(2) Marmont may leave a considerable force, perhaps the two divisions of Souham and Bonnet, in Leon, while departing southward with the greater part of his army: ‘this is the operation which it is probable that the enemy will follow.’ What the Army of Galicia can then accomplish will depend on the exact relative force of itself and of the French left in front of it, and on the state of the fortified places on the Douro and Tormes [Toro, Zamora, Salamanca] and the degree of equipment with which General Abadia can provide himself for siege-work. But España and Julian Sanchez must make all the play that they can, and even Porlier and Longa, from distant Cantabria, must be asked to co-operate in making mischief. Silveira and Baccelar will support, but risk nothing.
(3) Marmont may send to Estremadura only the smaller half of his army, and keep four or five divisions in the north, a force strong enough to enable him to take the offensive. He may attack either (a) Galicia, (b) Tras-os-Montes, or (c) the Beira, including Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo.
(a) If Marmont should invade Galicia, Abadia had better retreat, but in the direction that will bring him near the frontiers of Portugal (i. e. by Puebla Senabria) rather than on Lugo and Corunna. In that case Silveira and Baccelar will be on the enemy’s flank and rear, and will do as much mischief as they can on his communications, always taking care that they do not, by pushing too far into Leon, lose their communication with the Galicians or with Portugal. In proportion as the French may advance farther into Galicia, Baccelar will take measures to collect the whole of the militia of the Douro provinces northward. Carlos de España and Julian Sanchez ought to have good opportunities of making trouble for the enemy in the Salamanca district, if he pushes far from his base.
(b) If Marmont should invade Tras-os-Montes [not a likely operation, owing to the roughness of the country], Baccelar and Silveira should oppose him in front, while Abadia would come down on his flank and rear, and annoy him as much as possible. ‘Don Carlos and the guerrillas might do a great deal of mischief in Castille.’
(c) If Marmont should attack Beira, advancing by Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, both these fortresses are in such a state of defence as to ensure them against capture by a coup-de-main, and are supplied with provisions to suffice during any time that the enemy could possibly remain in the country. Baccelar and Silveira will assemble all the militia of the northern provinces in Upper Beira, and place themselves in communication with Carlos de España. They will endeavour to protect the magazines on the Douro and Mondego [at Celorico, Guarda, Lamego, St. João de Pesqueira], and may live on the last in case of urgent necessity, but not otherwise, as these stores could not easily be replaced. An attempt should be made, if possible, to draw the enemy into the Beira Baixa (i. e. the Castello Branco country) rather than towards the Douro. Abadia will invade northern Leon; what he can do depends on the force that Marmont leaves on the Esla, and the strength of his garrisons at Astorga, Zamora, Toro, &c. Supposing Marmont takes this direction, Carlos de España will destroy before him all the bridges on the Yeltes and Huebra, and that of Barba del Puerco, and the three bridges at Castillejo, all on the Lower Agueda.
It will be seen that the alternative (2) was Marmont’s own choice, and that he would have carried it out but for Napoleon’s orders, which definitively imposed upon him (3c) the raid into northern Beira. With the inconclusive operations resulting from that movement we shall deal in their proper place. It began on March 27th, and the Marshal was over the Agueda on March 30th. The last British division had left Ciudad Rodrigo three weeks before Marmont advanced, so difficult was it for him to get full and correct information, and to collect a sufficiently large army for invasion. On the 26th February he was under the impression that two British divisions only had yet marched for Badajoz, though five had really started. On March 6th, when only the 5th Division remained in the North, he still believed that Wellington and a large fraction of his army were in their old positions. This was the result of his adversary’s wisdom in stopping at Freneda till March 5th; as long as he was there in person, it was still thought probable by the French that only a detachment had marched southward. Hence came the lateness of Marmont’s final advance: for a long time he might consider that he was, as his master ordered, ‘containing’ several British divisions and the Commander-in-Chief himself.
Meanwhile, on taking stock of his situation at Elvas on March 12th, Wellington was reasonably satisfied. Not only was the greater part of his army in hand, and the rest rapidly coming up, but the siege material had escaped all the perils of storms by sea and rocky defiles by land, and was much where he had expected it to be. The material which moved by road, the sixteen 24-lb. howitzers which had marched on January 30th, and a convoy of 24-pounder and 18-pounder travelling-carriages and stores, which went off on February 2, had both come to hand at Elvas, the first on February 25th, the second on March 3, and were ready parked on the glacis. This was a wonderful journey over mountain roads in the most rainy season of the year. The sea-borne guns had also enjoyed a surprising immunity from winter storms; Dickson, when he arrived at Setubal on February 10th, found that the 24-pounders from Oporto had arrived thirty-six hours before him, and on the 14th was beginning to forward them by river-boat to Alcacer do Sal, from where they were drawn by oxen to Elvas, along with their ammunition[251]. The only difficulty which arose was that Wellington had asked Admiral Berkeley, commanding the squadron at Lisbon, to lend him, as a supplementary train, twenty 18-pound ship guns. The admiral sent twenty Russian guns (leavings of Siniavins’s squadron captured in the Tagus at the time of the Convention of Cintra). Dickson protested, as these pieces were of a different calibre from the British 18-pounder, and would not take its shot. The admiral refused to disgarnish his own flagship, which happened to be the only vessel at Lisbon with home-made 18-pounders on board. Dickson had to take the Russian guns perforce, and to cull for their ammunition all the Portuguese stores at Lisbon, where a certain supply of round shot that fitted was discovered, though many thousands had to be rejected as ‘far too low.’ On March 8th the whole fifty-two guns of the siege-train were reported ready, and the officer commanding the Portuguese artillery at Elvas announced that he could even find a small supplement, six old heavy English iron guns of the time of George II, which had been in store there since General Burgoyne’s expedition of 1761, besides some Portuguese guns of similar calibre. The old brass guns which had made such bad practice in 1811 were not this time requisitioned—fortunately they were not needed. The garrison of Elvas had for some weeks been at work making gabions and fascines, which were all ready, as was also a large consignment of cutting-tools from the Lisbon arsenal, and a train of twenty-two pontoons. Altogether the material was in a wonderful state of completeness.
For the service of the siege Wellington could dispose of about 300 British and 560 Portuguese artillerymen, a much larger force than had been available at the two unlucky leaguers of 1811. Colonel Framingham was the senior officer in this arm present, but Wellington had directed that Alexander Dickson should take charge of the whole service of the siege, just as he had been entrusted with all the preparations for it. There were fifteen British, five German Legion, and seventeen Portuguese artillery officers under his command. The Portuguese gunners mostly came from the 3rd or Elvas regiment, the British were drawn from the companies of Holcombe, Gardiner, Glubb, and Rettberg.[252] Under Colonel Fletcher, senior engineer officer, there were 115 men of the Royal Military Artificers present at the commencement of the siege, and an additional party came up from Cadiz during its last days. But though this was an improvement over the state of things in 1811, the numbers were still far too small; there were no trained miners whatever, and the volunteers from the line acting as sappers, who were instructed by the Artificers, were for the most part unskilful—only 120 men of the 3rd Division who had been at work during the leaguer of Ciudad Rodrigo were comparatively efficient. The engineer arm was the weak point in the siege, as Wellington complained in a letter which will have to be dealt with in its proper place. He had already been urging on Lord Liverpool the absolute necessity for the creation of permanent units of men trained in the technicalities of siege-work. Soon after Rodrigo fell he wrote, ‘I would beg to suggest to your lordship the expediency of adding to the Engineer establishment a corps of sappers and miners. It is inconceivable with what disadvantage we undertake a siege, for want of assistance of this description. There is no French corps d’armée which has not a battalion of sappers and a company of miners. We are obliged to depend for assistance of this sort upon the regiments of the line; and, although the men are brave and willing, they want the knowledge and training which are necessary. Many casualties occur, and much valuable time is lost at the most critical period of the siege[253],’
The situation on March 12th, save in this single respect, seemed favourable. It was only fourteen miles from Elvas, where the siege-train lay parked and the material was ready, to Badajoz. Sufficient troops were already arrived not only to invest the place, but to form a large covering army against any attempt of Soult to raise the siege. There was every reason to believe that the advance would take the French unawares. Only Drouet’s two divisions were in Estremadura, and before they could be reinforced up to a strength which would enable them to act with effect some weeks must elapse. Soult, as in 1811, would have to borrow troops from Granada and the Cadiz Lines before he could venture to take the offensive. Unless he should raise the siege of Cadiz or evacuate Granada, he could not gather more than 25,000 or 30,000 men at the very most: and it would take him three weeks to collect so many. If he approached with some such force, he could be fought, with very little risk: for it was not now as at the time of Albuera: not three Anglo-Portuguese infantry divisions, but eight were concentrated at Elvas: there would be nine when the 5th Division arrived. Not three British cavalry regiments (the weak point at Albuera), but fourteen were with the army. If Soult should push forward for a battle, 40,000 men could be opposed to him, all Anglo-Portuguese units of old formation, while 15,000 men were left to invest Badajoz. Or if Wellington should choose to abandon the investment for three days (as Beresford had done in May 1811) he could bring 55,000 men to the contest, a force which must crush Soult by the force of double numbers, unless he should raise the siege of Cadiz and abandon Granada, so as to bring his whole army to the Guadiana. Even if he took that desperate, but perhaps necessary, measure, and came with 45,000 men, leaving only Seville garrisoned behind him, there was no reason to suppose that he could not be dealt with.
The only dangerous possibility was the intervention of Marmont with five or six divisions of the Army of Portugal, as had happened at the time of the operations on the Caya in June 1811. Wellington, as we have seen in his directions to Baccelar and Castaños, thought this intervention probable. But from the disposition of Marmont’s troops at the moment of his own departure from Freneda, he thought that he could count on three weeks, or a little more, of freedom from any interference from this side. Two at least of Marmont’s divisions (Souham and Bonnet) would almost certainly be left in the North, to contain the Galicians and Asturians. Of the other six only one (Foy) was in the valley of the Tagus: the rest were scattered about, at Salamanca, Avila, Valladolid, &c., and would take time to collect[254]. Wellington was quite aware of Marmont’s difficulties with regard to magazines; he also counted on the roughness of the roads, the fact that the rivers were high in March, and (most of all) on the slowness with which information would reach the French marshal[255]. Still, here lay the risk, so far as Wellington could know. What he could not guess was that the movement which he feared had been expressly forbidden to Marmont by his master, and that only on March 27th was permission granted to the Marshal to execute the march to Almaraz. By that time, as we have already seen, it was too late for him to profit by the tardily-granted leave.