The force which had defeated that general consisted in the main of the insurgents who had beleaguered Tuy and Vigo in March and April. They were now under Morillo and Garcia del Barrio, who were beginning to reduce them to some sort of discipline, and were organizing them into battalions and companies. But the core of the ‘Division of the Minho,’ as this force was now called, was composed of the small body of regulars which La Romana had left at Puebla de Senabria, under Martin La Carrera. That officer, after giving his feeble detachment some weeks of rest, had marched via Monterey and Orense to join the insurrectionary army. He brought with him nine guns and 2,000 men. On May 22 Carrera and Morillo crossed the Ulla and advanced on Santiago with 10,000 men, of whom only 7,000 possessed firearms. Maucune came forth to meet them in the Campo de Estrella[485], outside the city, with his four battalions and a regiment of chasseurs, thinking to gain an easy success when the enemy offered him battle in the open. But he was outnumbered by three to one, and as the Galicians showed much spirit and stood steadily to their guns, he was repulsed with loss. Carrera then attacked in his turn, drove the French into Santiago, chased them through the town, and pursued them for a league beyond it. Maucune was wounded, and lost 600 men—a fifth of his whole force—and two guns. He fell back in disorder on Corunna. He had the audacity to write to Ney that he had retired after an indecisive combat: but the Marshal, reading between the lines of his dispatch, hastened to Corunna with all the troops which had returned from the Asturias, and did not consider the situation secure till he learnt that Carrera had not advanced from Santiago.
Leaving his main body opposite the ‘Division of the Minho,’ the Duke of Elchingen now betook himself to Lugo, to concert a joint plan of operation with Soult [May 30]. The results of their somewhat stormy conference must be told in another chapter.
Meanwhile the situation behind them was rapidly changing. On May 24 La Romana, who had landed at Ribadeo, rejoined Mahy and his army at Villalba. The Marquis, on surveying the situation, came to the conclusion that it was too dangerous to remain in the northern angle of Galicia, between the French army at Lugo and the sea. He resolved to return to the southern region of the province, and to get into touch with Carrera and the troops on the Minho. He therefore bade his army prepare for another forced march across the mountains. They murmured but obeyed, and, cautiously slipping past Soult’s corps by a flank movement, crossed the high-road to Villafranca and reached Monforte de Lemos. From thence they safely descended to Orense, where La Romana established his head quarters [June 6]. Thus the Spaniards were once more in line, and prepared to defend the whole of Southern Galicia.
We have still to deal with the state of affairs in the Asturias. After Ney’s departure on May 22, Kellermann lay at Oviedo and Bonnet at Infiesto. But a few days later the latter general received the disquieting news that Ballasteros, whose movements had hitherto escaped him, was on the move towards the east, and might be intending either to make a raid into the plains of Castile, or to descend on Santander and its weak garrison.
Ballasteros, as a matter of fact, had resolved to stir up trouble in Bonnet’s rear, with the object of drawing him off from the Asturias. Leaving his refuge at Covadonga on May 24 he marched by mule-tracks, unmarked on any map, to Potes in the upper valley of the Deba. There he remained a few days, and finding that he was unpursued, and that his exact situation was unknown to the French, resolved to make a dash for Santander. Starting on June 6 and keeping to the mountains, he successfully achieved his end, and arrived at his goal before the garrison of that place had any knowledge of his approach. On the morning of June 10 he stormed the city, driving out General Noirot, who escaped with 1,000 men, but capturing 200 of the garrison and 400 sick in hospital, as well as the whole of the stores and munitions of Bonnet’s regiments. Among his other prizes was the sum of £10,000 in cash, in the military chest of the division. Some of the French tried to escape by sea, in three corvettes and two luggers which lay in the harbour, but the British frigates Amelia and Statira, which lay off the coast, captured them all. This was a splendid stroke, and if Ballasteros had been prudent he might have got away unharmed with all his plunder. But he lingered in Santander, though he knew that Bonnet must be in pursuit of him, and resolved to defend the town. The French general had started to protect his base and his dépôts, the moment that he ascertained the real direction of Ballasteros’ march. On the night of June 10 he met the fugitive garrison and learnt that Santander had fallen. Late on the ensuing day he reached its suburbs, and sent in two battalions to make a dash at the place. They were beaten off; but next morning Bonnet attacked with his whole force, the Asturians were defeated, and Ballasteros’ raid ended in a disaster. He himself escaped by sea, but 3,000 of his men were captured, and the rest dispersed. The French recovered their sick and prisoners, and such of their stores as the Spaniards had not consumed[486]. The wrecks of Ballasteros’ division drifted back over the hills to their native principality, save one detachment, the regulars of La Romana’s old regiment of La Princesa. This small body of 300 men turned south, and by an astounding march across Old Castile and Aragon reached Molina on the borders of Valencia, where they joined the army of Blake. They had gone 250 miles through territory of which the French were supposed to be in military possession, but threaded their way between the garrisons in perfect safety, because the peasantry never betrayed their position to the enemy.
Disastrous as was its end, Ballasteros’ expedition had yet served its purpose. Not only had it thrown the whole of the French garrisons in Biscay and Guipuzcoa into confusion, but even the Governor of Bayonne had been frightened and had sent alarming dispatches to the Emperor. This was comparatively unimportant, but it was a very different matter that Bonnet had been forced to evacuate the Asturias, all of whose eastern region was now free from the invaders.
More was to follow: Kellermann still lay at Oviedo, worried but not seriously incommoded by Worster and the Asturians of the west. But a few days after Bonnet’s departure he received a request from Mortier (backed by orders from King Joseph), that the division of the 5th Corps which had been lent him should instantly return to Castile. This was one of the results of Wellesley’s campaign on the Douro, for Mortier, hearing of Soult’s expulsion from Northern Portugal, imagined that the British army, being now free for further action, would debouch by Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo and fall upon Salamanca. He needed the aid of his second division, which Kellermann was forced to send back. But it would have been not only useless but extremely dangerous to linger at Oviedo with the small remnant of the expeditionary force, when Girard’s regiments had been withdrawn. Therefore Kellermann wisely resolved to evacuate the whole principality, and returned to Leon by the pass of Pajares in the third week of June.
Thus ended in complete failure the great concentric attack on the Asturias. The causes of the fiasco were two. (1) The French generals chose as their objective, not the enemy’s armies, but his capital and base of operations. Both Ney and Bonnet while marching on Oviedo left what (adapting a naval phrase) we may call an ‘army-in-being’ behind them, and in each case that army fell upon the detachments left in the rear, and pressed them so hard that the invading forces could not stay in the Asturias, but were forced to turn back to protect their communications. (2) In Spain conquest was useless unless a garrison could be left behind to hold down the territory that was overrun. But neither Ney, Kellermann, nor Bonnet had any troops to devote to such a purpose: they invaded the Asturias with regiments borrowed from other regions, from which they could not long be spared. As later experience in 1811 and 1812 showed, it required some 8,000 men merely to maintain a hold upon Oviedo and the central parts of the principality. The invaders had no such force at their disposition—the troops from the 6th Corps were wanted in Galicia, those of the 5th Corps in Castile, those of Bonnet in the Montaña. If it were impossible to garrison the Asturias, the invasion dwindled down into a raid, and a raid which left untouched the larger part of the enemy’s field army was useless. It would have been better policy to hunt Mahy, Worster, and Ballasteros rather than to secure for a bare three weeks military possession of Oviedo and Gijon. If Soult had not dropped from the clouds, as it were, to save Lugo: if Ballasteros had been a little more prudent at Santander, the Asturian expedition would have ended not merely in a failure, but in an ignominious defeat. It should never have been undertaken while the Galician insurrection was still raging, and while no troops were available for the permanent garrisoning of the principality.
Searching a little deeper, may we not say that the ultimate cause of the fiasco was Napoleon’s misconception of the character of the Spanish war? It was he who ordered the invasion of the Asturias, and he issued his orders under the hypothesis that it could be not only conquered but retained. But with the numbers then at the disposal of his generals this was impossible, because the insurrection absorbed so many of their troops, that no more could be detached without risking the loss of all that had been already gained. By grasping at the Asturias Napoleon nearly lost Galicia. Only Soult’s appearance prevented that province from falling completely into the hands of Mahy and La Carrera: and that appearance was as involuntary as it was unexpected. If the Duke of Dalmatia had been able to carry out his original design he would have retreated from Oporto to Zamora and not to Orense. If Beresford had not foiled him at Amarante, he would have been resting on the Douro when Fournier was in such desperate straits at Lugo. In that case Ney might have returned from Oviedo to find that his detachments had been destroyed, and that Galicia was lost. It was not the Emperor’s fault that this disaster failed to occur.