[215] All these figures are inclusive of men sick and detached, the former about 16,000, the latter 44,000.

[216] Junot’s original corps was reinforced by the 22nd of the line (4 batts.) drawn from the Prussian fortresses, and by some units which had hitherto been doing garrison duty in Navarrese and Biscayan fortresses, where they were now replaced by the Young Guard. Among these were the Irish Brigade (2 batts.) and the Prussian regiment which had formed the original garrison of Pampeluna.

[217] For details of this corps and its services see the monograph, La Gendarmerie en Espagne et Portugal, by E. Martin, Paris, 1898.

[218] Nine battalions as follows: Two of Nassau, the others from Gotha, Weimar, Altenburg, Waldeck, Reuss, Schwarzburg, Anhalt, and Lippe; strength about 6,000 men.

[219] The 4th battalions ultimately retained in Junot’s corps did not for the most part belong to regiments of the Spanish army, but to regiments in Germany or the colonies. They are over and above the 66 fourth battalions accounted for in the list above. For details of the whole set of reinforcements see Tables in Appendix.

[220] Over and above the ordinary death-rate for French troops quartered in Spain, which was very high, we have to allow for the losses at Tamames, Ocaña, the conquest of Andalusia, the sieges of Astorga, Gerona, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Almeida, and all smaller engagements.

[221] This division had charge of the Provinces of Leon, Zamora, and Salamanca, which were not a ‘military government.’

[222] Roughly, on May 15, 2nd Corps 20,000 men, 6th ditto 35,000, 8th ditto 26,000, Cavalry reserve 5,000, effectives present under arms, besides the sick, who made up about 12,000 more, and some 6,000 men detached. See Tables in Appendix.

[223] The Emperor once confiscated 3,000,000 francs which Masséna had collected by selling licences to trade with the English at Leghorn and other Italian ports. See the Memoirs of General Lamarque, who carried out the seizure.

[224] See Thiébault, iv. 375; Marbot, ii. 380-1; Duchesse d’Abrantes, viii. 50. All these may be called scandal-mongers, but the lady’s presence, and the troubles to which it gave rise, are chronicled by more serious authorities.

[225] See Foy’s complaints on p. 114 of his Vie Militaire (ed. Girod de L’Ain) as to the way in which the Marshal suspected him of undermining his favour with the Emperor.

[226] See Lord Stanhope’s Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, p. 20.

[227] This comes from an eye-witness with no grudge against Masséna, Hulot, commanding the artillery of the 8th Corps. See his Mémoires, p. 303.

[228] Foy, p. 101. The Emperor, a notoriously bad shot, lodged some pellets in the Marshal’s left eye while letting fly at a pheasant. Napoleon turned round and accused his faithful Berthier of having fired the shot: the Prince of Neuchâtel was courtier enough to take the blame without a word, and in official histories appears as the culprit (see e. g. Amic’s Masséna, p. 272); for other notes see Guingret, p. 250. What is most astonishing is that Masséna was complaisant enough to affect to blame Berthier for the disaster.

[229] See the admirable summary of all this in Foy’s diary (Girod de L’Ain), p. 101. Marbot gives the same views at bottom, but with his usual exaggeration, and with ‘illustrative anecdotes,’ occasionally of doubtful accuracy.

[230] Note Pelet’s Aperçu sur la Campagne de Portugal, nearly forty pages in the Appendix to Victoires et Conquêtes, vol. xxi: for his disputes with Baron Fririon see the Spectateur Militaire for 1841. Pelet says, ignoring the chief of the staff entirely, ‘qu’il était investi de la confiance absolue du maréchal: qu’il faisait seul auprès de lui tout le travail militaire et politique, qu’il dirigeait la haute correspondance avec le major-général (Berthier) et les chefs de corps, etc., etc.’ For Fririon’s comparative impotence see a story on p. 387 of Marbot’s vol. ii, which may or may not be true—probably the former.

Pelet’s writings give a poor impression of his brain-power and his love of exact truth. He says, for example, in his Aperçu that Masséna had only 40,000 men in his army of invasion, when it is certain that he had 64,000. See Baron Fririon’s remarks on him in Spectateur Militaire, June 1841, pp. 1-5.

[231] Napoleon to Clarke, Oct. 30, 1809.

[232] See for example Jan. 20, 1810, to Berthier; Jan. 31, to same; Feb. 12, to same.

[233] Correspondance, vol. xx, Napoleon to Berthier, Feb. 12, 1810.

[234] Soult had given up the 2nd Corps when he became King Joseph’s Major-General: Reynier, appointed to command it, had not yet appeared.

[235] ‘Il faut prévoir que les Anglais peuvent marcher sur Talavera pour faire diversion,’ wrote Napoleon on Jan. 31 to Berthier. But Heudelet had been moved before his caution could reach Madrid.

[236] Hill’s division, two brigades strong at Talavera in August, had received a third brigade in September under Catlin Craufurd, consisting of the 2/28th, 2/34th, and 2/39th.

[237] Composed of the 2nd, 4th, 10th, and 14th regiments, each two battalions strong, with 4,500 bayonets.

[238] 1st and 4th Portuguese cavalry.

[239] He had 7,094 men with the colours, besides sick and detached, by the imperial muster rolls of Jan. 15, 1810.

[240] I cannot understand Napier’s narrative of this little campaign, on pages 352-4 of his vol. ii. It runs as follows, and seems to have no relation to the facts detailed by Belmas, Toreno, Arteche, or any other historian. No mention is made of the four captures of Oviedo!

‘Mahy was organizing a second army at Lugo and in the Asturias. D’Arco [Arce] commanded 7,000 men, 3,000 of whom were posted at Cornellana under General Ponte.... Bonnet, from the Asturias, threatened Galicia by the Concija d’Ibas: having destroyed Ponte’s force at Potes de la Sierra [30 miles from Colombres, where the actual fight took place], he menaced Galicia by the pass of Nava de Suarna [a place which his vanguard did not approach by a matter of 40 miles].... But he did not pass Nava de Suarna, and General D’Arco rallied the Asturian fugitives at Louarca. It seems probable that while Bonnet drew the attention of the Galician army towards Lugo [he was never within 100 miles of that place], Junot thought to penetrate by Puebla Senabria. But finally Junot, drawing a reinforcement from Bonnet, invested Astorga with 10,000 infantry,’ &c. [No troops from Bonnet’s force ever appeared before Astorga.]

This last blunder is apparently borrowed from Victoires et Conquêtes, xx. 12, which states that General Bonnet detached Jeannin’s brigade, the 46th and 65th, to Astorga. But these regiments did not belong to Bonnet, but were, from the first to the last, parts of Junot’s own corps, and never entered the Asturias. Compare Napoleon, Correspondance, xx. 21, the muster rolls of Jan. 1, Feb. 15, and Belmas, iii. p. 46.

[241] Napoleon to Berthier, Jan. 11, 1810.

[242] See p. 76.

[243] For the letters of Loison to Santocildes and the reply of the Spanish brigadier, see the correspondence in Belmas, iii. pp. 53-6.

[244] Loison to Berthier, Feb. 16, from La Baneza.

[245] For notes as to the cause and execution of this abortive movement, see the diary of Ney’s aide de camp, Sprünglin, pages 402-3.

[246] Wellington to Craufurd, Feb. 16. Compare similar remarks in Wellington to Beresford, from Vizeu, Feb. 21, 1810.

[247] Even the 8th Corps had to leave guns behind at Bayonne for want of horses, Belmas, ii. 13.

[248] There are good narratives in the autobiographies of Noël and Hulot of the artillery, beside the excellent account in Belmas, vol. iii.

[249] Only consisting of four 24-pounders, one 16-pounder, four 12-pounders, eight 6-inch howitzers, and one 6-inch mortar. See Belmas, iii. 28.

[250] ‘Les Espagnols rispostèrent avec vivacité; on s’étonnait d’autant plus que, le parapet étant en pierres sèches, chaque boulet qui le frappait en faisait jaillir de nombreux éclats.’ Belmas, iii. 34.

[251] Two officers and forty-nine men killed, ten officers and ninety-nine men wounded, according to his official report to the Junta, in which all details are duly given.

[252] See the figures in Junot’s dispatch, given on pages 66-7 of Belmas, vol. iii.

[253] Napoleon to Berthier, May 29, 1810.

[254] Serras’ division consisted of the 113th Line, a Tuscan regiment originally employed in Catalonia, which had been so cut up in 1809 that it had been sent back to refill its cadres; also of the 4th of the Vistula (two battalions), a Polish regiment raised in 1810, with four provisional battalions, and three stray battalions belonging to regiments in the South, which had not been allowed to go on to join Soult [4th battalions of the 32nd and 58th Line and of 12th Léger]: his total strength was 8,000 men.

[255] See the curious dispatch no. 16651, of July 14, directing Suchet to be ready to send half his corps to Valladolid after he should have taken Tortosa.

[256] The head quarters of the 43rd during January and February were at Valverde, above the Coa, those of the 52nd at Pinhel, those of the 95th at Villa Torpim.

[257] On Craufurd’s complaint that the 2nd Caçadores were badly commanded and too full of boys. He repeatedly asked for, and ultimately obtained, the 3rd battalion in place of the 2nd, because of his confidence in Elder.

[258] Note especially Wellington’s explanatory dispatch to Craufurd of March 8, where he even goes so far as to give his subordinate a free hand as to the choice of his line: ‘You must be a better judge of the details of this question than I can be, and I wish you to consider them, in order to be able to carry the plan into execution when I shall send it to you.’ In another letter Wellington writes: ‘Nothing can be of greater advantage to me than to have the benefit of your opinion on any subject.’

[259] ‘I intend that the divisions of Generals Cole and Picton should support you on the Coa, without waiting for orders from me, if it should be necessary, and they shall be directed accordingly.’ 8th March, from Vizeu.

[260] It should not be forgotten that Picton, no less than Craufurd, was at this time living down an old disaster. But Picton’s misfortune had not been military. It was the celebrated case of Rex v. Picton. He had been tried for permitting the use of torture to extract evidence against criminals while governor of the newly conquered island of Trinidad, and convicted, though Spanish law (which was still in force in Trinidad) apparently permitted of the practice. After this Picton was a marked man. The story of Luisa Calderon, the quadroon girl who had been tortured by ‘picketing,’ had been appearing intermittently in the columns of every Whig paper for more than three years.

[261] His elder brother, Sir Charles Craufurd, was Deputy-Adjutant-General, and M.P. for Retford. Windham, the Secretary for War, was his devoted friend.

[262] Though senior in the date of his first commission to nearly all the officers of the Peninsular army, Craufurd was six years junior to Picton, and one year junior to Hope. Graham, much his senior in age, had only entered the army in 1793.

[263] Such as Shaw-Kennedy, William Campbell, Kincaid, and Lord Seaton.

[264] For Craufurd’s life and personality see his biography by his grandson the Rev. Alex. Craufurd, London, 1890. The most vivid picture of him is in Rifleman Harris’s chronicle of the Corunna retreat, a wonderful piece of narrative by a writer from the ranks, who admired his general despite of all his severity, and acknowledges that his methods were necessary. Though Napier as a historian is on the whole fairly just to his old commander, whose achievements were bound up indissolubly with the glories of the Light Division, as a man he disliked Craufurd: in one of his hooks which I possess (Delagrave’s Campagne de Portugal) he has written in the margin several bitter personal remarks about him, very unlike the language employed in his history. The unpublished Journal of Colonel McLeod of the 43rd is (as Mr. Alex. Craufurd informs me) written in the same spirit. So is Charles Napier’s Diary.

[265] As an Appendix to Lord F. Fitz-Clarence’s Manual of Outpost Duties.

[266] One of the most curious points in Shaw-Kennedy’s Diary [p. 218] is that from the reports of deserters Craufurd succeeded in reconstructing the exact composition of Ney’s corps, in brigades and battalions, with a final error of only one battalion and 2,000 men too few.

[267] Shaw-Kennedy, Diary, pp. 142 and 147.

[268] Herrasti’s report gives 1st of Majorca 706 officers and men, Avila and Segovia militia 857 and 317 respectively, three battalions of volunteers of Ciudad Rodrigo 2,242, Urban guard 750, artillery 375, sappers 60; total, with some details added, 5,510, not including Sanchez’s Partida. See Belmas, iii. 314.

[269] See Sprünglin’s Journal, p. 417.

[270] May 2, to Craufurd.

[271] On June 1 Craufurd calculated the troops in front of Ciudad Rodrigo, by counting regiments and battalions, at over 25,000 men. There were really 30,000, and the under-estimate came from allowing only 550 men to a battalion, while they really averaged 650. About the same time Craufurd estimated the parts of Junot’s corps in the neighbourhood to be 13,000 men: they were really nearly 17,000. The cause of error was the same. See Shaw-Kennedy’s Diary, pages 190-5. The estimates are corrected, on fuller information, early in July, see ibid., p. 220.

[272] To Charles Stuart, June 8, and to Hill, June 9.

[273] This movement, unchronicled elsewhere, appears in D’Urban’s diary, April 26. ‘The Portuguese ordered to the front, consisting of two brigades of artillery, 4th and 6th Caçadores, 1st and 16th (Pack), 7th and 19th (Coleman), 6th and 18th (Alex. Campbell), 11th and 23rd (Collins), 9th and 21st (Harvey) of the Line. They all go into march on the 28th, and will arrive by successive brigades at Celorico in four days.’

[274] At this moment the total force of the allied army was:—

[275] Dispatches, vi. p. 172.

[276] D’Urban, for example, wrote in his journal on June 18 that he took the daring step of suggesting a surprise attack on Ney to the General. No notice was taken of his suggestion.

[277] Picton summed up the situation in a letter to a friend [see Robinson’s Life of Picton, i. 273] very clearly: ‘If we attempt to relieve the place the French will drive us out of Portugal: while if they get possession of it, they will lose time, which is more important to them than Ciudad Rodrigo. But they have got to find this out.’

[278] A slight under-estimate, as it would seem, for with La Carrera’s force the whole would have been 36,000 sabres and bayonets. Of the 3,000 cavalry 700 were Portuguese and 300 Spaniards.

[279] Wellington to Henry Wellesley, June 20.

[280] Wellington to Craufurd, June 24.

[281] Wellington to Hill, July 9.

[282] These were Napoleon’s dispatches nos. 16,505, 16,519-20, and 16,504, as is shown by the excellent analysis of them given by D’Urban in his diary. He read them over with Beresford on July 1. No. 16,519 was very valuable, as giving the exact strength of the 2nd, 6th, and 8th Corps—the first absolutely certain analysis of them that Wellington obtained.

[283] These were the 3/1st, 1/9th, 2/38th, which arrived at Lisbon April 1-8. Leith’s division was formally constituted only on July 15, but really existed since June.

[284] See the Emperor’s dispatches to Berthier of May 27 and May 29.

[285] Masséna came up from Salamanca this day to inspect the bombardment, and made (as was his wont) a rather mendacious report thereon to the Emperor, declaring that the French loss had been 12 killed and 41 wounded, whereas it had exceeded 100 [see Belmas, iii. p. 233], and that the defence of the place was seriously impaired—which it was not as yet.

[286] Belmas, iii. 245, July 2.

[287] See Shaw-Kennedy’s Diary, pp. 208-9 and 211.

[288] Belmas, iii. 250. For the conduct of the Hussars see Beamish’s German Legion, i. pp. 274-6. Martinien’s lists show that the 1st French dragoons lost one, the 2nd three, and the 4th one officer on this day.

[289] See the criticisms in Belmas, iii. 259. Compare the views of the artilleryman Hulot, pages 306-9 of his autobiography.

[290] Viz. three squadrons of the 14th, one (Krauchenberg’s) of the 1st Hussars K.G.L., and two of the 16th. The other two squadrons of the hussars, and the 4th squadron of the 14th, were holding the outpost line to right and left.

[291] It is certain that both charged, and both were beaten off. But the regimental diarists of the two regiments each mention only the repulse of the squadron from the other corps. See Tompkinson (of the 16th), Diary, p. 31, and Von Linsingen’s letter (from the 1st Hussars), printed in Beamish, i. 279-80.

[292] Von Grüben’s squadron of the K.G.L. Hussars, and the fourth squadron of the 14th Light Dragoons, neither of which formed part of Craufurd’s little expedition. The former had been watching Villa de Ciervo, the latter was on outpost duty.

[293] Charles Napier in his diary [Life, i. p. 132] and Tomkinson [p. 31] accuse Craufurd of reckless haste. Harry Smith, in his autobiography [i. p. 22], holds that the Rifles could have got up in time to force the square to surrender. Leach [p. 142] makes much the same comment. All these were eye-witnesses. Yet it would have taken some time to bring up the guns or the infantry, and the French were near broken ground, over which they might have escaped, if not immediately assailed. See also Craufurd’s Life by his grandson, pp. 114-16.

[294] Among these officers was General Stewart, the adjutant-general, see Wellington to Craufurd, from Alverca, July 23, a very interesting letter, commented on in the Life of Craufurd, pp. 117-20.

[295] Hulot (p. 36) says that he met the square retiring, and noticed that numbers of the bayonets and gun-barrels had been cut and bent by the blows of the English dragoons, as they tried to force their way in. See Masséna’s dispatch to Berthier of Aug. 10, in Belmas’s Pièces Justificatives.

[296] Wellington to Craufurd from Alverca, July 16.

[297] Wellington to Craufurd from Alverca, July 22, 8 p.m.

[298] The 43rd on the left, the two Caçador battalions in the centre, the 52nd on the right, while the Rifles were partly dispersed along the front, partly with the 43rd.

[299] Simmons’s Journal of a British Rifleman, p. 77.

[300] Of this, O’Hare’s Company of the 1/95th, sixty-seven strong, an officer and eleven men were killed or wounded and forty-five were taken prisoners.

[301] Leach’s Reminiscences, pp. 149-50.

[302] The Chasseurs de la Siège formed of picked marksmen from all the regiments of the 6th Corps.

[303] That Ney himself was the person responsible for this mad adventure seems proved by the journal of Sprünglin, who writes ‘À midi je reçus de M. le Maréchal lui-même l’ordre d’emporter à tout prix le pont de la Coa, d’où deux compagnies de Grenadiers venaient d’être repoussés. J’avais 300 hommes; je formai mon bataillon en colonne et abordai les Anglais à la baïonnette, et au cri de Vive l’Empereur. Le pont fut emporté, mais j’eus 4 officiers et 86 soldats tués, et 3 officiers et 144 soldats blessés. Le 25 le bataillon, étant détruit, fut dissous.’ That the bridge was ‘emporté’ in any other sense than that a score or so of survivors got to the other side, and then returned, is of course untrue. Sprünglin, p. 439.

[304] For an interesting description of this incident, see George Napier’s autobiography, p. 131.

[305] Thirty-six killed, 189 wounded, 83 missing. See Tables in Appendix.

[306] Martinien’s invaluable lists show 7 officers killed and 17 wounded, which at the normal rate of 22 men per officer, exactly corresponds to the actual loss of 117 killed and 410 wounded (Koch, vii. 118).

[307] It is a curious fact that in the draft of Masséna’s dispatch in the Archives du Ministère de la Guerre, we actually catch him in the act of falsifying returns. There is first written ‘Nous leur avons pris 100 hommes et deux pièces de canon. Notre perte a été de près de 500 hommes tant tués que blessés.’ Then the figures 100 are scratched out and above is inserted ‘un drapeau et 400 hommes,’ while for the French loss 500 is scratched out and 300 inserted. Ney, whose dispatch was lying before Masséna, had honestly written that Craufurd ‘a été chassé de sa position avec une perte considérable de tués et de blessés, nous lui avons fait en outre une centaine de prisonniers.’ Ney reported also a loss of about 500 men, which Masséna deliberately cut down to 300. Belmas (iii. 379) has replaced the genuine figures in his reprint of Masséna’s dispatch, though both the draft in the Archives and the original publication in the Moniteur give the falsifications. Masséna says nought of the check at the bridge, though Ney honestly wrote ‘au delà du Coa, une réserve qu’il avait lui permis de se reconnaître, et il continue sa retraite sur Pinhel la nuit du 24.’ As to the guns captured, it was perfectly true that some cannon were taken that day, but not in fighting, nor from Craufurd. The governor of Almeida was mounting two small guns (4-pounders) on a windmill some way outside the glacis. They had not been got up to their position, but were lying below—removed from their carriages, in order to be slung up more easily on to the roof. The mill was abandoned when Ney came up, and the dismounted cannon fell into his hands. He said not a word of them, any more than he did of the imaginary flag alleged by Masséna to have been captured. But the Prince of Essling brought in both, to please the imperial palate, which yearned for British flags and guns. His dispatch, published some weeks later in the Moniteur, came into Craufurd’s hands in November, and provoked him to write a vindication of his conduct, and a contradiction of ‘the false assertions contained in Marshal Masséna’s report of an action which was not only highly honourable to the Light Division, but positively terminated in its favour, notwithstanding the extraordinary disparity of numbers. For a corps of 4,000 men performed, in the face of an army of 24,000, one of the most difficult operations of war,—a retreat from a broken and extensive position over one narrow defile, and defended during the whole day the first defensible position that was to be found in the neighbourhood of the place where the action commenced.’ For the whole letter see Alex. Craufurd’s Life of Craufurd, pp. 140-1.

[308] See the letter to Craufurd in the Dispatches, dated July 26 and 27. His letter to Lord Liverpool of July 25 offers, indeed, excuses for Craufurd. But in that to Henry Wellesley of July 27, and still more in that to his relative Pole of July 31, he expresses vexation. ‘I had positively forbidden the foolish affairs in which Craufurd involved his outposts, ... and repeated my injunction that he should not engage in an affair on the right of the river.... You will say in this case, “Why not accuse Craufurd?” I answer, “Because if I am to be hanged for it, I cannot accuse a man who I believe has meant well, and whose error was one of judgement, not of intention.”’

[309] See Craufurd’s Life, pp. 149-50.

[310] This interview was denied by Robinson in his Life of Picton (i. 294) on the mere allegation of some of Picton’s staff that they had not heard of it, or been present at it. But the evidence of William Campbell, Craufurd’s brigade-major, brought forward by Napier at Robinson’s challenge, is conclusive. See Napier, vi. pp. 418-19, for the ‘fiery looks and violent rejoinders’ witnessed by Campbell. Picton had been specially ordered to support Craufurd if necessary. See Wellington Dispatches, v. pp. 535 and 547.

[311] This came from the extreme hardness of the soil, which induced the builders of the 18th-century enceinte to put less earth into the glacis than was needed, since it had to be scraped up and carried from a great distance, owing to the fact that the coating of soil all around is so thin above the rock.

[312] Wellington to Hill, Alverca, July 27, ‘There is not the smallest appearance of the enemy’s intending to attack Almeida, and I conclude that as soon as they have got together their force, they will make a dash at us, and endeavour to make our retreat as difficult as possible.’

[313] For details of this combat see Foy’s observations on p. 97 of his Vie Militaire, ed. Girod de L’Ain.

[314] For a narrative of these obscure campaigns see Schaller’s Souvenirs d’un officier Fribourgeois, pp. 29-37.

[315] See ibid., pp. 32-3.

[316] For a narrative of these interesting but obscure movements, see Schepeler, iii. 596-9. It is impossible to give a full account of them here, but necessary to mention them, to show the Sisyphean character of Bonnet’s task.

[317] This version of the cause of the disaster is given by Soriano da Luz (iii. 73) from the mouth of an artillery officer (one José Moreira) who had it from the only man in the castle-yard who escaped. This soldier, seeing the train fired, jumped into an oven-hole which lay behind him, and chanced not to be killed.