Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/189

 Wellesley He hoped to get possession of Badajoz also before the French, who had to live upon the country, could take the field. He remained near Rodrigo till its works were repaired; then putting a Spanish garrison into it, and trusting the defence of the frontier to the Portuguese militia and the Galicians, he took his whole army to Elvas in the beginning of March. On the 16th he invested Badajoz. The garrison numbered five thousand men, and the works were stronger than those of Rodrigo; but there was again a hill from which the walls might be breached at a distance, and that side was chosen for the attack. The Picurina redoubt, which occupied this hill, was stormed on the 25th; and on 6 April, breaches having been formed in two bastions and the curtain between them, orders were given for the assault. The obstacles and fire encountered at the breaches proved insurmountable; but a brigade of the fifth division under General George Townshend Walker [q. v.] escaladed the works on the opposite side of the town, and advanced along the ramparts towards the breaches. The castle, too, was escaladed by the third division under Picton. The troops defending the breaches dispersed, and the place was taken and sacked. It cost Wellington nearly five thousand men, of whom more than two-thirds fell in the assault. When he learnt the extent of his losses, 'the firmness of his nature gave way for a moment, and the pride of conquest yielded to a passionate burst of grief (, iv. 123;, i. 295-311).

He wrote next day to Lord Liverpool begging that the British army might be provided with a corps of trained sappers and miners, as every foreign army was; adding that it was a cruel situation for any person to be placed in to have to sacrifice his best officers and men in carrying such places by vive force (Athenæum, 1889, i. 537). But if he had had the means, he had not the time for systematic approaches. Soult was advancing with twenty-four thousand men, and a second battle of Albuera was imminent, when the place fell. Marmont had meant to send three divisions to help Soult, but he received orders from Napoleon (Corresp. 18 Feb.) that if Wellington should make the mistake of attacking Badajoz, he was to march on Almeida and push out parties to Coimbra. Accordingly he entered Portugal at the end of March.

Learning this, and that the Spaniards had neglected to provision Rodrigo, Wellington gave up his intention of following Soult, who had retreated into Andalusia, and in the middle of April recrossed the Tagus, leaving Hill on the south side as before, with seventeen thousand men. On his approach Marmont fell back, having done nothing' beyond gathering supplies. The invasion of Andalusia had been Wellington's plan for the campaign. Forced to abandon it, he determined to invade Castile, feeling sure that if he could beat Marmont he should indirectly deliver the south of Spain. As a preliminary, he caused Rowland Hill [q. v.] to seize and destroy the double bridgehead at Almaraz which Marmont had built to secure his communication with Soult; and he made this capture seem to threaten Soult, strengthening his disinclination to detach troops to the north. Wellington shortened his own communication with Hill by repairing the bridge at Alcantara. The British sea-power not only helped him in feeding his troops (Desp, 4 Dec. 1811), but enabled him to give occupation to the other French armies while he was dealing with the army of Portugal. The east coast was to be threatened by an expedition from Sicily, the coast of Biscay by a squadron under Sir Home Popham acting in concert with the Spaniards, while the troops at Cadiz and Gibraltar were to hinder Soult from concentrating against Hill. North of the Duero the Portuguese militia and the Galicians were to invade the Asturias and Leon, and to co-operate with his own army.

On 13 June Wellington passed the Agueda with nearly fifty thousand men and marched on Salamanca. Some convents which had been converted into forts detained him there ten days. On the 20th Marmont brought up twenty-five thousand men, and was joined two days afterwards by fifteen thousand more. A good opportunity of bringing him to action seems to have been missed (, iv. 249), and when the forts fell on the 27th, he retired behind the Duero. The two armies remained in observation of one another on that river till 16 July, when Marmont, being joined by six thousand men, took the offensive. His skilful manœuvres and the greater mobility of his troops forced the allied army back to the Tormes, and across it.

On 22 July that army was drawn up on the hills south-east of Salamanca, and its baggage was already on the road to Rodrigo. King Joseph was marching from Madrid with fourteen thousand men to join Marmont, and there was now nothing to hinder their junction. Some cavalry, in which arm Marmont was weak, were also on their way to him from the army of the north. But from vanity, as Napoleon not unfairly said (Corresp. 2 Sept.), he gave the opportunity for which Wellington was anxiously watching. 