Baird suffered from even more vexatious delays. Though the greater part of his convoy had arrived at Coruña on October 13, the local junta would not permit them to land without express orders from the central junta at Aranjuez. Consequently the disembarkation did not begin till the 26th and was only finished on November 4. Transport and equipment were difficult to obtain, and on November 22 Baird was still only at Astorga. There exaggerated reports of the French advance induced him to halt, but by Moore's orders he continued his march. On the 28th the news of the defeat of Castaños at Tudela reached Moore at Salamanca. Co-operation with a Spanish army now appeared impossible, and even a junction with Baird seemed too hazardous to attempt. Moore therefore, ordered Baird to retire on Coruña and to proceed to Lisbon by sea, and, while waiting himself at Salamanca for Hope, made preparations for a retreat to Portugal. On December 5, the day after his junction with Hope, Moore determined to continue his advance. He had received news of the enthusiastic preparations for the defence of Madrid but did not know of its fall, and he considered that the Spanish enthusiasm justified some risk on the part of the British troops. He accordingly recalled Baird, whose infantry had retired to Villafranca, though his cavalry were still at Astorga. On the 9th came the news of the fall of Madrid, but Moore believed that an attack on the French lines of communication might still prove useful, and on the 11th the advance was renewed. Moore himself left Salamanca on the 13th. On the 12th he learned for the first time from some prisoners the true strength of the French army, 250,000 of all arms, and also discovered that the enemy were in complete ignorance of the position of his own army. Next day an intercepted despatch showed him that he might possibly be able to cut off Soult in an isolated position at Saldaña. Having at last effected a junction with Baird's corps on the 19th he reached Sahagun on the 21st, and was on the point of delivering his attack under favourable conditions, though his triumph must have been short-lived.
His real success was of another order. He had anticipated that Napoleon would postpone everything to the opportunity of crushing a British army, and the ultimate object of his march to Sahagun was to draw the French away from Lisbon and Andalusia. He was not disappointed. Napoleon at last divined that Moore was not flying in a south-westerly direction, but carrying out a bold manœuvre in a north-easterly direction. He instantly pushed division after division from various quarters by forced marches upon Moore's reported track, while he himself followed with desperate efforts across the snow-clad mountains between Madrid and the Douro. Apprised of his swift advance, and conscious of his own vast inferiority in numbers, Moore had no choice but to retreat without a moment's delay upon Benevente and Astorga. He was now sufficiently far north to prefer to retire upon Galicia rather than upon Portugal. The retreat began on the 24th and was executed with such rapidity that on January 1, 1809, Napoleon gave up the pursuit at Astorga, leaving it to be continued by Soult. Whether he was influenced by intelligence of fresh armaments on the Danube, or of dangerous plots in Paris, must remain uncertain, but it is highly probable that he saw little honour to be won in a laborious chase of a foe who might prove formidable if brought to bay.
Moore's army, disheartened as it was by the loss of a brilliant chance, and demoralised as it became under the fatigues and hardships of a most harassing retreat, never failed to repel attacks on its rear, where Paget handled the cavalry of the rear-guard with signal ability, especially in a spirited action near Benevente. In spite of some excesses, tolerable order was maintained until the British force, still 25,000 strong, reached Astorga, and was joined by some 10,000 Spaniards under Romaña. Thenceforward, all sense of discipline was abandoned by so many regiments that Moore described the conduct of his whole army as "infamous beyond belief," though it is certain that some regiments, and notably those of the reserve, should be excepted from this sweeping condemnation. Drunkenness, marauding, and other military crimes grew more and more general as the main body marched "in a drove" through Villafranca to Lugo, where Moore vainly offered battle, and onwards to Betanzos on the sea-coast. There a marvellous rally was effected, stragglers rejoined the ranks in unexpected numbers, the moral of the soldiery was restored as the fearful strain of physical misery was relaxed, and by January 12, 1809, all the divisions of Moore's army were safely posted in or around Coruña. Bad weather had delayed the fleet of transports ordered round from Vigo, but it ran into the harbour on the 14th, and the sick and invalids were sent on board.
THE BATTLE OF CORUÑA.
Moore was advised to make terms for the embarkation of his entire command, but he was too good a soldier to comply. Those who took part in the battle of Coruña on the 16th, some 15,000 men in all, were no unworthy representatives of the army which started from Lisbon three months earlier. Soult, with a larger force, assumed the offensive, and made a determined attack on the British position in front of the harbour and town of Coruña. He was repulsed at all points, but Moore was mortally, and Baird severely, wounded on the field. Hope, who took command, knowing that Soult would soon be reinforced, wisely persisted in carrying out Moore's intention, evacuated Coruña, and embarked his army for England during the night and the following day. His losses were estimated by Hope at above 700, killed and wounded; those of the enemy were twice as great. Thus victory crowned a campaign which otherwise would have done little to satisfy the popular appetite for tangible success. The original object of supporting the Spanish resistance in the north had been rendered impossible of fulfilment by Napoleon's victories when Moore had barely crossed the Spanish frontier, and in this sense the expedition must be regarded as a failure, though its commander was in no sense responsible for its ill-success. On the other hand, considered as a skilful diversion, the expedition was highly successful. It drew all the best French troops and generals into the north-west corner of Spain, leaving all the other, and far richer, provinces to recover their power of resistance.43
The spirit in which Napoleon had entered upon this contest is well illustrated in two sentences of his address to the citizens of Madrid. "The Bourbons," he said, "can no longer reign in Europe," and "No power under the influence of England can exist on the continent". The counter-proclamations of Spanish juntas were more prolix and equally arrogant, but one of them reveals the secret of national strength when it asserts that "a whole people is more powerful than disciplined armies". The British estimate of Napoleon's Spanish policy was tersely expressed by the Marquis Wellesley in the house of lords, "To him force and fraud were alike; force, that would stoop to all the base artifices of fraud; and fraud, that would come armed with all the fierce violence of force".
WELLESLEY TAKES COMMAND.
For three months after the battle of Coruña, the Peninsular war, as regards the action of Great Britain, was all but suspended. Two days before that battle, a formal treaty of peace and alliance between Great Britain and the Spanish junta, which had withdrawn to Seville, was signed at London. Sir John Cradock was in command of the British troops at Lisbon, and took up a defensive position there, with reinforcements from Cadiz, awaiting the approach of Soult, who had captured Oporto by storm, and of Victor, who was in the valley of the Tagus. At the request of the Portuguese, Beresford had been sent out to organise and command their army. Early in 1809 the Spaniards were defeated with great slaughter at Ucles, Ciudad Real, and Medellin; Zaragoza was taken after another siege, and still more obstinate defence; and the national cause seemed more desperate than ever. On April 2, however, Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had returned home after the convention of Cintra, was appointed to the command-in-chief of our forces in the Peninsula. Before leaving England, he left with the ministers a memorandum on the conduct of the war which, viewed by the light of later events, must be accounted a masterpiece of foresight and sagacity. When it was laid before George III., his natural shrewdness at once discerned its true value, and he desired its author to be informed of the strong impression which it had produced on his mind.
Wellesley, indeed, could not estimate beforehand the vast numerical superiority of the French while the rest of Europe was at peace, or the impotent vacillations of Spanish