SECTION XXXIV: CHAPTER VI
FROM THE TORMES TO THE AGUEDA
The last crisis of the campaign of 1812 was now over, and, but for two unlucky circumstances, the four days of operations which still remained would have required little notice from the annalist. But these two mishaps, the continuance of the exceptionally severe and tempestuous weather which had set in upon the 15th November, and the misdirection of the supply column, which had got completely separated from the marching troops, were to have most disastrous results. They cost the army 3,000 men, much misery, and some humiliation, and Wellington great vexation of spirit, leading to one of his rare outbursts of violent rage—his angry words committed to paper, and published abroad by misadventure, were always remembered with a grudge by his officers and men.
It must be remembered that there was no really dangerous pursuit. Soult was not strong enough to press Wellington to a general action, and knew it. On the 16th he wrote to King Joseph: ‘I think that your Majesty’s intention is that the enemy should only be followed up to the frontier. In two days the campaign will probably be at an end in these parts, for if the enemy’s army goes behind the Agueda, I cannot think that it would be at present possible to pursue it any further. I await your orders for the future destination of the Army of the South, which would be unable to stop two days in position for want of bread and forage. I propose to establish it on the upper Tormes, below Salvatierra and El Barco, where I could rest eight or ten days, to allow the men repose and to collect food[192].’ Clearly there was no offensive spirit in the Marshal, who only wished to see Wellington upon his way to Rodrigo, and then contemplated turning back to the upper Tormes.
On the 16th there was little to record in the way of military operations. The British Army started at dawn from its wet bivouacks behind the Valmusa river, having received no distribution of food. The side roads, on which the larger part of the troops were moving, grew worse and worse as the rain continued. The weakly men began to fall behind, the shirkers to slip away into the woods, to look for peasants to plunder and roofs to shelter them from the drenching rain. After the usual midday halt the bad news went round that the supply column had gone off on the wrong road—via Ledesma—and that there would again be no distribution of rations that evening. All that the troops got was the carrion-like meat of over-driven bullocks hastily slaughtered, and acorns gathered in the oak woods through which the roads ran. These, we are assured, though bitter and hard, were better than nothing. It was only in the evening, after the infantry had encamped behind the brook that gets its name from the village of Matilla, that the pursuing French cavalry came up on the two southern roads, and engaged in a bickering skirmish with the screen of allied horse covering the rear. The Polish Lancers, 2nd Hussars, and 5th and 27th Chasseurs engaged in an interchange of partial charges with the 14th Light Dragoons and K.G.L. Hussars of Victor Alten’s brigade, in front of the camps of the 2nd Division. It was brought to a sudden end by the light company of the 28th and two guns opening fire on the French from under the cover of a woodside, on which the enemy went off, with a loss of some 50 men, mostly wounded prisoners[193]. Alten’s brigade suffered much less. The centre column saw very little of the pursuing French—Digeon’s Dragoons—who made no attempt to press in. The cavalry of the Army of Portugal acted even more feebly on the northernmost of the three parallel roads. Yet the retreating army lost several hundred ‘missing’ this day, all stragglers or weakly men captured singly on the road, or in villages at its sides, whither they had betaken themselves for shelter or marauding. The rearguard cavalry vainly attempted to whip them all into the tail of the retreating column—some were really unable to move—others escaped notice in hiding-places, and were taken by the French when they emerged for a tardy attempt to follow the army. The camp-followers, and the unfortunate women and children whom the evil custom of the time allowed to remain with the regiments, suffered most of all. Soult in his dispatch to King Joseph of the night of the 16th says that he had gathered in 600 prisoners this day, and is very probably correct.
The 17th November was an even worse day—the rain still continued to fall, and stomachs were still more empty than on the preceding morning. The march of the retreating army was still in three columns, but the 2nd Division replaced the 4th as the rearguard of the southern column (2nd, 3rd, 4th Divisions; Hamilton’s Portuguese; Morillo’s Spaniards), which marched unmolested from Matilla by Villalba to Anaya on the Huebra, turning off towards the end of the day from the high road to Tamames[194], in order not to get too far from the central column, which was marching on San Muñoz: for Wellington intended to have his whole army arrayed behind the Huebra, a good fighting position, that evening. This was a most miserable journey. ‘The effects of hunger and fatigue were even more visible than on the preceding day. A savage sort of desperation had taken possession of our minds, and those who lived on the most friendly terms in happier times now quarrelled with each other, using the most frightful imprecations, on the slightest offence. A misanthropic spirit was in possession of every bosom. The streams which fell from the hills were swelled into rivers, which we had to wade, and many fell out, including even officers. It was piteous to see some of the men, who had dragged their limbs after them with determined spirit, fall down at last among the mud, unable to proceed further, and sure of being taken prisoners if they escaped death. Towards night the rain had somewhat abated, but the cold was excessive, and numbers who had resisted the effect of hunger and fatigue with a hardy spirit were now obliged to give way, and sank to the ground praying for death to deliver them from their misery. Some prayed not in vain, for next morning before daylight, in passing from our halting-ground to the road, I stumbled over several who had died in the night[195].’
The only food that the southern marching column got this day was procured from the celebrated raid upon the swine, which so much enraged Wellington. It is recorded in many 3rd and 4th Division diaries. The main wealth of the peasantry of this forest region lay in their pigs, which had been driven into the heart of the woods, to hide them from the passing armies. From some unknown cause a stampede broke out in one vast herd of the creatures, which ran across the road cutting through the middle of the 3rd Division. The starving soldiers opened up a lively fusillade upon them, and whole battalions broke their ranks and pursued them with the bayonet, cutting up the creatures before they were dead, each man going off with a gory limb or rib. Many officers farther to the rear thought from the firing that the French had cut into the head of the column. Later in the day the same or another herd charged the camp of a brigade of the 2nd Division, and gave many a hungry man an unexpected meal[196].
The southern column had no enemy but hunger and cold on the 17th, but the experiences of the centre column were more military. This corps, consisting of the 1st, 6th, 5th, 7th, Light Divisions, moving in that order, had a tiresome alarm before the rearguard had started in the morning from behind the Matilla brook. By some blunder—on the part of Gordon the Quartermaster-General as was said[197]—the covering cavalry marched off before the Light Division, the rear of the infantry column, had left its ground. There was nothing but the picquets from the 95th Rifles between the camp, where the battalions were just getting under arms, and two divisions of French Dragoons, cautiously advancing along the road and with their flanking parties out in the woods. There was barely time to form close column and start off before the enemy were riding in from all sides. They did not attempt to close, but while keeping their main body on the road, at a safe distance, sent out many detached squadrons, along by-paths in the woods, which from time to time came out unexpectedly not only upon the flank of the Light Division, acting as rearguard, but much farther up the line, where the 7th Division, and the 5th in front of them, were moving along the road to San Muñoz. Hardly any of the allied cavalry appeared to curb these incursions—the main body appears to have gone off too much to the south, in the direction of Hill’s column. Hence came the extraordinary chance that small bodies of the French got into the interval between the Light Division and the 7th, and even into that between the 7th Division and the 5th, though the troops themselves were all closed up and perfectly safe in their dense columns. Great part of the baggage of the 7th Division was intercepted and plundered by one party. But the most tiresome incident was that a patrol of three men from Vinot’s light cavalry captured the one-armed General Edward Paget, the newly-arrived second-in-command of the Army, as he was riding—accompanied by his Spanish servant alone—from the rear brigade of the 5th Division to the front brigade of the 7th, in order to bid the latter close up rapidly. The French pounced on him out of a corner of the wood, and as he could not defend himself, and had no escort, he was hurried off a prisoner, and it was some time before his absence was noted[198]. A good many isolated soldiers were picked up in the same fashion by the French cavalry, before the central column emerged from the woods and found itself above the broad ravine of the Huebra river, and the town of San Muñoz, in the late afternoon[199].
The whole column had been ordered to encamp on the farther side of the Huebra, on the plateau in front of Boadilla and Cabrillas, and each division as it passed the river made its way to the ground allotted to it. There was wood to be had in abundance, and fires were lit—the rain had abated in the afternoon—but there was little to cook. Again there was no distribution save of beef from the droves of half-starved oxen which accompanied the divisions, and acorns which turned out more palatable when roasted than when eaten raw.
The 7th Division had just crossed the Huebra, and the Light Division and a few squadrons of cavalry alone were on the farther bank, when a new turn was given to the day by the appearance of infantry behind the French Dragoons, who had been following the retreating centre column since dawn. Soult had at last succeeded in getting his leading division, that of Daricau, to the front. Hitherto the bad roads and the fatigue of the long marches had prevented them from picking up the cavalry of the advanced guard. The Marshal by no means intended to commit himself to a general action, but thought that he had the chance of falling upon the rear of Wellington’s retreating central column, as it passed the defile of the Huebra. ‘I thought,’ he wrote that evening to King Joseph, ‘that I might bring off a combat of infantry, and a cavalry affair, to advantage, but had to give up the idea, and to limit my efforts to cannonading the masses of the English Army across the Huebra. The enemy showed us 20,000 men in position, including 3,000 horse, and more than 20 guns—we could see other masses debouching across the bridge of Castillejo de Huebra, and the glare of camp fires announced the presence of more divisions on the plateau of Cabrillas[200].’