In 1808 the advanced posts of Napoleon's army pursued Sir John Moore's army at the rate of twenty-five miles a day, in the midst of winter. Napoleon transported an army of fifty thousand men from Madrid to Astorga with nearly the same rapidity, marching through deep snows, across high mountains, and rivers swollen by the winter rains. The activity, perseverance, and endurance of his troops, during these ten days' march, are scarcely equalled in history.
In 1812, the activity of the French forces under Clausel was truly extraordinary. After almost unheard-of efforts at the battle of Salamanca, he retreated forty miles in a little more than twelve hours!
In 1814, Napoleon's army marched at the rate of ten leagues a day, besides fighting a battle every twenty-four hours. Wishing to form a junction with other troops, for the succor of Paris, he marched his army the distance of seventy-five miles in thirty-six hours; the cavalry marching night and day, and the infantry travelling en poste.
On his return from Elba, in 1815, his guards marched fifty miles the first day after landing; reached Grenoble through a rough and mountainous country, a distance of two hundred miles, in six days, and reached-Paris, a distance of six hundred miles, in less than twenty days!
The marches of the allied powers, during the wars of the French Revolution, were much less rapid than those of the armies of Napoleon. Nevertheless, for a single day the English and Spaniards have made some of the most extraordinary marches on record.
In 1809, on the day of the battle of Talavera, General Crawford, fearing that Wellington was hard pressed, made a forced march with three thousand men the distance of sixty-two miles in twenty-six hours!
The Spanish regiment of Romana, in their march from Jutland to Spain, marched the extraordinary distance of fifty miles in twenty-one hours.
Cavalry, for a single day, will march a greater distance than infantry; but for a campaign of several months the infantry will march over the most ground. In the Russian campaign of Napoleon, his cavalry failed to keep pace with the infantry in his forced march on Moskwa. But in the short campaigns of 1805 and 1806, the cavalry of Murat displayed the most wonderful activity, and effected more extraordinary results than any mounted troops of modern ages.
The English cavalry, however, have made one or two short marches with a rapidity truly extraordinary.
In 1803 Wellington's cavalry in India marched the distance of sixty miles in thirty-two hours.