Two British generals, Mackenzie and Langworth, thirty-one officers of inferior rank, seven hundred and sixty-seven sergeants and soldiers were killed. Three generals, a hundred and ninety-two officers, three thousand seven hundred and eighteen sergeants and privates were wounded; nine officers, six hundred and forty-three sergeants and soldiers were missing: making a total loss of six thousand two hundred and sixty-eight in the two days’ fighting, of which five thousand four hundred and twenty-two fell on the 28th.
On the French side, nine hundred and forty-four, including two generals, were killed. Six thousand two hundred and ninety-four were wounded, one hundred and fifty-six made prisoners; giving a total of seven thousand three hundred and eighty-nine men and officers, of which four thousand were of Victor’s corps: ten guns were taken and seven left in the woods by the French. The Spaniards returned twelve hundred men killed and wounded, but the correctness of their report was very much doubted.
Early on the 29th the French quitted their position for the heights of Salinas behind the Alberche; and that day General Robert Craufurd reached the English camp with the 43rd, 52nd and 95th regiments, and immediately took charge of the outposts. These troops, after a march of twenty miles, were in bivouac near Malpartida de Placencia when the alarm caused by the Spanish fugitives spread to that part. Craufurd, fearing the army was pressed, allowed his men to rest for a few hours, and then withdrawing fifty of the weakest marched with a resolution not to halt until he reached the field of battle. As the brigade advanced it met crowds of the runaways, not all Spaniards, but all propagating the vilest falsehoods: the army was defeated—Sir Arthur Wellesley was killed—the French were only a few miles distant: some, blinded by their fears, pretended even to point out the enemy’s posts on the nearest hills! Indignant at this shameful scene the troops pressed on with impetuous speed, and leaving only seventeen stragglers behind, in twenty-six hours crossed the field of battle, a strong compact body, having during that time marched sixty-two English miles in the hottest season of the year, each man carrying from fifty to sixty pounds weight. Had the historian Gibbon known of such an effort, he would have spared his sneer about the delicacy of modern soldiers![9]
The desperate fighting of the English soldier, responding to his general’s genius, had now saved the army from the danger imposed by Cuesta’s perverseness and the infirmity of the Spanish troops; but Sir A. Wellesley had still to expiate his own errors as to Spanish character, Spanish warfare, and the French power and resources.
Soult, after his retreat, had so promptly reorganized his force as to be co-operating with Ney against the Gallician insurgents, when in the British camp he was supposed to be wandering, distressed, and shirking every foe. Meanwhile Napoleon, foreseeing with intuitive sagacity that the English general would operate by the valley of the Tagus, and Gallicia consequently be abandoned, gave Soult authority to unite in Leon the troops of Mortier, Ney and Kellermann to his own, above fifty thousand fighting men in all. With them he was to fall on the British communications, by crossing the Gredos mountains and entering the valley of the Tagus; but Ney, discontented at being under Soult’s command, was dilatory, and the latter only passed the Gredos the 31st instead of the 29th as he designed; the allies thus escaped being inclosed between two French armies, each an overmatch for them in numbers and power of movement.
Sir A. Wellesley had heard on the 30th that Soult was likely to cross the mountains, yet, thinking him weak, only desired Cuesta to reinforce some Spanish troops previously posted at the pass of Baños, which had however been already forced by the French; but on the 2nd of August it became known that Soult had descended upon Placencia and taken all the English stores there; news which aroused both generals; then they agreed that Sir Arthur should march against him, while Cuesta remained at Talavera to watch the king—promising to bring off the men in the British hospitals if forced to retreat. Sir Arthur, relying on this, marched the 3rd, still thinking Soult had only fifteen thousand men, the remnant of his former army; but he had fifty-three thousand, and on the morning of the 4th the English general found himself with seventeen thousand half-starved soldiers at Oropesa, Soult being in his front, Victor menacing his rear, and Cuesta, false to his word, close at hand, having left fifteen hundred British sick and wounded to the enemy. The fate of the Peninsula was then hanging by a thread which could not support the weight for twelve hours, and only one resource remained: the bridge of Arzobispo was near, and the army crossed the Tagus, leaving the French with all the credit of the campaign.
On the mountains beyond that river, the English general maintained a defensive position until the 20th against the enemy; but against the evil proceedings of the Spanish government and Spanish generals he could not hold his ground, and therefore retired into Portugal; having during his short campaign lost by sickness and in battle, or abandoned, three thousand five hundred gallant soldiers and nearly two thousand horses, fifteen hundred of which died of want.
BOOK III.
Combats on the Coa and Agueda—Barba de Puerco—Combat of Almeida—Anecdotes of British Soldiers—Battle of Busaco.