On taking over charge of the whole kingdom of Leon from Marmont, Bessières came to the conclusion that he must draw in troops towards the south, lest he should be caught in a position in which he had no disposable central mass towards the Douro. Consequently on the 6th of June he sent orders to Bonnet to evacuate the Asturias and fall back by the pass of Pajares to Leon, in order to place himself in closer touch with Serras.[602] On the 14th, therefore, Bonnet left Oviedo and came over the mountains with three of his regiments, while the fourth went eastward parallel to the coast, in the direction of Santander, picking up in its retreat all the small garrisons which had been left to dominate the Asturian ports, and to prevent communication between Longa and Porlier and the English cruisers. By the 17th Bonnet lay at Leon with 6,000 men: he was just in time to support the scattered front line formed by Serras’s division against the attack which Wellington had planned. For Santocildes and the Army of Galicia had advanced against Astorga, quite without his knowledge, two days before he marched south from Oviedo.
The disposable force of the Spaniards consisted, after the weakest and least serviceable regiments had been told off for garrison duty at Corunna, Ferrol, Vigo, and other fortified places, of about 15,000 men. Santocildes brought his reserve from Lugo and the division of General Taboada, nearly 7,000 men and 600 horse, to Villafranca in the Vierzo, from which he advanced down the passes to Astorga on June 12th. A second division of 2,500 men under General Cabrera came forward at the same time from Puebla de Senabria, as far as the edge of the mountains above the Rio Tuerto, and demonstrated against La Baneza, the half-way post between Astorga and Benavente. The left wing, composed of Losada’s Asturians, was wanting: it had followed Bonnet when he began to retreat and had occupied Oviedo. Losada remained there himself, but sent one brigade to join the main army by a circuitous route[603], since the direct way by the pass of Pajares and Leon was blocked by Bonnet. This brigade under Castañon did not get to the front till June 23rd.
On the 19th of June Santocildes found Astorga evacuated; the small garrison of 400 men had blown up part of the city walls, and absconded on that same morning. They fell back on Bonnet at Leon. Meanwhile Serras started to march northward from Benavente with 2,000 men, to ‘contain’ Santocildes, while Bonnet sent forward two regiments under his brigadier, Valletaux, to assist Serras. But their forces never met: the column from Benavente got engaged with Cabrera’s division near La Baneza, and could not push further forward. That from Leon found most of Taboada’s division placed across its path near Benavides, behind the river Orbigo, nine miles in front of Astorga (June 23). Valletaux, despising his enemy, crossed the stream and attacked, though the balance of numbers was against him. When the engagement had been for some hours in progress, Castañon, with the brigade just arriving from Asturias, came down on his flank. The French were beaten: Valletaux fell, and his brigade lost over 300 men[604] in the combat, which the Spaniards name from the village of Cogorderos and the French from that of Quintanilla de Valle. The defeated force fell back beyond the Orbigo, and was succoured by Bonnet, with the rest of his troops from Leon. Meanwhile Serras retired towards Benavente, and called loudly for help to his chief, Bessières.
Santocildes, seeing that Cabrera had now nothing in front of him at La Baneza, called up his division to Astorga, and uniting it with the troops of Taboada and Castañon marched against Bonnet on July 2nd. The French general, after trying to defend for some time the bridge of the Orbigo, found himself so outnumbered that he must retreat towards Leon. But before he had been driven back so far, first Serras from Benavente, and then Bessières himself, with Dumoustier’s division from Valladolid, came up to join him. The French, now 13,000 strong, advanced to seek a general action (July 18). Santocildes, showing great prudence, refused to fight in the plain, hastily abandoned Astorga and the banks of the Orbigo, and withdrew into the mountains south-west of Astorga, where he took post at Torienzo. The enemy did not pursue, and only a party of light cavalry entered Astorga, which it abandoned next day. For Bessières had received intelligence that his head quarters at Valladolid, which was almost ungarrisoned in the absence of Dumoustier’s division, had been attacked by the partidas of the southern sierras (July 15). At the same time General Dorsenne reported from Burgos that Mina had crossed into his government, deserting his more usual haunts in Navarre, and had united with Longa and Porlier. They had a large force and had cut the communications with Santander. On returning to Valladolid with the Guard division, Bessières found waiting there on July 25 his letters of recall to Paris. The Emperor had deposed him, partly in consequence of complaints as to his intractability made by King Joseph, partly because he was dissatisfied at the hopeless tone of his dispatches, in which (to his master’s discontent) he kept setting forth the thesis that the war in Spain was being conducted on a wrong system, and that the Army of the North was helpless[605]. His post was given to General Dorsenne, a man of inferior ability, though his operations prove him not to have been such a conceited imbecile as his jealous subordinate Thiébault alleges[606]. Indeed, his record in the north compares not unfavourably with that of Bessières, and he was decidedly more ready to aid his neighbours than the Duke of Istria—which was the main thing necessary among French generals in Spain.
On the departure of Bessières for Valladolid, his subordinates Bonnet and Serras had halted behind the Orbigo, holding La Baneza as their advanced point. Santocildes, who showed as much enterprise as prudence during his short tenure of command, learning that there were now only 6,000 or 7,000 men in front of him, came down again from his mountains on July 28th with all his three divisions, and advanced against them: they were forced, after some slight skirmishing, to abandon La Baneza and the line of the Orbigo, and to fall back on Leon. Santocildes advanced to the Esla, and roving detachments sent out from his front pushed forward as far into Old Castile as Sahagun and Palencia. The partidas got possession of the whole country-side, and the French garrisons of Zamora, Toro, Benavente, and Salamanca were completely cut off from their communication with Dorsenne’s head quarters at Valladolid. There was equal trouble in the provinces of Burgos and Santander, where Longa and Porlier long held occupied the Guard division of General Roguet, evading him when necessary, and always returning to give trouble when he had passed by.
Unfortunately for the Spaniards, Santocildes was at this moment superseded by General Abadia, whom Castaños had sent to take general command of the ‘6th Army’. He was in every way inferior to his junior and predecessor, being neither so alert nor so cautious, and having a craze for unnecessary innovation in matters of detail, which might have been harmless in time of peace, but was vexatious when carried out during a campaign. Wellington had at first conceived great expectations from his intelligence[607], but soon became entirely disappointed with him.
Just before Abadia replaced Santocildes, the position of Dorsenne was wonderfully improved by the arrival on the Ebro of the division of Souham, 7,000 strong, which had been promised to him in June, and had been marching up from Marseilles for five weeks. The commander of the Army of the North at once turned over the province of Burgos to Souham, and moved forward from it the greater part of the Guard division of Roguet, which thus became free for operations in the open field. Caffarelli’s and Reille’s divisions were now also present in Biscay and Navarre, so that the available strength of the French in northern Spain was higher than it had been since the summer of 1810, and Dorsenne thought that his rear was adequately covered. He therefore marched with the two divisions of the Young Guard and his two cavalry brigades, to link his operations with those of Bonnet on the Esla. Dorsenne started from Valladolid on August 9th, marching in two columns, Dumoustier’s division by Mayorga and Valencia de Don Juan, Roguet’s by Villalpando and Benavente, so as to converge on La Baneza. Bonnet, strengthened by some reinforcements, advanced at the same time from Leon against the bridges of the Orbigo and Astorga, and Dorsenne, with a small reserve, followed by the road Valladolid-Valderas. It was evidently intended that Roguet’s division should turn the Spanish right, and drive the whole army northward, and away from Galicia, while it was attacked in front by Bonnet and Dumoustier.
Fortunately for his army, which was now about to be attacked by nearly 30,000 men, Abadia listened to the advice of Santocildes, and withdrew hastily to the hills when, on August 17th, his outposts were attacked. Cabrera’s division retired on its old post of Puebla de Senabria, and got into communication with Silveira’s Portuguese, who had come up to Braganza. Castañon and the Conde de Belveder[608] (who had just relieved Taboada in command of the 2nd Division) were drawn back to the two passes above Astorga, those of Manzanal and Fuencebadon. Dorsenne, dividing his troops, attacked both, and carried them, not without severe fighting, on July 27th. The Spanish detachment in the Manzanal pass was badly cut up: that before Fuencebadon suffered less. The French lost General Corsin. Behind the passes there are two lines of retreat into Galicia, the northern and more obvious is the great chaussée to Corunna, via Villafranca and Lugo, which Sir John Moore followed in January 1809. The southern and more rugged is that by Ponferrada, Domingo Flores, and the Val de Orres to Orense, which La Romana took in that same historic retreat. This last road was now chosen by Abadia, for two reasons: the first was that by taking it he placed himself upon the flank of Dorsenne’s advance against the heart of Galicia, and forced the enemy either to turn against him, and follow him into a remote and desolate country, or (if he pressed on) to expose his communication with Astorga and Leon. The second reason was that he knew that Dorsenne had come lightly equipped, intending rather to drive his army out of the Astorga region than to conquer the whole province of Galicia; the French would not, therefore, be able to feed on the desolate route between Ponferrada and Orense, and would probably turn back, content with having cleared the plains of Leon.
This argument was correct. Dorsenne went no further on the great chaussée than Villafranca, which he sacked on August 29th, and then turned on his heel, refusing to press deeper into Galicia, or to pursue Abadia’s army. He marched back to Astorga on the 30th-31st, burning every village of the Vierzo on his way, and descended into the plains of Leon. Abadia followed cautiously, reoccupied Villafranca and Ponferrada, and pushed his outposts forward again to the edge of the mountains. It was found that the French were repairing Astorga, which they once more garrisoned, and held as an outpost till the next year. The ground occupied by the Army of Galicia was exactly the same on the 10th of September as it had been on the 10th of June, save that all Asturias was still clear of invaders. It was not till the late autumn that Bonnet once more made his appearance in that oft-invaded province.
The reasons of Dorsenne’s sudden retreat from the borders of Galicia were many and various. It must not be supposed that his expedition had been taken in hand with the object of conquering that province, as Napier seems to suggest[609]. Such a task would have required much longer preparation than he had been able to make: he had neither collected the stores and munitions that would have been required for so great an enterprise, nor made the necessary dispositions for the protection of the vast space behind him. When he marched against Abadia, he left nothing between the Ebro and the border of Portugal save Souham’s newly arrived division and a few of Serras’s battalions scattered in small garrisons at Leon, Benavente, Valladolid, &c. His movement of advance had been made to chase the Army of Galicia out of the plains, where it had been showing itself so persistently since June, and to relieve the pressure which it had brought upon Bonnet and Serras. There was no purpose of conquest underlying his march, only a desire to scour the valleys of the Orbigo and the Esla of tiresome intruders. The Spaniards were wholly mistaken in supposing that he retired from Villafranca because Abadia had shown a disposition to make a long resistance, or because the Junta had called out the alarmas, or general levée en masse of the province, raised on the principle of the Portuguese Ordenança. He could have gone on further if that had been his intention—but he had no such desire.