the open. After several nights spent in position, dysentery and rheumatism, which had already been thinning the ranks, became more common than ever.

Hill’s column, meanwhile, having left the main road at Villacastin on the 4th and having followed the bad cross-paths between Belayos and Fontiveros, got into a better route at the latter place, which it reached after a very fatiguing march on the night of the 5th. D’Urban’s Portuguese horse, covering the north flank of the retreat, had a narrow escape of being cut off from the main column, near Villanueva de Gomez, by Soult’s advanced cavalry, which was pushing up northward to Arevalo, but D’Urban got across their front in time. Hill’s Spanish divisions did not follow the same road as the British, but had moved from Villacastin to Arevalo on the 4th, covered by their own cavalry (Penne Villemur): on the 5th they marched from Arevalo to Fontiveros and rejoined Hill’s head-quarters[152]. They had moved along two sides of a triangle, the British only along the base—but the advantage of a good road as opposed to a very bad one compensated for the difference of miles covered. Presumably the order to Hill to take the wretched by-paths that he followed was dictated by the idea that, if these routes were neglected, Soult might send a column along them, and anticipate Hill on the upper Tormes. Nothing of the kind was attempted; the Marshal’s only preoccupation at this time was that he must at all costs look for the Army of Portugal, and his explorations were directed north, toward Arevalo. Hill’s rear was only followed by a vanguard of light cavalry, which behaved with great caution, and contented itself with gathering up stragglers, who fell behind the column by their own fault or from exhaustion. Soult claims to have taken some 600 of them[153], a figure which English authorities reduce by about half: some scores of drunkards were undoubtedly captured in the wine vaults of Villacastin[154].

On the 6th Hill’s column marched from Fontiveros to Peñaranda, the Light Division and Morillo forming the infantry rearguard, covered at a distance by Long’s and Victor Alten’s squadrons. On the 7th the stage covered was from Peñaranda to Coca (not far from Garcia Hernandez) within easy reach of the Tormes, whose passage it was evident would be made without any interference by the enemy. On the 8th, the day on which Wellington entered the San Cristobal position, Hill crossed the Tormes at Alba, leaving Howard’s brigade of the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese to hold that town, which lies on the east bank of the river. It was intended to maintain Alba as a sort of tête de pont to cover the bridge. Though dominated by heights a few hundred yards away[155], it was extremely suitable for defence against an enemy unprovided with heavy artillery. It was surrounded by an old Moorish wall, with gaps that could easily be blocked, and its castle, a solid donjon, completely commanded and protected the bridge. Slade’s cavalry brigade remained out as a screen in front of Alba, to watch for the approach of the enemy. When the rest of the troops had crossed the Tormes, Wellington directed Hill to send him the 3rd, 4th, and Light Divisions, España’s Spaniards, and Victor Alten’s and D’Urban’s cavalry. The force left under his lieutenant was now to consist, as in the early summer, of nothing more than the old Estremaduran corps—the 2nd Division, Hamilton’s Portuguese, the British cavalry of Slade and Long, the Portuguese cavalry of Campbell and the Spanish squadrons of Penne Villemur—about 20,000 men of the three nations. These remained behind Alba, in the woods above the Tormes. The troops requisitioned from Hill moved up to Calvarisa de Arriba, Machacon, and other villages in the angle of the Tormes facing Huerta, from whence they could be drawn into the San Cristobal position, by the fords of Aldea Lengua and Santa Marta, if necessary. The whole army, not much under 70,000 strong, was now formed in line from San Cristobal to Alba, waiting to see whether the advance of the enemy would be by the eastern or the northern bend of the river.

The French were slow in making their appearance, and still slower in developing their intentions. For some days there was little more than cavalry seen in front of Wellington’s position. The reason of their tardy appearance was that Soult had carried out his design of uniting with the Army of Portugal before attempting to press the Allies. On the 8th he was still at Arevalo in person, with the main body of his infantry: light cavalry alone had followed Hill. Only on the preceding night had his scouts, pushing out in the direction of Medina del Campo, succeeded in discovering Souham, who had crossed the bridge of Tordesillas on the 6th, after Wellington’s departure from Rueda, and had sent reconnaissances in all directions to look for the Army of the South, whose approach had come to his knowledge not by any dispatch received but only by the vague rumours of the countryside. Meanwhile, he had held back his infantry, being not too sure that Wellington might not have evacuated Rueda only as a trick, to lure him forward: it was possible that he had been joined by Hill, and was waiting a few miles back from the Douro, with the object of falling upon the Army of Portugal with superior strength, as it should be debouching from the bridge of Tordesillas. But the roads were found empty in every direction, and presently Souham’s cavalry came in touch with Soult’s, and both sides discovered the exact situation.

Soult, Jourdan, and the King agreed that their best policy was to bring every man forward from all the three armies, and to force Wellington to battle, if he could be induced to stand his ground. But matters must not be pressed till the Army of the Centre, which had only started from Madrid on the 6th, should come up into line; and some of the divisions of the Army of the South were still far to the rear, having halted about Villacastin and Arevalo. Accordingly, it was not till the 10th that Wellington saw any serious force accumulating before the Salamanca positions, and even then it was the advanced guard alone of the enemy which had arrived. On the 9th Soult’s head-quarters were at Peñaranda, those of the King at Flores de Avila, those of Souham at Villaruela. On the 10th Soult was in person before Alba de Tormes, but had only his cavalry and two infantry divisions in hand; the rest were still in the rear. The Army of the Centre had its vanguard at Macotera; that of the Army of Portugal had reached Babilafuente[156]. The troops were much tried by the weather, and those of Soult’s army in particular were feeling their privations. They had been almost continually on the march since September, having halted but a few days on the borders of Valencia. The bitter November cold of the plateau of Old Castile was felt almost unbearable by men who had been for three years lodged in Andalusia, whose climate is almost sub-tropical and never suffers the extremes that are usual in Northern Spain[157]. Soult’s Army, too, had the worst roads during the last days of the advance, and its commissariat arrangements had gone wrong, while little could be gleaned from the countryside. The horses began to fail, and stragglers to drop behind.

On the 10th Soult resolved to see whether Wellington was disposed to hold Alba de Tormes, or whether the detachment there would blow up the bridge and retire when attacked. Operations began by the driving in of the pickets of Long’s Light Dragoons, who had been kept as far forward as possible till the last moment. They lost a few men in retiring. Soult then placed three batteries on the hill to the east of the town, and commenced to shell it at about two o’clock in the afternoon; shortly afterwards twelve voltigeur companies of the Fifth Division deployed in long lines, and began to press up towards the place, taking every possible advantage of cover, while the heavy columns of the regiments to which they belonged, and of Daricau’s division in support, were visible in the rear.

Alba was held by Howard’s brigade of the 2nd Division (1/50th, 1/71st, 1/92nd); on the other side of the water, as a reserve, were Hamilton’s Portuguese (2nd, 4th, 10th, and 14th Line) and the batteries of Arriaga and Braun, placed in a position from which they could flank any attacks on the bridge. The town had been prepared for defence, the gaps in its walls having been filled up with rough palisading, and its non-existent gates built up with barricades of stone and timber. Each of the three British regiments held one-third of the circumference of the wall, with half its companies in firing-line and the others in reserve under shelter. From two till five, when dusk fell, Soult continued to batter the town; but ‘notwithstanding the shower of shot and shell which plunged and danced about the streets in every direction[158]’ the losses of the defenders were quite moderate: they had been given time on the 9th to extemporize good shelter with barricades and traverses, and kept under cover. Thrice during the afternoon the lines of voltigeurs, who had thrown themselves into the ravines and ditches around the walls, received orders to charge in; but on each occasion the bickering fire which they had hitherto received burst out into a blaze as they approached the walls, and their losses were so great that they had to run back into cover. Hamilton reinforced the garrison at dusk with two of Da Costa’s Portuguese battalions (of the 2nd and 14th Line). At nightfall the French had accomplished absolutely nothing.

Next morning at dawn (about 6 o’clock) the cannonade recommenced, and the French skirmishers once more pushed up towards the walls. Da Costa’s light companies were used against them, as well as those of the three British battalions. But the attack was not pressed home, and after a few hours Soult desisted: the guns were drawn off, the infantry retired. The Marshal wrote to King Joseph that it was no use pressing on: he had thrown 1,500 shot into the place without effect: by persisting ‘nous y perdrions du monde sans résultat[159].’ Wellington had to be attacked, but the way to reach him was certainly—as it appeared—not to be over the bridge of Alba. From the 11th to the 14th Howard’s and da Costa’s brigades held the place without further molestation. Their modest casualty list, on the afternoon of the 10th and the morning hours of the 11th, had been 21 men killed and 3 officers and 89 men wounded: 8 killed and 36 wounded were Portuguese. The 1/92nd with 38 men hit was the battalion that suffered most[160]. The French loss had been a little greater—apparently 2 officers killed and 6 wounded[161], with some 150 casualties in the rank and file: the 45th Ligne with 5 officers hurt contributed the largest total to the list.

The cannonade at Alba settled nothing: on its second day the French commanders were taking counsel together, Soult, the King, Jourdan, with Souham and Clausel (representing the Army of Portugal) were all riding up and down the eastern bank of the Tormes, and seeking for the facts which must determine their next move[162]. Fortunately for the historian, after the debate, which was long and indecisive, Jourdan and Soult each wrote a formal letter of advice to the King that evening. On one point only were they agreed: it would be mad to attack Wellington on the position of San Cristobal, whose strength was well known to all the officers of the Army of Portugal, and had been increased during the last two days by the throwing up of a chain of redoubts armed with artillery. There remained two plans—Jourdan’s was a proposal to force the line of the Tormes between Huerta and Alba, by a frontal attack across the numerous fords which Marmont had used in the campaign of the previous July; Soult’s was a plan for turning Wellington’s right by going some distance up-stream south of Alba, and utilizing the fords of the Tormes between Alba and Salvatierra. In the main the question turned on the practicability of the fords, and this was varying from hour to hour. The rain, which had made Hill’s retreat and Soult’s advance so miserable to the troops, had stopped for the moment, and the river was falling. Of the numerous passages about Huerta, La Encina and Villa Gonzalo, Wellington had considered on the 9th that none were really practicable: on the 10th he wrote to Hill that ‘the river has certainly fallen since yesterday evening, but I believe that no infantry soldier can pass yet, even if a cavalry soldier can, and small picquets guarding the fords and charging resolutely the first men who pass, will effectually prevent the passage[163].’ Hill was not so certain that the enemy could not force his way over the river, and on the 11th Wellington conceded that some of the fords had certainly become practicable for cavalry, if not for infantry[164]. Considering the immense superiority of the French in the mounted arm, it was conceivable that they might attack many fords at once, drive in the inferior cavalry-screen of the Allies, and then throw bridges across and attack the British centre. In that case the army would stand to fight, not behind the river bank but in front of the position of the Arapiles. It would be necessary to close in the flanks for a battle; all or most of the troops on the San Cristobal position would cross the Tormes, just as they had done in July, and at the same time Hill would draw in from Alba and form the southern wing of the line, in the woods which had sheltered Marmont’s beaten army on the night of the great victory. But Alba was not to be abandoned[165]: its castle was susceptible of a long defence, and effectually blocked the best passage of the Tormes. Wellington selected a battalion of Galician infantry (Monterey, under Major José Miranda) which was to be placed in the castle, and to hold it as long as possible, even when it should (as was inevitable) be cut off from the allied army by the advance of the French. The position was explained to the Spanish major, who (as we shall see) behaved most admirably, blocked the Alba line of communication for many days, and finally escaped by a sudden sally from what looked like an inevitable surrender.

The two plans which were submitted to King Joseph on the evening of November 11 both presupposed the practicability of the fords of the Tormes. The river must evidently have fallen considerably since Wellington surveyed it on the 9th, and drew his conclusion that it was a barrier not to be crossed by any body of troops, but at most passable by individual horsemen.

Jourdan wrote: ‘When we arrived on the heights above the right bank of the Almar, Your Majesty was struck with the advantages that the ground presented. I myself at once conceived the hope of forcing the English Army to a general action which must involve its destruction. Wellington’s position is too long—extending from the heights of San Cristobal on the right bank of the Tormes as far as Alba. The Imperial Army could pass the river at almost any spot between Huerta and the point where the Almar flows into the Tormes. The immense plain on the opposite bank would permit the whole of our cavalry to cross and form up in front, to protect the passage of our infantry. After that, the Army would march in mass against the English centre (which appears to be between Calvarisa de Abaxo and Calvarisa de Arriba), and would break through the enemy’s line. I do not disguise from myself that the piercing of the hostile centre has its difficulties, but I should think that 80,000 French troops could surmount them. Your Majesty must have remarked that Soult, who at first was all for marching toward the upper Tormes, was struck with the advantages which this ground offered, and came round to my opinion. But subsequently he got talking with General Clausel, about the plan for marching up the river, and returned to his first view, which he induced Clausel to support. Both of them are acquainted with the localities over which they wish to move the armies, which gives weight to their opinion. I do not wish to deny that Soult’s proposition is the more prudent, and if we want to fight we ought to do so on ground which Wellington has not chosen, and which is less advantageous to the enemy than that which he now occupies. But I fear that we should not obtain from this movement so much advantage as Soult appears to expect.

‘For he seems to think that Wellington will be forced to retreat on Ciudad Rodrigo, while it is quite possible that he may choose to retreat on San Felices, in which case our movement to the upper Tormes compels him to retire indeed, but enables him to avoid a battle. For my part I think that our superior numbers make a general action desirable. I conclude, then, that Your Majesty may adopt Soult’s proposition so far as the movement up the Tormes goes. If so, I believe that the Army of Portugal must follow the Army of the South. The enemy has all his forces united: it would be too dangerous for us to divide ours[166].’

Soult’s letter of the evening of the 12th, to the King, runs as follows:

‘The passage which we reconnoitred a little below Villa Gonzalo unites all the qualities which one could desire, and I should be in favour of it, were it not for the fact that after debouching on this point we should have to form up for the attack under the fire of the enemy, and should be compelled immediately to assail his whole army, in a position which he knows and has thought out, and where very probably he has entrenched himself. I think, therefore, that it would be more prudent and more advantageous to force him to shift his position, and to commit himself to an action on ground which we and not he will have chosen—or else to retreat[167]. I have sent three officers along the upper Tormes: they have reconnoitred and found practicable three fords between Exeme and Galisancho[167].’

From the comparison of these two interesting dispatches we see that Jourdan desired a battle in the style of Wagram, where the attacking army crosses a river, and breaks through the over-long line of an enemy deployed along heights at some distance from the water’s edge. But Soult (to use an anachronism) feared a battle in the style of Fredericksburg, where the assailant, debouching from narrow fords or bridges, attacks in heavy masses a well-prepared position, held by an enemy who has had time to settle down comfortably into it, and to entrench the most suitable points. Soult was eminently justified in his criticism of Jourdan’s plan: the most noteworthy remark to be made upon it is that this was the battle which Wellington wanted. He wished to be attacked frontally by the fords between Alba and Huerta, and had made all his arrangements. On the other hand, Jourdan’s criticism of Soult was equally cogent. If the French armies, keeping in a mass, crossed the upper Tormes far above Alba, Wellington had the choice between fighting in a new position (e. g. behind the river Zurgain), and absconding, before his flank should be threatened seriously. He could, indeed, move off, practically unmolested, towards Ciudad Rodrigo, and not merely (as Jourdan suggested) by the more northern line toward San Felices and Almeida.

Joseph, as was perhaps natural, gave his final decision in favour of Soult’s plan. It was true that he had a marked superiority in numbers, and that a defeat of a crushing sort inflicted on Wellington would go far to end the Peninsular War. No such army on the French side had ever been in line on a single field before in Spain. Jourdan’s estimate of 80,000 men was a decided understatement, even allowing for the fact that Soult’s divisions had already many stragglers, and that Souham had left a ‘minimum’ garrison at Valladolid. Something much more like the 90,000 men at which Wellington estimated the three united French armies must have been collected[168]. On the other hand there is a dreadful risk taken when an army endeavours to cross a group of fords, supplemented at the best by some hastily constructed bridges, in face of an enemy known to be wary, active, and determined. What might not happen if Wellington fell upon the leading divisions, while the rest were crowding down to their crossing points? Or who could guarantee that sudden rain in the Sierra de Francia might not cause the Tormes to rise three feet on the battle day, and separate the troops who had crossed from those still on the eastern bank? Every one at the French head-quarters must have remembered Essling, and the narrow escape from supreme disaster there suffered from the caprice of the Danube.

On the whole, the prospect of the enormous advantage to be got by inflicting a complete disaster on Wellington did not balance the possibility of loss that might follow an unsuccessful frontal attack upon his position. Joseph made his choice in favour of Soult’s plan for a flank march to the upper Tormes. This manœuvre would take several days to execute, as the Army of the South had to be moved to its left from all its cantonments facing Alba, while the Armies of the Centre and Portugal had to wait till this flank march was finished, in order to come up and take over the former positions of Soult’s divisions. For all the French chiefs were agreed that the armies must keep closed up, and that no gap must be allowed to come into existence between them. When the Army of the South should begin to cross the Tormes, the Army of Portugal must be in direct support of it, and must make no separate attack of its own to the north of Alba, in the localities which Jourdan had found so tempting. The whole of the 12th and 13th November was expended in making this shift of troops southward. Soult moved his army up-stream and placed his head-quarters at Anaya, six miles south of Alba, above the fords of Galisancho, where the crossing was to take place. The King moved to Valdecarros, a little to Soult’s right, with the Army of the Centre. The Army of Portugal, leaving its cavalry and two infantry divisions[169] as a rearguard about Huerta, moved the other six to the heights above Alba, where it was hoped that it might cross, when Soult’s manœuvre should force Hill to abandon that place and draw back.

The King took two unexpected measures before passing the Tormes. The first was to supersede Souham as commander of the Army of Portugal—the excuse used was that he was indisposed, and not up to his task: the real cause was that he was considered to have shown tardiness and over-caution in his manœuvres since October 30th.[170] Drouet was taken from the command of the Army of the Centre, and given the more important charge of that of Portugal. The other, and more surprising, order was one which made over—as a temporary arrangement—the charge of the Army of the Centre to Soult, who thus had nearly 60,000 men put at his disposition. The object was, apparently, to give him ample forces for the move now about to be made at his request, and on his responsibility.

Wellington was evidently somewhat puzzled at the posture of the French on the 12th-13th November. He could not make out any reduction of the French forces between Huerta and Alba, where indeed the whole Army of Portugal still lay, but now with an accumulation of forces on its left and a weaker right. Yet so long as the enemy was still in force at Huerta he could not evacuate the San Cristobal position, in order to send reinforcements to Hill. Reconnaissances by French cavalry above Alba were reported each day by outlying picquets of Hamilton’s Portuguese, who were watching the course of the upper Tormes[171]. But no solid force was sent to back these outlying posts: Wellington considered it unsafe to extend his already lengthy front. The disposition of the troops on his right wing was still that Hill lay in the woods behind Alba, with the 3rd and 4th Divisions at Calvarisa de Abaxo as a reserve for him, while Long’s and D’Urban’s cavalry carefully watched the course of the river from Alba to opposite Huerta. On the north of the Tormes Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese were on the river-bank at Aldea Lengua and Cabrerizos, watching the two French divisions at Huerta. The 1st, 5th, 6th, 7th Divisions and the Galicians held the San Cristobal position, with Anson’s, Victor Alten’s, and Ponsonby’s cavalry far out in their front. Nothing hostile could be discovered in this direction nearer than the two divisions of the Army of Portugal at Huerta. Yet Wellington did not like to weaken his left flank: at any moment the enemy at Huerta might come forward, and might prove to be the vanguard of an advancing army, not the rearguard of one about to go off southward. This hypothesis seemed all the more possible because Maucune, on the morning of the 12th, had made a reconnaissance in force against Pack’s Portuguese, at Aldea Lengua: he deployed three brigades, engaged in a lively skirmish, and only retreated when British reinforcements began to come up. On the following day Wellington, wishing to see whether Maucune was on the move, beat up his quarters with strong reconnaissances of cavalry, and found him still in position[172]. Till Maucune should leave Huerta, in advance or retreat, the situation was not clear. For these two days, it seems, Wellington was still thinking it possible that he might be attacked either on the San Cristobal position or by the fords between Huerta and Alba. But he was quite aware that the other possibility (a flank movement of Soult by the upper Tormes) existed, and had sent a staff officer with a party of the 13th Light Dragoons to cross the river at Salvatierra and ascertain the southernmost point to which the French had moved[173]. And he had given Hill elaborate orders as to what should be done if he were turned and driven in. Whether there would be a battle to follow, or a retreat on Ciudad Rodrigo, depended on the exact movements of the enemy, and the force that he brought up to the crucial point. If the French split themselves into many columns, with long gaps between them, there was still a chance of administering a second lesson like that of July 22nd on much the same ground.

On the early morning of the 14th the crisis came. At dawn Pierre Soult’s Light Cavalry crossed the Tormes in force at three fords between Galisancho and Lucinos, which were perfectly passable, the water only coming up to the horses’ bellies. The Portuguese picquets beyond the river gave the alarm, but had to retire at once; some few were cut off by the chasseurs. Two divisions of dragoons followed Vinot’s and Avy’s light horse, and when they had scoured the west bank of the Tormes up and down and found no enemy in force, the infantry began to pass, not only by the fords but by several trestle bridges which were constructed in haste. As soon as there were a couple of divisions across the river, they advanced to a line of heights a couple of miles ahead, where there was a fair defensive position above the village of Martin Amor. By the afternoon the whole Army of the South was across the water, and had taken up a more advanced line towards Mozarbes, while the Army of the Centre was beginning to follow. It had been hoped that the Army of Portugal would be able to cross at or near Alba, for Soult supposed it likely that Hill would evacuate that town, when he saw 40,000 men arrayed behind his left flank. But though Hill did withdraw Howard’s and da Costa’s brigades in the afternoon, he left Miranda’s Spanish battalion in the castle, and blew up the bridge. As the castle commanded the ruined structure and the ford near it, and fired furiously on both, there was no chance of passing here or of repairing the ruined arch. Drouet found that he would have to march up-stream, and made his crossing at Torrejon, four miles south of Alba and near the fords that Soult had employed. He had the bulk of his army over the river by the afternoon, and his two rear divisions under Maucune, which had arrived late after a forced march from Huerta, crossed at dusk[174]. The whole 90,000 men of the French Army were over the Tormes that night, bivouacking on the heights from Torradillos to Valdenuerque, in front of Martin Amor. The operation had been neatly carried out, and was quite successful.

Wellington had early knowledge of the French movement from two sources—his cavalry told him almost at daybreak that the French camps above Huerta were empty, and soon after came Hill’s news that Soult had begun to cross the Tormes in force at Galisancho. Quite early in the morning Wellington rode out in haste, to take command in person on the threatened front, after having issued orders that the whole of the troops on the San Cristobal position should follow him. He himself pushed on with his staff, met Hill in the wood south of the Arapiles, and told him to watch the roads from Alba with the 4th Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese. Then, taking the strong 2nd Division—8,000 infantry—and all the cavalry brigades that had been watching the middle Tormes (Slade’s, Long’s, and D’Urban’s, and Penne Villemur’s Spaniards) he pushed on to ‘contain’ and possibly to attack Soult[175]. But on arriving in front of Mozarbes a little before noon, he saw that the enemy had already three or four divisions and 4,000 horse drawn up in line to cover the passage of the Tormes by the rest of his army. He had arrived too late to check Soult’s leading columns, and if he sent for Hill and the other troops which lay to his rear, he would, even when they arrived, have only 25,000 men available to attack an enemy who had already as great a force in line, and who was receiving fresh troops every moment from the fords[176]. Nothing could be done till the great reserve from the San Cristobal position came up, and they were not due till late in the day—the last of them indeed did not cross the bridge of Salamanca till the following morning.

At dusk Wellington ordered Hill to fall back with his infantry from the woods in front of Alba to the old position of the Arapiles, but kept his cavalry to the front, to cover his own line of battle as long as possible. Their screen of vedettes was placed in the line of woods from Miranda de Azan to Utrera, south of the heights on which Marmont’s army had taken up its position upon July 22nd. Till this cavalry was driven in, the French, on the rising ground above Mozarbes, could not make out the British position.

On the morning of the 15th Wellington had all his troops in hand, though the last divisions from San Cristobal did not come up till some hours after daybreak. But the enemy had also brought up every man to the front, being resolved to sacrifice not even the smallest part of his numerical superiority. Some critics, among them Jourdan[177], hold that Wellington, since he was determined not to fight save at advantage, should have commenced his retreat on Ciudad Rodrigo the moment that he saw the whole of the three hostile armies massed in his front, and before they could begin to debouch from their position on the heights of Mozarbes. And it is probable that if he had directed the troops from San Cristobal to take the roads towards the Agueda, instead of bringing them up to the Arapiles position, and if he had used Hill’s corps and all his cavalry as a rearguard only, he would have reached Ciudad Rodrigo with a smaller loss of life than was actually to be spent. The French would have had to start their pursuit from a more distant and a less favourable point.

It seems, however, that Wellington was prepared to risk a battle, even against the superior numbers opposed to him, supposing that the enemy played his game badly. He resolved to take up the excellent position along the Arapiles heights which he had held on July 22nd, and to stand to fight against any frontal assault—the advantage of the ground, with its bold slopes, good cover for reserves, and favourable emplacements for artillery, were evidently in his eyes so great that he was prepared to risk a general engagement with 20,000 men less in line than had his adversaries. As the morning drew on, he had his army formed up from Calvarisa de Arriba to a point not far from Miranda de Azan. The line was longer than in the battle of July 22nd, for the troops were much more numerous. The extreme left wing was formed by the 4th Division holding the heights and village of Calvarisa de Arriba (which had been in Foy’s hands on July 22). The 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese were holding both the Arapiles—the French as well as the English—and the ground from thence as far as the village of the same name. Westward of Hill’s troops lay the 3rd Division and Morillo’s Spaniards. The second line, composed of troops which had come down from San Cristobal, consisted of the Light Division (on the left), Pack and Bradford, the Galicians, and the 5th, 6th, and 7th Divisions. The 1st Division was placed as a somewhat ‘refused’ right flank protection for the whole army—much as Pakenham and the 3rd Division had been in July. It lay about Aldea Tejada on the Zurgain river, several miles to the right rear of the 3rd Division. The object for which it was detailed to this separate duty was the same as that for which Pakenham had been told off at the earlier crisis—to protect the Ciudad Rodrigo road, and to be ready to outflank and intercept any attempt which the French might make to turn the British position in this direction. The bulk of the cavalry was also placed on the right wing, to cover the end of the infantry line. Only the Portuguese horse of D’Urban and Campbell, Penne Villemur’s Spaniards, and Long’s brigade were on the left beyond Calvarisa de Arriba. The rest, five British brigades, lay out in the direction of Miranda de Azan and in front of Aldea Tejada. Bock’s brigade on the extreme right long remembered their position of this morning because they were placed on ‘Pakenham’s Hill’, the spot where the 3rd Division had fallen upon Thomières in the old battle. The ground was thickly strewn with the skeletons of the French who had then fallen, still lying unburied and in a horrible state of complete preservation: the horses’ hoofs were continually setting the skulls rolling[178]. Behind Bock were Ponsonby’s, Victor Alten’s, Anson’s, and Slade’s brigades, a formidable mass, yet far less in strength than the innumerable cavalry of the Armies of the South and Centre, which lay opposite them 7,000 strong[179]. Nothing was more uncertain than the move which the French would next make. If it should turn out to be one which did not fit in with Wellington’s plans, there would be no alternative but a retreat on Ciudad Rodrigo. Wherefore all the divisions were directed to send off their baggage half a march to the west, and preparations were made to destroy so much of the magazines in Salamanca city as could not be carried off. The commissariat officers were already packing up all for which transport could be found, and sending it forward. By an error of judgement on the part of the Quartermaster-General, James Willoughby Gordon—not the first of his blunders in this campaign—all this valuable store was started on the road Salamanca-Rollan-San Felices, which was the safest by far of all those open to the Army if a retreat should become necessary, and the farthest from any probable line of advance that the French could take. But it had the disadvantage of being far away from the other roads by which the Allied Army might have to move, and the unfortunate result followed on the 16th-17th-18th that the food was moving on the northern road, and the troops—starving for want of it—on three other roads parallel to it at a distance of twenty miles to the south. Soldiers must be fed, or they straggle and turn to marauding, and it is of no profit to have food if it be not in the right place at the right moment. These simple facts were to cause dire trouble during the next three days.

Meanwhile, from a comparatively early hour on the 15th it became evident that Soult was not going to play the game that Wellington desired. It was a miserable morning of drifting rain, and reconnaissances had to be pushed far forward to get any clear information. But the reports soon began to come in, to the effect that the enemy was keeping closed up, that he was constructing trenches and abattis on the heights of Mozarbes[180] and that he had pushed out an immense force of cavalry on his left wing, under cover of which infantry divisions were clearly to be seen working westward. Evidently Soult was aiming at the roads toward Ciudad Rodrigo; but he was not (like Marmont on July 22) letting his army break up into unconnected sections, and was keeping it in an unbroken line. The entrenchments on the hills showed that he was prepared to receive in position any frontal attack that Wellington might be prepared to direct against him. His motions were slow, not only because of his cautious method of procedure, but from the badness of the country roads, already made deep and miry from the rain, over which he was moving his left wing towards the west. The Army of Portugal was now in line on his right, and its cavalry was feeling its way forward towards Hill’s flank. But obviously the danger was not on this side, where the bulk of the French infantry was standing fast in position: it was the other wing, Soult’s troops alone, which was in decided motion, and that for a flank march, not for anything approaching a frontal attack.

All this was most disappointing: Wellington at once made up his mind that since the enemy was not about to attack his position, and since it would be madness on his part to take the offensive and assail the well-placed array of the French, there was no alternative save instant retreat. It must not be delayed, because, when Soult should have moved his left wing a little farther on, he would be controlling the road that runs from Mozarbes to Tamames and Ciudad Rodrigo, parallel to that via Matilla and San Muñoz to the same destination, over which Wellington’s natural line of retreat lay.

At about two o’clock in the afternoon on the 15th the British commander-in-chief made up his mind that he must delay no longer, and ordered his army to march to its right, in the two lines in which it was already arranged. The mass of cavalry in front of Aldea Tejada remained stationary, to cover the movement of the infantry behind its rear: the smaller body of horse on the left held its ground about the Arapiles, till all the divisions had passed on, and then followed as a rearguard. The entire army marched in fighting trim: if attacked at any moment it had only to front to its left flank, and then would be in order of battle. The movement had to be slow for the first few miles, since neither the front nor the rear column was on a good track until it reached the river Zurgain, and there fell into one of the three parallel roads which run from Salamanca to Ciudad Rodrigo. Moreover the rain, which had been a mere drizzle in the morning, turned to a heavy torrential downpour just as the army was starting. The country paths became quagmires in a few minutes; and when the usually insignificant Zurgain came in sight it was already a roaring river, only to be forded with care. The march was toilsome in the extreme, and the troops, who had expected and desired a general action, were sodden and sulky. ‘I never saw the men in such a bad humour,’ observes one intelligent eye-witness[181]. The march was absolutely unmolested by the French, and the columns, having crossed the Zurgain, fell into the three parallel roads which run side by side for many miles from Salamanca—the southern one to Matilla, the central one to Maza de San Pedro and San Muñoz, the northern one (the so-called Calzada de Don Diego) to Aldehuela de la Boveda[182]. Of these the second is the regular high road from Salamanca to the frontier, the other two secondary lines of communication. They are extraordinarily convenient for the retreat of an army which must be kept together, the distance between the two side-roads and the central one being seldom over five miles, and often no more than three. The only misfortune was that the train of transport had gone off, by Colonel Gordon’s error[183], on an entirely different and divergent route, towards Rollan and San Felices. The army, after falling into the designated roads, pursued its way till after dark and bivouacked in the patches of forest on the farther side of the Valmusa river, about 10 miles from Salamanca. The head-quarters were at the village of Carnero on the central road[184]. The night was miserable, no food was distributed, and though wood was abundant it was hard to light fires, owing to the incessant rain. The troops were tired and footsore, and straggling had once more begun.

Meanwhile there was quite as much discontent in the French ranks as in those of Wellington. There had been a general feeling that since the whole force of the three armies of the South, Centre, and Portugal had been successfully concentrated on the Mozarbes position, and since the enemy was known to be much inferior in numbers, something decisive ought to have happened on the 15th November. That no collision whatever took place must be attributed partly to the bad weather, but much more to the caution of Soult, who was this day determined above all things that he would not suffer the fate of Marmont on this same ground, by allowing any dislocation to take place between the various sections of his army.

At nine o’clock in the morning it had been reported that—so far as the misty rain allowed of certain observation—Wellington was in line of battle on the Arapiles position. Soult continued to move his cavalry forward with caution, and to extend his left towards Azan. A little before noon Joseph and Jourdan joined Soult on the heights above Mozarbes, the Allies being still stationary. Jourdan suggested that the Army of Portugal should move forward on the right and attack that flank of the hostile line which rested on the Arapiles[185]: this was tried in a tentative way, apparently with the object of holding Hill’s divisions to their ground, and preventing them from moving off. But it led to no more than some bickering between the caçadores of the 2nd Division and the advanced light cavalry and voltigeurs of the French right, in the woods south of the greater Arapile. The Army of Portugal made no real attempt to close in. A partial attack on Wellington’s line would, indeed, have been unwise. The only chance would have been for Soult to march in upon its right while D’Erlon was pressing in with decision against its left. But Soult, though requested by King Joseph to move forward in force, continued his cautious flanking movement to the westward, and did not carry out a precise and definite order to push out his cavalry and drive in the British squadrons which lay in front of Wellington’s right. Then came the torrential rain which set in about two o’clock, just as Wellington ordered his army to move off, still preserving its battle order, toward the river Zurgain. His departure was only partially visible, and no attempt was made to incommode it. A cavalry officer of the Army of the South writes: ‘The rain falling in deluge soon rendered the whole field of operations one vast and deep quagmire. The smallest dips in the ground became dangerous precipices. The darkness, continually growing blacker, soon added to the horror of the scene, and made us absolutely unable to act. The muskets of the infantry were no longer capable of being discharged. The cavalry was not only unable to manœuvre, but even to advance on the slippery, sodden, and slimy soil.... We lay down on the field drenched by the rain, with the mud up to our knees[186].’

Jourdan says that it was pitch dark by four o’clock, the gloom of the terrible downpour melting early into the darkness of the night. There was much recrimination between the French leaders. Joseph wrote to the Minister of War that he tried to bring on decisive action between eleven o’clock and two, and failed entirely by the fault of Soult. He accused him of deliberately wasting two hours by vain excuses, and suggested that the real explanation of his sluggishness was that he knew the incapacity of his brother Pierre Soult, commanding the light horse of the left wing, and thought that he would get matters into a mess if he were charged with the duty of pressing Wellington’s cavalry in front of him[187]. ‘He knows the extent of his brother’s capacity, and fears to compromise him. For this reason his light horse is always kept close in to the rest of the army, and never advances without being immediately supported by the remainder of his cavalry, while the Duke of Dalmatia always marches himself in his brother’s company.’

Such a theory is, of course, quite insufficient to explain Soult’s reluctance to engage on this day. The simple fact was that, after Albuera, he had a wholesome dread of attacking a British army in position, if it could be avoided, and preferred to manœuvre it from its chosen ground, even if he thereby sacrificed the possibility of a great victory, and secured only an illusory advantage.

On finding that Wellington had got off unmolested, and that Soult had made no attempt to drive in the cavalry which was covering his retreat, King Joseph, by Jourdan’s advice, issued orders which proved that both he and his mentor thought that the game was up. Instead of setting every man upon the track of the allied columns, Joseph ordered the whole Army of Portugal, as well as his own Guard, to march upon the deserted town of Salamanca, while Soult alone was permitted to pursue the retreating foe. Now since the King was as much convinced as either of the Marshals that, if Wellington was to be brought to book, every man of the 90,000 French troops must be ready to attack him, it is clear that the order to the Army of Portugal to desist from the pursuit meant that no general action was now to be hoped for. Jourdan could indulge in the malicious satisfaction of the adviser who, having seen his counsel rejected, is able to say ‘I told you so!’ to his comrade, when bad luck has supervened. He had prophesied that, if Soult were allowed to try his flank move to the upper Tormes, Wellington would get off without harm[188]. This had now happened; it was judged that a further pursuit by the whole army was useless, and the 40,000 men of the Army of Portugal and the Royal Guards were directed to seize Salamanca and halt there. Clearly if Soult’s 50,000 men went on, and Wellington suddenly turned to bay, the pursuers could not dare to bring him to action, since they would be much outnumbered. Evidently, all that could now be hoped was that Soult might worry the rear of the retreating enemy, and pick up stragglers and baggage.

After dark the light cavalry of the Army of Portugal and Foy’s infantry division marched on Salamanca, and reached it that night, after much toilsome trudging over inundated paths: ‘The plain was under water: for half the way our infantry were walking through water knee deep: if the moon had not risen we should never have found our way there.’ The bridge of Salamanca was discovered to be unbroken, and some half-emptied magazines of flour and rum were captured. A rearguard of British cavalry—half a troop of the 2nd Hussars of the German Legion—evacuated the place on the arrival of the French, covering a mass of stragglers, sutlers, and Spanish refugees, who found their way to Ledesma and from thence to the Portuguese frontier[189]. Foy, following them forty-eight hours later, moved to Ledesma, and then to Zamora, where he took up cantonments. The cavalry of the Army of Portugal, starting earlier, went to feel for Wellington’s rear on the road towards Aldehuela de la Boveda, leaving the pursuit on the other two routes to Soult. The rest of the Army remained cantoned at Salamanca, which had been well plundered by the first division that arrived[190]. King Joseph reviewed it, outside the city, on November 17—all in the rain—a melancholy ceremony. The men and officers were alike weary and discontented. ‘We had an army stronger by a third than Wellington’s, infinitely superior in cavalry and artillery. Confident expectation of victory was in every man’s head. The chance had come of beating the English—perhaps of driving them from the Peninsula. This fine opportunity, so splendid, so decisive, with so few adverse chances, has been let slip[191].’ So wrote the disappointed Foy. He adds, ‘The King does not know how to show to advantage before his troops; he can speak with effect neither to the officers nor to the rank and file: he got absolutely wet through, rode home, and went to bed.’

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER VI

FROM THE TORMES TO THE AGUEDA

The last crisis of the campaign of 1812 was now over, and, but for two unlucky circumstances, the four days of operations which still remained would have required little notice from the annalist. But these two mishaps, the continuance of the exceptionally severe and tempestuous weather which had set in upon the 15th November, and the misdirection of the supply column, which had got completely separated from the marching troops, were to have most disastrous results. They cost the army 3,000 men, much misery, and some humiliation, and Wellington great vexation of spirit, leading to one of his rare outbursts of violent rage—his angry words committed to paper, and published abroad by misadventure, were always remembered with a grudge by his officers and men.

It must be remembered that there was no really dangerous pursuit. Soult was not strong enough to press Wellington to a general action, and knew it. On the 16th he wrote to King Joseph: ‘I think that your Majesty’s intention is that the enemy should only be followed up to the frontier. In two days the campaign will probably be at an end in these parts, for if the enemy’s army goes behind the Agueda, I cannot think that it would be at present possible to pursue it any further. I await your orders for the future destination of the Army of the South, which would be unable to stop two days in position for want of bread and forage. I propose to establish it on the upper Tormes, below Salvatierra and El Barco, where I could rest eight or ten days, to allow the men repose and to collect food[192].’ Clearly there was no offensive spirit in the Marshal, who only wished to see Wellington upon his way to Rodrigo, and then contemplated turning back to the upper Tormes.

On the 16th there was little to record in the way of military operations. The British Army started at dawn from its wet bivouacks behind the Valmusa river, having received no distribution of food. The side roads, on which the larger part of the troops were moving, grew worse and worse as the rain continued. The weakly men began to fall behind, the shirkers to slip away into the woods, to look for peasants to plunder and roofs to shelter them from the drenching rain. After the usual midday halt the bad news went round that the supply column had gone off on the wrong road—via Ledesma—and that there would again be no distribution of rations that evening. All that the troops got was the carrion-like meat of over-driven bullocks hastily slaughtered, and acorns gathered in the oak woods through which the roads ran. These, we are assured, though bitter and hard, were better than nothing. It was only in the evening, after the infantry had encamped behind the brook that gets its name from the village of Matilla, that the pursuing French cavalry came up on the two southern roads, and engaged in a bickering skirmish with the screen of allied horse covering the rear. The Polish Lancers, 2nd Hussars, and 5th and 27th Chasseurs engaged in an interchange of partial charges with the 14th Light Dragoons and K.G.L. Hussars of Victor Alten’s brigade, in front of the camps of the 2nd Division. It was brought to a sudden end by the light company of the 28th and two guns opening fire on the French from under the cover of a woodside, on which the enemy went off, with a loss of some 50 men, mostly wounded prisoners[193]. Alten’s brigade suffered much less. The centre column saw very little of the pursuing French—Digeon’s Dragoons—who made no attempt to press in. The cavalry of the Army of Portugal acted even more feebly on the northernmost of the three parallel roads. Yet the retreating army lost several hundred ‘missing’ this day, all stragglers or weakly men captured singly on the road, or in villages at its sides, whither they had betaken themselves for shelter or marauding. The rearguard cavalry vainly attempted to whip them all into the tail of the retreating column—some were really unable to move—others escaped notice in hiding-places, and were taken by the French when they emerged for a tardy attempt to follow the army. The camp-followers, and the unfortunate women and children whom the evil custom of the time allowed to remain with the regiments, suffered most of all. Soult in his dispatch to King Joseph of the night of the 16th says that he had gathered in 600 prisoners this day, and is very probably correct.

The 17th November was an even worse day—the rain still continued to fall, and stomachs were still more empty than on the preceding morning. The march of the retreating army was still in three columns, but the 2nd Division replaced the 4th as the rearguard of the southern column (2nd, 3rd, 4th Divisions; Hamilton’s Portuguese; Morillo’s Spaniards), which marched unmolested from Matilla by Villalba to Anaya on the Huebra, turning off towards the end of the day from the high road to Tamames[194], in order not to get too far from the central column, which was marching on San Muñoz: for Wellington intended to have his whole army arrayed behind the Huebra, a good fighting position, that evening. This was a most miserable journey. ‘The effects of hunger and fatigue were even more visible than on the preceding day. A savage sort of desperation had taken possession of our minds, and those who lived on the most friendly terms in happier times now quarrelled with each other, using the most frightful imprecations, on the slightest offence. A misanthropic spirit was in possession of every bosom. The streams which fell from the hills were swelled into rivers, which we had to wade, and many fell out, including even officers. It was piteous to see some of the men, who had dragged their limbs after them with determined spirit, fall down at last among the mud, unable to proceed further, and sure of being taken prisoners if they escaped death. Towards night the rain had somewhat abated, but the cold was excessive, and numbers who had resisted the effect of hunger and fatigue with a hardy spirit were now obliged to give way, and sank to the ground praying for death to deliver them from their misery. Some prayed not in vain, for next morning before daylight, in passing from our halting-ground to the road, I stumbled over several who had died in the night[195].’

The only food that the southern marching column got this day was procured from the celebrated raid upon the swine, which so much enraged Wellington. It is recorded in many 3rd and 4th Division diaries. The main wealth of the peasantry of this forest region lay in their pigs, which had been driven into the heart of the woods, to hide them from the passing armies. From some unknown cause a stampede broke out in one vast herd of the creatures, which ran across the road cutting through the middle of the 3rd Division. The starving soldiers opened up a lively fusillade upon them, and whole battalions broke their ranks and pursued them with the bayonet, cutting up the creatures before they were dead, each man going off with a gory limb or rib. Many officers farther to the rear thought from the firing that the French had cut into the head of the column. Later in the day the same or another herd charged the camp of a brigade of the 2nd Division, and gave many a hungry man an unexpected meal[196].

The southern column had no enemy but hunger and cold on the 17th, but the experiences of the centre column were more military. This corps, consisting of the 1st, 6th, 5th, 7th, Light Divisions, moving in that order, had a tiresome alarm before the rearguard had started in the morning from behind the Matilla brook. By some blunder—on the part of Gordon the Quartermaster-General as was said[197]—the covering cavalry marched off before the Light Division, the rear of the infantry column, had left its ground. There was nothing but the picquets from the 95th Rifles between the camp, where the battalions were just getting under arms, and two divisions of French Dragoons, cautiously advancing along the road and with their flanking parties out in the woods. There was barely time to form close column and start off before the enemy were riding in from all sides. They did not attempt to close, but while keeping their main body on the road, at a safe distance, sent out many detached squadrons, along by-paths in the woods, which from time to time came out unexpectedly not only upon the flank of the Light Division, acting as rearguard, but much farther up the line, where the 7th Division, and the 5th in front of them, were moving along the road to San Muñoz. Hardly any of the allied cavalry appeared to curb these incursions—the main body appears to have gone off too much to the south, in the direction of Hill’s column. Hence came the extraordinary chance that small bodies of the French got into the interval between the Light Division and the 7th, and even into that between the 7th Division and the 5th, though the troops themselves were all closed up and perfectly safe in their dense columns. Great part of the baggage of the 7th Division was intercepted and plundered by one party. But the most tiresome incident was that a patrol of three men from Vinot’s light cavalry captured the one-armed General Edward Paget, the newly-arrived second-in-command of the Army, as he was riding—accompanied by his Spanish servant alone—from the rear brigade of the 5th Division to the front brigade of the 7th, in order to bid the latter close up rapidly. The French pounced on him out of a corner of the wood, and as he could not defend himself, and had no escort, he was hurried off a prisoner, and it was some time before his absence was noted[198]. A good many isolated soldiers were picked up in the same fashion by the French cavalry, before the central column emerged from the woods and found itself above the broad ravine of the Huebra river, and the town of San Muñoz, in the late afternoon[199].

The whole column had been ordered to encamp on the farther side of the Huebra, on the plateau in front of Boadilla and Cabrillas, and each division as it passed the river made its way to the ground allotted to it. There was wood to be had in abundance, and fires were lit—the rain had abated in the afternoon—but there was little to cook. Again there was no distribution save of beef from the droves of half-starved oxen which accompanied the divisions, and acorns which turned out more palatable when roasted than when eaten raw.

The 7th Division had just crossed the Huebra, and the Light Division and a few squadrons of cavalry alone were on the farther bank, when a new turn was given to the day by the appearance of infantry behind the French Dragoons, who had been following the retreating centre column since dawn. Soult had at last succeeded in getting his leading division, that of Daricau, to the front. Hitherto the bad roads and the fatigue of the long marches had prevented them from picking up the cavalry of the advanced guard. The Marshal by no means intended to commit himself to a general action, but thought that he had the chance of falling upon the rear of Wellington’s retreating central column, as it passed the defile of the Huebra. ‘I thought,’ he wrote that evening to King Joseph, ‘that I might bring off a combat of infantry, and a cavalry affair, to advantage, but had to give up the idea, and to limit my efforts to cannonading the masses of the English Army across the Huebra. The enemy showed us 20,000 men in position, including 3,000 horse, and more than 20 guns—we could see other masses debouching across the bridge of Castillejo de Huebra, and the glare of camp fires announced the presence of more divisions on the plateau of Cabrillas[200].’

What happened at this rearguard action, whose details Soult slurs over, was that the Light Division, suddenly attacked by the French infantry as it was about to cross the Huebra, had to throw out a strong skirmishing line to its rear, while the main column plunged down the ravine and over the fords. Three companies of the 43rd and one of the 95th[201] held back Daricau’s voltigeurs till their comrades had waded across the water, and then had the dangerous task of withdrawing from the woodside and rushing down to the fords sharply pursued. Soult showed at first every sign of desiring to cross the Huebra in their wake, brought up four batteries to his side of the ravine, and began to play upon the Light and 7th Divisions, which had formed up to defend the passage. His skirmishers swarmed down to the river bank, under cover of the fire of the guns, engaged in a lively tiraillade across the rapid stream, and would certainly have attempted to cross if the return fire had not been as strong and rapid as their own. The 7th Division, drawn up in three lines of brigades on the higher slopes, was much shelled by the French artillery, and would have suffered severely but for the fact that the rain-sodden ground ‘swallowed the shot and smothered the shells[202].’ It is an extraordinary fact that after ‘four hours of standing up to the ankles in mud and water, completely exposed, having nothing to shelter us[203]’ the regiments in the front brigade were hardly touched at all: the 68th had no loss whatever, the 51st had one officer killed and eight men wounded, and the total casualties in the division were under 30. Soult’s report that ‘notre feu d’artillerie a été très meurtrier pour l’ennemi’ was plausible enough to any French officer watching the artillery practice, which was good—but happened to be incorrect.

At dusk the firing ceased, and the French drew off from the river and encamped in the woods behind them, as did the Light and 7th Divisions on the opposite bank. The losses on both sides in this skirmish—sometimes called the combat of San Muñoz, sometimes the combat of the Huebra—were very moderate. Daricau’s division had 226 casualties (mostly in the 21st Léger and 100th Line), and the French cavalry a few more. On the British side the Light and 7th Divisions and the cavalry of the rearguard lost 365 men—but this included 178 prisoners not taken in action but individually as stragglers during the long retreat through the woods since dawn[204]. In the actual fighting the loss was only 2 officers and 9 men killed, and 4 officers and 90 men wounded in the British brigades, with 1 officer and 36 men killed and 2 officers and 43 men wounded in the Portuguese—a total of 187. Next morning it was expected that the French, having now several more infantry divisions at the front, would make an attempt to force the line of the Huebra at dawn. Nothing of the kind happened. ‘Daylight came at last,’ writes the cavalry officer in charge of the line of vedettes along the river, ‘the French drums beat, and the troops stood to arms. I took my place to observe their movements, and expected every moment to see the columns leaving the camp for the different fords. But no! after having had a good opportunity to observe their strength, and to see their cavalry water their horses, I witnessed with no small satisfaction the whole, after remaining under arms about two hours, disperse to their respective bivouacks[205].’ The pursuit was over.

Wellington, in short, had offered battle on the Huebra, on the evening of the 17th, and Soult had refused it, seeing that the bulk of the allied army was concentrated close behind that river, while his own infantry divisions were still straggling up from the rear. Nor had he any intention of following next day—he wrote to King Joseph that ‘I told your Majesty that seeing the retreat of the enemy upon the Agueda well pronounced, and having no hope of being able to engage him in a general action before he has terminated his movement, I should put a limit to my pursuit after passing the Huebra, and should move off towards the upper Tormes, to enable the army to collect the food which it lacks.’ The regret expressed at being unable to force on a battle was of course insincere. All that Soult did was to wait till the British rearguard had abandoned the line of the Huebra, and then move his advanced cavalry to Cabrillas, from which some small reconnoitring parties pushed as far as the Yeltes river[206], and then came back, reporting that it was impossible to pass that flooded stream without bridges, and that the British were all across it. On the morning of the 19th the whole French army retired eastward, marching by Tamames and Linares towards Salvatierra. The truth was that the French were by now suffering almost as much from fatigue and want of food as the British. They could not ‘live on the country’, and the diet of acorns, of which several diarists speak, was as repugnant to the pursuers as to the pursued.

On the 18th the British Army had an unmolested retreat. This did not prevent many losses of men who dropped to the rear and died of fatigue and starvation. The carcasses of dead horses all along the road had been hacked up for food. One observer saw thirteen corpses lying round a single fire: another counted so many as fifty men sitting in a clump, who declared their absolute incapacity to march a foot farther, and could not be induced to move. But the stragglers who did not perish hobbled on to the camps in the evening for the most part. The cavalry swept up large numbers of them into safety. That night the column of Hill reached Tenebron and Moras Verdes: the centre column lodged about Santi Espiritus and Alba de Yeltes. The Galicians, forming the northern column, were about Castillo de Yeltes and Fuenteroble. The march of the centre column was accompanied by the curious case of insubordination by three divisional generals (those commanding the 1st, 5th, and 7th Divisions[207]) of which Napier makes such scathing notice. Their orders gave an itinerary involving a march over fords in flooded fields; they consulted together, judged the route hopeless, and turned off towards the bridge of Castillo de Yeltes, which they found blocked by the Army of Galicia. Wellington, failing to find them on the prescribed path, set out to seek them, and came upon them waiting miserably in the mud. He is said to have given them no more rebuke than a sarcastic ‘You see, gentlemen, I know my own business best’ and allowed them to cross after the Spaniards, many hours late[208]. The insubordination was inexcusable—yet perhaps it would not have been beneath Wellington’s dignity to have prefaced his original order with an explanatory note such as ‘the main road by Castillo bridge being reserved for the Spanish divisions.’ But this would not have been in his normal style. Like Stonewall Jackson fifty years after, he was not prone to give his reasons to subordinates, even when his orders would appear to them very inexplicable.

On the 19th a march of a few miles brought all the columns within a short distance of Ciudad Rodrigo, and the commissariat transport having reached that place on the preceding day, quite unmolested, arrangements had already been made to send out food to meet the approaching columns. ‘About dusk we took up our ground on the face of the hill near Rodrigo—the weather now changing to a severe frost was intensely cold. We had not long been halted when the well-known summons of “turn out for biscuit” rang in our ears. The strongest went for it, and received two days’ rations for every man. It was customary to make an orderly division, but that night it was dispensed with, each man eagerly seized what he could get, and endeavoured to allay the dreadful gnawing which had tormented us during four days of unexampled cold and fatigue. In a short time two more rations were delivered, and the inordinate eating that ensued threatened to do more mischief than the former want[209].’

On the 20th the army was distributed in quarters around and behind Rodrigo—Hill’s column about Martiago, Zamorra, Robledo, Cespedosa, and other villages on the Upper Agueda; the centre column about Gallegos, Carpio, Pastores, El Bodon, Campillo, and other cantonments well known from the long tarrying of the army there in 1811. The Galicians were left out in the direction of San Felices and the Lower Agueda. Every one was now under cover, and food was abundant—almost too abundant at first. Rest, warmth, and regular rations were indeed necessary. ‘Scarcely a man had shoes—not that they had not been properly supplied with them before the retreat began, but the state of the roads had been such that as soon as a shoe fell off or stuck in the mud, in place of picking it up, the man kicked its fellow-companion after it. Yet the infantry was still efficient and fit to do its duty. But the cavalry and artillery were in a wretched state: the batteries of the 3rd, 6th, and 7th Divisions, the heavy cavalry, with the 11th and 12th Light Dragoons were nearly a wreck—the artillery of the 3rd Division lost 70 horses between Salamanca and Rodrigo.... The cavalry was half dismounted, the artillery without the proper number of horses to draw the guns, much less the ammunition cars—many died from cold and famine under the harness of the artillery and the saddles of the dragoons.... The batteries could with difficulty show three horses in place of eight to a gun[210].’

Stragglers continued to come in for several days. Julian Sanchez was sent out with his lancers to search the woods for them, and brought in 800 mounted on the horses of his men. But when the divisional returns were prepared on November 29th, it was found that besides killed and wounded in action and sick in hospital, there was a melancholy deficit of 4921 ‘missing’ since October 23rd. The killed and wounded in action, as opposed to the missing, were very few considering the dangers which the Army had gone through: some 160 at Villadrigo, 440 at Villamuriel and Palencia, 70 at the Puente Larga, 113 at Alba de Tormes, 187 at the combat of the Huebra—smaller fights such as the skirmishes at Tordesillas, Aldea Lengua, and Matilla can hardly account for 200 more between them—the total cannot have exceeded 1,200 casualties in action. But nearly 5,000 missing was a sad record. How many of them were dead, how many had deserted, and how many were prisoners in the hands of the French, it is hard to determine. The losses in missing before Salamanca had been insignificant—perhaps 500 in each of the two columns of Wellington and Hill—there had been many drunkards and malingerers taken both at Torquemada and at Valdemoro. But the main loss was suffered between the 16th and the 18th of November, in the woods and mires between Salamanca and the Yeltes river. Soult, in his daily letters to King Joseph, claims to have taken 600 prisoners on the 16th, 1,000 to 1,200 on the 17th, and 100 on the 18th. These figures do not appear incredible, and would allow in addition for well over a thousand men dead, and some hundreds of deserters. The latter were certainly numerous in the foreign corps—the Brunswick-Oels and Chasseurs Britanniques show losses in ‘missing’ out of proportion to all the other regiments[211]. It is noteworthy, when comparing the lists of the ‘missing’ in the various divisions, to see that the Portuguese units suffered far more severely in proportion to their numbers than the British. They showed the total of 2,469 as against 2,477, but this was out of 22,000 men only, while the similar British figure was out of a total of 32,000 or thereabouts—i. e. their loss was about 10·8 per cent. as against about 8 per cent. Several observers of the retreat note that the cold and perpetual rain told much more heavily upon the stamina of the Portuguese, whose native climate is far more mild than that of the plateaux of Leon. They simply sank by the wayside, and died, or suffered themselves to be taken prisoners without attempting to get away. The unit in the whole army which suffered most heavily in the way of ‘missing’ was Bradford’s Portuguese brigade, which lost 514 men out of 1,645. In the Light and 3rd Divisions the Portuguese battalions were little more than a third of the British in numbers, but had more missing than their comrades in the proportion of 163 to 92 in one case and 230 to 184 in the other. The worst divisional records were those of the 5th and 7th Divisions, which lost 800 and 600 men respectively: the best those of the 1st, 6th, and Light Divisions with only 283, 170, and 255. Individual British regiments differed much: the most unsatisfactory figures were those of a battalion which had only landed at Lisbon that summer, and had not been present at Salamanca. The 1/82nd distinguished itself by leaving more drunken stragglers at Valdemoro than any other corps, and had dropped a terrible proportion of its men between Salamanca and Rodrigo. Wellington put the colonel under arrest, and proposed to try him before a court martial for ‘gross neglect of duty,’ but in the end did not press matters to a formal prosecution[212].

For the first few days after the arrival of the army at Ciudad Rodrigo Wellington was not quite certain that the enemy, after resting on the Tormes for a few days, might not resume his advance[213]. This was unlikely, owing to the weather and the obvious difficulty of finding food for 90,000 men in a devastated countryside. Still, it was conceivable, and a further advance on Soult’s part would have been very tiresome, when the allied troops so much required rest, and when some dangerous cracks seemed to threaten the stability of parts of the newly repaired sections of the walls of Ciudad Rodrigo[214]. For six days the army was held together, till on November 26th arrived certain news that Soult was on his way to the province of Avila, and that the greater part of the Army of Portugal was leaving Salamanca for the rear, and distributing itself in its old cantonments in the direction of Toro and Valladolid[215], while King Joseph with the Army of the Centre was on his march for Madrid. Since the French were certainly dispersing, there was no longer any necessity for keeping the allied army concentrated. On the 27th Wellington ordered a general dislocation of the divisions into winter quarters. Only the Light Division and Victor Alten’s cavalry remained about Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. Of the rest of the army, Hill, with his old corps—the 2nd Division, Hamilton’s Portuguese and Erskine’s cavalry—marched for Coria and Zarza, being directed to canton themselves in the valley of the Alagon with an advanced post at Bejar. Campbell’s Portuguese cavalry went to their old haunts about Elvas in the Alemtejo, and Penne Villemur and Morillo, with the Estremaduran Divisions, returned to their native regions. Castaños and the Galician army retired also to their own province, marching through the Tras-os-Montes by way of Braganza. D’Urban’s Portuguese horse were cantoned for the winter north of the Douro, but the rest of the allied cavalry (Bock, Ponsonby, and Anson) were sent far to the rear, to look for comfortable quarters in the Mondego valley and the villages south of Oporto. The remaining British infantry divisions (the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th) were distributed about the province of Beira, in various quarters from Lamego to Guarda, at distances of thirty or fifty miles from the frontier[216]. The general disposition of the cantonments of the army was not much different from what it had been in the first days of 1812, before the long eleven months’ campaign began. Only Hill was no longer on the Guadiana, but north of the Tagus, since there was no enemy left in Andalusia to require his attention.

While the dispersion was in progress Wellington issued (November 28) the Memorandum to Officers commanding Divisions and Brigades which caused so many heart-burnings among his subordinates. It was intended to go no further than those officers; but some of them dispatched copies to the colonels of the regiments under their charge, and so it became public property. Written in a moment of intense irritation, it contained much rebuke that was merited, but was unjust from the sweeping and general character of the blame that it distributed to the whole army, and most certainly failed to take account of the exceptional conditions of the 15th to the 19th of November. Wellington wrote:

‘I am concerned to have to observe that the army under my command has fallen off in the respect of discipline in the late campaign, to a greater degree than any army with which I have ever served, or of which I have ever read. Yet this army has met with no disaster: it has suffered no privations which but trifling attention on the part of the officers could not have prevented, and for which there existed no reason in the nature of the service. Nor has it suffered any hardships, excepting those resulting from the necessity of being exposed to the inclemencies of the weather at a time when they were most severe. It must be obvious to every officer that from the moment the troops commenced their retreat from the neighbourhood of Burgos on the one hand, and of Madrid on the other, the officers lost all control over their men. Irregularities and outrages were committed with impunity. Yet the necessity for retreat existing, none was ever made on which the troops had such short marches; none on which they made such long and repeated halts; and none on which the retreating army was so little pressed on their rear by the enemy.... I have no hesitation in attributing these evils to the habitual inattention of the officers of the regiments to their duty, as prescribed by the standing regulations of the service, and the orders of this army.... The commanding officers of regiments must enforce the order of the army regarding the constant inspection and superintendence of the officers over the conduct of the men in their companies, and they must endeavour to inspire the non-commissioned officers with a sense of their situation and authority. By these means the frequent and discreditable resort to the authority of the Provost, and to punishments by courts martial, will be prevented, and the soldiers will not dare to commit the offences and outrages of which there are so many complaints, when they well know that their officers and non-commissioned officers have their eyes on them.

‘In regard to the food of the soldier, I have frequently observed and lamented in the late campaign the facility and celerity with which the French cooked in comparison with our army. The cause of this disadvantage is the same with that of every other—want of attention of the officers to the orders of the army and the conduct of their men.... Generals and field officers must get the captains and subalterns of their regiments to understand and perform the duties required of them, as the only mode by which the discipline and efficiency of the army can be restored and maintained during the next campaign.’

There was undoubtedly much to justify the strong language which Wellington used as to the grievous relaxation of discipline in some of the regiments. Unfortunately he made no exceptions to his general statement, and wrote as if the whole army had been guilty of straggling, drunkenness, and marauding in the same degree. There was not the slightest hint that there were many corps which had gone through the retreat with small loss of men and none of credit. But Wellington had seen with his own eyes the disgraceful scenes at Torquemada, had been roused from his uneasy slumbers by the sound of the pig-shooting on the night of November 17, and he had witnessed the devastation of San Muñoz and other villages by men who were tearing whole houses to pieces to get firewood. He had ordered the Provost-Marshal to hang on the spot two soldiers caught red-handed in plunder, and sent three officers whose men had pulled down cottages, when collecting fuel, to be court-martialled[217]. The figures of the ‘missing’ in some regiments had rightly provoked his indignation. But he might at the same time have noticed that there were not only battalions but whole brigades where their number was insignificant. In one division of 5,000 men there were but 170—in the five British battalions of the Light Division no more than 96. In both these cases the deficiency represented only weakly men who had fallen by the way from fatigue and disease, and cannot afford any margin for stragglers and marauders.

The general feeling in the army was that nearly all the loss and mischief had happened in the inclement days of November 15-18, previous disorders having been comparatively insignificant; and as regards those days they questioned the justice of Wellington’s indictment of the troops. To say that ‘the army had suffered no privations which but trifling attention on the part of the officers could not have prevented’ was simply not true. What ‘trifling attention’ on the part of the regimental officers could have made up for the fact that some divisions had received absolutely no distribution of food of any sort for four continuous days, and others in the same four days nothing but two rations of beef, and no biscuit or other food at all?[218] It was useless to tell them that they had suffered no privations, or that they could by care have avoided them. As an intelligent general officer wrote on November 20: ‘During the whole of this retreat from the 15th inclusive, not only has the weather been dreadfully severe, but the commissariat arrangements having failed, the troops have been mostly without any issue of rations, and have suffered the extremity of privation, having lived upon acorns and hogs killed occasionally in the woods. The natural result of this has been great disorder and confusion, and the roads in the rear of the columns of march are covered with exhausted stragglers left to the enemy. In fact, by some inconceivable blunder, which the Quartermaster-General’s department attribute to that of the Commissary-General, and which the latter throw back on the former, the supplies of the army, which were adequate for much larger numbers, on the morning that we broke up from the Arapiles were sent down the Tormes, by Ledesma toward Almeida, while the army marched on Ciudad Rodrigo—hinc illae lachrymae[219].’

There is no doubt that sheer lack of food during inclement weather, and in a desolate and thinly peopled forest-country did most of the mischief. As an indignant subaltern writes: ‘The officers asked each other, and asked themselves, how or in what manner they were to blame for the privations of the retreat. The answer uniformly was—in no way whatever. Their business was to keep the men together, and if possible to keep up with their men themselves—and this was the most difficult duty—many of these officers were young lads badly clothed, with scarcely a shoe or a boot left—some attacked with dysentery, others with ague, more with a burning fever raging through their system; they had scarce strength to hobble along in company with their more hardy comrades, the rank and file[220].’

Wellington’s memorandum stated that the marches were short in miles, and this was generally true, though on October 23 the infantry had to do 29 miles. But mileage is not the only thing to be considered in calculating the day’s work—the time spent on the miry roads, where every step was ankle deep in slime that tore the shoes from the feet, was inordinate: several of the marches were from 4 o’clock, before dawn, to the same hour in the afternoon. This on an empty stomach and with the regulation 60 lb. of weight on the soldier’s back was no mean task. And sometimes the journey ended, as for the Light and 7th Divisions on November 17th, in the troops being deployed in battle order in the drifting rain, and kept for some hours more under arms, to resist a possible advance of the French. The strain was too much for many willing men whose constitution was not over robust. It was not only shirkers who fell out and collapsed.

As to the matter of the cooking, one capable subaltern remarked in his diary, ‘if we were allowed to tear down doors, &c., in every village, as the enemy do, without having to go miles for wood, we could cook in as short a time as they[221].’ And another remarks with justice that when the companies had to prepare their food in the vast Flanders cauldrons, carried on mules which dragged at the tail of the regimental baggage train, they could never be sure of getting them up to their bivouacs in good time. There was an immense improvement in 1813, when light tin camp-kettles carried alternately by the men of each squad, were introduced. These were always at hand, and could be got to boil ‘without needing a whole tree or half a church door to warm them.’ Wellington might have spared this criticism on his soldiers’ cooking when he had already, as his dispatches show, asked for the small kettles to be made, precisely because the cauldrons were too heavy, and seldom got up in good time[222]. He did well to lament the slow cooking, but knowing its cause, and having been in command of the army since April 1809, might he not have indented for portable kettles before May 1812?

The real truth with regard to much of the objurgatory language of the ‘Memorandum’ is that, loth though one may be to confess it, the staff officer—commander-in-chief or whatever his rank—who has slept under cover and had adequate food during such awful days as those of November 15 to November 19, 1812, may easily underrate the privations of the man in the ranks, who has faced the weather unsheltered and with no rations at all. This observation does not in the least affect the points on which Wellington did well to be angry—the disgraceful scenes of drunkenness at Torquemada and Valdemoro, the plundering of villages at more points than one, and the excessive straggling from some ill-commanded battalions. And, as we have had occasion to point out before, there was a residuum of bad soldiers in well-nigh every regiment—Colborne estimates it at 50 or 100 men on the average—and exceptional circumstances like the storm of Badajoz or the hardships of the Salamanca retreat brought this ruffianly element to the surface, and led to deplorable incidents. Presumably many corps got rid of the majority of their mauvais sujets by straggling and desertion on those wretched November days upon the Valmusa, the Huebra, and the Yeltes.

Here we may leave the main armies at the end of the campaign. It remains only to speak of Suchet and his opponents on the coast of the Mediterranean. After the departure of Soult and King Joseph from Valencia in the middle of October, it might have been supposed that the Duke of Albufera, now left to his own resources, would have been in some danger. For not only had he in front of him the Anglo-Sicilian troops who had landed under Maitland at Alicante, and his old adversaries of Joseph O’Donnell’s Army, but—since there were now no French left in Andalusia—all the Spanish detachments which had formerly watched the eastern flank of that kingdom were available against him. After Soult had occupied Madrid, Elio, Freire, and Bassecourt all came down to Albacete and Chinchilla, to link themselves with the Alicante troops. Leaving out the Empecinado and Duran, who did not move southward from their mountains on the borders of Aragon and Castile, there were still 25,000 Spanish troops of the ‘second’ and ‘third’ armies—the old Valencian and Murcian corps, disposable for use against Suchet in November[223]. And what was still more ominous for the French on the East Coast, a second reinforcement was getting together at Palermo to strengthen the Anglo-Sicilian corps at Alicante. General Campbell with about 4,000 men sailed on November 14th; this force consisted of two British battalions[224], a foreign battalion of light companies, 1,500 Italians, and some miscellaneous details. Though the Italians (as their conduct proved next spring[225]) were eminently untrustworthy material, the rest were an appreciable addition to the strength of the expeditionary force, which was now swelled to an army corps rather than a large division. They only came to hand on December 2, however, and the best opportunity for attacking Suchet had passed before their landing, since obviously he was most vulnerable when all the rest of the French armies had passed on to Salamanca, after November 6th, and before King Joseph had come back to Madrid and Soult to Toledo in the early days of December. The four weeks between those dates, however, were wasted by the British and Spanish generals on the East Coast.

Suchet had recognized his danger, and had taken up a defensive position in front of the Xucar, with Harispe’s division at Almanza, Fuente la Higuera, and Moxente, Habert’s at Albayda across the high-road from Valencia to Alicante, and Musnier’s in reserve, at Alcira and Xativa. Here he waited on events, having lost touch completely with Soult and the King, from whom he received no dispatch for eighty days after their departure from Albacete and Cuenca in October. It was only by way of Saragossa that he learnt, some weeks later, that they had recaptured Madrid and then marched for the Tormes[226]. He had only 15,000 men in line beyond the Xucar, and knew that in front of him there were 7,000 Anglo-Sicilians, 8,000 of Roche and Whittingham’s men, and more than that number of the Murcians, all grouped round Alicante, while Elio, Freire, and Bassecourt, with 8,000 or 9,000 men, were coming in from the direction of Madrid, and Villacampa with 3,000 more might appear from Southern Aragon. This was a formidable combination, though the Spanish troops were badly organized, and had a long record of defeat behind them. The disaster of Castalla had shown a few months before the incapacity of the leaders and the unsteadiness of the men of the Murcian army. Yet the number of troops available was large, and the 5,000 English and German Legionary infantry of the Alicante Army provided a nucleus of trustworthy material, such as in firm hands might have accomplished much.

Unity and continuity of command, however, was completely wanting. On September 25th Maitland had fallen sick, and the charge of the troops at Alicante passed to his second-in-command, General Mackenzie. This officer showed signs of wishing to adopt a timid offensive attitude against Suchet. He pushed his own and Whittingham’s divisions out as far as Alcoy, opposite Habert’s position at Albayda, and contrived some petty naval demonstration against the Valencian coast. Of these the most important was an expedition which tried on October 5th to capture the town of Denia, the southernmost place in the possession of the French. It was composed of a wing of the 1/81st, and a company each of De Roll’s regiment and of marines—about 600 men—under General Donkin. These troops, carried on the Fame and Cephalus, landed near Denia, and drove the small French garrison into the castle. This was found to be a more formidable work than had been expected, and to require battering by heavy guns. Some cannons were, with difficulty, landed from the ships, and a siege would have been commenced but for the news that Habert was sending up a relieving force. Whereupon the little expedition re-embarked, men and guns being reshipped with much difficulty under the fire of the French on a rocky beach[227]. The loss was trifling, but the whole plan was obviously feeble and useless. To have turned Suchet’s sea-ward flank with 5,000 men, while threatening his front with the rest of the British and Spanish troops available might have been a conceivable operation. But what could 600 men, entirely isolated, hope to accomplish?

It must have been long after this fruitless demonstration that Mackenzie received a formal order from Wellington dated from before Burgos on October 13th[228], bidding him attack Valencia, either by land or by sea, if Soult and King Joseph should have marched their armies against Madrid. He was instructed not to accept a general action with Suchet, unless he was very superior in numbers, and to beware of fighting in ground favourable to cavalry. His own mounted force consisted only of 230 sabres[229], and 500 belonging to Whittingham and to the Murcian army were of doubtful efficiency. But it was thought that Suchet was very weak, and a little while later Wellington received false information that the Marshal had lent a considerable part of his army to King Joseph for the march on Madrid[230]. He therefore hoped that a bold advance against Valencia might shake the hold of the French on the Mediterranean coast.

The letter directed to Mackenzie was received not by him but by General William Clinton (the brother of H. Clinton of the 6th Division), who had arrived at Alicante and taken command—superseding Mackenzie—on October 25th. Lord William Bentinck had sent him out from Palermo on hearing of Maitland’s illness. The change of generals had no good results—Clinton fell at once into a fierce quarrel with Cruz the Spanish governor of Alicante. He opined that he ought not to start to attack Suchet without receiving over control of the Alicante forts, and placing them in the charge of a British garrison. The Governor refused to give up the keys, and much friction ensued, causing an angry interchange of letters which wasted many days. Wellington, when he heard of it, declared that Clinton seemed to have been wholly unreasonable in his demand[231]. Meanwhile Clinton drew in Mackenzie’s troops from the front, instead of making an advance toward Valencia. Suchet, hearing that there were no red-coated battalions left opposite Habert, resolved to try the effect of a reconnaissance in force, and moved forward against Roche and Whittingham, who still lay at Alcoy. The English and Spanish divisions at once drew back to Xixona, twenty miles nearer to Alicante. Impressed by this activity on the part of the enemy, Clinton wrote to Wellington that Suchet was too strong to be meddled with, and that he dared attempt no offensive move toward Valencia[232]. Yet counting Roche, Whittingham, and the Murcian troops at Alicante, he must have outnumbered the French by nearly two to one. And on November 22 the Governor of Alicante actually surrendered the keys of the citadel—the point on which Clinton had insisted as the necessary preliminary for active operations.

Nothing had yet been done on the East Coast when on December 2 General Campbell landed at Alicante with the 4,000 Sicilian troops already mentioned a few pages back. He was senior to Clinton, and relieved him of the command. Thus in the 70 days since September 23rd there had been four general officers in successive charge of the force which was intended to keep Suchet in check. It would have been difficult to contrive a more inconvenient arrangement—both Clinton and Campbell were new to the army and the district, and each took many days to make out his situation, and arrive at a conclusion as to what could and what could not be done. Campbell, immediately on his arrival, was solicited by Elio to attack Suchet, in combination with his own army, which should strike in from Albacete on the Marshal’s flank. He offered to bring up 10,000 men of his own (Freire, Bassecourt, and Villacampa) and said—apparently without authorization—that Del Parque would assist, at the head of the Army of Andalusia. But Campbell refused to stir, and possibly was right, when such cases as Barrosa and Talavera are taken into consideration. Yet Wellington, his commander-in-chief, had ordered the offensive to be taken in no hesitating terms, and the force available was undoubtedly too large to be wasted. As Wellington himself remarked, most British generals of that day, though bold enough in action, and capable of acting as efficient lieutenants, seemed stricken with a mental paralysis when placed in an independent position, where the responsibility of taking the initiative was thrown upon them. It was only exceptional men like Craufurd and Graham who welcomed it. The general effect of the Anglo-Sicilian expedition was disappointing in the extreme. Suchet had thought, and with reason, that it would be ruinous to him, both in July and again in November. It turned out to be a negligible quantity in the game, except so far as it prevented the French Army of Valencia from moving any of its 15,000 men to co-operate with Soult or King Joseph. Wellington had hoped for much greater profit from the diversion.

After all, a much larger body of French troops than Suchet’s field force in front of Valencia was being at this time kept completely employed, by enemies who owned a far less numerous following than Campbell or Elio. The little Army of Catalonia, not 8,000 strong, was finding employment all through the autumn and winter for Decaen’s 20,000 men; and Duran and Villacampa in Aragon—aided occasionally by Mina from the side of Navarre, and Sarsfield from the side of Catalonia—were keeping the strong force under Reille, Severoli, and Caffarelli in constant movement, and occasionally inflicting severe loss on its flying columns. Their co-operation in the general cause was useful and effective—that of the Alicante Army was not. To sum up all the operations on the eastern side of Spain we may say that there had been practically no change in the situation of the adversaries since February. The amount of territory occupied by the French was unchanged—they had made no progress in the pacification of Aragon or Catalonia; but on the other hand Suchet’s hold on Valencia still remained entirely unshaken.

SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER VII

CRITICAL SUMMARY OF THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1812

Though Wellington’s divisions took up in December 1812 almost the same cantonments that they had occupied in December 1811, ere they marched out at midwinter to the leaguer of Ciudad Rodrigo, the aspect of affairs in the Peninsula had been completely transformed during the intervening twelve months. It was not merely that Andalusia, Estremadura, and Asturias had been freed from the presence of the French armies, who were never to return. Nor was it merely that—to use Wellington’s own words[233]—‘we have sent to England little less than 20,000 prisoners,[234] have taken and destroyed, or have now ourselves the use of, the enemy’s arsenals in Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Valladolid, Madrid, Astorga, Seville, and the lines before Cadiz, and upon the whole have taken or destroyed, or now possess, little short of 3,000 pieces of their cannon[235].’ Nor was it the all-important thing that the Armies of Portugal, the Centre, and the South, Wellington’s immediate enemies, were in November weaker by 30,000 men than they had been in March, and this though they had received 10,000 men in drafts since the summer ended. The fact that really counted was that the whole French system in Spain had been shaken to its foundations. It was useless to pretend any longer that King Joseph was a legitimate sovereign, and the Cadiz government a mere knot of rebels driven into their last and remotest place of refuge. The dream of complete conquest, which had lingered on down to the moment of Suchet’s capture of Valencia, was gone for ever. The prestige of the French arms was shattered: the confidence of the officers in the marshals, that of the men in their officers, had disappeared. As Foy, the most intelligent of the French observers, sums up the matter, what hope was there for the future when the whole available field force of the French armies of Spain, superior in number by a third to Wellington’s army, had been collected on a single field, and had allowed the enemy to march away practically unmolested? ‘Wellington goes off unbeaten, with the glory of his laurels of the Arapiles untarnished, after having restored to the Spaniards all the lands south of the Tagus, after having forced us to destroy our own magazines and fortifications, and deprived us of all the resources that resulted from our former conquests and ought to have secured their retention[236].’ There was a profound dissatisfaction throughout the French Army; and as the winter drew on, and the ill news from Russia began slowly to drift in, it became evident that the old remedy for all ills so often suggested in 1810-11—the personal appearance of the Emperor in Spain with large reinforcements—was never likely to come to pass. Indeed, troops would probably be withdrawn from Spain rather than sent thither, and the extra subsidies in money, for which King Joseph was always clamouring, were never likely to be forthcoming from the Imperial Exchequer.

As to the past campaign, belated recriminations continued to fly about: Clarke—the Minister of War at Paris—was the central point round which they revolved, since it was through him that the reports went to the Emperor from Spain, and to him that the rare answers came back from some Russian bivouac, when the master had a moment’s leisure from his own troubles. Generally he wrote in a very discouraging strain: ‘vous sentez qu’éloigné comme je suis, je ne puis rien faire pour les armées d’Espagne[237].’ His occasional comments were scathing—Marmont’s reports were all lies, he was to be interrogated in a formal series of questions, as to why he had dared to fight at Salamanca. The quarrels of Joseph and Soult were unworthy of serious attention: ‘il ne pouvait pas s’occuper de semblables pauvretés dans un moment où il était à la tête de 500,000 hommes, et faisait des choses immenses.’ Considering the way in which Soult had wrecked all the plans of the King and Joseph in June-July, by deliberate disobedience to a long series of orders sent by his hierarchic superior, it was poor comfort to Joseph to be told that he must continue to put up with him. ‘Le Maréchal Soult est la seule tête militaire qu’il y eût en Espagne: on ne pouvait l’en retirer sans compromettre l’armée[238].’ ‘Why had the King ever returned to Spain in 1811?’ said the Emperor—though a reference to the correspondence between them in that year tends to show that Joseph had offered to abdicate, or take any other step prescribed to him, and that it was his brother who preferred to keep him at Madrid as a figure-head. Napoleon, it is clear, was vexed at being worried by the affairs of the Peninsula at a moment when he required all his time for the contemplation of his own problems, and discharged his wrath, deserved or undeserved, in all directions. It may be doubted whether he ever thought of himself as perhaps the greatest offender of all; but it was—as we have already shown at great length[239]—precisely his own elaborate orders which led first to the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo and then to that of Badajoz. But for these initial strokes Wellington’s task in the later spring would have been far more difficult. And it is certainly the fact that if Marmont had been allowed to follow his own inspiration in February and March, Badajoz at least might have been saved. As to what followed in June and July, Soult must take the main share of the blame. Wellington’s game would have been far harder if the Army of the South had obeyed the King’s orders, and come up to the Tagus in June. Soult would have had to evacuate Andalusia, it is true; but he none the less had to abandon it in the end, and it would have made all the difference in the world to the fate of the campaign if he had come northward while Marmont’s Army was still intact, and not after it had received the crushing blow of July 22nd at Salamanca. No rational student of the events of that summer can fail to recognize that Jourdan and the King had found the right conclusion, and issued the right orders, and that Soult’s determination to hang on to Andalusia till the last moment showed as much mental perversity as military insubordination. His counter-plan for inducing the King to come to Seville, abandoning Madrid before Marmont had even tried the fortune of battle, was simply the wild project of a viceroy loth to abandon his realm, and convinced that every one else ought to give way for his own personal profit[240]. To surrender Central and Northern Spain to Wellington, and to allow all communications between Andalusia and France to be cut would have been insane. The King would only have brought 15,000 men with him: Soult could not have added a greater field force than 25,000 men more—as was repeatedly shown when he tried to concentrate in Estremadura. Their joint 40,000 would have neither been enough to face Wellington nor to threaten Portugal. Meanwhile Spain from the Ebro to the Sierra Morena would have passed into the hands of the Allies. It is unnecessary to dilate further on the topic.

A more interesting problem, and one into which Napier went at great length, is the criticism of the campaigns of 1812 from the other point of view, that of Wellington. It is clear that there is nothing but praise to be bestowed on the masterly strategical combination of January and March, which brought about the captures of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Each fell before a blow delivered at the precise moment when it must be most effective. The position of the enemy had been carefully calculated, and every adverse possibility taken into consideration. It is obvious that Rodrigo was doomed without fail from the first, because Wellington had realized and demonstrated to himself the inability of the French to hinder his enterprise, after the Imperial orders had sent Montbrun off to the borders of Valencia. And Badajoz was destined to fall also, unless Marmont should help Soult at the earliest possible moment and with the greatest possible force. There was in this case an adverse chance, though not a very great one: that it never came near to occurring was due to the Emperor’s removal of Marmont’s southern divisions from the Tagus valley. But even if this fortunate intervention of Napoleon had not simplified the task of the Allied Army, it was still improbable that Marmont would appear in time; and the improbability had been ascertained by careful study of the state of the magazines and the distribution of the cantonments of the Army of Portugal. Soult without Marmont could accomplish nothing, and on this fact Wellington based his plan. If the Duke of Dalmatia had brought up 10,000 men more than he actually did, his advance would still have been insufficient to save Badajoz.

As to the details of the siege of that fortress, we have seen that things by no means went as Wellington desired. He himself threw the blame on the want of trained sappers, and the inexpertness of his engineer officers[241]. The engineers’ reply was that they were directed to work ‘against time’, and not given sufficient days or means to carry out their operations according to the regular methods of their craft. ‘The project of attack adopted would not stand the test of criticism as a scientific operation, but possessed merit as a bold experiment to reduce in an unusually short time a considerable fortress, well armed and well countermined, by the agency of unskilled sappers, no miners, and insufficient ordnance[242].’ Probably the verdict of the historian must be that the time-problem was the dominating fact, and that had there been no relieving armies in the field other methods would have been pursued[243]. It is at least certain that the rapidity with which the place was taken disconcerted Soult[244], and upset all the plans of the French in Spain.

After the fall of Badajoz Wellington had his choice between the invasion of Andalusia and that of the valley of the Douro. It can hardly be doubted that he was right in choosing the latter, not only on the ground which he himself stated, that Marmont’s was the ‘operating army’[245] and the more dangerous of the two, but because (as Marmont put it) a disaster in the North would compel the French to evacuate the South, while a disaster in the South would have no such effect in the North. The victory of Salamanca liberated Andalusia and Madrid as well as the Douro valley—a similar victory somewhere in front of Seville would have cleared Andalusia, no doubt, but would not have sufficed to deliver the Castiles and Leon. The Northern operation was the most decisive. The well-timed storm of the Almaraz forts secured for that operation a reasonable amount of time, during which it could not be disturbed by the appearance of reinforcements for the Army of Portugal.

The irruption into Leon in June, for which such careful subsidiary operations had been made on all sides—in Andalusia and Catalonia, on the Bay of Biscay and in Navarre—had at first all the results that could have been expected. But it can hardly be denied that a grave mistake was made when no adequate preparations were made for the siege of the Salamanca forts—and this was a mistake that was to be repeated under very similar circumstances before Burgos in September. There was nothing to prevent a proper battering-train from being brought out from Rodrigo or Almeida. Yet a worse slip, most certainly, was made when on June 21st Wellington refused the battle that Marmont most rashly offered. He could have fought with the advantage of numbers, position, and superiority in cavalry, in a measure that he was not to enjoy again during the Salamanca campaign. Why he held back we now know—he thought (and not without good reason) that if he did not attack Marmont, the presumptuous Marshal would attack him. Such a project indeed was in his adversary’s mind, and if it had been carried out the result would undoubtedly have been a second Bussaco. But Marmont hesitated—and was saved for the moment. That he was able to retire with an intact army behind the Douro was a terrible disappointment to Wellington; for, during the deadlock that ensued for nearly three weeks, the French Armies of the North, South, and Centre might have spared reinforcements for the Army of Portugal. Soult’s perversity, Caffarelli’s want of perception of the relative importance of things, and King Joseph’s tardiness prevented these possible reinforcements from getting up in time. But this Wellington could not foresee, and he was under the impression that nothing was more possible than the arrival of Marmont’s expected succours. If the French should play the right game, Wellington thought it probable that he might have had to evacuate Salamanca and his other recent conquests, and to retire to the Agueda and the protection of Ciudad Rodrigo. Fortunately there turned out to be no necessity for this heart-breaking move. Marmont came forward on July 15th, without having received any of the assistance that he had expected from the other armies, and involved himself in the manœuvres that were to end in complete disaster. By his first movement, the ingenious demonstration on the side of Toro, ending by the passage of the whole French army over the Douro at the distant Tordesillas, he distinctly scored a point over his adversary. Wellington was only prepared to fight a defensive battle at this moment; and when the Duke of Ragusa refused, on the Guarena (July 18), to indulge him in such a fashion, and continued to turn his right flank on several successive days, he always gave back, awaiting an opportunity that seemed never about to arrive. The head-quarters staff of the allied army marvelled at their leader’s caution, on the days (July 19-20) when the two armies were executing their parallel marches about Vallesa and Cantalapiedra. At any moment a battle on equal terms could have been brought about, but it was refused. Yet Wellington had recently acquired the knowledge that King Joseph was just starting from Madrid to join Marmont with 15,000 men; and a victory over the Army of Portugal before it should be reinforced was the only way out of the dangerous situation. He would not commit himself to the chance of an offensive battle, and—as his dispatches show—made up his mind to abandon Salamanca and fall back upon the Agueda, unless his adversary should oblige him by making some obvious blunder.

The psychology of the moment—as has been shown above—was that he considered that an indecisive victory, entailing heavy loss in his own ranks, would have availed him little. Unless he could put Marmont completely out of action by a very crushing blow, the Marshal would be joined by the Army of the Centre and other reinforcements, and would still be able to make head against him. At the bottom of his mind, it is clear, lay the consideration that he had in his hands the only field-army that Great Britain possessed, that in risking it he would risk everything—even the loss of Portugal,—and that the total force of the French in the Peninsula was so great that he must not fight save at a marked advantage. His own 50,000 men were the sole hope of the allied cause—Marmont’s Army was but one of several bodies whose existence he had to bear in mind. As long as he kept his army intact, the enemy could do no more than push him back to the Agueda: when they had got him thus far, they would have to disperse again, for they could not feed on the countryside, nor invade Portugal with less than 100,000 men. But if he were to wreck his army by suffering a check, or even by winning a bloody and indecisive success, he could not calculate where his retreat might end, or how great the disaster might be.

Wellington’s caution was rewarded on the 22nd July, when his adversary at last fell into reckless over-confidence, and invited defeat, by stringing out his army along an arc of six miles opposite the strong and concentrated line of the Allies. The punishment was prompt and crushing—the sudden advance of Wellington was a beautiful piece of tactics, ‘a battle in the style of Frederic the Great’ as the sagacious Foy observed, in a fit of enthusiasm wherein the admiration of the skilled soldier prevailed over the national pride of the Frenchman. Marmont’s host was not merely beaten, but scattered and demoralized: it was put out of action for some time, and if Carlos de España had only maintained the castle of Alba de Tormes there would have been nothing left worth mentioning of the Army of Portugal. Even as things actually fell out, the victory was absolutely complete, and placed all the valley of the Douro and Central Spain in Wellington’s hands.

After Salamanca he had it in his power to choose between thrusting Clausel and the battered Army of Portugal behind the Ebro, and marching on Madrid to deal with King Joseph and Soult. His choice of the second alternative has often been criticized, and ascribed to motives which were far from his mind. The real cause of his turn to the South was his belief that Soult must now evacuate Andalusia, and that he would therefore have all his army concentrated, and no longer frittered away in garrisons, as it had been for the last two years. Instead of being able to collect 25,000 men only for the field, the Duke of Dalmatia would have 50,000 available, and when joined by the King and perhaps by Suchet, he would need to be faced by the whole allied army. Wellington therefore intended that Hill should join him; together they could deal with the largest block of French troops still left in the Peninsula. His intention was to force matters to a decision in the South, and he thought it likely that he might find Soult already marching upon Toledo with his whole army. In this expectation he was entirely disappointed; the Marshal—as we have seen—refused for a month to evacuate his viceroyalty, and stayed there so long that Wellington began to think that he would have to go down to Andalusia to evict him. ‘I suspect,’ he wrote at last on August 18, ‘that he will not stir, till I force him out, by a direct movement upon him, and I think of making that movement as soon as I can take the troops to the South without injuring their health.’

This was an unexpected development: ‘any other but a modern French Army would now leave the province (Andalusia), as they have absolutely no communication of any kind with France, or with any other French army, and are pressed on all sides,’ wrote Wellington. Yet Soult lingered, and meanwhile the Army of Portugal, rallied in a shorter time than could have been expected, returned to Valladolid, and assumed the offensive in the valley of the Douro. The trouble in that direction became so acute that Wellington resolved to march against Clausel, with a force sufficient to drive him back to the Ebro, intending afterwards to return to Madrid to pick up the other half of his own army, to join with Hill, and then to deal with Soult, whose tardy resolve to evacuate Andalusia was only just becoming evident.

The march against Clausel was necessary; and it seems a misfortune that Wellington left three of his best divisions at Madrid—which was obviously in no danger for the present, and where Hill was expected to arrive ere long. It turned out that the force put in motion against Valladolid and Burgos was too small—even after it had been joined by Clinton and the Galicians—to secure the complete predominance in the North which was necessary. Clausel retreated, but was pursued in a somewhat cautious fashion, and only as far as Burgos. It would appear that if Wellington had brought 10,000 men more with him from Madrid, and if he had invested Burgos with the Galician Army, and followed hard upon Clausel with all his Anglo-Portuguese, he might have driven the French not only beyond the Ebro, but as much farther as he pleased. For Clausel could not have stood for a moment if Wellington’s power had been a little greater, and Caffarelli was in September so entirely taken up with the operations of Home Popham, Mina, and Mendizabal that he had not a man to spare.

But Wellington advanced no farther than Burgos, and allowed Clausel to lie opposite him at Briviesca unmolested, till he had drawn great reinforcements from France, and had at last induced Caffarelli to come to his aid with 10,000 men. Meanwhile, he was devoting himself to the siege of Burgos, where, by his own fault, he had no sufficient artillery resources to subdue an improvised fortress of the third class. The fault was exactly the same as that which had been committed before the Salamanca Forts in June. And—as has been demonstrated above—Wellington had been pressed to take more heavy guns with him, both by Sir Home Popham and by officers at Madrid. And if he had called for them, even after the siege began, they could have reached him in time. His own curious comments on the facts are not convincing:

‘I see that a disposition exists to blame the Government for the failure of the siege of Burgos. The Government had nothing to say to the siege: it was entirely my own act. In regard to means, there were ample means, both at Madrid and at Santander, for the siege of the strongest fortress. That which was wanting at both places was the means of transporting ordnance and military stores.... I could not find means for moving even one gun from Madrid. Popham is a gentleman who picques himself on overcoming all difficulties. He knows the time it took to find transport even for about 100 barrels of powder and a few hundred thousand rounds of musket ammunition that he sent me. As for the two guns that he endeavoured to send me, I was obliged to send my own cattle to draw them, and felt great inconvenience from the want of those cattle in subsequent movements of the Army[246].’

The answer that must be made to these allegations is that when matters came to a crisis at Madrid, on Soult’s approach, enough transport was found there to send off to Ciudad Rodrigo great part of the Retiro stores—though much of the material there had to be blown up. If there were not draught animals for even half a dozen guns to be got at Madrid, why did Wellington write on August 31st that ‘if the enemy shall advance, all arrangements must be made for the evacuation of Madrid, such as sending away sick, stores, &c., and eventually for the destruction of what cannot be carried off[247].’ Considerable convoys marched with Hill when the Spanish capital was evacuated, and it is impossible to believe that the 322 draught mules which, by Dickson’s estimate, were the proper allowance for a 24-pound battery of six guns with 180 rounds per gun, could not have been procured at Madrid in September. A requisition on the batteries and transport train of the four divisions left round Madrid could have been made to supplement local resources. But Wellington had made up his mind to risk the Burgos campaign with no more than Dickson’s trifling ‘artillery reserve’—of which the only efficient part was precisely three iron 18-pounders. As to the allusions to Home Popham, they must—with all regret—be described as ungrateful. And they conceal the fact that the two heavy ship-guns which Popham had sent forward were only brought from Reynosa by Wellington’s own draught beasts. Popham got them across the mountains from Santander by his own exertions, and would have sent them some weeks earlier but for Wellington’s refusal to ask for them. And it was the ammunition sent by Popham which alone enabled the siege to go on for as long as it did.

The calculations—miscalculations rather—which kept the main Army in front of Burgos to such a late day in the season as October 20th, have been dealt with in a previous chapter. The united force of Souham and Caffarelli was undervalued; it was not till Wellington saw their two armies deployed that he recognized that they had 20,000 men more in hand than he had supposed. And on the other front he relied too much on the strength of the line of the Tagus for defence. We must concede that if the weather had been the same in New Castile as it was in Wellington’s own region, if the Tagus had been in flood like the Arlanzon and the Pisuerga, and the desperate rains that prevailed at Burgos had prevailed also at Toledo and Aranjuez, his plan would probably have been successful. But who dares make the weather a fixed point in military calculations? The season disappointed him, and Soult was lucky enough to find bright days and hard roads and streams half dry as he advanced on Madrid[248], though Wellington was almost embogged and moved among perpetual fogs in the North.

Still, the cardinal fact at the bottom of the unfortunate Burgos campaign was that the Anglo-Portuguese Army was not strong enough for the task in hand, when Soult’s whole force, and great part of the Army of the North also, came into the field to aid the armies of Portugal and the Centre. The permanent evacuation of Andalusia and the temporary evacuation of Biscay put into movement 60,000 men who had hitherto been for the most part locked up in the occupation of those regions. When they became an ‘operating army’ Wellington was hopelessly outnumbered. He himself thought that he might yet have pulled through the crisis, without being compelled to evacuate Madrid and the two Castiles, if only Ballasteros had obeyed orders, and distracted Soult by an irruption into La Mancha against the flank of the advancing enemy. Undoubtedly that General was most perverse and disloyal; but it seems quite possible that if he had advanced, as ordered, he would only have let himself in for one of those crushing defeats which commanders of his type so often suffered during the war. The fact was that the French armies, when once concentrated, were too numerous to be held in check. Wellington’s only real chance of success would have been to concentrate every man either against Souham and Caffarelli on the one side, or against Soult and the King on the other. This was made difficult by the initial division of his army into two nearly equal halves—which resulted in his own force being too weak to deal with the French Northern Army, and Hill’s similarly too weak to deal with the Southern Army. He had intended, when he left Madrid on August 31st, to return thither with the bulk of his marching force, after disposing of the northern enemy, and (as we have seen) this idea was still in his head even as late as early October. But he failed to carry out his intention, partly because he had allowed himself to get entangled in the siege of Burgos, partly because the French army in front of him proved much stronger than he had originally calculated.

The only occasion on which it was actually in his power for a few days to combine Hill’s force and his own for a blow at one of the two hostile armies, while the other was still far off, was on the 3rd-5th of November. He saw the chance, but deliberately refused to take it, for reasons which we have seen set forth[249], and which were perfectly convincing. If he had concentrated against either of the French armies, it might have refused to fight and drawn back, while the other was in a position to cut off his line of communication with Salamanca and Portugal.

He resolved, and at this moment the resolve was wise, not to attempt any such blow, but to fall back on the well-known and formidable positions round Salamanca. Here he thought that he could defend the line of the Tormes, even against a combined force that outnumbered him by 25,000 men. Probably he would have succeeded if the enemy had delivered a frontal attack, as Jourdan and the majority of the French generals desired. But Soult’s safe but indecisive policy of refusing to make such an attack, and turning the Allied flank by the fords of the upper Tormes, was adopted. The only counter to this move would have been to assail the French while they were in the midst of their manœuvre, even as Marmont had been assailed at the battle of the Arapiles. But the disparity of numbers was on this occasion too great for such a stroke to be prudent, and Wellington was forced, most unwillingly, to retreat to the frontier of Portugal.

But for two mishaps—the coming on of absolutely abominable weather and the misdirection of the food-supplies by Colonel Gordon—this retreat would have been uneventful, and would have been attended with little or no loss. For the French pursuit was timid and ineffective, and only carried out by a fraction of the enemy’s army—nearly half of it halted at Salamanca, and the remaining part was not strong enough to attack Wellington. As it chanced, Gordon’s errors and the plague of immoderate rains not only cost Wellington several thousand men, but produced an impression of disaster both on the minds of those who took part in the miserable march and on those of the captious critics in London. What should have been ‘a good clean retreat’ became a rather disastrous affair. But this was not due to the enemy, and the French observers got small comfort from it—as we have already shown by quoting Foy’s perspicuous and angry comments on the operations around Salamanca[250]. Wellington got off with ‘an army in being,’ and if it was tired out, so was that of his opponents. A hundred thousand men had been scraped together from every corner of the Peninsula to overwhelm him, but had failed to do so. Meanwhile he had cleared all Spain south of the Tagus valley from the enemy, had broken their prestige, and had shaken to pieces the pretension of King Joseph to be taken seriously as the monarch of the greatest vassal-kingdom of his brother’s empire.