SECTION VIII: CHAPTER V

SOULT’S PURSUIT OF MOORE: ASTORGA TO CORUNNA

When he found that Moore had escaped from him, Napoleon slackened down from the high speed with which he had been moving for the last ten days. He stayed at Benavente for two nights, occupying himself with desk-work of all kinds, and abandoning the pursuit of the British to Bessières and Soult. The great coup had failed: instead of capturing the expeditionary force he could but harass it on its way to the sea. Such a task was beneath his own dignity: it would compromise the imperial reputation for infallibility, if a campaign that had opened with blows like Espinosa, Tudela, and the capture of Madrid ended in a long and ineffectual stern-chase. If Bonaparte had continued the hunt himself, with the mere result of arriving in time to see Moore embark and depart, he would have felt that his prestige had been lowered. He tacitly confessed as much himself long years after, when, in one of his lucubrations at St. Helena, he remarked that he would have conducted the pursuit in person, if he had but known that contrary winds had prevented the fleet of British transports from reaching Corunna. But of this he was unaware at the time; and since he calculated that Moore could be harassed perhaps, but not destroyed or captured, he resolved to halt and turn back. Soult should have the duty of escorting the British to the sea: they were to be pressed vigorously and, with luck, the Emperor trusted that half of them might never see England again. But no complete success could be expected, and he did not wish to appear personally in any enterprise that was but partially successful.

Other reasons were assigned both by Napoleon himself and by his admirers for his abandonment of the pursuit of Moore. He stated that Galicia was too much in a corner of the world for him to adventure himself in its mountains—he would be twenty days journey from Paris and the heart of affairs. If Austria began to move again in the spring, there would be an intolerable delay[p. 560] before he could receive news or transmit orders[674]. He wished to take in hand the reorganization of his armies in Italy, on the Rhine, and beyond the Adriatic. All this was plausible enough, but the real reason of his return was that he would not be present at a fiasco or a half-success. It would seem, however, that there may have been another operating cause, which the Emperor never chose to mention; the evidence for it has only cropped up of late years[675]. It appears that he was somewhat disquieted by secret intelligence from Paris, as to obscure intrigues among his own ministers and courtiers. The Spanish War had given new occasions to the malcontents who were always criticizing the Empire. Not much could be learnt by the French public about the affair of Bayonne, but all that had got abroad was well calculated to disgust even loyal supporters of the Empire. The talk of the salons, which Napoleon always affected to despise, but which he never disregarded, was more bitter than ever. It is quite possible that some hint of the conspiracy of the ‘Philadelphes,’ which four months later showed its hand in the mysterious affair of D’Argenteau, may have reached him. But it is certain that he had disquieting reports concerning the intrigues of Fouché and Talleyrand. Both of those veteran plotters were at this moment in more or less marked disgrace. For once in a way, therefore, they were acting in concert. They were relieving their injured feelings by making secret overtures in all directions, in search of allies against their master. Incredible as it may appear, they had found a ready hearer in Murat, who was much disgusted with his brother-in-law for throwing upon him the blame for the disasters of the first Spanish campaign. Other notable personages were being drawn into the cave of malcontents, and discourses of more than doubtful loyalty were being delivered. Like many other cabals of the period, this one was destined to shrink into nothingness at the reappearance of the master at Paris[676]. But while he was away[p. 561] his agents were troubled and terrified: they seem to have sent him alarming hints, which had far more to do with his return to France than any fear as to the intentions of Austria[677].

An oft-repeated story says that the Emperor received a packet of letters from Paris while riding from Benavente to Astorga on January 1, 1809, and, after reading them by the wayside with every sign of anger, declared that he must return to France. If the tale be true, we may be sure that the papers which so moved his wrath had no reference to armaments on the Danube, but were concerned with the intrigues in Paris. There was absolutely nothing in the state of European affairs to make an instant departure from Spain necessary. On the other hand, rumours of domestic plots always touched the Emperor to the quick, and it must have been as irritating as it was unexpected to discover that his own sister and brother-in-law were dabbling in such intrigues, even though ostensibly they were but discussing what should be done if something should happen in Spain to their august relative.

Already ere leaving Benavente the Emperor had issued orders which showed that he had abandoned his hope of surrounding and crushing Moore. He had begun to send off, to the right and to the left, part of the great mass of troops which he had brought with him. On December 31 he wrote to Dessolles, and ordered him to give his division a short rest at Villacastin, and then to return to Madrid, where the garrison was too weak. On January 1, the whole of the Imperial Guard was directed to halt and return to Benavente, from whence it was soon after told to march back to Valladolid. Lapisse’s division of Victor’s corps, which had got no further than Benavente in its advance, was turned off to subdue the southern parts of the kingdom of Leon. To the same end were diverted D’Avenay’s[678] and Maupetit’s[679] brigades of cavalry. Quite contrary[p. 562] to Moore’s expectations and prophecies, the people of this part of Spain displayed a frantic patriotism, when once the enemy was upon them. Toro, an open town[680], had to be stormed: Zamora made a still better resistance, repulsed a first attack, and had to be breached and assaulted by a brigade of Lapisse’s division. The villagers of Penilla distinguished themselves by falling upon and capturing a battery of the Imperial Guard, which was passing by with an insufficient escort. Of course the guns were recovered, and the place burnt, within a few days of the exploit[681].

Having sent off the Guards, Lapisse, Dessolles, and Maupetit’s and D’Avenay’s cavalry, the Emperor had still a large force left in hand for the pursuit of Moore. There remained Soult’s and Ney’s corps, the horsemen of Lahoussaye, Lorges, and Franceschi, and the greater part of Junot’s 8th Corps. The Emperor had resolved to break up this last-named unit: it contained many third-battalions belonging to regiments which were already in Spain: they were directed to rejoin their respective head quarters. When this was done, there remained only enough to make up two rather weak divisions of 5,000 men each. These were given to Delaborde and Heudelet, and incorporated with Soult’s 2nd Corps. Loison’s division, the third of the original 8th Corps, was suppressed[682]. Junot himself was sent off to take a command under Lannes at the siege of Saragossa. When joined by Delaborde and Heudelet, Soult had a corps of exceptional strength—five divisions and nearly 30,000 bayonets. He could not use for the pursuit of Moore Bonnet’s division, which had been left to garrison Santander. But with the remainder, 25,000 strong, he pressed forward from Astorga in pursuance of his master’s orders. His cavalry force was very large in proportion: it consisted of 6,000 sabres, for not only were three complete divisions of dragoons with him, but Ney’s corps-cavalry (the brigade of Colbert) was up at the front and leading the pursuit. Ney himself, with his two infantry divisions, those of Maurice Mathieu and Marchand, was a march or two to the rear, some 16,000 bayonets strong. If Soult[p. 563] should suffer any check, he was sure of prompt support within three days. Thus the whole force sent in chase of Moore mustered some 47,000 men[683].

The head of the pursuing column was formed by Lahoussaye’s dragoons and Colbert’s light cavalry: in support of these, but always some miles to the rear, came Merle’s infantry. This formed the French van: the rest of Soult’s troops were a march behind, with Heudelet’s division for rearguard. All the 2nd Corps followed the English on the Manzanal road: only Franceschi’s four regiments of cavalry turned aside, to follow the rugged pass of Foncebadon, by which La Romana’s dilapidated host had retired. The exhausted Spaniards were making but slow progress through the snow and the mountain torrents. Franceschi caught them up on January 2, and scattered their rearguard under General Rengel, taking a couple of flags and some 1,500 men: the prisoners are described as being in the last extremity of misery and fatigue, and many of them were infected with the typhus fever, which had been hanging about this unfortunate corps ever since its awful experience in the Cantabrian hills during the month of November[684].

Moore’s army, as we have already seen, had marched out from Astorga—the main body on December 30, the rearguard on the thirty-first. After determining that he would not defend the passes of Manzanal and Foncebadon, the general had doubted whether he should make his retreat on Corunna by the great chaussée, or on Vigo, by the minor road which goes via Orense and the valley of the Sil. It is strange that he did not see that his mind must be promptly made up, and that when once he had passed the mountains he must commit himself to one or the other route. But his dispatches to Castlereagh show that it was not till he had[p. 564] reached Lugo that he finally decided in favour of the main road[685]. He must have formed the erroneous conclusion that the French would not pursue him far beyond Astorga[686]: he thought that they would be stopped by want of provisions and by fatigue. Having formed this unsound hypothesis, he put off the final decision as to his route till he should reach Lugo. Meanwhile, to protect the side-road to Vigo he detached 3,500 of his best troops, Robert Crawfurd’s light brigade [the 43rd (1st batt.), 52nd (2nd batt.), and 95th (2nd batt.)], and Alten’s brigade of the German Legion. They diverged from the main road after leaving Astorga, and marched, by Ponferrada and La Rua, on Orense. How much they suffered on the miserable bypaths of the valley of the Sil may be gathered in the interesting diaries of Surtees and Harris: but it was only with the snow and the want of food that they had to contend. They never saw a Frenchman, embarked unmolested at Vigo, and were absolutely useless to Moore during the rest of the campaign. It is impossible to understand how it came that they were sent away in this fashion, and nothing can be said in favour of the move. Unless the whole army were going by the Orense road, no one should have been sent along it: and the difficulties of the track were such that to have taken the main body over it would have been practically impossible. As it was, 3,500 fine soldiers were wasted for all fighting purposes. The duty of covering the rear of the army, which had hitherto fallen to the lot of Crawfurd, was now transferred to General Paget and the ‘Reserve Division[687].’ One regiment of hussars [the 15th] was left with them: the other four cavalry corps pushed on to the front, as there was no great opportunity for using them, now that the army had plunged into the mountains.

[p. 565]

Colbert and Lahoussaye took some little time, after leaving Astorga, before they came upon the rear of Moore’s army. But they had no difficulty in ascertaining the route that the English had taken: the steep uphill road from Astorga into the Vierzo was strewn with wreckage of all kinds, which had been abandoned by the retreating troops. The long twelve-mile incline, deeply covered with snow, had proved fatal to a vast number of draught animals, and wagon after wagon had to be abandoned to the pursuers, for want of sufficient oxen and mules to drag them further forward. Among the derelict baggage were lying no small number of exhausted stragglers, dead or dying from cold or dysentery.

The whole morale of Moore’s army had suffered a dreadful deterioration from the moment that the order to evacuate Astorga was issued. As long as there was any prospect of fighting, the men—though surly and discontented—had stuck to their colours. Some regiments had begun to maraud, but the majority were still in good order. But from Astorga onward the discipline of the greater part of the corps began to relax. There were about a dozen regiments[688] which behaved thoroughly well, and came through the retreat with insignificant losses: on the other hand there were many others which left from thirty to forty per cent. of their men behind them. It cannot be disguised that the enormous difference between the proportion of ‘missing’ in battalions of the same brigade, which went through exactly identical experiences, was simply due to the varying degrees of zeal and energy with which the officers kept their men together. Where there was a strong controlling will the stragglers were few, and no one fell behind save those who were absolutely dying. The iron hand of Robert Crawfurd brought the 43rd and 95th through their troubles with a loss of eighty or ninety men each. The splendid discipline of the Guards brigade carried them to Corunna with even smaller proportional losses. There is no mistaking the coincidence when we find that the battalion which Moore denounced at Salamanca as being the worst commanded and the worst disciplined in his force, was also the one which left a higher percentage of stragglers behind than any other corps. The fact was that the toils of the[p. 566] retreat tried the machinery of the regiments to the utmost, and that where the management was weak or incompetent discipline broke down. It was not the troops who had the longest marches or the most fighting that suffered the heaviest losses: those of Paget’s division, the rearguard of the whole army, which was constantly in touch with the French advance, compare favourably with those of some corps which never fired a shot between Benavente and Corunna. It is sad to have to confess that half the horrors of the retreat were due to purely preventible causes, and that if the badly-managed regiments had been up to the disciplinary standard of the Guards or the Light Brigade, the whole march would have been remembered as toilsome but not disastrous. Moore himself wrote, in the last dispatch to which he ever set his hand, that ‘he would not have believed, had he not witnessed it, that a British army would in so short a time have been so completely demoralized. Its conduct during the late marches was infamous beyond belief. He could say nothing in its favour but that when there was a prospect of fighting the men were at once steady, and seemed pleased and determined to do their duty[689].’ This denunciation was far too sweeping, for many corps kept good order throughout the whole campaign: but there was only too much to justify Moore’s anger.

The serious trouble began at Bembibre, the first place beyond the pass of Manzanal, where Hope’s, Baird’s, and Fraser’s divisions had encamped on the night of the thirty-first. The village was unfortunately a large local dép?t for wine: slinking off from their companies, many hundreds of marauders made their way into the vaults and cellars. When the divisions marched next morning they left nearly a thousand men, in various stages of intoxication, lying about the houses and streets. The officers of Paget’s Reserve, who came up that afternoon, describe Bembibre as looking like a battle-field, so thickly were the prostrate redcoats strewn in every corner. Vigorous endeavours were made to rouse these bad soldiers, and to start them upon their way; but even next morning there were multitudes who could not or would not march[690]. When[p. 567] the Reserve evacuated the place on January 2, it was still full of torpid stragglers. Suddenly there appeared on the scene the leading brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons, pushing down from the pass of Manzanal, and driving before them the last hussar picket which Paget had left behind. The noise of the horsemen roused the lingerers, who began at last to stagger away, but it was too late: ‘the cavalry rode through the long line of these lame defenceless wretches, slashing among them as a schoolboy does among thistles[691].’ Most of the stragglers, it is said, were still so insensible from liquor that they made no resistance, and did not even get out of the road[692]. A few, with dreadful cuts about their heads and shoulders, succeeded in overtaking the Reserve. Moore had the poor bleeding wretches paraded along the front of the regiments, as a warning to drunkards and malingerers.

Meanwhile Baird and Hope’s divisions had reached Villafranca on the first, and scenes almost as disgraceful as those of Bembibre were occurring. The town was Moore’s most important dép?t: it contained fourteen days’ rations of biscuit for the whole army, an immense amount of salt-beef and pork, and some hundreds of barrels of rum. There was no transport to carry off all this valuable provender, and Moore ordered it to be given to the flames. Hearing of this the troops broke into the magazines, and began to load themselves with all and more than they could carry, arguing, not unnaturally, that so much good food should not be burnt. Moore ordered one man—who was caught breaking into the rum store—to be shot in the square. But it was no use; the soldiers burst loose, though many of their officers cut and slashed at them to keep them in the ranks, and snatched all that they could from the fires. Some forced open private houses and plundered, and in a few cases maltreated, or even murdered, the townsfolk who would not give them drink. A great many got at the rum, and were left behind when the divisions marched on January 3[693].

While these orgies were going on at Villafranca, Paget and the Reserve had been halted six miles away, at Cacabellos, where[p. 568] the high-road passes over the little river Cua[694]. There was here a position in which a whole army could stand at bay, and Moore’s engineers had pointed it out to him as the post between Astorga and Lugo where there was the most favourable fighting-ground. It is certain that if he had chosen to offer battle to Soult on this front, the Marshal would have been checked for many days—he could not have got forward without calling up Ney from Astorga, and there is no good road by which the British could have been outflanked. But Moore had no intention of making a serious defence: he was fighting a rearguard action merely to allow time for the stores at Villafranca to be destroyed.

The forces which were halted at Cacabellos consisted of the five battalions of the Reserve (under Paget), the 15th Hussars, and a horse-artillery battery. A squadron of the cavalry and half of the 95th Rifles were left beyond the river, in observation along the road towards Bembibre: the guns were placed on the western side of the Cua, commanding the road up from the bridge. The 28th formed their escort, while the other three battalions of the division were hidden behind a line of vineyards and stone walls parallel with the winding stream[695].

About one o’clock in the afternoon the French appeared, pushing cautiously forward from Bembibre with Colbert’s cavalry brigade of Ney’s corps now at their head, while Lahoussaye’s division of dragoons was in support. The infantry were not yet in sight. Colbert, a young and very dashing officer, currently reputed to be the most handsome man in the whole French army, was burning to distinguish himself. He had never before met the British, and had formed a poor opinion of them from the numerous stragglers and drunkards whom he had seen upon the road. He thought that the rearguard might be pushed, and the defile forced with little loss. Accordingly he rode forward at the head of his two regiments[696], and fell upon the squadron of the 15th Hussars which was observing him. They had to fly in hot haste, and, coming in suddenly to the bridge, rode into and over the last two companies of the 95th Rifles, who had not yet crossed the[p. 569] stream. Colbert, sweeping down close to their heels, came upon the disordered infantry and took some forty or fifty prisoners before the riflemen could escape across the water[697]. But, seeing the 28th and the guns holding the slope above, he halted for a moment before attempting to proceed further.

Judging however, from a hasty survey, that there were no very great numbers opposed to him, the young French general resolved to attempt to carry the bridge of Cacabellos by a furious charge, just as Franceschi had forced that of Mansilla five days before. This was a most hazardous and ill-advised move: it could only succeed against demoralized troops, and was bound to fail when tried against the steady battalions of the Reserve division. But ranging his leading regiment four abreast, Colbert charged for the bridge: the six guns opposite him tore the head of the column to pieces, but the majority of the troopers got across and tried to dash uphill and capture the position. They had fallen into a dreadful trap, for the 28th blocked the road just beyond the bridge, while the 95th and 52nd poured in a hot flanking fire from behind the vineyard walls on either side. There was no getting forward: Colbert himself was shot as he tried to urge on his men[698], and his aide-de-camp Latour-Maubourg fell at his side. After staying for no more than a few minutes on the further side of the water, the brigade turned rein and plunged back across the bridge, leaving many scores of dead and wounded behind them.

Lahoussaye’s dragoons now came to the front: several squadrons of them forded the river at different points, but, unable to charge among the rocks and vines, they were forced to dismount and to act as skirmishers, a capacity in which they competed to no great advantage against the 52nd, with whom they found themselves engaged. It was not till the leading infantry of Merle’s division came up, not long before dusk, that the French were enabled to make any head against the defenders. Their voltigeurs bickered with the 95th and 52nd for an hour, but when the formed columns tried to cross the bridge, they were so raked by the six guns opposite them that they gave back in disorder. After dark the firing ceased, and Moore, who had come up in person from Villa[p. 570]franca at the sound of the cannon, had no difficulty in withdrawing his men under cover of the night. In this sharp skirmish each side lost some 200 men: the French casualties were mainly in Colbert’s cavalry, the British were distributed unequally between the 95th (who suffered most), the 28th, and 52nd: the other two regiments present (the 20th and 91st) were hardly engaged[699].

Marching all through the night of 3rd-4th of January the Reserve division passed through Villafranca, where stores of all kinds were still blazing in huge bonfires, and did not halt till they reached Nogales, eighteen miles further on. They found the road before them strewn with one continuous line of wreckage from the regiments of the main body. The country beyond Villafranca was far more bare and desolate than the eastern half of the Vierzo: discipline grew worse each day, and the surviving animals of the baggage-train were dying off wholesale from cold and want of forage. The cavalry horses were also beginning to perish very fast, mainly from losing their shoes on the rough and stony road. As soon as a horse was unable to keep up with the regiment, he was (by Lord Paget’s orders) shot by his rider, in order to prevent him from falling into the hands of the French. Many witnesses of the retreat state that the incessant cracking of the hussars’ pistols, as the unfortunate chargers were shot, was the thing that lingered longest in their memories of all the sounds of these unhappy days.

Beyond Villafranca the Corunna road passes through the picturesque defile of Piedrafita, by which it reaches the head waters of the Nava river, and then climbing the spurs of Monte Cebrero comes out into the bleak upland plain of Lugo. This fifty miles contained the most difficult and desolate country in the whole of Moore’s march, and was the scene of more helpless and undeserved misery than any other section of the retreat. It was not merely drunkards and marauders who now began to fall to the rear, but steady old soldiers who could not face the cold, the semi-starvation, and the forced marches. Moore hurried his troops forward at a pace that, over such roads, could only be kept up by the strongest[p. 571] men. On January 5 he compelled the whole army to execute a forced march of no less than thirty-six continuous hours, which was almost as deadly as a battle. This haste seems all the less justifiable because the district abounded with positions at which the enemy could be held back for many hours, whenever the rearguard was told to stand at bay. At Nogales and Constantino, where opposition was offered, the French were easily checked, and there were many other points where similar stands could have been made. It would seem that Moore, shocked at the state of indiscipline into which his regiments were falling, thought only of getting to the sea as quickly as possible. Certainly, the pursuit was not so vigorous as to make such frantic haste necessary. Whenever the Reserve division halted and offered battle, the French dragoons held off, and waited, often for many hours, for their infantry to come up.

‘All that had hitherto been suffered by our troops was but a prelude to this time of horrors,’ wrote one British eye-witness. ‘It had still been attempted to carry forward our sick and wounded: here (on Monte Cebrero) the beasts which dragged them failed, and they were left in their wagons, to perish among the snow. As we looked round on gaining the highest point of these slippery precipices, and observed the rear of the army winding along the narrow road, we could see the whole track marked out by our own wretched people, who lay expiring from fatigue and the severity of the cold—while their uniforms reddened in spots the white surface of the ground. Our men had now become quite mad with despair: excessive fatigue and the consciousness of disgrace, in thus flying before an enemy whom they despised, excited in them a spirit which was quite mutinous. A few hours’ pause was all they asked, an opportunity of confronting the foe, and the certainty of making the pursuers atone for all the miseries that they had suffered. Not allowed to fight, they cast themselves down to perish by the wayside, giving utterance to feelings of shame, anger, and grief. But too frequently their dying groans were mingled with imprecations upon the General, who chose rather to let them die like beasts than to take their chance on the field of battle. That no degree of horror might be wanting, this unfortunate army was accompanied by many women and children, of whom some were frozen to death on the abandoned baggage-wagons, some died of fatigue and cold, while their[p. 572] infants were seen vainly sucking at their clay-cold breasts[700].’ It is shocking to have to add that the miserable survivors of these poor women of the camp were abominably maltreated by the French[701].

Not only was the greater part of the baggage-train of the army lost between Villafranca and Lugo, but other things of more importance. A battery of Spanish guns was left behind on the crest of Monte Oribio for want of draught animals, and the military chest of the army was abandoned between Nogales and Cerezal. It contained about ￡25,000 in dollars, and was drawn in two ox-wagons, which gradually fell behind the main body as the beasts wore out. General Paget refused to fight a rearguard action to cover its slow progress, and ordered the 28th Regiment to hurl the small kegs containing the money over a precipice. The silver shower lay scattered among the rocks at the bottom: part was gathered up by Lahoussaye’s dragoons, but the bulk fell next spring, when the snow melted, into the hands of the local peasantry [Jan. 4].

On the further side of the mountains, between Cerezal and Constantino, the army was astounded to meet a long train of fifty bullock-carts moving southward. It contained clothing and stores for La Romana’s army, which the Junta of Galicia, with incredible carelessness, had sent forward from Lugo, though it had heard that the British were retreating. A few miles of further advance would have taken it into the hands of the French. Very naturally, the soldiery stripped the wagons and requisitioned the beasts for their own baggage. The shoes and garments were a godsend to those of the ragged battalions who could lay hands on them, and next day at Constantino many of the Reserve fought in whole- or half-Spanish uniforms.

The skirmish at Constantino, on the afternoon of January 5, was the most important engagement, save that of Cacabellos, during the whole retreat. It was a typical rearguard action to cover a[p. 573] bridge: the British engineers having failed in their endeavour to blow up the central arch, Paget placed his guns so as to command the passage, extended the 28th and the 95th along the nearer bank of the deep-sunk river, and held out with ease till nightfall. Lahoussaye’s dragoons refused, very wisely, to attempt the position. Merle’s infantry tried to force the passage by sending forward a regiment in dense column, which suffered heavily from the guns, was much mauled by the British light troops ranged along the water’s edge, and finally desisted from the attack, allowing Paget to withdraw unmolested after dark. The French were supposed to have lost about 300 men—a figure which was probably exaggerated: the British casualties were insignificant.

On January 6 Paget and the rearguard reached Lugo, where they found the main body of the army drawn out in battle order on a favourable position three miles outside the town. The fearful amount of straggling which had taken place during the forced marches of the fourth and fifth had induced Moore to halt on his march to the sea, in order to rest his men, restore discipline, and allow the laggards to come up. A tiresome contretemps had made him still more anxious to allow the army time to recruit itself. He had made up his mind at Herrerias (near Villafranca) that the wild idea of retiring on Vigo must be given up. The reports of the engineer officers whom he had sent to survey that port, as well as Ferrol and Corunna, were all in favour of the last-named place. Accordingly he had sent orders to the admiral at Vigo, bidding him bring the fleet of transports round to Corunna. At the same time Baird was directed to halt at Lugo, and not to take the side-road to Vigo via Compostella. Baird duly received the dispatch, and should have seen that it was sent on to his colleagues, Hope and Fraser. He gave the letter for Fraser to a private dragoon, who got drunk and lost the important document. Hence the 3rd Division started off on the Compostella road, a bad bypath, and went many miles across the snow before it was found and recalled. Baird’s negligence cost Fraser’s battalions 400 men in stragglers, and having marched and countermarched more than twenty miles, they returned to Lugo so thoroughly worn out that they could not possibly have resumed their retreat on the sixth[702].

Moore had found in Lugo a dép?t containing four or five days[p. 574]’ provisions for the whole force, as well as a welcome reinforcement—Leith’s brigade of Hope’s division, which had never marched to Astorga, and had been preceding the army by easy stages in its retreat. Including these 1,800 fresh bayonets, the army now mustered about 19,000 combatants. Since it left Benavente it had been diminished by the strength of the two Light Brigades detached to Vigo (3,500 men), by 1,000 dismounted cavalry who had been sent on to Corunna, by 500 or 600 sick too ill to be moved, who had been left in the hospitals of Astorga and Villafranca, and by about 2,000 men lost by the way between Astorga and Lugo. Moore imagined that the loss under the last-named head had been even greater: but the moment that the army halted and the news of approaching battle flew round, hundreds of stragglers and marauders flocked in to the colours, sick men pulled themselves together, and the regiments appeared far stronger than had been anticipated. The Commander-in-chief issued a scathing ‘General Order’ to the officers commanding corps with regard to this point. ‘They must be as sensible as himself of the complete disorganization of the army. If they wished to give the troops a fair chance of success, they must exert themselves to restore order and discipline. The Commander of the Forces was tired of giving orders which were never attended to: he therefore appealed to the honour and feelings of the army: if those were not sufficient to induce them to do their duty, he must despair of succeeding by any other means. He had been obliged to order military executions, but there would have been no need for them if only officers did their duty. It was chiefly from their negligence, and from the want of proper regulations in the regiments, that crimes and irregularities were committed[703].’

The Lugo position was very strong: on the right it touched the unfordable river Minho, on the left it rested on rocky and inaccessible hills. All along the front there was a line of low stone walls, the boundaries of fields and vineyards. Below it there was a gentle down-slope of a mile, up which the enemy would have to march in order to attack. The army and the general alike were pleased with the outlook: they hoped that Soult would fight, and knew that they could give a good account of him.

The Marshal turned out to be far too circumspect to run his head against such a formidable line. He came up on the sixth,[p. 575] with the dragoons of Lahoussaye and Franceschi and Merle’s infantry. On the next morning Mermet’s and Delaborde’s divisions and Lorges’s cavalry appeared. But the forced marches had tried them no less than they had tried the British. French accounts say that the three infantry divisions had only 13,000 bayonets with the eagles, instead of the 20,000 whom they should have shown, and that the cavalry instead of 6,000 sabres mustered only 4,000. Some men had fallen by the way in the snow, others were limping along the road many miles to the rear: many were marauding on the flanks, like the British who had gone before them. Heudelet’s whole division was more than two marches to the rear, at Villafranca.

On the seventh, therefore, Soult did no more than feel the British position. He had not at first been sure that Moore’s whole army was in front of him, and imagined that he might have to deal with no more than Paget’s Reserve division, with which he had bickered so much during the last four days. He was soon undeceived: when he brought forward a battery against Moore’s centre, it was immediately silenced by the fire of fifteen guns. A feint opposite the British right, near the river, was promptly opposed by the Brigade of Guards. A more serious attack by Merle’s division, on the hill to the left, was beaten back by Leith’s brigade, who drove back the 2nd Léger and 36th of the Line by a bayonet-charge downhill, and inflicted on them a loss of 300 men.

On the eighth many of Soult’s stragglers came up, but he still considered himself too weak to attack, and sent back to hurry up Heudelet’s division, and to request Ney to push forward his corps to Villafranca. He remained quiescent all day, to the great disappointment of Moore, who had issued orders to his army warning them that a battle was at hand, and bidding them not to waste their fire on the tirailleurs, but reserve it for the supporting columns. As the day wore on, without any sign of movement on the part of the French, the British commander began to grow anxious and depressed. If Soult would not move, it must mean that he had resolved to draw up heavy reinforcements from the rear. It would be mad to wait till they should come up: either the Marshal must be attacked at once, before he could be strengthened, or else the army must resume its retreat on Corunna before Soult was ready. To take the offensive Moore considered very doubtful policy—the French had about his own numbers, or perhaps even[p. 576] more, and they were established in a commanding position almost as strong as his own. Even if he beat them, they could fall back on Heudelet and Ney, and face him again, in or about Villafranca. To win a second battle would be hard work, and, even if all went well, the army would be so reduced in numbers that practically nothing would remain for a descent into the plains of Leon.

Accordingly Moore resolved neither to attack nor to wait to be attacked, but to resume his retreat towards the sea. It was not a very enterprising course; but it was at least a safe one; and since the troops were now somewhat rested, and (as he hoped) restored to good spirits, by seeing that the enemy dared not face them, he considered that he might withdraw without evil results. Accordingly the evening of the eighth was spent in destroying impedimenta and making preparations for retreat. Five hundred foundered cavalry and artillery horses were shot, a number of caissons knocked to pieces, and the remainder of the stores of food destroyed so far as was possible. At midnight on January 8-9 the army silently slipped out of its lines, leaving its bivouac fires burning, so as to delude the enemy with the idea that it still lay before him. Elaborate precautions had been taken to guide each division to the point from which it could fall with the greatest ease into the Corunna road. But it is not easy to evacuate by night a long position intersected with walls, enclosures, and suburban bypaths. Moreover the fates were unpropitious: drenching rain had set in, and it was impossible to see five yards in the stormy darkness. Whole regiments and brigades got astray, and of all the four divisions only Paget’s Reserve kept its bearings accurately and reached the chaussée exactly at the destined point. For miles on each side of the road stray battalions were wandering in futile circles when the day dawned. Instead of marching fifteen miles under cover of the night, many corps had got no further than four or five from their starting-point. Isolated men were scattered all over the face of the country-side, some because they had lost their regiments, others because they had deliberately sought shelter from the rain behind any convenient wall or rock.

Continuing their retreat for some hours after daybreak, the troops reached the village of Valmeda, where their absolute exhaustion made a halt necessary. The more prudent commanders made their men lie down in their ranks, in spite of the downpour,[p. 577] and eat as they lay. But Baird, from mistaken kindness, allowed his division to disperse and to seek shelter in the cottages and barns of neighbouring hamlets: they could not be got together again when the time to start had arrived, and Bentinck and Manningham’s brigades left an enormous proportion of their men behind. The same thing happened on a smaller scale with Hope’s and Fraser’s divisions: only Paget’s regiments brought up the rear in good order. But behind them trailed several thousand stragglers, forming a sort of irregular rearguard. There was more dispersion, disorder, and marauding in this march than in any other during the whole retreat. The plundering during this stage seems to have been particularly discreditable: the inhabitants of the villages along the high-road had for the most part gone up into the hills, in spite of the dreadful weather. The British seem to have imputed their absence to them as a crime, and to have regarded every empty house as a fair field for plunder. As a matter of fact it was not with the desire of withholding aid from their friends that the Galicians had disappeared, but from fear of the French. If they had remained behind they would have been stripped and misused by the enemy. But the unreasoning soldiery chose to regard the unfortunate peasants as hostile[704]: they wantonly broke up doors[p. 578] and furniture, and stole all manner of useless household stuff. Even worse outrages occasionally happened: where the inhabitants, in outlying farms and hamlets, had remained behind, they turned them out of their houses, robbed them by force, and even shot those who resisted. In return, it was but natural that isolated marauders should be killed by the angry country-folk. But the good spirit of the Galicians was displayed in many places by the way in which they fed stragglers[705], and saved them from the French by showing them bypaths over the hills. No less than 500 men who had lost their way were passed on from village to village by the peasants, till they reached Portugal.

What between deliberate marauding for food or plunder[706], and genuine inability to keep up with the regiment on the part of weakly men, Moore’s main body accomplished the march from Lugo to Betanzos in the most disorderly style. Paget’s rearguard kept their ranks, but the troops in front were marching in a drove, without any attempt to preserve discipline. An observer counted one very distinguished regiment in Manningham’s brigade of Baird’s division, and reports that with the colours there were only nine officers, three sergeants, and three privates when they reached the gates of Betanzos[707].

Fortunately for Moore, the French pursued the retreating army with the greatest slackness. It was late on the morning of the ninth before Soult discovered that the British were gone: the drenching rain which had so incommoded them had at least screened their retreat. After occupying Lugo, which was full of dead horses,[p. 579] broken material, and spoiled provisions, the Marshal pushed on Franceschi’s cavalry in pursuit. But he had lost twelve hours, and Moore was far ahead: only stragglers were captured on the road, and the British rearguard was not sighted till the passage of the Ladra, nearly halfway from Lugo to Betanzos[708]. This was late in the day, and Paget was not seriously molested, though the engineers who accompanied him failed to blow up the bridges over the Ladra and the Mendeo, partly because their powder had been spoilt by the rain, partly (as it would seem) from unskilful handiwork.

The fatiguing retreat was continued through part of the night of January 9-10, and on the following morning all the regiments reached Betanzos, on the sea-coast. The indefatigable Reserve division took up a position on a low range of heights outside the town, to cover the incoming of the thousands of stragglers who were still to the rear. From this vantage-ground they had the opportunity of witnessing a curious incident which few of the narrators of the retreat have failed to record. Franceschi’s cavalry had resumed the pursuit, and after sweeping up some hundreds of prisoners from isolated parties, came to the village at the foot of the hills where the stragglers had gathered most thickly. At the noise of their approach, a good number of the more able-bodied men ran together, hastily formed up in a solid mass across the road, and beat off the French horsemen by a rolling fire. This had been done more by instinct than by design: but a sergeant of the 43rd, who assumed command over the assembly, skilfully brought order out of the danger[709]. He divided the men into two parties, which retired alternately down the road, the one facing the French while the other pushed on. The chasseurs charged them several times, but could never break in, and the whole body escaped to the English lines[710]. They had covered the retreat of[p. 580] many other stragglers, who ran in from all sides while the combat was going on. Yet in spite of this irregular exploit, the army lost many men: on this day and the preceding ninth, more than 1000 were left behind—some had died of cold and fatigue, some had been cut down by the French. But the majority had been captured as they straggled along, too dazed and worn out even to leave the road and take to the hillside when the cavalry got among them[711].

Soult had as yet no infantry to the front, and Moore remained for a day at Betanzos, observed by Franceschi’s and Lahoussaye’s cavalry, which dared not molest him. On January 11 he resumed his march to Corunna, with his army in a far better condition than might have been expected. The weather had turned mild and dry, and the climate of the coastland was a pleasant change from that of the mountains[712]. The men had been well fed at Betanzos with food sent on from Corunna, and, marching along the friendly sea with their goal in sight, recovered themselves in a surprising manner. Their general was not so cheerful: he had heard that the fleet from Vigo had failed to double Cape Finisterre, and was still beating about in the Atlantic. He had hoped to find it already in harbour, and was much concerned to think that he might have to stand at bay for some days in order to allow it time to arrive.

[p. 581]

At Betanzos more sacrifices of war-material were made by the retiring army. Moore found there a large quantity of stores intended for La Romana, and had to spike and throw into the river five guns and some thousands of muskets. A considerable amount of food was imperfectly destroyed, but enough remained to give a welcome supply to the famishing French. It had been intended to blow up Betanzos bridge, but the mines were only partially successful, and the 28th Regiment from Paget’s Reserve division had to stay behind and to guard the half-ruined structure against Franceschi’s cavalry, till the main body had nearly reached Corunna, and the French infantry had begun to appear.

On the night of the eleventh, the divisions of Hope, Baird, and Fraser reached Corunna, while that of Paget halted at El Burgo, four miles outside the town, where the chaussée crosses the tidal river Mero. Here the bridge was successfully blown up: it was only the second operation of the kind which had been carried out with efficiency during the whole retreat. Another bridge at Cambria, a few miles further up the stream, was also destroyed. Thus the French were for the moment brought to a stand. On the twelfth their leading infantry column came up, and bickered with Paget’s troops, across the impassable water, for the whole day[713]. But it was not till the thirteenth that Franceschi discovered a third passage at Celas, seven miles inland, across which he conducted his division. Moore then ordered the Reserve to draw back to the heights in front of Corunna. The French instantly came down to the river, and began to reconstruct the broken bridge. On the night of the thirteenth infantry could cross: on the fourteenth the artillery also began to pass over. But Soult advanced with great caution: here, as at Lugo, he was dismayed to see how much the fatigues of the march had diminished his army: Delaborde’s division was not yet up: those of Merle and Mermet were so thinned by straggling that the Marshal resolved not to put his fortune to the test till the ranks were again full.

This delay gave the British general ample time to arrange for his departure. On the thirteenth, he blew up the great stores of powder which the Junta of Galicia had left stowed away in a magazine three miles outside the town. The quantity was not much less than 4,000 barrels, and the explosion was so powerful that wellnigh every window in Corunna was shattered.

[p. 582]

On the afternoon of the fourteenth the long-expected transports at last ran into the harbour, and Moore began to get on board his sick and wounded, his cavalry, and his guns. The horses were in such a deplorable state that very few of them were worth reshipping: only about 250 cavalry chargers and 700 artillery draught-cattle were considered too good to be left behind[714]. The remainder of the poor beasts, more than 2,000 in number, were shot or stabbed and flung into the sea. Only enough were left to draw nine guns, which the general intended to use if he was forced to give battle before the embarkation was finished. The rest of the cannon, over fifty in number, were safely got on board the fleet. The personnel of the cavalry and artillery went on shipboard very little reduced by their casualties in the retreat. The former was only short of 200 men, the latter of 250: they had come off so easily because they had been sent to the rear since Cacabellos, and had retreated to Corunna without any check or molestation. Along with the hussars and the gunners some 2,500 or 3,000 invalids were sent on board. A few hundred more, too sick to face a voyage, were left behind in the hospitals of Corunna. Something like 5,000 men had perished or been taken during the retreat; 3,500 had embarked at Vigo, so that about 15,000 men, all infantry save some 200 gunners, remained behind to oppose Soult. Considering all that they had gone through, they were now in very good trim: all the sick and weakly men had been sent off, those who remained in the ranks were all war-hardened veterans. Before the battle they had enjoyed four days of rest and good feeding in Corunna. Moreover, they had repaired their armament: there were in the arsenal many thousand stand of arms, newly arrived from England for the use of the Galician army. Moore made his men change their rusty and battered muskets for new ones, before ordering the store to be destroyed. He also distributed new cartridges, from an enormous stock found in the place. The town was, in fact, crammed with munitions of all sorts. Seeing that there would be no time to re-embark them, Moore utilized what he could, and destroyed the rest.