Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 (89 page)

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 his 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 st
rength 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, Bessie
res 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 ragamuffins
¹
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. Ea
rly in September the two French
commanders took counsel and agreed to unite their forces to revictual Rodrigo. On the 23rd they met, w
ith nearly 60,000 men, at Tamame
s, 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. H
ere, 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 pre
parations. Though he made no att
empt 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 w
atch while the rest of the Army
remained a little farther back, strung out along a sixteen-mile front
to cover his accumulations of ar
tillery and stores from raiding
cavalry. After Marmont's failure to
attack on the Caya, he did not
expect him to do more than provis
ion the fortress and retire. He
had been profoundly impressed by
a captured letter to Napoleon's
Chief-of-Staff, in which the Marsh
al 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 prov
ide exact information. Welling
ton knew that Napoleon had been sen
ding reinforcements into Spain,
but he failed to realise how many. He estimated their num
ber at
around ten thousand. In fact ther
e were thirty thousand, of whom
more than half had been assigne
d 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

¹
Fortescue, VIII,
254-5.
"W
^e
have certainly altered the nature of the
war in Spain,"
wrote Wellington. " Marmont says he can do nothing without magazines, which is a quite new era in the French military system."

division of infantry, were moving through El Bodon on Fuente Guinaldo, while two other cavalry brigades under General Wathier were starting on a sweep to the north through Espeja.

It was the larger of these two forces, comprising nearly 3000 horse and 8000 foot, which came up against the 3rd Division, 5000 strong, on the El Bodon plateau. Driving through the British
out
post screen, Montbrun suddenly became aware that the troops in front of him, instead of being concentrated for battle, were spread over a front of nearly six miles with huge gaps between them. On this he decided to probe more closely and, without waiting for the infantry, sent the whole of his cavalry in to attack two British battalions which, with some Portuguese guns and three squadrons of horse, were posted across the main road.

The French cavalry were on their chosen ground, an open plain. They saw before them the kind of situation which had proved the prelude to so many triumphs on the battlefields of the Continent. They went forward in a glorious sweep of flashing helmets and sabres to scatter the outnumbered infantry and massacre them as they ran. The Portuguese gunners, though keeping up a heavy fire at point-blank range, were overpowered and forced to take shelter; many were cut down. But the
5th
Foot behind them—the Northumberland Fusiliers—instead of flying, advanced on the amazed dragoons before they could recover breath and, pouring in three deadly volleys, scattered them and recaptured the guns. This unorthodox performance temporarily restored the situation, and for the next hour, ordered by Wellington to hold on at all costs until the isolated units on their flanks could be withdrawn, the
5th
and its companion regiment, the
77th
—a unit still fresh from England —resisted e
very attack. All the while the 1
st Hussars of the King's German Legion and the nth Light Dragoons
¹
kept charging the enemy's cavalry to gain time.

By the time that the French gave up their frontal attacks for the less costly and more profitable tactics of infiltration, the remainder of the division had been disengaged and was in retreat towards the south. The
5th
and
77th
then formed a single square and, preceded by a supporting Portuguese battalion, brought up the rear. For the next two hours the 3rd Division withdrew in column of regiments across a perfectly flat plain with Montbrun's cavalry riding furiously round it. Once the rea
rguard square was assailed from
three sides simultaneou
sly; for some minutes nothing co
uld be seen but a