[682] There were only two battalions remaining with Loison by Jan. 10.
[683] A month after the pursuit of Moore had ended, and the battle of Corunna had been fought, the four infantry divisions of Soult’s corps which were in Galicia had still 19,000 effective bayonets for the invasion of Portugal. The three cavalry divisions were some 5,300 strong. Ney’s corps, which had hardly been engaged, had 16,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry. There were still, therefore, 41,300 men in hand of the two corps. It is impossible to make the losses from the long pursuit in the snow and the battle of Corunna less than 4,500 or 5,000 men, when we reflect that Moore lost 6,000, of whom only 2,000 were prisoners, and that Soult suffered at least 1,500 casualties in the Corunna fighting.
[684] Nap. Corresp., 14,662. ‘Les hommes pris sur La Romana étaient horribles à voir,’ says Napoleon, who saw them at Astorga.
[685] This is made absolutely certain by his letter of Jan. 13, in which he says that ‘at Lugo I became sensible of the impossibility of reaching Vigo, which is at too great a distance.’ On starting from Astorga, then, he still thought that he might be able to embark at that port. A glance at the map shows that the march Astorga—Lugo—Vigo is two sides of a triangle. If the Vigo route was to be taken, the only rational places to turn on to it are Astorga and Ponferrada.
[686] ‘After a time the same difficulties which affect us must affect him [Soult]: therefore the rear once past Villafranca, I do not expect to be molested’ (Moore to Castlereagh, from Astorga, Dec. 31).
[687] Consisting of the 20th Foot, and the first battalions of the 28th, 52nd, 91st, and 95th.
[688] The reader should note, in the Appendix dealing with the numbers of Moore’s army, the very small proportional losses suffered by the two battalions of the Guards, the 43rd (1st batt.), 4th, 42nd, 71st, 79th, 92nd, 95th (2nd batt.), and the cavalry.
[689] I quote from the original in the Record Office, not from the mutilated version printed in the Parliamentary Papers and elsewhere.
[690] Blakeney, of the 28th, says: ‘We employed the greater part of Jan. 1 in turning or dragging the drunken men out of the houses into the streets, and sending forward as many as could be moved. Yet little could be effected with men incapable of standing, much less of marching’ (p. 50).
[691] ‘T.S.’ of the 71st (Journal, p. 58).