THE MONTHS OF WAITING: SIEGE OF ASTORGA (MARCH–MAY 1810)
Masséna, as we have seen, was only appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Portugal on April 17, 1810, and did not appear at Valladolid, to take up his charge, till May. The campaign, however, had begun long before under the Emperor’s own directions. There were preliminary operations to be carried out, which could be finished before either the new General-in-Chief or the main body of the reinforcements from beyond the Pyrenees had arrived. These were the repression of the insurgent bands of Navarre, Biscay, and Old Castile, the firm establishment of the line of communications between Salamanca and Bayonne, and the capture of the outlying Spanish fortresses, Astorga and Ciudad Rodrigo, which served as external defences for the Portuguese frontier. ‘Les besoins en Espagne sont successifs,’ wrote the Emperor early in the winter of 1809-10[231], ‘il faut d’abord un corps qui soumette les derrières. étant en Novembre il serait impossible de réunir tous les moyens avant du commencement de janvier. Et dans cette presqu’?le coupée de montagnes les froids et les neiges de janvier ne permettront de rien faire.’ All that he could do before spring would be to send forward Junot’s corps, and the other earlier reinforcements, to positions from which they should be ready to strike, the moment that the fine weather began. With the coming of the new year, when these corps had reached their destined positions, the imperial orders begin to abound in elaborate directions for the extermination of the guerrillas of the Upper Ebro and the Upper Douro[232], orders which led to much marching and counter-marching of the newly arrived troops, but to little practical effect in the way of repression, for skilled leaders like Mina, the[p. 213] Empecinado, and Julian Sanchez, nearly always slipped between the fingers of their pursuers, and on the few occasions when they were pressed into a corner, simply bade their men disperse and unite again at some distant rendezvous. These operations, however, were wholly subsidiary: the actual advance against Portugal only commences with the orders given to Junot in February to concentrate his corps at Valladolid, to hand over the charge of Salamanca and Old Castile to Kellermann’s dragoons and the divisions of the 6th Corps, and then to subdue the whole of the plain-land of Leon, as far as the foot of the Asturian and Galician mountains, including the towns of Benavente, Leon, and Astorga. Bonnet and his division, now as always based on Santander, were already advancing to invade the Asturias, and to threaten Galicia from the east. Ney with the 6th Corps was ordered to draw near to the frontier of Portugal on the side of Ciudad Rodrigo, ‘to inundate all the approaches to that kingdom with his cavalry, disquiet the English, and prevent them from dreaming of transferring themselves back to the south.’ The news of the near approach of the Emperor himself with 80,000 men was to be spread in every direction[233].
Meanwhile the third great unit which was to form part of the projected Army of Portugal, the 2nd Corps (under the temporary command of General Heudelet[234]), was taking part in a separate and remote series of operations, far to the South. This corps, it will be remembered, had been left on the Tagus about Talavera and Oropesa, to protect the rear of Soult and King Joseph, when they marched in January with the 1st, 4th, and 5th Corps to conquer Andalusia. That exploit having been accomplished, Mortier went, with half of the 5th Corps, to attack Badajoz, and to subdue Estremadura, which Soult imagined to be defenceless, since Albuquerque had marched with the old Estremaduran army to save Cadiz. Mortier advanced unopposed to the walls of Badajoz, which he reached on February 12, but found himself unable to undertake its siege with his small force of 9,000 men, because a new Spanish host[p. 214] had just appeared upon the scene. La Romana, with three of the divisions of the army that had been beaten at Alba de Tormes in November, had marched down the Spanish-Portuguese frontier by the Pass of Perales; and on the same day that Mortier appeared in front of Badajoz, his vanguard arrived at Albuquerque, only twenty miles away. These divisions were 13,000 strong: La Romana could add to this force a few thousands more left behind by Albuquerque. Mortier rightly felt that he dare not commence the regular siege of Badajoz when he had such superior numbers in his front. He therefore asked for reinforcements, both from Soult and from King Joseph. The former could spare nothing from Andalusia at this moment, but the 2nd Corps was ordered to leave the Tagus and place itself in communication with Mortier. Heudelet had other projects on hand at the moment: he had just seized Plasencia on February 10, and was engaged in bickering with Carlos d’Espa?a and Martin Carrera, whom La Romana had left in the Sierra de Gata. But, in obedience to his orders, he called in his detachments, and marched by Deleytosa and Truxillo into the valley of the Guadiana. This movement, from the French point of view, was a hazardous one; by the transference southward of the 2nd Corps, a long gap was left between Ney at Salamanca and Heudelet and Mortier in Estremadura. No troops whatever covered Madrid from the side of the south-west and the valley of the Tagus, and an irruption of the English on this line was one of the dangers which Napoleon most dreaded[235]. He was unaware of Wellington’s deeply-rooted determination to commit himself to no more Spanish campaigns.
Long before Heudelet approached the Guadiana, Mortier had been compelled, partly by want of supplies, partly by the threatening attitude of La Romana, who began cautiously to turn his flanks, to retire from in front of the walls of Badajoz. He gave back as far as Zafra on the road to the south, and six days after marched for Seville, leaving only a rearguard at Santa Ollala, on the extreme border of Estremadura. Soult required his presence, for, on account of a rising in Granada, and a[p. 215] threatening movement by the Spanish army of Murcia, the French reserves in Andalusia had been moved eastward, and its capital was almost stripped of troops. Hence when the 2nd Corps reached Ca?eres on March 8, and appeared in front of Albuquerque on March 14, it found that the 5th Corps had departed, and that it was nearly 100 miles from the nearest friendly post. Heudelet, therefore, having all La Romana’s army in his front, and no orders to execute (since the junction with Mortier had failed), retired to Merida, where Reynier arrived from the north, superseded him, and took command. Here the 2nd Corps remained practically passive for the rest of the spring, keeping open, but with difficulty and at long intervals, the communications between Madrid and Seville, by means of detachments at Truxillo and Almaraz. To a certain extent Reynier kept La Romana’s army in check, but he did not fully discharge even that moderate task, for the Spanish general detached southward two of his divisions, those of Contreras and Ballasteros, to threaten the frontiers of Andalusia and stir up an insurrection in the Condado de Niebla and the other regions west of Seville. Ballasteros surprised the cavalry brigade of Mortier’s corps at Valverde, at midnight on February 19, and scattered it, killing Beauregard, the brigadier. He then advanced to Ronquillo, only twenty miles from Seville, where, on March 25-6, he had an indecisive engagement with one of Gazan’s brigades, after which he retired into the Condado. Mortier, thereupon, came out against him from Seville at the head of a whole division. Unwisely offering battle at Zalamea, on the Rio Tinto, on April 15, Ballasteros was beaten, and retired into the mountains. Thither, after some time, he was pursued by Mortier’s columns, and again defeated at Ara?ena on May 26. But he rallied his broken force in the Sierra de Ara?ena, where he remained for long after, a thorn in the side of the Army of Andalusia, always descending for a raid in the plains of Seville when he was left unwatched. Soult was forced to keep a considerable part of the 5th Corps in observation of him—a detachment that he was loth to spare.
La Romana’s central divisions, meanwhile, those of Charles O’Donnell (brother of the Henry O’Donnell who had distinguished himself at Gerona in the previous autumn), Mendizabal,[p. 216] and Contreras, bickered with the 2nd Corps in the direction of Ca?eres and Torresnovas, without any notable advantage on either side. But as long as Reynier lay at Merida, and Mortier might at any moment come up from Seville to his aid, Wellington felt uneasy as to the possibility of a French advance between Tagus and Guadiana, and, regarding La Romana’s army as an insufficient security on this side, moved Hill with a force of 12,000 men to Portalegre, close to the rear of Badajoz. Hill had with his own British division, now consisting of three brigades[236], another division composed of Portuguese, under General Hamilton[237], the English heavy cavalry brigade of Slade, a weak Portuguese cavalry brigade under Madden[238], and three batteries. He was ordered not to countenance any offensive movements on the part of La Romana, but to support him, and to endeavour to cover Badajoz, if the French should unite the 2nd and 5th Corps, and make a serious move westward. There was no need, as matters turned out, for any such support, for Reynier, though he executed some rather useless feints and counter-marches in April and May, undertook nothing serious. One of his demonstrations drew Hill to Arronches, close to Elvas, on May 14, but it turned out to be meaningless, and the British troops returned to their usual head quarters at Portalegre a few days later. There seems to have been some uncertainty of purpose in all this man?uvring of the French in Estremadura. Reynier was not strong enough to offer to fight La Romana and Hill combined; he might have done so with good prospect of success if Mortier could have been spared from Andalusia; but half the 5th Corps was usually detached far to the south, hunting the insurgents of the Sierra de Ronda, and the other half had to garrison Seville and watch Ballasteros. Hence Reynier, left to himself, did no more for the common cause of the French in Spain than detain Hill’s two divisions in the Alemtejo. That Wellington was thus obliged to divide his army was no doubt[p. 217] a permanent gain to the enemy: yet they obtained it by the very doubtful expedient of leaving nothing on the Tagus; a push in the direction of Plasencia and Almaraz by even a small Spanish force would have been a very tiresome and troublesome matter for King Joseph, who would have been forced either to bring down Ney from Salamanca, or to call Reynier back from the Guadiana, for Madrid was entirely uncovered on the West. But nothing of the sort happened; La Romana kept his main body concentrated in front of Badajoz, and had the full approval of Wellington for doing so.
At the extreme opposite flank of the French front, on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, there was going on at this same time a side-campaign conducted with a much greater degree of vigour, but equally indecisive in the end. The Asturias had been almost stripped of troops by Del Parque, in order to reinforce the army that fought at Tamames and Alba de Tormes. When the Duke moved his main force southward after the last-named fight, he carried off with him the division of Ballasteros, which had been the core of the old Asturian Army. General Antonio Arce was left in the principality with some 4,000 men, whom he kept at Colombres, behind the Deba, under General Llano-Ponte, watching the French force in the province of Santander. New levies, little more than 2,000 strong, were being collected at Oviedo. In the end of January General Bonnet, whose division at Santander had received its drafts, and had been strengthened up to 7,000 men[239], thought himself strong enough to drive in Arce’s weak line and to make a dash at the Asturian capital. On the 25th he attacked the lines of Colombres, and carried them with no difficulty. On the 31st he captured Oviedo, which was evacuated by the Captain-General Arce and the local Junta without serious fighting. But that active partisan Juan Porlier at once cut off his communication with Santander, by seizing Infiesto and Gijon. Bonnet at once evacuated Oviedo, and turned back to clear his rear. Porlier escaped along the coast to Pravia, and meanwhile the main body of the Asturians, under General Barcena, reoccupied the capital. Having driven off Porlier, the French general marched west[p. 218]ward once more, beat Barcena at the bridge of Colleto on February 14, and again made himself master of Oviedo. The Asturians rallied behind the Narcea, where they were joined by a brigade of 2,000 men sent to their aid by Mahy, the Captain-General of Galicia.
That province, like the Asturias, had been left almost ungarrisoned by Del Parque, when he took the old ‘Army of Galicia’ across the Sierra de Gata, and transferred it to Estremadura. Mahy had been left behind with the skeleton of one division, which he was to recruit, as best he could, by new levies. His main preoccupation at this moment was the defence of the newly fortified stronghold of Astorga, which was already threatened by the French troops in the plains of Leon. But seeing his flank menaced by Bonnet’s advance, he lent what men he could spare to aid in the defence of the Asturias.
The Asturian junta, having deposed General Arce for incapacity and corruption, and appointed Cienfuegos to take over his troops, ordered the resumption of offensive operations against Bonnet in March. Porlier, their great partisan-hero, made a circuit along the coast, and threatened the French communications with Santander. At the same time their main force advanced against Oviedo by the valley of the Nalon. Bonnet’s advanced brigade was driven in, after a sharp skirmish at Grado on March 19, and disquieted by Porlier’s simultaneous attack on his rear, he evacuated the Asturian capital for the third time, and gave back as far as Cangas de Onis, in the valley of the Ona. He then called up all the reinforcements that he could obtain from Santander, and marched—for the fourth time in three months!—on Oviedo with his whole division; the Spaniards retired without offering serious opposition, and took up a line behind the Narcea [March 29]. This time Bonnet left them no time to rally, but forced the passage of that river, whereupon the Asturians ascended to Tineo in the mountains, while the Galician succours gave back to Navia, almost on the edge of their own principality [April 25-26]. After this, Bonnet’s offensive force was spent; having to occupy Oviedo and its ports of Gijon and Aviles, as well as all the central and eastern Asturias, and, moreover, to defend his communication with Santander from new attacks of Porlier, his strength[p. 219] sufficed for no more. His 7,000 men were immobilized for the rest of the year: he had conquered two-thirds of the Asturias, and barely succeeded in keeping it down. But he was quite unable to spare a man to aid in French operations in the plains of Leon, or even to make a serious attempt to threaten Galicia. Once or twice he succeeded in communicating with the forces which Junot (and after him Kellermann and Serras) commanded in the plains beyond the Cantabrian range, by expeditions pushed down through the pass of Pajares on to Leon; but the road was always closed again by the guerrillas, and no co-operation could take place. In short, the Spaniards lost the greater part of the Asturias, and the French lost the further services of Bonnet’s division[240]. It had no power to threaten Galicia, because it was forced to keep garrisons in Gijon, Aviles, Lastres, Santona, and all the sea-ports, with a full brigade at Oviedo in the centre, to support them. Any concentration of troops, leading to the evacuation of the smaller garrisons, at once let loose the guerrillas from their mountains. Bonnet had but 7,000 men in all: of these, not more than half could be used[p. 220] for an expedition, and such a force was too small to have any practical effect on the general course of events in north-western Spain.
Bonnet’s operations were, of course, wholly subsidiary; the really important movements that were on foot in the early spring of 1810 were those of Junot and Ney in the plains of Leon. In pursuance of the Emperor’s orders to the effect that the whole plain-land of Leon was to be occupied, as a preliminary to the invasion of Portugal, Loison, who had re-entered Spain at the head of a number of battalions which were ultimately to join the corps of Ney, was ordered to move on from Valladolid and occupy the country about Benavente and Astorga. He was left free to select either of those towns as his head quarters, and was directed to communicate with Bonnet, when the latter should have entered the Asturias, so that their operations should threaten Galicia simultaneously[241]. Loison’s expedition, however, proved a complete failure; he marched towards Astorga early in February with nearly 10,000 men. On the 11th he appeared before that town, and learnt that since Carrié’s reconnaissance in October 1809[242], it had been much strengthened. La Romana had repaired the breaches of its mediaeval walls. He had thrown up entrenchments round the suburb of La Reteibia, which occupies that part of the hill of Astorga, which is not covered by the town itself. He had also established outlying posts in the suburbs of San Andrés and Puerta del Rey, which lie at the foot of the hill, on its northern and eastern sides. Fourteen guns, only two of them 12-pounders, the rest light, had been mounted on the walls. The place, therefore, was a make-shift fortification of the most antiquated style. General Garcia Velasco, who had been left behind in Galicia with one division of the old Northern army when Del Parque marched for Estremadura, was in charge of this portion of the Spanish front, under the superintendence of Mahy, the Captain-General. He had placed half his troops—five battalions, or 2,700 men, in Astorga, while he himself with the remainder lay beyond the mountains, at Villafranca, in the Vierzo, with about the same force. The total of organized troops in Galicia[p. 221] at this moment did not exceed 8,000 men, including the small brigade which Mahy sent to the Asturias, and a detachment under Echevarria at Puebla de Senabria. Astorga had not been expecting a siege at such an early date as February 11; it was only provisioned for twenty days, and the guns had not ammunition to last for even that short space of time. The governor, José Santocildes, was a man of courage and resource, who knew how to put on a bold face to an impossible situation, or instant disaster might have followed.
Loison was disconcerted to find that Astorga, his destined head quarters, was held and garrisoned against him. His engineers reconnoitred its walls, and informed him that it could not be taken without a regular battering-train. He had only field-pieces with him, the weather was abominable, and his troops—all conscript battalions from France—were suffering terribly from the continued rain and cold. Wherefore he contented himself with inviting Santocildes to surrender, promising him promotion at King Joseph’s hands, if he ‘would implore the clemency of a sovereign who treats all Spaniards like a father[243].’ When the governor sent a curt reply, intimating that he and his people intended to do their duty, Loison retired to La Baneza, and reported to his chiefs that he was helpless for want of siege-guns. He announced at the same time that he had attempted to communicate with Bonnet at Oviedo, by sending two battalions to the foot of the pass of Pajares, but that the mountain roads were all blocked with snow, and that this detachment had been forced to fall back into the plains, without obtaining any news of what was afoot in the Asturias[244].
A few days later, the head of Junot’s corps entered the province of Leon, and Loison was directed to move southward and join Ney at Salamanca. His place on the Esla and the Orbigo was taken by Clausel’s division of the 8th Corps. The newly arrived general executed another reconnaissance to the neighbourhood of Astorga, and on February 26 sent Santocildes a second summons, in the name of Junot. It received the same answer that had been given to Loison. It was clear that Astorga[p. 222] must be besieged, and that a battering train must be placed at the disposition of the force charged with the operation. But in the present state of the roads it would take some time to bring heavy guns to the front. Further operations had to be postponed. The 6th Corps, it may be remarked, had executed at the same time that Loison appeared in front of Astorga, a demonstration against Ciudad Rodrigo. King Joseph had written from Andalusia to beg Ney to threaten the place, while the news of the French victories in the south were still fresh, assuring him that the Spaniards were so cowed that a prompt surrender was probable. The Marshal, though doubting the wisdom of these optimistic views, concentrated his corps, advanced to San Felices, and on February 13 summoned Rodrigo. He got from General Herrasti, the governor, an answer as bold and confident as that which Loison received from Santocildes, and returned to Salamanca to disperse his troops in cantonments and ask for a battering-train[245]. His short and ineffective excursion to the banks of the Agueda had taken him in sight of the British outposts on the Spanish frontier, and had induced Wellington for a moment to think that the invasion of Portugal was at hand. It was impossible that he should have guessed that Ney’s advance had no better cause than King Joseph’s foolish confidence. Hence the withdrawal of the 6th Corps, after the vain summons of Ciudad Rodrigo, was as inexplicable as its advance. ‘I do not understand Ney’s movement,’ he wrote to his trusted subordinate, Robert Craufurd, ‘coupled as it is with the movement upon Badajoz from the south of Spain. The French are not strong enough for the two sieges at the same time, and I much doubt whether they are in a state to undertake one of them[246].’ The prompt retirement of Ney from before Ciudad Rodrigo, and of Mortier from before Badajoz, completely justified his conclusions within a day or two of the writing of his letter.
There was nothing for the French in the kingdom of Leon to do, save to await the arrival of the great battering-train which[p. 223] Napoleon had bestowed upon his Army of Portugal. It was far to the rear: on February 20 its head was only beginning to approach Burgos, and its tail had not quitted Bayonne. The reason of this tardiness was the want of draught animals at the southern dép?ts of France. The equipment of the train and the artillery of the 8th Corps, and the other great reinforcements which had just passed the Pyrenees, had exhausted the available supplies of horses[247], and when the authorities at Bayonne had to place the ‘grand park’ on a war footing there was intolerable delay. Even when detachments of the park had started, they made slow progress in Spain, for the French horses died off rapidly in the bitter weather of the plateau of Old Castile, and it was almost impossible to replace them by requisition from the country-side. Junot, bold to the verge of rashness, and feverishly anxious to remake the reputation that he had lost at Vimiero, could not endure the delay. He sent to requisition Spanish guns from the governors of Burgos and Segovia, dispatched his own teams to draw them, and when he heard that a small train was procurable, ordered the 8th Corps towards Astorga on March 15, leaving the cannon to follow. The month’s delay in the investment had enabled Santocildes to fill up the supply of food and ammunition which had been so low in February; he had now got his fortress in as good state as was possible, considering the intrinsic weakness of its mediaeval walls, and had induced 3,000 of the 4,000 inhabitants to retire to Galicia.
On March 21 Clausel’s division invested Astorga, while Solignac’s came up to Leon and Benavente in support, and St. Croix’s division of dragoons took post in advance of La Baneza, to observe the Spanish forces in southern Galicia and the Portuguese of the Tras-os-Montes. Till the guns should arrive, there was nothing to be done save to choose the point of attack, prepare fascines and gabions, and open the first parallel, out of harm’s way from the small artillery of the garrison—none of it heavier than a 12-pounder. Valazé, Junot’s chief engineer, opined that the low-lying suburbs at the foot of the hill of Astorga might be neglected, and the newly entrenched[p. 224] Reteibia on the high ground masked by a false attack, while the projecting and unflanked north-west corner of the old walls of the city itself might be battered from the slopes below: here, as in all its circuit, the place had neither ditch nor glacis: there was simply the stout mediaeval wall, broken every 30 yards by a small square tower, which followed the sky-line of the plateau.
The first three weeks of the siege had an unusual character, since the French could build what works they pleased, but could not seriously batter Astorga with the sixteen field-guns of small calibre belonging to the division lying before the walls. The officer in temporary command of the artillery, Colonel No?l, contented himself with opening fire from various false attacks, from which the guns were repeatedly moved, in order to distract the attention of the enemy from the chosen front on the north-west, where the approaches were completed, and a great battery constructed, ready for the siege-guns when they should arrive. Meanwhile there was a good deal of infantry skirmishing in and about the lower suburbs, in whose outskirts the French ultimately established themselves, though they had no intention of pushing up to the walls either from Puerta del Rey or from San Andrés[248]. The garrison defended itself well, executed several vigorous sorties, and lost no post of importance, though the line of resistance in the suburbs was gradually thrust back. Santocildes received several encouraging messages from his chief Mahy, who announced that he was bringing up to the pass of Foncebadon, on the edge of the plain of Astorga, every man that Galicia could furnish. But even when the Captain-General had brought his reserves from Lugo to join Garcia’s division, they had only 5,000 bayonets. To hold them off, Junot sent Clausel’s division to the outposts, and replaced it in the trenches by Solignac’s and one brigade of Lagrange’s. Mahy, in face of such an accumulation of men, was absolutely helpless. Echevarria, with his weak brigade from Puebla de Senabria, had pushed a little forward, to give moral support to Mahy. He was surprised and routed near Alcanizas on April 10, by St. Croix’s dragoons.
Map of the siege of Astorga
Enlarge SIEGE OF ASTORGA
On the 15th the siege-train arrived from Valladolid; it was[p. 225] small[249], but sufficient against an enemy so miserably provided with guns as Santocildes. Junot himself came up on the 17th to watch the effect of the attack. It was instant and overpowering. When once the artillery had been placed in the works prepared for it, and had begun its fire, the old walls of Astorga began to crumble. The light Spanish pieces on the enceinte were overpowered, despite of the gallant way in which the gunners stuck to their work[250]. By noon on the 21st of April the north-western angle of the walls of Astorga had been beaten down, and the fallen stones, there being no ditch, had accumulated at the foot of the broad breach, so as to give an easy entrance. Fortunately for the defence, there was a large church just inside the angle: its roof and tower had been shot down, but the garrison had made themselves strong in the lower parts of the building, and threw up traverses from it to the wall on each side of the breach. This gave them a second line of defence, though but a weak one, and when Junot sent in a summons in the afternoon Santocildes refused his offer. At seven the French general bade 700 men storm the breach; the forlorn hope was composed of the voltigeur and grenadier companies of the Irish Legion and the 47th of the Line. The column penetrated to the foot of the breach without much difficulty, though exposed to heavy musketry from the walls, and a flanking fire from the suburb of the Reteibia. The breach was carried, and, in addition, a house built with its back to the ramparts just inside the enceinte. But the assailants could get no further, owing to the murderous fire which the Spaniards kept up from behind the ruined church and the traverses. After an hour of desperate attempts to break in, they took shelter, some in the house that they had captured, but the majority behind the lip of the breach, where they covered themselves as best they could, by piles of débris built in with their haversacks, and even with the corpses of the fallen. Under[p. 226] this poor shelter they lay till dark, suffering heavily. During the night the troops in the trenches ran out a line of gabions from the front works to the foot of the walls, and by dawn had opened a good communication with the men at the breach, though they had to work under a furious but blind fire from above.
At dawn on April 22, Santocildes surrendered. He might have held out some hours longer behind his inner defences, if he had not exhausted nearly all his musket ammunition in resisting the storm. There were less than thirty cartridges a head left for the infantry of the garrison, and only 500 pounds of powder for the artillery. The defence had been admirable, and, it may be added, very scientific, a fact proved by the low figures of the dead and wounded, which did not amount to 200 men[251]. The French, in the assault alone, lost five officers and 107 men killed, and eight officers and 286 men wounded[252]. Junot was thought to have been precipitate in ordering the storm: his excuse was that there were less than two hours of daylight left, and that, if he had deferred the attack till next morning, the Spaniards would have retrenched the breach under cover of the dark, and made it impracticable. The siege cost the 8th Corps in all 160 killed and some 400 wounded, a heavy butcher’s bill for the capture of a mediaeval fortress armed with only fourteen light guns. Two thousand five hundred prisoners were taken, as shown by Santocildes’ lists, but Junot claimed to have ‘captured 3,500 fine troops, all with good English muskets, and well clothed in English great coats,’ as well as 500 sick and wounded—impossible figures.
On the morning of the surrender Mahy made a feeble demonstration against the covering troops, on both the passes of Manzanal and Foncebadon, while Echevarria beat up the force at Penilla which lay facing him. All three attacks were checked with ease, the Galician army not being able to put more than 6,000 men in the field on the three fronts taken together. Its loss was heavy, especially at Penilla.
[p. 227]
After detaching the 22nd Regiment, which was ordered to endeavour to communicate with Bonnet in the Asturias, and garrisoning Astorga with two battalions, Junot drew back the greater part of his corps to Valladolid and Toro. He had been ordered to place himself near Ney, in order to aid and cover the 6th Corps in the oncoming siege of Ciudad Rodrigo. At the same time he received the unwelcome news that Masséna had been named Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Portugal, and that the 8th Corps was placed under his orders.
Masséna, as has been already mentioned, did not arrive at Salamanca till May 28th: he could not well have reached the front earlier, since the Emperor had only placed him in command in April. The long delay in the opening of the main campaign must, therefore, be laid to Napoleon’s account rather than to that of his generals. If he had suspected that every day of waiting meant that Wellington had added an extra redoubt to the ever-growing lines of Torres Vedras, it is permissible to believe that he would have hurried forward matters at a less leisurely pace. But his determination to conduct the invasion of Portugal in what he called ‘a methodical fashion’ is sufficiently shown by the orders sent to Salamanca on May 29. ‘Tell the Prince of Essling that, according to our English intelligence, the army of General Wellington is composed of no more than 24,000 British and Germans, and that his Portuguese are only 25,000 strong. I do not wish to enter Lisbon at this moment, because I could not feed the city, whose immense population is accustomed to live on sea-borne food. He can spend the summer months in taking Ciudad Rodrigo, and then Almeida. He need not hurry, but can go methodically to work. The English general, having less than 3,000 cavalry, may offer battle on ground where cavalry cannot act, but will never come out to fight in the plains[253].’
The Emperor then proceeds to add that with the 50,000 men of the 6th and 8th Corps, the cavalry reserve, &c., Masséna is strong enough to take both Rodrigo and Almeida at his ease: Reynier and the 2nd Corps can be called up to the bridge of Alcantara, from whence they can menace Central Portugal and cover Madrid. No order is given to bring up this corps[p. 228] to join the main army: it seems that the Emperor at this moment had in his head the plan, with which Wellington always credited him, of threatening a secondary attack in the Tagus valley. The 2nd Corps is treated as covering Masséna’s left, while on his right he will be flanked by Kellermann, who is to add to the small force already under his command in Old Castile a whole new division, that of Serras, composed of troops just arrived from France[254]. This, added to Kellermann’s dragoons, would make a corps of 12,000 men. In addition, as the Emperor remarks, by the time that the Army of Portugal is ready to march on Lisbon, it will have in its rear the 9th Corps under Drouet, nearly 20,000 men, who will be concentrated at Valladolid before the autumn has begun. There will be over 30,000 men in Leon and Old Castile when Masséna’s army moves on from Almeida, and in the rear of these again Burgos, Navarre, and Biscay will be held by the Young Guard, and by twenty-six 4th battalions from France, which were due to start after the 9th Corps, and would have made their appearance south of the Pyrenees by August or September.
This document is a very curious product of the imperial pen. It would be hard to find in the rest of the Correspondance a dispatch which so completely abandons the ‘Napoleonic methods’ of quick concentration and sharp strokes, and orders a delay of three months or more in the completion of a campaign whose preliminary operations had begun so far back as February. We may reject at once the explanation offered by some of Napoleon’s enemies, to the effect that he was jealous of Masséna, and did not wish him to achieve too rapid or too brilliant a success. But it is clear that a humanitarian regard for the possible sufferings of the inhabitants of Lisbon—the only reason alleged for the delay—is an inadequate motive. Such things did not normally affect the Emperor, and he must have remembered that when Junot occupied Portugal at the mid-winter of 1807-8[p. 229] famine had not played its part in the difficulties encountered by the French. Nor does it seem that an exaggerated estimate of the enemy’s strength induced him to postpone the attack till all the reinforcements had arrived. He under-estimates Wellington’s British troops by some 5,000, his Portuguese troops by at least 15,000 men. He is utterly ignorant of the works of Torres Vedras, though six months’ labour has already been lavished on them, and by this time they were already defensible. Three months seem an altogether exaggerated time to devote to the sieges of the two little old-fashioned second-rate fortresses of Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida. From whence, then, comes this unprecedented resolve to adopt a ‘methodical’ system in dealing with the invasion of Portugal? It has been suggested that the Emperor was very desirous to make sure of the absolute suppression of the guerrilleros of the Pyrenees and the Ebro, before pushing forward his field army to Lisbon. Possibly he was influenced by his knowledge of the infinite difficulty that Masséna would find in equipping himself with a train, and more especially in creating magazines during the months before the harvest had been gathered in. Some have thought that, looking far forward, he considered it would be more disastrous to the English army to be ‘driven into the sea’ somewhere in the rough months of October and November rather than in the fine weather of June—and undoubtedly no one who reads his dispatches can doubt that the desire to deal an absolutely crushing blow to that army was his dominating idea throughout. But probably the main determining factor in Napoleon’s mind was the resolve that there should be no failure this time, for want of preparation or want of sufficient strength; that no risks should be taken, and that what he regarded as an overwhelming force should be launched upon Portugal. After Junot’s disaster of 1808 and Soult’s fiasco in 1809, the Imperial prestige could not stand a third failure. The old pledge that ‘the leopard should be driven into the sea’ must be redeemed at all costs on this occasion. Solid success rather than a brilliant campaign must be the end kept in view: hence came the elaborate preparations for the sustaining of Masséna’s advance by the support of Drouet, Kellermann, and Serras. Even Suchet’s operations in Eastern Spain were to be conducted with some[p. 230] regard to the affairs of Portugal[255]. It was a broad and a formidable plan—but it failed in one all-important factor. Wellington’s strength was underrated; it was no mere driving of 25,000 British troops into the sea that was now in question, but the reduction of a kingdom where every man had been placed under arms, and every preparation made for passive as well as for active resistance. When Napoleon was once more foiled, it was because he had treated the Portuguese army—a ‘tas de coquins’ as he called them—as a negligible quantity, and because he had foreseen neither that systematic devastation of the land, nor the creation of those vast lines in front of Lisbon, which were such essential features of Wellington’s scheme of defence. The French attack was delivered by 65,000 men, not by the 100,000 whose advent the British general had feared: and precisely because the numbers of the Army of Portugal were no greater, the attack was made on the Beira frontier only. Masséna had no men to spare for the secondary invasion south of the Tagus which Wellington had expected and dreaded. The Emperor’s plans went to wreck because he had under-estimated his enemy, and assigned too small a force to his lieutenant. But it was no ordinary general who had so prepared his defence that Napoleon’s calculations went all astray. The genius of Wellington was the true cause of the disastrous end of the long-prepared invasion.