The defile of the French army across the fords naturally took a long time, and Wellington was able to allow his weary infantry some hours of much-needed rest in the morning. Only cavalry was sent forward at once, to form a screen in front of the hostile force that was gradually accumulating on the near side of the fords. In the afternoon, however, when the greater part of the French were over the water, nearly the whole allied army received orders to cross the Tormes, and occupy the heights to the south of it. It moved practically in battle order, in two lines, of which the front passed by the ford of Cabrerizos, the second by that of Santa Marta. Only a reserve, now consisting of the 3rd Division and D’Urban’s Portuguese horse, remained on the north side of the river near Cabrerizos, to contain the French force which was still visible at dusk on the slopes by Babila Fuente. Till this detachment had disappeared, Wellington was obliged to leave a corresponding proportion of his men to contain it, lest the enemy might try a dash at Salamanca by the north bank. Marmont made no such attempt, and in the morning it was obvious that this rearguard was following the rest of his army across the Tormes.
During the night the French advanced cavalry were holding Calvarisa de Ariba on their left and Machacon on their right: the infantry were bivouacked in a concentrated position in the wooded country south of those villages. The British cavalry screen held Calvarisa de Abaxo[502], Pelabravo, and the height of Nuestra Señora de la Peña, close in to the corresponding front line of the enemy’s vedettes. The infantry were encamped in two lines behind the Ribera de Pelagarcia, the ravine, which runs north from Nuestra Señora de la Peña to the Tormes, between Santa Marta and Cabrerizos. This was Graham’s old position of June 24th, and excellent for defence. The right was on well-marked high ground, the centre was covered by woods. Only the left, near Santa Marta, was on lower slopes.
About an hour after nightfall the hills where French and English lay opposite each other were visited by an appalling tempest. ‘The rain fell in torrents accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning, and succeeded by instantaneous peals of thunder:’ writes one annalist: ‘a more violent crash of the elements has seldom been witnessed: its effects were soon apparent. Le Marchands brigade of cavalry had halted to our left: the men, dismounted, were either seated or lying on the ground, holding their horses’ bridles. Alarmed by the thunder, the beasts started with a sudden violence, and many of them breaking loose galloped across the country in all directions. The frightened horses, in a state of wildness, passing by without riders, added to the awful effect of the tempest[503].’ The 5th Dragoon Guards suffered most by the stampede—eighteen men were hurt, and thirty-one horses were not to be found. Another diarist speaks of the splendid effect of the lightning reflected on the musket-barrels of belated infantry columns, which were just marching to their camping-ground. Before midnight the storm had passed over—the later hours of sleep were undisturbed, and next morning a brilliant sun rose into a cloudless sky[504]. The last day of manœuvring was begun, and the battle which both sides had so long avoided was at last to come.
SECTION XXXIII: CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF SALAMANCA, JULY 22, 1812.
THE EARLY STAGES
The decisive moment of the campaign of 1812 had now been reached—though Marmont was wholly unaware of it, and was proposing merely to continue his manœuvring of the last five days, and though Wellington hardly expected that the 22nd of July would turn out more eventful than the 21st. Both of them have left record of their intentions on the fateful morning. The Duke of Ragusa wrote to Berthier as follows: ‘My object was, in taking up this position, to prolong my movement to the left, in order to dislodge the enemy from the neighbourhood of Salamanca, and to fight him at a greater advantage. I calculated on taking up a good defensive position, against which the enemy could make no offensive move, and intended to press near enough to him to be able to profit from the first fault that he might make, and to attack him with vigour[505].’ He adds in another document, ‘I considered that our respective positions would bring on not a battle, but an advantageous rearguard action, in which, using my full force late in the day, with a part only of the British army left in front of me, I should probably score a point[506].’ It is clear that he reckoned that his adversary would continue his policy of the last five days; Wellington, if his flank were once more turned, would move on as before—always parrying the thrusts made at him, but not taking the offensive himself.
Nor was he altogether wrong in his expectation. Writing to Lord Bathurst on the evening of July 21st, the British Commander-in-Chief summed up his intentions in these words. ‘I have determined to cross the Tormes, if the enemy should: to cover Salamanca as long as I can: and above all not to give up our communication with Ciudad Rodrigo: and not to fight an action unless under very advantageous circumstances, or if it should become absolutely necessary[507].’ This determination is re-stated in a dispatch which Wellington wrote three days later, in a very different frame of mind. ‘I had determined that if circumstances should not permit me to attack him on the 22nd, I should move toward Ciudad Rodrigo without further loss of time[508].’ Wellington was therefore, it is clear, intending simply to continue his retreat without delivering battle, unless Marmont should give him an opportunity of striking a heavy blow, by putting himself in some dangerous posture. He desired to fight, but only if he could fight at advantage. Had Marmont continued to turn his flank by cautious movements made at a discreet distance, and with an army always ready to form an orderly line of battle, Wellington would have sacrificed Salamanca, and moved back toward the Agueda. He was not prepared to waste men in indecisive combats, which would not put the enemy out of action even if they went off well. ‘It is better that a battle should not be fought, unless under such favourable circumstances that there would be reason to hope that the allied army would be able to maintain the field, while that of the enemy would not[509].’ For if the French were only checked, and not completely knocked to pieces, Wellington knew that they would be reinforced within a few days by the 14,000 men whom King Joseph (unknown to Marmont) was bringing up from Madrid. Retreat would then again become necessary, since the enemy would be superior in numbers to a hopeless extent. Wellington added that the 22nd was his best day of advantage, since within thirty-six hours Marmont would have been reinforced by the cavalry brigade under General Chauvel, which Caffarelli had at last sent forward from Burgos. It had reached the Douro at Valladolid on the 20th, and would be up at the front on the 23rd: this he well knew, and somewhat overrated its strength[510].
But though ready to take his advantage, if it were offered him, Wellington evidently leaned to the idea that it would not be given. He prepared for retreat, by sending off his whole baggage-train on the Ciudad Rodrigo road at dawn, escorted by one of D’Urban’s three Portuguese cavalry regiments. This was a clear expression of his intention to move off. So is his letter of July 24 to Graham in which, writing in confidence to a trusted subordinate, he remarks, ‘Marmont ought to have given me a pont d’or, and then he would have made a handsome operation of it.’ Instead of furnishing the proverbial bridge of gold to the yielding adversary, the Marshal pressed in upon him in a threatening fashion, yet with his troops so scattered and strung out on a long front, that he was not ready for a decisive action when Wellington at last saw his opportunity and dashed in upon him.
At dawn on the 22nd each party had to discover the exact position of his adversary, for the country-side was both wooded and undulating. Wellington’s army, on the line of heights reaching southward from Santa Marta, was almost entirely masked, partly by the woods in the centre of his position, but still more by his having placed all the divisions far back from the sky-line on the reverse slope of the plateau. The front was about three miles long, but little was visible upon it. Foy, whose division was ahead of the rest of the French army, describes what he saw as follows:—