Soult’s main body had broken up from Puebla de Senabria on June 29: from thence Mermet’s, Delaborde’s, and Lorges’ troops marched to Benavente, and those of Merle and Heudelet to Zamora. In these places they enjoyed a few days of rest and began to refit themselves. But it was not long before they were called upon to take part in another great campaign, and once more to face their old enemies the English.
The first care of the Duke of Dalmatia, after he had emerged from the Galician Sierras, had been to write long justificatory dispatches to the Emperor and King Joseph. They are most interesting documents, and explain with perfect clearness his reasons for abandoning Ney and returning to the valley of the Douro. His main thesis is that it was his duty to keep the English in check, since they were the one really dangerous enemy in the Peninsula. Since it was notorious that Wellesley had quitted Northern Portugal, it was practically certain that he must be intending to march southward, to fall upon Victor, and strike a blow at Madrid. It was necessary, therefore, that the 2nd Corps should follow him, and be ready to aid in the defence of the capital. The safety of Madrid was far more important than the subjection of Galicia, and the Marshal had no hesitation in sacrificing the lesser object in order to secure the greater. Ney, he thought, would be strong enough to make head against Noroña and La Romana united: but he could not hope to hold down the whole of Galicia, and he would have either to be reinforced, or to be permitted to evacuate the province.
As to the conquest of Galicia, it would take many men and many months. At present it would be impossible to find the forces necessary for its complete subjection. This could only be done by fortifying not merely Corunna, Ferrol, and Lugo, but also Tuy, Monterey, Viana, and Puebla de Senabria. Each of these places should be given a garrison of 5,000 or 6,000 men, and furnished with stores calculated to last for four months. In addition there would have to be blockhouses built along the high-road from Lugo to Villafranca, and on several other lines. Columns operating from each of the seven great garrisons should be continually moving about, keeping open the communication between stronghold and stronghold, and chastising the insurgents.
Thus Soult calculated that the subjection of Galicia would require from 35,000 to 42,000 men, continually on the move, and never liable to be called upon for any service outside the province. It was absurd, therefore, for him to suggest in a later paragraph that Ney might be left to hold his own. What was the use of setting 15,000 men to work on a task that would strain the energies of 35,000? And where was King Joseph to find the additional 20,000 men, if the 2nd Corps were withdrawn into Leon to watch the British army? No such force could be drawn from any other part of Spain, and it would be useless to ask for reinforcements from France while the Austrian War was calling every available man to the Danube. Soult’s view, clearly, was that Galicia would have to be abandoned for the present, though he did not choose to say so. Till the English had been destroyed, or driven into the sea, King Joseph would never be able to find 35,000 men to lock up in the remote and mountainous north-western corner of the Peninsula[503].
There is not the slightest doubt that Soult’s views were perfectly correct. Looking at the war in the Peninsula as a whole, it was a strategical blunder to endeavour to hold Galicia before Portugal had been conquered. And while the force of the French armies in Spain remained at its present figure, it was impossible to spare two whole army corps for this secondary theatre of operations. The attempt to subdue the province had only been made because Moore had drawn after him to Corunna the armies of Soult and Ney: and, since they were on the spot, the temptation to use them there was too great to be withstood. This is but one more instance of the way in which the famous march to Sahagun had disarranged all the Emperor’s original plans for the conquest of the Peninsula.
It has often been debated whether it would be truer to say that Galicia was delivered by Wellesley’s operations or by the valour and obstinacy of its own inhabitants. After giving all due credit to the gallant peasantry who checked Ney and harassed Soult, to the prudence of the untiring La Romana, and to Noroña’s cautious courage, it is yet necessary to decide that the real cause of the evacuation of the province by the invaders was the presence of the victorious British army in Portugal. The two Marshals might have maintained themselves there for an indefinite time, if they could have shut their eyes to what was going on elsewhere. But Soult was quite right in believing that it would be mad to persist in the attempt to subdue Galicia, while Wellesley was in the field, and nothing lay between him and Madrid but the 22,000 men of the 1st Corps. If he and Ney had lingered on in the north, engaged in fruitless hunting after La Romana, while July and August wore on, Madrid would have fallen into the hands of Wellesley and Cuesta, and King Joseph would once more have been forced to go upon his travels, to Burgos or elsewhere. The Talavera campaign only failed of success because the 2nd and the 6th Corps were withdrawn from the Galician hills just in time to concentrate at Salamanca and fall upon the rear of the victors. If they had been wandering around Monterey or Mondonedo at the end of July, instead of being cantoned in the plains of Leon, the capital of Spain would undoubtedly have been recovered by Wellesley and Cuesta—though whether those ill-assorted colleagues could have held it for long is another question. Into such possibilities it is useless to make inquiry.
N.B.—My best authority for this campaign is the set of dispatches by Carrol in the Record Office. He was at Vigo from June 3 to June 14; with La Romana from June 16 to July 11. Thus he was on the spot for the fight on the Oitaben, and also for the operations against Soult. Napier’s narrative is more than usually faulty in dealing with the end of the Galician campaign. He writes as a partisan of Soult, and his whole tale is drawn from the Marshal’s dispatches and from the book of the panegyrist, Le Noble. His whole picture of the desperate condition of La Romana is untrue: the Marquis had always open to him a safe retreat into Portugal, and his army was never engaged with Soult at all. Carrol’s dispatches make this quite clear. The map (facing p. 125 of vol. ii.) is so hopelessly inaccurate both as to distances, and as to the relative positions of places to each other, that I can only compare it to those ingenious diagrams which a railway produces, in order to show that it possesses the shortest route from London to Edinburgh, or from Brussels to Berlin.
SECTION XV: CHAPTER III
OPERATIONS IN ARAGON: ALCAÑIZ AND BELCHITE
(MARCH-JUNE 1809)