“If I fail, God will, I hope, have mercy upon me, for nobody else will.”
Wellesley.
Soult, joined by Mortier and Ney, had some 50,000 men with which to face the victor of Talavera. Had Cuesta guarded the mountain passes as he was supposed to do, Wellesley would not have found himself in so awkward a predicament. Both his front and rear were threatened, the former by Victor and Sebastiani and the latter by Soult. While his ranks were sadly depleted, those of the French were augmented. By great good fortune General Craufurd and his celebrated Light Division arrived on the morning of the 29th July, the day following the conclusion of the battle.
Rumour proved on this occasion a powerful ally of the Commander-in-Chief, for had not Craufurd heard of the supposed death of Sir Arthur, it is scarcely likely that he would have urged his men, each loaded with forty pounds weight on his back, to march forty-three English miles in twenty-two hours. Wellesley made up his mind to advance against Soult, but was forced to abandon the idea when he heard that the enemy had entered Plasencia in great force, thereby severing the British communications with Lisbon. A retreat “to take up the defensive line of the Tagus” became eminently necessary. “We were in a bad scrape,” he writes on the 8th August, “from which I think I have extricated both armies; and I really believe that, if I had not determined to retire at the moment I did, all retreat would have been cut off for both.” “Both,” of course, includes the Spaniards, whose “train of mismanagement,” added to Soult’s advance, were contributing causes of his withdrawal.
The Spaniards promised to remain at Talavera to watch the movements of the enemy and to assist the wounded. No sooner was Wellesley out of the way than Cuesta felt that the position was untenable, with the result that many British soldiers, rendered unable to keep up with the Spanish troops by reason of their wounds, were made prisoners by Victor, who soon afterwards took possession of the town.
The Tagus was crossed at Arzobispo, and a rearguard of 8000 Spaniards, under Cuesta, left to defend the passage. At Almarez the bridge of boats was broken to arrest Soult’s advance from Naval Moral, no great distance away, and on the high road. As it happened, the French Marshal was able to cross the river at Arzobispo by means of a ford. He promptly defeated the Spanish force there and captured their guns. Not a few of the defenders fled, throwing away their arms and clothing, a very usual device. This was followed by the defeat of Venegas by Joseph and Sebastiani at Almonacid, near Toledo, where several thousand men were either killed, wounded, or captured, and of a Portuguese and Spanish column which had been detached from the main army, under Sir Robert Wilson, by Ney at the Puerto de Baños.
In the middle of August 1809 the various armies were occupying the following positions: British, Jaraicejo; Eguia, Deleytosa; Vanegas, La Carolina; Ney, Salamanca; Kellermann, Valladolid; Soult, Plasencia; Mortier, Oropesa and Arzobispo; Victor, Talavera and Toledo; Sebastiani, La Mancha.
The storm was followed by a lull, for the contesting armies were all but worn out and required rest. Wellesley made his headquarters first at Deleytosa, and, when that place was vacated on the 11th, at Jaraicejo; the Spanish made the former town their headquarters, and the Portuguese army, under Beresford, withdrew within their home frontier.
“While the army remained in this position,” namely, Deleytosa, General Sir George T. Napier records: “We suffered dreadfully from want of food; nothing but a small portion of unground wheat and (when we could catch them) about a quarter of a pound of old goats’ flesh each man; no salt, bread, or wine; and as the Spaniards had plundered the baggage of the British army during the battle of Talavera, there was nothing of any kind to be procured to help us out, such as tea or sugar.”[54] These defects the General determined to remedy, for “no troops can serve to any good purpose unless they are regularly fed,” a maxim equivalent to that of Napoleon that “an army moves on its stomach.”
Cuesta resigned his command, which was given to Eguia, but from henceforth the British Commander placed his sole reliance on his own forces. The lack of co-operation in the combined army was also evident in that of the French, for the various marshals had separated, and, to Napoleon’s disgust, lost a golden opportunity of crushing the hated English, which was never again vouchsafed to them. “Force Wellesley to fight on every possible occasion,” was his frequent cry. “Win if you can, but lose a battle rather than deliver none. We can afford to expend three men for every one he loses, and you will thus wear him out in the end.” Wellesley preferred to conserve his energy, not to squander it.
After repeated requests for provisions and means of transport, all more or less evasively answered by the Spanish authorities, Wellesley carried out his threat and fell back upon the frontiers of Portugal. Not without a certain suggestion of irony, he was at this time appointed a Captain-General in the Spanish service, and received six Andalusian horses “in the name of King Ferdinand the VIIth.” Shortly afterwards he was notified that he had been elevated to the Peerage, with the titles of Baron Douro of Wellesley, and Viscount Wellington of Talavera. From henceforth we shall style him Wellington, a signature he first adopted on the 16th September 1809.