SECTION VIII: CHAPTER IV
NAPOLEON’S PURSUIT OF MOORE: SAHAGUN TO ASTORGA
We have many times had occasion in this narrative to wonder at the extreme tardiness with which news reached the Spanish and the English generals. It is now at the inefficiency of Napoleon’s intelligence department that we must express our surprise. Considering that Moore had moved forward from Salamanca as far back as December 12, and had made his existence manifest to the French on that same day by the successful skirmish at Rueda, it is astonishing to find that the Emperor did not grasp the situation for nine days. Under the influence of his pre-conceived idea that the British must be retiring on Lisbon, he was looking for them in every other quarter rather than the banks of the Upper Douro. On the seventeenth he was ordering reconnaissances to be made in the direction of Plasencia[637] in Estremadura (of all places in the world) to get news of Moore, and was still pushing troops towards Talavera on the road to Portugal. The general tendency of all his movements was in this direction, and there can be no doubt that in a few days his great central reserve would have followed in the wake of Lasalle and Lefebvre, and started for Badajoz and Elvas. On the nineteenth he reviewed outside Madrid the troops that were available for instant movement—the Imperial Guard, the corps of Ney, the divisions of Leval and Lapisse—about 40,000 men with 150 guns, all in excellent order, and with fifteen days’ biscuit stored in their wagons[638]. Of the direction they were to take we can have no doubt, when we read in the imperial correspondence orders for naval officers to be hurried up to reorganize the arsenal of Lisbon[639], and a private note to Bessières—the commander-in-chief of the cavalry—bidding him start his spare horses and his personal baggage for Talavera[640].
The Emperor’s obstinate refusal to look in the right direction is very curious when we remember that Moore’s cavalry was sweeping the plains as far as Valladolid from December 12 to 16, and that on the eighteenth Franceschi had abandoned that important city, while Soult had got news of Moore’s being on the move two days earlier. Clearly either there was grave neglect in sending information on the part of the French cavalry generals in Old Castile, or else the Emperor had so convinced himself that the British were somewhere on the road to Lisbon, that he did not read the true meaning of the dispatches from the north. Be this as it may, it is evident that there was a serious failure in the imperial intelligence department, and that a week or more was wasted. Bonaparte ought to have been astir two or three days after Stewart and Paget drove in Franceschi’s screen of vedettes. As a matter of fact it was nine days before any move was made at the French head quarters: yet Rueda is only ninety-five miles from Madrid.
The first definite intelligence as to the English being on the move in Old Castile reached the Emperor on the evening of December 19. Yet it was only on the twenty-first that he really awoke to the full meaning of the reports that reached him from Soult and Franceschi[641]. But when he did at last realize the situation, he acted with a sudden and spasmodic energy which was never surpassed in any of his earlier campaigns. He hurled on to Moore’s track not only the central reserve at Madrid, but troops gathered in from all directions, till he had set at least 80,000 men on the march, to encompass the British corps which had so hardily thrown itself upon his communications. Moore had been perfectly right when he stated his belief that the sight of the redcoats within reach would stir the Emperor up to such wrath, that he would abandon every other enterprise and rush upon them with every available man.
On the evening of the twenty-first the French troops from every camp around Madrid were pouring out towards the Escurial and the two passes over the Guadarrama. The cavalry of Ney’s corps and of the Imperial Guard was in front, then came the masses of their infantry. Lapisse’s division fell in behind: an express was sent to Dessolles, who was guarding the road to Calatayud and Saragossa, to leave only two battalions and a battery behind, and to make forced marches on the Escurial with the rest of his men. Another aide-de-camp rode to set Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons on the move from Avila[642]. Finally messengers rode north to bid Lorges’s dragoons, and all the fractions of Junot’s corps, to place themselves under the orders of Soult. Millet’s belated division of dragoons was to do the same, if it had yet crossed the Ebro.
The Emperor, once more committing the error of arguing from insufficient data, had made up his mind that the English were at Valladolid[643]. He had no news from that place since Franceschi had abandoned it, and chose to assume that Moore, or at any rate some portion of the British army, was there established. Under this hypothesis it would be easy to cut off the raiders from a retreat on Portugal, or even on Galicia, by carrying troops with extreme speed to Tordesillas and Medina de Rio Seco. This comparatively easy task was all that Napoleon aimed at in his first directions. Villacastin, Arevalo, Olmedo, and Medina del Campo are the points to which his orders of December 21 and 22 require that the advancing columns should be pushed.
For the maintenance of Madrid, and the ‘containing’ of the Spanish armies at Cuenca and Almaraz, the Emperor left nothing behind but the corps of Lefebvre, two-thirds of the corps of Victor, and the three cavalry divisions of Lasalle, Milhaud, and Latour-Maubourg—8,000 horse and 28,000 foot in all, with ninety guns[644]. King Joseph was left in nominal command of the whole. Such a force was amply sufficient to hold back the disorganized troops of Galluzzo and Infantado, but not to advance on Seville or on Lisbon. It was impossible that any blow should be dealt to the west or the south, till the Emperor should send back some of the enormous masses of men that he had hurled upon Moore. Thus the English general’s intention was fully carried out: his raid into Old Castile had completely disarranged all Bonaparte’s plans. It gave the Spaniards at least two months in which to rally and recover their spirits, and it drew the field-army of the Emperor into a remote and desolate corner of Spain, so that the main centres of resistance were left unmolested.
Napoleon had guessed part, but by no means all, of Moore’s design. ‘The manœuvre of the English is very strange,’ he wrote to his brother Joseph; ‘it is proved that they have evacuated Salamanca. Probably they have brought their transports round to Ferrol, because they think that the retreat on Lisbon is no longer safe, as we could push on from Talavera by the left bank of the Tagus and shut the mouth of the river.... Probably they have evacuated Portugal and transferred their base to Ferrol, because it offers advantages for a safe embarkation. But while retreating, they might hope to inflict a check on the corps of Soult, and may not have made up their mind to try it till they had got upon their new line of retreat, and moved to the right bank of the Douro. They may have argued as follows: “If the French commit themselves to a march on Lisbon, we can evacuate on Oporto, and while doing so are still on our line of communications with Ferrol. Or, possibly, they may be expecting fresh reinforcements. But whatever their plan may be, their move will have a great influence on the end of this whole business.”’
The Emperor thought therefore that Moore’s main object had been to change an unsafe base at Lisbon for a safe one in Galicia, and that the demonstration against Soult was incidental and secondary. It does not seem to have struck him that the real design was to lure the central field-army of the French from Madrid, and to postpone the invasion of the south. Many of his apologists and admirers have excused his blindness, by saying that Moore’s plan was so rash and hazardous that no sensible man could have guessed it. But this is a complete mistake: the plan, if properly carried out, was perfectly sound. Sir John knew precisely what he was doing, and was prepared to turn on his heel and go back at full speed, the instant that he saw the least movement on the side of Madrid. It was in no rash spirit that he acted, but rather the reverse: ‘I mean to proceed bridle in hand,’ he said; ‘and if the bubble bursts, we shall have a run for it.’[645] And on this principle he acted: three hours after he got notice that Napoleon was on the march, he started to ‘make a run for it’ to Astorga, and his promptness was such that his main body was never in the slightest danger from the Emperor’s rush on Benavente, fierce and sudden though it was. The disasters of the second part of the retreat were not in the least caused by Napoleon’s intercepting movement, which proved an absolute and complete failure.