History of the Peninsular War, Volume 6 (of 6)

by Robert Southey

Sir Rowland Hill, to whom this important service had been intrusted, broke up from Almandralejo on the 12th of May, with part of the 2nd division of infantry, and six of the 24-pounder iron howitzers which had been used against Badajoz. The Marquis de Almeida, who was a member of the Junta of Extremadura, accompanied them, and from him and from the people, Sir Rowland received the most ready and effectual assistance which it was in their power to bestow. On the morning of the 16th they reached Jaraicejo, an old and decayed town, about eight miles from the summit of the pass; and on the same evening they advanced in three columns ... the left, under Lieutenant-General Chowne, toward the castle of Miravete; Sir Rowland himself, with the right under Major-General Howard, toward a pass through which a most difficult and circuitous footpath leads by the village of Romangordo to the bridge; and the centre, under Major-General Long, along the high road, to the Puerto. The artillery was with the centre: both the flank columns were provided with ladders, and it was intended that both should escalade the forts against which they were directed; but the difficulties of the way were such, that it was found impossible for them to reach their respective points before daybreak: as the enemy, therefore, could not be taken by surprise, Sir Rowland judged it best to defer the attack till they should be better acquainted with the position and nature of the works; and the troops bivouacked on the sierra. It was found that the castle, because of its peculiar situation, could not be carried without a long operation: a false attack therefore was directed to be made upon it by Lieutenant-General Chowne, and Sir Rowland, with the right, and the 6th Portugueze caçadores (about 2,000 men in all), on the evening of the 18th began to descend by the mountain path which he had originally proposed to take. They were provided with twelve scaling-ladders of sixteen feet in length; and he relied, as in this case he well might do, upon the valour of the troops, to supply the want of artillery. Although the distance was little more than six miles, the way was so difficult, that notwithstanding all the exertions of officers and men the head of the column did not arrive near the fort till it was break of day, and it was two or three hours later before the rear came up; but during this time the troops were completely concealed by the hill, and the feint against the castle had induced the enemy to believe that the bridge forts would not be attacked till the pass should have been forced, and a way made for the guns.

♦May 19.♦

Could the attack have been made before day, it was intended that the tête-du-pont should have been escaladed, and the bridge destroyed at the same time that Fort Napoleon was assaulted; but well knowing how much depended upon celerity, Sir Rowland did not wait till the troops who were appointed to this part of the operations could come up; with the first battalion of the 50th and one wing of the 71st, he escaladed the fort in three places nearly at the same time. At first a determined resistance was made, but the enemy soon slackened their destructive fire: they took to flight as soon as the assailants were on the top of the parapet; they abandoned the tower, and were driven at the point of the bayonet through their entrenchment, and through the tête-du-pont, and across the bridge. The commander of Fort Ragusa on the opposite bank, with a cowardice rarely shown among French officers, but with a selfish disregard for the soldiers which was too common among them, cut the bridge, in consequence of which many leaped into the river and perished, and 259 were made prisoners, including the governor and sixteen officers; and acting with further folly in his fear, he evacuated his own fort, which was perfectly safe from any attack, and retired with his garrison to Naval Moral, three leagues off, for which he was brought to summary trial at Talavera and shot.... Both forts were entirely destroyed by the conquerors, and the whole apparatus of the bridge, and the stores, which were in such abundance as to prove that this point had justly been considered a most important station by the enemy. The loss in this signal enterprise was, two officers and 31 men killed, 13 and 131 wounded.

The garrison ought to have been prepared for such an attack; for Marmont had apprehended it, and in that apprehension had marched a detachment to the Puerto del Pico, with the view of reinforcing Talavera in case the bridge should be lost. Sir Rowland retired by Truxillo to his former position in front of Badajos; and on the second day after his success, a division of the central army, under General d’Armagnac, crossed the Tagus by the Puente del Arzobispo, to relieve the isolated garrison at Miravete. Both Soult and Marmont had put their forces in motion as soon as they were informed of Sir Rowland’s march: the latter arrived upon the Tagus too late to prevent the evil, and without the means of repairing it; the former, when he found that the allies had passed Truxillo on their return, gave up the hope of intercepting them. He returned to Seville, and, regarding with uneasy apprehension the enterprising spirit of an enemy whom he had once affected to despise, gave directions for strengthening the line of the Guadalete, lest a force should be landed at St. Roque’s or at Algeziras, and endanger his communication with the besieging army before Cadiz. Bornos, as the most important point upon the line, was fortified with great care. Ballasteros ♦Ballasteros defeated at Bornos.♦ thought to interrupt the progress of the works, and accordingly brought all the force he could muster, consisting of about 6,000, to attack the French division there of 4,500 under General Corroux. Collecting his troops at La Majada de Ruiz, and marching from thence early in the afternoon of one day, he succeeded in fording the Guadalete unperceived ♦June 1.♦ at dawn on the next. The attack was made bravely, but, with the usual ill fortune and ill discipline of a Spanish army, some mistake led to confusion, and confusion was followed by panic: the French were not strong enough to pursue them beyond the river, and Ballasteros retired with the loss of about 1,000 killed and wounded, and half as many prisoners, ... a fourth of his whole force.

♦Lord Wellington advances into Spain.♦

Meantime Badajoz had been fully supplied; the means of transport which had been used for that service were then employed in storing Ciudad Rodrigo; a month’s consumption for the whole army was deposited there; the bridge at Alcantara was repaired for a readier communication with Sir Rowland’s corps; and on the 13th of June the army broke up from its cantonments on the Agueda. On the 16th they came up with the enemy, about six miles from Salamanca, on the Valmusa, and there was a skirmish with their cavalry; in the evening the French withdrew across the Tormes, and the army bivouacked within a league of Salamanca.

♦Salamanca♦

When the earliest accounts of Spain begin, Salamanca was already a considerable place, and known by a name little different from what it bears at present. It fell to decay after the Moorish conquest, but was re-peopled at the same time with certain other towns upon the Tormes, by the Leonese in the 10th century, after the great battle of Simancas: in the 13th King St. Ferdinand removed thither the university from Palencia. It soon became one of the most flourishing seats of learning in Christendom, and continued to be so till Spain rejected the light of the reformation. In its best days it is said to have contained no fewer than 8,000 native students, and 7,000 from foreign countries: when the present war began, the number little exceeded 3,000, among whom a few Irish were the only foreigners. The population consisted of some 3,400 families: it had once been much greater. But Salamanca was still an important and a famous place: popular fiction had made its name familiar to those who are unacquainted with its history; while to the antiquary, the historian, and the philosopher, it is a city of no ordinary interest. The Roman road, which extended from thence to Merida, and so to Seville, may still be traced in its vicinity: its bridge of twenty-seven arches, over the Tormes, is said to be in part a Roman work. The Mozarabic liturgy is retained in one of its churches. Its cathedral, though far inferior to some of the older edifices, whether of Moorish or Gothic architecture, in Spain, is a large and imposing structure. Twenty-five parish churches are enclosed within its walls, twenty convents of monks or friars, eleven of nuns: these, with its numerous colleges, give it an imposing appearance from without, and a melancholy solemnity within. Nowhere, indeed, were there more munificent endowments for education, and for literature, and for religion; and nowhere could be less of that happy effect which the benefactors in their piety had contemplated: the philosophy which was taught there was that of the schoolmen, the morality that of the casuists, the religion that of the Inquisition. It is a popular belief in Spain, that the Devil also has his college at Salamanca, where students of the black art take their degrees in certain caverns, every seventh being left with him, in earnest of the after-payment to which they all are bound.

♦The Tormes.♦

The city stands in a commanding situation on the right bank of the Tormes, a river of considerable magnitude there, which rises near the Sierra de Tablada in Old Castille, and falls into the Douro on the Portuguese frontier, opposite Bemposta. The country round is open, without trees, and with a few villages interspersed, in which the houses are constructed of clay. On the left of the river there are extensive pastures, on the right a wide and unenclosed corn country. The pastures are common, and the arable land occupied after a manner not usual in other parts of Spain: it is cultivated in annual allotments, and reverts to the commonalty after the harvest.