“The arrears of the army are certainly getting to an alarming pitch, and if it is suffered to increase, we cannot go on: we have only here two brigades of infantry, fed by our own commissariat, and we are now reduced to one of them having barely bread for this day, and the commissary has not a farthing of money. I know not how we shall get on!”
Such were Beresford’s words on the 8th of July, and on the 15th Wellington wrote even more forcibly.
“I have never,” said he, “been in such distress as at present, and some serious misfortune must happen, if the government do not attend seriously to the subject, and supply us regularly with money. The arrears and distresses of the Portuguse government, are a joke to ours, and if our credit was not better than theirs, we should certainly starve. As it is, if we don’t find means to pay our bills for butcher’s meat there will be an end to the war at once.”
Thus stript as it were to the skin, the English general thought once more to hide his nakedness in the mountains of Portugal, when Marmont, proud of his own unripened skill, and perhaps, from the experience of San Cristoval, undervaluing his adversary’s tactics, desirous also, it was said, to gain a victory without the presence of a king, Marmont, pushed on by fate, madly broke the chain which restrained his enemy’s strength.
CHAPTER III.
1812. July. When Wellington found by the intercepted letters, that the king’s orders for Drouet to cross the Tagus, were reiterated, and imperative, he directed Hill to detach troops, in the same proportion. And as this reinforcement, coming by the way of Alcantara, could reach the Duero as soon as Drouet could reach Madrid, he hoped still to maintain the Tormes, if not the Duero, notwithstanding the king’s power; for some money, long expected from England, had at last arrived in Oporto, and he thought the Gallicians, maugre their inertness, must soon be felt by the enemy. Moreover the harvest on the ground, however abundant, could not long feed the French multitudes, if Drouet and the king should together join Marmont. Nevertheless, fearing the action of Joseph’s cavalry, he ordered D’Urban’s horsemen to join the army on the Duero. But to understand the remarkable movements which were now about to commence, the reader must bear in mind, that the French army, from its peculiar organization, could, while the ground harvest lasted, operate without any regard to lines of communication; it had supports on all sides and procured its food every where, for the troops were taught to reap the standing corn, and grind it themselves if their cavalry could not seize flour in the villages. This organization approaching the ancient Roman military perfection, gave them great advantages; in the field it baffled the irregular, and threw the regular force of the allies, entirely upon the defensive; because when the flanks were turned, a retreat only could save the communications, and the French offered no point, for retaliation in kind. Wherefore, with a force composed of four different nations, Wellington was to execute the most difficult evolutions, in an open country, his chances of success being to arise only from the casual errors of his adversary, who was an able general, who knew the country perfectly, and was at the head of an army, brave, excellently disciplined, and of one nation. The game would have been quite unequal if the English general had not been so strong in cavalry.
FRENCH PASSAGE OF THE DUERO.
In the course of the 15th and 16th Marmont, who had previously made several deceptive movements, concentrated his beautiful and gallant army between Toro and the Hornija river; and intercepted letters, the reports of deserters, and the talk of the peasants had for several days assigned the former place as his point of passage. On the morning of the 16th the English exploring officers, passing the Duero near Tordesillas, found only the garrison there, and in the evening the reports stated, that two French divisions had already passed the repaired bridge of Toro. Wellington united his centre and left at Canizal on the Guarena during the night, intending to attack those who had passed at Toro; but as he had still some doubts of the enemy’s real object, he caused sir Stapleton Cotton to halt on the Trabancos with the right wing, composed of the fourth and light divisions and Anson’s cavalry. Meanwhile Marmont, recalling his troops from the left bank of the Duero, returned to Tordesillas and Pollos, passed that river at those points and occupied Nava del Rey, where his whole army was concentrated in the evening of the 17th, some of his divisions having marched above forty miles, and some above fifty miles, without a halt. The English cavalry posts being thus driven over the Trabancos, advice of the enemy’s movement was sent to lord Wellington, but he was then near Toro, it was midnight ere it reached him, and the troops, under Cotton, remained near Castrejon behind the Trabancos during the nightSee [plan No. 3.] of the 17th without orders, exposed, in a bad position, to the attack of the whole French army. Wellington hastened to their aid in person, and he ordered Bock’s, Le Marchant’s, and Alten’s brigades of cavalry, to follow him to Alaejos, and the fifth division to take post at Torrecilla de la Orden six miles in rear of Castrejon.
At day-break Cotton’s outposts were again driven in by the enemy, and the bulk of his cavalry with a troop of horse artillery immediately formed in front of the two infantry divisions, which were drawn up, the fourth division on the left, the light division on the right, but at a considerable distance from each other and separated by a wide ravine. The country was open and hilly, like the downs of England, with here and there water-gulleys, dry hollows, and bold naked heads of land, and behind the most prominent of these last, on the other side of the Trabancos, lay the whole French army. Cotton however, seeing only horsemen, pushed his cavalry again towards the river, advancing cautiously by his right along some high table-land, and his troops were soon lost to the view of the infantry, for the morning fog was thick on the stream, and at first nothing could be descried beyond. But very soon the deep tones of artillery shook the ground, the sharp ring of musketry was heard in the mist, and the forty-third regiment was hastily brought through Castrejon to support the advancing cavalry; for besides the ravine which separated the fourth from the light division, there was another ravine with a marshy bottom, between the cavalry and infantry, and the village of Castrejon was the only good point of passage.