On the 30th the French army appeared in front of Rodrigo, and Carlos de España, leaving 3,000 men as garrison there, under General Vives, retired with the small remainder of his division towards the Portuguese frontier. He was pursued and molested by the enemy’s cavalry, not having been covered or assisted, as Wellington had directed, by Victor Alten’s regiment of German Hussars. That officer, neglecting his orders in the most flagrant fashion, did not retire slowly and in a fighting posture, when the French drove in his line of vedettes in front of Rodrigo, but collected his regiment and rode hard for Castello Branco, without concerning himself in the least as to the safety of the Spanish and Portuguese forces in his neighbourhood, or the procuring of intelligence as to the strength and the purpose of the French army. His carelessness or shirking of responsibility, which was to be displayed in still worse form as the campaign went on, drew on him such a sharp and bitter rebuke from Wellington that it is a wonder that he was not sent home forthwith[313].
Marmont looked at Rodrigo, but refused to attempt anything against it, though he was informed that the garrison was undisciplined and dispirited. Without siege artillery he held that it was useless to attack the place. After sending in a formal summons to Vives (who gave the proper negative answer in round terms), and throwing into the streets a few shells from the howitzers attached to his field-batteries, he told off Brennier’s division to blockade Rodrigo, as also to guard a flying bridge which he cast across the Agueda at La Caridad, a few miles up-stream.
His next move was to send forward Clausel with two divisions to investigate the state of Almeida. He had heard that its walls were unfinished, and thought that there might be some chance of executing a coup-de-main against it. The general, however, came back next day, reporting that he thought the scheme impossible. He had apparently been deterred from pressing in upon the place both by the defiant attitude of the governor, Le Mesurier, whose outposts skirmished outside the walls for some time before allowing themselves to be driven in, and still more by the sight of a considerable force of Portuguese troops encamped close to the town on the other side of the Coa. This was Trant’s militia, the first detachment that had got to the front of the various bodies of troops which Wellington had told off for the defence of the Beira. They had taken up the strong position behind the bridge of the Coa, which Craufurd had so obstinately defended against Ney in July 1810.
On the alarm being given on March 29th that Marmont was marching against that province, and not against Galicia or the Tras-os-Montes, Wellington’s orders suiting that contingency were carried out with more or less accuracy. Silveira, with the Tras-os-Montes militia and his small body of regular cavalry, began to move on Lamego, where Baccelar, the chief commander in the North, had concentrated the regiments from the Oporto region and the Beira Alta, even before Marmont had left Salamanca. General Abadia had been requested to press forward against the French on the Esla, so as to threaten the flank and rear of the invading army. He did not accomplish much, being convinced that the forces left opposite him were too strong to be lightly meddled with. But he directed a raid to be made from the Western Asturias towards the city of Leon, and the division at Puebla de Senabria threatened Benavente. Both movements were executed too late to be of any importance in affecting the course of the campaign.
Baccelar had been ordered to avoid committing himself to a general action with any large body of the enemy, but to show such a mass of troops concentrated that Marmont would have to keep his main body together, and to act cautiously on the offensive. His primary duty was to cover, if possible, the large magazines at São João de Pesqueira and Lamego on the Douro, and the smaller ones at Villa da Ponte, Pinhel, and Celorico. To these Wellington attached much importance, as they were the intermediate dépôts from which his army drew its sustenance when it was on the northern frontier, and he knew that he would be requiring them again ere many weeks had passed. As long as Marmont remained near Almeida, it was necessary to keep a force as far forward as possible, behind the very defensible line of the Coa, and Trant was advanced for this purpose, though he was directed not to commit himself. His presence so close to Almeida was very valuable, as he would have to be driven off before the Marshal formally invested the place. Le Mesurier, the governor, was not at all comfortable as to his position: though he had a proportion of British artillery left with him, the whole of the infantry of the garrison consisted of Beira militia, who had no experience under arms. On taking over charge of the place, on March 18, the governor had complained that though the walls were in a sufficient state of repair, and there were plenty of guns forthcoming, yet few or none of them were mounted ready for service, the powder magazines were insufficiently sheltered, and many details of fortification (palisades, platforms, &c.) had to be completed in a hurry[314]. However, the place looked so sound for defence when Clausel reconnoitred it, that—as we have seen—he made no attempt to invest it, and promptly withdrew, reporting to his chief that Almeida was not to be taken by a coup-de-main.
Marmont then made the move which Wellington had most desired, and which in his dispatch to Baccelar he had specified as the happiest thing that could come about. Instead of sitting down before Almeida or Ciudad Rodrigo, or making a push against the dépôts on the Douro, he turned southward towards the Lower Beira, and (leaving Brennier behind to guard communications) marched with three divisions to Sabugal via Fuente Guinaldo. This policy could have no great results—the Marshal might ravage the country-side, but such a movement with such a force could not possibly alarm Wellington overmuch, or draw him away from the siege of Badajoz if he were determined to persevere in it. There was nothing of importance to him in central Beira—only minor dépôts at Celorico and Castello Branco, much less valuable than the larger ones at Lamego and São João de Pesqueira on the Douro. ‘He can do no more,’ as an acute observer on the Portuguese staff remarked, ‘than drive off some cattle, burn some cottages, and ruin a few wretched peasants[315].’ For the country about the sources of the Zezere and round Castello Branco is one of the most thinly peopled districts of Portugal.
To meet Marmont’s southern move Baccelar brought up Trant’s and Wilson’s militia by a parallel march to Guarda, while Le Cor, with the two regiments of the Beira Baixa, held on at Castello Branco till he should be evicted from it. To Wellington’s intense disgust[316], Victor Alten, whose orders directed him to fall back no farther than that town, continued his precipitate retreat with the German Hussars to the bridge of Villa Velha on the Tagus, and began to take measures to destroy that all-important link of communications between north and south. Fortunately he was stopped before he had done the damage. The bridge was only taken over to the south bank, not committed to the flames.
Halting at Sabugal, on April 8th, Marmont sent out flying columns, which ravaged the country-side as far as Penamacor, Fundão, and Covilhão, and dispatched Clausel with a whole division against Castello Branco, the one important place in the whole region. Le Cor evacuated it on April 12th, after burning such of the magazines as could not be removed in haste: and Clausel—who occupied it for two days—did not therefore get possession of the stores of food which his chief had hoped to find there. In revenge the town and the small proportion of its inhabitants who did not take to the hills were badly maltreated: many buildings, including the bishop’s palace, were burnt.
Hearing that Marmont had dispersed the larger portion of his army with flying columns, and was lying at Sabugal, on the 12th, with only a few thousand men, Trant conceived the rash idea that it would be possible to surprise him, at his head-quarters, by a night march of his own and Wilson’s combined divisions from Guarda. The distance was about twenty miles over mountain roads, and the scheme must have led to disaster, for—contrary to the information which the militia generals had gathered—the Marshal’s concentrated main body was still stronger than their own, despite of all his detachments[317]. ‘You could not have succeeded in your attempt, and you would have lost your division and that of General Wilson[318],’ wrote Wellington to Trant, when the scheme and its failure were reported to him a week later. It was fortunately never tried, owing to Baccelar’s having made objections to his subordinate’s hare-brained plan.
But the best comment on the enterprise is that on the very night (April 13-14) which Trant had fixed for his march, he was himself surprised by Marmont, so bad had been his arrangements for watching the country-side. The Marshal had learnt that there was an accumulation of militia at Guarda threatening his flank, and resolved to give it a lesson. He started with a brigade each from Sarrut’s and Maucune’s divisions and five squadrons of light cavalry—about 7,000 men—and was, at dawn, on the 14th, at the foot of the hill of Guarda, where he had the good luck to cut off all Trant’s outposts without their firing a shot—so badly did the militia keep their look-out. ‘Had he only dashed headlong into the town he might have captured Wilson’s and my divisions without losing probably a single man,’ wrote Trant. But the ascent into Guarda was long and steep, and Marmont, who had only cavalry up, did not guess how careless were his adversaries. He took proper military precautions and waited for his infantry: meanwhile the Portuguese were roused, almost by chance as it seems. ‘My distrust of the militia with regard to the execution of precautions,’ continues Trant, ‘had induced me at all times to have a drummer at my bedroom door, in readiness to beat to arms. This was most fortunately the case on the night of April 13, 1812, for the first intimation that I had of the enemy being near at hand was given me by my servant, on bringing me my coffee at daybreak on the 14th. He said that there was such a report in the street, and that the soldiers were assembling at the alarm rendezvous. I instantly beat to arms, and the beat being as instantly taken up by every drummer in the place, Marmont, who was at that very moment with his cavalry at the entrance of the town, held back. I was myself the first man out of the town, and he was not then 400 yards away[319].’