All the officers behaved firmly, and the Mondego was finally passed, yet in confusion and with the loss of two hundred prisoners; and Marmont might now have crossed the river, on the flank of the militia, and galloped into Celerico where there was nothing to defend the magazines; instead of which he halted and permitted the disorderly rabble to gain that place. Such however was his compassion, that when he found they were really nothing but poor undisciplined peasants he would not suffer his cavalry to cut them down and no man was killed during the whole action, although the French horsemen were actually in the midst of the fugitives. Bacellar having destroyed a quantity of powder at Celerico retreated with Trant’s people the next day towards Lamego; Wilson remained at Celerico, and when the enemy had driven in his outposts, he ordered the magazines to be destroyed, but the order was only partly executed when the French retired, and on the 17th the militia reoccupied Guarda.
This short campaign of the militia I have treated at length, because it produced an undue effect at the time, and because it shews how trifling accidents will mar the greatest combinations; for here the English general’s extensive arrangements for the protection of Beira were utterly disconcerted by the slow advance of Silveira on the one side, and the rapid retreat of general Alten on the other. Again, the French deceived by some red uniforms and by some bivouac fires, on the Cabeça Negro, had relinquished the attack of Almeida to run after a few thousand undisciplined militia men, who were yet saved by the accidental beating of a drum; and it is curious to find a marshal of France personally acting as a partizan, and yet effecting nothing against these miserable troops.
The disaster on the Mondego spread consternation as far as Coimbra, and the most alarming reports reached lord Wellington, whose operations it is now time to notice. When Soult’s retreat from Llerena was ascertained, the allied army had marched towards the Tagus, and on the 11th lord Wellington, hearing of Alten’s retreat, sent him orders to recross that river without delay and return to Castello Branco. The 16th the advanced guard of the army also reached that town, and the same day a militia officer flying from Coimbra in the general panic, came to head-quarters and reported that the enemy was master of that town; but the next hour, brought general Wilson’s report from Guarda, and the unfortunate wretch whose fears had led him to give the false information, was tried and shot by order of Beresford.
At this time the French army, in number about twenty-eight thousand, was concentrated, with the exception of Brennier’s division which remained near Ciudad Rodrigo, between Sabugal and the ridge of hills overlooking Penamacor. Marmont was inclined to fight, for he had heard of a convoy of provisions which lord Wellington had some days before sent by the way of Almeida to Ciudad, and intended to cut it off; but the convoy having reached Almeida was safe, and the French general’s own position was very critical. Almeida and the militia at Guarda were on his right flank, Ciudad Rodrigo was on his rear, and immediately behind him the Coa and the Agueda rivers were both swelled by heavy rains which fell from the 13th to the 19th, and the flood had broken the bridge near Caridad. There remained only the Puente de Villar on the Upper Agueda for retreat, and the roads leading to it were bad and narrow; the march from thence to Tamames was also circuitous and exposed to the attack of the allies, who could move on the chord through Ciudad Rodrigo. Marmont’s retreat must therefore have been effected through the pass of Perales upon Coria, and the English general conceiving good hopes of falling on him before he could cross the Coa, moved forward to Pedrogoa; but the rear of the army was not yet across the Tagus, and a sufficient body of troops for the attack could not be collected before the 21st. On that day, however, the Agueda having subsided, the French restored their bridge, the last of their divisions crossed it on the 24th, and Marmont thus terminated his operations without loss. After this he again spread his troops over the plains of Leon, where some of his smaller posts had indeed been harassed by Julian Sanchez, but where the Gallician army had done nothing.
The Portuguese militia were immediately disbanded, and the English general made the greatest exertions to revictual Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, intending when that was effected to leave Picton with a corps upon the Agueda, and march himself against Andalusia, following his original design. The first division, which had only reached Castello Branco, returned to Castello de Vide, and as Foy’s division had meanwhile reoccupied Truxillo, Hill advanced to observe him, and the fifth Spanish army returned to Estremadura. But the difficulty of supplying the fortresses was very great. The incursion of Marmont had destroyed all the intermediate magazines, and dispersed the means of transport on the lines of communication; the Portuguese government would not remedy the inconvenience either there, or on the other frontier, and Elvas and Badajos were suffering from the same cause as Ciudad and Almeida.
In this dilemma lord Wellington adopted, from necessity, a very unmilitary and dangerous remedy. For having declared to the members of the Portuguese government, that on their heads he would throw the responsibility of losing Badajos and Elvas, if they did not immediately victual both, a threat which had its due effect, he employed the whole of the carriages and mules attached to the army to bring up stores to Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo; meanwhile he quartered his troops near the points of water-carriage, that is to say, on the Mondego, the Douro, and the Tagus. Thus the army was spread from the Morena to the Tagus, from the Tagus to the Douro, from the Douro to the Mondego, on a line little less than four hundred miles long, and in the face of three hostile armies, the farthest of which was but a few marches from the outposts. It was however scarcely possible for the French to assemble again in masses, before the ripening of the coming harvest; and on the other hand, even the above measure was insufficient to gain time; the expedition against Andalusia was therefore abandoned, and the fifth great epoch of the war terminated.