The capture of these two great fortresses gave Wellington an immense advantage. He was no longer dependent on Lisbon, but had secure bases on the Guadiana and the Agueda. He could, at will, smite the French armies in Spain, and menace alike the north, the south, the centre; and the French marshals stood uneasily on guard, expecting his stroke, but not able to guess where it would fall. Each marshal, too, was more concerned in guarding his own province than in assisting his neighbour. Marmont had fallen back to Salamanca, Soult was on the Guadalquiver.

Wellington elected to strike at Marmont. His overthrow would lay Madrid open; and Soult, finding his communications with France threatened, must fall back in haste. A victory in Castile, that is, would deliver Andalusia.

But it was necessary to snap the chain of communication betwixt Marmont and Soult, and to isolate the latter general. The Tagus flowed betwixt these two commanders; and at Almarez was the single bridge across the Tagus by which the two French armies communicated with each other. So important was this bridge that it was guarded by three forts and a fortified bridge-head, armed with eighteen guns and held by a garrison of 1000 men. Wellington despatched his most enterprising leader, Hill, to leap upon the bridge and destroy it, thus breaking the link betwixt Soult and Marmont.

It was a daring feat. Hill had 6000 men and eighteen guns; with this modest force he had to thrust himself deep into a hostile country, storm the forts that guarded the bridge without waiting to breach their walls; and fall back with light-footed speed, lest he should be cut off and destroyed by overwhelming forces.

On May 12, Hill was across the Guadiana; on the 16th he was within a night's march of Almarez. He formed his force into three columns -- the right consisting of the 50th, 71st, and 92nd, under his own command; the centre under Long, the left under Chowne -- and pushed forward in the darkness, intending to attack at the same moment Mirabete, a castle a league distant from the bridge, and serving as an outpost to it, and the forts guarding the bridge itself.

The roads were bad, however, and day broke long before Almarez was reached. Hill found, too, the road was so completely destroyed that it was impossible to take forward his guns. He must do the work with musket and bayonet only. His troops remained in the hills till the night of May 18. On the next day Chowne began his attack on Mirabete before Hill's column had reached Fort Napoleona powerful redoubt standing on high ground and guarding the southern end of the bridge.

The sound of Chowne's musketry and the sight of the eddying white smoke rising above the trees gave the alarm to Fort Napoleon. Its garrison, crowded on the parapet, were gazing eagerly towards Mirabete; when suddenly two tiny red columns broke over the crest of the nearest hill. It was the 50th under Colonel Stewart, with a wing of the 71st; and at the double, with a proud and exultant shout, the men came on. The guns of Fort Napoleon broke hurriedly into fire; all round its crest the musketry flashed. Fort Ragusa, from the farther bank, added the thunder of its guns to the tumult. Never pausing, however, the British came on at a run, the leading files carrying ladders -- the very ladders that had played a part in the assault of Badajos -- for the escalade. The ladders proved far too short; but half way up the face of the wall was a broad ledge.

The English clambered to this, dragged up their ladders -red with the blood of Badajos-re-erected them on the ledge, and broke with levelled bayonets over the parapet, the English and French all mixed together, with a tumult of shouts, tumbling down to the floor of the redoubt.

So stern was the rush of the 50th and 71st, that the French garrison was driven across the redoubt and through its rear on to the armed bridgehead, into which the British swept with the flying French, slaying them as they fled. In a moment the floating bridge was crowded with pursuers and pursued. The English quickly turned the guns of Fort Napoleon on Fort Ragusa across the river; that place was now firing hurriedly at the bridge to arrest the rush of the pursuing English.

The bridge was broken, the farther bank was safe; but so sudden was the surprise, so fierce the onfall, so wild the panic, that the garrison of Fort Ragusa actually abandoned that strong place, and fled, and some men of the 92nd, swimming over, restored the bridge. The British lost in the fight 179 in killed and wounded, but of the French 259, including the governor and sixteen officers, were captured. The forts, the bridge, with huge supplies of ammunition and stores, were destroyed; and Hill, marching fast, reached Merida in safety, having performed the most brilliant stroke of individual soldiership in the campaign.

Marmont was now isolated. Napoleon, too, was on the point of declaring war with Russia, and was absorbed in collecting and organising that stupendous host which was to invade Russia, and perish before 1812 ended in its snows. He had no attention to waste on Spain, and no reinforcements to send to his generals there. They ought not, indeed, to have needed any. There were still over 300,000 good soldiers under the French eagles in Spain, commanded by generals trained in Napoleon's school and familiar with victory; while Wellington could only put 32,000 British soldiers in line of battle, with 24,000 Portuguese of fair fighting quality. Marmont had 70,000 troops under his command, of which 5 2,000 were present with the eagles, and he was able to call up reinforcements amounting to 12,000 more.

Wellington had 36,000 infantry, 3500 cavalry, and 54 guns under his personal command. With this force he proposed to strike at Marmont, whose columns were concentrating on the Douro.

Marmont was not a fortunate general; but he was of a quick and daring spirit, an adroit tactician, whose swift brain could maneuvre columns and battalions on a battlefield as a fine chess-player moves his pawns and knights on a board. He was a captain, in a word, not unworthy of contending with Wellington; and, in the tangle of marches and countermarches round Salamanca, when two great -armies were circling round each other like two angry hawks in mid-air, Marmont, with his lighter-footed French infantry, fairly outmarched and, for the moment, outgeneralled Wellington. It was in the thunderstroke of actual battle that the English general rebuked the genius and wrecked the art of his gallant rival.

Wellington crossed the Agueda on June 13, and began his march for the Tormes. His aim was to strike at Marmont, and crush him before reinforcements could reach him from the south or the north. Marmont's plan, in turn, was to evade Wellington's stroke, but cling to the Tormes, behind the screen of the forts at Salamanca, till the gathering French columns should give him a resistless superiority in numbers, and enable him to drive Wellington back in ruin to Portugal.

Wellington reached Salamanca on June 17, five days before Napoleon issued his declaration of war against Russia. Marmont fell back, trusting to the forts of Salamanca to detain Wellington at least fifteen days, by which time the reinforcements pushing on at speed from Madrid and the north would have joined him. The forts were strong and heavily armed.

No less than thirteen convents and twenty-two colleges had been destroyed to supply materials for their construction. They were strongly garrisoned, and Wellington had no battering train. The men who had stormed Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, however, were formidable assailants. The attack on the forts was momentarily checked by failure of ammunition, but operations were urged with such stern energy, that Marmont advanced in tempestuous fashion to the relief of his sorely pressed garrison.

Wellington was content with barring Marmont's advance, until, on June 29, the forts surrendered, when Marmont fell back with angry reluctance to the Douro to wait for his reinforcements.

Patience is, in no sense, a French virtue; and Marmont, sore from the loss of his forts and in a mood of battle, found it impossible to stand on the defensive till Bonnet from the Asturias and Joseph in person from Madrid, with reinforcements which would give him an overwhelining superiority, came up. He began a series of rapid movements, the aim of which was, while evading actual battle, to got past Wellington's flank, and strike at the Ciudad Rodrigo road on his rear, which formed the Englishman's line of retreat to Portugal.

The weather was fine, the country open, the rivers everywhere fordable. Marmont was familiar with every wrinkle in the face of the soil, and he began a series of' fierce, swift, and exquisitely skilful maneuvres to get past his wary antagonist, yet never risking a battle except under conditions of overwhelming advantage, his hardy and active soldiers more than once marching fifty miles without a halt. Wellington had to meet these maneuvres as a cool fencer meets the keen and deadly thrusts of his antagonist. Horse, foot, and artillery were but the human pawns in this great game of chess, and the movements of the armies yielded some of the most picturesque spectacles in the whole of the war.

One such scene occurred on July 18. The two armies were racing for the Guarena. If Marmont reached it first, Wellington would be cut off from Salamanca. The day was one of great heat; the men were marching in close order; the sky was full of the dust of their march. But war has not often yielded a stranger sight.

"Hostile columns of infantry, only half musket-shot from each other," says Napier, "were marching impetuously towards a common goal, the officers on each side pointing forward with their swords, or touching their caps and waving their hands in courtesy, while the German cavalry, huge men, on huge horses, rode between in a close compact body, as if to prevent a collision, at times the loud tones of command to hasten the march were heard passing from the front to the rear on both sides, and now and then the rush of French bullets came sweeping over the columns, whose violent pace was continually accelerated."

Thus moving for ten miles, but keeping the most perfect order, both armies approached the Guarena, and the enemy seeing the Light Division, although more in their power than the others, was yet outstripping them in the march, increased the fire of their guns and menaced an attack with infantry.

The German cavalry instantly drew close round, the column plunged suddenly into a hollow dip of ground on the left, and ten minutes after the head of the division was in the stream of the Guarena. Again on the 20th, the same strange scene was witnessed. The two armies were marching at speed on close and parallel lines of hills, Marmont striving to reach the ford of Huerta on the Tormes. The eager columns were within musket-shot of each other; the cavalry was watching for an opportunity to charge; where the ground gave the chance, a battery of horse-artillery would wheel round and unlimber, and pour grape into the flank of the opposite column.

But the infantry, dust-covered and footsore, never halted. With sloping muskets and swinging gait they pressed forward at speed; the officers, like gallant gentlemen who bore no malice and knew no fear," sometimes waving their hands to each other from either column.

But time was flying; Marmont's reinforcements were fast coming up, and Wellington, who could neither escape nor grasp his agile opponent, was meditating a retreat. For the first and only time in his life he was beaten in tactics! A letter to Castanos declaring Wellington's intentions to fall back on Portugal fell into Marmont's hands. The long strife in tactics had given the French general an exultant but misleading sense of superiority over the Englishman. That he should escape by a retreat was a thought intolerable to Marmont's fiery temper; and he gave Wellington what he wanted-the chance of a fair fight.

Chapter XXV: Salamanca