A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 3, Sep. 1809-Dec. 1810

by Charles Oman

Undismayed by their first repulse, the Spanish ministers were soon making new representations to Wellesley and Wellington, in order to induce them to commit the English army to a forward policy. They sent in repeated schemes for supplying Wellington with food and transport on a lavish scale[69]; but he merely expressed his doubts as to whether orders that looked admirable on paper would ever be carried out in practice. He consented for the present to remain at Badajoz, as long as he could subsist his army in its environs, but warned the Junta that it was more probable that he would retire within the Portuguese border, for reasons of supply, than that he would join in another campaign on the Tagus.

Despite of all, the government at Seville went on with its plans for a general advance, even after they recognized that Wellington was not to be moved. A grand plan of operations was gradually devised by the War-Minister Cornel and his advisers. Stated shortly it was as follows. The army in La Mancha, which Venegas had rallied after the disaster of Almonacid, was to be raised to a strength of over 50,000 men by the drafting into it of a full two-thirds of Cuesta’s old army of Estremadura. On September 21 Eguia marched eastwards up the Guadiana, with three divisions of infantry and twelve or thirteen regiments of cavalry, to join Venegas[70]. The remaining force, amounting to two divisions of infantry and 2,500 cavalry, was left in Estremadura under the Duke of Albuquerque, the officer to whom the government was obliged to assign this army, because the Junta of Badajoz pressed for his appointment and would not hear of any other commander. He was considered an Anglophil, and a friend of some of the Andalusian malcontents, so the force left with him was cut down to the minimum. All the old regular regiments were withdrawn from him, save one single battalion, and he was left with nothing save the newly-raised volunteer units, some of which had behaved so badly at Talavera[71]. His cavalry was soon after reduced by the order to send a brigade to join the Army of the North, so that he was finally left with only five regiments of that arm or about 1,500 sabres. Of his infantry, about 12,000 strong, over 4,000 were absorbed by the garrison of Badajoz, so that he had only 8,000 men available for service in the field.

Eguia, on the other hand, carried with him to La Mancha some 25,000 men, the picked corps of the Estremaduran army; and, as the remains of Venegas’s divisions rallied and recruited after Almonacid, amounted to rather more than that number, the united force exceeded 50,000 sabres and bayonets. With this army the Junta intended to make a direct stroke at Madrid, while Albuquerque was directed to show himself on the Tagus, in front of Almaraz and Talavera, with the object of detaining at least one of the French corps in that direction. It was hoped, even yet, that Wellington might be induced to join in this demonstration. If once the redcoats reappeared at the front, neither Soult nor Mortier could be moved to oppose the army of La Mancha. Meanwhile Ney and the French corps in Leon and Old Castile were to be distracted by the use of a new force from the north, whose composition must be explained. The Junta held that the last campaign had failed only because the allies had possessed no force ready to detain Soult and Ney. If they had not appeared at Plasencia, Wellington, Cuesta, and Venegas would have been able to drive King Joseph out of his capital. Two months later the whole position was changed, in their estimation, by the fact that Spain once more possessed a large ‘Army of the Left,’ which would be able to occupy at least two French corps, while the rest of the allies marched again on Madrid. That such a force existed did indeed modify the aspect of affairs. La Romana had been moved to Seville to become a member of the Junta, but his successor, the Duke Del Parque, was collecting a host very formidable as far as numbers went. The old army of Galicia had been reformed into four divisions under Martin de la Carrera, Losada, Mahy, and the Conde de Belveder—the general whose name was so unfortunately connected with the ill-fought combat of Gamonal. These four divisions now comprised 27,000 men, of whom more than half were newly-raised Galician recruits, whom La Romana had embodied in the depleted cadres of his original battalions, after Ney and Soult had evacuated the province in July. A few of the ancient regiments that had made the campaign of Espinosa had died out completely—their small remnants having been drafted into other corps[72]. On the other hand there were a few new regiments of Galician volunteers—but La Romana had set his face against the creation of such units, wisely preferring to place his new levies in the ranks of the old battalions of the regular army[73]. In the main, therefore, the new ‘Army of the Left’ represented, as far as names and cadres went, Blake’s original ‘Army of Galicia[74].’ It had the same cardinal fault as that army, in that it had practically no cavalry whatever: the single dragoon regiment that Blake had owned (La Reina) having been almost completely destroyed in 1808[75]. Each division had a battery; the guns, of which La Romana’s army had been almost destitute in the spring, had been supplied from England, and landed at Corunna during the summer.

But the Galician divisions, though the most numerous, were not the only units which were told off to the new ‘Army of the Left.’ Asturias had been free of invaders since Ney and Bonnet retired from its borders in June 1809. The Central Junta ordered Ballasteros to join the main army with the few regular troops in the principality, and ten battalions of the local volunteers, a force of over 9,000 men. The Asturian Junta, always very selfish and particularist in its aims, made some protests but obeyed. Nine of its less efficient regiments were left behind to watch Bonnet.

Finally the Duke Del Parque himself had been collecting fresh levies about Ciudad Rodrigo, while the plains of Leon lay abandoned by the French during the absence of Ney’s corps in the valley of the Tagus. Including the garrison of Rodrigo he had 9,000 men, all in new units save one old line battalion and one old militia regiment[76]. Deducting the 3,500 men which held the fortress, there were seven battalions—nearly 6,000 bayonets—and a squadron or two of horse available for the strengthening of the field army. These were now told off as the ‘5th Division of the Army of the Left’; that of Ballasteros was numbered the 3rd Division.

The Galician, Asturian, and Leonese divisions had between them less than 500 horsemen. To make up for this destitution the Central Junta directed the Duke of Albuquerque to send off to Ciudad Rodrigo, via the Portuguese frontier, a brigade of his cavalry. Accordingly the Prince of Anglona marched north with three regiments[77], only 1,000 sabres in all, and joined Del Parque on September 25. Thus at the end of that month the ‘Army of the Left’ numbered nearly 50,000 men—all infantry save 1,500 horse and 1,200 gunners. But they were scattered all over North-Western Spain, from Oviedo to Astorga, and from Astorga to Ciudad Rodrigo, and had to be concentrated before they could act. Nor was the concentration devoid of danger, for the French might fall upon the Asturians or the Leonese before they had joined the Galician main body. As a matter of fact the 50,000 never took the field in one mass, for Del Parque left a division under Mahy to protect Galicia, and, when these regiments and the garrison of Rodrigo were deducted, he had but 40,000 in all, including sick and men on detachment. This, nevertheless, constituted a formidable force—if it had been in existence in July, Soult and Ney could never have marched against Wellington with their whole strength, and the Talavera campaign might have had another end. But the troops were of varying quality—the Leonese division was absolutely raw: the Galicians had far too many recruits with only two months’ training in their ranks, the Estremaduran cavalry had a bad record of disasters. A general of genius might have accomplished something with the Army of the Left—but Del Parque, though more cautious than many of his compeers, was no genius.

The Junta had a deeply-rooted notion that if sufficient pressure were applied to Wellesley and Wellington, they would permit Beresford’s Portuguese army, now some 20,000 strong, to join Del Parque for the advance into the plains of Leon. They had mistaken their men: Wellington returned as peremptory a refusal to their request for the aid of the Portuguese troops as to their demand that his own British army should advance with Albuquerque to the Tagus[78].

Nothing could be more hazardous than the plan finally formulated at the Seville War Office for the simultaneous advance of the armies of La Mancha, the North, and Estremadura. Even if it had been energetically supported by Wellington and Beresford, it would have been rash: converging operations by several armies starting from distant bases against an enemy concentrated in their midst are proverbially disastrous. In this particular plan three forces—numbering in all about 110,000 men, and starting from points so far apart as Ciudad Rodrigo, Truxillo, and the Passes by La Carolina, were to fall upon some 120,000 men, placed in a comparatively compact body in their centre. A single mistake in the timing of operations, the chance that one Spanish army might outmarch another, or that one of the three might fail to detain any hostile force in its front (as had happened with Venegas during the Talavera Campaign) was bound to be ruinous. The French had it in their power to deal with their enemies in detail, if the least mischance should occur: and with Spanish generals and Spanish armies it was almost certain that some error would be made.

Meanwhile the Junta made their last preparation for the grand stroke, by deposing Venegas from the command of the united army in La Mancha. Eguia held the interim command for a few days, but was to be replaced by Areizaga, an elderly general who had never commanded more than a single division, and had to his credit only courage shown in a subordinate position at the battle of Alcañiz. He was summoned from Lerida, and came hastily to take up his charge.

The sole advantage which the Spaniards possessed in October 1809 was that their enemy did not expect to be attacked. A month after Talavera matters had apparently settled down for the whole autumn, as far as the French generals could calculate. With the knowledge that the Austrian War was over, and that unlimited reinforcements could now be poured into Spain by his brother, King Joseph was content to wait. He had refused to allow Soult to make his favourite move of invading Portugal in the end of August, because he wished the Emperor to take up the responsibility of settling the next plan of campaign, and of determining the number of new troops that would be required to carry it out. The French corps, therefore, were in a semicircle round Madrid: Soult and Mortier in the central Tagus Valley at Plasencia and Talavera, Victor in La Mancha, with Sebastiani supporting him at Toledo and Aranjuez, Ney at Salamanca, Dessolles and the Royal Guard as a central reserve in the capital. This was a purely defensive position, and Joseph intended to retain it, till the masses of troops from Germany, with the Emperor himself perchance at their head, should come up to his aid. It does not seem to have entered into his head that the enemy would again take the offensive, after the fiasco of the Talavera campaign, and the bloody lesson of Almonacid.