The surrender of this devoted city closed the campaign for 1809. The principal events of the campaign of 1810 were the battle of Busaco, in which the English gained the victory, and the retreat of the French Marshal Massena. For four months and a half, Massena had continually followed the retreating forces of Wellington, until now he had retired beyond the lines of Torres Vedras. The English had been engaged on these lines a year, until they had at last rendered them almost impregnable. They consisted of three lines of intrenchments, one within another, extending for nearly thirty miles. On these lines were a hundred and fifty redoubts, and six hundred mounted cannon. Here Massena saw his enemy retire within these lines, and he then knew that his utmost efforts to dislodge him must prove abortive. Besides, Wellington here received reinforcements to his army, which increased it to one hundred and thirty thousand men.
Besides these defences, there were twenty British ships of the line, and a hundred transports, ready to receive the army, if forced to retire. Unwilling to retreat, Massena sat down with his army here, hoping to draw Wellington to an open battle. But he preferred waiting for an attack upon his intrenchments, or to starve the enemy into a retreat. This he knew must soon be done. Wellington himself declares that Massena provisioned his sixty thousand men and twenty thousand horses, for two months, where he could not have maintained a single division of English soldiers. But his army was now reduced to starvation; and he, driven to the last extremity, saw that he must either commence his retreat at once, or his famine-stricken army would be too weak to march. Arranging his troops into a compact mass, he placed the rear guard under the command of Ney, and retired from the Torres Vedras. Wellington immediately commenced the pursuit; but, owing to the skilful arrangements of the French marshal, he found it impossible to attack him with success. Taking advantage of every favorable position, he would make a stand, and wait until the main body of the army had passed on, and then would himself fall back. Thus, for more than four months, did this retreat continue, until he arrived at the confines of Portugal, having lost more than one-third of his army. Many were the cruelties practised on this retreat. They have often been described, and form a dark spot on the English historian’s page. All war is necessarily cruel; and the desolation and barrenness that followed in the track of the French army, wasting the inhabitants by famine, were a powerful check on Wellington in his pursuit. The track of a retreating and starving army must always be covered with woe; and one might as well complain of the cruelty of a besieging force, because innocent women and children die by hunger.
The siege of Cadiz occupied the spring and summer of this year. During this siege, a tremendous tempest ravaged the Spanish coast, lasting four days. By it more than forty sail of merchantmen, besides three line-of-battle ships, were driven on shore. It was during this tempest that the French and Swiss on board the prison-ships in the harbor made their escape. “The storm was so great,” writes one of the unhappy captives, “that we could not receive our supply of provision from the shore. Our signals of distress were wholly disregarded by the Spanish authorities; and, had it not been for the humanity of the British admiral, who sent his boats to their relief, many more of our miserable men must have perished. The pontoons in which these prisoners were confined were not properly secured; and the prisoners on board the Castilla, seeing that the wind and tide were in their favor, cut the cable, and, hoisting a sail which they had made from their hammocks, steered for the opposite coast. They were seven hundred in number, and most of them officers. English boats were sent against them, but they found the French were prepared. The ballast of the vessel in which they were confined was cannon-balls of twenty-four and thirty-six pounds’ weight. These the French hurled by hand into the boats of their pursuers, and soon disabled them, so that the fugitives finally succeeded in escaping with but little loss.”
The first two months of the year 1811 were most inauspicious for the Spanish cause. General Suchet possessed himself of Tortosa, and on the 23d of the same month Soult became master of Olivenza. On the same day died the Marquis de la Romana, one of the most skilful and noblest of the Spanish leaders; and he had scarcely expired, before his army met with a signal defeat at Gebora.
[CHAPTER IV.]
The Author, with his Regiment, leaves Gibraltar, for Tarifa—Dissensions between the Spanish and English Officers—Battle of Barossa—Retreat of the French—Suffering of the Pursuing Army—Guerillas—Don Julian Sanchez—Juan Martin Diaz—Xavier Mina—Continued Privations of the British Army—Adventures of the Author in Search of Food—Arrival of the Commissariat with Provisions—Extravagant Joy of the Troops—Departure of the British Army for Badajos.
Having given to my readers some slight sketches of the rise and progress of this war previous to the time when I first became an active participator in its scenes, I shall now continue it, with the history of my own adventures.