In spite of his reluctance Victor was forced to yield to the pressure of Jourdan and the Emperor’s explicit orders. On March 14 he began to make his preparations to cross the Tagus and to attack Cuesta: it was reported to him that the roads starting from the two bridges which were in his power, those of Talavera and Arzobispo, were neither of them practicable for artillery, and that only the route by Almaraz was suitable for the guns and heavy baggage. But the bridge of Almaraz was broken, and beyond it were visible entrenchments thrown up by the Spaniards, and a considerable body of troops—the division of General Henestrosa. The Duke of Belluno determined to clear the way for a crossing at Almaraz, by sending infantry across the Tagus by the passages higher up-stream, with orders to sweep the southern bank till they came opposite to the broken bridge. They were to dislodge the force behind it, and then the artillery, the baggage, and cavalry were to cross on a bridge of rafts, which was being prepared close to Almaraz, in order to be ready the moment that it should be wanted.
On March 15, therefore, Leval’s Germans crossed the Tagus by the bridge of Talavera, with some of Lasalle’s cavalry, while on the next morning Victor himself passed at Arzobispo with the divisions of Villatte and Ruffin. The combined column pushed westward by a bad road on the hillside overhanging the river, in a difficult country of rocks and woods, seamed with countless ravines, where cavalry could barely act and artillery would have been perfectly useless. Cuesta, on hearing of this movement to turn his flank, threw back his right wing, and bade it make a stand behind the ravine of the little river Ibor, which falls into the Tagus half-way between Arzobispo and Almaraz. His force in this direction consisted of the division of the Duke del Parque, about 5,000 strong, with six guns. On the seventeenth Victor’s columns, with the Germans of Leval at their head, arrived before the defiles of Meza de Ibor, and found themselves confronted by the Duke, who was firmly established on the other side of the ravine, in a fine position, with his guns on a projecting rock which enfiladed the high-road. Victor directed Leval’s eight[167] battalions to cross the ravine, and storm the heights on the other side. This they did in very gallant style, but not without heavy losses, for the Estremadurans, confident in the strength of their rugged fighting-ground, made a long and vigorous resistance, till the Germans actually came to close quarters with them and ran in with the bayonet. Del Parque’s line then crumpled up, and dispersed over the hillsides: finding it impossible to bring off his guns, he cast them over the precipice into the ravine below. The Germans lost seventy killed and 428 wounded while climbing the difficult slopes: Del Parque’s men probably suffered far less, as they absconded when the enemy closed, and had been under cover till that moment. The supposition of some French authorities that the defenders of Meza de Ibor lost 1,000 men is most improbable. The country was one exactly suited for a cheap defence, and for an easy scattering over the hills in the moment of defeat.
The Duke fell back on Deleytosa, higher up the side of the Sierra de Guadalupe, where Cuesta had established his head quarters. Here he was joined by another of the Estremaduran divisions, that of General Trias, nearly 5,000 strong. Henestrosa, with the rest of the army, was still watching the passage at Almaraz, where Cuesta had made up his mind that the main attack of the French would be delivered. He persisted for some time in believing that Victor’s movement across the Talavera and Arzobispo bridges was merely a feint; and thus it was that Del Parque had been left alone to bear the first brunt of the attack. When he was at last convinced that the bulk of Victor’s infantry was on his flank, and that Almaraz was hopelessly turned, the old Captain-General hastily sent orders to Henestrosa to abandon his entrenchments opposite the bridge, and to retreat on Truxillo across the mountains. He himself took that path without delay, and got off in safety with his two leading divisions, but Henestrosa had to brush across the front of the advancing French, and was in some danger. Luckily for him Victor was more set on clearing the road from Almaraz than on pursuing the enemy.
When Henestrosa had disappeared, the passage was open, and the cavalry of Latour-Maubourg and Beaumont, guarding the artillery and baggage-train of the 1st Corps, crossed on the rafts which had been prepared long before, and joined the infantry and the Marshal. The passage presented more difficulties than had been expected, for it proved impossible to construct a permanent bridge; the stream was very fierce, and the anchors by which the floats were moored found no hold in the smooth rocky bottom. The guns passed either by being sent over on rafts or by means of a rope ferry, which was with some difficulty rigged up. It was not till some time later that a solid bridge of boats was built at this most important passage[168]. One cavalry regiment was left behind to protect it[169].
Cuesta, when he had united his three divisions, would have dearly loved to give battle to Victor behind Truxillo, in the excellent position of the Puerto de Santa Cruz, where the chaussée from Madrid to Badajoz crosses the Sierra de Guadalupe. His love for general engagements was by no means cured by the event of his experiments at Cabezon and Medina de Rio Seco. But he was withheld from offering battle not by mere prudence, but by the fact that he was expecting to receive two considerable reinforcements. The Marquis de Portago was bringing up a detachment from Badajoz—three battalions[170] which had been intended to form the nucleus of a new Fourth division that was being organized in that fortress. At the same moment Albuquerque was expected from the east, at the head of the 4,500 men whom the Supreme Junta had detached from the army of La Mancha, and had sent down the Guadiana to join that of Estremadura. Cuesta wished to pick up these 7,000 men before he gave battle.
Accordingly he evacuated the pass of Santa Cruz, and fell back southward towards his reinforcements, leaving Henestrosa with the bulk of his cavalry to act as a rearguard. That officer carried out his duty with a dash and a vigour that were rare in Spanish armies at this date. When the fiery Lasalle came pressing up against him with his usual fury, the Spanish general contrived to inflict on him two distinct checks. At Berrocal, half-way down the defile of Santa Cruz, he made a sudden halt and drove in the leading squadron of the French by a charge of his Royal Carbineers, a small remnant of the Guard-Cavalry which had been serving with the Army of Estremadura since its formation [March 20]. The French lost ten killed and fifteen wounded[171].
This was a trifle, but on the next day Henestrosa scored a far more tangible advantage. Noting that Lasalle’s leading regiment, the 10th Chasseurs, had got far ahead of the rest of the division, and was pushing on with reckless haste, he laid a trap for it in front of the village of Miajadas. Presenting a small body of cavalry on the high-road, he hid on each side of it a strong regiment of his own horse, with orders to fall upon the flank and rear of the French when they should have passed the ambush. The two corps set aside for this surprise were Infante and Almanza, both regiments of La Romana’s army from Denmark, which had not yet drawn their sabres since the war commenced.
Colonel Subervie of the 10th Chasseurs, advancing with heedless confidence to charge the body of Spaniards in front of him, suddenly saw himself enveloped and surrounded by the two regiments placed in ambush. There was a furious mêlée, in which the chasseurs lost one officer and sixty-two men killed and about seventy more wounded, before they could cut their way out of the snare. The sight of Lasalle’s main body coming up in haste to the rescue made Henestrosa give the order for a prompt retreat, which he accomplished without loss. ‘We arrived,’ writes a French officer of one of the supporting regiments, ‘too late, and saw nothing but a cloud of dust in the distance, made by the Spaniards as they rode away, and the colonel of the 10th tearing his hair at the sight of his numerous wounded[172].’ This lesson taught Lasalle more caution: it was creditable to Henestrosa, though it must be confessed that he had two men to one in the skirmish, in addition to the advantage of taking his enemy by surprise. Oddly enough the regiments which accomplished this successful coup on the twenty-first were the same which behaved worst in the great battle of the next week[173].
At Miajadas, where this skirmish had taken place, the road descending from the pass of Santa Cruz forks in two directions. One branch goes towards Merida and Badajoz, the other and less important to Medellin, La Serena, and the upper Guadiana. It would have been natural for Cuesta to take the former route, which brought him nearer to his base at Badajoz, and at the same time enabled him to cover the main road to Andalusia, at which Victor was presumably aiming. But the old general left this line unprotected, and retired by the eastern path to Medellin. His main object was to secure his junction with the reinforcements from La Mancha, which Albuquerque was bringing to him. They were nearing La Serena, and would be cut off from him if he took the road to Badajoz. At the same time he argued that, as he had thus placed himself on the flank of the French, they could not afford to march past him, since the moment that they left Merida behind them he would be enabled to cut their communications with Madrid. He imagined that Victor would prefer to fight him, and would not dare either to take in hand the siege of Badajoz, or to advance against Andalusia, without clearing his flank by a general action. The moment that he should have picked up Albuquerque, Cuesta was prepared to indulge the enemy with a fight, and if he were not attacked himself he intended to take the offensive. This was sheer madness; even when he had drawn in his last reserves the old general had but 20,000 foot and 3,000 horse[174], a number which only exceeded Victor’s total by three or four thousand men because the latter had been dropping detachments between Almaraz and Merida. Considering the relative value of the individual soldiery of the two armies, Cuesta’s behaviour was that of a criminal lunatic. We shall see that his tactics were as bad as his strategy.
The Marshal had left the two Dutch battalions of Leval’s division at Truxillo, in charge of his sick: he dropped the 1st Dragoons of Latour-Maubourg’s division at Miajadas, to guard the cross-roads, and sent out the 4th and 9th from the same division along the upper Guadiana, where they soon learnt of Cuesta’s presence on the other side of the river. Lasalle’s light horse rode down to Merida, and occupied the old Roman capital of western Spain without having to strike a blow. Learning that the Spaniards had not retreated in this direction, but by the eastern road, the Marshal (as Cuesta had supposed likely) directed the bulk of his infantry on Medellin; only the division of Ruffin remained behind, at the cross-roads of Miajadas.