History of the war in the Peninsula and in the south of France from the year 1807 to the year 1814, vol. 2

by William Francis Patrick Napier

BOOK IX.

CHAPTER I.

CAMPAIGN OF TALAVERA.

In the foregoing book the real state of affairs in the Peninsula has been described; but it appeared with a somewhat different aspect to the English general, because false informations, egregious boasts, and hollow promises, such as had been employed to mislead sir John Moore, were renewed at this period; and the allied nations were influenced by a riotous rather than a reasonable confidence of victory. The English newspapers teemed with letters, describing the enemy’s misery and fears: nor was the camp free from these inflated feelings. Marshal Beresford was so credulous of French weakness as publicly to announce to the junta of Badajos that Soult’s force, wandering and harassed by continual attacks, was reduced to eight or ten thousand distressed soldiers. Nay, sir Arthur Wellesley himself, swayed by the pertinacity of the tale-makers, the unhesitating assurances of the junta, perhaps, also, a little excited by a sense of his own great talents, was not free from the impression that the hour of complete triumph was come.

The Spanish government and the Spanish generals were importunate for offensive movements, and lavish in their promises of support; and the English general was as eager, for he was at the head of gallant troops, his foot was on the path of victory, and he felt that, if the duke of Belluno was not quickly disabled, the British army, threatened on both flanks, would, as in the case of sir John Cradock, be obliged to remain in some defensive position, near Lisbon, until it became the scorn of the French, and an object of suspicion and hatred to the Spanish and Portuguese people.

There were three lines of offensive operations open:—

1º. To cross the Tagus, join Cuesta’s army, and, making Elvas and Badajos the base of movements, attack Victor in front. This line was circuitous. It permitted the enemy to cover his front by the Tagus; the operations of the allies would have been cramped by the Sierra de Guadalupe on one side, and the mountains lying between Albuquerque and Alcantara on the other; and strong detachments must have been left to cover the roads to Lisbon, on the right bank of the Tagus. Finally, the communication between the duke of Belluno and Soult being free, Beresford’s corps would have been endangered.

2º. To adopt Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo as the base of movements, and to operate in conjunction with Beresford, the duke del Parque, and Romana, by the line of Salamanca, while Cuesta and Venegas occupied the attention of the first and fourth corps on the Tagus. The objections to this line were, that it separated the British troops from the most efficient and most numerous, and obliged them to act with the weakest and most irregular of the Spanish armies; that it abandoned Cuesta to the ruin which his headstrong humour would certainly provoke; and as the loss of Seville or of Lisbon would inevitably follow; the instructions of the English ministers, (which enjoined the defence of the latter city as paramount to every object, save the military possession of Cadiz,) would have been neglected.

3º. To march upon Plasencia and Almaraz, form a junction with Cuesta, and advance against Madrid, while Venegas operated in the same view, by the line of La Mancha. The obstacles in the way of this plan were—1º. That it exposed Cuesta to be defeated by Victor before the junction; and that, after the junction, the combinations would still be dependent upon the accuracy of Venegas’s movements. 2º. That sir Arthur Wellesley’s march, with reference to Soult’s corps, would be a flank march: an unsafe operation at all times, but, on this occasion, when the troops must move through the long and narrow valley of the Tagus, peculiarly dangerous. Nevertheless, this line was adopted, nor were the reasons in favour of it devoid of force.

The number of French immediately protecting Madrid was estimated at fifty thousand; but confidential officers, sent to the head-quarters of Cuesta and Venegas, had ascertained that their strength was not overstated at thirty-eight thousand, for the first, and twenty-five thousand for the second, all well armed and equipped, and the last certainly the best and most efficient army that the Spaniards had yet brought into the field. Now the English force in Portugal amounted to thirty thousand men, exclusive of the sick, twenty-two thousand being under arms on the frontier, and eight thousand at Lisbon: here, then, was a mass of ninety thousand regular troops that could be brought to bear on fifty thousand; besides which there were sir Robert Wilson’s legion, about a thousand strong, and the Spanish partidas of the Guadalupe and the Sierra de Bejar.