The cannonade now became heavy, and the spectacle surprisingly beautiful, for the lighter smoke and mist, curling up in fantastic pillars, formed a huge and glittering dome tinged of many colours by the rising sun; and through the grosser vapour below, the restless horsemen were seen or lost as the fume thickened from the rapid play of the artillery, while the bluff head of land, beyond the Trabancos, covered with French troops, appeared, by an optical deception close at hand, dilated to the size of a mountain, and crowned with gigantic soldiers, who were continually breaking off and sliding down into the fight. Suddenly a dismounted cavalry officer stalked from the midst of the smoke towards the line of infantry; his gait was peculiarly rigid, and he appeared to hold a bloody handkerchief to his heart, but that which seemed a cloth, was a broad and dreadful wound; a bullet had entirely effaced the flesh from his left shoulder and from his breast, and had carried away part of his ribs, his heart was bared, and its movement plainly discerned. It was a piteous and yet a noble sight, for his countenance though ghastly was firm, his step scarcely indicated weakness, and his voice never faltered. This unyielding man’s name was Williams; he died a short distance from the field of battle, and it was said, in the arms of his son, a youth of fourteen, who had followed his father to the Peninsula in hopes of obtaining a commission, for they were not in affluent circumstances.
General Cotton maintained this exposed position with skill and resolution, from day-light until seven o’clock, at which time Wellington arrived, in company with Beresford, and proceeded to examine the enemy’s movements. The time was critical, and the two English generals were like to have been slain together by a body of French cavalry, not very numerous, which breaking away from the multitude on the head of land beyond the Trabancos, came galloping at full speed across the valley. It was for a moment thought they were deserting, but with headlong course they mounted the table-land on which Cotton’s left wing was posted, and drove a whole line of British cavalry skirmishers back in confusion. The reserves indeed soon came up from Alaejos, and these furious swordsmen being scattered in all directions were in turn driven away or cut down, but meanwhile thirty or forty, led by a noble officer, had brought up their right shoulders, and came over the edge of the table-land above the hollow which separated the British wings at the instant when Wellington and Beresford arrived on the same slope. There were some infantry picquets in the bottom, and higher up, near the French, were two guns covered by a squadron of light cavalry which was disposed in perfect order. When the French officer saw this squadron, he reined in his horse with difficulty, and his troopers gathered in a confused body round him as if to retreat. They seemed lost men, for the British instantly charged, but with a shout the gallant fellows soused down upon the squadron, and the latter turning, galloped through the guns; then the whole mass, friends and enemies, went like a whirlwind to the bottom, carrying away lord Wellington, and the other generals, who with drawn swords and some difficulty, got clear of the tumult. The French horsemen were now quite exhausted, and a reserve squadron of heavy dragoons coming in cut most of them to pieces; yet their invincible leader, assaulted by three enemies at once, struck one dead from his horse, and with surprising exertions saved himself from the others, though they rode hewing at him on each side for a quarter of a mile.
While this charge was being executed, Marmont, who had ascertained that a part only of Wellington’s army was before him, crossed the Trabancos in two columns, and passing by Alaejos, turned the left of the allies, marching straight upon the Guarena. The British retired by Torecilla de la Orden, the fifth division being in one column on the left, the fourth division on the right as they retreated, and the light division on an intermediate line and nearer to the enemy. The cavalry were on the flanks and rear, the air was extremely sultry, the dust rose in clouds, and the close order of the troops rendered it very oppressive, but the military spectacle was exceedingly strange and grand. For then were seen the hostile columns of infantry, only half musket-shot from each other, marching impetuously towards a common goal, the officers on each side pointing forwards with their swords, or touching their caps, and waving their hands in courtesy, while the German cavalry, huge men, on huge horses, rode between in a close compact body as if to prevent a collision. At times the loud tones of command, to hasten the march, were heard passing from the front to the rear, and now and then the rushing sound of bullets came sweeping over the columns whose violent pace was continually accelerated.
Thus moving for ten miles, yet keeping the most perfect order, both parties approached the Guarena, and the enemy seeing that the light division, although more in their power than the others, were yet outstripping them in the march, increased the fire of their guns and menaced an attack with infantry. But the German cavalry instantly drew close round, the column plunged suddenly into a hollow dip of ground on the left which offered the means of baffling the enemy’s aim, and ten minutes after the head of the division was in the stream of the Guarena between Osmo and Castrillo. The fifth division entered the river at the same time but higher up on the left, and the fourth division passed it on the right. The soldiers of the light division, tormented with thirst, yet long used to their enemy’s mode of warfare, drunk as they marched, and the soldiers of the fifth division stopped in the river for only a few moments, but on the instant forty French guns gathered on the heights above sent a tempest of bullets amongst them. So nicely timed was the operation.
The Guarena, flowing from four distinct sources which are united below Castrillo, offered a very strong line of defence, and Marmont, hoping to carry it in the first confusion of the passage, and so seize the table-land of Vallesa, had brought up all his artillery to the front; and to distract the allies’ attention he had directed Clausel to push the head of the right column over the river at Castrillo, at the same time. But Wellington expecting him at Vallesa from the first, had ordered the other divisions of his army, originally assembled at Canizal, to cross one of the upper branches of the river; and they reached the table-land of Vallesa, before Marmont’s infantry, oppressed by the extreme heat and rapidity of the march, could muster in strength to attempt the passage of the other branch. Clausel, however, sent Carier’s brigade of cavalry across the Guarena at Castrillo and supported it with a column of infantry; and the fourth division had just gained the heights above Canizal, after passing the stream, when Carier’s horsemen entered the valley on their left, and the infantry in one column menaced their front. The sedgy banks of the river would have been difficult to force in face of an enemy, but Victor Alten though a very bold man in action, was slow to seize an advantage, and suffered the French cavalry to cross and form in considerable numbers without opposition; he assailed them too late and by successive squadrons instead of by regiments, and the result was unfavourable at first. The fourteenth and the German hussars were hard-pressed, the third dragoons came up in support, but they were immediately driven back again by the fire of some French infantry, the fight waxed hot with the others, and many fell, but finally general Carier was wounded and taken, and the French retired. During this cavalry action the twenty-seventh and fortieth regiments coming down the hill, broke the enemy’s infantry with an impetuous bayonet charge, and Alten’s horsemen being then disengaged sabred some of the fugitives.
This combat cost the French who had advanced too far without support, a general and five hundred soldiers; but Marmont, though baffled at Vallesa, and beaten at Castrillo, concentrated his army at the latter place in such a manner as to hold both banks of the Guarena. Whereupon Wellington recalled his troops from Vallesa; and as the whole loss of the allies during the previous operations was not more than six hundred, nor that of the French more than eight hundred, and that both sides were highly excited, the day still young, and the positions although strong, open, and within cannon-shot, a battle was expected. Marmont’s troops had however been marching for two days and nights incessantly, and Wellington’s plan did not admit of fighting unless forced to it in defence, or under such circumstances, as would enable him to crush his opponent, and yet keep the field afterwards against the king.
By this series of signal operations, the French general had passed a great river, taken the initiatory movement, surprised the right wing of the allies, and pushed it back above ten miles. Yet these advantages are to be traced to the peculiarities of the English general’s situation which have been already noticed, and Wellington’s tactical skill was manifested by the extricating of his troops from their dangerous position at Castrejon without loss, and without being forced to fight a battle. He however appears to have erred in extending his troops to the right when he first reached the Duero, for seeing that Marmont could at pleasure pass that river and turn his flanks, he should have remained concentrated on the Guarena, and only pushed cavalry posts to the line of the Duero above Toro. Neither should he have risked his right wing so far from his main body from the evening of the 16th to the morning of the 18th. He could scarcely have brought it off without severe loss, if Marmont had been stronger in cavalry, and instead of pushing forwards at once to the Guarena had attacked him on the march. On the other hand the security of the French general’s movements, from the Trabancos to the Guarena, depended entirely on their rapidity; for as his columns crossed the open country on a line parallel to the march of the allies, a simple wheel by companies to the right would have formed the latter in order of battle on his flank while the four divisions already on the Guarena could have met them in front.
But it was on the 16th that the French general failed in the most glaring manner. His intent was, by menacing the communication with Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, to force the allies back, and strike some decisive blow during their retreat. Now on the evening of the 16th he had passed the Duero at Toro, gained a day’s march, and was then actually nearer to Salamanca than the allies were; and had he persisted in his movement Wellington must have fought him to disadvantage or have given up Salamanca, and passed the Tormes at Huerta to regain the communication with Ciudad Rodrigo. This advantage Marmont relinquished, to make a forced march of eighty miles in forty-eight hours, and to risk the execution of a variety of nice and difficult evolutions, in which he lost above a thousand men by the sword or by fatigue, and finally found his adversary on the 18th still facing him in the very position which he had turned on the evening of the 16th!
On the 19th the armies maintained their respective ground in quiet until the evening, when Marmont concentrated his troops in one mass on his left near the village of Tarazona, and Wellington, fearing for his right, again passed the second branch of the Guarena, at Vallesa, and El Olmo, and took post on the table-land above those villages. The light division, being in front, advanced to the edge of the table-land, overlooking the enemy’s main body which was at rest round the bivouac fires; yet the picquets would have been quietly posted, if sir Stapleton Cotton coming up at the moment, had not ordered captain Ross to turn his battery of six-pounders upon a group of French officers. At the first shot the enemy seemed surprised, at the second their gunners run to their pieces, and in a few moments a reply from twelve eight-pounders shewed the folly of provoking a useless combat. An artillery officer was wounded in the head, several of the British soldiers fell in different parts of the line, one shot swept away a whole section of Portuguese, and finally the division was obliged to withdraw several hundred yards in a mortifying manner to avoid a great and unnecessary effusion of blood.
The allies being now formed in two lines on the table-land of Vallesa offered a fair though not an easy field to the enemy; Wellington expected a battle the next day, because the range of heights which he occupied, trended backwards to the Tormes on the shortest line; and as he had thrown a Spanish garrison into the castle of Alba de Tormes, he thought Marmont could not turn his right, or if he attempted it, that he would be shouldered off the Tormes at the ford of Huerta. He was mistaken. The French general was more perfectly acquainted with the ground and proved that he could move an army with wonderful facility.