♦MARMONT SUCCEEDS MASSENA IN THE COMMAND.♦
The English and their general did full justice to the ability with which Brenier performed his difficult attempt. Massena made use of it to colour over his defeat, and represented the evacuation and not the relief of Almeida as the object for which the battle of Fuentes d’Onoro was fought. “The operation,” he said, “which had put the army in motion was thus terminated.” Shortly afterwards he returned to France, with Ney, Junot, and Loison, leaving behind them names, ever to be execrated in Portugal, and to be held in everlasting infamy. Marmont succeeded him in the command. The army, which still called itself the army of Portugal, went into its cantonments upon the Tormes, having, in Massena’s curious language, _advanced_ into Spain that it might rest; and Lord Wellington set out for the south summoned by intelligence from Marshal Beresford that Soult, notwithstanding previous rumours, which described him as fortifying Seville, and preparing to stand on the defensive in Andalusia, was advancing into Extremadura. ♦LORD WELLINGTON RECALLED TO ALENTEJO.♦ These tidings reached him on the night of the 15th; and he set out on the following morning.
When the British commander had been recalled from Badajoz to secure the recovery of Almeida, Beresford was left waiting till the Guadiana should fall sufficiently for him to re-establish the bridge. The French under Latour Maubourg, when they had been forced to retire from Llerena, fell back to Guadalcañal; it was of importance to push them as far off as possible during the intended siege; and a combined movement of Colonel Colborne, Ballasteros, and the Conde de Penne Villamur, who commanded the cavalry of the Spanish army in Extremadura, made them, though far superior in force, retire to Constantino. This service having been performed, the investment of Badajoz was commenced on the 4th of May. But the enterprise was undertaken ♦BADAJOZ BESIEGED.♦ under every possible disadvantage. For Marshal Beresford had not force enough to carry on the siege, and at the same time hold a position which should cover it from interruption. He was as inadequately supplied with other means as with men: ample stores, indeed, had been ordered from Lisbon to Elvas, and on the part of the governor at Elvas, General Leite, nothing was wanting which his zeal and activity could effect: but these could do little in an exhausted country, where carriage was not to be procured, and all that could be brought up was miserably insufficient. At that time also, the French were perfectly skilled both in the attack and defence of fortified places, while we had every thing to learn: there was not even a corps of sappers and miners attached to the army, so that all those preliminary operations to which men may be trained at home, at leisure, and in perfect safety, were here to be learnt under the fire of an enemy as well skilled in all the arts of defence as we were deficient in those of attack. In this branch of war they were as superior to us as our troops were uniformly found to theirs in the field; and it is a superiority against which courage, though carried to the highest point, can be of no avail. On the part of the besieged, courage and the high sense of duty may suffice, though outworks have fallen, walls are weak, and science wanting; this had been proved at Zaragoza and Gerona. But it is one thing to assail ramparts, and another to defend them; and the braver the assailants, the greater must be their loss, if they are not directed by the necessary skill.