Masséna, down to the end of December, did not know in the least whether Foy or any other of his emissaries had got through. He had simply to wait till news should penetrate to him. Meanwhile the one governing preoccupation of his life was to get food for his army, since if food failed he must be driven to the disastrous winter retreat, across flooded streams and between snow-clad mountains, to which Wellington hoped to force him. The English general’s forecast of the time which would be required to starve out the French army was wrong by some eight or nine weeks. He thought that they would have consumed every possible morsel of food that could be scraped together by December—as a matter of fact they held out till the end of February, in a state of constantly increasing privation. It seems that Wellington underrated both the capacity for endurance that the enemy would show, and still more the resources which were available to him. The Portuguese government had ordered the peasantry to destroy all food-stuffs that they could not carry off, when the country-side was evacuated in October, and the people retired within the Torres Vedras lines. Ostensibly the decree had been carried out; but it was impossible to induce these small cultivators to make away with good food, the worst of crimes to the peasant’s mind. The large majority hid or buried, instead of burning, their stores, trusting to recover what they had concealed when the French should have departed. Many of the hiding-places were very ingenious—in some cases caves in the hills had been used, and their mouths plastered up with stones and earth. In others, pits or silos had been dug in unlikely places, and carefully covered up, or cellars had been filled, and their entrances bricked up and concealed. The ingenuity that is bred by an empty stomach soon set the French on the search for these hoards. When it was once discovered that there was much hidden grain and maize in the country, every man became a food-hunter. Whole villages were pulled down in the search for secret places in their walls or under their floors. Parties scoured every ravine or hillside where caves might lurk. We are told that one effective plan was for detachments to go about with full barrels in fields near houses, and to cast water all over the surface. Where the liquid sank in suddenly, there was a chance that a silo lurked below, and the spade often turned up a deposit of hundreds of bushels. But more drastic methods than these were soon devised. In the sort of no-man’s-land between the actual cantonments of the French army and the outposts of Wilson, Trant, and Blunt, the population had not entirely disappeared. Though the large majority had retired, some of the poorest or the most reckless had merely hidden themselves in the hills for a week or two, and came down cautiously when the French had marched by towards Lisbon. A sprinkling of miserable folk lived precariously in or near their usual abodes, always ready to fly or to conceal themselves when a foraging party was reported in the neighbourhood. Hence came the horrid business that one French diarist calls the ‘chasse aux hommes’; it became a regular device for the marauders to move by night, hide themselves, and watch for some unwary peasant. When he was sighted he was pursued and often caught. He was then offered the choice between revealing the hiding-places of himself and his neighbours, and a musket-ball through the head. Generally he yielded, and the party went back with their mules loaded with grain, or driving before them some goats and oxen. Sometimes he was himself starving, could reveal nothing, and was murdered. We are assured by more than one French narrator of these hateful times that it was discovered that torture was more effective than the mere fear of death. If the prisoner could or would discover nothing, he was hung up for a few minutes, and then let down and offered a second chance of life. Sometimes this led to revelations; if not he was strung up again for good[12]. Torture by fire is also said to have been employed on some occasions.
Naturally these atrocities were not practised under the eyes of the officers commanding regular foraging parties[13]. But when a company had dispersed in search of plunder, the men who were separated in twos or threes without control acted with such various degrees of brutality as suited themselves. Moreover, there was a floating scum of unlicensed marauders, who had left their colours without leave, and were in no hurry to rejoin them. These were responsible for the worst crimes: sometimes they gathered together in bands of considerable strength, and it is said that they were known to fire on regular foraging parties who tried to arrest or restrain them[14], and that one troop, several hundred strong, fought a desperate skirmish with a whole battalion sent to hunt them down. But it was not these fricoteurs, as they were called, who were the sole offenders; many horrors were perpetrated within the limits of the cantonments by the authorized raiding companies. Guingret of the 39th, in Ney’s corps, mentions in his diary that he had seen such a detachment return to camp, after having surprised a half-deserted village, with a number of peasant girls, whom they sold to their comrades, some for a couple of gold pieces, others for a pack-horse[15], and assures us that rape was habitual when such a surprise had succeeded. It was in vain that Masséna and the corps-commanders issued general orders prohibiting misconduct of any kind, and even executed one or two offenders caught flagrante delicto. For the regimental officers, who depended on the individual efficiency of their men in marauding for their daily food, were not too eager to make inquiries as to what had passed outside their own vision, and the soldier who brought home much booty was not too closely questioned as to the manner in which he had obtained it. When a foraging party had turned over many bushels of wheat or maize, or a hundred sheep, to the store of their battalion, it could hardly be expected that their colonel would show his gratitude by inquiring whether the happy find had been procured by torture or by simple murder.
Of the three corps which formed Masséna’s army, that of Reynier, in the Santarem entrenchments, seems to have suffered most, because it was concentrated on a narrow position, with no unexhausted country around it, and with other troops immediately in its rear, who had sucked dry the resources of the plain of Golegão. Its foraging parties had to go thirty miles away before they had a chance of finding ground that had not been already picked over most carefully by the men of the 6th or the 8th Corps. Junot’s men were a little better off, as they had the Leiria-Alcobaça country immediately on their flank, and could plunder there without molestation, unless they pressed in too closely upon the outposts of Trant’s or Blunt’s detachments. Nevertheless the 8th Corps lost more men by disease than either of the others during this hard winter. It was composed to a great extent of conscript battalions new to Spain, young and unacclimatized, whose men died off like flies from cold, dysentery, and rheumatism. Clausel’s division, which contained all these raw units, sank from 6,700 to 4,000 men in the three months that preceded the New Year, without having been engaged in any serious fighting—a loss of forty per cent.: while the case-hardened troops of Reynier, who had been in the Peninsula since 1808, and had already gone through the privations of Soult’s marches to Corunna and Oporto, only shrank from 17,000 to 12,000 bayonets in the same three months. Moreover, of the 5,000 lost by them, 2,000 were the casualties of Bussaco, not the victims of Wellington’s scheme of starvation. Ney’s corps and the cavalry reserve were better off than either Junot’s or Reynier’s troops, having at their disposition the fertile country between Golegão, Thomar, and Abrantes, where, at the commencement of their sojourn, food was to be got with comparative ease—many fields of maize were still standing unreaped when they first arrived, and it was not till after the New Year of 1811 that they began to be seriously pinched, and to be driven far afield, up the valley of the Zezere and into the mountains in the direction of Espinhal and Coimbra. The 6th Corps was still 18,000 strong out of its original 24,000 on January 1st, and of the 6,000 missing, 2,000 represented Bussaco casualties in actual fighting.
It must be confessed that the French army displayed splendid fortitude and ingenuity in maintaining itself on the Tagus so long beyond the period of Wellington’s estimate. That it did not altogether dissolve, when it was living from hand to mouth, with a fifth or a quarter of the men habitually absent on foraging expeditions, is surprising. Desertions to the allied lines, save from the foreign battalions in Loison’s and Solignac’s divisions, were very rare; the native French gave many recruits to the marauding fricoteurs, but seldom passed over to the enemy. The regimental officers succeeded in organizing a regular system by which the exploitation of the country-side was made as effectual as could be managed. They repaired and set going the ruined mills, discovered and rebuilt the bakers’ ovens of every village and town, and in most cases organized regimental food-reserves which made them independent of the general commissariat[16]. For there was little or nothing to be got from head quarters. Shoes proved the greatest difficulty, but the men learnt to make rude mocassins or ‘rivlins’ of untanned hide, which served fairly well, though they needed constant replacing[17]. In some regiments a third of the men might be seen wearing this primitive footgear. Another weak point was ammunition—there had been no great consumption of it since Bussaco, or the state of the army would have been perilous indeed, since it had to depend on what it had originally brought down from Spain in September. No more had been received, and attempts to establish a powder factory at Santarem failed for lack of saltpetre. If Masséna had been forced to fight two or three general engagements, his stores would have been so depleted that he would have had to abscond at once, lest the army should be left without cartridges. Meanwhile he hung on to his position, conscious that his power of endurance was limited, but hoping at any moment to see reinforcements break through from the north or the east, to refill his ranks and bring him the needful convoys.
Of military operations, as opposed to mere raids by detachments in search of food, hardly anything was undertaken by the Army of Portugal down to the end of the year. Between the 22nd and the 29th of December, General Ferey, with five battalions and a cavalry regiment, carried out a useless excursion beyond the Zezere, into the desolate region of Castello Branco as far as Cortiçada; apparently he had been sent out because of rumours that a French force was operating in this direction, and he was told to get into touch with it. But these reports were idle—they were tardy echoes of Gardanne’s unhappy march on the Estrada Nova[18] a full month before. The brigade returned, wearied and more than half-starved, on the seventh day, equally destitute of news and of the plunder that it had hoped to find in a hitherto untouched district. The only fruitful action, indeed, which the French carried out in this month was the completion of the great bridge-equipage at the mouth of the Zezere, which Masséna had ordered General Eblé to construct many weeks back[19]. His object was to have at his disposition means for crossing the Tagus, in case he should wish to invade the Alemtejo, or to co-operate with any friendly troops that might appear from that direction. Originally he had intended to make Santarem his crossing-point, but, after some boats had been built there, with immense difficulties owing to the entire lack of appliances, he determined that the place was too near the British lines, and too much exposed to attacks by Wellington’s river flotilla. Obviously a serious attempt to cross the Tagus near Santarem, even if its initial stages succeeded, and the larger part of the army got over, would expose the rear divisions to almost certain destruction, since Wellington could throw 30,000 men upon them within the next twelve hours. There is no more certain way of ruining an army than to allow it to be caught divided into two halves by a broad river spanned by one or two precarious bridges. On the other hand, the mouth of the Zezere was very remote from Wellington’s main army, and a crossing made opposite to it could only be opposed by a part of Beresford’s force, which was not very large, and was spread along fifty miles of the river front. Moreover, the corps executing the passage would not have any great danger on its flank or rear, since there was only the Portuguese garrison of Abrantes to molest it. It was an additional advantage that a bridge-equipage at Punhete could be kept in perfect safety a mile or two up the Zezere, out of range of guns on the further bank of the Tagus, and could be floated down at the last moment: while at Santarem the boats had to be stored on the actual bank of the Tagus, exposed to attacks from the side of the water by Wellington’s gunboats. One effort to sink or fire them by a bombardment and the use of Congreve rockets had already been made[20].
Accordingly Masséna resolved that if he made any attempt to cross into the Alemtejo, he would take Punhete and the estuary of the Zezere as his starting-point. Here he established his dockyard, and hither he transferred most of the busy workers from Santarem. In the course of a month they got ready for him the materials for two bridges broad enough to span the Tagus, besides ninety flat-bottomed boats. The mouth of the Zezere was protected by a number of batteries, to keep down the fire of any guns that Beresford might bring up to sink the bridges when they were being cast across.
These preparations did not long escape Wellington’s notice; he saw that the ground opposite Punhete was the most crucial point in Beresford’s long front, and bade him close up his troops toward it. The detachment beyond the Tagus was reinforced by a Spanish brigade under Carlos de España, drawn from La Romana’s army, which was placed at Barca just opposite the mouth of the Zezere, with William Stewart’s brigade of the 2nd Division close by at Santa Margarida, Tramagal, and Pinheiros. Three batteries were established on the Tagus bank opposite Punhete, and armed with six-pounders; but as these were overmatched by the French guns across the water, nine-pounders were requisitioned from Lisbon[21]. The rest of the 2nd Division and Hamilton’s two Portuguese brigades were to be ready to march to support Carlos de España and Stewart at the shortest notice. These dispositions were sufficient to keep Masséna quiet; he had no real intention of crossing the Tagus unless he heard of Soult’s approach from the direction of the Alemtejo[22].
On that side all was tranquil—as indeed it was destined to remain for many a week more. But just at the end of the month of December the isolation in which the Army of Portugal had so long been living at last came to an end, and reinforcements and news were at last received, though the news was disheartening and the reinforcements inadequate. On the 26th the reconnoitring party under General Marcognet, which had just beaten up Wilson’s quarters at Espinhal, was surprised by the appearance of a party of regular cavalry pushing towards them on the road from Ponte de Murcella. The uniforms were soon seen to be those of French dragoons, and a joyful meeting took place[23]. The new-comers announced that they were the advanced guard of Drouet’s 9th Corps, which was pushing down the valley of the Mondego in search of the Army of Portugal, but had no exact knowledge of where it was to be found.
The 9th Corps, it will be remembered, was a promiscuous assembly of some twenty newly-raised fourth battalions, belonging to the regiments which were already in Spain. Eleven were fractions of corps serving in Soult’s Army of Andalusia, five of regiments of Ney’s 6th Corps, the rest of units under Reynier’s and Junot’s command. Drouet had been originally ordered to do no more than conduct these battalions, which were little better than a mass of drafts, to join the regiments to which they belonged. They were divided into two provisional divisions under Generals Conroux and Claparéde. Thrust, as it were, into Spain without any regular organization, destitute of battalion transport, and with an improvised and insufficient staff, they had made very slow progress since they crossed the Pyrenees, mainly owing to difficulties of commissariat. When Foy passed Salamanca on November 10th, the head of Claparéde’s division had only just entered that city; the tail of the corps was struggling up from Valladolid and Burgos. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that Claparéde only reached the neighbourhood of Almeida on the 15th of November, and that Drouet had not concentrated his whole force at that place till December 14th. He had about 16,000 men, having left three of his own battalions to garrison Ciudad Rodrigo, and picked up instead the remains of Gardanne’s column, which had retreated on to the Spanish frontier in such disorder at the end of the preceding month[24]. This detachment, by reason of its losses during its disastrous flight, had been reduced to about 1,400 men fit for service—about the same number that Drouet had left behind him from his own corps. Drouet was acting under stringent orders from the Emperor to move forward at the earliest possible moment[25], and open up communication with Masséna. His original instructions had been to go no further forward than Almeida himself, but to send a column under Gardanne, 6,000 strong, to clear and keep open the way to the Tagus. The march and failure of Gardanne have been already related, and Drouet saw that to carry out the Emperor’s orders he must use a larger force. At the same time his dispatches told him that he must at all costs keep in touch with Almeida, and not merely join Masséna and allow himself to be cut off from Spain[26].
Drouet’s solution of the problem was that with Conroux’s division and Gardanne’s detachment, some 8,000 men, he would march down the Mondego by Celorico and Ponte de Murcella, and cut his way to join Masséna, but that he would leave his second division under Claparéde behind him, about Celorico and Trancoso, to keep in touch with Almeida and maintain his communications. This was about as much as could be done to carry out Napoleon’s instructions, which were essentially impossible to execute. For the Portuguese militia, with which the 9th Corps had to deal, were, when properly managed, a very intangible enemy, who could retire whenever a column passed, and return to block the way when it had gone by. It is impossible to see how Drouet could have kept open the whole road from Almeida to Thomar, without leaving all along the way a couple of battalions, entrenched in a good position, at distances of fifteen or twenty miles from each other. And if he had done this, he would have had no force left at the moment when he joined Masséna. It was useless for Napoleon to tell him in one breath to keep the road open from end to end, and in the next to forbid him to make any small detachments[27]. But the Emperor neither fully understood the military situation in Portugal, nor grasped the relative merits of its roads or the relative resources of its various regions. In a dispatch sent out to Masséna on December 4th (but not delivered till February) he advised that Marshal to try to open his communications with Spain by the awful mountain road from the Zezere by Cardigos and Belmonte to Guarda, and at the same time to use the desolate Castello Branco country ‘pour faire des vivres.’ Ferey’s fruitless expedition up that very road and into that very region, carried out a fortnight before the Emperor’s dispatch was even written, had sufficiently proved the futility of the suggestion.