SECTION XXIX WELLINGTON’S AUTUMN CAMPAIGN OF 1811 CHAPTER I

WELLINGTON’S BLOCKADE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO.
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1811

When Marmont, before the end of the second week of July, had taken his departure from the valley of the Guadiana, and had begun to disperse his army in cantonments on both sides of the Tagus, Wellington was able to review his own situation at leisure, and to think out a new plan of operations. The Army of Portugal had settled down in a central position, from which it could transfer itself with equal facility to reinforce the 5th Corps in Estremadura, if the Allies should make another move against Badajoz, or the troops of Dorsenne in the kingdom of Leon, if any attempt were made to strike at Ciudad Rodrigo and Salamanca. Marmont had placed one division (Foy’s) and a cavalry brigade at Truxillo, to keep up the communication across the mountains with the 5th Corps. He had established his own head quarters at Navalmoral, near Almaraz, and had three divisions[675] in his immediate neighbourhood along the Tagus. The remaining two, which completed his army, were placed, one at Plasencia, the other in the province of Avila[676], somewhat more to the north, so as to command the passes into the kingdom of Leon, by which the army would have to move to join the Army of the North, supposing that Wellington took the offensive on the Agueda and the Tormes. In this position the Marshal remained, in an expectant attitude, for some ten weeks. The period of repose was very grateful to him, since he had taken his army to the relief of Badajoz in haste, before it was fully reorganized, and[p. 543] was anxiously expecting the arrival of the drafts and convalescents whom he had left behind him, and—what was still more important—a great supply of remounts to strengthen his depleted cavalry, and of gun teams to bring his batteries up to the total of eighty pieces, which had been prescribed by the Emperor as his proper complement. He was aware that orders had been issued from Paris that the Army of the North was to make over to him 500 artillery horses, and that nearly a thousand cavalry were coming from Bayonne, whither the 3rd and 4th squadrons of each of his dragoon regiments had been sent back in May to pick up new chargers. General Vandermaesen, as he was informed by a dispatch from Berthier dated July 10th, was to be at Burgos by August 15th, with 850 remounted dragoons, 1,100 artillery horses, and 6,000 drafts and recruits for the infantry. But, as so often happened in Spain, this great reinforcement had not turned up even by the middle of September; for though the troops had started from Bayonne, great numbers of them were detained on the way, not only by Dorsenne, but by mere post-commanders and chiefs of small garrisons, who presumed to lay hands on them because they thought themselves threatened by some movement of the Navarrese or Cantabrian guerrilleros[677]. Vandermaesen got to Burgos, but could not collect more than half of the column which he was directed to take to the Army of Portugal, and so did not start. The divisions in the field received no appreciable reinforcements till September was far advanced. Meanwhile Marmont used the troops which lay immediately round his head quarters to construct an important group of permanent fortifications about Almaraz, the chief passage of the Tagus. The flying-bridge there was replaced by a strong bridge of boats, protected at each end by a closed work, partly in stone, partly in earth; the one was called Fort Ragusa, the other Fort Napoleon. In addition, the defile in the mountains, by which the road descends on to Almaraz, was protected by a third structure called Fort Mirabete, from the neighbouring village. This group of works gave the French[p. 544] a stronger hold on the central Tagus than they had ever possessed before, and the permanent bridge was invaluable, since it permitted troops to go south or north at a much greater rate than had been possible when, as hitherto, they had to be ferried over on a mere pontoon worked with ropes. Orders came from Paris that a similar passage, protected by a fortified post, was to be established at Alcantara, sixty miles further down the river, where the broken Roman bridge[678] invited repair. But this was quite beyond Marmont’s power—the position was far too near the Portuguese border to be maintained save by a large garrison, which would have required revictualling at frequent intervals, for the neighbouring region, always desolate, was now absolutely depeopled. When Wellington had large bodies of troops at Castello Branco and Portalegre, while there was no solid force of the Army of Portugal nearer than Navalmoral, it would have been too risky to expose a detachment at Alcantara. The ruined remains of the mediaeval fortress there, which had been knocked to pieces in the old War of the Spanish Succession, could not have been patched up so as to resist artillery of the lightest sort.

Marmont had the greatest difficulty in maintaining his army in the region which it now occupied. The western part of the kingdom of New Castile was (as Wellington had found in the Talavera campaign) almost incapable of feeding a large force. The Vera of Plasencia was the only district which sufficed for itself even in time of peace. Normally food would have been drawn from the direction of Toledo, Aranjuez, and Madrid. But this district was in the occupation of the Army of the Centre, and King Joseph protested in the most lively fashion at being expected to furnish all the supplies for Marmont’s force, over which he was denied control, and with which he seems to have felt himself little concerned[679]. New Castile barely sufficed for his own needs, and when an Imperial decree proclaimed that the districts of Toledo, Avila, and Talavera were removed from his sphere of command and placed at the disposition of the Army of Portugal, he considered that his brother had broken the[p. 545] pledges which had been made to him during his short visit to Paris, for in this bargain it had been stipulated[680] that armies entering his sphere of activity came under his command. Before evacuating the ceded districts, he withdrew all the movable stores and munitions; Marmont declares that at Toledo the royal officials sold all the corn in the magazines to private persons, just before the arrival of his own commissaries, and handed over empty vaults to the new-comers[681].

Even with the resources of the provinces of Avila and Toledo at its disposition, the Army of Portugal only lived from hand to mouth, and was unable to accumulate magazines of any importance. The transport of the food-stuffs was the great problem; the army had practically no vehicles left—as Marmont observed in one of his dispatches to Berthier, he had received over from Masséna about ten waggons only—all the rest that had belonged to the three corps that had marched into Portugal had been left behind on the mountain roads between Santarem and Sabugal in March[682]. Country carts might have been requisitioned in the valley of the Tagus at an early stage of the war, but by 1811 they had entirely disappeared, along with the oxen that had drawn them. The population had mostly vanished, and the fraction that remained was in a condition of abject misery from Talavera as far as the Portuguese border. Marmont calls the country from Almaraz to Merida ‘a horrible wilderness[683].’ He calculated that the whole of the Avila-Plasencia-Talavera region could barely feed 15,000 men, and that the rest of his army only subsisted by drawing on the comparatively intact Toledo district.

Of all this trouble on the part of his immediate adversary Wellington was aware, through intercepted dispatches, as well as through the reports sent in to him by the Spaniards. And the facts that Marmont had been forced to disperse his army into cantonments extending from Truxillo to Avila, and had no magazines of any size, formed important data in his calcula[p. 546]tions. It would clearly take many days to assemble the whole Army of Portugal—whether it were required on the Guadiana or on the Tormes. At the same time Marmont, by his march in June to join Soult, had shown himself a general of energy and decision, and it must be taken for granted that, if there was good reason for him to move, he would do so, as quickly as the difficulties of supply would permit him. His force, which Wellington very accurately calculated at about 30,000 infantry and 3,500 horse, or some 36,000 men of all arms[684], was the central fact in all future operations. Clearly it would be moved south or north whenever necessary.

As to Soult, he had now so much on his hands in Andalusia that he was not to be feared for the present. It was known that he had left nothing in Estremadura save the 5th Corps, now under Drouet, and five or six regiments of dragoons. The troops drawn from Cordova and Granada had been taken back to Andalusia. But two divisions were hunting Blake and Ballasteros in the Condado de Niebla. The disposable remainder must be very small. Soult therefore might be neglected as an enemy capable of taking the offensive. If, however, the Anglo-Portuguese army were to invade Andalusia, an operation which some of Wellington’s subordinates had suggested to him as a possibility[685], the Duke of Dalmatia would certainly raise the siege of Cadiz, probably abandon Granada, and march against the Allies with a force which, including the 5th Corps, would be 60,000 strong. Wherefore offensive action in this quarter could not be thought of[686], all the more so because Marmont, if nothing was left opposite him on the Tagus, might come down by Merida, threaten Elvas and Abrantes, and perhaps take the Allies in the rear after they had crossed the Sierra Morena.

Nor was the idea of renewing the siege of Badajoz, during Soult’s absence, tempting. The place could certainly be beset;[p. 547] but in ten days or so Marmont and the 12,000 men of the 5th Corps would have united to relieve it, and their joint force would be nearly equal in total numbers to the Anglo-Portuguese and superior to them in cavalry. ‘Any success which we might derive from a general action, to which I might bring the Army of Portugal and the 5th Corps, would not be very decisive; on the other hand the loss which we would sustain by the heat of the weather, and by the length of the marches which we should be obliged to make would be very great[687].’ But the main objection to a renewal of the siege of Badajoz was not the prospect of a pitched battle, but the impossibility of sitting down to a leaguer in the valley of the Guadiana at a time when it was known to be absolutely pestilential. Already on the Caya the army had begun to suffer from the well-known Guadiana fever, and its spread had only been stopped by moving the troops back to the healthy towns in the highlands.

Wellington therefore ruled out of the list of possible operations any movement to the south of the Tagus. There remained only the chance of making another attempt on Ciudad Rodrigo, and from the end of July onward this was the project which was engrossing his attention. To make a move in this direction would certainly draw Marmont from the Tagus, and cause him to unite with the Army of the North for the relief of the fortress. But Wellington thought that he would prefer this combination among his enemies to the other one, which would ensue if he were to make his stroke in Estremadura. He gave three reasons to Lord Liverpool for the preference[688]: the first was that in a campaign on the frontiers of Leon he would have the assistance of all the militia of northern Portugal for subsidiary operations. The second was that the ground would be much more in his favour—he would have behind him not the broad plains of the Alemtejo, but the rugged spurs of the Serra da Estrella, where strong positions abounded, and where the numerous French cavalry would be as useless as they had proved during the campaign of Bussaco in the preceding year. The third advantage was that to draw Marmont into Leon separated[p. 548] him from Soult by the whole breadth of central Spain, and disconnected the operations of the two main French forces. For the Army of the North was a less formidable body than the Army of Andalusia, because it was scattered over an even greater extent of territory. Nor were its distractions less than those of Soult: the Galicians and Asturians, Longa, Porlier, and Mina, and all the guerrilleros of Old Castile, were in existence to keep this French force constantly harassed. In their way they were more effective as irritants than Blake, Ballasteros, and the Murcians had proved to be in the south.

Wellington was not at this moment, the end of July, aware that the Army of the North was about to receive reinforcements, which would make it far more formidable in the autumn. He could not yet know that the divisions of Souham, Reille, and Caffarelli were about to be thrown across the Pyrenees, and that the first of them would be in the front line during the operations of September. Even by August he was only aware in a vague fashion[689] that more French troops were expected at Vittoria from Bayonne, and supposed them to be about 10,000 or 11,000 strong[690], while they were really three full divisions of over 30,000 men. By the end of the month he was better informed—but by that time his operations had begun, and it was too late to make a change[691].

Even from the first, however, Wellington was disposed to believe that no great results would follow from a move against Ciudad Rodrigo. ‘I am tempted to try this enterprise,’ he wrote to Lord Liverpool before he had begun his march, ‘but I beg your Lordship to observe that I may be obliged to abandon it. When the relative force of the two armies will be so nearly balanced as in this, and particularly in an operation in the Peninsula of Spain, it is impossible for me to foresee all the events which may lead to this result. But the arrival of reinforcements to the enemy, or further information, which may[p. 549] show them to be stronger than I now imagine, or a falling off in the strength of our army owing to sickness, would necessarily oblige me to abandon the enterprise[692].’ Later comments are in the same cautious tone: on August 9 Wellington thinks it ‘more than ever doubtful whether he will be in a situation to undertake the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo’—but the movement may afford an opportunity of striking an advantageous blow, and cause the enemy, at least, to draw off troops from corners of the Peninsula where they are badly wanted.

Long before the army began to move towards the Agueda and the frontiers of Leon, Wellington had given the preliminary order[693] which committed him to the project of attacking Rodrigo. He had at last received from England the heavy battering-train of siege artillery, which would have been invaluable in May for the breaching of Badajoz. It was on shipboard in Lisbon harbour. He directed it to be taken round by sea to Oporto, sent up the Douro in boats as far as Lamego—where lay the limit of river navigation—and then to be sent forward by detachments to Trancoso, in the northern Beira, where he intended to establish his base dép?t. Nearly 400 pairs of draught bullocks and about 900 country carts were to be collected at Lamego for the transport. The charge of the whole operation was given to Alexander Dickson, whose energetic management of the very inefficient siege artillery at Badajoz had inspired Wellington with a strong belief in his resourcefulness, and his power of getting the largest possible amount of work out of the Portuguese, military and civilians alike.

Dickson started at once for Oporto, where he found two companies of British artillery[694] which had been sent from Lisbon, and picked up somewhat later 300 Portuguese gunners, who were also placed at his disposition. With their aid he began shipping up to Lamego the guns and ammunition from the[p. 550] transports. So long as the transport was by water, matters went slowly but easily, but the land voyage from Lamego onwards turned out a heart-rending business, from the badness of the roads and the difficulty of collecting cattle for draught. Dickson prevailed upon Wellington in the end to make Villa da Ponte, rather than Trancoso, his central dép?t—the town in the hills proving less convenient than the large village fifteen miles further north. All through August and September material was accumulating at Villa da Ponte, but it was never sent forward, because, as the campaign worked out, no regular siege of Ciudad Rodrigo ever became possible. Wellington would not show his battering-train until it was certain that he could turn it to good use, and kept it hidden far to the rear of his fighting-line. It was only gradually that part of it began to be moved up to Almeida, ostensibly to serve for the re-armament of that fortress, where the damage done by the two explosions carried out by Brennier and Pack had been repaired. It was not to be till December that the guns landed at Oporto in August were employed. But all through the autumn Wellington’s movements were greatly influenced by the fact that he had now a large and efficient siege-train ready, in a position from which it could be sent forward the moment that a fair opportunity should offer itself. It was the existence of Dickson’s park at Villa da Ponte, as much, or more, than any other factor in the situation, that kept Wellington on the frontiers of Leon watching for his chance. It would seem that his caution was justified—the French never quite realized that he was ready to attack Rodrigo in the most effective style, when they should give him the opportunity that he lacked, by dispersing their armies in a way which rendered rapid concentration impossible.

The march of the seven divisions which were destined for service on the Agueda and the Azava began in the first week of August. The Light Division and Arentschildt’s cavalry, moving up from Castello Branco, were at Sabugal on the 8th and occupied Martiago, beyond the Agueda and close to Rodrigo, on the 10th. On the following day Wellington in person led a reconnaissance right up to the walls of the fortress, and drove in all the French outposts. The blockade was then established by the Light Division on the left bank of the Agueda, and the 3rd[p. 551] Division on the right, the head quarters of the former being at Carpio, those of the latter at Martiago. The road north-eastward to Salamanca was only cut by means of cavalry posts and Julian Sanchez’s guerrilla bands, and the infantry did not approach within some miles of Rodrigo. Wellington’s purpose was merely to prevent the entry of provisions into the place: he had no intention of drawing close up to it and opening a siege, till he should have learnt that his battering-train should have reached Trancoso: and it would obviously be a matter of many weeks before the guns got up from Oporto. It might perhaps be argued that it would have been better not to demonstrate at all against Rodrigo, or to call the attention of Marmont and Dorsenne in this direction, till there was some possibility of opening siege-operations. For to famish the garrison must infallibly lead to a concentration of the enemy at Salamanca for its relief, and draw together a large army. Marmont was less dangerous in his scattered cantonments about the Tagus than with his forces massed on the Tormes. And there was little hope of reducing Rodrigo by famine alone; clearly the enemy would mass and fight, rather than allow it to fall unaided[695].

Meanwhile Wellington moved his head quarters to Fuente Guinaldo, sixteen miles south of Ciudad Rodrigo, on August 12th, and kept them there till September 24th. The divisions not engaged in the blockade were cantoned at various points to the rear. The first division lay about Penamacor: it was no longer commanded by Spencer, who had so long led it. He had gone home, ostensibly on sick leave, really because he was annoyed that General Graham had recently been ordered up from Cadiz, and was for the future to take charge of the whole left wing of the army whenever the Commander-in-Chief was absent. This responsibility had hitherto fallen to Spencer, and Wellington was not alone in thinking that he had not discharged it over well[696]. The arrival of Graham (August 8th) was welcomed by[p. 552] all ranks, and for the future he assumed charge, nominally of the 1st Division, really of all the troops in the north which were not actually under the master’s eye. At any rate Graham could never be accused of dullness of apprehension or indecision, the two charges habitually made against Spencer by Wellington himself, no less than by many diarists of the time.

Not far off from the 1st Division was the 4th, under Cole, at Pedrog?o, twenty miles north-east from Castello Branco. The 5th Division, meanwhile, lay at Perales, Payo, and Navas Frias watching the passes of the Sierra de Gata, in case Marmont’s division at Plasencia should make an unexpected forward movement towards Leon by the shortest route. The 7th Division was at Villar Mayor near Sabugal and Fuente Guinaldo. Lastly, the 6th Division, more to the left and forming the northernmost section of the army, was cantoned between the Coa and the lower Agueda, from Nava de Aver as far as the bridge of Barba del Puerco. Of the cavalry, Alten’s brigade[697] was covering the Light and 3rd Divisions in front of Ciudad Rodrigo, while the others, De Grey’s[698], Slade’s[699], and Anson’s[700] were[p. 553] watching the frontier eastward from Castello Branco, with observing parties in the passes but the main bodies placed some way to the rear. The head quarters of the second brigade was at Soita near Sabugal, that of the last-named at Idanha Nova. These cantonments, it will be observed, were somewhat scattered, there being no less than eighty miles between Barba del Puerco in the north and Penamacor in the south, but Wellington calculated that he would always have long notice of any concentration of the enemy in his front, and three marches would suffice to unite the army on its centre, between Fuente Guinaldo and Alfayates, or four to concentrate it on a wing, if the French (a thing not very probable) should show signs of operating either south of the Sierra de Gata or on the lower Agueda.

It should be noted that about this time Wellington, for the first time since 1810, obtained the assistance of a Spanish force on the Beira frontier. General Casta?os, busy in reorganizing the ruined Army of Estremadura, sent Carlos de Espa?a with the cadres of several infantry regiments to the frontier of Leon, to fill them up with recruits from the province of Salamanca. The rest of his troops, under Morillo and Penne Villemur[701], were kept in Estremadura and continued to co-operate with Hill. But Carlos de Espa?a fixed himself at Ledesma, where he joined hands with the great partisan Julian Sanchez, and soon collected some 3,000 men, who though useless for action, being raw and not properly furnished with uniforms or arms, yet served to hold a position in front of the lower Agueda, and gave much trouble to Thiébault, the governor of Salamanca, by their sallies and incursions into his district.

For some weeks after the arrival of the army on the Beira frontier there was little stirring. The fact that Ciudad Rodrigo had been cut off from communication with Salamanca did not at first provoke the French to action, for the place was in no immediate danger of starvation. A large convoy had been thrown into the place only two days before the blockade was formed, and it was known that the allied army had no siege-train in its company. Throughout the month of August Dorsenne was much more troubled by the operations of the Galicians than by Wellington’s demonstration, while Marmont, knowing that[p. 554] Rodrigo was provisioned up to October[702], saw no reason for moving till it should be drawing nearer to the end of its resources. It was only about the middle of September that he got tardy news that there was a siege-train making its way up from Oporto, and that the British divisions behind the Agueda were making gabions and fascines. He then was stimulated to activity, and concerted a junction with Dorsenne without further delay—of which more hereafter. In August he found full occupation in the organization of the provinces of New Castile, which the Emperor had handed over to him, and was more worried by the difficulty of raising taxes and collecting magazines, and by incessant wrangles with King Joseph’s officials, than by military difficulties[703]. All that he did was to move his head quarters to the neighbourhood of Plasencia[704], and to shift some of the brigades cantoned along the Tagus to the north of that river, in view of the fact that a march to relieve and revictual Ciudad Rodrigo would ultimately become necessary. Foy’s division was kept, however, at Truxillo—far to the south—till the middle of September, in order that touch might not be lost with Drouet and the Army of Andalusia. The Marshal, very rightly, scouted the idea, which some of his subordinates had formed, that Wellington’s appearance on the Beira frontier might portend a dash at Salamanca[705]. To gain some further knowledge of the disposition of the Anglo-Portuguese he sent out several cavalry reconnaissances from Plasencia towards the Sierra de Gata. They found British outposts all along the passes, and could not get forward, though one party succeeded in capturing a picket of the 11th Light Dragoons at San Martin de Trebejos, near the Puerto de Perales, on August 14th.

The news that Marmont was shifting troops northward, towards the passes into the kingdom of Leon, induced Wellington to make a corresponding movement with his own troops, and on August 27th the 1st and 4th Divisions were ordered to prepare[p. 555] to move from Penamacor and Pedrog?o to the neighbourhood of Fuente Guinaldo, close to head quarters[706]. The notion that the Army of Portugal would, at some not very distant date, march to raise the blockade of Rodrigo, was made even more certain by the capture of a dispatch in cipher from Foy to Girard, warning him that he was under orders to follow Marmont across the Tagus and abandon Truxillo[707]. But Foy made no move for a fortnight more, and Wellington rightly concluded that he need be under no apprehension as to the concentration of the enemy, till he had received news that Truxillo had been evacuated. It was also clear that Marmont intended that Dorsenne should co-operate with him, and since that general, with all the disposable troops of the Army of the North, was beyond Astorga at the end of August, campaigning against the Galicians, there was no need to feel any alarm till this force should be known to have turned southward towards the Douro. On the third of September things began to look a little more exciting, when Dorsenne was reported to be starting from Astorga on his return journey: he made forced marches for Salamanca, where it was known that a convoy for the supply of Rodrigo was being organized[708]. But provisions were hard to collect in Leon, and Marmont had refused to begin his march of concentration till it should be certified to him that Dorsenne was nearly ready, and that the convoy had been got together.

Hence it was not till September 17th that the time of crisis began. On this day Wellington received the news that Foy had evacuated Truxillo on the 15th, and that Montbrun’s cavalry was crossing the sierra by the Puerto de Ba?os, with infantry columns following in its rear. On the previous day an intercepted letter informed him that the Salamanca convoy was to be ready on September 21st[709]. If Dorsenne had stopped in front of the Galicians, or if Marmont had been moving with only part of his troops, Wellington would have prepared to fight a battle beyond the Agueda. But it was clear from several intercepted dispatches that the Armies of Portugal and the North were about[p. 556] to unite in full force, and, as the British general remarked in a letter which lapsed into unwonted jocularity, ‘The devil is in the French for numbers[710]’. He had got to know that Souham’s strong division had come to the front to join Dorsenne[711], and that the guard-divisions, of Roguet and Dumoustier, with their attendant cavalry and artillery made up 15,000 men, and not 7,000 as he had hitherto supposed[712]. It was possible, nay probable, that the Army of the North would put at least 25,000 men into the field for the combined movement now pending[713], and Marmont, if he came in full force, might bring 35,000 more. It was impossible to stop such a mass of men in the plain east of Rodrigo, where the ground was all suited to cavalry operations, and where no good defensive positions were to be found. If the enemy were determined to relieve the place he could certainly accomplish his desire.

Wellington had a little more than 46,000 men under his hand at this moment. The total should have been higher, but all the newly arrived detachments had been in the Walcheren expedition, and the heat of the Spanish summer had brought out the fever which lurked in the bodies of the men who had served in that pestilential spot. Battalions which had landed at Lisbon in June with 700 or 800 men had gone down to 400 or 500 bayonets in September, though the marches had not been heavy[714]. Nor had the old Peninsular regiments escaped a touch of Guadiana fever during their stay near Elvas in July. Wherefore there were no less than 14,000 sick in the British army at this moment, and the force present under arms in the seven divisions on the Beira frontier was (excluding the Portuguese)[p. 557] only 29,000 sabres and bayonets. Of the Portuguese the seven infantry and two cavalry brigades serving with the main army made up about 17,000 men more[715]. With 46,000 men Wellington refused to offer battle beyond the Agueda to the combined French forces, which might well amount to 60,000 men, and could not be less than 53,000 or 55,000. But he was determined not to retire an inch further from Rodrigo than was necessary, being convinced that the enemy could only remain concentrated for a few days, and could have no serious intention of invading Portugal. Though he might not be able to fight in the open plain, he was prepared to defend himself in the skirts of the mountains, if the French should push out beyond Rodrigo. Here he had two positions already selected, the first at Fuente Guinaldo, where the rugged ground begins, the second by Rendo and Alfayates, in front of Sabugal, which was far more formidable: this was the ground which Spencer had been told to take up in April, when he had been left opposite Masséna during Wellington’s absence at Badajoz. The Guinaldo position, being less defensible by nature, was to be rendered strong by art. During its stay there in September the 4th Division sketched out an entrenched camp along the hills, but only two redoubts and some long lines of trench had been completed when the crisis came at the end of the month.

Meanwhile Wellington did not intend to retire on Guinaldo, much less on the Rendo-Alfayates position, unless he were forced to do so. He thought it likely that Marmont and Dorsenne would content themselves with relieving Rodrigo, and would push no further. Wherefore he directed that Picton and Craufurd, the generals in command of the two blockading divisions, should leave the Salamanca road open, when the French appeared in strength, but should not give back from the immediate neighbourhood of the fortress unless they were attacked in force. Craufurd might get behind the Vadillo, a torrent which falls into the Agueda five miles above Rodrigo. Picton was to occupy the isolated plateau on which lie the villages of El Bodon and Pastores, five or six miles south of Rodrigo. Here they[p. 558] were to stand, and to see what the enemy intended to do; probably they would have to retreat no further. This disposition, which was founded on a false psychological estimate of the character of Marmont, was to lead to trouble. The Marshal was more enterprising than Wellington had calculated, and (as affairs turned out) it would have been safer to concentrate the whole army on the Fuente Guinaldo position the moment that the Armies of Portugal and the North appeared in front of Ciudad Rodrigo.