Lieutenant-General Hill was entrusted with the duty of watching the enemy in Alemtejo,[69] and two divisions were left in Estremadura. The Commander-in-Chief, with some 40,000 men, hastened towards Ciudad Rodrigo, unaware at the moment that the garrison had been reinforced and that Napoleon was sending more men to the Peninsula. When these important facts reached him he contented himself with blockading the place, and prepared to retire behind the Agueda should necessity warrant. Marmont sent for Dorsenne, who had taken the command in Galicia from Bessières, and with 60,000 troops set out toward the end of September to relieve Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington then occupied El Bodon, on the left bank of the Agueda. “The object of taking a position so near to the enemy,” he says, “was to force them to show their army. This was an object, because the people of the country, as usual, believed and reported that the enemy were not so strong as we knew them to be; and if they had not seen the enemy’s strength, they would have entertained a very unfavorable opinion of the British army, which it was desirable to avoid. This object was accomplished by the operations at the close of September.”
Early on the morning of the 25th the Marshal drove in the outposts of Wellington’s left wing, and turned the heights occupied by the right centre, thereby placing the British Commander in a dangerous position, from which he extricated himself by hurling his cavalry at the horsemen and artillery now endeavouring to scale the heights. Two British guns were captured and retaken at the point of the bayonet. When the French infantry were brought into action Wellington gradually withdrew in the direction of Fuente Guinaldo, pursued by the enemy’s cavalry, which were received by solid British squares and repelled as six miles were traversed. Marmont again advanced on the 26th, but did not attack. Wellington retreated until he reached a strong position in front of Sabugal on the 28th.
A rear-guard action had been fought on the previous day at Aldea da Ponte, but Marmont withdrew without offering battle, and, after supplying much needed necessaries to Ciudad Rodrigo, proceeded to the Tagus valley and Dorsenne to Salamanca. Wellington renewed the blockade “in order,” as he says, “to keep a large force of the enemy employed to observe our operations, and to prevent them from undertaking any operation elsewhere.” Placing his army in cantonments on the banks of the Coa, the Commander-in-Chief made his headquarters at Freneda.
While in their winter quarters both officers and men were able to recuperate after their previous arduous campaign. Sports, theatricals and other amusements helped to pass away the time and to cheer up the army. Even more important was the opportunity thus afforded the many semi-invalids to recover their health. “We are really almost an army of convalescents.” Wellington himself rode to hounds occasionally, and applauded the amateur histrionic efforts of his soldiers, when time and circumstances permitted him to attend their performances. He was able to re-establish Almeida as a military post, where he kept his battering-train to deceive the enemy, to blockade Ciudad Rodrigo, and to prepare for its investment.
Meanwhile the guerillas were “increasing in numbers and boldness throughout the Peninsula,” constantly annoying the French commanders. “It was their indomitable spirit of resistance,” says Professor Oman,[70] “which enabled Wellington, with his small Anglo-Portuguese army, to keep the field against such largely superior numbers. No sooner had the French concentrated, and abandoned a district, than there sprang up in it a local Junta and a ragged apology for an army. Even where the invaders lay thickest, along the route from Bayonne to Madrid, guerilla bands maintained themselves in the mountains, cut off couriers and escorts, and often isolated one French army from another for weeks at a time. The greater partisan chiefs, such as Mina in Navarre, Julian Sanchez in Leon, and Porlier in the Cantabrian hills, kept whole brigades of the French in constant employment. Often beaten, they were never destroyed, and always reappeared to strike some daring blow at the point where they were least expected. Half the French army was always employed in the fruitless task of guerilla-hunting. This was the secret which explains the fact that, with 300,000 men under arms, the invaders could never concentrate more than 70,000 to deal with Wellington.”
In the autumn and winter of 1811 the enemy accomplished nothing of importance in eastern and southern Spain. In the south-east Suchet defeated Blake on the 25th October at the battle of Sagunto, “the last pitched battle of the war,” remarks the above authority, “in which a Spanish army, unaided by British troops, attempted to face the French.” Forced into the city of Valencia with part of his motley array, Blake made a gallant attempt to rid himself of his besieger, an almost impossible task considering that Suchet had been reinforced while the unfortunate Spanish commander had been considerably reduced. On the 9th January 1812 his 16,000 followers laid down their weapons.
The investment of Ciudad Rodrigo by Wellington had been delayed owing to a complexity of causes. All the carting had to be performed by Portuguese and Spanish, and their slowness and the inclement weather combined precluded the Commander-in-Chief from pushing forward his operations with any celerity of movement. Empty carts took two days to go ten miles on a good road. Wellington confessed that he had to appear satisfied, otherwise the drivers would have deserted. If he succeeded in his designs he hoped to “make a fine campaign in the spring”; if he did not, “I shall bring back towards this frontier the whole [French] army which had marched towards Valencia and Aragon. By these means I hope to save Valencia.”
Alas, for human ambition! The capital of the province fell three days after the above dispatch was written.
On the 8th January 1812 a start was made, and Ciudad Rodrigo invested. During the night the palisaded redoubt on the hill of San Francisco, which the French had recently constructed, was stormed and carried, but Wellington at once perceived that the enemy had made good use of their time by strengthening their works and fortifying three convents in the suburbs. “The success of this operation,” he writes, “enabled us immediately to break ground within 600 yards of the place, notwithstanding that the enemy still hold the fortified convents; and the enemy’s work has been turned into a part of our first parallel, and a good communication made with it.” Wellington encamped his men on the southern bank, which necessitated their fording the narrow stream, although he had built a bridge lower down the Agueda for munitions. It was no child’s play for the soldiers. Through icy cold water, across ground covered with snow and frost, and amidst a rain of shot and shell, these brave fellows went to their work, each division in succession. Some of them returned, others did not, for “The path of glory leads but to the grave.”
The convent of Santa Cruz was captured on the night of the 13th, followed on the 14th by the fall of the convent of San Francisco and other fortified posts in the suburbs. By this time batteries were within 180 yards of the walls. “We proceeded at Ciudad Rodrigo,” he tells the Duke of Richmond, “on quite a new principle in sieges. The whole object of our fire was to lay open the walls. We had not one mortar; nor a howitzer, excepting to prevent the enemy from clearing the breaches, and for that purpose we had only two; and we fired upon the flanks and defences only when we wished to get the better of them, with a view to protect those who were to storm. This shows the kind of place we had to attack....” Matters now became urgent, for advice had been received that Marmont was stirring. By the 19th the breaches made in the ramparts by the artillery were declared practicable. Wellington had already summoned the Governor to surrender. His reply was that “he and the brave garrison which he commanded were prepared rather to bury themselves in the ruins of a place entrusted to them by their Emperor.” The troops, consisting of the regiments of the 3rd and Light Divisions and some Portuguese caçadores, marched to the assault in five columns. “Rangers of Connaught,” cried General Picton to the “Fighting 3rd,” who were charged with the centre attack, “it is not my intention to expend any powder this evening; we’ll do this business with the cold iron.”