When Wellesley’s columns, faint but pursuing, received the orders which bade them halt at Ruivaens and Montalegre, their commander was already planning out the details of their return-march to the Tagus. From the first moment of his setting forth3 from Lisbon, he had looked upon the expedition against Soult as no more than a necessary preliminary to the more important expedition against Victor. He would have preferred, as we have already seen[538], to have directed his first blow against the French army in Estremadura, and had only been induced to begin his campaign by the attack upon Soult because he saw the political necessity for delivering Oporto. His original intention had been no more than to man?uvre the 2nd Corps4 out of Portugal. But, owing to the faulty dispositions6 of the Duke of Dalmatia, he had been able to accomplish much more than this—he had beaten the Marshal, stripped him of his artillery7 and equipment, destroyed a sixth of his army, and flung him back into Galicia by a rugged8 and impracticable road, which took him far from his natural base of operations. He had done much more than he had hoped or promised to do when he set out from Lisbon. Yet these ‘uncovenanted mercies’ did not distract him from his original plan: his main object was not the destruction of Soult, but the clearing of the whole frontier of Portugal from the danger of invasion, and this could not be accomplished11 till Victor had been dealt with. The necessity for a prompt movement against the 1st Corps was emphasized[p. 434] by the news, received on May 19 at Montalegre, that its commander was already astir, and apparently12 about to assume the offensive. Mackenzie reported from Abrantes, with some signs of dismay, that a strong French column had just fallen upon Alcantara, and driven from it the small Portuguese13 detachment which was covering his front.
Accordingly Wellesley turned the march of his whole army southward, the very moment that he discovered that the 2nd Corps had not fallen into the trap set for it at Chaves and Ruivaens. He had resolved to leave nothing but the local levies14 of Silveira and Botilho to watch Galicia, and to protect the provinces north of the Douro. ‘Soult,’ he wrote, ‘will be very little formidable to any body of troops for some time to come.’ He imagined—and quite correctly—that the Galician guerrillas and the army of La Romana would suffice to find him occupation. He did not, however, realize that it was possible that not only Soult but Ney also would be so much harassed15 by the insurgents16, and would fall into such bitter strife17 with each other, that they might ere long evacuate1 Galicia altogether. This, indeed, could not have been foreseen at the moment when the British turned southwards from Montalegre. If Wellesley could have guessed that by July 1 the three French Corps in Northern Spain—the 2nd, 5th, and 6th—would all be clear of the mountains and concentrated in the triangle Astorga-Zamora-Valladolid, he would have had to recast his plan of operations. But on May 19 such a conjunction appeared most improbable, and the British general could not have deemed it likely that a French army of 55,000 men, available for field-operations, would be collected on the central Douro, at the moment when he had committed himself to operations on the Tagus. Indeed, for some weeks after he had departed from Oporto the information from the north made any such concentration appear improbable. While he was on his march to the south he began to hear of the details of Ney’s and Kellermann’s expedition against the Asturias, news which he received with complacency[539], as it showed that the French were entangling19 themselves in new and hazardous20 enterprises which would make it more difficult than ever for them to collect a force opposite[p. 435] the frontier of Northern Portugal. Down to the very end of June Wellesley had no reason to dread21 any concentration of French troops upon his flank in the valley of the Douro. It was only in the following month that Soult was heard of at Puebla de Senabria and Ney at Astorga. By that time the British army had already crossed the frontier of Spain and commenced its operations against Victor.
At the moment when Wellesley turned back from Montalegre and set his face southward, he had not yet settled the details of his plan of campaign. There appeared to be two courses open to him. The first was to base himself upon Almeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and advance upon Salamanca. This movement, which he could have begun in the second week of June, would undoubtedly22 have thrown into disorder23 all the French arrangements in Northern Spain. There would have been no force ready to oppose him save a single division of Mortier’s corps—the rest of that marshal’s troops were absent with Kellermann in the Asturias. This could not have held the British army back, and a bold march in advance would have placed Wellesley in a position where he could have intercepted24 all communications between the French troops in Galicia and those in and about Madrid. The movement might appear tempting25, but it would have been too hazardous. The only force that could have been used for it was the 20,000 troops of Wellesley’s own army, backed by the 12,000 or 15,000 Portuguese regulars whom Beresford could collect between the Douro and the Tagus. The Spaniards had no troops in this direction save the garrison26 of Ciudad Rodrigo, and a battalion27 or two which Carlos d’Espa?a had raised on the borders of Leon and Portugal. On the other hand, the news that the British were at Salamanca or Toro would certainly have forced Ney, Soult, and Kellermann to evacuate Galicia and the Asturias and hasten to the aid of Mortier. They would have been far too strong, when united, for the 30,000 or 35,000 men of Wellesley and Beresford. La Romana and the Asturians could have brought no corresponding reinforcements to assist the British army, and must necessarily have arrived too late—long after the French corps would have reached the Douro[540]. The idea of a movement on[p. 436] Salamanca, therefore, did not even for a moment enter into Wellesley’s mind.
The other alternative open to the British general, and that which he had from the first determined28 to take in hand, was (as we have already seen) a march against Victor. Such a movement might be carried out in one of two ways. (1) It would be possible to advance against his flank and rear by keeping north of the Tagus, and striking, by Coria and Plasencia, at Almaraz and its great bridge of boats, across which ran the communication between the 1st Corps and Madrid. This operation would have to be carried out by the British army alone, while the Spanish army of Estremadura, acting29 from a separate base, kept in touch with Victor but avoided compromising itself by any rash attack upon him. The Marshal, placed in a central position between Wellesley’s and Cuesta’s forces, would certainly try to beat one of them before they got the chance of drawing together. (2) It was equally possible to operate against Victor not on separate lines, but by crossing the Tagus, joining the Spaniards somewhere in the neighbourhood of Badajoz, and falling upon the Marshal with the united strength of both armies. This movement would be less hazardous than the other, since it would secure the concentration of an army of a strength sufficient to crush the 25,000 men at which the 1st Corps might reasonably be rated. But it would only drive Victor back upon Madrid and King Joseph’s reserves by a frontal attack, while the other plan—that of the march on Almaraz—would imperil his flank and rear, and threaten to cut him off from the King and the capital.
Before making any decision between the two plans, Wellesley wrote to Cuesta, from Oporto on May 22, a letter requesting him to state his views as to the way in which the operations of the British and Spanish armies could best be combined. He[p. 437] informed him that the troops which had defeated Soult were already on their way to the south, that the head of the column would reach the Mondego on the twenty-sixth, and that the whole would be concentrated near Abrantes early in June. It was at that place that the choice would have to be made between the two possible lines of attack on Victor—that which led to Almaraz, and that which went on to Southern Estremadura. A few days later Wellesley dispatched a confidential31 officer of his staff—Colonel Bourke—to bear to the Spanish general a definite request for his decision on the point whether the allied32 armies should prepare for an actual junction18, or should man?uvre from separate bases, or should ‘co-operate with communication,’ i.e. combine their movements without adopting a single base or a joint33 line of advance. Bourke was also directed to obtain all the information that he could concerning the strength, morale34, and discipline of Cuesta’s army, and to discover what chance there was of securing the active assistance of the second Spanish army in the south—that which, under General Venegas, was defending the defiles36 in front of La Carolina[541].
It was clear that some days must elapse before an answer could arrive from the camp of the Estremaduran army, and meanwhile Wellesley continued to urge the counter-march of his troops from the various points at which they had halted between Oporto and Montalegre. All the scattered37 British brigades were directed on Abrantes by different routes: those which had the least distance to march began to arrive there on the eleventh and the twelve of June.
The Commander-in-chief had resolved not to take on with him the Portuguese regulars whom he had employed in the campaign against Soult. Both the brigades which had marched on Amarante under Beresford, and the four battalions38 which had fought along with Wellesley in the main column, were now dropped behind. They were destined39 to form an army of observation, lest Mortier and his 5th Corps, or any other French force, might chance to assail40 the front between the Douro and the Tagus during the absence of the British in the south.[p. 438] Beresford, who was left in command, was directed to arrange his troops so as to be able to support Almeida, and resist any raid from the direction of Salamanca or Zamora. The main body of the army lay at Guarda, its reserves at Coimbra. The Portuguese division which had been lying on the Zezere in company with Mackenzie’s troops, was also placed at Beresford’s disposition5, so that he had about eighteen battalions, four regiments41 of cavalry43, and five or six batteries—a force of between 12,000 and 15,000 men. It was his duty to connect Wellesley’s left wing with Silveira’s right, and to reinforce either of them if necessary. The Commander-in-chief was inclined to believe, from his knowledge of the disposition of the French corps at the moment, that no very serious attack was likely to be directed against Northern Portugal during his absence—at the most Soult might threaten Braganza or Mortier Almeida. But it was necessary to make some provision against even unlikely contingencies44.
The only Portuguese force which Wellesley had resolved to utilize45 for the campaign in Estremadura was the battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion, under Colonel Mayne, which had been stationed at Alcantara watching the movements of Victor. Sir Robert Wilson, now recalled from Beresford’s column and placed once more with his own men, was to take up the command of his old force, and to add to it the 5th Cazadores, a regiment42 which had hitherto been lying with Mackenzie’s division at Abrantes. With these 1,500 men he was to serve as the northern flank-guard of the British army when it should enter Spain.
When Wellesley first started upon his march, he was under the impression that his plan of campaign might be settled for him by the movements of Victor rather than by the devices of Cuesta. The rapidity of his progress was partly caused by the news of the Marshal’s attack on Alcantara, an operation which might, as it seemed, turn out to be the prelude46 of a raid in force upon Central Portugal. That it portended47 an actual invasion with serious designs Wellesley could not believe, being convinced that Victor would have to leave so large a proportion of his army to observe Cuesta, that he would not be able to set aside more than 10,000 or 12,000 men for operations in the valley of the Tagus[542]. But such a force would be enough to[p. 439] sweep the country about Castello Branco and Villa48 Velha, and to beat up Mackenzie’s line of defence on the Zezere.
The actual course of events on the Tagus had been as follows. Victor, even after having received the division of Lapisse, considered himself too weak either to march on Cuesta and drive him over the mountains into Andalusia, or to fall upon Central Portugal by an advance along the Tagus[543]. He had received vague information of the formation of Mackenzie’s corps of observation on the Zezere, though apparently he had not discovered that there was a strong British contingent49 in its ranks. But he was under the impression that if he crossed the Guadiana in force, to attack Cuesta, the Portuguese would advance into Estremadura and cut his communications; while if he marched against the Portuguese, Cuesta would move northward50 to attack his rear. Accordingly he maintained for some time a purely51 defensive52 attitude, keeping his three French infantry53 divisions concentrated in a central position, at Torremocha, Montanches, and Salvatierra (near Caceres), while he remained himself with Leval’s Germans and Latour-Maubourg’s dragoons in the neighbourhood of Merida, observing Cuesta and sending flying columns up and down the Guadiana to watch the garrison of Badajoz and the guerrillas of the Sierra de Guadalupe. He had not forgotten the Emperor’s orders that he was to be prepared to execute a diversion in favour of Marshal Soult, when he should hear that the 2nd Corps was on its way to Lisbon. But, like all the other French generals, he was profoundly ignorant of the position and the fortunes of the Duke of Dalmatia. On April 22 the head-quarters staff at Madrid had received no more than a vague rumour54 that the 2nd Corps had entered Oporto a month before! They got no trustworthy information concerning its doings till May was far advanced[544]. Victor, therefore, depending on King Joseph for his news from Northern Portugal, was completely in the dark as to the moment when he might be called upon to execute his diversion on the Tagus. The Portuguese and Galician insur[p. 440]gents had succeeded in maintaining a complete blockade of Soult, and thus had foiled all Napoleon’s plans for combining the operations of the 1st and the 2nd Corps.
Victor was only stirred up into a spasmodic activity in the second week in May, by the news that a Portuguese force had crossed the frontier and occupied Alcantara, where the great Roman bridge across the Tagus provided a line of communication between North-Western and Central Estremadura. This detachment—as we have already seen—consisted of no more than Colonel Mayne’s 1st battalion of the Loyal Lusitanian Legion, brought down from the passes of the Sierra de Gata, and of a single regiment of newly-raised militia55—that of the frontier district of Idanha. They had with them the six guns of the battery of the Legion and a solitary56 squadron of cavalry, Wellesley had thrown forward this little force of 2,000 men to serve as an outpost for Mackenzie’s corps on the Zezere. But rumour magnified its strength, and Victor jumped to the conclusion that it formed the vanguard of a Portuguese army which was intending to concert a combined operation with Cuesta, by threatening the communication of the 1st Corps while the Spaniards attacked its front.
Labouring under this delusion57, Victor took the division of Lapisse and a brigade of dragoons, and marched against Alcantara upon the eleventh of May. As he approached the river he was met at Brozas by Mayne’s vedettes, whom he soon drove in to the gates of the little town. Alcantara being situated58 on the south side of the Tagus, it was impossible to defend it: but Mayne had barricaded59 and mined the bridge, planted his guns so as to command the passage, and constructed trenches60 for his infantry along the northern bank. After seizing the town, Victor opened a heavy fire of artillery and musketry against the Portuguese detachment. It was met by a vigorous return from the further bank, which lasted for more than three hours before the defence began to flag. The Marshal very properly refused to send forward his infantry to attempt the storm of the bridge till his artillery should have silenced that of the defenders61. At about midday the Idanha militia, who had already suffered not inconsiderable losses, deserted62 their trenches and fled. Thereupon Mayne fired his mine in the bridge, but unhappily for[p. 441] him the tough Roman cement defied even the power of gunpowder63; only one side of the arch was shattered; the crown of the vault64 held firm, and the passage was still possible. The Legion still kept its ground, though it had lost many men, and had seen one of his guns dismounted, and the rest silenced by the French artillery. But when Victor hurled65 the leading brigade of Lapisse’s division at the bridge he succeeded in forcing it[545]. Mayne drew off his legionaries in good order and retreated to the pass of Salvatierra, leaving behind him a gun and more than 250 killed and wounded[546] [May 14]—a heavy loss from the 1,000 men of the single battalion which bore the whole brunt of the fighting.
Victor went no further than Alcantara, having satisfied himself that the Portuguese force which had made such a creditable resistance consisted of a single weak brigade, and did not form the vanguard of an army bent66 on invading Estremadura. After remaining for no more than three days at Alcantara, and trying in vain to obtain news of the whereabouts of Soult—who was at that moment being hunted past Guimaraens and Braga in the far north—the Marshal drew back his troops to Torremocha near Caceres.
His advance, though it had only lasted for six days, and had not been pushed more than a few miles beyond Alcantara, had much disturbed General Mackenzie, who dreaded67 to find himself the next object of attack and to see the whole of the 1st Corps debouching against him by the road through Castello Branco. Wellesley wrote to him that he need not be alarmed, that Victor could not spare more than 10,000 or 12,000 men for his demonstration69, and that the 8,000 British and Portuguese troops behind the Zezere were amply sufficient to maintain defensive operations till the main army from the north should come up. He expressed his opinion that the French force at Alcantara was ‘a mere70 reconnoitring party, sent out for the purpose of[p. 442] ascertaining71 what has become of Soult,’ a conclusion in which he was perfectly72 right. Mackenzie[547], who betrayed an exaggerated want of confidence in his Portuguese troops, was profoundly relieved to see the enemy retire upon the seventeenth. He had advanced from Abrantes and taken up a defensive position along the Sobreira Formosa to resist the Marshal, but he had done so with many searchings of heart, and was glad to see the danger pass away. When Victor had retired73 into Central Estremadura, Mayne came back with all due caution, and reoccupied the bridge of Alcantara.
Wellesley, therefore, had been perfectly well justified74 in his confidence that nothing was to be feared in this direction. The French could not possibly have dared to undertake more than a demonstration in the direction of Castello Branco. King Joseph’s orders to Victor had prescribed no more[548], and the Marshal had accomplished even less. In his letter of excuse to Jourdan he explained that he would gladly have left Lapisse’s division at Alcantara, or even have moved it forward for some distance into Portugal[549], if he had not found it absolutely impossible to feed it in the bare and stony75 district north of the Tagus, where Junot’s army had been wellnigh starved in November 1807. The peasantry of the villages for fifteen leagues round Alcantara had, as he declared, gone off into the mountains with their cattle, after burying their corn, and he had found it impossible to discover food for even three days’ consumption of a single division.
During Victor’s absence at Alcantara, Cuesta had sent down a part of his troops to make a raid on Merida, the Marshal’s advanced post on the Guadiana. It failed entirely76; the garrison, two battalions of Leval’s German division, maintained themselves with ease in a large convent outside that town, which Victor had patched up and turned into a place of some little strength. On hearing that the Spaniards were descending[p. 443] from the mountains, King Joseph ordered the Duke of Belluno to attack them at once. But on the mere news of the Marshal’s approach Cuesta called back his detachment into the passes, sweeping78 off at the same time the inhabitants of all the villages along the Guadiana, together with their cattle and their stores of provisions.
At the beginning of June Victor began to press the King and Jourdan for leave to abandon his hold on Southern Estremadura, and to fall back towards the Tagus. He urged that his position was very dangerous, now that Cuesta’s army had been recruited up to a force of 22,000 infantry and 6,000 horse, especially since the Portuguese had once more got possession of Alcantara. His main contention79 was that he must either be reinforced up to a strength which would permit him to attack Andalusia, or else be permitted to withdraw from the exhausted80 district between the Guadiana and the Tagus, in order to seek a region where his men would be able to live. The only district in this neighbourhood where the country-side was still intact was that north of the Tagus, around the towns of Plasencia and Coria—the valleys of the Alagon and Tietar. To move the army in this direction would involve the evacuation of Central Estremadura—it would be necessary to abandon Merida, Truxillo, and Caceres, with the sacrifice of a certain amount of prestige. But unless the 1st Corps could be reinforced—and this, as Victor must have known, was impossible[550]—there was no other alternative. The internal condition of the army was growing worse day by day. ‘The troops are on half rations9 of bread: they can get little meat—often none at all. The results of starvation are making themselves felt in the most deplorable way. The men are going into hospital at the rate of several hundreds a day[551].’ A few days later Victor adds, ‘If I could even get together enough biscuit to feed the army for merely seven or eight days I should not feel so uncomfortable. But we have no flour to issue for a bread ration10, so cannot bake biscuit[552].’ And again he adds, ‘The whole population of this[p. 444] region has retired within Cuesta’s lines, after destroying the ovens and the mills, and removing every scrap81 of food. It seems that the enemy is resolved to starve us out, and to leave a desert in front of us if we advance.... Carefully estimating all my stores I find that I have barely enough to last for five days in hand. We are menaced with absolute famine, which we can only avoid by moving off, and there is no suitable cantonment to be found in the whole space between Tagus and Guadiana: the entire country is ruined.’
Joseph and Jourdan replied to the first of these dismal82 letters by promising30 to send the 1st Corps 300,000 rations of biscuit, and by urging its commander to renew his attack on Alcantara, in order to threaten Portugal and ‘disengage the Duke of Dalmatia’—who, on the day when their dispatch was written, was at Lugo, in the north of Galicia, some 300 miles as the crow flies from Victor’s head quarters[553]. They received the answer that such a move was impossible, as Mayne had just blown up the bridge of Alcantara, and it was now impossible to cross the Tagus[554].
A few days later the news arrived at Madrid that Soult had been defeated and flung out of Portugal[555]. It had taken three weeks for information of this transcendent importance to reach the king! Seriously alarmed, Joseph and Jourdan sent Victor his long-denied permission to retire from Estremadura and place himself behind the Tagus. They do not seem to have guessed that the victorious83 Wellesley would make his next move against the 1st Corps, but imagined that he would debouch68 into Old Castile by way of Rodrigo and Salamanca, wherefore their main idea was to strengthen Mortier and the army in the valley of the Douro[556]. Thus it fell in with their views that Victor should draw back to the line of the Tagus, a general concentration of all the French troops in the Peninsula seeming advisable, in face of the necessity for resisting the sup[p. 445]posed attack on Old Castile. Another reason for assuming a defensive attitude was the gloomy news from Aragon, where Suchet, after his defeat at Alca?iz, had retired on Saragossa and was sending despairing appeals for reinforcements to Madrid.
Accordingly, the 1st Corps evacuated84 Estremadura between the fourteenth and the nineteenth of June, and, crossing the Tagus, disposed itself in a position on the northern bank, with its right wing at Almaraz and its left at Talavera. Here Victor intended to make his stand, being confident that with the broad river in front of him he could easily beat off any attack on the part of the Spanish army.
But when Wellesley and Cuesta first began to correspond concerning their joint movement against the French in Estremadura, Victor was still in his old cantonments, and their scheme of operations had been sketched85 out on the hypothesis that he lay at Merida, Torremocha, and Caceres. It was with the design of assailing86 him while he still held this advanced position, that Cuesta drew up his paper of answers to Wellesley’s queries87 and dispatched it to Abrantes to meet the British general on his arrival[557].
If the old Captain-General’s suggestions were by no means marked with the stamp of genius, they had at least the merit of variety. He offered Wellesley the choice between no less than three plans of campaign. (1) His first proposal was that the British army should descend77 into Southern Estremadura, and join him in the neighbourhood of Badajoz. From thence the united host was to advance against Victor and assail him in front. But meanwhile Cuesta proposed to send out two subsidiary columns, to turn the Marshal’s flanks and surround him. One was to base itself on Alcantara and march along the northern bank of the Tagus to seize Almaraz: the other was to push by La Serena through the Guadalupe mountains to threaten Talavera. By these operations, if Victor would be good enough to remain quiet in his present cantonments, he would be completely surrounded, his retreat would be cut[p. 446] off, and he would finally be compelled to surrender. The scheme was of course preposterous88. What rational man could have supposed it likely that the Marshal would remain quiescent89 while his flanks were being turned? He would certainly have hastened to retire and to throw himself upon the detached columns, one or both of which he could have annihilated90 before the main armies of the allies could get within touch of him[558]. Wellesley refused to listen for a moment to this plan of campaign. (2) The second proposal of Cuesta was that the British army should pass the Tagus at Alcantara and operate against Victor’s flank, while the Spanish army attacked him in front. To this the same objection could be urged: it presupposed that the Frenchman would remain fixed91 in his present cantonments: but he certainly would not do so when he heard that he was to be assailed92 on both flanks; he would retire behind the Tagus at once, and the British army would have wasted its march, and be obliged to return to the north bank of that river: moreover, it would involve a very long movement to the south to get in touch with Victor’s flank. Probably it would be necessary to descend as far into Estremadura as Caceres, and, when that point was reached, the Marshal could make the whole man?uvre futile93 by retiring at once behind the Tagus at Almaraz. To follow him to the north bank the British would have to retrace94 their steps to Alcantara.
The third proposal of Cuesta—the only one in which Wellesley could find any prospect95 of success, was that the British army, keeping north of the Tagus, should march by Castello Branco on Plasencia. There it would be in the rear[p. 447] of Victor’s best line of retreat by the bridge of Almaraz. If the man?uvre could be kept very secret, and executed with great speed, Almaraz, perhaps also the subsidiary passage at Arzobispo, might be seized. Should the Marshal get early news of the movement, and hurry back across the Tagus to fend35 off this stab in the rear, Wellesley was prepared to fight him in the open with equal forces, conceiving that he was ‘sufficiently strong to defend himself against any attack which Victor might make.’ He hoped that Cuesta was able to guarantee that he also was competent to hold his own, supposing that the Marshal, neglecting the British diversion, should concentrate his corps and strike at the Spanish army.
On the whole, therefore, Wellesley was not disinclined to fall in with this plan, which had the extra merit of remaining feasible even if Victor withdrew north of the Tagus before either of the allied armies had completed its march. He made one countersuggestion, viz. that Cuesta might move eastward96, with the whole or part of his army, join the army of Venegas in La Mancha, and attack Sebastiani, leaving the British alone to deal with Victor. But he did not wish to press this plan, thinking that an attack on the enemy’s left was on first principles less advisable than one on his right, because it did not offer any chance of cutting him off from Madrid[559].
The answer to Cuesta’s proposals was sent off from Abrantes, which Wellesley, preceding his army by three or four days’ march, reached upon June 8. He had now under his hand Mackenzie’s Anglo-Portuguese force, but the leading brigades of the troops who had fought at Oporto could not arrive before the eleventh or twelfth. There was thus ample time to concert the joint plan of campaign before the whole army would be concentrated and ready to move. But when Cuesta’s reply to the dispatch of June 8 came to hand upon June 13, Wellesley was much vexed97 to find that the old Captain-General had expressed a great dislike for the idea that the British army should march upon Plasencia and Almaraz—though it had been one of his own three suggestions. He now pleaded urgently in favour of the first of his original alternatives—that Wellesley[p. 448] should come down to Badajoz and join him in a frontal attack upon Victor. With much reluctance98 the British general resolved to comply, apparently moved by his ally’s openly expressed dislike to being left to face Victor alone. ‘I must acknowledge,’ he wrote to Colonel Bourke, ‘that I entertain no apprehension99 that the French will attack General Cuesta: I am much more afraid that they are going away, and strengthening themselves upon the Tagus[560].’ To the Spanish General he sent a dispatch to the same effect, in which he pledged himself to march to join the army of Estremadura, though he frankly100 stated that all his information led him to believe that Victor had no intention of taking the offensive, and that the junction was therefore unnecessary. He expressed his hope that Cuesta would avoid all fighting till they had met, the only possible danger to the allied cause being that one of the two armies should suffer a defeat before the other had started on the combined movement to which they were committed[561].
Fortunately for all parties concerned, the march on Badajoz which Wellesley so much disliked never had to be begun, for on the day after he had sent off his dispatch to Cuesta he received reliable information from several sources, to the effect that Victor had evacuated and blown up the fortified101 convent of Merida, and had sent off all his baggage and heavy artillery towards Almaraz. During the next four days the whole of the 1st Corps marched for that all-important bridge, and crossed it. On the nineteenth Victor had established his entire army north of the Tagus, at Almaraz, Arzobispo, and Talavera. Thus the whole face of affairs was changed, and the advance of the British army into Southern Estremadura was rendered unnecessary. It was fortunate that the news of the retreat of the 1st Corps was received at Abrantes just in time to allow of the countermanding102 of the march of Wellesley’s army on Badajoz, for that fruitless movement would have begun if the Duke of Belluno had been able to retain his starving army in its positions for a few days longer.
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evacuate
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| v.遣送；搬空；抽出；排泄；大(小)便 | |
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evacuates
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| 撤离，疏散( evacuate的第三人称单数 )； 排空（胃肠），排泄（粪便）； （从危险的地方）撤出，搬出，撤空 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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dispositions
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| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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ration
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| n.定量(pl.)给养，口粮；vt.定量供应 | |
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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13
Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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levies
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| （部队）征兵( levy的名词复数 )； 募捐； 被征募的军队 | |
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harassed
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| adj. 疲倦的，厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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insurgents
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| n.起义，暴动，造反( insurgent的名词复数 ) | |
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strife
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| n.争吵，冲突，倾轧，竞争 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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entangling
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| v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的现在分词 ) | |
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hazardous
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| adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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intercepted
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| 拦截( intercept的过去式和过去分词 )； 截住； 截击； 拦阻 | |
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tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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garrison
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| n.卫戍部队；驻地，卫戍区；vt.派(兵)驻防 | |
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battalion
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| n.营；部队；大队(的人) | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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morale
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| n.道德准则，士气，斗志 | |
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fend
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| v.照料（自己），（自己）谋生，挡开，避开 | |
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defiles
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| v.玷污( defile的第三人称单数 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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battalions
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| n.（陆军的）一营（大约有一千兵士）( battalion的名词复数 )；协同作战的部队；军队；（组织在一起工作的）队伍 | |
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destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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assail
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| v.猛烈攻击，抨击，痛斥 | |
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regiments
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| （军队的）团( regiment的名词复数 )； 大量的人或物 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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cavalry
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| n.骑兵；轻装甲部队 | |
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44
contingencies
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| n.偶然发生的事故，意外事故( contingency的名词复数 )；以备万一 | |
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45
utilize
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| vt.使用，利用 | |
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46
prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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portended
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| v.预示( portend的过去式和过去分词 )；预兆；给…以警告；预告 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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49
contingent
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| adj.视条件而定的；n.一组，代表团，分遣队 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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52
defensive
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| adj.防御的；防卫的；防守的 | |
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53
infantry
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| n.[总称]步兵(部队) | |
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54
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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55
militia
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| n.民兵，民兵组织 | |
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56
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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delusion
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| n.谬见，欺骗，幻觉，迷惑 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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barricaded
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| 设路障于，以障碍物阻塞( barricade的过去式和过去分词 )； 设路障[防御工事]保卫或固守 | |
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trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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defenders
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| n.防御者( defender的名词复数 )；守卫者；保护者；辩护者 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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64
vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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dreaded
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| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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68
debouch
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| v.流出，进入 | |
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69
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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70
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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71
ascertaining
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的现在分词 ) | |
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72
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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74
justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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75
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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76
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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77
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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78
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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79
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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80
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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81
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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82
dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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83
victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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84
evacuated
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| 撤退者的 | |
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85
sketched
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| v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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86
assailing
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| v.攻击( assail的现在分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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87
queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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88
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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89
quiescent
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| adj.静止的，不活动的，寂静的 | |
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annihilated
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| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
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91
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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92
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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93
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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94
retrace
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| v.折回；追溯，探源 | |
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95
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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96
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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97
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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98
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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99
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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100
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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101
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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102
countermanding
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| v.取消（命令），撤回( countermand的现在分词 ) | |
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