This necessary arrangement the Emperor utterly refused to carry out: he sent rebukes to Drouet for hesitating to obey the orders of the Prince of Essling, and he jested at the absurd conduct of Ney and Junot in conducting themselves like independent generals[539]. But these officers were in command of troops definitely allotted to the Army of Portugal. Over the other generals of Spain he refused to allow Masséna any control, and he continued to send them his own ever-tardy instructions, which had often ceased to be appropriate long before the dispatch had reached its destination. If we seek the reasons of this unwise persistence in his old methods, we find that they were two. The first was his secret, but only half-disguised, intention to annex all the Spanish provinces north of the Ebro to France, an insane resolve which led him to keep Suchet and Macdonald in Aragon and Catalonia, as well as the governors of Navarre and Biscay, out of the control of any central authority that he might set up in Spain. The second was his jealousy of entrusting the vast army south of the Ebro, far more than 250,000 men at the moment, to any single commander. He remembered Soult’s absurd strivings after royalty in Portugal; he knew that Masséna, though the best of soldiers, was false, selfish, and ambitious; and he refused to hand over to either of them a full control over the whole of the forces in the Peninsula. It was even better, in his estimation, to leave King Joseph a shadow of power, than to take the risk of giving overmuch authority to one of the two able, but not wholly trustworthy, marshals to whom he must otherwise have entrusted it.
The war in Portugal, therefore, went on as a mere section of the great contest in the Peninsula; the other and less important episodes were not made wholly subordinate to it. And if this system continued Wellington was free from any real danger. He knew it himself; he studied diligently both the political position and the details of the emplacement of the imperial armies in the Peninsula. He was fortunate enough to secure whole budgets of French dispatches captured by the Ordenança[540], and all that he read confirmed him in his conclusion. ‘I calculate,’ he writes on October 27, ‘that a reinforcement of 15,000 men would not now give the enemy so good an army as they had at Bussaco. He lost 2,000 killed or taken there: Trant took 5,000 at Coimbra: above 1,000 prisoners have gone through this army: many have been killed by the peasantry. They cannot have less than 4,000 sick[541], after the march they have made, and the weather to which they are exposed. The deserters tell us that almost every one is sick. From this statement you may judge of the diminution of their numbers; and you will see that I have not much reason to apprehend anything from [Drouet’s] “quinze beaux bataillons which fought at Essling”[542], and which cannot be here before the middle of November. I do not think I have much to apprehend even if Mortier is added to them. However, we shall see how that will be.... All the accounts which I receive of the distresses of the enemy for want of provisions would tend to a belief that their army cannot remain long in the position in which it is placed, and it is astonishing that they have been able to remain here so long as this[543].’ That they have succeeded in staying even a fortnight in front of the Lines is, he adds, entirely the fault of the Portuguese government, for not carrying out thoroughly the work of devastation. But, for the reasons stated on an earlier page, Wellington was resolved not to take the offensive, even against a foe whose ranks were beginning to grow thin. Famine should do the work, and no lives should be wasted.
There remained only one danger: it was just possible that Soult, even though Masséna had not yet suffered any disaster great enough to make the evacuation of Eastern Andalusia imperative, might send Mortier and some additional divisions of his other corps to Spanish Estremadura, and make a dash at the Lower Tagus. Masséna’s boat-building at Santarem, of which every deserter spoke, might be intended to give him the materials for a bridge by which he might communicate across the Lower Tagus with Soult. Wellington accordingly resolved to keep a strict watch beyond the Tagus, and to have a flying force ready, which could hinder the construction of a bridge or a bridge head. With this object on November 2 he sent over the Tagus General Fane, with his 1,500 Portuguese horse, a battalion of Caçadores, and a few guns. All the North Alemtejo Ordenança were called out to watch the river banks, and to lend what small assistance they could to the cavalry. Fane discovered the French dockyard at Santarem, and tried to fire it with rockets on November 13. He failed, but the mere appearance of his little force on the further bank of the Tagus had some good effect, since it warned Masséna that an attempt to pass the broad river would not be unopposed, and therefore made him more chary of attempting it. Fane, being in touch with Abrantes on his right hand and with Lisbon on his left, now formed, as it were, a section of the blockading screen which was thrown round the whole French army.
Wellington had miscalculated the time which the French could afford to spend in front of the Lines, without suffering actual starvation, by about a fortnight. On November 10 Masséna gave orders for the evacuation of his whole position, and a general retreat on Santarem, because it had become absolutely impossible to stay any longer on the ground facing Zibreira and Alhandra, unless the whole army was to perish. The report from the 8th Corps may suffice to give in a few words the condition of affairs, ‘General Clausel wishes to observe that during the daytime he cannot count on any other troops save those actually guarding the outpost line. The majority of the men are absent on raids to the rear, to seek for maize and cattle. The last detachment which came back to camp had been nine days away. Generals and soldiers agree in stating that for some time it has only been possible to collect a little corn with extreme difficulty. For eight days the troops have been living on polenta (boiled maize flour) alone, and of this they have received only half a ration. During the last four days the 1st Division has received only one ration of meat, which amounted to six ounces of goat’s-flesh. If the corps had to make a retreat, it would have to abandon its sick and wounded for want of carts, which the intendant-generals will not furnish[544].’ The condition of the 2nd and 6th Corps was only so far better that they had to send their foragers a less distance, when seeking for the scanty store which could still be gleaned from the hidden granaries of the Portuguese.
But Masséna had no intention of retiring on Spain when he began to issue orders for a general movement to the rear. Profoundly sensible of the difficulties of a November retreat through the mountains, trusting that he might block the British army by maintaining a bold attitude in its front, and still hoping that large reinforcements might reach him ere long from Drouet and Mortier, he had resolved only to evacuate the Lisbon peninsula, and to retire no further than to the flat and fertile lands between Santarem and the Zezere. In the Plain of Golegão, as it is sometimes called, he hoped to feed his army for many weeks more, for the region was still comparatively full of resources, since it had only been exploited as yet by the garrison of Santarem and the flying columns which had marched to the Zezere. It was now his cherished hope that Wellington might follow him into the plain-land, abandoning his defensive system, and consenting to give battle in the open. The English might even be induced to attack the French army when it should have taken up a new and a strong position. In somewhat rash confidence the Marshal professed himself certain of the result, even with his depleted army of under 50,000 men, if Wellington would consent to fight. At the worst, if starved out again or beaten in the field, he would retreat on Spain by Castello Branco, for which purpose he had sent up the greater part of his boat-train from Santarem to build a bridge over the Zezere. He had also pushed part of Loison’s brigade of infantry across that river at Punhete, and was holding with it a point suitable for a tête-du-pont. A regiment of dragoons was attached to this force: it skirmished not unfrequently with parties sent out to reconnoitre from Abrantes, but with no serious result. For General Lobo, the governor, had no intention of coming out with a large detachment, in order to push the French advanced guard back over the river. He had been ordered to keep to the defensive, and only sent out occasional reconnaissances to see whether the enemy were still in position.
Loison’s troops were now no longer the only large force which had quitted the army in front of the Lines. Not only was Montbrun, with the main body of the cavalry, watching the roads from the north, but six battalions of infantry had been sent up from the 6th Corps on November 8 to occupy Torres Novas and Thomar. If Wellington had attacked the enemy behind Sobral on any day after that date, he would have found Ney short of fourteen battalions[545] out of the thirty-four which formed his corps. There would have been only 10,000 infantry ready to support Junot in the direction of Alemquer. But this fact, of course, was unknown to the English general, who had already made up his mind not to take the offensive. If it had come to his knowledge, he might have attacked, even at the last moment, with an enormous probability of inflicting on the enemy not the mere repulse that he disliked to contemplate—on account of its ulterior effects—but a crushing defeat, which might have hurled them out of Portugal.
On November 10 Masséna ordered the hospitals of the 6th and 8th Corps at Alemquer, and of the 2nd Corps at Azambuja, to be sent off to Santarem. At the same time the intendants of the commissariat were ordered to direct to the rear the meagre store of provisions which was in their possession, loaded on the much depleted transport train which still survived. On the 13th the reserve parks and the artillery train of each corps were ordered to follow. On the 14th, at eight o’clock in the evening, the infantry, many of whom lay in contact with the British lines, acted on their marching directions. Ney’s main body, which was out of sight of Wellington, was to move first; then Junot and Ferey’s brigade, whose movement was most perilous—for if their departure were discovered while they were on the hither side of the defile of Alemquer, they ran a great risk of being enveloped and destroyed. Reynier was to maintain his position at Villafranca and Carregado, until it was reported to him that Junot and his corps had passed Alemquer and reached Moinho de Cubo. For if the 2nd Corps had gone off at an early hour, and its departure had been discovered, Hill might have marched from Alhandra on Alemquer quickly enough to intercept Junot at that point; and if Junot were being pursued at the moment by the troops from his immediate front, the whole 8th Corps might have been cut off.
On the night of the 14th, when the movement was commencing, Masséna was favoured with the greatest piece of luck which had come to him since the explosion of Almeida. A fog began to rise in the small hours, and had become dense by the early morning. It caused some difficulty to the retiring troops, and dragoons had to be placed at every cross road to point out the right direction to the infantry columns[546]. But it had the all-important result of permitting the British outposts to see nothing at dawn. The limit visible to them was less than 100 yards. It was only at ten o’clock in the morning of the 15th that the mists were suddenly rolled up by an east wind, and that the nearer outposts could see that the French sentinels in front of them had disappeared. The first alarm was given by Campbell’s 6th Division[547]. The news spread along the whole line from west to east, and reached the Commander-in-Chief, who ascended the hill in front of Sobral a few minutes later[548]. The ingenuity of the enemy in concealing his departure had been great. Ferey’s brigade, in front of Arruda, had erected a well-designed line of dummy sentinels before the Light Division, which were not discovered to be men of straw, topped with old shakos and bound to poles, till the fog rolled off on the 15th[549].
Meanwhile the French had accomplished the first stage of their retreat absolutely unmolested. Ney had retreated as far as Alcoentre; Junot had passed the defile of Alemquer, and passed through Moinho de Cubo to Aveira de Cima. Reynier, who had waited till Junot was in safety before he withdrew at eight in the morning, reached Cartaxo before the day ended. The first and most difficult stage of the retreat had been finished without a shot being fired. What would have happened had the night of the 14th been clear and starry, and the morning sun had shone out on the 15th, so that Junot would have been detected as he was passing Alemquer, and Reynier would have been visible still in line of battle behind Villafranca, the French diarists of the campaign prefer not to contemplate. Yet they mostly continued to speak of Wellington as a mediocre general, who had all the luck on his side.
On the night of the 15th the British Commander-in-Chief had to draw his deductions from the facts before him. Three things were possible: Masséna might have been so thoroughly starved out and broken in spirit, that he might be intending to retire on Spain, either via Thomar and the Mondego, or by his new bridge on the Zezere and the route of Castello Branco. Or he might be proposing to cross the Tagus by means of the boats and pontoons still remaining at Santarem, to seek unwasted fields in the Alemtejo and a junction with Mortier. Or, again, he might merely be abandoning a position that was no longer tenable, in order to take up a new one—perhaps at Santarem, perhaps at Thomar, but very possibly at and about Abrantes, whose siege he might be contemplating[550].