The Age of Elegance by Arthur Bryant Page A

recrossed the river the same evening about two miles above Salamanca. Marmont was driving straight for his communications, and, though the gloom of the liberated city now surpassed its ecstasy of a month earlier, the British commander resolved that night to abandon it and retire on Ciudad Rodrigo. Without a major blunder by his opponent he could not hope for a decisive victory or for one without losses which he could not replace. The two armies were by now almost equal, the French having 48,500 men with a marked superiority in guns to the Anglo-Portuguese 50,000. And thanks to the guerrillas' interception of French dispatches Wellington, unlike Marmont, knew that 15,000 men under King Joseph and Jourdan were hastening to Marmont's aid from Madrid. He had also learnt that the British Commander-in-Chief in Sicily had failed to make a diversion on the Valencian coast and was contemplating instead an expedition to Italy. Faced with the possibility of Suchet also reinforcing Marmont, there seemed nothing for it but to abandon the offensive for another year. He could not afford to be cut off from Portugal or to fight a battle which he was not reasonably sure of winning.
    To those whose lives he was so prudently husbanding Wellington's decision to retreat came as a bitter disappointment. Their confidence in their own prowess, the warmth of their welcome from the Spanish people, the hopes of diving deeper into the romantic land before them, had ended in the old way. To add to their humiliation, that night as they lay tentless and hungry in the open fields they were assailed by a fearful thunderstorm. Flashes lit the blackness of the plain, horses broke from their piquets and galloped into the
    1 "I was frequently impressed with the horror of being wounded without the power to keep them off." Tomkinson, 190.
    enemy lines, and the earth threw up multitudes of drowning worms. The summer dawn of the 22nd found the British soaked, aching and sullen.
    In Marmont's mind Wellington's iron self-restraint had by now established the idea that he was incapable of any but a defensive role. It had even eradicated the painful impression of British invincibili ty forced on the French consciousness by the battles of the past four years. It caused the Marshal to throw all caution to the winds. On the morning of July 22nd he saw his chance—the greatest of his career. Before the elusive British could slip away again to the Portuguese mountains, he would treat them as his master had treated the Austrians and Prussians. By reverting to the elan of revolutionary tradition, he would do to the stiff-necked redcoats what Junot, Victor, Soult, Ney, Massena, even Napoleon had failed to do.
    With this intention the Marshal resumed his westward march on the morning of the 22nd, edging as he had done before round the right flank of the mainly invisible British, while his guns maintained a brisk cannonade against such of their positions as he could see. Presently, mistaking adjustments in Wellington's disposition for signs of an immediate retreat, he resolved to hasten the pace of his march towards the Salamanca-Rodrigo highway. He therefore ordered his advance-guard—the left flank of the line he presented to the British—to hurry ahead to envelop their right and cut their communications. By so doing he extended his force in the presence of an enemy still concentrated.
    The British Commander-in-Chief, guardian of the only army England possessed, had told his Government that he would never risk a general encounter at a disadvantage. But he had never said that he would not seize victory if it was offered him. Between two and three in the afternoon the leading French division, which was marching across his front along a low ridge about a mile away, began to race ahead. Seeing the gap between it and the more slowly moving centre widen, Wellington dropped the chicken leg he was eating and seized a telescope. Then, with a quick, "That will do," he sent off his aides