Chapter XXXIV: Section XVI: Chapter VIII (2)

The departure of the Estremaduran army had one deplorable result. It exposed the English hospitals at Talavera, with their 4,000 wounded, to capture by the enemy. Wellesley, before he had marched off, had given orders that all the men capable of being moved should be sent off towards Plasencia and Portugal as soon as possible. But he had no transport that could cope with the task of transferring such a mass of invalids towards his base. He wrote from Oropesa begging Cuesta to requisition carts from the country-side for this purpose[708]. But it was notorious that carts were not to be had--all Wellesley’s letters for the last three weeks were full of complaints to the effect that he could not procure them by money or by force. When the Spaniards were themselves departing, bag and baggage, it was an inopportune moment at which to ask them to provide transport: yet since the British wounded had been left to their care they were bound in honour to do all that could be done to save them. It is said that Cuesta made over[709] no more than seven ox-carts and a few mules to Colonel Mackinnon, the officer charged with the task of evacuating the hospitals. These and about forty vehicles of various kinds belonging to the British themselves were all that could be procured for the use of the wounded. They could only accommodate a tithe of the serious cases: the men with hurts of less consequence were forced to set out upon their feet. ‘The road to Oropesa,’ writes one of their fellow sufferers, ‘was covered with our poor limping bloodless soldiers. On crutches or sticks, with blankets thrown over them, they hobbled woefully along. For the moment panic terror lent them a force inconsistent with their debility and their fresh wounds. Some died by the road, others, unable to get further than Oropesa, afterwards fell into the hands of the enemy[710].’ The rest trailed onward to the bridge of Arzobispo, where Wellesley provided transport for many of them by unloading baggage-wagons, and ultimately reached Truxillo, at which place the new hospitals were established. Of the whole 4,000 about 1,500 had been left at Talavera as hopeless or dangerous cases, and these became the captives of the French: 2,000 drifted in, at various times, to Truxillo: the remaining 500 expired by the wayside or were taken by the French in the villages where they had dropped down[711].

[708] Wellesley to O’Donoju, Aug. 3, 1809.

[709] I am bound to say that after reading the Spanish
narratives, I doubt whether Cuesta had at his disposal the large
amount of spare vehicles of which Londonderry and Napier speak.

[710] Boothby, _A Prisoner of France_, p. 40. For the adventures
of two wounded officers on their weary way to Truxillo see the
_Diary_ of Hawker, and the narrative of Colonel Leslie. The
latter made a personal appeal to Cuesta, whose carriage he had
met by the roadside. The old general sent for the Alcalde, and
made him provide a mule--though it turned out to be a very bad
one--for the wounded officer. This small fact to his credit needs
recording, after the copious abuse heaped on him.

[711] The invalids were admirably cared for by the enemy. See
Boothby.

Long before Cuesta and his host had arrived at Oropesa, Wellesley had made up his mind that the only course open to him was to abandon the march towards Navalmoral and Almaraz, and to turn aside to the bridge of Arzobispo. As the French were known to be at Navalmoral, it would have been impossible to force a passage to Almaraz without a battle. If the enemy were to be estimated at two corps, or 30,000 men, according to the indications of the intercepted letter, they would probably be able to detain the Anglo-Spanish army till Victor should arrive from the rear. For, without accepting a pitched battle, they would be strong enough to harass and check the allies, and to prevent them from reaching Almaraz till the 1st Corps should come upon the scene. ‘I was not certain,’ wrote Wellesley to Beresford two days later, ‘that Ney was not with Soult: and I _was_ certain that, if not with him, he was at no great distance. We should therefore have had a battle to fight in order to gain the road to Almaraz--Plasencia was then out of the question--and if Victor had followed Cuesta, as he ought to have done, another battle, probably, before the bridge could be re-established[712]. Then it was to be considered that, Cuesta having left Talavera, the bridge of Arzobispo would have been open to the enemy’s enterprise: if they had destroyed it, while we had failed in forcing Soult at Navalmoral, we were gone.’

[712] The Marquis del Reino (it will be remembered) had broken
the boat-bridge of Almaraz on August 2, after abandoning the
Puerto de Baños.

It is impossible not to bow before Wellesley’s reasoning. The French critics object that only Mortier was at Navalmoral on August 4, Soult being twenty miles behind him at Bazagona on the Tietar, so that it would have been possible for the British army to have driven back the 19,000 men of the Duke of Treviso, and to have forced its way to Almaraz[713]. But even if Wellesley had fought a successful action with Mortier on August 4, Soult would certainly have joined his colleague on the fifth, before the bridge could have been repaired, or at any rate before the whole Anglo-Spanish army and all its impedimenta could have crossed the Tagus. If attacked during their passage by the 37,000 men of the 2nd and 5th Corps they would have fared badly. Wellesley was perfectly correct in his decision; indeed the only point in which he was deceived was that he believed the enemy in his front to be Soult’s and Ney’s Corps, whereas they were in reality those of Soult and Mortier. Ney only reached Plasencia on August 4, and did not join the main body of the army till two days later.

[713] See for example, Le Noble, pp. 339-40.

When Wellesley and Cuesta met at Oropesa, early on the morning of August 4, they found themselves as usual engaged in a heated controversy. The British general had directed his divisions to hold themselves ready to march on the bridge of Arzobispo without further delay. Cuesta on the other hand had been attacked by a recrudescence of his old disease, the mania for fighting pitched battles[714]. He proposed that the allied armies should remain on the north bank of the Tagus, adopt a good defensive position, and defy Soult to attack them. Wellesley would not listen for a moment to this project, and finally declared that in spite of all arguments to the contrary, he should cross the Tagus that day at the head of his army. The two generals parted in wrath, and at six o’clock the British commenced their march to Arzobispo, only nine miles distant; the whole force crossed its bridge before evening, and established itself in bivouac on the south side of the river.

[714] ‘As usual, General Cuesta wanted to fight general actions,’
writes Wellesley to Beresford, from Arzobispo, on the afternoon
of this same day.

Cuesta remained at Oropesa for the whole day of August 4, and was there joined both by Bassecourt, who had fallen back from Centinello, and by Zayas and Albuquerque, who had evacuated Talavera at noon and made a forced march to join their chief. He appeared disposed to fight even though his ally had abandoned him. In the afternoon Mortier’s cavalry pressed in against him. He turned fiercely upon them, deployed a whole division of infantry and 1,200 horse in their front, and drove them back towards their supports. This vigorous action had a result that could not have been foreseen: Mortier jumped to the conclusion that he was himself about to be attacked by the whole Spanish army--perhaps by Wellesley also[715]. He halted the 5th Corps in advance of Navalmoral, and wrote to implore Soult to come up to his aid without delay. The Duke of Dalmatia hurried up with all speed, and on August 5 brought the 2nd Corps to Casatejada, only six miles in the rear of his colleague. Ney, following with a like promptness, advanced that day to Malpartida, a march behind the position of Soult.

[715] ‘M. le Maréchal duc de Trévise crut qu’il serait attaqué,’
says Soult in his report of August 13. He therefore held back,
and sent for the 2nd Corps. Hence came Cuesta’s salvation.

On the sixth, therefore, the whole army from the Douro was practically concentrated, and Soult and Mortier advanced against Cuesta with Ney close in their rear. They found that they were too late: after remaining in battle order in front of the bridge of Arzobispo during the whole of the fifth, courting the attack which Mortier had been too cautious to deliver, the Captain-General had crossed the Tagus that night, and had occupied its further bank. He had left in front of the bridge only a small rearguard, which retired after a skirmish with the advanced cavalry of the 5th Corps. For once Cuesta had found luck upon his side; if Mortier had ventured to assail him on the fifth, and had forced him to an engagement, in a position from which retreat was difficult, and with the Tagus at his back, his situation would have been most perilous. For even if he had kept the 5th Corps at bay, he could not easily have withdrawn in face of it, and Soult would have been upon him on the next morning. In escaping across the narrow bridge of Arzobispo his losses must have been terrible: indeed the greater part of his army might have been destroyed.

Finding, on the evening of August 6, that both the British and the Estremaduran armies were now covered by the Tagus, whose line they appeared determined to defend, Soult was forced to think out a new plan of campaign. His original design of taking the allies in the rear and cutting off their retreat had miscarried: he must now either halt and recognize that his march had failed in its main purpose, or else deliver a frontal attack upon the line of the Tagus. The bridge of Almaraz was broken, and troops (the detachment of the Marquis Del Reino) were visible behind it. The bridge of Arzobispo was not destroyed, but the Spaniards were obviously ready to defend it. It was barricaded, the mediaeval towers in its midst were manned by a detachment of infantry, and a battery for twelve guns had been placed in an earthwork erected on a knoll thirty yards in its rear, so as to sweep all the approaches. Considerable forces both of cavalry and of infantry were visible on the hillsides and in the villages of the southern bank. Cuesta, in fact, while proposing to fall back with his main body to Meza de Ibor and Deleytosa, in order to recover his communication with his base at Badajoz, had left behind a strong rearguard, consisting of Bassecourt’s infantry division and Albuquerque’s six regiments of cavalry, a force of 5,000 bayonets and nearly 3,000 sabres. They were ordered to defend the bridge and the neighbouring ford of Azutan till further orders should reach them. The ground was very strong; indeed the ford was the one perilous point, and as that passage was narrow and hard to find, Cuesta trusted that it might be maintained even against very superior numbers. So formidable did the defence appear that Soult halted during the whole day of August 7, while he took stock of the Spanish positions, and sought up-stream and down-stream for means of passage other than the bridge. He was not at first aware of the existence of the ford: it was only revealed to him by the imprudence of the Spanish cavalry, who rode their horses far into the stream when watering them, thus showing that there were long shallows projecting from the southern bank. By a careful search at night the French intelligence-officers discovered that the river was only deep for a few yards under their own bank[716]: for the rest of its breadth there were only two or three feet of water. Having found the point, not far from the bridge, where the more dangerous part of the channel was fordable, they advised the Marshal that the passage of the river would present no insurmountable difficulties. Soult resolved to deliver an assault both on the bridge and on the ford upon the morning of August 8. Nor was it only at Arzobispo that he determined to force the line of the Tagus. He directed Ney, who was bringing up his rear at the head of the 6th Corps, to turn aside to the broken bridge of Almaraz, and to endeavour to cross the river by aid of a ford which was said to exist in that neighbourhood. Sketch-maps were sent to the Marshal in order to enable him to locate the exact point of passage--it would seem that they must have been very faulty.

[716] General Arteche, who has examined the ford, notes that the
main channel, narrow but with a rocky bottom, is close under the
northern, i.e. the French, bank. The remaining two-thirds of the
breadth of the river has a hard sandy bottom and is in August
extremely shallow. If once, therefore, the deep water under the
nearer bank was crossed, the French had no difficulties before
them.

Meanwhile Wellesley had passed the Tagus four days and Cuesta three days before the Marshal’s attack was ready, and both had been granted time to proceed far upon their way. It was fortunate that they were not hurried, for the road from Arzobispo to Meza de Ibor and thence to Deleytosa and Jaraicejo, though passable for guns and wheeled vehicles, was steep and in a deplorable condition of disrepair. It took Wellesley two days to march from the bridge to Meza de Ibor, a distance of only seventeen miles, because of the endless trouble caused by his artillery. There were places where he had practically to remake the roadway, and others where whole companies of infantry had to be turned on to haul the cannon up slopes where the half-starved horses could make no headway. These exertions were all the more exhausting because the men were falling into a state of great bodily weakness from insufficient supplies. Even at Talavera they had on many days received no more than half rations: but after passing Oropesa regular distributions of food ceased altogether for some time: there were still a few slaughter-oxen with the army, but bread or biscuit was unobtainable, and the troops had to maintain themselves on what they could scrape up from the thinly peopled and rugged country-side. A diet of overripe _garbanzos_, parched to the hardness of bullets, was all that many could obtain. Better foragers eked them out with honeycomb stolen from the peasants’ hives, and pork got by shooting the half-wild pigs which roam in troops among the woods on the mountain side. Many, in the ravenous eagerness of hunger, ate the meat warm and raw, and contracted choleraic complaints from their unwholesome feeding[717].

[717] For details of these privations see the diary of Leach of
the 95th, p. 92.

Divining that Soult would probably make a dash at Almaraz as well as at Arzobispo, Wellesley sent on ahead of his main body the brigade of Robert Craufurd, to which he attached Donkin’s much depleted regiments, in order to make up a small division. As they were unhampered by guns or baggage this detachment reached Almaraz on the sixth, after a fifteen hours’ forced march on the preceding day. They took over charge of the broken bridge and the ford from the Spanish troops of the Marquis Del Reino, and proceeded to entrench themselves in the excellent positions overlooking the point where the river was passable. Thus Ney, when he reached Almaraz on the following day, found the enemy already established opposite him, and ready to dispute the crossing. About 4,000 British troops and 1,500 Spanish troops were holding the river bank: immediately at their backs was the narrow and eminently defensible defile of Mirabete, which completely commands the road to Truxillo: it was an even stronger position than that which covered the ford and the ruined bridge.

On August 7 therefore Wellesley considered himself in a comparatively satisfactory situation. The passage at Almaraz was held by a vanguard consisting of the best troops in the army. Two divisions, the cavalry, and all the guns had traversed the worst part of the road, and had reached Deleytosa, only nine miles behind Craufurd’s position. If the French should attack on the following day, the main body could reinforce the light brigade in a few hours. One division, in the rear, was holding the position of Meza de Ibor, which Wellesley did not wish to evacuate until the Spanish army was ready to occupy it. He had discovered that there were points between Arzobispo and Almaraz where the passage of the Tagus was not wholly impracticable for small bodies of infantry[718], and dreaded that the enemy might throw a detachment across the stream to make a dash for the Meza. If this position had been lost the communication between the two armies would have been broken.

[718] Wellesley to O’Donoju, from Deleytosa, Aug. 7.

Cuesta, meanwhile, was engaged in the steep and stony mountain road over which Wellesley had toiled on the 5th and the 6th of August. His vanguard was now close to Meza de Ibor: the rest of the army was strung out between that point and Val de la Casa: the Captain-General himself had his head quarters on the night of the seventh at Peraleda de Garbin, ten miles west of Arzobispo. Bassecourt and Albuquerque were still covering the rear, with Mortier’s corps now plainly visible in their front. On their steadiness depended the safety of the whole army, for Cuesta had more baggage and more guns[719] than Wellesley, and therefore the road over the hills was even more trying to him than to his colleague. There was a congestion of wheeled transport at certain spots on the road which created hopeless confusion, and barred the march of the cavalry and even of the infantry divisions. It was only removed by setting whole battalions to work to drag the wagons out of the way. Cuesta’s ultimate destination was the Meza de Ibor, a position of unparalleled strength, which could be held even after the enemy had crossed the Tagus. That they would ultimately win their way over the river was certain, for already news had arrived that Victor, after reaching Talavera on Aug. 6, had pushed infantry over its bridge on the road to Herencia and Aldea Nueva. Troops coming from this direction would outflank the Arzobispo position, and compel Albuquerque to abandon it. Even without cavalry or guns this detachment of the 1st Corps would be strong enough to dislodge the guard of the bridge, by falling upon its rear, while Mortier was attacking it in front. As the cavalry of Victor and Soult had met, half way between Oropesa and Talavera, upon the afternoon of the seventh, the two marshals were now in full communication, and able to concert any plans that they might please for joint operations.

[719] Beside his own thirty guns he had the seventeen captured
French pieces which had been won at Talavera. Wellesley, it will
be remembered (p. 543), had handed them over to him.

The Duke of Dalmatia, however, preferred to win all the credit for himself, and attacked without allowing his colleague’s troops time to approach the Spanish position. It was fortunate for Albuquerque that the rivalry of the two hostile commanders saved him from the joint assault, which would have been far more ruinous to him than the actual combat of Aug. 8 was destined to prove.

Having full knowledge of the existence and the locality of the ford of Azutan, Soult had resolved to launch his main attack upon this point, while directing only a subsidiary attack upon the fortified bridge. This last was only to be pushed home in case the troops sent against the ford should succeed in making good their footing upon the further bank. A careful observation of the Spanish lines showed that both Albuquerque and Bassecourt were holding back the main body of their divisions at some distance from the water’s edge, in the groves around the three villages of Pedrosa, Burgillo, and Azutan. There was only a single regiment of cavalry watching the river bank, and two or three battalions of infantry manning the towers of the bridge of Arzobispo and the redoubt in its rear. The Spaniards showed every sign of a blind confidence in the strength of their position behind the broad but shallow Tagus.

Knowing their habits, Soult selected for the moment of his attack the hour of the _siesta_. It was between one and two o’clock in the afternoon when he bade his columns, which had been drawn up under cover, and at some distance from the water’s edge, to advance to force the passage. For the assault upon the ford he had collected the whole of his cavalry, no less than twelve regiments. Lahoussaye’s dragoons formed the van, then came Lorges’ brigade, then the division of light horse belonging to the 2nd Corps, in the rear the corps-cavalry of Mortier. This mass of 4,000 horsemen was to be followed by the first brigade of Girard’s infantry division of the 5th Corps, while its second brigade was to assault the bridge, when Lahoussaye and Lorges should have won the passage of the ford and have established themselves on the flank of the Spanish defences. Gazan’s division, the second of the 5th Corps, was to support Girard, while the masses of the infantry of the 2nd Corps remained in reserve. All the light artillery of the army was to gallop down to the water’s edge at various selected points, when the attacking columns were first put in movement, and to distract the attention of the enemy’s guns so far as lay in their power.

At about 1.30 P.M. Caulaincourt’s brigade of Lahoussaye’s dragoons, a force of about 600 sabres, sallied out from its cover behind the village of Arzobispo, and moved down to the ford at a sharp trot. It plunged into the water, had passed the deeper part of the channel almost before the Spaniards had guessed its intention, and soon reached the shallows on the opposite bank. The only hostile force ready to meet it was a single regiment (the 1st Estremaduran Hussars) which was watching the ford, and a battalion of infantry which Bassecourt sent down in haste from the redoubt behind the bridge. A fierce charge of Caulaincourt’s dragoons dispersed and routed the Spanish horse; after they had been driven off the victors turned upon the battalion, which tried to form square on their approach, but was late in finishing its manœuvre. It was assailed before the rear side had been formed, broken up, and cut to pieces.

Soult had thus gained a precious half-hour, during which the remainder of his cavalry, squadron after squadron, came pouring over the ford, and began to form up on the southern bank. When several regiments had passed he also let loose the infantry brigade which was to attack the bridge. So narrow was the approach that only a single battalion (the 1st of the 40th of the line) could deliver the assault. But the _tirailleur_ companies of several other battalions, and two batteries of horse artillery, opened a lateral fire from various points of the northern bank, to distract the Spaniards from the frontal attack. The fraction of Bassecourt’s division which was in position at the bridge and the redoubt had already been completely cowed by seeing Lahoussaye’s cavalry forming up in their flank and rear. If they waited to resist the infantry attack, it was clear that they would be cut off from their sole line of retreat by the dragoons. They abandoned their positions after firing a couple of scattering volleys, and fled eastward along the river bank towards the village of Azutan. The heavy guns in the redoubt were left behind, and fell into the hands of Caulaincourt. Girard’s infantry was therefore able to cross the river almost without loss, two regiments at the bridge, two at the ford which the cavalry had already utilized. A few men were drowned in the second column, having strayed into deep water by swerving to the right or left of the proper route.

Meanwhile Albuquerque’s horse and Bassecourt’s second brigade, roused from their ill-timed siesta, were pouring out of the villages which had sheltered them from the noontide heat. The infantry--four battalions apparently--drew up beside a wood, on the slope a mile above the bridge, and waited to be attacked. The cavalry, however, came on in one great mass, and charged down upon Lahoussaye’s division, which was covering the deployment of the rest of the French horse. Albuquerque’s only thought was to engage the enemy before he had succeeded in passing the whole of his squadrons over the ford. Vainly hoping to atone for his previous slackness by haste that came too late, he had hurried his five regiments forward as soon as the men could saddle and bridle their horses. Fractions of the different corps were mixed together, and no proper first or second line had been formed. The whole mass--some 2,500 sabres--in great disorder, galloped down upon the two brigades of Lahoussaye, and engaged them for a short time. But Lorges’ dragoons and part of Soult’s light horse were now at hand to aid the leading division; the Spaniards were beset in flank as well as in front, and broke after the first shock. Albuquerque, who showed plenty of useless personal courage, tried in vain to rally them on the 2nd Estremaduran Hussars, the only regiment which remained intact. It was borne away by the backrush of the rest, and scattering over the hillsides the whole body fled westward and northward, some towards Peraleda de Garbin, others towards Pedrosa. Bassecourt’s infantry went off to the rear as soon as they saw their comrades routed, and took to the hills. By keeping to rocky ground they suffered comparatively little loss.

The French urged the pursuit of Albuquerque’s fugitive horsemen for many miles, chasing them as far as the defile of La Estrella in the Sierra de Guadalupe in one direction, and beyond Val de la Casa in the other. On the latter road the chase only ceased when the dragoons came upon the divisions of Henestrosa and Zayas, from Cuesta’s main army, drawn up across their path. The losses of the Spaniards were very considerable--600 men and 400 horses were captured, and over 800 killed and wounded. One flag was taken, that of the regiment cut to pieces by Lahoussaye’s dragoons at the commencement of the fighting. The pieces in the redoubt, and the divisional battery of Albuquerque, 16 guns in all, were lost. By an additional mischance the French also recovered fourteen of their own seventeen guns that had been taken at Talavera. Cuesta had not been able to utilize these pieces for want of gunners: they were trailing along in the rear of his army, very indifferently horsed, when the French dragoons swept along the road to Peraleda. On the approach of the pursuers they were abandoned by the wayside. This capture enabled Soult to assert that he had taken in all 30 cannon, and emboldened Sebastiani, a few weeks later, to declare that he had never lost his guns at Talavera[720]. Having recovered them he could exhibit them--all save two or three--in evidence of his mendacious statement.

[720] The fact that these guns were actually French explains
Le Noble’s statement that the captured pieces were largely ‘de
modèle français.’ Napier has a strange statement, whose source
I cannot discover, to the effect that ‘Cuesta on his march to
Meza d’Ibor left fifteen guns upon the road, which Albuquerque’s
flight uncovered. A trumpeter attending an English flag of truce
treacherously or foolishly made known the fact to the French, who
immediately sent cavalry to fetch them off.’ Napier, ii. 189.

Soult declared in his official report that his cavalry had lost only 28 killed and 83 wounded, his artillery 4 wounded, his infantry hardly a man, save some few drowned at the ford.

The rout of the Spanish rearguard and the capture of the bridge of Arzobispo gave Soult a foothold on the southern bank of the Tagus, but little more. The road by which he could now advance against the allies was detestable--we have already seen how its cliffs and ravines had tried the British and the Estremaduran armies. To reach Cuesta’s new position on the Meza de Ibor the Duke of Dalmatia would have had to make a two days’ march through these defiles, dragging his guns with him. His cavalry he would have been forced to leave behind him, as there would have been no means of employing it in the mountains. Meanwhile Wellesley had established himself in the ground which he had selected behind the broken bridge of Almaraz, and Cuesta had got the whole of his infantry and half his artillery over the Ibor stream and arrayed them on the Meza, where the rocky slopes are impregnable against a frontal attack, if the defending army shows ordinary determination[721]. All through the ninth and the morning of the tenth the Spaniards were dragging the rest of their guns and their baggage up the steep zigzag path between the river and the summit of the plateau, and it was not till the end of the latter day that everything was in position. It is probable therefore that if Soult had pressed his pursuit with all possible speed, he might have captured some of the Spanish _impedimenta_ on the morning of the tenth. But there were defiles between Peraleda and the Ibor river where Cuesta’s rearguard might possibly have detained him till the guns and baggage were in safety[722].

[721] It will he remembered that on March 17, Victor turned Del
Parque’s division out of the Meza de Ibor position. But the
latter had only 5,000 men, not enough to man the whole line,
while the Duke of Belluno had two divisions for the frontal
attack, and turned the Meza with another, that of Villatte.
Cuesta had 30,000 men and more, quite sufficient to hold the
entire position.

[722] Wellesley went to visit his allies on the Meza upon the
morning of Aug. 10, and found that half the guns and baggage had
been dragged up on the ninth, but that there was still a great
accumulation at the foot of the steep slope, between the Ibor
river and the lower edge of the plateau. He was in great distress
at the notion that the French might come up at any moment, drive
in the rearguard, and capture the rear sections of the Spanish
train; see _Wellington Dispatches_, v. 22, to Lord Wellesley,
from Deleytosa, Aug. 10.

The Duke of Dalmatia, however, paused at the bridge of Arzobispo before committing himself to a second advance against the allies. He was averse to making an isolated attack upon the admirable position now occupied by the Estremaduran army, and wished to combine it with a simultaneous assault upon the British. It will be remembered that he had detached Ney’s corps from the rear of his line of march, and ordered it to attempt the passage of the Tagus at Almaraz, by the ford which he knew to exist close to the ruined bridge. He also wrote to Victor to desire him to push forward the two infantry divisions which had crossed the river at Talavera, and to direct them on Mohedas and Alia, so as to turn Cuesta’s flank by a long circuitous march among the rugged summits of the Sierra de Guadalupe.

Neither of these subsidiary movements was carried out. One division of Ney’s corps, and Fournier’s brigade of dragoons reached Almaraz on Aug. 8: the other division and the light cavalry had followed the 2nd Corps so closely that it had passed Navalmoral on its way eastward, and had to make a long counter-march. It was not till the ninth or tenth therefore that the Duke of Elchingen would have been in a position to attempt the passage of the Tagus. Craufurd’s detachment had been established at Mirabete, behind the broken bridge, since Aug. 6, and two days later the main body of the British army had reached Deleytosa, where it was within a few hours’ march of the vanguard, and perfectly ready to support it. If Ney had endeavoured to pass the Tagus on the ninth or tenth with his 12,500 men, it is clear that the head of his column must have been destroyed, for the ford was narrow and difficult, and indeed barely passable for infantry even in the middle of August[723]. But the Marshal did not even attempt the passage, for the simple reason that his intelligence officers failed to discover the ford, and reported to him that none existed. He sent word to Soult that the scheme was impracticable, and drawing back from the water’s edge concentrated his whole corps at Navalmoral [Aug. 9].

[723] From Soult’s dispatch of Aug. 13, it appears that a Colonel
Ornano, with a regiment of dragoons, was detailed to examine the
banks of the Tagus in search of the ford, but failed to find
it. The cause is not hard to seek, for it crosses the river
diagonally on a narrow shelf of rock with deep water on either
side. It is not less than four feet deep, and Leach of the 95th,
who was on guard at its southern end, describes it as ‘not
exactly practicable for infantry even at the driest season of
the year’ (p. 94). The English, knowing its exact course, were
established in positions from which they could concentrate upon
it in a few minutes. We may rationally suppose, therefore, that
Ney would have found the Tagus not less difficult to pass on Aug.
9, than the Oitaben had been on June 8.

Victor, at the other end of the French line, showed no desire to adventure his infantry among the defiles of the Sierra de Guadalupe, without guns or cavalry, and refused to move up into the mountains in order to turn Cuesta’s right flank. Thus the whole plan concerted by the Duke of Dalmatia for a general attack on the allies came to an ignominious conclusion.

It would appear, indeed, that his chance of inflicting a serious blow on the enemy had passed away long ere he brought the 2nd and 5th Corps down to the bridge of Arzobispo. It was on the fifth, when Mortier refused to close with Cuesta and allowed him to withdraw across the Tagus, that Soult had lost his best opportunity. On that day the Spaniards were still on the wrong side of the river, and the British vanguard had not yet reached the broken bridge of Almaraz. If Mortier had engaged the army of Cuesta, and Ney had found and attacked the ford at Almaraz before Craufurd’s arrival, the position of the allies would have been forlorn indeed. But on the fifth Soult had not yet discovered the real position of affairs; and the head of Ney’s corps was only just debouching from Plasencia, two long marches from Almaraz. In short ‘the fog of war,’ as a modern writer has happily called it, was still lying thick about the combatants, and Soult’s best chance was gone before he was even aware of it.

On August 9, matters looked far less promising, even though the bridge of Arzobispo had been won. Since Ney sent word that he could not cross at Almaraz, while Victor declined to commit himself to any schemes for an advance into the eastern mountains, Soult saw that he must construct another scheme of operations. His own preference was for a march into Portugal by way of Coria and Castello Branco. Such an attack upon Wellesley’s base, made by the 50,000 men of the 2nd, 5th, and 6th Corps, would compel the British to abandon Almaraz, to give up their connexion with Cuesta, and to march in haste by Truxillo, Caceres, and Portalegre on Abrantes, in order to cover Lisbon. It was even possible that, if the invading army made great haste, it might reach Abrantes before the British: in that case Wellesley would be forced to keep to the southern bank of the Tagus and cross it at Santarem, comparatively close to the capital. Thus all Central Portugal might be won without a battle, and Lisbon itself might fall ere the campaign ended, since the 20,000 men of the British general, even when aided by the local levies, could not (as Soult supposed) hold back three French _corps d’armée_[724]. There was another alternative possible--to march not on Lisbon but on Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, and to invade Portugal by the northern road. But this plan would take a longer time to execute, and promised less decisive results.

[724] Soult to Joseph, Aug. 9, from Arzobispo: ‘Je serai disposé
soit à marcher sur Lisbonne pour détruire les établissements
anglais avant que leur armée ne puisse y arriver, et à lui rendre
son embarquement difficile, soit à marcher sur Ciudad Rodrigo
pour en faire le siège.... Dans le cas du premier mouvement (qui
produira infailliblement de grands résultats) j’aurai l’honneur
de prier V. M. d’avoir la bonté de faire connaître à MM. les
maréchaux ducs de Trévise et d’Elchingen que telle est son
intention, afin que toute observation soit ainsi prévenue, et
qu’on ne puisse m’attribuer aucun sentiment d’amour-propre.’

But even before the combat of Arzobispo had taken place, Joseph and Jourdan had determined that they would not permit Soult to carry out any schemes of advance against Portugal. They could show very good grounds for their decision. If the Duke of Dalmatia marched off to attack Lisbon, he would leave the 1st and 4th Corps and the King’s reserve,--less than 50,000 men in all, after the losses of Talavera,--opposed to Cuesta, Wellesley, and Venegas, who between them would have at least 75,000[725]. If the British army should refuse to be drawn away towards Portugal, and should recross the Tagus at Almaraz with Cuesta in its wake, the situation would be deplorable. Victor would be exposed, just as he had been on July 22 and 23, to a joint attack from the two armies. And on this occasion Sebastiani and the King would not be able to bring him help, for they were now closely engaged with Venegas near Aranjuez. If they moved away from the front of the army of La Mancha, Madrid would be lost in two days. If they did not so move, Wellesley and Cuesta might crush Victor, or drive him away on some eccentric line of retreat which would uncover the capital. Jourdan therefore, writing in the name of Joseph, had informed Soult in a dispatch dated Aug. 8, that it was impossible to permit him to march on Portugal, as his departure would uncover Madrid and probably bring about a fatal disaster. He also urged that the exhaustion of the troops rendered a halt necessary, and that it would be impossible to feed them, if they advanced into the stony wilderness on the borders of Portugal before they had collected magazines. For the present the King would be contented to keep the allies in check, without seeking to attack or disperse them, until the weather began to grow cooler and the troops had rested from their fatigues.

[725] Joseph, exaggerating the enemy’s force, was under the
impression that they had fully 100,000 men: see his letter to
Napoleon of July 31.

As if intending to put it out of Soult’s power to undertake his projected expedition into Portugal, Jourdan and Joseph now proceeded to deprive him of the control of one of his three army corps. They authorized Ney to recross the mountains and to return to Salamanca, in order to protect the plains of Leon from the incursions of the Spaniards of Galicia. Deprived of such a large section of his army, Soult would be unable to march against Abrantes, as he so much desired to do. There were good military reasons, too, for sending off Ney in this direction: Kellermann kept reporting that La Romana was on the move, and that unless promptly succoured he should find himself obliged to abandon Benavente and Zamora and to fall back on Valladolid. The Spaniards from Ciudad Rodrigo had already taken the offensive, and Del Parque’s advanced guard had even seized Salamanca.

Ney accepted with alacrity the chance of withdrawing himself from the immediate control of his old enemy Soult; he received his permission to return to Leon on Aug. 9: on the tenth his whole corps was on the move, and on the eleventh he had retired to Plasencia. On the following day he plunged into the passes and made for Salamanca with all possible speed[726].

[726] Ney has been accused of deserting Soult, and retiring
from Almaraz and Navalmoral on his own responsibility, and
contrary to the orders of his immediate superior. But Jourdan’s
dispatch of Aug. 9 to the Minister of War shows that the Duke
of Elchingen was obeying directions sent to him from the royal
head quarters. ‘Le roi a pensé,’ he writes, ‘qu’on ne devait
pas, quant à présent, chercher à pénétrer ni en Andalousie ni en
Portugal.... Le duc de Dalmatie renverra promptement le 6me corps
sur Salamanque pour en chasser les ennemis, et couvrir la Vieille
Castille conjointement avec le Général Kellermann.’ Ney then was
strictly correct in stating in his dispatch of Aug. 18, that he
had acted in obedience to his orders.

While the 6th Corps was dispatched to the north, the King directed Soult to take up, with the rest of his troops, a defensive position opposite the allied armies on the central Tagus. The 2nd Corps was to occupy Plasencia, the 5th to watch the passages at Almaraz and Arzobispo, while keeping a detachment at Talavera. Thus all Soult’s plans for an active campaign were shattered, and he was told off to act as a ‘containing force.’ Meanwhile Joseph drew Victor and the 1st Corps away from Talavera, towards Toledo and La Mancha, with the intention of bringing them into play against Venegas. For just as Soult had always ‘an eye on Portugal,’ so Joseph had always ‘an eye on Madrid.’ He could not feel secure so long as a Spanish army lay near Toledo or Aranjuez, only two marches from the gates of his capital, and was determined to dislodge it from this threatening position before taking any other operation in hand. He had accepted as true rumours to the effect that part of Cuesta’s troops had retired in the direction of Ocaña[727] to join the army of La Mancha, and even that 6,000 British[728] had been detached in this same direction. Thus he had persuaded himself that Venegas had 40,000 men, and was desirous of drawing in Victor to his head quarters before delivering his attack, thinking that Sebastiani and the central reserve would be too weak for the task.

[727] Joseph to Napoleon, from Valdemoro, August 7.

[728] Jourdan to Belliard, from Bargas, August 8.