The Confrontation at Salamanca

by Geoffrey Watson

  Not that he talked about his talent, but people always seemed to know and wanted to ask questions, like the company on board Commodore Cockburn’s Titan, a few days ago. Most of the sailors appeared to think little of going broadside to broadside and blasting hell out of each other with cannon balls measuring over six inches across.

  Yet they were fascinated to question him on how it felt to be so exposed on land and shooting individual Frenchmen with a ball less than an inch across. They seemed to imagine that it was so much braver and so very personal.

  Strange! He had never regarded it as the least bit personal. Champion to champion combat had never been a successful battle-winning tactic since Alexander the great had used the Macedonian phalanx, three thousand years ago. Modern armies did not have champions and grand chivalric gestures, although if a champion was defined as someone whose skill at arms was greater than the rest of the fighters, then the Hornets, to a man, could assume the role for Wellington’s army. It would, however, be difficult to find an equivalent challenger among the French.

  Following the meeting on board Titan, the Hornets – six hundred men of the British First Battalion – were moving eastwards along the Spanish Biscay coast, between the sea and the chain of mountains known as the Cordillera Cantabrica.

  In support were the combined guerrilla bands of two guerrilla leaders, both of whom had been given the rank of brigadier general by the increasingly desperate authorities in Cadiz. They were not commanding regular soldiers and they were not of noble birth, which was normally of considerable importance for Spanish officers. Between them though, they had assembled nearly two thousand guerrilleros, both horse and foot. The authorities were willing to give them any sort of legitimacy that would keep them fighting the invaders.

  Leaders of brigands and bandits, having been given a high rank out of necessity, immediately assumed the full status of an aristocrat and it became a matter of honour that they should command this expedition in which the contribution of the Hornets was a mere battalion.

  Fortunately, all this had been foreseen and Welbeloved had come in person to initiate the drive forward. Having been confirmed by the Cortez as the legitimate Conde de Alba, after his marriage to the Condesa and holding the rank of major general, he outranked both of them, militarily and aristocratically.

  They agreed that honour would be satisfied and they would obey orders from Welbeloved. Then it was pointed out to them that MacKay also was senior to them as he held the rank of brigadier in the Army of Galicia and it dated before both of theirs. They were inclined to dispute this, but it did provide an excuse for them to defer honourably to MacKay. After all, the Hornets had by now assumed almost legendary status in Spain. They may look drab and insignificant, but tales of their exploits had spread throughout the country. It made perfect sense to try not to incur their displeasure, especially when they had it explained to them that no one’s honour would be brought into question if they accepted orders from them for the duration of this adventure only.

  Algy was riding comfortably along the coast road in company with Colonel MacKay. For the fifty miles between Ribadeo and Cape de Peñas, there was little alternative to the coast road. The foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains reached out towards the sea wherever they could. There were plenty of tracks leading up into the mountains and even south through them at this time of year, following the valleys cut by the streams. If one wanted to travel east or west, there was the coast road.

  A Company, now led by Brevet Captain Evan Davies was scouting ahead. It was quite slow progress, as a platoon had to be detached for a brief exploration up every valley that they crossed. It was largely a waste of time, because it was becoming more and more evident that the French had pulled back their forces at least as far as Cape de Peñas – the rocky cape.

  It did serve the purpose of allowing the guerrillero foot soldiers to keep up with their mounted compadres.

  Whether the French had left garrisons in the larger towns, particularly Avilés, Gijón and Oviedo, needed investigation, but that was still a couple of days away and there were small towns and fishing villages all the way along the coast that might have warranted a French presence.

  Algy had agreed a system of signals with Commodore Cockburn, who was following them, cruising along the coast in Titan, while still awaiting the rest of his flotilla, recently summoned to join him from El Ferrol.

  A young midshipman and two seamen, who could ride a horse, were having the adventure of their lives. Carrying a great deal of bunting from the signal locker, it was their task to hoist a signal from above any significant village or town that the Hornets passed through.

  Four flags only were needed. The first told Titan that the town was clear of French. The second that some French had been evicted and that a party of marines would be welcome to keep order for a day or two.

  Flag three was as two, but recommended that up to a company of marines may be needed to help defend against counter attack and flag four said ‘please send a boat, we need to discuss a joint attack.’

  Number one flag flew from Navia and Luarca and was duly ignored by Titan. MacKay cast an eye on the roads leading south from Navia. If any French scavenging parties were out, the fertile valley of the Rio Navia was likely to be an attraction. He thought it unlikely and was impatient to move on, but to be sure, he talked the guerrilleros into sending a substantial mounted detachment to find out.

  Beyond Luarca, the road forked by Cape Busto. The southern branch went up into the hills and met with a track through the mountains, before turning east again toward Oviedo. The coastal road continued toward Avilés, another thirty or more miles farther on.

  It seemed a good place to stop for the night. In the morning, MacKay would take C and D Companies toward Oviedo and Chumley would continue on the coast road toward Avilés. The guerrilleros would use their cavalry strength to explore the three hundred square miles between the two roads for signs of French foragers.

  Indeed it was a good place for a bivouac. The days were getting longer, the weather was pleasant without being too hot. The sea to the north was calm and the mountains to the south gave a reassuring feeling of containment. The small plateau that they chose was difficult to approach on three sides and readily defensible on the other. Hamish MacKay sat with Juanita, his wife, Algy Chumley and the four company commanders and reminisced.

  The north of Spain was a familiar stamping ground for the Hornets. The original platoon had fought all the way along the coast during Sir John Moore’s retreat to La Coruña. Only two years later, Hamish MacKay and many of the men with him now in the present First Battalion had entered Gijón and made off with a French frigate and a captured British brig-of-war.

  There were many memories to talk about, but most of all, MacKay wanted to deal with the situation that was now facing them.

  “I am sure that all of you gentlemen ken why Sir Joshua hae sent us north o’ the mountains, when it is obvious that Lord Wellington is getting ready tae challenge Marshal Marmont, the Duc de Ragusa.

  Let me, nevertheless, introduce ye all tae matters o’ grand strategy. Ye hae tae realise that it is Marmont’s Army of Portugal that Wellington shall move against. It is presently scattered in garrison over a large region o’ Spain, south o’ this chain o’ mountains and there is an excellent chance that he can catch it at a disadvantage before Marmont can concentrate all his divisions against him.

  General Dorsenne commands the Army of the North in this region. He too has lost troops tae Boney’s Russian adventure and has already withdrawn eastward because he cannot find enough men tae cover the whole of his region.

  This does nae mean that he shall not be ordered tae send men tae help Marmont if Wellington is pressing him severely. We are here tae make sure that he has nae men that he can spare for the purpose.

  The Royal Navy is sending Admiral Popham and his flotilla tae attack some o’ the northern ports. He shall hae ten thousand or more marines, but cannae be here for five or six weeks.


  Until then, our ain Commodore, Sir Charles Cockburn hae brought his flotilla and about a thousand marines frae the Mediterranean. He is following us along the coast and itching tae join us in any mischief that ye can dream up. Dinnae forget that his marines hae already been shown how tae make the best o’ their muskets by some o’ our ain instructors. They are better shots than most, but they still have bright red coats, so think hard before ye use them unnecessarily.

  Then we hae the guerrilleros o’ Longa and Porlier wi’ us. It is hoped that they shall join another band under Espoz y Mina and become the Spanish Seventh Army to be commanded by General Mendizábal, when we get closer tae Santander.

  I was expecting that we should already hae met some o’ General Dorsenne’s troops by now, but it appears that he hae withdrawn frae the eastern part o’ Asturias and we are about tae discover if he hae left garrisons in the triangle o’ important towns, twenty miles tae the east o’ here.

  These towns; Avilés, Gijón and Oviedo, are the heart o’ the Asturias. If they can be cleared o’ Frenchmen, then the Spanish Seventh Army can concentrate in Cantabria and the Basque Provinces and Admiral Popham can work wi’ them tae attack Santander, Bilbao and any o’ the smaller ports close tae them.

  Tomorrow, I shall take C and D Companies tae look at Oviedo and Algy shall go wi’ A and B Companies tae dae the same wi’ Avilés. We hae tae clear them both before we deal wi’ Gijón, but Gijón is the one we want so that the navy can make use o’ it as a supply base.

  If we are able tae capture all three, gentlemen, then the French are effectively out o’ the Asturias and we may be free tae return tae the army around Salamanca and leave the Biscay coast tae ten thousand marines and perhaps twenty thousand guerrilleros.

  Dorsenne’s Army of the North is said tae be less than fifty thousand now and cannae be everywhere at once.

  Remember that Lord Wellington does not need anyone tae fight a battle wi’ Dorsenne; only tae make it impossible for him tae send any troops tae help Marmont.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The great central plateau of Castilla y León occupies an area of land like a monstrous arena, one hundred and fifty miles across and is centred on the city of Valladolid.

  The circumference of a circle with that diameter is about five hundred miles and on the high plain is composed of chains of mountains rising from the floor of the plateau at fifteen hundred feet, to giants of eight and nine thousand feet.

  In scale, it could be regarded as an amphitheatre of the gods or perhaps a crater of an enormous dormant volcano.

  This natural coliseum is divided quite precisely into northern and southern regions by the great River Duero, that rises in the mountains of the eastern rim and flows due west to the border with Portugal, where it becomes the Douro until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean.

  In the weeks after the recapture of the fortress towns of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz by Lord Wellington, intelligence reports seemed to indicate that responsibility for the whole of this region had been turned over to Marshal Marmont and the Army of Portugal, thus converting what had been an expeditionary force into a garrison army.

  Spain, it would appear, was to be put on hold until the emperor had finished whatever business he was engaging in against Russia.

  Intelligence reports, which came extensively from guerrilla sources, were unavoidably vague about the whole compass of the marshal’s responsibility. Until recently, much of the northern sector had been controlled by the Army of the North under General Dorsenne and there were two French divisions in the area that could be under the control of either of these commanders.

  If they were to remain in the area, Wellington had to regard them as being available to Marmont, should he have to concentrate his scattered forces when the British attacked.

  The British army had been strengthened after its successes in the two sieges and for the first time in this campaign, Wellington was confident that he could attain local superiority against a French force that would have to be gathered together over an area of fifty thousand square miles.

  There were, of course, other French armies in Spain that could come to Marmont’s assistance, but only by abandoning the territories that they had carved out for themselves.

  Marshal Soult in Andalucia was too strong to tackle in isolation, but was being kept fully occupied defending his own region from raids by small Spanish armies lurking in the mountains and landed along his coasts by the Royal Navy. General Sir Rowland Hill was also lurking to his north in the Extremadura with several divisions, while the only direct main route to the north, west of Madrid, had been cut by a daring raid on the only usable bridge over the River Tagus.

  The new Marshal Suchet had conquered Valencia in the east, but had too few troops to keep everything subdued, to be able to spare any to help. Royal Navy incursions with troops from Sicily were planned to assist guerrilleros and the remains of Spanish armies and keep him occupied with his own concerns.

  King Joseph had his royal guard in Madrid. About twenty thousand men could be moved to any region, but with all his marshals clamouring for extra troops, he wouldn’t move anywhere until he was convinced that it was absolutely essential.

  General Dorsenne, in the north, was already suffering from guerrilleros taking advantage of the reduction in his forces. Now that the Royal Navy, the guerrilleros and the Hornets were beginning to raid the northern coast, he would be wanting back his two divisions south of the Cantabrian Mountains. He wouldn’t get them if the last of Wellington’s planned diversions could be implemented.

  The Spanish General Santocildes had become an expert lurker with the Army of Galicia in the mountains of the northwest; the western end of the Cordillera Cantabrica.

  He had already blooded his army last year, with the help of Hamish MacKay and had only retreated when the French had scraped together a bigger force than he could cope with, given the quality of the raw recruits he was having to use.

  Now, Major General Sir Joshua Welbeloved had arrived, together with six hundred men of the Spanish battalion of Hornets, the Avispónes. Lord Wellington was anxious that the Galicians should advance once more into the western part of the region north of the Duero. The more French troops they could attract to counter their threat, the fewer Marmont would have to put into the field against Wellington.

  General Santocildes would like to co-operate. His advance into León last year had shown him what he could accomplish with his half-trained troops, particularly after many of them had benefited from tough training sessions presided over by units of MacKay’s Hornets.

  Admittedly it had been at a fortuitous time when the French in the region had been drained of troops to feed the Army of Portugal and the army of Marshal Suchet in the east.

  He had advanced and retreated several times, as the harassed French commanders, Marshal Bessières and then General Dorsenne had rushed backwards and forwards to deal with insurrection in the east, then back to confront his army and recover what he had gained.

  He was quite pragmatic about the ability of his peasant conscripts to fight any seasoned French veterans. He needed an overwhelming majority and an astute choice of defensive position. By no stretch of the imagination could he consider his men yet suitable as an attacking force.

  This had been made plain to MacKay last year and he was now being just as forthright with Welbeloved. It was an attitude in a Spanish general that Sir Joshua had not encountered before: a thorough understanding of what his troops could and could not do and a willingness to be aggressive only when he was certain that he could win.

  It was an enlightened view and to be commended up to a point. Welbeloved could sympathise with the desire to be frugal with the lives of his soldiers. After all, he had managed to keep the Hornet’s casualty list almost non-existent.

  What he found difficult to understand was why, in time of war, Galicia should pay for and feed a field army of fifteen thousand men to act solely as a sort of super guerrilla force. A force to be used a
pparently, only against garrison troops and insufficiently trained to be very effective against even those unless their numbers had been quite reduced.

  The Council in Cadiz, the only indigenous government that Spain had at the present time, had instructed Santocildes to advance in support of Wellington. Galicia was run by the regional junta and Cadiz was a long way away. Anyway it was under siege by the French. Santocildes would take note of the wishes of Cadiz, but how he carried these wishes out was his decision, as was the timing of any acts of aggression.

  Not all was as unhelpful as Welbeloved might have believed. The Hornets had worked hard when MacKay had been here before. Colonel Quintana and his cavalry had been shown how the Avispónes conducted their affairs and his squadrons had been subjected to a short, but intensive, course of training and combat that did wonders for their esprit and morale.

  After initial antagonism, the colonel had quickly become a convert and then a disciple. He now commanded fifteen hundred horsemen and had done his utmost to make them into replicas of his new heroes. Even their uniforms had changed.

  There was no doubt that they were still regiments of hussars or dragoons, but all the bright colours had gone. Green now predominated and it was evident that if one of his squadrons wished to conceal themselves, they would be much more difficult to spot.

  The same number of men had now become light infantry, with a uniform that was not unlike the pattern of the British 95th Rifles, but they still had their muskets. These were only muzzle-loaders, but the same improvements given to many of these weapons by the Hornet instructors had now been applied to all of them.

  Each of them had been taught to skirmish to a standard equal to, and maybe better than the French, but with weapons that gave them more than twice the accurate killing range. They were all itching for a fight.