Free The Age of Elegance by Arthur Bryant

For if he could barricade them out of central Spain and return to Madrid in October, he might, with Hill's aid and his interior lines, be able to fend off Soult and Joseph, especially if the Spanish Army of Murcia and the British expedition from Sicily, which had now landed at Alicante, continued to keep Suchet occupied.
    Yet he was under no illusions. With less than 80,000 troops of mixed nationality, half of them operating north of the Guadarramas and the other half a hundred and fifty miles away on the Tagus, he had to face an attack before the winter by two French armies from the north, and two—possibly three—from the south. For his very success had exposed him to the danger he had hitherto contrived to avoid— a concentric movement of all the French forces in the Peninsula. Beyond that lay a still worse threat: the return of Napoleon and a victorious Grande Armee from Russia. The news from the east was ominous: the Emperor, overcoming all resistance, was driving towards Moscow at tremendous speed to compel the Czar's surrender before the winter. "Though I still hope to be able to maintain our position in Castile and even to improve our strength," Wellington wrote to his brother on August 23 rd, "I shudder when I reflect upon the enormity of the task which I have undertaken, with inadequate powers myself to do anything and without assistance of any kind from the Spaniards. ... If by any chance I should be overwhelmed or should be obliged to retire, what will the world say? What will the people of England say?"
    On September 16th, having marched another hundred and sixty miles, he appeared before Burgos with four of his eight divisions. Two days earlier Napoleon had entered Moscow after defeating the Russians in a great battle at Borodino. About the same time Soult, who had at last abandoned Seville and his lines before Cadiz, sulkily set out from Granada with 45,000 troops to join King Joseph and Suchet in Valencia. Meanwhile the guerrilleros, intoxicated by their successes, began to congregate in the liberated cities to plunder and murder collaborators. Their pressure on the French, therefore, relaxed.
    The attack on Burgos castle did not go as Wellington had intended. Despite the lessons of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, he had underestimated the strength of the place, and failed, until it was too late, to order up enough heavy artillery. Nor had the sappers for whom he had asked yet reached him from England. As before, he had to use storming parties to do the work of guns and mines. Yet, shaken by the casualties of Badajoz, he did not dare to use them decisively. After losing 2000 men in five minor assaults, he was forced on October 21st to abandon the siege. By that date not only were the French Armies of Portugal and the North, half again as strong as his own, marching to the fortress's relief, but Soult and Joseph with 60,000 men were threatening Madrid from Valencia. The British were in danger of being crushed between the upper and nether millstones.
    In victory Wellington had displayed some of the weaknesses of his country. He had been a little too easy-going and sanguine, and had shown signs, most unusual in him, of preferring to hope for, rather than to ensure, success. But when the storm broke he acted with wonderful resolution and presence of mind. Years later, when asked what was the test of a great general, he replied, "To know when to retreat and to dare to do it." Marching his men in silence through the streets of Burgos on the night of October 21st, he gained a day on the relieving army before the French were aware that he had gone. Yet, with 6000 cavalry to his own 1300 dragoons, they were able to press him very hard. The weather, too, turned against him, making muddy rivers of the primitive Castilian roads. 1 His men were weakened by sickness and sulky at having to withdraw; in the little wine town of Torquemada 12,000 of them broke into the wine vaults with the usual disgraceful results. None the