Years of Victory 1802 - 1812

by Arthur Bryant

  Had the Spanish armies, though outnumbered, acted on the defensive, they might have been able to hold the French until the arrival of Moore's troops. But, having wasted three months in controversy, they chose the moment of the Grand Army's appearance for their long-advertised attack. On the last day of October Blake with the Army of Galicia, advancing without the slightest support from his colleagues, walked into Ney's lines at Durango. Here his

  1 One of them, Colonel Doyle—an enthusiastic and rather unbalanced Irishman who was given the rank of General in the Spanish Service—wrote hopefully to his British employers of "pouring all the energies of the different provinces into one stream, the tide of which will be a torrent which will sweep away from the face of Spain the remnant of the French army." See Fortescue, VI, 259, 226; Moore, II, 281, 381; Ann. Reg. (1809), Hist. 3; Earl Stanhope, Miscellanies (1863), 53.

  troops, half naked and starving, were trounced and driven back to Bilbao. "Intractable as swine, obstinate as mules and unmanageable as bullocks," as a disgusted British officer wrote, they were cut up like rations or dispersed in all directions like a flock of sheep.

  A week later Napoleon reached Vittoria. He found himself in the centre of a horseshoe, with a compact force of the finest troops in Europe facing three widely separated bodies of peasant levies whose total numbers were inferior to his own. He struck immediately. In two successive days Blake was routed again at Espinosa, only escaping annihilation by a precipitate flight over the Cantabrian mountains, and the Army of Estremedura—theoretically in reserve —was utterly shattered at Gamonal village north of, Burgos. On November 9th Burgos was a busy military base, supposedly far behind the lines and swarming with cheerful Spanish soldiers. A day later it was a deserted city full of untidy corpses and sacked houses while around it the French cavalry hunted Count Belvedere's men over the Castilian plain. Belvedere himself—a youth of twenty completely unaccustomed to command—fled with his Staff to Aranda, 60 miles in the rear. The Spanish centre had ceased to exist. On the 13th the French occupied Valladollid—the intended rendezvous of the British army—while the Supreme Junta was still debating the possibility of . their being able to advance at all.1

  Such was the state of affairs on November 13th when Sir John Moore, having covered 250 miles of mountain track in just over three weeks, was met at Ciudad Rodrigo by an urgent summons from Belvedere. "The Spaniards," he noted dryly, "seem to think that everybody should fly but themselves." Two days later at Salamanca he heard the news of Gamonal. He had arrived too late. Vallodollid, sixty miles to the north-east, was already in French hands; without so much as a Spanish piquet between, his army was threatened with destruction before it could assemble. Baird, who had been expected at Astorga by November 14th, was still detained by the rains at Lugo nearly a hundred miles to the north-west; his 5000 horse under Lord Paget had only landed at Corunna on the day Moore reached Salamanca. Hope, with the artillery, was a hundred miles away to the south on the far side of the Guadarramas. A more depressing position for a commander it was scarcely possible to conceive. Behind on Moore's only line of retreat were the barren,

  1 Jackson, II, 295-6. The Spanish love of logic based on purely idealistic premises was observed a few days earlier by Captain Leith Hay in the crowd at the Puerta del Sol which concluded that, because "the person who had gained the battle of Baylen . . . could without hesitation or difficulty have driven the main body of the enemy across the Pyrenees or led them captive to Madrid, General Castanos must be a traitor." Leith Hay, I, 58.

  rain-soaked mountains through which he had come and a countryside in which he had no hope of maintaining himself.

  Yet the very folly of the Spanish generals that had betrayed him came to his aid. For Castanos and Palafox, wholly regardless of the fate of their colleagues, proceeded to advance on Napoleon's eastern

  flank with the insane notion of cutting him off from France. The result was that the French, not unnaturally supposing the British to be in retreat to Portugal, switched their main forges eastwards from Burgos towards the Ebro. Meanwhile Moore, being completely in the dark as to what either the French or the Spaniards were doing—for no one troubled to send him information—remained where he was, resting and regrouping his army and trying to obtain intelligence. By November 18th he knew that Blake had been routed at Espinosa on the ioth and that the chance of a junction with Baird was even slighter than he had supposed. It did not add to his comfort to receive on the same day a cheerful letter from Castlereagh predicting an early advance by the Spanish armies. At that very moment his predecessors, arraigned before their seniors in the hall of Chelsea Hospital, were facing the indictment of an indignant country.1

  Moore's dilemma was pitiful. The assumptions on which his instructions had been issued and which were still held by the Cabinet no longer existed: they had vanished with the Spanish armies of the North and Centre. The fog of war had descended over the Castilian plain ahead, and he had no cavalry with which to penetrate it. The Ebro was nearly three hundred miles away and the whole French army lay between him and it.

  Yet so long as Castanos was fighting there, it would be craven to abandon the Spaniards to their fate. Because bis first duty was to preserve his army—his country's only one—Moore had sent Baird and Hope discretionary powers to fall back on Corunna and Lisbon should they find their way barred by overwhelming force. But until the attempt to assemble his forces had been made, he felt he had no option but to remain where he was. To Hester Stanhope, perhaps his dearest friend on earth, he wrote that he was in a scrape and that she must be prepared for bad news, though his troops were in good spirits and eager to make a fight for it. "Farewell, my dear Lady Hester," he added, "if I extricate myself and those with me from our present difficulties, I shall return to you with satisfaction; but if not it will be better I shall never quit Spain."2

  It was in this resolve that Moore on November 28th sat down to

  1 Moore II, 279-81, 307-8; Castlereagh, VHI, 2. 2 Hester Stanhope, 60; Moore, II, 382-3.

  reply to an urgent letter from Baird. Five days earlier the latter at Astorga, a hundred and twenty miles to the north, had heard of the disasters of Espinosa and Gamonal and the French capture of Vallodollid. Armed with Moore's discretionary power to fall back on Corunna, he had at once ordered a retreat. "It certainly never could be the intention of the British Government," he wrote, "that we should engage in the defence of the country, unaided and unsupported by any Spanish force."1 But Moore at once recalled him. "I see my situation," he informed him, "in as unfavourable a light as you or anyone can do. But it is our business to make every effort to unite here and to obey our orders and the wishes of our country. It would never do to retreat without making the attempt. If the enemy prevent us, there is no help for it, but if he does not, I am determined to unite the army. When that is done we shall act according to circumstances. There is still a chance that the presence of so large a British force may give spirits to the Spaniards."

  But late that night Moore learnt that the last Spanish army had ceased to exist. Riding five hundred miles in six days, a member of the British Mission at Castanos's headquarters arrived from the capital to report that on November 23rd that general and Palafox had been routed at Tudela. The British were now the only undefeated force in northern Spain.

  Around them was a population without the slightest outward trace of the fervid Iberian patriotism so extolled at home. The peasants continued their ceaseless labour in the fields. The townsmen, wrapped in their brown winter cloaks, lounged about in their hundreds in the sunshine, "apathetic, indifferent, gloomy and sunk in utter idleness." They seemed unmoved alike by Moore's appeals for help and the menace of the foraging cavalry which rode at will over the countryside. "After leading us into a most dreadful mess through their deceitful and mendacious promises," an Hanoverian officer wrote, "they run away and say: *' Now try to get out of it as best you can!' The people here have the cool effrontery to look upon the English troops as exotic animals who have co
me to engage in a private fight with the French, and now that they are here all that the fine Spanish gentlemen have to do is to look on with their hands in their pockets. They do not regard us in the least as allies who are prepared to shed their blood for Spain; they simply look

  1 Moore, II, 347. Baird's view was shared by his subordinates. Lord Paget, no defeatist, wrote on November 23rd: "The game is considered as completely up. The Government must have been grossly deceived. . . . We do not discover any enthusiasm anywhere. The country appears to be in a state of complete apathy. A junction of Moore's corps and of Baird's corps is impossible. . . . Even if we were now to form the junction, we have no ulterior object. There is no Spanish army and there is no salvation for the Spanish nation, take my word for it." Paget Papers, II, 385.

  upon us as heretics. In our billets it is as much as we can do to get a glass of water."1

  Under the circumstances there seemed nothing for it but to get out as quickly as possible. During the night Moore wrote again to Baird, ordering him to return to Corunna, re-embark in his transports and proceed to the Tagus. His own retreat through the Portuguese highlands to Lisbon would begin as soon as Hope's column, now at Villacastin seventy miles' to the south-east, could reach him. He ordered it to proceed by forced marches to Alba de Tormes and thence to Ciudad-Rodrigo on the Portuguese border where he proposed to join it. So long as Castanos' army remained in the field, he wrote, there -had been hope, but now he could see none.

  Till his guns and cavalry arrived Moore's position was one of acute danger. He had no idea how many troops Napoleon had with him on the Castilian plain: he knew that they could not be less than 80,000 to his own 17,000; he suspected that they were far more. To increase his troubles, protests began to arrive from Hookham Frere at Madrid urging him, in the name of the patriots, to stand firm, and repeating the old, familiar fables of impending Spanish victories. To support them came two Castilian generals—creatures of fantasy —who, declaring that 20,000 of their troops were barring the mountain road to Madrid, outlined fresh projects for the annihilation of Napoleon.

  Yet at that moment the Emperor was in the suburbs of Madrid*. As soon as he had learnt of the rout of the Spanish armies on the Ebro, he had marched on the capital. -In his path was the snow ridge of the Guadarramas, where 12,000 Spaniards, hastily dispatched from Madrid, were holding the narrow and all but impregnable Somosierra defile. But once again the impact of cavalry proved fatal to undisciplined troops. Under cover of a mountain mist Napoleon launched the Polish lancers of the Imperial Guard against the guns at the head of the pass. The defenders fled in confusion, leaving the road to Madrid open. On December ist Napoleon's advance guard appeared before the city.

  Next evening Moore learnt what had occurred from his aide-decamp, Colonel Thomas Graham, who arrived from the capital just in time to give the Spanish generals the lie. As an expose of their projects, the news was conclusive. On the other hand, it temporarily relieved the British army of danger. Either because he was unaware of its position or because he viewed it with indifference, Napoleon had vanished over the mountains to the south. Two days later Hope, who had shown the greatest calm, initiative and judgment in a most

  1 Schaumann, 70. 79-81; Moore, II, 279-81; Boothby, 120; Napier; 1, 427, 430.

  trying situation,1 arrived with his precious guns and cavalry at Alba de Tormes, a day's march from Salamanca. For the first time since he left Lisbon Moore had a balanced fighting force under his immediate command.

  On the morrow, December 5th, 1808 just as he was preparing to retreat at leisure on Portugal, further tidings arrived from the Spanish capital. The populace had risen once more, refused to admit Napoleon and appointed new leaders who were preparing to resist to the death. Madrid was to become a second Saragossa. The brave and generous British were urged to hasten to its aid.

  In Moore's heart there flickered once more a faint spark of hope. He had little belief that Madrid could withstand the French assault; like Napoleon he knew the power of artillery. Nor was he in any doubt of the peril of remaining a day longer in northern Spain, now that his guns were safe. The odds against him—though he could not tell how great—were enormous. But he had been sent to save Spain, and, though her leaders had shown themselves worthless, her people, he was beginning to see, might be worth saving. A connoisseur in human virtue and courage, he saw—with a flash of poet's insight—that, under all its absurdities and fantasies, this strange, moody, mercurial race had bottom. The hardy, sober, industrious peasants who went about their daily affairs with such astonishing indifference when the French were at their doors, and who never gave them a thought till they were riding down the village street, were true men after all. Again and again during Moore's stay at Salamanca British officers were caught in villages overrun by the tide of French cavalry. Yet though every Spaniard in the place knew of their presence, not one was ever betrayed.2

  Such a people, resolved to save itself, might still be saved. If British action could give them the will to fight on, Moore saw that it was his duty to give it. Deep down he knew that there was something more precious even than his country's only army: her honour. If he could use the fine instrument he had made—even if in doing so he should break or lose it—to create in Spain a permanent focus of resistance to Napoleon, he would have done what he had been sent to do. For the first time since he crossed the frontier his path became clear.

  1 He had firmly ignored all Frere's hysterical entreaties to throw his guns into Madrid and, before even receiving Moore's summons, had found a short cut over the Guadarramas to his imperilled chief. He completed his dangerous task by covering 47 miles in 36 hours. Fortescue, VI, 315; Journal of a Soldier, 51-2.

  2 Moore, II, 392-3. "They are fine people." George Jackson, flying with the Central Junta from Madrid to Badajoz, noted the same smouldering virtue. "The road swarms with armed peasants; every man would be a soldier. If Spain is subdued it will not be the fault of her people. I am convinced that the country might be saved." Jackson, II, 316. See also Leslie, 23, 26.

  One thing the Spaniards needed above everything else: that of which in their brief hour of triumph they had been so prodigal— time. While Madrid held out, the southern provinces and Portugal were still free from the invader. Within a few weeks the winter would fall with its fierce winds from the mountains and the snowdrifts blocking the passes; if Napoleon's tempestuous advance could be held till then, the patriot leaders at Seville, Valencia and Cadiz and the British and Portuguese at Lisbon might still be able to form new armies before the spring. To relieve Madrid, as the leaders of the populace demanded, was far beyond Moore's power: he could not, with half his little army and the bulk of his cavalry still in Galicia, cross the Guadarramas into the plains of New Castile. That would be to walk into the lion's den.

  Yet a plan was taking shape in his mind. If he could join forces with Baird, he might strike eastwards with 35,000 men at Napoleon's communications with France. At the very moment that his contemptuous enemy thought he was retiring on Portugal, he would advance in the opposite direction. By doing so he would secure the support—for what it was worth—of the remnants of Blake's defeated army which La Romana had rallied on the Asturian border. Startling as such a move might seem, Moore saw what far-reaching effects it might have. Unable to feed his army on the wintry tableland of central Spain, the conqueror of Europe would be forced to recross the Guadarramas in the December snows and deal with the threat to his life-line. Then the British army would become the quarry and have to run for its life over the mountains. But in the meantime Spain would have been given a respite—and a second chance.

  Moore acted quickly, for speed was the essence of what he had to do. On the evening of December 5th he wrote two letters—one to Castlereagh, informing him of his intentions, and the other to Baird, recalling him to Astorga while warning him to be ready for an immediate retreat into Galicia. "Madrid still holds out," he told him, "this is the first instance of enthusiasm shown. There is a chance that th
e example may be followed and the people be roused. . . . I mean to proceed bridle in hand, for if the bubble bursts and Madrid falls, we shall have to run for it."

  Four days later, while Moore was waiting for Baird to retrace his steps, his aide-de-camp, Colonel Graham, returned to headquarters with the tidings that Madrid had capitulated. On the very day after the patriot leaders had dispatched their appeal to Moore they had entered into negotiations for surrender. Nor did they trouble-to inform him that they had done so. On December 4th the Emperor had entered the capital. The way was open to Lisbon and Cadiz.

  But Moore came of a stubborn race. He had made up his mind to harass Napoleon's communications, and, though Spain now seemed doomed, he meant while his adversary's back was turned to effect his junction with Baird and do what damage he could before he had to run for it. One of his officers, scouting to the north-west, had discovered that the French, in their southward surge, had evacuated Valladollid; they were obviously still unaware of his presence on the edge of the Castilian plain. He was free to advance across it and assemble his army where he had originally planned. His troops, who made a fine show parading in the noble square of Salamanca in the December sunshine, were now thoroughly rested after their march; strict discipline had been re-established and, careless of the future, they only asked to be led against the enemy. The weather had suddenly grown cold; at night the frost was so intense that a Highlander of the 71st had his powdered pigtail frozen to the ground as he slept. But the days were clear and exhilarating, and the ground had dried up.