Mina having obtained two or three thousand stand of English arms had re-entered Aragon and domineered on the left bank of the Ebro, while Duran, with four thousand men, operated uncontrolled on the right bank. The Empecinado, Villacampa, and Bassecour descended from Cuenca, the first against Requeña, the others against Albacete. The Frayle interrupted the communications between Valencia and Tortoza. Saornil, Cuesta, Firmin, and others, were in La Mancha and Estremadura, Juan Palarea, called the Medico, was near Segovia, and though Marquinez had been murdered by one of his own men, his partida and that of Julian Sanchez acted as regular troops with Wellington’s army. Meanwhile sir Home Popham, in conjunction with Mendizabel, Porlier, and Renovales, who had gathered all the minor partidas under their banners, assailed Gueteria; but unsuccessfully; for on the 30th of September, the Spanish chiefs were driven away, and Popham lost some guns which had been landed. About the same time the Empecinado being defeated at Requeña, retired to Cuenca, yet he failed not from thence to infest the French quarters.
Duran, when Soria was abandoned, fell upon Calatayud, but was defeated by Severoli, who withdrew the garrison. Then the Spanish chief attacked the castle of Almunia, which was only one march from Zaragoza, and when Severoli succoured this place also, and dismantled the castle, Duran attacked Borja between Tudela and Zaragoza, and took it before Severoli could come up. Thus Zaragoza was gradually deprived of its outposts, on the right of the Ebro; on the left, Mina hovered close to the gates, and his lieutenant, Chaplangara, meeting, near Ayerbe, with three hundred Italians, killed forty, and would have destroyed the whole but for the timely succour of some mounted gens-d’armes. At last Reille being undeceived as to Wellington’s march, restored the smaller posts which he had abandoned, and Suchet ordered the castle of Almunia to be refitted, but during these events, Bassecour and Villa Campa united to infest Joseph’s quarters about Albacete.
Soult’s march from Andalusia and his junction with the king, has been described; but while he was yet at Grenada, Hill, leaving three Portuguese regiments of infantry and one of cavalry at Almendralejo and Truxillo, to protect his line of supply, had marched to cross the Tagus at Almaraz, and Arzobispo. He entered Toledo the 28th of September, and the same day Elio took a small French garrison left in Consuegra. Hill soon after occupied a line from Toledo to Aranjuez, where he was joined by the fourth division, Victor Alten’s cavalry, and the detachments quartered about Ildefonsos and Segovia. On the 8th, hearing of Soult’s arrival at Hellin, he pushed his cavalry to Belmonte on the San Clemente road, and here in La Mancha as in Old Castile the stories of French devastation were belied by the abundance of provisions.
Bassecour, Villa Campa, and the Empecinado now united on the road leading from Cuenca to Valencia, while the Medico and other chiefs gathered in the Toledo mountains. In this manner the allies extended from Toledo on the right, by Belmonte, Cuenca, and Calatayud to near Jacca on the left, and were in military communication with the coast; for Caffarelli’s disposable force was now concentrated to relieve Burgos, and Mina had free intercourse with Mendizabal and Renovales, and with Popham’s fleet. But the French line of correspondence between the armies in the eastern and[Appendix, No. 8, B.] northern provinces, was so interrupted that the English newspapers became their surest, quickest, and most accurate channels of intelligence.
Souham, who over-rated the force of his adversary, and feared a defeat as being himself the only barrier left between Wellington and France, was at first so far from meditating an advance, that he expected and dreaded an attack from the allies; and as the want of provisions would not let him concentrate his army permanently near Monasterio, his dispositions were made to fight on the Ebro.Duke of Feltre’s official correspondence, MSS. The minister of war had even desired him to detach a division against the partidas. But when by the English newspapers, and other information sent from Paris, he learned that Soult was in march from Grenada,—that the king intended to move upon Madrid,—that no English troops had left that capital to join Wellington,—that the army of the latter was not very numerous, and that the castleGeneral Souham’s official correspondence, MSS. of Burgos was sorely pressed, he called up Caffarelli’s troops from Vittoria, concentrated his own at Briviesca and resolved to raise the siege.
On the 13th a skirmish took place on the stream beyond Monasterio, where captain Perse of the sixteenth dragoons was twice forced from the bridge and twice recovered it in the most gallant manner, maintaining his post until colonel F. Ponsonby, who commanded the reserves, arrived. Ponsonby and Perse were both wounded, and this demonstration was followed by various others until the evening of the 18th, when the whole French army was united, and the advanced guard captured a picquet of the Brunswickers which contrary to orders had remained in St. Olalla. This sudden movement apparently prevented Wellington from occupying the position of Monasterio, his outposts fell back on the 19th to Quintanapala and Olmos, and on the ridges behind those places he drew up his army in order of battle. The right was at Ibeas on the Arlanzan; the centre at Riobena and Majarradas on the main road behind Olmos; the left was thrown back near Soto Palaccio, and rested on a small river.
The 20th, Maucune, with two divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, drove the allies from Quintanapala, but Olmos was successfully defended by the Chasseurs Brittaniques, and Maucune, having no supports, was immediately outflanked on the right and forced back to Monasterio, by two divisions under sir Edward Paget. There were now in position, including Pack’s Portuguese, which blockaded the castle, about thirty-three thousand men under arms, namely, twenty-one thousand Anglo-Portuguese infantry and cavalry, eleven thousand Gallicians, and the horsemen of Marquinez and Julian Sanchez. Thus, there were four thousand troopers, but only two thousand six hundred of these were British and German, and the Spanish horsemen regular or irregular, could scarcely be counted in the line of battle. The number of guns and howitzers was only forty-two, including twelve Spanish pieces, extremely ill equipped and scant of ammunition.
Lord Wellington had long felt the want of artillery and had sent a memoir upon the subject, to the British government, in the beginning of the year, yet his ordnance establishment had not been augmented, hence his difficulties during the siege; and in the field, instead of ninety British and Portuguese cannon, which was the just complement for his army, he had now only fifty serviceable pieces, of which twenty-four were with general Hill; and all were British, for the Portuguese artillery had from the abuses and the poverty of their government entirely melted away. Now the French had,Official state of the army given to Massena, MSS. as I have before stated, forty-four thousand men, of which nearly five thousand were cavalry, and they had more than sixty guns, a matter of no small importance; for besides the actual power of artillery in an action, soldiers are excited when the noise is greatest on their side. Wellington stood, therefore, at disadvantage in numbers, composition, and real strength. In his rear was the castle, and the river Arlanzan, the fords and bridges of which were commanded by the guns of the fortress; his generals of division, Paget excepted, were not of any marked ability, his troops were somewhat desponding, and deteriorated in discipline. His situation was therefore dangerous, and critical; a victory could scarcely be expected, and a defeat would have been destructive; he should not have provoked a battle, nor would he have done so had he known that Caffarelli’s troops were united to Souham’s.
On the other hand, Souham should by all means have forced on an action, because his ground was strong, his retreat open, his army powerful and compact, his soldiers full of confidence, his lieutenants Clauzel, Maucune, and Foy, men of distinguished talents, able to second, and able to succeed him in the chief command. The chances of victory and the profit to be derived were great, the chances of defeat, and the dangers to be incurred comparatively small. And it was thus indeed that he judged the matter himself, for Maucune’s advance was intended to be the prelude to a great[Appendix, No. 8. A.] battle, and the English general, as we have seen, was willing to stand the trial. But generals are not absolute masters of events, and as the extraneous influence which restrained both sides, on this occasion, came from afar, it was fitting to show how, in war, movements, distant, and apparently unconnected with those immediately under a general’s eye, will break his measures, and make him appear undecided or foolish when in truth he is both wise and firm.
While Wellington was still engaged with the siege, the cortez made him commander of all the Spanish armies. He had before refused this responsible situation, but the circumstances were now changed, for the Spaniards, having lost nearly all their cavalry and guns in the course of the war, could not safely act, except in connexion with the Anglo-Portuguese forces, and it was absolutely necessary that one head should direct. The English general therefore demanded leave of his own government to accept the offer, although he observed, that the Spanish troops were not at all improved in their discipline, their equipments, or their military spirit; but he thought that conjoined with the British they might behave well, and so escape any more of those terrible disasters which had heretofore overwhelmed the country and nearly brought the war to a conclusion. He was willing to save the dignity of the Spanish government, by leaving it a certain body of men wherewith to operate after its own plans; but that he might exercise his own power efficiently, and to the profit of the troops under himself, he desired that the English government would vigorously insist upon the strict application of the subsidy to the payment of the Spanish soldiers acting with the British army, otherwise the care of the Spanish troops, he said, would only cramp his own operations.