CHAPTER XX
State of the opposing armies previous to the battle of Salamanca—Preliminary movements—The Duke of Ragusa’s false movement—Pakenham engaged with the enemy’s left—Defeats the division under General Thomières—Reinforced, they again advance to the attack—Their destruction by a brigade of British cavalry—The Portuguese repulsed—Desperate exertions of the French—Final charge of Clinton’s division—Complete defeat of the French army.
The situation and position of the hostile armies have been described in the last chapter; it left them on the banks of the Douro; and the probability, nay the certainty, that a collision was about to take place between them was manifest to the lowest soldier of both.
The passage of the line of the Douro in presence of an army in a condition for battle is difficult, and it requires much circumspection on the part of the General to hazard it in the face of an enemy. Yet Marmont managed to cross. He employed the days of the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th of July in a series of evolutions we had hitherto been unaccustomed to witness; and, in fine, on the morning of the 17th, after having made a night-march of thirteen Spanish leagues, his army was over the river, in battle array on the plain to the right of Nava del Rey, while the bulk of our army was in full movement upon Toro, distant several leagues from the 4th and Light Divisions and the two brigades of heavy horse. The village of Torrecilla de la Orden was in their front.
Marmont, finding how well the passage of the Douro had been masked by his night-march, and seeing the small number of troops that were at hand to oppose his movement, ordered his masses forward in the hope of crushing them. The 4th and Light Divisions, covered by Bock’s dragoons,[[28]] retired upon the rising ground behind the villages. At this point various charges were made by the cavalry of both armies; and it was not until after a retreat of three hours, under a burning sun and a torrent of shot, that the two divisions reached the heights of the Guarena. The soldiers, famishing with thirst, their tongues cleaving to their mouths, and fainting with fatigue, rushed headlong towards the river; and before they had drank sufficiently to satisfy their burning thirst, the heights above them were crowned with forty pieces of cannon at half-range. Great was the confusion caused by the cannonade; and it was not without suffering some loss that they effected their retreat to the opposite bank. In less than an hour they joined the 1st and 3rd Divisions, and the entire continued the retrograde movement.
[28]. The 1st and 2nd Heavy Dragoons of the King’s German Legion, lately arrived from England.
The French then advanced in two columns of twenty-five thousand men each; the intervening space between them might be reckoned at two miles. The right wing was commanded by Clausel, the left by Marmont in person. Clausel had scarcely arrived before the point occupied by the 4th Division, when, seeing the smallness of their force, he conceived the idea of making a sudden rush, in the hope of cutting them off. His troops had scarcely formed when he pushed onward at the head of two divisions of infantry and the brigade of dragoons commanded by General Carrié; but Cole, placing himself at the head of the 27th and 40th Regiments, received him with steadiness, and drove the French infantry back in disorder. Meanwhile Carrié, seeing some open spaces in Cole’s line, caused by their movement against Clausel’s infantry, thought to profit by this disorder, and galloping forward at the head of his troopers, sabred many men; but at this moment the cavalry sent to sustain Cole met them, and after a severe but short conflict totally overthrew the brigade of Carrié, who was himself numbered amongst the prisoners.
The defeat of Clausel and Carrié checked in a great degree the ardour of the French Marshal. The following day he rested, and on the 19th threw back his right wing, and moving forward with the left of his army, menaced the right of the British; but Lord Wellington, anticipating the movement, was prepared for him, and offered battle on the plain of Velosa. This was refused on the part of the French General; and from this until the 20th, the two armies manœuvred within half cannon-shot of each other, the British retiring as it had advanced—moving, not directly rearward, but rather in a line parallel with the march of the French. The columns were in movement in an open country, fairly in the view of each other, and their respective attitudes were of that novel sort that it would be difficult to find the like recorded in the history of any two armies. At times the French and British were within musket-shot of each other, the soldiers of both in momentary expectation of being engaged, yet not one shot was fired by either.