CHAP. destruction of the enemy, and the deliverance XIV. of Spain. 1808. Battle of The November. The system of the French was to beat this army down, as their increasing numbers enabled Espinosa. them to do, by repeated attacks. Blake intended to remain some days at Espinosa, for the purpose of giving his men some rest. But having arrived on the 9th, his rear-guard, under the Conde de San Roman, one of the officers who had escaped from the Baltic, was attacked on the following day, by a far superior force. He immediately posted his army in front of the town; Azevedo, with the Asturians and the first division, on a height to the left, covering the road to S. Andero; the second division on a hill to the right; the third and the reserve in the centre. van-guard was posted on a little hill close in the rear of the centre, with six four-pounders. The enemy were successful in their first attack, and drove the Spaniards from a wood which they had occupied; they returned, however, to the charge, being reinforced with the third division, and the action became general, except on the left of the Spanish position. It continued for three hours, till evening closed in; and Blake thought the advantage was on his side, though the enemy had gained possession of a wood and ridge of hill in front of his centre and right. The contest had been very severe, and a very great proportion of the Spanish officers had fallen, San Roman among them, and the Galician General Riquelme, both mortally wounded. The XIV. November. men lay on their arms that night, and Victor, CHAP. who commanded in this battle, brought up fresh troops from his rear to the ridge. At daybreak,1808. when the main attention of the Spaniards was drawn towards this point, he made his great attack upon their left, commencing it with a strong body of sharp-shooters; they were twice repulsed; meantime one of their large columns, under General Maison, came up and formed in line; the sharp-shooters, being reinforced, returned to the charge, and General Ruffin, with his division, attacked the centre. There the enemy were well resisted; but on the left they succeeded, owing, in great part, it appears, to the system which on this and the preceding day was practised, of marking out the officers. Azevedo, and the two Asturian Generals who were next in command, fell; this threw the men into confusion, and when they saw themselves cut off from the road to S. Andero, and that the French were advancing to occupy a height in rear of the town which commands the road to Reynosa, they gave way, and nothing remained but to order a general retreat. They had to retire by a bridge over the Trueba and a defile; and instead of attempting to save the guns, which would necessarily have impeded the retreat of the army, Blake thought it better to employ them till the last moment; this was done with great effect, and they were spiked when the enemy was close to them. Blake was one of those men who would have XIV. 1808. November. CHAP. been thought worthy of the chief command if they had never been trusted with it. His talents were considerable; he understood the theory of his profession well, and could plan an action or a campaign with great ability; but he was deficient in that promptitude and presence of mind which are the first qualifications of a commander. His own game he could play skilfully, but when the adversary disconcerted it by some unexpected movement, he was incapable of forming new dispositions to meet the altered circumstances. By persisting against a superior and continually increasing force in operations which had been calculated against an inferior one, he exposed himself to the imminent hazard of being entirely cut off; and by advancing so far into a country which had been stripped of its provisions, and with no commissariat to follow him, he exhausted his men. Under every privation he indeed set them an example of cheerfulness, and let them see that he fared as hardly as themselves; but this could not counteract the effects of inanition. They were in a state of famine when they arrived at Espinosa, and would have found nothing there to relieve them if 250 mules, laden with biscuits, had not most opportunely arrived, sent by MajorGeneral Leith, who was forwarding partial supplies toward them by every possible way. But men thus hungered, and enfeebled also by long continued exposure to cold and rain, were ill fitted for close action, in which much depended upon personal strength. Another and more lamentable error was, that the troops from the Baltic, the only thoroughly disciplined part of his force, were brought into action after the first defeat, and exposed by single battalions to bear the brunt of every conflict; and thus they were sacrificed in detail, giving melancholy proof, by the devoted courage with which they stood their ground, of what they could have effected, if, as a body, they had been brought into some fair field of battle. CHAP. XIV. 1808. November. of Blake's Reynosa. Blake attempted with the remains of his army Dispersion to make a stand at Reynosa; his principal maga- army at zine and his park of artillery were there; it is one of the strongest positions in that strong country, and had it been occupied in time, the event of the campaign might have been different. But the forlorn hope of collecting his scattered forces there was soon defeated. Victor was pursuing him closely from Espinosa; Lefebvre from the side of Villarcayo. And from the side of Burgos, where a fatal blow had now been struck, Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, marched upon Reynosa. No alternative was left him but to retreat toward S. Andero, and the dispersion was so complete, that there no longer remained any force on this side to oppose the enemy. Yet in justice to this ill-fated army it should be said, that no men ever behaved more gallantly, nor with more devoted patriotism. Without cavalry, half clothed, almost without food, they fought battle after battle against troops always superior in number, and whose losses were always filled XIV. CHAP. up with reinforcements. Nor did any circumstance of disgrace attend their defeat; there was November. no capitulation, no surrender of large bodies, or 1808. Nov. 16. Buonaparte arrives in of strong places; the ground on which they fought was won by the French, and that was all, as long as any body of the Spaniards remained together. The magazines at Reynosa now fell into their hands, and they entered S. Andero. The Bishop saved himself in an English ship, and General Riquelme expired as his men were lifting him on board. They had borne him thither from Espinosa; for, routed as they were, they would not leave him to die in the hands of the enemy. Here, and in some of the smaller ports, the French found a considerable booty of English goods. When Buonaparte arrived in Spain he was not Spain. pleased at finding that Lefebvre had opened the campaign; his hope had been to march a strong force in the rear of Blake's army, and thus place it in a situation where it must either have been destroyed or have laid down its arms. In crossing the mountains near Mondragon he had nearly lost one of his favourite Generals, Marshal Lasnes, Duke of Montebello; the ground was covered with frozen snow, his horse fell with him, and in attempting to rise fell on him. He was carried to Vitoria in a state of great danger, his body covered with those discolorations which show that the small vessels of the skin are ruptured, the abdomen swoln, the extremities cold, suffering acute pain, and with all the symptoms of |