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

by Charles Oman

The serious trouble began at Bembibre, the first place beyond the pass of Manzanal, where Hope’s, Baird’s, and Fraser’s divisions had encamped on the night of the thirty-first. The village was unfortunately a large local dépôt for wine: slinking off from their companies, many hundreds of marauders made their way into the vaults and cellars. When the divisions marched next morning they left nearly a thousand men, in various stages of intoxication, lying about the houses and streets. The officers of Paget’s Reserve, who came up that afternoon, describe Bembibre as looking like a battle-field, so thickly were the prostrate redcoats strewn in every corner. Vigorous endeavours were made to rouse these bad soldiers, and to start them upon their way; but even next morning there were multitudes who could not or would not march[690]. When the Reserve evacuated the place on January 2, it was still full of torpid stragglers. Suddenly there appeared on the scene the leading brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons, pushing down from the pass of Manzanal, and driving before them the last hussar picket which Paget had left behind. The noise of the horsemen roused the lingerers, who began at last to stagger away, but it was too late: ‘the cavalry rode through the long line of these lame defenceless wretches, slashing among them as a schoolboy does among thistles[691].’ Most of the stragglers, it is said, were still so insensible from liquor that they made no resistance, and did not even get out of the road[692]. A few, with dreadful cuts about their heads and shoulders, succeeded in overtaking the Reserve. Moore had the poor bleeding wretches paraded along the front of the regiments, as a warning to drunkards and malingerers.

Meanwhile Baird and Hope’s divisions had reached Villafranca on the first, and scenes almost as disgraceful as those of Bembibre were occurring. The town was Moore’s most important dépôt: it contained fourteen days’ rations of biscuit for the whole army, an immense amount of salt-beef and pork, and some hundreds of barrels of rum. There was no transport to carry off all this valuable provender, and Moore ordered it to be given to the flames. Hearing of this the troops broke into the magazines, and began to load themselves with all and more than they could carry, arguing, not unnaturally, that so much good food should not be burnt. Moore ordered one man—who was caught breaking into the rum store—to be shot in the square. But it was no use; the soldiers burst loose, though many of their officers cut and slashed at them to keep them in the ranks, and snatched all that they could from the fires. Some forced open private houses and plundered, and in a few cases maltreated, or even murdered, the townsfolk who would not give them drink. A great many got at the rum, and were left behind when the divisions marched on January 3[693].

While these orgies were going on at Villafranca, Paget and the Reserve had been halted six miles away, at Cacabellos, where the high-road passes over the little river Cua[694]. There was here a position in which a whole army could stand at bay, and Moore’s engineers had pointed it out to him as the post between Astorga and Lugo where there was the most favourable fighting-ground. It is certain that if he had chosen to offer battle to Soult on this front, the Marshal would have been checked for many days—he could not have got forward without calling up Ney from Astorga, and there is no good road by which the British could have been outflanked. But Moore had no intention of making a serious defence: he was fighting a rearguard action merely to allow time for the stores at Villafranca to be destroyed.

The forces which were halted at Cacabellos consisted of the five battalions of the Reserve (under Paget), the 15th Hussars, and a horse-artillery battery. A squadron of the cavalry and half of the 95th Rifles were left beyond the river, in observation along the road towards Bembibre: the guns were placed on the western side of the Cua, commanding the road up from the bridge. The 28th formed their escort, while the other three battalions of the division were hidden behind a line of vineyards and stone walls parallel with the winding stream[695].

About one o’clock in the afternoon the French appeared, pushing cautiously forward from Bembibre with Colbert’s cavalry brigade of Ney’s corps now at their head, while Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons was in support. The infantry were not yet in sight. Colbert, a young and very dashing officer, currently reputed to be the most handsome man in the whole French army, was burning to distinguish himself. He had never before met the British, and had formed a poor opinion of them from the numerous stragglers and drunkards whom he had seen upon the road. He thought that the rearguard might be pushed, and the defile forced with little loss. Accordingly he rode forward at the head of his two regiments[696], and fell upon the squadron of the 15th Hussars which was observing him. They had to fly in hot haste, and, coming in suddenly to the bridge, rode into and over the last two companies of the 95th Rifles, who had not yet crossed the stream. Colbert, sweeping down close to their heels, came upon the disordered infantry and took some forty or fifty prisoners before the riflemen could escape across the water[697]. But, seeing the 28th and the guns holding the slope above, he halted for a moment before attempting to proceed further.

Judging however, from a hasty survey, that there were no very great numbers opposed to him, the young French general resolved to attempt to carry the bridge of Cacabellos by a furious charge, just as Franceschi had forced that of Mansilla five days before. This was a most hazardous and ill-advised move: it could only succeed against demoralized troops, and was bound to fail when tried against the steady battalions of the Reserve division. But ranging his leading regiment four abreast, Colbert charged for the bridge: the six guns opposite him tore the head of the column to pieces, but the majority of the troopers got across and tried to dash uphill and capture the position. They had fallen into a dreadful trap, for the 28th blocked the road just beyond the bridge, while the 95th and 52nd poured in a hot flanking fire from behind the vineyard walls on either side. There was no getting forward: Colbert himself was shot as he tried to urge on his men[698], and his aide-de-camp Latour-Maubourg fell at his side. After staying for no more than a few minutes on the further side of the water, the brigade turned rein and plunged back across the bridge, leaving many scores of dead and wounded behind them.

Lahoussaye’s dragoons now came to the front: several squadrons of them forded the river at different points, but, unable to charge among the rocks and vines, they were forced to dismount and to act as skirmishers, a capacity in which they competed to no great advantage against the 52nd, with whom they found themselves engaged. It was not till the leading infantry of Merle’s division came up, not long before dusk, that the French were enabled to make any head against the defenders. Their voltigeurs bickered with the 95th and 52nd for an hour, but when the formed columns tried to cross the bridge, they were so raked by the six guns opposite them that they gave back in disorder. After dark the firing ceased, and Moore, who had come up in person from Villafranca at the sound of the cannon, had no difficulty in withdrawing his men under cover of the night. In this sharp skirmish each side lost some 200 men: the French casualties were mainly in Colbert’s cavalry, the British were distributed unequally between the 95th (who suffered most), the 28th, and 52nd: the other two regiments present (the 20th and 91st) were hardly engaged[699].

Marching all through the night of 3rd-4th of January the Reserve division passed through Villafranca, where stores of all kinds were still blazing in huge bonfires, and did not halt till they reached Nogales, eighteen miles further on. They found the road before them strewn with one continuous line of wreckage from the regiments of the main body. The country beyond Villafranca was far more bare and desolate than the eastern half of the Vierzo: discipline grew worse each day, and the surviving animals of the baggage-train were dying off wholesale from cold and want of forage. The cavalry horses were also beginning to perish very fast, mainly from losing their shoes on the rough and stony road. As soon as a horse was unable to keep up with the regiment, he was (by Lord Paget’s orders) shot by his rider, in order to prevent him from falling into the hands of the French. Many witnesses of the retreat state that the incessant cracking of the hussars’ pistols, as the unfortunate chargers were shot, was the thing that lingered longest in their memories of all the sounds of these unhappy days.

Beyond Villafranca the Corunna road passes through the picturesque defile of Piedrafita, by which it reaches the head waters of the Nava river, and then climbing the spurs of Monte Cebrero comes out into the bleak upland plain of Lugo. This fifty miles contained the most difficult and desolate country in the whole of Moore’s march, and was the scene of more helpless and undeserved misery than any other section of the retreat. It was not merely drunkards and marauders who now began to fall to the rear, but steady old soldiers who could not face the cold, the semi-starvation, and the forced marches. Moore hurried his troops forward at a pace that, over such roads, could only be kept up by the strongest men. On January 5 he compelled the whole army to execute a forced march of no less than thirty-six continuous hours, which was almost as deadly as a battle. This haste seems all the less justifiable because the district abounded with positions at which the enemy could be held back for many hours, whenever the rearguard was told to stand at bay. At Nogales and Constantino, where opposition was offered, the French were easily checked, and there were many other points where similar stands could have been made. It would seem that Moore, shocked at the state of indiscipline into which his regiments were falling, thought only of getting to the sea as quickly as possible. Certainly, the pursuit was not so vigorous as to make such frantic haste necessary. Whenever the Reserve division halted and offered battle, the French dragoons held off, and waited, often for many hours, for their infantry to come up.

‘All that had hitherto been suffered by our troops was but a prelude to this time of horrors,’ wrote one British eye-witness. ‘It had still been attempted to carry forward our sick and wounded: here (on Monte Cebrero) the beasts which dragged them failed, and they were left in their wagons, to perish among the snow. As we looked round on gaining the highest point of these slippery precipices, and observed the rear of the army winding along the narrow road, we could see the whole track marked out by our own wretched people, who lay expiring from fatigue and the severity of the cold—while their uniforms reddened in spots the white surface of the ground. Our men had now become quite mad with despair: excessive fatigue and the consciousness of disgrace, in thus flying before an enemy whom they despised, excited in them a spirit which was quite mutinous. A few hours’ pause was all they asked, an opportunity of confronting the foe, and the certainty of making the pursuers atone for all the miseries that they had suffered. Not allowed to fight, they cast themselves down to perish by the wayside, giving utterance to feelings of shame, anger, and grief. But too frequently their dying groans were mingled with imprecations upon the General, who chose rather to let them die like beasts than to take their chance on the field of battle. That no degree of horror might be wanting, this unfortunate army was accompanied by many women and children, of whom some were frozen to death on the abandoned baggage-wagons, some died of fatigue and cold, while their infants were seen vainly sucking at their clay-cold breasts[700].’ It is shocking to have to add that the miserable survivors of these poor women of the camp were abominably maltreated by the French[701].