[138] Napier (iv. p. 373) says that Joseph left a garrison and his impedimenta in Madrid—I can find no trace of it in the contemporary accounts, e. g. of Romanos (Memorias de un Setenton) or of Harley who was about the town during the second week of November. Vacani distinctly says that Joseph had to take on even his sick (vi. p. 190). Cf. also Arteche, xi. pp. 309-12.
[139] Napier, iv. p. 373, says that Joseph went by the route of Segovia to Castile. I cannot think where he picked up this extraordinary idea. Jourdan’s dispatch of November 10 from Peñaranda gives all the facts. It was on the 5th, near Villacastin, that Soult told Joseph that Hill was about to be joined by Wellington and that the two might crush him. The King at once sent orders to Drouet to come up by forced marches from Madrid. The Army of the Centre started next day. Palombini did not get off till the 8th (Vacani, vi. p. 190), but the head of the column reached Villacastin that same day.
[140] Wellington to Hill, November 3. Dispatches, ix. p. 532.
[141] His first definite information as to this was from a Spaniard who on November 4 saw 3,000 French infantry marching through Torquemada towards Burgos (Dispatches, ix. p. 544). Even so late as November 8th he did not rely on this important news as correct.
[142] From Rueda, November 5, morning. Dispatches, ix. p. 537.
[143] They had really not the 50,000 on which Wellington speculated (’45,000 men I should consider rather below the number’ (Dispatches, ix. p. 544) ) but 60,000 or very nearly that number. But, on the day when Wellington was writing, their rear had not even started from Madrid, and Soult’s 40,000 men were strung out all along the road.
[144] As a matter of fact, using the best map of 1812 available to me (Nantiat’s), it would seem that the line Rueda-Fuentesauco-Salamanca is about 50 miles, that by Rueda-Nava del Rey-Pitiegua-Salamanca about 55 miles, while the route suggested for the French, circuitous and running in more than one place by country cross-paths, is over 65 miles long, not to speak of its being a worse route for topographical reasons.
[145] An under-estimate by several thousands. Wellington did not know of Aussenac’s brigade from Bayonne, over 3,000 men, which had now been attached provisionally to the Army of Portugal.
[146] The total which marched was 60,000, so Wellington was even more correct than he supposed in his notion that 45,000 was too small a figure.
[147] Wellington to Lord Bathurst, Pitiegua, November 8. Dispatches, ix. pp. 544-5.
[148] Dispatches, ix. p. 520.
[149] Wellington to Hill, Rueda, November 5. Dispatches, ix. p. 537.
[150] Ibid., p. 539.
[151] I cannot find the details of the marching orders of the divisions; but from personal diaries I seem to deduce that the 5th and 7th Divisions marched by Alaejos, the 1st and 6th by Castrejon and Vallesa, while the cavalry not only provided a rearguard but kept out flank detachments as far as Cantalapiedra on one side and the lower Guarena on the other.
[152] All this from the detailed routes of march in the dispatches of Jackson (Hill’s Q.M.G.) to D’Urban on November 4-5-6.
[153] See his dispatch of November 8 from Flores de Avila.
[154] For an adventure with these rascals, who threatened to shoot one of Hill’s aides-de-camp, see Schepeler, p. 691.
[155] The ground on which Del Parque had fought his unlucky battle in 1809.
[156] These movements from Jourdan to Clarke, of November 10, and Soult to Clarke of November 12.
[157] See the Notes of the Baden officer Riegel (vol. iii. p. 537), who complains bitterly of the piercing north wind, and the lack of wood to build fires.
[158] D’Espinchel (ii. p. 71) says that the voltigeurs got within the walls, but were expelled on each occasion. The English narratives deny that they ever closed, or reached the barricades.
[159] Soult to Joseph, 8 a.m. on the 11th, ‘bivouac sur la hauteur en arrière d’Alba de Tormes.’
[160] General Hamilton’s account of the business (Dispatch to Hill, Wellington Dispatches, ix. p. 558) is very clear. There is also a good account of the Alba fighting in Colonel Gardyne’s excellent history of the 92nd.
[161] All their names verifiable from Martinien’s admirable lists of ‘Officiers tués et blessés.’
[162] See Jourdan’s Mémoires, p. 441, for the meeting.
[163] Wellington to Hill, November 10, 4.30 p.m. (Dispatches, ix. p. 549).
[164] Same to same, November 11 (ix. p. 550).
[165] Same to same, pp. 550-1.
[166] Jourdan to Joseph, head-quarters at Peñaranda: early on November 12.
[167] Soult to Joseph, night of November 11, from the bivouac behind Alba de Tormes.
[168] As the table of the French Armies of Spain for October 15 in the Appendix shows, the Army of the South had on that day 47,000 men under arms (omitting ‘sick’ and ‘detached’), the Army of the Centre 15,000, the Army of Portugal 45,000 (including Aussenac’s brigade and Merlin’s cavalry, both attached to it provisionally). This gives a total of 107,000, without sick or detached. The Army of Portugal may have lost 1,000 men in action at Villadrigo and Villa Muriel, &c.: the Army of the South not more than 400 at the Puente Larga, Alba de Tormes, &c. The Army of the Centre had not fought at all. A deduction has to be made for Soult’s very large body of men attached to the Artillery Park, and for a smaller number in the Army of Portugal—say 3,000 men for the two together. Souham had left a small garrison at Valladolid—perhaps 1,500 men. If we allow 5,000 men for sick and stragglers between October 20 and November 12 there must still have been a good 90,000 men present. Miot (who was present) calls the total 97,000 (iii. p. 254), making it a little too high, I imagine.
[169] Maucune and Gauthier (late Chauvel). See Wellington Dispatches, ix. p. 556.
[170] Souham naturally expressed his indignation. See Miot, iii. p. 252-3.
[171] D’Urban reports on November 12th: ‘Enemy’s troops in continual movement, and he made a careful reconnaissance of the river from Huerta to Exeme [above Alba].’ On the 13th he writes: ‘The enemy moved all his troops between Huerta and Alba by his left into the woods behind Exeme on the high road to Avila. From thence he can either go in that direction or cross the Tormes by fords above Alba bridge.’
[172] This fact, very important in justification of Wellington’s long stay on San Cristobal, is not mentioned in any of his dispatches. But there is a full account of the skirmish in the Mémoire of Colonel Béchaud of Maucune’s Division, printed in Études Napoléoniennes, iii. pp. 98-9.
[173] The reconnaissance was executed by Leith Hay, who found the French flank at Galisancho and reported its exact position. See his Narrative, ii. pp. 99-100.
[174] Details from Foy’s Vie militaire, ed. Girod de l’Ain, p. 118, and Béchaud (quoted above), pp. 99-100.
[175] His original intention to attack is clearly stated in Dispatches, ix. p. 559, and the statement is corroborated by D’Urban.
[176] D’Urban, an eye-witness, thinks that Wellington ought to have called up Hill and attacked, despite of all difficulties. ‘Lord Wellington arrived upon the ground at about 12 noon, and at first appeared inclined to attack what of the enemy had already passed, with the divisions and cavalry on the spot. The success of such a measure appeared certain, and would have frustrated all the enemy’s projects. However, his opinion changed: they were allowed to continue passing unmolested.’
[177] Mémoires, p. 448. Cf. also Napier, iv. p. 381, who seems to share the idea. ‘Why, it may be asked, did the English commander, having somewhat carelessly suffered Soult to pass the Tormes and turn his position, wait so long on the Arapiles position as to render a dangerous movement (retreat in face of the enemy and to a flank) necessary?’
[178] This horrid reminiscence I found in the unpublished letters of Hodenberg of the 1st Heavy Dragoons K.G.L., which I reprinted in Blackwood’s Magazine in the year 1913.
[179] Details about the exact drawing-up of the second line and reserves seem impossible to discover. I have only accurate notes as to the position of the front line and some of the cavalry and the 1st Division.
[180] For doing this Jourdan criticized Soult for over-caution, and wasting of time, describing this measure as timid and unnecessary. Mémoires, p. 443.
[181] Donaldson of the 94th. Recollections, p. 179.
[182] The 4th Division formed the infantry rearguard on the southern road, the Light Division that on the central road.
[183] Colonel James Willoughby Gordon seems not to have been a success as quarter-master-general. Very soon after his arrival we get notes in the earlier part of the Salamanca campaign that intelligent officers ‘thought he would not stop long with the Army.’ Cf. Tomkinson, p. 224: ‘Nothing could equal the bad arrangements of the Quartermaster-General—the cavalry all retired by one road, allowing that of the enemy to follow our infantry’ [of the central column on November 18]—which was not covered, all the horse having gone on the western or left road. Wellington had a worse accusation against him than mere incapacity (of this more will be found in chap. iii of sect. xxxv)—that of sending letters home which revealed military secrets which got into the English papers. In September he made up his mind that Gordon must not see his dispatches, and must be ‘kept at as great distance as possible’ (Supplementary Dispatches, vii. pp. 427-8). He was sent home before the next campaign.
[184] D’Urban’s diary.
[185] See Foy, Vie militaire, p. 190. He was a witness to the conversation. And cf. Espinchel, Mémoires, ii. p. 73, who gets the hour too late and exaggerates the contact of the armies. He says that 12 of Hill’s guns opened on the French light cavalry. Cf. also Joseph to Clarke of December 20.
[186] Espinchel, ii. p. 73.
[187] Joseph to Clarke, in a long dispatch of December 20. Ducasse’s Correspondance du Roi Joseph, ix. pp. 119-20.
[189] For the curious adventures of Captain v. Stolzenberg commanding this little party, and of the horde which he shepherded, see Schwertfeger’s History of the K.G.L., ii. pp. 262-3.
[190] Mémoires of Béchaud, quoted above, p. 101.
[191] Foy, Vie militaire, pp. 189-90.
[192] Soult to King Joseph, Matilla, 16th November 1812.
[193] There is a good account of the skirmish in the Mémoires of Espinchel, ii. p. 73, who frankly allows that the French light cavalry were both outmanœuvred and repulsed with loss. The returns of the three French regiments show 22 killed, no wounded, and 25 missing—an odd proportion. Apparently the wounded must all have been captured. The 1st Hussars K.G.L. had 7 wounded and 7 missing, the rest of Alten’s brigade under 20 casualties. This brigade was now three regiments strong instead of two, having had the 2nd Hussars K.G.L. from Hill’s Army attached to it at Salamanca.
[194] Napier says that the column went through Tamames, but no 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Division diary mentions that considerable town as passed—they all speak of solitudes and oak-woods alone. Wellington’s orders on the night of November 16 (Supplementary Dispatches, xiv. p. 157) give ‘La Neja’ as Hill’s destination, and this oddly spelt place is undoubtedly Anaya de Huebra.
[195] Memoirs of Donaldson of the 94th, pp. 181-2.
[196] See the Memoirs of Grattan of the 88th, and Bell of the 34th.
[197] See Wellington’s Marching Orders for the 17th in Supplementary Dispatches, xiv. pp. 157-8, for the cavalry. A perverse reading of them might make the cavalry start too early for ‘the brook which passes by La Maza and Aldehuela’, where they are told to be at dawn. They are not actually directed to wait for the infantry rearguard.
[198] There is a full account of his capture in the memoirs of Espinchel, ii. p. 77, the officer whose men took Paget prisoner.
[199] The movements of this day are made very difficult to follow by the fact that Wellington in his dispatches (ix. 464-5) calls Hill’s column the right, and the Spanish column the left, of the three in which the Army marched. Vere’s Diary of the Marches of the 4th Division does the same. But these directions are only correct when the army faced about and stopped to check the French. On the march Hill’s was the left column, and the Spaniards the right. For this reason I have called them the southern and northern columns respectively.
[200] Soult to Joseph, November 17, from before San Muñoz.
[201] So the regimental histories (both good) of these corps. Napier gives one more company of the 43rd.
[202] Napier, iv. p. 385.
[203] Autobiography of Green of the 68th, p. 127.
[204] British ‘missing’ one officer (General Paget) and 111 men, Portuguese ‘missing’ 66 men.
[205] Reminiscences of Hay, 12th Light Dragoons, p. 86.
[206] Espinchel commanded that which went farthest, to the bridge in front of Santi Espiritus: he says that the whole road was lined with broken-down carts and carriages, and strewn with dead men. About 100 British stragglers were gathered in.
[207] The tale may be found with details, told from Wellington’s point of view, in Supplementary Dispatches, vii. p. 494. The chief offender was W. Stewart, who had succeeded to the command of the 1st Division on Paget’s capture the preceding day. The others Wellington describes as ‘new-comers’ so they must have been Oswald and Lord Dalhousie, for the other divisional commanders in this column, Clinton and C. Alten, were not in any sense ‘new-comers’. I think, therefore, that Mr. Fortescue is wrong in giving the names of the culprits as Stewart, Dalhousie, and Clinton.
[208] See Napier, iv. p. 386. But cf. Fitzroy Somerset’s version in Greville Memoirs, i. pp. 136-7.
[209] Donaldson of the 94th, p. 184. Grattan (p. 315) has a story of a Connaught Ranger who ate, in addition to his rations, six ox-heads on six successive days, and died of inflammation of the bowels.
[210] Grattan, pp. 303 and 305-6.
[211] Seventeen of the Chasseurs Britanniques were tried all together for desertion in October 1812! They were mostly Italians. And for one man recaptured and tried, how many got away safely?
[212] See Dispatches, ix. pp. 601-2.
[213] See Dispatches, ix. pp. 562 and 570.
[214] See the Life of Burgoyne, who was sent to look after the threatening symptoms, vol. i. p. 246.
[215] The troops of the Army of Portugal began to march east as early as November 20, long before Soult got back into touch with them. Jourdan to Clarke, from Salamanca, November 20.
[216] The 1st Division seems to have been quartered about the upper Mondego between Celorico and Mangualde, the 3rd in villages between Moimenta and Lamego, the 4th about São João de Pesqueira, the 5th, Pack and Bradford, in the direction of Lamego, the 6th and 7th on the lower Mondego and the Alva under the Serra da Estrella, as far as I can make out from regimental diaries. There is no general notice as to cantonments in the Wellington Dispatches to help. But see General Orders for December 1, 1812, as to the post-towns for each division.
[217] Their cases are in General Orders for 1813, pp. 51-3. Each was condemned to six months’ suspension, but the members of the court martial petitioned for their pardon, on account of the privations of the time. Wellington grudgingly granted the request ‘not concurring in any way in the opinion of the court, that their cases in any way deserved this indulgence.’
[218] Bunbury, aide-de-camp to General Hamilton, referring to Wellington’s memorandum, makes solemn asseveration that his troops got no distribution whatever for those four days. The general himself had no bread. Acorns were the sole diet.
[219] Private and unpublished diary of General D’Urban.
[220] Grattan of the 88th, p. 307.
[221] Tomkinson, p. 227.
[222] They had been ordered in May 1812, but had not been distributed by November. See Dispatches, ix. p. 603.
[223] The figures may be found on pp. 170-1 of the Statistical ‘Ejércitos Españoles’ of 1822, referred to in other places.
[224] See Tables in Appendix. The British battalions were 1/27th and a grenadier battalion formed of companies of the regiments left in Sicily. The light battalion was formed of companies from the 3rd, 7th, 8th Line of the K.G.L. and from de Roll and Dillon. The Italians were ‘2nd Anglo-Italian Levy’. There was a field battery (British), but only 13 cavalry (20th Light Dragoons).
[226] See Suchet, Mémoires, ii. p. 269.
[227] The best account is in Gildea’s History of the 81st Regiment, pp. 104-8.
[228] Dispatches, ix. p. 487.
[229] 161 of the 20th Light Dragoons, and 71 of the ‘Foreign Hussars,’ a newly raised corps, mainly German, which did very creditably in 1813.
[230] Wellington to Lord Bathurst. Dispatches, ix, p. 535.
[231] Dispatches, ix. p. 545.
[232] See Wellington to H. Clinton (W. Clinton’s brother) on December 9 (Dispatches, ix. p. 614), and to Lord Bathurst (ibid., p. 616).
[233] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, Dispatches, ix. p. 573.
[234] These figures seem to represent about 1,400 prisoners at Rodrigo, 4,000 at Badajoz, 300 at the Almaraz forts, 600 at the Salamanca forts, 7,000 at the battle of Salamanca, 2,000 at the Retiro, 1,300 at Astorga, 700 at Guadalajara, with 2,000 more taken in smaller affairs, such as the surrenders of Consuegra and Tordesillas, the combat on the Guarena, the pursuit after Salamanca, and Hill’s operations in Estremadura.
[235] This looks a large figure, but over 150 guns were taken at Rodrigo, more than that number at Badajoz, several hundred in the Retiro, and infinite numbers in the Cadiz lines and the arsenal of Seville, not to speak of the captures at Astorga, Guadalajara, Almaraz, and in the field at Salamanca, &c.
[236] Foy, Vie militaire, p. 193. Napoleon to Clarke, October 19, 1812.
[237] Report of Colonel Desprez to Joseph of his interview with the Emperor at Moscow on October 19th. Correspondance du Roi Joseph, ix. p. 178.
[238] Ibid., p. 179.
[239] See above, vol. v, pp. 194-5.
[240] Napier’s statement that Napoleon was thinking of this project when he declared Soult to be the ‘only military head in Spain’ is entirely unjustified by the context from which he is quoting. The Emperor therein makes no allusion to the Seville project. See Ducasse’s Correspondance, ix. pp. 178-9.
[241] See his letter quoted above, vol. v, pp. 255-6.
[242] Jones, Sieges of the Peninsula, ii. p. 430.
[243] Jones remarks that ‘we had to leave it to the valour of the troops to surmount intermediate obstacles which in a properly conducted siege would be removed by art and labour’ (Sieges, i. p. 163).
[244] See above, vol. v, p. 270.
[245] See above, vol. v, p. 316.
[246] Wellington to Lord Liverpool, Dispatches, ix. p. 574.
[247] Memorandum for Baron Alten, Madrid, 31st August 1812.
[248] The bad weather on the Tagus only began October 30th.
[251] Not including 2/59th at Cadiz, but including the 1/6th, 20th, and 91st which only landed in November, and the battalions of the 1st Foot Guards which had only just joined during the Burgos retreat.
[252] The Portuguese infantry had suffered quite as heavily—cold being very trying to them, though summer heat affected them less than the British. The 20th Portuguese, starting on the retreat from Madrid with 900 men, only brought 350 to Rodrigo.
[253] 4,400 for the infantry, 350 for cavalry, plus drafts for artillery, &c.
[254] Where the new Second Guards Brigade had a dreadful epidemic of fever and dysentery, and buried 700 men. It was so thinned that it could not march even in May, and missed the Vittoria campaign.
[255] Brigades were not always kept together, the regiments being a little scattered. Individual battalions were in Baños, Bejar, Bohoyo, Montehermoso, &c.
[256] Jourdan, Mémoires, p. 449.
[257] See Correspondance du Roi Joseph, ix. p. 462.
[258] For a curious narrative of adventures in Madrid, November 4-10, by a party of English prisoners who escaped in the confusion that followed the outmarch of the French, see the Memoirs of Captain Harley of the 47th, ii. pp. 42-50.
[259] Fortunately for themselves most of King Joseph’s Spanish partisans, who fled from Madrid in July to Valencia, were still under Suchet’s charge and had not returned, or their lot would have been a hard one.
[260] Miot de Melito, iii. p. 258.
[261] The 2nd Division (see above, p. 90) had been taken from Soult and lent to the Army of the Centre during the operation of November. It was never given back.
[262] A good picture of the state of Central Spain in January and February 1813 may be got from the Memoirs of d’Espinchel, of the 2nd Hussars, an officer charged with the raising of contributions in La Mancha—a melancholy record of violence and treachery, assassination by guerrilleros and reprisals by the French, of villages plundered and magistrates shot. D’Espinchel had mainly to deal with the bands of El Medico and the Empecinado. See his Souvenirs militaires, pp. 86-110.
[263] Vide v. pp. 550-8.
[264] See Mina’s Life of himself, pp. 39-43. He declares that the French custom-house at Yrun paid him 100 onzas de oro (£300) a month, for leave to pass goods across the Bidassoa.
[265] The remains of Thomières’ unlucky division, cut to pieces at Salamanca—the 1st, 65th, and 101st Line.
[266] 64th Line.
[267] Correspondance du Roi Joseph, ix. p. 224.
[268] Jourdan, Mémoires, p. 452.
[269] Clarke to King Joseph, Correspondance du Roi, ix. p. 186.