We left Maitland anchored in the Bay of Palamos on July 31. The moment that he appeared Eroles went on board his ship, to urge his immediate disembarkation, and to promise the enthusiastic assistance of the Catalans. The energetic baron gave a most optimistic picture of the state of affairs, he declared that the whole country would rise at the sight of the red-coats, that Tarragona was weakly held, and that the total force of the French, including Suchet’s column near Tortosa, was only 13,000 men. Lacy and Sarsfield appeared later, and gave much less encouraging information: they rated the enemy at a far higher figure than Eroles, and were right in so doing, for Decaen had some 25,000 men, and could by an effort have concentrated 15,000, exclusive of succours from Suchet. The Spanish Army of Catalonia could only furnish 7,000 foot and 300 horse, of whom many were so far off at the moment that Lacy declared that it would take six or eight days to bring them up. By the time that they were all arrived, the French would have concentrated also, and would be equal in numbers to the whole force that the allies could collect. Tarragona was reported to be in a better state of defence than Eroles allowed, and the engineers declared that it might take ten days to reduce it. But the greatest problem of all was that of provisions: Lacy declared that the country could furnish little or nothing: he could not undertake to keep his own small army concentrated for more than a week. The Anglo-Sicilians must be fed from the fleet, and he could provide no transport. Evidently the expedition would be tied down to the shore, and the siege of Tarragona was the only possible operation. Since the Anglo-Sicilian army could not manœuvre at large or retire into the inland, it would have to fight Decaen, to cover the investment of Tarragona, within a few days of its landing. On the other hand if, as Eroles promised, the somatenes rose on every side at the news of the disembarkation, the outlying French troops might not be able to get up to join Decaen, the roads would be blocked, the enemy might never be able to concentrate, and the force about Barcelona, his only immediately available field army, was not more than 8,000 strong, and might be beaten.
There were those who said that Lacy never wished to see the expedition land, because he was jealous of Eroles, and thought that a general rising which ended in success would have meant the end of his own power and tenure of office[749]. It is at least certain that the views which he expressed caused Maitland much trouble, and made him to flinch from his original idea of landing without delay and attacking Tarragona, according to Wellington’s desire. The English general took refuge in a council of war—the usual resource of commanders of a wavering purpose. His lieutenants all advised him to refuse to land, on the ground that his forces were too small and heterogeneous, that Lacy could give no prompt assistance, and that there was no sign as yet of the general rising which Eroles promised. Moreover, some of the naval officers told him that anchorage off the Catalan coast was so dangerous, even in summer, that they could not promise him that the army could be taken safely on board in case of a defeat. To the intense disgust of Eroles and the other Catalan leaders, but not at all to Lacy’s displeasure, Maitland accepted the advice of his council of war, and resolved to make off, and to land farther south. The original idea was to have come ashore somewhere in the midst of the long coast-line south of the Ebro, between Tortosa and Valencia, with the object of breaking Suchet’s line in the middle. But the news of Joseph O’Donnell’s gratuitous disaster at Castalla, which obviously enabled the Marshal to use his whole army against a disembarking force, and the suggestion that Alicante itself might be in danger, induced Maitland in the end to order his whole armament to steer southward. He arrived at Alicante on August 7th, and commenced to send his troops ashore—both his own 6,000 men and Whittingham’s 4,000 auxiliaries of the Balearic division. Since Roche was already there, with his troops in good order, there were 14,000 men collected in Alicante, over and above the wrecks of O’Donnell’s force. If only the Murcians had been intact, the mass assembled would have caused Suchet serious qualms, since it would have outnumbered the French corps in Valencia very considerably, and there was in it a nucleus of good troops in Maitland’s British and German battalions. The news of Salamanca had also come to hand by this time, and had transformed the general aspect of affairs in Suchet’s eyes: King Joseph was again demanding instant help from him, in the hope of retaining Madrid, and had called in (without his knowledge or consent) the division of Palombini from Aragon, and the garrison of Cuenca[750]. If Wellington should advance—as he actually did—against the King, and should drive him from his capital, it was possible that the main theatre of the war might be transferred to the borders of Valencia.
The Marshal therefore resolved to concentrate: he ordered Habert and Harispe to fall back behind the Xucar with their 8,000 men, abandoning their advanced positions in front of Alicante, and placed them at Jativa; here he threw up some field-works and armed a tête-de-pont on the Xucar at Alberique. He ordered Paris’s brigade to come down from northern Aragon to Teruel, and he warned the generals in Catalonia that he might ask for reinforcements from them.
Maitland therefore, after his landing, found that the French had disappeared from his immediate front. He was joined by Roche, and by the 67th regiment from Cartagena, and proposed to drive Harispe from Castalla and Ibi. But he marched against him on August 16th-18th, only to find that he had already retired behind the Xucar. Farther than Monforte he found himself unable to advance, for want of transport and food. For the expedition from Sicily had not been fitted out for an advance into the inland. It had been supposed by Bentinck that the troops would be able to hire or requisition in Spain the mules and carts that they would require for a forward movement. But the country-side about Alicante was already exhausted by the long stay of the Murcian army in that region; and O’Donnell—before Maitland had come to know the difficulties of his position, got from him a pledge that he would not take anything from it either by purchase or by requisition. The British general had hired mules to draw his guns, but found that he could not feed them on a forward march, because the resources of the district were denied him. He himself had to stop at Elda, Roche at Alcoy, because the problem of transport and food could not be solved. All that he could do was to feel the French line of outposts behind the Xucar with a flying column composed of his own handful of cavalry—200 sabres—and a detachment of Spanish horse lent him by Elio, the successor of O’Donnell [August 20th-21st].
But even the thought of farther advance had now to be given up, for the news arrived that King Joseph had evacuated Madrid on the 14th, and was marching on Valencia with the 15,000 men that he had collected. To have tried any further attack on Suchet, when such an army was coming in from the flank to join the Marshal, would have been insane. The French force in this region would be doubled in strength by the King’s arrival. Wherefore Maitland drew back his own division to Alicante, and brought Roche back to Xixona, not far in front of that fortress, expecting that he might ere long be pushed back, and perhaps besieged there. Wellington in the end of the month, having the same idea, sent him elaborate directions for the defence of the place, bidding him to hold it as long as possible, but to keep his transports close at hand, and to re-embark if things came to the worst[751].
On the 25th King Joseph’s army and its vast convoy of French and Spanish refugees, joined Suchet’s outposts at Almanza, and the dangerous combination which Maitland and Wellington had foreseen came to pass. But what was still more threatening for the army at Alicante was the rumour that Soult was about to evacuate Andalusia, and to bring the whole of the Army of the South to Valencia. This would mean that nearly 80,000 French troops would ere long be collected within striking distance of the motley force over which Maitland and Elio now held command, and it seemed probable that Soult in his march might sweep over the whole country-side, disperse the Spanish forces on the Murcian border, and perhaps besiege and take Cartagena and Alicante as a parergon on the way. We have seen in chapter X that nothing of this kind happened: Soult hung on to Andalusia for a month longer than Wellington or any one else deemed probable: he only left Granada on September 17th, and when he did move on Valencia he took the bad inland roads by Huescar, Calasparra, and Hellin, leaving Murcia and Cartagena and the whole sea-coast undisturbed. The reason, as has been already pointed out, was the outbreak of yellow fever at Cartagena, which caused the Duke of Dalmatia so much concern that he preferred to keep away from the infection, even at the cost of taking inferior and circuitous roads.
For the whole of September, therefore, Suchet on the one side and Maitland and the Spaniards on the other, were waiting on Soult: in the expectation of his early arrival both sides kept quiet. Thus tamely ended the first campaign of the Anglo-Sicilian army, on whose efforts Wellington had so much counted. And its later operations, as we shall presently see, were to be wholly in keeping with its unlucky start.
SECTION XXXIII: CHAPTER XII
WELLINGTON RETURNS TO THE DOURO. FINIS