Thus Souham had secured a safe passage over the Carrion and it mattered little to him that his other attack farther south had less decisive success. Here Maucune, always a very enterprising—not to say reckless—commander had marched against the two bridges of Villa Muriel and San Isidro. He led his own division towards the former, and sent that of Gauthier against the latter. The 5th Division had an infantry screen of light troops beyond the river—this was pushed in, with some loss, especially to the 8th Caçadores. Both bridges were then attacked, but each was blown up when the heads of the French columns approached, and a heavy fire, both of artillery and of musketry, from the other bank checked their further advance. Gauthier then turned east in search of a passage, and went coasting along the bank of the Pisuerga for some miles, as far as the bridge of Tariego (or Baños, as the British accounts call it). This had been prepared for destruction like the other bridges, but the mine when exploded only broke the parapets and part of the flooring. The French charged across, on the uninjured crown of the arch, and captured some 40 of the working party[101]: they established themselves on the opposite bank, but advanced no farther; here the British had still the lower course of the Pisuerga to protect them, while Gauthier had no supports near, and halted, content to have captured the bridge, which he began to repair.
Meanwhile, the bridge of Villa Muriel having been more efficiently blown up, Maucune dispersed his voltigeur companies along the river-bank, brought his artillery up to a favourable position, and entered on a long desultory skirmish with Oswald, which lasted for some hours. During this time he was searching for fords—several were found[102], but all were deep and dangerous. About three o’clock in the afternoon a squadron of cavalry forded one of them, apparently unobserved, reached the western bank, and rolled up a company of the 1/9th which it caught strung out along the river bickering with the skirmishers on the other side. An officer and 33 men were taken prisoners[103]. This passage was followed by that of eight voltigeur companies, who established themselves on the other side, but clung to the bank of the river, the British light troops having only retired a few score of yards from it. Having thus got a lodgement beyond the Carrion, Maucune resolved to cross in force, in support of his voltigeurs. Arnauld’s brigade passed at the ford which had first been used, Montfort’s at another, to the left of the broken bridge, farther down the stream. The French seized the village of Villa Muriel, and established themselves in force along the dry bed of the canal, a little to its front. Wellington had expected that Maucune would come on farther, and intended to charge him with the whole 5th Division when he should begin to ascend the slope above the canal. But when, after an hour or more, the enemy made no advance, it became necessary to assume the offensive against him, since Foy was now across the Carrion at Palencia, and, if he commenced to push forward, he might drive the Spanish troops between him and Villa Muriel into Maucune’s arms. The latter must be expelled before this danger should arise: wherefore at about 4 o’clock a brigade of Losada’s Spaniards was sent against the right of the French division, while Pringle’s brigade attacked its front along the bed of the canal. The Spaniards made no progress—they were indeed driven back, and rallied with difficulty by Wellington’s friend General Alava, who was severely wounded. To replace them the British brigade of Barnes was brought up, and told to storm Villa Muriel—Spry’s Portuguese supporting. After a stiff fight Pringle and Barnes swept all before them: the enemy yielded first on the right, but held out for some time in the village, where he lost a certain number of prisoners. He finally repassed the fords, and sought safety in the plain on the eastern bank, where the French reserves were now beginning to appear in immense force. ‘Their numbers were so great that the fields appeared to our view almost black[104].’ Wellington wrote home that he had hitherto under-estimated Souham’s force, and only now realized that the Army of the North had brought up its infantry as well as its cavalry. He, naturally, made no attempt to pursue the enemy beyond the Carrion, and the fight died down into a distant cannonade across the water[105].
The combat of Villa Muriel cost the 5th Division some 500 casualties—not including 43 men of the 3/1st, hurt or taken in the separate fight at Palencia, or a few casualties in Ponsonby’s dragoons in that same quarter. Maucune’s losses were probably not far different—they must certainly have exceeded the ‘250 killed or wounded, 30 prisoners and 6 drowned’ of the official report: for one of Maucune’s regiments—the 15th Line—had 200 casualties by itself[106]. Foy at Palencia lost very few men—though his statement of ‘three or four’ as their total can hardly be correct. He had taken 100 prisoners (27 of them British), and killed or wounded 60 more, mostly Galicians[107]. The balance of the day’s losses was certainly against the Allies.
Moreover, despite of Maucune’s repulse, the result of the day’s fighting was much to Wellington’s detriment, since (though the loss of the bridge of Tariego mattered little) the capture of Palencia ruined his scheme for defending the line of the Carrion. Souham’s whole army could follow Foy, and turn the left flank of the Allies behind that river. Wherefore Wellington first threw back the left flank of the 5th Division en potence, to make a containing line against Foy, while its right flank still held the line of the river about Villa Muriel. Under cover of this rearguard, the remainder of the army evacuated its positions on each side of Dueñas at dawn on the 26th, and marched down the Pisuerga to Cabezon, where it passed the river at the bridge of that place and retired to the opposite side. The 5th Division followed (unmolested by the enemy) in the early morning: at night the entire allied army had retired across the broad stream, and was lining its left bank from Valladolid upward, with that city (held by the 7th Division) as the supporting point of its southern flank, and its northern resting on the Cubillas river. This was one of the most surprising and ingenious movements that Wellington ever carried out. On the 23rd he was defending the right bank of the Pisuerga—on the 24th he was on the other side and defending its left bank in a much stronger position. He was in no way sacrificing his communications with Portugal or Madrid, since he had behind him two good bridges over the Douro, those of Tudela and Puente Duero, with excellent roads southward and westward to Medina del Campo, Arevalo, and Olmedo. The enemy might refuse to attack him, and march down the west bank of the Pisuerga towards the Douro, but Wellington had already provided for the destruction of the three bridges of Simancas, Tordesillas, and Toro, and the Douro was now a very fierce and broad barrier to further progress, twice as difficult to cross as the Pisuerga. On the other hand, if Souham should make up his mind to come down the Pisuerga on its eastern bank, by the restored bridge of Tariego, there was an excellent fighting position along the Cubillas river. But the roads on this side of the Pisuerga were bad, and the country rough, while on the western bank the ground was flat and fertile, and the line of march easy.
Souham, therefore, advanced as was natural from Palencia southward, on the right bank of the Pisuerga; on the 26th he withdrew Maucune and Gauthier to that side, and on the 27th felt the position of Cabezon, which he decided to be impregnable, and left alone. He placed the infantry of the Army of the North opposite it, and moved southward with the rest of his forces. On the 28th he tried the passage of Valladolid, after driving out a battalion of Portuguese caçadores from the suburb beyond the Pisuerga, and cannonading the 51st across the bridge. Here too the obstacles looked most formidable, and the French, pursuing their march, came to the bridge of Simancas, which was blown up in their faces by Colonel Halkett, whose brigade of the 7th Division had been placed in this part of the British line. Halkett then sent on one of his three battalions (the Brunswick-Oels) to Tordesillas.
This was all quite satisfactory to Wellington, who had been able to give his troops two days’ rest, and who saw that the enemy, despite of his superior numbers, seemed to be brought to a nonplus by the position behind the Pisuerga. But the next evening (October 29) brought very untoward news. Foy’s division now formed the advance-guard of the Army of Portugal: it reached and occupied Tordesillas, where the bridge (like that of Simancas) had its main arch destroyed. A mediaeval tower on the south bank of the ruined structure was held by a half-company of the Brunswick-Oels infantry as an outlying picquet: the rest of the battalion was encamped in a wood some hundreds of yards behind. Considering that the river was broad and swift, and that all boats had been carefully destroyed, it was considered that the passage was impossible. Foy thought, however, that it was worth making the hazardous attempt to cross: he called for volunteers, and collected 11 officers and 44 men, who undertook to attempt to ford the Douro by swimming and wading. Their leader was Captain Guingret of the 6th Léger, one of the minor historians of the war. They placed their muskets and ammunition on a sort of raft formed of planks hastily joined, which certain good swimmers undertook to tow and guide. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon the 55 adventurers pushed off the raft, and plunged into the water, striking out in a diagonal direction. Meanwhile Foy brought down his divisional battery to the shore, and began shelling the tower at the bridge-end. The starting-point had been well chosen, and the raft and swimmers were borne across the stream with surprising speed, and came ashore a few yards from the tower, which, all naked and with arms many of which had been soaked in the water and would not fire, they proceeded to attack. The lieutenant in charge of the Brunswick picquet and his men lost their heads in the most disgraceful fashion; perhaps they were demoralized by the artillery playing on them—at any rate, after firing some ill-directed shots, they ran off—two were captured in the tower, nine others outside it. The swimmers, now shivering with cold, for the afternoon was bleak, took possession of the bridgehead, and Foy’s sappers at the other end of the broken arch began to hurry forward ropes to establish a communication with the captured tower[108].
The major in command of the Brunswick battalion, half a mile off, behaved as badly as the subaltern at the tower. He should have come down in force and thrown the handful of naked men into the river. Instead of doing so he put his corps under arms in the edge of the wood, and sent information to his brigadier asking for orders. By the time that Halkett heard of the matter, a rough communication had been made across the shattered bridge, and the French were streaming over. Nothing was done, save to move reinforcements from the 7th Division to block the two roads that diverge from the bridgehead south and west.
This extraordinary feat of Guingret’s party, one of the most dashing exploits of the Peninsular War, altered Wellington’s position, much for the worse. The enemy had now secured a crossing on the Douro opposite his extreme left wing. He had already begun to move troops in this direction, when he saw Foy pushing forward past Simancas, and on the morning of the 29th had resolved to leave Valladolid and make a general shift westward, parallel to the enemy. Soon after dawn the bridge of Cabezon was blown up, and the British right wing retired, under cover of the troops still holding Valladolid. When the right wing (the 5th Division and the Galicians) had passed to the rear of that city, and were nearing the Douro bridges (Tudela and Puente de Duero) behind it, the centre of the British line (1st, 6th, and Pack’s Portuguese) followed, and finally the left (two brigades of the 7th Division) evacuated Valladolid after destroying the Pisuerga bridge, and passed the Douro in the wake of the centre. All this was done with no molestation from the enemy, and at nightfall on the 29th every man was on the south of the Douro, and its bridges had been blown up after the rearguards had passed.
Wellington had been intending to hold the line of that great river till he should have certain news of how Hill—of whose operations the next chapter treats—was faring in the south. Since he knew that the troops from Madrid were coming to join him, he had purposed to maintain himself behind the Douro till Hill came up to the Adaja. The news of the passage of Foy at Tordesillas was therefore very vexatious; but his counter-move was bold and effective. Before the enemy had fully repaired the bridge, or got any large force across it, he marched to Rueda with the 1st, 6th, and 7th Divisions, and advanced from thence to the heights opposite Tordesillas, where he formed line of battle only 1,200 yards from the Douro, and threw up a line of redoubts, so strong that the enemy dared not push on. The first brigade to move out from the bridge would obviously be destroyed, and there was no room for large forces to deploy and attack. The enemy saw this, and instead of debouching constructed a defensive bridgehead at Tordesillas[109].
Souham indeed, having occupied Valladolid and drawn up to the line of the Douro, remained quiescent for six days. It looked as if his offensive movement had come to an end. The main cause of his halt was that Caffarelli, having assisted him in driving Wellington back to the Douro, refused to follow him further, declaring that he must go back at once to the North, from whence the most unsatisfactory news was reaching him day by day. Both about Pampeluna, and round Bilbao, which the Spaniards had once more seized, things were in a most dangerous condition. After barely visiting Valladolid he turned on his heel, and marching fast was back at Burgos again on November 6th[110]. Deprived of the strong cavalry brigade and the two infantry divisions of the Army of the North, Souham was no longer in a condition to press Wellington recklessly. He had now well under 40,000 men, instead of nearly 50,000, with which to assail the Allies in their new and strong position. Wherefore, he resolved to wait till he had news that Soult and King Joseph were drawing near from the South. The King’s dispatches had told him to avoid a general action, and to wait for the effect of the great diversion that would soon be developing against Wellington’s rear. Hence, mainly, came the halt, which caused his adversary to think for some days that he might be able to draw at the line of the Douro the limit of the French advance.