THE END OF THE TALAVERA CAMPAIGN: ALMONACID

While King Joseph’s orders were being carried out, Wellesley and Cuesta found themselves, to their great surprise, unmolested by any hostile force. The army which had been in their front at Almaraz and Arzobispo disappeared on August 10, leaving only small detachments to watch the northern bank of the Tagus. It was soon reported to Wellesley that Victor had passed away towards Toledo, and that another corps—or perhaps two[729]—had retired to Plasencia. The object of this move however had to be determined, before the British general could take corresponding measures. Was Soult about to invade Portugal by way of Coria and Castello Branco, or was he merely taking up cantonments, from which he could observe the British and Estremaduran armies, while the King and Victor moved off against Venegas? On the whole Wellesley was inclined to believe that the latter hypothesis was the correct one, and that the enemy was about to ‘refuse’ his right wing, and to use his left for offensive action against the army of La Mancha. As was generally the case, his prescience was not at fault, and he had exactly divined the King’s intentions[730]. He had nevertheless to guard against the possibility that the other alternative might[p. 600] prove to be correct, and that Central Portugal was in danger—as indeed it would have been if Joseph had allowed Soult to carry out his original plan.

Wellesley resolved therefore to maintain his present position at Jaraicejo and Mirabete till he should be certain as to the intentions of the French. If they were really about to invade Portugal, he would march at once for Abrantes. If not, he would keep his ground, for by holding the passage at Almaraz he was threatening the French centre, and detaining in his front troops who would otherwise be free to attack the Spaniards either in La Mancha or in Leon.

Meanwhile measures had to be taken to provide a detaining force in front of Soult, lest an attack on Portugal should turn out to be in progress. This force was provided by bringing down Beresford and the Portuguese field army to Zarza and Alcantara, and sending up to their aid the British reinforcements which had landed at Lisbon during the month of July. Beresford, it will be remembered, had received orders at the commencement of the campaign directing him to concentrate his army behind Almeida, to link his operations with those of Del Parque and the Spanish force at Ciudad Rodrigo, but at the same time to be ready to transfer himself either northward or southward if his presence should be required on the Douro or the Tagus. In accordance with these instructions Beresford had collected thirty-two battalions of regular infantry, with one more from the Lusitanian Legion, and the University Volunteers of Coimbra, as also five squadrons from various cavalry regiments, and four batteries of artillery—a force of 18,000 men in all[731]. On July 31 he had crossed the Spanish frontier, and lay at San Felices and Villa de Cervo, near Ciudad Rodrigo. There he heard of Soult’s march from Salamanca towards Plasencia, and very properly made up his mind to bring his army down to Estremadura by a line parallel to that which the French had taken. He crossed the Sierra de Gata by the rough pass of Perales, and on August 12 fixed his head quarters at Moraleja,[p. 601] near Coria, on the southern slope of the mountains. His cavalry held Coria, while his right wing was in touch with the English brigades from Lisbon, which had just reached Zarza la Mayor. These were the seven battalions of Lightburne and Catlin Craufurd[732], which Wellesley had vainly hoped to receive in time for Talavera. They numbered 4,500 bayonets, and had with them one battery of British artillery.

Thus even before Soult reached Plasencia, there was an army of 18,000 Portuguese and 4,500 British on the lower Tietar, ready to act as a detaining force and to retard the Marshal’s advance, if he should make a serious attempt to invade Portugal. On Aug. 15, by Wellesley’s orders, Beresford left Moraleja and transferred his whole army to Zarza, in order to be able to fall back with perfect security on Castello Branco should circumstances so require. If he had remained at Moraleja he might have been cut off from the high-road to Abrantes by a sudden movement of the enemy on Coria[733].

Wellesley now felt comparatively safe, so far as matters strategical were concerned. If the enemy, contrary to his expectation, should march into Portugal, he could join Beresford at Abrantes, and stand at bay with some 24,000 British and 18,000 Portuguese regulars, a force sufficient to check the 30,000 men who was the utmost force that Soult could bring against him after Ney’s departure. Meanwhile, till the Marshal should move, he retained his old position at Mirabete and Jaraicejo. Though the French showed no signs of activity in his front, the weary fortnight during which the British army lay in position behind the Tagus were perhaps the most trying time that Wellesley spent during his first campaign in Spain. It was a period of absolute starvation for man and beast, and the army was going to pieces under his eyes. Ever since the British had arrived in front of Talavera on July 22, rations as we have already seen had been scanty and irregular. But the fourteen days spent at Deleytosa and Jaraicejo were even worse than those which had preceded them. The stores collected at Plasencia had been captured by the French: those gathered at Abrantes were so far distant that they could not be[p. 602] drawn upon, now that the high-road north of the Tagus had been cut by the enemy. The army had to live miserably on what it could wring out of the country-side, which Victor two months before had stripped to the very bones. Wellesley had hoped to be fed by the Spanish Government, when he threw up his line of communication with Abrantes, and took up that with Badajoz. But the Spanish Government was a broken reed on which to lean: if it fed its own armies most imperfectly, it was hardly to be expected that it would deal more liberally with its allies. The trifling stores brought from Talavera had long been exhausted: the country-side had been eaten bare: from the South very little could be procured. The Spanish Commissary-General Lozano de Torres[734] occasionally sent up a small consignment of flour from Caceres and Truxillo, but it did not suffice to give the army even half-rations. It was to no purpose that at Abrantes provisions abounded at this moment, for there was no means of getting them forward from Portugal[735]. The enemy lay between the army and its base dép?t, and there was no transport available to bring up the food by the circuitous route of Villa Velha and Portalegre. Even so early as August 8 Wellesley began to write that ‘a starving army is actually worse than none. The soldiers lose their discipline and their spirit. They plunder in the very presence of their officers. The officers are discontented, and almost as bad as the men. With the army that a fortnight ago beat double their numbers, I should now hesitate to meet a French corps of half that strength.’ On the eleventh he wrote to warn Cuesta that unless he was provided with food of some sort he should remain no longer in his advanced position, but fall back towards Badajoz, whatever might be the consequences. ‘It is impossible,’ he[p. 603] stated, ‘for me to remain any longer in a country in which no arrangement has been made for the supply of provisions to the troops, and in which all the provisions that are either found in the country or are sent from Seville (as I have been informed for the use of the British army) are applied solely and exclusively to the use of the Spanish troops[736].’

The Junta sent Wellesley a letter of high-flown praise for his doings at Talavera, a present of horses, and a commission as Captain-General in their army. But food they did not send in any sufficient quantities. All the convoys that came up from Andalusia were made over to Cuesta’s army, and the Estremaduran districts which were supposed to be allotted for the sustenance of the British had little or nothing to give. When we remember that in June Victor had described this same region as absolutely exhausted and incapable of furnishing the 1st Corps with even five days’ supplies, we shall not wonder that Wellesley’s troops starved there in August. It was impossible however to convince the British general that the suffering of his men were the result of Spanish penury rather than of Spanish negligence and bad faith. There was much just foundation for his complaints, for the Junta, after so many promises, had sent him no train from Andalusia. Moreover detachments and marauding bands from Cuesta’s army frequently intercepted the small supplies of food which British foraging parties were able to procure[737]. When taxed with their misdoings, Cuesta replied that Wellesley’s men had not unfrequently seized and plundered his own convoys, which was undoubtedly true[738], and that the British soldiers were enjoying such abundance that he had been told that some of them were actually selling their bread-ration to the Spaniards because they had no need of it—which was most certainly false[739].

That Wellesley was using no exaggerated terms, when he[p. 604] declared that his army was literally perishing for want of food, is proved by the narratives of a score of British officers who were present in the Talavera campaign[740]. That his ultimate retreat was caused by nothing but the necessity of saving his men is perfectly clear. The strategical advantage of maintaining the position behind the Almaraz passage was so evident, and the political disadvantages of withdrawing were so obvious, that a man of Wellesley’s keen insight into the facts of war must have desired to hold on as long as was possible. Unless Soult were actually attacking Portugal, Mirabete and Jaraicejo afforded the best ground that could be selected for ‘containing’ and imposing upon the enemy. So long as the British army lay there it was practically unassailable from the front, while it was admirably placed for the purpose of making an irruption into the midst of the enemy’s lines, if he should disperse his corps in search of food, or detach large forces towards La Mancha or Leon. ‘If I could only have fed,’ wrote Wellesley, ‘I could, after some time, have struck a brilliant blow either upon Soult at Plasencia, or upon Mortier in the centre[741]. It is clear that by a dash across the Almaraz passage he could have fallen upon either of these forces, and assailed it with good hope of success before it could be succoured by the other. But such a venture was impossible to an army which had lost one-third of its cavalry horses from starvation within three weeks, and whose battalions were brought so low by physical exhaustion that few of them could be relied upon to march ten miles in a day.

Wellesley declared that, having once linked his fortunes to those of the Spanish army of Estremadura, he had considered himself bound to co-operate with it as long as was humanly speaking possible, and implicit credit may be given to his assertion[742]. The limit of physical endurance, however, was reached[p. 605] on August 20, the day on which he was finally compelled to commence his retreat in the direction of Truxillo and Badajoz.

Before that day arrived one event occurred which seemed to make useful co-operation between the two allied armies more feasible than it had been at any date since the campaign began. On the night of August 12-13 Cuesta, whose health had been steadily growing worse since the injuries that he had received at Medellin, was disabled by a paralytic stroke which deprived him of the use of one of his legs. He resigned on the following day, and was succeeded by his second-in-command Eguia, an officer whose conciliatory manners and mild disposition promised to make communication between the head quarters of the two allied armies comparatively friendly. Cuesta, after receiving from the Central Junta a letter of recall couched in the most flattering terms, retired to the baths of Alhama. When he had somewhat recovered his strength, he turned his energies to writing a long vindication of his whole conduct in 1809, and then engaged in a furious controversy with Venegas, concerning the latter’s disobedience of orders in July. Engaged in these harmless pursuits he ceased to be a source of danger to his country. Unfortunately his removal from the theatre of war was not of such benefit to the common cause as might have been hoped. The Junta found ere long a general just as rash and incapable, if not quite so old, to whom to entrust the command of its largest army. Juan Carlos Areizaga, the vanquished of Oca?a, was entirely worthy to be the spiritual heir of Cuesta’s policy.

But for the present General Eguia was for some weeks in charge of the Army of Estremadura. His first idea was to persuade Wellesley to postpone his departure, and to retain his advanced position. He urged this request upon his colleague with more zeal than tact, and to no good effect. By using in one of his dispatches the phrase that other considerations besides the want of food must be determining the movements of the British army[743], he roused Wellesley’s wrath. The famine was[p. 606] so real that any insinuation that it was a mere pretext for retreat was certainly calculated to wound the general whose troops were perishing before his eyes. Expressing deep indignation[744] Wellesley refused to listen to a proposal that he should divide with the Estremadurans the stores of food at Truxillo—which indeed were hopelessly inadequate for the sustenance of two armies. Nor would he even accept an offer made him on August 20 by Lorenzo Calvo de Rozas, who came in haste from the Central Junta, to the effect that he might appropriate the whole of the magazine at Truxillo, leaving the Spanish army to provide for itself from other resources. The proposal was probably honest and genuine, but Wellesley knew the dilatory habits of the Junta so well that he was convinced that the dép?t made over to him would never be properly replenished, and would soon run dry[745].

Marching therefore by short stages, for the exhaustion of his troops made rapid progress impossible[746], he started from Jaraicejo on August 20, and moved by Truxillo and Miajadas to the valley of the Guadiana, where he cantoned the army about[p. 607] Merida, Montijo, and Badajoz. The British head quarters were fixed at the last-named place from September 3 till December 27, 1809, and, excepting for some small changes in detail, the army retained the position which it had now taken up for nearly four months. In the fertile region along the Guadiana the troops were fed without much trouble: but they did not recover the health that they had lost in the time of starvation among the barren hills behind Arzobispo and Mirabete. In spite of the junction of reinforcements and the return of convalescents to the ranks, the army could never show more than from 23,000 to 25,000 men under arms during the autumn months. When the rainy season began, the intermittent ague which was known to the British as ‘Guadiana fever’ was never absent: it did not often kill, but it disabled men by the thousand, and it was not till Wellesley moved back into Portugal at midwinter that the regiments recovered their normal health.

If he had been free to follow his personal inclination, it is probable that Wellesley would have moved back into Portugal in September. But strategical and political reasons made this impossible. While based on Badajoz he still threatened the French hold on the valley of the Tagus, and compelled the King to keep two army corps at least in his front. Since it was always possible that he might return to Almaraz and threaten Madrid, a containing force had to be told off against him. He was also in a position from which he could easily sally out to check raids upon Portugal: from Badajoz he could either join Beresford in a few marches, or fall by Alcantara upon the flank of any detachment that Soult might lead forward in the direction of Castello Branco and Abrantes. He was convinced that no such raids would be made, but their possibility had to be taken into consideration, and while lying in his present cantonments he was well placed for frustrating them. But political considerations were even more powerful than military considerations in chaining him to Badajoz. The Junta at Seville were most anxious to keep the British army in their front: they were convinced that, if it retired on Portugal, Joseph and Soult would at once organize an invasion of Andalusia, and they were well aware that Eguia and Venegas would not suffice to hold back the 70,000 men who might then be directed against[p. 608] them. In the dispatches which the Marquis Wellesley (who had superseded Frere at Seville on August 11) kept sending to his brother, the main fact conveyed was the absolute despair with which the Spanish Government viewed the prospect of the removal of their allies towards Portugal. ‘Don Martin de Garay [the secretary to the Junta] declared to me with expressions of the deepest sorrow and terror’—wrote the Marquis on August 22—‘that if your army should quit Spain, at this critical moment, inevitable and immediate ruin must ensue to his government, to whatever provinces remain under its authority, to the cause of Spain itself, and to every interest connected with the alliance so happily established between Great Britain and the Spanish nation.... No argument produced the effect of diminishing the urgency of his entreaties, and I have ascertained that his sensations are in no degree more powerful than those of the Government and of every description of people within this city and its vicinity.... Viewing the painful consequences that would follow your retreat into Portugal, I feel it my duty to submit to your consideration the possibility of adopting some intermediate plan, which may have some of the advantages of retreat into Portugal, without occasioning alarm in Spain, and so endangering the foundations of the alliance between that country and Great Britain[747].’

A stay at Badajoz was obviously the only ‘intermediate plan’ that was worth taking into consideration; and considering the urgency of his brother’s representations Wellesley could not refuse to halt within the Spanish border. The military advantages of the position that he had now taken up were not inconsiderable, and no profit that could have been got by returning into Portugal could have counterbalanced the loss of the Spanish alliance. In the valley of the Central Guadiana, therefore, the British army remained cantoned. But no arguments that the Junta could produce availed to persuade Wellesley to engage in another campaign with a Spanish colleague at his side. Not even when the tempting offer was made that Albuquerque should be given command of half of the Estremaduran army, and placed under his orders, would he consent to pledge himself to offensive operations.

[p. 609]

Meanwhile, dispatches had arrived from England, containing the official news that the Austrian War was at an end: rumours to that effect had already reached the British camps from French sources before Wellesley left Oropesa[748]. The whole character of the continental struggle was changed by the fact that the Emperor had once more the power to send reinforcements to Spain, or even to go there himself. The situation required further consideration, and the British Government resolved to place upon Wellesley’s shoulders the all-important task of deciding whether the struggle in the Peninsula could still be maintained, and how (in the event of his giving an affirmative answer) it could best be carried on[749]. He replied that in the existing state of affairs, and considering the bad state of the Spanish armies, neither 30,000 nor even 40,000 British troops would suffice to maintain Andalusia against the unlimited numbers of French whom the Emperor could now send across the Pyrenees. But he held that Portugal might be defended with success, if the Portuguese army and militia could be com[p. 610]pleted to their full strength, and the country well organized for resistance. It was probable that the borders of Portugal could not be maintained; ‘the whole country is frontier, and it would be difficult to prevent the enemy from penetrating by some point or other.’ He would have therefore ‘to confine himself to preserving what is most important,—the capital.’ But this he was prepared to undertake, and strongly advised the ministry to make no attempt to defend both Andalusia and Portugal, but to leave the Junta to their own vain devices, and to make sure of Lisbon[750].

Thus, in September 1809 Wellesley enunciated with great clearness the policy that he was about to employ in the next year. The lines of Torres Vedras are already hovering before his imagination, and after a flying visit to Lisbon in October they took definite shape in his ‘Memorandum for Colonel Fletcher’ of the twentieth of that month. In that document the whole project for defending the Portuguese capital by a series of concentric fortifications is set forth, and the modifications which it afterwards suffered were only in matters of detail. In short the Lines which were to check Masséna had been thought out in the British general’s provident mind exactly twelve months before the French army appeared in front of them.

In following the fortunes of Wellesley we have now got far beyond the point to which we have conducted the general history of the Talavera campaign. It is time to turn back to the movements of Soult and King Joseph, and to explain the reasons which made it possible for the British army to remain unmolested at Jaraicejo and Mirabete till August 20, and then to retire to Merida and Badajoz without imperilling the safety of their Estremaduran allies.

The King, as we have already seen, had made up his mind that the all-important point, at this stage of the campaign, was to make an end of the army of Venegas, and to relieve Madrid[p. 611] from danger. He had therefore called Victor towards Toledo, and directed Mortier to relieve the divisions of the 1st Corps which lay at Talavera with troops from the 5th Corps. The result of ............