As expected, Wellington advanced on Salamanca in May. Concentrat
ing his forces to meet him, Joseph discovered to his alarm that it was not
the full roo,ooo strong Allied force (8o,ooo British and Hanoverians,
zo,ooo Spanish) that had occupied the city but a much smaller force.
Wellington had duped him by sending his main army under General Sir
Thomas Graham to cross into Spain further north. Graham's six
divisions emerged on to the plains of Leon from the Tras-Os-Montes
mountains, where Wellington's decoy fo rce from Salamanca joined them
after forced marches. After concentrating at Toro, Wellington turned
Marmont's old tactics back on the French by hooking ever north,
threatening to get round the enemy and forcing the evacuation of Palencia
and Burgos.
Continually outflanked, Joseph pulled his forces back to the plain west
of Vitoria. Wellington realized that a victory here would not deliver the
ultimate strategic objective of clearing the French out of Spain and that
ideally he needed a battle farther west, but he had problems himself with
long supply lines. Although he was being partially provisioned by Royal
Navy vessels at Corunna, the main supply line ran back to Portugal, a
ten-week journey away, and for five days he had had to live off the land.
The decisive clash came on 19 June. Joseph was expecting a frontal
attack from the west but Wellington planned a two-pronged onslaught
from the north. He observed that Joseph had made a bad error by
drawing up his forces with a five-mile gap between the front-line Army of
the South and the second-line Army of Portugal. To lull the French,
Wellington sent General Hill through the pass of La Puebla on to the
Vitoria plain, as Joseph had expected. Then he unleashed his main attack.
Caught between two fires, the French attempted a fighting withdrawal,
which quickly became a rout as they discovered, too late, that the British
had come down behind them to seize the roads to Bayonne and Bilbao.
Reduced to withdrawing along the rough track to Pamplona, the French
army soon dissolved into a chaos of panicked men, frightened camp
followers and abandoned wagons.
Vitoria was a spectacular victory, as it severed the French retreat to
San Sebastian and Bayonne, and made the French abandon all their
artillery (rso guns), stores, ammunition and equipment, including
paintings, money and other treasures evacuated from Madrid. The entire
payroll of the French army was also captured, with the result that
millions of gold francs disappeared into the pockets of British, Spanish
and Portuguese soldiers. Joseph's army took 8,ooo casualties (as against
s,ooo in Wellington's army) and lost several hundreds more to guerrillas
during the retreat. It was fortunate for the French that torrential rain and
marcin
(Marcin)
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