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Oct.]

ROUTE OF THE ARMY.

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ed on dividing his army, a dangerous arrangement, and one by which the period of concentration would of necessity be retarded. In consequence of this decision, the troops were ordered to march in three columns.

A corps of six thousand men, composed of the cavalry, four brigades of artillery, and four regiments of infantry, under command of Lieutenant-General Hope, were directed to pass through the Alentejo, and proceed by the route of Badajos, Merida, Truxillo, Talavera dela Reyna, and the Escurial.

Three brigades, under Lieutenant-General Fraser, marched by Abrantes and Almeida.

Two brigades, commanded by Major-General Beresford, were sent by Coimbra and Almeida. As it was deemed imprudent, by Sir John Moore, that the two latter columns should be without artillery, a brigade of light six-pounders was likewise directed on Almeida.

The different corps of the army having commenced their march, Sir John Moore quitted LisNov. 8] bon on the twenty-seventh of October. On the eighth of November he was at Almeida. On the thirteenth he arrived at Salamanca, where he received intelligence of the defeat and dispersion of Belvidere's army before Burgos. This event seems to have inspired the British general with melancholy forebodings of the fate of the contest in which he was about to engage.

On the second night after his arrival, he was awakened by an express from General Pignatelli, conveying intelligence that the enemy had pushed on a body of cavalry to Valladolid, a city not above three marches from Salamanca.

The situation of Sir John Moore had thus suddenly become one of extreme peril. The enemy were in his front; and he had in Salamanca only three brigades of infantry, and not a single gun. In these circumstances, he contemplated again retiring on Portugal. He assembled the Junta of Salamanca; and

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SITUATION OF THE BRITISH ARMY

[1808. laying before them the information he had received, stated, that, should the enemy continue their advance on his front-now wholly uncovered-the British army had no option but retreat. On the arrival of intelligence, however, that the French troops had been withdrawn to Palencia, he determined on continuing his head-quarters at Salamanca; and directed Generals Baird and Hope to close on that city with their divisions.

Every day brought with it intelligence of fresh disasters. By the battle of Espinosa, Blake's army had been dispersed. The whole left wing of the Spanish army, which occupied a line reaching from Bilboa to Burgos, had thus been annihilated; and the flank of the centre, under Castanos, was laid open to the enemy.

The situation of Sir John Moore at Salamanca, with respect to the Spanish armies, was very extraordinary. He was at the vertex of a triangle, the base of which, at the distance of between two hundred and fifty, and three hundred miles, was the French position, the points at the extremities of the base, that is, the French flanks, were the positions of the Spanish armies.

The army of Castanos was, at this period, posted in the neighbourhood of Tudela, but on the opposite or north side of the Ebro, and about three hundred miles to the north-east of Salamanca. The French were thus completely interposed between the Spanish and British armies; and might, at any moment, advance on the latter in overwhelming force. For this state of things, Sir John Moore was unprepared. All his arrangements had been framed on the assurance that the assembling of his forces would be protected by the Spanish armies. To effect the union of his isolated divisions had now become an operation of danger and difficulty. The position of these bodies was such as to prevent the possibility of immediate action. He was placed as a central point

Nov.]

AT SALAMANCA.

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between the two wings of his army, and found it impracticable to approach the one, without hazarding the safety of the other.

Thus compelled to remain inactive at Salamanca, Sir John Moore endeavoured to stimulate the local authorities into the adoption of such measures of promptitude and vigour as were suited to the exigence of the crisis. In this effort he failed. The Spanish people, though still influenced by fierce and unmitigated hatred towards their invaders, were no longer animated by that uncalculating and convulsive energy which, in the commencement of the struggle, had goaded them like madness into furious resistance. The fierceness of the paroxism had passed; and though, in the cause of their country, the hand of every Spaniard was prepared to gripe the sword, the blows it dealt were directed with an erring aim, and by a feeble arm. Their detestation of a foreign yoke was undiminished; but it had become a fixed and inert sentiment, rather than a fierce, uncontrollable, and all-pervading impulse.

Before entering Spain, every thing had contributed to conceal the real state of the Peninsula from the penetrating vision of Sir John Moore. The British government, itself deceived, had become, in its turn, the involuntary propagator of deception. At the commencement of the struggle, it had dispatched military agents to the head-quarters of the different Spanish generals, to act as organs of communication, and transmit authentic intelligence of the progress of events in the seat of war. The persons selected for this service were, generally, officers undistinguished by talent or experience, and therefore little suited to discharge, with benefit, the duties of an office so delicate and important. They seem generally to have become the dupes of the unwarranted confidence and inflated boasting of those by whom they were surrounded; and their reports were framed in a strain of blind and sanguine anticipation, not

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SIR JOHN MOORE IS DECEIVED

[1808. deducible from any enlarged or rational view of the prospects or condition of the people. Instead of true representations of the numbers, character, and state of efficiency of the armies, they were deluded into adopting the extravagant hyperboles of rash and vain-glorious men, and contributed what in them lay to propagate false and exaggerated notions of the military power of the Spanish nation. They did not venture to obtrude on the British Cabinet the unpalatable truth that the national army was, in effect, nothing more than a congregation of separate and independent bands, miserably armed, possessing but a scanty and ill-served artillery, and almost destitute of cavalry. Had they done so; and had they stated likewise, that this army was without magazines of any kind, without generals of talent or experience, without officers sufficiently versed in the details of war, to instruct and discipline the raw levies which constituted the greater part of its numerical strength; and, further, that the different leaders. were prevented, by frivolous jealousies, and discordance of opinion, from cordially uniting in the execution of any great operation, the calamitous events on the Ebro would probably not have come like a thunderbolt to crush and stultify the combinations of a government, which was at least sincerely anxious to co-operate in the cause of freedom.

England had furnished Spain with supplies; she had poured arms and munitions into the country with a profuse hand; but she had taken no efficacious measures for their judicious application. She exercised little influence on the counsels of the Spanish government; and even while providing the very thews and sinews of the war, her voice was seldom listened to with obedience or respect. Arms, placed at the disposal of men swayed by petty views and local interests, were wasted and misapplied; and the supplies of money, clothing, and ammunition, so liberally afforded, became a bone of contention and of

Nov.] IN HIS EXPECTATIONS OF ASSISTANCE.

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petty jealousy to the rival authorities. In truth, the provincial governors were actuated by no liberal and enlarged views of the public benefit. Supine in danger, and vain-glorious in prosperity, at once untalented and unenlightened, no men could be more unfitted to direct the resources of a nation with vigour and effect.

In such men Sir John Moore could place no trust. His expectations had been deceived. He found supineness where he expected energy; a people not filled with an active spirit-stirring enthusiasm, but reposing in a dull, immovable, and lethargic confidence in their own prowess and resources, even in the immediate neighbourhood of a triumphant enemy. His mind became not only perplexed but irritated by the disappointment of his hopes. At Salamanca he knew himself to be placed in a difficult and precarious position, unprotected in front, separated from the wings of his army, with nothing but a barren country to retire upon. To the concentration of his forces, he was aware, indeed, that no present obstacle existed; but how long such a state of things might continue, he had no data on which to form a judgment. The enemy at any moment might interpose a body which would prevent the possibility of a junction, for there existed no Spanish force from which he could anticipate protection.

To the other embarrassments of Sir John Moore must be added, the difficulty of receiving true and faithful intelligence of the events passing around him. On public and official reports no confidence could be placed, and of more authentic sources of intelligence he was in a great measure deprived. He had been sent forward without a plan of operations, or any data on which to found one. Castanos was the person with whom he had been directed to concert his measures; but that officer had been superseded by Romana; and of the situation of the latter, Sir John Moore only knew that he was engaged VOL. II.

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