Without an hour's delay, orders went forth to check the southward march of his columns, and to pour fifty thousand men in a torrent across the snowy Guadarrama hills, that they might cut off the retreat of Moore to the coast.
His object was to place the small English force between the great Army of the south and the French corps under Soult,—the latter consisting of about thirty thousand men. That done, the crushing of the British Army would be a mere matter of detail. At any moment Napoleon could supplement his first fifty thousand with a hundred thousand more.
But this fierce northward rush of Napoleon was exactly what Moore had meant to bring about. He had drawn away the main body of the French from the tortured south; he had given the Spaniards a breathing-space in which to rally, if they would, for fresh resistance; and he had for the moment saved Portugal from desperate peril. He could do no more.
Twenty-three thousand men, with eight or ten thousand more out of reach, opposed to seventy or eighty thousand, with a hundred thousand more within reach! Two thousand cavalry pitted against six or eight times their own number! A collie-dog snapping at a Bengal tiger, would be no inapt picture of Moore's desperate daring.
When news arrived of Napoleon's rush to cut off his communications with Portugal, Moore was within twenty-four hours of falling upon Soult, beyond the river Carrion. One sharp brush had already taken place with the enemy—seven hundred French cavalry being routed by four hundred English hussars. Every man in the Army was passionately eager to meet the foe.
Moore, however, did not hesitate. The work intended by his spirited advance was done. Nothing remained but to fall steadily back before overwhelming odds.
All those bright expectations, with which he had started on this expedition, had been dashed to the ground. In every direction he had met with indifference and opposition, where he ought to have found grateful co-operation. The Spanish forces had proved themselves worthless.
And to the unutterable disappointment of officers and men, the forward march was countermanded.
"Retreat, Jack! Now! When one day more would bring us up with Soult!"
How could Roy know, how could other murmuring spirits around him know, that which Moore alone realised—that one day more of advance would be simply playing into Napoleon's hands, would bring about that which the tyrant of Europe most ardently desired—the complete annihilation of the small British army?