This was a most alarming dispatch for Hill. Just as he had assumed his fighting position, and was expecting to be attacked by Soult on the following day, he received orders to retire without a moment’s delay. And what was worst of all, he was told that the line of retreat indicated to him would not improbably prove dangerous or impossible, and that he might, within the next day or so, get a counter-order, directing him to retire by the line of the Tagus and Almaraz, since a junction with Wellington behind the Adaja might prove impossible. But a retreat across the front of the enemy, on the route Navalcarnero-Talavera-Almaraz, would clearly be most dangerous, since the left wing of the Army (the Light Division, D’Urban, Alten and the Spaniards) would have forty miles to march before they were clear of the advancing columns of the French, debouching from Aranjuez. And to make matters worse, the enemy was terribly strong in cavalry, and the countryside south of Madrid was very favourable to the mounted arm. If the army should march at once for the road by the Guadarrama, and when it had reached the neighbourhood of Madrid or the Escurial should get the news that the route to Villacastin and Arevalo had been blocked, it would be almost impossible to turn off on to the Tagus line or to make for Almaraz. The only chance left would be to take the bad mountain-road to Avila, and thence to the upper Tormes, a choice that no officer could contemplate without dismay in October.
There was one plea that might have been urged in favour of an instant move toward Talavera and the Tagus route (the right wing to march by Illescas and Fuensalida, the left by Madrid and Navalcarnero), but it was a plea of which neither Wellington nor Hill seems to have thought. Supposing that Hill’s 40,000 men after uncovering and evacuating Madrid should place themselves behind the Alberche, in and about Talavera, it was difficult to believe that Soult and King Joseph would dare to march north to join Souham and to trouble Wellington. They could hardly leave 40,000 men behind them uncontained, and would probably have to halt and to face toward Hill, so as to cover the capital. This threat to their flank and their rear might force the enemy to come to a stop, and might secure Wellington’s rear as effectually as a junction with him at Arevalo behind the Adaja. But on the other hand there were two considerations which tended to make any use of the Tagus route undesirable, save on compulsion and as a pis aller. The first was that the whole valley from Toledo to Almaraz was in a state of dreadful exhaustion, with half its land untilled and its population living on the edge of starvation. To subsist there would be difficult. The second and more important was that the enemy might conceivably leave Soult and the Army of the South to hold Madrid and contain Hill’s force, and then would still possess 20,000 men—of the Cuenca column—who might be sent by the Guadarrama and Villacastin to take Wellington in the rear. It would be of little use to bring the enemy to a standstill in the direction of Madrid, if he could still spare a detachment which would make Wellington’s position in Old Castile hopelessly untenable, and might even put him in grave danger of being overwhelmed.
But ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof’ was no doubt the reflection of Rowland Hill, a pious man well acquainted with his Bible. He had for the present a clear order to march for the Escurial, the Guadarrama, and Arevalo. That it might be cancelled if certain circumstances, over which he had no control, should occur on the Douro, was an unpleasant possibility, which did not come into consideration on the 29th of October. Accordingly he gave orders for instant retreat. There was little immediate danger to his left wing, since the French column in front of it, at Fuente Dueñas, had to pass first the defiles of the Tajuna and then those of the Jarama, and all the bridges on both were destroyed or ready for destruction. The right wing was in a much more delicate situation, since it was separated from Soult at Aranjuez only by the Jarama. The outposts of the two armies were in close touch with each other at the Puente Larga, with nothing but the river between; and the 4th Division at Añover had to pass behind the force holding the Puente Larga in order to get into the Madrid road. Supposing that bridge were forced too soon, Cole would be driven off in an eccentric line of retreat toward Toledo and Talavera.
While, therefore, all the rest of the army was set in motion for the Escurial at dawn on the 30th, Skerrett was ordered to stand still at the Puente Larga, and to hold it at all costs till the rest of the allied right wing should have got clear. Meanwhile the troops about Alcalá (the Light Division, España and Morillo) marched round the north side of Madrid without entering the city, and continuing their course all day and part of the night, were on the upper Manzanares, about the palace of El Pardo by 12 p.m. At the same time the troops about Valdemoro (3rd Division, Hamilton’s Portuguese, and the bulk of the cavalry) retired past the south side of Madrid, and reached Aravaca, on its west side two miles out, by night. Here Hill established his head-quarters. The 4th Division, from Añover, which had the longest march of all, had been started off before the bulk of the army, on the night of the 29th, not at dawn on the 30th like the rest. It fell into the main road at Valdemoro before daybreak, much fatigued; while halting there the weary men discovered more wine than was good for them—the population had fled and left their cellars exposed for the first comer. There was a terrible amount of drunkenness, and so much straggling, when the division marched off at noon, that many hundreds of men, hidden in houses in a state of absolute incapacity to move, were left behind[132]. The division, minus its drunkards, joined the rest of the right wing at Aravaca that night. Cole remained behind himself—while his troops marched on—to supervise the defence of the Puente Larga. He had been told to take on Skerrett’s brigade as a part of his division till further orders, and naturally stopped with the rearguard.
By the night of the 30th all the army was concentrated beyond Madrid, without having seen an enemy or suffered any molestation, save Skerrett’s detachment, which was fighting all day at the Puente Larga for the protection of the rest. Soult, as Hill had expected, had resolved to force the line of the Jarama and Tajuna that day. But while on the right his cavalry felt forward only to the Tajuna and its broken bridges, on the left he was already in touch with his enemy, for the Puente Larga is only two miles outside Aranjuez, from which the approach to it lies along one of the great avenues of planes that form part of the royal Park between the Tagus and Jarama.
The Puente Larga is an immensely long bridge of 16 arches, for the Jarama in winter is a very broad river. Its southern end is commanded by a slight rising ground, its northern lies in the flat and ends in a causeway, by which the road finally mounts up on to the plateau of Valdemoro. Thus it would have been easier to defend from the south than from the north, as Skerrett had to do. An attempt had been made to blow up one of the centre arches of the bridge, but though two mines had been laid, their explosion on the morning of the 30th did not make a complete breach, one parapet and a broad section of the footway beside it remaining intact. The engineer officer in charge, holding that there was no time to make another mine, had a breastwork covered by an abattis thrown up across the northern end of the bridge. Here then was a sort of terrace with balustrades and stone seats, where the bridge and causeway met. Behind the breastwork and the terrace Skerrett placed his two companies of the 95th Rifles and part of the 2/47th, while behind the nearer part of the causeway there was room for the supports, the rest of the 47th and the 2/87th in close column. The ridge of the causeway almost completely sheltered them from fire from the French side of the river, even from the most elevated ground. Three guns of Braun’s Portuguese battery were prepared for action on the right end of the terrace, behind the hastily extemporized breastwork. Half a mile to the rear, at the north end of the causeway, was Skerrett’s reserve, composed of the 3rd batt. of the First Guards, the 20th Portuguese, and the remaining three pieces of Braun’s battery. The whole defending force of five battalions and six guns was somewhat under 4,000 strong.
Soult was not certain whether Hill was intending to fight on the line of the Jarama, or whether he had merely to drive in a rearguard. The day was very misty from dawn onward, and at 9 o’clock in the morning rain began, and fell continuously till night. Thus the Marshal could not see in the least what sort of a force was opposed to him, and his cavalry, exploring up and down the river bank, were unable to find any practicable fords, or to give him any information as to whether there were allied troops holding the entire course of the Jarama. After some hours, therefore, Soult sent forward Reymond’s division[133] with orders to force the Puente Larga, as he had been informed that it was still passable owing to the failure of the mines. A battery took post on the rising ground at the south end of the bridge, and shelled the breastwork and the Portuguese guns, while the voltigeur companies of the 12th Léger strung, themselves out along the river bank, and commenced a long bickering fusillade with Skerrett’s men across the water. The artillery and musketry fight went on for some hours, till Braun’s three pieces ceased firing for want of ammunition. Thinking this a favourable moment, Soult sent part of the 12th Léger against the bridge—the head of the column never reached the narrow pass at the half-broken eighth arch, suffering so much from the musketry that it fell back in disorder before getting half-way across. Another regiment, or the same re-formed, attempted a similar rush a few minutes later, and was repulsed in the same fashion. Thereupon Soult ordered the attack to cease, ‘seeing,’ as he says in his dispatch, ‘that we were wasting ammunition to no effect.’ He drew off both his guns and his voltigeurs, and the combat came to an end. A French officer appeared on to the bridge with a white flag a little later, and got permission to remove the many wounded lying at its south end. After dark Skerrett withdrew very quietly, leaving dummy sentries on the bridge head and the causeway, who were only detected as straw-stuffed great-coats at dawn next morning. The brigade, therefore, had an undisturbed march all night, and halted next morning on the Prado of Madrid, where it was allowed a few hours of rest. Its loss had been about 3 officers and 60 men killed and wounded, of whom 40 were in the 2/47th and 11 in the rifle companies. The French had five officers and about 100 men killed and wounded[134]. The whole fight was much what the combat of the Coa would have been in 1810, if Craufurd had fought behind and not before the bridge of Almeida.
Soult had deduced, from the stubborn way in which the Puente Larga was defended, that Hill was standing to fight a general action behind the Jarama. He made during the night preparations for bringing up much artillery and constructing bridges, but discovered at dawn that his exertions had been unnecessary. Cavalry under Pierre Soult were pushed out as far as Valdemoro, and captured there some 300 drunken stragglers belonging to the 4th Division, who had not thought fit to follow Skerrett when he passed through. The day was one of dense fog, and the younger Soult never got in touch with Hill’s rearguard, but picked up a rumour that Wellington was expected at Madrid that day, with two divisions from Burgos, and that the whole allied army was prepared to deliver battle in a position outside the capital. In consequence, his brother the Marshal held back, and contented himself with bringing up the entire Army of the South to the Jarama, while he sent his false news to King Joseph and Jourdan. He proposed that the Cuenca column should make no attempt to force the higher course of the Tajuna, where all the bridges were broken, and behind which lay the equally tiresome obstacle of the Henares, but should come round to Aranjuez and cross by the Puente Larga. Jourdan advised compliance, remarking that the forcing of the lines of the Tajuna and Henares and the making of bridges upon them might take many days. To save time the right wing came round to join the left[135].
This was a godsend to Hill, as it resulted in no pursuit being made on the 31st; the French advanced cavalry only entered Madrid on the 1st November, and the second of that month had arrived before any infantry reached the capital. By that day the allied army was over the Guadarrama, and well on its way to Villacastin and Arevalo. The evacuation of Madrid was accompanied with many distressing incidents: the people were in despair at seeing themselves about to fall back once more into the power of the ‘Intrusive King’. Many of the notables had committed themselves so openly to the patriotic cause that they thought it wise to depart in company with Hill’s army. An order to burn the considerable stores of provisions which could not be brought off led to a riot—the lower classes were on the edge of starvation, and the sight of good food being wasted led them to make a disorderly rush on the magazines, to drive away the commissaries, and to carry off the flour and salt meat which was being destroyed. Probably it would have been wise to permit them to do so without making difficulties; as the stores, once dispersed, could hardly have been gathered in again by the enemy. The explosion of the Arsenal in the Retiro fort was a more absolute necessity, but the Madrileños murmured greatly that the large building of La China, the porcelain manufactory, was blown up along with the surrounding earthworks. The mines, it may be incidentally remarked, were so carelessly laid that two commissariat officers were killed by the first of them that went off, and the last nearly made an end of Captain Cleeves, K.G.L., the artillery officer in charge of the business. He was severely scorched, and barely escaped with his life[136].
The rearguard of the British Army quitted the mourning city by noon on the 31st October: the head of the column was already on that day at the Escurial. On November 1st the passage of the Guadarrama began, and on the 3rd the last cavalry brigade, bringing up the rear, was over the mountains. Not a sign had been seen of the enemy, whose advanced light cavalry only reached Galapagar, five miles south of the Escurial upon the 2nd. The weather, however, was very bad, rain falling day after day, and this must serve as an inadequate excuse for the fact that straggling had already begun, and that a certain number of men dropped so far behind that they fell into the hands of the tardily-appearing enemy. But the loss of these laggards, for the most part the selected bad characters of each battalion, was a small price to pay for an unmolested retreat. Hill’s spirits rose, hour by hour, as he received no letter from Wellington to say that the retreat to Arevalo had become impossible, or that the line of the Douro had been lost. These terrible possibilities might—so far as he knew—have come into existence at any moment on the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd of November. On the 4th the whole army from Madrid was concentrated at Villacastin, so close to Wellington’s position behind the Douro at Rueda that dispatches could now get through from him to Hill in less than twelve hours. The cavalry of the extreme rearguard—the 2nd Hussars K.G.L., who had left the Escurial only on the 3rd, had barely seen the enemy’s advanced vedettes on that day, and were not overtaken by them till late on the 4th. The pursuit was slow, cautious, and not executed by any very large body of horse. Hill, therefore, granted his troops a very necessary rest of twelve hours at Villacastin.