Here Wellesley first had practical experience of the weakness of his Spanish allies. The talk of their generals and officers “was like the maddest boastings of Don Quixote, their conduct in action was that of his squire.”[36] Supplies promised were not forthcoming. Plundering was therefore far from uncommon, and the British army was by no means well disciplined at that time. Even their own general recognised this. “The army,” he writes, “behaves terribly ill. They are a rabble who cannot bear success any more than Sir John Moore’s army could bear failure.... They plunder in all directions.” But they were only very raw soldiers after all, and hungry men are not easily kept in order when food exists, and they can have none of it unless they take it by force. At Talavera, for example, the men had only “a few ounces of wheat in the grain throughout that day” of battle. Cuesta obstinately took his own line, and suffered for it. He would not attack the French, when Wellesley proposed to do so, but went to bed! Taking the initiative himself afterwards, he was roughly handled, and fell back in disorder, but was finally persuaded to make a stand at Talavera. The Allies numbered some 53,000 men, with 100 guns, of which the British counted 19,000. The French, under the nominal supreme command of Joseph, numbered 50,000 seasoned troops and 80 guns. These took the offensive. Early in the day, some 10,000 of the Spanish broke and fled, taking Cuesta with them. Whittingham, formerly the military attaché at Baylen and now brigadier, helped to stop the gap thus made by bringing up some Spanish battalions of stiffer metal. So the army held its own, the French fell sullenly back, and thus ended the first day’s battle.
At daybreak, the combat was renewed, and, owing to the intense heat of the day, somewhat intermittently. During one of these lulls, both combatants ran to assuage their thirst at a stream that ran between the armies, and conversed amicably until the bugler on both sides sounded the “fall in,” and the recent friends met again as foes. So the battle was renewed with varying fortune, until, as evening drew on, the French retired to their original position.
During the latter part of the day a vigorous cavalry charge was made by the 23rd Light Dragoons and Arentschild’s Hussars of the German Legion on the head of a French column, but, meeting with a deep ravine, the former plunged confusedly into it; but they still managed to reach the enemy’s square, where they were practically annihilated, though they undoubtedly paralysed the enemy for a time. But Arentschild, wiser in his generation, wheeled aside, exclaiming, “I will not kill my young mens.”
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On the 29th July, Crawford’s Light Division, the 42nd, 52nd, and 95th, joined the army after a march of forty-two miles in twenty-six hours, during which each carried sixty pounds’ weight, in a time of extreme heat, and went on outpost duty at once![37] Verily they were men in those days, when khaki suits and sun-helmets were not.
The victory of Talavera made Sir Arthur my Lord Viscount Wellington, with a pension of £2000 a year, and placed its name on the colours of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, 14th Hussars, 16th Lancers, Coldstream and Scots Guards, the 3rd, 7th, 24th, 29th, 31st, 40th, 45th, 48th, 53rd, 60th, 61st, 66th, 83rd, 87th, and 88th Regiments of the line. A gold medal was also granted to all officers above the rank of lieutenant-colonel, who had served at Corunna and Talavera.
Meanwhile, Soult was again advancing, and now in great force, on Placencia, which place he reached without opposition, as Cuesta had failed to guard the Baños Pass as he had promised. Wellington, unaware of this, marched to it; while the advance of Joseph again rendered a retreat, in presence of such numbers, unavoidable. Cuesta fell back, abandoning both Spanish and British wounded to French generosity, which was not misplaced.
Finally, the Spanish were defeated in a series of small affairs, while Wellington had crossed the Tagus at Arzobespo. Winter quarters were taken up in the valley of the Mondego, when the Spaniards were defending Ciudad Rodrigo on the one hand, and Beresford was covering Almeida on the other; but the cessation of hostilities, in other parts of Europe about this time, enabled Napoleon to pour considerable reinforcements into the Peninsula, and to attempt once again the invasion of Portugal. Then, by the summer of 1810, the French had three corps (Victor, Mortier, and Sebastiani) in Andalusia; Joseph, with 24,000 men, in Madrid; and three corps (Ney, Regnier, and Junot), to be united under the “spoiled child of victory,” Massena, who was selected to invade Portugal, and prove that on this occasion, at all events, fortune was going to “spoil the child.” There were three roads by which this invasion could be effected,—from Oporto, from Badajoz, and from Salamanca by Almeida and the Coa. This latter route was watched by Crawford with some of the Light Division.
Here occurred the first skirmishes along the Coa, which were brilliant rather than useful; and the army, falling back before Massena, who captured Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, took up a position on the Busaco Sierra, as much with the view of restoring the morale of troops already becoming disheartened by retreat, as for checking the enemy. “It was, in fine, a political battle, and Wellington afterwards called it a mistake.”[38] The delay in attacking enabled Wellington to further strengthen his position on the ridge, eight miles long, the flanks of which rested on the Mondego on the right, and on some precipitous ravines on the left; and the French attack on it was conducted with the greatest boldness and impetuosity.
Though strategically unnecessary, the battle is interesting tactically, as showing clearly the method of fighting frequently adopted, that of the defensive; and it compares the French columnar formation—the ranks of the companies being three deep, covered in their advance by skirmishers—with the linear formations of Frederick the Great and Wellington. Napier’s description of Busaco is singularly vivid:—