Nothing, however, that could be done by diligence and exertion was omitted. The Guadiana was in such a state that it seemed feasible to construct a bridge by fixing trestles across the shallow part of the river, and connecting them with the five Spanish boats in the deeper stream; or those boats might be used as a floating bridge for the artillery and heavy stores, and the interval filled with some half dozen tin pontoons, which had been sent from Lisbon to Elvas, and which, though weak and bad of their kind, might bear the weight of infantry, there being a practicable ford for the horse. This latter plan was preferred: materials were collected not without great difficulty, and delays which that difficulty occasioned: trees were to be felled for the purpose, and the trestles were made only seven feet in height, because no timber for making larger was found near the spot. On the 2nd of April the engineers reported that the passage was ready for the following day, and three squadrons passed that evening, and stretched their piquets along the advanced hills; thus making a show which imposed upon the enemy. The troops marched from their cantonments, and arrived at daybreak in a wood within a mile of the bridge. No apprehensions of the river had been entertained, for there had been no rain in those parts; but heavy rains had fallen far off, in the high regions where the Guadiana has its sources. When day broke it was seen that the water had risen three feet seven inches in the course of the night: planks, trestles, and pontoons were swept away by the current, and the ford also had become impassable. Beresford still determined to cross, not losing the opportunity which the enemy by their want of vigilance allowed him. Enough of the trestles were collected from the river to form, with two of the pontoons, two landing-places, and two floating bridges were made of the ♦Passage of the Guadiana.♦ Spanish boats. This was completed by the afternoon of the 5th. The army immediately began to cross; and continued crossing, without an hour’s intermission, from three that afternoon till after midnight on the 8th. Only one man and horse were lost in the operation. Some country boats meantime carried across the three days’ reserve of biscuit; and the same proportion of slaughter-cattle swam over. The troops bivouacked in succession as they passed, forming a position in a small semicircle, from Villa Real on the right to the Guadiana on the left. Severely as the French had suffered in the affair before Campo Mayor, they acted at this time with as much disregard of their enemies, as if they had no abler general than Mendizabal to contend with, and no better troops than those which they had so easily routed. They had 12,000 men within three hours’ march, who might have effectually disputed the passage, or cut off the advanced guard. But so ill were they informed of Beresford’s movements, and so negligent in ascertaining them, that they made no endeavour to interrupt him till the morning of the 8th, when they advanced in some force, and surprised before daybreak a piquet of the 13th dragoons; but they were driven back by the 37th, which closed the right of the position; and finding the allies too strong for them, desisted from any further attempt.
♦Olivença retaken.♦
On the morning of the 9th, as soon as the fog cleared, the army marched in three columns upon Olivença: it was thought not unlikely that the enemy would wait for them there, or on the opposite bank of the Valverde river, where the ground was favourable: they had, however, fallen back to Albuhera, leaving a garrison in Olivença. The place was summoned, and refused to surrender; guns and stores, therefore, were ordered from Elvas; the fourth division remained to besiege it; and the rest of the army moved by Valverde, and bivouacked in the wood of Albuhera, the enemy’s rear-guard retiring before their advance, which entered S. Martha on the 12th. Here the army halted till the 15th, to get up provisions which were still brought from the rear; and on that day Olivença surrendered at discretion, before the breach was practicable. The garrison consisted of about 480 men, in a place where Mendizabal had thrown away 3000. The French had committed a fault of the same kind, though not to an equal extent; the force they left there being totally inadequate to the defence of so large a fortress. The recapture of this place would have produced an angry contention between the Spanish and Portugueze Governments, if Portugal had not been rendered, by English influence, patient in this instance under a galling sense of injustice. The territory on the left of the Guadiana, in which Olivença stands, was part of the dowry given with his daughter to Affonso III. by the Castillian king, Alfonso the Wise; a grant which, though deemed at the time to have been an arbitrary, ♦Claim of the Portugueze to that place.♦ and therefore an illegal cession of national rights, was subsequently confirmed to Portugal with due form by the treaty between kings Dinez and Ferdinand IV. But as the Guadiana might seem to form a natural boundary between the two kingdoms on this part of the frontier, Spain has ever looked with an evil eye upon this cession. Five centuries had not reconciled a people peculiarly tenacious of what they deem national rights, to this dismemberment, as they considered it, though in itself of little importance to Spain, and though what had been ceded to Portugal was in reality the right of winning it from the Moors, and keeping it when won. In times of international war, therefore, the possession of Olivença had been contested not less as a point of honour than for its own value, when it was a place of great strength; and so strong was the border spirit which prevailed there that, when the Spaniards captured it in 1658, the whole of the inhabitants chose rather to leave the town, and lose whatever they could not carry with them, than become subjects to the King of Spain, though the property of those who should remove was offered to any who would remain. It was restored at the end of that war, and Portugal continued to hold it till its cession was extorted in 1801, in the treaty of Badajoz. But the war which was terminated by that treaty had been entirely unprovoked by Portugal: Spain was then acting as the deceived and degraded instrument of French policy; and the Portugueze felt, as they well might do, that the surrender, though made to Spain, had been compelled by France; and that so long as Spain retained Olivença by virtue of that treaty, they were an injured people. The Prince of Brazil, in the proclamation which he issued on his arrival in Brazil, declaring war against France, and against Spain as then the ally and instrument of French oppression, had protested against the injustice which was done him in that treaty, and declared his intention of recovering when he could whatever he had then been compelled to abandon: and the Spaniards were themselves so conscious of this injustice, that the local authorities, with the sanction of the Junta of Extremadura, had, at the commencement of the war against Buonaparte and the Intruder, proposed to restore Olivença and its district to Portugal for a certain sum of money. The Central Government had not authorised this proposal; and Olivença was not to be thought of in times when the independence of both nations was at stake. But fortune had now put it in the power of the Portugueze to right themselves: Olivença had been taken by the French, and retaken from them by an allied force of Portugueze and British: and one of the Portugueze Regents proposed to his colleague the British ambassador that the Portugueze standards should be displayed there, without previous explanation, or subsequent justification of the measure. There prevailed at that time a strong feeling of irritation in the Portugueze Government against the Spaniards, occasioned by the conduct of the Spanish officers on the frontier, and the unrestrained irregularities of the Spanish troops wherever they passed: they had even sacked a townlet near Badajoz; an act for which the Portugueze meditated reprisals, and had actually proposed so insane a measure to the British ministry, when the Spanish regency allayed their resentment by disavowing the act, and issuing orders for the punishment of the parties concerned. Having thus been in some degree mollified, they were persuaded not to injure the common cause by asserting their own claim, just and reasonable as that claim was, but to wait the effect of a treaty then pendant with Spain, in which the restoration of Olivença was stipulated and not disputed. It is discreditable to Spain that the restitution which Portugal was then contented to wait for has not yet been made.
♦The French retire from Extremadura.♦
Olivença having been taken, the allied army marched upon Zafra and Los Santos; this movement being designed to secure themselves from interruption in the intended siege, and to protect Ballasteros, who, after failing to effect a junction with Zayas, was pressed by a French division under General Maransin, and compelled to retire successively on the 13th and 14th from Fregenal and Xeres de los Cavalleros. The French, upon discovering Beresford’s advance, on the following day retired hastily toward Llerena, which Latour Maubourg, who had succeeded to Mortier in the command, occupied with about 6000 horse and foot: the division which now joined him consisted of 4000 infantry and 500 cavalry. At Los Santos the allied cavalry fell in with the 2nd and 10th of the enemy’s hussars, about 600 in number, who were apparently sent on reconnoissance: they charged our 13th dragoons weakly, and were repulsed; then retreated from the force which was moving against them; and presently quickening that retreat, fled to Villa Garcia, and were followed for nearly ten miles at a gallop. In this they lost a chef d’escadron, killed, and about 160 men and horses prisoners: the British eleven horses of the 4th dragoons, who died of fatigue after the chase. The enemy remained one day longer at Llerena, and on the following, when a movement against them had been ordered for the next morning, retired to Guadalcanal; thus for the time abandoning Extremadura. Beresford then cantoned his infantry at Valverde, Azenchal, Villa Alva, and Almendralejo, the cavalry remaining at Zafra, Los Santos, Usagre, and Bienvenida: here the resources of the country were sufficient for their plentiful supply. A Spanish corps of about 1500 men, under the Conde de Penne Villamur, belonging to Castaños’s army, occupied Llerena. Ballasteros, with about an equal force, was at Monasterio; and Blake, who had sailed from Cadiz for the Guadiana on the 15th, with 6000 foot and 400 horse, had reached Ayamonte, with 5000 of his men and 200 of his cavalry; the others had been compelled by weather to put back. Soult was at this time uniting his disposable force near Seville: nearly the whole corps from the Condado de Niebla had joined him there, and he had also drawn a detachment from Sebastiani’s corps, ♦April 20.♦ and some regiments from Puerto S. Maria. This was the situation of the respective armies when Lord Wellington arrived at Elvas, and was met there by Marshal Beresford.
♦Siege of Badajoz undertaken.♦
Thus far in this memorable campaign the war had been conducted by the British commander as a game of skill: it was now to become a game of hazard. The base surrender of Badajoz distracted his attention as much as it had disappointed his reasonable hopes: that the place should be recovered was of the greatest importance to his future operations: to the enemy, it was of equal importance to maintain it. Soult could bring into the field a force sufficient for its relief. It was well garrisoned: whatever injury had been done to the works was thoroughly repaired: it had sufficient artillery, and was well supplied. Lord Wellington and Beresford reconnoitred it: three battalions ♦March 22.♦ came out to skirmish with the reconnoitring party, and were driven back, but with the loss on our side of three officers and about forty men killed and wounded. The siege, to be successful, must be vigorously pursued, so that there might not be time enough allowed for relieving the place: no plan, therefore, could be adopted which would require more than sixteen days’ open trenches: but at least twenty-two, and this too, if the means were fully equal to the undertaking, would be required, if either of the south fronts were attacked, which yet it was plainly seen would have been the preferable points of attack, had time permitted; and means as well as time were wanting. The plan which was adopted therefore as the only one in these circumstances feasible, was to breach and assault Fort Christoval, and having reduced it, to attack the castle from thence: three or four days’ battering might, it was thought, form a practicable breach in the castle wall, which on that side was entirely exposed, as well as apparently weak; and if the castle were carried, Badajoz could make no farther resistance.
♦Bridge at Jurumenha swept away.♦
During the night of the 23rd the Guadiana rose nearly eight feet and a half in the course of twelve hours: the bridge which had been thrown across it at Jurumenha since the army passed was swept away, and the whole of its materials carried down the stream and lost. The communication was restored by another bridge of casks at the end of the month; but Lord Wellington, seeing the danger of such a river in the rear of the army, immediately changed the cantonment of the troops, and directed Beresford to occupy and rest his rear upon Merida, where the old Roman bridge rendered his passage at any ♦Lord Wellington recalled to Beira.♦ time sure. No sooner had these instructions been given than he was recalled to Beira by intelligence that Massena was approaching the Agueda in force, and seemed to threaten an attempt for the relief of Almeida.
♦Inactivity of the Spanish commander in Galicia.♦