THE MARCH TO TALAVERA: QUARREL OF WELLESLEY AND CUESTA
Having returned to his army on July 12, Wellesley gave orders for the whole force to get ready for a general advance on the morning of the eighteenth, the day which had been chosen for the commencement of operations at the conference of Almaraz. It would have been in every way desirable to have moved out at once, and not to have waited for these six days. If the march against Victor had been fixed for the thirteenth or fourteenth, the French would have been caught unprepared, for as late as the seventeenth King Joseph and his adviser Jourdan were under the impression that the force at Plasencia consisted of nothing more than a Portuguese division of 10,000 men, and it was only on the twenty-second that they received the definite information that the whole British army was upon the Tietar[607]. It is clear that, by advancing five days earlier than he actually did, Wellesley might have caught the enemy in a state of complete dispersion—the 4th Corps being on July 20 still at Madridejos in La Mancha, and the King with his reserves at Madrid. If attacked on the seventeenth or the eighteenth, as he might well have been, Victor would have found it impossible to call up Sebastiani in time, and must have fallen back in haste to the capital. The allies could then have cut him off from the 4th Corps, which must have retreated by a circuitous route, and could not have rejoined the main body of the French army in time for a battle in front of Madrid.
It would appear that Wellesley had fixed the date of his[p. 484] advance so late as the eighteenth mainly because of the difficulty as to the collection of provisions, which was now looming before him in larger proportions than ever. But it is possible that the necessity for allowing some days for the transmission of the plan of campaign to Venegas also counted for something in the drawing up of the time-table. It would have been rash to start before the army of La Mancha was prepared to take its part in the joint plan of operations. So much depended upon the diversion which Venegas was to execute, that it would have been a mistake to move before he could break up from his distant cantonments at Santa Cruz de Mudela. No word, however, concerning this appears in Wellesley’s correspondence. From July 13 to July 18 his dispatches show anxiety about nothing save his food and his transport. Every day that he stayed at Plasencia made him feel more uncomfortable concerning the all-important question of supplies. The corn which the Alcaldes of the Vera had promised to secure for him had begun to come in, though in driblets and small consignments, but there was no means of getting it forward: transport was absolutely unprocurable[608]. Wellesley sent officers to scour the country-side as far as Bejar and Ciudad Rodrigo, but they could procure him neither mules nor carts. He also pressed the Spanish commissary-general, Lozano de Torres, to hunt up every animal that could be procured, but to small effect. The fact was that Estremadura was not at any time rich in beasts or vehicles, and that the peasantry had sent away most of those they owned while the French lay at Almaraz, lest they should be carried off by the enemy. Wellesley, who did not understand the limited resources of this part of Spain, was inclined to believe that the authorities were hostile or even treacherous.[p. 485] The Central Junta had promised him transport in order to make sure of his starting on the campaign along the Tagus, and when transport failed to appear, he attributed it to ill-will rather than to poverty. No doubt he was fully justified in his view that an army operating in a friendly country may rationally expect to draw both food and the means to carry it from the regions through which it is passing. But sometimes the provisions or the transport are not forthcoming merely because the one or the other is not to be found. It is certain that both Estremadura and the valley of the central Tagus were at this moment harried absolutely bare: Victor’s despairing letters from Caceres in May and from La Calzada in June are sufficient proof of the fact. In a district where the Marshal said that ‘he could not collect five days’ provisions by any manner of exertion,’ and that ‘his men were dropping down dead from actual starvation, so that he must retire or see his whole corps crumble away[609],’ it is clear that the Central Junta could not have created food for the British army. Cuesta’s troops were living from hand to mouth on supplies sent forward from Andalusia, or they could not have continued to exist in the land. The only district which was intact was that between Coria and Plasencia, and this was actually at the moment feeding the British army, and had done so now for ten days or more. But unfortunately the Vera could give corn but no draught animals. If Wellesley had known this, he must either have exerted himself to procure more transport before leaving Abrantes—a difficult task, for he had already drained Portugal of carts and mules—or have refused to march till the Spaniards sent him wagon trains from Andalusia. It would have taken months for the Junta to collect and send forward such trains: they had dispatched all that they could procure to Cuesta. The campaign on the Tagus, in short, would never have been fought if Wellesley had understood the state of affairs that he was to encounter.
The causes, therefore, of the deadlock that was about to occur were partly the light-hearted incompetence of the Central Junta in promising the British army the use of resources which did not exist, partly Wellesley’s natural ignorance of the[p. 486] miserable state of Central Spain. He had never entered the country before, and could not know of its poverty. He had trusted to the usual military theory that the country-side ought to provide for a friendly army on the march: but in Spain all military theories failed to act. Napoleon committed precisely similar errors, when he directed his army corps to move about in Castile as if they were in Germany or Lombardy, and found exactly the same hindrances as did the British general. In later years Wellesley never moved without a heavy train, and a vast provision of sumpter-beasts and camp-followers. In July 1809 he had still to learn the art of conducting a Spanish campaign.
Meanwhile he was beginning to feel most uncomfortable about the question of provisions. His anxiety is shown by his letters to Frere and Beresford; ‘it is impossible,’ he wrote, ‘to express the inconvenience and risk that we incur from the want of means of conveyance, which I cannot believe the country could not furnish, if there existed any inclination to furnish them. The officers complain, and I believe not without reason, that the country gives unwillingly the supplies of provisions that we have required ... and we have not procured a cart or a mule for the service of the army[610].’ But to O’Donoju, the chief of the staff of the Estremaduran army, he wrote in even more drastic terms, employing phrases that were certain to provoke resentment. He had, he said, scoured the whole region as far as Ciudad Rodrigo for transport, and to no effect. ‘If the people of Spain are unable or unwilling to supply what the army requires, I am afraid that they must do without its services.’ He had been forced to come to a painful decision, and ‘in order to be fair and candid to General Cuesta’ he must proceed to inform him that he would execute the plan for falling upon Victor behind the Alberche, but that when this had been done he would stir no step further, and ‘begin no new operation till he had been supplied with the means of transport which the army requires[611].’
After dispatching this ultimatum, whose terms and tone leave something to be desired—for surely Cuesta was the last[p. 487] person to be saddled with the responsibility for the pledges made by his enemies of the Central Junta—Wellesley issued orders for the army to march. He had been joined at Plasencia by the last of the regiments from Lisbon, which reached him in time for Talavera[612], but had been forced to leave 400 sick behind him, for the army was still in a bad condition as regards health. It was therefore with little over 21,000 men that he began his advance to the Alberche. It was executed with punctual observance of the dates that had been settled at the interview at Almaraz. On July 18 the army crossed the Tietar on a flying bridge built at Bazagona, and lay at Miajadas. On the next night the head quarters were at Centinello; on the twentieth the British entered Oropesa. Here Cuesta joined them with his whole army, save the two battalions lent to Wilson, and the two others under the Marquis Del Reino which had been sent to the Puerto de Ba?os. Deducting these 2,600 bayonets and his sick, he brought over 6,000 horse and 27,000 foot to the rendezvous. The junction having taken place on the twenty-first, the advance to Talavera was to begin next morning. Oropesa lies only nineteen miles from that town, and as Victor’s cavalry vedettes were in sight, it was clear that contact with the enemy would be established during the course of the day. Accordingly the allied armies marched with caution, the Spaniards along the high-road, the British following a parallel path on the left, across the slopes of the hills which divide the valley of the Tietar from that of the Tagus.
About midday the Spaniards fell in with the whole of the cavalry division of Latour-Maubourg, which Victor had thrown out as a screen in front of Talavera. He had ascertained on the evening of the preceding day that Cuesta was about to move forward, and was anxious to compel him to display his entire force. Above all he desired to ascertain whether the rumours concerning the presence of British troops in his front were correct. Accordingly he had left two battalions of infantry in the town of Talavera, and thrown out the six regiments of dragoons in front of it, near the village of Gamonal. The Spaniards were advancing with Albuquerque’s cavalry division as an advanced guard. But seeing Latour-Maubourg in his[p. 488] front the Duke refused to attack, and sent back for infantry and guns. Cuesta pushed forward the division of Zayas to support him, but even when it arrived the Spaniards made no headway. They continued skirmishing for four hours[613] till the British light cavalry began to appear on their left. ‘Though much more numerous than the enemy,’ wrote an eye-witness, ‘they made no attempt to drive him in, but contented themselves with deploying into several long lines, making a very formidable appearance. We had expected to see them closely and successfully engaged, having heard that they were peculiarly adapted for petty warfare, but we found them utterly incapable of coping with the enemy’s tirailleurs, who were driving them almost into a circle.’
On the appearance, however, of Anson’s cavalry upon their flank the French went hastily to the rear, skirted the suburbs of Talavera, and rode off along the great Madrid chaussée to the east, followed by the British light dragoons. As they passed the town two small columns of infantry came out of it and followed in their rear. Albuquerque sent one of his regiments against them, but could not get his men to charge home. On three separate occasions they came on, but, after receiving the fire of the French, pulled up and fell into confusion. The impression made by the Spanish cavalry on the numerous British observers was very bad. ‘No men could have more carefully avoided coming to close quarters than did the Spaniards this day[614],’ wr............