The 31st, Eguia reached La Serena; and Venegas having rallied his fugitives in the Morena, and being reinforced from the depôts in Andalusia, the two armies amounted to about fifty thousand men, of which eight or ten thousand were horse: for, as I have before observed, the Spanish cavalry seldom suffered much. But the tide of popular discontent was now setting full against the central government. The members of the ancient junta of Seville worked incessantly for their overthrow. Romana, Castaños, Cuesta, Albuquerque, all, and they were many, who had suffered dishonour at their hands, were against them; and the local junta of Estremadura insisted that Albuquerque should command in that province.
Thus pressed, the supreme junta, considering Venegas as a man devoted to their wishes, resolved to increase his forces. For this purpose they gave Albuquerque the command in Estremadura, but furnished him with only twelve thousand men, sending the remainder of Eguia’s army to Venegas; and, at the same time, making a last effort to engage the British general in their proceedings, they offered to place Albuquerque under his orders, provided he would undertake an offensive movement. [Appendix, No. 17]. By these means, they maintained their tottering power: but their plans, being founded upon vile political intrigues, could in no wise alter sir Arthur Wellesley’s determination, which was the result of enlarged military views. He refused their offers; and, the 4th of September, his head-quarters were established at Badajos. Meanwhile, Romana delivered over his army to the duke del Parque, and repaired to Seville. Venegas again advanced into La Mancha, but at the approach of a very inferior force of the enemy, retired, with all the haste and confusion of a rout, to the Morena. The English troops were then distributed in Badajos, Elvas, Campo Mayor, and other places, on both banks of the Guadiana. The brigades already in Portugal were brought up to the army, and the lost ammunition and equipments were replaced from the magazines at Lisbon, Abrantes, and Santarem. Beresford, leaving some light troops and militia on the frontier, retired to Thomar, and this eventful campaign, of two months, terminated.
The loss of the army was considerable; above three thousand five hundred men had been killed, or had died of sickness, or fallen into the enemy’s hands. Fifteen hundred horses had perished from want of food, exclusive of those lost in battle; the spirits of the soldiers were depressed; and a heart-burning hatred of the Spaniards was engendered by the treatment endured. To fill the cup, the pestilent fever of the Guadiana, assailing bodies which fatigue and bad nourishment had already predisposed to disease, made frightful ravages. Dysentry, that scourge of armies, raged; and, in a short time, above five thousand men died in the hospitals.
CHAPTER V.
OBSERVATIONS.
During this short, but important campaign, the armies on both sides acted in violation of that maxim which condemns “double external lines of operation,” but the results vindicated the soundness of the rule. Nothing permanent or great, nothing proportionate to the number of the troops, the vastness of the combinations, or the reputation of the commanders, was achieved; yet, neither sir Arthur Wellesley nor the duke of Dalmatia can be justly censured, seeing that the last was controlled by the king, and the first by circumstances of a peculiar nature. The French marshal was thwarted by superior authority; and the English general, commanding an auxiliary force, was obliged to regulate his movements, not by his own military views, but by the actual state of the Spaniards’ operations, and with reference to the politics and temper of that people.
La Mancha was the true line by which to act against Madrid, but the British army was on the frontier of Portugal. The junta refused Cadiz as a place of arms; and without Cadiz, or some other fortified sea-port, neither prudence, nor his instructions, would permit sir Arthur to hazard a great operation on that side. Hence he adopted, not what was most fitting, in a military sense, but what was least objectionable among the few plans that could be concerted at all with the Spanish generals and government. Now, the latter being resolved to act with strong armies, both in Estremadura and La Mancha, the English general had but to remain on a miserable defensive system in Portugal, or to unite with Cuesta in the valley of the Tagus. His territorial line of operations was therefore a matter of necessity, and any fair criticism must be founded on the management of his masses after it was chosen. That he did not greatly err in his conception of the campaign, is to be inferred from the fact, that Napoleon, Soult, Victor, and Jourdan, simultaneously expected him upon the very line he followed. He was thwarted by Cuesta at every step, Venegas failed to aid him, and the fatal error relative to Soult’s forces, under which he laboured throughout, vitiated all his operations; yet he shook the intrusive monarch roughly, in the midst of fifty thousand men.
Let the project be judged, not by what did happen, but by what would have happened, if Cuesta had been active, and if Venegas had performed his part loyally. The junction of the British and Spanish forces was made at Naval Moral, on the 22d of July. The duke of Belluno, with twenty-one thousand men, was then in position behind the Alberche, the fourth corps near Madrilejos in La Mancha, and Joseph at Madrid, where general Foy had just arrived, to concert Soult’s movement upon Plasencia.
It is evident that the king and Sebastiani could not reach the scene of action before the 25th or 26th of July, nor could Soult influence the operations before the 1st or 2d of August. If then, the allied army, being sixty thousand strong, with a hundred pieces of artillery, had attacked Victor on the morning of the 23d, it is to be presumed that the latter would have been beaten, and obliged to retreat, either upon Madrid or Toledo; but the country immediately in his rear was open, and ten thousand horsemen could have been launched in the pursuit. Sir Robert Wilson, also, would have been on Victor’s flank, if, neglecting a junction with the fourth corps, that marshal had taken the road to Madrid; and if that of Toledo, the first and fourth corps would have been separated from the king, who did not reach Vargas until the evening of the 25th, but who would not, in this case, have been able to advance at all beyond Naval Carneiro.