The line of resistance may, therefore, be said to have extended from the Sierra Morena to Coruña—weak from its length; weaker, that the allied corps, being separated by mountains, by rivers, and by vast tracts of country, and having different bases of operation, such as Lisbon, Seville, and Ciudad Rodrigo, could not act in concert, except offensively; and with how little effect in that way the campaign of Talavera had proved. But the French were concentrated in a narrow space, and, having only Madrid to cover, were advantageously situated for offensive or defensive movements.
The allied forces were, for the most part, imperfectly organized, and would not, altogether, have amounted to ninety thousand fighting men. The French were above one hundred thousand, dangerous from their discipline and experience, more dangerous that they held a central position, and that their numbers were unknown to their opponents; and, moreover, having, in four days, gained one general and two minor battles, their courage was high and eager.
See Calvo Garray and Lord Wellesley’s Correspondence, Parl. Papers, 1810.
At this period, by the acknowledgement of the Spaniards themselves, the fate of the country depended entirely upon the British troops, and, doubtless, the latter were soldiers of no ordinary stamp; but there is a limit to human power, in war as well as in other matters. Sir Arthur Wellesley was at the head of some seventeen thousand men, of all arms, and about five thousand were somewhere between Lisbon and Alcantara: but the whole French army could, in two days, have been concentrated in the valley of the Tagus. Soult, alone, of all the associated generals, appears to have viewed this crisis with the eye of a great commander. Had he been permitted to follow up the attack at Arzobispo, on the 8th of August, what could the seventeen thousand starving British troops, encumbered with the terror-stricken Spaniards, have effected against the seventy thousand French that would have stormed their positions on three sides at once? The hardy, enduring English infantry might, indeed, have held their ground in one battle, but could they have fought a second? Would not a movement of the first corps by Guadalupe, would not famine alone, have forced the ten or twelve thousand men remaining (if, indeed, so many were left) to abandon the banks of the Tagus, to abandon, also, their parcs of ammunition and their wounded men, and to retreat towards Portugal; and to retreat, also, with little hope, harassed, as they would have been, by six thousand horsemen, for Soult had eighteen regiments of cavalry?
Let it be supposed, however, that the strength of the Meza d’Ibor and the Mirabete had baffled all the enemy’s efforts, and that, seeing the allies fixed in those positions, the sixth corps, in pursuance of Soult’s second proposal, had crossed the frontier of Parl. Pap. 1810. Portugal. Sir Arthur Wellesley, contemplating such an event, affirmed that he meant to follow them in any movement they might make against Lisbon; but there were two ways of following, the one by the south and the other by the north bank of the Tagus. Now, if he designed to cross the Tagus at the Cardinal’s bridge, and so, connecting his right with Beresford, to hang on the enemy’s rear, it could only have been while he was ignorant of Venegas’ defeat, and when he imagined the French to have but thirty thousand men in the valley of the Tagus; but they had above seventy thousand; and, without endangering Madrid, they could have invaded Portugal with, at least, fifty thousand men under arms.
If, on the other hand, he designed to move by the south side of the Tagus, the French line of march upon Abrantes and Lisbon was shorter than his; and Beresford, who only reached Moraleja on the 12th, would have been cut off, and thrown back upon Almeida. It is true that marshal Ney alleged the difficulty of feeding the troops in the country about Plasencia and Coria, and the prudence of Soult’s project might, in that respect, have been somewhat questionable. But the duke of Elchingen was averse to any invasion of Portugal; and, to an unwilling mind, difficulties are enlarged beyond their due proportion. Moreover, his talents were more remarkable in a battle than in the dispositions for a campaign; and Soult’s opinion must, on this occasion, be allowed greater weight, because the Vera de Plasencia and the valleys of the Bejar and the Gata mountains were certainly exceedingly fertile, they had been little injured, and the object was, not to fix a base of operations, but to obtain a momentary subsistence until a richer country could be opened.
Admitting, however, that a march on Lisbon was not feasible at that moment, there could have been no well-founded objection to the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, which Soult again proposed. The emperor’s instructions were indeed pleaded; but those were general, founded upon the past errors of the campaign, which made him doubtful of the future; they were not applicable to the peculiar circumstances of the moment, and would have been disregarded by a general with a tithe of his own genius. Fortunately for Spain, the intrusive king was not a great commander. When he might have entered the temple of victory with banners flying, he stretched himself at the threshold and slept.
The departure of the English army was a remarkable epoch in the Peninsular war. The policy of combining operations with the Spanish armies, and of striking directly at the great masses of the French, had been fairly acted upon, and had failed; and the long-cherished delusion, relative to Spanish enthusiasm and Spanish efficiency, was at last dissipated. The transactions of the campaign of 1809 form a series of practical comments upon the campaign of 1808. All the objections which had been made to sir John Moore’s conduct, being put to the test of experience, proved illusory, while the soundness of that general’s views were confirmed in every particular. The leading events of the two campaigns bear a striking resemblance to each other.
Both sir Arthur Wellesley and sir John Moore advanced from Portugal to aid the Spanish armies. The first general commanded twenty-five thousand, the last twenty thousand men; but there was this difference: that, in 1808, Portugal was so disorganised as to require a British force to keep down anarchy; whereas, in 1809, Portugal formed a good base of operations, and a Portuguese army was acting in conjunction with the British.
Sir John Moore was joined by six thousand men, under Romana, and there was no other Spanish army in existence to aid him.