This untoward event obliged Wellington to throw back his left, composed of the fifth division and the Spaniards, at Muriel, thus offering two fronts, the one facing Palencia, the other the Carion. Oswald’s error then became manifest; for Maucune having dispersed the eighth caçadores who were defending a ford between Muriel and San Isidro, fell with a strong body of infantry and guns upon the allies at Muriel, and this at the moment when the mine having been exploded, the party covering the bridge were passing the broken arch by means of ladders. The play of the mine which was effectual, checked the advance of the French for an instant, but suddenly a horseman darting out at full speed from the column, rode down under a flight of bullets, to the bridge, calling out that he was a deserter; he reached the edge of the chasm made by the explosion, and then violently checking his foaming horse, held up his hands, exclaiming that he was a lost man, and with hurried accents asked if there was no ford near. The good-natured soldiers pointed to one a little way off and the gallant fellow having looked earnestly for a few moments as if to fix the exact point, wheeled his horse round, kissed his hand in derision, and bending over his saddle-bow dashed back to his own comrades, amidst showers of shot, and shouts of laughter from both sides. The next moment Maucune’s column covered by a concentrated fire of guns passed the river at the ford thus discovered, made some prisoners in the village, and lined the dry bed of the canal.
Lord Wellington who came up at this instant immediately turned some guns upon the enemy and desired that the village and canal might be retaken; Oswald thought that they could not be held, yet Wellington, whose retreat was endangered by the presence of the enemy on that side of the river was peremptory; he ordered one brigade under general Barnes to attack the main body, while another brigade under general Pringle, cleared the canal, and he strengthened the left with the Spanish troops and Brunswickers. A very sharp fire of artillery and musquetry ensued, and the allies suffered some loss, especially by cannon-shot which from the other side of the river plumped into the reserves. The Spaniards, unequal to any regular movement, got into confusion, and were falling back, when their fiery countryman Miguel Alava, running to their head, with exhortation and example, for though wounded he would not retire, urged them forward to the fight; finally the enemy was driven over the river, the village was re-occupied in force, and the canal was lined by the allied troops. During these events at Villa Muriel, other troops attempted without success to seize the bridge of San Isidro, and the mine was exploded; but they were more fortunate at the bridge of Baños on the Pisuerga, for the mine there failed, and the French cavalry galloping over, made both the working and covering party prisoners.
The strength of the position was now sapped, for Souham could assemble his army on the allies’ left, by Palencia, and force them to an action with their back upon the Pisuerga, or he could pass that river on his own left, and forestall them on the Duero at Tudela. If Wellington pushed his army over the Pisuerga by the bridge of Duenas, Souham, having the initial movement, might be first on the ground, and could attack the heads of the allied columns while Foy’s division came down on the rear. If Wellington, by a rapid movement along the right bank of the Pisuerga, endeavoured to cross at Cabezon, which was the next bridge in his rear, and so gain the Duero, Souham by moving along the left bank, might fall upon him while in march to the Duero, and hampered between that river the Pisuerga and the Esquevilla. An action under such circumstances would have been formidable, and the English general once cut off from the Duero must have retired through Valladolid and Simancas to Tordesillas, or Toro, giving up his communications with Hill. In this critical state of affairs Wellington made no delay. He kept good watch upon the left of the Pisuerga, and knowing that the ground there was rugged, and the roads narrow and bad, while on the right bank they were good and wide, sent his baggage in the night to Valladolid, and withdrawing the troops before day-break on the 26th, made a clean march of sixteen miles to Cabezon, where he passed to the left of the Pisuerga and barricaded and mined the bridge. Then sending a detachment to hold the bridge of Tudela on the Duero behind him, he caused the seventh division, under lord Dalhousie, to secure the bridges of Valladolid, Simancas, and Tordesillas. His retreat behind the Duero, which river was now in full water, being thus assured, he again halted, partly because the ground was favourable, partly to give the commissary-general Kennedy time for some indispensible arrangements.
This functionary, who had gone to England sick in the latter end of 1811, and had returned to the army only the day before the siege of Burgos was raised, in passing from Lisbon by Badajoz to Madrid, and thence to Burgos, discovered that the inexperience of the gentleman who conducted the department during his absence had been productive of some serious errors. The magazines established between Lisbon and Badajos, and from thence by Almaraz to the valley of the Tagus, for the supply of the army in Madrid, had not been removed again when the retreat commenced, and Soult would have found them full, if his march had been made rapidly on that side; on the other hand the magazines on the line of operations, between Lisbon and Salamanca, were nearly empty. Kennedy had therefore the double task on hand to remove the magazines from the south side of the Tagus, and to bring up stores upon the line of the present retreat; and his dispositions were not yet completed when Wellington desired him to take measures for the removal of the sick and wounded, and every other incumbrance, from Salamanca, promising to hold his actual position on the Pisuerga until the operation was effected. Now there was sufficient means of transport for the occasion, but the negligence of many medical and escorting officers, conducting the convoys of sick to the rear, and the consequent bad conduct of the soldiers, for where the officers are careless the soldiers will be licentious, produced the worst effects. Such outrages were perpetrated on the inhabitants along the whole line of march that terror was every where predominant, and the ill-used drivers and muleteers deserted, some with, some without their cattle, by hundreds. Hence Kennedy’s operation in some measure failed, the greatest distress was incurred, and the commissariat lost nearly the whole of the animals and carriages employed; the villages were abandoned, and the under-commissaries were bewildered, or paralyzed, by the terrible disorder thus spread along the line of communication.
Souham having repaired the bridges on the Carion, resumed the pursuit on the 26th, by the right of the Pisuerga, being deterred probably from moving to the left bank, by the rugged nature of the ground, and by the king’s orders not to risk a serious action. In the morning of the 27th his whole army was collected in front of Cabezon, but he contented himself with a cannonade and a display of his force; the former cost the allies colonel Robe of the artillery, a practised officer and a worthy man; the latter enabled the English general, for the first time, to discover the numbers he had to contend with, and they convinced him that he could hold neither the Pisuerga nor the Duero permanently. However his object being to gain time, he held his position, and when the French, leaving a division in front of Cabezon, extended their right, by Cigales and Valladolid, to Simancas, he caused the bridges at the two latter places to be destroyed in succession.
Congratulating himself that he had not fought in front of Burgos with so powerful an army, Wellington now resolved to retire behind the Duero and finally, if pressed, behind the Tormes. But as the troops on the Tagus would then be exposed to a flank attack, similar to that which the siege of Burgos had been raised to avoid on his own part; and as this would be more certain if any ill fortune befell the troops on the Duero, he ordered Hill to relinquish the defence of the Tagus at once and retreat, giving him a discretion as to the line, but desiring him, if possible, to come by the Guadarama passes; for he designed, if all went well, to unite on the Adaja river in a central position, intending to keep Souham in check with a part of his army, and with the remainder to fall upon Soult.
On the 28th Souham, still extending his right, with a view to dislodge the allies by turning their left, endeavoured to force the bridges at ValladolidSee [plan 5.] and Simancas on the Pisuerga, and that of Tordesillas on the Duero. The first was easily defended by the main body of the seventh division, but Halket, an able officer, finding the French strong and eager at the second, destroyed it, and detached the regiment of Brunswick Oels to ruin that of Tordesillas. It was done in time, and a tower behind the ruins was occupied by a detachment, while the remainder of the Brunswickers took post in a pine-wood at some distance. The French arrived and seemed for some time at a loss, but very soon sixty French officers and non-commissioned officers, headed by captain Guingret, a daring man, formed a small raft to hold their arms and clothes, and then plunged into the water, holding their swords with their teeth, and swimming and pushing their raft before them. Under protection of a cannonade, they thus crossed this great river, though it was in full and strong water, and the weather very cold, and having reached the other side, naked as they were, stormed the tower. The Brunswick regiment then abandoned its position, and these gallant soldiers remained masters of the bridge.
Wellington having heard of the attack at Simancas, and having seen the whole French army in march to its right along the hill beyond the Pisuerga on the evening of the 28th, destroyed the bridges at Valladolid and Cabeçon, and crossed the Duero at Tudela and Puente de Duero on the 29th, but scarcely had he effected this operation when intelligence of Guingret’s splendid action at Tordesillas reached him. With the instant decision of a great captain he marched by his left, and having reached the heights between Rueda and Tordesillas on the 30th, fronted the enemy and forbad further progress on that point; the bridge was indeed already repaired by the French, but Souham’s main body had not yet arrived, and Wellington’s menacing position was too significant to be misunderstood. The bridges of Toro and Zamora were now destroyed by detachments, and though the French, spreading along the river bank, commenced repairing the former, the junction with Hill’s army was insured; and the English general, judging that the bridge of Toro could not be restored for several days, even hoped to maintain the line of the Duero permanently, because he expected that Hill, of whose operations it is now time to speak, would be on the Adaja by the 3d of November.