Soult’s first action, on finding himself placed in command of the whole of the French forces in North-western Spain, was to issue orders to Mortier to march on Salamanca, and to Ney to bring the 6th Corps down to Benavente. These dispositions clearly indicate an intention of falling upon Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and assailing Northern Portugal—the plan which the Duke of Dalmatia had broached to the King in his letter from Puebla de Senabria on June 25, before he had received the news that the 5th and 6th Corps had been added to his command.
It is clear that on July 2 Soult had no knowledge of Wellesley’s movements, and thought that the British army was quite as likely to be aiming at Salamanca as at Madrid. It is also evident that he was aware that he would be unable to move for some weeks. Till the 2nd Corps should have received the clothing, munitions, and artillery which had been promised it, it could not possibly take the field for the invasion of Portugal.
Soult, therefore, was obliged to wait till his stores should be replenished, and till the two corps from Astorga and Valladolid should concentrate on his flanks. It was while he was remaining perforce in this posture of expectation that the news of the real condition of affairs in New Castile was at last brought to him.
SECTION XVI: CHAPTER III
WELLESLEY AND CUESTA: THE INTERVIEW AT MIRABETE
It was not till the third day of July that Wellesley had been able to cross the Spanish border. Since Victor had assumed his new position to the north of the Tagus as early as the nineteenth of the preceding month, there was a perilous fortnight during which Cuesta and his army were left alone to face the French. All through this time of waiting, the British Commander-in-chief was haunted by the dread that the old Captain-General might repeat his earlier errors, and once more—as at Rio Seco and Medellin—court a pitched battle. Wellesley had done his best to urge caution, by letters written not only to Cuesta himself, but to his Chief-of-the-staff O’Donoju and to Colonel Roche, who had now replaced Bourke as British representative at the head quarters of the Army of Estremadura. Fortunately they were not needed: the Spanish General was for once cautious: he followed Victor at a respectful distance, and when he had reached the Tagus and repaired the bridge of Almaraz, held back his army to the southern bank and only pushed a few small detachments beyond the stream to search for the enemy. Since the French had withdrawn to Talavera on June 26 there was no collision. The cavalry of the 1st Corps were discovered upon the upper Tietar and the Alberche, but they preserved a defensive attitude, and the Spaniards did not provoke them by any rash attempt to drive them back upon their main body. All remained quiet, as Wellesley had rather desired than expected.
Cuesta’s strategical position, therefore, was perfectly secure, since he kept his main body to the south of the river, and showed no desire to meddle with Victor before the arrival of the British. At this moment military affairs were not the only things that were engaging the attention of the old Captain-General. He was watching with considerable anxiety the course of events at Seville, where he was aware that he had many enemies. Ever since his high-handed action against the deputies of Leon in the preceding autumn, he knew that the Central Junta, and especially its Liberal wing, viewed him with suspicion and dislike. It was with great reluctance that they had placed him in command of the Estremaduran army, and if he had not been popular with the Conservative and clerical party and with some of the military cliques, he would not have retained his post for long. At this moment there were many intrigues stirring in Andalusia, and if some of them were directed against the Junta, others had no other end than the changing of the commanders of the various armies. While the Junta were debating about forms of government, and especially about the summoning of a national Cortes in the autumn, there were a number of officers of damaged reputation whose main object was to recover the military rank of which they had been deprived after misfortunes in the field. Infantado, who thought that it was absurd that he should have been disgraced after Ucles, while Cuesta had been rewarded after Medellin, was at the head of one party of intriguers, which included Francisco Palafox and the Conde de Montijo, and had secured the aid of Colonel Doyle, late British agent in Aragon and Catalonia, an officer who showed a lamentable readiness to throw himself into the intestine quarrels of the Spanish factions[586]. Their actions went to the very edge of high treason, for Montijo stirred up a riot at Granada on April 16, attacked the provincial authorities, and almost succeeded in carrying out a pronunciamiento which must have led to civil war. The Junta did no more than banish him to San Lucar, from which place he continued his plots with Infantado, in spite of the warning that he had received.
In Seville, faction if not so openly displayed was equally violent. There was, as we have already said, a large section of the Junta whose dearest wish would have been to displace Cuesta: it was they who had obtained the nomination of Venegas to take charge of the troops in La Mancha, merely because he was known to be an enemy of the elder general. Yet since the two armies would have to co-operate in any attempt to recover Madrid, it was clearly inexpedient that their commanders should be at enmity. Some of the politicians at Seville were set on giving high command to the Duke of Albuquerque, an energetic and ambitious officer, but one gifted with the talent of quarrelling with every superior under whom he served: he was now bickering with Cuesta just as in March he had bickered with Cartaojal. The Duke was a great admirer of all things English, and a personal friend of Frere, the British minister. The latter did his best to support his pretensions, often expressing in official correspondence with the Junta a desire that Albuquerque might be given an independent corps, and entrusted with the charge of the movement that was to be concerted in conjunction with Wellesley’s army.
But it was not so much Albuquerque as Wellesley himself that Cuesta dreaded as a possible successor. For Frere was possessed with the notion that the time had now arrived at which it would be possible to press for the appointment of a single Commander-in-chief of all the Spanish armies. The obvious person to fill this post was the victor of Vimiero and Oporto, if only Spanish pride would consent to the appointment of a foreigner. Frere had sufficient sense to refrain from openly publishing his idea. But he was continually ventilating it to his private friends in the Junta, in season and out of season. There can be no doubt that both from the military and the political point of view the results of Wellesley’s exaltation to the position of Generalissimo would have been excellent. If he had controlled the whole of the Spanish armies in the summer of 1809, the course of affairs in the Peninsula would have taken a very different turn, and the campaign of Talavera would not have been wrecked by the hopeless want of co-operation between the allied armies. But it was not yet the time to press for the appointment: great as Wellesley’s reputation already was, when compared with that of any Spanish general, it was still not so splendid or so commanding as to compel assent to his promotion[587]. Legitimate national pride stood in the way, and even after Espinosa, and Tudela, and Medellin the Spaniards could not believe that it was necessary for them to entrust the whole responsibility for the defence of their country to the foreigner. Only a few of the politicians of Seville showed any liking for the project. Wellesley himself would have desired nothing so much as this appointment, but being wiser and less hopeful than Frere, he thought it useless to press the point. When the sanguine diplomat wrote to him, early in June, to detail his attempts to bring home the advisability of the project to his Spanish friends, the general’s reply was cautious in the extreme. ‘I am much flattered,’ he said, ‘by the notion entertained by some of the persons in authority at Seville, of appointing me to the command of the Spanish armies. I have received no instruction from Government upon that subject: but I believe that it was considered an object of great importance in England that the Commander-in-chief of the British troops should have that situation. But it is one more likely to be attained by refraining from pressing it, and leaving it to the Spanish themselves to discover the expediency of the arrangement, than by any suggestion on our parts.’ He concluded by informing Frere that he could not conceive that his insinuation was likely to have any effect, and that the opinion of the British Ministry was probably correct—viz. that at present national jealousy made the project hopeless[588].