On April 24th Wellington halted his pursuing army at Fuente Guinaldo and Sabugal, on hearing that Marmont had escaped him by a margin of twenty-four hours. The French were in full march for Salamanca, and it was impossible to pursue them any further, firstly because the allied army needed a few days of rest after the forced march from Badajoz, and secondly because its train had dropped behind, food was nearly out, and convoys had to be brought up from Lamego and São João de Pesqueira. There was, of course, nothing to be got out of the unhappy region in which Marmont’s locusts had just been spread abroad. The only fortunate thing was that the Duke of Ragusa had turned his raid against the Beira Baixa, and left the great dépôts on the Douro unmolested. From them ample sustenance could be got up, in a week, to the positions behind the Agueda and Coa where the army had halted.
Wellington, as it will be remembered, had contemplated an attack on Andalusia after Badajoz fell. But the necessity for seeing to the relief and revictualling of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo had brought him up to the frontiers of Leon with the main body of his host. In the position where he now lay, he was well placed for an advance on Salamanca, and an attack on the Army of Portugal. To return to Estremadura would involve a long and weary countermarch. Moreover there was no doubt that operations in Leon would be more decisive than operations in Andalusia. As Marmont was to write to Berthier a few days later, a victory of the allies in the North would involve the evacuation of the South by Soult, while a victory in Andalusia would leave the French power in the valleys of the Douro and Tagus unshaken[350]. Advancing from the line of the Agueda against Salamanca and Valladolid, Wellington would have his base and his main line of communications in his direct rear, safe against any flank attack. A raid against Andalusia, even if successful, would separate him from Lisbon, and compel him to take up a new base at Cadiz—a doubtful expedient. But what seems, in the end, to have been the main cause for Wellington’s choosing Leon rather than Andalusia as his next sphere of operations, was that Marmont (as he judged) had the larger available army for field movements outside his own ground. Soult was more pinned down to his viceroyalty by local needs: he would not raise the siege of Cadiz or evacuate Granada and Cordova. Therefore he could not collect (as his movement at the time of the fall of Badajoz had shown) more than 24,000 men for an offensive operation. This was the absolute limit of his power to aid Marmont. But the latter, if he chose to evacuate Asturias and other outlying regions, could bring a much larger force to help Soult. Therefore an attack on Andalusia would enable the enemy to concentrate a more numerous defensive force than an attack on Leon. ‘Of the two armies opposed to us that of Portugal can produce the larger number of men for a distant operation. Marmont has nothing to attend to but the British army, as he has been repeatedly told in [intercepted] letters from Berthier. By abandoning Castille and Leon for a short time he may lose some plunder and contributions, but he loses nothing that can permanently affect his situation, or which he could not regain as soon as he has a superiority, particularly of cavalry, in the open plains of Castille. Marmont’s, then, being what may be called of the two the operating army, the movement which I might make into Andalusia would enable the enemy to bring the largest body of men to act together on one point. It would be a false movement, and this must by all means be avoided[351].’
This decision was not made immediately on Marmont’s retreat of April 24th: for some days after the British headquarters settled down at Fuente Guinaldo, Wellington had not quite made up his mind between the two operations: his letters to Lord Liverpool, to Hill, and Graham, are full of the needs of the moment, and do not lay down any general strategical plan. The staff, in their discussions with each other, canvassed the situation. ‘While Marmont remains in Old Castile he [Wellington] must leave a certain force near the frontier of the Beira. But leaving the 3rd, 4th, 5th Divisions, and Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese (perhaps 18,000 men) for that purpose, he can move upon Andalusia, if he wishes, with the 1st, 6th, 7th, and Light Divisions, afterwards picking up Power’s Portuguese brigade and all General Hill’s corps d’armée—perhaps 36,000 infantry. This would do.’ So wrote D’Urban the chief of the Portuguese staff in his private diary, on May 5, evidently after discussion with Beresford, and others of those who were nearest the centre of decision. Wellington, however, was pondering over alternatives: he could not move for a week or two at the best, for he had to replenish his stores at the front, and to see that the repairs and revictualling of Almeida and Rodrigo were completed, before he could start on any offensive movement. In that time, too, he would be able to learn how Marmont was disposing of his army, and whether Soult was showing any tendency to reinforce Drouet’s force in Estremadura.
It seems that an insight into his enemies’ purposes was made specially easy for Wellington at this moment by the successive capture of a great deal of French correspondence. When Marmont was in Portugal, between the 1st and 23rd of April, three of the duplicates of his dispatches were captured, one by Portuguese Ordenança, the others by Julian Sanchez between Rodrigo and Salamanca[352]. They were all in cipher, but the ingenuity of Captain Scovell, the cipher-secretary at head-quarters, was capable of dealing with them, and from them could be made out a great deal about the strength of the Marshal’s army, and his general views on the campaign. If they had been taken and sent in a little earlier, they might have enabled Wellington to complete that surprise and dispersion of the French expeditionary force which had been in his mind.
But though they arrived too late for this purpose, they were valuable, as showing Marmont’s dislike of the imperial orders that he had been sent to carry out, and his preference for his own schemes. They were also full of bitter complaints of the neglect in which the Army of Portugal was left as to pay, stores, and transport. Wellington might reasonably deduce from them that any reconcentration of that army would be slow, and that if it had to march to reinforce Soult in the South, the effort would be a severe one.
But shortly after Marmont’s return to Salamanca, his adversary got an even more valuable insight into his plans. The guerrilleros carried off, between Salamanca and Valladolid, an officer bearing five dispatches, dated April 28 and April 30th. One was directed to Dorsenne, two to Berthier, one to Jourdan, the fifth contained the parole to Bayonne of the great scout, Colquhoun Grant[353]. The first, couched in very peremptory terms, asked for food—the Army of Portugal must absolutely receive 8,000 quintals of wheat, once promised, without delay—it was in a state of danger and penury, and could not keep concentrated to face the British. Of the letters to Berthier one announced that Bonnet’s division was duly in march for the Asturias, and that without it the Marshal thought his own strength dangerously low. The other asked for 4,000,000 francs owing to the Army of Portugal for pay and sustenance, and declared that, unless money came to hand at once, it was impossible to see how the troops were to be kept alive in the two months still remaining before harvest. A postscript asked for a siege-train to be sent on at all costs—the Marshal had heard that one was on the way from Bayonne: but nothing was known about it at Burgos. The letter to Jourdan was the most important of all[354]: it was the document, already quoted in the previous chapter, in which the Marshal detailed his intentions as to the dispersion of his army, protested against being obliged to send too many men into the valley of the Tagus, and explained the importance of the bridge-forts and magazines at Almaraz, by which his troops at Avila, &c., would debouch southward whenever they were ordered to concentrate for a junction with Soult. ‘On ne peut agir que par Lugar Nuevo [the name by which Marmont always designates the Almaraz forts] ... il faut bien se garder de jeter trop de troupes sur le Tage, et se contenter de bien assurer une défense de huit jours pour les forts de Lugar Nuevo et Mirabete, temps suffisant pour que les troupes rassemblées à Avila débouchent.... Un dépôt de 400 à 500 mille fanegas (qui n’est pas au delà de ce que Madrid et La Manche peuvent fournir) donnerait les moyens d’agir sans compromettre la subsistance des troupes.’
Undoubtedly it was the deciphering of the greater part of this letter, which set forth so clearly the importance of the Almaraz bridge, and showed at the same time that only one French division [Foy’s at Talavera] was anywhere near it, that determined Wellington to make the sudden stroke at that central strategical point which he had thought of in February[355]. At that time he had refused to try it, because there were three French divisions on the Tagus. Now there was only one at Talavera, two marches from Almaraz, and the nearest reinforcements at Avila were two very long marches from Talavera. The possibility presented itself that a column might strike at Almaraz from somewhere on the Portuguese frontier, and take the place by a coup-de-main, with or without first beating Foy, whose strength of 5,000 men was perfectly known to Wellington.
Hill could count on two or three days of undisturbed operations before the nearest reinforcing division, that of Foy, could reach Almaraz: on four or five more, before troops from Avila could come up. It must be noted that everything would depend on the absolute secrecy that could be preserved as to the start of the expedition: but on this Wellington thought that he could count. The Spanish peasantry seldom or never betrayed him: the French had no outlying posts beyond Almaraz which might give them warning. The garrison was in a normal state of blockade by guerrillero bands haunting the Sierra de Guadalupe.
It may be added that a blow at Almaraz was just as useful as a means for keeping Soult from joining Marmont as Marmont from joining Soult. It would be profitable if Wellington’s final decision should be given in favour of an Andalusian expedition. But his mind was by now leaning towards an attack on Leon rather than on the South. The final inclination may have been given by the receipt of another intercepted dispatch—Soult’s to Jourdan of April 17[356], sent in by guerrilleros who had probably captured the bearer in the Sierra Morena about April 20th. This document, which we have already had occasion to quote for another purpose[357], was full of angry denunciations of Marmont for letting Badajoz fall unaided, and served to show that, if Soult had to help the Army of Portugal, he would do so with no good will to its commander. Moreover it was largely occupied by proposals for the circumventing of Ballasteros and the siege of Tarifa—movements which would disperse the Army of the South even more than it was already dispersed, and would clearly prevent it from succouring Marmont within any reasonable space of time.
The decision that Hill should make his long-deferred coup-de-main upon Almaraz first appears in Wellington’s dispatches on May 4th[358], but Hill had been warned that the operation was likely to be sanctioned some days earlier, on April 24, and again more definitely on April 30th[359]. That the final judgement of Wellington was now leaning in favour of the advance on Salamanca rather than the Andalusian raid appears to emerge from a note of D’Urban dated May 6th—’The retirement of Marmont within a given distance—the slow progress of the Spaniards at Rodrigo, which renders it unsafe to leave that place and this frontier—the retiring altogether of Soult, and the state of his army not making him dangerous now—these and other combining reasons determine Lord Wellington to make his offensive operation north of the Tagus, and to move upon Marmont. All necessary preparations making, but secretly: it will be very feasible to keep the movement unforeseen till it begins. Meanwhile General Hill is to move upon and destroy everything at Almaraz[360].’