SECTION VIII: CHAPTER IV

NAPOLEON’S PURSUIT OF MOORE: SAHAGUN TO ASTORGA

We have many times had occasion in this narrative to wonder at the extreme tardiness with which news reached the Spanish and the English generals. It is now at the inefficiency of Napoleon’s intelligence department that we must express our surprise. Considering that Moore had moved forward from Salamanca as far back as December 12, and had made his existence manifest to the French on that same day by the successful skirmish at Rueda, it is astonishing to find that the Emperor did not grasp the situation for nine days. Under the influence of his pre-conceived idea that the British must be retiring on Lisbon, he was looking for them in every other quarter rather than the banks of the Upper Douro. On the seventeenth he was ordering reconnaissances to be made in the direction of Plasencia[637] in Estremadura (of all places in the world) to get news of Moore, and was still pushing troops towards Talavera on the road to Portugal. The general tendency of all his movements was in this direction, and there can be no doubt that in a few days his great central reserve would have followed in the wake of Lasalle and Lefebvre, and started for Badajoz and Elvas. On the nineteenth he reviewed outside Madrid the troops that were available for instant movement—the Imperial Guard, the corps of Ney, the divisions of Leval and Lapisse—about 40,000 men with 150 guns, all in excellent order, and with fifteen days’ biscuit stored in their wagons[638]. Of the direction they were to take we can have no doubt, when we read in the imperial[p. 540] correspondence orders for naval officers to be hurried up to reorganize the arsenal of Lisbon[639], and a private note to Bessières—the commander-in-chief of the cavalry—bidding him start his spare horses and his personal baggage for Talavera[640].

The Emperor’s obstinate refusal to look in the right direction is very curious when we remember that Moore’s cavalry was sweeping the plains as far as Valladolid from December 12 to 16, and that on the eighteenth Franceschi had abandoned that important city, while Soult had got news of Moore’s being on the move two days earlier. Clearly either there was grave neglect in sending information on the part of the French cavalry generals in Old Castile, or else the Emperor had so convinced himself that the British were somewhere on the road to Lisbon, that he did not read the true meaning of the dispatches from the north. Be this as it may, it is evident that there was a serious failure in the imperial intelligence department, and that a week or more was wasted. Bonaparte ought to have been astir two or three days after Stewart and Paget drove in Franceschi’s screen of vedettes. As a matter of fact it was nine days before any move was made at the French head quarters: yet Rueda is only ninety-five miles from Madrid.

The first definite intelligence as to the English being on the move in Old Castile reached the Emperor on the evening of December 19. Yet it was only on the twenty-first that he really awoke to the full meaning of the reports that reached him from Soult and Franceschi[641]. But when he did at last realize the situation, he acted with a sudden and spasmodic energy which was never surpassed in any of his earlier campaigns. He hurled on to Moore’s track not only the central reserve at Madrid, but troops gathered in from all directions, till he had set at least 80,000 men on the march, to encompass the British corps which had so hardily thrown itself upon his communications. Moore had been perfectly right when he stated his belief that the sight of the redcoats within reach would stir the Emperor up to such wrath, that he would abandon every other enterprise and rush upon them with every available man.

On the evening of the twenty-first the French troops from every[p. 541] camp around Madrid were pouring out towards the Escurial and the two passes over the Guadarrama. The cavalry of Ney’s corps and of the Imperial Guard was in front, then came the masses of their infantry. Lapisse’s division fell in behind: an express was sent to Dessolles, who was guarding the road to Calatayud and Saragossa, to leave only two battalions and a battery behind, and to make forced marches on the Escurial with the rest of his men. Another aide-de-camp rode to set Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons on the move from Avila[642]. Finally messengers rode north to bid Lorges’s dragoons, and all the fractions of Junot’s corps, to place themselves under the orders of Soult. Millet’s belated division of dragoons was to do the same, if it had yet crossed the Ebro.

The Emperor, once more committing the error of arguing from insufficient data, had made up his mind that the English were at Valladolid[643]. He had no news from that place since Franceschi had abandoned it, and chose to assume that Moore, or at any rate some portion of the British army, was there established. Under this hypothesis it would be easy to cut off the raiders from a retreat on Portugal, or even on Galicia, by carrying troops with extreme speed to Tordesillas and Medina de Rio Seco. This comparatively easy task was all that Napoleon aimed at in his first directions. Villacastin, Arevalo, Olmedo, and Medina del Campo are the points to which his orders of December 21 and 22 require that the advancing columns should be pushed.

For the maintenance of Madrid, and the ‘containing’ of the Spanish armies at Cuenca and Almaraz, the Emperor left nothing behind but the corps of Lefebvre, two-thirds of the corps of Victor, and the three cavalry divisions of Lasalle, Milhaud, and Latour-Maubourg—8,000 horse and 28,000 foot in all, with ninety guns[644]. King Joseph was left in nominal command of the whole. Such a force was amply sufficient to hold back the disorganized troops of Galluzzo and Infantado, but not to advance on Seville or on Lisbon. It was impossible that any blow should be dealt to the west or the south, till the Emperor should send back some of the enormous masses of men that he had hurled upon Moore. Thus the English general’s intention was fully carried out: his raid into Old Castile had completely disarranged all Bonaparte’s plans. It gave the Spaniards at least two months in which to rally and recover their spirits, and it drew the field-army of the Emperor into a remote and desolate corner of Spain, so that the main centres of resistance were left unmolested.

[p. 542]

Napoleon had guessed part, but by no means all, of Moore’s design. ‘The man?uvre of the English is very strange,’ he wrote to his brother Joseph; ‘it is proved that they have evacuated Salamanca. Probably they have brought their transports round to Ferrol, because they think that the retreat on Lisbon is no longer safe, as we could push on from Talavera by the left bank of the Tagus and shut the mouth of the river.... Probably they have evacuated Portugal and transferred their base to Ferrol, because it offers advantages for a safe embarkation. But while retreating, they might hope to inflict a check on the corps of Soult, and may not have made up their mind to try it till they had got upon their new line of retreat, and moved to the right bank of the Douro. They may have argued as follows: “If the French commit themselves to a march on Lisbon, we can evacuate on Oporto, and while doing so are still on our line of communications with Ferrol. Or, possibly, they may be expecting fresh reinforcements. But whatever their plan may be, their move will have a great influence on the end of this whole business.”’

The Emperor thought therefore that Moore’s main object had been to change an unsafe base at Lisbon for a safe one in Galicia, and that the demonstration against Soult was incidental and secondary. It does not seem to have struck him that the real design was to[p. 543] lure the central field-army of the French from Madrid, and to postpone the invasion of the south. Many of his apologists and admirers have excused his blindness, by saying that Moore’s plan was so rash and hazardous that no sensible man could have guessed it. But this is a complete mistake: the plan, if properly carried out, was perfectly sound. Sir John knew precisely what he was doing, and was prepared to turn on his heel and go back at full speed, the instant that he saw the least movement on the side of Madrid. It was in no rash spirit that he acted, but rather the reverse: ‘I mean to proceed bridle in hand,’ he said; ‘and if the bubble bursts, we shall have a run for it.’[645] And on this principle he acted: three hours after he got notice that Napoleon was on the march, he started to ‘make a run for it’ to Astorga, and his promptness was such that his main body was never in the slightest danger from the Emperor’s rush on Benavente, fierce and sudden though it was. The disasters of the second part of the retreat were not in the least caused by Napoleon’s intercepting movement, which proved an absolute and complete failure.

But to proceed: Ney’s corps, which led the advance against Moore, crossed the Guadarrama on the night of December 21, and had arrived safely at Villacastin, on the northern side of the passes, on the morning of the twenty-second. As if to contradict the Emperor’s statement—made as he was setting out—that ‘the weather could not be better,’ a dreadful tempest arose that day. When Bonaparte rode up from Chamartin, to place himself at the head of his Guard, which was to cross the mountains on the twenty-second, he found the whole column stopped by a howling blizzard, which swept down the pass with irresistible strength and piled the snow in large drifts at every inconvenient corner of the defile. It is said that several horsemen were flung over precipices by the mere force of the wind. The whole train of cannon and caissons stuck halfway up the ascent, and could neither advance nor retreat. Violently irritated at the long delay, Napoleon turned on every pioneer that could be found to clear away the drifts, set masses of men to trample down the snow into a beaten track, forced the officers and all the cavalry to dismount and lead their horses, and unharnessed half the artillery so as to give double teams to the rest. In this way the Guard, with the Emperor walking on foot in its midst, succeeded at last in crawling through to Villacastin by the night of December 23.[p. 544] A considerable number of men died of cold and fatigue, and the passage had occupied some sixteen hours more than had been calculated by the Emperor. The troops which followed him had less trouble in their passage, the tempest having abated its fury, and the path cleared by the Guard being available for their use.

At the very moment at which Moore was countermanding the advance on Sahagun—about seven o’clock on the evening of the twenty-third—Napoleon was throwing himself on his couch at Villacastin, after a day of fatigue which had tried even his iron frame. For the next week the two armies were contending with their feet and not their arms, in the competition which the French officers called the ‘race to Benavente[646].’ Napoleon was at last beginning to understand that he had not before him the comparatively simple task of cutting the road between Valladolid and Astorga, but the much harder one of intercepting that between Sahagun and Astorga. For the first three days of his march he was still under some hopes of catching the English before they could cross the Esla—and if any of them had been at Valladolid this would certainly have been possible. On December 24 he was at Arevalo: on Christmas Day he reached Tordesillas, where he waited twenty-four hours to allow his infantry to come up with his cavalry. On the twenty-seventh he at last understood—mainly through a letter from Soult—that the English were much further north than he had at first believed. But he was still in high spirits: he did not think it probable that Moore also might have been making forced marches, and having seized Medina de Rio Seco with Ney’s corps, he imagined that he was close on the flank of the retreating enemy. ‘To-day or to-morrow,’ he wrote to his brother Joseph on that morning, ‘it is probable that great events will take place. If the English have not already retreated they are lost: even if they have already moved they shall be pursued to the water’s edge, and not half of them shall re-embark. Put in your newspapers that 36,000 English are surrounded, that I am at Benavente in their rear, while Soult is in their front[647].’ The announcement was duly made in the Madrid Gazette, but the Emperor had been deceived as to the condition of affairs, which never in actual fact resembled the picture that he had drawn for himself[648].

[p. 545]

Sir John had commenced his retreat from Sahagun on the twenty-fourth, with the intention of retiring to Astorga, and of taking up a position on the mountains behind it that might cover Galicia. He did not intend to retire any further unless he were obliged[649]. If Soult should follow him closely, while the Emperor was still two or three marches away, he announced his intention of turning upon the Marshal and offering him battle. He wrote to La Romana asking him to hold the bridge of Mansilla (the most northerly passage over the Esla) as long as might be prudent, and then to retire on the Asturias, leaving the road to Galicia clear for the English army[650].

At noon on the twenty-fourth Moore started off in two columns: Baird’s division marched by the northern road to Valencia de Don Juan, where the Esla is passable by a ford and a ferry: Hope and Fraser took the more southern route by Mayorga and the bridge of Castro Gonzalo. The reserve division under E. Paget, and the two light brigades, remained behind at Sahagun for twenty-four hours to cover the retreat. The five cavalry regiments were ordered to press in closely upon Soult, and to keep him as long as possible in doubt as to whether he was not himself about to be attacked.

This demonstration seems to have served its purpose, for the Marshal made no move either on the twenty-fourth or the twenty-fifth. Yet by the latter day his army was growing very formidable, as all the corps from Burgos and Palencia were reporting themselves to him: Lorges’s dragoons had reached Frechilla, and Delaborde with the head of the infantry of Junot’s corps was at Paredes, only thirteen miles from Soult’s head quarters at Carrion. Loison and Heudelet were not far behind. Yet the English columns marched for two days wholly unmolested.

On the twenty-sixth Baird crossed the Esla at Valencia: the ford was dangerous, for the river was rising: a sudden thaw on the twenty-fourth had turned the roads into mud, and loosened the snows. But the guns and baggage crossed without loss, as did[p. 546] also some of the infantry, the rest using the two ferry-boats[651]. Hope and Fraser, on the Mayorga road, had nothing but the badness of their route to contend against. The soil of this part of the kingdom of Leon is a soft rich loam, and the cross-roads were knee-deep in clay: for the whole of the twenty-sixth it rained without intermission: the troops plodded on in very surly mood, but as yet there was no straggling. It was still believed that Moore would fight at Astorga, and, though the men grumbled that ‘the General intended to march them to death first and to fight after[652],’ they still kept together.

But already signs were beginning to be visible that their discipline was about to break down. A good deal of wanton damage and a certain amount of plunder took place at the halting-places for the night—Mayorga, Valderas, and Benavente. A voice from the ranks explains the situation. ‘Our sufferings were so great that many of the men lost their natural activity and spirits, and became savage in their dispositions. The idea of running away, without even firing a shot, from the enemy we had beaten so easily at Vimiero, was too galling to their feelings. Each spoke to his fellow, even in common conversation, with bitterness: rage flashed out on the most trifling occasion of disagreement. The poor Spaniards had little to expect from such men as these, who blamed them for their inactivity. Every man found at home was looked upon as a traitor to his country. “Why is not every Spaniard under arms and fighting? The cause is not ours: are we to be the only sufferers?” Such was the common language, and from these feelings pillage and outrage naturally arose[653].’ The men began to seize food in the towns and villages without waiting for the regular distribution, forced their way into houses, and (the country being singularly destitute of wood) tore down sheds and doors to build up their bivouac fires. The most deplorable mischief took place at Benavente, where the regiment quartered in the picturesque old castle belonging to the Duchess of Osuna burnt much of the mediaeval furniture, tore down the sixteenth-century tapestry to make bed-clothes, and lighted fires[p. 547] on the floors of the rooms, to the destruction of the porcelain friezes and alcoves[654]. Moore issued a strongly-worded proclamation against these excesses on December 27, blaming the officers for not keeping an eye upon the men, and pointing out that ‘not bravery alone, but patience and constancy under fatigue and hardship were military virtues[655].’ Unfortunately, such arguments had little effect on the tired and surly rank and file. Things were ere long to grow much worse.

The infantry, as we have seen, accomplished their march to Benavente without molestation, and all, including the rearguard, were across the Esla by the twenty-seventh. Paget’s cavalry, however, had a much more exciting time on the last two days. Finding that he was not attacked, Soult began to bestir himself on the twenty-sixth: he sent Lorges’s dragoons after the British army, in the direction of Mayorga, while with Franceschi’s cavalry and the whole of his infantry he marched by the direct road on Astorga, via the bridge of Mansilla.

Lorges’s four regiments were in touch with the rearguard of Paget’s hussars on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, but they were not the only or the most important enemies who were now striving to drive in Moore’s cavalry screen. The advanced guard of the Emperor’s army had just come up, and first Colbert’s brigade of Ney’s corps and then the cavalry of the Guard began to press in upon Paget: Lahoussaye’s dragoons arrived on the scene a little later. It is a splendid testimonial to the way in which the British horsemen were handled, that they held their own for three days against nearly triple forces on a front of thirty miles[656]. No better certificate could be given to them than the fact that the Emperor estimated them, when the fighting was over, at 4,000 or 5,000 sabres, their real force being only 2,400. He wrote, too, in a moment of chagrin when Moore’s army had just escaped from him, so that he was not at all inclined to[p. 548] exaggerate their numbers, and as a matter of fact rated the infantry too low.

But under the admirable leading of Paget the British cavalry held its own in every direction. Moore was not exaggerating when he wrote on the twenty-eighth that ‘they have obtained by their spirit and enterprise an ascendency over the French which nothing but great superiority of numbers on their part can get the better of[657].’ The 18th Light Dragoons turned back to clear their rear six times on December 27, and on each occasion drove in the leading squadrons of their pursuers with such effect that they secured themselves an unmolested retreat for the next few miles. At one charge, near Valencia de Don Juan, a troop of thirty-eight sabres of this regiment charged a French squadron of 105 men, and broke through them, killing twelve and capturing twenty. The 10th Hussars, while fending off Lorges’s dragoons near Mayorga, found that a regiment of the light cavalry of Ney had got into their rear and had drawn itself up on a rising ground flanking the high-road. Charging up the slope, and over soil deep in the slush of half-melted snow, they broke through the enemy’s line, and got off in safety with 100 prisoners. Every one of Paget’s five regiments had its full share of fighting on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh, yet they closed in on to Benavente in perfect order, with insignificant losses, and exulting in a complete consciousness of their superiority to the enemy’s horse. Since the start from Salamanca they had in twelve days taken no less than 500 prisoners, besides inflicting considerable losses in killed and wounded on the French. They had still one more success before them, ere they found themselves condemned to comparative uselessness among the mountains of Galicia.

On the twenty-eighth Robert Crawfurd’s brigade had waited behind in the mud and rain, drawn up in front of the bridge of Castro Gonzalo, ‘standing for many hours with arms posted, and staring the French cavalry in the face, while the water actually ran out of the muzzles of their muskets[658].’ At last our hussars retired, and Crawfurd blew up two arches of the bridge when Paget had passed over, and moved back on Benavente, after some trifling skirmishing with the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, who had come up in force and tried to interrupt his work. The inde[p. 549]fatigable British horsemen left pickets all along the river on each side of the broken bridge, ready to report and oppose any attempt to cross.

After resting for a day in Benavente Moore had sent on the divisions of Fraser and Hope to Astorga, by the highway through La Baneza. The division of Baird, marching from Valencia by villainous cross-roads, converged on the same point, where the three corps met upon December 29. Their march was wholly unmolested by the French, who were being successfully held back by Moore’s rearguard under the two Pagets—the cavalry general and the commander of the reserve division—and by Crawfurd and Alten’s light brigades. On the same morning that the main body reached Astorga, the infantry of the rearguard marched out of Benavente, leaving behind only the horsemen, who were watching all the fords, with their supports three miles behind in the town of Benavente. Seeing that all the infantry had disappeared, Lefebvre-Desnouettes, who commanded the cavalry of the Guard, thought it high time to press beyond the Esla: it was absurd, he thought, that the mass of French horsemen, now gathered opposite the broken bridge of Castro Gonzalo, should allow themselves to be kept in check by a mere chain of vedettes unsupported by infantry or guns. Accordingly he searched for fords, and when one was found a few hundred yards from the bridge, crossed it at the head of the four squadrons of the chasseurs of the Guard, between 500 and 600 sabres[659]. The rest of his troops, after vainly seeking for other passages, were about to follow him. The moment that he had got over the water Lefebvre found himself withstood by the pickets, mainly belonging to the 18th Light Dragoons, who came riding in from their posts along the river to mass themselves opposite to him. When about 130 men were collected, under Colonel Otway, they ventured to charge the leading squadrons of the chasseurs, of course with indifferent success. After retiring a few hundred yards more, they were joined by a troop of the 3rd Dragoons of the King’s German Legion, under Major Burgwedel, and again turned to fight. At this second clash the front line of the pursuers was broken for a moment, and the dragoons who had burst through the gap had a narrow escape of being surrounded[p. 550] and captured by the second line, but finally fought their way out of the mêlée with no great loss. Charles Stewart, their brigadier, now came up and rallied them for the second time: he retired towards the town in good order, without allowing himself to be cowed by Lefebvre’s rapid advance, for he knew that supports were at hand. Lord Paget, warned in good time, had drawn out the 10th Hussars under cover of the houses of the southern suburb of Benavente. He waited till the chasseurs drew quite near to him, and were too remote from the ford they had crossed to be able to retire with ease: then he suddenly sallied out from his cover and swooped down upon them. The pickets at the same moment wheeled about, cheered, and charged. The enemy, now slightly outnumbered—for the 10th were fully 450 sabres strong, and the pickets at least 200—made a good fight. A British witness observes that these ‘fine big fellows in fur caps and long green coats’ were far better than the line regiments with which the hussars had hitherto been engaged. But in a few minutes they were broken, and chased for two miles right back to the ford by which they had crossed. Lefebvre himself was captured by a private of the 10th named Grisdale, his wounded horse having refused to swim the river[660]. With him there were taken two captains and seventy unwounded prisoners. The chasseurs left fifty-five men dead or hurt upon the field, and many of those who got away were much cut about[661]. The British casualties were fifty, almost all from the men who had furnished the pickets, for the 10th suffered little: Burgwedel, who had led the Germans of the 3rd K. G. L., was the only officer hurt[662].

The remnant of the chasseurs crossed the river, and were immediately supported by other regiments, who (after failing to find another ford) had come down to that which Lefebvre had used.[p. 551] They showed some signs of attempting a second passage, but Lord Paget turned upon them the guns of Downman’s horse-battery, which had just galloped up from Benavente. After two rounds the enemy rode off hastily from the river, and fell back inland. They had received such a sharp lesson that they allowed the British cavalry to retreat without molestation in the afternoon. Napoleon consoled himself with writing that the British were ‘flying in panic’—a statement which the circumstances hardly seemed to justify[663]—and gave an exaggerated account of the disorders which they had committed at Valderas and Benavente, to which he added an imaginary outrage at Leon[664]. But there is no more talk of Moore’s corps being surrounded—wherefore it suddenly shrinks in the Emperor’s estimation, being no longer 36,000 strong, but only ‘21,000 infantry, with 4,000 or 5,000 horse.’ Lefebvre’s affair he frankly owned, when writing to King Joseph, was disgusting: ‘by evening I had 8,000 horse on the spot, but the enemy was gone[665].’

Paget indeed was so effectively gone, that though French cavalry by the thousand crossed the ford that night they could do nothing. And Crawfurd had so thoroughly destroyed the bridge of Castro Gonzalo—he had blown up the central pier, and not merely cut the crowns of the arches—that infantry and guns could not cross till the thirtieth. It was only on that day that the heads of Ney’s corps and of the Imperial Guard came up: Lapisse’s division was still far behind, at Toro. All that the rapid forced marches of the Emperor had brought him was the privilege of assisting at Paget’s departure, and of picking up in Benavente some abandoned carts, which Moore had caused to be broken after burning their contents.

Napoleon still consoled himself with the idea that it was possible that Soult might have been more fortunate than himself, and might perhaps already be attacking the English at Astorga. This was not the case: after learning that Moore had disappeared from his front, the Duke of Dalmatia had taken the road Sahagun—Mansilla, as the shortest line which would bring him to Astorga, the place[p. 552] where any army intending to defend Galicia would make its first stand. This choice brought him upon the tracks of La Romana’s army, not of the British. The Marquis, when Moore retired, had moved back on Leon, but had sent to his ally a message to the effect that he could not accept the suggestion to make the Asturias his base, and would be forced, when the enemy advanced, to join the British at Astorga. It was absolutely impossible, he said, to repair to the Asturias, for the pass of Pajares, the only coach-road thither, was impassable on account of the snow[666]. La Romana left as a rearguard at the all-important bridge of Mansilla, his 2nd Division, 3,000 strong, with two guns. Contrary to Moore’s advice he would not blow up the bridge, giving as his reason that the Esla was fordable in several places in its immediate neighbourhood. This was a blunder; but the officer in command of the 2nd Division committed a greater one, by drawing up his main body in front of the bridge and not behind it—a repetition of Cuesta’s old error at Cabezon. Soult did not come in contact with the Spanish rearguard till four days after he had left Carrion: so heavy had been the rain, and so vile the road, that it took him from the twenty-sixth to the twenty-ninth to cover the forty-five miles between Carrion and Mansilla. But on the morning of December 30 he delivered his attack: a tremendous cavalry-charge by the chasseurs and dragoons of Franceschi broke the Spanish line, and pursuers and pursued went pell-mell over the bridge, which was not defended for a moment. The French captured 1,500 men—who were cut off from re-crossing the river—two guns, and two standards. Hearing of this disaster La Romana at once evacuated Leon, which Soult seized on the thirty-first. The place had been hastily fortified, and there had been much talk of the possibility of defending it[667]; but at the first summons it opened its gates without firing a shot. The Marquis—leaving 2,000 sick in the hospitals, and a considerable accumulation of food in his magazines—fell back on Astorga, much to the discontent of Moore, who had not desired to see him in that direction. Soult at Leon was only twenty-five miles from Astorga: he was now but one march from Moore’s rearguard, and in close touch with the Emperor, who coming up from the south reached La Baneza on the same day—the last of the old year, 1808.

[p. 553]

The divisions of Baird, Hope, and Fraser, as we have already seen, had reached Astorga on the twenty-ninth, the reserve division and the light brigades (after a most fatiguing march from Benavente) on the thirtieth, while the cavalry was, as always, to the rear, keeping back the advancing squadrons of Bessières. Thus on the thirtieth the English and Spanish armies were concentrated at Astorga with every available man present—the British still 25,000 strong; for they had suffered little in the fighting, and had not yet begun to straggle—but Romana with no more than 9,000 or 10,000 of the nominal 22,000 which had been shown in his returns of ten days before. His 2nd Division had been practically destroyed at Mansilla: he had left 2,000 sick at Leon, and many more had fallen out of the ranks in the march from that place—some because they wished to desert their colours, but more from cold, disease, and misery; for the army was not merely half naked, but infected with a malignant typhus fever which was making terrible ravages in its ranks[668].

Moore had told La Romana on the twenty-fourth that he hoped to make a stand at Astorga. The same statement had been passed round the army, and had kept up the spirits of the men to some extent, though many had begun to believe that ‘Moore would never fight[669].’ There were magazines of food at Astorga, and much more considerable ones of military equipment: a large convoy of shoes, blankets, and muskets had lately come in from Corunna, and Baird’s heavy baggage had been stacked in the place before he marched for Sahagun. The town itself was surrounded with ancient walls, and had some possibilities of defence: just behind it rises the first range of the Galician mountains, a steep and forbidding chain pierced only by the two passes which contain the old[p. 554] and the new high-roads to Corunna. The former—the shorter, but by far the more rugged—is called the defile of Foncebadon; the latter—longer and easier—is the defile of Manzanal.

The question was at once raised as to whether the position in rear of Astorga should not be seriously defended. The town itself would naturally have to be given up, if the French chose to press on in force; but the two defiles might be fortified and held against very superior numbers. To turn 25,000 British troops out of them would have been a very serious task, and the Spaniards meanwhile could have been used for diversions on the enemy’s flank and rear. La Romana called upon Moore, at the moment of the latter’s arrival at Astorga, and proposed that they should join in defending the passes. To give them up meant, he said, to give up also the great upland valley behind them—the Vierzo—where lay his own dép?ts and his park of artillery at Ponferrada, and where Moore also had considerable stores and magazines at Villafranca. The proposal was well worthy of being taken into account, and was far from being—as Napier calls it—‘wilder than the dreams of Don Quixote!’ for the positions were very strong, and there was no convenient route by which they could be turned. The only other way into Galicia, that by Puebla de Sanabria, is not only far away, but almost impassable at midwinter from the badness of the road and the deep snow. Moreover it leads not into the main valley of the Minho, but into that of the Tamega on the Portuguese frontier, from which another series of difficult defiles have to be crossed in order to get into the heart of Galicia. La Romana thought that this road might practically be disregarded as an element of danger in a January campaign.

The suggestion of the Marquis deserved serious consideration. Moore’s reasons for a summary rejection of the proposal are not stated by him at any length[670]. He wrote to Castlereagh merely that there was only two days’ bread at Astorga, that his means of carriage were melting away by the death of draught beasts and the desertion of drivers, and that he feared that the enemy might use the road upon his flank—i.e. the Puebla de Sanabria route—to turn his position. He purposed therefore to fall back at once to the coast as fast as he could, and trusted that the French, for want of food, would not be able to follow him further than Villafranca. To these reasons may be added another, which Moore cited in his[p. 555] conversation with La Romana, that the troops required rest, and could not get it in the bleak positions above Astorga[671].

Some of these reasons are not quite convincing: though there were only two days’ rations at Astorga, there were fourteen days’ at Villafranca, and large dép?ts had also been gathered at Lugo and Corunna. These could be rendered available with no great trouble, if real energy were displayed, for there was still (as the disasters of the retreat were to show) a good deal of wheeled transport with the army. The flanking road by Puebla de Sanabria was (as we have said) so difficult and so remote that any turning corps that tried it would be heard of long before it became dangerous. There would be great political advantage in checking Bonaparte at the passes, even if it were only for a week or ten days. Moreover, to show a bold front would raise the spirits of the army, whose growing disorders were the marks of discontent at the retreat, and whose one wish was to fight the French as soon as possible. As to the rest which Moore declared to be necessary for the troops, this could surely have been better given by halting them and offering to defend the passes, than by taking them over the long and desolate road that separated them from Corunna. The experiences of the next eleven days can hardly be called ‘rest.’

Though clearly possible, a stand behind Astorga may not have been the best policy. Napoleon had a vast force in hand after his junction with Soult, and he was a dangerous foe to brave, even in such a formidable position as that which the British occupied. But it is doubtful whether this fact was the cause of Moore’s determination to retreat to the sea. If we may judge from the tone of his dispatches, his thought was merely that he had promised to make a diversion, under strong pressure from Frere and the rest; that he had successfully carried out his engagement, and lured the Emperor and the bulk of the French forces away from Madrid; and that he considered his task completed. In his letter of December 31 to Castlereagh, he harks back once more to his old depreciation of the Spaniards—they had taken no advantage of the chance he had given them, they were as apathetic as ever, his exertions had been wasted, and so forth[672]. In so writing he made a mistake: his[p. 556] campaign was so far from being wasted that he had actually saved Spain. He had caused the Emperor to lose the psychological moment for striking at Seville and Lisbon, when the spirits of the patriots were at their lowest, and had given them three months to rally. By the time that the southward move from Madrid was once more possible to the French, Spain had again got armies in the field, and the awful disasters of November and December, 1808, had been half forgotten.

It seems improbable, from Moore’s tone in his dispatch of December 31, that he ever had any serious intention of standing behind Astorga. He had fallen back upon his old desponding views of the last days of November, and was simply set on bringing off the British army in safety, without much care for the fate of the Spaniards whom he so much disliked and contemned. The only sign of his ever having studied the intermediate positions between Astorga and Corunna lies in a report addressed to him on December 26, by Carmichael Smith of the Royal Engineers. This speaks of the Manzanal—Rodrigatos position as presenting an appearance of strong ground, but having the defect of possessing a down-slope to the rear for six miles, so that if the line were forced, a long retreat downhill would be necessary in face of the pursuing enemy. The engineer then proceeded to recommend the position of Cacabellos, a league in front of Villafranca, as being very strong and safe from any turning movement. But Moore, as we shall see, refused to stand at the one place as much as at the other, only halting a rearguard at Cacabellos to keep off the pursuing horse for a few hours, and never offering a pitched battle upon that ground. It is probable that nothing would have induced him to fight at either position, after he had once resolved that a straight march to the sea was the best policy.

So little time did Moore take in making up his mind as to the desirability of holding the passes above Astorga, that he pushed on Baird’s, Fraser’s, and Hope’s divisions towards Villafranca on[p. 557] the thirtieth, while Paget’s reserve with the two light brigades followed on the thirty-first. The whole British army was on the other side of Astorga, and across the passes, when Soult and Bonaparte’s columns converged on La Baneza. Their infantry did not enter Astorga till the first day of the new year, thirty-six hours after Moore’s main body had evacuated the place.

But this easy escape from the Emperor’s clutches had been bought at considerable sacrifices. Astorga was crammed with stores of all kinds, as we have already had occasion to mention: food was the only thing that was at all short. But there was not sufficient transport in the place, and the retreating army was already losing wagons and beasts so fast that it could not carry off much of the accumulated material that lay before it. A hasty attempt was made to serve out to the troops the things that could be immediately utilized. La Romana’s Spaniards received several thousand new English muskets to replace their dilapidated weapons, and a quantity of blankets. Some of the British regiments had shoes issued to them; but out of mere hurry and mismanagement several thousand pairs more were destroyed instead of distributed, though many men were already almost barefoot. There were abandoned all the heavy baggage of Baird’s division (which had been stacked at Astorga before the march to Sahagun), an entire dép?t of entrenching tools, several hundred barrels of rum, and many scores of carts and wagons for which draught animals were wanting. A quantity of small-arms ammunition was blown up. But the most distressing thing of all was that those of the sick of the army who could not bear to be taken on through the January cold in open wagons had to be left behind: some four hundred invalids, it would seem, were abandoned in the hospital and fell into the hands of the French[673].

The most deplorable thing about these losses was that all the evacuation and destruction was carried out under difficulties, owing to the gross state of disorder and indiscipline into which the army was falling. The news that they were to retreat once more without fighting had exasperated the men to the last degree. Thousands of them got loose in the streets, breaking into houses, maltreating the inhabitants, and pillaging the stores, which were to be aban[p. 558]doned, for their private profit. The rum was naturally a great attraction, and many stragglers were left behind dead drunk, to be beaten out of the place by the cavalry when they left it on the night of the thirty-first. La Romana had to make formal complaint to Moore of the misbehaviour of the troops, who had even tried to steal his artillery mules and insulted his officers. There can be no doubt that if the rank and file had been kept in hand many valuable stores could have been distributed instead of destroyed, and the straggling which was to prove so fatal might have been nipped in the bud. But the officers were as discontented as the men, and in many regiments seem to have made little or no effort to keep things together. Already several battalions were beginning to march with an advanced guard of marauders and a rearguard of limping stragglers, the sure signs of impending trouble.

By the thirty-first, however, Astorga was clear of British and Spanish troops. Moore marched by the new high-road, the route of Manzanal: La Romana took the shorter but more rugged defile of Foncebadon. But he sent his guns along with the British, in order to spare the beasts the steeper ascents of the old chaussée. The terrible rain of the last week was just passing into snow as the two columns, every man desperately out of heart, began their long uphill climb across the ridge of the Monte Teleno, towards the uplands of the Vierzo.

NOTE

This account of the retreat from Sahagun is constructed from a careful comparison of the official documents with the memoirs and monographs of the following British eye-witnesses:—Robert Blakeney (of the 28th), Rifleman Harris and Sergeant Surtees (of the 2/95th), Lord Londonderry, and Lord Vivian of the Cavalry Brigade, Leith Hay (Aide-de-Camp to General Leith), Charles and William Napier, T.S. of the 71st, Steevens of the 20th, the Surgeon Adam Neale, and the Chaplain Ormsby. Bradford, another chaplain, has left a series of admirable water-colour drawings of the chief points on the road as far as Lugo, made under such difficulties as can be well imagined. Of French eye-witnesses I have used the accounts of St. Chamans, Fantin des Odoards, Naylies, De Gonneville, Lejeune, and the detestably inaccurate Le Noble.