Though clearly possible, a stand behind Astorga may not have been the best policy. Napoleon had a vast force in hand after his junction with Soult, and he was a dangerous foe to brave, even in such a formidable position as that which the British occupied. But it is doubtful whether this fact was the cause of Moore’s determination to retreat to the sea. If we may judge from the tone of his dispatches, his thought was merely that he had promised to make a diversion, under strong pressure from Frere and the rest; that he had successfully carried out his engagement, and lured the Emperor and the bulk of the French forces away from Madrid; and that he considered his task completed. In his letter of December 31 to Castlereagh, he harks back once more to his old depreciation of the Spaniards—they had taken no advantage of the chance he had given them, they were as apathetic as ever, his exertions had been wasted, and so forth[672]. In so writing he made a mistake: his campaign was so far from being wasted that he had actually saved Spain. He had caused the Emperor to lose the psychological moment for striking at Seville and Lisbon, when the spirits of the patriots were at their lowest, and had given them three months to rally. By the time that the southward move from Madrid was once more possible to the French, Spain had again got armies in the field, and the awful disasters of November and December, 1808, had been half forgotten.
It seems improbable, from Moore’s tone in his dispatch of December 31, that he ever had any serious intention of standing behind Astorga. He had fallen back upon his old desponding views of the last days of November, and was simply set on bringing off the British army in safety, without much care for the fate of the Spaniards whom he so much disliked and contemned. The only sign of his ever having studied the intermediate positions between Astorga and Corunna lies in a report addressed to him on December 26, by Carmichael Smith of the Royal Engineers. This speaks of the Manzanal—Rodrigatos position as presenting an appearance of strong ground, but having the defect of possessing a down-slope to the rear for six miles, so that if the line were forced, a long retreat downhill would be necessary in face of the pursuing enemy. The engineer then proceeded to recommend the position of Cacabellos, a league in front of Villafranca, as being very strong and safe from any turning movement. But Moore, as we shall see, refused to stand at the one place as much as at the other, only halting a rearguard at Cacabellos to keep off the pursuing horse for a few hours, and never offering a pitched battle upon that ground. It is probable that nothing would have induced him to fight at either position, after he had once resolved that a straight march to the sea was the best policy.
So little time did Moore take in making up his mind as to the desirability of holding the passes above Astorga, that he pushed on Baird’s, Fraser’s, and Hope’s divisions towards Villafranca on the thirtieth, while Paget’s reserve with the two light brigades followed on the thirty-first. The whole British army was on the other side of Astorga, and across the passes, when Soult and Bonaparte’s columns converged on La Baneza. Their infantry did not enter Astorga till the first day of the new year, thirty-six hours after Moore’s main body had evacuated the place.
But this easy escape from the Emperor’s clutches had been bought at considerable sacrifices. Astorga was crammed with stores of all kinds, as we have already had occasion to mention: food was the only thing that was at all short. But there was not sufficient transport in the place, and the retreating army was already losing wagons and beasts so fast that it could not carry off much of the accumulated material that lay before it. A hasty attempt was made to serve out to the troops the things that could be immediately utilized. La Romana’s Spaniards received several thousand new English muskets to replace their dilapidated weapons, and a quantity of blankets. Some of the British regiments had shoes issued to them; but out of mere hurry and mismanagement several thousand pairs more were destroyed instead of distributed, though many men were already almost barefoot. There were abandoned all the heavy baggage of Baird’s division (which had been stacked at Astorga before the march to Sahagun), an entire dépôt of entrenching tools, several hundred barrels of rum, and many scores of carts and wagons for which draught animals were wanting. A quantity of small-arms ammunition was blown up. But the most distressing thing of all was that those of the sick of the army who could not bear to be taken on through the January cold in open wagons had to be left behind: some four hundred invalids, it would seem, were abandoned in the hospital and fell into the hands of the French[673].
The most deplorable thing about these losses was that all the evacuation and destruction was carried out under difficulties, owing to the gross state of disorder and indiscipline into which the army was falling. The news that they were to retreat once more without fighting had exasperated the men to the last degree. Thousands of them got loose in the streets, breaking into houses, maltreating the inhabitants, and pillaging the stores, which were to be abandoned, for their private profit. The rum was naturally a great attraction, and many stragglers were left behind dead drunk, to be beaten out of the place by the cavalry when they left it on the night of the thirty-first. La Romana had to make formal complaint to Moore of the misbehaviour of the troops, who had even tried to steal his artillery mules and insulted his officers. There can be no doubt that if the rank and file had been kept in hand many valuable stores could have been distributed instead of destroyed, and the straggling which was to prove so fatal might have been nipped in the bud. But the officers were as discontented as the men, and in many regiments seem to have made little or no effort to keep things together. Already several battalions were beginning to march with an advanced guard of marauders and a rearguard of limping stragglers, the sure signs of impending trouble.
By the thirty-first, however, Astorga was clear of British and Spanish troops. Moore marched by the new high-road, the route of Manzanal: La Romana took the shorter but more rugged defile of Foncebadon. But he sent his guns along with the British, in order to spare the beasts the steeper ascents of the old chaussée. The terrible rain of the last week was just passing into snow as the two columns, every man desperately out of heart, began their long uphill climb across the ridge of the Monte Teleno, towards the uplands of the Vierzo.
NOTE
This account of the retreat from Sahagun is constructed from a careful comparison of the official documents with the memoirs and monographs of the following British eye-witnesses:—Robert Blakeney (of the 28th), Rifleman Harris and Sergeant Surtees (of the 2/95th), Lord Londonderry, and Lord Vivian of the Cavalry Brigade, Leith Hay (Aide-de-Camp to General Leith), Charles and William Napier, T.S. of the 71st, Steevens of the 20th, the Surgeon Adam Neale, and the Chaplain Ormsby. Bradford, another chaplain, has left a series of admirable water-colour drawings of the chief points on the road as far as Lugo, made under such difficulties as can be well imagined. Of French eye-witnesses I have used the accounts of St. Chamans, Fantin des Odoards, Naylies, De Gonneville, Lejeune, and the detestably inaccurate Le Noble.