It is now time to see what troops constituted these succours, the 100,000 men with whom the Emperor had originally intended to march in person to the conquest of the Peninsula. On looking through their muster roll the first thing that strikes the eye is that very little—almost nothing indeed—had been taken from the Army of Germany. The Emperor, though Austria was tamed and Prussia was under his feet, did not think it safe to cut down to any great extent the garrisons of Central Europe and Eastern France:
(1) Of all the corps that had taken part in the Wagram campaign only one had been directed on Spain, and this was a force of the second line, a unit originally called the ‘Corps de Réserve de l’Armée d’Allemagne’ and afterwards the 8th Corps. It had played only a small part in the late war, and was mostly composed of the newly raised 4th battalions of regiments serving elsewhere. Recruited up to a strength of 30,000 men by the addition of some stray battalions from Northern Germany, it was the first of all the new reinforcements to reach Spain[216]. Indeed, the head of its column reached Burgos by the 1st of January, 1810. It was assigned to the Army of Portugal. By the drafting away of some of its 4th battalions to join the regiments to which they appertained it ultimately came down to about 20,000 men.
(2) Next in point of importance were the two divisions of the Young Guard under Generals Roguet and Dumoustier, nineteen battalions, with three provisional regiments of the Guard Cavalry, nearly 15,000 men in all. These units had been formed in 1809, just in time for some of them to take their share in the bloody days of Essling and Wagram. The Emperor did not make them over to the Army of Portugal, but retained them in Biscay and Navarre, close under the Pyrenees. Apparently he disliked sending any of his Guards so far afield as to render it difficult to draw them back to France, in the event (unlikely as it was at this moment) of further troubles breaking out in Central Europe. The Guard divisions stayed in Spain two years, but were never allowed to go far forward into the interior.
(3) Deeply impressed with the danger and difficulty of keeping up the lines of communication between Bayonne and Madrid, since Mina and his coadjutors had set the guerrilla war on foot in Navarre and Old Castile, Napoleon had formed a corps whose special duty was to be the keeping open of the roads, and the policing of the country-side between the frontier and the Spanish capital. This was composed of twenty squadrons of Gendarmes, all veterans and picked men, each with a total strength of seven officers and 200 troopers. The decree ordering their selection from among the gendarmerie of Southern and Central France was published on November 24, 1809: but the first squadrons only began to pass the Pyrenees in February 1810, and many did not appear till April and May. Yet 4,000 men were in line by the summer[217].
(4) A few new regiments which had not hitherto been represented in the Peninsula were moved down thither. Among these were the Neuchâtel troops from Berthier’s principality, a German division from the minor states of the Confederation of the Rhine under General Rouyer[218], which went to Catalonia, the 7th, 13th, and 25th Chasseurs à Cheval, with two battalions of Marines. The total did not amount to more than some 10,000 men.
(5) By far the largest item in the reinforcements was composed of the 4th battalions of wellnigh every regiment which was already serving in Spain. The army which had marched across the Pyrenees in 1808 had been organized on the basis of three field-battalions to the regiment, the 4th battalion being the dépôt battalion. But Napoleon had now raised the standard to four (or in a few cases more) field-battalions, over and above the dépôt. All the fourth battalions were now existing and available; a few had served in the Austrian War, many of the others had been lying in the camps which the Emperor had formed at Boulogne, Pontivy, and elsewhere, to protect his coasts against possible English descents. Those belonging to 40 regiments already in Spain, with the full complement of 840 men each, were first ordered to cross the Pyrenees: they numbered 33,600 men: these were all at the front by May 1810. The Emperor somewhat later dispatched the fourth battalions of twenty-six regiments more to the Peninsula, giving to the temporary organization the name of the 9th Corps. This should have given another 21,840 men, and nearly did so; their gross total, when all had reached Vittoria in September 1810, was 20,231. But the 9th Corps should not be reckoned in the first 100,000 men which the Emperor set aside for the spring campaign of 1810, it was a supplementary addition[219].
(6) The Emperor dealt in a similar way with the cavalry; the regiments already in Spain had been reduced to a strength of two or three squadrons by the wear and tear of eighteen months of war. The dépôts had now got ready two squadrons fit for field service. Those belonging to sixteen regiments of dragoons, organized into eight provisional regiments, were sent early to the front, and were all in Spain by January 1810.
(7) In addition to units like 4th battalions and 3rd and 4th squadrons added to the strength of each dragoon or infantry regiment, the Emperor did not neglect to send drafts to fill up the depleted 1st, 2nd, and 3rd battalions and 1st and 2nd squadrons. In the early months of 1810, 27,000 men, in small drafts not amounting to the strength of a battalion or squadron were forwarded to recruit the old units. They went forward in ‘régiments de marche,’ which were broken up on reaching the head quarters of the corps to which each party belonged.
Adding together all the units, with an extra allowance of 3,500 artillery for the new batteries that came in with Junot’s Corps, the Guard divisions, and the 9th Corps, we get as a total of the reinforcements poured into Spain between December 1809, and September 1810, the following figures:—
| Junot’s corps, at its final strength in June, infantry only | 20,000 |
| Young Guard divisions | 15,000 |
| Gendarmerie | 4,000 |
| New regiments | 10,000 |
| 4th battalions, the first arrivals | 33,600 |
| 4th battalions forming the 9th Corps | 20,000 |
| Cavalry in organized squadrons | 5,000 |
| Artillery in complete batteries | 3,500 |
| Drafts, not in permanent units, for Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery | 27,000 |
| 138,100 |