On the twenty-eighth Robert Crawfurd’s brigade had waited behind in the mud and rain, drawn up in front of the bridge of Castro Gonzalo, ‘standing for many hours with arms posted, and staring the French cavalry in the face, while the water actually ran out of the muzzles of their muskets[658].’ At last our hussars retired, and Crawfurd blew up two arches of the bridge when Paget had passed over, and moved back on Benavente, after some trifling skirmishing with the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, who had come up in force and tried to interrupt his work. The indefatigable British horsemen left pickets all along the river on each side of the broken bridge, ready to report and oppose any attempt to cross.
After resting for a day in Benavente Moore had sent on the divisions of Fraser and Hope to Astorga, by the highway through La Baneza. The division of Baird, marching from Valencia by villainous cross-roads, converged on the same point, where the three corps met upon December 29. Their march was wholly unmolested by the French, who were being successfully held back by Moore’s rearguard under the two Pagets—the cavalry general and the commander of the reserve division—and by Crawfurd and Alten’s light brigades. On the same morning that the main body reached Astorga, the infantry of the rearguard marched out of Benavente, leaving behind only the horsemen, who were watching all the fords, with their supports three miles behind in the town of Benavente. Seeing that all the infantry had disappeared, Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who commanded the cavalry of the Guard, thought it high time to press beyond the Esla: it was absurd, he thought, that the mass of French horsemen, now gathered opposite the broken bridge of Castro Gonzalo, should allow themselves to be kept in check by a mere chain of vedettes unsupported by infantry or guns. Accordingly he searched for fords, and when one was found a few hundred yards from the bridge, crossed it at the head of the four squadrons of the chasseurs of the Guard, between 500 and 600 sabres[659]. The rest of his troops, after vainly seeking for other passages, were about to follow him. The moment that he had got over the water Lefebvre found himself withstood by the pickets, mainly belonging to the 18th Light Dragoons, who came riding in from their posts along the river to mass themselves opposite to him. When about 130 men were collected, under Colonel Otway, they ventured to charge the leading squadrons of the chasseurs, of course with indifferent success. After retiring a few hundred yards more, they were joined by a troop of the 3rd Dragoons of the King’s German Legion, under Major Burgwedel, and again turned to fight. At this second clash the front line of the pursuers was broken for a moment, and the dragoons who had burst through the gap had a narrow escape of being surrounded and captured by the second line, but finally fought their way out of the mêlée with no great loss. Charles Stewart, their brigadier, now came up and rallied them for the second time: he retired towards the town in good order, without allowing himself to be cowed by Lefebvre’s rapid advance, for he knew that supports were at hand. Lord Paget, warned in good time, had drawn out the 10th Hussars under cover of the houses of the southern suburb of Benavente. He waited till the chasseurs drew quite near to him, and were too remote from the ford they had crossed to be able to retire with ease: then he suddenly sallied out from his cover and swooped down upon them. The pickets at the same moment wheeled about, cheered, and charged. The enemy, now slightly outnumbered—for the 10th were fully 450 sabres strong, and the pickets at least 200—made a good fight. A British witness observes that these ‘fine big fellows in fur caps and long green coats’ were far better than the line regiments with which the hussars had hitherto been engaged. But in a few minutes they were broken, and chased for two miles right back to the ford by which they had crossed. Lefebvre himself was captured by a private of the 10th named Grisdale, his wounded horse having refused to swim the river[660]. With him there were taken two captains and seventy unwounded prisoners. The chasseurs left fifty-five men dead or hurt upon the field, and many of those who got away were much cut about[661]. The British casualties were fifty, almost all from the men who had furnished the pickets, for the 10th suffered little: Burgwedel, who had led the Germans of the 3rd K. G. L., was the only officer hurt[662].
The remnant of the chasseurs crossed the river, and were immediately supported by other regiments, who (after failing to find another ford) had come down to that which Lefebvre had used. They showed some signs of attempting a second passage, but Lord Paget turned upon them the guns of Downman’s horse-battery, which had just galloped up from Benavente. After two rounds the enemy rode off hastily from the river, and fell back inland. They had received such a sharp lesson that they allowed the British cavalry to retreat without molestation in the afternoon. Napoleon consoled himself with writing that the British were ‘flying in panic’—a statement which the circumstances hardly seemed to justify[663]—and gave an exaggerated account of the disorders which they had committed at Valderas and Benavente, to which he added an imaginary outrage at Leon[664]. But there is no more talk of Moore’s corps being surrounded—wherefore it suddenly shrinks in the Emperor’s estimation, being no longer 36,000 strong, but only ‘21,000 infantry, with 4,000 or 5,000 horse.’ Lefebvre’s affair he frankly owned, when writing to King Joseph, was disgusting: ‘by evening I had 8,000 horse on the spot, but the enemy was gone[665].’
Paget indeed was so effectively gone, that though French cavalry by the thousand crossed the ford that night they could do nothing. And Crawfurd had so thoroughly destroyed the bridge of Castro Gonzalo—he had blown up the central pier, and not merely cut the crowns of the arches—that infantry and guns could not cross till the thirtieth. It was only on that day that the heads of Ney’s corps and of the Imperial Guard came up: Lapisse’s division was still far behind, at Toro. All that the rapid forced marches of the Emperor had brought him was the privilege of assisting at Paget’s departure, and of picking up in Benavente some abandoned carts, which Moore had caused to be broken after burning their contents.
Napoleon still consoled himself with the idea that it was possible that Soult might have been more fortunate than himself, and might perhaps already be attacking the English at Astorga. This was not the case: after learning that Moore had disappeared from his front, the Duke of Dalmatia had taken the road Sahagun—Mansilla, as the shortest line which would bring him to Astorga, the place where any army intending to defend Galicia would make its first stand. This choice brought him upon the tracks of La Romana’s army, not of the British. The Marquis, when Moore retired, had moved back on Leon, but had sent to his ally a message to the effect that he could not accept the suggestion to make the Asturias his base, and would be forced, when the enemy advanced, to join the British at Astorga. It was absolutely impossible, he said, to repair to the Asturias, for the pass of Pajares, the only coach-road thither, was impassable on account of the snow[666]. La Romana left as a rearguard at the all-important bridge of Mansilla, his 2nd Division, 3,000 strong, with two guns. Contrary to Moore’s advice he would not blow up the bridge, giving as his reason that the Esla was fordable in several places in its immediate neighbourhood. This was a blunder; but the officer in command of the 2nd Division committed a greater one, by drawing up his main body in front of the bridge and not behind it—a repetition of Cuesta’s old error at Cabezon. Soult did not come in contact with the Spanish rearguard till four days after he had left Carrion: so heavy had been the rain, and so vile the road, that it took him from the twenty-sixth to the twenty-ninth to cover the forty-five miles between Carrion and Mansilla. But on the morning of December 30 he delivered his attack: a tremendous cavalry-charge by the chasseurs and dragoons of Franceschi broke the Spanish line, and pursuers and pursued went pell-mell over the bridge, which was not defended for a moment. The French captured 1,500 men—who were cut off from re-crossing the river—two guns, and two standards. Hearing of this disaster La Romana at once evacuated Leon, which Soult seized on the thirty-first. The place had been hastily fortified, and there had been much talk of the possibility of defending it[667]; but at the first summons it opened its gates without firing a shot. The Marquis—leaving 2,000 sick in the hospitals, and a considerable accumulation of food in his magazines—fell back on Astorga, much to the discontent of Moore, who had not desired to see him in that direction. Soult at Leon was only twenty-five miles from Astorga: he was now but one march from Moore’s rearguard, and in close touch with the Emperor, who coming up from the south reached La Baneza on the same day—the last of the old year, 1808.
The divisions of Baird, Hope, and Fraser, as we have already seen, had reached Astorga on the twenty-ninth, the reserve division and the light brigades (after a most fatiguing march from Benavente) on the thirtieth, while the cavalry was, as always, to the rear, keeping back the advancing squadrons of Bessières. Thus on the thirtieth the English and Spanish armies were concentrated at Astorga with every available man present—the British still 25,000 strong; for they had suffered little in the fighting, and had not yet begun to straggle—but Romana with no more than 9,000 or 10,000 of the nominal 22,000 which had been shown in his returns of ten days before. His 2nd Division had been practically destroyed at Mansilla: he had left 2,000 sick at Leon, and many more had fallen out of the ranks in the march from that place—some because they wished to desert their colours, but more from cold, disease, and misery; for the army was not merely half naked, but infected with a malignant typhus fever which was making terrible ravages in its ranks[668].
Moore had told La Romana on the twenty-fourth that he hoped to make a stand at Astorga. The same statement had been passed round the army, and had kept up the spirits of the men to some extent, though many had begun to believe that ‘Moore would never fight[669].’ There were magazines of food at Astorga, and much more considerable ones of military equipment: a large convoy of shoes, blankets, and muskets had lately come in from Corunna, and Baird’s heavy baggage had been stacked in the place before he marched for Sahagun. The town itself was surrounded with ancient walls, and had some possibilities of defence: just behind it rises the first range of the Galician mountains, a steep and forbidding chain pierced only by the two passes which contain the old and the new high-roads to Corunna. The former—the shorter, but by far the more rugged—is called the defile of Foncebadon; the latter—longer and easier—is the defile of Manzanal.
The question was at once raised as to whether the position in rear of Astorga should not be seriously defended. The town itself would naturally have to be given up, if the French chose to press on in force; but the two defiles might be fortified and held against very superior numbers. To turn 25,000 British troops out of them would have been a very serious task, and the Spaniards meanwhile could have been used for diversions on the enemy’s flank and rear. La Romana called upon Moore, at the moment of the latter’s arrival at Astorga, and proposed that they should join in defending the passes. To give them up meant, he said, to give up also the great upland valley behind them—the Vierzo—where lay his own dépôts and his park of artillery at Ponferrada, and where Moore also had considerable stores and magazines at Villafranca. The proposal was well worthy of being taken into account, and was far from being—as Napier calls it—‘wilder than the dreams of Don Quixote!’ for the positions were very strong, and there was no convenient route by which they could be turned. The only other way into Galicia, that by Puebla de Sanabria, is not only far away, but almost impassable at midwinter from the badness of the road and the deep snow. Moreover it leads not into the main valley of the Minho, but into that of the Tamega on the Portuguese frontier, from which another series of difficult defiles have to be crossed in order to get into the heart of Galicia. La Romana thought that this road might practically be disregarded as an element of danger in a January campaign.
The suggestion of the Marquis deserved serious consideration. Moore’s reasons for a summary rejection of the proposal are not stated by him at any length[670]. He wrote to Castlereagh merely that there was only two days’ bread at Astorga, that his means of carriage were melting away by the death of draught beasts and the desertion of drivers, and that he feared that the enemy might use the road upon his flank—i.e. the Puebla de Sanabria route—to turn his position. He purposed therefore to fall back at once to the coast as fast as he could, and trusted that the French, for want of food, would not be able to follow him further than Villafranca. To these reasons may be added another, which Moore cited in his conversation with La Romana, that the troops required rest, and could not get it in the bleak positions above Astorga[671].
Some of these reasons are not quite convincing: though there were only two days’ rations at Astorga, there were fourteen days’ at Villafranca, and large dépôts had also been gathered at Lugo and Corunna. These could be rendered available with no great trouble, if real energy were displayed, for there was still (as the disasters of the retreat were to show) a good deal of wheeled transport with the army. The flanking road by Puebla de Sanabria was (as we have said) so difficult and so remote that any turning corps that tried it would be heard of long before it became dangerous. There would be great political advantage in checking Bonaparte at the passes, even if it were only for a week or ten days. Moreover, to show a bold front would raise the spirits of the army, whose growing disorders were the marks of discontent at the retreat, and whose one wish was to fight the French as soon as possible. As to the rest which Moore declared to be necessary for the troops, this could surely have been better given by halting them and offering to defend the passes, than by taking them over the long and desolate road that separated them from Corunna. The experiences of the next eleven days can hardly be called ‘rest.’