SECTION XXIII: CHAPTER III

MASSéNA’S LAST WEEKS AT SANTAREM
JANUARY-MARCH 1811

After the arrival of Drouet and his division of the 9th Corps at Leiria in the early days of the New Year, there was no serious movement of any part of the French or the British armies for some weeks. The weather was bad, and the troops on both sides remained in their cantonments, save such of the French as were detailed for the perpetual marauding parties up the line of the Zezere or in the southern slopes of the Serra da Estrella by which alone the army was kept alive. The ranks of Masséna’s battalions continued to grow thinner, but not at such a rate as in November and December—for the weakly men had already been weeded out by the dreadful mortality of the preceding period. Provisions had daily to be sought further and further afield, but they were not wholly exhausted. The Marshal waited anxiously for further news from Paris, and for tidings that the Army of Andalusia was coming to his aid. But after the arrival of Drouet’s column no further information got through for five weeks, for Wilson and Trant were blocking the northern roads with their militia as effectually as in the time before the 9th Corps started from Almeida.

Wellington, for his part, was waiting for his great scheme of starvation to work out to its logical end. He had, as has already been observed, somewhat underrated the time for which the French would be able to live on the resources of the country that he dominated. More than once in December and January he thought that he had detected the signs of a coming retreat, and had been disappointed[85]. The enemy still remained in his old[p. 65] cantonments, and nothing more than petty movements of small units had taken place. This anxious waiting was, as might have been expected, trying to Wellington’s temper. He was not shaken in his belief that he had made the right decision, but it was exasperating to see the deadlock on the Tagus continuing far beyond his expectations, and the Estremaduran campaign developing behind his back. During the long weeks of tension the strain on his mind vented itself in criticism, reasonable and unreasonable, of the authorities with whom he had to work—the British and Portuguese Governments.

The administration of Spencer Perceval had done its best to maintain the war and to support its general, under great difficulties. It had not shrunk from making financial exertions of the most unprecedented kind in order to keep up the war in Portugal. As Lord Liverpool pointed out to Wellington[86], the army in the Peninsula had cost ￡2,778,796 in 1808, ￡2,639,764 in 1809; in 1810 the sum asked for had risen to ￡6,061,235—more than double the total of either of the preceding years. And this did not include either ordnance stores, supplies sent out in kind, or the hire of transports, which were calculated to make out ￡2,000,000 more. The Government had provided these sums in face of a bitter and carping opposition on the part of the Whigs, and despite of much lukewarmness among their own followers, of whom many considered that the limit of reasonable expense had been reached. As Lord Liverpool observed, the increase of the Portuguese subsidy, and the taking into British pay of the larger half of the Portuguese army, had been ‘carried by a small and unwilling majority[87].’ The Government had driven the money bills through the House of Commons only by smart cracking of the whip of party loyalty. They had promised Wellington that his army should be increased by 14,000 men during the course of the winter, and the promise was in the course of fulfilment. Many regiments had already arrived; all were to reach the Tagus before March was out. This had been done in a time of dire distress to the Tory party, George III had been prostrated by his last attack of insanity, which was destined to be permanent, in October 1810. As it became[p. 66] certain that his recovery was not to be looked for, the appointment of the Prince of Wales as Regent was the obvious and necessary corollary. But the Prince was still reckoned a Whig, and it was believed with reason that his first act on coming into power would be to dismiss the Perceval Ministry, and to call upon Grey, Grenville, and Sheridan to form an administration. The Tories all through the winter thought that they were destined to immediate expulsion from office, and had before them a long strife with the Crown. It was only at the beginning of February 1811 that the younger George, who had taken the oath as Regent on the 6th of that month, announced, to the general surprise of the nation, that he had no intention of dismissing the Ministry, and was prepared to work with them. Perceval and Liverpool, during the three preceding months, were doing their best for the army in Portugal while they believed that a political disaster was hanging over their heads. They did not yet realize that the Prince’s Whig principles had worn thin of late, and that he was tired of the dictatorial manners which Grey and Grenville had adopted towards him.

It is terrible to contemplate the results which might have followed had the Whigs come into office at this juncture. They were pledged to the theory that the Peninsular War was hopeless and ought to be abandoned. Grey and Grenville had stated that Wellington was a failure; they had denied that Talavera was a victory. Brougham had summarized the feelings of the party in a savage attack upon both Government and general in the Edinburgh Review. At this very moment—February 1811—Ponsonby, the leader of the opposition in the House of Commons, was preaching that ‘France cannot be prevented from overrunning Spain by continuing a war in Portugal, ... so that neither in Spain or Portugal has anything happened that can give reason to believe that the war will ever terminate to our advantage[88].’ Freemantle, another leader, maintained that ‘Bonaparte, having conquered the rest of the Continent, must also conquer the Peninsula, because he has greater numbers to bring up after every defeat, and therefore defeat of one of his armies was vain[89].’ Every Whig journal was prophesying the[p. 67] expulsion of Wellington from Portugal within a few weeks, as indeed they had been doing ever since October 1809.

All honour, therefore, is due to the statesmen who continued in the midst of all their own troubles, constitutional and financial, to give a steady support to Wellington, and to redeem the pledges which they had made to him. When Napier in his great history declares that the Ministry betrayed Wellington, that ‘Perceval had neither the wisdom to support nor the manliness to put an end to the war in the Peninsula; his crooked contemptible policy was shown by withholding what was necessary to continue the contest and throwing upon the General the responsibility of failure,’ he is merely venting the malignant folly of the Whigs of his day, which ought to have been forgotten by the time that he took his pen in hand, long after the war was over.

It is unfortunately true that Wellington, in the stress of waiting hours during the winter of 1810-11, used querulous and captious language concerning his supporters at home. The main point of his complaint was that he was not supplied rapidly enough with specie, that bills were sent him when he wanted dollars or guineas, and that so the pay of the army was falling into arrears. The fact was deplorable; but on a consideration of the condition of the English monetary system at this date it is hard to see how the difficulty could have been avoided. Since the suspension of the coinage of guineas in 1797, and the introduction of an almost unlimited issue of bank-notes, gold had gradually become an almost invisible commodity in Great Britain[90]. The guinea, when seen, commanded an ever-increasing premium; by 1809 it was worth ￡1 5s., or more, in paper. British silver was equally deficient; there had been none coined at the Mint since 1787, and the internal trade of the country was being transacted with difficulty, by means of Spanish dollars or half-dollars stamped with the king’s head, or by local tokens struck by banks and corporations, which only served in the immediate neighbourhood of their place of issue[91]. The Bank of[p. 68] England dollar, the only coin which circulated generally, passed for 5s., though it had only the value of 4s. 2d. in its weight of silver. When Great Britain could find no specie for its own internal business, the Government was required to send enormous remittances in cash to the Peninsula, because all transactions therein were made in silver or gold, and English paper was not negotiable[92]. That the coin was sent at all seems marvellous, rather than that it was sent late and in insufficient quantities. The worst time of all was in the early spring of 1811, when there was a severe commercial crisis at home, and the Government was issuing exchequer bills, to the amount of ￡6,000,000, as an advance to merchants and manufacturers to stave off general bankruptcy in London[93].

It was certainly an unhappy thing that Wellington could look upon the whole situation as one in which ‘the Government chooses to undertake large services, and not to supply us with sufficient pecuniary means[94],’ and could write that the present ministers complained so much of the expense of the war, that he considered it not impossible that the army might be recalled bag and baggage—a remark made not in February but in March, when Masséna had actually retreated from the Tagus[95]. This rather unjustifiable complaint was probably the direct result of Lord Liverpool’s letter of February 20, in which he had set forth at length the enormous burden of the war, and expressed his doubts as to whether the augmentation of the Peninsular army by 14,000 men, for which he had just provided, could be permanently kept up[96]. He suggested that when the ‘present crisis[p. 69]’ (i. e. Masséna’s presence at the gates of Lisbon) had come to an end, the army should send home some of its less effective regiments, and that the ideal of 30,000 effective rank and file (not including the garrison of Cadiz) would probably have to be kept in mind. But long before the dispatch of February 20 Wellington thought that he had detected an intention on Liverpool’s part to bring the whole Peninsular War to an end, on financial grounds, and wrote most bitterly to his kinsman Pole, accusing the Secretary of State of being half-hearted, and showing a deep-rooted distrust of his influence in the Cabinet[97]. All this was forgotten when the firmness of the Ministry in support of the war became evident, and in later years Wellington wrote to acknowledge in the most handsome style the support that he had received from the Perceval administration[98].

During all these weeks of waiting Wellington was also troubled by problems with regard to the internal state of Portugal. Two main sources of worry can be traced in his correspondence. The first was the inefficiency of the Portuguese commissariat, which bid fair to cause absolute starvation among those brigades of the national army which were not incorporated with British divisions and supplied from the British stores. Slow and irregular[p. 70] forwarding of provisions to the corps stationed in advanced or remote positions led to a dreadful increase in the number of sick. We find Wellington complaining that regiments which had 1,200 men in line at Bussaco could only show 1,000 or 900 under arms in February, although they had received considerable drafts from their dép?ts at midwinter. D’Urban’s daily notes bear out the statements of the Commander-in-Chief. He asserts with indignation that by ‘the villany of commissaries,’ the same quantity of flour which provided 15? rations for the British soldier was returned as having given only 9 to the Portuguese—the balance having been embezzled. Allowances, of course, must be made for the difficulties of a government of whose territory a good third had been depopulated by the orders of Wellington. But the trouble does not seem to have been so much the actual want of food-stuffs at head quarters[99]—great quantities were got from the Alemtejo and the north—as the inefficiency of distribution, which left outlying brigades sometimes foodless for two or three days at a time. Clothing and shoes were also very slow in arriving at the front. At the bottom the cause of all this inefficiency was probably (as Wellington observes in one letter[100]) the want of money to keep up an adequate transport service, and it might be pleaded that in the distressful condition of the country the deficit was no fault of the government, but unavoidable. Wellington’s view was that with greater economy in civil expenses, and more careful supervision of commissaries and contractors, there was money enough to pay for all necessary military objects. He was probably right, but there is small wonder if a provisional government like the Regency found it hard to introduce administrative reforms in the midst of a crisis, and with the enemy almost at the gates of the capital. After all, the effort which Portugal had made was splendid, and the whole nation had accepted the awful necessity of the depopulation of its central provinces with a loyalty that was surprising, if we consider the magnitude of the sacrifice.

There was, however, a small minority of traitors still left in[p. 71] Portugal, and their intrigues seem to have given Wellington much concern, not because there was any danger from their personal action, but because they conveyed to Masséna the intelligence as to the condition of affairs in Lisbon, and in Europe at large, which he could not obtain in any other way, owing to the strict blockade kept up around his rear. On the last day of the old year four officers, two colonels and two majors, had fled out of Lisbon and joined the French[101]. They were all men who had quarrelled with Beresford, and deserted in revenge: but that four field officers could turn traitors at once was a most distressing sign. Wellington had fears of a general plot against the English, and was inclined to suspect the Bishop of Oporto and President Sousa of knowing more about it than befitted members of the Regency. He was apparently mistaken, though their petulance and intermittent protests against all his actions seemed to him to justify any doubts. But minor persons in Lisbon, old friends of Alorna and his Francophil policy, had contrived to open up communication with the renegade General Pamplona, and to send him newspapers, reports of the movement of troops, and other miscellaneous information, using as their intermediaries smugglers, who passed the lines at night to sell coffee, sugar, and other luxuries to the French[102]. For there was a ready market for such things in the army of Masséna. Fortunately this illicit correspondence was of little importance, since there was no solid party in Portugal in favour of Napoleon, and the information conveyed by newspapers as to affairs in Lisbon was not, at this time, at all encouraging to the French; while that as to events in England or remote parts of Spain was too old in date to be of any great profit to them.

Meanwhile Wellington regarded his position as secure for the moment. The Army of Portugal, even after Drouet’s arrival, was too weak to attack him. Soult’s movement from Andalusia at first caused him some uneasiness, for he[p. 72] had conceived a notion that the expedition from Andalusia, leaving Badajoz and Elvas on its left, and ignoring the Spanish Army of Estremadura, might be intending to march by Merida and Truxillo to Almaraz, and from thence to join Masséna by the circuitous route through Coria and Castello Branco[103]. He was reassured as to this possibility when the news came that Soult, unable to undertake anything bold so long as Gazan had not joined him, had sat down to besiege Olivenza on January 11th. If the Marshal intended to take all the Estremaduran fortresses before moving on, occupation could be found for him for many a week, and when La Romana’s two divisions had been sent to join Mendizabal on January 22, Wellington imagined that he might regard the situation on this side as secure. It will be remembered that he gave Mendizabal elaborate advice as to the course that he was to pursue, and he was justified in believing that if that advice was followed Badajoz would never fall, and Soult for the moment would become an almost negligible quantity.

There was always the chance, however, that Soult might turn against the Alemtejo after all, and that Masséna might make a desperate effort to cross the Tagus and join him. Hence Wellington spent much thought in devising means to prevent this danger from coming into being. Beresford received elaborate orders as to the conduct that he was to pursue, with his corps south of the Tagus, in case Masséna attempted a passage, or Soult appeared before Elvas. In the latter case the French would be fought by an army composed of Mendizabal’s Estremadurans, Beresford’s corps, and the brigade of Portuguese line troops in Elvas, a mass of over 30,000 men. This force ought to suffice, but if the worst came, and a defeat were suffered, the army south of the Tagus would try to defend first the passages[p. 73] of the Zatas river (or the Benevente river as Wellington usually calls it), then those of the Almansor, and lastly the line across the neck of the Setubal peninsula, opposite Lisbon, where there was a short front of ten miles from Setubal itself (which was fortified) past the castle of Palmella to Moita on the Tagus estuary. But behind this again was the strongest defensive position of all, a Lines of Torres Vedras on a small scale[104]. The works erected here were an afterthought: they had formed no part of the original scheme for the fortification of Lisbon, but when it had been proved to Wellington that batteries on the Heights of Almada, beyond the broad Tagus mouth, might incommode the shipping in the harbour, and possibly the town itself [the range was 2,300 yards], he had ordered, early in December, that the Portuguese labourers set free from work on the old lines by Masséna’s departure should be transferred to the Almada front[105]. Here a line of 8,000 yards from sea to sea was marked out, and strengthened with no less than seventeen closed redoubts, connected by a covered way. Eighty-six guns were allotted to them, and their defence was to be given over to the marines of the fleet, and the local militia and trained Ordenan?a (Atiradores nacionaes) of Lisbon. It was calculated that Beresford would find a garrison of 7,500 men already placed in these forts if he were ever forced back on to them. It seemed impossible that such a short front, so strongly held, could ever be broken through.

But all this was a precaution designed to face a very unlikely—if a possible—situation of affairs. It was much more probable that Masséna would try to pass the Tagus higher up, than that Soult would fight his way to its mouth across the Alemtejo, and every precaution was taken to give Masséna a hot reception if he should make the attempt. It was clear that his starting-point for such an enterprise must be Punhete and the mouth of the Zezere, for there were collected the ninety boats and the materials for the floating bridges which had been created by the energy of General Eblé. At Santarem, the other place where Masséna[p. 74] had boats, the stock of them was known to be too small for a passage in force. Beresford, it will be remembered, had already established batteries which commanded the mouth of the Zezere, and had several times stopped small explorations by the French boats. Only on one occasion did a few succeed in running past down-stream. On the whole it was considered unlikely that Masséna would attempt such a serious matter as the crossing of the Tagus opposite Punhete. D’Urban, Beresford’s chief of the staff, reported ‘It is altogether improbable that he will commit himself, unless in combination with the army arriving from the south. The stream is very rapid. The boats cannot return to the original point of embarkation for a second load of men, nor to the second point for a third load, but must cross at each time to a point lower down, owing to the current. This must and will occasion great disunion and scattering among the parts of the division who first pass, all the more because they will be vigorously opposed from the beginning. It appears to me that no attempt of the kind can succeed. The Zezere-mouth alone is their place d’armes, and leaves little else for us to watch: hence arises for them a difficulty of accomplishing this enterprise that would appear almost unsurmountable.’[106] It is most interesting to compare this judgement from the English side with the discussion of the problem by the French generals, which followed a few days later, and with which we shall presently have to deal[107].

Meanwhile both parties were decidedly nervous as to the possible movements of their adversaries. If Wellington sometimes thought that Masséna might make an attempt to cross the Tagus, Masséna was very reasonably suspicious that Wellington might make a surprise-attack upon Junot’s corps along the upper Rio Mayor, and try to cut it off, before it could be succoured by Ney from Thomar and Goleg?o. This suspicion led to the only skirmish that marked the month of January. On the 19th the Marshal ordered Junot to make a reconnaissance in force beyond the river, along the Alcoentre road, to see whether a rumour that an English division had been brought up behind Pack’s[p. 75] Portuguese outposts were true. The Duke of Abrantes conducted the affair himself, at the head of 3,000 infantry of Clausel’s division and 500 horse. He pressed in the cavalry screen in front of Pack, consisting of a squadron of the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion, and occupied the village of Rio Mayor, from which he drove out two Portuguese companies. Discovering nothing in reserve save Pack’s brigade, drawn up for resistance on the heights to the rear, and noting no red-coated battalions, the French withdrew after a little skirmishing, and returned to their lines. During this trifling affair Junot received a painful but not dangerous wound from the carbine of a hussar vedette. The ball struck him on the side of the nose, broke the bone there, and lodged in his cheek; but it was extracted with no difficulty, and he was able to resume command of his corps within a few days[108]. Nothing further occurred on this front till February 10, when the English cavalry paid a return visit to the French outlying picket east of the Rio Mayor, drove it in, and retired with an officer and ten men prisoners.

On February 5th the third and final period of Masséna’s stay on the Tagus may be said to have begun, with the arrival of the last orders from Paris which he was destined to receive. He had been more than a month without any official intelligence of what was going on behind him, the latest dispatches to hand having been those brought by Drouet at the end of the old year. But General Foy now appeared with the orders which the Emperor had issued on December 22nd. He had cut his way from Ciudad Rodrigo across the eastern mountains, and along the Estrada Nova, at the head of a column of 1,800 men, mostly composed of drafts belonging to the 2nd Corps, which he had found waiting on the Spanish frontier. The rains had been continuous, the badness of the road was notorious, and Colonel Grant with a small party of local Ordenan?a hung about the route of the column for the last five days of its march, and slew or captured more than a hundred stragglers. The total loss by fatigue and sickness was much greater[109].

[p. 76]The orders brought by Foy were not particularly comforting to Masséna. He was bidden to hold on to his position till he had received succour from the Army of the South, and also from the Army of the Centre. Mortier’s corps, as he had already been assured, would at some not-distant date make its appearance on the Tagus, in the direction of Montalv?o and Villaflor. A column from the Army of the Centre was to advance to Plasencia, and communicate with the Marshal via Coria and Castello Branco. He was not expected to take the offensive till he should have received these reinforcements, but he must use Drouet’s troops to keep open communications with Almeida, and ‘regularize’ the war. There was no order for him to cross the Tagus into the Alemtejo in search of Mortier: it was Mortier who was to come to him. Practically all this amounted to a command to wait and endure—the initiative was to come from outside, with the arrival of reinforcements from the south and east. ‘L’empereur appelait son armée à une lutte de fatigue et de persévérance,’ as Foy commented.

But this ‘strife of toil and perseverance’ had already been going on since November, the dispatch was forty-four days old when it reached Masséna, and the co-operation by the Armies of the South and Centre, which it promised, showed no signs of coming to pass. As a matter of fact, when Foy arrived, Mortier’s divisions were absorbed in the siege of Badajoz, and Soult, with Mendizabal upon his hands, could have moved neither a detachment nor the whole 5th Corps to the Tagus. The promised assistance from the Army of the Centre, a mere column of 3,000 men under Lahoussaye, had advanced first to Truxillo and then to Plasencia, as was promised, but had turned back for want of provisions long before reaching the Portuguese frontier. Masséna pushed several reconnaissances towards the upper Tagus, in the hope of getting information as to the appearance of friendly troops on either side of the river, but could learn nothing. He says that he judged from the tranquillity shown by the English south of the Tagus that there could be no French force near enough to cause them disquietude. Meanwhile the power of the Army of Portugal to live by plundering the country-side was being reduced every day. The distance at which food had to be sought was ever increasing, and the loss suffered by the parties which were[p. 77] cut off while raiding was growing daily more serious. The number of prisoners taken by the British cavalry on Junot’s flank and Drouet’s front amounted to several hundreds in January and February[110]. Many more were destroyed by the Ordenan?a, who were goaded to ferocious activity by the ever-growing cruelty of the marauders, and dogged every expedition that set out with an ever-increasing skill. They avoided the main bodies, but trapped and shot small parties that strayed more than a few hundred yards from the column, with patient persistence.

After waiting for a fortnight after the arrival of Foy and the imperial dispatches, and learning nothing of any approach of the long-promised troops of Mortier, Masséna assembled the corps leaders and certain other generals at Goleg?o on February 19th, at a meeting which he carefully refrained from calling a council of war. That he should do so was in itself a sign of flagging confidence; he had shown himself very autocratic hitherto, and had asked the advice of none of his lieutenants. Now he regarded the situation as so desperate that he thought that he must either give up the game and retreat from the Tagus, or risk an attack on the allied forces south of that river, with the object of crossing into the Alemtejo and going off to join Soult. His own mind was practically made up in favour of the former alternative; but he knew that if he took it without consulting his lieutenants, they would probably report him to the Emperor as having despaired before all was lost. The council of war was really called for the purpose of arguing them down, and committing them to the policy of retreat[111], so[p. 78] that they should not be able to protest against it at a later date.

The three corps-commanders came to the meeting each with a scheme of his own to develop. Ney proposed to pass the Tagus by force, with the whole army, to abandon Portugal for the moment, and to join Soult. The united armies should establish themselves on the Guadiana, complete the conquest of Estremadura, and then, after calling in all possible reinforcements, take in hand the invasion of the Alemtejo, and an attack on Lisbon from the south. Junot hotly combated this scheme: to pass into the Alemtejo meant the surrender of all Portugal to Wellington, who would chase the 9th Corps out of the Beira; it would be ‘giving up the whole game.’ He wished to establish a bridge-head on the other side of the Tagus, but not to send the whole army across, merely to occupy it with a strong detachment, and then to wait for Mortier’s promised appearance. Reynier’s scheme was a variant of Junot’s, but infinitely more dangerous, for he was a general of second-rate capacity. He would throw one corps across the Tagus, to scour the Alemtejo for provisions, and to try to find Mortier. The other two should hold on at Santarem, in the entrenched positions which had already checked Wellington for three months. The English general, he said, was timid, and would never dare to assault these formidable works, even in the absence of one-third of the army.

Masséna had no difficulty in demolishing this last proposal. The passage of the Tagus would be a dangerous and difficult operation in face of an enemy who was upon the alert, who had fortified all the obvious landing-places on the opposite bank, and who was known to have established a perfect system of signals and communications. It might very probably end in a bloody repulse. But granting that it succeeded, and that a corps of 15,000 men got over into the Alemtejo, victory would have consequences more disastrous than failure. For Wellington would fall upon the two corps left north of the Tagus with his main force, perhaps 60,000 men; and when separated from the troops detached in the Alemtejo the Army of Portugal would have only 30,000 in line. ‘N’est-il pas à craindre que cette portion de l’armée, séparée de l’autre, ne soit attaquée, battue, détruite, par un ennemi à qui, pour nous faire beaucoup de mal, il ne manque[p. 79] que de le vouloir?’ This was absolutely irrefutable logic; nothing could be more insane than Reynier’s proposal to separate the French army into two parts by the broad stream of the Tagus. Wellington could have destroyed with ease the two-thirds of it left north of the river, unless that portion should be ready to evacuate all else that it held and shut itself up to be besieged in Santarem—the only possible centre of resistance. But to be shut up in Santarem meant starvation on a worse scale than had been hitherto endured. For the army, losing its old broad foraging-ground, would be compelled to live entirely upon what might be sent it from the northern Alemtejo by the detached corps; and that region was known to be barren and thinly peopled, and had probably already been stripped of its resources by Wellington’s orders. (As a matter of fact such orders had been issued some time back.) ‘Faut-il pour un intérêt si modique que celui de manger un mois dans l’Alemtejo risquer une pareille opération?’ asked the Marshal. And any dispassionate judge must decide that his question could only be answered in the negative. Ney’s proposal, to take the whole army across the Tagus into the Alemtejo, was not quite so easy to dispose of. But there stood against its first necessary preliminary—the passage of the river—the same objections that were registered against Reynier’s plan. The passage might end in a repulse, and the position of the army would be very bad if, having concentrated at Punhete (or at Santarem) for the crossing, it found itself encircled by all Wellington’s forces, which would march in upon it the moment that Ney’s and Junot’s corps were withdrawn from their present cantonments. The Marshal disliked the idea of having to fight a battle, with the Tagus at his back, and all his possible lines of retreat intercepted[112]. Or again, the crossing might succeed, so far as the throwing of a vanguard across to the Alemtejo bank went. But Wellington would close in upon the army while it was actually passing, and might easily destroy its rearguard, or even its larger half, by attacking when the rest[p. 80] was across the water, and unable to return with sufficient promptness.

If the army were so lucky as to get off entire into the barren Alemtejo, and to unite with the 5th Corps on the Guadiana, Wellington, as Junot had pointed out, would have a free hand in northern and central Portugal, and would sweep Claparéde out of it, while he need not be seriously alarmed at any attack on Lisbon from the south of the Tagus, for the city was covered by the Almada lines[113] and could not be harassed from this quarter. Meanwhile the Army of Portugal would be cut off from all the supplies and reinforcements which were accumulating for it on the frontier of Spain, at Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca; ‘it would be going off to a distance from its real line of operations and of communications.’

Masséna then came to the point: having argued down the schemes of Reynier and Ney, he developed his own determination, which was to hold on for the few days more that seemed possible. The marauding operations that fed the army were rapidly growing less productive, and the moment was approaching when the daily plunder would no longer meet the daily consumption, and then, in case the long-expected Soult did not appear, the army must retire on to the line of the Mondego[114]. There, in a country comparatively undamaged, Masséna hoped to hold out some fifty or sixty days at the least: the whole 9th Corps would be available for opening and maintaining the communications with Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and reinforcements and stores would easily be brought forward[115]. But no further offensive movements could be contemplated; the army was exhausted and needed a long rest; in the end it would probably have to retire within the borders of Spain—perhaps to Alcantara on the Tagus, perhaps into Leon.

Ney and Reynier seem to have retired from the conference[p. 81] rather talked down than convinced, and the latter sent in to his Commander-in-Chief a sort of protest, taking the form of a précis of the meeting, in which the arguments used and the result arrived at were so misrepresented that Masséna caused a formal document to be drawn up and signed by five other generals present at the council, in which it was declared that the précis was wholly incorrect. Apparently Reynier had intended to get his protest to the Emperor’s hands, in order to free himself from any responsibility in approving a retreat which he thought that his master would condemn[116].

The few weeks for which the Army of Portugal retained its position after the conference at Goleg?o, were spent by all its units as a mere period of preparation for the retreat, for the generals had long made up their minds that Soult would never appear on the Tagus. They seem even to have thought that he might have retired from Estremadura, for the distant thunder of the bombardment of Badajoz, which had been audible at Punhete during the first half of February, seemed to have ceased. This must have been due to some change of atmospheric conditions, for it was going on with redoubled energy in the last days of the month. But Masséna and his lieutenants argued that either the siege had been raised, or else Soult had taken the place, and yet was not marching to the Tagus. They seem to have regarded his doings as a negligible quantity, when coming to their final resolve.

During the last days of February all the corps received preliminary orders, which could have no other meaning than that a retreat had been decided upon. The divisions were ordered to send their parks and heavy baggage to the rear, and the divisional batteries were told to complete as many gun-teams with good serviceable horses as was possible, by destroying caissons, and drafting their animals on to the guns. In some cases batteries had to be reduced to three or four pieces, even when half the caissons had been burnt. The 8th Corps destroyed fifty-one caissons on the 24th-27th February, yet still could find only four horses each for those remaining, including animals that were sick or barely fit for service[117]. But the[p. 82] transport of food was even more important than that of artillery material; in the central magazines there was gathered together some fifteen days’ of biscuit for the whole army, the flour for which had been procured with the greatest difficulty in small quantities, and had been hoarded to the last. This was issued to the regiments, with stringent orders not to use it till the actual retreat began. Some units were so pressed by starvation that they began to consume it, and ultimately started with only eight or ten days consumption in their packs or on their waggons. The whole of the transport was in a deplorable state; if the cavalry and artillery had lost 5,088 horses since November, the train had been depleted of draught-beasts in a still greater proportion, since they were both weaker to start with, and less carefully kept. Some regiments had no longer any horses attached to them, and could only show a few pack-mules and asses, quite insufficient for carrying their reserve ammunition and food[118]. Two things were certain—the one that if the army could not pick up provisions on the way by marauding, it would ultimately have to retire to its base within the frontiers of Spain. And no food could be collected for some days, since the first five stages of the retreat would be through a region already stripped bare. The second was that the ammunition might suffice for one general engagement, supposing that there was heavy fighting during the retreat, but that it would hardly be able to serve for two.

On March 3rd Masséna issued the orders which marked his determination to retreat at once. Ney was directed to march on the next day from Thomar, with Marchand’s division and some cavalry, and join Drouet at Leiria in the rear—they were ultimately to be the covering force of the retiring army. On the 5th Reynier was directed to send back his first division (Merle) from Santarem towards the rear, while the second division (Heudelet) continued to hold the old lines. On this same day Ney’s second division (Mermet) evacuated Torres Novas, and marched northward to Ourem near Leiria, while one of Junot’s divisions (Solignac) massed itself at Pernes, to await the arrival of the other (Clausel), which was to hold the outposts till the[p. 83] last moment. This was the critical day of the concentration, for of the eight divisions forming the Army of Portugal five had started off, leaving three (Heudelet at Santarem, Clausel on the Rio Mayor, Loison at Punhete) to hold the old positions. If Wellington had attacked in force on the 5th, it seems certain that he must have destroyed these covering forces, which in their scattered position could not possibly have held their ground. But the British general, as we shall see, was engaged in a scheme of his own, and did not at first detect the full meaning of the French movements.

For Wellington at this moment was busy in developing an encircling attack on the whole of the French positions, and it was not yet ready[119]. On February 23rd he had made up his mind to strike the moment that a large body of reinforcements, already overdue from England and the Mediterranean, should have arrived. The plan was that the main army, while holding Reynier in check at Santarem with one or two divisions, should attack Junot on the Rio Mayor with the bulk of its force. At the same time Beresford, drawing his corps to the north of the Tagus by the boat-bridge at Abrantes, was to fall upon Loison at Punhete, and (as it was hoped) thus distract Ney, whose duty would be divided between the succouring of Junot and that of the division on the Zezere. But, even if he turned most of the reserves in the direction of the Rio Mayor, the long distance[p. 84] would prevent them from arriving in time. Junot would almost certainly be overwhelmed by superior numbers, while Reynier was being ‘contained,’ and while Ney’s columns were still far off.

Preparations and reconnaissances in view of this great attack began to be made, but the reinforcements were slow to arrive. Six thousand men were due, mainly the troops which afterwards formed the 7th Division and the second British brigade of the 6th. But on March 1 only the Chasseurs Britanniques from Cadiz, and half of the 51st had yet landed[120]. Of the other expected regiments the bulk turned up in Lisbon harbour on the 4th-6th March, viz. the 2nd, 85th, 1/36th, 2/52nd, but the light infantry brigade of the King’s German Legion did not come in till the 21st of the same month. It was undoubtedly the accidental delay of a few days in the arrival of these seven battalions that caused Wellington to hold back; if Masséna had postponed his move for a week more, all would have been in line save the two belated German battalions, and the attack would have been delivered about the 10th-12th of March.

Set on the carrying out of his own plan, which could not begin to work for a few days more, Wellington was evidently not fully prepared for the suddenness of Masséna’s retreat. On the 4th of March, the day when Ney’s corps began to file to the rear, he wrote to Beresford, ‘I think it likely that the enemy is about some move, but have been so frequently disappointed that it is impossible to be certain. There is no alteration whatever in their front.’ This was true, for Junot and Reynier had not moved on a man upon the 4th. On the next—the critical—day he himself made a survey of Reynier’s lines in front of Santarem, found them still manned by Heudelet’s division, but thought that he could detect that the artillery in the French works was less numerous than on the previous day. There were no howitzers in the great work across the high road, but only what appeared to be pieces of small calibre. He could not perceive guns any[p. 85] longer upon the main heights in front of Santarem; bushes seemed to have been laid to cover the stations which they had occupied. But the outposts were the same, and he did not observe any other change on the heights, excepting that all the troops visible upon them were fully accoutred. He concluded that no general movement of Reynier’s corps had taken place. ‘It is probable that baggage and heavy artillery may have been sent off, but the effective part of the army still remains in position.’ There was no obvious alteration visible along Junot’s front, where Clausel was that day holding all the outposts, Solignac having marched back to Pernes.

If Wellington had attacked at once that day, with the troops that were up in his front line, the Light Division and the 1st Division, in front of Santarem, while demonstrating with Pack’s Portuguese and the cavalry brigades along the Rio Mayor to detain Clausel, it is probable that he might have made great havoc of Heudelet’s division, which was holding a front too long for its strength, and had no supports, since the rest of the 2nd Corps was a march to the rear by now. But he was still thinking of his own plan; the fleet, with the bulk of the expected battalions, was reported at the mouth of the Tagus, and one regiment had actually landed. Wherefore he wrote to Beresford, ‘the reinforcements have arrived, and we shall be able in a few days to attack the enemy, if he retains this position, or possibly to attack him in any other which he may take up.’ Meanwhile the rear divisions of the army were ordered to close in; on the evening of March 5th Cole (4th Division) was brought up to Cartaxo, while Campbell (6th Division) moved out from the old lines to Azambuja, which Cole had left. The 3rd Division was ordered up from Alcoentre to join Pack’s Portuguese on the Rio Mayor. Beresford was directed to bring the 2nd Division across the Tagus at Abrantes, and to attack the French on the Zezere (Loison’s division) the moment that he saw any signs of their being about to move off[121].

But all this was too late: the only chance of destroying Masséna’s rearguard would have been to have attacked on the[p. 86] morning of the 5th with the troops that were already on the spot. And this Wellington would not do, because he thought that Reynier and Junot were still in position ‘with the effective part of the army.’ On the following morning it was too late: Heudelet had evacuated Santarem, and Clausel the line of the Rio Mayor, after dusk; and each having made a long night-march, the one was at Ponte de Almonda near Goleg?o, the other near Torres Novas, before noon on the 6th. Heudelet had blown up the bridge of Alviella, Clausel that of Pernes, to detain the pursuers. The enemy had gained a full march upon the British in this direction. On the other flank Beresford brought the 2nd Division over the Tagus on the 6th, but finding that Loison had made no movement had not attacked him, his orders being to fall on only when he saw the enemy break up from his positions.

On the early morning of the same day Wellington had found that Santarem was empty and occupied it. The Light Division and Pack were sent in pursuit of Junot, and reached Pernes: the 1st Division followed Reynier, and had the head of its column at the broken bridge of the Alviella by the afternoon. The 4th and 6th Divisions, coming up from the rear, entered Santarem, while the 3rd Division reached the line of the Rio Mayor and followed the Light Division. The 5th Division and Campbell’s Portuguese were still far to the rear. On this day Wellington made up his mind, from the signs before him, that Masséna was in full march for Coimbra and the north, and did not intend to fight a battle[122]. The only puzzling sign was that Loison’s division still remained stationary on the Zezere. Was it even now possible that the other corps were going to join him for an attack on Abrantes, an attempt to cross the Tagus near it, or a retreat into Spain via the Castello Branco road? This was not likely: for if such had been Masséna’s plan, Ney would have arrived to join Loison already, and they would have commenced their movement beyond the Zezere. Wellington, however, did not feel quite certain as to what was the French scheme till Loison burnt his boats and bridges on the night of the 6th-7th, and moved off towards Thomar, in the same direction as the rest of the French army. It is clear that if Beresford had been[p. 87] ordered to fall upon Loison in force upon the afternoon of the 6th, he might have done him much harm, for there lay upon the Zezere only a single French infantry division and a cavalry brigade, while Beresford had at Abrantes, beside the garrison, an English and a Portuguese division of infantry, and as much cavalry at least as Loison possessed.

On the 7th Ney and Drouet were halted at Leiria to cover the arrival of the rest of the army. Reynier marched from Goleg?o to Thomar; Junot from Torres Novas to Ch?o de Ma?ans; Loison was at dawn close to Thomar, after a night march, leaving his boats and bridges blazing behind him as a beacon for Beresford’s benefit. It was clear that the French were all making for the Coimbra roads, and had no designs west of the Zezere. The English cavalry, following on the heels of both Reynier’s and Junot’s columns, informed Wellington that the enemy was apparently about to use both roads towards the Mondego, that by Leiria and Pombal, and that by Ch?o de Ma?ans and Anci?o. The British general expressed some surprise at this, remarking in a letter to Beresford that the latter road was so bad that he marvelled that everything had not gone by the infinitely superior Leiria chaussée, the main road to the north[123]. Meanwhile, of his own troops Beresford had crossed the Zezere, but did not reach Thomar; Nightingale’s brigade of the 1st Division moved on from the bridge of the Alviella to Atalaya beyond Goleg?o, the Light Division from Pernes advanced to Arga and La Marosa on the Torres Novas-Thomar road. The 4th and 6th Divisions reached Goleg?o in the afternoon. But hearing of Ney’s and Drouet’s concentration at Leiria, and doubtful whether he would not find that the rest of the enemy was about to take shelter behind them, Wellington resolved not to push any more troops in the Thomar direction, but to keep a large mass upon the Santarem-Leiria-Coimbra road. The bulk of the 1st Division (all save Nightingale’s brigade) and the 3rd Division were halted at Alcanhede and Pernes, and thither too the 5th Division and the Portuguese brigades from the rear were directed. It must be confessed that this was not a very rapid or vigorous pursuit: Wellington was waiting on the enemy’s movements, rather than forcing[p. 88] them to take such directions as best suited himself. But it must be remembered that he had been compelled to advance ere yet his own preparations were made, four or five days before he had intended to make his great concentric attack, and two factors were against him. The first was the eternal food-problem; the divisions had marched unexpectedly, with such supplies as they had in hand; they were unable to get anything from the country, which the French had stripped bare during the last three months. The rations for them were being brought up from the rear, but if they outmarched them they must starve: hence there were reasons against hurry. The second cause of delay was that Wellington wished to have his whole army in hand, if the enemy should turn and show fight, and the divisions which had started from the Torres Vedras Lines on the first notice of Masséna’s departure on the 5th were still far to the rear, viz. the 5th and the Portuguese battalions which had once been Le Cor’s and was now under Campbell. The new 7th Division, which had just landed, had not yet commenced its march from Lisbon.

The aspect of the region through which the army was marching was piteous in the extreme. Santarem town was a wreck, ‘the houses torn and dilapidated, the streets strewn with household furniture half-burnt and destroyed, many streets quite impassable with filth and rubbish, with an occasional man, horse, or donkey rotting, and corrupting the air with pestilential vapours: a few miserable inhabitants like living skeletons[124].’ The country-side was worse—cottages burnt and unroofed, and corpses of murdered peasants, some fresh, some mere heaps of bones, lying in every ravine. The survivors were just emerging from woods or caverns to cut up the French sick and stragglers. A single quotation may suffice to give some idea of the wayside sights of this distressing march. It comes from a 3rd Division chronicler, who is describing the village of Porto de Mos, south of Leiria: ‘When we entered the place, there was a large convent fronting us, which, as well as many of the houses, had been set on fire by the French. I never before witnessed such destruction: floors torn up, beds cut in pieces, their contents thrown about intermixed with kitchen utensils, broken mirrors, china, &c.[p. 89] There was a large fire in the chapel, on which had been heaped broken pieces of the altar, wooden images, picture frames, and the ornamental woodwork of the organ. Searching for a clean place to put down bags of biscuit, we found a door leading to a chamber apart from the chapel. It was quite dark, so I took up a burning piece of wood to inspect it. It was full of half-consumed human bodies, some lying, others kneeling or leaning against the walls. The floor was covered with ashes, in many places still red-hot. Such an appalling sight I have never witnessed. Of those who had sunk on the floor nothing remained but bones: those who were in a kneeling or standing posture were only partially consumed. The expression of their scorched faces was horrible beyond description. In a bag lying at the upper end of the apartment was the dead body of a young child, who had been strangled: the cord used was still tight about its little neck[125].’

It was on the morning that followed his arrival at Torres Novas (March 8th) that Wellington, encouraged by the reports of his cavalry scouts, to the effect that the French were marching day and night, and showed no wish to fight, issued the orders already alluded to in a previous chapter, which bade Beresford turn back the 2nd Division, and march with it and the 4th to the relief of Badajoz[126]. The report of Menacho’s death and of the rapid advance of the French siege-works had just reached him. Beresford was to take with him Hamilton’s Portuguese division, which had not yet passed the Tagus, and De Grey’s cavalry brigade. The boat-bridge at Abrantes was floated down to Tancos near Punhete, in order to save the 2nd and 4th Divisions some miles of march in their journey to the Alemtejo. These troops turned back, and were nearing Tancos on the following day, when they received orders to halt. The French, so the advanced cavalry reported, after marching hitherto day[p. 90] and night, had come to a stand at Pombal, north of Leiria, where Ney, Junot, and Drouet were now all massed. Though Reynier was said to have taken another road, that by Espinhal, Wellington was not sure that Masséna did not intend to fight, and if so, he wished to have the 4th Division with him, and De Grey’s heavy dragoons. ‘In this case it is desirable,’ he writes, ‘that I should be a little stronger, and as Badajoz is not yet pressed ... I have sent to Cole to desire that his division and the dragoons march to-morrow for Cacharia. I shall then be as strong as the enemy, or very nearly.’ The 2nd Division was to halt and wait further orders. It was not till the 12th that it was let loose, and told to resume its march to the Alemtejo: Cole and De Grey were not sent back from the main army till the 16th. Meanwhile Badajoz, as we have already seen, fell by Imaz’s pusillanimity on March 10—a date too early for Beresford to have saved it, even if he had continued the march originally prescribed to him on the 8th of that month.

Before Wellington sent on their southward journey the three divisions which were to form the future Army of Estremadura, stirring events had begun to occur on the Leiria-Coimbra road, and the general course of Masséna’s retreat had already been settled.