When Wellington reached Elvas three days after the battle and read the melancholy account which Bercsford had sent to greet him, he said directly, "This won't do; it will drive the people in England mad. Write me down a victory."4 The dispatch was altered accordingly, and Albuera was enrolled among the most glorious battle honours in the British Army's history. Its losses had been largely needless, but it had achieved its purpose and, though Philli-pon took advantage of Beresford's absence to level the allies' siege-works, the investment of Badajoz was immediately resumed. Nor was the battle without consequences of a moral kind. The French gallant and experienced soldiers though they were, never wholly recovered from the effects of that terrible day. The memory of it
1 Napier, Hook XII, ch. vi. 2 Broughton, I, 34.
3 Fortescue, VIII, 205-9; Oman, IV, 392-5, 631-5. 4 Stanhope, Conversations, 90.
haunted them thereafter in the presence of the British infantry like a blow across the eyes.
The discord in Wellington's plans caused by the loss of Badajoz had still, however, to be resolved. So long as that fortress and Ciudad Rodrigo were both held by the French, the strategic initiative remained beyond his reach. Not till he was master of one or the other could he pursue the train of favouring circumstance offered by a bold advance into Spain. Forced until then to campaign on two fronts, his problem was to concentrate sufficient strength to besiege one fortress and fend off attempts to relieve it without dangerously weakening the other half of his army.
In the brief if rather breathless pause gained by Fuentes de Onoro and Albuera, Wellington attempted once more to reduce Badajoz with the means at his disposal. He relied on the greater speed with which he could concentrate and the ignorance in which the guerrillas kept the French generals of one another's movements. Marching fifteen miles a day, the 3rd and 7th divisions reached Elvas on May 24th, once more bringing the half-crippled Anglo-Portuguese force in the south to 24,000 effectives. Fourteen thousand of them reinvested Badajoz, while the remainder, under Rowland Hill, who had providentially arrived from England, pushed Soult's outposts as far down the Andalusian highway as was compatible with safety. Here on the 25th, at Usagre, forty-five miles south of Albuera, Lumley's cavalry scored a brilliant and unexpected success, ambushing and destroying three hundred of Latour-Maubourg's greatly superior force of horse for a loss of less than twenty troopers.
The second British siege of Badajoz proved no more successful than the first. Like Beresford, Wellington lacked both the heavy guns and the trained sappers to prepare a way for his infantry. There were only twenty-five Royal Military Artificers, as the engineers were called, in the whole Peninsula.1 Most of the big guns assembled by Colonel Dickson, the young British commander of the Portuguese artillery, dated from the seventeenth century. When on June 6th, a week after opening the trenches, a storming party essayed an inadequate breach in the ramparts of San Cristobal, ninety-two men out of a hundred and eighty were lost. A second equally vain attempt three days later resulted in another hundred and forty casualties, half of them fatal. Two hundred more were killed or wounded by enemy shells and mortars in the wet, exposed trenches. By June 10th the ammunition of the siege-guns was almost exhausted. Realising that he was attempting
1 Oman, IV, 417. 441
something beyond his means, Wellington thereupon raised the siege. Immediately afterwards, though the garrison was almost down to its last ration, he withdrew his blockading screen. Important as the recapture of Badajoz was to him, there was something even more essential—the Anglo-Portuguese army. He would not risk its ultimate safety for any secondary object, however great.
For the expected had happened. Not only had Soult, rallying after Albuera, called up his reinforcements, but the Army of Portugal was coming down from the north to his assistance. On May 10th, five days after the battle of Fuentes de Onoro, Massena had been superseded by Marshal Marmont, the thirty-six-year-old Duke of Ragusa. This brilliant soldier, who had fought by Napoleon's side in almost every major campaign since Toulon, had not yet inherited his predecessor's feud with Soult. He not only acceded to the latter's request for help but, reorganising his depleted formations at astonishing speed, set off for the south with his entire force on June 1st. Revictualling Ciudad Rodrigo on the way, he crossed the Tagus by a flying bridge at Almaraz and reached Merida by the middle of the month with 32,000 men. Here he was joined by Soult and reinforced, by Drouet's 9th Corps. With more than 60,000 troops between them the two Marshals were in an immediate position to advance on Badajoz at once.
Wellington had also concentrated his forces, and more quickly than they. Admirably served by his quartermaster-general, Colonel John Waters, and the host of Spanish spies whom that genial, chameleon-like Welshman controlled,1 he knew every change in the enemy's dispositions almost before it happened. At the end of the first week in June, Spencer, acting on his orders, set off to join him with his four divisions from the North. Marching twenty miles a day in heat so intense that more than one of the proud infantry of the Light Division dropped dead sooner than fall out like the weaker brethren of other corps,2 they crossed the Tagus by pontoon at Villa Velha and reached Elvas before their adversaries got to Merida.
Even with this reinforcement Wellington had still only 54,000 troops, of whom less than two-thirds were British. He had no intention of being forced to fight against odds in an open plain or of being hustled into a hasty and costly retreat. He therefore withdrew to the north of the Guadiana on June 17th, before the enemy's
1 For a delightful account of his activities, see Gronow, I, 15-16.
2Tomk'mson, 106; Smith, I, 50; Simmons, 188. "I do not believe that ten of a company marched into the town together," wrote a private of the 71st Highlanders. "My sight grew dim, my mouth was dry as dust, my lips one continued blister."—Journal oj a Soldier, 114.
junction was still complete, and took up a carefully chosen position on the Portuguese frontier. When two days later the French moved forward from Merida in the direction of Albuera, they found that the shadow they were seeking had vanished.
One June 20th the two Marshals entered Badajoz, to the joy of Phillipon's hungry garrison. The next week was critical. Less than ten miles to the west Wellington with an outnumbered Anglo-Portuguese army was holding a twelve-mile line of hills stretching from Elvas through the Caya valley and Campo Mayor to the little walled town of Ougella near the Gebora. He could only retreat at the cost of exposing the key fortress of Elvas and laying Portugal open to a fourth invasion. But he had chosen his ground and placed his troops with such skill that they could neither be overlooked nor outflanked; nothing could expel them but a frontal attack on a position that was almost as strong as that of Bussaco.
This, with the memory of other attacks against hill positions chosen by Wellington fresh in their minds, the two Marshals refused to attempt. Although Latour-Maubourg's cavalry, keenly scrutinised by British outposts in the Moorish watchtowers along the wooded heights, made a great show of strength, a homogeneous army of 63,000 French for five days declined the chance of battle with an Anglo-Portuguese force of 54,000.
By June 27th the danger was over. Impelled by invisible forces, the great French concentration had already begun to disperse. On that day the most southerly of the divisions facing the Portuguese frontier marched in haste southwards. For, finding that Soult had pared his Andalusian garrisons to the bone to relieve Badajoz, the forces of resistance in southern Spain had seized their opportunity. They were assisted by Blake and 11,000 Spanish regulars whom Wellington had detached to threaten Seville as soon as Soult moved north. At the same time another 14,000 Spaniards from Murcia poured into Andalusia from the east.
From that moment Soult's glance, as Wellington had foreseen, turned from Portugal back to his endangered viceroyalty. He thought no more of taking Elvas and Lisbon but of saving Seville and Granada. Five days after the relief of Badajoz he informed Marmont that he must return to his capital.' His fellow Marshal was naturally furious; he had not come to hi
s assistance, he declared, merely to take over his frontier duties and free the Army of Andalusia for police work. He only consented to remain on the Guadiana at all on condition that Soult left him the 5th Corps and the whole of 'Latour-Maubourg's cavalry.
Even with this Marmont's strength was reduced to less than 50,000. Yet, since it was still sufficient to stop Wellington from either resuming the siege of Badajoz or uncovering Elvas, the deadlock on the Caya and Guadiana continued until the middle of July. It was an extremely uncomfortable fortnight for the British. The whole neighbourhood was a shadeless, dusty inferno of tropical heat, swarming with snakes, scorpions and mosquitoes and notorious for fevers. The only consolation was the knowledge that the enemy was suffering just as severely.
Wellington knew, moreover, that Marmont could not retain his position. The twin laws of Peninsular warfare were operating against him. Being dependent like all French generals on the resources of the country, he could not maintain himself in a desert. Nor, having provinces of his own to police, could he leave them for long without fatal consequences. He had entrusted his beat in Leon to the reluctant Marshal Bessieres and his Army of the North. Like Soult, Bessieres now found himself beset with troubles of his own. Instigated by Wellington, the ragged Spanish Army of Galicia seized the opportunity of the southward drift of the campaign to take the offensive and tin-eaten the plain of Leon. Though it was driven back as soon as the French were able to concentrate, the partisan bands of the two great guerrilla chiefs, Porlicr and Longa, descending from the Asturian mountains, played such havoc along the enemy's lines of communication that for several weeks the whole North was paralysed. So good did the hunting become that another famous chieftain, Mina, forsook his preserves in Navarre to join them. Many French garrisons were completely isolated and even Bessieres's headquarters at Valladolid was beleaguered. Meanwhile the celebrated throat-cutter, Don Julian Sanchez, and his villainous ragamuffins1 succeeded in once more cutting Ciudad Rodrigo off from the outer world.
On July 15th, 1811, Marmont, having provisioned Badajoz for six months and eaten up the entire countryside, withdrew northeastwards towards the Vera of Plasencia and the road over the mountain passes to Leon. With several thousands of his men already down with Guadiana fever, Wellington gratefully followed Ins example and marched his army northwards through Portugal to the Tagus, leaving Rowland Hill with the 2nd Division and Hamilton's Portuguese to guard Elvas. For the next few weeks the army was cantoned in the hill villages around Portalegre and Castello Branco, while it recovered-its health and made up its depleted ranks with fresh drafts from England. Here it was in a position to watch
1 "I could never divest myself of the idea of Forty Thieves when I looked at him and his gang."—Gomm, 244. See also Kincaid, Random Shots, 187-8; Schaumann, 325.
the Army of Portugal and move northwards to Ciudad Rodrigo or southwards again to Badajoz as events dictated.
Without great difficulty Wellington had regained his freedom of action. For after three years' fighting his foes, though numerically superior, had lost their offensive spirit. They had re-provisioned Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. But the armies with which they had done so had been forced to withdraw and disperse, and before long they would have to reassemble and re-provision them again. Sooner or later the chance for which Wellington was waiting would come. It would have come already if only the Spaniards had learnt from their bitter experience the necessity for discipline and military training, or had pocketed their pride, like the Portuguese, and let the British teach them. But their movements remained as chaotic and ill-co-ordinated as ever, and the wider opportunities offered by the French concentration on the Guadiana were missed. The Army of Murcia was routed by Soult and thrown out of Andalusia, the Army of Galicia was forced to retreat to the hills, while on the east coast Marshal Suchet stormed Tarragona and prepared to invade Valencia. Wellington's was still the only dependable force fighting the French in the Peninsula or in Europe. " One would have thought," he wrote after his exacting experience," that there would have been a general rising. This is the third time in less than two years that the entire disposable force of the enemy has been united against me. But no one takes advantage of it except the guerrillas."1
Yet the help given to Wellington by the Spaniards, bankrupt though they were in official policy, was far greater than met the eye. Porlier, the guerrilla chief, surprised Santander in August; Brigadier Martinez with 4000 starving indomitables immobilised the French 7th Corps for the entire summer in front of Figueras; Ballasteros, making deft use of British sea power, kept descending and re-embarking at various points along the Andalusian coastline, sending Soult's harassed columns scurrying on wild-goose chases through the mountains. Hardly a day passed without some foray against Napoleon's three hundred mile lifeline from Bayonne to Madrid. One Catalonian band, to the Emperor's apoplectic fury, even crossed the Pyrenees and ravaged an outlying canton of France. And the reinforcements which he had ordered to Spain in the spring were delayed on the road for weeks by the countless diversions caused by such warfare. It was not till the autumn that they began to reach their destinations.
By that time Ciudad Rodrigo was again threatened. Not only was its garrison blockaded by British light troops and Spanish
1 Fortescue, VIII, 250.
guerrillas, but rumours had begun to reach the French that a siege-train had been landed in the Douro and that serious preparations were in progress for an assault. Early in August, 1811, Wellington's army, reinforced from England, had marched once more over the sky-borne Sierra de Gata to its old haunts between the Coa and Agueda —stretching, in Johnny Kincaid's words, off to the north in pursuit of fresh game. For its chief meant either to take the fortress or to force the French into a new concentration to save it.
Marmont could not afford to let the gateway to Leon go by default. Nor could his colleague, Dorsenne, who had just succeeded to the command of Bessieres's Army of the North; an Allied march across the Douro plain would cut at the very roots of his troublesome dominion. Early in September the two French commanders took counsel and agreed to unite their forces to revictual Rodrigo. On the 23rd they met, with nearly 60,000 men, at Tamames, twenty miles to the east of the fortress. With them came a hundred and thirty field guns and a convoy of more than a thousand supply-wagons, gathered with immense difficulty from a denuded countryside.
Wellington could not maintain the siege against so great a force. His army, despite reinforcements, still numbered less than 46,000, 17,000 of them Portuguese. 14,000 more—mostly newcomers from England—were suffering from malaria or a recurrence of Walcheren fever. With only 3000 cavalry to Marmont's 4500, the British commander had no choice but to leave the plains for the safety of the mountains. Here, on the rocky fringe at Fuente Guinaldo, fifteen miles south-west of Ciudad Rodrigo, and a further twenty miles back near Sabugal, he had prepared with his usual foresight two formidable positions. The second, in particular, was one of immense strength.
Yet he was much slower in going back than usual. For, sensing the nearness of his own offensive, he grudged yielding a foot more ground than was necessary. Behind his lines he had been building in the utmost secrecy an elaborate system of forward bases, packed with munitions and stores for a winter assault on Ciudad Rodrigo. The reports which had reached the French were true; a battering-train from England had been landed in July in the Douro, whence a thousand country carts and an army of Portuguese labourers were painfully moving it over the mountains to Almeida. Here other Portuguese were at work restoring the ruined fortifications to house and guard it till it was needed. Elsewhere Colonel Fletcher and his engineer officers were training tradesmen and artificers from the infantry for sapping and siege-duties and setting others to work-making fascines and gabions.
Wellington did not wish the enemy to stumble on these preparations. Though he made no attempt to prevent Marmont's entry into Rodrigo on the 24th, he left the 3rd and Light Divisions within a few miles of the fortress to keep watch while the rest of
the Army remained a little farther back, strung out along a sixteen-mile front
to cover his accumulations of artillery and stores from raiding cavalry. After Marmont's failure to attack on the Caya, he did not expect him to do more than provision the fortress and retire. He had been profoundly impressed by a captured letter to Napoleon's Chief-of-Staff, in which the Marshal complained that, whereas the British had a vast number of supply-carts and twelve thousand pack animals, Masscna had scarcely left him a dozen wagons.1 For once, too, the guerrillas had failed to provide exact information. Wellington knew that Napoleon had been sending reinforcements into Spain, but he failed to realise how many. He estimated their number at around ten thousand. In fact there were thirty thousand, of whom more than half had been assigned to the Armies of Portugal and the North.
Yet Wellington was right about Marmont's intentions. The Marshal only meant to relieve Ciudad Rodrigo; he was not equipped to do more. Unlike Massena, he had grasped the impossibility of campaigning in the Peninsula without organised transport and supplies. And, as Ins opponent knew, he had none save what he had brought to provision the fortress. But he was young and confident, and, like a true Frenchman, could not resist the opportunity of glory. On September 25th, 1811, it suddenly seemed as if a good deal might be coming his way.
On the morning of that day Major-General Picton's 3rd Division, still standing at its observation post on the plateau of El Bodon, six miles south of Rodrigo and as many more in front of the army's concentration point at Fuente Guinaldo, saw moving towards it along the road out of the relieved fortress squadron after squadron of cavalry, followed by thirteen or fourteen battalions of infantry. Some of the latter were reported to be wearing high plumes and bearskins and were believed, though wrongly, to belong to the Imperial Guard. It was part of a reconnaissance in force which Marmont had sent out for the purpose of discovering what Wellington wished to hide—his preparations for reducing Ciudad Rodrigo. Four brigades of cavalry under General Montbrun, supported by a
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