The first half of the retreat from Burgos was now at an end. To understand the manœuvres of the second half, we must first explain the doings of Soult, King Joseph, and General Hill in New Castile during the last week of October.
SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER IV
HILL’S RETREAT FROM MADRID
The crisis in front of Madrid, where Hill stood exposed to attack from the mass of French forces in the kingdom of Valencia, developed late. We have already seen that the first dispatch from the South which disquieted Wellington only reached him on the 19th October, and that it was not till the 21st that he realized that all his plans for hindering a French advance on Madrid were ineffective, and that Hill was in serious danger.
The long delay in Soult’s evacuation of Andalusia was—as has been already remarked—the ultimate cause of the late appearance of the advancing columns of the enemy in front of Madrid. It was not till September 30 that the advanced cavalry of the Army of the South got into touch with the outlying vedettes of Treillard’s dragoons, at Tobarra near Hellin. Four days later Soult was in conference with King Joseph, and the Marshals Jourdan and Suchet who had come out to meet him, at Fuente la Higuera, some fifty miles farther on the road toward Valencia. They met with various designs, though all were agreed that the Allies must be driven out of the capital as soon as possible. Suchet was mainly anxious to get the Army of the South, and the King also, out of his own viceroyalty. Joseph’s troops were wasting his stores, and harrying the peasantry, whose shearing he wished to reserve for himself. Soult’s men were notoriously unruly, and at the present moment half famished, after their long march through a barren land. The Duke of Albufera was anxious to see them all started off for Madrid at the earliest possible moment. His only personal demand was that he should be allowed to borrow a division from one or the other army; for, when they should be gone, he thought that he would have barely enough men to hold off Mackenzie and the Spaniards of the Murcian army. He promised, and produced, large convoys of food for the service of the Armies of the South and Centre, but pleaded that in order to make his only base and arsenal—the city of Valencia—quite safe, it was necessary that they should leave him 5,000 extra troops: in especial he pleaded for Palombini’s division, which had originally been borrowed from his own army of Aragon. Jourdan—as he tells us in his memoirs[111]—maintained that it was necessary to turn every possible man upon Madrid, and that Suchet could defend himself against his old enemies with his own army alone. He might, if hard pressed, call down some troops from Catalonia.
But the real quarrel was between Soult and King Joseph. The first was in a sullen and captious mood, because the King had caused him to evacuate his much-prized viceroyalty in Andalusia, by refusing to join him there in September. But Joseph was at a much higher pitch of passion; not only did he still remember all Soult’s disobedience in July and August, which (as he thought) had led to the unnecessary loss of Madrid, but he had a new and a much more bitter grievance. Some time before the Army of the South reached Valencia, he had become possessed of the dispatch to the minister of war which Soult had written on August 12th, in which he hinted that the King was meditating treachery to his brother the Emperor, and had opened up negotiations with the Cortes in order to betray the French cause[112]. This document—as has been explained above—had been given by Soult to a privateer captain bound from Malaga to Toulon, who had been forced to run into the harbour of Valencia by the British blockading squadron. Not knowing the contents of the document, the captain had handed it over to the King, when he found him at Valencia. Thus Joseph was aware that the Marshal had accused him, on the most flimsy evidence, of betraying his brother. He was justly indignant, and had contemplated, in his first outburst of rage, the arrest and supersession of Soult. His next impulse had been to send off his confidential aide-de-camp Colonel Deprez, to seek first the minister of war at Paris, and then the Emperor himself in Russia[113], with his petition for vengeance. ‘Je demande justice. Que le Maréchal Soult soit rappelé, entendu, et puni[114].’ If his enemy had appeared at Valencia early in September, he would probably have taken the most extreme measures against him. But three weeks had gone by, his anger had had time to cool, and he could realize the danger of attempting to seize and deport a marshal whose army was double the size of his own and Suchet’s combined, and who had a powerful faction to support him among his own generals. Joseph hoped that a mandate for Soult’s recall and disgrace would soon be on its way from Russia, and meanwhile curbed his temper, ignored the Marshal’s recent charges of treachery, and contented himself with treating him with coldness, and overruling many of his proposals, on the mere formal ground of discipline. He was the commander-in-chief, and could accept or reject the suggestions of a subordinate as he pleased. Soult was no longer three hundred miles away, as he had been in June, and orders given by a superior on the spot could be enforced, unless the Marshal were prepared to break out into open insubordination.
There was no difference of opinion as to the necessity for marching on Madrid. But wrangling arose as to the amount of troops that would be needed for the operation. Soult said that every possible man would be required, and wished to march with the entire Army of the South on San Clemente and Ocaña, while he suggested that the King, with the Army of the Centre and a large detachment taken from Suchet, should move by Requeña and Cuenca. Suchet protested in the most vigorous fashion against being stripped of any of his divisions, and maintained that it was rather necessary that he should be lent 5,000 men from the Armies of the Centre of the South. The King and Jourdan refused to consider the latter proposition, but agreed that Suchet would require all his own troops, and that none should be taken from him. Yet approving of the double movement on Madrid, they declared that the Army of the Centre was too small to operate by itself, and that Soult should make over to it Barrois’s division and a brigade of light cavalry, to bring it up to the necessary strength. Soult protested loudly: the Emperor had entrusted the army of the South to him; he was responsible for it; it was one and indivisible, and so forth[115].
Joseph then put the matter to him in the form of a simple order to set these troops on a certain route on a certain day. The Marshal did not dare to disobey, but stated that he regarded them as still belonging to his army, and should continue to expect reports from their commanders. This left him with a force of five infantry and three cavalry divisions, disencumbered of his sick, and of 2,000 old, weakly, or time-expired men, who marched to Valencia to join the next convoy that Suchet should send to France. Their total (omitting Barrois and the cavalry taken off by Joseph) made up 30,000 infantry, 6,000 horse, and with engineers, artillery, train, &c., just 40,000 men. The Army of the Centre on October 15th showed (including Palombini, the King’s Guard and the Spaniards) about 15,000 present under arms, to which must be added Barrois and the two cavalry regiments that accompanied him[116], making 6,000 men between them. Thus the total force with which Joseph and Soult marched on Madrid was over 60,000 men[117].
The object of dividing the advancing army into two columns was not merely to make it more easy for the troops to find food in a desolate country, but much more to carry out a strategical plan. If the whole army had moved by the high road through La Mancha, it would have had no power to communicate with the Army of Portugal. The King’s idea was that the northern column, which marched by Cuenca, and which he himself accompanied, would ultimately get into touch with Souham, who had been directed—by dispatches which reached him too late or not at all—to follow Wellington in such a way that he would be able to outflank him on the Upper Douro, and open up communications by the route of Aranda, the Somosierra Pass, and Guadalajara, with the main French Army. But Souham, when he commenced his advance against Wellington on October 18th, had no order from the King later than a letter of October 1st, written before Soult had arrived in the kingdom of Valencia. He received no more dispatches while engaged in his pursuit of Wellington, and was unaware of Joseph’s later plans, so that when he reached Valladolid he made no endeavour to feel to his left, towards Aranda, but rather extended himself to his right, in the direction of Tordesillas and Toro, a movement which took him entirely away from the direction in which the King hoped to find him. They did not get into touch, or combine their operations in any way, till November had arrived. At the same time the advance of a large body of troops by the route of Cuenca turned out most profitable in the end to the French strategy, for it was precisely this flanking column, of great but unknown strength, which compelled Hill to abandon his intention of defending the lines of the Tagus or the Tajuna. However he might place himself opposite Soult’s army coming from the South, he had this threatening force beyond his eastern flank, turning his positions by roads too remote for him to guard.
King Joseph had proposed to commence his march upon Madrid at the earliest possible moment—at the interview with the three marshals at Fuente la Higuera he had named the 9th October as the date for starting. But Soult declared, after a few days, that this was impossible, owing to the necessity for collecting the convoys that Suchet was sending him, replenishing his ammunition, and bringing up his rearmost troops. The division of Conroux had picked up the yellow fever, by plundering out of its route, during the march through Murcia. It had been left in quarantine, some days behind the rest of the army, and would take time to come up. It is probable that Soult was not really wasting time of set purpose; but the King was certainly under the impression that he was doing so, and their correspondence was most acrimonious[118]. Special offence was given by Joseph’s withdrawing Drouet from the Army of the South, and entrusting him with the command of that of the Centre. But when Soult murmured at this and other things, the King sent him a laconic letter of ten lines, telling him that if he refused to obey orders he had better resign his command and go to Paris, where he would have to give account for all his doings. The Marshal, as on previous occasions when the question of his resignation had been pressed home[119], avoided this simple solution of the problem, and yielded a grudging obedience in the end.