It should be noted that Wellington had carefully avoided calling attention to the accumulation of ships and stores at Corunna, even in his letters to the ministers at home[497]. Their existence there was plausibly explained by the need for supplying the Spanish army of Galicia—which had indeed received much material during the spring. The provision of heavy artillery shows that he was contemplating as a probability the siege of San Sebastian and the other northern fortresses. He had failed at Burgos in 1812 for lack of the 24-pounders which Home Popham had vainly offered to send him from Santander: now he was quite ready to receive them from that port. As things stood on the Pisuerga, at the moment that he sent this prescient dispatch to Bourke, it was certainly a bold prophecy to write that he was about to clear the Cantabrian coast by his next move. The French were still unbeaten, and he was more than a hundred miles from the Bay of Biscay, from which he was separated by a most rough and complicated land of mountains. But he had already taken his measure of the capacity of the hostile commanders, and his hopes were high.
The great flank movement’s initial stages can be best traced by following on the map Wellington’s nightly head-quarters. They were La Mota on the 4th, Castromonte on the 5th, Ampudia on the 6th—all these carefully avoid the neighbourhood of the Pisuerga, though the cavalry pushed on to feel the lines of the French along the river. But the army, instead of making for the crossings at Valladolid, Cabezon, or Dueñas, kept steadily on in four parallel columns, on roads far from the river. Hill, still as always on the right, went by Torrelobaton, Mucientes, and Dueñas; Graham, on the left, by Medina de Rio Seco and Grixota; ‘the Head-Quarters Column’ under Wellington himself, by Castromonte and Ampudia—while, far off, the Galician army on the north moved by Villaramiel and Villoldo on Aguilar de Campos. The flanking cavalry kept up a continual bickering along the Pisuerga with French outposts; on the 6th those at the head of the advance had a distant glimpse of a great review of the Army of the Centre, which King Joseph was holding outside Palencia, from the heights which overlook that city from the west. In front of Dueñas there was an exchange of letters under a flag of truce between Wellington and Gazan—a most odd proceeding at such a moment—from which both parties thought they had derived useful information[498]. The British parlementaire reported to the Commander-in-Chief that Dueñas was still held by French infantry—which was good to know: the French, on the other hand, got a reply to Gazan’s letter to Wellington within four hours—which proved that British Head-Quarters must be a very short way from them—which was equally a valuable scrap of knowledge.
The King had now waited three days in the temporary position behind the Pisuerga, without being attacked, though he was in the close neighbourhood of the enemy. The quiescence of such an adversary made him uncomfortable, and at last he guessed part of what was going on opposite him. The British must be pushing up northward parallel to his line, and preparing to turn his right flank (which extended no farther than Palencia) by way of Amusco and the upper Carrion. Whereupon Joseph on the 7th hastily resumed his retreat, and got behind the defile of Torquemada. There was danger in waiting—nothing had been heard of Clausel, but news were to hand that Lamartinière, with one of the missing divisions of the Army of Portugal, was nearing Burgos from the north. The main body took post on the Arlanzon—but Reille with his two divisions at Castroxeriz on the Odra. Jourdan went forward to report on the condition of Burgos, where important new works had been commenced in the spring, and to choose good defensible positions in its neighbourhood. It was expected that the British army would follow in pursuit, up the great chaussée from Palencia to Torquemada.
And at first it looked as if this might be the case: entering Palencia on the same day that the King had left it, Wellington pushed up the chaussée part of Hill’s column—Grant’s and Ponsonby’s cavalry brigades and the Light Division, which kept in touch with the enemy’s rear. The rest of the right column had got no farther forward than Palencia. But the main body of the army continued its north-westerly turning movement, Graham’s infantry that day reached Grixota, five miles north of Palencia; the Galicians were up parallel with Graham farther west, somewhere near Becceril. The movements of June 8 and 9, however, were the decisive revelations of Wellington’s intentions. He moved his head-quarters not up the Torquemada road, but to Amusco on the Carrion river, and continued to urge his columns straight northward—Graham to San Cebrian and Peña on the 8th and Osorno on the 9th, the main body of Hill’s column to Amusco and Tamara, the Galicians to Carrion. He was thus getting his army well north of any positions which the enemy would be likely to take up in the neighbourhood of Burgos, giving it very long marches, but still keeping it closely concentrated.
On the 10th he judged that he had got sufficiently round the enemy, and turned all his columns due east towards the upper Pisuerga—Graham’s and Wellington’s own divisions crossing it at Zarzosa and Melgar, Hill at Astudillo, some miles farther south. Head-quarters were fixed that night at Melgar. With the passage of the Pisuerga ended the long march through the great flat corn-bearing plainland of Northern Spain, the Tierra de Campos. The next ten days were to be spent among rougher paths. The triumphant and almost unopposed advance from the Esla to the Pisuerga, executed in one sweep and at high speed, was an episode which those who were engaged in it never forgot.
‘From the time of our crossing the Esla up to this period,’ wrote one diarist, ‘we have been marching through one continuous cornfield. The land is of the richest quality, and produces the finest crops with the least possible labour. It is generally wheat, with a fair proportion of barley, and now and then a crop of vetches or clover. The horses fed on green barley nearly the whole march, and got fat. The army has trampled down twenty yards of corn on each side of the roads by which the several columns have passed—in many places much more, from the baggage going on the side of the columns, and so spreading farther into the wheat. But they must not mind their corn if we get the enemy out of their country!... The country gives bread and corn, and hitherto these have not failed, and this is a region that has been plundered and devastated for five years by the enemy! It was said before our march that until the harvest came in, not a pound of bread by way of supplies for the army could be procured[499].’
A Light Division diarist writes in a more romantic frame of mind: ‘The country was beautifully diversified, studded with castles of Moorish architecture, recalling the chivalric days of Ferdinand and Isabella. The sun shone brilliantly, the sky was heavenly blue, and clouds of dust marked the line of march of the glittering columns. The joyous peasantry hailed our approach and came dancing to meet us, singing, and beating time on their small tambourines; and when we passed through the principal street of Palencia, the nuns, from the upper windows of a convent, showered down rose-leaves upon our dusty heads[500].’
The dry comment of the Commander-in-chief, in his report to the War Minister at home, contrasts oddly with this enthusiasm: ‘I enclose the last weekly and daily states. We keep up our strength, and the army are very healthy and in better order than I have ever known them. God knows how long that will last. It depends entirely upon the officers[501].’
While Wellington’s columns were hurrying northward, the French remained for two days (June 7-9) in position behind the Pisuerga—Reille on the right at Castroxeriz, the rest of the army holding the heights down to Villadiego and the Arlanza river. Only British cavalry scouts appeared in front of them. ‘The position was excellent,’ says Jourdan, ‘and it was hoped to hold it for some days. But the generals commanding the armies represented to the King that the troops lacked bread, and that they dared not send out large detachments far afield to requisition food from the peasantry, wherefore the whole force retired on Burgos.’ No doubt the country was bare; and, when the enemy is known to be near, it is unsafe to make large detachments: but it may be suspected that the real cause for retreat was the continuous uncertainty as to Wellington’s northward movement. Yet it is clear that the French Head-Quarters had no suspicion how far that movement was going.
For on the 9th, when they retreated, they took up position on a very short line north and south of Burgos. Reille’s two divisions lay behind the Hormaza river, ten miles west of the fortress—with the right opposite Hormaza village, the left at Estepar—forming a front line. The Army of the South was on both banks of the Arlanzon, five miles behind Reille—right wing behind the Urbel river, left wing behind the Arcos river. The Army of the Centre and the King’s Guards were in reserve, billeted in Burgos itself. But already Wellington’s columns were aiming at points far north of Reille’s position. That day the northernmost divisions of Graham’s infantry[502] were at Osorno, next day (June 10th) at Zarzosa, beyond the Pisuerga, a point from which they could easily march round the Hormaza position, and on June 11th, at Sotresgudo, where they halted for a day[503]. The centre[504], with Wellington himself, on the same day had reached Castroxeriz on the Odra river, while Hill was close by at Barrio de Santa Maria and Valbases. Nothing had been sent south of the Arlanzon save Julian Sanchez’s lancers, who were scouring the country in the direction of Lerma, on the look-out for belated French convoys or detachments. The Galician army, keeping (as always) far out on the left wing, had reached the Pisuerga at Herrera, ten miles north of Graham’s extreme flank. They were now within two marches of the upper Ebro, and there was absolutely no enemy in front of them for scores of miles—the nearest Frenchmen in that direction were the columns with which Foy was scouring the roads of Biscay, after his capture of Castro-Urdiales.