Victor Alten’s cavalry was left on the Yeltes in advance of the Agueda to mask the movements, but Marmont was unable to measure his adversary’s talent or fathom his designs. He had again spread his army far and wide, appeared to expect no further winter operations, and having lost all his secret friends and emissaries at Ciudad Rodrigo, where they had been discovered and put to death by Carlos España, with an overstrained severity that gave general disgust, knew nothing of the allies’ march to the Tagus. On the other hand the projected siege was, by the incredibly vexatious conduct of the Portuguese Regency, delayed ten days, and thrown into the violent equinoctial rains, which greatly augmented the difficulties. It was in vain Wellington threatened, remonstrated and wasted his mental powers to devise remedies for those evils, and to impart energy and good faith to that extraordinary government. Insolent anger, falsehood or stolid indifference in all functionaries, from the highest to the lowest, met him at every turn, and the responsibility even in small matters became too onerous for subordinate officers; he was compelled to arrange every detail of service himself with the native authorities. His iron strength of body and mind were thus strained until all men wondered how they resisted, and indeed he did fall sick, but recovered after a few days.
On the 15th of March pontoons were laid over the Guadiana four miles from Elvas, where the current was dull, and two large Spanish boats being arranged as flying-bridges, Beresford crossed that river on the 16th to invest Badajos with fifteen thousand men.
Soult was then before Cadiz, but Drouet and Daricau were with ten thousand men in Estremadura; wherefore General Graham marched with three divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry upon Llerena, while Hill moved by Merida upon Almendralejos. These covering corps were together thirty thousand strong, five thousand being cavalry, and the whole army presented fifty-one thousand sabres and bayonets, of which twenty thousand were Portuguese. Castaños had gone to Gallicia, and the fifth Spanish army, under Morillo and Penne Villemur, four thousand strong, passed down the Portuguese frontier to the Lower Guadiana, intending to fall on Seville when Soult should march to succour Badajos.
As the allies advanced, Drouet moved by his right towards Medellin, to maintain the communication with Marmont by Truxillo. Hill and Graham then halted, the latter at Zafra, having Slade’s cavalry in front. Marmont meanwhile recalled his sixth division from Talavera to Castile, and four other divisions and his cavalry, quartered at Toledo, marched over the Guadarama towards Valladolid.
It was therefore manifest that he would not act this time in conjunction with Soult.
Third English Siege of Badajos. (March, 1812.)
Badajos stands between the Rivillas, a small stream, and the Guadiana, a noble river five hundred yards broad. From the angle formed by their confluence the town spread out like a fan, having eight regular bastions and curtains, with good counterscarps, covered way, and glacis.
At the meeting of the rivers, the Rivillas being there for a short distance deep and wide, was a rock one hundred feet high, crowned with an old castle, the ascent to which was not steep. This was the extreme point of defence on the enemy’s left, and from thence to the Trinidad bastion, terminating this the eastern front of resistance, an inundation protected the ramparts, one short interval excepted, which was defended by an outwork, beyond the stream, called the cunette of San Roque.
On the enemy’s right of San Roque, also beyond the Rivillas and four hundred yards from the walls, another outwork called the Picurina was constructed on an isolated hill, about the same distance from San Roque as the latter was from the castle. These two outworks had a covered communication with each other, and the San Roque had one with the town, but the inundation cut the Picurina off from the latter, and it was an inclosed and palisadoed work.
The southern front, the longest, was protected in the centre by a crown-work, constructed on the lofty Sierra de Viento, the end of which, at only two hundred yards, overlooked the walls. The remainder of that front and the western front had no outworks.