On the 6th Ballasteros received false news that Conroux was marching against him with the troops from the Cadiz Lines, and drew back into the mountains. It is said that he was wilfully deceived by persons in the French interest; at any rate he must have been badly served by his cavalry and intelligence officers, who ought to have been able to tell him that there was no foundation for the report. Penne and Morillo, however, though disappointed at failing to meet their colleague’s army, made a great parade of their small force under the walls of Seville, and skirmished with the French at the bridge-head of Triana, and under the walls of the Cartuja, so boldly that Rignoux expected a serious attack. They could only have accomplished something more profitable if the people of Seville had risen, but no disturbance took place. After remaining in front of the place all the 7th and 8th of April, they disappeared on the 9th, having received news of the fall of Badajoz, and drawn the correct deduction that Soult would turn back to hunt them when freed from his other task. Wellington, indeed, had written to give them warning to that effect on the very morning that they retired[304]: but they anticipated the danger, and were safely behind the Rio Tinto when Soult turned up in hot haste at Seville on the 11th, after four days of exhausting forced marches.
The Marshal had left the two divisions of Drouet and Daricau with Perreymond’s cavalry in Estremadura, to act as an observing force, and had marched with his remaining 13,000 men to save Seville, which owing to Ballasteros’s timidity had never been in any real danger. But the Spanish diversion had nevertheless had precisely the effect that Wellington had expected and desired. During Soult’s short absence of twelve days great part of the open country of Andalusia had fallen out of his control, the communications with La Mancha and King Joseph had been cut off, and the guerrilleros had blockaded all the smaller French posts. The hold of the invaders upon the kingdom was never so secure as it had been before the fall of Badajoz.
Ballasteros, after his fiasco in front of Seville, made two fruitless attempts against isolated French garrisons. He failed at the Castle of Zahara on April 11th. One of his columns in an assault on Osuna two days later got into the town and killed or captured 60 of the defenders, but failed to take the citadel, where the remainder defended themselves till Pierre Soult was reported to be at hand, and the Spaniards withdrew[305]. He ended his campaign of raids, however, with a more successful stroke. Hearing that the brigadier Rey, with three battalions and some dragoons, was marching from Malaga to relieve the garrison of Ronda, he fell upon him at Alhaurin on the 14th with his main body, encompassed him with fourfold strength, and drove him in rout back to Malaga, capturing his two guns and inflicting more than 200 casualties upon him[306]. Ballasteros then hoped to seize on Malaga, where the French were much alarmed, and prepared to shut themselves up in the citadel of Gibalfaro. But the news that Pierre Soult and Conroux were approaching with a strong column caused the Spaniards to retire to the mountains above Gibraltar [April 19th]. Thus the operations in Andalusia, which had opened with Soult’s march to Badajoz, came to an end, with no ruinous disaster to the French, but with a diminution of their prestige, and a distinct weakening of their hold on the kingdom. In the Condado de Niebla Soult made no attempt to reoccupy lost ground, and east of Granada his line of posts had recoiled considerably on the Murcian side: Baza and Ubeda had been abandoned for good. It was but a vain boast when the Marshal wrote to Berthier that, after he had set all things to rights in the central parts of Andalusia, he intended to organize a general concentration to crush Ballasteros, and that his next task would be to lay siege for a second time to Tarifa, ‘the loss of which place would be more injurious to the English and the Insurgents than that of Alicante, or even that of Badajoz—against which last-named fortress I ought to make no attack till I shall have finished matters on the Tarifa side, and so have nothing to fear on my left flank[307].’
To complete the survey of the fortunes of the Army of the South in April, it only remains that we should mention the doings of Drouet, now left once more with his two old divisions to form the ‘corps of observation’ opposite the Anglo-Portuguese. Soult during his retreat had dropped his lieutenant at Llerena, with orders to give back on Seville without fighting any serious action, if the enemy should pursue him in force, but if he were left alone to hold his ground, push his cavalry forward, and keep a strong detachment as near the Upper Guadiana as possible. For only by placing troops at Campanario, Medellin, and (if possible) Merida, could communication be kept up via Truxillo and Almaraz with the Army of Portugal.
As it turned out, Drouet was not to be permitted to occupy such a forward position as Soult would have liked. He was closely followed by Stapleton Cotton, with Le Marchant’s and Slade’s heavy and Ponsonby’s[308] light cavalry brigades, who brought his rearguard to action at Villagarcia outside Llerena on April 11th. This was a considerable fight. Drouet’s horse was in position to cover the retirement of his infantry, with Lallemand’s dragoons in first line, and Perreymond’s hussars and chasseurs in support. Lallemand evidently thought that he had only Ponsonby’s brigade in front of him, as Le Marchant’s was coming up by a side-road covered by hills, and Slade’s was far out of sight to the rear. Accordingly he accepted battle on an equal front, each side having three regiments in line. But, just as the charge was delivered, the 5th Dragoon Guards, Le Marchant’s leading regiment, came on the ground from the right, and, rapidly deploying, took the French line in flank and completely rolled it up[309]. The enemy went to the rear in confusion, and the pursuit was continued till, half-way between Villagarcia and Llerena, the French rallied on their reserve (2nd Hussars) behind a broad ditch. Cotton, who had not let his men get out of hand, re-formed Anson’s brigade and delivered a second successful charge, which drove the French in upon Drouet’s infantry, which was in order of battle to the left of Llerena town. It was impossible to do more, as three cavalry brigades could not attack 12,000 men of all arms in a good position. But a few hours later the whole French corps was seen in retreat eastward: it retired to Berlanga and Azuaga on the watershed of the Sierra Morena, completely abandoning Estremadura.
The French (outnumbered, if Slade’s brigade be counted, but it was far to the rear and never put in line) lost 53 killed and wounded and 4 officers and 132 rank and file taken prisoners. Cotton’s casualties were 14 killed and 2 officers and 35 men wounded: he insisted that his success would have been much greater if Ponsonby had held back a little longer, till the whole of Le Marchant’s squadrons came on the field—Lallemand would then have been cut off from Llerena and his line of retreat, and the greater part of his brigade ought to have been captured, though the light cavalry in the second line might have got off[310]. However, the affair was very creditable to all concerned.
Hill’s infantry did not follow the retreating French, and had halted about Almendralejo and Villafranca, only the cavalry having gone on in pursuit to Llerena. The rest of the Anglo-Portuguese army was already in movement for the North, as Wellington had given up the idea, which had somewhat tempted him at first, of pursuing Soult to Seville and trying to upset the whole fabric of French power in Andalusia. Of this more in its due place. Suffice it to say here that he fell back on his old partition of forces, leaving Hill in Estremadura as his ‘corps of observation’, with precisely the same force that he had been given in 1811, save that one British cavalry brigade (that of Slade) was added. The rest of the corps consisted of the 2nd Division, Hamilton’s two Portuguese brigades, Long’s British and John Campbell’s Portuguese horse[311]. The whole amounted to about 14,000 men, sufficient not only to hold Drouet in check, but also to keep an eye upon the French troops in the valley of the Tagus, against whom Wellington was now meditating a raid of the sort that he had already sketched out in his correspondence with Hill in February.
So much for the Army of Andalusia and its fortunes in April 1812. We must now turn to those of Marmont and the Army of Portugal during the same critical weeks.
The Duke of Ragusa, as it will be remembered, had been caught at Salamanca, on March 27th, by Napoleon’s dispatch giving him an over-late option of detaching troops to the relief of Badajoz. But being already committed to the invasion of Portugal prescribed by the Emperor’s earlier letters, and having his field-force and his magazines disposed for that project, he had resolved to proceed with it, though he had no great belief in the results that would follow from his taking the offensive[312]. As he informed his master, there was nothing at which he could strike effectively. ‘It would seem that His Majesty thinks that Lord Wellington has magazines close behind the frontier of northern Portugal. Not so. These magazines are at Abrantes, or in Estremadura. His hospitals are at Lisbon, Castello Branco, and Abrantes. There is nothing of any importance to him on the Coa.’ And how was Almeida or Ciudad Rodrigo to be assailed in such a way as to cause Wellington any disquietude, when the Army of Portugal had not a single heavy gun left? ‘General Dorsenne had the happy idea of leaving in Rodrigo, a fortress of inferior character on the front of our line, the whole siege-train prepared for this army at great expense, so that new guns of large calibre must actually be brought up from France.’
Marmont’s striking force was not so large as he would have wished. Bonnet was, by the Emperor’s orders, beginning his advance for the reoccupation of the Asturias. Foy was in the valley of the Tagus. Souham had to be left on the Esla, to observe the Army of Galicia. This left five divisions for active operations: but the Marshal came to the conclusion that he must split up one more (Ferey’s) to hold Valladolid, Salamanca, Zamora, Toro, Avila, Benavente, and other places, which in an elaborate calculation sent to Berthier he showed to require 4,910 men for their garrisons. He therefore marched with four infantry divisions only [Clausel, Maucune, Sarrut, Brennier] and 1,500 light cavalry, about 25,000 men in all: his division of dragoons was left behind in Leon, to keep open communication between his various garrisons. A rather illusory help was sought by sending to Foy, who then lay at Almaraz, orders to the effect that he might push a detachment to Plasencia, and give out that he was about to join the main army by the pass of Perales. But Foy’s real concern, as he was told, was to keep up communication with the Army of the South, and to give any help that was possible on the side of Truxillo, if (by some improbable chance) the Army of the Centre should be able to lend him the aid of any appreciable number of battalions.