Not only were his munitions exhausted, but all the news behind him was unsatisfactory. Though the reinforcements from France had arrived on the Ebro, Old Castile was in the most disturbed condition. There had been a notable disaster at Santander on August 14th-15th, when Porlier, by a sudden concentration, had stormed the town, dispersing General Rouget’s[610] garrison, and had then swept away most of the minor posts around it; only Torrelavega had succeeded in beating off his assault. But when reinforcements came flocking in, the Spaniards had retired to the hills with 300 prisoners, and were threatening other points. The gates of Palencia and Valladolid had been insulted by partidas, who showed themselves boldly in sight of the walls, and established a loose blockade, which could only be pierced by the movement of considerable columns. But the most pressing point was Ciudad Rodrigo: Julian Sanchez had cut its communications with Salamanca, and had defeated small bodies of 300 or 400 men which had been sent to reopen them. A much larger force had to be detailed to throw provisions into the place in July, but by the end of August stores were again running low, and General Reynaud, the governor, whenever he could pass an emissary through the lines of the partidas, kept asking for help of all kinds.
But since Dorsenne started for his expedition against Astorga, the problem of getting food into Rodrigo had been complicated by the appearance of Wellington’s army on the Coa and the Agueda. On August 12th the head quarters of the Anglo-Portuguese army had been moved up from the south to Fuente Guinaldo, in the immediate neighbourhood of the blockaded fortress, and already on August 8th the garrison had detected British outposts—from the Light Division—in their immediate neighbourhood. Now, since Marmont and the Army of Portugal were still in the valley of the Tagus, and all Leon was still in the charge of the Army of the North, Dorsenne found himself responsible for the revictualling, indeed for the relief from blockade, of a fortress which might be beset by 40,000 men. It was absolutely necessary for him to return from the border of Galicia, and to concert matters with Marmont for a common movement against Wellington. For the field force of the Army of the North, which had just driven Abadia into the hills, was not over 28,000 strong, and obviously could not succour Rodrigo by its own unaided strength.
Returning to Valladolid early in September, with the two Guard divisions, and leaving Bonnet once more to observe the Galicians, Dorsenne opened pourparlers with Marmont for a general concentration against Wellington. Of this effort we must speak in its due place.
Meanwhile matters settled down in the northern field of operations. Bonnet was too weak to move, or to think of reoccupying his old post in the Asturias. Abadia’s army was much reduced in numbers, both by privations and by desertion: the last days of the late campaign, spent in the desolate Val de Orres, had been particularly trying to the troops. An English observer who saw them at Ponferrada described them as ‘in even worse condition than might be expected—half the soldiers without trousers, and wearing only capotes—while the clothing of the rest shows great need for improvement. They are a fine body of men, standing well, though deeply marked by privation, and as badly trained as equipped. The best corps can only manœuvre singly, not attempting movements of the line; the Toledo battalion broke down in attempting to change front en échelon. The cavalry are on a level with the infantry, move with wide gaps between squadrons, and cannot go accurately through the sword exercise. The horses might each be a Rosinante—the artillery as badly manned as horsed[611].’ The numbers were terribly low: it was doubtful whether the whole field force could produce 10,000 men, and they had started on the June campaign with 15,000.
Dilapidated, however, as the Army of Galicia might be at the end of its operations, it had done well, having kept the French Army of the North ‘contained’ for the many weeks during which Wellington was absent on the Guadiana. Bessières and Dorsenne had accomplished nothing positive during that time; and the territory held down by the invaders in September was less than it had been in June by the whole extent of the Asturias. It is absurd of Napier to state that ‘Galicia with its lordly Junta, its regular army, fortified towns, numerous population, and constant supplies from England, had less weight in the contest than the 5,000 Portuguese militia conducted by Trant and Wilson[612].’ The province, so far from being of no weight in the contest, did Wellington most useful service. The two diversions carried out by Santocildes, which twice compelled the Army of the North to mass all its available field troops on the Orbigo, were operations of the most profitable sort, and since the Galician always retired in time, led to no disasters of the kind that too often happened when a Peninsular general was overdaring. But while paying his just due to Santocildes, we must praise even more the unwearied activity of the chiefs of the Cantabrian bands and the guerrilleros of Old Castile and Leon. It was Longa and Porlier, and Julian Sanchez, who, with forces that were never very great in numbers, paralysed by their ubiquity and their unceasing enterprise the greater part of Bessières’s and Dorsenne’s troops. If they had not been in existence, the French might have found men enough to conquer Galicia, or to attack north-eastern Portugal in force. This was true throughout the whole of 1810 and 1811, and was a governing fact in the history of the Peninsular War. Even though the Emperor pushed 30,000 fresh infantry (the divisions of Souham, Reille, and Caffarelli) into northern Spain in July and August 1811, he was never able to make the communication between Bayonne and Madrid absolutely safe, or to call any region subdued which was not held down by a garrison altogether out of proportion to its population.
SECTION XXVII: CHAPTER IV
SOULT’S TROUBLES IN ANDALUSIA. JULY-SEPTEMBER 1811
After his departure from the Guadiana on June 28th, Soult found himself plunged into a new series of troubles, which were to continue all through the summer and autumn. Just as he was about to set out for Seville with two cavalry regiments as escort, following in the wake of Godinot’s and Conroux’s infantry, he received the unwelcome news that Blake, of whose march he had been aware since the 24th, had crossed the lower Guadiana near Mertola on June 23[613], and had invaded the Condado de Niebla with nearly 12,000 men. If Blake had struck straight at Seville there can be little doubt that he would have taken it, for General Daricau, the governor, hastened, on the first news of the approach of an enemy, to shut himself up in the fortified Cartuja Convent, with his scanty garrison of convalescents, drafts, and Juramentados. He had not the least hope of maintaining the large and turbulent city under control. But no one appeared to molest him, except some cavalry, who were easily driven off by cannon-shot. Blake, apparently disliking to present himself in the open plain of the Guadalquivir, had not marched on Seville, but sat down on June 30 to besiege the castle of Niebla, the capital of the region which he had invaded. It was the only French garrison left in western Andalusia, and was held by a battalion of 600 ‘Swiss’ in King Joseph’s service—a miscellaneous corps formed of deserters of all races from the Spanish and British armies, under a Colonel Fritzhardt. Blake lay for five days before the mediaeval castle with the division of Zayas, while Ballasteros, with the rest of the army, took a position to cover him against French troops coming from Estremadura, who (as was rightly suspected) were not long in appearing. The siege failed because Blake had brought no artillery with him—on account of the bad mountain roads he had sent his guns round from Mertola by Ayamonte, and they had not come up. An attempt to take the castle by escalade failed, and the Spanish general was sitting helplessly before its walls on July 2nd, when the news came that the French were upon him. Soult, hearing on his way southward of Blake’s raid, had turned both Conroux and Godinot against the invaders, and had continued his own route to Seville with no more than the cavalry and one infantry regiment. While Godinot marched on Niebla by Cala and Aracena, Conroux tried to cut in between Blake and the sea by a circuitous route by Fregenal, through the worst of the mountains, aiming at the ports of Huelva and Moguer. It was hoped that the Spaniards might be caught between the two divisions—but the quarry was too shy. Blake departed at the first alarm, and embarked at Ayamonte with Zayas’s division; Ballasteros, marching away into the hills which he knew so well, evaded Conroux, and passed for a time northward into the Sierra de Aroche. The cavalry under Penne Villemur did not abscond by water, but returned along the Portuguese frontier to Estremadura, where it joined the skeleton army of Castaños, which still consisted of no more than six or eight battalions under Morillo and Carlos de España, some 3,000 or 4,000 men at most. Wellington had sent it back to Villa Viçosa during the operations around the Caya, declining to use it in the fighting-line till it should be reorganized. Blake, whose embarkation at Ayamonte on July 8th had been accompanied by circumstances of disgraceful panic[614], returned to Cadiz with 7,000 men. Ballasteros followed him thither six weeks later, having descended from the hills and embarked at the mouth of the Guadiana at the end of August.
Blake’s Niebla expedition had been conducted with the greatest timidity and incompetence. Yet it had served Wellington’s purpose much as he had intended, since it drew off 11,000 French troops into a remote corner of Andalusia for some weeks. It is true that Soult’s original withdrawal from the Guadiana was not caused by this diversion, but it had forced him to send away on a wild-goose chase troops urgently needed elsewhere. For if Conroux and Godinot had not marched to Niebla and Ayamonte, they would have gone straight to Granada, to reinforce the 4th Corps, which was, throughout the month of July, in considerable danger from the Murcians. It was not till August had begun that Soult was able to come to its aid, with the divisions which had been distracted to the far west by Blake’s expedition.