Here the jealousies and bickerings in London may be left for a space. We shall only need to turn back for a moment to ministerial matters when, at midsummer, the whole situation had been transformed, for France and Russia were at last openly engaged in war, a great relief to British statesmen, although at the same time a new trouble was arising in the West to distract their attention. For the same month that started Napoleon on his way to Moscow saw President Madison’s declaration of war on Great Britain, and raised problems, both on the high seas and on the frontiers of Canada, that would have seemed heart-breaking and insoluble if the strength of France had not been engaged elsewhere. But the ‘stab in the back,’ as angry British politicians called it, was delivered too late to be effective.
SECTION XXXII
WELLINGTON’S FIRST CAMPAIGN OF 1812
CHAPTER I
THE CAPTURE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO
It is with no small relief that we turn away from the annals of the petty warfare in the provinces and of the bickerings of politicians, to follow the doings of Wellington. All the ‘alarms and excursions’ that we have been narrating were of small import, compared with the operations on the frontiers of Portugal and Leon which began at the New Year of 1812. Here we have arrived at the true backbone of the war, the central fact which governed all the rest. Here we follow the working out of a definite plan conceived by a master-mind, and are no longer dealing with spasmodic movements dictated by the necessities of the moment. For the initiative had at last fallen into Wellington’s hands, and the schemes of Soult and Marmont were no longer to determine his movements. On the contrary, it was he who was to dictate theirs.
The governing factor in the situation in the end of December 1811 was, as we have already shown, the fact that Marmont’s army had been so distracted by the Alicante expedition, undertaken by Napoleon’s special orders, that it was no longer in a position to concentrate, in full force and within a reasonably short period of time. It was on December 13th[161] that the Duke of Ragusa received the definitive orders, written on November 20-1, that bade him to send towards Valencia, for Suchet’s benefit, such a force as, when joined by a detachment from the Army of the Centre, should make up 12,000 men, and to find 3,000 or 4,000 more to cover the line of communications of the expedition. Accordingly orders were issued to Montbrun to take up the enterprise, with the divisions of Foy and Sarrut, and his own cavalry; the concentration of the corps began on December 15th, and on December 29th it marched eastward from La Mancha[162] on its fruitless raid.
Wellington’s policy at this moment depended on the exact distribution of the hostile armies in front of him. He lay with the bulk of his army wintering in cantonments along the frontier of Portugal and Leon, but with the Light Division pushed close up to Ciudad Rodrigo, and ready to invest it, the moment that the news should arrive that the French had so moved their forces as to make it possible for him to close in upon that fortress, without the danger of a very large army appearing to relieve it within a few days. On December 28th he summed up his scheme in a report to Lord Liverpool, in which he stated that, after the El Bodon-Aldea da Ponte fighting in September, he had ‘determined to persevere in the same system till the enemy should make some alteration in the disposition of his forces[163].’ In the meanwhile he judged that he was keeping Marmont and Dorsenne ‘contained,’ and preventing them from undertaking operations elsewhere, unless they were prepared to risk the chance of losing Rodrigo. ‘It would not answer to remove the army to the frontiers of Estremadura (where a chance of effecting some important object might have offered), as in that case General Abadia [and the Spanish Army of Galicia] would have been left to himself, and would have fallen an easy sacrifice to the Army of the North[164].’ Therefore Wellington refused to take the opportunity of descending upon Badajoz and driving Drouet out of Estremadura, though these operations were perfectly possible. He confined himself to ordering Hill to carry out the two raids in this direction, of which the first led to the destruction of Girard at Arroyo dos Molinos in October, and the second to the occupation of Merida and the expulsion of the French from central Estremadura at midwinter [December 27, 1811-January 13, 1812].
In October Wellington had hoped for some time that Rodrigo would be gravely incommoded for lack of provisions, for it was almost cut off from the army to which it belonged by the guerrillero bands of Julian Sanchez, who dominated all the country between the Agueda and Salamanca, while the Light Division lay on the heights close above it, ready to pounce on any convoy that might try to pass in. This expectation, however, had been disappointed, as a large amount of food had been thrown into the place on November 2nd by General Thiébault, the governor of Salamanca. This revictualling had only been accomplished by a mixture of good management and good luck. The governor saw that any convoy must have a large escort, because of the guerrilleros, who would have cut off a small one. But a large escort could not move very fast, or escape notice. Wherefore, taking no mean risk, Thiébault collected 3,400 men for a guard, stopped all exit of Spaniards from Salamanca two days before the convoy started, gave out a false destination for his movement, and sent out requisitions for rations for 12,000 men in the villages between the starting-place and Rodrigo. Wellington had been on the look-out for some such attempt, and had intended that the Light Division, from its lair at Martiago in the mountain-valleys above the city, should descend upon any force of moderate size that might approach. But receiving, rather late, the false news that at least three whole divisions were to serve as escort, he forbade Craufurd to risk anything till he should have received reinforcements. The same day the Agueda became unfordable owing to sudden rains, and no troops could be sent across to join Craufurd. Wherefore Thiébault got by, ere the smallness of his force was realized, and retreated with such haste, after throwing in the food, that the Light Division could not come up with him[165]. Such luck could not be expected another time!