The Spanish brigade on the hill made a stubborn resistance, and even held back the Poles till its flank was turned by the Germans. Venegas sent to its aid his miserably inadequate reserve under Giron, and some battalions drawn from the first division. But these troops came too late, the Cerrojones were lost, and the reinforcements only succeeded in checking the French advance behind the hill, on the slopes between it and Almonacid. The key of the position was thus in Sebastiani’s hands, and, seeing the Spanish centre outflanked, he let loose upon it his French division, which drove in Lacy and Zerain, and captured the town of Almonacid and three guns. Venegas was thus forced to draw back his whole line, and re-formed it on the Cerro del Castillo, which lay behind his original position. The troops were much disordered by this retrograde movement, yet made a very creditable effort to maintain their new ground. But King Joseph and the reserve had now come on the field, and Dessolles’ troops were thrown into the front line to aid the infantry of the 4th Corps. After a stubborn fight the Spanish left and centre again broke, and Venegas was only able to save them from complete destruction by bringing up Vigodet’s division, which was almost intact, and throwing it in the way of the advancing enemy. It held out long enough to allow the main body to escape, and then followed its comrades in retreat down the high-road to Mora and Madridejos. The French cavalry was let loose in pursuit, but does not seem to have been so successful in its work as had been the case at Ucles and Medellin. At any rate the bulk of the Spaniards escaped in more or less order, and only the stragglers were cut up.
The losses of Venegas’s army would appear to have been about 800 killed and 2,500 wounded[753], besides a considerable number of prisoners—perhaps 2,000 in all, for Sebastiani’s dispatch giving the figure of 4,000 cannot be trusted. The army of La Mancha had also lost twenty-one of its forty guns, all its baggage and several standards. Still the defeat was far less crushing than Medellin had been, and the whole army was rallied at the passes with no great difficulty. It had fought very creditably, as is sufficiently vouched for by the fact that Sebastiani acknowledged a loss of 319 killed and 2,075 wounded. The Polish division in especial had suffered very severely while storming the Cerrojones at the opening of the combat.
Thus ended the part taken by the Army of La Mancha in the Talavera campaign. No words are too strong to use in condemnation of Venegas’s conduct. After wrecking the plan of campaign drawn up by Wellesley and Cuesta by his criminal slackness and timidity in July, he then proceeded to the extreme of culpable rashness. He had ample time to retire to the South, when his position was compromised by the departure of the British and Estremaduran armies from Talavera. Instead of doing so he remained behind, and courted an unnecessary battle, in which his unskilful dispositions secured the defeat of an army which tried to do its duty and defended itself far better than could have been expected. He should have been court-martialled and shot for his repeated and impudent disobedience of Cuesta’s orders. But the Junta, conscious that they were themselves to blame for giving him secret directions which clashed with those of the Commander-in-chief, spared him, and only removed him from command some weeks later, in order to replace him by Areizaga, an officer of exactly the same level of merit and intelligence.
After his—or rather Sebastiani’s—victory at Almonacid King Joseph established the 4th Corps in cantonments around Toledo and Aranjuez, and sent Victor and the 1st Corps into La Mancha to observe the passes and to contain the wrecks of Venegas’s army. He returned himself with his guards and the reserve to Madrid on August 15, celebrated a Te Deum, and published an extravagant account of his own achievements, in which he claimed to have discomfited the attempt of 120,000 enemies (there were but 80,000 at the most liberal estimate) with the aid of 40,000 invincible French troops. The co-operation of Soult’s 50,000 men was consigned to oblivion in this extraordinary document.
The moment that he heard of the defeat of Venegas, Soult wrote to the King, renewing the demand which he had made ten days before for permission to invade Portugal. Now that the army of La Mancha had been disposed of, he considered that Victor might come back to Talavera and Almaraz, so as to set free Mortier and the 5th Corps for the attack on Portugal. He also suggested that Ney, having put things right at Salamanca, might now be recalled to the valley of the Tagus, and rejoin the 2nd and 5th Corps. He supported his demands by an unfounded assertion that Wellesley was on his march to unite with Beresford by way of Alcantara, and asked for leave to attack the latter before the main British army should have joined him. In a few days more, he said, it would be too late to move, for Beresford and Wellesley would have concentrated their forces, so that he would have 45,000 Anglo-Portuguese in his front[754].
Joseph refused to listen to these arguments, and had fair reasons to show for his negative reply to the Marshal’s requests. Wellesley, as he truly remarked, was not marching for Alcantara to join Beresford: he was still at Jaraicejo in close touch with the Estremaduran army. If Mortier were removed to the Portuguese border, Wellesley and Eguia might descend upon Victor and crush him. It was impossible to leave less than two corps to defend the Middle Tagus. As for Ney, he could not quit Leon, for Del Parque and the Galicians were concentrating in great force upon his front. Indeed, he had just written to request that the 2nd Corps might be moved up to Salamanca to support him[755]. It was not now the time to engage in further offensive operations either against Portugal or against Andalusia. The troops were exhausted; the hospital of Madrid contained at the moment 12,000 sick and wounded, the cavalry was so distressed by incessant work that few regiments could put 250 men in line. The transport was worn out, and new horses and mules were impossible to procure, for the King had no money with which to purchase them. Finally, and this was the most conclusive point of all, orders had been received from the Emperor countermanding all active operations till the hot season should be over[756]. It was impossible to say what his intentions might be, now that he was freed from the Austrian War. He might come himself to Spain, or he might send large reinforcements to the King. In any case it would be impossible to move till his will was known and his mind made up[757].
These arguments were conclusive, and Soult was forced to remain quiescent: all that he could do was to push small parties to Zarza and Coria when Beresford had evacuated those places.
Thus the Talavera campaign came to an end. There was now a long pause in the movements both of the allies and of the French. The subsequent fighting in October belongs to a totally independent series of operations. The combatants who had been engaged in July and August rested in September: Soult was left at Plasencia, Mortier at Talavera and Navalmoral, Ney at Salamanca; Victor’s head quarters were at Daymiel in La Mancha, Sebastiani lay along the Tagus from Aranjuez to Toledo. Of the allied troops Wellesley’s army was cantoned about Badajoz and Merida. The Estremadurans under Eguia covered the passages of the Tagus from Deleytosa, Jaraicejo, and Truxillo: Venegas was reorganizing his depleted corps at his old quarters in the passes by La Carolina. Beresford was observing Soult from Castello Branco, and lastly, the Galicians were moving down by divisions to join Del Parque’s forces at Ciudad Rodrigo, where a formidable army was now beginning to be collected.
The Talavera campaign, in short, had settled nothing. The attempt of the allies to capture Madrid had failed, but the attempt of the French to surround Wellesley and Cuesta by Soult’s flank march had failed also. Looking to the net results of all the fighting since May, it could be said that the balance of loss stood against the French. They had abandoned Galicia and the Asturias, as well as their precarious hold on Northern Portugal. They had gained nothing, save that their forces were concentrated in a good central position, instead of being scattered from Corunna and Oporto as far as Merida and Manzanares. The next move was in the hands of the Emperor: it remained to be seen how he would deal with the situation in the Peninsula, now that he, at last, had time to study it in detail.
Before passing on to the new series of operations which took place in the late autumn, one minor side-issue of the Talavera campaign remains to be narrated—the fate of the small roving column of 4,000 Spaniards and Portuguese under Sir Robert Wilson, which had been threatening Madrid in the King’s absence, and which had caused so many misgivings in the mind of Marshal Victor. Wilson’s doings were to give one more proof of his extraordinary resourcefulness and vigour, if any further evidence were needed after his masterly handling of Lapisse in the spring. It will be remembered that on August 4 he had slipped away from Escalona, on hearing from Wellesley that Soult had descended upon Plasencia. He intended to join the main army at Talavera, but on nearing that place discovered that it had already been evacuated, and that both the British and the Estremaduran armies had disappeared in the direction of Oropesa. Accordingly he directed his steps to the westward, hoping to overtake Wellesley on his march. On his way, however, he was caught up by Villatte’s division of Victor’s corps, which had been vainly hunting for him at Nombella and Escalona since the fifth. Thrown out of his path by this force, Wilson turned up into the mountains, intending to escape by the northern bank of the Tietar. He soon learnt, however, from the peasantry that Soult had sent a brigade under Foy to look for him in the Vera of Plasencia, and that Hugo, the governor of Avila, had come down to hold against him the passes of Arenas and Monbeltran. Thus ringed around with foes, he did not lose his nerve, but turning up into the Sierra de Gredos, by a mule-path that leads from Aldea Nueva to the upper valley of the Alagon, escaped in the direction of Bejar. From thence he intended to strike across towards Portugal. But a new enemy now came upon him: he had evaded Villatte and Foy only to run into the arms of Ney, who on this day [August 12] was preparing to cross the Puerto de Baños on his way to Salamanca. There was still time to escape from the Marshal’s front and to retire to Ciudad Rodrigo unmolested. But Wilson saw the rocky defile of the Puerto in front of him, and could not resist the temptation of holding it against the enemy, though he was well aware that with a force of less than 4,000 men, destitute of artillery, he could not seriously hope to repulse a whole army corps. Nevertheless he offered battle in the pass, and fought a running fight for nine hours against Ney’s vanguard, defending three successive positions, from each of which he had to be expelled. In his last stand he held on too long, and allowed the enemy to close. His four battalions were all broken, and fled over the hills to Miranda de Castañar, where they rallied on the next day. The Marshal acknowledged in his dispatch to King Joseph a loss of five officers and thirty men killed, and ten officers and 140 men wounded, which shows that he had been forced to fight hard to clear the pass. He claimed to have ‘destroyed’ Wilson’s detachment, and declared that 1,200 Spaniards and Portuguese had fallen. But Wilson’s returns show that his total loss, killed, wounded, and missing, was under 400, among whom there was not a single field officer or captain. Having assuaged his thirst for a fight by this gallant, if unnecessary, engagement, Wilson escaped to the Pass of Perales, and finally reached Castello Branco on August 24, where he fell in with Beresford, and was at last in safety, after his many wanderings among the summits of the Sierra de Gredos and the Sierra de Gata. This hazardous march was his last achievement in the Peninsula; after a bitter quarrel with Beresford concerning the status of his Lusitanian Legion in the Portuguese army, he sailed for England in October, and never returned to Portugal.