Moore knew by this time that Madrid had fallen, but that did not alter his plans. When Napoleon realised that the daring Englishman was striking at his communications, it was certain he would arrest the southward march of his armies and turn his whole strenghth on the puny and audacious foe that had attempted such a stroke. But this would for the moment at least save the whole south of Spain, and give it time to prepare for defence. It would arrest -- if it did not wreck -- Napoleon's whole campaign.

Seldom has a commander attempted a more desperate task than that to which Moore now addressed himself He had an army equal to his own in numbers on his front, another on his left might cut him off from the sea. Napoleon himself, with an overwhelming force, marching at speed from Madrid, would break in upon his right flank. Moore's problem was, by the nicest adjustment of time, to push on far enough to bring upon himself Napoleon's rush, and yet, by nimbleness and speed, to evade that great soldier's stroke and pluck his own army from destruction. He pushed on, therefore, to strike Soult at Sahagun; and yet, treating the forward march as really a movement of retreat, prepared stores in his rear on the roads leading to the sea-coast.

The effect of Moore's audacious policy was exactly what he calculated. Napoleon learned of Moore's advance on December 21, and acted with lightning-like swiftness of decision. He wrote to, Josephine on the 22nd, "I am starting this moment to out-maneuver the English, who appear to have received their reinforcements, and wish to play the swagerers."

To Ney he said more seriously, "Moore is now the only general fit to contend with me. I shall advance against him in person."

"The day wherein we succeed in seeing these English," he added, "will be a day of jubilee for the French army. . . . Ah! that they might be met with to the number of 80,000 or 100,000 men instead of 20,000, that English mothers might feel the horrors of war! All the evils, all the plagues which can afflict the human race come from London."

Fifty thousand French troops, with the cavalry of the Guard, were on the evening of the 22nd at the foot of the Guadarama hills. The range is wild and rugged; its ravines were choked with snow, and slippery with ice. A tempest, edged with sleet and black with rain-clouds, was scuffling over the frozen hill summits. The French advance-guard was driven back by the mountain tempests, and the movement of the whole army arrested. "Men and horses," says Marbot, "were hurled over precipices; "the leading battalions had actually begun to retreat."

But neither the deep snow nor the wild hills, nor the yet wilder tempest, could stay Napoleon's vehement purpose. He made his cavalry dismount, and the leading files to interlock their arms and press on in spite of snow and ice and blackness. Napoleon himself, with Lannes holding his arm on one side, and Duroc on the other, trudged with the leading files. The crest of the range was reached and crossed, though many men and animals died.

On the 26th Napoleon had reached Tordesillas with the Guard and two divisions, having covered ioo miles in that tremendous march, and he wrote to Soult, "If the English pass to-day in their position they are lost."

Still pushing furiously onward, he reached Valderas: but he was too late by exactly twelve hours! The English were across the Esla! So daringly had Moore held on to his position, so exactly had he calculated the speed and reach of Napoleon's stroke!

Moore had pressed on resolutely to attack Soult. He was slightly superior to the French in numbers, an believed he could shatter Soult's force and begin his retreat to the coast with the glory of having destroyed one of Napoleon's marshals almost in Napoleon's very presence. He proposed to make a night-march to Carran, and there fall on Soult.

At nine o'clock on the night of December 23 his troops were formed in two columns ready for the adventure. The track lay across a wide plain, thick with snow; a bitter tempest was blowing, yet-the men were in the highest spirits. A great battle lay before them; and battle for the British soldier is a tonic. The right column had already fallen into quick step, when a dragoon came riding furiously up.

Fall Back

He brought the news that Napoleon was in full march to cut off the British army. Moore arrested his impatient columns, and at dawn his divisions began to fall back.

Moore was now the pursued, not the pursuer, Soult was pressing eagerly on his rear, Napoleon thundering on his flank. On the 26th the Esla was crossed. It was a wild scene. Rain fell incessantly from the black skies; the river was rising; there was but a single clumsy boat, and an army had to cross, with all its baggage and followers. A ford was found, and infantry and artillery fought their way through the fast rising waters. Moore himself crossed by a bridge at another point, and before the long column was well over, the French cavalry were upon the hill and looking down on the scene.

The distance from Sahagun, the point at which Moore's retreat began, and Corunna, where he expected the British transports to be waiting for him, was, in a direct line, about 16o miles; the actual march of the troops was probably about 220 miles, The retreat began on December 15. Corunna was reached on January 12.

Measured thus by either distance or time, the retreat does not seem a very formidable thing. Napoleon, with 50,000 men, marched from Madrid to Villapando, 164 miles, in seven days. Moore in eight days of actual marching only covered 150 miles.

When translated into the cold terms of an itinerary, the story, indeed, is soon told. On the 26th the Esla was crossed. On the 27th Benevente was reached, and the columns balted for two days. On the 30th the headquarters were at Astorga, and a junction was effected with Baird, the combined forces at this point numbering 25,000 men.

Moore had announced he would stand and fight at this point, but Soult, pressing on the British rear, was now superior in numbers to Moore, and the British general feared he might slip past his left flank and cut him off from Corunna.

Junot, with the very troops which had fought at Vimiero, was moving on his right shoulder from Burgos. Lefebvre was striking at his communications from Salamanca, and betwixt Junot and Lefebvre, Napoleon was coining up like a tempest. Moore, in a word, was within a crescent-like curve of hostile armies, more than five times as numerous as his own, and all moving upon him by lines which resembled the radii of a circle converging to its centre.

On December 30 he fell back from Astorga, On January 1, Napoleon reached that place, and 80,000 French troops with 200 guns were concentrated there. It is a proof of Napoleon's energy that within ten days of learning Moore's strategy, and in the depth of winter, he had carried so great an army across 200 miles of mountainous country and in the wildest weather. But it is also a dramatic justification of Moore's strategy that he had drawn a hostile force so formidable into a hilly corner of Spain, thus staying its southward rush.

The French columns which crowded Astorga would have been marching on Lisbon but for the English general's skilful and audacious strategy. It is a proof, again, of the perfection of Napoleon's military art, that he and Soult, marching through wild country and wild weather, and from widely separated points, the one traversing over a hundred, the other over two hundred miles of difficult roads, yet had effected their junction at the agreed point and the agreed moment with something like mathematical exactness.

Astorga

At Astorga, Napoleon surrendered the pursuit of the English to Soult. The adroit Englishman had evaded him, and the whole concentration of Napoleon's columns, planned with such skill and urged with such fire, had failed! Napoleon relieved his feelings privately by much angry rhetoric. Thus on December 31 he writes to Joseph: "My vanguard is near Astorga; the English are running away as fast as they can.... They are abhorred by everybody; they have carried off everything, and then maltreated and beaten the inhabitants. There could not have been a better sedative for Spain than to send here an English army."

The same day he writes to Josephine: "I have been for several days pursuing the English, but they fly in terror." Again, on January 1, 1809, he wrote to Fouche: "The English have abandoned the Spaniards in a shameful and cowardly manner. We are pursuing them hotly.... The English, it appears, have sent for 10,000 horses, so as to escape more quickly. Have all this shown up in the newspapers. Have caricatures made, and songs and popular ditties written. Have them translated into German and Italian, and circulated in Italy and Germany."

Napoleon was determined to celebrate, at least, a literary triumph over his enemies!

Moore now divided his army; his light companies under Craufurd took the road to Vigo, while he,himself fell back to Villefranca. On January 6 he reached Lugo and turned to face Soult. The Frenchman, however, shrank from closing with his enemy till Victor, who was coming up with 20,000 men, should join him. On the 8th Moore made a night march to Valmeda.

On the 10th the columns reached Betanzos. On the 12th the British came down from the summits of the hill near Corunna, only to find the bay empty.

British Disintegration

During this retreat of eighteen days it will be seen that Moore's forces actually halted four days, and it seems difficult to understand how a British army, unshaken by defeat and splendidly led, should practically have fallen into ruin in a period of time so short. But the march from Sahagun to Corunna was, for suffering and horror, like a tiny section of the Moscow retreat, the track lay through the savage Asturian hills.

It was winter-time. Tempests raged almost incessantly. Every stream was swollen, every ravine was choked with snow. The troops were without shelter; and it may be frankly admitted that British troops do not shine in the virtues required in a retreat. The men grow sullen and reckless. Discipline vanishes. The British private would rather stand in his tracks and die facing the enemy than tramp, perhaps with blooding feet and hungry stomach, to escape him.

At Valderas and Benevente the troops discovered great vaults stored with wine, and wild scenes of drunkenness took place, and still more fatally affected discipline. At Astorga the British colunins found the town occupied by the wreck of Romana's army -- a mass of worn-out wretches, half-naked and more than half-starved, fermenting with disease of every kind; and this helped to shake still further the morale of the British troops themselves.

But the toil of the marches, along roads knee-deep in mud, or through wild passes choked with snow, the incessant rain, the bitter cold, the exhaustion of hunger, taxed human strength and endurance to the breaking-point. The marches were sometimes pushed with unwise energy. Moro than once no halt was made during the short, bitter, winter day, and the long black winter night that followed, and scores of men fell dead in the staggering ranks, killed by pure fatigue. The country in some places was most, difficult, and an officer who shared the horrors of the retreat has described the extraordinary sight witnessed in one wild and gloomy valley which had to be passed.

"Thousands of the red-coats," he says, "were creeping like snails up the ascent before us, their muskets slung round their necks, and clambering, with both hands, as they hauled themselves up."

"I looked round when we had hardly gained the highest point of those slippery precipices, and saw the rear of the army winding along the narrow road. I saw their way marked by the wretched people who lay on all sides, dying from fatigue and cold. Their bodies reddened in spots the white surface of the ground."

Now and again a tableland had to be crossed, over which the tempest raved with unchecked fury, and the toiling columns were almost buried in snow; their track- was strewn with the dead and the dying

"The long day," says the writer we have already quoted, "found us still pushing on; the night caused us no halt."

Little groups of soldiers -- often with women and children amongst them -- sat huddled together in the snow with bent heads, waiting for death. The troops that limped into Corunna were gaunt, bent, ragged, many literally blind with fatigue and hardship. Napier, afterwards the historian of the Peninsular War, shared in the sufferings and heroism of this retreat.

"I marched," he says, "for several days with bare feet. The days and nights were filled with scuffling tempests of sleet and snow."

Napier had only a jacket and a pair of linen trousers for clothes. "My feet," he says, "were swelled, and bled at every step in such a manner that General Craufurd, who saw me in that state, turned his head away."

Yet the blackness of this retreat was lit up with gleams of splendid heroism, The rear-guard, under the tonic of perpetual battle, maintained their discipline unbroken. They passed whole nights under arms in snow and rain. Twice they made forced marches of forty miles across savage country and muddy roads. Seven times they closed in desperate conflict with the pursuers. Yet they lost fewer men than any other part of the army!

Courage, indeed, was a quality which never failed even the stragglers. More than once, when the French cavalry were amongst them, they turned upon them under some leader chosen at the moment, fell into rough order, and drove off the French horsemen with slaughter.

A British army in the worst horrors of retreat, when every military virtue seems to have perished, instantly feels the summons to battle as an inspiration. The stragglers, somehow, crystallise into regiments. The sick forget their pains. Discipline asserts its ancient maode, and what, an hour before, seemed a procession of limping and ragged fugitives, becomes suddenly a formidable and by no means uncheerful army.

At Lugo, Moore turned at bay, and the process instantly brought the stragglers back to the ranks and restored authority to the officers. The men forgot hunger, cold, and sickness, and became jesting and hardy soldiers again. Soult refused to fight, and when the retreat began once more, with new hardships, the sullen troops fell afresh into disorder.

The part taken by the cavalry under Paget in this retreat was very gallant. They faced with cheerful courage and tireless hardihood the vastly superior French cavalry which pressed on the British rear, and never failed to overthrow them in the actual shock of the charge. Some of the cavalry exploits on the British side were singularly brilliant.

Rearguard Skirmishes

Thus, on December 26, Paget turned on the French horsemen near Mayorga. The French cavalry made their appearance on the summit of a steep hill, and seemed about to ride down on the British stragglers beneath. Paget sent two squadrons of the 10th Hussars at them. The slope of the hill was sodden with rain, and in places thick with snow. Colonel Leigh, of the 10th, rode boldly with his first squadron up the face of the hill, and men and horses were blown when they reached the crest. With great coolness Leigh halted his men to give them breath, dressed his line -- all under sharp fire -- and then rode straight in on the French, who were foolish enough to receive the charge while halted. These two squadrons of Hussars actually killed and captured of the French a number exceeding their own entire force.

Again, on the 29th, at Castro Gonsalo, some 600 French cavalry of the Guard pushed across the river on the British pickets. Colonel Otway, who commanded the rearmost posts, drew his pickets together, numbering at first only sixty men, and coolly faced the French.

As other pickets fell in, and Otway's force grew, he suddenly rode at the leading French squadron, overthrow it, slaying its captain, and then fell back before the main body of the French could reach him. The plain was covered with stragglers, baggage-mules, &c., and if the French cavalry could have broken through that thin screen of British horse, they would have wrought enormous mischief. Paget had placed the 10th Hussars under cover of some houses, and when the French had advanced into the plain, these rode out at a gallop, charged and broke the enemy, drove them back to the river, riding furiously in their tumbled ranks, and slaying almost at will.

Their commander, General LefebvreDesnouettes, was captured. "At this moment," says Marbot, "the Emperor came up. Imagine his wrath at hearing that not only had his favourite regiment undergone a repulse, but that its commander remained in the hands of the English."

Marbot adds that the English refused to exchange the captured general as they wished to exhibit in London as a captive "one of the commanders of the Imperial Guard of France."

Moore lost 4000 men in the marches and hardships of those eighteen days. It is an expressive proof of the severities endured, that when the Royals reached Batanzos they only mustered with the colours nine officers, three sergeants, and three privates. The rest had dropped on the road. But it is a sufficient demonstration that whatever were Moore's losses in this disastrous retreat his men never lost their fighting quality, that when the much enduring columns marched over 14,000 strong into Corunna, they had not lost a gun or a flag to the enemy.

Paget, perhaps, is the most gallant figure in the black landscape of the retreat to Commia; but Craufurd, though a sterner, is quite as heroic a figure in the march made by the light troops to Vigo. The Rifles furnished the rear-guard of this body, and these valiant, hardy, but self- willed veterans found in Craufurd a leader of fiercer temper than even their own, and his stem will held them together with Aron severity and vigour. Craufurd knew that the safety of the column depended upon its discipline, and he enforced it with ruthless energy, shooting or hanging defaulters under the very muskets of the attacking French. Nothing tired him. Nothing daunted him. The feeling betwixt the Rifles and Craufurd was, on both sides, an odd compound of dread, anger, and affection.

"The Rifles," says one who tells the story from the ranks, "being always at his heels, he seemed to think them his familiars. If he stopped his horse, and halted to deliver one of his stern reprimands, you would see half-a-dozen lean, unshaven, shoeless, and savage riflemen, standing for the moment leaning upon their weapons, and scowling up in his face as he scolded; and when be dashed the spurs into his reeking horse, they would throw up their rifles upon their shoulders and hobble after him again."

Chapter VIII: The Battle of Corunna