When his three belated divisions had appeared Lannes had drawn up his army in two lines, and flung the bulk of it against the Aragonese, leaving only Colbert’s and Digeon’s dragoons and the single division of Lagrange to look after La Peña and the rest of the Army of Andalusia.
Instead of sending forward fresh troops, Lannes brought up to the charge for a second time the regiments of Maurice Mathieu and Morlot. Behind the latter Musnier deployed, behind the former Grandjean, but neither of these divisions, as it turned out, was to fire a shot or to lose a man. While Morlot with his six battalions once more attacked the heights above the city, Maurice Mathieu with his twelve attempted both to push back O’Neille and to turn his flank by way of the Cabezo Malla. After a short but well-contested struggle both these attacks succeeded. Morlot, though his leading brigade suffered heavily, obtained a lodgement on top of the Cerro de Santa Barbara, by pushing a battalion up a lateral ravine, which had been left unwatched on account of its difficulty. Others followed, and Roca’s division broke, poured down the hill into Tudela, and fled away by the Saragossa road. Almost at the same moment O’Neille’s troops were beaten off the Cabezo Malla by Maurice Mathieu, who had succeeded in slipping a battalion and a cavalry regiment round their left flank, on the side of the fatal gap. Seeing the line of the Aragonese reeling back, General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, to whom Lannes had given the chief command of his cavalry, charged with three regiments of Wathier’s division at the very centre of the hostile army. He burst through between O’Neille and Saint March’s troops, and then wheeling outward attacked both in flank. This assault was decisive. The whole mass dispersed among the olive groves, irrigation-cuts, and stone fences which cover the plain to the south of Tudela. A few battalions kept their ranks and formed a sort of rearguard, but the main part of Roca’s, Saint March’s, and O’Neille’s levies fled straight before them till the dusk fell, and far into the night. Some of them got to Saragossa next day, though the distance was over fifty miles.
Meanwhile La Peña’s futile operations in front of Cascante had gone on all through the afternoon. He had at first nothing but cavalry in front of him, but about three o’clock Lagrange’s division, which had been the last to arrive on the field of all the French army, appeared in his direction. Its leading brigade marched into the gap, wheeled to its right, and drove out of Urzante the two isolated battalions which La Peña had placed there in the morning. They made a gallant resistance[492], but had to yield to superior numbers and to fall back on the main body at Cascante[493]. Here they found not only La Peña but also Grimarest, and Villariezo’s mixed brigade, for these officers had at last deigned to obey Castaños’ orders and to close in to the right. There was now an imposing mass of troops collected in this quarter, at least 18,000 foot and 3,000 horse, but they allowed themselves to be ‘contained’ by Lagrange’s single division and Digeon’s dragoons. Colbert, with the rest of the cavalry, had ridden through the gap and gone off in pursuit of the Aragonese. The remaining hour of daylight was spent in futile skirmishing with Lagrange, and after dark La Peña and Grimarest retired unmolested to Borja, by the road which skirts the foot of the Sierra de Moncayo. They were only disturbed by a panic caused by the blowing up of the reserve ammunition of the Army of the Centre. Some of the troops took the explosion for a sudden discharge of French artillery, broke their ranks, and were with difficulty reassembled.
It is impossible to speak too strongly of the shameful slackness and timidity of La Peña and his colleagues. If they had been tried for cowardice, and shot after the manner of Admiral Byng, they would not have received more than their deserts. That 20,000 men, including the greater part of the victors of Baylen, should assist, from a distance of four miles only, at the rout of their comrades of the Army of Aragon, was the most deplorable incident of all this unhappy campaign.
From the astounding way in which the Andalusian army had been mishandled, it resulted that practically no loss—200 killed and wounded at the most—was suffered in this quarter, and the troops marched off with their artillery and wagons, after blowing up their reserve ammunition and abandoning their heavy baggage in their camps[494]. The Aragonese had, of course, fared very differently. They lost twenty-six guns—apparently all that they had brought to the field—over 1,000 prisoners, and at least 3,000 killed and wounded[495]. That the casualties were not more numerous was due to the fact that the plain to the south of Tudela was covered with olive-groves, and irrigation-cuts, which checked the French cavalry and facilitated the flight of the fugitives.
Lannes, it is clear, did not entirely fulfil Napoleon’s expectations. He did not take full advantage of the gap between O’Neille and La Peña, and wasted much force in frontal attacks which might have been avoided. If he had thrust two divisions and all his horse between the fractions of the Spanish army, before ordering the second attack of Maurice Mathieu and Morlot, the victory would have been far more decisive, and less costly. The loss of the 3rd Corps was 44 killed and 513 wounded; that of Lagrange’s division and the dragoons has not been preserved, but can have been but small—probably less than 100 in all—though Lagrange himself received a severe hurt in the arm. The only regiment that suffered heavily was the 117th, of Morlot’s division, which, in turning Roca off the Cerro de Santa Barbara, lost 303 killed and wounded, more than half the total casualties of the 3rd Corps.
Lannes had carried out indifferently well the part of the Emperor’s great plan that had been entrusted to him; but this, as we have seen, was only half of the game. When Castaños and the Aragonese were routed, they ought to have found Marshal Ney at their backs, intercepting their retreat on Saragossa or Madrid. As a matter of fact he was more than fifty miles away on the day of the battle, and arrived with a tardiness which made his flanking march entirely futile. The orders for him to march from Aranda on Soria and Tarazona had been issued on November 18[496], and he had been warned that Lannes would deliver his blow on the twenty-second. But Ney did not receive his instructions till the nineteenth, and only set out on the twentieth. When once he was upon the move he made tremendous marches, for on the twenty-first he had reached Almazan, more than sixty miles from his starting-point: by dusk on the twenty-second he had pushed on to Soria[497], where he halted for forty-eight hours on account of the utter exhaustion of his troops. He had pushed them forward no less than seventy-eight miles in three days, a rate which cannot be kept up. Hence he was obliged to let them spend the twenty-third and twenty-fourth in Soria: at dawn on the twenty-fifth they set out again, and executed another terrible march. It is thirty miles from Soria to Agreda, in the heart of the Sierra de Moncayo, where the 6th Corps slept on that night, and every foot of the way was over villainous mountain roads. Hence Ney only reached Tarazona early on the twenty-sixth, three days after the battle; yet it cannot be said that he had been slow: he had covered 121 miles in six and a half days, even when the halt at Soria is included. This is very fair marching for infantry, when the difficulties of the country are considered. Napoleon ungenerously ascribed the escape of Castaños to the fact that ‘Ney had allowed himself to be imposed upon by the Spaniards, and rested for the twenty-second and twenty-third at Soria, because he chose to imagine that the enemy had 80,000 men, and other follies. If he had reached Agreda on the twenty-third, according to my orders, not a man would have escaped[498].’ But, as Marshal Jourdan very truly remarks in his Mémoires, ‘Calculating the distance from Aranda to Tarazona via Soria, one easily sees that even if Ney had given no rest to his troops, it would have been impossible for him to arrive before the afternoon of the twenty-fourth, that is to say, twenty-four hours after the battle. It is not he who should be reproached, but the Emperor, who ought to have started him from Aranda two days earlier[499].’
Blind admirers of Bonaparte have endeavoured to make out a case against Ney, by accusing him of having stopped at Soria for three days in order to pillage it—which he did not, though he made a requisition of shoes and cloth for great-coats from the municipality. If he is really to blame, it is rather for having worked his men so hard on the twentieth to the twenty-second that they were not fit to march on the twenty-third: he had taken them seventy-eight miles on those three days, with the natural result that they were dead beat. If he had contented himself with doing sixteen or eighteen miles a day, he would have reached Soria on the twenty-third, but his men would have been comparatively fresh, and could have moved on next morning. Even then he would have been late for the battle, as Jourdan clearly shows: the fact was that the Emperor asked an impossibility of him when he expected him to cover 121 miles in four days, with artillery and baggage, and a difficult mountain range to climb[500].
Meanwhile the routed forces of O’Neille, Roca, and Saint March joined at Mallen, and retreated along the high-road to Saragossa, accompanied for part of the way by Castaños; while those of La Peña, Grimarest, and Villariezo marched by Borja to La Almunia on the Xalon, where their General-in-chief joined them and directed them to take the road to Madrid, not that which led to the Aragonese capital. On the night of the twenty-fifth the Army of Andalusia, minus the greater part of the wrecks of Roca’s division[501], was concentrated at Calatayud, not much reduced in numbers, but already suffering from hunger—all their stores having been lost at Cascante and Tarazona—and inclined to be mutinous. The incredible mismanagement at Tudela was put down to treachery, and the men were much inclined to disobey their chiefs. It was at this unhappy moment that Castaños received a dispatch from the Central Junta dated November 21, which authorized him to incorporate the divisions of O’Neille and Saint March with the army of Andalusia, leaving only the Aragonese under the control of Palafox. This order, if given a month earlier, would have saved an enormous amount of wrangling and mismanagement. But it was now too late: these divisions had retired on Saragossa, and the enemy having interposed between them and Castaños, the authorization remained perforce a dead letter.
Lannes had directed Maurice Mathieu, with the divisions of Lagrange and Musnier, to follow the Andalusians by Borja, while Morlot and Grandjean pursued the Aragonese on the road of Mallen. The chase does not seem to have been very hotly urged, but on each road a certain number of stragglers were picked up. Ney, reaching Borja on the twenty-sixth with the head of his column, found himself in the rear of Maurice Mathieu, and committed to the pursuit of Castaños. Their vanguard reached Calatayud on the twenty-seventh, and learnt that the Army of the Centre had evacuated that city on the same morning, and was pressing towards Madrid, with the intention of taking part in the defence of the capital.