This was precisely what Marmont had intended to do. He was convinced, like Soult, that Wellington’s next move would be against Badajoz, and he placed Montbrun and the divisions of Foy, Brennier, and Sarrut about Talavera, Monbeltran, and Almaraz, precisely in order that they might be in easy touch with Drouet. On February 22 he wrote to his colleague explaining his purpose in so doing, and his complete acquiescence in the plan for a joint movement against Wellington, whenever the latter should appear on the Guadiana[290]. His pledge was quite honest and genuine, and in reliance on it Soult made all his arrangements. These, however, appear to have been rather loose and careless: the Marshal seems to have felt such complete confidence in the combination that he made insufficient preparations on his own side. No reinforcements were sent either to Badajoz or to Drouet, whose 12,000 men were dispersed in a very long front in Estremadura, reaching from Medellin and Don Benito on the right to Fregenal on the left. This is why Graham, when he moved forward briskly on March 17th, found no solid body of the enemy in front of him, but only scattered brigades and regiments, which made off in haste, and which only succeeded at last in concentrating so far to the rear as Fuente Ovejuna, which is actually in Andalusia, and behind the crest of the Sierra Morena. We may add that having been advised by Drouet as early as March 11th[291] that British troops were accumulating behind Elvas, Soult ought to have taken the alarm at once, to have moved back to Seville from Santa Maria by Cadiz, where he lay on that date, and to have issued orders for the concentration of his reserves. He did none of these things, was still in front of Cadiz on March 20[292], and did not prescribe any movement of troops till, on that day, he received Drouet’s more definite and alarming news that Wellington was in person at Elvas, and had moved out toward Badajoz on the 16th. Clearly he lost nine days by want of sufficient promptness, and had but himself to blame if he could only start from Seville with a considerable field-force on March 30. All that he appears to have done on March 11 was to write to Marmont that the long-foreseen hypothesis of a move of Wellington on Badajoz was being verified, and that they must prepare to unite their forces. Jourdan has, therefore, some justification for his remark that he does not see why Soult should have been before Cadiz, amusing himself by throwing shells into that place[293] as late as March 20th.
From the 20th to the 30th of that month Soult was busily engaged in organizing the relief-column which, after picking up Drouet on the way, was to march to the succour of Badajoz. He could not venture to touch the divisions of Conroux and Cassagne, which together were none too strong to provide for the manning of the Cadiz Lines and the fending off of Ballasteros from their rear. But he called off the whole division of Barrois, nearly 8,000 strong[294], Vichery’s brigade of infantry from Leval’s division in the province of Granada[295], and six regiments of Digeon’s and Pierre Soult’s dragoons. This, with the corresponding artillery, made a column of some 13,000 men, with which the Marshal started from Seville on the 30th March, crossed the Guadalquivir at Lora del Rio next day, and moved on Constantina and Guadalcanal. An interesting complication would have been caused if Graham had been allowed to stop with his 19,000 men at Azuaga and Llerena, where he was directly between Soult and Drouet’s position at Fuente Ovejuna, and if Hill from Merida had moved against Drouet’s corps. But as Wellington had withdrawn Graham’s column to Villafranca on March 31, there was nothing left to prevent Drouet from coming in from his excentric position, and joining his chief at Llerena on April 4th, with the 12,000 men of his own and Daricau’s divisions. This gave the Marshal some 25,000 men[296] in hand, a force which would be manifestly incapable of raising the siege of Badajoz, for he knew that Wellington had at least 45,000 men in hand, and, as a matter of fact, the arrival of the 5th Division and other late detachments had raised the Anglo-Portuguese army to something more like 55,000 sabres and bayonets.
Wellington’s orders, when he heard that Soult was in the passes, and that Drouet was moving to join him, directed Graham to fall back on the Albuera position, and Hill to join him there by the route of Lobon and Talavera Real, if it should appear that all the French columns were moving directly to the relief of Badajoz, and none of them spreading out eastward towards the Upper Guadiana[297]. These conditions were realized, as Soult moved in one solid body towards Villafranca and Fuente del Maestre: so Hill evacuated Merida, after destroying its bridge, and joined Graham on the old Albuera ground on April 6th. They had 31,000 men, including four British divisions and four British cavalry brigades, and Wellington could have reinforced them from the lines before Badajoz with two divisions more, if it had been necessary, while still leaving the fortress adequately blockaded by 10,000 or 12,000 men. But as Soult did not appear at Fuente del Maestre and Villafranca till the afternoon of April 7th, a day after Badajoz had fallen, this need did not arise. The Marshal, learning of the disaster, hastily turned back and retired towards Andalusia, wisely observing that he ‘could not fight the whole English army.’ It is interesting to speculate what would have happened if he had lingered five days less before Cadiz, had issued his concentration orders on the 14th or 15th instead of the 20th March, and had appeared at Villafranca on the 2nd instead of the 7th of the next month. His dispatch of April 17 states that he had intended to fight, despite of odds, to save Badajoz: if he had done so, and had attacked 40,000 Anglo-Portuguese with his 25,000 men, he must inevitably have suffered a dreadful disaster. He must have fought a second battle of Albuera with much the same strength that he had at the first, while his enemy would have had six British divisions instead of two, and an equal instead of a wholly inferior cavalry. The result of such a battle could hardly have failed to be not only a crushing defeat for the French, but the prompt loss of all Andalusia; for thrown back on that kingdom with a routed army, and unable to gather in promptly reserves scattered over the whole land, from the Cadiz Lines to Granada and Malaga, he must have evacuated his viceroyalty, and have retreated in haste either on La Mancha or on Valencia.
It is most improbable, however, that Soult would really have ventured to attack the Albuera position[298], in spite of the confident language of his ex-post-facto dispatches. His whole plan of operations depended on his being joined by the Army of Portugal, in accordance with Marmont’s promise of February 22nd. And he was well aware, by a letter sent by Foy to Drouet on March 31st, and received on April 6th, that he could expect no help from the North for many weeks, if any came at all. That Badajoz was never relieved was due, not to Soult’s delay in concentrating (though this was no doubt unwise), nor to his over-confidence in Phillipon’s power of resistance, which was (as it turned out) misplaced. He wrote to Berthier that ‘the garrison wanted for nothing—it had still food for two months, and was abundantly provided with munitions: its total strength was 5,000 men: it had victoriously repulsed three assaults: the men were convinced that, however great a hostile force presented itself before the breaches, it would never carry them: Phillipon had been informed on March 28th that I was marching to his help: the troops were in enthusiastic spirits, though they had already lost 500 men in successful sorties: my advanced guard was at only one long day’s march from the place, when it succumbs!’ It was indeed an évènement funeste!
But Soult’s late arrival and miscalculation of the time that the siege would take, were neither of them the causes of the fall of Badajoz. It would have fallen none the less if he had arrived on the Albuera upon April 2nd. The fate of the place was really settled by Napoleon’s dispatches to Marmont, with which we dealt at great length in an earlier chapter[299]. The orders of February 11 and February 21 (received by the Duke of Ragusa on February 26 and March 2 respectively) forbade him to worry about Badajoz, ‘a very strong fortress supported by an army of 80,000 men,’ and told him to withdraw to Salamanca two of the three divisions which he was keeping in the valley of the Tagus, and to reply to any movement of Wellington into Estremadura by invading Northern Portugal. The plan which Soult and Marmont had concerted for a joint relief of Badajoz was expressly forbidden by their master, on his erroneous hypothesis that a thrust at Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida must bring Wellington home again. Marmont’s promise of co-operation, sent off on February 22nd to Seville, was rendered impossible—through no fault of his—by the imperial dispatch received four days later, which expressly forbade him to stand by it. ‘The English will only go southward if you, by your ill-devised scheme, keep two or three divisions detached on the Tagus: that reassures them, and tells them that you have no offensive projects against them.’ So Marmont, protesting and prophesying future disaster, was compelled to withdraw two divisions from the central position on the Tagus, and to leave there only Foy’s 5,000 men—a negligible quantity in the problem. Nor was this all—he was not even allowed to send them back, since the whole Army of Portugal was ordered to march into the Beira.
Soult, therefore, was justified in his wrath when he wrote to Marmont that he had been given a promise and that it had been broken, ‘if there had been the least attempt to concert operations between the armies of Portugal and the South, the English army would have been destroyed, and Badajoz would still be in the power of the Emperor. I deplore bitterly the fact that you have not been able to come to an arrangement with me on the subject.’ But the wrath should have been directed against the Emperor, not against his lieutenant, who had so unwillingly been forced to break his promise. The only censure, perhaps, that can be laid upon Marmont is that he should have made it more clear to Soult that, by the new directions from Paris, he was rendered unable to redeem his pledge. Soult was not, however, without warnings that something of the kind might happen: Berthier had written to him on February 11th, and the letter must have arrived by the middle of March, that the Emperor was displeased to find him appealing for troops of the Army of Portugal to be moved to Truxillo, and that he ought to be more dependent on his own strength[300]. It would have been better if the Emperor’s trusty scribe had explained to Soult that Marmont was expressly forbidden, in a dispatch written that same day, to keep more than one division on the Tagus, or to worry himself about the danger of Badajoz.
Marmont’s original plan for joining Soult via Almaraz might have failed—he himself confesses it in one of his replies to Berthier. But it was the only scheme which presented any prospect of success. By making it impossible Napoleon rendered the fall of Badajoz certain. For it is no defence whatever to point out that his dispatch of March 12th, which reached Salamanca on March 27, finally gave Marmont the option of going southward. By that time it was too late to try the move:—if the Duke of Ragusa had marched for Almaraz and Truxillo next morning, he would still have been many days too late to join Soult before April 6th, the date on which Badajoz fell.
Summing up the whole operation, we must conclude that Wellington’s plan, which depended for its efficacy on the slowness with which the French always received information, and the difficulty which they always experienced in concentrating and feeding large bodies of troops in winter or early spring, was bound to be successful, unless an improbable conjunction of chances had occurred. If Marmont and Soult had both taken the alarm at the earliest possible moment, and had each marched with the strongest possible field army, Soult with the 25,000 men that he actually collected, Marmont with the three divisions that lay on the Tagus on March 1st, and three more from Castile[301], they might have met east of Merida somewhere about the last days of March. In that case their united strength would have been from 50,000 to 55,000 men: Wellington had as many, so that he would not have been bound down to the mere defensive policy that he took up on the Caya in June-July 1811, when his numbers were decidedly less than now. But the chance that both Marmont and Soult would do the right thing in the shortest possible time was unlikely. They would have had terrible difficulties from the torrential rains that prevailed in the last ten days of March, and the consequent badness of the roads. Marmont’s (if not Soult’s) food-problem would have been a hard one, as he himself shows in several of his letters. Soult got his first definite alarm on March 11th: Marmont could hardly move till he had learnt that Wellington had started for Estremadura in person: till this was certain, he could not be sure that the main body of the Anglo-Portuguese army was not still behind the Agueda. Wellington only left Freneda on March 5th, and Marmont did not know of his departure till some days later. If the two marshals had each issued prompt concentration orders on March 11, it still remains very doubtful if they would have met in time to foil Wellington’s object. As a matter of fact Soult (as we have seen) delayed for nine days before he determined to concentrate his field-force and march on Badajoz, and this lateness would have wrecked the combination, even if Marmont had been more ready than his colleague.
Still there was some chance that the armies might have joined, if Napoleon had not intervened with his misguided refusal to allow Marmont to keep three divisions in the valley of the Tagus or to ‘worry about affairs that did not concern him.’ Wellington could not know of these orders: hence came his anxieties, and his determination to hurry the siege of Badajoz to a conclusion at the earliest possible date. He was never—as it turned out—in serious danger, but he could not possibly be aware of the fact that Marmont was fettered by his instructions. It was only the gradual accumulation of reports proving that the Army of Portugal was moving against Ciudad Rodrigo, and not on Almaraz, that finally gave him comparative ease of mind with regard to the situation. As to Soult, he somewhat over-estimated his force, taking it at 30,000 or even 35,000 men rather than the real 25,000: this was, no doubt, the reason why he resolved to fight with his ‘covering army’ ranged on the Albuera position, and not farther forward. If he had known that on April 1 Soult had only 13,000 men at Monasterio, and was still separated from Drouet, he might possibly have been more enterprising.
No signs of Marmont’s arrival being visible, Wellington could afford to contemplate with great equanimity Soult’s position at Villafranca on April 7th. If the Marshal moved forward he would be beaten—but it was almost certain that he would move back at once, for, as it will be remembered, precautions had been taken to give him an alarming distraction in his rear, by means of the operations of Penne Villemur and Ballasteros[302]. This combination worked with perfect success, far more accurately than Blake’s similar raid on Seville had done in June 1811. Ballasteros, it is true, did much less than was in his power. He started from his refuge under the guns of Gibraltar, passed down from the Ronda mountains, and reached Utrera, in the plain of the Guadalquivir less than twenty miles from Seville, on April 4. But he then swerved away, having done more to alarm than to hurt the French, though he had a force of 10,000 infantry and 800 horse[303], sufficient to have put Seville in serious peril. But Penne Villemur and Morillo, though they had not half the numbers of Ballasteros, accomplished all that Wellington required: having slipped into the Condado de Niebla almost unobserved, they pushed rapidly eastward, and occupied San Lucar la Mayor, only twelve miles from Seville, on April 4, the same day that Ballasteros appeared at Utrera. Their cavalry pushed up so boldly toward the suburbs that they had to be driven off by cannon-shot from the tête-de-pont at the bridge of Triana. General Rignoux, governor of Seville, had a very motley and insufficient garrison, as Wellington had calculated when he sent Penne Villemur forth. The only organized units were a battalion of ‘Swiss’ Juramentados—really adventurers of all nations—and a regiment of Spanish horse, making 1,500 men altogether: the rest consisted of convalescents and weakly men belonging to the regiments in the Cadiz Lines, and of 600 dismounted dragoons. These made up some 2,000 men more, but many were not fit to bear arms. In addition there were some companies of the recently raised ‘National Guards.’ The enormous size of Seville, and the weakness of its old wall, compelled Rignoux to concentrate his force in the fortified Cartuja convent, leaving only small posts at the gates and the bridge. He sent at once, as Wellington had hoped, pressing appeals to Soult, saying that he was beset by 14,000 men, and that the citizens would probably rise and let in the enemy.