The Emperor was in the midst of holding a large review in the Spanish capital on December 19 when Dumas’ message was brought to him. With his customary clarity of mind, Napoleon at once recognized the reality of the situation and was pleased to approve his subordinate’s activities. The parade was immediately dismissed, and the Emperor rode off to make a new plan. As Moore had anticipated, the chance of smiting a British army hip and thigh was too strong a temptation for Napoleon to withstand. All other operations, including Lefebvre’s proposed march on Lisbon and Victor’s to Seville, were forthwith suspended; 80,000 men, every soldier that could immediately be spared, were to be flung northward over the Guadarramas without delay in order to cut Moore’s lines of retreat toward Lisbon. The Emperor erroneously assumed Moore to be near Valladolid and that consequently his communications could be severed if the French could seize Tordesillas and Medina de Rio Seco.
A veritable flood of orders poured out of Imperial Headquarters. The cavalry of Ney’s corps and of the Guard were to set out at once for the Guadarrama Pass, followed by the infantry of the VIth Corps, the Imperial Guard and General Lapisse’s division. At the same time, General Desolles was ordered to advance toward Escorial, while Lahoussaye’s cavalry headed for Avila. Lorge’s dragoons and various fragments of Victor’s corps were temporarily to be placed under Marshal Soult’s immediate command. For the occupation of Madrid and its immediate vicinity, Joseph was left with Lefebvre’s corps, two thirds of Victor’s and three cavalry divisions—a total of 36,000 men and 90 guns. For the remainder, Napoleon’s plan was as follows. While Soult pinned Moore frontally, Napoleon would lead up a powerful army against the British rear and thus encompass the destruction of the “perfidious islanders.” There could thus be no doubt that Sir John’s deliberate “red herring” was disrupting the Emperor’s plans for the final conquest of the Iberian Peninsula; the only question was whether or not he could avoid the fate bearing down on his small army.
By the 20th the first French troops were on the move from Madrid. On the 21st, the leading cavalry and Ney’s corps successfully negotiated the Guadarrama Pass despite bitterly cold weather and reached Villacastin beyond. Next day, however, the Emperor and the troops with him found it very difficult to follow them over. “The Emperor wished to pass over the mountain without delay,” recalled Castellanne, “but the weather was frightful—there was snow in drifts, a fearful wind and an abominable frost. Nevertheless the Emperor ordered the Dragoons of the Guard to advance. These soldiers, after fighting their way up a quarter of the slope, came back reporting that ‘It was impossible to go further.’” This advice Napoleon refused to accept. The advance must not be halted by mere bad weather. In the ensuing battle with the elements the gunners fared worst. “The troops of the trains, who, after doubling up the gun teams, were compelled to make the journey to the top of the mountain several times, suffered terribly. The Emperor had with him two aides and the Prince of NeuchĊtel—but even his Majesty fell at the top of the slope—it was impossible to stay on horseback.”45 As Dumas, another participant, recalled, “the troops experienced more difficulty than during the famous passage of the St. Bernard. It was almost impossible to press on against the violent wind.”46 And still the implacable will of the Emperor hounded his men on in their battle against the elements; he earned more than a few hard looks from his “grumblers.” “The soldiers of Lapisse’s division,” noted Colonel de Gonneville, “showed the most sinister dispositions against the Emperor’s person all the way up, even calling out to one another to fire a bullet at him and have done with it—and then accusing each other of cowardice for failing to do so. He heard all this as plainly as the rest of us, but didn’t seem to take it at all seriously.”47 In the end sheer grit and will power triumphed, and by nightfall on the 23 rd a weary Napoleon was leading his exhausted men into the haven of Villacastin. Nobody who shared in the ordeal ever forgot Napoleon’s crossing of the Guadarramas.
Despite the best endeavors of the French, however, two valuable days had been lost owing to the storm, and this delay ennabled Sir John Moore to make a clean breakaway. What the French soldiers called “the race for Benavente” now developed. Napoleon slowly came to realize that the British Army was placed further north than he had originally envisaged, and this meant that his task of encircling Moore would be considerably more difficult. For now it was necessary to place his men athwart the distant Sahagun-to-Astorga road if the British were to be cut off from their newly revealed bases of Corunna and Ferrol. Nevertheless le Tondu was characteristically confident that his scheme would end successfully. “If the English are not already in full retreat,” he wrote to Joseph on the 27th, “they are lost; and, if they retire, they will be pursued right up to their embarkation and at least half of them will not get away…. Put it in the newspapers and have it spread everywhere that 36,000 Englishmen are surrounded; that I am at Benavente in their rear while Marshal Soult is pressing them from the front.”48 This announcement amounts to a blatant case of misleading propaganda if ever there was one.
By this time, appalling weather was affecting both sides, but Moore’s men were showing greater signs of distress than their pursuers, who, after all, were considerably more seasoned to the rigors of war in the Spanish Peninsula. Discipline began to suffer as the strain mounted, but by dint of hard marching and fine leadership, Moore managed to keep ahead of the French. The cavalry regiments forming his rear guard performed wonders. Lorge’s dragoons made contact with Paget’s hussars briefly on the 26th and 27th, but nothing serious developed until the 29th. On that day part of the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, commanded by General Lefebvre-Desnouëttes, reached the southern bank of the River Esla near Benavente. Seeing what appeared to be only a weak force of English troops on the further bank, Lefebvre-Desnouëttes rashly ordered his men to cross and engage without delay. As first all went well, and the Chasseurs of the Guard inflicted heavy casualties on Moore’s picquet. But then at the critical moment Lord Paget made his appearance with a sizeable force of fresh horsemen, which he had infiltrated through the buildings of Benavente unseen by the French, and coolly proceeded to take the French chasseurs, who enjoyed the nickname of “The Favored Children,” in the flank. The chasseurs fought magnificently, but no less than four squadrons were decimated or scattered. The French left 55 killed and wounded on the field, and a further 73, including no less a personage than Lefebvre-Desnouëttes himself, were taken captive on the river bank as they attempted to recross. British losses amounted to 50 casualties.
It was not long before tidings of this minor disaster were carried to the Emperor, for during this period he was right at the forefront of the pursuit. Indeed, the previous day he had been the first man into Valderas, accompanied only by his escort and a single squadron of the same ill-fated chasseurs, entering the village a mere two hours after the last British troops had left its streets. Marshal Ney was moved to inflict a mild rebuke on his master for thus exposing himself—“Sire, I thank Your Majesty for acting as my advance guard!” he remarked rather pointedly. Now, twenty-four hours later, the Emperor had to assimilate news of the capture of one of his favorite lieutenants. According to Castellanne he took the news with outward calm, and typically chose to misrepresent the scale of casualties. “General Lefebvre-Desnouëttes has been involved in a little affair,” he remarked. “He has been wounded and captured along with two or three chasseurs.” After saying these words the Emperor began to whistle through his teeth—he didn’t appear at all put out.”49
Nevertheless, it is probable that this small incident did more than anything else to convince Napoleon that Moore had effectively eluded his carefully laid trap. The Emperor tried to explain away his disappointment by imputing a disreputable panic on his opponents. “I have been pursuing the English for some days,” he confided to the Empress Josephine in a letter dated December 31, “but they are fleeing in a terrified fashion. They have abandoned the debris of La Romana’s army to avoid delaying their retreat by a singl
e half day. More than a hundred baggage wagons have already been taken. The weather remains very bad.”50
The events of the following days confirmed this veiled admission of Moore’s escape. In spite of the efforts of Marshal Soult, who was hounding his men down the road from Mansilla to Astorga in an attempt to forestall the British there, Moore won the race comfortably enough and entered the town with three divisions on the 29th. The British commander was again faced with the need for a new decision. When he originally ordered the retreat on December 23, he had envisaged making a halt at Astorga, and if necessary turning at bay there. Now he saw fit to reconsider; he was anxious about the condition and morale of his troops, and many shortages were already being experienced. Accordingly, he decided to evacuate Astorga and continue the retreat all the way to Corunna, there to await evacuation by the Royal Navy, who were requested to send up sufficient shipping forthwith. And so, on December 31, the British rear guard slipped out of Astorga and took the road toward the sea.
It was never the Emperor’s wont to be personally associated with failure. The realization that Moore was making good his escape proved extremely galling to Napoleon, particularly as he had insisted on taking personal control of the pursuit operation. As a completely satisfactory outcome could no longer be expected, the campaign did not warrant the continued presence of the Emperor. It is not very surprising, therefore, that he soon decided to reduce the size of the forces engaged so as to minimize the impression of Moore’s Fabian victory and to hand over command of the campaign to a minion. On December 31, General Desolles and his men were ordered to head back for Madrid, where King Joseph, surrounded by a hostile population, was severely handicapped by shortage of troops. A short time later new orders were issued breaking up Junot’s corps, returning the third battalions to their original regiments in the IVth Corps, placing the remainder under Soult. Victor’s corps was the next to be redirected; a full half of its strength, together with two brigades of cavalry, received instructions to march eastward and undertake the reduction of Léon. Then, on January 1, the Imperial Guard was taken out of the line and marched back to Benavente and thence (eventually) to Valladolid. Finally, the conduct of the pursuit was handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to Marshal Soult, whose corps’ strength had now been brought up to a full 30,000 bayonets and 6,000 sabers. Ney, with a further 16,000 men, would be available to support him if need arose.
Even before this dispersal of French forces to new duties, General Sir John Moore had already, in effect, earned a full year’s respite for southern Spain and Portugal. The chances of a rapid cure for the Spanish “ulcer” had receded almost to vanishing point, although superficially it might appear that Napoleon’s military triumph was practically complete, with three enemy field armies smashed into oblivion and the fourth and last in full cry for a port of evacuation.
Of course, Napoleon’s decision to abandon personal direction of the Spanish campaign was based on far more substantial reasons than mere pique. For some months past, there had been irrefutable indications of Austrian rearmament, and if the Hapsburgs were to be forestalled in launching a spring campaign along the Danube, Napoleon’s speedy return to France was imperative. What was more, on January 1, 1809, the Emperor received news of a new conspiracy at Paris involving Talleyrand, Fouché and even his brother-in-law Murat, the new King of Naples. There was little new in the fact that the first personages named were involved in plots, but the truly alarming aspect of the affair was that two such unlikely bedfellows as the ex-minister of foreign affairs and the minister of police were apparently acting in concert with Gascon Joachim—of all people—as their confederate.
The news that the Emperor was about to leave for France produced something of a sensation throughout the Army of Spain. The Imperial Guard was particularly incensed when it learned that it was to be left behind—at least for the time being. “Nobody wanted to stay in Spain,” Dumas recalled. The inhospitable nature of the countryside, the smoldering hatred of the population, the ceaseless danger of being shot by a guerilla from behind the next rock or stabbed with a stilleto by a provocative but bloodthirsty Spanish beauty, the endemic shortage of food and drink, the complete failure of either terror or friendliness to gain even a token of submission to King Joseph’s rule—all these features of life in the Iberian Peninsula had long since robbed the invasion of its glamor and adventurous appeal. Nor were the generals any happier at the prospect of being left to act on their own; they might consider Napoleon a hard taskmaster—always calling for the virtually impossible and invariably critical of everything except the most astounding results—yet they still preferred to feel their master close behind them. The mutual jealousies poisoning relations between the various marshals was a further reason why they felt lost without the Emperor. Mutual cooperation was practically out of the question once the all-seeing eye and all-directing hand had been withdrawn, and even Napoleon was unable to devise an effective chain of command for his bickering underlings; in the end, he left his brother Joseph as nominal commander in chief (although nobody for a moment ever considered him a soldier, least of all himself). The Emperor also permitted the rest of the near-mutinous marshals to set up semiautonomous commands in their respective areas. This laxity of overall control was to prove a powerful factor in keeping the Spanish cauldron on the boil over the following years, and Wellington was to benefit greatly from the endemic disunity in the French camps and headquarters.
On January 6, Napoleon set out from Astorga for Valladolid, accompanied by an escort formed from part of the Imperial Guard. For eleven days he lingered in the great city on the banks of the Douro, completing arrangements for handing over the reins of civil and military affairs to his successor. During this period, Marshals Soult and Ney were making fresh efforts to catch up with the elusive British and cut them off from their evacuation ports. In spite of the brilliant personal example of Sir John Moore, the British army was fast degenerating into a rabble, for the rigor of a winter retreat over the inhospitable Cantabrian mountains was wreaking havoc with both health and morale. Nevertheless, Moore always managed to keep one move ahead of his pursuers; on January 6 he turned at bay at Lugo and offered battle, but Soult’s command was so strung out and dispersed that it hardly presented a worthwhile target, and so Moore determined to continue the retreat to Corunna. After burning many wagons and shooting lame horses, the British returned to the road early on the 9th and slipped away northward, unnoticed by Soult’s drowsy picquets. Two days of confused rear guard actions ensued, but by the night of the 11th three of Moore’s four divisions had safely reached Corunna, and the fourth (Paget) was only four miles distant. However, there was still no sign of the eagerly awaited transports, and it might be thought that Soult had at last placed the enemy at his mercy with their backs to the sea and their discipline in tatters. But Soult knew enough about the English to respect their “last-ditch” valor and he proceeded with great caution, waiting for his distant units to materialize before risking a full-scale assault. Moore was consequently afforded four days’ grace in which to re-equip his ragged and starving men from the ample depots of Corunna before setting the match to what was left over; 4,000 barrels of gunpowder were ignited on the 13th, and although they were stored three miles outside the town hardly a window escaped the blast.
Then, on the afternoon of the 14th, the long-awaited sails appeared over the horizon, and by evening Moore was beginning to evacuate his sick, the better horses and some of his guns. These were followed by the cavalrymen and gunners, and by the 15th only 15,000 infantry and 200 artillerymen remained on shore facing Soult’s encircling forces. As for the balance of the British force, 5,000 men had perished during the retreat and a further 3,500 had embarked earlier at Vigo Bay in complete safety. Seeing the forest of masts in Corunna Bay, and noting the ceaseless passage of boats from ship to shore, the Duke of Dalmatia realized that he must strike without further delay if his quarry was not to escape him entirely. By the 15th, he had no less than 15,000 in
fantry and 4,500 cavalry at his disposal. Accordingly, about 2:00
P.M. on the following day he launched a heavy attack against Moore’s left with the intention of taking Monte Moro and interposing French troops between General Baird’s division and Corunna. At the same time, containing attacks were mounted against the other sectors of the British line.
South view of Corunna, looking towards the battle area beyond the town
All afternoon and evening the battle raged, but as Soult had anticipated, the British clung to their positions with dogged endurance, and no French attack managed to make any permanent headway or dislodge the stalwart defenders. In the middle of the afternoon, however, the British army suffered an irreparable loss when its gallant commander was struck by a cannonball on the left shoulder. The wound was plainly mortal, but as he was borne from the field in a blanket by six soldiers, Sir John Moore had the dying satisfaction of noting that Soult’s blue-clad columns were everywhere in retreat. By the time the French finally drew off to lick their wounds as dusk deepened, Sir John was dead.
The British army had inflicted perhaps 1,500 casualties for a loss of some 800 men killed and wounded. Sir John Moore passed away deeming himself fortunate to fall (like Nelson) in the moment of victory, and he was buried in a soldier’s grave early on the morning of the 17th. His death had not been in vain; the evacuation was able to continue unopposed throughout the next two days, and by the 18th the last men had been re-embarked. Nor was this the limit of Moore’s achievement; he had overcome daunting difficulties for three long months. He had bearded Napoleon and entirely disrupted his plans for completing the conquest of Spain and Portugal, and he had brought his men through the horrors of a winter retreat over the mountains and made it possible for them to be safely evacuated. This meant that he had preserved the greater part of England’s only field army and ensured that it could sail away to prepare for future operations designed to hammer the French eagles. Although it was a tragedy for his country and the army he loved and served so well that Moore died at the moment of success, his work was vindicated a few months later when a new expeditionary force commanded by the able Sir Arthur Wellesley appeared off the Portuguese coast and prepared to renew the conflict. The running sore thus created by Moore and subsequently kept festering by the “Iron Duke” was destined to impose a ceaseless drain on the resources of talent and lifeblood of the French Empire. Napoleon would live to rue the day that he chose to meddle in the affairs of the Peninsula, and thus unwittingly created so heavy a stick for his own back by affording Great Britain the opportunity to strike back at him on the Continent. Yet it is tragic and ironic to have to record that Britain was very tardy in recognizing Moore’s greatness. The first reaction to news of Corunna and the safe evacuation of the army was a storm of criticism over his handling of the campaign, and it was left to a gallant enemy, Marshal Soult, to order the erection of a fitting monument over the grave of one of England’s greatest and most deserving soldiers.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 81
