There is hardly ever an excuse for a governor who surrenders without having withstood at least one assault, and Napoleon laid down the general rule that any officer so doing should be sent before a court martial. Imaz with his large garrison, his immense artillery resources, and his certainty of being relieved in ten days was least of all men in a condition to plead justification. It is only necessary to compare him with Alvarez at Gerona, who with a smaller garrison and a far weaker fortress held out for three months, after not one but three large breaches had been made in his weak mediaeval enceinte. The Regency very properly ordered Imaz to be put on his trial, but the proceedings, which only commenced when the French liberated him, dragged on interminably, and had not come to an end when the war ceased in 1814. If ever there was a case where an example in the style of Admiral Byng, pour encourager les autres, could have been rightfully made, this was one.
Soult, relieved from desperate anxiety by Imaz’s surrender, had no other thought than to return as quickly as possible to Andalusia. Leaving Mortier at Badajoz with sixteen battalions and five regiments of cavalry, about 11,000 men, he started back for Seville on the third day after the capitulation, taking with him two regiments of dragoons and the bulk of Gazan’s division[84]. As he marched he was in fear that any hour might bring the news that Daricau had lost Seville, or that Victor had been forced to abandon the siege of Cadiz, for the report of the bloody defeat of Barrosa (March 5) had reached him on the 12th of March, and heightened his anxiety. But he reached Seville on March 20th, to find that the situation might yet be saved, and that Andalusia was still his own.
His achievements during the two months of his Estremaduran campaign had indeed been splendid. With an army not exceeding 20,000 men, and operating in the worst of weather, he had taken two fortresses, won a battle in the open field, and captured 16,000 prisoners. The Spanish Army of Estremadura, which had seemed so powerful at the commencement of his campaign, was almost exterminated, and the frontier of Portugal was laid open. Soult had redeemed his promise to make a powerful diversion in favour of Masséna, and it is hard to see how he could have done more. For he could not have moved to the Tagus before Badajoz fell, and (thanks to the courage of Menacho) that city had held out till eight days after the date on which Masséna ordered the Army of Portugal to commence its retreat to the north. Wellington’s plan of starvation had, after all, achieved its effect, and Masséna had been driven out of his position before Soult was in a position to come to his aid. Even if Masséna had stayed a little longer at Santarem, it seems hard to believe that Soult could have joined him, considering that Elvas, a place stronger than Badajoz, was in his front, and that the news from Andalusia spelt utter ruin unless he should return to save it. He must have done so, even if on March 11 the Army of Portugal had still been in its old position.
SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER III
MASSÉNA’S LAST WEEKS AT SANTAREM
JANUARY-MARCH 1811
After the arrival of Drouet and his division of the 9th Corps at Leiria in the early days of the New Year, there was no serious movement of any part of the French or the British armies for some weeks. The weather was bad, and the troops on both sides remained in their cantonments, save such of the French as were detailed for the perpetual marauding parties up the line of the Zezere or in the southern slopes of the Serra da Estrella by which alone the army was kept alive. The ranks of Masséna’s battalions continued to grow thinner, but not at such a rate as in November and December—for the weakly men had already been weeded out by the dreadful mortality of the preceding period. Provisions had daily to be sought further and further afield, but they were not wholly exhausted. The Marshal waited anxiously for further news from Paris, and for tidings that the Army of Andalusia was coming to his aid. But after the arrival of Drouet’s column no further information got through for five weeks, for Wilson and Trant were blocking the northern roads with their militia as effectually as in the time before the 9th Corps started from Almeida.
Wellington, for his part, was waiting for his great scheme of starvation to work out to its logical end. He had, as has already been observed, somewhat underrated the time for which the French would be able to live on the resources of the country that he dominated. More than once in December and January he thought that he had detected the signs of a coming retreat, and had been disappointed[85]. The enemy still remained in his old cantonments, and nothing more than petty movements of small units had taken place. This anxious waiting was, as might have been expected, trying to Wellington’s temper. He was not shaken in his belief that he had made the right decision, but it was exasperating to see the deadlock on the Tagus continuing far beyond his expectations, and the Estremaduran campaign developing behind his back. During the long weeks of tension the strain on his mind vented itself in criticism, reasonable and unreasonable, of the authorities with whom he had to work—the British and Portuguese Governments.
The administration of Spencer Perceval had done its best to maintain the war and to support its general, under great difficulties. It had not shrunk from making financial exertions of the most unprecedented kind in order to keep up the war in Portugal. As Lord Liverpool pointed out to Wellington[86], the army in the Peninsula had cost £2,778,796 in 1808, £2,639,764 in 1809; in 1810 the sum asked for had risen to £6,061,235—more than double the total of either of the preceding years. And this did not include either ordnance stores, supplies sent out in kind, or the hire of transports, which were calculated to make out £2,000,000 more. The Government had provided these sums in face of a bitter and carping opposition on the part of the Whigs, and despite of much lukewarmness among their own followers, of whom many considered that the limit of reasonable expense had been reached. As Lord Liverpool observed, the increase of the Portuguese subsidy, and the taking into British pay of the larger half of the Portuguese army, had been ‘carried by a small and unwilling majority[87].’ The Government had driven the money bills through the House of Commons only by smart cracking of the whip of party loyalty. They had promised Wellington that his army should be increased by 14,000 men during the course of the winter, and the promise was in the course of fulfilment. Many regiments had already arrived; all were to reach the Tagus before March was out. This had been done in a time of dire distress to the Tory party, George III had been prostrated by his last attack of insanity, which was destined to be permanent, in October 1810. As it became certain that his recovery was not to be looked for, the appointment of the Prince of Wales as Regent was the obvious and necessary corollary. But the Prince was still reckoned a Whig, and it was believed with reason that his first act on coming into power would be to dismiss the Perceval Ministry, and to call upon Grey, Grenville, and Sheridan to form an administration. The Tories all through the winter thought that they were destined to immediate expulsion from office, and had before them a long strife with the Crown. It was only at the beginning of February 1811 that the younger George, who had taken the oath as Regent on the 6th of that month, announced, to the general surprise of the nation, that he had no intention of dismissing the Ministry, and was prepared to work with them. Perceval and Liverpool, during the three preceding months, were doing their best for the army in Portugal while they believed that a political disaster was hanging over their heads. They did not yet realize that the Prince’s Whig principles had worn thin of late, and that he was tired of the dictatorial manners which Grey and Grenville had adopted towards him.
It is terrible to contemplate the results which might have followed had the Whigs come into office at this juncture. They were pledged to the theory that the Peninsular War was hopeless and ought to be abandoned. Grey and Grenville had stated that Wellington was a failure; they had denied that Talavera was a victory. Brougham had summarized the feelings of the party in a savage attack upon both Government and general in the Edinburgh Review. At this very moment—February 1811—Ponsonby, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, was preaching that ‘France cannot be prevented from overrunning Spain by continuing a war in Portugal, ... so that neither in Spain or Portugal has anything happened that can give reason to believe that the war will ever terminate to our advantage[88].’ Freemantle, another leader, maintained that ‘Bonaparte, having conquered the rest of the Continent, must also conquer the Peninsula, because he has greater numbers to bring up after every defeat, and therefore defeat of one of his armies was vain[89].’ Every Whig journal was prophesying the expulsion of Wellington from Portugal within a few weeks, as indeed they had been doing ever since October 1809.