At the moment when Wellington launched his two great columns into Spain, the French head-quarters staff was in a condition of nervous expectation. The spring was so far advanced that it had been expected that the Allies would have been already on the move, and their long quiescence was supposed, very reasonably, to cover some new plan which it was impossible to divine. The position of the French armies was very unfavourable, entirely owing to the continued absence from the front of the whole infantry of the Army of Portugal, which, by Napoleon’s desire and by the detailed instructions of the Minister of War at Paris, had been lent to the Army of the North, and sent backward into Biscay, Navarre, and Aragon to hunt the guerrilleros. Five and a half out of the six divisions of Reille’s command were still occupied on these marches and counter-marches in the rear, when May was far spent, and when the offensive of the Allies must be expected at every moment.

The French army, available for immediate operations, was therefore short of one-third of its strength, and Jourdan and King Joseph disliked the situation. Jourdan confesses in his Memoirs that he and his master ought to have ordered Clausel to suspend his operations, however incomplete they might be, and to send back all the borrowed infantry to the valley of the Douro. But the minister’s letters kept repeating so often that the campaign north of the Ebro must be completed at all costs, that the King considered that he could do no more than transmit to Paris the warnings that he was receiving, urging on the minister that it was time to suspend those operations, and that General Clausel should be ordered to come back in haste towards Burgos[485]. This self-exculpation of Jourdan shows clearly enough the miserable consequences of the system of double-command which Napoleon had always kept up in Spain. The habit of sending orders direct from Paris to fractions of the Army of Spain was so deeply ingrained, that the titular Commander-in-Chief and his Chief of the Staff dared not issue instructions of primary importance to one of the generals under them without obtaining leave from the Emperor! And at this moment the Emperor was not even at Paris—he had long been at the front in Germany, and had fought the battle of Lützen on May 2. What came from Paris was not even the orders of Napoleon, but the orders of Clarke, transmitting his impression of the imperial will from dispatches already many days old, which would be doubly out of date before they reached Valladolid. The supreme master must take the responsibility of the fact that on May 15 or May 18 his representatives in Spain were asking for leave to modify his arrangements, by petitions which could receive no reply—for mere reasons of space and time—till the crisis which they were fearing had burst upon them. The whole system was ruinous—in 1813 as it had been in 1812. The only rational method would have been to turn over the whole conduct of affairs in Spain to some local authority, supreme in everything and responsible for everything. Yet stronger men than Joseph and Jourdan would perhaps have taken the risk of offending their master, and have issued peremptory orders, which Clausel, Foy, and the other outlying generals would probably have obeyed.

On May 20 the distribution of the Army of Spain was as follows: King Joseph and the 2,500 men of his guards, horse and foot, lay at general head-quarters at Valladolid. Of the two infantry divisions of D’Erlon’s Army of the Centre, one, that of Darmagnac, had been lent to Reille, when all the infantry of the Army of Portugal had been borrowed from him, and was lying at Medina de Rio Seco, in the rear of Reille’s cavalry, who were watching from a discreet distance the Army of Galicia and the roads in the direction of Astorga and Leon. It will be remembered that on May 20 Reille, hearing vague rumours of allied movements beyond the Esla, had executed a great sweep with Boyer’s dragoons across the bridge of Benavente, and for five leagues beyond it, had found nothing, and had reported that there were no British troops in the direction, and no Spaniards nearer than Astorga[486].

The other division of the Army of the Centre, that of Cassagne, was at Segovia, far south of the Douro, keeping touch with the large garrison still left in Madrid, which, as long as it was maintained there, could not be left in a state of absolute isolation.

Of the Army of the South, Gazan had his head-quarters at Arevalo, not very far from the King at Valladolid, but retained with him only Tilly’s cavalry division. The rest of his troops were woefully dispersed. Daricau’s division and Digeon’s dragoons lay at Zamora and Toro—nearly 100 miles from head-quarters—maintaining a loose touch with Reille’s cavalry. Villatte—with one detached regiment of Digeon’s dragoons to keep watch for him—was at Salamanca—fifty miles from Daricau. Conroux, with a third division, was at Avila, with a whole block of mountains between him and Villatte. He was supposed to be watching Hill, and had detachments as far out as Monbeltran on the borders of Estremadura. He was also separated from the force at Madrid by several sierras and the formidable pass of the Guadarrama. In the capital itself lay Leval with one more division, while the independent brigade of Maransin[487], had been intermittently holding Toledo, and was actually there on the 20th, in company with a brigade of light cavalry under Pierre Soult[488]. The extreme outer flanks of the Army of the South were as far apart therefore as Zamora and Toledo—160 miles as the crow flies—and a Spanish crow has rough country to fly over—and each of them was some 90 miles by road from the head-quarters in the centre.

As to the infantry of the Army of Portugal, the only element of it which lay anywhere near head-quarters was a brigade of Maucune’s at Palencia on the Carrion, which was guarding a large dépôt of stores and transport. The other brigade of Maucune’s was at Burgos. Lamartinière’s division (late that commanded for so long by Bonnet) was watching the great chaussée from Burgos by Briviesca to Miranda del Ebro, in order to keep touch with Clausel in Navarre. Similarly Sarrut’s division, after its long and fruitless chase of Longa, was keeping safe the roads from Bilbao to Miranda, in order to link Foy with the main army. Foy himself was on the shores of the Bay of Biscay, where he had stormed Castro-Urdiales on May 12, and was trying to make an end of the local guerrilleros. The other two divisions of Reille’s infantry were lost to sight in the mountains of Navarre, where they were marching and countermarching with Clausel, in pursuit of the elusive Mina. These were the divisions of Taupin and of Barbot: the troops which were working along with them were the two ‘active’ divisions of the Army of the North, those of Abbé and Vandermaesen. Clausel’s great flying column, of 15,000 men or more, was so continually on the move through regions where cross-communication was impossible, owing to the insurrection, that it could not be located with certainty on any given date, or receive instruction without a delay that might run to eight or ten days.

Obviously it would take the French army a week to concentrate on Valladolid or Arevalo, if Wellington should be aiming at Salamanca and the Central Douro. But if he were about to attack one of the extreme wings, at Zamora or Madrid, the time required would be much greater. And Joseph and Jourdan were not at all sure that the secret plan of Wellington might not be a thrust, with Hill’s force as the spear-head, at Madrid. One of the many false rumours sent to head-quarters was that forage had been ordered for Long’s cavalry at Escalona on the Tietar, many miles in front of Talavera. While another report truly chronicled the concentration of Hill’s brigades at Bejar, and the gathering of stores there, but interpreted their meaning as preparation for a march on Avila by the Puente de Congosto.

Uncertain as to what was Wellington’s plan, the French Higher Command finally resolved to await its manifestation before giving the final orders—a system which was certain to lead to some initial loss of territory at the opening of the campaign, since the enemy would have a week in hand, before he could be opposed by a sufficient mass on the line which he might select. On May 18th Jourdan ordered Gazan to push exploring reconnaissances towards the Portuguese frontier, and, if Wellington should be met advancing, to order Leval to evacuate Madrid, to send forward all his cavalry to support Villatte at Salamanca, and, when the latter should be driven in, to have his whole army ready to receive him behind the line of the Trabancos river, except Daricau’s division, which should remain at Toro. Reille was to bring forward Darmagnac’s infantry from Rio Seco to support his cavalry on the Esla, and to unite Maucune’s scattered force by calling up his rear brigade from Burgos, so as to provide a reserve for Darmagnac. If Wellington should advance, as was thought most probable, from Ciudad Rodrigo, marching on Salamanca in full strength, and driving in Villatte, it was intended to bring in all the troops of Gazan and D’Erlon to the north bank of the Douro, and to defend the course of that river from Toro to Tordesillas, as Marmont had done in June 1812. If the British showed strength on the Esla, which was thought unlikely, Reille would reinforce Daricau and Digeon with all his cavalry and the divisions of Darmagnac and Maucune. But no definite orders were sent either to Clausel[489] or to Foy, Sarrut, and Lamartinière—the directions to be given them would depend on the strength which the British displayed, and the front on which they appeared. Thus a week or more after Wellington should have shown his hand, the two armies of the South and Centre, with the cavalry and one infantry division of the Army of Portugal, ought to be concentrated on the required points north of the Douro, with the possibility of bringing up later the five missing divisions of the Army of Portugal, and Clausel’s two disposable divisions from the Army of the North. But these last might take a very long time to appear, and meanwhile there would only be 45,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry in hand opposite Wellington[490]. Considering the latter’s estimated numerical superiority, it seemed that he might be brought to a stand, but hardly beaten, by the forces which the King could collect. A defensive campaign on the Douro was really Jourdan’s forecast of the game; it might perhaps be turned into an offensive, when the missing divisions of the Army of Portugal and Clausel should come up, with some 30,000 men of reinforcements.

It is a nervous business to wait for the move which finally betrays the enemy’s intention, as every one knows who remembers August 1914. It was probably with some feeling of relief that Gazan at Arevalo and King Joseph at Palencia heard, on the 24th, that Wellington had passed the Agueda on the 22nd, and was apparently marching on Salamanca in great strength. Conroux sent in news that Hill was at the same time marching up from Bejar northward—not turning east. The campaign therefore, as it appeared, was to take the form which had seemed most probable, and the hypothetical orders for concentration which had been issued to the generals on the 18th became valid. But Gazan lost a day in evacuating Madrid, by riding over from Arevalo to Valladolid and formally requesting the King’s authorization for the retreat of Leval from the capital. So the aide-de-camp bearing the dispatch of recall only started from Valladolid on the morning of the 25th, instead of from Arevalo on the afternoon of the 24th: it was clear therefore that Leval would be late at the concentration point.

The other parts of the French scheme were carried out according to plan between the 25th and the 29th. When Villatte found himself attacked at Salamanca, and got away with some loss eastward on the 26th, he fell back on Medina del Campo, and found waiting for him there on the 28th Conroux’s division from Avila and the division of cavalry which Gazan had been keeping at his head-quarters at Arevalo—Tilly’s dragoons. D’Erlon was in march from Segovia with Cassagne’s division and Treillard’s horse, and had reached Olmedo, only fifteen miles from Medina, so that he would be available next day. The whole made up a force of 16,000 foot and 4,000 horse. But Leval was late, and would not be up for three days more, nor had Maucune’s brigade yet come down from Burgos, while Daricau and Digeon began to look uncomfortably remote in their position at Toro and Zamora, where only Reille could reach them.

Joseph and Jourdan had intended to take position behind the Zapardiel on the 30th, there to demonstrate against Wellington, who ought by this time to be coming down upon them. It was necessary to hold him in check till Leval should have got in from Madrid to join the main body, and then all would retire beyond the Douro, to the intended defensive position. But this day two disquieting facts became notable: one was that Wellington was not advancing from Salamanca: the troops that he had brought thither had not moved since the 26th. The other was that Digeon sent word that there were allied forces approaching the lower Esla from the direction of Braganza, although Reille had reported ten days back that there were absolutely no signs of allied movement from this direction—their numbers were as yet incalculable. The suspicion, then for the first time, arose that the Salamanca advance might be a mere feint, despite of Wellington’s personal appearance in that direction.

On the morning of June 1st suspicion became certainty. Digeon reported that the British had crossed the Esla in great force, by several fords, and that he and Daricau were retiring on Toro at once. Joseph would have liked to go behind the Douro without delay, but could not possibly do so until Leval, Maransin, and Pierre Soult should have come up from the south. And the Madrid column was not due on the Douro for two more days, owing to its late start—no fault of its own, but due to Gazan’s dilatory conduct on May 24th.

Leval had only got the order to evacuate the capital on the 26th. Luckily for him Maransin had come in with his flying column from Toledo on the 21st, so that there was no need to wait to pick up this detachment. The garrison was directed to be under arms for marching at daybreak on the 27th, and with them went a considerable train of Afrancesado refugees, for many of Joseph’s ministers and courtiers had refused to start by the earlier convoys, which had gone to Valladolid in March and April, hoping that emigration might never again become necessary. The remembrance of the miserable march to Valencia in July 1812 weighed on their minds, and made them unwilling to face a second hegira of the same sort. Now all had to go; and quantities of carriages, carts, wagons, and mules belonging to civilians were mixed with, or trailed behind, the columns of Leval’s infantry. The convoy could not travel very fast; it only reached the foot of the mountains on the night of the 27th, crossed the Guadarrama pass on the 28th, and reached Espinar on the northern descent on the 29th. Here Leval turned off the baggage and refugees on to the road of Segovia, under charge of an escort commanded by General Hugo, late Governor of Madrid. He himself with the fighting men went on to Arevalo by the great chaussée, reached the Douro on the 2nd of June, and joined Gazan at Tordesillas. The latter had crossed the river on May 31st, the moment that it became clear that the Madrid column was not going to be intercepted by any British force from the Salamanca direction. D’Erlon passed the Douro only on June 2, the same day as Leval, having waited behind to cover the arrival of the column of refugees and transport from Madrid, which had been directed on Segovia and Cuellar.

On June 2nd therefore the south bank of the Douro had been at last evacuated by all the French forces, but Jourdan’s and Joseph’s plan for defending the northern bank was obviously out of date and impossible. For Wellington was already at Toro with Graham’s 40,000 men, and there was no means of preventing Hill’s 30,000 and the Galicians from joining him north of the river. The Salamanca column, if only the French had known it, was already marching north, to fall in alongside of the other and larger mass of the allied army, and was due at Toro next day (June 3rd).

This last fact was, of course, unknown at French head-quarters on the afternoon of June 2nd—all that had transpired was that Wellington was at Toro with a very large force, and the Galicians close by his flank on the Benavente road. The exact position of the imperial army was that Gazan, with four and a half infantry divisions of the Army of the South and all the cavalry of Digeon, Tilly, and Pierre Soult, was concentrated on a ten-mile front between Tordesillas and Torrelobaton: Reille, with Darmagnac’s division and Boyer’s cavalry, was at Medina de Rio Seco, twelve miles farther north. D’Erlon, with Cassagne’s division and Treillard’s dragoons, was at Valladolid, fifteen miles behind Tordesillas; the King and his Guards at Cigales, ten miles north of D’Erlon, twelve miles east of Reille. Maucune’s two brigades had at last concentrated at Palencia—some 25 miles north of Valladolid. There was now a very solid mass of troops, which could be united at one spot—Torrelobaton for example—by a concentric march, taking up one day, or could on the other hand string itself out in a well closed-up front behind the Carrion and Pisuerga rivers, from Palencia to Simancas, to defend the line of those streams. The force was formidable—over 40,000 bayonets, quite 10,000 sabres. It was physically possible either to mass and offer Wellington a battle, or to stand fast to defend the line of the Pisuerga. But would either course be prudent, considering that Hill could join Wellington with ease at Toro, so that the entire Anglo-Portuguese army could be concentrated for a general action, not to speak of the Galicians of Giron on his flank? Exact calculations as to the allied strength were impossible—but it would certainly exceed 70,000 men: some of the French generals put it at 90,000. To engage in an open battle west of the Pisuerga against such superior numbers would be insane. But what of the idea of taking up a defensive line east of that river, in the hope of rallying Foy, Clausel, and other outlying forces within a week or ten days? Marmont had done well with his position behind a river in July 1812, and had only been ruined at Salamanca because he had left his strong line and attacked with insufficient numbers.

There was much debate at head-quarters on the afternoon of June 2. Several policies were discussed, even, as it would appear, a desperate suggestion of Jourdan’s to bring the whole army back southward across the Douro, to Medina del Campo and Olmedo, and defy Wellington to cross its front so as to cut the Burgos road and the communication with France. ‘It is doubtful whether Wellington would have dared to continue his march to the Carrion, and to abandon his line of connexion with Portugal,’ writes Jourdan; ‘more probably he would have repassed the Douro, to follow the French army, which could then have retired up-stream to Aranda, and from thence either on Burgos or on Saragossa. Time would have been gained—Clausel would have come up, and we could have fought on ground more suitable for cavalry[491].’ This most hazardous plan would have commenced by abandoning to the enemy all Old Castile and Biscay, with the French forces scattered in them; for even if Wellington had followed the King with his Anglo-Portuguese army, Giron’s Galicians and the insurgents of the North—Longa, Porlier, El Pastor, and the rest—would have been left free to clear the whole country up to the Pyrenees. The French detachments in the North must have retired on Bayonne. King Joseph and the generals rejected the scheme at once, on the ground that Napoleon’s orders had always insisted on the retention of the direct road to France, by Burgos and Vittoria, as the most important of all considerations. This was undoubtedly a correct decision. Not only was the road along the south bank of the Douro to Aranda a very bad one, through an exhausted country, but it is clear that, if they took it, the French would never have got back again on to the Burgos line, but would have been forced to take the Saragossa line. The way from Aranda by Soria to Saragossa was through a rough country infested by Duran, the Empecinado, and other active guerrillero leaders. It could never have served as the main artery of communication for an army of the size of King Joseph’s. But supposing that the King should have reached Saragossa, his only touch with France would be through Barcelona and Roussillon, for there is no decent carriage road from Saragossa across the Central Pyrenees—the difficult pass by Jaca having often been tried and found wanting, save for small and unencumbered detachments. To base the whole army of Spain on Perpignan instead of Bayonne would have been hopelessly impracticable.

The question as to whether the line along the Pisuerga, from Palencia to opposite Simancas, could not be held was the really hard problem. It was 35 miles long, well marked, but with local faults; the water was low; there were points where the west bank commanded the east; from near Palencia to Cabezon the only good road was on the western side of the river, and so out of control; while the bad path on the eastern side was cut up by three streams coming in from the high plateaux of the province of Burgos. In the rear there was the defile of Torquemada, where the road and the Pisuerga itself came out of the upland. After pondering over the question, Joseph decided that the Pisuerga was too dangerous a line to hold, that he was still too weak in numbers, and that he had better fall back on Burgos, and wait in position there, on ground much more defensible than the broad plains of the Pisuerga and the Carrion, for the arrival of the missing divisions of the Army of Portugal and of Clausel.

On the evening of the 2nd orders were issued that all the impedimenta of the Army of Spain should move off northward at once. The Grand Park and other transport, the Spanish refugees with all their carriages and lumber, the French civil administrators, the King’s ministers with his private baggage and treasure, and much miscellaneous stuff from the royal palaces—pictures, books, and antiquities—were to start off at once on the road to Burgos. One great convoy was dispatched that night, a second and still larger one the following morning. Escort was found for them from the King’s Spanish troops, the so-called ‘division’ of Casa Palacios, and other detachments, making up 4,000 men in all. On the afternoon of the 3rd the army executed a general movement of retreat, leaving only a cavalry screen behind, to observe Wellington’s advance. The Army of the South came back through Valladolid, after blowing up all the bridges on the lower Pisuerga and the neighbouring streams, and then marched up its western bank to Cabezon. Reille evacuated Medina de Rio Seco and fell back on Palencia, where he picked up Maucune. Head-quarters and the King’s guard moved to Magaz, just south of Palencia. D’Erlon marched from Valladolid to Dueñas, ten miles farther south than Magaz, and made ready to blow up the bridge there and cross to the other side of the Pisuerga. The whole army was collected in a space of 15 miles, and halted for two days, in a safe position for retreat on Burgos, when it should be pressed. For Joseph and Jourdan naturally wished to gain time—every day that passed made it more likely that the missing divisions from the North would be heard of, or even be reported as approaching. Yet it would seem that even yet no direct and peremptory orders had been sent to Clausel, for Jourdan writes in his Memoirs that ‘the King suspended the retrograde movement because he thought to gain time, and hoped that the Minister of War would have given orders to General Clauzel to come down on Burgos[492].’ Again the wretched system of double-command and constant reference to Paris was working! If it be remembered that it was only on the 18th of May that the King had made his final appeal to the minister to let loose Clausel from the northern operations, and that the news of Wellington’s actual advance had only been sent to France on the 24th, when could it be expected that the directions from Paris would reach the scattered columns lost in the mountains of Navarre? And was there any certainty that Clarke would visualize the full danger of the position, and give at once the kind of orders that the King desired? He might send instead a lecture on the Emperor’s intentions, if past experience was to be trusted, and some suggestions which the events of the last ten days would have put completely out of date.