There was only one touch during the winter with Wellington’s army, whose cantonments, save those of the Light Division, were far back, behind the ‘no man’s land’ which encircled the French armies. This single contact was due to an adventurous reconnaissance by Foy, who at his head-quarters at Avila had conceived a project for surprising Hill’s most outlying detachment, the 50th regiment, which was billeted at Bejar, in the passes in front of Coria. On false news that no good look-out was being kept around Bejar, he started on the 19th February from Piedrahita with a column of three very weak infantry battalions and 80 horse—about 1,500 men in all, and marching day and night fell upon the cantonments of the 50th at dawn on the morning of the 20th. The surprise did not come off. Colonel Harrison of the 50th was a cautious officer, who had barricaded the ruined gates of the town, and patched its crumbling walls—He had picquets far out, and was accustomed to keep several companies under arms from 2 o’clock till daylight every night. Moreover Hill, thinking the position exposed, had lately reinforced him with the 6th Caçadores, from Ashworth’s brigade. Foy, charging in on the town in the dusk, dislodged the outlying picquets after a sharp skirmish; but his advanced guard of 300 voltigeurs met such a storm of fire from the gate and walls, which were fully manned, that it swerved off when 30 yards from the entrance. Foy ordered a general retreat, since he saw the enemy ready for him, and marched off as quickly as he had come, pursued for some distance by the Caçadores[361]. He says in his dispatch to Reille that he only lost two men killed and five wounded, that he could have carried the town had he pleased, and that he only retired because he was warned that the 71st and 92nd, the other regiments of Cadogan’s brigade, were marching up from Baños, seven miles away[362]. This those may believe who please: it is certain that he made off the moment that he saw that his surprise had failed, and that he was committed to an attack on a barricaded town. Hill expected more raids of this sort, but the attempt was never repeated.
It was on the 14th of February, five days before Foy’s adventure, that King Joseph received his first Paris mail. Its portentous and appalling contents were far worse than anything that he had expected. The most illuminating item was a letter from Colonel Desprez, his aide-de-camp, who had made the Moscow retreat, and was able to give him the whole truth concerning Russia. ‘We lost prisoners by the tens of thousands—but, however many the prisoners, the dead are many more. Every nightly bivouac left hundreds of frozen corpses behind. The situation may be summed up by saying that the army is dead. The Young Guard, to which I was attached, quitted Moscow 8,000 strong; there were 400 left at Wilna. All the other corps have suffered on the same scale; I am convinced that not 20,000 men recrossed the Vistula. If your Majesty asks me where the retreat will stop, I can only reply that the Russians will settle that point. I cannot think that the Prussians will resist: the King and his ministers are favourably disposed—not so the people—riots are breaking out in Berlin: crossing Prussia I had evidence that we can hardly count on these allies. And it seems that in the Austrian army the officers are making public demonstrations against continuing the war. This is a sad picture—but I think there is no exaggeration in it. On returning to Paris and thinking all over in cold blood, my judgement on the situation is as gloomy as it was at the theatre of war[363].’
Napoleon had spent several days at the Tuileries, busy with grandiose schemes for the organization of a new Grande Armée, to replace that which he had sacrificed in Russia, and with financial and diplomatic problems of absorbing interest, before he found a moment in which to dictate to Clarke his orders for the King of Spain. The note was very short and full of reticences[364]: it left much unsaid that had to be supplied by the recipient’s intelligence. ‘The King must have received by now the 29th Bulletin, which would show him the state of affairs in the North; they were absorbing the Emperor’s care and attention. Things being as they were, he ought to move his head-quarters to Valladolid, holding Madrid only as the extreme point of occupation of his southern wing. He should turn his attention to the pacification of Biscay and Navarre while the English were inactive. Soult had been sent orders to come back to France—as the King had repeatedly requested; his Army of the South might be given over to Marshal Jourdan or to Gazan.’ If Joseph had owned no independent sources of information such a statement would have left him much in the dark, both as to the actual state of the Emperor’s resources, and as to his intentions with regard to Spain. The Emperor did not say that he had lost his army and must create another, nor did he intimate how far he intended to give up his Spanish venture. But the order to draw back to Valladolid and hold Madrid lightly, could only be interpreted as a warning that there would be no more reinforcements available for Spain, so that the area of occupation would have to be contracted.
The recall of Soult was what Joseph had eagerly petitioned for in 1812, when he had come upon the curious letter in which the Marshal accused him before the Emperor of treason to the French cause[365]. But the Marshal was not brought home in disgrace; rather he was sent for in the hour of danger, as one who could be useful to the new Grande Armée. It must have been irritating to the King to know, from a passage in the already-cited letter of Colonel Desprez, that Napoleon had called the Duke of Dalmatia ‘the only military brain in the Peninsula’, that he stigmatized the King’s denunciations of him as des pauvretés to which he attached no importance, and that he had added that half the generals in Spain had shared Soult’s suspicions. The Marshal left, in triumph rather than in disgrace, with a large staff and escort, and a long train of fourgons carrying his Andalusian plunder, more especially his splendid gallery of Murillos robbed from Seville churches[366].
Dated one day later than the Emperor’s first rough notes, we find the formal dispatch from the war-minister Clarke, which made things a little clearer. Setting forth his master’s ideas in a more verbose style, Clarke explained that the affairs of Spain must be subordinated to those of the North. The move to Valladolid would make communication with Paris shorter and safer, and provide a larger force to hold down Northern Spain. Caffarelli was not strong enough both to hunt down the guerrilleros and at the same time to provide garrisons on the great roads and the coast. The King would have to lend him a hand in the task.
There were other dispatches for Joseph and Jourdan dated on the 4th of January, but only one more of importance: this was an order for wholesale drafts to be made from the Army of Spain, for the benefit of the new Army of Germany. But large as they were, the limited scale of them showed that the Emperor had not the least intention of surrendering his hold on the Peninsula, or of drawing back to the line of the Ebro or the Pyrenees, as Lord Liverpool had expected[367]. All the six Armies of Spain—those of the North, Portugal, the Centre, the South, Aragon, and Catalonia—were to continue in existence, and the total number of men to be drawn from any one of them did not amount to a fourth of its numbers. There were still to be 200,000 men left in the Peninsula.
The first demand was for twenty-five picked men from each battalion of infantry or regiment of cavalry, and ten from each battery of artillery, to reconstitute the Imperial Guard, reduced practically to nothing in Russia. Putting aside foreign regiments (Italian, Neapolitan, German, Swiss) there were some 220 French battalions in Spain in January 1813, and some 35 regiments of cavalry. The call was therefore for 5,500 bayonets and 875 sabres—no great amount from an army which had 260,000 men on its rolls, and 212,000 actually under the colours.
But this was only a commencement. It was more important that the Armies of the South and Catalonia were to contribute a large number of cadres to the new Grande Armée. Those of Portugal, Aragon, the Centre, and the North were at first less in question, because their regiments were, on the average, not so strong as those of the other two. The Army of the South was specially affected, because its units were (and always had been) very large regiments. In 1812 Soult’s infantry corps nearly all had three battalions—a few four. Similarly with the cavalry, many regiments had four squadrons, none less than three. The edict of January 4th ordered that each infantry regiment should send back to France the full cadre of officers and non-commissioned officers for one battalion, with a skeleton cadre of men, cutting down the number of battalions present with the eagle by one, and drafting the surplus rank and file of the subtracted battalion into those remaining in Spain. The cadre was roughly calculated out to 120 of all ranks. When, therefore, the system was applied to the Army of the South, it was cut down from 57 battalions to 36 in its 19 regiments[368]. The 21 cadres took off to France 2,500 officers and men. Similarly 15 cavalry regiments, in 50 squadrons, were to send 12 squadron-cadres to France, some 600 sabres.
The small Army of Catalonia was to contribute a battalion-cadre from each of those of its regiments which had three or more battalions—which would give six more cadres for Germany.
The Armies of Portugal, Aragon, and the Centre were mainly composed of regiments having only two battalions—they were therefore for the present left comparatively untouched. The first named was only ordered to give up one battalion-cadre, the second two, the third three (all from Palombini’s Italian division). Of cavalry the Army of Portugal only gave up one squadron-cadre, the Army of the Centre three.