Soult created out of these elements nine fighting divisions of infantry, two of cavalry, and a strong but miscellaneous Reserve Corps, which had the equivalent of five brigades. The plan which he adopted for the reorganization was to select nine of the old infantry divisions (of which there had been 14-1/2) and to keep them as the bases of the new units, drafting into them the battalions of the other five[838]. Those abolished were the two divisions (Abbé’s and Vandermaesen’s) of the Army of the North, Sarrut’s division of the Army of Portugal, Leval’s of the Army of the South, and Darmagnac’s of the Army of the Centre. Sarrut had been killed at Vittoria, Leval had gone to Germany; but provision was made for the other three generals whose divisions were ‘scrapped’: Abbé took over Villatte’s old division of the Army of the South, while Villatte went to command the general reserve. Vandermaesen was given the division of the Army of Portugal lately under Barbot, who relapsed into the status of a brigadier. Darmagnac went with the two French regiments of his old division to join the surviving unit of the Army of the Centre, Cassagne’s division, and took command of it—Cassagne, its former chief, disappearing. Lastly, Daricau having been severely wounded at Vittoria, his division was given to Maransin, whose independent brigade was absorbed. Thus, of the old divisions, only those of Foy, Conroux, Maucune, Taupin, Lamartinière, remained under their original leaders: the other four surviving divisions got new chiefs, whose names are familiar to us, but who had hitherto been connected with quite different troops.
Napoleon’s ideal of the ‘standard’ division of 6,000 men was not accurately realized, owing to the fact that some corps had suffered heavily and others hardly at all during the recent campaign. Putting six regiments into each division, Soult found that he had created units varying in size from Abbé’s with 8,030 men to Vandermaesen’s, with only 4,181. For there was no uniformity of size among the regiments, which varied from 1,900 bayonets in three battalions[839] down to 430 in one[840]. Abbé’s, Lamartinière’s, Conroux’s, and Darmagnac’s divisions had 7,000 men each, or more; Foy’s, Taupin’s, and Maransin’s just about 6,000; Vandermaesen’s and Maucune’s not much over 4,000 each. It was still impossible to carry out Napoleon’s orders to give each division two batteries of field artillery, only one apiece could be provided; but, this moderate provision having been made, there remained over for the general artillery reserve two batteries of horse and two of field artillery. The army had in all 140 guns horsed—72 with the infantry divisions, 32 with Villatte’s reserve, 12 with the cavalry divisions, 24 as general army reserve. There were also three mountain batteries—two- or three-pounders carried on muleback.
For his chief of the staff Soult chose Gazan, who had long served with him in the same capacity in Andalusia. The late generals-in-chief of the Armies of Portugal, the North and the Centre—Reille, Clausel, and Drouet D’Erlon, naturally took the three lieutenant-generalcies: Soult gave each of them three divisions in charge, but being prohibited from calling these groups ‘army corps’, he styled them the ‘lieutenancies’ of the Right, Left, and Centre. These terms soon became anomalous—for by the chances of manœuvre the ‘Centre’—D’Erlon’s group—during the campaign of the Pyrenees fought on the right, the ‘left’ (Clausel) in the Centre, and the ‘right’ (Reille) on the left wing. The absurd nomenclature of the groups sometimes makes a French dispatch hard to understand: it would have been much simpler to call the three groups army-corps, but this designation was under taboo by the Emperor’s special command.
Clausel took the left lieutenancy, because he and his troops, which he had brought back from his long march in Aragon, were actually on the left on June 15th: he had under him the two divisions, those of Vandermaesen and Taupin, which practically represented the bulk of his former column, with Conroux’s division which had remained at St. Jean-Pied-du-Port when the rest of the Army of the South went to the Bidassoa. The total of bayonets was 17,218—this was the weakest of the ‘lieutenancies’ because the individual regiments recently returned from Aragon were low in numbers from three months of mountain warfare against Mina.
D’Erlon had the Centre, with the divisions of Abbé and Maransin, both consisting of old Andalusian regiments, and of Darmagnac, who represented the French part of the Army of the Centre. His corps were strong—just under 21,000 bayonets[841].
Reille, late chief of the Army of Portugal, had the remaining three divisions, Foy, Maucune, and Lamartinière, all of them coming from his own old command, and under officers who had long served in that army. Their total strength was 17,235—many of the regiments were low in numbers from the recent fighting in Biscay.
Each of the three ‘lieutenancies’ had a light cavalry regiment attached to it—we should have called them corps-cavalry had the name been permitted. They were weak—only 808 sabres between the three—but sufficient for scouting purposes.
Adding the two cavalry divisions of Pierre Soult (the Marshal’s very undistinguished but much cherished brother) and Treillard, the Army of Spain had 7,147 sabres, including the remnants of the foreign cavalry—Nassau Chasseurs, Spanish light horse, and Royal Guards, who were something under 1,000 all told.
The very large body of troops under Villatte which Soult had left outside his nine marching divisions, and his three ‘lieutenancies’, consisted of a great number of battalions of the recently abolished armies, which were left as a surplus, when the new formations had been brought up to the six-regiment standard. They included of French troops one odd battalion of the Army of Portugal, eleven of the Army of the North, and six of the old Bayonne Reserve. The eighteen battalions were mostly rather weak, and mustered only a little over 9,000 bayonets between them.
In addition Villatte’s reserve included all the foreign troops—Neuenstein’s Rheinbund Germans, who had served so long in the Army of the Centre, St. Pol’s Italian brigade, the King’s Foot-Guards—a solid body of 2,000 infantry, all Frenchmen, though in Spanish uniform—and the forlorn remnant of the Afrancesados—three dwindling regiments under Casapalacios, which had shrunk from 2,000 to 1,100 bayonets during the last month.