"Lords and dukes and noble princes,
On thy fatal banks were slain;
Fatal banks that gave to slaughter
All the pride and flower of Spain.
Furious press the hostile squadrons—
Furious he repels their rage;
Loss of blood at length enfeebles—
Who can war with thousands wage?"
Old Spanish Ballad.
On the llth of December the division of Sir John Hope quitted Alva and marched towards Tordesillas.
By this time Sir John Moore had discovered that Bonaparte, abandoning his project of entering the southern provinces, was on the march to intercept his retreat towards the sea-coast and Portugal, while another column was advancing against him from the direction of Burgos.
To frustrate a design that might prove so fatal to his slender army, Moore was compelled to relinquish all hope of fighting the Duke of Dalmatia; so, countermanding the order for the advance of his various divisions, he requested Romana to defend the bridge of Mansilla-de-los-Mulos, and while he fell back towards the Douro, ordered all the heavy baggage to be conveyed to Astorga.
On hearing of these movements, Bonaparte exclaimed energetically to Soult, who related it to Major Charles Napier of the 43rd—
"Moore is the only general now fit to contend with me; I shall advance against him in person."
Marching to his left, Moore crossed the Douro at Toro, to form a junction with Sir David Baird on the 21st December at Vallada. On the day before this, near the magnificent Abbey of Sahagun, nine hundred French cavalry pressing on, were met by four hundred of ours under Lord Paget, who repulsed them by one brilliant charge, sabreing thirty, and taking two hundred and sixty prisoners.
Bonaparte advanced with his main body, a hundred thousand strong, by four routes, towards Benevente, along roads buried deep in snow, through which, by force or bribery, he had thousands of Spanish labourers cutting pathways, for the winter had set in with unusual rigour; but the division of Sir John Hope, whose cavalry and artillery suffered much by the loss of their horses, which died fast of the glanders, entered the town before him on the 24th of the same month.
The sufferings of the army during this retreat towards the north-west angle of Spain were very great, and the regimental officers were compelled to carry their personal effects—at least such as were absolutely necessary—about with them in bags or knapsacks, for the baggage animals (carts there were none) died, or were lost by the way. All bandsmen, batsmen, servants, and grooms were very properly turned into the ranks, as Moore had resolved that there should be available as many muskets as possible. Seven officers had but one tent, and every mounted officer had to groom and rub down his own horse: arrangements whereat the grumbling, from the staff particularly, was deep if not loud. The rations were also diminished: but of all the corps none suffered less than the Highland regiments. After marching hundreds of miles through snow, rain, and storm, by roads unchanged since the Moors traversed them, the 79th and 92nd particularly had never a man on the sick-list, a fact attributable either to their native hardihood or the serviceable nature of their costume.
Snow was falling heavily as Hope's division entered the crumbling mud walls of the small and miserable town of Benevente in Leon, where the officers and men, irrespective of rank, crowded for shelter into the houses and the castle, while a line of cavalry picquets with a few pieces of artillery, held the bridge of Orviegro.
Weary and foot-sore, Quentin, after cleaning his musket, flung himself on a heap of straw in one of the rooms of that wonderful old castle which is the residence of the Dukes of Ossuna, and which Southey, in his letters from Spain, describes as one of the finest monuments of the age of Spanish chivalry, adding, "we have nothing in England which approaches to its grandeur. Berkeley, Raby, even Warwick and Windsor, are poor fabrics in comparison."
Projecting from a wall, a gigantic arm and hand in armour sustain a magnificent lamp to light the grand staircase of the castle.
Its open galleries and horse-shoe Saracenic arches, that spring from fluted and twisted columns of porphyry and granite; its long aerial-like cloisters, with jasper pillars, jagged arches, and tessellated floors; its recessed seats, deep niches, and canopied alcoves, covered with quaint arabesques in scarlet, blue, and gold, were now crowded by wet, weary, and almost shoeless (certainly shirtless) infantry, who piled their muskets or heaped up their knapsacks and camp kettles, without heed, in those noble apartments, where they smoked and made fires of whatever they could lay hands on; many a gilded chair became fuel, and pictures by Velasquez, Murillo, and other eminent painters of the Spanish school, were torn from the walls, and, with a curse on the Spaniards, rolled up and thrust under a pot of rice soup.
In fact, the troops were now fast becoming reckless, and everything that was combustible was destroyed on this occasion, the family archives of the Dukes of Ossuna alone escaping.
Maddened by cold and hunger, they cared not how they made themselves comfortable for the night; but with the first peep of dawn, the report of cannon was heard at the bridge, the bugles sounded the turn-out, and hundreds of hoarse voices were heard shouting,
"Stand to your arms! turn out! The enemy are coming on—the out-picquets are engaged!"
The division got under arms to continue its retreat, which the flank companies were ordered to cover by forming in front of the town; and so came in this dreary 25th of December.
"A merry Christmas and a happy new year!" cried Monkton to Quentin, as the grenadiers of Askerne left the battalion double-quick, and just in time to witness a very brilliant cavalry encounter.
It was about the hour of nine in the morning, and from the slope on which Benevente stands, they could see in a little plain below the bridge of the Orviegro, three squadrons of the Imperial Guard led by a dashing officer in a furred pelisse, skirmishing with the out-picquets of the light cavalry, and endeavouring to cross the river by a ford there. The red flashing of the carbines on both sides was incessant; in the clear frosty air the reports rang sharply, and the figures of the Imperial Light Cavalry, in their brilliant uniforms, were distinctly visible upon the spotless background of snow. No one was hit on either side, however, as the dragoon is seldom much of a shot.
But suddenly two squadrons of the splendid 10th Hussars, by order of Lord Paget, and led by Brigadier-General Stewart, defiled out of Benevente to support the picquets, their loose scarlet pelisses and plumes waving as they galloped along, and rapidly forming line, they advanced with a loud hurrah, and keeping their horses well in hand, lest they should be blown, against the Chasseurs à Cheval of the Guard, who drew up on the crest of an eminence to receive them.
Many who looked on held their breath, and excitement repressed the rising cheer as the adverse lines of cavalry met! There was a mingled yell and hurrah; the long straight swords of the French on one side, and the crooked sabres of the 10th on the other, all uplifted, flashed keenly in the morning sun; then there was a terrible shock; hussars and chasseurs were all mingled in a wild tumultuous mass, and on both sides horses and men went down among bloody and trodden snow; but the French fled at full speed, leaving the ground strewed with killed and wounded men, and encumbered by scared horses that rushed about with empty saddles.
Eighty-five French Chasseurs and fifty of our smart Hussars were lying there dead or writhing in all the agony of sword wounds among the snow; but with loud cheers the survivors came trotting into Benevente, bringing with them seventy dismounted prisoners, among whom was the leader of the French, superbly dressed in a green uniform that had a profusion of gold and fur trimming upon it. He was led forward between two Hussars, who had each his carbine resting on his thigh.
"Paget," exclaimed Brigadier-General Sir Charles Stewart, hurrying up at a canter, "allow me to present you with a valuable prisoner. We have just had the honour to take Lieutenant-General Lefebre Desnouettes, commander of the cavalry of the Imperial Guard."
Lord Paget bowed very low to the captive.
Pale, exhausted, and covered with sword-cuts, he was the picture of a soldier; and his eyes had that keen, bright, almost wolfish expression, peculiar to those who have recently stared the grim King of Terrors face to face on the battlefield. He was led away, and was soon after presented to Sir John Moore, to whom he spoke with intense bitterness of his own defeat.
"Bonaparte," said he, "is the minion of fortune; he never forgives the unfortunate, but ever believes them culpable!"
Moore sought to console him, and presented him with a splendid oriental scimitar, which Lefebre ever after preserved with gratitude, and wore in England, whither he was despatched at once in charge of Captain Wyndham, one of the general's aides-de-camp.
The division continued its retreat by the ruined walls and mouldering citadel of Astorga, and Villa Franca del Bierzo, and, though many perished by the way, Quentin Kennedy, endowed by spirit and enthusiasm rather than bodily strength, bore up manfully amid the fatigue, the privations, and the horrors of that long and devious retreat of so many hundred miles, along roads covered with deep snow, over steep and rugged mountain sierras, through half-frozen rivers, where the bridges had been broken down or blown up, and by narrow defiles, followed by an enthusiastic enemy, whose well-victualled force, outnumbering by three times that of Moore, came on fast and surely, with flying artillery, lightly-armed dragoons, and pestilent little Voltigeurs, skirmishing every foot of the way—the sharp ringing of carbines and the boom of field-pieces being the invariable close of each day's march, and the prelude to its resumption in the cold, dark early morning, when the cavalry rear-guard held the advance of the foe in check, till the jaded and half-slept infantry pushed on, and on, and on—hopeless, heartless, and in rags, leaving, en route, in the form of dead and dying men, women, children, and horses, traces of the havoc that neglect and disaster were making in the ranks, for now the Spanish authorities omitted utterly to supply the troops with either billets or rations, or any necessary provisions.
A junction of Hope's division with the main body of the British army was effected, however; on the 31st of December, Moore quitted Astorga with his famine-stricken force, and so hot and fierce was the pursuit, that on the following day, the first of the new year, Napoleon entered the little town at the head of eighty thousand horse and foot, with two hundred pieces of cannon, while many thousand bayonets more were on the march to join him!
The Emperor, however, went no further than Astorga, for there he left to Soult—to use his own inflated words—"the glorious mission of destroying the British—of pursuing them to the point of embarkation, and driving them into the sea!"
And the state of matters we have described continued until the army reached Lugo, after a five days' march through a rugged and savage country.