MASSéNA AT SANTAREM. THE DEADLOCK ON THE LOWER TAGUS. DECEMBER 1810-JANUARY 1811
On the 18th of November, 1810, Masséna had completed the movement to the rear which he had commenced on the 14th. His army no longer threatened the Lines of Torres Vedras: he had abandoned the offensive for the defensive. Concentrated in the triangle Santarem-Punhete-Thomar, with his three corps so disposed that a march of twenty miles would suffice to concentrate everything save outlying detachments, he waited to see whether his enemy would dare to attack him; for he still hoped for a battle in the open field, and was prepared to accept its chances. At Bussaco, so he reasoned, his defeat had been the result of an over-bold attack on a strong position. The event might go otherwise if he threw the responsibility of the offensive on Wellington. He had secured for himself an advantageous fighting-ground: his left flank was protected by the formidable entrenchments around Santarem; his front was covered by the rain-sodden valley of the Rio Mayor, which during the winter season could be crossed only at a few well-known points. His right wing could not be turned, unless his adversary were ready to push a great force over villainous roads towards Alcanhede and the upper course of the Rio Mayor. And if Wellington should risk a large detachment in this direction, it might be possible to burst out from Santarem, against the containing force which he would be compelled to leave on the banks of the Tagus, about Cartaxo, and to beat it back towards the Lines—a movement which would almost certainly bring back the turning column from the North. For the English general could not dare to leave Lisbon exposed to the chances of a sudden blow, when there was little but Portuguese militia left to occupy[p. 2] the long chain of defensive works from Alhandra to Torres Vedras. For some weeks after his retreat to his new position at Santarem, Masséna lived in hopes that Wellington would either deliver an attack on his well-protected front, or undertake the dangerous turning movement towards his left.
No such chance was granted him. His adversary had weighed all the arguments for and against the offensive, and had made up his mind to rely rather on his old weapon—starvation—than on force. In several of his December dispatches he sums up the situation with perfect clearness; on the 2nd he wrote to Lord Liverpool, ‘It would still be impossible to make any movement of importance upon the right flank of the enemy’s position at Santarem without exposing some divisions of troops to be insulated and cut off. The enemy having concentrated their army about Torres Novas, &c., I do not propose to make any movement by which I incur the risk of involving the army in a general action, on ground less advantageous than that which I had fixed upon to bring this contest to an issue [i. e. the Lines]. The enemy can be relieved from the difficulties of their situation only by the occurrence of some misfortune to the allied army, and I should forward their views by placing the fate of the campaign on the result of a general action on ground chosen by them, and not on that selected by me. I therefore propose to continue the operation of light detachments on their flanks and rear, to confine them as much as possible, but to engage in no serious affair on ground on which the result can be at all doubtful[1].’ At the end of the month he simply restates his decision: ‘Having such an enemy to contend with, and knowing (as I do) that there is no army in the Peninsula capable of contending with the enemy, excepting that under my command; that there are no means of replacing any large losses I might sustain; and that any success acquired by a large sacrifice of men would be followed by disastrous consequence to the cause of the allies, I have determined to persevere in the system which has hitherto saved all, and which will, I hope, end in the defeat of the enemy[2].’
[p. 3]Accordingly Wellington’s main army was kept for the three winter months of December, January, and February almost precisely on the same ground on which it had been placed in the last week of November. The three British cavalry brigades formed a line in front of the whole, reaching from Porto de Mugem on the Tagus to S?o Jo?o de Ribiera on the upper Rio Mayor[3]. The infantry divisions (save the 2nd) were arranged in successive lines of cantonment behind them, watching the course of the Rio Mayor, while the reserves had retired as far as the Lines of Torres Vedras. Practically the whole force could be concentrated in a single march—or a march and a half at most—in case Masséna should take the improbable—but still conceivable—step of sallying out from Santarem to resume the offensive. When the first French reinforcements began to come up—about the New Year of 1810-11—such a sally seemed to Wellington quite worth guarding against[4]. The disposition of the infantry was as follows: On the right, near the Tagus, lay the Light Division, immediately in front of Santarem, quartered in Valle and other villages. On the left the front line was formed by Pack’s Portuguese, who lay at Almoster, on heights overlooking the middle course of the Rio Mayor. In support of the Light Division, but five miles to the rear, at Cartaxo and other places, was the large and powerful 1st Division, 7,000 bayonets. The 4th Division lay at an equal distance behind the 1st, at Azambuja and Aveiras da Cima. Behind Pack, on the inland or Leiria road, Picton and his 3rd Division were placed at Alcoentre. Their support was the 5th Division at Torres Vedras in the old Lines, seventeen miles to the rear, from which a circuitous road led to Alcoentre. Finally the newly-formed 6th Division was placed at the other end of the Lines, but just outside them, at Alemquer and Arruda, with Le Cor’s Portuguese division immediately behind, at Alhandra.
In all the main army consisted of about 48,000 men of all[p. 4] arms; but this did not compose the whole of Wellington’s available resources. He had transferred a considerable detachment to the southern bank of the Tagus, to protect the Alemtejo against any possible descent by the French. It will be remembered that as early as the beginning of November[5] he had sent across the river Fane’s Portuguese cavalry and a battalion of Ca?adores, who were directed to watch the road along the further bank, to prevent any trifling force of French from crossing in search of provisions, and to keep open the communications with Abrantes. As long as Masséna was threatening the Lines of Torres Vedras, there was no danger that he would throw anything more than a raiding party across the Tagus; he would want every man for the great assault. But when the Marshal gave up the offensive and retired to Santarem, the aspect of affairs was changed; it was quite possible that, with his army in a state of semi-starvation, he might venture to send a considerable detachment over the river, to gather the food which was so necessary to him. Nor was it unlikely that he might have a still more cogent reason for invading the Alemtejo. If, as Wellington thought probable[6], the army of Andalusia were to be ordered up to assist the army of Portugal, it would be of great importance for the latter to possess a footing on the left bank of the Tagus, as the communication with Soult’s troops must certainly be made in this direction. Accordingly there was good reason for securing the line of the river, and for cooping up Masséna in his limited sphere on its western bank. On the 19th-20th of November, Hill and the 2nd Division, attended as usual by Hamilton’s two Portuguese brigades, and with the 13th Light Dragoons attached, crossed the Tagus in boats a little to the north of Salvaterra, to reinforce Fane’s detachment. This was a serious force—10,000 men—which Wellington could ill spare, and he made elaborate arrangements to enable it to return in haste, in the event of Masséna’s once more taking the offensive on the western bank of the Tagus. The flotilla of[p. 5] gunboats and river craft, which had been guarding the river, was to be kept ready at Alhandra to bring back the 2nd Division, at the first alarm of a movement of the French from Santarem. Meanwhile Hill moved up the river and established his head quarters at Chamusca, a little north of Santarem, from which point he could both observe the main body of the French and impede any attempt that they might make to cross the river, and also could keep in touch with Abrantes, and reinforce it, supposing that Masséna showed any signs of molesting it. The British brigades of the 2nd Division were distributed along the river, William Stewart’s at Pinheiros and Tramagal most to the north, Hoghton’s at Chamusca, Lumley’s at Almeirim, exactly facing Santarem. Hamilton’s two Portuguese brigades continued the line southward, Fonseca’s brigade at Mugem, Campbell’s at Salvaterra. Fane’s four regiments of Portuguese cavalry, and the British 13th Light Dragoons, were strung out by squadrons along the whole front from the neighbourhood of Abrantes to Almeirim, patrolling the river bank with unceasing care[7].
On the 29th of November Hill was disabled by a severe attack of fever, and the control of all the troops beyond the Tagus devolved on his senior brigadier, William Stewart. Wellington only allowed this hard-fighting but somewhat too venturesome officer to retain his very responsible command for a few weeks. Troubled by Stewart’s constant requests to be allowed to make offensive movements against the French, which did not enter into his own plans[8], and dreading the consequences of his enterprise, the Commander-in-Chief superseded him, by sending over Beresford to take the charge of all the forces on the Alemtejo bank of the Tagus (December 30). He would have preferred to give the duty to Hill, who had in the preceding summer carried out a similar task with complete success, while he watched Reynier from Castello Branco[9]. But Hill’s fever[p. 6] lingered on for many weeks, and when he was convalescent the medical men insisted that he must return to England for change of air. This he did in February, and we miss his familiar name in the records of the Peninsular War for a space of three months, till his reappearance at the front in May.
Beresford therefore began, with the New Year, to exercise a semi-independent command over the detached force beyond the Tagus, which he was to retain for nearly six months. The experiment of giving him this responsible duty was not altogether a happy one; and after his unsuccessful operations in Estremadura, and his ill-fought victory at Albuera, Wellington withdrew him to other duties in June, and once more handed over the troops south of the Tagus to the cautious yet capable hands of Hill.
The main force, meanwhile, faced the front of Masséna’s army; Beresford’s detachment observed its left flank along the Tagus. But this was not all; Wellington had also taken his precautions to cast around the rear of the irregular parallelogram held by the French a screen of light troops, which effectually cut their communications with Spain, and restricted, though they could not altogether hinder, their marauding raids in search of provisions. This screen was weakest beyond Abrantes, on the line of the Zezere; but here the land was barren, and the enemy had little or nothing to gain by plundering excursions. The Castello Branco country was only guarded by its own Ordenan?a levy, which was trifling in force, as the whole ‘corregedoria’ from the Zezere to the Elga had only 40,000 souls, and it had sent its two militia regiments within the Lisbon lines. But, save in the small upland plain about Castello Branco itself, there was practically neither population nor tillage. The less barren and deserted mountain land between the Zezere and the Mondego was much more worth plundering, and was protected by the militia brigade of John Wilson, who lay at Espinhal on the Thomar-Coimbra road, with a force of four battalions, which ought to have numbered 3,000 men, but often shrank down to 1,500. For the militiamen, unpaid and ill-fed, deserted freely during the winter season, and as their homes lay far northward, by the Douro, it was not easy to gather them back to their colours. But Wilson had always a sufficient nucleus about him[p. 7] to check any marauding party that fell short of a regiment, and was a real restraint on the foragers of the 6th Corps, when they pushed out from Ourem or Thomar to gather food. He was only once seriously engaged, when, on December 23rd, General Marcognet, with two battalions and a cavalry regiment, came up against him, drove him out of Espinhal after some skirmishing, and pushed a reconnaissance as far as the Mondego, of which we shall hear in its due place.
Beyond Wilson to the west, the line of observation was taken up by Trant’s militia brigade, which lay at Coimbra, to which town many of its fugitive inhabitants had by this time returned. He had a larger force than Wilson—seven militia regiments, whose strength varied from day to day but seldom fell below 3,000 men. With this irregular force he watched the line of the lower Mondego, keeping pickets out some way to the south of the river, as far as Louri?al and Redinha. They were only once driven in, when on Dec. 6th-8th one of Montbrun’s dragoon regiments pushed up the high road, and verified the fact that all the passages of the lower Mondego, including the bridge of Coimbra, were guarded.
The last link in the chain of detachments which Wellington had cast around the French was the garrison of the sea-girt fortress of Peniche, half-way between Lisbon and the mouth of the Mondego. It was held by the dép?ts of several infantry regiments of the regular army, under General Blunt of the Portuguese service, not by any single organized unit. But there were some 2,000 or 3,000 recruits, more or less trained, in the place, and the enterprising Major Fenwick, whom Blunt had put in charge of his outpost-line, kept large pickets out in the direction of Caldas and Obidos, which frequently came in contact with the raiding parties of the 8th Corps, and did them much harm. Fenwick was mortally wounded in action near Obidos on Dec. 4th[10], but the forward position of these outposts of the Peniche garrison was maintained, and the French could never forage in the coast-land for a radius of some[p. 8] fifteen miles around that fortress, though they moved as they pleased about Leiria and the deserted abbeys of Batalha and Alcoba?a. The Portuguese outposts at Caldas were in close and regular touch with Anson’s cavalry pickets from S?o Jo?o de Ribiera on the Rio Mayor.
It will be seen therefore that the limited space in which Masséna’s army could seek its living was a parallelogram, bounded by the Tagus on the south, the lower Zezere on the east, the Rio Mayor and the Alcoa (the river of Alcoba?a) on the west, and on the north by an irregular line drawn from Leiria through Pombal to Caba?os near the Zezere. Outside these limits food could only be got by large detachments, moving with all military precautions, and obliged to keep up a constant running fight with the Portuguese militia. The profit from such expeditions, whose march was necessarily very slow, was so small that Masséna sent out very few of them, since the peasantry got off with their flocks into the hills, whenever the first skirmishing shots along the high road were heard. The sustenance of the French was mainly obtained by harrying and re-harrying the area bounded by the limits stated above, where they could work their will without meeting with any resistance. There was very little change in the cantonments of Masséna’s army during the three months of their stay between the Tagus and the Zezere. Of the 2nd Corps both divisions were in the Santarem fortifications, holding the town and the banks of the Rio Mayor to the west of it. Close in touch with the 2nd Corps came the 8th, with Clausel’s division in front line from Tremes to Alcanhede and Abrah?o, and Solignac’s in second line at Torres Novas, Pernes, and the adjacent villages. Both corps had their cavalry brigades out in front of them, along the line of the Rio Mayor. Ney and the 6th Corps formed the general reserve of the army, having Mermet’s division at Thomar (the Marshal’s head quarters), and Marchand’s at Goleg?o near the Tagus; Loison’s, the third division of the corps, was detached on the Zezere, guarding the bridge which had been established across that river at Punhete, and watching the garrison of Abrantes. Its front post was at Montalv?o beyond the Zezere, only five miles from the Portuguese fortress; its remaining battalions were ranged along the river from Punhete as far north as Dornes. Montbrun and[p. 9] the cavalry reserve (less certain squadrons lent to Loison), lay at Ch?o-de-Ma?ans on the northern skirts of the plain of Thomar; they had one infantry regiment (lent by Ney) to support them, at Caba?os, and their main duty was to watch and restrain Trant and Wilson, with whose advanced posts they were always bickering.
The situation of the French army was remarkably compact: Ney’s division at Goleg?o was only one long march (eighteen miles) behind Reynier; his second division at Thomar was less than two marches (twenty-six miles) behind Junot. Only Loison could not have been brought up at short notice, supposing that Wellington had attacked the line of the Rio Mayor. If, on the other hand, an Anglo-Portuguese force had debouched from Abrantes to attack Loison—no impossible plan, and one that William Stewart had strenuously urged Wellington to adopt—the division at Punhete could have been reinforced from Goleg?o and Thomar in one march, since the former of these places is about thirteen miles from the Zezere, and the latter not more than ten.
Masséna’s dispositions, as can be seen at a glance, were purely defensive. They could not be otherwise, when his army had dwindled down by the beginning of December to 45,000 efficient sabres and bayonets, while his hospitals were encumbered by 8,000 or 9,000 sick. All that he aspired to do was to hold on in the Santarem-Rio Mayor position, pinning his adversary down to the neighbourhood of Lisbon, till he should be restored to the power of taking the offensive once more, by the arrival of reinforcements; his aid must come on one side from Soult and the Army of Andalusia, on the other from Drouet’s 9th Corps, whose services had been promised to him by the Emperor long before the invasion of Portugal began. But down to the end of the year he had not the slightest breath of information as to whether this assistance was close at hand, or whether it had, perchance, not even begun to move in his direction. Since he had cut himself loose from the frontier of Spain in September, not a single dispatch had reached him, not even a secret emissary had penetrated to his head quarters. For all that he knew Napoleon might be dead, or engaged in a new war with some continental enemy. It is an astonishing testimony to the[p. 10] efficiency of the screen of Portuguese Ordenan?a and militia, which Wellington had cast round the French army, to find that nothing had slipped through. And the Marshal’s attempts to send out news of himself had been almost equally well foiled; all his messengers had been intercepted save Foy, who (as it will be remembered) had forced his way over the unfrequented Estrada Nova road on October 31st[11]. And Foy had got through to Ciudad Rodrigo because he had been given such a large escort—600 men—that no mere gathering of local Ordenan?a could stop him.
Masséna, down to the end of December, did not know in the least whether Foy or any other of his emissaries had got through. He had simply to wait till news should penetrate to him. Meanwhile the one governing preoccupation of his life was to get food for his army, since if food failed he must be driven to the disastrous winter retreat, across flooded streams and between snow-clad mountains, to which Wellington hoped to force him. The English general’s forecast of the time which would be required to starve out the French army was wrong by some eight or nine weeks. He thought that they would have consumed every possible morsel of food that could be scraped together by December—as a matter of fact they held out till the end of February, in a state of constantly increasing privation. It seems that Wellington underrated both the capacity for endurance that the enemy would show, and still more the resources which were available to him. The Portuguese government had ordered the peasantry to destroy all food-stuffs that they could not carry off, when the country-side was evacuated in October, and the people retired within the Torres Vedras lines. Ostensibly the decree had been carried out; but it was impossible to induce these small cultivators to make away with good food, the worst of crimes to the peasant’s mind. The large majority hid or buried, instead of burning, their stores, trusting to recover what they had concealed when the French should have departed. Many of the hiding-places were very ingenious—in some cases caves in the hills had been used, and their[p. 11] mouths plastered up with stones and earth. In others, pits or silos had been dug in unlikely places, and carefully covered up, or cellars had been filled, and their entrances bricked up and concealed. The ingenuity that is bred by an empty stomach soon set the French on the search for these hoards. When it was once discovered that there was much hidden grain and maize in the country, every man became a food-hunter. Whole villages were pulled down in the search for secret places in their walls or under their floors. Parties scoured every ravine or hillside where caves might lurk. We are told that one effective plan was for detachments to go about with full barrels in fields near houses, and to cast water all over the surface. Where the liquid sank in suddenly, there was a chance that a silo lurked below, and the spade often turned up a deposit of hundreds of bushels. But more drastic methods than these were soon devised. In the sort of no-man’s-land between the actual cantonments of the French army and the outposts of Wilson, Trant, and Blunt, the population had not entirely disappeared. Though the large majority had retired, some of the poorest or the most reckless had merely hidden themselves in the hills for a week or two, and came down cautiously when the French had marched by towards Lisbon. A sprinkling of miserable folk lived precariously in or near their usual abodes, always ready to fly or to conceal themselves when a foraging party was reported in the neighbourhood. Hence came the horrid business that one French diarist calls the ‘chasse aux hommes’; it became a regular device for the marauders to move by night, hide themselves, and watch for some unwary peasant. When he was sighted he was pursued and often caught. He was then offered the choice between revealing the hiding-places of himself and his neighbours, and a musket-ball through the head. Generally he yielded, and the party went back with their mules loaded with grain, or driving before them some goats and oxen. Sometimes he was himself starving, could reveal nothing, and was murdered. We are assured by more than one French narrator of these hateful times that it was discovered that torture was more effective than the mere fear of death. If the prisoner could or would discover nothing, he was hung up for a few minutes, and the............