THE RETREAT FROM TALAVERA

When the dawn of July 29 had arrived, the plain and the rolling hills in front of the allied position were seen to be absolutely deserted. No trace of the French army was visible save the heaps of dead upon the further side of the Porti?a: the wounded had been carried off, with the exception of those who had fallen within the British lines, and so become prisoners of war. It was soon discovered that the enemy had left a screen of cavalry along the western bank of the Alberche: but whether his main body lay close behind the stream, or had retired towards Madrid, could not be ascertained without making a reconnaissance in force. Such an operation was beyond Wellesley’s power on the morning after the battle. He was neither able nor willing to send out a large detachment to beat up the enemy’s camps, with the object of ascertaining his situation and intentions. The British army was utterly exhausted: on the preceding day the men had fought upon half-rations: when the contest was over they had found that only a third of a ration had been issued: this scanty pittance was sent up to the regiments in the evening, as they still lay in battle-order on the ground that they had held during the day. Water was almost equally deficient: it was difficult to procure: nothing but the wells of the few houses in the rear of the position being available. Only on the morning of the twenty-ninth, when the departure of the enemy had become certain, were the troops allowed to return to their old bivouacs in the rear, and there to seek repose. Even then it was only a minority of the men who could be spared from duty. The gathering in of the vast numbers wounded—French as well as English—and their removal into Talavera demanded such enormous fatigue-parties that the larger number of the survivors had to be told off to[p. 560] this work and were denied the rest that they had so well earned.

It is certain that the British army could have done nothing upon the twenty-ninth even if their commander had desired to push forward against the enemy. The men were not only tired out by two days of battle, but half-starved in addition. But Wellesley was far from feeling any wish to pursue the French. His infantry had suffered so dreadfully that he could not dream of exposing them to the ordeal of another engagement till they had been granted a respite for the refreshment of body and spirit. Of his divisions only that of A. Campbell—the smallest of the four—was practically intact. The others had suffered paralysing losses—in Hill’s ranks one man out of every four had been stricken down, in Mackenzie’s one man in every three, while Sherbrooke’s frightful casualty-list showed that nearly two men out of five were missing from the ranks. Never, save at Albuera, was such slaughter on the side of the victors seen again during the whole course of the Peninsular War. ‘The extreme fatigue of the troops,’ wrote Wellesley, ‘the want of provisions, and the number of wounded to be taken care of, have prevented me from moving from my position[685].’

On the morning of the twenty-ninth the depleted strength of the army was partly compensated by the arrival of the first of those reinforcements from Lisbon which Wellesley had been anxiously expecting. At about six o’clock Robert Craufurd came upon the scene with the three regiments of his Light Brigade—all old battalions who had shared in Moore’s Corunna campaign. He was accompanied by a battery of horse artillery (A troop), the first unit of that arm which came under Wellesley’s command. But the Light Brigade were almost as weary as their comrades who had fought in the battle: they had only reached Talavera by a forced march of unexampled severity. Hearing at Navalmoral that the two armies were in presence, Robert Craufurd had hurried forward with almost incredible swiftness. Dropping his baggage and a few weakly men at Oropesa he had marched forty-three miles in twenty-two hours, though the day was hot and every soldier carried some fifty pounds’ weight upon his back. All day long the cannon was heard growling in the distance,[p. 561] and at short intervals the brigade kept meeting parties of Spanish fugitives, interspersed with British sutlers and commissaries, who gave the most dismal accounts of the progress of the fight. In spite of his desperate efforts to get up in time Craufurd reached the field thirteen hours too late, and heard to his intense chagrin that the battle had been won without his aid[686]. Weary though his men were, they were at once hurried to the front, to relieve A. Campbell’s division on the line of advanced posts. There they found plenty of employment in burying the dead, and in gathering up the French wounded, whom it was necessary to protect from the fury of the Spanish peasantry.

The arrival of Craufurd’s brigade did something towards filling up the terrible gap in the ranks of the British infantry, but was far from enabling Wellesley to assume the offensive. Indeed the advent of fresh troops only accentuated the difficulty of feeding the army. Corn was still almost unobtainable; the supplies from the Vera de Plasencia showed no signs of appearing, and even oxen for the meat-ration, which had hitherto been obtainable in fair quantities, were beginning to run short. Nothing was to be had from Talavera itself, where Victor had exhausted all the available food many weeks before, nor could any assistance be got from the Spanish army, who were themselves commencing to feel the pinch of starvation.

All Wellesley’s hopes at this juncture were founded on the idea that the diversion of Venegas upon the Upper Tagus would force the French host in his front to break up, in order to save Madrid from an attack in the rear. The army of La Mancha had failed to keep Sebastiani in check, and to prevent him from appearing on the field of Talavera. But since the enemy had concentrated every available man for the battle, it was certain that Venegas had now no hostile force in his front, and that the way to the capital was open to him. If he had[p. 562] pushed on either by Aranjuez or by Toledo, he must now be close to the capital, and King Joseph would be obliged to detach a large force against him. That detachment once made, the army behind the Alberche would be so much weakened that it would be unable to face the British and Cuesta. If it offered fight, it must be beaten: if it retired, the allies would follow it up and drive it away in a direction which would prevent it from rejoining the troops that had been sent against Venegas. On the twenty-ninth Wellesley was under the impression that the army of La Mancha had already brought pressure to bear upon the French, for a false report had reached him that on the previous day it had captured Toledo. His dispatches written after the arrival of this rumour indicate an intention of moving forward on the thirtieth or thirty-first. The King, he says, must now detach troops against Venegas. This being so, it will be necessary to induce Cuesta to advance, supporting him with the British army ‘as soon as it shall be a little rested and refreshed after two days of the hardest fighting that I have ever been a party to. We shall certainly move towards Madrid, if not interrupted by some accident on our flank[687].’

The last words of this sentence are of great importance, since they show that already upon the day after Talavera Wellesley was beginning to be uneasy about his left flank. Some time before the battle he had received news from the north, to the effect that both Ney and Kellermann had returned to the valley of the Douro, after evacuating Galicia and the Asturias[688]. He had therefore to take into consideration the chance that the enemy might move southward, and fall upon his line of communication with Portugal, not only with the corps of Soult, but with a large additional force. Unfortunately the information that had reached him from the plains of Leon had been to the[p. 563] effect that Ney’s and Kellermann’s troops were much reduced in numbers and efficiency, so that even when they had joined Soult the total of the French field army upon the Douro would not much exceed 20,000 men[689]. This misconception affected all his plans: for if the hostile force about Salamanca, Zamora, and Benavente was no greater than was reported, it followed that any expedition sent against his own communications could not be more than 12,000 or 15,000 strong, since Soult would be forced to leave a containing force in front of Beresford and Del Parque, who now lay in the direction of Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo. Any French advance against Bejar and Plasencia, therefore, would, as Wellesley supposed, be a mere raid, executed by a comparatively small force. He doubted whether Soult dared undertake such an operation: ‘the enemy,’ he wrote, ‘would not like to venture through the passes into Estremadura, having me on one side of him, and you [Beresford] and Romana upon the other[690].’ He was therefore not much disturbed in mind about the movements of the French in the valley of the Douro. If he had but known that not 20,000 men but 50,000 men were now concentrating at Salamanca, his feelings would have been far different. But it was not till some days later that it began to dawn upon him that Soult was far stronger than he had supposed, and that there might be serious danger to be feared from this quarter. Meanwhile he hoped to prevent any advance of the French in the direction of Plasencia, by causing a strong demonstration to be made in the valley of the Douro. He wrote to Beresford that he must contrive to arrange for joint action with La Romana and the Army of Galicia. If they appeared in strength in the direction of Ciudad Rodrigo, the Duke of Dalmatia might be deterred from making any movement to the south. If, however, the Spaniards proved helpless or impracticable, the Portuguese army would have to confine itself to the defence of its own frontier.

On the morning of July 30 Wellesley received the first[p. 564] definite information which led him to conclude that the French forces from the north were actually contemplating the raid upon his communications which on the preceding day he had regarded as doubtful. The Marquis Del Reino, whom, as it will be remembered, Cuesta had sent to the Puerto de Ba?os with two weak battalions, reported that troops from the Douro valley were threatening his front. At the same time messages were received from the Alcaldes of Fuente Roble and Los Santos, places on the road between Salamanca and Bejar, to the effect that they had received orders from Soult to prepare 12,000 and 24,000 rations respectively, for troops due to arrive on July 28. The numbers given counted for little in Wellesley’s estimation, since it is the commonest thing in the world for generals to requisition food for a far larger force than they actually bring with them. But at least it seemed clear that some considerable detachment from Salamanca was on its way towards the Puerto de Ba?os. In consequence of this fact Wellesley wrote to the Spanish government, and also informed Cuesta, that in the event of a serious attempt of the enemy to cut his communications, he should ‘move so as to take care of himself,’ and do his best to preserve Portugal[691]—in other words, that he should abandon the projected march on Madrid which had been his main purpose on the preceding day. He was still, however, under the impression that Soult had no very large force with him, as is sufficiently shown by the fact that on the thirty-first he suggested to Cuesta that it would be well to detach one of his divisions—say 5,000 men—to strengthen the insignificant force which was already in position at the Puerto de Ba?os. ‘I still think,’ he wrote, ‘that the movements of General Beresford with the Portuguese army on the frontier, and that of the Duque del Parque from Ciudad Rodrigo, combined with the natural difficulties of the country, and the defence by the Marquis Del Reino, may delay the enemy’s advance till the arrival of your division[692].’ It is clear that when he[p. 565] wrote in these terms Wellesley was still labouring under the delusion that Soult’s advance was a mere raid executed by one or two divisions, and not a serious operation carried out by a large army.

While Wellesley was spending the three days which followed the battle of the twenty-eighth in resting his men and pondering over his next move, the enemies whom he had defeated at Talavera were in a state of even greater uncertainty and indecision. By daylight on July 29, as we have already seen, the whole French army had retired behind the Alberche, leaving only a screen of cavalry upon its western bank. The King was under the impression that Wellesley and Cuesta would probably follow him up ere the day had passed, and drew up his whole force along that same line of heights which Victor had occupied upon the twenty-second and twenty-third of the month. But when nothing appeared in his front during the morning hours save a few vedettes, he realized that he might count upon a short respite, and took new measures. After sending off to his brother the Emperor a most flagrantly mendacious account of the battle of Talavera[693], he proceeded to divide up his army. As Wellington had foreseen, he detached a large force to hold back Venegas and the army of La Mancha, who were at last coming into the field upon his flank. He was bound to do so, under pain of imperilling the safety of Madrid.

It is time to cast a glance at the operations of the incompetent general whose sloth and disobedience had wrecked the plan that Wellesley and Cuesta had drawn out at their con[p. 566]ference near Almaraz. On July 16 Venegas had begun to move forward from El Moral, Valdepe?as, and Santa Cruz de Mudela, in accordance with the directions that had been sent him. He occupied Manzanares and Daimiel, and then came into collision with Sebastiani’s cavalry at Villaharta and Herencia, for the 4th Corps had not yet begun to withdraw towards Madrid. Owing to the profound ignorance in which the enemy still lay as to the advance of Wellesley and Cuesta, Sebastiani had not, on the nineteenth, received any order to fall back or to join Victor and the King. Thus, when pressed by the advanced troops of Venegas, he did not retire, but held his ground, and showed every intention of accepting battle. Learning from the peasantry that he had the whole of the 4th Corps in front of him, and might have to deal with nearly 20,000 men, the Spanish general halted, and refused to advance further. In so doing he was fulfilling the spirit of the instructions that had been sent him, for Cuesta and Wellesley had wished him to detain Sebastiani and keep in touch with him—not to attack him or to fight a pitched battle. They had taken it for granted that the Frenchman would receive early news of their own advance, and would already be in retreat before Venegas came up with him. But it was not till July 22, as we have already seen, that Victor and King Joseph obtained certain intelligence of the march of the allies upon Talavera. Until the orders for a retreat arrived from Madrid, the 4th Corps was kept in its old position at Madridejos, and courted rather than avoided an engagement with the army of La Mancha[694].

Venegas, after summoning his divisional generals to a council of war, refused to attack Sebastiani, and wisely, for his 23,000 men would certainly have been beaten by the 20,000 Frenchmen who still lay in front of him. From the nineteenth to the twenty-second the two armies faced each other across the upper Guadiana, each waiting for the other to move. Late on the twenty-third, however, Sebastiani received his orders to evacuate La Mancha, and to hasten to Toledo in order to join Victor[p. 567] and the King, in a combined assault upon Wellesley and Cuesta.

It was on the next day that Venegas committed the ruinous error which was to wreck the fate of the whole campaign. On the morning of the twenty-fourth the 4th Corps had disappeared from his front: instead of following closely in the rear of Sebastiani with all speed, and molesting his retreat, as his orders prescribed, he made no attempt to prevent the 4th Corps from moving off, nor did he execute that rapid flanking march on Aranjuez or Fuentedue?as which his instructions prescribed. He moved forward at a snail’s pace, having first sent off to Cuesta an argumentative letter, in which he begged for leave to direct his advance on Toledo instead of on the points which had been named in his orders. On the twenty-sixth he received an answer, in which his Commander-in-chief authorized him to make his own choice between the route by Aranjuez and that by Toledo.

Venegas had already committed the fatal error of letting Sebastiani slip away unmolested: he now hesitated between the idea of carrying out his own plan, and that of obeying Cuesta’s original orders, and after much hesitation sent his first division under General Lacy towards Toledo, while he himself, with the other four, marched by Tembleque upon Aranjuez. So slow and cautious was their advance that Lacy only arrived in front of Toledo on July 28—the day that the battle of Talavera was fought, while Venegas himself occupied Aranjuez twenty-four hours later, on the morning of the twenty-ninth. He had taken six days to cross the sixty miles of open rolling plain which lie between the Guadiana and the Tagus, though he had been absolutely unopposed by the enemy whom he had allowed to slip away from his front. Sebastiani had marched at the rate of twenty miles a day when he retired from Madridejos to Toledo, Venegas and Lacy followed at the rate of ten and twelve miles a day respectively. Yet the special duty imposed on the army of La Mancha had been to keep in touch with the 4th Corps. Further comment is hardly necessary.

On the morning of the day when Wellesley was assailed by the forces of Victor and King Joseph, General Lacy appeared[p. 568] in front of Toledo. The town was held by 3,000 men of Valence’s Polish division: it is practically impregnable against any attack from the south, presenting to that side a front of sheer cliff, overhanging the river, and accessible only by two fortified bridges. To make any impression on the place Lacy would have had to cross the Tagus at some other point, and then might have beset the comparatively weak northern front with considerable chances of success. But he contented himself with demonstrating against the bridges, and discharging some fruitless cannon-shot across the river. General Valence, the Governor of Toledo, reported to Jourdan that he was attacked, and his message, reaching the battle-field of Talavera after Victor’s second repulse, had a certain amount of influence on the action of King Joseph. The place was never for a moment in danger, as Lacy made no attempt to pass the Tagus in order to press his attack home.

On the following morning (July 29) Venegas reached the other great passage of the Tagus, at Aranjuez, with two of his divisions, and occupied the place after driving out a few French vedettes. He pressed his cavalry forward to the line of the Tajuna, and ere nightfall some of them had penetrated almost as far as Valdemoro, the village half way between Aranjuez and Madrid. No signs of any serious hostile force could be discovered, and secret friends in the capital sent notice that they were being held down by a very weak garrison, consisting of no more than a single French brigade and a handful of the King’s Spanish levies. There was everything to tempt Venegas to execute that rapid march upon the capital which had been prescribed in his original orders, but instead of doing so this wretched officer halted for eight whole days at Aranjuez [July 29 to August 5].

On the day after Talavera Jourdan and Joseph had not yet discovered the whereabouts of the main body of the army of La Mancha: but Lacy had made such a noisy demonstration in front of Toledo that they were inclined to believe that his chief must be close behind him. Accordingly the garrison of Toledo was reinforced by the missing brigade of Valence’s Polish division, and raised to the strength of 4,700 men. The King, with the rest of Sebastiani’s corps and his own Guards and[p. 569] reserves, marched to Santa Ollala, and on the next day [July 30] placed himself at Bargas, a few miles in rear of Toledo. In this position he would have been wholly unable to protect Madrid, if Venegas had pressed forward on that same morning from Aranjuez, for that place is actually nearer to the capital than the village at which Joseph had fixed his head quarters. The sloth displayed by the Spanish general was the only thing which preserved Madrid from capture. On August 1, apprised of the fact that the main body of the army of La Mancha was at Aranjuez and not before Toledo, Joseph transferred his army to Illescas, a point from which he would be able to attack Venegas in flank, if the latter should move forward. Only Milhaud’s division of dragoons was thrown forward to Valdemoro, on the direct road from Aranjuez to Madrid: it drove out of the village a regiment of Spanish horse, which reported to Venegas that there was now a heavy force in his front. For the next four days the King’s troops and the army of Venegas retained their respective positions, each waiting for the other to move. The Spaniard had realized that his chance of capturing Madrid had gone by, and remained in a state of indecision at Aranjuez. Joseph was waiting for definite news of the movements of Wellesley and Cuesta, before risking an attack on the army of La Mancha. He saw that it had abandoned the offensive, and did not wish to move off from his central position at Illescas till he was sure that Victor was not in need of any help. Yet he was so disturbed as to the general state of affairs that he sent orders to General Belliard at Madrid to evacuate all non-combatants and civilians on to Valladolid, and to prepare to shut himself up in the Retiro.

The doings of Victor, during the five days after he had separated from the King, require a more lengthy consideration. Left behind upon the Alberche with the 1st Corps, which the casualties of the battle had reduced to no more than 18,000 men, he felt himself in a perilous position: if the allies should advance, he could do no more than endeavour to retard their march on Madrid. Whether he could count on any further aid from the King and Sebastiani would depend on the wholly problematical movements of Venegas. Somewhat to his surprise Wellesley and Cuesta remained quiescent not only on the[p. 570] twenty-ninth but on the thirtieth of July. But an alarm now came from another quarter: it will be remembered that the enterprising Sir Robert Wilson with 4,000 men, partly Spaniards, partly Portuguese of the Lusitanian Legion, had moved parallel with Wellesley’s northern flank during the advance to Talavera. On the day of the battle he had ‘marched to the cannon’ as a good officer should, and had actually approached Cazalegas, at the back of the French army, in the course of the afternoon. Learning of the results of the fight, he had turned back to his old path upon the twenty-ninth, and had entered Escalona on the upper Alberche. At this place he was behind Victor’s flank, and lay only thirty-eight miles from Madrid. There was no French force between him and the capital, and if only his division had been a little stronger he would have been justified in making a raid upon the city, relying for aid upon the insurrection that would indubitably have broken out the moment that he presented himself before its gates.

It was reported to Victor on the thirtieth not only that Wilson was at Escalona, but also that he was at the head of a strong Portuguese division, estimated at 8,000 or 10,000 men. The Marshal determined that he could not venture to leave such a force upon his rear while the armies of Wellesley and Cuesta were in his front, and fell back ten miles to Maqueda on the high road to Madrid. On the following day, still uneasy as to his position, he retired still further, to Santa Cruz, and wrote to King Joseph that he might be forced to continue his retreat as far as Mostoles, almost in the suburbs of Madrid [Aug. 2]. He was so badly informed as to the movements of the allies, that he not only warned the King that Wilson was threatening Madrid, but assured him that the British army from Talavera had broken up from its cantonments and was advancing along the Alberche towards the capital[695]. Joseph, better instructed as to the actual situation of affairs, replied by assuring him that Wellesley and Cuesta were far more likely to be retreating on Almaraz than marching on Madrid, as they must have heard ere now of Soult’s advance on Plasencia. He ordered the[p. 571] Marshal to fall back no further, and to send a division to feel for Wilson at Escalona. On detaching Villatte to execute this reconnaissance [Aug. 5] Victor was surprised to find that Sir Robert’s little force had already evacuated its advanced position, and had retreated into the mountains. For the last four days indeed Victor had been fighting with shadows—for the British and Estremaduran armies had never passed the Alberche, while Wilson had absconded from Escalona on receiving from Wellesley the news that Soult had been heard of at the Puerto de Ba?os. In consequence of the needless march of the 1st Corps to Maqueda and Santa Cruz, the allied generals were able to withdraw unmolested, and even unobserved, from Talavera, and were far upon their way down the Tagus before their absence was suspected. The erratic movements of Victor may be excused in part by the uniform difficulty in obtaining accurate information which the French always experienced in Spain. But even when this allowance is made, it must be confessed that his operations do not tend to give us any very high idea of his strategical ability. He was clearly one of those generals, of the class denounced by Napoleon, qui se font des tableaux, who argue on insufficient data, and take a long time to be convinced of the error of their original hypothesis.

Neither Victor nor King Joseph, therefore, exercised any influence over the doings of Wellesley and Cuesta at Talavera between the 29th of July and the 3rd of August. The allies worked out their plans undisturbed by any interference on the part of the old enemies whom they had beaten on the battle day. Down to August 1 the British general had been unconvinced by the rumours of Soult’s approach, at the head of a large army, which were persistently arriving from the secret agents in the direction of Salamanca[696]. It was only on the evening of that day that he received news so precise, and so threatening, that he found himself forced to abandon for the moment any intention of pushing on towards Madrid, in consequence of the impending attack on the line of his communications[p. 572] with Portugal. It was announced to him that the vanguard of the French army from the north had actually entered Bejar on the twenty-ninth and was driving in the trifling force under the Marquis Del Reino, which Cuesta had sent to the Puerto de Ba?os.

Whatever might be the force at Soult’s disposal—and Wellesley was still under the delusion that it amounted at most to a single corps of 12,000 or 15,000 men—it was impossible to allow the French to establish themselves between the British army and Portugal. If they were at Bejar on the twenty-ninth they might easily reach Plasencia on the thirty-first. On receiving the news Cuesta, who had hitherto shown the greatest reluctance to divide his army, detached his 5th division under Bassecourt, with orders to set out at the greatest possible speed, and join the Marquis Del Reino. This move was tardy and useless, for it is four long marches from Talavera to Plasencia, so that Bassecourt must arrive too late to hold the defiles. If he found the French already established on the river Alagon, his 5,000 men would be utterly inadequate to ‘contain’ double or triple that number of Soult’s troops. As a matter of fact the enemy had entered Plasencia on the afternoon of August 1, before the Spanish division had even commenced its movement to the west[697].

On the morning of August 2 Wellesley and Cuesta held a long and stormy conference. The Captain-General proposed that Wellesley should detach half his force to assist Bassecourt, and stay with the remainder at Talavera, in order to support the Army of Estremadura against any renewed attack by Victor and King Joseph[698]. The English commander refused to divide[p. 573] his force—he had only 18,000 effectives even after Craufurd had joined him, and such a small body would not bear division. But he offered either to march against Soult with his entire host, or to remain at Talavera if his colleague preferred to set out for Plasencia with his main body. Cuesta chose the former alternative, and on the morning of the third Wellesley moved out with every available man, intending to attack the enemy at the earliest opportunity. He was still under the impression that he would have to deal with no more than a single French corps, and was confident of the result. His only fear was that Victor might descend upon Talavera in his absence, and that Cuesta might evacuate the place on being attacked. If this should happen, the English hospitals, in which there lay nearly 5,000 wounded, might fall into the hands of the enemy. On halting at Oropesa he sent back a note to O’Donoju, the chief of the staff of the Estremaduran army, begging him to send off westward all the British wounded who were in a condition to travel. He asked that country carts might be requisitioned for their assistance, if no transport could be spared by the Spanish troops[699].

Wellesley was setting out with 18,000 men to attack not the mere 15,000 men that he believed to be in his front, but three whole corps d’armée, with a strength of 50,000 sabres and bayonets. In his long career there were many dangerous crises, but this was perhaps the most perilous of all. If he had remained for a little longer in ignorance of the real situation, he might have found himself involved in a contest in which defeat was certain and destruction highly probable.

The real situation in his front was as follows. On receiving the dispatch from Madrid which permitted him to execute his projected march upon Plasencia, Soult had begun to concentrate his army [July 24]. Mortier and the 5th Corps were already in march for Salamanca in pursuance of earlier orders: they arrived in its neighbourhood the same day on which Foy brought the King’s orders to his chief. The 2nd Corps was already massed upon the Tormes, and ready to move the moment that it should receive the supply of artillery which had been so long upon its way from Madrid. Ney and the[p. 574] 6th Corps from Benavente and Astorga had far to come: they only reached Salamanca on July 31; if we remember that the distance from Astorga to the concentration point was no less than ninety miles we cease to wonder at their tardy arrival.

Soult had strict orders from the Emperor to march with his troops well closed up, and not to risk the danger of being caught with his corps strung out at distances which would permit of their being met and defeated in detail[700]. He was therefore entirely justified in refusing to move until the 6th Corps should be in supporting distance of the rest of his army, and the 2nd Corps should have received the cannon which were needed to replace the pieces that they had lost in Portugal. For this reason we must regard as unfounded all the vehement reproaches heaped upon him by Joseph and Jourdan during the acrimonious correspondence that followed upon the end of the campaign. It would have been wrong to start the 5th Corps upon its way to Plasencia till the 2nd Corps was ready to follow, and the much needed guns only came into Salamanca on the twenty-ninth, though their approach had been reported on the preceding day.

We cannot therefore blame Soult for sloth or slackness when we find that he started Mortier upon his way on July 27, and followed him with his own corps upon July 30, the day after the guns arrived, and the day before Ney and his troops were due to reach Salamanca from the north.

The order of march was as follows: the vanguard was composed of the whole corps of Mortier, nearly 17,000 strong[701], reinforced by three brigades of dragoons under Lahoussaye and Lorges with a strength of 2,000 sabres. The 2nd Corps followed; though it started three days later than the 5th it was gradually gaining ground on the vanguard all through the march, as it had no fighting to do or reconnaissances to execute.[p. 575] Hence it was only twenty-four hours behind Mortier in arriving at Plasencia. Its strength was 18,000 men, even after it had detached the brigades of dragoons to strengthen the vanguard, and placed five battalions at the disposal of General Kellermann[702]. During its stay at Zamora and Toro it had picked up a mass of convalescents and details, who had not taken part in its Galician campaign. The rear was formed by Ney’s troops, which started from Salamanca only one day behind the 2nd Corps. The infantry was not complete, as a brigade of 3,000 men was left behind on the Douro, to assist Kellermann in holding down the kingdom of Leon. Hence, even including a brigade of Lorges’ dragoons, the 6th Corps had only some 12,500 men on the march. The whole army, therefore, as it will be seen, was about 50,000 strong.

Just before he marched from Salamanca Soult had heard that Beresford’s Portuguese were commencing to show themselves in force in the direction of Almeida, while Del Parque’s small division at Ciudad Rodrigo was beginning to be reinforced by troops descending from the mountains of Galicia. Trusting that the danger from this quarter might not prove imminent, the Marshal left in observation of the allies only the remains of the force that Kellermann had brought back from the Asturias—the 5th division of dragoons and a few battalions of infantry, strengthened by the five battalions from the 2nd Corps and the one brigade detached from Ney. The whole did not amount to more than 9,000 or 10,000 men, scattered along the whole front from Astorga to Salamanca. It was clear that much was risked in this direction, for Beresford and Del Parque could concentrate over 20,000 troops for an attack on any point that they might select. But Soult was prepared to accept the chances of war in the Douro valley, rightly thinking that if he could crush Wellesley’s army on the Tagus any losses in the north could easily be repaired. It would matter little if the[p. 576] Spaniards and Portuguese occupied Salamanca, or even Valladolid, after the British had been destroyed.

Mortier, starting on July 27, on the road by Fuente Roble and Los Santos, made two marches without coming in touch with any enemy. It was only on the third day that he met at La Calzada the vedettes of the trifling force under the Marquis Del Reino which Cuesta had sent to hold the Puerto de Ba?os. After chasing them through Bejar, the Marshal came upon their supports drawn up in the pass [July 30]. Del Reino thought himself obliged to fight, though he had but four battalions with a total of 2,500 or 3,000 bayonets[703]. He was of course dislodged with ease by the overwhelming numbers which Mortier turned against him—the first division of the 5th Corps alone sufficed to drive him through the pass. Thereupon he retired down the Alagon, and after sending news of his defeat to Cuesta fell back to Almaraz, where he took up the bridge of boats and removed it to the southern bank of the Tagus.

Having cleared the passes upon the thirtieth, the 5th Corps advanced to Candelaria and Ba?os de Bejar upon the thirty-first, and entered Plasencia on the first of August. Here Mortier captured 334 of Wellesley’s sick, who had been left behind as being incapable of removal. On the preceding day the town had been full of British detachments: the place was the half-way house between Portugal and Talavera, and many commissaries, isolated officers going to or from the front, and details marching to join their corps, had been collected there. Captain Pattison, the senior officer present, withdrew to Zarza, with every man that could march, when he heard of Mortier’s[p. 577] approach, taking with him a convoy which had recently arrived from Abrantes. But he was obliged to leave behind him a considerable amount of corn, just collected from the Vera, which had been destined for Wellesley’s army. The whole civil population of Plasencia fled to the hills, in obedience to an order of the local Junta, and the British soldiers in the hospital were the only living beings whom the French vanguard found in the city. The men of the 5th Corps plundered the deserted houses, as was but natural, but behaved with much humanity to the captured invalids[704].

After seizing Plasencia Mortier halted for a day, in obedience to Soult’s orders, that he might allow the 2nd Corps to close up before he pressed in any further towards Wellesley. The Duke of Dalmatia was determined to run no risks, when dealing with an adversary so enterprising as his old enemy of Oporto. On August 2 he himself and the leading divisions of his corps reached Plasencia: the rest were close behind. On the same afternoon, therefore, the advance could be resumed, and Mortier set out on the high road towards Almaraz and Talavera, having eight regiments of horse—3,000 men—in his front. He slept that night at Malpartida, seven miles in advance of Plasencia, and moved on next morning to the line of the Tietar and the village of Toril. One of his reconnoitring parties approached the bridge of Almaraz and found it broken: another reached Navalmoral. He was now drawing very close to Wellesley, who had encamped that day at Oropesa, and was only thirty miles away: indeed the British and the French cavalry came in contact that evening in front of Navalmoral.

On August 3, by a curious coincidence, each Commander-in-chief was at last informed of his adversary’s strength and intentions by a captured dispatch. A Spanish messenger was arrested by Soult’s cavalry, while bearing a letter from Wellesley to General Erskine dated August 1. In this document there was an account of the battle of Talavera, which had[p. 578] hitherto been unknown to Soult. But the most important clause of it was a request to Erskine to find out whether the rumours reporting the advance of 12,000 French towards the Puerto de Ba?os were correct. The Duke of Dalmatia thus discovered that his adversary, only two days before, was grossly underrating the numbers of the army that was marching against his rear. He was led on to hope that Wellesley would presently advance against him with inferior numbers, and court destruction by attacking the united 2nd and 5th Corps[705].

This indeed might have come to pass had not the allies on the same day become possessed of a French dispatch which revealed to them the real situation of affairs. Some guerrillas in the neighbourhood of Avila intercepted a friar, who was an agent of King Joseph, and was bearing a letter from him to Soult. They brought the paper to Cuesta on August 3: it contained not only an account of the King’s plans and projects, but orders for the Marshal, which mentioned Ney and the 6th Corps, and showed that the force marching on Plasencia was at least double the strength that Wellesley had expected[706]. This letter Cuesta sent on to his colleague with laudable promptness; it reached the British commander in time to save him from taking the irreparable step of marching from Oropesa to Navalmoral, where the vanguard of Mortier’s cavalry had just been met by the vedettes of Cotton’s light horse. Wellesley had actually written to Bassecourt to bid him halt at Centinello till he himself should arrive, and then to join him in an attack on the French[707], when he was handed the intercepted letter which showed that Soult had at least 30,000 men in hand.

[p. 579]

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