When his leading division had reached Talavera, don Thomas Morla, then secretary at war, anxious to Lord W. Bentinck’s Letters. have the troops more minutely divided, proposed that the regiments should march through Madrid in ten divisions on as many successive days, the first to reach the capital on the 22d of November, which would exactly have brought the convoy into the jaws of the French army. Hope immediately repaired in person to Madrid, held a conference with Morla, and quickly [Appendix, No. 13], section 6. satisfied himself that every thing was in confusion, and that the Spanish government had neither arranged a general plan, nor was capable of conducting one. Convinced of this unfortunate truth, he paid no attention to Morla’s proposition, but carried his troops at once to the Escurial by the road of Naval Carnero. At the Escurial he halted to close up the rear, and to obtain bullocks to assist in dragging the parc over the Guadarama. The 28th he crossed the mountain, and entered the open flat country. The 28th and 29th the infantry and guns were at Villa Castin and St. Antonia, the parc being at Espinar, and the cavalry advanced on the road to Arevalo. General Heredia was still at Segovia. The duke of Dantzic was at Valladolid and Placentia, and his patroles were heard of at Coca, only a few miles from Arevalo.
In the course of the day a despatch from Mr. Stuart announced the catastrophe at Tudela, and the flight from the camp of Sepulveda. At the same time the outposts of cavalry in the front reported that four hundred French horse were at Olmedo, only twelve miles from Arevalo, and that four thousand others were in the neighbourhood. The scouts General Hope’s Reports. MS. at St. Garcia, on the right, also tracked the French again at Añaya, near Segovia. The general’s situation was now truly embarrassing. If he fell back to the Guadarama, the army at Salamanca would be without ammunition or artillery. If he advanced, it must be by a flank march of three days, with a heavy convoy, over a flat country, and within a few hours march of a very superior cavalry. If he delayed where he was even for a few hours, the French on the side of Segovia might get between him and the pass of Guadarama, and then, attacked in front, flank, and rear, he would be reduced to the shameful necessity of abandoning his convoy and guns to save his men in the mountains of Avila. A man of less intrepidity and calmness would have been ruined; but Hope, as enterprising as he was prudent, without any hesitation ordered the cavalry to throw out parties cautiously towards the French, and to maintain a confident front if the latter approached; then moving the infantry and guns from Villacastin, and the convoy from Espinosa by cross roads to Avila, he continued his march day and night until they reached Peneranda: the cavalry covering this movement closed gradually to the left, and finally occupied Fontiveros on the 2d of December.
The infantry and the draft animals were greatly fatigued, but the danger was not over; the patroles reported, that the enemy, to the number of ten thousand infantry, two thousand cavalry, and forty guns, were still in Olmedo. This was the eternal fourth corps, which thus traversing the country, continually crossed the heads of the English columns, and seemed to multiply the forces of the French at all points. Hope now drew his infantry and cavalry up in position, but obliged the artillery and the convoy to proceed without rest to Alba de Tormes, where a detachment from Salamanca met them, and covered their march to that town. This vigorous and skilful operation concluded, the division remained at Peneranda, collected its stragglers, and pushed outposts to Medina del Campo, Madrigal, and Torecilla, while the fourth corps unwittingly pursued its march to the Guadarama.
Sir John Moore’s resolution to retreat upon Portugal created a great sensation at Madrid and at Aranjuez. The junta feared, and with reason, that Mr. Stuart’s Correspondence. such a palpable proof of the state to which their negligence and incapacity had reduced the country would endanger their authority, and perhaps their lives; and although they were on the point of flying to Badajos themselves, they were anxious that others should rush headlong into danger. Morla, and those who, like him, were prepared to abandon the cause of their country, felt mortified at losing an opportunity of commemorating their defection by a signal act of perfidy. The English plenipotentiary was surprised and indignant that a general of experience and reputation should think for himself, and decide upon a military operation without a reference to his opinion. Mr. Frere, although a person of some scholastic attainments, greatly overrated his own talent for public affairs. He was ill qualified for the duties of his situation, which at this moment required temper, sagacity, and judgment. He had come out to Spain impressed with false notions of what was passing in that country, and clinging tenaciously to the pictures of his imagination, he resented the intrusion of reason, and petulantly spurned at facts. The defeat of the conde de Belvedere at Gamonal, a defeat that broke the centre of the Spanish line, uncovered the flank and rear of Castaños’s army, opened a way to Madrid, and rendered the concentration of the British divisions unsafe, if not impossible; he curiously called the “unlucky affair of the 10th at Burgos.” After the battle of Tudela he estimated the whole Narrative of Moore’s Campaign. French army on the side of Burgos and Valladolid at eleven thousand men, when they were above one hundred thousand; and yet, with information so absurdly defective, he was prompt to interfere with, and eager to control, the military combinations of the general, although they were founded upon the true and acknowledged principles of the art of war.
While sir John Moore was anxiously watching the dangerous progress of sir John Hope, he was suddenly assailed by the representations and remonstrances of all these offended, mortified, and disappointed persons. The question of retiring was, by the defeat of Tudela, rendered so purely military, and the necessity of it was so palpable, that the general, although anticipating some expressions of discontent from the Spanish government, was totally unprepared for the torrent of puerile impertinencies with which he was overwhelmed. Morla, a subtle man, endeavoured first to deceive Mr. Moore’s Papers. Stuart; by treating the defeat of Castaños lightly, and stating officially that he had saved the greatest part of Mr. Stuart’s Correspondence. his army at Siguenza, and was on the march to join St. Juan at the Somosierra; to this he added, that there were only small bodies of French cavalry in the flat country of Castille and Leon, and no force on that side capable of preventing the junction of sir John Moore’s division. This was on the evening of the 30th. The emperor had forced the pass of the Somosierra on that morning, and the duke of Dantzic was at Valladolid. The same day Mr. Frere, writing from Aranjuez, (in answer to the general’s former communication, and before he was acquainted with his intention to fall back), deprecated a retreat Moore’s Papers. upon Portugal, and asserted, that the enthusiasm of the Spaniards was unbounded, except in Castille and Frere’s Correspondence. Leon, where he admitted they were more passive than they should be. He even stated, that twenty thousand men were actually assembled in the vicinity of the capital, and that Castaños was falling back upon them; that reinforcements were arriving daily from the southern provinces, and that the addition of the British army would form a force greatly superior to any the French could bring against that quarter, in sufficient time. It was certain, he said, that the latter were very weak, and would be afraid to advance, while the whole country, from the Pyrenees to the capital, was in arms upon their left flank. Rumours also were rife that the conscription had been resisted, and this was the more probable, because every great effort made by France was accompanied by weakness and internal disturbance; and a pastoral letter of the bishop of Carcassonne seemed to imply that it was so at that time. “Good policy, therefore, required, that the French should be attacked before their reinforcements joined them, as any success obtained at that moment would render a conscription for a third attempt infinitely difficult, if not impracticable; but if, on the other hand,” said this inconsiderate person, “the French are allowed, with their present forces, to retain their present advantages, and to wait the completion of their conscription, they would pour into Spain, with a number of troops which would give them immediate possession of the capital and the central provinces.” Two days after the date of this letter, the emperor was actually at the capital; and Mr. Frere, notwithstanding the superior Spanish force which his imagination had conjured up, was, with the junta, flying in all haste from those very central provinces: France remaining, meanwhile, strong, and free from internal dissension. This rambling letter was not despatched when the general’s intention to fall back upon Portugal was made known to Mr. Frere; but the latter thought it so admirably calculated to prevent a retreat, that he forwarded it, accompanied by a short explanatory note, which was offensive in style, and indicative of a petulant disposition.
At this time, don Augustin Bueno and don Ventura Escalente arrived at head-quarters. These two generals were deputed by the junta to remonstrate against sir John Moore’s intended retreat; and they justified the choice of their employers, being in folly and presumptuous ignorance the very types of the government they represented. They began by asserting, that St. Juan, with twenty thousand men under his command, had so fortified the pass of the Somosierra, that it could not be forced by any number of enemies, and then affirming that reinforcements were daily joining him, they were proceeding to create immense Spanish armies, when the general stopped Moore’s Papers. their garrulity by introducing colonel Graham, who had been a witness of the dispersion of Castaños’s army, and had just left the unfortunate St. Juan at Talavera, surrounded by the villanous runagates, who murdered him the next day. It may be easily supposed, that such representations and from such men could have no weight with the commander of an army; in fact, the necessity of retreating was rendered more imperious by these glaring proofs that the junta and the English plenipotentiary were totally ignorant of what was passing around them. But Napoleon was now in full career; he had raised a hurricane of war, and directing its fury as he pleased, his adversaries were obliged to conform their movements to his, and as the circumstances varied from hour to hour, the determination of one moment was rendered useless in the next.
The appearance of the French cavalry in the plains of Madrid sent the junta and Mr. Frere headlong to Badajos; but the people of Madrid, as we have seen, shut their gates, and displayed the outward signs of a resolution to imitate Zaragoza. The neighbouring peasants flocked in to aid the citizens, and a military junta (composed of the duke of Infantado, the prince of Castel Franco, the marquis of Castellar, and don Thomas Morla) was appointed to manage the defence. Morla now resolved to make a final effort to involve the British army in the destruction of his own country, and as the duke of Infantado was easily persuaded to quit Madrid on a mission to the army of the centre, the traitor was left sole master of the town, because the duke and himself only had any influence with that armed mob, which had murdered the marquis of Perales, and filled the city with tumult.
When the French emperor summoned the junta to surrender, Morla, in concert with the prince of Castel Franco, addressed a paper to sir John Moore, in which it was stated that twenty-five thousand men under Castaños, and ten thousand from the Somosierra, were marching in all haste to the capital, where forty thousand others were in arms; but that, apprehending an increase of force on the enemy’s side, the junta hoped that the English army would either march to the assistance of the capital, or take a direction to fall upon the rear of the French, and not doubting that the English general had already formed a junction with Blake’s army, they hoped he would be quick in his operations. This paper was sent by a government messenger to Salamanca; but ere he could reach that place, Morla, who had commenced negotiations, before the despatch was written, capitulated, and Napoleon was in Madrid. This communication alone would not have been sufficient to arrest sir John Moore’s retrograde movement. He was become too well acquainted with what facility Spanish armies were created on paper, to rely on any statement of their numbers; but Mr. Stuart also expressed a belief that Madrid would make a vigorous resistance, and the tide of false information having set in with a strong current, every moment brought fresh assurances that a great spirit had arisen.
On the day that Morla’s communication arrived, there also appeared at head-quarters one Charmilly, a French adventurer. This man, who has been since denounced in the British parliament as an organizer of assassination in St. Domingo, and a fraudulent bankrupt in London, came as the confidential agent of Mr. Frere. He had been in Madrid during the night of the 1st, and left it (immediately after having held a conference with Morla), on the morning of the 2d. Taking the road to Talavera, he met with the plenipotentiary, to whom he spoke with enthusiasm of the spirit and preparations of the inhabitants in the capital. Mr. Frere readily confided in him, and imparting his own views, not only intrusted this stranger with letters to the British general, but charged him with a mission to obstruct the retreat into Portugal. Thus instructed, Charmilly hastened to Salamanca, and presented Mr. Frere’s first missive, in which that gentleman, after alluding to former representations, and to the information of which colonel Charmilly was the bearer, viz. the enthusiasm in the capital, made a formal remonstrance, to the effect that propriety and policy demanded an immediate advance of the British to support this generous effort. Charmilly also demanded a personal interview, which was granted; but sir John Moore having some suspicion of the man, whom he had seen before, listened to his tale of the enthusiasm and vigorous character displayed at Madrid, with an appearance of coldness that baffled the penetration of the adventurer, who retired under the impression that a retreat was certain.
For many years so much ridicule had been attached to the name of an English expedition, that weak-headed men claimed a sort of prescriptive right to censure without regard to subordination, the conduct of their general. It had been so in Egypt, where a cabal was formed to deprive lord Hutchinson of the command; it had been so at Buenos Ayres, at Ferrol, and in Portugal. It was so at this time in sir John Moore’s army; and it will be found in the course of this work, that the superlative talents, vigour, and success of the duke of Wellington, could not even at a late period of the war secure him from such vexatious folly. The three generals who commanded the separate divisions of the army, and who were in consequence acquainted with all the circumstances of the moment, were perfectly agreed as to the propriety of a retreat; but in other quarters indecent murmurs were so prevalent among officers of rank as to call for rebuke. Charmilly, ignorant of the decided character of the general-in-chief, concluded that this temper was favourable to the object of his mission, and presented a second letter, which Mr. Frere had charged him to deliver, should the first fail of effect. The purport of it was to desire that if sir John Moore still persisted in his intention of retreating, “the bearer might be previously examined before a council of war,” in other words, that Mr. Frere, convinced of sir John Moore’s incapacity and want of zeal, was determined to control his proceedings even by force. And this to a British general of long experience and confirmed reputation, and by the hands of a foreign adventurer!! The indignation of a high spirit at such a foolish, wanton insult, may be easily imagined. He tore the letter in pieces, and ordered Charmilly to quit the cantonments of the British army without delay. His anger, however, soon subsided. Quarrels among the servants of the public could only prove detrimental to his country, and he put his personal feelings on one side. The information brought by Charmilly, separated from the indecorum of his mission, was in itself important. It confirmed the essential fact, that Madrid was actually resisting, and that the spirit and energy of the country was awaking. Hitherto his own observation had led sir John Moore to doubt, if the people took sufficient interest in the cause to make any effectual effort; all around himself was apathetic and incapable, and his correspondents, with the exception of Mr. [Appendix, No. 13], section 7. Frere, nay, even the intercepted letters of French officers, had agreed in describing the general feeling of the country as subsiding into indifference. To use his own words, “Spain was without armies, generals, or a government.” But now the fire essential to the salvation of the nation appeared to be kindling, and Moore feeling conscious of ability to lead a British army, hailed the appearance of an enthusiasm which promised success to a just cause, and a brilliant career of glory to himself.