Wellington had begun to hurry up the nearest divisions to support Craufurd, and had supposed for two days that he would have serious fighting, since he imagined that 15,000 or 18,000 men at least had been brought up to guard the convoy. It was a grave disappointment to him to find that he had been misled, for it was clear that Rodrigo would not be straitened for food for many a day. He had now to fall back on his original scheme of reducing the place by a regular siege, when the propitious instant should come round.
Meanwhile, waiting for the moment when Marmont and Dorsenne should disperse their troops into a less concentrated position, he took preliminary measures to face that eventuality when it should occur. The main thing was to get the battering-train, with which Ciudad Rodrigo would have to be attacked, close up to its objective. As we have already seen[166], it had been collected far to the rear, at the obscure village of Villa da Ponte near Trancoso. Between that spot and Rodrigo there were eighty miles of bad mountain roads: if Wellington had waited till he heard that Marmont had moved, before he began to bring up his heavy guns, he would have lost many days. Accordingly he commenced to push them forward as early as November 12th: their temporary shelter was to be in the fortress of Almeida, which was already so far restored that it could be regarded as safe against anything short of a regular siege. It was certain that Marmont would not come forward at midwinter for any such operation, and against raids or demonstrations the place was already secure. On December 4th Wellington reported[167] to Lord Liverpool that it would be completely ‘re-established as a military post’ within a few weeks; and on the 19th he announced that it was now ‘a place of security,’ and could be trusted to resist any attack whatever. But, long before even the first of these dates, it was beginning to receive the siege-material which Alexander Dickson was ordered to bring up from the rear. As early as November 22nd the first division of heavy guns entered its gates: it was given out—to deceive French spies—that the pieces were only intended to arm the walls, and at the same time Dickson was actively employed in mounting on them a number of guns of heavy calibre, wrecked in the explosion when Brennier evacuated Almeida in May 1811. Twenty-five of them were in position before Christmas Day. The indefatigable artillery commandant had also hunted out of the ruins no less than 8,000 round shot: it was originally intended that they should go into the magazines of the garrison; but, when the time for action came, Wellington sent the greater part of this stock of second-hand shot to the front, because they were immediately available, and ordered the Almeida stores to be replenished, as occasion served, by the later convoys that arrived from Villa da Ponte.
Nor was it in bringing forward guns and ammunition alone that Wellington was busy during December: he caused a great quantity of gabions and fascines to be constructed by the men of the four divisions nearest the front, giving two vintems (2½d.) for every fascine and four for every gabion. He had a very strong trestle-bridge cast across the Agueda at Marialva, seven miles north of Rodrigo and out of the reach of its garrison, and he began to collect carts from every direction. Not only were they requisitioned in Beira, but Carlos de España, who was lying in a somewhat venturesome position within the frontiers of Leon, ordered the Spanish peasantry, even as far as Tamames, to send every available ox-wain west-ward—and many came, though their owners were risking dire chastisement at the hands of the governor of the province of Salamanca.
Marmont, as we have seen, began to move troops eastward for Montbrun’s Valencian expedition about December 15th. The first news of this displacement reached Wellington on the 24th, when he heard that Brennier’s division had evacuated Plasencia and fallen back behind the Tietar, taking with it all its baggage, sick, and stores. This might be no more than a change of cantonments for a single division, or it might be a part of a general strategical move. Wellington wrote to Hill that evening, ‘some say they are going to Valencia, some that they are to cross the Tagus. I will let you know if I should learn anything positive. I have not yet heard whether the movement has been general, or is confined to this particular division[168].’ The right deduction was not drawn with certainty, because at the same time false intelligence was brought that Foy had started from Toledo and gone into La Mancha, but had returned again. This was a confused account of his movement; but the rumour of his coming back discounted the certain news about Brennier’s eastward move[169].
On the 29th came the very important additional information that on the 26th Clausel’s Division, hitherto lying on the Upper Tormes, above Salamanca, had marched upon Avila, and that the division already at Avila was moving on some unknown eastward destination. At the same time Wellington received the perfectly correct information that all the cavalry of the Imperial Guard in Old Castile had already started for Bayonne, and that the two infantry divisions of the Young Guard, which formed the most effective part of Dorsenne’s Army of the North, were under orders to march northward from Valladolid, and had already begun to move.[170] This was certain—less so a report sent in by Castaños to the effect that he had learnt that the whole Army of Portugal was about to concentrate at Toledo. On this Wellington writes to Graham that ‘he imagines it is only a report from Alcaldes’—a class of correspondents on whose accuracy and perspicacity he was not accustomed to rely over-much[171].
But enough information had come to hand to make it clear that a general eastward movement of the French was taking place, and that the troops immediately available for the succour of Ciudad Rodrigo were both decreased in numbers and removed farther from the sphere of Wellington’s future operations. He thought that the opportunity given justified him in striking at once, and had drawn at last the correct deduction: ‘I conclude that all these movements have for their object to support Suchet’s operations in Valencia, or even to co-operate with him[172].’ If Marmont were extending his troops so far east as the Valencian border, and if Dorsenne were withdrawing divisions northward from Valladolid, it was clear that they could not concentrate in any short space of time for the deliverance of Rodrigo. It was possible that the siege might linger on long enough to enable the Armies of Portugal and the North to unite; Wellington calculated that it might take as much as twenty-four or even thirty days—an estimate which happily turned out to be exaggerated: in the end he stormed it only twelve days after investment. But even if Rodrigo should resist its besiegers sufficiently long to permit of a general concentration of the enemy, that concentration would disarrange all their schemes, and weaken their hold on many outlying parts of the Peninsula. ‘If I do not succeed,’ wrote Wellington, ‘I shall at least bring back some of the troops of the Army of the North, and the Army of Portugal, and shall so far relieve the Guerrillas [Mina, Longa, Porlier] and the Spanish Army in Valencia[173].’ The last-named force was, as a matter of fact, beyond saving, when Wellington wrote his letter to Lord Liverpool. But he could not know it, and if Blake had behaved with common prudence and foresight in the end of December, his game ought not to have been played out to a disastrous end early in January, just when the British were moving out to the leaguer of Rodrigo.
All the divisions cantoned upon or behind the Beira frontier received, on January 2nd-3rd, the orders which bade them prepare to push up to the line of the Agueda. Only the 6th Division, which lay farthest off, as far back as Mangualde and Penaverde near the Upper Mondego, was not brought up to the front within the next few days. The 1st Division had a long march from Guarda, Celorico, and Penamacor, the 4th and 5th Divisions very short ones from Aldea del Obispo and Alameda, Villa de Ciervo, and other villages near Almeida. The 3rd Division from Aldea da Ponte and Navas Frias had a journey greater than those of the two last-named units, but much less than that of the 1st Division. Finally the Light Division was, it may be said, already in position: its outlying pickets at Pastores and Zamorra were already within six miles of Rodrigo, and its head-quarters at Martiago only a short distance farther back.
By January 5th the divisions were all at the front, though their march had been carried out in very inclement weather—heavy snow fell on the night of the 1st-2nd of the month, and continued to fall on the third; while on the 4th the wind shifted, the snow turned to sleet, and the roads grew soft and slushy. The carts with stores and ammunition, pushing forward from Almeida, only reached Gallegos—ten miles away—in two days. The troops were well forward—the 1st Division at Espeja and Gallegos, the 3rd at Martiago and Zamorra, the 4th at San Felices, beyond the Agueda, the Light Division at Pastores, La Encina and El Bodon. But Wellington nevertheless had to put off the investment for three days, because the train was not to the front. On the 6th he crossed the Agueda with his staff and made a close reconnaissance of the place, unmolested by the garrison. But it was only on the 8th that the divisions, who were suffering severely from exposure to the wintry weather, received orders to close in and complete the investment.
Of the topography of Ciudad Rodrigo we have already spoken at some length, when dealing with its siege by Ney in 1810. The French occupation had made no essential change to its character. The only additions to its works made during the last eighteen months were the erection of a small fort on the summit of the Greater Teson, and the reinforcing by masonry of the three large convents in the suburb of San Francisco, which the Spaniards had already used as places of strength. The first-named work was a redoubt (named Redout Renaud, from the governor whom Julian Sanchez had kidnapped in October): it mounted three guns, had a ditch and palisades, and was built for a garrison of seventy men. Its gorge contained a sally-port opening towards the town, and was closed with palisades only. Four guns on the stone roof of the fortified convent of San Francisco, and many more in the northern front of the enceinte, bore upon it, and were intended to make access to it dangerous and costly.
The breaches made during Ney’s siege, in the walls facing the Tesons, had been well built up: but the new masonry, clearly distinguishable by its fresh colour from the older stone, had not set over well, and proved less hard when battered.