LV. 1808. conqueror. His entry into Naples was as great a scene of CHAP. triumph, felicitations, and enthusiasm, as that of Joseph had been. Shortly afterwards, however, he gave proof of the vigour which was to attend at least his military operations, by a successful expedition against the island of Capri, which the English had held for three years, but Montg. vi. now yielded with a small garrison under Sir Hudson tens, Sup. i. Lowe, which capitulated, and was sent back to England, vii. 149. to a vigorous and well-conceived attack from the French 237, 239. forces.1 1 365. Mar 106. Thib. Bot. iv. 14. returns to the Ebro. Secured by the conferences at Erfurth from all danger in his rear, Napoleon speedily returned to Paris; and, Napoleon after presiding over the opening of the legislative assembly, Paris, and then resolved, with his wonted vigour, to set out for the for Pyrenees. He was determined by a sudden attack to dis- Atlas, perse the Spanish armaments and capture Madrid, before Plate 48. either the English auxiliaries could acquire a solid footing in the Peninsula, or Austria could gain time to put in motion the extensive armaments she was preparing on the Danube. Leaving Paris in the end of October, he arrived Oct. 29. at Bayonne on the 3d November, and immediately dis- Nov. 3. posed his forces for active operations. The effect of the vigorous exertions which he had made to strengthen his armies in that quarter was now beginning to display itself. The fifty thousand soldiers who in the middle of August were concentrated on the Ebro, dejected by disaster, had swelled by the end of September, as if by enchantment, to ninety thousand men present under arms in Navarre, besides twenty thousand, under St Cyr, in Catalonia. This body, already so formidable, subsequently received vast accessions of force from the troops arriving from Germany, especially the Imperial Guard, and the corps of Nap. i. Soult, Ney, and Mortier, all of which were veterans from Thib. vii. the Grand Army, confident in themselves, and inured to 119. victory.2 During the whole of October, the road from Bayonne to Vitoria was crowded with horsemen and carriages; 361, 363. 156. Tor. ii. 1808. muster in Navarre. CHAP. through every opening in the Pyrenees, foot-soldiers were LV. pouring in endless multitudes to reinforce the grand Conformably to his general custom, Immense Napoleon divided the whole army into eight corps, collected by commanded by as many marshals, whose names, already Napoleon. rendered immortal in the rolls of fame, seemed a sure 15. force there presage to victory.* Their united force, when the Emperor took the field in the beginning of November, was not less than three hundred thousand men, of whom fully forty thousand were cavalry; and they comprehended above a hundred and twenty thousand of the Grand Army. After deducting the troops in Catalonia, and those which required to be maintained in garrison in the northern fortresses, and the sick and absent, at least a hundred and eighty thousand could be relied on for offensive operations on the Ebro. But the magnitude of this force, great as it was, constituted the least formidable part of its character. It was its incomparable discipline, spirit, and equipment, the skill and vigour of its officers, the docility and experience of its soldiers, the central and impregnable position which it occupied among the mountains of Navarre, and the unity of design which it was 1 Tor. ii. 119. well known would soon be communicated to its operations Napier, i. 361, 362, by the consummate talents of Napoleon, which constituted ii. 386, 387. its real strength, and rendered the friends of freedom in Europe justly fearful of the collision of such a host with the divided and inexperienced armies of the Spanish provinces.1+ 377. South. Thib. vii. 150, 152. Thiers, ix. 350, 352. * First corps, Victor, Duke of Belluno, 33,937 Second corps, Bessières, Duke of Istria, afterwards Soult, Duke Before assuming the command of the army, Napoleon had said, in his LV. 1808. 16. and strength Spaniards. These armies, though very numerous on paper, and in CHAP. considerable strength in the field, were far from being in a situation, either from discipline, equipment, or position, to make head against so formidable an enemy. The Spa- Positions nish troops were divided into three armies; that of the of the right under Palafox, consisting of eighteen thousand infantry and five hundred horse, occupied the country between Saragossa and Sanguessa, and was composed almost entirely of Aragonese and Valencians. The centre, under Castanos, which boasted of the victors of Baylen in its ranks, was twenty-eight thousand strong, including thirteen hundred horse, and had thirty-six pieces of cannon; it lay at Tarazona and Agreda, right opposite to the centre of the French position. The left, under Blake, thirty thousand in number, almost entirely Galicians, but with hardly any cavalry, and only twenty-six guns, was stationed on the rocky mountains near Reynosa, from whence the Ebro takes it rise. Thus, seventy-four thousand infantry, and two thousand horse, with eighty-six guns, were all that the Spaniards could rely upon for immediate operations on the Ebro; for although considerable reserves were collecting in the rear, yet they were too far from the scene of action, and their discipline and equipment were not in a sufficient state of forwardness to permit of their either arriving in time at the theatre of conflict, or taking any useful part in it, if they were there.* Seventy-four thousand Spanish infantry and two thousand Spanish cavalry could never be considered a match for a opening address to the legislative body at Paris, "In a few days I shall set out to place myself at the head of my army, and, with the aid of God, crown at Madrid the King of Spain, and plant my eagles on the towers of Lisbon !”— Discourse, 25th Oct. 1808; Moniteur, 26th Oct. 1808; and THIB. vii. 86. And Imperial Muster-Rolls, NAPIER, i. 88, Appendix. * These reserves were stated to be as follows; but they were all distant from the scene of action, and had, for the most part, hardly acquired the rudiments of the military art : Castilians at Segovia, about 150 miles in the rear, Estremadurans at Talavera, Andalusians in la Mancha, Asturians in reserve at Llanes, 12,000 13,000 14,000 18,000 Total, 57,000 LV. 1808. CHAP. hundred and fifty thousand French foot, and thirty thousand horse, even under the most favourable circumstances. Least of all could they be relied on, when the French occupied a central position, defended by almost inaccessible mountains, and were guided by one commander of consummate abilities; while their undisciplined antagonists, 1 Nap.i.362, Scattered over a circumference two hundred miles in 103, 104. length, and separated from each other by deep ravines, Trapid rivers, and impassable ridges, were under the comTor. ii. 180. mand of different and independent generals, jealous of each other, and gifted with comparatively moderate military talents.1 152, Thiers, ix. 384, 385. 17. tion, and the British army. The British forces, it is true, under Sir John Moore March, posi- and Sir David Baird, were rapidly approaching the scene strength of of action; but their distance, notwithstanding all their efforts, was still such as to preclude the hope of their being in a situation to render any effectual assistance. Sir John Moore's forces, which set out on their march from Lisbon, as already mentioned, in the end of October, had broken, for the sake of procuring better roads for the artillery and waggon-train, into two columns; and while the main body, under Sir John in person, followed the direct roads by Coimbra and Abrantes to Almeida, and Ciudad Rodrigo, a lesser division, but with the reserve, the cavalry, and most of the guns under General Hope, took the more circuitous route by Elvas, Badajos, Talavera, and Madrid. It was not, however, till the 8th November that this heavily encumbered corps reached the Spanish frontier, and on the 27th of the same month that it crossed the Guadarrama mountains, before which time the fate of all the Spanish armies on the Ebro had been sealed. Meanwhile, on the 11th, Sir John Moore himself crossed the Spanish frontier, and, on the 18th, had collected the bulk of his forces at Salamanca; but Sir David Nap. 425, Baird, who had landed at Corunna on the 13th October, i. 181, 185. had only, by great exertion, succeeded in reaching Astorga 470. in Leon, four days' march from Salamanca, on the 20th Nov. 8. Nov. 27. Oct. 13. 431. Lond. South, ii. November.2 LV. 1808. 18. division of and Spanish also troops. Thus the British army, not in all more than thirty CHAP. thousand strong, was split into three divisions, severally stationed at the Escurial, Salamanca, and Astorga, distant eighty or a hundred miles from each other, and without Deplorable any common base or line of operations; and the Spa- the British niards, a hundred miles further in advance, were divided into three armies, separated by like distances from each other; while Napoleon lay with a hundred and eighty thousand veteran troops clustered round the basin of Vitoria. It was easy to see that the allies, exhibiting in this respect a melancholy contrast to their antagonists, were but novices in the art of war, and signally ignorant of the importance of time in its combinations; and that the English in particular, inheriting too 470. Nap.i. much of the character of their Saxon ancestors, were, 181, like Athelstane the Unready, still unprepared to strike 189. till the moment for decisive operations had passed.1* Napoleon, who was well aware of the importance of * These observations apply to those having the general direction of the Allied campaign, and especially the English government, who, at this period were far from being adequately impressed with the vital importance of time in war. Their instructions for the campaign were dated so late as October 6. Both the gallant generals intrusted with the direction of the English army pressed forward with all imaginable expedition after they received them; and Sir John Moore in particular, as it will appear in the sequel, with mournful resolution, began an important advance under circumstances which, to all but a soldier of honour, were utterly desperate. It was impossible for him to commence operations before the junction with Sir David Baird, which did not take place till the end of November. But still, in all concerned, there was at this period an evident want of the vigour and expedition requisite for success in war. Napoleon would never have permitted the main English army to have lingered inactive at Lisbon from the end of August, when the Convention of Cintra was concluded, till the middle of October, when the march for Spain commenced, nor delayed the British expedition under Sir David Baird till it reached the Spanish shores for the first time on the 13th of that month. But these were the faults of government. The greatest error, in a military point of view, of Sir John Moore, was separating the artillery from the infantry and cavalry in the advance into Spain. For this oblivion of the first rule of military movements-viz. to station each portion of the army so that its different arms may, in case of need, support and aid each other, it is hardly possible to find any excuse. It is difficult to conceive how the direct road by Almeida could at that period have been impassable for artillery and waggons, when it had so recently before been traversed by Junot with all his army, and was ever after the great line of military communication which the Duke of Wellington made use of from the capital to the frontier; and, at any rate, if the passage at that period was impracticable for the guns, that might have been a good reason for 1 South, ii. 425, 431. |