Wellington

by Richard Holmes

  The Light and 4th Divisions were to attack the main breaches, Picton’s 3rd Division was to scale the castle walls, and Leith’s 5th Division would assault the intact walls in the north-west. When the attack began at 10pm, the garrison was well prepared. Debris which might have given cover to the attackers had been cleared away; spiked planks had been laid on the rubble slope of the breaches themselves; and sword-blades hammered into stout timbers barred the tops. Fused shells and grenades were to hand, and infantrymen in the front line were to be passed loaded muskets by their comrades behind. Even getting to the foot of the breaches was not easy, for there was a steep drop into the ditch which killed some of the men who fell from the ladders they used to descend; others drowned in the water. Lieutenant Harry Smith of the 95th recalled that the first shot:

  brought down such a hail of fire as I shall never forget, nor ever saw before or since. It was most murderous. We flew down the ladders and rushed at the breach, but we were broken, and carried no weight with us, though every soldier was a hero … A Rifleman stood amongst the sword blades on the top of one of the cheveaux de frises. We made a glorious rush to follow, but, alas! in vain. He was knocked over. My old captain, O’Hare, who commanded the storming party, was killed. All were awfully wounded except, I do believe, myself and little Freer of the 43rd. I had some seconds at the revetment of the bastion near the breach, and my red-coat pockets were literally filled with chips of stones splintered by musket balls. Those not knocked down were driven back by this hail of mortality to the ladders.41

  More than forty separate attacks made no progress, and French soldiers at the top of the breaches taunted their assailants, asking them if they did not want to enter Badajoz.

  Picton’s men did no better at the castle. They had to carry their heavy and roughly-made ladders for half a mile and then plant them against walls thirty feet high, while the defenders fired down, and scattered shells and blazing carcasses, wicker containers filled with oil-soaked rubbish, which gave them light to shoot by. Young George Hennell was serving as a gentleman volunteer in the 94th, and had never been in action before. As his company crept up the slippery slope on hands and knees, a single shot from a 24-pdr hit twelve men, who ‘sank together with a groan that would have shook to the soul the nerves of the oldest soldier When he reached the foot of the wall ‘the dead and wounded lay so thick that we were continually treading on them … The men were not so eager to go up the ladders as I had expected they would be. They were as thick as possible in the ditch …’42

  Wellington was on high ground east of the town, receiving reports that were increasingly gloomy. His chief medical officer, Dr James McGrigor, was looking at him when he heard that all assaults had failed with heavy loss:

  At this moment, I cast my eyes on the countenance of Lord Wellington lit up by the glare of the torch … I shall never forget it to the last moment of my existence … The jaw had fallen, the face was of unusual length, while the torchlight gave to his countenance a lurid aspect; but still the expression of the face was firm.43

  Wellington, taking McGrigor for a staff officer, asked him to order Picton to make a last try at the castle and then, realising his mistake, sent an aide instead. We cannot be sure that this desperate request spurred the 3rd Division into new activity, because repeated efforts were already being made to get ladders up against the wall. Picton had been wounded, and Major General James Kempt took over, but it was probably Lieutenant Colonel Henry Ridge of the 5th who was the first to make his way up a ladder and gain the ramparts. He was shot dead moments later, but enough of his men followed him to fan out along the walls and drive back the defenders. Lieutenant MacPherson of the 45th, breathing with some difficulty because a musket-ball, providentially deflected by Spanish dollars in his pocket, had broken two ribs, rushed up to the tower, tore down the French flag and ran up his own scarlet jacket. At about this time Leith’s men, who had attacked late, forced their way in at the north-west as the defence weakened. Phillipon made a last attempt at counter-attacking, and then escaped across the bridge to Fort San Cristobal where he surrendered the next morning.

  Badajoz was a terrible place that night. Edward Costello of the 95th remembered: ‘The shouts and oaths of drunken soldiers in quest of more liquor, the reports of fire-arms and the crashing in of doors, together with the appalling shrieks of hapless women, might have induced anybody to believe himself in the regions of the damned.44 Private John Spencer Cooper of the 7th Fusiliers admitted that: ‘All orders ceased. Plunder was the order of the night. Some got loaded with plate etc; then beastly drunk; and lastly, were robbed by others. This lasted until the second day after.’45 Lieutenant William Grattan was equally shocked by men who would fall:

  upon the already too deeply injured females, and tear from them the trinkets that adorned their necks, finger or ears! And finally, they would strip them of their wearing apparel … many men were flogged, but although the contrary has been said, none were hanged – yet hundreds deserved it.46

  The heavy casualties incurred in the storm – the allies lost nearly 5,000 men in the siege, and the Light and 4th Divisions, 2,500 in the breaches – partly explain, though they do not condone, what happened at Badajoz. There are still unhappy memories in the town in part the result of atrocities committed when Franco’s north African troops took the place in the Civil War, and the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was recently denied permission to erect a memorial to its role in the storm. The breaches have been repaired and the bastions grin out across park and suburb, but the castle, still scarred by cannon fire, has a gloomy air and is not the place to linger after dark. I was glad to get away from Badajoz.

  Wellington informed Liverpool that the storm of Badajoz ‘affords as strong an instance of the gallantry of our troops as had ever been displayed. But I greatly hope that I shall never again be the instrument of putting them to such a test’. He was profoundly shaken by the carnage in the breaches, where Grattan thought that ‘it was not possible to look at those brave men, all of them dead or frightfully maimed, without recollecting what they had been just a few short hours before …’47 Wellington broke down in tears, and when Picton stumped along on his wounded leg: ‘I bit my lips, and did everything I could to stop myself for I was ashamed he should see it, but I could not, and he so little entered into my feelings that he said “Good God, what is the matter?”’48

  The scenes in the town were scarcely less shocking. Wellington remembered entering a cellar where soldiers were lying so drunk that wine was actually flowing from their mouths, and he was nearly hit by a soldier firing in the air. A General Order of 7 April 1812 announced that it was time that the looting ceased, and a gallows was erected in the square to drive the point home. An aide-de-camp wrote that Wellington was so angry that he could hardly bring himself to thank the troops.

  While Wellington was preparing to move from Badajoz, half a continent away, Napoleon was about to depart for his fatal campaign against Russia. And, yet again, there were links between the emperor’s ambitions and affairs in the Peninsula. Before departing, he ordered Marmont to mount another offensive into Portugal, and forbade him to cooperate with Soult in the south. Although there were over 230,000 French soldiers in Spain, they were split up between five armies, and the need to mount operations against guerrillas and Spanish regular forces would have made it hard for them to co-operate against Wellington’s much smaller army – he had some 60,000 regulars – even had they been directed to do so. But with the unmartial King Joseph in overall command, his elbow jogged by dispatches from Paris that might take a month to arrive, there was little to stop the marshals from feuding, nor much chance to impose a coherent strategy.

  Wellington was unsure whether to attack Marmont or Soult, but knew that he needed to re-provision Ciudad Rodrigo before doing anything else. He set in motion a variety of diversions that would hinder any French attempts at concentration, and a well-handled raid by Hill captured the Tagus crossing at Almaraz – where the French had replaced
the damaged masonry bridge with a pontoon bridge – severing communications between Marmont and Soult. Wellington then set off for Salamanca, entering this most beautiful university city on 17 June 1812 to rapturous enthusiasm, and taking its forts ten days later. There he heard news of Major General John Slade’s defeat in a little cavalry action at Maguilla, rightly called ‘the most discreditable cavalry fight of the war’ by Ian Fletcher, which prompted him to write to Rowland Hill his much-quoted censure of the mad-brained tricks of cavalry officers.49

  He then marched out to manoeuvre against Marmont, who was trying to force him back on Ciudad Rodrigo, and for the next few days both armies moved parallel with one another, like swordsmen watching for an opportunity. ‘Marmont will certainly not risk an action unless he should have an advantage,’ Wellington told Sir Thomas Graham, ‘and I shall certainly not risk one unless I should have an advantage; and matters therefore do not appear to be brought to that criterion very soon.’50 At dawn on 22 July, there was no reason to think that the day would not be like any other and the two armies, about 50,000 men apiece, marched across open country in the great loop of the River Tormes, west of Salamanca.

  It had been a trying time for Wellington. The days were scorching, and the dust made men look like sweeps, but the nights were so cold that troops even dug up coffins to use as firewood; Wellington declared that he had never been colder in his life. He was short of sleep – he spent less than forty-eight hours in bed in a fortnight – and catnapped when he could, sometimes lying in the grass with a newspaper over his face. His practice of delivering orders in person and ‘superintend[ing] every operation of the Troops’ meant that he was frequently at risk, and that July, he and his staff were cut off by French cavalry. An observer saw Wellington and Beresford galloping out of the mêlée with drawn swords, the former looking ‘more than half pleased’. Despite the stress of campaigning, at forty-three he was:

  in the prime of life, a well made man five foot ten inches in height, with broad shoulders and well-developed chest. Of the cruiser, rather than the battleship build, the greyhound, rather than the mastiff breed, he seemed all made for speed and action, yet as strong as steel, and capable of great endurance.51

  He boasted that he had inherited ‘the family eye of a hawk’. Gleig thought that his eyes were ‘dark violet blue, or grey’ and observed that ‘even to the last he could distinguish objects at an immense distance’.52

  The battlefield of Salamanca remains one of the most evocative of this or any war. It is unspoiled by development, and the plain – not unlike a treeless Salisbury Plain on a much greater scale – is still dominated by the two flat-topped hills known as the Greater and Lesser Arapile, with the honey-coloured buildings of Salamanca on the horizon. The plain is by no means flat, however, and ridges roll across it, most notably west and north-east of the Lesser Arapile. Early on the 22 July, there was some fighting around the ruined chapel just west of Calvarrasa de Arriba, important because whoever held it could see something of what went on behind this latter ridge. Shortly afterwards the British occupied the Lesser Arapile and the French the Greater, repulsing Portuguese troops who lunged for it. As the morning went on, both armies marched south-west, with most of Wellington’s men out of sight of the French behind the long ridge north-east of the Lesser Arapile. An exception was Ned Pakenham, who had replaced the wounded Picton at the head of the 3rd Division, and was heading for Aldea Tejada on Wellington’s extreme western flank.

  Wellington spent the morning on the Lesser Arapile or the ridge to its west, above the little village of Los Arapiles. He could see that the French, as usual, were marching faster than his own men. Francis Seymour Larpent, Wellington’s censorious judge advocate-general, had his own views on this:

  In marching, our men have no chance against the French. The latter beat them hollow; principally, I believe, owing to their being a more intelligent set of beings, seeing consequences more, and feeling them. This makes them sober and orderly whenever it becomes material, and on a pinch their exertions and unrivalled activity are astonishing. Our men get sulky and desperate, drink excessively, and become daily more weak and unable to proceed, principally from their own conduct … In every respect, except courage, they are very inferior soldiers to the French and Germans …53

  Suspecting that Marmont might turn his right, Wellington brought up troops from behind the long ridge and formed a line running through Los Arapiles, and for a time it looked as if Marmont, whose skirmishers pushed into the southern edge of the village, would indeed attack. But then it became clear that the French, strung out across the plain in division-sized blocks, were still moving westwards. At about midday Wellington, stumping about a farmyard in Los Arapiles, munching a chicken leg and snatching glances at the French through his telescope, suddenly exclaimed: ‘By God, that will do!’ He flung the chicken leg in the air, sprang into the saddle and cantered up the hill behind for a better look. Then he turned to General Miguel de Alava, his Spanish liaison officer. ‘Mon cher Alava,’ he said, ‘Marmont est perdu.’ And with that he galloped westwards, outdistancing his staff, to find Ned Pakenham. ‘Ned, d’ye see those fellows on the hill,’ he asked, pointing at the leading French division. ‘Throw your division into column, have at them and drive them to the devil.’ ‘I will, my Lord,’ relied Pakenham ‘if you will give me your hand.’ Wellington was not a demonstrative man, but shook hands with his brother-in-law with evident emotion.54

  As Pakenham’s men advanced to the attack, not coming into view until they were about 500 yards from the French, Wellington hurtled back the way he had come, issuing orders for an attack that would begin as soon as the 3rd Division struck. What followed was a succession of hammer-blows, falling on the flanks of overextended French divisions, which were never able to concentrate to meet the threat. As the three infantry divisions on his right surged forward, Wellington’s cavalry, under Lieutenant General Sir Stapleton Cotton, crashed into the French. The heavy dragoons under Major General John Gaspard Le Marchant broke one French division and badly damaged another, but Le Marchant was killed, shot through the spine in the very moment of victory. ‘By God, Cotton,’ shouted Wellington, ‘I never saw anything more beautiful in my life. The day is yours.’

  Marmont had been wounded at the start of the action by a shell fired by a British howitzer (in later life some insensitive soul introduced him to the sergeant who had pointed the piece). Command passed to General Bonnet, who was also hit, and then to General Clausel. The latter reacted brilliantly to the destruction of his left wing by sending two strong divisions against Wellington’s centre. This counter-attack went in just after the repulse of an allied attack on the Greater Arapile, and had it been launched against a commander of average capacity, it might very well have succeeded. But Wellington had the strong line of his 6th Division ready to meet the French, and a familiar story was played out as columns met line between the Arapiles. Clausel managed to block the road to Alba de Tormes with Ferrey’s intact division, which fought gallantly as night came on, folding only after its commander had been cut in two by a round-shot. Marmont had lost at least 14,000 men and 20 guns, and the allies less than half as many men. The scale of the defeat might have been even greater, but Carlos de España had withdrawn the garrison from the bridge at Alba de Tormes, which allowed the French to cross the river safely. ‘If I had known there was no garrison at Alba,’ Wellington observed, ‘I should have marched there, and probably had the whole.’55

  Salamanca gives the lie to the suggestion that Wellington was simply a great defensive general. Maximilien Foy, who commanded a French division that day, thought that the battle:

  raises Lord Wellington’s reputation almost to the level of Marlborough. Hitherto we have been aware of his prudence, his eye for choosing a position, and his skill in utilising it. At Salamanca he has shown himself a great and able master of manoeuvres. He kept his dispositions concealed for almost the whole day: he waited till we were committed to our movements before he de
veloped his own: he played a safe game: he fought in the oblique order – it was a battle in the style of Frederick the Great.56

  Salamanca opened the road to Madrid, which the allies entered on 12 August 1812. Substantial quantities of arms and ammunition were captured, and Wellington became embroiled in lengthy discussions as to the best use to which these could be put. News from other parts of Spain was generally good, especially in the south, where Soult had at last given up the long siege of Cádiz. The Spanish appointed Wellesley generalissimo of all their forces, and on 22 September, he heard from Henry (himself now a Knight of the Bath) that the Prince Regent made him a marquess, and parliament voted him £100,000 towards the cost of a future residence. He would have preferred ready money, for he had been complaining to Bathurst that his daily allowance of ten guineas, reduced by income tax and other deductions to about eight, simply failed to meet the demands placed on him, and he would be ‘ruined’ unless it was increased.57 And he was not hugely gratified by his promotion in the peerage, complaining: ‘What the devil is the use of making me a marquess?’

  The cumulative strain was biting deep into him and the Goya crayon sketch of Wellington, drawn from life in Madrid that summer, shows haunted eyes set in a worn face. His correspondence also reveals a man battered by a sea of troubles. His army continued to commit ‘enormous outrages’ which were likely to forfeit Spanish sympathy. The Spanish themselves were brave but hopelessly unmilitary and corrupt. His own government did not understand the war, and Horse Guards had no idea of the difficulties the army laboured under – on 13 September he pointed out that nobody in his army had been paid since late April – and the incompetent and the inadequate were foisted upon him. When one of the latter, Lieutenant General Sir William Erskine, threw himself through a window, it transpired that ‘he had been two years confined, and that he should not have been sent out here as chief officer of the cavalry – it was too great a risk’.58 On looking at a list of senior officers being sent out to join him, Wellington jested darkly that he did not know what effect their names would have upon the enemy, but they certainly frightened him.