Free The Age of Elegance by Arthur Bryant Page A

less, he brought them back with few casualties to the Douro in five days. Here he intended to stand, facing northwards across the river, while Hill, a hundred miles to the south on the other side of the Guadar ramas, faced southwards across the Tagus to keep Joseph and Soult from Madrid. With 55,000 Anglo-Portuguese and 25,000 Spaniards operating on interior lines, there seemed at least a hope of being able to hold the summer's gains and prevent the 50,000 men of the French Armies of Portugal and the North from uniting with the 60,000 of the Armies of the South and Centre.
    But that autumn Wellington's star was not in the ascendant. He failed to hold the Douro because, during the evening of October 29th, a party of French volunteers with splendid daring swam across what was thought to be an impassable reach near-the shattered bridge at Tordesillas and surprised and routed a regiment of German infantry, thus enabling Foy's sappers to get a pontoon bridge across the flooded stream. And Hill was unable to hold the Tagus because die autumnal rains which had set in with such violence north of the Guadarramas had still to fall in New Castile. Not only did the rivers south of Madrid fail as a result to bar Soult's and Joseph's advance, but General Ballasteros, the erratic commander of Spain's southern army, omitted, in a fit of sulks, to make his promised move against the French flank in La Mancha. Both halves of the British army were thus forced into the open, and both, being outnumbered —particularly in cavalry—were left with no alternative but retreat.
    1 In England the equinoctial gales that stormy October strewed the Channel with wrecks, and the Thames at Westminster rose so high that it flowed into Westminster Hall. See Colchester, 11, 466-7; Daniell, I, 106.
    Ordering Hill to blow up the Retiro and cross the Guadarramas to join him, Wellington prepared to fall back on Salamanca. On the last day of October the British marched out of Madrid, watched by reproachful multitudes. Then, knowing there was an end to peace and pleasure so long as a Frenchman remained in Spain, the men, bronzed and strapped under their packs, swung out in the familiar columns towards the snow-capped mountains. "A splendid sight it was," wrote Bell, "to see so grand an army winding its way zig-zag up the long pass so far as the eye could see. The old trade was going on, killing and slaying and capturing our daily bread." On either side of the track lay dead beasts and murdered peasants, slain no one knew how or by whom. Spain was like that.
    As soon as Hill was through the Guadarrama, Wellington resumed his retreat, their roads converging. By November 9th 30,000 British and Germans, 20,000 Portuguese and 25,000 Spaniards were concentrated on the Tormes in front of Salamanca, while 50,000 Frenchmen moved cautiously against them from the north-east and 60,000 from the south-east. With perfect judgment Wellington had brought the two halves of his army back two hundred miles in the face of a superior enemy without losing a gun and hardly a prisoner. It would have been possible for him at that moment to throw his united force against either of his still divided adversaries. There was not a man in the British ranks who did not hope and believe that he would. But without counting the Spaniards who, through lack of discipline, were still almost impossible to manoeuvre, Wellington had not sufficient men to win a decisive victory over either French army—to one of which, without the Spaniards, he was inferior, and to the other about equal. And in the event of victory over one adversary, he would still, with depleted ranks, have had to encounter the other; while, had he failed, he must have been crushed between their approaching pincers. True, therefore, to his unchanging principle, he avoided needless risks and, allowing the French to join armies—that grand concentration which he had so long and successfully avoided—awaited their attack in one of his usual