The Spanish commander-in-chief had displayed most blameworthy torpidity on this day. He had let Dupont slip away from Andujar, and did not discover that he was gone till dawn had arrived. Then, instead of pursuing at full speed with all his forces, he had sent on La Peña’s division, while he lingered behind with that of Felix Jones, surveying the enemy’s empty lines. The fourth division must have marched late and moved slowly, as it only reached the Rumblar bridge—twelve miles from Andujar—at about 2 p.m. It could easily have been there by 8 or 9 a.m., and might have fallen upon Dupont while he was delivering one of his earlier attacks on the Baylen position.
At much the same moment that Villoutreys and Copons reached Castaños at Andujar, at about five o’clock in the afternoon, the second half of the French army at last appeared upon the scene. General Vedel had discovered on the eighteenth that he had nothing to fear from the side of the passes. He therefore called down all Dufour’s troops, save two battalions left at Santa Elena, united the two divisions at La Carolina, and gave orders for their return to Baylen on the following morning. Leaving the bivouac at five o’clock Vedel, with some 9,000 or 9,500 men, marched down the defile for ten miles as far as the village of Guarroman, which he reached about 9.30 or 10 a.m.[153] The day was hot, the men were tired, and though the noise of a distant cannonade could be distinctly heard in the direction of Baylen, the general told his officers to allow their battalions two hours to cook, and to rest themselves. By some inexplicable carelessness the two hours swelled to four, and it was not till 2 p.m. that the column started out again, to drop down to Baylen. An hour before the French marched, the cannonade, which had been growling in the distance all through the mid-day rest, suddenly died down. Vedel was in nowise disturbed, and is said to have remarked that his chief had probably made an end of the Spanish corps which had been blocking the road between them.
After this astonishing display of sloth and slackness, Vedel proceeded along the road for ten miles, till he came in sight of the rear of the Spanish position at Baylen. His cavalry soon brought him the news that the troops visible upon the hillsides were enemies: they consisted of the brigade which Reding had told off at the beginning of the day to hold the height of San Cristobal and the Cerro del Ahorcado against a possible attack from the rear. It was at last clear to Vedel that things had not gone well at Baylen, and that it was his duty to press in upon the Spaniards, and endeavour to cut his way through to his chief. He had begun to deploy his troops across the defile, with the object of attacking both the flanking hills, when two officers with a white flag rode out towards him. They announced to him that Dupont had been beaten, and had asked for a suspension of hostilities, which had been granted. La Peña’s troops had stayed their advance, and he was asked to do the same.
Either because he doubted the truth of these statements, or because he thought that his appearance would improve Dupont’s position, Vedel refused to halt, and sent back the Spanish officers to tell Reding that he should attack him. This he did with small delay, falling on the brigade opposed to him with great fury. Boussard’s dragoons charged the troops on the lower slopes of the Cerro del Ahorcado, and rode into two battalions who were so much relying on the armistice that they were surprised with their arms still piled, cooking their evening meal. A thousand men were taken prisoners almost without firing a shot[154]. Cassagnes’ infantry attacked the steep height of San Cristobal with less good fortune: his first assault was beaten off, and Vedel was preparing to succour him, when a second white flag came out of Baylen. It was carried by a Spanish officer, who brought with him De Barbarin, one of Dupont’s aides-de-camp. The general had sent a written communication ordering Vedel to cease firing and remain quiet, as an armistice had been concluded, and it was hoped that Castaños would consent to a convention. The moment that his answer was received it should be passed on; meanwhile the attack must be stopped and the troops withdrawn.
Vedel obeyed: clearly he could do nothing else, for Dupont was his hierarchical superior, and, as far as he could see, was still a free agent. Moreover, De Barbarin told him of the very easy terms which the commander-in-chief hoped to get from Castaños. If they could be secured it would be unnecessary, as well as risky, to continue the attack. For La Peña might very possibly have annihilated the beaten division before Vedel could force his way to its aid, since horse and foot were both ‘fought out,’ and there was neither strength nor spirit for resistance left among them. Vedel therefore was justified in his obedience to his superior, and in his withdrawal to a point two miles up the La Carolina road.
Meanwhile Villoutreys, the emissary of Dupont, had reached the camp of Castaños at Andujar[155] late in the afternoon, and laid his chief’s proposals before the Spaniard. As might have been expected, they were declined—Dupont was in the trap, and it would have been absurd to let him off so easily. No great objection was made to the retreat of Vedel, but Castaños said that the corps caught between La Peña and Reding must lay down its arms. Early next morning (July 20) Villoutreys returned with this reply to the French camp.
Dupont meanwhile had spent a restless night. He had gone round the miserable bivouac of his men, to see if they would be in a condition to fight next morning, in the event of the negotiations failing. The result was most discouraging: the soldiers were in dire straits for want of water, they had little to eat, and were so worn out that they could not be roused even to gather in the wounded. The brigadiers and colonels reported that they could hold out no prospect of a rally on the morrow[156]. Only Privé, the commander of the heavy-cavalry brigade, spoke in favour of fighting: the others doubted whether even 2,000 men could be got together for a rush at the Spanish lines. When an aide-de-camp, whom Vedel had been allowed to send to his chief, asked whether it would not be possible to make a concerted attack on Reding next morning, with the object of disengaging the surrounded division, Dupont told him that it was no use to dream of any such thing. Vedel must prepare for a prompt retreat, in order to save himself; no more could be done.
At dawn, nothing having been yet settled, La Peña wrote to Dupont threatening that if the 1,000 men who had been captured by Vedel on the previous day were not at once released, he should consider the armistice at an end, and order his division to advance. The request was reasonable, as they had been surprised and taken while relying on the suspension of arms. Dupont ordered his subordinate to send them back to Reding’s camp. Castaños meanwhile was pressing for a reply to his demand for surrender: he had brought up Felix Jones’s division to join La Peña’s in the early morning, so that he had over 14,000 men massed on the right bank of the Rumblar and ready to attack[157]. Dupont was well aware of this, and had made up his mind to surrender when he realized the hopeless demoralization of his troops. Early in the morning he called a council of war; the officers present, after a short discussion, drew up and signed a document in which they declared that ‘the honour of the French arms had been sufficiently vindicated by the battle of the previous day: that in accepting the enemy’s terms the commander-in-chief was yielding to evident military necessity: that, surrounded by 40,000 enemies, he was justified in averting by an honourable treaty the destruction of his corps.’ Only the cavalry brigadier Privé, refused to put his name to the paper, on which appear the signatures of three generals of division, of the officers commanding the artillery and engineers, of two brigadiers, and of three commanders of regiments.
After this formality was ended Generals Chabert and Marescot rode out from the French camp and met Castaños. They had orders to make the best terms they could: in a general way it was recognized that the compromised division could not escape surrender, and that Vedel and Dufour would probably have to evacuate Andalusia and stipulate for a free passage to Madrid. The Spaniards were not, as it seems, intending to ask for much more. But while they were haggling on such petty points as the forms of surrender, and the exemption of officers’ baggage from search, a new factor was introduced into the discussion. Some irregulars from the Sierra Morena came to Castaños, bringing with them as a prisoner an aide-de-camp of Savary[158]. They had secured his dispatch, which was a peremptory order to Dupont to evacuate Andalusia with all his three divisions, and fall back towards Madrid. This put a new face on affairs, for Castaños saw that if he conceded a free retreat to Vedel and Dufour, he would be enabling them to carry out exactly the movement which Savary intended. To do so would clearly be undesirable: he therefore interposed in the negotiations, and declared that the troops of these two generals should not be allowed to quit Andalusia by the road which had been hitherto proposed. They must be sent round by sea to some port of France not immediately contiguous with the Spanish frontier.
Chabert and Marescot, as was natural, declaimed vehemently against this projected change in the capitulation, and declared that it was inadmissible. But they were answered in even more violent terms by the turbulent Conde de Tilly, who attended as representative of the Junta of Seville. He taunted them with their atrocities at the sack of Cordova, and threatened that if the negotiations fell through no quarter should be given to the French army. At last Castaños suggested a compromise: he offered to let Dupont’s troops, no less than those of Vedel, return to France by sea, if the claim that the latter should be allowed to retreat on Madrid were withdrawn. This was conceding much, and the French generals accepted the proposal.