Not only was the greater part of the baggage-train of the army lost between Villafranca and Lugo, but other things of more importance. A battery of Spanish guns was left behind on the crest of Monte Oribio for want of draught animals, and the military chest of the army was abandoned between Nogales and Cerezal. It contained about £25,000 in dollars, and was drawn in two ox-wagons, which gradually fell behind the main body as the beasts wore out. General Paget refused to fight a rearguard action to cover its slow progress, and ordered the 28th Regiment to hurl the small kegs containing the money over a precipice. The silver shower lay scattered among the rocks at the bottom: part was gathered up by Lahoussaye’s dragoons, but the bulk fell next spring, when the snow melted, into the hands of the local peasantry [Jan. 4].
On the further side of the mountains, between Cerezal and Constantino, the army was astounded to meet a long train of fifty bullock-carts moving southward. It contained clothing and stores for La Romana’s army, which the Junta of Galicia, with incredible carelessness, had sent forward from Lugo, though it had heard that the British were retreating. A few miles of further advance would have taken it into the hands of the French. Very naturally, the soldiery stripped the wagons and requisitioned the beasts for their own baggage. The shoes and garments were a godsend to those of the ragged battalions who could lay hands on them, and next day at Constantino many of the Reserve fought in whole- or half-Spanish uniforms.
The skirmish at Constantino, on the afternoon of January 5, was the most important engagement, save that of Cacabellos, during the whole retreat. It was a typical rearguard action to cover a bridge: the British engineers having failed in their endeavour to blow up the central arch, Paget placed his guns so as to command the passage, extended the 28th and the 95th along the nearer bank of the deep-sunk river, and held out with ease till nightfall. Lahoussaye’s dragoons refused, very wisely, to attempt the position. Merle’s infantry tried to force the passage by sending forward a regiment in dense column, which suffered heavily from the guns, was much mauled by the British light troops ranged along the water’s edge, and finally desisted from the attack, allowing Paget to withdraw unmolested after dark. The French were supposed to have lost about 300 men—a figure which was probably exaggerated: the British casualties were insignificant.
On January 6 Paget and the rearguard reached Lugo, where they found the main body of the army drawn out in battle order on a favourable position three miles outside the town. The fearful amount of straggling which had taken place during the forced marches of the fourth and fifth had induced Moore to halt on his march to the sea, in order to rest his men, restore discipline, and allow the laggards to come up. A tiresome contretemps had made him still more anxious to allow the army time to recruit itself. He had made up his mind at Herrerias (near Villafranca) that the wild idea of retiring on Vigo must be given up. The reports of the engineer officers whom he had sent to survey that port, as well as Ferrol and Corunna, were all in favour of the last-named place. Accordingly he had sent orders to the admiral at Vigo, bidding him bring the fleet of transports round to Corunna. At the same time Baird was directed to halt at Lugo, and not to take the side-road to Vigo via Compostella. Baird duly received the dispatch, and should have seen that it was sent on to his colleagues, Hope and Fraser. He gave the letter for Fraser to a private dragoon, who got drunk and lost the important document. Hence the 3rd Division started off on the Compostella road, a bad bypath, and went many miles across the snow before it was found and recalled. Baird’s negligence cost Fraser’s battalions 400 men in stragglers, and having marched and countermarched more than twenty miles, they returned to Lugo so thoroughly worn out that they could not possibly have resumed their retreat on the sixth[702].
Moore had found in Lugo a dépôt containing four or five days’ provisions for the whole force, as well as a welcome reinforcement—Leith’s brigade of Hope’s division, which had never marched to Astorga, and had been preceding the army by easy stages in its retreat. Including these 1,800 fresh bayonets, the army now mustered about 19,000 combatants. Since it left Benavente it had been diminished by the strength of the two Light Brigades detached to Vigo (3,500 men), by 1,000 dismounted cavalry who had been sent on to Corunna, by 500 or 600 sick too ill to be moved, who had been left in the hospitals of Astorga and Villafranca, and by about 2,000 men lost by the way between Astorga and Lugo. Moore imagined that the loss under the last-named head had been even greater: but the moment that the army halted and the news of approaching battle flew round, hundreds of stragglers and marauders flocked in to the colours, sick men pulled themselves together, and the regiments appeared far stronger than had been anticipated. The Commander-in-chief issued a scathing ‘General Order’ to the officers commanding corps with regard to this point. ‘They must be as sensible as himself of the complete disorganization of the army. If they wished to give the troops a fair chance of success, they must exert themselves to restore order and discipline. The Commander of the Forces was tired of giving orders which were never attended to: he therefore appealed to the honour and feelings of the army: if those were not sufficient to induce them to do their duty, he must despair of succeeding by any other means. He had been obliged to order military executions, but there would have been no need for them if only officers did their duty. It was chiefly from their negligence, and from the want of proper regulations in the regiments, that crimes and irregularities were committed[703].’
The Lugo position was very strong: on the right it touched the unfordable river Minho, on the left it rested on rocky and inaccessible hills. All along the front there was a line of low stone walls, the boundaries of fields and vineyards. Below it there was a gentle down-slope of a mile, up which the enemy would have to march in order to attack. The army and the general alike were pleased with the outlook: they hoped that Soult would fight, and knew that they could give a good account of him.
The Marshal turned out to be far too circumspect to run his head against such a formidable line. He came up on the sixth, with the dragoons of Lahoussaye and Franceschi and Merle’s infantry. On the next morning Mermet’s and Delaborde’s divisions and Lorges’s cavalry appeared. But the forced marches had tried them no less than they had tried the British. French accounts say that the three infantry divisions had only 13,000 bayonets with the eagles, instead of the 20,000 whom they should have shown, and that the cavalry instead of 6,000 sabres mustered only 4,000. Some men had fallen by the way in the snow, others were limping along the road many miles to the rear: many were marauding on the flanks, like the British who had gone before them. Heudelet’s whole division was more than two marches to the rear, at Villafranca.
On the seventh, therefore, Soult did no more than feel the British position. He had not at first been sure that Moore’s whole army was in front of him, and imagined that he might have to deal with no more than Paget’s Reserve division, with which he had bickered so much during the last four days. He was soon undeceived: when he brought forward a battery against Moore’s centre, it was immediately silenced by the fire of fifteen guns. A feint opposite the British right, near the river, was promptly opposed by the Brigade of Guards. A more serious attack by Merle’s division, on the hill to the left, was beaten back by Leith’s brigade, who drove back the 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line by a bayonet-charge downhill, and inflicted on them a loss of 300 men.
On the eighth many of Soult’s stragglers came up, but he still considered himself too weak to attack, and sent back to hurry up Heudelet’s division, and to request Ney to push forward his corps to Villafranca. He remained quiescent all day, to the great disappointment of Moore, who had issued orders to his army warning them that a battle was at hand, and bidding them not to waste their fire on the tirailleurs, but reserve it for the supporting columns. As the day wore on, without any sign of movement on the part of the French, the British commander began to grow anxious and depressed. If Soult would not move, it must mean that he had resolved to draw up heavy reinforcements from the rear. It would be mad to wait till they should come up: either the Marshal must be attacked at once, before he could be strengthened, or else the army must resume its retreat on Corunna before Soult was ready. To take the offensive Moore considered very doubtful policy—the French had about his own numbers, or perhaps even more, and they were established in a commanding position almost as strong as his own. Even if he beat them, they could fall back on Heudelet and Ney, and face him again, in or about Villafranca. To win a second battle would be hard work, and, even if all went well, the army would be so reduced in numbers that practically nothing would remain for a descent into the plains of Leon.
Accordingly Moore resolved neither to attack nor to wait to be attacked, but to resume his retreat towards the sea. It was not a very enterprising course; but it was at least a safe one; and since the troops were now somewhat rested, and (as he hoped) restored to good spirits, by seeing that the enemy dared not face them, he considered that he might withdraw without evil results. Accordingly the evening of the eighth was spent in destroying impedimenta and making preparations for retreat. Five hundred foundered cavalry and artillery horses were shot, a number of caissons knocked to pieces, and the remainder of the stores of food destroyed so far as was possible. At midnight on January 8-9 the army silently slipped out of its lines, leaving its bivouac fires burning, so as to delude the enemy with the idea that it still lay before him. Elaborate precautions had been taken to guide each division to the point from which it could fall with the greatest ease into the Corunna road. But it is not easy to evacuate by night a long position intersected with walls, enclosures, and suburban bypaths. Moreover the fates were unpropitious: drenching rain had set in, and it was impossible to see five yards in the stormy darkness. Whole regiments and brigades got astray, and of all the four divisions only Paget’s Reserve kept its bearings accurately and reached the chaussée exactly at the destined point. For miles on each side of the road stray battalions were wandering in futile circles when the day dawned. Instead of marching fifteen miles under cover of the night, many corps had got no further than four or five from their starting-point. Isolated men were scattered all over the face of the country-side, some because they had lost their regiments, others because they had deliberately sought shelter from the rain behind any convenient wall or rock.