Meanwhile Montbrun’s cavalry, supported by small detachments from the infantry of Ney’s corps, had pressed somewhat further to the north, in order to occupy a broader tract of land from which the army might feed itself, a task that grew harder every day. From his head quarters at Ourem and from Cabaços, on the Thomar-Coimbra road, he continued to send out strong reconnaissances in every direction, of which some occasionally pushed as far as Leiria on the road towards Coimbra, and others scoured the left bank of the lower Zezere and the Nabao. The limit of their excursions was fixed by the fact that Wilson’s brigade of Portuguese militia still lay at Espinhal, and, though it was reduced by desertion and sickness to 1,500 men, was reported to Montbrun as a serious force, with which he had better not meddle. Trant’s troops at Coimbra—a weak militia division—were also estimated at much over their real strength. It was not till later that sheer starvation drove the French further afield, and revealed to them the weakness of the cordon of inferior troops which hemmed them in upon the northern side.
The blockade of the French army, therefore, remained still unbroken, and its communication with the north was as absolutely interrupted in the end of November as in the beginning of October. One attempt to break through the screen of Portuguese irregulars had been made in November, but of its failure Masséna had as yet no knowledge. When Foy reached Rodrigo, on his way to Paris, he had handed over his escort of one battalion of infantry and 120 horsemen to General Gardanne, who was ordered to strengthen them with all the convalescents of the Army of Portugal, and with the garrisons of Almeida and Rodrigo also, if these last had now been relieved by troops of Drouet’s 9th Corps. At the head of 6,000 men, as Masséna calculated, he could cut his way to join the main army, escorting a great train of munitions, of which both the artillery and the infantry at the front were lamentably in need. Gardanne could not gather in the Almeida garrison, as that place was still blockaded by Silveira’s Portuguese. But with the two battalions from Rodrigo, added to Foy’s late escort, and a mass of convalescents, he had collected some 5,000 men by November 20[571], the day on which he marched by the Sabugal-Belmonte-Fundão route towards Punhete and the lower Zezere. He was cursed with dreadful weather, followed and harassed by all the Ordenança of the Castello Branco country, hampered by his heavy convoy, and much troubled by the disorderly convalescents, who were largely professional malingerers. But he got as far as Cardigos on the Sobreira-Formosa road, only fifteen miles from Punhete, where Loison was awaiting him on the Zezere. Here he was brought to a stand (November 27) by the flooded and bridgeless stream of the Codes. No news had reached him from Masséna, while he was assured by Portuguese deserters, who probably were sent out to deceive him by the governor of Abrantes, that the Marshal had not only evacuated his position before the Lines, but was retreating on Spain via the Mondego. They added that Hill had just reached Abrantes with 10,000 men, and was about to march against him. Thereupon Gardanne hastily turned back, reached Penamacor by forced marches on November 29, and from thence retired to Rodrigo, having lost 400 men and 300 horses by disease and fatigue during his ill-conducted expedition. If he had pushed forward fifteen miles further on the 28th, he would have got into touch with Loison, and reached Masséna’s head quarters in safety. Wellington, not without reason, professed himself unable to comprehend this strange march and countermarch. ‘I do not exactly understand this movement[572],’ and ‘if this march was ordered by superior authority, and was connected with any other arrangements, it had every appearance of, and was attended by all the consequences of, a precipitate and forced retreat[573].’
Here, then, we leave Masséna and his army, cantoned in the space between the Rio Mayor and the Zezere, still destitute of news from France, and still entirely ignorant whether or no any endeavour was being made to relieve them. Of their further doings during the three months that ended on March 1, 1811, we shall tell elsewhere. Suffice it to say that, despite many dangers and risks, Wellington’s scheme of starvation was played out to the end, and achieved complete success. Of the privation and losses that the French suffered, and the atrocities that they committed, of the difficulties of the British Commander-in-Chief—with an obstinate enemy still in front of him, a factious Regency and a half-starved population behind him in Lisbon, and a disquieting prospect that Soult might take a hand in the game—the fourth volume of this work will give full details.
SECTION XXII
END OF THE YEAR 1810
CHAPTER I
OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH AND EAST OF SPAIN (JULY–DECEMBER 1810)
While tracing the all-important Campaign of Portugal, down to the deadlock in front of Santarem, which began about the 20th of November, 1810, and was to endure till the 1st of March in the succeeding year, we have been obliged to leave untouched events, civil and military, in many other parts of the Peninsula during the autumn. Only the Andalusian campaigns have been carried down to November: in Northern Spain we have traced the course of affairs no further than September[574]: in Eastern Spain no further than August[575]. Moreover, little has been said of the general effect on the French occupation caused by the division of supreme authority which Napoleon sanctioned in the spring[576], or of the importance of the long-deferred meeting of the Spanish Cortes, which assembled at Cadiz in the autumn. With these points we must deal before proceeding to narrate the campaigns of 1811.
The survey of the military operations, none of which were particularly important, must precede the summary of the political situation, with regard to King Joseph on the one side and the Cortes on the other. For the acts of the King and the Cortes had an influence extending far beyond the months in which they began, and were, indeed, main factors in the Peninsular struggle for years to come. But the doings of the armies in Galicia and Asturias on the one flank, in Catalonia and Valencia on the other, can easily be dismissed in a few pages: they were but preliminaries to the greater operations in the spring of 1811.