In this campaign the French forces were too1812. much scattered, and they occupied the countries bordering on Portugal rather as a conquered territory than as a field of operations. The movements of the armies of the north, of the centre, and of Portugal, might have been so combined as to present a hundred thousand men on a field of battle; yet Wellington captured two great fortresses within gun-shot as it were of them all, and was never disturbed by the approach of even thirty thousand men. This arose partly from want of union, partly from the orders of the Emperor, whose plans the generals either did not or would not understand in their true spirit, and therefore executed without vigour; and yet the French writers have generally endeavoured to fasten the failures on Napoleon, as if he only was mistaken about the war in Spain! It is easy to spurn the dead lion!
The expedition of Montbrun to Alicant has been fixed upon as the chief cause of the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo. Napoleon however did not desire that Montbrun’s march should be held in abeyance for a week, upon the strength of some vague rumours relative to the allies’ proceedings, and yet be finally sent at precisely the wrong period; neither did he contemplate that general’s idle display at Alicant after the city of Valencia had fallen. But ill-executed and hurtful as this expedition doubtless was, in various ways, the loss of Ciudad Rodrigo cannot be directly traced to it. Montbrun was at Almanza the 9th of January and the 19th Ciudad was stormed; now, if he had not been at Almanza he would have been at Toledo or Talavera, that is, eight marches from Salamanca; and as the commencement of the siege was not known until the 15th, even at Valladolid, he could not have been on the Tormes before the 25th, which would have been five days too late. The emperor wished to strengthen Suchet at the crisis of the Valencian operations, and his intent was that Montbrun should have reached that city in December, but the latter did not arrive before the middle of January; had he been only a week earlier, that is, had he marched at once from Toledo, Mahy could not have escaped, Alicant would then have fallen, and if Blake had made an obstinate defence at Valencia the value of such a reinforcement would have been acknowledged.
At this period Valencia was the most important point in the Peninsula, and there was no apparent reason why Ciudad should be in any immediate danger; the emperor could not calculate upon the errors of his own generals. It is futile therefore to affirm that Montbrun’s detachment was made on a false principle; it was on the contrary conceived in perfect accord with the maxim of concentrating on the important point at the decisive moment; errors, extraneous to the original design, alone brought it within the principle of dissemination.
The loss of Ciudad Rodrigo may be directly traced to the duke of Ragusa’s want of vigilance, to the scanty garrison which he kept in the place, to the Russian war which obliged the emperor to weaken the army of the north; finally, to the extravagance of the army of the centre. Marmont expressly asserts that at Madrid three thousand men devoured and wasted daily the rations of twenty-two thousand, and the stores thus consumed would have enabled the army of Portugal to keep concentrated, in which case Wellington could not have taken Ciudad; and if the army of the centre had been efficient, Hill would have incurred great danger and Soult’s power been vastly augmented.
It is not Napoleon’s skill only, that has been assailed by these writers. Lord Wellington also is blamed for not crushing Souham’s division at Tamames between the 23d and the 26th of January; although Souham, a good general, never entered Tamames, except with cavalry scouts, and kept his main body at Matilla, whence one forced march would have placed him behind the Tormes in safety! In such a shallow manner have the important operations of this period been treated. Nor will the causes commonly assigned for the fall of Badajos better bear examination.
“Marmont instead of joining Soult in Estremadura, followed a phantom in Beira.” “It was his vanity and jealousy of the duke of Dalmatia that lost Badajos.” Such are the assertions of both French and English writers; nevertheless the duke of Ragusa never anticipated any success from his movement into Beira, and far from avoiding Soult, earnestly desired to co-operate with him; moreover this invasion of Beira, which has been regarded as a folly, was the conception of Napoleon, the greatest of all captains! and it is not difficult to shew that the emperor’s design was, notwithstanding the ill result, capacious and solid.
Let us suppose that Marmont had aided Soult, and that the army of the centre had also sent men. If they had made any error in their combinations the English general would have defeated them separately; if they had effected their junction, he would have retreated, and Badajos would have been succoured. But then eighty thousand French would have been assembled by long marches in the winter rains, to the great detriment of their affairs elsewhere, and unless they came prepared to take Elvas, without any adequate object; for lord Wellington could, after the fall of Ciudad Rodrigo, have repeated this operation as often as he pleased, which, besides the opening thus made for insurrection in Spain, would have stamped a character of weakness on the French arms, extremely injurious, since character is half the strength of an army.
The emperor judged better; he disliked such timid operations, he desired that his powerful armies should throw the allies on the defensive and he indicated the means of doing so. Wellington, he said, expecting an effort to retake Ciudad Rodrigo, had called Hill across the Tagus, and to prevent that movement Soult was directed to send twenty thousand men against the Alemtejo. The fall of Ciudad had thus by obliging the allies to defend it, given the French their choice of ground for a battle, and at a distance from the sea; it was for Marmont to avail himself of the occasion, not by marching to aid Soult, who had eighty thousand excellent troops, and at the worst could be only driven from Andalusia upon Valencia or Madrid; whereas if the army of Portugal or a part of it should be defeated on the Guadiana the blow would be felt in every part of Spain. Marmont’s business was, he said, first to strengthen his own position at Salamanca, as a base of operations, and then to keep the allies constantly engaged on the Agueda until he was prepared to fight a general battle. Meanwhile Soult should either take the fortresses of the Alemtejo, or draw off Hill’s corps from Wellington, who would then be very inferior to Marmont and yet Hill himself would be unequal to fight Soult.
“Fix your quarters,” said the emperor, “at Salamanca, work day and night to fortify that place—organize a new battering train—form magazines—send strong advanced guards to menace Ciudad and Almeida—harass the allies’ outposts, even daily—threaten the frontier of Portugal in all directions, and send parties to ravage the nearest villages—repair the ways to Almeida and Oporto, and keep the bulk of your army at Toro Zamora, Benevente, and Avila, which are fertile districts, and from whence, in four days, you can concentrate the whole upon Salamanca. You will thus keep the allies in check on the Agueda, and your troops will repose, while you prepare for great operations. You have nothing to do with the south. Announce the approach of your new battering train, and if Wellington marches to invest Badajos with a few divisions, Soult will be able to relieve it; but if Wellington goes with all his forces, unite your army, march straight upon Almeida, push parties to Coimbra, overrun the country in various directions, and be assured he will return. Twenty-four hours after the receipt of this letter you should be on your way to Salamanca, and your advanced guards should be in march towards Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida.”
Now, if Marmont had thus conceived the war himself, he could have commenced operations before the end of January; but this letter, written the 15th of February, reached him in the latter end of that month, and found him desponding and fearful even in defence. Vacillating between his own wishes and the emperor’s orders, he did nothing; but had he, as his despatch recommended, commenced his operations in twenty-four hours, his advanced posts would have been near Ciudad early in March, that is at the moment when the allies were, as I have before shewn, disseminated all over Portugal, and when only the fifth division was upon the Coa to oppose him. The works of Almeida[Appendix, No. VIII.] Section 2. were then quite indefensible, and the movement upon Badajos must have necessarily been suspended. Thus the winter season would have passed away uselessly for the allies unless Wellington turned to attack Marmont, which was a difficult operation in itself, and would have been dangerous to the Alemtejo, while Soult held Badajos, for that marshal, as we have seen, had received orders to attack Hill with twenty thousand men. Here then the errors were of execution, not of design, and the first part of the emperor’s combinations was evidently just and solid. It remains to test the second part which was to have been executed if lord Wellington invested Badajos.