Ney, taking with him Lagrange’s infantry and Digeon’s and Colbert’s cavalry from the troops which fought at Tudela, and adding them to the two divisions of Marchand and Dessolles, which had formed his turning column, urged the pursuit as fast as he was able. Twice he came up with the Spanish army: on each occasion Castaños sacrificed his rearguard, which made a long stand and was terribly mauled, while he pushed ahead with his main body. At this cost the army was saved, but it arrived in New Castile half starved and exhausted, and almost as much demoralized as if it had been beaten in a pitched battle. A few days later many of the battalions burst into open mutiny, when they were ordered to retire into the mountains of Cuenca. But at least they had escaped from Ney by rapid marching, and still preserved the form and semblance of an army.
Meanwhile Napoleon, on his side, had begun to operate against Madrid with a speed and sureness of stroke that made futile every attempt of the Spaniards to intervene between him and his goal. The moment that the news of Tudela reached him (November 26) he had hurled his main body upon the capital, and within eight days it was in his hands. The march of the army of Andalusia to cover Madrid was (though Castaños could not know it) useless from the first. By hurrying to the aid of the Junta, through Siguenza and Guadalajara, he was merely exposing himself for a second time to destruction. His troops were destined to escape from the peril in New Castile, by a stroke of fortune just as notable as that which had saved them from being cut off on the day after Tudela. But he, meanwhile, was separated from his troops, for on arriving at Siguenza he was met by another dispatch from the Junta, which relieved him of the command of the army of the Centre, and bade him hasten to Head Quarters, where his aid was required by the Central Committee for War. Handing over the troops to the incapable La Peña, Castaños hastened southward in search of the Junta, whose whereabouts in those days of flight and confusion it was not easy to find.
SECTION VII: CHAPTER VI
PASSAGE OF THE SOMOSIERRA: NAPOLEON AT MADRID
After completing his arrangements for the two sweeping flank-movements that were destined to entrap Blake and Castaños, the Emperor moved forward from Burgos on November 22, along the great road to Madrid by Lerma and Aranda de Duero. His advance was completely masked by the broad screen of cavalry which had gone on in front of him. Lasalle was ahead, Milhaud on the right flank, and covered by them he moved with ease across the plain of Old Castile. He brought with him a very substantial force, all the Imperial Guard, horse and foot, Victor and his 1st Corps, and the reserve-cavalry of Latour-Maubourg and Lahoussaye. King Joseph and his household troops were left behind at Burgos, to preserve the line of communication with Vittoria and Bayonne. The flanks were quite safe, with Ney and Moncey lying out upon the left, and Soult and Lefebvre upon the right. In a few days—supposing that the armies of Blake and Castaños fell into the snare, or were at least broken and scattered—the Emperor hoped to be able to draw in both Ney and Lefebvre to aid in his enveloping attack upon Madrid. Nor was this all: the corps of Mortier and Junot were now approaching the Pyrenees, and would soon be available as a great central reserve. The whole force put in motion against Madrid was enormous: the Emperor had 45,000 men under his own hand: Ney and Lefebvre could dispose of 40,000 more: Mortier and Junot were bringing up another 40,000 in the rear. Omitting the troops left behind on the line of communication and the outlying corps of Soult and Moncey, not less than 130,000 men were about to concentrate upon Madrid.
The Emperor halted at Aranda from November 23 to 28, mainly (as it would seem) to allow the two great flanking operations to work themselves out. When Soult reported that Blake’s much-chased army had dissolved into a mere mob, and taken refuge in the fastnesses of the Asturias, and when Lannes sent in the news of Tudela, the Emperor saw that it was time to move. On the twenty-eighth he marched on Madrid, by the direct high-road that crosses the long and desolate pass of the Somosierra.
Meanwhile the Spaniards had been granted nineteen days since the rout of Gamonal in which to organize the defence of their capital—a space in which something might have been done had their resources been properly applied and their commanders capable. It is true that even if every available man had been hurried to Madrid, the Emperor must still have prevailed: his numbers were too overwhelming to be withstood. But this fact does not excuse the Junta for not having done their best to hold him back. It is clear that when the news of Gamonal reached them, on the morning of the twelfth, orders should have been sent to Castaños to fall back on the capital by way of Calatayud and Siguenza, leaving Palafox and the Aragonese to ‘contain’ Moncey as long as might be possible. Nothing of the kind was done, and the army of the Centre—as we have seen—was still at Tudela on the twenty-third. There was another and a still more important source of aid available: the English army from Portugal had begun to arrive at Salamanca on November 13: its rearguard had reached that city ten days later. With Sir John Moore’s designs and plans of campaign we shall have to deal in another chapter. It must suffice in this place to say that he was now within 150 miles of Madrid by a good high-road: the subsidiary column under Hope, which had with it nearly the whole of the British artillery, was at Talavera, still nearer to the capital. If the Junta had realized and frankly avowed the perils of the situation, there can be no doubt that they would have used every effort to bring Moore to the defence of Madrid. Seven or eight good marches could have carried him thither. But the Spaniards did nothing of the kind: refusing to realize the imminence of the danger, they preferred to urge on Mr. Frere, the newly arrived British minister, a scheme for the union of Moore’s forces with Blake’s broken ‘Army of the Left[502].’ They suggested that Hope’s division might be brought up to reinforce the capital, but that the rest of the British troops should operate in the valley of the Douro. This proposition was wholly inadmissible, for Hope had with him all Moore’s cavalry and most of his guns. To have separated him from his chief would have left the latter incapable of any offensive movement. Hope declined to listen to the proposal, and marched via the Escurial to join the main army[503].
The fact was that the Junta still persisted in the foolish belief that Napoleon had no more than 80,000 men disposable in Northern Spain, instead of the 250,000 who were really at his command. They looked on the French advance to Burgos as a mere reconnaissance in force made by a single corps, and in this notion the imbecile Belvedere did his best to confirm them, by stating in his dispatch that the force which had routed him amounted to no more than 3,000 horse and 6,000 infantry[504]. Instead of calling in Castaños and making a desperate appeal for aid to Moore, the Junta contented themselves with endeavouring to reorganize the wrecks of the army of Estremadura, and pushing forward the belated fragments of the 1st and 3rd Andalusian divisions, which still lingered in Madrid, as well as the few Castilian levies that were now available for service in the field. Nothing can show their blind self-confidence more clearly than their proclamation of November 15, put forward to attenuate the ill effects on the public mind of the news of the rout of Gamonal. ‘The Supreme Junta of Government’—so runs the document—‘in order to prevent any more unhappy accidents of this kind, has already taken the most prudent measures; it has nominated Don Joseph Heredia to the command of the army of Estremadura: it has ordered all the other generals of the Army of the Right to combine their movements: it has given stringent orders for the prompt reinforcement of the above-named army.... There is every hope that the enemy, who now boasts of having been able to advance as far as Burgos, will soon be well chastised for his temerity. And if it is certain—as the reports from the frontier assure us—that the Emperor of the French has come in person to inspect the conduct of his generals and his troops in Spain, we may hope that the valiant defenders of our fatherland may aspire to the glory of making him fly, with the same haste with which they forced his brother Joseph to abandon the throne and the capital of which he vainly thought that he had taken possession[505].’
Since they systematically undervalued the number of Napoleon’s host, and refused to believe that there was any danger of a serious attack on Madrid during the next few days, it was natural that the Junta should waste, in the most hopeless fashion, the short time of respite that was granted to them between the rout of Gamonal and Napoleon’s advance from Aranda. They hurried forward the troops that were close at hand to hold the passes of the watershed between Old and New Castile, and then resumed their usual constitutional debates.