SECTION III: CHAPTER III

OPERATIONS IN THE NORTH: BATTLE OF MEDINA DE RIO SECO

While Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Verdier were making their long series of attacks on Saragossa, matters were coming to a head in the north-west of Spain. The army of Galicia had at last descended into the plains, and commenced to threaten the right flank of Bessières and the communications between Burgos and Madrid. This forward movement was due neither to the Galician Junta, nor to the officer whom they had placed in command of their army, but to the obstinate persistence of Cuesta, who had not in the least learnt the lesson of caution from his defeat at Cabezon, and was eager to fight a pitched battle with all the forces that could be collected in Northern Spain.

The resources at hand were not inconsiderable: in Galicia, or on the way thither from Portugal, were no less than thirty-nine battalions of regular infantry—though most of them were very weak: there were also thirteen battalions of embodied militia, some thirty guns, and a handful of cavalry (not more than 150 sabres). The Junta had placed in command, after the murder of the captain-general Filanghieri, a comparatively young general—Joachim Blake, one of those many soldiers of fortune of Irish blood who formed such a notable element in the Spanish army. When the insurrection broke out he had been merely colonel of the regiment named ‘the Volunteers of the Crown’: he had never had more than three battalions to manage before he found himself placed at the head of the whole Galician army. Though a most unlucky general—half a dozen times he seems to have been the victim of ill fortune, for which he was hardly responsible—Blake was in real merit far above the average of the Spanish commanders. He had neither the slackness nor the arrogance which were the besetting sins of so many of the Peninsular generals: and his dauntless courage was not combined with recklessness or careless over-confidence. He showed from the first very considerable[p. 164] organizing power: all his efforts were directed to the task of inducing the Junta and the people of Galicia to allow him to draft the crowds of recruits who flocked to his banner into the old regiments of the line and the militia, instead of forming them into new corps. With some trouble he carried his point, and was able to bring up to their full complement most of the old battalions: of new units very few[132] were created. When he took the field it was only the old cadres thus brought up to strength that accompanied him, not raw and unsteady troops of new organization.

After hastily concentrating and brigading his army at Lugo, Blake led them to the edge of the mountains which divide Galicia from the plains of Leon. It was his original intention to stand at bay on the hills, and force the French to attack him. With this object he occupied the passes of Manzanal, Fuencebadon, and Puebla de Sanabria, the only places where roads of importance penetrate into the Galician uplands [June 23]. His whole field force, distributed into four divisions and a ‘vanguard brigade’ of light troops, amounted to some 25,000 men fit for the field: in addition, 8,000 or 10,000 new levies were being organized behind him, but he refused—with great wisdom—to bring them to the front during his first movements.

On Blake’s left flank were other Spanish troops: the Junta of the Asturias had raised some 15,000 men: but these—unlike the Galician army—were utterly raw and untrained. Of old troops there was but one single militia battalion among them. The Junta had dispersed them in small bodies all along the eastern and southern side of the province, arraying them to cover not only the high road from Madrid and Leon to Oviedo, but every impracticable mule-path that crosses the Cantabrian Mountains. By this unwise arrangement the Asturian army was weak at every point: it was impossible to concentrate more than 5,000 men for the defence of any part of the long and narrow province. The fact was that the Junta looked solely to the defence of its own land, and had no conception that the protection of the Asturias should be treated as only a section of the great problem of the protection of the whole of Northern Spain.

While the Galicians and the Asturians were taking up this[p. 165] purely defensive attitude, they had forgotten to reckon with one factor in their neighbourhood. Right in front of them lay the old Captain-General of Castile, with the wrecks of the army that had been so signally routed at Cabezon. He had retired to Benavente on the Esla, and there had halted, finding that he was not pursued by Lasalle. Here he reorganized his scattered Castilian levies into three battalions, and raised three more in the province of Leon. He had still 300 or 400 regular cavalry, but not a single gun. Quite undismayed by his late defeat, he persisted in wishing to fight in the plain, and began to send urgent messages both to Blake and to the Juntas of Asturias and Galicia, begging them to send down their armies from the hills, and aid him in making a dash at Valladolid, with the object of cutting off Bessières’ communications with Madrid, and so disarranging the whole system of Napoleon’s plan for the conquest of Spain.

The Asturians, partly from a well-justified disbelief in Cuesta’s ability, partly from a selfish desire to retain all their troops for the defence of their own province, refused to stir. They sent the Captain-General a modest reinforcement, two battalions of the newly raised regiment of Covadonga, but refused any more aid. Instead, they suggested that Cuesta should fall back on Leon and the southern slope of the Asturian hills, so as to threaten from thence any advance of the French into the plains of Leon.

But the Galician Junta showed themselves less unyielding. Despite of the remonstrances of Blake, who was set on maintaining the defensive, and holding the passes above Astorga, they consented to allow their army to move down into the plain of Old Castile and to join Cuesta. After some fruitless remonstrances Blake moved forward with the bulk of his host, leaving behind him his second division to hold the passes, while with the other three and his vanguard brigade he marched on Benavente [July 5].

On July 10 the armies of Galicia and Castile met at Villalpando, and a brisk quarrel at once broke out between their commanders. Cuesta was for attacking the French at once: Blake pointed out that for an army with no more than thirty guns and 500 or 600 cavalry to offer battle in the plains was sheer madness. The Irish general had the larger and more effective army, but Cuesta was thirteen years his senior as lieutenant-general, and insisted on assuming command of the combined host in accordance with the[p. 166] normal rules of military precedence. After some fruitless resistance Blake yielded, and the whole Spanish army moved forward on Valladolid: all that Cuesta would grant on the side of caution was that the third Galician division, 5,000 strong, should be left as a reserve at Benavente. Even this was a mistake: if the two generals were to fight at all, they should have put every available man in line, and have endeavoured at all costs to induce the Asturians also to co-operate with them. They might have had in all for the oncoming battle 40,000 men, instead of 22,000, if the outlying troops had been collected.

A blow from the north-west was precisely what Napoleon at Bayonne and Savary at Madrid had been expecting for some weeks. Both of them were perfectly conscious that any check inflicted on Bessières in Old Castile would wreck the whole plan of invasion. So much of the marshal’s corps d’armée had been distracted towards Saragossa, that it was clearly necessary to reinforce him. From Madrid Savary sent up half of the troops of the Imperial Guard which had hitherto been in the capital—three battalions of fusiliers (first regiment) and three squadrons of cavalry[133]. Napoleon afterwards blamed him severely for not having sent more, saying that from the mass of troops in and about Madrid he might have spared another complete division—that of Gobert, the second division of Moncey’s corps. Without its aid the Emperor half-expected that Bessières might be checked, if the Galicians came down in full force[134]. He himself sent up from Bayonne nearly all the troops which were at that moment under his hand, ten veteran battalions just arrived from Germany, forming the division of General Mouton.

The reinforcements being hurried on to Bessières by forced marches, that general found himself on July 9 at the head of a force with which he thought that he might venture to attack Blake and Cuesta. If they had brought with them all their troops, and had called in the Asturians, it is probable that the marshal would have found himself too weak to face them: fortunately for him he had only five-ninths of the army of Galicia[p. 167] and Cuesta’s miserable levies in front of him. His own fighting force was formed of odd fragments of all the divisions which formed his corps d’armée: large sections of each of them were left behind to guard his communications with France, and others were before Saragossa. Bessières marched from Burgos with the brigade of the Imperial Guard: at Palencia he picked up Lasalle’s cavalry with half Mouton’s newly arrived division of veterans (the second brigade was left at Vittoria) and a small part of Merle’s division, which had been hastily brought over the mountains from Santander to join him. There was also present the larger half of Verdier’s division, of which the rest was now in Aragon with its commander[135].

On the evening of July 13, Lasalle’s light cavalry got in touch with the outposts of the Spaniards near Medina de Rio Seco,[p. 168] and reported that Blake and Cuesta were present in force. On the next morning Bessières marched before daybreak from Palencia, and just as the day was growing hot, discovered the enemy drawn up on rising ground a little to the east of the small town which has given its name to the battle. Blake had 15,000 infantry and 150 cavalry with twenty guns[136]; Cuesta 6,000 infantry and 550 cavalry, but not a single cannon. They outnumbered Bessières by nearly two to one in foot soldiery, but had little more than half his number of horse, and only two-thirds as many guns.

A more prudent general than Cuesta would have refused to fight at all with an army containing in its ranks no less than 9,000 recruits, and almost destitute of cavalry. But if fighting was to be done, a wise man would at any rate have chosen a good position, where his flanks would be covered from turning movements and inaccessible to the enemy’s very superior force of horsemen. The old Captain-General cared nothing for such caution: he had merely drawn up his army on a gentle hillside, somewhat cut up by low stone walls, but practicable for cavalry at nearly every point. His flanks had no protection of any kind from the lie of the ground: behind his back was the town of Medina de Rio Seco, and the dry bed of the Sequillo river, obstacles which would tend to make a retreat difficult to conduct in orderly fashion. But a retreat was the last thing in Cuesta’s thoughts.
Map of Medina de Rio Seco

Enlarge  Battle of Medina de Rio Seco. July 14, 1808.

Bad as was the position selected, the way in which it was occupied was still more strange. The Captain-General had divided his host into two halves, the one consisting of the first division of[p. 169] the army of Galicia and of the vanguard brigade, the other of the fourth Galician division and the raw ‘Army of Castile.’ Blake with the first-named force was drawn up in a short, compact formation, three lines deep, at the south-eastern front of the hill, the ‘Plateau of Valdecuevas,’ as it is called. His right looked down into the plain, his left, in the centre of the plateau, stood quite ‘in the air.’ But nearly a mile to his left rear, and quite out of sight, lay the other half of the army, just too far off to protect Blake’s exposed flank if it should be attacked, and in a very bad position for defending itself. Why Cuesta ranged his left wing (or second line, if it may so be called) low down on the reverse slope of the plateau, and in a place where it could not even see Blake’s corps, it is impossible to conceive. Tore?o hazards the guess that, in his arrogant confidence, he placed Blake where he would have to bear the stress of the battle, and might probably lose ground, intending to come up himself with the left wing and restore the fight when his colleague should be sufficiently humbled. Such a plan would not have been outside the scope of the old man’s selfish pride.

Bessières, marching up from the east, came in sight of the Spaniards in the early morning. He at once deployed his whole army, and advanced in battle array over the plain. In front was a slight cavalry screen of Lasalle’s chasseurs; next came Mouton’s division, deployed to the right, and Merle’s division, with Sabathier’s brigade, to the left of the country-road which leads, over the plateau, towards Medina de Rio Seco. The Imperial Guard, horse and foot, and the bulk of Lasalle’s cavalry brigade were in reserve behind the centre. On getting near the enemy’s position, Bessières soon discovered the two halves of the Spanish army and the broad gap which lay between them. His mind was at once made up: he proposed to contain Cuesta with a small force, and to fall upon and envelop Blake with the rest of his army before the Captain-General of Castile could come to his aid. This excellent plan was carried out to the letter, thanks to the incapacity of Cuesta.

Not far east of the plateau of Valdecuevas lay an isolated eminence, the mound of Monclin: on it the marshal drew up the greater part of his artillery (twenty guns) which began to batter Blake’s front line: the Galician batteries replied, and held their own though outnumbered by two to one. Then Sabathier’s eight[p. 170] weak battalions deployed and commenced a cautious attack upon Blake’s front: this was not to be pressed home for a time. Meanwhile Merle’s seven battalions pushed into the fight, continuing Sabathier’s line to the south-west and trying to envelop Blake’s southern flank. They forced the Galicians to throw back their right wing, and to keep continually extending it, in order to avoid being turned. The Spaniards fought not amiss, and for some hour or more the battle was almost stationary.

Meanwhile, far to the French right, Mouton’s five battalions were executing a cautious demonstration against Cuesta’s forces, across the northern folds of the plateau. The old general allowed himself to be completely occupied by this trifling show of attack, and made no movement to aid Blake’s wing. The gap between him and his colleague was not filled up. Then came the sudden development of Bessières’ plan: Sabathier and Merle were told to attack in earnest, and while Blake was deeply engaged with their fifteen battalions, Lasalle rode into the open space on the left of the Galicians, formed up the 22nd chasseurs à cheval at right angles to the Spanish line, and charged in furiously upon Blake’s flank. The unfortunate troops on whom the blow fell were deployed in line, and utterly unprepared for a cavalry shock from the side. The first battalion which received the attack broke at once and ran in upon the second[137]: in a few minutes Blake’s whole left wing fell down like a pack of cards, each corps as it fled sweeping away that next to it. The French infantry, advancing at the same moment, ran in with the bayonet, seized the Spanish guns, and hustled the Galicians westward along the plateau in a mob. Blake’s troops were only saved from complete destruction by the steadiness of a Navarrese battalion, which formed square to cover the retreat, and at the cost of one-third of its strength allowed the other corps to get a long start in their flight. They retired due west, and crossed the Sequillo to the south of the town of Rio Seco before they could be rallied.

It was now the turn of Cuesta to suffer. The moment that Blake was disposed of, Bessières marched over the hill towards the[p. 171] other half of the Spanish army: leaving some of Lasalle’s cavalry and Sabathier’s brigade to pursue the routed corps, he formed the whole of his remaining troops in a line, bringing up the reserve of the Imperial Guard to make its centre, while Mouton formed the right wing and the two brigades of Merle the left. Cuesta, outnumbered and attacked down hill, would have done wisely to retreat and to seek for shelter in and behind the town of Rio Seco in his immediate rear. But he had prepared a new surprise for the enemy; as they descended upon him they were astonished to see his front line, the eight battalions which formed the fourth Galician division, form itself into columns of attack and slowly commence to climb the hill with the object of attacking their right and centre. Meanwhile Cuesta’s handful of cavalry rode out on the northern end of the line and fell upon the skirmishers of Mouton’s division, whom it chased back till it was met and driven off by the three squadrons of the Imperial Guard.

The uphill charge of the fourth Galician division was a fine but an utterly useless display of courage. They were attacking nearly double their own numbers of victorious troops, who outflanked them on both wings and tore them to pieces with a concentric fire of artillery to which they could not respond. The regiments at each end of the line were soon broken up, but in the centre two battalions of picked grenadiers[138] actually closed with the French, captured four guns of the Imperial Guard, and forced back the supporting infantry of the same corps for a short space, till Bessières hurled upon them the three squadrons of the Guard-Cavalry, which broke them and swept them down hill again.

Seeing his attack fail, Cuesta bade his last reserve, the raw Castilian and Leonese levies, retreat behind the river and the town of Medina de Rio Seco, which they did without much loss, covered to a certain extent by the two Asturian battalions, the only part of Cuesta’s own force which was seriously engaged.

The ‘Army of Castile,’ therefore, had no more than 155 casualties, but the two Galician divisions had suffered heavily. They left behind them on the field nearly 400 dead, and over 500 wounded, with some 1,200 prisoners. The ten guns of Blake’s wing had all been captured, and with them several pairs of colours. In addition[p. 172] more than a thousand of the Galician recruits had dispersed, and could not be rallied. Altogether Blake’s army had lost over 3,000 men. The French, as might have been expected, had suffered comparatively little: they had 105 killed and 300 wounded, according to Foy; other historians give even smaller figures.

A vigorous pursuit might have done much further harm to the defeated Spaniards; but Bessières’ men had been marching since two in the morning, and fighting all through the mid-day. They were much fatigued, and their commander did not press the chase far beyond the river. But the town of Rio Seco was sacked from cellar to garret, with much slaying of non-combatants and outrages of all kinds[139], a fact very discreditable to the marshal, who could have stopped the plunder had he chosen.

The defeated generals met, a little to the west of the battle-field, and after a bitter altercation, in which Blake used the plainest words about Cuesta’s generalship, parted in wrath. The Galicians retired by the way they had come, and joined the division which had been left behind three days before; they then went back to the passes above Astorga, abandoning a considerable amount of stores at Benavente. Cuesta took the army of Castile to Leon, retiring on the Asturias rather than on Galicia.

Bessières’ well-earned victory was creditable to himself and his troops, but the way had been made easy for him by the astounding tactical errors of the Captain-General of Castile. The rank and file of the Spanish army had no reason to be ashamed of their conduct: it was their commander who should have blushed at the reckless way in which he had sacrificed his willing troops. Handled by Cuesta the best army in the world might have been defeated by inferior numbers.

The strategical results of the battle of Rio Seco were great and far-reaching. All danger of the cutting of the communications between Madrid and Bayonne was averted, and Napoleon, his mind set at rest on this point, could now assert that Dupont’s position in Andalusia was henceforth the only hazardous point in his great scheme of invasion[140]. It would clearly be a very long time before the army of Galicia would again dare to take the offensive, and meanwhile Madrid was safe, and the attempt to conquer Southern[p. 173] Spain could be resumed without any fear of interruption. Bessières, after such a victory, was strong enough not to require any further reinforcements from the central reserve in and about the capital.

The most obvious result of Rio Seco was that King Joseph was now able to proceed on his way to Madrid, and to enter the city in triumph. After receiving the homage of the Spanish notables at Bayonne, and nominating a ministry, he had crossed the frontier on July 9. But he had been obliged to stop short at Burgos, till Bessières should have beaten off the attack of Blake and Cuesta: his presence there had been most inconvenient to the marshal, who had been forced to leave behind for his protection Rey’s veteran brigade of Mouton’s division, which he would gladly have taken out to the approaching battle.

When the news of Medina de Rio Seco arrived at Burgos, the usurper resumed his march on Madrid, still escorted by Rey’s troops. He travelled by short stages, stopping at every town to be complimented by reluctant magistrates and corporations, who dared not refuse their homage. The populace everywhere shut itself up in its houses in silent protest. Joseph’s state entry into Madrid on July 20 was the culminating point of the melancholy farce. He passed through the streets with a brilliant staff, between long lines of French bayonets, and amid the blare of military music. But not a Spaniard was to be seen except the handful of courtiers and officials who had accepted the new government. The attempts of the French to produce a demonstration, or even to get the town decorated, had met with passive disobedience. Like Charles of Austria when he entered Madrid in 1710, Joseph Bonaparte might have exclaimed that he could see ‘a court, but no people’ about him. But he affected not to notice the dismal side of the situation, assumed an exaggerated urbanity, and heaped compliments and preferment on the small section of Afrancesados who adhered to him.

The usurper had resolved to give himself as much as possible the air of a Spanish national king. Of all his Neapolitan court he had brought with him only one personage, his favourite Saligny, whom he had made Duke of San Germano. The rest of his household was composed of nobles and officials chosen from among the herd which had bowed before him at Bayonne. There were among them several of the late partisans of King Ferdinand, of whom[p. 174] some had frankly sold themselves to his supplanter, while others (like the Duke of Infantado) were only looking for an opportunity to abscond when it might present itself. The first list of ministers was also full of names that were already well known in the Spanish bureaucracy. Of the cabinet of Ferdinand VII, Cevallos the minister of Foreign Affairs, O’Farrill at the War Office, Pi?uela at the ministry of Justice, were base enough to accept the continuation of their powers by the usurper. Urquijo, who took the Secretaryship of State, was an old victim of Godoy’s, who had once before held office under Charles IV. Mazarredo, who was placed at the ministry of Marine, was perhaps the most distinguished officer in the Spanish navy. But Joseph imagined that his greatest stroke of policy was the appointment as minister of the Interior of Gaspar de Jovellanos, the most prominent among the Spanish liberals, whose reputation for wisdom and patriotism had cost him a long imprisonment during the days of the Prince of the Peace. The idea was ingenious, but the plan for strengthening the ministry failed, for Jovellanos utterly refused to take office along with a clique of traitors and in the cabinet of a usurper. Yet even without him, the body of courtiers and officials whom Joseph collected was far more respectable, from their high station and old experience, than might have been expected—a fact very disgraceful to the Spanish bureaucrats.

In less troublous times, and with a more legitimate title to the crown, Joseph Bonaparte might have made a very tolerable king. He was certainly a far more worthy occupant of the throne than any of the miserable Spanish Bourbons: but he was not of the stuff of which successful usurpers are made. He was a weak, well-intentioned man, not destitute of a heart or a conscience: and as he gradually realized all the evils that he had brought on Spain by his ill-regulated ambition, he grew less and less satisfied with his position as his brother’s tool. He made long and untiring efforts to conciliate the Spaniards, by an unwavering affability and mildness, combined with a strict attention to public business. Unfortunately all his efforts were counteracted by his brother’s harshness, and by the greed and violence of the French generals, over whom he could never gain any control. It is a great testimony in his favour that the Spanish people despised rather than hated him: their more violent animosity was reserved for Napoleon. His nominal subjects agreed to regard him as a humorous character:[p. 175] they laughed at his long harangues, in which Neapolitan phrases were too often mixed with the sonorous Castilian: they insisted that he was blind of one eye—which did not happen to be the case. They spoke of him as always occupied with the pleasures of the table and with miscellaneous amours—accusations for which there was a very slight foundation of fact. They insisted that he was a coward and a sluggard—titles which he was far from meriting. He was, they said, perpetually hoodwinked, baffled, and bullied, alike by his generals, his ministers, and his mistresses. But they never really hated him—a fact which, considering the manner of his accession, must be held to be very much to his credit.

But the first stay of the ‘Intrusive King,’ as the Spaniards called him, in his capital, was to be very short. He had only arrived there on July 20: his formal proclamation took place on the twenty-fourth. He had hardly settled down in the royal palace, and commenced a dispute with the effete ‘Council of Castile’—which with unexpected obstinacy refused to swear the oath to him and to the constitution of Bayonne—when he was obliged to take to flight. On the twenty-fourth rumours began to be current in Madrid that a great disaster had taken place in Andalusia, and that Dupont’s army had been annihilated. On the twenty-eighth the news was confirmed in every particular. On August 1, the King, the court, and the 20,000 French troops which still remained in and about the capital, marched out by the northern road, and took their way towards the Ebro. This retreat was the result of a great council of war, in which the energetic advice of Savary, who wished to fight one more battle in front of the capital, with all the forces that could be concentrated, was overruled by the King and the majority of the generals. ‘A council of war never fights,’ as has been most truly observed.