A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 1, 1807-1809

by Charles Oman

But to proceed: Ney’s corps, which led the advance against Moore, crossed the Guadarrama on the night of December 21, and had arrived safely at Villacastin, on the northern side of the passes, on the morning of the twenty-second. As if to contradict the Emperor’s statement—made as he was setting out—that ‘the weather could not be better,’ a dreadful tempest arose that day. When Bonaparte rode up from Chamartin, to place himself at the head of his Guard, which was to cross the mountains on the twenty-second, he found the whole column stopped by a howling blizzard, which swept down the pass with irresistible strength and piled the snow in large drifts at every inconvenient corner of the defile. It is said that several horsemen were flung over precipices by the mere force of the wind. The whole train of cannon and caissons stuck halfway up the ascent, and could neither advance nor retreat. Violently irritated at the long delay, Napoleon turned on every pioneer that could be found to clear away the drifts, set masses of men to trample down the snow into a beaten track, forced the officers and all the cavalry to dismount and lead their horses, and unharnessed half the artillery so as to give double teams to the rest. In this way the Guard, with the Emperor walking on foot in its midst, succeeded at last in crawling through to Villacastin by the night of December 23. A considerable number of men died of cold and fatigue, and the passage had occupied some sixteen hours more than had been calculated by the Emperor. The troops which followed him had less trouble in their passage, the tempest having abated its fury, and the path cleared by the Guard being available for their use.

At the very moment at which Moore was countermanding the advance on Sahagun—about seven o’clock on the evening of the twenty-third—Napoleon was throwing himself on his couch at Villacastin, after a day of fatigue which had tried even his iron frame. For the next week the two armies were contending with their feet and not their arms, in the competition which the French officers called the ‘race to Benavente[646].’ Napoleon was at last beginning to understand that he had not before him the comparatively simple task of cutting the road between Valladolid and Astorga, but the much harder one of intercepting that between Sahagun and Astorga. For the first three days of his march he was still under some hopes of catching the English before they could cross the Esla—and if any of them had been at Valladolid this would certainly have been possible. On December 24 he was at Arevalo: on Christmas Day he reached Tordesillas, where he waited twenty-four hours to allow his infantry to come up with his cavalry. On the twenty-seventh he at last understood—mainly through a letter from Soult—that the English were much further north than he had at first believed. But he was still in high spirits: he did not think it probable that Moore also might have been making forced marches, and having seized Medina de Rio Seco with Ney’s corps, he imagined that he was close on the flank of the retreating enemy. ‘To-day or to-morrow,’ he wrote to his brother Joseph on that morning, ‘it is probable that great events will take place. If the English have not already retreated they are lost: even if they have already moved they shall be pursued to the water’s edge, and not half of them shall re-embark. Put in your newspapers that 36,000 English are surrounded, that I am at Benavente in their rear, while Soult is in their front[647].’ The announcement was duly made in the Madrid Gazette, but the Emperor had been deceived as to the condition of affairs, which never in actual fact resembled the picture that he had drawn for himself[648].

Sir John had commenced his retreat from Sahagun on the twenty-fourth, with the intention of retiring to Astorga, and of taking up a position on the mountains behind it that might cover Galicia. He did not intend to retire any further unless he were obliged[649]. If Soult should follow him closely, while the Emperor was still two or three marches away, he announced his intention of turning upon the Marshal and offering him battle. He wrote to La Romana asking him to hold the bridge of Mansilla (the most northerly passage over the Esla) as long as might be prudent, and then to retire on the Asturias, leaving the road to Galicia clear for the English army[650].

At noon on the twenty-fourth Moore started off in two columns: Baird’s division marched by the northern road to Valencia de Don Juan, where the Esla is passable by a ford and a ferry: Hope and Fraser took the more southern route by Mayorga and the bridge of Castro Gonzalo. The reserve division under E. Paget, and the two light brigades, remained behind at Sahagun for twenty-four hours to cover the retreat. The five cavalry regiments were ordered to press in closely upon Soult, and to keep him as long as possible in doubt as to whether he was not himself about to be attacked.

This demonstration seems to have served its purpose, for the Marshal made no move either on the twenty-fourth or the twenty-fifth. Yet by the latter day his army was growing very formidable, as all the corps from Burgos and Palencia were reporting themselves to him: Lorges’s dragoons had reached Frechilla, and Delaborde with the head of the infantry of Junot’s corps was at Paredes, only thirteen miles from Soult’s head quarters at Carrion. Loison and Heudelet were not far behind. Yet the English columns marched for two days wholly unmolested.

On the twenty-sixth Baird crossed the Esla at Valencia: the ford was dangerous, for the river was rising: a sudden thaw on the twenty-fourth had turned the roads into mud, and loosened the snows. But the guns and baggage crossed without loss, as did also some of the infantry, the rest using the two ferry-boats[651]. Hope and Fraser, on the Mayorga road, had nothing but the badness of their route to contend against. The soil of this part of the kingdom of Leon is a soft rich loam, and the cross-roads were knee-deep in clay: for the whole of the twenty-sixth it rained without intermission: the troops plodded on in very surly mood, but as yet there was no straggling. It was still believed that Moore would fight at Astorga, and, though the men grumbled that ‘the General intended to march them to death first and to fight after[652],’ they still kept together.

But already signs were beginning to be visible that their discipline was about to break down. A good deal of wanton damage and a certain amount of plunder took place at the halting-places for the night—Mayorga, Valderas, and Benavente. A voice from the ranks explains the situation. ‘Our sufferings were so great that many of the men lost their natural activity and spirits, and became savage in their dispositions. The idea of running away, without even firing a shot, from the enemy we had beaten so easily at Vimiero, was too galling to their feelings. Each spoke to his fellow, even in common conversation, with bitterness: rage flashed out on the most trifling occasion of disagreement. The poor Spaniards had little to expect from such men as these, who blamed them for their inactivity. Every man found at home was looked upon as a traitor to his country. “Why is not every Spaniard under arms and fighting? The cause is not ours: are we to be the only sufferers?” Such was the common language, and from these feelings pillage and outrage naturally arose[653].’ The men began to seize food in the towns and villages without waiting for the regular distribution, forced their way into houses, and (the country being singularly destitute of wood) tore down sheds and doors to build up their bivouac fires. The most deplorable mischief took place at Benavente, where the regiment quartered in the picturesque old castle belonging to the Duchess of Osuna burnt much of the mediaeval furniture, tore down the sixteenth-century tapestry to make bed-clothes, and lighted fires on the floors of the rooms, to the destruction of the porcelain friezes and alcoves[654]. Moore issued a strongly-worded proclamation against these excesses on December 27, blaming the officers for not keeping an eye upon the men, and pointing out that ‘not bravery alone, but patience and constancy under fatigue and hardship were military virtues[655].’ Unfortunately, such arguments had little effect on the tired and surly rank and file. Things were ere long to grow much worse.

The infantry, as we have seen, accomplished their march to Benavente without molestation, and all, including the rearguard, were across the Esla by the twenty-seventh. Paget’s cavalry, however, had a much more exciting time on the last two days. Finding that he was not attacked, Soult began to bestir himself on the twenty-sixth: he sent Lorges’s dragoons after the British army, in the direction of Mayorga, while with Franceschi’s cavalry and the whole of his infantry he marched by the direct road on Astorga, via the bridge of Mansilla.

Lorges’s four regiments were in touch with the rearguard of Paget’s hussars on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, but they were not the only or the most important enemies who were now striving to drive in Moore’s cavalry screen. The advanced guard of the Emperor’s army had just come up, and first Colbert’s brigade of Ney’s corps and then the cavalry of the Guard began to press in upon Paget: Lahoussaye’s dragoons arrived on the scene a little later. It is a splendid testimonial to the way in which the British horsemen were handled, that they held their own for three days against nearly triple forces on a front of thirty miles[656]. No better certificate could be given to them than the fact that the Emperor estimated them, when the fighting was over, at 4,000 or 5,000 sabres, their real force being only 2,400. He wrote, too, in a moment of chagrin when Moore’s army had just escaped from him, so that he was not at all inclined to exaggerate their numbers, and as a matter of fact rated the infantry too low.

But under the admirable leading of Paget the British cavalry held its own in every direction. Moore was not exaggerating when he wrote on the twenty-eighth that ‘they have obtained by their spirit and enterprise an ascendency over the French which nothing but great superiority of numbers on their part can get the better of[657].’ The 18th Light Dragoons turned back to clear their rear six times on December 27, and on each occasion drove in the leading squadrons of their pursuers with such effect that they secured themselves an unmolested retreat for the next few miles. At one charge, near Valencia de Don Juan, a troop of thirty-eight sabres of this regiment charged a French squadron of 105 men, and broke through them, killing twelve and capturing twenty. The 10th Hussars, while fending off Lorges’s dragoons near Mayorga, found that a regiment of the light cavalry of Ney had got into their rear and had drawn itself up on a rising ground flanking the high-road. Charging up the slope, and over soil deep in the slush of half-melted snow, they broke through the enemy’s line, and got off in safety with 100 prisoners. Every one of Paget’s five regiments had its full share of fighting on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, yet they closed in on to Benavente in perfect order, with insignificant losses, and exulting in a complete consciousness of their superiority to the enemy’s horse. Since the start from Salamanca they had in twelve days taken no less than 500 prisoners, besides inflicting considerable losses in killed and wounded on the French. They had still one more success before them, ere they found themselves condemned to comparative uselessness among the mountains of Galicia.