The French suffered more severely. Two generals and nine hundred and forty-four killed; Marshal Jourdan, MSS. six thousand two hundred and ninety-four wounded, and a hundred and fifty-six prisoners; furnishing a Semelé’s Journal of Operations of the First Corps, MSS. total of seven thousand three hundred and eighty-nine men and officers, of which four thousand were of the first corps. Of seventeen guns captured, ten were taken by general Campbell’s division, and seven were left in the woods by the French.
The Spaniards returned above twelve hundred men, killed and wounded, but the correctness of the report was very much doubted at the time.
The 29th, at day-break, the French army quitted its position, and, before six o’clock, was in order of battle on the heights of Salinas, behind the Alberche. That day, also, general Robert Craufurd reached the English camp, with the forty-third, fifty-second, and ninety-fifth or rifle regiment, and immediately took charge of the outposts. These troops, after a march of twenty miles, were in bivouac near Malpartida de Plasencia, when the alarm, caused by the fugitive Spanish, spread to that part. Craufurd allowed the men to rest for a few hours, and then, withdrawing about fifty of the weakest from the ranks, commenced his march with the resolution not to halt until he reached the field of battle. As the brigade advanced, crowds of the runaways were met with; and those not all Spaniards, propagating the vilest falsehoods: “the army was defeated,”—“Sir Arthur Wellesley was killed,”—“the French were only a few miles distant;” and some, blinded by their fears, affected even to point out the enemy’s advanced posts on the nearest hills. Indignant at this shameful scene, the troops hastened, rather than slackened, the impetuosity of their pace; and, leaving only seventeen stragglers behind, in twenty-six hours they had crossed the field of battle in a close and compact body, having, in that time, passed over sixty-two English miles, and in the hottest season of the year, each man carrying from fifty to sixty pounds weight upon his shoulders. Had the historian Gibbon known of such a march, he would have spared his sneer about the “delicacy of modern soldiers!”
OBSERVATIONS.
1º. The moral courage evinced by sir Arthur Wellesley, when, with such a coadjutor as Cuesta, he accepted battle, was not less remarkable than the judicious disposition which, finally, rendered him master of the field. Yet it is doubtful if he could have maintained his position had the French been well managed, and their strength reserved for the proper moment, instead of being wasted on isolated attacks during the night of the 27th, and the morning of the 28th. A pitched battle is a great affair. A good general will endeavour to bring all the moral, as well as the physical, force of his army into play at the same time, if he means to win, and all may be too little.
Marshal Jourdan’s project was conceived in this spirit, and worthy of his reputation; and it is possible, that he might have placed his army, unperceived, on the flank of the English, and by a sudden and general attack have carried the key of the position, and so commenced his battle well: but sir Arthur Wellesley’s resources would not then have been exhausted. He had foreseen such a movement, and was prepared, by a change of front, to keep the enemy in check with his left wing and cavalry; while the right, marching upon the position abandoned by the French, should cut the latter off from the Alberche. In this movement the allies would have been reinforced by Wilson’s corps, which was near Cazalegas, and the contending armies would then have exchanged lines of operation. The French could, however, have gained nothing, unless they won a complete victory; but the allies would, even though defeated, have ensured their junction with Venegas. Madrid and Toledo would have fallen; and before Soult could unite with Joseph, a new line of operations, through the fertile country of La Mancha, would have been obtained. But these matters are only speculative.
2º. The distribution of the French troops for the great attack cannot be praised. The attempt to turn the English left with a single division was puerile. The allied cavalry was plainly to be seen in the valley; how, then, could a single division hope to develop its attack upon the hill, when five thousand horsemen were hanging upon its flank? and, in fact, the whole of Ruffin’s, and the half of Villatte’s division, were paralyzed by the charge of a single regiment. To have rendered this movement formidable, the principal part of the French cavalry should have preceded the march of the infantry; but the great error was fighting at all, before Soult reached Plasencia.
3º. It has been said, that to complete the victory sir Arthur Wellesley should have caused the Spaniards to advance; but this would, more probably, have led to a defeat. Neither Cuesta, nor his troops, were capable of an orderly movement. The infantry of the first and the fourth corps were still above twenty thousand strong; and, although a repulsed, by no means a discomfited force. The cavalry, the king’s guards, and Dessolle’s division, had not been engaged at all, and were alone sufficient to beat the Spaniards. A second panic, such as that of the 27th, would have led to the most deplorable consequences, as those, who know with what facility French soldiers recover from a repulse, will readily acknowledge. This battle was one of hard honest fighting, and the exceeding gallantry of the troops honoured the nations to which they belonged. The English owed much to the general’s dispositions and something to fortune. The French owed nothing to their commander; but when it is considered that only the reserve of their infantry were withheld from the great attack on the 28th, and that, consequently, above thirty thousand men were closely and unsuccessfully engaged for three hours with sixteen thousand British, it must be confessed that the latter proved themselves to be truly formidable soldiers; yet the greatest part were raw men, so lately drafted from the militia regiments that many of them still bore the number of their former regiments on their accoutrements.
Plate 7. to face Pa. 409
