A history of the Peninsular War, Vol. 6, September 1, 1812-August 5, 1813

When the Anglo-Portuguese Army halted at Ciudad Rodrigo, and came back once more to regular rations and marches that were no longer forced, it was of course in very bad condition. The cold and wet of the last ten days’ retreat from Salamanca had caused many a man to drop dead by the way, and had sent thousands of sick to the hospitals, riddled with dysentery and rheumatism. And the hospitals and dépôts were even before this last influx loaded up with convalescents not fit for service, from the casualties of Salamanca and Burgos. The December morning states were enough to fill Wellington with dismay; of his 64[251] British battalions there were only 30,397 men present with the colours—an average of much less than 500 bayonets to the battalion. There were no less than 18,000 men in hospital—more than a third of the total strength of the infantry arm. Thirteen regiments had more men ‘sick’ than ‘effective’; twelve were down to under 300 strong[252]. The cavalry had not lost so many in proportion—they had 5,700 present under arms to 1,436 sick, but could not mount more than 5,000, owing to the loss of horses during the retreat, and the surviving horses were for the most part in bad condition.

The first thing necessary was to get the troops under cover and well fed: a very long rest was obviously necessary to allow the way-worn and exhausted men time to recover their strength, and the convalescents to rejoin from the hospitals. With the winter drafts known to be ready and starting from England, to the number of some 5,000[253], beside one or two more complete battalions promised for the Peninsula, there might be an army in April 1813 no less strong than that which had opened the campaign of 1812. But clearly the only movement to be thought of at present was that of getting the divisions into comfortable winter quarters. Accordingly the army broke up a few days after reaching Ciudad Rodrigo, and spread itself out in dispositions not unlike those of the December previous, save that nothing was left so far to the South as had been the custom in other years. For Soult was no longer in Andalusia, and the right wing of the Allied army had no reason to descend as far as the Guadiana.

By December the 1st Division had distributed itself on the upper Mondego around Guarda and Vizeu[254]; the 3rd Division was farther north, about Moimento de Beira; the 4th, with head-quarters at S. João de Pesqueira, occupied cantonments along the Douro; the 5th was a little lower down the same river in Lamego and the neighbouring villages. The 6th Division lay somewhat farther back on the northern slope of the Serra de Estrella, along the high road parallel with the middle Mondego, with head-quarters at Cea; the 7th at Moimento da Serra and Santa Marinha, also under the Estrella. Pack’s and Bradford’s Portuguese went north of the Douro, to Penafiel and Villa Real respectively. Only the much-enduring Light Division was left in rather cold and bare quarters on the frontier, occupying familiar billets at Fuentes de Oñoro, Alameda, Gallegos, and other villages between the Coa and the Agueda. The cavalry was all sent back to the rear, even so far as the coast-plain at the mouths of the Vouga and the Mondego, save V. Alten’s brigade, which remained on the Agueda in company with the Light Division, and D’Urban’s Portuguese, who went back to Braganza, in the far north-east of the Tras-os-Montes, on the Spanish frontier. Any observer noting these dispositions as a whole could not but conclude that they were most easily explained by an intention to resume in the next spring the old line of the Allied advance of 1812; since all the British troops were conveniently placed for a concentration on the Agueda, and a march on Salamanca. The fact that the three small Portuguese units had been sent north of the Douro would attract little attention. And this no doubt was the impression which Wellington wished to produce on any secret agents of the French who might report the location of his winter quarters.

Meanwhile, as in earlier years, Hill took the old Army of Estremadura, the British 2nd Division, Hamilton’s Portuguese division, and Erskine’s two cavalry brigades, back to the South, but only as far as the Tagus and the Alagon, not to the Guadiana. He fixed his head-quarters at Coria, and distributed the brigades of the 2nd Division in the mountain villages above, covering the great passes of the Sierra de Francia and the Sierra de Gata, the Puerto de Baños and the Puerto de Perales[255]. Hamilton’s division lay inside its own country, at Moraleja, Idanha, and Penamacor. The cavalry head-quarters were at Brozas in the valley of the Tagus, near Alcantara and its Roman bridge. Here Erskine, the cavalry divisional general, committed suicide by jumping out of a high window in a state of frenzy. Wellington had long wanted to get rid of him—though not in this sad way—and for good reason, as is explained by several incidents of 1811 and 1812 which have been noticed in previous volumes. Yet he had never been able to obtain his departure—political influences at home stood in the way. Erskine being thus removed, the Commander-in-Chief at once dissolved the 2nd Cavalry Division, and its two British brigades (Long’s and Fane’s) ceased to have any other connexion with each other, beyond that of being both attached to Hill’s Corps.

The disposition for Hill’s winter quarters was obviously intended not merely to cover the great passes between the valleys of the Douro and the Tagus, but also to give the enemy cause to think that Wellington might some day attack on the southern front, either by a sudden advance up the Tagus on Talavera and Madrid, or by a blow at Avila across the Puente de Congosto defile. Either operation would be equally possible to a force based on Coria. And repeatedly during the spring rumours ran through the French lines that Hill had advanced to Plasencia or the bridge of Almaraz.

Behind the long front that lay between D’Urban’s horse at Braganza and Erskine’s horse at Brozas, the British army settled down for a very protracted period of rest and reorganization—it was to be much longer than Wellington had intended, owing to unforeseen chances. The Spanish auxiliary forces which had marched with the Allies in the autumn also dispersed: Castaños led the Army of Galicia back from the Agueda to its own country, by a long march through the Tras-os-Montes. Carlos de España put part of his division as a garrison in Ciudad Rodrigo, and lay with the rest in the mountain villages of the Sierra de Francia. Morillo, sticking close to Hill’s side, as he had done all through 1812, went back with him to the South, and wintered once more in Estremadura, at Caçeres and the neighbouring places.

On the other side, King Joseph and Marshal Soult had also to place their armies—as worn out as were those of their enemy—in winter quarters. And the choice of theirs was a much more difficult problem than that which lay before Wellington, since King Joseph had to settle not only a military but a political problem. The whole fabric of the French occupation of Spain had been dashed to pieces in the preceding summer by the loss of Andalusia, the temporary occupation of Madrid by the Allies, and the advance of the Anglo-Portuguese Army as far as Burgos. It had now to be reconstructed—but on what lines? There was clearly no possibility of reoccupying Andalusia or Estremadura: to do so would have involved a winter campaign—which was unthinkable—and an intolerable dispersion of the army which had been collected with so much difficulty for the repression of Wellington. The real alternatives possible were either (1) to reconstruct King Joseph’s Spanish kingdom, as it had existed in the spring of 1812, minus Andalusia, making Madrid the political capital and the military base of operations, or (2) to recognize that the total strength of the French armies no longer sufficed for such an ambitious scheme, and to occupy in strength only Old Castile and Leon, with the provinces beyond the Ebro, making Valladolid both the political and the military centre of operations, and abandoning Madrid altogether, or only holding it as an advanced post towards the south, on the extreme limit of French occupation.

After much debate Joseph and Jourdan chose the former plan, influenced mainly, as the Marshal writes in his Memoirs, by the fact that to give up Madrid as the capital, and to remove to Valladolid, would be a death-blow to the prestige of the Franco-Spanish monarchy. It would matter little whether Madrid were actually abandoned, or held as a precarious outpost: in either case Joseph could no longer pretend to be King of Spain[256]. In addition it must be remembered that to give up New Castile and La Mancha would leave Suchet in a position of isolation at Valencia, far too much advanced, and quite out of touch with the other armies, and also that from the administrative point of view Joseph had always regarded the revenues which he drew from Madrid and New Castile as the only solid part of his very modest and irregular budget. That a great error of choice was made is undoubted; but its ruinous nature was only to be revealed by circumstances which the King and the Marshal could not possibly have foreseen on November 20, 1812. When they made their decision neither they nor any one at Paris, or elsewhere in Western Europe, had a notion of the awful débâcle which was in progress in Russia. Napoleon had evacuated Moscow a month back; he was now in disastrous retreat from Smolensk toward the Berezina, with an army that was already crumbling under his hands. But that the whole of it was destined to perish during the next few days, and that France was to be left unguarded by any Grande Armée when the new year came, seemed an incredible contingency. Joseph and Jourdan expected to draw from the Emperor drafts and reinforcements in 1813, as they had even in 1812. If they had guessed that, instead, he would be drawing drafts and reinforcements from them, they would have adopted a different policy. But the celebrated ‘29th Bulletin’ was published in Paris only on December 3rd, and did not get to Madrid till January 6th,[257] and even that dismal document did not reveal the full extent of the ruin. It was not, indeed, till private letters from survivors of the Moscow retreat began to drift in, three weeks later, that the French head-quarters in Spain realized what the month of November had meant in Russia.

It was quite natural, then, that King Joseph should have made up his mind, at the end of the Burgos retreat, that he would occupy so much of the regained regions as was possible, and would make Madrid once more his residence and the centre of his operations. He was right in believing that he had at least four months before him for reorganization and reconstruction: Wellington was too hard hit to be able to move before April at the earliest.

It was some weeks before the King was able to spread the three French armies in the final positions which he had chosen for them. He left Salamanca himself at the head of his Guard on November 23rd, and moved on Madrid by way of Peñaranda, Arevalo and the Guadarrama Pass. He reached the capital on December 2nd, to find that it had been occupied a few days after he had left it on his march to Salamanca by the Empecinado and his partida[258]. The guerrillero chief had administered the city with the aid of an extemporized junta for more than three weeks[259]. On the approach of the King he retired, taking with him some citizens who had compromised themselves in the patriotic cause. Joseph, however, showed himself particularly gracious on his return, and endeavoured to produce an impression of the restored solidity of his régime, by holding court functions, reopening the theatres, and visiting hospitals and public institutions. The demonstration had little effect, all the more because it was accompanied by increased market-dues and the collection of arrears of taxation. It was impossible to persuade the Madrileños that the King’s return was for good, and confidence in his power was never restored.

Meanwhile the Army of the Centre reoccupied the provinces of Segovia and Guadalajara with the northern part of that of Toledo. While crossing the Guadarrama a few days after the King, its leading division was caught in a blizzard similar to that which, on the same spot, had impeded Napoleon on December 22nd, 1808, and lost a hundred men frozen or buried in the snow[260]. Soult was directed to place his head-quarters at Toledo, and to occupy that province and Avila, with so much of La Mancha as he thought proper. The Army of Portugal was allotted the provinces of Zamora, Leon, Salamanca, Palencia, and Valladolid, with head-quarters at the last-named city. The front towards Portugal and Galicia was held by one division at Leon, another at Zamora, and two at Salamanca, the rest of the eight divisions of this army being écheloned in reserve at various points in Old Castile. But at the end of December the King determined that there must be a shifting of cantonments, in order to tighten up his connexion with Suchet at Valencia. He ordered Soult to send a division to Cuenca, as a half-way house to the East Coast. To enable him to spare these troops he was relieved of the charge of the province of Avila, which was taken over by Foy, with the 1st Division of the Army of Portugal.

The extent of the French occupation in central and northern Spain at the commencement of the new year, 1813, may best be defined by a list of the Divisional head-quarters of the armies, which were, on January 15, Army of the South, 1st Division (Leval), Toledo[261]; 3rd Division (Villatte), Talavera; 4th Division (Conroux), Madridejos; 5th Division (Pécheux), Daymiel in La Mancha; 6th Division (Daricau), San Clemente in the province of Cuenca. Of the cavalry Pierre Soult’s light horse and Digeon’s dragoons were in a forward position in La Mancha, Tilly’s dragoons in reserve at Toledo. The effective total of Soult’s army was on this day 36,000 officers and men effective, beside men in hospital or detached.

Of the Army of the Centre, Darmagnac’s Division, as also the Royal Guard, was at Madrid, Cassagne’s Division at Arganda (twenty miles farther east), the Franco-Spanish Division of Casapalacios at Segovia, the cavalry dispersed at various points in a circle round Madrid. This army had just lost Palombini’s Italian Division, which had served with it during the autumn campaign of 1812. It was on its way to Burgos, to join the Army of the North, to which it properly belonged. With this deduction the Army of the Centre had still 12,000 French troops, plus Joseph’s Guards and Spaniards, who must have made up at least 5,000 more.

The Army of Portugal was much more widely dispersed. It showed the 1st Division (Foy) at Avila, 2nd Division (Barbot) at Valladolid, 3rd Division (Sarrut) at Leon, 4th Division (Fririon) at Saldaña, 5th Division (Maucune) and 8th Division (Chauvel) at Salamanca, with detachments at Ledesma and Zamora. The 6th and 7th Divisions, both weak, were in process of being cut up to strengthen the others, as will be explained later, when reorganization is in question. Of the two cavalry divisions of the Army of Portugal both Boyer’s dragoons, with head-quarters at Mayorga, and Curto’s light horse, with head-quarters at Medina de Rio Seco, were keeping a line of advanced posts on the Esla, to watch the Spanish army of Galicia. The total effective strength, omitting sick, was 42,000 men.

The three armies had thus about 95,000 men under arms to cover the enormous block of territory which they occupied. The distance from Salamanca to San Clemente is 250 miles; that from Leon to Daymiel 280 miles. It is clear that a concentration on Madrid or Valladolid would be comparatively easy. On the other hand there would be an intolerable distance for the Army of the South to cover, if Salamanca were the point chosen by an enemy for assault, or for the remoter divisions of the Army of Portugal to traverse, if Talavera were selected. But, as was obvious, there was no chance of any such blow being delivered at present, since Wellington could not possibly stir till the spring, while the Spanish regular forces in Andalusia and Murcia were negligible quantities until the Anglo-Portuguese army should be able to move.

All round the position of the French there was at this moment a broad ‘no man’s land’; for their farthest outposts were nowhere in direct touch with the enemy, but separated from him by many miles of unoccupied ground, in which neither party kept permanent posts. Between Astorga—the farthest advanced post of the Galicians—and the line of the Esla, between Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, between Avila and Bejar, between Talavera and Coria, between Daymiel and San Clemente and the northern foot-hills of the Sierra Morena, this broad debatable land was in possession neither of the French nor of the regular armies of their enemy, but of the guerrillero bands, under a score of leaders small and great. And the difficulty of the situation for King Joseph was that, while Wellington and Castaños and Del Parque and Elio were quiet perforce at midwinter, the guerrilleros were not. Having ample spaces of unoccupied border, in which they could take refuge when pursued, and many mountain recesses, even within the zone of French occupation, where they could lie safe against anything less than a considerable flying column, they seemed to defy extermination. Even in King Joseph’s most prosperous days, when the final triumph of the French seemed probable, there had always been guerrilleros; but since Wellington’s march to Madrid and Soult’s evacuation of Andalusia, it no longer looked as if the national cause was hopeless. To collect the army which drove Wellington back to Portugal in November every district in Spain, from Biscay to La Mancha, had been stripped for a time of its army of occupation. Regions long tamed had been out of hand for four or five months, enjoying an unruly and uncomfortable freedom, in which local juntas and guerrillero chiefs, who took the pose of military governors, contended for authority. And when the French came back they found that their old prestige was gone and that it could only be restored, if it could be restored at all, by ceaseless acts of repression of the most drastic sort. For if any town or village showed any signs of willing submission, the guerrilleros descended upon it when its garrison was absent, and hung or arrested ‘Afrancesados’: while if the population (as was more usual) showed ill-will and offered passive resistance, the French imprisoned or shot the magistrates, and imposed heavy fines for disloyalty[262].

But while the whole of northern and central Spain was full of punitory raids and executions, there was one region where the trouble passed the limit of unrest, and could only be called insurrection, where the French garrisons were practically blockaded in their cantonments, and where the open country was completely out of hand. This was the sub-Pyrenean district comprising Navarre, the three Basque provinces, and the mountainous lands between Santander and Burgos. And from the strategical point of view this was the most important tract in all Spain, since the main communication with France lay through its midst, by the great road from Madrid to Bayonne through Valladolid, Vittoria, and Tolosa. We have seen in earlier pages that trouble had been endemic in these lands ever since Mina’s appearance in 1810, and the permanent establishment of those active partisans, Porlier and Longa, on the Cantabrian coast-line. The creation of Reille’s ‘Army of the Ebro’ in 1811 for the special purpose of making an end of the northern bands had failed in its purpose. But things only came to a crisis in the summer of 1812, when Sir Home Popham’s operations on the Biscay coast cleared the French out of most of the smaller ports, and gave the insurgents for the first time free communication with the sea, and the inexhaustible supplies of Britain. We have seen in the last volume[263] how the co-operation of Caffarelli with Marmont in the Salamanca campaign was completely prevented by this diversion, how Longa and Mendizabal retook Santander and for a space Bilbao, and how Mina held the Governor of Pampeluna blockaded in the strongest fortress of northern Spain. Caffarelli had recovered Bilbao in August; but when Wellington marched on Burgos in September, and the Army of the North was compelled to abandon all other operations, in order to succour the retreating Army of Portugal, the capital of Biscay and all the surrounding district passed back into the power of the Spaniards. In the whole region nothing remained in the hands of the French save the ports of Santoña, Guetaria, and San Sebastian, and a line of fortified posts along the high road from the Bidassoa to the Ebro. And in Navarre Mina held full possession of the open country, raised the taxes, established courts of justice, and (what appears more strange) set up custom-houses on the French frontier, at which he allowed non-military goods to pass into Spain on the payment of regular dues[264]. He had raised his original partida to a strength of nine battalions of infantry and two regiments of cavalry, possessed cannon, and had a munition factory working at the head of the Pyrenean valley of Roncal.

Before Wellington commenced his retreat from the Douro to the Portuguese frontier, or the armies of Soult and of Souham had joined, to bring their overpowering force against the Anglo-Portuguese, Souham, as we have already seen, had released the troops of the Army of the North, and sent them back by Burgos to the Ebro, in order that Caffarelli might reoccupy the lost districts, and make safe once more the high road from Bayonne to Miranda, and the almost equally important route along the Ebro from Miranda to Saragossa, by which he had to keep up his connexion with Suchet and the East Coast. Turning back from Valladolid on November 1st, the commander of the Army of the North spent some time in opening up the high road, on which many convoys were lying blockaded in the garrisons and unable to move, and not till December was come did he clear Bilbao, and drive the coast-land guerrilleros out of all the Biscayan harbour towns save Castro-Urdiales, which had been fortified and was firmly held. Putting off its siege for a time, he then pushed along the coast to relieve Santoña, which had been blockaded for many months by Mendizabal and Longa. He cut his way thither, and threw in a convoy and reinforcements; but as soon as he was gone the Cantabrians came back and resumed their former positions around the place. By the end of the year Caffarelli had done nothing conclusive—some shadow of occupation had been restored in Biscay, but when this was completed the new garrisons had reduced his troops available for active service to a very modest figure. And on January 7 he had to part with the best unit of them—the brigade of the Young Guard under Dumoustier, which had been left in Spain when all the rest of the Guards went off for the Russian campaign in the preceding year. He was also directed to give up to their proper owners three provisional regiments composed of drafts for the armies of Portugal and the South, which had been intercepted on their way to Valladolid, and used to stop gaps in the line of communication. In return for these deductions he was told that he should be given Palombini’s Italian Division, taken from the Army of the Centre, three depleted regiments from the Army of Portugal,[265] and one from Soult’s Army,[266] which he might fill up with drafts from the Bayonne reserve. But it took some time to move these units northward, and meanwhile Caffarelli was left with no more than 10,000 movable troops—though the Army of the North was theoretically about 40,000 strong. The Bayonne chaussée was again out of control—so much so that in January and February there were two complete breaks of some weeks, during which neither convoys nor couriers could get through from Tolosa to Burgos. Bitter complaints about this interruption of communications are to be found in the correspondence of Napoleon and King Joseph. The famous ‘29th Bulletin’ sent off from Paris on December 4th only reached Madrid on January 6th—the Emperor’s order for the reorganization of the Spanish armies, dispatched on January 4th, came to hand only on February 16th; and the reply acknowledging its receipt was not received in Paris till March 18th![267] It had travelled by the circuitous route of Valencia and Barcelona.

This was intolerable to both parties, and they joined in placing the blame for delay on the shoulders of Caffarelli, who was denounced as dilatory and wanting in energy. Jourdan accused him of deliberate disregard of all military obedience. ‘He was ostensibly under the orders of the King, but rarely corresponded with Madrid. When he did send a report, he seemed to do so rather as a matter of politeness than as the duty of a subordinate towards his hierarchical superior[268].’ On January 14th the Emperor ordered him to quit the command of the Army of the North and return to Paris. Transmitting this welcome piece of news to Joseph, the Minister of War remarked that Caffarelli had insufficient numbers, but that ‘with more activity, continuity, and method in his operations he might have been much more successful[269].’ In his place the Emperor nominated Clausel, who was on sick-leave in France, but was able to rejoin almost at once. This choice was generally approved, as his operations with the Army of Portugal after the battle of Salamanca had won him a well-deserved reputation. But all concerned, from Paris to Madrid, were destined to discover that it was not Caffarelli’s incapacity, but the difficulty of the problem, that was responsible for the unsatisfactory condition of affairs in Biscay and Navarre. The capable Clausel made little more of the game than the short-sighted and mediocre officer whom he superseded. But this could hardly have been foreseen at midwinter; the fact was not obvious till May, when (as we shall see) Clausel, though he had been lent many thousands of troops much wanted elsewhere, had to confess that his task was not completed, despite of four months of energetic effort, countless marches and counter-marches, and a dozen bloody but inconclusive defeats inflicted on the Northern insurgents.