Thus every man of Wellington’s striking force, 80,000 sabres and bayonets, was concentrated north of Toro on the night of June 3—all the British in a single mass, the Galicians some 18 miles off on the flank, but easily available. Nothing was now south of the Douro save Carlos de España’s Spanish division, left to garrison Salamanca, and Julian Sanchez’s horse, who were searching the roads south of the river, and had just captured a large French cavalry patrol at Castro Nuño, near Pollos. It seemed to Wellington incredible that the enemy would reply to his stroke at their communications by a similar stroke at his on the Salamanca-Rodrigo line. Indeed, all reports showed them moving north, in order to form opposite him on the north bank of the Douro. Moreover, it was clear that they would have the greatest difficulty in concentrating a sufficient force to fight him, for the possession of Valladolid and the defence of the great northern chaussée. The first stage of his plan had been completed with entire success.
SECTION XXXVI: CHAPTER IV
MOVEMENTS OF THE FRENCH:
MAY 22-JUNE 4
At the moment when Wellington launched his two great columns into Spain, the French head-quarters staff was in a condition of nervous expectation. The spring was so far advanced that it had been expected that the Allies would have been already on the move, and their long quiescence was supposed, very reasonably, to cover some new plan which it was impossible to divine. The position of the French armies was very unfavourable, entirely owing to the continued absence from the front of the whole infantry of the Army of Portugal, which, by Napoleon’s desire and by the detailed instructions of the Minister of War at Paris, had been lent to the Army of the North, and sent backward into Biscay, Navarre, and Aragon to hunt the guerrilleros. Five and a half out of the six divisions of Reille’s command were still occupied on these marches and counter-marches in the rear, when May was far spent, and when the offensive of the Allies must be expected at every moment.
The French army, available for immediate operations, was therefore short of one-third of its strength, and Jourdan and King Joseph disliked the situation. Jourdan confesses in his Memoirs that he and his master ought to have ordered Clausel to suspend his operations, however incomplete they might be, and to send back all the borrowed infantry to the valley of the Douro. But the minister’s letters kept repeating so often that the campaign north of the Ebro must be completed at all costs, that the King considered that he could do no more than transmit to Paris the warnings that he was receiving, urging on the minister that it was time to suspend those operations, and that General Clausel should be ordered to come back in haste towards Burgos[485]. This self-exculpation of Jourdan shows clearly enough the miserable consequences of the system of double-command which Napoleon had always kept up in Spain. The habit of sending orders direct from Paris to fractions of the Army of Spain was so deeply ingrained, that the titular Commander-in-Chief and his Chief of the Staff dared not issue instructions of primary importance to one of the generals under them without obtaining leave from the Emperor! And at this moment the Emperor was not even at Paris—he had long been at the front in Germany, and had fought the battle of Lützen on May 2. What came from Paris was not even the orders of Napoleon, but the orders of Clarke, transmitting his impression of the imperial will from dispatches already many days old, which would be doubly out of date before they reached Valladolid. The supreme master must take the responsibility of the fact that on May 15 or May 18 his representatives in Spain were asking for leave to modify his arrangements, by petitions which could receive no reply—for mere reasons of space and time—till the crisis which they were fearing had burst upon them. The whole system was ruinous—in 1813 as it had been in 1812. The only rational method would have been to turn over the whole conduct of affairs in Spain to some local authority, supreme in everything and responsible for everything. Yet stronger men than Joseph and Jourdan would perhaps have taken the risk of offending their master, and have issued peremptory orders, which Clausel, Foy, and the other outlying generals would probably have obeyed.
On May 20 the distribution of the Army of Spain was as follows: King Joseph and the 2,500 men of his guards, horse and foot, lay at general head-quarters at Valladolid. Of the two infantry divisions of D’Erlon’s Army of the Centre, one, that of Darmagnac, had been lent to Reille, when all the infantry of the Army of Portugal had been borrowed from him, and was lying at Medina de Rio Seco, in the rear of Reille’s cavalry, who were watching from a discreet distance the Army of Galicia and the roads in the direction of Astorga and Leon. It will be remembered that on May 20 Reille, hearing vague rumours of allied movements beyond the Esla, had executed a great sweep with Boyer’s dragoons across the bridge of Benavente, and for five leagues beyond it, had found nothing, and had reported that there were no British troops in the direction, and no Spaniards nearer than Astorga[486].
The other division of the Army of the Centre, that of Cassagne, was at Segovia, far south of the Douro, keeping touch with the large garrison still left in Madrid, which, as long as it was maintained there, could not be left in a state of absolute isolation.
Of the Army of the South, Gazan had his head-quarters at Arevalo, not very far from the King at Valladolid, but retained with him only Tilly’s cavalry division. The rest of his troops were woefully dispersed. Daricau’s division and Digeon’s dragoons lay at Zamora and Toro—nearly 100 miles from head-quarters—maintaining a loose touch with Reille’s cavalry. Villatte—with one detached regiment of Digeon’s dragoons to keep watch for him—was at Salamanca—fifty miles from Daricau. Conroux, with a third division, was at Avila, with a whole block of mountains between him and Villatte. He was supposed to be watching Hill, and had detachments as far out as Monbeltran on the borders of Estremadura. He was also separated from the force at Madrid by several sierras and the formidable pass of the Guadarrama. In the capital itself lay Leval with one more division, while the independent brigade of Maransin[487], had been intermittently holding Toledo, and was actually there on the 20th, in company with a brigade of light cavalry under Pierre Soult[488]. The extreme outer flanks of the Army of the South were as far apart therefore as Zamora and Toledo—160 miles as the crow flies—and a Spanish crow has rough country to fly over—and each of them was some 90 miles by road from the head-quarters in the centre.
As to the infantry of the Army of Portugal, the only element of it which lay anywhere near head-quarters was a brigade of Maucune’s at Palencia on the Carrion, which was guarding a large dépôt of stores and transport. The other brigade of Maucune’s was at Burgos. Lamartinière’s division (late that commanded for so long by Bonnet) was watching the great chaussée from Burgos by Briviesca to Miranda del Ebro, in order to keep touch with Clausel in Navarre. Similarly Sarrut’s division, after its long and fruitless chase of Longa, was keeping safe the roads from Bilbao to Miranda, in order to link Foy with the main army. Foy himself was on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, where he had stormed Castro-Urdiales on May 12, and was trying to make an end of the local guerrilleros. The other two divisions of Reille’s infantry were lost to sight in the mountains of Navarre, where they were marching and countermarching with Clausel, in pursuit of the elusive Mina. These were the divisions of Taupin and of Barbot: the troops which were working along with them were the two ‘active’ divisions of the Army of the North, those of Abbé and Vandermaesen. Clausel’s great flying column, of 15,000 men or more, was so continually on the move through regions where cross-communication was impossible, owing to the insurrection, that it could not be located with certainty on any given date, or receive instruction without a delay that might run to eight or ten days.
Obviously it would take the French army a week to concentrate on Valladolid or Arevalo, if Wellington should be aiming at Salamanca and the Central Douro. But if he were about to attack one of the extreme wings, at Zamora or Madrid, the time required would be much greater. And Joseph and Jourdan were not at all sure that the secret plan of Wellington might not be a thrust, with Hill’s force as the spear-head, at Madrid. One of the many false rumours sent to head-quarters was that forage had been ordered for Long’s cavalry at Escalona on the Tietar, many miles in front of Talavera. While another report truly chronicled the concentration of Hill’s brigades at Bejar, and the gathering of stores there, but interpreted their meaning as preparation for a march on Avila by the Puente de Congosto.