CHAPTER I

THE CAPTURE OF CIUDAD RODRIGO

It is with no small relief that we turn away from the annals of the petty warfare in the provinces and of the bickerings of politicians, to follow the doings of Wellington. All the ‘alarms and excursions’ that we have been narrating were of small import, compared with the operations on the frontiers of Portugal and Leon which began at the New Year of 1812. Here we have arrived at the true backbone of the war, the central fact which governed all the rest. Here we follow the working out of a definite plan conceived by a master-mind, and are no longer dealing with spasmodic movements dictated by the necessities of the moment. For the initiative had at last fallen into Wellington’s hands, and the schemes of Soult and Marmont were no longer to determine his movements. On the contrary, it was he who was to dictate theirs.

The governing factor in the situation in the end of December 1811 was, as we have already shown, the fact that Marmont’s army had been so distracted by the Alicante expedition, undertaken by Napoleon’s special orders, that it was no longer in a position to concentrate, in full force and within a reasonably short period of time. It was on December 13th[161] that the Duke of Ragusa received the definitive orders, written on November 20-1, that bade him to send towards Valencia, for Suchet’s benefit, such a force as, when joined by a detachment from the Army of the Centre, should make up 12,000 men, and to find 3,000 or 4,000 more to cover the line of communications of the expedition. Accordingly orders were issued to Montbrun to take up the enterprise, with the divisions of Foy and Sarrut, and his own cavalry; the concentration of the corps began on December 15th, and on December 29th it marched eastward from La Mancha[162] on its fruitless raid.

[161] For this date see Marmont to Berthier, from Valladolid, Feb. 6, 1812.

[162] For details, see