[566] Moore to Castlereagh, Oct. 9: ‘The march from this will be by the three roads Coimbra, Guarda, and Alcantara.’
[567] Moore to Castlereagh, Oct. 9.
[568] Ibid., Oct. 11.
[569] Moore also consulted Colonel Lopez, the Spanish officer who had been sent to his head quarters by the Junta, as being specially skilled in roads and topography. But Lopez disclaimed any knowledge, and could only say that Junot’s artillery had been nearly ruined by the roads between Ciudad Rodrigo and Abrantes.
[570] e.g. in 1706 Lord Galway took over forty guns, twelve of which were heavy siege-pieces, from Elvas by Alcantara and Coria to Ciudad Rodrigo. In 1762 the Spaniards took no less than ninety guns from Ciudad Rodrigo by Celorico and Sabugal to Castello Branco, and thence back into Spain.
[571] Napier does not seem to know this, and distinctly states (i. 102) that Loison had no guns.
[572] Moore to Hope, from Almeida, Nov. 8.
[573] In endeavouring to excuse Moore, Napier takes the strange course of making out that the Guarda road, though usable, as experience showed, was ‘in a military sense, non-practicable’ from its difficulties. This will not stand in face of Moore’s words quoted above. Of the Coimbra—Celorico road he omits all mention (i. 345).
[574] These were the 2nd, 36th, 71st, and 92nd Foot.
[575] Napier has a long note, in justification of Moore, to the effect that if the concentration point of the British army had been Burgos instead of Salamanca, Hope’s detour would have cost no waste of time, and would have been rather profitable than otherwise. But Moore distinctly looked upon the movement as a deplorable necessity, not as a proper strategical proceeding. ‘It is a great round,’ he wrote to Castlereagh on October 27, when announcing this modification of his original plan, ‘and will separate the corps, for a time, from the rest of the army: but there is no help for it.’ Moreover he stated, in this same letter, that he would not move forward an inch from Salamanca till Hope should have reached Espinar, on the northern side of the Guadarrama Pass. At a later date he announced that he should not advance till Hope had got even nearer to him, and made his way as far as Arevalo [letter of Nov. 24]. He was too good a general to dream of a concentration at Burgos, when once he had ascertained the relative positions of the Spanish and the French armies, for that place was within a couple of marches of the enemy’s outposts at Miranda and Logroño. There is, in short, no way of justifying Hope’s circular march, when once it is granted that the roads of Northern Portugal were not impracticable for artillery. Moore knew this perfectly well, as his letter to Hope, which we have quoted on p. 495 shows. No arguments are worth anything in his justification when he himself writes ‘if anything adverse happens, I have not necessity to plead.’ This is the language of an honest man, conscious that he has made a mistake, and prepared to take the responsibility. Napier’s apology for him (i. 345-7) is but ingenious and eloquent casuistry.