Meanwhile Marmont pushed on for Salamanca, where the troops were to concentrate, having with him only the divisions of Clausel and Maucune. On January 21st he had reached Fuente Sauco, one march north of Salamanca, when he received the appalling news that Ciudad Rodrigo had been stormed by Wellington two days before. This was a thunderstroke—his army was caught not half concentrated, and he was for the moment helpless. He advanced as far as Salamanca, and there picked up Thiébault’s division, but even so he had not more that 15,000 men in hand, and dared not, with such a handful, march on Rodrigo, to endeavour to recover it before Wellington should have restored its fortifications. Bonnet had not yet even reached Leon: Ferey and Dorsenne’s Guard division had not been heard of. As to where Foy and Montbrun might be at the moment, it was hardly possible to hazard a guess. The only troops that could be relied upon to appear within the next few days were the divisions of Souham and Brennier. Even with their help the army would not exceed 26,000 or 28,000 men.
Meanwhile Wellington, with seven divisions now in hand, for he had brought up both the 5th and the 7th to the front, was lying on the Agueda, covering the repairs of Ciudad Rodrigo. Marmont had at first thought that, elated by his recent success, the British general might push his advance towards Salamanca. He made no signs of doing so: all his troops remained concentrated on the Portuguese frontier, ready to protect the rebuilding of Rodrigo. Here, on the day after the storm, all the trenches were filled in, and the débris on the breaches removed. Twelve hundred men were then turned to the task of mending the breaches, which were at first built up with fascines and earth only, so as to make them ready within a few days to resist a coup-de-main. In a very short time they were more or less in a state of defence, and on February 15th Castaños produced a brigade of Spanish infantry to form the new garrison of the place. The work was much retarded by the weather. Throughout the time of the siege it had been bitterly cold but very dry: but on the 28th the wind shifted to the west, and for the nine days following there was incessant and torrential rain, which was very detrimental to the work. It had, however, the compensating advantage of preventing Marmont from making any advance from Salamanca. Every river in Leon was over its banks, every ford impassable, the roads became practically useless. When, therefore, on February 2nd[215] the Agueda rose to such a height that Wellington’s trestle-bridge was swept away, and the stone town-bridge of Rodrigo was two feet under water, so that the divisions cantoned on the Portuguese frontier were cut off from the half-repaired fortress, there was no pressing danger from the French, who were quite unable to move forward.
Marmont, as we have seen, had reached Fuente Sauco on January 21st, and Salamanca on January 22nd. On the following day Souham, coming in from the direction of Zamora, appeared at Matilla, half way between Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, so that he was in touch with his chief and ready to act as his advanced guard. But no other troops had come up, and on the 24th the Marshal received a hasty note from Dorsenne, saying that the division of the Young Guard from Burgos would not reach the Tormes till February 2[216]. With only four divisions at his disposition (Clausel, Maucune, Thiébault, Souham) Marmont dared not yet move forward, since he knew that Wellington had at least six in hand, and he shrank from committing himself to decisive action with little more than 20,000 men assembled. On the 28th Dorsenne sent in a still more disheartening dispatch than his last: he had now ordered Roguet’s Guards, who had got as far forward as Medina del Campo, to return to Burgos[217]. The reasons given were that Mina had just inflicted a severe blow on General Abbé, the commanding officer in Navarre, by beating him near Pampeluna with a loss of 400 men, that the Conde de Montijo, from Aragon, had laid siege to Soria, and was pressing its garrison hard, and that another assembly of guerrillero bands had attacked Aranda del Duero, and would take it, if it were not succoured in a few days. ‘I therefore trust that your excellency will approve of my having called back Roguet’s division, its artillery, and Laferrière’s horse, to use them for a guerre à outrance against the guerrillas.’ Nothing serious—he added—would follow, as all reports agreed that Wellington was sitting tight near Ciudad Rodrigo, and would make no advance toward Salamanca.
No succours whatever, therefore, were to be expected from the Army of the North: Bonnet had only just recrossed the Cantabrian mountains, much incommoded by the bad weather in the passes, and Foy and Montbrun were only expected in the neighbourhood of Toledo early in February. Therefore Marmont abandoned all hope of attacking Wellington before Ciudad Rodrigo should be in a state of defence. The desperately rainy weather of January 28th to February 6th was no doubt the last decisive fact in making the Marshal give up the game. Before the rain had ceased falling, he concluded that all chance of a successful offensive move was gone, for he returned from Salamanca to Valladolid on February 5th.
On February 6th he wrote to Berthier[218] that he had ordered Montbrun and Foy, on their return from the Alicante expedition, to remain behind in the valley of the Tagus, and not to come on to Salamanca. His reason for abandoning all idea of a general concentration against Wellington in the kingdom of Leon, was that he was convinced that the next move of the British general would be to make a dash at Badajoz, and that he wished to have a considerable force ready in the direction of Almaraz and Talavera, with which he could succour the Army of the South, when it should be compelled to march, as in 1811, to relieve that fortress. His forecast of Wellington’s probable scheme of operations was perfectly correct, and his idea that the best way to foil it would be to hold a large portion of his army in the valley of the Tagus was correct also. But he was not to be permitted to carry out his own plan: the orders from Paris, which he so much dreaded, once more intervened to prescribe for him a very different policy[219].
Wellington during the critical days from January 20th to February 6th was naturally anxious. He knew that Marmont would concentrate against him, but he hoped (as indeed he was justified in doing) that the concentration would be slow and imperfect, and that the Marshal would find himself too weak to advance from Salamanca. His anxiety was made somewhat greater than it need have been, by a false report that Foy and Montbrun were already returned from the Alicante expedition—he was told that both had got back to Toledo by the beginning of January[220]—a most mischievous piece of false news. An equally groundless rumour informed him that Bonnet had left the Asturias, many days before his departure actually took place. On January 21 he wrote to Lord Liverpool that Bonnet had passed Benavente on his way to Salamanca, and that ‘the whole of what had gone eastward’ [i. e. Foy and Montbrun] was reported to be coming up from the Tagus to Valladolid, so that in a few days Marmont might possibly have 50,000 men in hand[221]. To make himself strong against such a concentration he ordered Hill, on January 22, to bring up three brigades of the 2nd Division to Castello Branco, with which he might join the main army at a few days’ notice[222]. At the same time he directed General Abadia to send a force to occupy the Asturias, which must be empty since Bonnet had evacuated it. It was not till some days later that he got the reassuring, and correct, news that Foy and Montbrun, instead of being already at the front in Castile, were not even expected at Toledo till January 29th, and that Bonnet had started late, and was only at La Baneza when February had already begun. But, by the time that he had received this information, it had already become evident that Marmont was not about to take the offensive, and Ciudad Rodrigo was already in a condition to resist a coup-de-main; while, since the whole siege-train of the Army of Portugal had been captured therein, it was certain that the Marshal could not come up provided with the artillery required for a regular siege.
By February 12th the real state of affairs became clear, ‘the enemy has few troops left at Salamanca and in the towns on the Tormes, and it appears that Marshal Marmont has cantoned the right of his army on the Douro, at Zamora and Toro, the centre in the province of Avila, while one division (the 6th) has returned to Talavera and the valley of the Tagus.’ This was nearly correct: Marmont, on February 6th, had defined his position as follows—two divisions (those just returned from the Alicante expedition) in the valley of the Tagus; one, the 6th (Brennier), at Monbeltran, in one of the passes leading from the Tagus to the Douro valley; one (Clausel) at Avila; three on the Douro and the Esla (Zamora, Toro, Benavente) with a strong advanced guard at Salamanca. The heavy detachment towards the Tagus, as he explained, was to provide for the probable necessity of succouring Badajoz, to which Wellington was certain to turn his attention ere long.
Marmont was perfectly right in his surmise. Ciudad Rodrigo had hardly been in his hands for five days, when Wellington began to issue orders presupposing an attack on Badajoz. On January 25th Alexander Dickson was directed to send the 24-lb. shot and reserve powder remaining at the artillery base at Villa da Ponte to be embarked on the Douro for Oporto, where they were to be placed on ship-board[223]. Next day it was ordered that sixteen howitzers of the siege-train should start from Almeida overland for the Alemtejo, each drawn by eight bullocks, while twenty 24-pounders were to be shipped down the Douro from Barca de Alva to Oporto, and sent round from thence to Setubal, the seaport nearest to Elvas[224]. On the 28th Dickson himself was ordered to start at once for Setubal, in order that he might be ready to receive each consignment on its arrival, and to make arrangements for its transport to Elvas[225], while a dispatch was sent to Hill[226] definitely stating that, if all went well, the siege of Badajoz was to begin in the second week of March.
These plans were drawn up long before it was clear that the army might not have to fight Marmont on the Agueda, for the defence of Ciudad Rodrigo. ‘If they should move this way, I hope to give a good account of them,’ Wellington wrote to Douglas (the British officer attached to the Army of Galicia)[227]: but he judged it more likely that no such advance would be made. ‘I think it probable that when Marmont shall have heard of our success, he will not move at all[228].’ Meanwhile there was no need to march the army southward for some time, since the artillery and stores would take many weeks on their land or water voyage, when roads were bad and the sea vexed with winter storms. So long as seven divisions were cantoned behind the Agueda and Coa, Marmont could have no certain knowledge that the attack on Badajoz was contemplated, whatever he might suspect. Therefore no transference southward of the divisions behind the Agueda was begun till February 19th. But Wellington, with an eye on Marmont’s future movements, contemplated a raid by Hill on the bridge of Almaraz, the nearest and best passage which the French possessed on the Tagus. If it could be broken by a flying column, any succours from the Army of Portugal to the Army of the South would have to take a much longer route and waste much time[229]. The project was abandoned, on Hill’s report that he doubted of its practicability, since a successful coup-de-main on one of the bridge-head forts might not secure the actual destruction of the boats, which the French might withdraw to the farther side of the river, and relay at their leisure[230]. But, as we shall see, the scheme was postponed and not entirely rejected: in May it was carried out with complete success.
While Wellington was awaiting the news that his siege artillery was well forward on the way to Elvas, Marmont had been undergoing one of his periodical lectures from Paris. A dispatch sent to him by Berthier on January 23, and received at Valladolid on February 6th—fourteen days only having been occupied by its travels—had of course no reference to Wellington or Ciudad Rodrigo, the news of the investment of that fortress having only reached Paris on January 27th. It was mainly composed of censures on Montbrun’s Alicante expedition, which Napoleon considered to have been undertaken with too large a force—’he had ordered a flying column to be sent against Valencia, a whole army corps had marched.’ But the paragraph in it which filled Marmont with dismay was one ordering him to make over at once 6,000 men to the Army of the North, whose numbers the Emperor considered to be running too low, now that the two Guard divisions had been directed to return to France.