A most prescient note occurs in this dispatch, which seems as if it were written in prophetical foresight of what was to happen at Campo Mayor five days later. ‘The cavalry is the most delicate arm we possess. We have few officers who have practical knowledge of the mode of using it, or who have ever seen more than two regiments together. To these circumstances add that the defeat of, or any great loss sustained by, our cavalry in these open grounds would be a misfortune, amounting almost to a defeat of the whole; you will therefore see the necessity of keeping your cavalry as much as possible en masse, and in reserve, to be thrown in at the moment when opportunity offers for striking a decisive blow.’ It looks almost as if Wellington knew that General Long, who commanded Beresford’s cavalry, was going to make the very mistakes that he actually committed on the first collision with the enemy.
The moment that the 4th Division and De Grey’s dragoons reached Portalegre, Beresford began his march on Campo Mayor (March 22) sending out Colborne’s and Lumley’s brigades of the 2nd Division to Arronches, and the Portuguese cavalry brigade of Otway to Azumar. This last-named unit had been watching the frontier between the Tagus and the Guadiana ever since Masséna’s retreat from Santarem, and joined the 2nd Division on the 20th of March. Hamilton’s Portuguese infantry division was to follow next day, the 4th Division was to be allowed two days’ rest after its fatiguing march from the Ceira, and was only to start on the 24th[313]. On the 25th the whole army was to be in front of Campo Mayor.
It remains to speak of the position in which the enemy was found. Between the 14th of March, when Soult departed from Seville, and the 25th, when Beresford’s army made its sudden and quite unexpected descent into the middle of the French forces, only eleven days elapsed; but Mortier had turned them to good account, and had more than fulfilled all that had been expected of him. On the very day that Soult started for Seville he marched against Campo Mayor, with nine battalions of infantry, a cavalry brigade, and part of the siege-train which had just captured Badajoz. One other battalion was left as garrison in Olivenza, the six that remained from the corps were told off for Badajoz, where General Phillipon had been appointed governor. With the aid of three companies of sappers they were already busily engaged in levelling their own old siege-works, and commencing the repairs to the battered front of the walls. Mortier conceived that there could not be any danger in carrying out the orders that Soult had left, for he could find no traces of any hostile force in his vicinity, save the Portuguese garrison of Elvas, and the 4,000 men who formed the wrecks of Mendizabal’s army. This demoralized force had rallied at Campo Mayor, but on receiving the news of the fall of Badajoz retired in haste to Estremos, twenty miles within the Portuguese frontier. Their presence there was a danger rather than a defence to the Alemtejo, for not only did they consume some magazines collected there by Wellington’s orders for the use of the expeditionary force, but they plundered recklessly in the neighbouring villages, and committed such outrages that the Portuguese Government was almost forced to take military measures against them[314]. Mortier had nothing to fear from this quarter, while he could hear no news of the approach of any British force from the direction of the Tagus. The 2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese, it will be remembered, had only been ordered to resume their movement towards Estremadura on the 13th, by Wellington’s dispatch of the 12th, and when Mortier started from Badajoz they were only just commencing their advance from the neighbourhood of Abrantes towards Crato and Portalegre, and were very nearly a hundred miles away, so that it was impossible that he should get any information concerning them.
Campo Mayor was an old-fashioned fortress, which had not been remodelled since the War of the Spanish Succession, its greatest weakness was that an outlying fort (São João), only 200 yards from the walls in a commanding position, had been dismantled, but not blown up and levelled to the ground. It overlooked one of the bastions of the place, and had only to be seized in order to provide an admirable starting-place for operations against the enceinte. No serious attention had been paid to Campo Mayor of late, the much stronger place of Elvas, only eleven miles away, having absorbed all the attention of the Portuguese government. The Spaniards had been garrisoning it for the last six months, but when they hastily departed the Governor of Elvas threw into it half a battalion of the Portalegre Militia (about 300 men) and a company of artillery. This handful of men, aided by the Ordenança of the place, were all that were at the disposition of the very gallant and resourceful old engineer officer, Major José Joaquim Talaya, who was left in charge of the place. As the population was under 3,000 souls, the levy of the Ordenança cannot have amounted to more than 300 men, and many of these (as was still the case in most parts of Portugal) had no firearms, but only pikes. But the chief magistrate (juiz de fora), José Carvalho, served at the head of them with great energy, and we are assured that (contrary to what might have been expected) the citizens took a more creditable part than the militiamen in the defence[315].
With no regulars save the company of artillery, and no more than 800 men in all to protect a long enceinte, it might have been expected that Talaya could make no defence at all—indeed he might have evacuated the place without any blame. But being a man of fine resolution, and recognizing the fact that he was doing the greatest possible service by detaining 7,000 French before his walls, and thereby covering Elvas and allowing time for Beresford to arrive, he resolved to hold out as long as possible. The French seized Fort São João on the night of their arrival (March 14th) and opened trenches on each side of it, commencing at the same time three batteries, of which two were sheltered by the dismantled work. Next morning two of these works were in a position to open fire on the town, since the heavy guns for them had only to come from Badajoz, a mere nine miles away.
Despite of this Talaya held out for seven days of bombardment and open trenches (15th-21st March). He concentrated all his artillery on the approaches and the breaching-batteries, and for some time held his own. On the 19th a breach was opened in the projecting bastion (de Concelho), but the Governor refused a summons to surrender, and actually beat off an assault that night. On the following day the whole face of the bastion began to crumble, and, since further resistance was hopeless, Talaya accepted the terms offered him by Mortier—viz. that the garrison should lay down its arms if not relieved within twenty-four hours, the Militia and Ordenança not to be regarded as prisoners of war, but to be allowed to stay in or retire to their homes, on condition that they should not again bear arms against the French. A similar favour was extended to the Governor himself, who was allowed, ‘on account of his great age,’ says the capitulation, to retire to his own residence on giving his word of honour not to serve again[316]. As the whole garrison, save the artillery, were irregular troops, Mortier took over less than 100 prisoners. Some fifty guns, many of them of very antique and useless fabric, and 10,000 rations of biscuit were captured. The delay of twenty-four hours in the surrender of the town turned out very unluckily for Mortier, as it just gave time for Beresford and his army to arrive, only four days after the surrender, before the place had been dismantled or injured.
The eight-day defence of the absolutely untenable Campo Mayor contrasts in the strongest fashion with that of the neighbouring Spanish fortress of Albuquerque. This, too, was a very neglected and antiquated place, but it possessed a citadel on a high crag, which might have been held for some days against anything but heavy artillery, and it would have taken some time to erect batteries which could effectively reach it. When, however, Latour-Maubourg, with two cavalry regiments, summoned it, on March 15, the Governor at once began to parley, and on being told that infantry and guns were coming forward, actually opened his gates next day, before the two battalions and two guns sent by Mortier arrived. This demoralized officer was Major-General José Cagigal; his garrison consisted of two battalions of the Estremaduran regiment of Fernando VII, about 800 men, and a few artillerymen with seventeen brass guns of position. This was, on the whole, the most disgraceful surrender made during the whole Peninsular War—it can only be compared to the celebrated capitulation of Stettin in 1806, when the Prussian general, in an exactly similar fashion, yielded a fortress to a brigade of hussars who were impudent enough to summon it. But Stettin was a far worse case than Albuquerque—since it was a modern stronghold with a garrison of no less than 6,000 men.
After the surrender of Albuquerque, Latour-Maubourg sent on a regiment of dragoons to Valencia de Alcantara, the last fortified place in Spanish hands between the Guadiana and the Tagus. The small garrison evacuated it, and the dragoons, after bursting seven guns found within its walls, and blowing up its gates (March 17), returned to Badajoz.
The news of the loss of the one Portuguese and the two Spanish fortresses did not detain Beresford a moment in his advance, indeed he was only anxious to attack the enemy before he should have either repaired and garrisoned, or else dismantled and destroyed, Campo Mayor. On the 24th, Cole’s 4th Division, having had its two prescribed days of rest, marched from Portalegre to Arronches, where it caught up the cavalry and the other two divisions. Nothing had been discovered of the French, save some hussar vedettes only three miles north of Campo Mayor. It seems that Beresford’s approach came as a complete surprise to Mortier, who had made no preparations to meet it. He had withdrawn the greater part of the troops who had formed the siege corps to Badajoz, and had left Latour-Maubourg to dismantle the place—for he had made up his mind not to hold it. The cavalry general retained three of his own regiments (26th Dragoons and 2nd and 10th Hussars), one infantry regiment (the 100th of the Line), a half-battery of horse artillery, with a large detachment of the military train, who were in charge not only of the siege-guns lately used, but of thirty pieces from the walls of Campo Mayor, which it was intended to bring over to Badajoz. The rest of the Portuguese guns were to be burst, as useless and antiquated. The engineers were selecting sections of the enceinte, which were to be mined and blown up. The whole French force was about 900 sabres and 1,200 bayonets, plus the detachments of the auxiliary arms—perhaps 2,400 men in all[317]. There was a very fair chance of capturing it entire, owing to the careless way in which Latour-Maubourg kept watch. The presence of scouting parties of Portuguese dragoons had been reported to him[318]. But probably he attached little importance to their presence in this direction. There had been cavalry of that nation on the Estremaduran frontier ever since January.
At half-past ten o’clock on the very rainy morning of the 25th, Beresford’s army was advancing on Campo Mayor in three converging columns, the bulk of the 2nd Division preceded by De Grey’s dragoons on the high-road, Hamilton’s Portuguese division on a by-path over a ridge to the east of the road, with the 13th Light Dragoons and two Portuguese squadrons in their front, Colborne’s brigade and the remaining Portuguese horse on a corresponding ridge, some way to the western or right side of the chaussée. Cole followed a mile in the rear as reserve. The French outposts were found as on the preceding day, only three miles outside the town. General Latour-Maubourg chanced to be visiting them, probably in tardy consequence of the reports of the previous day. When attacked they retired skirmishing, to delay as far as possible the advance of Beresford’s leading squadrons. Latour-Maubourg, seeing that the Allies were coming up on a broad front, and at least 15,000 strong, rode back hastily into the town, ordered the drums to beat, and directed infantry and cavalry alike to abandon their baggage, and to form up without a moment’s delay on the glacis outside the southern gate for a retreat. A column of sixteen heavy guns from the walls of Campo Mayor and the siege-train, with practically no escort, had started some little time back, and was on its way to Badajoz along the high-road before the alarm was given[319]. The allied cavalry, on coming in sight of the town from the ridge to its north, discovered the enemy just moving off, the infantry regiment in column of route on the road, with one hussar regiment in front of it and another in rear, while the 26th Dragoons, some little way ahead, was covering the rest from being intercepted on the high-road, for Latour-Maubourg had seen that his danger lay in the probability that Beresford would strike in, with the horse of his van, between him and Badajoz, and so force him to fight his way through, under pain of being surrounded and captured if he failed. This indeed was Beresford’s intention, but being impressed with Wellington’s warning not to risk or lose his cavalry, he had ordered General Long, who was in command of the division of that arm, not to commit himself against a superior force, and ‘to wait for the infantry to come up if he were in any doubt; yet if the opportunity to strike a blow occurs he must avail himself of it[320].’ The whole cavalry force with the army was only eleven British squadrons and five Portuguese, the latter very weak, and the total number of sabres was about 1,500, a very small allowance for an army of over 18,000 men, and therefore very precious.