[[Erratum from p. xii]: A dispatch of Beresford at Lisbon clears up my doubts as to Silveira’s culpability. Beresford complains that the latter lost a whole day by marching from Amarante to Villa Pouca without orders; the dispatch directing him to take the path by Mondim thus reached him only when he had gone many miles on the wrong road. The time lost could never be made up.]
Beyond Montalegre it would have been useless to follow the flying French. An advance into Galicia would have taken the British army too far from Lisbon, and have rendered it impossible to return in time to the Tagus if Victor should be on the move. That marshal, as we shall see, was showing signs of stirring from his long spell of torpidity, and it was a dispatch from Mackenzie, containing the news that the 1st Corps was on the move, that made Wellesley specially anxious to check the pursuit, and to draw back to Central Portugal before matters should come to a head in Estremadura. He could safely calculate that it would be months rather than weeks before Soult would be in a condition to cause any trouble on the northern frontier.
N.B.—There are admirable accounts of the horrors of Soult’s retreat in the works of Le Noble, St. Chamans, Fantin des Odoards, and Naylies. The pursuit of the main body of the English army is well described by four eye-witnesses—Lord Londonderry, Stothert, Hawker, and Lord Munster. For the march of Beresford’s corps I have only the details given by Lord Gough’s letter, cited heretofore.
SECTION XV
OPERATIONS IN NORTHERN SPAIN
(MARCH-JUNE 1809)
CHAPTER I
NEY AND LA ROMANA IN GALICIA AND THE ASTURIAS
While following the fortunes of Soult and the 2nd Corps in Northern Portugal, we have been constrained to withdraw our attention from Galicia, where we left Marshal Ney busied in a vain attempt to beat down the insurrections which had sprung up in every corner of the kingdom, at the moment when the melting of the snows gave notice that spring was at hand. It was with no good will that the Duke of Elchingen had seen his colleague depart from Orense and plunge into the Portuguese mountains. Indeed he had done his best to induce Soult to disregard the Emperor’s orders, and to join him in a strenuous effort to pacify Galicia before embarking on the march to Oporto[459]. When he found that his appeal had failed to influence the Duke of Dalmatia, and that the 2nd Corps had passed out of sight and left the whole of Galicia upon his hands, he was constrained to take stock of his position and to think out a plan of campaign.
Ney had at his disposal some 17,000 men, consisting of the twenty-four infantry battalions of his own corps, which formed the two divisions of Marchand and Maurice Mathieu, of the two regiments of his corps-cavalry, and of Fournier’s brigade of Lorges’ dragoons, which Soult, by the Emperor’s orders, had transferred to him before crossing the Minho. Among his resources it would not be fair to count the two garrisons at Vigo and Tuy which the 2nd Corps had left behind it. They numbered more than 4,000 men, but were so placed as to be more of a charge than a help to Ney. They failed to keep him in touch with Soult, and their necessities distracted some of his troops to their aid when he was requiring every man for other purposes.