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Another random document with
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amount from an army which had 260,000 men on its rolls, and
212,000 actually under the colours.
But this was only a commencement. It was more important that
the Armies of the South and Catalonia were to contribute a large
number of cadres to the new Grande Armée. Those of Portugal,
Aragon, the Centre, and the North were at first less in question,
because their regiments were, on the average, not so strong as
those of the other two. The Army of the South was specially affected,
because its units were (and always had been) very large regiments.
In 1812 Soult’s infantry corps nearly all had three battalions—a few
four. Similarly with the cavalry, many regiments had four squadrons,
none less than three. The edict of January 4th ordered that each
infantry regiment should send back to France the full cadre of
officers and non-commissioned officers for one battalion, with a
skeleton cadre of men, cutting down the number of battalions
present with the eagle by one, and drafting the surplus rank and file
of the subtracted battalion into those remaining in Spain. The cadre
was roughly calculated out to 120 of all ranks. When, therefore, the
system was applied to the Army of the South, it was cut down from
57 battalions to 36 in its 19 regiments[368]. The 21 cadres took off to
France 2,500 officers and men. Similarly 15 cavalry regiments, in 50
squadrons, were to send 12 squadron-cadres to France, some 600
sabres.
The small Army of Catalonia was to contribute a battalion-cadre
from each of those of its regiments which had three or more
battalions—which would give six more cadres for Germany.
The Armies of Portugal, Aragon, and the Centre were mainly
composed of regiments having only two battalions—they were
therefore for the present left comparatively untouched. The first
named was only ordered to give up one battalion-cadre, the second
two, the third three (all from Palombini’s Italian division). Of cavalry
the Army of Portugal only gave up one squadron-cadre, the Army of
the Centre three.
In addition, the small number of foreign auxiliary troops still left in
Spain were ordered back to France, save the remnant of Palombini’s
and Severoli’s Italians and the Rheinbund units[369] in the Army of the
Centre, viz. the 7th Polish Lancers (the last regiment of troops of this
nationality left south of the Pyrenees), the Westphalian horse in the
Army of the Centre, and the Berg and Westphalian infantry in
Catalonia. Moreover, the brigade of the Young Guard in the Army of
the North (that of Dumoustier) and the three naval battalions from
Cadiz, which had served so long in the Army of the South, were to
come home, also four batteries of French horse-artillery and two of
Westphalian field artillery. Lastly, cadres being as necessary for the
military train as for any other branch of the service, all the armies
were to send home every dismounted man of this corps. The same
rule was applied to the Équipages militaires and the Artillery Park.
This whole deduction from the Army of Spain under these heads
came to nearly 12,000 soldiers of all arms, over and above these
cadres.
There was an elaborate clause as to reorganizing the Army of the
North: in return for giving up four provisional regiments of drafts to
the Armies of Portugal and the South, it was to get three regiments
made over to it from the former, and one from the latter. Napoleon
calculated that it would lose nothing in numbers from the exchange,
but as a matter of fact it did. The drafts to be returned to their proper
corps ran to over 8,000 men. But General Reille, being told to
contribute three regiments to the Army of the North, selected the
three depleted units which had composed Thomières’ unlucky
division at the battle of Salamanca (the 1st, 62nd, and 101st), which
together did not make up 3,000 bayonets[370], though Gazan chose to
make over the 64th, a three-battalion regiment with 1,600 men. The
Army of the North, therefore, lost nearly 3,000 men on the balance of
the exchange, though the Emperor was aware that it was already too
weak for the task set it. But he probably considered that Palombini’s
Italians, detached (as we have already seen[371]) from the Army of
the Centre, would make up the difference.
In addition to the squadron-cadres which he requisitioned on
January 4th, the Emperor had a further intention of bringing back to
Central Europe some complete units of heavy cavalry, to furnish the
host now collecting in Germany with the horsemen in which it was so
notoriously deficient. The whole of the dragoon-division of Boyer in
the Army of Portugal is marked in the March returns with ordre de
rentrer en France; so are several dragoon regiments in the Army of
the South. But as a matter of fact hardly one of them had started for
the Pyrenees by May[372], so that both in the Army of Portugal and
the Army of the South the cavalry total was only a few hundreds
smaller at the time of the opening of the campaign of Vittoria than it
had been at the New Year—the shrinkage amounting to no more
than the squadron-cadres and the few men for the Imperial Guard.
The Emperor’s intentions, therefore, as they became known to
King Joseph and Jourdan on February 16th, left the three armies
opposed to Wellington some 15,000 men smaller than they had been
at the time of the Burgos retreat; but this was a very modest
deduction considering their size, and still kept nearly 100,000 men in
Castile and Leon, over and above the Army of the North, which
might be considered as tied down to its own duty of suppressing the
rising in Biscay and Navarre, and incapable of sparing any help to its
neighbours. When we reflect on the scale of the Russian disaster,
the demand made upon the Army of Spain seems very moderate.
But there were two ominous doubts. Would the Emperor be content
with his original requisitions in men and horses from the armies of
Spain? And what exactly did he mean by the phrase that the King
would have to lend appui et secours to the Army of the North, for the
destruction of the rebels beyond the Ebro? If this signified the
distraction of any large body of men from the forces left opposed to
Wellington, the situation would be uncomfortable. Both these doubts
soon developed into sinister certainties.
On receiving the Emperor’s original orders King Joseph hastened
to obey, though the removal of his court from Madrid to Valladolid
looked to him like the abandonment of his pose as King of Spain. He
ordered Soult’s successor, Gazan, to evacuate La Mancha, and to
draw back to the neighbourhood of Madrid, leaving a small
detachment of light troops about Toledo. The Army of the South also
took over the province of Avila from the Army of Portugal, and it was
intended that it should soon relieve the Army of the Centre in the
province of Segovia. For Joseph had made up his mind that any help
which he must give against the northern rebels should be furnished
by D’Erlon’s little army, which he would stretch out from Segovia
towards Burgos and the Ebro[373], and so take Mina and the
insurgents of Navarre in the rear. Early in March all these
movements were in progress, and (as we have seen in the last
chapter) were beginning to be reported to Wellington, who made
many deductions from them. Joseph himself transferred his head-
quarters to Valladolid on March 23rd, by which time the greater part
of the other changes had been carried out. The Emperor afterwards
criticized his brother’s delay of a whole month between the receipt of
his orders to decamp and his actual arrival at Valladolid. To this
Jourdan made the reply that it was useless to move the head-
quarters till the drawing in of the Army of the South had been
completed, and that the bringing in of such outlying units as
Daricau’s division from the province of Cuenca, and the transference
of the Army of the Centre northward, took much time[374].
Evacuations cannot be carried out at a day’s notice, when they
involve the moving of magazines and the calling in of a civil
administration.
On March 12th, while all the movements were in progress,
another batch of orders from Paris came to hand. They contained
details which upset the arrangements which the King was carrying
out, for the Emperor decided that the succour which was to be given
to the Army of the North was to be drawn from Reille’s Army, and not
from D’Erlon’s, so that a new series of counter-marches would have
to be carried out. And—what was more ominous for the future—
Napoleon had dropped once more into his old habit of sending
orders directly to subordinate generals, without passing them
through the head-quarters of the Army of Spain. For Clarke, in his
dispatch of February 3rd, informed the King that the Emperor had
sent Reille directions to detach a division to Navarre at once, ‘a
disposition which cannot conflict with any orders which your Majesty
may give to the Army of Portugal, for the common end of reducing to
submission the provinces of the North[375].’ Unfortunately this was
precisely what such an order did accomplish, for Joseph had sent
D’Erlon in the direction to which he now found that Reille had
simultaneously detached Barbot’s division of the Army of Portugal,
without any knowledge that D’Erlon had already been detailed for the
job.
The Emperor was falling back into the practice by which he had
in the preceding year ruined Marmont—the issuing of detailed orders
for the movement of troops, based on information a month old, it
being certain that the execution of these orders would take place an
additional three weeks after they had been formulated. As we shall
presently see, the initial successes of Wellington in his Vittoria
campaign were entirely due to the position in which the Army of
Portugal had placed itself, in obedience to Napoleon’s direct
instructions.
Meanwhile Clarke’s dispatch of February 2nd, conveying these
orders, arrived at the same moment as two others dated ten days
later[376], which were most unpleasant reading. The first contained an
absolutely insulting message to the King from his brother: ‘his
Imperial Majesty bids me say,’ wrote Clarke, ‘with regard to the
money for which you have asked in several recent letters, that all
funds necessary for the armies of Spain could have been got out of
the rich and fertile provinces which are being devastated by the
insurgent bands. By employing the activity and vigour needed to
establish order and tranquillity, the resources which they still possess
can be utilized. This is an additional motive for inducing your Majesty
to put an end to this war in the interior, which troubles peaceful
inhabitants, ruins the countryside, exhausts your armies, and
deprives them of the resources which they could enjoy if these fine
regions were in a peaceful state. Aragon and Navarre are to-day
under Mina’s law, and maintain this disastrous struggle with their
food and money. It is time to put an end to this state of affairs.’
Written apparently a few hours later than the dispatch quoted
above came another[377], setting forth the policy which was to be the
ruin of the French cause in Spain three months later. It is composed
of a series of wild miscalculations. When the head-quarters of the
Army of Spain should have been moved to Valladolid, it would be
possible to send the whole Army of Portugal to help the Army of the
North beyond the Ebro. ‘The Armies of the Centre and South,
occupying Salamanca and Valladolid, have sufficient strength to
keep the English in check, while waiting on events. Madrid and even
Valencia are of secondary importance. Valladolid and Salamanca
have become the essential points, between which there should be
distributed forces ready to take the offensive against the English,
and to wreck their plans. The Emperor is informed that they have
been reinforced in Portugal, and that they seem to have two
alternative schemes—either to make a push into Spain, or to send
out from the port of Lisbon an expedition of 25,000 men, partly
English, partly Spanish, which is to land somewhere on the French
coast, when the campaign shall have begun in Germany. To prevent
them engaging in this expedition, you must always be in a position to
march forward and to threaten to overrun Portugal and take Lisbon.
At the same time you must make the communications with France
safe and easy, by using the time of the English inactivity to subdue
Biscay and Navarre.... If the French armies in Spain remain idle, and
permit the English to send expeditions against our coast, the
tranquillity of France will be compromised, and the ruin of our cause
in Spain will infallibly follow.’
A supplementary letter to Jourdan of the same day recapitulates
all the above points, adding that the Army of Portugal must send to
Clausel, now Caffarelli’s successor in the North, as many troops as
are needed there, but that the King at the same time must menace
Portugal, so that Wellington shall not be able to detach men from his
Peninsular Army.
The fundamental error in all this is that, underrating Wellington’s
strength, Napoleon judged that the Armies of the South and Centre
could keep him in check. They were at this moment under 60,000 of
all arms: if the Army of Portugal were out of the way, they were
absolutely insufficient for the task set them. As to their menacing
Lisbon, Wellington would have liked nothing better than an advance
by them into Portugal, where he would have outnumbered them
hopelessly. The hypothesis that Wellington was about to send
25,000 men by sea for a landing inside the French Empire, on which
Napoleon lays so much stress, seems to have been formed on
erroneous information from French spies in London, who had heard
the rumour that a raid on Holland or Hanover was likely, or perhaps
even one aimed at La Vendée. For the royalist émigrés in England
had certainly been talking of such a plan, and pressing it upon Lord
Liverpool, as the dispatches of the latter to Wellington show[378]. The
Emperor did not know that all such schemes would be scouted by
the British Commander in Spain, and that he now possessed
influence enough with the Cabinet to stop them.
 It would appear that the Emperor’s intelligence from England
misled him in other ways: he was duly informed of the departure
from Lisbon of the depleted cavalry and infantry units, about which
Wellington disputed so much with the Duke of York, and the
deduction drawn was that the Peninsular Army was being
decreased. The exaggerated impression of the losses in the Burgos
retreat, which could be gathered from the Whig newspapers, led to
an underrating of the strength that the British Army would have in the
spring. Traitors from Cadiz wrote to Madrid that the friction between
the Regency and Wellington was so great, that it was doubtful
whether the new Generalissimo would have any real control over the
Spanish armies. And the sickness in both the British and the
Portuguese armies—bad as it was—was exaggerated by spies, so
wildly that the Emperor was under the delusion that Wellington could
not count on more than 30,000 British or 20,000 Portuguese troops
in the coming campaign. It may be worth while to quote at this point
the official view at Paris of the British army in Portugal, though the
words were written some time later, and only just before the news of
Wellington’s sudden advance on the Douro had come to hand:
‘In the position in which the enemy found himself there was no
reason to fear that he would take the offensive: his remoteness, his
lack of transport, his constant and timid caution in all operations out
of the ordinary line, all announced that we had complete liberty to act
as suited us best, without worry or inconvenience. I may add that the
ill feeling between English and Spaniards, the voyage of Lord
Wellington to Cadiz, the changes in his army, of which many
regiments have been sent back to England, were all favourable
circumstances allowing us to carry out fearlessly every movement
that the Emperor’s orders might dictate[379].’
It is only necessary to observe that Wellington was not more
remote from the French than they were from him: that he had
excellent transport—far better than his enemies ever enjoyed: that
timid caution was hardly the policy which stormed Badajoz or won
Salamanca: that his rapid and triumphant offensive was just starting
when the Minister of War wrote the egregious paragraph which we
have just cited. Persistent undervaluing of the resources and energy
of Wellington by Head-quarters at Paris—i.e. by the Emperor when
present, by the Minister of War in his absence—was at the roots of
the impending disaster.
Leaving the King newly established at Valladolid, the Army of the
South redistributing itself between Madrid and the Douro, the Army
of the Centre turning back from its projected march to Burgos in
order to reoccupy the province of Segovia, and the Army of Portugal
beginning to draw off from in front of Wellington troops to be sent to
the North, we must turn for a moment to explain the crisis in Navarre
and Biscay which was engrossing so much of Napoleon’s attention.
 SECTION XXXV: CHAPTER V
THE NORTHERN INSURRECTION.
FEBRUARY-MAY 1813

It has been explained in an earlier chapter that ever since

General Caffarelli concentrated all the available troops of the Army of
the North, in order to join Souham in driving away Wellington from the
siege of Burgos, the three Basque provinces, Navarre, and the coast-
land of Santander had been out of hand[380]. The outward and visible
sign of that fact was the intermittent stoppage of communication
between Bayonne and Madrid, which had so much irritated Napoleon
on his return from Russia. It was undoubtedly a just cause of anger
that important dispatches should be hung up at Tolosa, or Vittoria, or
Burgos, because the bands of Mina or Mendizabal or Longa were
holding the defile of Salinas—the grave of so many convoy-escorts—
or the pass of Pancorbo. It had been calculated in 1811 that it might
often require a small column of 250 men to bring an imperial courier
safely through either of those perilous narrows. But in the winter of
1812-13 things had grown far worse. ‘The insurgents of Guipuzcoa,
Navarre, and Aragon,’ as Clarke wrote to Jourdan with perfect
truth[381], ‘have had six months to organize and train themselves: their
progress has been prodigious: they have formed many formidable
corps, which no longer fear to face our troops when numbers are
equal. They have called in the English, and receive every day arms,
munitions, and even cannon on the coast. They have actually begun
to conduct regular sieges.’ Yet it was three months and more since
the King had sent back Caffarelli and the field-force of the Army of the
North from Valladolid, to restore order in the regions which had
slipped out of hand during the great concentration of the French
armies in November.
 If it be asked why the North had become so far more unquiet than
it had been in previous years, the answer must be that the cause was
moral and not material. It was not merely that many small places had
been evacuated for a time by the French during the Burgos
campaign, nor that the British fleet was throwing in arms and supplies
at Castro-Urdiales or Santander. The important thing was that for the
first time since 1808 the whole people had got a glimpse of hope: the
French had been driven out of Madrid; they had evacuated Biscay;
Old Castile and Leon had been in the power of Wellington for several
months. It was true that Madrid had been recovered, that Wellington
had been forced to retreat. But it was well known that the general
result of the campaign of 1812 had been to free all Southern Spain,
and that the French had been on the verge of ruin in the early
autumn. The prestige of the Imperial armies had received at
Salamanca a blow from which it never recovered. Wherefore the
insurgents of the North put forth during the winter of 1812-13 an
energy such as they had never before displayed, and the French
generals gradually discovered that they had no longer to do with
mere guerrillero bands, half-armed, half-fed wanderers in the hills,
recruited only from the desperate and the reckless, but with a whole
people in arms. When Caffarelli returned from Burgos, he found that
the Spanish authorities had re-established themselves in every town
which had been left ungarrisoned, that taxes and requisitions were
being levied in a regular fashion, and that new regiments were being
formed and trained in Biscay and Guipuzcoa. The nominal Spanish
commander in this region was Mendizabal, theoretically Chief of the
‘Seventh Army’—but he was an officer of little resource and no
authority. The real fighting man was Longa, originally a guerrillero
chief, but now gazetted a colonel in the regular army. He was a
gunsmith from the Rioja, a very resolute and persistent man, who had
taken to the hills early, and had outlived most of his rivals and
colleagues—a clear instance of the ‘survival of the fittest.’ His useful
co-operation with Sir Home Popham in the last autumn has been
mentioned above: his band, now reorganized as four infantry
battalions, was raised from the mountaineers of the province of
Santander and the region of the upper Ebro. His usual beat lay
between the sea and Burgos, and he was as frequently to be found
on the Cantabrian coast as at the defile of Pancorbo, where the great
Bayonne chaussée crosses from the watershed of the Ebro to that of
the Douro. His force never much exceeded 3,000 men, but they were
tough material—great marchers and (as they proved when serving
under Wellington) very staunch fighters on their own ground. West of
Longa’s hunting grounds were those of Porlier, in the Eastern
Asturias: the star of the ‘Marquesito,’ as he was called, had paled
somewhat of late, as the reputation of Longa had increased. He had
never had again such a stroke of luck as his celebrated surprise of
Santander in 1811[382], and the long French occupation of the Asturias
in the days of Bonnet had worn down his band to little over 2,000
men. At this moment he was mainly engaged, under the nominal
command of Mendizabal, in keeping Santoña blockaded. To besiege
it in form he had neither enough men nor a battering train: but if
driven away once and again by Caffarelli, he never allowed himself to
be caught, and was back again to stop the roads, the moment that
the relieving column had marched off. In Biscay the leading spirit was
Jauregui (El Pastor), another old ally of Sir Home Popham, but in
addition to his band there was now on foot a new organization of a
more regular sort, three Biscayan and three Guipuzcoan battalions,
who had received arms from the English cruisers. They held all the
interior of the country, had fortified the old citadel of Castro-Urdiales
on the coast, with guns lent them from the fleet, and co-operated with
Mendizabal and Longa whenever occasion offered. They had held
Bilbao for a time in the autumn, but were chased out of it when
Caffarelli returned from Burgos. In January they made another
attempt upon it, but were repulsed by General Rouget, in command
of the garrison.
Between the fields of operation of the Biscayans and Longa and
that of the Navarrese insurgents, there was the line of the great
Bayonne chaussée, held by a series of French garrisons at Tolosa,
Bergara, Mondragon, Vittoria, Miranda del Ebro, and the castle of
Pancorbo. This line of fortified places was a sore hindrance to the
Spaniards, but on many occasions they crossed it. Mina’s raiding
battalions from Navarre were frequently seen in the Basque
provinces. And they had made communication between one garrison
and another so dangerous that the post-commanders often refused to
risk men on escorts between one place and the next, and had long
ceased to attempt requisitions on the countryside. They were fed by
convoys pushed up the high road, with heavy forces to guard them, at
infrequent intervals. In Navarre, as has been already explained, Mina
held the whole countryside, and had set up an orderly form of
government. He had at the most 8,000 or 9,000 men, but they spread
everywhere, sometimes operating in one column, sometimes in many,
seldom to be caught when sought after, and capable of turning on
any rash pursuing force and overwhelming it, if its strength was seen
to be over-small. Mina’s sphere of action extended far into Aragon, as
far as Huesca, so that he was as much a plague to Paris, the
Governor of Saragossa, as to Thouvenot, Governor of Vittoria, or
Abbé, Governor of Pampeluna. His strategical purpose, if we may
ascribe such a thing to one who was, after all, but a guerrillero of
special talent and energy, was to break the line of communication
down the Ebro from Miranda to Saragossa, the route by which the
King and the Army of the North kept up their touch with Suchet’s
troops in Aragon. It was a tempting objective, since all down the river
there were French garrisons at short distances in Haro, Logroño,
Viana, Calahorra, Milagro, Tudela, and other places, none of them
very large, and each capable of being isolated, and attacked for some
days, before the Governor of Navarre could come to its aid with a
strong relieving column. And there were other garrisons, such as
those at Tafalla and Huesca, covering outlying road-centres, which
were far from succour and liable to surprise-attacks at any moment.
Nor was Mina destitute of the power to call in help for one of his
greater raids—he sometimes shifted towards the coast, and got in
touch with the Guipuzcoans and Biscayans, while he had also
communication with Duran, south of the Ebro. This officer who was
theoretically a division-commander in the Valencian Army, was really
the leader of a band of four or five thousand irregulars, who hung
about the mountains of Soria, and kept the roads from Madrid to
Saragossa and the Ebro blocked. And Duran was again in touch with
the Empecinado, whose beat lay on the east side of New Castile, and
whose main object was to molest the French garrisons of
Guadalajara, Segovia, and Alcalá. Temporary combinations of
formidable strength could be made, when several of these irregular
forces joined for a common raid: but the chiefs generally worked
apart, each disliking to move very far from his own district, where he
was acquainted with the roads and the inhabitants. For in a country of
chaotic sierras, like Northern Spain, local knowledge was all-
important: to be aware of exactly what paths and passes were
practicable in January snow, or what torrents were fordable in March
rain, was the advantage which the guerrillero had over his enemy. It
is probable that in March or April 1813 the total force of all the
insurgent bands was no greater than that of the French garrisons and
movable columns with which they had to contend. But the Army of the
North was forced to tie down the larger half of its strength to holding
strategical points and long lines of communication, while the
guerrilleros could evacuate one whole region for weeks at a time, in
order to mass in another. They could be unexpectedly strong in one
district, yet lose nothing by temporary abandonment of another. They
were admirably served for intelligence, since the whole population
was by goodwill or by fear at their service: the French could only
depend on afrancesados for information, and these were timid and
few; they grew fewer as Mina gradually discovered and hanged
traitors. When the French columns had gone by, it was easily to be
guessed who had guided them or given them news—and such
people perished, or had to migrate to the nearest garrison. But local
knowledge was the real strength of the guerrilleros: a French column-
commander, guiding his steps from the abominable maps of Lopez—
the atlas which was universally used for want of a better—was always
finding his enemy escape by a path unindicated on the map, or
appear in his rear over some unknown cross-road, which could not
have been suspected to exist. Hence the local Spanish traitor was
absolutely necessary as a guide, and often he could not be found—
treachery having been discovered to be a path that led inevitably to
the gallows. The Army of the North had acquired, from old and painful
experience of counter-marches, some general knowledge of the
cross-roads between the Ebro and the Pyrenees. But when troops
from a distance—sections of the Bayonne Reserve, or reinforcements
from the Army of Portugal—were turned on to the game of guerrillero-
hunting, they found themselves very helpless. As a rule, the most
promising march ended in finding the lair still warm, but the quarry
invisible.
Napoleon and his mouthpiece, the War Minister Clarke, refused to
the end, as Marshal Marmont remarked[383], to see that the War of
Spain was unlike any other war that the French armies had waged
since 1792. The nearest parallels to it were the fighting in Switzerland
in 1798 and against Hofer’s Tyrolese in 1809. But both of these
earlier insurrectionary wars had been fought on a very limited area,
against an enemy of no great numerical strength, practically unhelped
from without. In Spain the distances were very great, the mountains—
if less high than the Alps—were almost as tiresome, for in the Alps
there were vast tracts completely inaccessible to both sides, but the
Sierras, if rugged, are less lofty and better furnished with goat-tracks
and smugglers’ by-ways, where the heavily laden infantryman cannot
follow the evasive mountaineer. Moreover, the English cruisers
continued to drop in the arms and munitions without which the
insurgents could not have kept the field.
There can be no doubt that Napoleon undervalued the power of
the Spanish guerrilleros, just as he undervalued the resources and
the enterprise of Wellington. From the first moment of his return from
Russia he had continued to impress on Joseph and Jourdan the
necessity for pacifying the North, before the season for regular
campaigning should have arrived, and Wellington should have taken
the field. But his theory that the winter was the best time for dealing
with the bands was rather specious than correct. For although the
short days, the snow in the passes, and the swollen torrents were, no
doubt, great hindrances to that freedom of movement which was the
main strength of the guerrilleros, they were even greater hindrances
to combined operations by bodies of regular troops. Rapid marches
are impossible off the high roads in Northern Spain, during the
midwinter months; and it was only by combined operations and the
use of large forces that the insurgents could be dealt with. Indeed, the
country roads were practically impassable for any regular troops in
many regions. What officer would risk detachments in upland valleys
that might be found to be blocked with snow, or cut off from their
usual communication by furious streams that had overflowed the
roads and made fords impracticable? Winter marches in unexplored
hills are the most deadly expedients: all the weakly soldiers fall by the
way—had not Drouet lost 150 men in passing the Guadarrama during
the early days of December—and the Guadarrama was crossed by
one of the few great royal roads of Spain? What would be the losses
of columns sent out on cross-roads and caught in blizzards, or in
those weeks of continuous rain which are not uncommon in the sub-
Pyrenean region?
The Emperor’s view was that Caffarelli had failed in his task from
want of resourcefulness. He was always trying to parry blows rather
than to strike himself: he allowed the insurgents to take the initiative,
and when they had executed some tiresome raid would set out in a
pursuit which was seldom useful, since they naturally outran him[384].
He was always marching to deliver or revictual some threatened
garrison, anywhere between Santoña and Pampeluna, instead of
setting himself to destroy the main agglomeration of hostile forces.
Now Caffarelli, it is true, was no great general, and may have been
on occasion wanting in vigour. But the best reply to the criticism of
him sent from Paris is to observe that his successor, Clausel,
universally acknowledged to be the most active officer in Spain, failed
in exactly the same way as his predecessor, even when he had been
lent 20,000 veteran troops to aid him in his task.
Napoleon wanted a great general movement pour balayer tout le
Nord. He granted that Caffarelli had not enough troops both to furnish
garrisons for every important point, and to hunt down the guerrilleros
with a large field-force. Therefore he ordered Reille to furnish
Caffarelli’s successor with every man that he asked for. If necessary,
the whole Army of Portugal might be requisitioned, since those of the
South and Centre would be enough to keep Wellington in check. The
letter of instructions which Clarke was directed to give to Clausel,
when the latter took up his appointment, explains the Emperor’s
views. ‘By a continual taking of the offensive it ought to be possible to
reach a prompt and happy result. The moment that the
reinforcements to be furnished by General Reille arrive (and possibly
they have already put themselves at your disposition) in Navarre and
Biscay, I am convinced that your usual activity will change the face of
affairs. Rapid pursuits, well directed, and above all properly adapted
to the topographical configuration of the district; raids made without
warning on the insurgents’ dépôts of provisions, their hospitals, their
stores of arms, and in general on all their magazines, will infallibly
carry confusion into their operations. After you have had some
successful engagements with them, it will only require politic
measures to complete their disorganization. When you have
scattered their juntas, all the young men they have enrolled by
compulsion will melt home. If you leave them no rest, and surprise
them in their remotest places of refuge, the matter should end by their
going wholly to pieces.... As to the keeping open your communication
with France, one particular device, to whose utility all the generals
who have served in that region bear witness, is to establish at regular
distances and in well chosen positions, especially where roads meet,
small palisaded forts, or blockhouses, which will form a chain of posts
and support each other. Owing to the wooded nature of the country
they will not cost much to build—the estimate for such a system of
blockhouses has been calculated to me at no more than 300,000
francs.
‘Santoña and Pampeluna must be held—the latter because its
capture is Mina’s main ambition, the former because it is a terror to
the English, who recently tried to have it besieged: General Caffarelli
had to lead an expedition to relieve it. Pampeluna is the more
important for the moment: when a division of the Army of Portugal
reaches Navarre you ought to be able to make Mina change his tone.
Santoña can wait—it may be reprovisioned by sea from the small
ports of Biscay. As General Caffarelli has inconsiderately evacuated
most of them, you should reoccupy them all, especially Bermeo and
Castro-Urdiales. The latter is said to have been fortified with the help
of the English. For the sake of the safety of Santoña all these places
must be retaken at once: from the mouth of the Bidassoa to
Santander every maritime position should be in French hands.
Santander especially is, by the Emperor’s express orders, to be
permanently occupied by an adequate garrison.
‘It is necessary that all these operations should be carried out
simultaneously. The pursuit of Mina in Navarre should synchronize
with the operations in Biscay. The insurgents should be hunted in the
inland, at the same time that they are attacked on the coast. This is
the only way to disorganize them, to make them weak and divided at
all points.... It seems preferable to use every available man for a
general simultaneous attack, than to undertake each necessary
operation in succession, with a smaller force and more leisure—all
the more so because the reinforcements, which are to co-operate in
your scheme, may be called elsewhere by some unforeseen
development of affairs[385].’
Clausel, in obedience to his instructions, tried to carry out the
whole of this scheme, and had small luck therewith. He built the chain
of blockhouses from Irun to Burgos, thereby tying up many battalions
to sedentary duty. He hunted Mina right and left, drove the
insurrectionary Junta of Biscay from its abode, occupied all the little
ports from Santander to San Sebastian, stormed the well-fortified
Castro-Urdiales, revictualled Pampeluna and Santoña, and at the end
of three months had to report that his task was unfinished, that the
insurrection was still unsubdued, and that although he had borrowed
20,000 infantry from the Army of Portugal, he must ask for another
20,000 men [where were they to be got?] in order to finish the
campaign. And by this time—the end of May—Wellington was loose,
and the King was falling back on the Ebro, vainly calling for the five
divisions that his brother had made over to the Army of the North. But
we must resume the chronicle of the Northern campaign, before
commenting on its inadequate and unhappy conclusion.
The operations may be said to have begun in January, when
Palombini’s Italian division marched from Old Castile to join the Army
of the North, in order to replace Dumoustier’s brigade of the Young
Guard, which was being recalled to France. After crossing the
Guadarrama Pass in a blizzard, which cost some lives, they got to
Burgos on the 28th, driving away the Cura Merino and his band, who
had been blocking the road from Valladolid. From Burgos Palombini
marched to Vittoria, escorting a convoy of drafts returning to France,
couriers, officials, and convalescents. There he heard that Longa and
Mendizabal had cut in behind him, and had again stopped
communications. Wherefore he turned back, and swept the Bureba,
where they were reported to be. Not finding them, he marched as far
as Poza de la Sal, not far from Briviesca, but some leagues off the
great chaussée. In this town his head-quarters were fixed, while the
bulk of his division was sent out in flying columns to collect food. He
had only 500 men with him, when on the night of February 10-11 he
found himself surrounded by three Spanish columns, which had
slipped through the intervals of the outlying Italian regiments, and ran
in on the town from different quarters. The surprise, contrived by
Longa, was complete; but Palombini, collecting his men in a clump,
held out till daylight, when his battalions came flocking in to the sound
of the musketry and relieved him. The Spaniards disappeared, taking
with them some baggage and prisoners captured in the first rush, and
were soon lost to sight in the mountains.
The Italians, lucky to have escaped so cheaply, marched back to
the Ebro by way of Domingo Calzada, where there was a French
garrison in imminent danger of starvation, as it had long been
blockaded by local bands[386]. Palombini took it on with him, and blew
up the castle, as the place was inconveniently remote from any other
French post. He then returned to Vittoria by way of Haro (February
18) and next pushed on to Bilbao, where he relieved Dumoustier’s
brigade of the Imperial Guard, which was at last able to obey the
Emperor’s order to return to France (February 21). Caffarelli used this
force as his escort back to Bayonne, and returned in some disgrace
to Paris. Clausel assumed command in his stead on the next day.
Pampeluna had been declared by the new commander’s letter of
instructions to be the place of which he should be most careful. But
seeing no chance of visiting and relieving it till his reinforcements
from the Army of Portugal should have come up, Clausel, while
waiting for their arrival, came to Bilbao, where he began to make
preparations for the siege of Castro-Urdiales, by far the most
important, for the moment, of the ports along the coast which the
Emperor had commended to him for destruction.
Meanwhile the Biscayan insurgents collected opposite Bilbao, on
the Eastern side, and Mendizabal brought up Longa’s troops and
some of the smaller bands to threaten it from the West. The idea was
to give Clausel so much trouble about his head-quarters that he
would be unable to march away against Castro. The days slipped by,
and farther East Mina was more active than ever in Navarre. He had
at last become the happy possessor of two siege guns, landed at
Deba on the Biscay coast, and dragged by incredible exertions
across mountain paths to the farthest inland. When they came to
hand he set to work to beleaguer the French garrison of Tafalla, an
outlying place, but less than thirty miles from Pampeluna. This was a
challenge to General Abbé, the Governor of Navarre: a force which
has dug trenches and brought up heavy guns is obviously asking for
a fight, and not intending to abscond. Abbé marched with 3,000
infantry and 150 chasseurs to raise the siege, and found Mina with
four of his battalions and his regiment of cavalry drawn up across the
high road, in a mountain position at Tiebas, ten miles north of Tafalla.
After a hard day’s fighting, Abbé failed to break through, and had to
fall back on Pampeluna[387] (February 9). The news of his repulse
disheartened the garrison, whose walls were crumbling under the fire
of Mina’s heavy guns, and they surrendered on February 11th to the
number of 11 officers and 317 men—the post-commander and many
others had been killed during the siege.
This success of Mina’s meant nothing less than that the whole
open country of Navarre was at his mercy, since Abbé had been
beaten in the field; wherefore Clausel hastened to dispatch the first
reinforcements from the Army of Portugal which reached him—
Barbot’s division—to this quarter. But the affair created less
excitement than an exploit of reckless courage carried out by one of
Mina’s detachments in the following month. The old castle of
Fuenterrabia commands the passage of the Bidassoa, and looks
across its estuary into France: on March 11 it was surprised by
escalade by a handful of guerrilleros, the garrison taken prisoner, the
guns thrown into the water, and the whole building destroyed by fire.
The flames were visible far into France—troops hurried up from Irun
and Hendaye, but of course found the guerrilleros gone[388].
This exploit was rather spectacular than harmful to the French—
quite otherwise was the last event of the month of March. Barbot’s
division, on entering Navarre, was directed to help Abbé to clear the
country between Pampeluna and the Ebro. Having reached Lodosa
on March 30, Barbot sent out two battalions to raise requisitions in
the neighbouring town of Lerin. The place was being sacked, when
the scattered French were suddenly attacked by two of Mina’s
battalions, while two more and 200 Navarrese lancers cut in between
the enemy and Lodosa. The French, thoroughly surprised, lost
heavily in the first shock, but rallied and started to cut their way back
to their division, only eight miles away. In a running fight they were
much mauled, and finally had to form square to receive the cavalry. In
this inconvenient formation they were forced to a long musketry fight
with the Navarrese, which so shook the square that it finally broke
when Mina’s lancers charged. The two battalions were annihilated, 28
officers and 635 men taken prisoners—the rest cut down. Gaudin, the
colonel commanding the detachment, escaped with a few mounted
officers[389]. The extraordinary part of the affair was that its last crisis
took place at only two miles from Lodosa, where Barbot was lying
with his remaining six battalions. The French general never stirred,
but only put himself in a posture of defence, thereby provoking Mina’s
surprise[390], for he could have saved the column by going out to its
help. After the disaster he retired to Pampeluna, with a division
reduced to little over 3,000 men. But not long after Taupin’s division of
the Army of Portugal also entered Navarre, and joined Abbé. This
gave the latter a very heavy force—at least 13,000 men, and when
Clausel had finished his own operations in the direction of Bilbao, and
marched from Biscay to encircle Mina on one side, while Abbé was to
hold him on the other, the great guerrillero was in grave danger. But
this was only in late April and May, and before the chronicle of these
weeks is reached we have to turn back westward for a space.
Napoleon’s orders had told Clausel to attack at all points at once,
and to lose no time in setting to work. But it was quite clear that no
general synchronized move could be made, until the divisions
borrowed from Reille had all arrived. What active operations meant,
before the reinforcements had come up, had been sufficiently proved
by Abbé’s defeat at Tiebas: and Clausel’s own doings in March were
equally discouraging, if not so disastrous. He had resolved to carry
out one of the Emperor’s urgent orders by capturing Castro-Urdiales,
the touching-place of British cruisers and the one fortified port which
the Allies possessed on the Biscay coast. Undervaluing its strength,
he marched out on March 21 with the bulk of Palombini’s Italian
division and a single French battalion, intending to take it by
escalade. For he had been told that its ancient walls had been
indifferently repaired, and were almost without guns. When, however,
he had reached the neighbourhood of Castro on the 22nd, he had to
own on inspection that the enterprise would be hopeless—his