A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 1, 1807-1809

by Charles Oman

MOORE AT SALAMANCA

It will be remembered that on October 6, 1808, the command of the British forces in Portugal had passed into the hands of Sir John Moore, to the entire satisfaction of Wellesley and the other officers who had served under those slow and cautious generals Sir Hew Dalrymple and Sir Harry Burrard. The moment that the news of Vimiero was received, and long before the details of the Convention of Cintra could come to hand, the Government had determined to send on the victorious British army into Spain, and to assist it with heavy reinforcements from home. Dalrymple was even informed that he might cross the frontier at once, if he chose, without waiting for any detailed instructions from the War Office[548]. Wellesley, as we have seen, thought that his chief should have done so without delay, and observed that if he had charge of affairs the army would be at Madrid by October 1[549].

Yet when Moore took over the command, he found that little or nothing had been done to carry out this design. The delay was partly occasioned by the tardy evacuation of Portugal by Junot’s troops: the last of them, as we have seen[550], did not leave the Tagus till the month of October had begun. But it was still more due to the leisurely and feeble management of Dalrymple, who would not march without detailed and definite orders from home. He might well have begun to move his brigades eastward long before the last small detachments of the French had disappeared. But when on October 6 Dalrymple’s successor looked around him, he found that the whole army was still concentrated in the neighbourhood of Lisbon, save Hope’s two brigades, and these had been sent forward to the frontier not so much for the purpose of entering Spain, as for that of bringing moral force to bear on General Galluzzo, and compelling him to abandon his ridiculous siege of Elvas. Two things had been especially neglected by Dalrymple—the exploration of the roads that lead from Portugal into Spain, and the pressing on of the formation of a proper divisional and regimental transport for the army. It is strange to find that he had remembered the existence of both of these needs: his dispatches speak of his intention to send officers both towards Badajoz and into Beira, and he asserts that ‘the army is in high order and fit to move when required[551].’ Yet his successor had to state that as a matter of fact no body of information about the routes and resources of Portugal and Spain had been collected, and that the scheme for moving and feeding the army had not been drawn up. ‘When I shall pass the frontier of Portugal,’ wrote Moore to Castlereagh, ‘it is impossible for me at this instant to say: it depends on a knowledge of the country which I am still without, and on commissariat arrangements yet unmade[552].’ We may grant that Dalrymple had been somewhat handicapped by the fact that his army had been landed, in the old haphazard British fashion, without any proper military train. We may also concede that no one could have foreseen that the Portuguese and Spanish governments would be unable to supply any useful information concerning the main roads and the resources of their own countries. But the whole month of September had been at the disposal of the late commander-in-chief, and he, with his quartermaster-general, Murray, must take the blame of having failed to accomplish in it all that might have been done. Within a fortnight after the Convention of Cintra had been signed, British officers ought to have explored every road to the frontier, and to have reported on their facilities. Yet on October 6 Moore could not find any one who could tell him whether the roads Lisbon—Sabugal—Almeida, and Lisbon—Abrantes—Castello Branco were or were not practicable for artillery! And this was in spite of the fact that a British detachment had actually marched from Lisbon to Almeida, in order to receive the surrender of the garrison of that fortress. The fact would seem to be that Dalrymple had placed his confidence in the native governments of the Peninsula. He vainly imagined that the Portuguese engineers could supply him with accurate details concerning the roads and resources of Beira and the Alemtejo. He sent a very capable officer—Lord William Bentinck—to Madrid, and entered into communication with the Spanish government. From them he hoped that he might get some account of the plan of campaign in which his army was to join, a list of the routes which it would be convenient for him to use, and details as to the way in which he could collect and carry provisions. As a matter of fact he could only obtain a quantity of vague and generally useless suggestions, some of which argued an astonishing ignorance of military affairs in those who made them. If there had been a Spanish commander-in-chief, Dalrymple might have extracted from him his views about the campaign that must shortly begin. But the Junta had steadfastly refused to unite the charge of their many armies in the hands of a single general: they told Lord William that he might make inquiries from Castaños: but the Andalusian general could only speak for himself. It was not he, but a council of war, that would settle the plan of operations: he could only give Bentinck the conclusions that had been arrived at after the abortive meeting of generals that had taken place on September 5. In answer to a string of questions administered to him by Dalrymple’s emissary, as to the routes that the British army had better follow, and the methods of supply that it had better adopt, he could only reply that he was at present without good maps, and could not give the necessary information in detail. He could only refer Bentinck to the newly formed Commissariat Board (Junta de Víveres), which ought to be able to designate the best routes with reference to the feeding of the army and the establishment of magazines[553]. Of course this board turned out to know even less than Castaños himself. Nothing whatever was done for the British army, with the exception that a certain Colonel Lopez was sent to its head quarters to act as the representative of the Junta de Víveres. It does not seem that he was able to do anything for the expeditionary force that they could not have done for themselves. In this way the whole time that Dalrymple had at his disposal had been wasted in the long correspondence with Madrid, and not a soldier had passed the frontier when Moore took up the command.

Meanwhile, it ought at least to have been possible to make preparations in Portugal, even if nothing could be done in Spain. But the question of transport and commissariat was a very difficult one. The British army had struggled from Mondego Bay to Lisbon with the aid of the small ox-wagons of the country-side, requisitioned and dismissed from village to village. But clearly a long campaign in Spain could not be managed on these lines. A permanent provision of draught and pack animals was required, and natives must be hired to drive them. The few regular enlisted men of the Royal Wagon Train who had reached Portugal were only enough to take care of the more important military stores. Moreover their wagons turned out to be much too heavy for the roads of the Peninsula, and had to be gradually replaced by country carts[554]. The great mass of the regimental baggage and the food had always to be transported on mules, or vehicles bought or hired from the peasantry. The Portuguese did not care to contract to take their animals over the frontier, and it was most difficult to collect transport of any kind, even with the aid of the local authorities. When once Moore’s dreadful retreat began, his drivers and muleteers deserted their wagons and beasts, and fled home, resolved that if they must lose their property they would not lose their lives also[555].

In later years Wellington gradually succeeded in collecting a large and invaluable army of Spanish and Portuguese employés, who—in their own fashion—were as good campaigners as his soldiery, and served him with exemplary fidelity even when their pay was many months in arrear. But in 1808 this body of trained camp-followers did not exist, and Moore had the greatest difficulty in scraping together the transport that took him forward to Salamanca. As to commissariat arrangements, he found that even though he divided his army into several small columns, and utilized as many separate routes as possible, it was not easy for the troops to live. The commissariat officers, sent on to collect magazines at the various halting-places, were so inexperienced and so uniformly ignorant of the Portuguese tongue, that even where they were energetic they had the greatest difficulty in catering for the army. Wellesley, as we have already seen[@repeated 556 note], had been complaining bitterly of their inefficiency during the short Vimiero campaign. Moore, more gracious in his phrases, wrote that ‘we have a Commissariat extremely zealous, but quite new and inexperienced in the important duties which it falls to their lot to perform.’ This was but one of the many penalties which England had to pay for her long abstention from continental warfare on a large scale. It is easy to blame the ministry, the permanent officials in London, or the executive officials on the spot[556]. But in reality mere want of knowledge of the needs of a great land-war accounts for most of the mistakes that were committed. To lavish angry criticism on individuals, as did the Opposition papers in England at the time, was almost as unjust as it was useless. The art of war, in this as in its other branches, had to be learnt; it was not possible to pick it up by intuition. Nothing can be more interesting than to look through the long series of orders and directions drawn up by the quartermaster-general’s department between 1809 and 1813, in which the gradual evolution of order out of chaos by dint of practical experience can be traced. But in October, 1808, the process was yet in its infancy.

It was with the greatest difficulty, therefore, that Moore got his army under weigh. He found it, as he wrote to Castlereagh, ‘without equipment of any kind, either for the carriage of the light baggage of regiments, artillery stores, commissariat stores, or any other appendage of an army, and without a magazine formed on any of the routes by which we are to march[557].’ Within ten days, however, the whole force was on the move. The heavy impedimenta were placed in store in Lisbon: it was a thousand pities that the troops did not leave behind their women and children, whose presence with the regiments was destined to cause so many harrowing scenes during the forced marches of the ensuing winter. They were offered a passage to England, but the greater part refused it, and the colonels (from mistaken kindness) generally allowed them to march with their corps.

The direction in which the army was to move had been settled in a general way by the dispatches sent from Castlereagh to Dalrymple in September[558]. It was to be held together in a single mass and sent forward to the Ebro, there to be put in line with Blake and Castaños. An attempt on the part of the Junta to distract part of it to Catalonia had been firmly and very wisely rejected. The French were still on the defensive when the plan was drawn out, and Burgos had been named as the point at which the British troops might aim. It was very close to the enemy, but in September neither English nor Spanish statesmen were taking into consideration the probability of the advent of the Emperor, and his immediate assumption of the offensive. They were rather dreaming of an advance towards the Pyrenees by the allied armies. If the large reinforcements which were promised to Moore were destined to land at Corunna, rather than at Gihon or Santander, it was merely because these latter ports were known to be small and destitute of resources, not because they were considered to be dangerously near to the French. La Romana’s division, it will be remembered, was actually put ashore at Santander: it is quite possible that Sir David Baird’s troops might have been sent to the same destination, but for the fortunate fact that it was believed that it would be impossible to supply him with transport from the bare and rugged region of the Montaña. Corunna was selected as the landing-place for all the regiments that were to join Moore, partly on account of its safe and spacious port, partly because it was believed that food and draught animals could be collected with comparative ease from Galicia.

More than 12,000 men, including three regiments of cavalry (the arm in which the force in Portugal was most deficient) and a brigade of the Guards, had been drawn from the home garrisons. The charge of this fine division had been given to Sir David Baird[559], an officer with a great Indian reputation, but comparatively unpractised in European warfare. They were embarked at Harwich, Portsmouth, Ramsgate, and Cork at various dates during September and October, and on the thirteenth of the latter month the main body of the force reached Corunna. By some stupid mismanagement at home the cavalry, the most important part of the expedition, were shipped off the last, and did not arrive till three weeks[560] after the rest of the troops had reached Spain.

By October 18 Moore reported that the greater part of his troops were already in motion, and as Baird’s infantry had reached Corunna on the thirteenth, it might have been expected that the junction of their forces would have taken place in time to enable them to play a part in the defensive campaign against Napoleon which ended in the fall of Madrid on December 4. If the troops had marched promptly, and by the best and shortest routes, they might have easily concentrated at Salamanca by the middle of November: Napier suggests the thirteenth[561] as a probable day, and considering the distances the date seems a very reasonable one. At that moment Gamonal and Espinosa had only just been fought and lost: Tudela was yet ten days in the future: sixteen days were to elapse before the Somosierra was forced. It is clear that the British army, which at Salamanca would have been only seven marches (150 miles) from Madrid, and four marches (eighty miles) from Valladolid, might have intervened in the struggle: whether its intervention might not have ended in disaster, considering the enormous forces of the French[562], is another matter. But the British Government intended that Moore and Baird should take part in the campaign: the Junta had been told to expect their help: and for the consolidation of the alliance between the two nations it was desirable that the help should be given in the most prompt and effective fashion.

There is no possibility of asserting that this was done. Moore and Baird did not join till December 20: no British soldier fired a single shot at a Frenchman before December 12[563]. The whole army was so much out of the campaign that Bonaparte never could learn what had become of it, and formed the most erroneous hypotheses concerning its position and intentions. We may frankly say that not one of his movements, down to the fall of Madrid, was in the least influenced by the fact that there was a British force in Spain.