Meanwhile Beresford, advanced by the Solano road to Almendralejos, where he found some more wounded men. His further progress was not opposed. The number of officers who had fallen in the French army, together with the privations endured, had produced despondence and discontent; the garrison at Villalba was not even disposed to maintain the castle, and under these circumstances, the duke of Dalmatia evacuated it, and continued his own retreat in the direction of Llerena, where he assumed a position on the 23d, his cavalry being near Usagre. This abandonment of the royal road to Seville was a well-considered movement. The country through which Soult passed being more fruitful and open, he could draw greater advantage from his superior cavalry; the mountains behind him were so strong he had nothing to fear from an attack; and by Belalcazar and Almaden, he could maintain a communication with La Mancha, from whence he expected Drouet’s division. The road of Guadalcanal was in his rear, by which he could draw reinforcements from Cordoba and from the fourth corps, and meanwhile the allies durst not venture to expose their left flank by marching on Monasterio.
From Llerena, a detachment was sent to drive away a Spanish Partizan corps which had cut his communications with Guadalcanal, and at the same time Latour Maubourg was directed to scour the country beyond Usagre; this led to an action; for that town, built upon a hill, and covered towards Los Santos by a river with steep and rugged banks, had only the one outlet by the bridge on that side, and when Latour Maubourg approached, Lumley retired across the river. The French light cavalry then marched along the right bank, with the intention of crossing lower down and thus covering the passage of the heavy horsemen; but before they could effect this object, general Bron rashly passed the river with two regiments of dragoons, and drew up in line just beyond the bridge. Lumley was lying close behind a rising ground, and when the French regiments had advanced a sufficient distance, Lefebre’s guns opened on them, and the third, and fourth dragoon guards, charged them in front while Madden’s Portuguese fell on their flank. They were overthrown at the first shock, and fled towards the bridge, but that being choked by the remainder of the cavalry advancing to their support, the fugitives, turned to the right and left, endeavouring to save themselves amongst some gardens situated on the banks of the river; there they were pursued and sabred until the French on the opposite side, seeing their distress, opened a fire of carbines and artillery that obliged the British to discontinue the attack. Forty killed, above a hundred wounded, and eighty prisoners were the fruits of this brilliant action of general Lumley’s, which terminated Beresford’s operations, for the miserable state to which the Regency had reduced the Portuguese army imperatively called for the marshal’s presence. General Hill, who had returned to Portugal, then re-assumed the command of the second division, amidst the eager rejoicings of the troops, and lord Wellington directed the renewed siege of Badajos in person.
OBSERVATIONS.
No general ever gained a great battle with so little increase of military reputation as marshal Beresford. His personal intrepidity and strength, qualities so attractive for the multitude, were conspicuously displayed, yet the breath of his own army withered his laurels, and his triumph was disputed by the very soldiers who followed his car. Their censures have been reiterated, without change and without abatement, even to this hour; and a close examination of his operations, while it detects many ill-founded objections, and others tainted with malice, leaves little doubt that the general feeling was right.
When he had passed the Guadiana and driven the fifth corps upon Guadalcanal, the delay that intervened, before he invested Badajos, was unjustly attributed to him: it was lord Wellington’s order, resulting from the tardiness of the Spanish generals, that paralyzed his operations. But when the time for action arrived, the want of concert in the investment, and the ill-matured attack on San Christoval belonged to Beresford’s arrangements; and he is especially responsible in reputation for the latter, because captain Squires personally represented the inevitable result, and his words were unheeded.
During the progress of the siege, either the want of correct intelligence, or a blunted judgement, misled the marshal. It was remarked that, at all times, he too readily believed the idle tales of distress and difficulties in the French armies, with which the spies generally, and the deserters always, interlarded their information. Thus he was incredulous of Soult’s enterprise, and that marshal was actually over the Morena before the orders were given for the commencing of the main attack of the castle of Badajos. However, the firmness with which Beresford resisted the importunities of the engineers to continue the siege, and the quick and orderly removal of the stores and battering-train, were alike remarkable and praiseworthy. It would have been happy if he had shewn as much magnanimity in what followed.
When he met Blake and Castaños at Valverde, the alternative of fighting or retiring behind the Guadiana was the subject of consideration. The Spanish generals were both in favour of giving battle. Blake, who could not retire the way he had arrived, without danger of having his march intercepted, was particularly earnest to fight; affirming that his troops, who were already in a miserable state, would disperse entirely if they were obliged to enter Portugal. Castaños was of the same opinion. Beresford also argued that it was unwise to relinquish the hope of taking Badajos, and ungenerous to desert the people of Estremadura; that a retreat would endanger Elvas, lay open the Alemtejo, and encourage the enemy to push his incursions further, which he could safely do, having such a fortress as Badajos with its bridge over the Guadiana, in his rear; a battle must then be fought in the Alemtejo with fewer troops and after a dispiriting retreat; there was also a greater scarcity of food in the Portuguese than in the Spanish province, and, finally, as the weather was menacing, the Guadiana might again rise before the stores were carried over, when the latter must be abandoned, or the army endangered to protect their passage.
But these plausible reasons were but a mask; the true cause why the English general adopted Blake’s proposals was the impatient temper of the British troops. None of them had been engaged in the battles under lord Wellington. At Busaco the regiments of the fourth division were idle spectators on the left, as those of the second division were on the right, while the action was in the centre. During Massena’s retreat they had not been employed under fire, and the combats of Sabugal and Fuentes Onoro had been fought without them. Thus a burning thirst for battle was general, and Beresford had not the art either of conciliating or of exacting the confidence of his troops. It is certain that if he had retreated, a very violent and unjust clamour would have been raised against him, and this was so strongly and unceremoniously represented to him, by an officer on his own staff, that he gave way. These are what may be termed the moral obstacles of war. Such men as lord Wellington or sir John Moore can stride over them, but to second-rate minds they are insuperable. Practice and study may make a good general as far as the handling of troops and the designing of a campaign, but that ascendancy of spirit which leads the wise, and controls the insolence of folly, is a rare gift of nature.
Beresford yielded with an unhappy flexibility to the clamour of the army and the representations of Blake, for it is unquestionable that the resolution to fight was unwarrantable on any sound military principle. We may pass over the argument founded upon the taking of Badajos, because neither the measures nor the means of the English general promised the slightest chance of success; the siege would have died away of itself in default of resources to carry it on. The true question to consider was, not whether Estremadura should be deserted or Badajos abandoned, but whether lord Wellington’s combinations and his great and well considered design for the deliverance of the Peninsula, should be ruined and defaced at a blow. To say that the Alemtejo could not have been defended until the commander-in-chief arrived from the north with reinforcements was mere trifling. Soult, with twenty or even thirty thousand men, durst not have attempted the siege of Elvas in the face of twenty-four thousand men such as Beresford commanded. The result of the battle of Fuentes Onoro was known in the English and in the French camps, before Beresford broke up from Badajos, hence he was certain that additional troops would soon be brought down to the Guadiana; indeed, the third and seventh divisions were actually at Campo Mayor the 23d of May. The danger to the Alemtejo was, therefore, slight, and the necessity of a battle being by no means apparent, it remains to analyze the chances of success.
Soult’s numbers were not accurately known, but it was ascertained that he had not less than twenty thousand veteran troops. He had also a great superiority of cavalry and artillery, and the country was peculiarly suitable for these arms; the martial character of the man was also understood. Now the allies could bring into the field more of infantry by ten thousand than the French, but they were of various tongues, and the Spanish part ill armed, starving, and worn out with fatigue, had been repeatedly and recently defeated by the very troops they were going to engage. The French were compact, swift of movement, inured to war, used to act together, and under the command of one able and experienced general. The allied army was unwieldy, each nation mistrusting the other, and the whole without unity of spirit, or of discipline, or of command. On what, then, could marshal Beresford found his hopes of success? The British troops. The latter were therefore to be freely used. But was it a time to risk the total destruction of two superb divisions and to encounter a certain and heavy loss of men, whose value he knew so well when he calculated upon them alone for victory in such circumstances?