FUENTES DE O?ORO: PRELIMINARY OPERATIONS.
APRIL 12nd-MAY 3rd, 1811

The Army of Portugal, sullenly retiring far within the frontiers of Spain, had been lost to Wellington’s sight on April 8th, when it passed the Agueda and fell back in diverging columns towards various towns of the kingdom of Leon—Salamanca, Toro, and Zamora—where it went into cantonments. Only Drouet with the two divisions of Conroux and Claparéde remained in observation of the Allies, with his head quarters at San Mu?oz. The British general was well aware of the dilapidated state in which the enemy had reached his base, and calculated that it would take many weeks for Masséna to get his army into fighting trim again. He considered that he might even hope to gain possession of Almeida before the French would be in a position to attempt its relief, though it could only fall by famine, since there were no heavy guns to form a battering-train for its siege nearer than Oporto, Abrantes, or Lisbon. He had already inspected the place, and saw that it had been put in such a good state of defence by the governor, Brennier, that all external traces of the great explosion of August 1810 had disappeared. That the town within was still a mass of ruins, with nearly every house cut off sheer at the first story, was of no military importance, when the enceinte and the bomb-proofs were in good order.

There was a short moment during which Wellington had some hopes of being able to lay hands on Ciudad Rodrigo as well as Almeida. He had learnt that the Spanish fortress was almost as depleted of food as the Portuguese, and that Masséna’s troops had consumed 200,000 rations from its stores when they reached the frontier; he thought that the extra garrison which Junot had thrown into it, before he passed onward, would only serve to exhaust the magazines so much the earlier. Accordingly he not[p. 289] only requested that active and enterprising partisan Julian Sanchez, to beset the roads between Salamanca and Rodrigo, in order that no provisions might get through, but made preparations to throw some British light troops across the Agueda to co-operate with him, when the approach of a convoy should be reported. With this object he moved up the Light Division and Arentschildt’s brigade of cavalry close to the Agueda and within a few miles of Rodrigo. Their head quarters were at Gallegos, their outposts extended from the bridge of Barba del Puerco on the north as far as El Bodon on the south. It was intended that, when Don Julian signalled the approach of the French, the Light Division should make a dash across the fords of the Agueda, and endeavour to intercept the convoy. This plan failed on the 13th of April, owing, as Wellington held, to the slowness of Sir William Erskine[355], who was still in command of the division, though news had just arrived—to the great satisfaction of all the battalions—that its old general, Craufurd, was daily expected at Lisbon on his way to the front.

Rodrigo having been revictualled, Wellington abandoned all hope of molesting it further; to have invested it would have been useless, when he had no siege-train. But Almeida he intended to reduce at his leisure, being of the opinion that it would be starved out before Masséna was in a position to take the field to relieve it. Nothing short of his whole army would suffice for that operation—if that even were enough. And knowing that the troops had just reached Salamanca in a demoralized and discontented condition, without shoes, without train, almost without ammunition, and with the remnant of their cavalry and artillery horses dying off at the rate of several hundreds a day, Wellington doubted if his adversary would be able to come out of his cantonments before the summer was far spent. At any rate, he calculated that he had a good many weeks before him, in which he was not likely to find the Army of Portugal a serious danger. Accordingly he resolved to put[p. 290] his own host into cantonments also, in such a position as to block the road to Almeida, and to give it a well-earned rest while that fortress was being starved out. He had, as we observed in a previous chapter, no intention of assuming the offensive against the French in Leon till he had organized his line of communication with his new base at Coimbra, and established large intermediate dép?ts at Lamego, Celorico, and other conveniently placed localities. The army was living from hand to mouth,—all the country about Almeida, Guarda, and Sabugal having been thoroughly devastated,—on convoys which were only struggling up at irregular intervals from the lower Mondego. The horses especially were in very poor order, from want of proper forage. ‘The regiments subsisted on the green corn, which was dreadful to the inhabitants, and of little use to the horses, when they had to work. There was nothing else, and we had to cut their rye.... How our army has been carried though this desolate abandoned country is astonishing[356].’ Till there were dép?ts and a regular service established, it was impossible to concentrate the army, much less to send it forward into Spain.

Accordingly the allied troops were spread broadcast in the villages between the Coa and the Agueda. The Light Division and two cavalry regiments[357] were in front, holding the outposts facing Ciudad Rodrigo, and in touch with Drouet’s corps, which lay along the Yeltes, a stream that runs roughly parallel with the Agueda, at a distance of from seven to fifteen miles to the north-east. The 5th Division was in the villages around Fort Concepcion, in support of the Light Division. The 6th Division, with Pack’s Portuguese, who had lately come up from the Mondego, where they had been dropped during the pursuit of Masséna[358], were blockading Almeida. The main body of the army, the 1st, 3rd, and 7th Divisions, with Ashworth’s independent Portuguese brigade[359], were cantoned in the valleys of[p. 291] the Dos Casas and the Turon, tributaries of the Agueda, being distributed between Nava de Aver, Fuentes de O?oro, Pozo Bello, and other small places in the neighbourhood. The cavalry, save that detached to the front, was trying to keep its horses alive in the poor villages along the Coa, from Castello Rodrigo to Alfayates[360]. The whole army, distributed in a square of not more than twenty miles, was so placed that it could concentrate at any point in one march. Wellington, even though he judged Masséna unable to molest him, was determined not to be caught with his troops in a state of dispersion.

But considering that things were at present at a standstill on the northern frontier, and that nothing serious could be undertaken there, till the line of supplies was organized and Almeida captured, Wellington now resolved to pay the long-deferred visit to Estremadura which he projected as far back as the commencement of Masséna’s retreat. ‘At this moment,’ he wrote to Lord Liverpool, ‘the first object is certainly Badajoz.’ Till that place should have been recovered and regarrisoned, he could never feel quite safe on his southern flank. A diversion on the part of Soult in the Alemtejo, threatening Lisbon from the south, would always be a dangerous and tiresome possibility, until Badajoz was once more in the hands of the Allies, and all Estremadura recovered and held by a competent force. The future was inscrutable—for all Wellington knew the Emperor might appear in person, before the summer was over, to take up the Spanish problem; or, on the other hand, the affairs of Eastern Europe might cause him to shut off all reinforcements from the Peninsula, and to turn his attention to a Russian war. But whatever might happen, it was well to have the Portuguese frontier properly covered in the south. Supposing the French made another march on Lisbon, it was necessary to be free of danger in the rear. Supposing that they showed weakness, and dropped the offensive, the possession of Badajoz and Estremadura gave facilities for disquieting the Army of Andalusia, perhaps for raising the siege of Cadiz, which could not be secured in any other fashion.

[p. 292]Meanwhile Wellington formulated three possible courses[361] which the French might pursue during the next two months, before new reinforcements could reach them from France, or the Emperor make his appearance—if so he should decide to do. These three possible courses were: (a) Masséna might call on Bessières, and induce him to join the Army of Portugal at once with all his disposable troops, in order that they might save Almeida by driving off the British army. (b) Masséna might allow his troops a long repose in cantonments, relieving the Army of the North in its present charge of Old Castile, while Bessières, with such part of his corps as he could collect, might invade Galicia, to clear the French right flank. (c) Masséna might give his troops the repose that they needed, and, after some interval, might pass south into Estremadura, to join Soult in operations on the Guadiana, while leaving Bessières in charge of the defence of the frontiers of Leon. It will be seen that the French actually adopted first plan (a), the endeavour to save Almeida by a junction of the Armies of Portugal and the North, and then, a month later, plan (c), a concentration in Estremadura to save Badajoz. Oddly enough, Wellington conceived that the first plan was the least likely of the three, apparently because he over-estimated the time which it would take Masséna to reorganize his army and resume active operations. He did not make enough allowance for the old Marshal’s obstinacy, and for the pride which forbade him to allow Almeida to fall without any effort being made to relieve it. But though he thought this scheme the least likely for the French to adopt, he made full provisions for dealing with it, in case it should be the one they selected. His second suggestion, that Bessières might hand over the charge of Old Castile to Masséna, and[p. 293] proceed to invade Galicia, was founded on an insufficient knowledge of the present situation and difficulties of the Army of the North. Bessières, though the gross amount of his forces was large (over 70,000 men), was much too obsessed and worried by the guerrilleros to dream of concentrating a force large enough to make a serious invasion of Galicia. We shall find him, three weeks after the date of Wellington’s dispatch, declaring that he could only collect 1,600 cavalry and one battery to form a field force, because any movement of his infantry would imperil the whole fabric of the French supremacy in northern Spain. If the objection be raised that this plea of his was only put forth in order to disoblige Masséna, and to save himself from responsibility, no such objection can be made to his statement of June 6th—made after Masséna’s recall—to the effect that if he were forced to concentrate 20,000 men for any purpose, all communications with France and Madrid would be lost, and the whole of the country-side, from the Guadiana to the Bay of Biscay, would blaze up in one general insurrection[362]. Supposing that Masséna and Bessières had been on the best of terms, and that the former had proposed to take over the charge of the region occupied by the latter, in order to set the Army of the North free for field operations, Bessières must have replied that he would not be able to produce enough men to ‘contain’ the British army, and at the same time to attack Galicia. Wellington’s hypothesis therefore was faulty; he undervalued the work of the guerrilleros, who were occupying, for his benefit, the attention of a much greater part of the French army than he supposed. The idea that the enemy might make a blow at Galicia was inspired by his knowledge of the weakness of that province, where Mahy had put everything out of gear, and Santocildes had not yet begun the process of reorganization. Knowing how disastrous the appearance of a French corps in this quarter might prove, he feared it more than was necessary[363].

[p. 294]If it be asked what were Napoleon’s views as to the proper scheme for the French marshals to adopt, under the circumstances that existed on April 15, we must not look (of course) to orders issued about that time, when he was still working on data three weeks old. As late as March 30th he had been sending instructions to Soult and other commanders on the hypothesis that Masséna’s head quarters were at Coimbra, and that Oporto was very possibly in French hands![364] On April 9 he was telling the Prince of Essling to devote his energy to the armament of Almeida, and to place himself so as to cover both that place and Ciudad Rodrigo[365]—orders exquisitely inapplicable when Almeida was already blockaded by Wellington, and Masséna’s troops had just crawled past Ciudad Rodrigo, in a state of hopeless dilapidation, on their retreat to Salamanca. The next advice sent to the Army of Portugal was almost equally inappropriate: having heard of Wellington’s flying visit to Estremadura by intelligence dated April 18th (the trip had begun upon the 15th), he jumped to the conclusion that the English general must have taken many troops with him. On May 7th he wrote, ‘the translations from English newspapers herewith enclosed show that Lord Wellington had crossed the Tagus on April 18th. So it seems that on the side of Castile there can now be only half the English army left. The events which must already have taken place on the side of Almeida will have shown the generals that this is the case, and will have enabled them to make the proper corresponding move (de prendre le parti convenable), viz. to begin to move towards the Tagus[366].’ On the day when this was written, Wellington, who had not taken a man to Estremadura,[p. 295] had been back on the frontier of Leon since April 28, and had, at the head of the whole of his original army, defeated Masséna and Bessières at Fuentes de O?oro, on May 5th. As always, the imperial orders, founded on data that had long ceased to be correct, or had never been correct at all, arrived too late to direct the course of the campaign.

One most important measure, however, was taken at this time, by which the Emperor did succeed in affecting the general course of affairs on the frontier of Portugal. On April 20th he made up his mind to recall Masséna, and to send a new chief to the Army of Portugal. Five days before, Marshal Marmont, newly returned from commanding in Dalmatia, had received orders to start at once for Spain, where he was to replace Ney at the head of the 6th Corps. Whether the Emperor had already made up his mind on the 15th that Marmont was to replace Masséna, not to serve under him, it is impossible to say. But he at any rate concealed his purpose from the younger Marshal, who had been some days in Spain before he received on May 10th the dispatch of April 20th which made him commander of the Army of Portugal[367]. Probably the news that Masséna had failed in his design to hold Coimbra, which Foy had elaborately explained to the Emperor, and had fallen back behind Ciudad Rodrigo, had provoked his master to dismiss him from command. Foy’s report had caused Napoleon to believe that Masséna could stop on the Mondego and hold Wellington in check. The imperial dispatch of March 30 (as we have already seen) speaks of Masséna’s stay at Coimbra as a settled fact, and states that Oporto is or will soon be in his hands. On April 9 Napoleon knew that the Marshal had lost Coimbra and fallen back on Guarda[368], but continued to send him elaborate instructions. It was apparently the receipt of Masséna’s dispatch of March 31st from Alfayates, confessing that he was completely foiled, and that he must retire beyond the Agueda, as far as Zamora and Toro, since the spirit of the army was so broken that he dared not risk a general[p. 296] action[369], which determined the Emperor to supersede him. This document must have reached Paris about the 15th or 16th, and would suffice to explain Napoleon’s anger. For a Commander-in-Chief who confesses that he has lost the confidence of his army is a dangerous person to retain in power. There was ample evidence from Masséna’s earlier letters that he had quarrelled not only with Ney but with most of his other superior officers; if the general feeling of the army was also against him, he was not likely to get much good service out of it. Possibly there may have been also a feeling of wounded amour propre in the Emperor’s breast, when he reflected how, relying on Masséna’s assurances, he had informed Soult, King Joseph, and Bessières that the Army of Portugal had its head quarters at Coimbra, and would attack Lisbon in the autumn[370], so that ‘a hundred thousand men, using Coimbra and Badajoz as their bases, would complete the conquest of Portugal, a conquest which would drag England into a crisis that would be of the highest interest.’ Napoleon did not like to be made ridiculous before his subordinates, by having been induced to publish an absurd misstatement of fact, leading up to a vainglorious prophecy which appeared most unlikely to be realized.

But though Masséna’s death-warrant, as commander-in-chief was signed on April 20, and may have been decided upon as early as April 16, there were still three weeks during which he was to make his last stroke for revenge, and to lose his last battle, for it was not till May 12th that Marmont presented his lettres de service and took over the command.

Wellington, meanwhile, convinced that he had nothing to fear for some little time from the Army of Portugal and its commander, left Villar Formoso on the morning of April 15th, reached Sabugal that night, Castello Branco on the 17th, and Elvas by the noon of the 20th. This was marvellous travelling, considering the mountain roads that had to be traversed, but Wellington was a mighty horseman, and accompanied by only[p. 297] a few well-mounted staff officers flew like the wind over hill and dale. He remained only four days in Estremadura; during that short time he surveyed Badajoz, and issued compendious directions for the siege[371]; he drew up a plan of campaign for the united armies of Beresford, Blake, and Casta?os, and then, returning as rapidly as he had come, retraced his route to the frontiers of Leon, and was back at Alameda on the 29th, having been less than a fortnight absent from his army. This rapidity of movement, as we have already seen, completely puzzled Napoleon, who, on receiving the intelligence that Wellington was over the Tagus on the 18th, thought that he had gone with a strong force to establish himself in Estremadura, and sent orders for the Army of Portugal to move at once towards the south[372], a movement which at that moment could not have been executed for want of train, transport, and provisions.

During Wellington’s absence the command of the troops cantoned between the Agueda and the Coa had been given over to Sir Brent Spencer, as the senior division-commander present. Wellington did not think it probable that Spencer would be much troubled by the enemy during his short spell of responsibility, but left him directions that covered every possible contingency. If, contrary to all expectation, Masséna should make an effort to relieve Almeida within the fortnight for which the Commander-in-Chief intended to be absent[373], Spencer was directed to make a careful estimate of the force of the enemy; if it were but small the line of the Agueda might be held; if it were great—it was conceivable that Bessières might succour Masséna—Spencer was to concentrate, not in front of Almeida, nor across the road from Rodrigo to that place, but in a defensive position to the south of it, parallel to the French line of advance and threatening it in flank. Only Pack’s Portuguese infantry brigade, and Barba?ena’s cavalry brigade of the same[p. 298] nation, were to keep up the investment of Almeida till the last possible moment. The designated position was that in front of Rendo, Alfayates, and Aldea Velha, which Wellington took up himself later in the same year, during a subsequent movement of the French to relieve Ciudad Rodrigo. No leave to fight a battle was given to Spencer, though it was given to Beresford when the latter was placed in a similar responsible position. Instead, he was ordered to send constant information to his absent chief, who gave him a tabular statement of the mileage of his journey and the place at which he was to be heard of each day[374]. Wellington intended to return with his own peculiar swiftness on the first threatening news, and thought that he could reckon on being back in time, if he was properly advised of the first ominous movements of the enemy. He apparently calculated that, if Masséna came on in great force, and found the British army massed in a strong mountain position, upon the flank of the route that he must take towards Almeida, he would be unlikely to attack it—Bussaco being an unpleasant memory. If the Marshal began to man?uvre he would lose time, and he himself would be back before the crisis came.

As a matter of fact it was only towards the end of Spencer’s short period of responsibility that matters began to grow interesting upon the frontiers of Leon. There was, however, a slight alarm on the 15th-16th, just after Wellington’s departure. Masséna, not contented with having passed a first convoy into Rodrigo on the 13th, had followed it up with a second, which was escorted by Marchand’s division of the 6th Corps—a unit which had seen more severe service during March than any other part of the French army, yet was considered to be in better order than its fellows. The same phenomenon, it will be remembered, had been noted with Paget’s rearguard division during Moore’s retreat to Corunna. Marchand was ordered, when he should have lodged the convoy in Rodrigo, to make a reconnaissance toward the Azava, and try to discover what was the force of the British in that direction. He got into the fortress without hindrance, owing to Erskine’s usual talent for bungling—on the approach of the convoy the Light[p. 299] Division was concentrated at Molino de Flores, but Erskine refused to send it over the fords, and watched Marchand defile into the town. Some cavalry went across the Agueda, and cut off a flanking party of three hundred French, who took shelter in a ruined village and refused to surrender. Erskine sent no one to support the British horse, and presently a French column came out of Rodrigo and released the blockaded party. All this took place under the eyes of the disgusted Light Division on the other side of the water[375] (April 16th).

Some days later Marchand came out of Rodrigo with a regiment of infantry and a squadron, to make the reconnaissance which he had been directed to execute. At Marialva, five miles outside the fortress, he ran into the pickets of the 95th and 52nd, and received such a warm reception that he turned back at once, and sent the report to Masséna that the British were established in strong force close above the Agueda (April 22[376]). After this there were no further alarms at the front till the 28th, the day on which Wellington returned from Elvas. But Spencer’s account of the reconnaissance of the 22nd, which reached Wellington at Portalegre on the 25th, undoubtedly contributed to hurry the return journey of the Commander-in-Chief, for it was accompanied by a report—which was perfectly correct—that information from the side of Salamanca seemed to make it certain that Masséna was reconcentrating his troops for a dash at Almeida, and that Bessières had been asked to give help. The Salamanca secret correspondents (of whom the chief was Doctor Curtis, the head of the Irish College in the University) had always proved trustworthy, so that their reports could not be ignored, and Wellington was glad that the French movement was reported at the end, and not at the commencement, of his trip to Estremadura.

The fact was that Masséna was making a last desperate effort to save the military reputation of which he was so proud, and to justify himself to his master. If Almeida and Rodrigo were both to be lost, as the final sequel to his retreat from Portugal,[p. 300] his whole year’s command must be written down as a failure; if these early conquests of 1810 could be saved, he might yet claim to have added somewhat to the French dominions in the Peninsula. His troops had not been a fortnight in their cantonments before he was making preparations to reassemble them for a last effort. In some respects that fortnight had made a great difference in their condition: Salamanca and Valladolid, at the moment of his arrival, were full of drafts of men, and accumulation of stores, belonging to the Army of Portugal, which had been gathering there for many months while the communications with that army were cut. At one moment in the late winter, Thiébault, the governor of Salamanca, had no less than 18,000 men of detachments belonging to Masséna’s troops in his government[377]—partly convalescents, partly small parties which had come up from the French dép?ts to join their regiments, and had been unable to do so. Though some of them had ultimately gone forward with Foy and Gardanne, many still remained to be absorbed. The numbers of ‘present under arms’ in the 2nd, 6th, and 8th Corps went up at once, the mass of sick and exhausted men which they discharged into hospital being replaced by the drafts and convalescents. Masséna also took out of the 9th Corps the battalions belonging to regiments of which the main bodies were already in the old Army of Portugal, and sent them to join their comrades[378]. The cadres of one battalion in each regiment were then sent home to France, and the other three raised to something like their original war strength. This redistribution brought up the divisions of Reynier and Loison to a figure which they had not known for many months, though it depleted Drouet’s corps to a corresponding extent: his troops now consisted of only[p. 301] eighteen battalions, or 10,000 infantry, all consisting of fourth battalions belonging to regiments serving in Andalusia. He had received orders that when the crisis on the frontiers of Leon was over, he was to conduct these units to join their eagles in Soult’s army. Drouet was anxious to get away from Masséna as soon as possible, and would gladly have marched for Seville without delay; but it was obvious that this was as yet impossible, and, as he was technically under the command of the Marshal, he was compelled to play his part in the ensuing campaign.

The net result of all the transferences of battalions and the picking up of drafts was that on May 1, the 2nd Corps had in the ranks 1,200 more men than it had possessed on March 15, the 6th Corps 2,000 more, Solignac’s division of the 8th Corps 800 more. On the other hand, Clausel’s division of the last-named corps, originally composed almost entirely of isolated ‘fourth battalions’ was practically ruined[379]. Masséna left it behind, when he mobilized the other divisions of the old Army of Portugal for the May campaign. But the men available for the field in the remaining divisions, including those of Drouet, now amounted to ............