It was probably not on mere strategic grounds, but because he was determined to assert himself, to prove that he was master of his own movements, and that he was not yet a beaten man or a failure, that Masséna issued orders on the 22nd for the 2nd Corps to make ready to move southward, not northward, from Guarda, and for the 6th and 8th to prepare to follow on the same route. This provoked an explosion of wrath on the part of Ney, who in the course of four hours of the afternoon wrote three successive letters to his commander, in terms of growing irritation. In the first, which was sent off before receiving the detailed orders for the new movement, he merely set forth all the objections to it, and inquired whether Masséna had the Emperor’s leave for such a general change of plans. In the second, after he had received and read the orders, he protested formally against them, and said that, unless positive instructions from Paris authorizing the new scheme had been received, the 6th Corps should not march. He gave many arguments, and they were incontestably true. ‘The army has need to rest behind the shelter of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, in order to receive the clothing and shoes which are absolutely necessary, and which must be brought up from the magazines. Your Excellency is mistaken in thinking that food can be got in abundance in the region of Coria and Plasencia. I have marched through that country [during the attempt to cut off Wellington’s retreat from Talavera in 1809], and it is impossible to exaggerate its sterility or the badness of its roads. Your Excellency will not get one single gun so far, with the teams that we have brought out of Portugal. Moreover this manœuvre, so singular at this particular moment, would entirely uncover Old Castile, and compromise all our operations in Spain. I am fully aware of the responsibility which I take upon myself in making formal opposition to your intentions, but, even if I were destined to be cashiered or condemned to death, I could not execute the march on Coria and Plasencia directed by your Highness, unless (of course) it has been ordered by the Emperor[225].’
Within two hours of the second letter Ney sent in the third, which was no mere protest, nor even a mere refusal to move, but an open declaration of his intention to march back to Almeida. ‘I warn your Excellency that to-morrow I shall leave my positions of Carapichina and Cortiço, and échelon my troops from Celorico to Freixadas, and on the day after they will be between Freixadas and Almeida. This disposition is forced on me, in order to prevent the whole force from disbanding, under the pretext of searching for the food necessary for its subsistence, for food is now absolutely lacking.’
Unless he was to surrender his authority altogether, and obey his subordinate, Masséna had now to strike. Ney had put himself absolutely in the wrong in the way of military subordination, though he was as absolutely in the right in the way of strategy. And the Commander-in-Chief had every technical justification when he formally deposed him from the command of the 6th Corps, and directed him to leave for Valladolid without delay, and there await the orders of the Emperor. Loison, the senior of the three divisional generals of the 6th Corps, was ordered to take over its command next morning. Several of Ney’s partisans urged him to refuse obedience, to seize the person of Masséna, and to declare himself Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Portugal. We are assured that he would have been backed in the step by the whole of his own corps, and would have met no resistance from the others, for Masséna was universally disliked, and every man wished to continue the retreat on Almeida of which Ney was the advocate[226]. But he shrank from levying open war upon his chief, and departed among the tears of the whole 6th Corps, of which he knew every officer and many men by sight. It had been under him, without a break, since he first formed it at the camp of Montreuil, near Boulogne, in 1804.
Masséna started off his aide-de-camp Pelet for Paris next day, with orders to get to the Emperor without delay, and explain the situation before Ney could tell his tale. This his emissary succeeded in doing, and his representations to Napoleon were backed by those of Foy, who had borne Masséna’s earlier message of March 9, and was still in Paris. The Emperor seems to have approved of Masséna’s stringent dealing with his subordinate, and even to have expressed his satisfaction with the new plan for marching the Army of Portugal to the middle Tagus[227]. He also declared that corps-commanders of the type of Ney and Junot were a mistake, and that to avoid further friction he would cut up the whole army into divisions, and abolish the corps altogether. But at the same time he allowed Ney to return to Paris, gave him a mere formal reproof, and then continued to employ him in posts of the highest importance. Next year the Marshal was to win his last title of ‘Prince of the Moscowa’ under his master’s eye, on the field of Borodino.
Ney having been superseded and banished, Masséna could carry out his wild plan for a march towards northern Estremadura through the midst of the Portuguese mountains. On the 23rd the 6th Corps was brought into Celorico, and its artillery moved forward as far as Ratoeiro on the Guarda road. The 8th Corps left Celorico and moved in the same direction, with its cavalry at Ponte do Ladrão in advance. Drouet with Conroux’s division had already gone back towards Almeida, with the sick and wounded of the whole army; he was ordered to take post at Val-de-Mula on the Turon, between Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo. His other division, that of Claparéde, was sent from Guarda to join him on the same day. Drouet, according to some versions of the events of this critical week, had moved back of his own accord without waiting for Masséna’s orders. But it is clear that there was absolute necessity to tell off some covering force for the frontiers of Leon, if the main army was to be drawn away to the central Tagus, lest Wellington should send off a detachment to attack Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and find nothing to hinder him.
For the next five days the march southward and eastward was continued. After a rest of only two nights at Guarda, the 2nd Corps moved on the 24th of March by two bad parallel roads through the hills, and encamped with its first division at Sortelha and its second at Aguas Bellas: a flanking detachment of cavalry occupied Belmonte, further to the west, in order to keep a look-out on the valley of the Zezere. The 8th Corps took up the position which the 2nd had evacuated at Guarda: it is recorded to have lost many of its already depleted stock of horses in climbing the steep ascent into that town, which stands on the very summit of the Serra da Estrella, at a height of over 3,400 feet above sea-level. No other town in Portugal lies so high. The 6th Corps followed the 8th, but halted short of Guarda, to cover the slow progress of its artillery, which had to be dragged up the defile with doubled teams, so that half the guns and vehicles had to wait at the bottom, while their beasts were assisting to draw the first section to its lofty destination.
The 25th saw the head of the 2nd Corps at Val de Lobos on the road to Penamacor; the main body painfully trailed along behind. Junot and the 8th Corps left Guarda, but took, not the path that Reynier had followed, but an equally difficult one leading to Belmonte. But the guns could not proceed with the infantry divisions. They had to be left at Guarda, the Belmonte road being pronounced absolutely impracticable for them: this was a serious check to Masséna, who had counted on using this route for the whole corps. Of the 6th Corps one division (Marchand) entered Guarda, a second (Loison’s old division, now commanded by Ferey) halted at Rapoulla, at the foot of the great mountain on which that town lies. The other division (Mermet) had taken a flanking turn, more in the plain, and lay at Goveias, fifteen miles north-east from Guarda, with a rearguard at Freixadas on the road to Almeida.
On the 26th, the last day on which it can be said that Masséna’s insane scheme for marching to Estremadura was still being carried out, the whole 6th Corps closed up on Guarda; the 8th Corps at Belmonte sent out reconnaissances towards Covilhão, Manteigas, and the Zezere; but the 2nd, which was heading the column of march, was completely stuck in the mountains between Sortelha and Penamacor. It must have seemed a bitter piece of irony to Reynier when he received orders ‘to profit by his stay in his position to collect grain, and bake bread and biscuit[228],’ for he was in an almost entirely uninhabited country, on the watershed between the sources of the Coa and the Zezere, with the Sierra de Meras, the frontier-range between Spain and Portugal, in front of him.
Next morning (March 27) Reynier, though he had the example of Ney’s fate before him, was driven by sheer necessity into sending an argumentative dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief, who had now got as far as Guarda. He begged him to give up his great plan: ‘no food could be procured for the whole way from Guarda to Plasencia; if the corps ever got to the latter place, it would find no resources there, for the Coria-Plasencia country does not grow its own corn, but is fed in ordinary times from the valley of the Tietar and other distant regions.’ This Reynier knew from his own experiences in that region, when he had been observing Hill in the preceding summer. He also warned Masséna that he was taking the army into an impasse, for the Tagus is a complete barrier between northern and southern Estremadura, and could not be crossed save at the ferry of Alconetar, where there were now no boats, the bridge of Alcantara (now broken), and that of Almaraz, where there was only a flying bridge of pontoons[229].
At the same time Junot was writing from Belmonte to say that he could go no further; not only had he been forced to leave all his guns behind at Guarda, but ‘les troupes meurent de faim, et ne peuvent pas se présenter en ligne.’ He had scoured the country as far as Covilhão with his cavalry, in search of food, with the sole result of ruining the few horses that were still in passable condition.