The Divine Liturgy of St.

John Chrysostom
(Orthodox Service Books Book 1) Fr. Joseph Irvin
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The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
Orthodox Service Books – Number 1
Compiled and edited by Fr. Joseph Irvin
Copyright © 2017 Fr. Joseph Irvin. Some rights reserved.
Creative Commons (ShareAlike) .
Published by Fr. Joseph Irvin
December 2020 Edition
 BEFORE LITURGY
PRAYERS BEFORE HOLY COMMUNION
BEGINNING
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, through the prayers of Your most pure Mother
and all the Saints, have mercy on us. Amen.
NOTE: A priest uses the following instead of the above:
PRIEST: Blessed is our God, always, now and ever, and unto ages of ages.
Amen.
Glory to You, our God, glory to You.
O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth Who is everywhere and
fills all things. Treasury of Blessings, and Giver of Life Come and abide in
us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.
Holy God! Holy Mighty! Holy Immortal! Have mercy on us. (3X)
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and
unto ages of ages. Amen.
O most Holy Trinity have mercy on us. Lord cleanse us from our sins. Master
pardon our transgressions. Holy One visit and heal our infirmities, for Your
name’s sake.
Lord have mercy. (3X)
"GNE ..."
Our Father, Who is in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom
come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass
against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
NOTE: If there is a priest, he adds the following exclamation:
PRIEST: For Yours is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of
ages.
Amen.
Lord have mercy. (12X)
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and
unto ages of ages. Amen.
Come, let us worship God our King!
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ, our King and our God!
Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ Himself, our King and our
God!
PSALM 21(22)
O God, my God, look to me; why have You forsaken me? Far from my
salvation are the words of my transgressions. O my God, I will cry in the
daytime, and You will not hear; and in the night season, and it shall not be
unto foolishness for me. But You dwell in the sanctuary, O You praise of
Israel. Our fathers hoped in You; they hoped, and You delivered them. They
cried unto You, and were saved; they hoped in You, and they were not
ashamed. But I am a worm and no man, a reproach of men, and the outcast of
the people. All they that saw me laughed me to scorn; they spoke with their
lips, they shook their heads, saying: "He hoped in the Lord; let Him deliver
Him; let Him save Him, for He delights in Him." For You are He that drew
me out of the womb, my hope from my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon
You from the womb; You are my God from my mother’s belly. Go not from
me, for trouble is near, for there is none to Help. Many bullocks have
compassed me; fat bulls have beset me round. They opened wide their mouth
against me, as a lion ravening and roaring. I am poured out like water, and all
my bones are scattered; my heart is like wax melting in the midst of my
bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue has cleaved to
my throat, and You have brought me down into the dust of death. For many
dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they
pierced my hands and my feet. They have numbered all my bones, and they
have looked and stared upon me. They parted my garments among them, and
cast lots upon my clothing. But put not Your Help far from me, O Lord; look
to my support. Deliver my soul from the sword, my only one from the hand
of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth, and my lowliness from the
statures of the unicorns. I will declare Your name unto my brethren; in the
midst of the church will I sing praise unto You. You that fear the Lord, praise
Him; all you the seed of Jacob, glorify Him; let all the seed of Israel fear
Him. For He has not despised nor abhorred the supplication of the poor,
neither has He turned away His face from me; and when I cried unto Him, He
heard me. Of You is my praise in the great congregation; I will pay my vows
before them that fear Him. The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and they shall
praise the Lord that seek Him; their hearts shall live for ever and ever. All the
ends of the earth shall remember, and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds
of the nations shall worship before Him. For the Kingdom is the Lord’s, and
He Himself is the sovereign of the nations. All they that be fat upon the earth
have eaten and worshiped; all they that go down to the dust shall fall down
before Him. And my soul lives unto Him, and my seed shall serve Him. The
generation that comes shall be told unto the Lord, and they shall declare His
righteousness unto a people that shall be born, whom the Lord has made.
PSALM 22(23)
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He makes me lie down in green
pastures. He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul! He leads me in
paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I fear not evil; For You are with me; Your rod
and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a Table before me in the
presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil, and most excellent is
Your cup which brings me joy! Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
PSALM 23(24)
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and all they that
dwell therein. He has founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the
rivers. Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord, or who shall stand in
His holy place? He that is innocent in his hands, and pure in heart; who has
not received his soul in vain, nor sworn deceitfully unto his neighbor. He
shall receive a blessing from the Lord and mercy from God his Savior. This is
the generation of them that seek the Lord, even of them that seek the face of
the God of Jacob. Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, you
everlasting gates; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of
glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your
gates, O princes, and be lifted up, you everlasting gates; and the King of
glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the
King of glory.
PSALM 115(116)
I kept my faith, even when I said "I am greatly afflicted;” I said in my
consternation "Every man is a liar.” What shall I render to the Lord for all
His bounty to me? I will lift up the Cup of Salvation and call on the name of
the Lord, I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints. O Lord, I am Your
servant; I am Your servant, the son of Your handmaid. You have loosed my
bonds. I will offer to You the Sacrifice of Thanksgiving and call on the name
of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people,
in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and
unto ages of ages. Amen.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! Glory to You, O God! (3X)
Lord have mercy. (3X)
Disregard my transgressions, O Lord Who was born of a Virgin! cleanse my
heart and make it a temple of Your most pure Body and Blood. Turn me not
away from Your presence, for Your great mercy is immeasurable.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
How can I who am unworthy dare to come to the Communion of Your Holy
Things? For if I should dare to approach You with those that are worthy, my
garment betrays me, for it is not a festal robe, and I shall cause the
condemnation of my greatly sinful soul. cleanse, O Lord, the pollution from
my soul, and save me, as You are the Lover of mankind.
Now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Great is the multitude of my sins, O Theotokos! I come to you, O Pure One,
in need of salvation. Visit my ailing soul, O You Who alone are blessed, and
pray to your Son and our God that He grant me forgiveness for the evil I have
done.
When the glorious Disciples were enlightened at the washing of the feet, then
Judas the ungodly one was stricken and darkened with the love of silver. And
unto the lawless judges did he deliver You, the righteous Judge. Behold, O
lover of money, him that for the sake thereof hung himself; flee that
insatiable soul that dares such things against the Master. O You Who are
good unto all, Lord, glory to You.
NOTE: the following is added during Great Lent:
Psalm 50(51)
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your great mercy; and according
to the multitude of Your tender mercies blot out my transgression. Wash me
thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I
acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against You
only have I sinned and done this evil in Your sight, that You might be
justified in Your sayings, and overcome when You are judged. For behold, I
was conceived in iniquity, and in sins did my mother bear me. For behold,
You have loved truth; the hidden and secret things of Your wisdom have You
revealed to me. You shall sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed;
You shall wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. You shall make
me to hear joy and gladness; the bones that are humbled shall rejoice. Turn
away Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a
clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away
from Your presence, and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto
me the joy of Your salvation, and establish me with Your sovereign spirit. I
will teach transgressors Your ways, and the ungodly shall turn again to You.
Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, the God of my salvation; my
tongue shall rejoice in Your righteousness. O Lord, You shall open my lips,
and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For had You desired sacrifice, I
would have given it; You will not delight in whole burnt offerings. A
sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; a broken and humbled heart God will not
despise. Do good, O Lord, in Your good pleasure unto Zion, and let the walls
of Jerusalem be built. Then shall You be pleased with a sacrifice of
righteousness, oblation and whole burnt offerings; then shall they offer bulls
upon Your altar.
Lord have mercy. (40X)
When you intend, O man, to eat the Master’s Body, approach with fear, lest
you be burned, for It is fire! Before drinking the Divine Blood in
Communion, make peace with those who have grieved you. Only then may
you dare to eat the Mystical Food. Before partaking of the Dread Sacrifice,
the life-giving Body of the Master, pray, trembling in this manner:
A PRAYER OF ST. BASIL THE GREAT
O Lord and Master, Jesus Christ our God, the Source of life and immortality,
the Creator of everything visible and invisible, the co-eternal and co-
unoriginate Son of the unoriginate Father You have come in these latter days
because of the abundance of Your goodness. You have put on our human
flesh and were crucified and buried for us thankless and graceless men, and
through Your own blood You have renewed our human nature which is
corrupted by sin. And now O Immortal King, accept the repentance of me, a
sinner, and incline Your ear to me and listen to my words. I have sinned, O
Lord, I have sinned against Heaven and before You, and I am not worthy to
look upon the height of Your glory. I have angered Your goodness; I have
transgressed Your commandments; I have not obeyed Your statutes. But, O
Lord, since You do not remember evil, but are long-suffering and of great
mercy, You have not given me over to be destroyed with my sins, but
patiently awaited my conversion. For You have said, O Lover of mankind,
through Your Prophets “I desire not the death of the sinner, but that he should
return and live.” For You do not desire, O Master, to destroy the work of
Your hands, neither shall You be pleased with the destruction of men, but
desire that all should be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.
Therefore, even I, although unworthy of Heaven and of earth, and of this
temporal life, having wholly yielded myself to sin, and made myself a slave
to sin, and having defaced Your image, yet being Your work and creation,
wretched though I be, I despair not of my salvation, and dare to approach
Your limitless loving-kindness. Accept, then, even me, O Lord, Lover of
mankind, as You accepted the Prostitute, the Thief, the Tax Collector and the
Prodigal. Take away the heavy burden of my sins, for You take away the sins
of the world and heal the infirmities of mankind; Who calls the weary and
heavy-laden to Yourself and gives them rest. You have not come to call the
righteous, but sinners to repentance. cleanse me from every defilement of
flesh and spirit. Teach me to achieve holiness in fear of You, that having the
testimony of my own conscience clean, and having communion of Your Holy
Things, I may be united with Your Body and Blood and may have You living
and abiding in me, with the Father and Your Holy Spirit. O Lord Jesus Christ
my God, let not the communion of Your most pure and life-creating
Mysteries bring me into judgment, nor may I become weak in soul and body
by partaking in an unworthy manner, but grant me to receive communion of
Your Holy Things without condemnation even to my very last breath, and by
them to receive communion of the Holy Spirit, provision for the journey of
eternal life, and an acceptable answer at Your dread judgment seat; that I,
together with all Your chosen ones, may also be a partaker of the
incorruptible blessings which You have prepared for those who love You, O
Lord, in whom You are exalted forever. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
O Lord my God, I know that I am not worthy nor sufficiently pleasing that
You should come under the roof of the house of my soul, for it is entirely
desolate and fallen in ruin, and You will not find in me a place worthy to lay
Your head. But as You humbled Yourself from on high for our sake, so now
humble Yourself to my lowliness. As You consented to lie in a cavern, in a
manger of dumb beasts, so now consent also to lie in the manger of my
irrational soul, and to enter into my defiled body. As You did not refuse to
enter and to eat with sinners in the house of Simon the leper, so now be
pleased to enter into the house of my soul, humble and leprous and sinful. As
You did not reject the harlot and sinner like me, when she came and touched
You, so have compassion also on me a sinner as I approach and touch You.
As You did nor abhor the kiss of her sin-stained and unclean mouth, do not
abhor my mouth, worse stained and more unclean than hers, nor my stained
and shamed and unclean lips, nor my still more impure tongue. But let the
fiery coal of Your most pure Body and Your most precious Blood bring me
sanctification, enlightenment and health of my lowly soul and body, unto the
lightening of the burden of my many sins, for protection against every act of
the devil, for the repulsion and victory over my wicked and evil habits, unto
the mortification of the passions, unto the keeping of Your commandments,
unto the application of Your divine grace, and unto the acquiring of Your
Kingdom. For not with disdain do I approach You, O Christ God, but as one
trusting in Your indescribable goodness, and that I may not become the prey
of the spiritual wolf by much abstaining from Your Communion. Therefore, I
beg You, O Master, for You alone are holy sanctify my soul and body, my
mind and heart, my muscles and bones. Renew me entirely. Implant Your
fear in my fleshly members and let Your sanctification never be removed
from me. Be my Helper and defender; guide my life in peace and make me
worthy to stand at Your right hand with all Your Saints. By the prayers and
supplications of Your most pure Mother, of Your spiritual servants, the most
pure Angelic powers, and of all the Saints who have been well-pleasing to
You. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. SIMEON METAPHRASTES
O only pure and sinless Lord, Who through the inexpressible compassion of
Your love for mankind took on all of our substance from the pure and virgin
blood of her that bore You supernaturally through the descent of the Holy
Spirit and the goodwill of the everlasting Father; O Christ Jesus, Wisdom of
God, and Peace, and Power, You Who through the assumption of our nature
took upon Yourself Your life-creating and saving Passion; the Cross, the
nails, the spear, and death mortify the soul corrupting passions of my body.
You Who by Your burial led captive the Kingdom of Hades, bury with good
thoughts my evil schemes, and destroy the spirits of evil. You Who by Your
life-bearing Resurrection on the third day raised up our fallen Forefather
Adam, raise me up who has slipped down into sin, setting before me the ways
of repentance. You Who by Your most glorious Ascension deified the flesh
that You had taken, and honored it with a seat at the right hand of the Father,
permit me, through partaking of Your holy Mysteries, to obtain a place at
Your right hand among those that are saved. O You Who by the descent of
Your Holy Spirit, the Comforter, made Your holy Disciples worthy vessels,
show me also to be a receptacle of His coming. You Who are to come again
to judge the world in righteousness allow me to also meet You on the clouds,
my Judge and Creator, with all Your Saints; that I may endlessly glorify and
praise You, with Your unoriginate Father, and Your most holy and good and
life-creating Spirit, now and ever, and ages of ages. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS
O Lord and Master Jesus Christ our God, Who alone has power to absolve
men from their sins, for You are good and love mankind forgive all my
transgressions done in knowledge or in ignorance, and make me worthy
without condemnation to have communion of Your divine, glorious, pure and
life-creating Mysteries. Let them not be for my punishment, or for the
increase of my sins. But let them be for my purification and sanctification, as
a promise of the life and the Kingdom to come, a defense and a Help and a
repulsion of every attacker and the removal of my many transgressions. For
You are a God of mercy and generosity and love for mankind, and to You we
ascribe glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto
ages of ages. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. BASIL THE GREAT
I know O Lord, that I partake unworthily of Your most pure Body and Your
most precious Blood, and that I am guilty and eat and drink damnation to
myself, not discerning Your Body and Blood, O my Christ and God. But
taking courage from Your generous loving-kindness I come to You Who has
said “He who eats my flesh and drinks My blood abides in me and I in Him.”
Be merciful, therefore, O Lord, and do not rebuke me, a sinner, but deal with
me according to Your mercy, and let Your Holy Things be for my
purification and healing, for enlightenment and protection, for the repulsion
of every tempting thought and action of the devil which works spiritually in
my fleshly members. Let them be for boldness and love for You, for the
correction and grounding of my life, for the increase of virtue and perfection,
and for the fulfillment of Your commandments, for the communion of the
Holy Spirit, for the journey of eternal life, for a good and acceptable answer
at Your dread judgment, but not for judgment or condemnation. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. SIMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN
From lips defiled and a vile heart; from an impure tongue and a soul defiled,
receive my prayer, O my Christ, and do not despise my words, my
appearance, nor my shamelessness. Grant me the boldness, my Christ, to say
what I desire. Even more, teach me what to do and say. I have sinned more
than the harlot who, on learning where You were, brought myrrh and came
boldly to anoint Your feet, my God, my Master and my Christ. As You did
not turn her away when she came with her heart, so, O Word, turn me not
away, but give me Your feet to hold, to kiss, and to anoint boldly with a
stream of tears as a precious ointment. Wash me with my tears, O Word, and
cleanse me with them! Remit my transgressions and grant me forgiveness.
You know the multitude of my evil You know also my wounds! You see my
scars You know also my faith! You see my intentions and hear my sighs.
Nothing is hidden from You, my God, my Maker, my Redeemer; not even a
teardrop or part of that drop. Your eyes have seen that which I have not yet
done. You have inscribed in Your book things yet to happen. See my
humility! See each of my labors and all of my sins! Absolve me of all, O God
of all, that with a pure heart, trembling thoughts and a contrite soul I may
partake of Your undefiled and most holy Mysteries which enliven and deify
all who partake of them with a pure heart. You have said, O Master
“Whoever eats My Body and drinks My Blood abides in Me and I in Him!”
True is every word of my Master and God! When I partake of Your divine
and deifying grace, I am no longer alone; I am with You, my Christ, the Light
of the Triple Sun which enlightens the world. May I not remain alone without
You, O life-giver, my Breath, my Life, my Joy, the Salvation of the world. I
approach You, therefore, with tears, as You see, and a contrite soul. I beg to
receive deliverance from my sins. May I partake uncondemned of Your life-
giving and spotless Mysteries, that You may abide, as You have said, with
me, the thrice wretched. May the Tempter not find me without Your grace
and seize me deceitfully, and lead me, deceived, from Your deifying words.
Therefore, I fall down before You and fervently cry "As You received the
Prodigal and the Harlot who came to You, O Gracious One, receive me,
prodigal and defiled." With a contrite soul I approach You now. I know O
Savior, that no one has sinned against You as I have, nor done the deeds that
I have done. But I also know that neither the greatness of my transgressions,
nor the multitude of my sins surpass the great patience of my God and His
extreme love for mankind. Through Your merciful compassion You cleanse
and brighten those who repent with fervor, making them partakers of Light
and full communicants of Your Divinity. To the astonishment of Angels and
human minds, You converse with them often as with Your true friends. This
makes me bold, my Christ, this gives me wings! Emboldened by the wealth
of Your generosity towards us, with both joy and trepidation, I who am grass
partake of fire. O strange wonder! I am sprinkled with dew and am not
burned, as the bush burned of old without being consumed. With grateful
thoughts and a grateful heart, with my grateful members, my soul and my
body, I now fall down and worship and glorify You, my God, for blessed are
You, now and for ever. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
O God, absolve, remit and pardon me my transgressions, as many sins as I
have committed by word or action or thought, willingly or unwillingly,
consciously or unconsciously; forgive me everything since You are good and
love mankind. And by the prayers of Your most pure Mother, of Your
spiritual servants, the holy Angelic powers and all the Saints, who from all
ages have been well-pleasing to You, be pleased to allow me to receive Your
most pure Body and Your most precious Blood for the healing of my soul
and body, and for the purification of my evil thoughts. For Yours is the
Kingdom and the power and the glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
ANOTHER PRAYER OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
I am not worthy, Master and Lord, that You should enter under the roof of
my soul; yet inasmuch as You desire to live in me as the Lover of mankind, I
approach with boldness. You have commanded let the doors be opened which
You alone have made and You shall enter with Your love for mankind just as
You are. You shall enter and enlighten my darkened reasoning, I believe that
You will do this. For You did not cast away the Prostitute who came to You
with tears, neither did You turn away the Tax Collector who repented, nor did
You reject the Thief who acknowledged Your Kingdom, nor did You forsake
the repentant persecutor, the Apostle Paul, even as he was. But all who came
to You in repentance You united to the ranks of Your friends, who alone are
blessed forever, now and unto the endless ages. Amen.
ANOTHER PRAYER OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
O Lord Jesus Christ my God, absolve, loose, cleanse and forgive me, Your
sinful and useless and unworthy servant, my errors, transgressions and sinful
failings as many as I have committed from my youth up to this present day
and hour, consciously and unconsciously, in words or actions or reasonings,
thoughts, pursuits and in all my senses. By the prayers of Your Mother the
most pure and ever-Virgin Mary who gave birth to You without human seed,
my only hope which will not put me to shame, my intercessor and salvation,
grant me to have communion without condemnation of Your most pure,
immortal, life-creating and awesome Mysteries; for the remission of sins and
unto life everlasting; for sanctification, enlightenment, strength, healing and
health of soul and body; for the most perfect removal and destruction of my
evil thoughts and reasonings and intentions, fantasies by night, brought by
dark and evil spirits; for Yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory
and the honor and the worship, with the Father and Your Holy Spirit, now
and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS
I stand before the doors of Your temple, and I do not forsake my wicked
thoughts. But, O Christ my God, as You have justified the Tax Collector, and
have had mercy on the Woman of Canaan and have opened the gates of
Paradise to the Thief, open to me the interior depths of Your love for
mankind and receive me as I come and repent before You. Receive me as
You received the sinful woman and the woman with the flow of blood. For
the first embraced Your most pure feet and received the forgiveness of her
sins, and the second just touched the hem of Your garment and received
healing. But I who am lost, daring to receive Your whole Body, may I not be
burned; but receive me as You have received them, and enlighten my
spiritual senses, burning up my spiritual faults by the prayers of her who gave
birth to You without human seed, and of the Heavenly Angelic powers, for
You are blessed unto ages of ages. Amen.
A PRAYER OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
I believe, O Lord, and I confess that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the
living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. I
believe that this is truly Your own most pure Body, and that this is truly Your
own precious Blood. Therefore, I pray "Have mercy upon me and forgive my
transgressions both voluntary and involuntary, of word and of deed,
committed in knowledge or in ignorance. And make me worthy to partake
without condemnation of Your most pure Mysteries, for the remission of my
sins, and unto life everlasting. Amen."
VERSES OF ST. SIMEON METAPHRASTES
Behold I draw near to the Divine Communion. Burn me not as I partake, O
Creator. For You are a Fire which consumes the unworthy. rather, cleanse me
of all defilement.
Of Your Mystical Supper, O Son of God, accept me this day as a
communicant; for I will not speak of Your Mystery to Your enemies, neither
like Judas will I give You a kiss; but like the thief will I confess You
remember me O Lord, in Your Kingdom.
Be awed, O man, when you see the deifying Blood. It is a fire which
consumes the unworthy! The Divine Body both defies and nourishes me. It
deifies the spirit and wondrously nourishes the mind.
With love have You drawn me, O Christ, and with Your divine love have
You changed me. Burn away my sins with a spiritual fire and satisfy me with
joy in You, that I may joyfully praise Your two comings, O Good One.
How shall I, who am unworthy, enter into the radiance of Your Saints? If I
dare to enter the bridal chamber, my garment accuses me, for it is not a
wedding garment, and the Angels will bind me and cast me out. cleanse, O
Lord, the filth of my soul and save me, for You love mankind.
O Master Who loves mankind! O Lord Jesus Christ my God! May these holy
Things not be to my condemnation, though I am unworthy of them. May they
be for the cleansing and sanctification of my soul and body and a pledge of
the life and Kingdom that are to come.
It is good for me to cleave to God and to place in the Lord the hope of my
salvation.
Of Your Mystical Supper, O Son of God, accept me this day as a
communicant; for I will not speak of Your Mystery to Your enemies, neither
like Judas will I give You a kiss; but like the thief will I confess You
remember me O Lord, in Your Kingdom.
A CONFESSION OF SINS
I confess to You, my Lord, God and Creator, to the One exalted and
worshiped in Holy Trinity; to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; all my sins
which I have committed all the days of my life, at every hour, in the present
and in the past; day and night; in thought, word and deed; by gluttony,
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
élan of French infantry. They advanced steadily enough across the
flat ground, and began to climb the hill, in spite of the rapid and
accurate fire of the artillery which crowned its summit. But when the
fire of musketry from the Spanish left began to beat upon their
flank, and the guns opened with grape, the attacking columns came
to a standstill at the line of a ditch cut in the slope. Their officers
made every effort to carry them forward for the few hundred yards
that separated them from the Spanish guns, but the mass wavered,
surged helplessly for a few minutes under the heavy fire, and then
dispersed and fled in disorder. Suchet rallied them behind the five
intact battalions which he still possessed, but refused to renew the
attack, and drew off ere night. He himself had been wounded in the
foot at the close of the action, and his troops had suffered heavily—
their loss must have been at least 700 or 800 men[522]. Blake, who
had lost no more than 300, did not attempt to pursue, fearing to
expose his troops in the plain to the assaults of the French cavalry.
The morale of the 3rd Corps had been so much shaken by its
unsuccessful début under its new commander, that a panic broke out
after dark among Laval’s troops, who fled in all directions, on a false
alarm that the Spanish cavalry had attacked and captured the
rearguard. Next morning the army poured into San Per and Hijar in
complete disorder, and some hours had to be spent in restoring
discipline. Suchet discovered the man who had started the cry of
sauve qui peut, and had him shot before the day was over[523].
The French had expected to be pursued, and many critics have
blamed Blake for not making the most of his victory and following
the defeated enemy at full speed. The Spanish general, however,
had good reasons for his quiescence: he saw that Suchet’s force was
almost as large as his own; he could not match the French in
cavalry; and having noted the orderly fashion in which they had left
the battle-field, he could not have guessed that during the night
they would disband in panic. Moreover—and this was the most
important point—he was expecting to receive in a few days
reinforcements from Valencia which would more than double his
numbers. Till they had come up he would not move, but contented
himself with sending the news of Alcañiz all over Aragon and
stimulating the activity of the insurgents. As he had hoped, the
results of his victory were important—the French had to evacuate
every outlying post that they possessed, and the whole of the open
country passed into the hands of the patriots. Perena and the
insurgents of the north bank of the Ebro pressed close in to
Saragossa: other bands threatened the high-road to Tudela:
thousands of recruits flocked into Blake’s camp, but he was
unfortunately unable to arm or utilize them.
Within a few days, however, he began to receive the promised
reinforcements from Valencia—a number of fresh regiments from the
rear, and drafts for the corps that were already with him[524]. He also
used his authority as supreme commander in Catalonia to draw
some reinforcements from that principality—three battalions of
Reding’s Granadan troops and one of miqueletes: no more could be
spared from in front of the active St. Cyr. Within three weeks after
his victory of Alcañiz he had collected an army of 25,000 men, and
considered himself strong enough to commence the march upon
Saragossa. It was in his power to advance directly upon the city by
the high-road along the Ebro, and to challenge Suchet to a battle
outside its southern gates. He did not, however, make this move, but
with a caution that he did not often display, kept to the mountains
and marched by a side-road to Belchite [June 12]. Here he received
news of Napoleon’s check at Essling, which had happened on the
twenty-second of the preceding month; it was announced as a
complete and crushing defeat of the Emperor, and encouraged the
Spaniards in no small degree.
From Belchite Blake, still keeping to the mountains, pursued his
march eastward to Villanueva in the valley of the Huerba. This move
revealed his design; he was about to place himself in a position from
which he could threaten Suchet’s lines of communication with Tudela
and Logroño, and so compel him either to abandon Saragossa
without fighting, or to come out and attack the Spanish army among
the hills. Blake, in short, was trying to manœuvre his enemy out of
Saragossa, or to induce him to fight another offensive action such as
that of Alcañiz had been. After the experience of May 25 he thought
that he could trust his army to hold its ground, though he was not
willing to risk an advance in the open, across the level plain in front
of Saragossa.
Suchet meanwhile had concentrated his whole available force in
that city and its immediate neighbourhood; he had drawn in every
man save a single column of two battalions, which was lying at La
Muela under General Fabre, with orders to keep back the insurgents
of the southern mountains from making a dash at Alagon and
cutting the high-road to Tudela. He had been writing letters to
Madrid, couched in the most urgent terms, to beg for
reinforcements. But just at this moment the Asturian expedition had
drawn away to the north all the troops in Old Castile. King Joseph
could do no more than promise that the two regiments from the 3rd
Corps which had been lent to Kellermann should be summoned
back, and directed to make forced marches on Saragossa. He could
spare nothing save these six battalions, believing it impossible to
deplete the garrison of Madrid, or to draw from Valladolid the single
division of Mortier’s corps, which was at this moment the only solid
force remaining in the valley of the Douro.
Suchet was inclined to believe that he might be attacked before
this small reinforcement of 3,000 men could arrive, and feared that,
with little more than 10,000 sabres and bayonets, he would risk
defeat if he attacked Blake in the mountains. The conduct of his
troops in and after the battle of Alcañiz had not tended to make him
hopeful of the result of another action of the same kind.
Nevertheless, when Blake came down into the valley of the Huerba,
and began to threaten his communications, he resolved that he must
fight once again; the alternative course, the evacuation of Saragossa
and a retreat up the Ebro, would have been too humiliating. Suchet
devoted the three weeks of respite which the slow advance of the
enemy allowed him to the reorganization of his corps. He made
strenuous exertions to clothe it, and to provide it with its arrears of
pay. He inspected every regiment in person, sought out and
remedied grievances, displaced a number of unsatisfactory officers,
and promoted many deserving individuals. He claims that the
improvement in the morale of the troops during the three weeks
when they lay encamped at Saragossa was enormous[525], and his
statements may be verified in the narrative of one of his
subordinates, who remarks that neither Moncey nor Junot had ever
shown that keen personal interest in the corps which Suchet always
displayed, and that the troops considered their new chief both more
genial and more business-like than any general they had hitherto
seen, and so resolved to do their best for him[526].
Forced to fight, but not by any means confident of victory, the
French commander discharged on to Tudela and Pampeluna his sick,
his heavy baggage, and his parks, before marching out to meet
Blake upon June 14. The enemy, though still clinging to the skirts of
the hills, had now moved so close to Saragossa that it was clear that
he must be attacked at once, though Suchet would have preferred to
wait a few days longer, till he should have rallied the brigade from
Old Castile. These two regiments, under Colonel Robert, had now
passed Tudela, and were expected to arrive on the fifteenth or
sixteenth. But Blake had now descended the valley of the Huerba,
and had pushed his outposts to within ten or twelve miles of
Saragossa. He had reorganized his army into three divisions, one of
which (mainly composed of Aragonese troops) was placed under
General Areizaga, while Roca and the Marquis of Lazan headed the
two others, in which the Valencian levies predominated. Of the total
of 25,000 men which the muster-rolls showed, 20,000 were in line:
the rest were detached or in hospital. There were about 1,000
untrustworthy cavalry and twenty-five guns.
In his final advance down the Huerba, Blake moved in two
columns. Areizaga’s division kept to the right bank and halted at
Botorrita, some sixteen miles from Saragossa. The Commander-in-
chief, with the other two divisions, marched on the left bank, and
pushing further forward than his lieutenant, reached the village of
Maria, twelve miles from the south-western front of the city. A
distance of six or seven miles separated the two corps. Thus Blake
had taken the strategical offensive, but was endeavouring to retain
the tactical defensive, by placing himself in a position where the
enemy must attack him. But he seems to have made a grave
mistake in keeping his columns so far apart, on different roads and
with a river between them. It should have been his object to make
sure that every man was on the field when the critical moment
should arrive.
Already on the morning of the fourteenth the two armies came
into contact. Musnier’s division met the Spanish vanguard, thrust it
back some way, but then came upon Blake and the main body, and
had to give ground. Suchet, on the same evening, established his
head quarters at the Abbey of Santa Fé, and there dictated his
orders for the battle of the following day. Having ascertained that
Areizaga’s division was the weaker of the two Spanish columns, he
left opposite it, on the Monte Torrero, a mile and a half outside
Saragossa, only a single brigade—five battalions—under General
Laval, who had now become the commander of the 1st Division, for
Grandjean had been sent back to France. Protected by the line of
the canal of Aragon, these 2,000 men[527] were to do their best to
beat off any attack which Areizaga might make against the city,
while the main bodies of both armies were engaged elsewhere. The
charge of Saragossa itself was given over to Colonel Haxo, who had
but a single battalion of infantry[528] and the sapper-companies of the
army.
Having set aside these 3,000 men to guard his flank and rear,
Suchet could only bring forward Musnier’s division, and the
remaining brigade of Laval’s division (that of Habert), with two other
battalions, for the main attack. But he retained with himself the
whole of his cavalry and all his artillery, save one single battery left
with the troops on Monte Torrero. This gave him fourteen battalions
—about 7,500 infantry—800 horse, and twelve guns—less than
9,000 men in all—to commence the battle. But he was encouraged
to risk an attack by the news that the brigade from Tudela was now
close at hand, and could reach the field by noon with 3,000
bayonets more. It would seem that Suchet (though he does not say
so in his Mémoires) held back during the morning hours, in order to
allow this heavy reserve time to reach the fighting-ground.
Blake was in order of battle along the line of a rolling hill
separated from the French lines by less than a mile. Behind his front
were two other similar spurs of the Sierra de la Muela, each
separated from the other by a steep ravine. On his right flank was
the river Huerba, with level fields half a mile broad between the
water’s edge and the commencement of the rising ground. The
village of Maria lay to his right rear, some way up the stream. The
Spaniards were drawn out in two lines, Roca’s division on the
northernmost ridge, Lazan’s in its rear on the second, while the
cavalry filled the space between the hills and the river. Two
battalions and half a battery were in reserve, in front of Maria. The
rest of the artillery was placed in the intervals of the first line.
The French occupied a minor line of heights facing Blake’s front:
Habert’s brigade held the left, near the river, having the two cavalry
regiments of Wathier in support. Musnier’s division formed the
centre and right: a squadron of Polish lancers was placed far out
upon its flank. The only reserve consisted of the two stray battalions
which did not belong either to Musnier or Habert—one of the 5th
Léger, another of the 64th of the Line[529].
Blake’s army was slow in taking up its ground, while Suchet did
not wish to move till the brigade from Tudela had got within
supporting distance. Hence in the morning hours there was no
serious collision. But at last the Spaniards took the initiative, and
pushed a cautious advance against Suchet’s left, apparently with the
object of worrying him into assuming the offensive rather than of
delivering a serious attack. But the cloud of skirmishers sent against
Habert’s front grew so thick and pushed so far forward, that at last
the whole brigade was seriously engaged, and the artillery was
obliged to open upon the swarm of Spanish tirailleurs. They fell back
when the shells began to drop among them, and sought refuge by
retiring nearer to their main body[530].
 About midday the bickering died down on the French left, but
shortly after the fire broke out with redoubled energy in another
direction. Disappointed that he could not induce Suchet to attack
him, Blake had at last resolved to take the offensive himself, and
columns were seen descending from his extreme left wing, evidently
with the intention of turning the French right. Having thus made up
his mind to strike, the Spanish general should have sent prompt
orders to his detached division under Areizaga, to bid it cross the
Huerba with all possible speed, and hasten to join the main body
before the engagement had grown hot. It could certainly have
arrived in two hours, since it was but six or seven miles away. But
Blake made no attempt to call in this body of 6,000 men (the best
troops in his army) or to utilize it in any way. He only employed the
two divisions that were under his hand on the hillsides above Maria.
The attack on the French right, made between one and two
o’clock, precipitated matters. When Suchet saw the Spanish
battalions beginning to descend from the ridge, he ordered his Polish
lancers to charge them in flank, and attacked them in front with part
of the 114th regiment and some voltigeur companies. The enemy
was thrown back, and retired to rejoin his main body. Then, before
they were fully rearranged in line of battle, the French general bade
the whole of Musnier’s division advance, and storm the Spanish
position. He was emboldened to press matters to an issue by the
joyful news that the long-expected brigade from Tudela had passed
Saragossa, and would be on the field in a couple of hours.
The eight battalions of the 114th, 115th, and the 1st of the
Vistula crossed the valley and fell upon the Spanish line between two
and three o’clock in the afternoon. Roca’s men met them with
resolution, and the fighting was for some time indecisive. Along part
of the front the French gained ground, but at other points they were
beaten back, and to repair a severe check suffered by the 115th,
Suchet had to engage half his reserve, the battalion of the 64th, and
to draw into the fight the 2nd of the Vistula from Habert’s brigade
upon the left. This movement restored the line, but nothing
appreciable had been gained, when a violent hailstorm from the
north suddenly swept down upon both armies, and hid them for half
an hour from each other’s sight.

BATTLE of ALCAÑIZ
MAY RD
23 1809
 BATTLE of MARIA
JUNE TH
15 1809

Before it was over, Suchet learnt that Robert and his brigade had
arrived at the Abbey of Santa Fé, on his right rear. He therefore
resolved to throw into the battle the wing of his army which he had
hitherto held back,—Habert’s battalions and the cavalry. When the
storm had passed over, they advanced against the Spanish right, in
the low ground near the river. The three battalions[531] of infantry led
the way, but when their fire had begun to take effect, Suchet bade
his hussars and cuirassiers charge through the intervals of the front
line. The troops here opposed to them consisted of 600 cavalry
under General O’Donoju—the whole of the horsemen that Blake
possessed, for the rest of his squadrons were with Areizaga, far
away from the field.
 The charge of Wathier’s two regiments proved decisive: the
Spanish horse did not wait to cross sabres, but broke and fled from
the field, exposing the flank of the battalions which lay next them in
the line. The cuirassiers and hussars rolled up these unfortunate
troops, and hunted them along the high-road as far as the outskirts
of Maria; here they came upon and rode down the two battalions
which Blake had left there as a last reserve, and captured the half-
battery that accompanied them.
The Spanish right was annihilated, and—what was worse—Blake
had lost possession of the only road by which he could withdraw and
join Areizaga. Meanwhile Habert’s battalions had not followed the
cavalry in their charge, but had turned upon the exposed flank of
the Spanish centre, and were attacking it in side and rear. It is
greatly to Blake’s credit that his firmness did not give way in this
distressing moment. He threw back his right, and sent up into line
such of Lazan’s battalions from his rear line as had not yet been
drawn into the fight. Thus he saved himself from utter disaster, and
though losing ground all through the evening hours, kept his men
together, and finally left the field in a solid mass, retiring over the
hills and ravines to the southward. ‘The Spaniards,’ wrote an eye-
witness, ‘went off the field in perfect order and with a good military
bearing[532].’ But they had been forced to leave behind them all their
guns save two, for they had no road, and could not drag the artillery
up the rugged slopes by which they saved themselves. Blake also
lost 1,000 killed, three or four times that number of wounded, and
some hundreds of prisoners. The steadiness of the retreat is
vouched for by the small number of flags captured by the French—
only three out of the thirty-four that had been upon the field.
Suchet, according to his own account, had lost no more than
between 700 and 800 men.
When safe from pursuit the beaten army crossed the Huerba far
above Maria, and rejoined Areizaga’s division at Botorrita on the
right bank of that stream.
 Next morning, to his surprise, Suchet learnt that the enemy was
still in position at Botorrita and was showing a steady front. The
victor did not march directly against Blake, as might have been
expected, but ordered Laval, with the troops that had been guarding
Saragossa, to turn the Spaniards’ right, while he himself manœuvred
to get round their left. These cautious proceedings would seem to
indicate that the French army had been more exhausted by the
battle of the previous day than Suchet concedes. The turning
movements failed, and Blake drew off undisturbed at nightfall, and
retired on that same road to Belchite by which he had marched on
Saragossa, in such high hopes, only four days back.
The battle of Maria had been on the whole very creditable to the
Valencian troops. But the subsequent course of events was
lamentable. On the way to Belchite many of the raw levies began to
disband themselves: the weather was bad, the road worse, and the
consciousness of defeat had had time enough to sink into the minds
of the soldiery. When Blake halted at Belchite, he found that he had
only 12,000 men with him: deducting the losses of the fifteenth,
there should have been at least 15,000 in line. Of artillery he
possessed no more than nine guns, seven that had been with
Areizaga, and two saved from Maria[533].
It can only be considered therefore a piece of mad presumption
on the part of the Spanish general that he halted at Belchite and
again offered battle to his pursuers. The position in front of that
town was strong—far stronger than the ground at Maria. But the
men were not the same; on June 15 they had fought with
confidence, proud of their victory at Alcañiz and intending to enter
Saragossa in triumph next day. On June 18 they were cowed and
disheartened—they had already done their best and had failed: it
seemed to them hopeless to try the fortunes of war again, and they
were half beaten before a shot had been fired. The mere numerical
odds, too, were no longer in their favour: at Maria, Blake had 13,000
men to Suchet’s 9,000—if we count only the troops that fought, and
neglect the 3,000 French who came up late in the day, and were
never engaged. At Belchite, Blake had about 12,000 men, and
Suchet rather more, for he had gathered in Laval’s and Robert’s
brigades—full 5,000 bayonets, and could put into line 13,000 men,
even if allowance be made for his losses in the late battle[534]. It is
impossible to understand the temerity with which the Spanish
general courted a disaster, by resolving to fight a second battle only
three days after he had lost the first.
Blake’s centre was in front of Belchite, in comparatively low-lying
ground, much cut up by olive groves and enclosures. His wings were
drawn up on two gentle hills, called the Calvary and El Pueyo: the
left was the weaker flank, the ridge there being open and exposed.
It was on this wing therefore that Suchet directed his main effort; he
sent against it the whole of Musnier’s division and a regiment of
cavalry, while Habert’s brigade marched to turn the right: the centre
was left unattacked. The moment that Musnier’s attack was well
pronounced, the whole of the Spanish left wing gave way, and fell
back on Belchite, to cover itself behind the walls and olive-groves.
Before the French division could be re-formed for a second attack,
an even more disgraceful rout occurred on the right wing. Habert’s
brigade had just commenced to close in upon the Spaniards, when a
chance shell exploded a caisson in rear of the battery in Blake’s
right-centre. The fire communicated itself to the other powder-
wagons which were standing near, and the whole group blew up
with a terrific report. ‘This piece of luck threw the whole line into
panic,’ writes an eye-witness, ‘the enemy thought that he was
attacked in the rear. Every man shouted Treason! whole battalions
threw down their arms and bolted. The disorder spread along the
entire line, and we only had to run in upon them and seize what we
could. If they had not closed the town-gates, which we found it
difficult to batter in, I fancy that the whole Spanish army would have
been captured or cut to pieces. But it took some time to break down
the narrow grated door, and then a battalion stood at bay in the
Market Place, and had to be ridden down by our Polish lancers
before we could get on. Lastly, we had to pass through another gate
to make our exit, and to cross the bridge over the Aguas in a narrow
formation. This gave the Spaniards time to show a clean pair of
heels, and they utilized the chance with their constitutional agility.
We took few prisoners, but got their nine guns, some twenty
munition wagons, and the whole of their very considerable
magazines. General Suchet wrote up a splendid account of the
elaborate manœuvres that he made. But I believe that my tale is
nearer to the facts, and that the order of battle which he published
was composed après coup. The whole affair did not last long enough
for him to carry out the various dispositions which he details[535].’
The whole Spanish army was scattered to the winds. It was some
days before the Aragonese and Catalans began to rally at Tortosa,
and the Valencians at Morella. The total loss in the battle had not
been large—Suchet says that only one regiment was actually
surrounded and cut to pieces, and only one flag taken[536]. But of the
25,000 men who had formed the ‘Army of the Right’ on June 1, not
10,000 were available a month later, and these were in a state of
demoralization which would have made it impossible to take them
into action.
Suchet was therefore able to set himself at leisure to the task of
reducing the plains of Aragon, whose control had passed out of his
hands in May. He left Musnier’s division at Alcañiz to watch all that
was left of Blake’s army, while he marched with the other two to
overrun the central valley of the Ebro. On June 23 he seized Caspe
and its long wooden bridge, and crossed the river. Next he occupied
Fraga and Monzon, and left Habert[537] and the 3rd division to watch
the valley of the Cinca. With the remaining division, that of Laval, he
marched back to Saragossa [July 1], sweeping the open country
clear of guerrilla bands. Then he sat down for a space in the
Aragonese capital, to busy himself in administrative schemes for the
governance of the kingdom, and in preparation for a systematic
campaign against the numerous insurgents of the northern and
southern mountains, who still remained under arms and seemed to
have been little affected by the disasters of Maria and Belchite.
Thus ended Blake’s invasion of Aragon, an undertaking which
promised well from the day of Alcañiz down to the battle of June 15.
It miscarried mainly through the gross tactical error which the
general made in dividing his army, and fighting at Maria with only
two-thirds of his available force. His strategy down to the actual
moment of battle seems to have been well-considered and prudent.
If he had put the Aragonese division of Areizaga in line between the
river and the hill, instead of his handful of untrustworthy cavalry, it
seems likely that a second Alcañiz might have been fought on the
fatal fifteenth of June. For Suchet’s infantry attack had miscarried,
and it was only the onslaught of his cavalry that won the day. Had
that charge failed, Saragossa must have been evacuated that night,
and the 3rd Corps would have been forced back on Navarre—to the
entire dislocation of all other French operations in Spain. If King
Joseph had received the news of the loss of Aragon in the same
week in which he learnt that Soult and Ney had evacuated Galicia,
and Kellermann the Asturias, he would probably have called back
Victor and Sebastiani and abandoned Madrid. For a disaster in the
valley of the Douro or the Ebro, as Napoleon once observed, is the
most fatal blow of all to an invader based on the north, and makes
central Spain untenable. While wondering at Blake’s errors, we must
not forget to lay part of the blame at the door of his lieutenant
Areizaga—the incapable man who afterwards lost the fatal fight of
Ocaña. An officer of sound views, when left without orders, would
have ‘marched to the cannon’ and appeared on the field of Maria in
the afternoon. Areizaga sat quiescent, six miles from the battle-field,
while the cannon were thundering in his ears from eleven in the
morning till six in the afternoon!
As for Suchet, we see that he took a terrible risk, and came safely
through the ordeal. There were many reasons for evacuating
Saragossa, when Blake came down the valley of the Huerba to cut
the communications of the 3rd Corps. But an enterprising general
just making his début in independent command, could not well take
the responsibility of retreat without first trying the luck of battle.
Fortune favoured the brave, and a splendid victory saved Saragossa
and led to the reconquest of the lost plains of Aragon. Yet, with
another cast of the dice, Maria might have proved a defeat, and
Suchet have gone down to history as a rash officer who imperilled
the whole fate of the French army in Spain by trying to face over-
great odds.
 SECTION XVI
THE TALAVERA CAMPAIGN
(JULY-AUGUST 1809)

CHAPTER I
WELLESLEY AT ABRANTES: VICTOR EVACUATES
ESTREMADURA

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 forth 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 manœuvre
the 2nd Corps out of Portugal. But, owing to the faulty dispositions
of the Duke of Dalmatia, he had been able to accomplish much more
than this—he had beaten the Marshal, stripped him of his artillery
and equipment, destroyed a sixth of his army, and flung him back
into Galicia by a rugged 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 accomplished till Victor had been
dealt with. The necessity for a prompt movement against the 1st
Corps was emphasized by the news, received on May 19 at
Montalegre, that its commander was already astir, and apparently
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 Portuguese
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 levies 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 harassed by the
insurgents, and would fall into such bitter strife with each other, that
they might ere long evacuate 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 entangling themselves in new and hazardous
enterprises which would make it more difficult than ever for them to
collect a force opposite the frontier of Northern Portugal. Down to
the very end of June Wellesley had no reason to dread 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 undoubtedly have thrown
into disorder 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 intercepted all
communications between the French troops in Galicia and those in
and about Madrid. The movement might appear tempting, 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 garrison of Ciudad
Rodrigo, and a battalion or two which Carlos d’España 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 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 determined 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, acting
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 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 confidential
officer of his staff—Colonel Bourke—to bear to the Spanish general a
definite request for his decision on the point whether the allied
armies should prepare for an actual junction, or should manœuvre
from separate bases, or should ‘co-operate with communication,’ i.e.
combine their movements without adopting a single base or a joint
line of advance. Bourke was also directed to obtain all the
information that he could concerning the strength, morale, 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
defiles 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 scattered 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 battalions which had fought along
with Wellesley in the main column, were now dropped behind. They
were destined to form an army of observation, lest Mortier and his
5th Corps, or any other French force, might chance to assail the
front between the Douro and the Tagus during the absence of the
British in the south. 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 disposition,
so that he had about eighteen battalions, four regiments of cavalry,
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 contingencies.
The only Portuguese force which Wellesley had resolved to utilize
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 regiment 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 prelude of a raid in force upon Central
Portugal. That it portended 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 sweep the country about Castello Branco and Villa 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 contingent 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
northward to attack his rear. Accordingly he maintained for some
time a purely defensive attitude, keeping his three French infantry
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 rumour 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 insurgents 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 militia—that of the frontier district of Idanha. They had with
them the six guns of the battery of the Legion and a solitary
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 delusion, 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 situated on the south side of the Tagus,
it was impossible to defend it: but Mayne had barricaded and mined
the bridge, planted his guns so as to command the passage, and
constructed trenches 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 defenders. At about
midday the Idanha militia, who had already suffered not
inconsiderable losses, deserted their trenches and fled. Thereupon
Mayne fired his mine in the bridge, but unhappily for him the tough
Roman cement defied even the power of gunpowder; only one side
of the arch was shattered; the crown of the vault 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 hurled 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 bent 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 dreaded 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 demonstration, 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 mere reconnoitring party, sent out for the
purpose of ascertaining what has become of Soult,’ a conclusion in
which he was perfectly 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 retired into Central Estremadura, Mayne
came back with all due caution, and reoccupied the bridge of
Alcantara.
Wellesley, therefore, had been perfectly well justified 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 stony 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 entirely; 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 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, sweeping 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
contention 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 exhausted 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 rations 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 ration, so cannot bake
biscuit[552].’ And again he adds, ‘The whole population of this region
has retired within Cuesta’s lines, after destroying the ovens and the
mills, and removing every scrap 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 dismal letters by
promising 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 victorious
Wellesley would make his next move against the 1st Corps, but
imagined that he would debouch 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
supposed attack on Old Castile. Another reason for assuming a
defensive attitude was the gloomy news from Aragon, where Suchet,
after his defeat at Alcañiz, had retired on Saragossa and was
sending despairing appeals for reinforcements to Madrid.
Accordingly, the 1st Corps evacuated 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 sketched out on the hypothesis that he lay at
Merida, Torremocha, and Caceres. It was with the design of assailing
him while he still held this advanced position, that Cuesta drew up
his paper of answers to Wellesley’s queries 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 descend 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 off, and he would
finally be compelled to surrender. The scheme was of course
preposterous. What rational man could have supposed it likely that
the Marshal would remain quiescent 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 annihilated 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 fixed in his present cantonments: but he
certainly would not do so when he heard that he was to be assailed
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 manœuvre futile by retiring at once behind the
Tagus at Almaraz. To follow him to the north bank the British would
have to retrace their steps to Alcantara.
The third proposal of Cuesta—the only one in which Wellesley
could find any prospect 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 of Victor’s best line of retreat
by the bridge of Almaraz. If the manœuvre 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 fend 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 eastward, 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 vexed 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 should come down to Badajoz and join him in a frontal
attack upon Victor. With much reluctance 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 apprehension 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 frankly 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 fortified 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
countermanding 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.
 SECTION XVI: CHAPTER II
WELLESLEY ENTERS SPAIN

The retreat of Victor beyond the Tagus forced Wellesley to concert

yet another plan of operation with Cuesta, since the position of the
French army, on which the whole of the recently adopted scheme
depended, had just suffered a radical change. It was clear that every
consideration now pointed to the necessity for adopting the
combination which Wellesley had urged upon his colleague in his
letter of June 8, viz. that the British army should move on Plasencia
and Almaraz. It would now be striking at the flank instead of the
rear of Victor’s corps, but it was clear that under the new conditions
it would still be in a position to roll up his whole army, if he should
endeavour to defend the passages of the Tagus against the
Spaniards, who were now approaching them from the front. For
Cuesta had descended from the mountains when he heard of Victor’s
retreat, and was now approaching Almaraz.
It took some time, however, to induce the Captain-General to
consent to this move. To the extreme vexation of his colleague he
produced other plans, so gratuitously impracticable that Wellesley
wrote to Castlereagh to say that he could conceive no explanation
for the old man’s conduct save a desire to refuse any scheme urged
on him by others, and a resolve to invent and advocate alternative
plans of his own out of mere pride and wrongheadedness. ‘The best
of the whole story,’ he added[562], was that Cuesta was now refusing
to accept a plan which he himself had suggested in one of his earlier
letters, merely because that plan had been taken up and advocated
by his ally. ‘The obstinacy of this old gentleman,’ he concluded, ‘is
throwing out of our hands the finest game that any armies ever
had[563].’
The necessity for working out a new scheme for the combined
operations of the British and Spanish armies, in view of Victor’s
retreat to Almaraz, entailed the loss of a few days. It would have
been impossible to start on the advance to Plasencia till Cuesta had
promised to accept that movement as part of the joint campaign.
There was also some time to be allowed for concluding an
agreement with Venegas, the General of the La Carolina army,
whose connexion with the campaign must become much more
intimate, now that the fighting was to take place not in Estremadura,
but further north, in the valley of the Tagus. For while Victor lay at
Merida and Sebastiani at Manzanares and Ciudad Real, the Spanish
forces which faced them were very far apart. But when Victor retired
to Talavera, and Sebastiani to Madridejos, in the end of June, Cuesta
and Venegas—each following the corps opposed to him—could draw
closer together. It was evident that the Andalusian army ought to be
made to play an important part in the combined operations of July.
It would be unfair to the Spanish generals to let it be supposed
that the necessity for settling on a common scheme of operations
with them was the sole cause which detained Wellesley at Abrantes
from the eighth to the twenty-seventh of June. The leading brigades
of the British troops from Oporto had begun to reach Abrantes on
the eleventh, and the more belated columns came up on the
fourteenth and fifteenth. But it would have been impossible to have
moved forward without some further delay, even if Wellesley had
been in possession of a complete and satisfactory plan of operations
on the day upon which his whole force was concentrated on the line
of the Zezere. At the least he would have required another week for
preparations.
His hindrances at this moment were manifold. The first was the
distressed condition of those of his brigades which had seen most
service during the Oporto campaign. Many regiments had been
constantly on the march from May 9 to June 14, without obtaining
more than two days’ rest in the whole time. Their shoes were worn
out, their jaded baggage-animals had dropped to the rear, and they
were leaving so many stragglers on the way that it was absolutely
necessary to give them a moderate rest at Abrantes, in order to
allow the ranks to grow full and the belated baggage to come up.
The regiments which had followed Beresford in the forced march
from Amarante to Chaves were worst off—they had never completely
recovered from the fatigues of those three days of constant rain and
storm spent on the stony roads of the Tras-os-Montes[564]. In any
case some delay must have occurred before all the troops were
ready to march. But many circumstances conspired to detain the
army at Abrantes for several days after the moment at which
Wellesley had determined to start for Plasencia. The first was the
non-arrival of convoys of shoes and clothing which he had ordered
up from Lisbon. The transport of the army was not yet fully
organized, its officers were lacking in experience, if not in zeal, and
orders were slowly executed. Many corps had, in the end, to start for
Spain without receiving the much-needed stores, which were still
trailing up from Santarem to Abrantes when Wellesley gave the
signal to advance. Another hindrance was the lack of money: the
army was obliged to pay for its wants in coin, but hard cash was so
difficult to procure both in London and in Lisbon that arrears were
already beginning to grow up. At first they vexed the soul of
Wellesley almost beyond endurance, but as the war dragged on they
only grew worse, and the Commander-in-chief had to endure with
resignation the fact that both the pay of the men and the wages of
the Portuguese muleteers and followers were overdue for many
months. In June 1809 he had not yet reached this state of
comparative callousness, and was endeavouring to scrape together
money by every possible device. He had borrowed £3,000 in
Portuguese silver from the merchants of the impoverished city of
Oporto: he was trying to exchange bills on England for dollars at
Cadiz, where the arrival of the American contribution had produced a
comparative plenty of the circulating medium. Yet after all he had to
start from Abrantes with only a comparatively moderate sum in his
military chest[565], the rest had not reached him on June 28, the