Here then was one direct cause of failure; but the error, although great, was not irreparable. If Soult was abandoned to his own resources, he had also obtained a firm and important position in the north, while Victor, reinforced by ten thousand men, was enabled to operate against Lisbon, by the Alemtejo, more efficaciously than before. But Victor seems to have been less disposed than Lapisse to execute his instructions.
VICTOR.
1º.—The inactivity of this marshal after the rout of Ucles has been already mentioned. It is certain that if the fourth and first corps had been well handled, neither Cuesta nor Cartoajal could have ventured beyond the defiles of the Sierra Morena, much less have bearded the French generals and established a line of defence along the Tagus. Fifty thousand French troops should, in two months, have done something more than maintain fifty miles of country on one side of Madrid.
2º.—The passage of the Tagus was successful, but can hardly be called a skilful operation, unless the duke of Belluno calculated upon the ignorance of his adversary. Before an able general and a moveable army, possessing a pontoon train, it would have scarcely answered to separate the troops in three divisions on an extent of fifty miles, leaving the artillery and parc of ammunition, protected only by some cavalry and one battalion of infantry, within two hours march of the enemy, for three days. If Cuesta had brought up all his detachments, the Meza d’Ibor might have been effectually manned, and yet ten thousand infantry, and all the Spanish cavalry, spared to cross the Tagus at Almaraz, on the 17th; in this case Victor’s artillery would probably have been captured, and his project certainly baffled.
3º.—The passage of the Tagus being, however, effected, Victor not only permitted Cuesta to escape, but actually lost all traces of his army, an evident fault not to be excused by pleading the impediments arising from the swelling of the river, the necessity of securing the communications, &c. If Cuesta’s power was despised before the passage of the river, when his army was whole and his position strong, there could be no reason for such great circumspection after his defeat, a circumspection, too, not supported by skill, as the dispersed state of the French army, the evening before the battle of Medellin, proves.
4º.—That Victor was enabled to fight Cuesta, on the morning of the 28th, with any prospect of success, must be attributed rather to fortune than to talent. It was a fault to permit the Spaniards to retake the offensive after the defeat on the Tagus; nor can the first movement of the duke of Belluno in the action be praised. He should have marched into the plain in a compact order of battle. The danger of sending Lassalle and Latour Maubourg to such a distance from the main body I shall have occasion to show in my observations on Cuesta’s operations; but, the after-movements of the French in this battle were well and rapidly combined and vigorously executed, and the success was proportionate to the ability displayed.
5º.—The battles of Medellin and Ciudad Real, which utterly destroyed the Spanish armies and laid Seville and Badajos open; those battles, in which blood was spilt like water, produced no result to the victors, for the French generals, as if they had struck a torpedo, never stretched forth their hands a second time. Sebastiani, indeed, wished to penetrate the Sierra Morena; but the king, fearful of the Valencians, restrained him. On the other hand, Joseph urged Victor to invade the Alemtejo, yet the latter would not obey, even when reinforced by Lapisse’s division. This was the great and fatal error of the whole campaign, for nearly all the disposable British and Portuguese troops were thus enabled to move against the duke of Dalmatia, while the duke of Belluno contrived neither to fulfil the instructions of Napoleon, nor the orders of the king, nor yet to perform any useful achievement himself.
He did not assist the invasion of Portugal, he did not maintain Estremadura, he did not take Seville, nor even prevent Cuesta from twice renewing the offensive; yet he remained in an unhealthy situation until he lost more men, by sickness, than would have furnished three such battles as Medellin. Two months so unprofitably wasted by a general, at the head of thirty thousand good troops, can scarcely be cited. The duke of Belluno’s reputation has been too hardly earned to attribute this inactivity to want of talent. That he was averse to aid the operations of marshal Soult is evident, and, most happily for Portugal, it was so; but, whether this aversion arose from personal jealousy, from indisposition to obey the king, or from a mistaken view of affairs, I have no means of judging.
CUESTA.
Cuesta’s peculiar unfitness for the lead of an army has been remarked more than once. It remains to show that his proceedings, on this occasion, continued to justify those remarks.