Years of Victory 1802 - 1812
Page 46
1 Schaumann, 189.
of mouldy bread, and the heat was so great that more than one rifleman fell dead as he marched, not a man voluntarily left the column. For far ahead the men could hear the rumble of the guns, and, from the lips of cowards flowing past them into the west the tale of a British army fighting against overwhelming odds.1
This time the attack was general and directed against almost the entire British line. It was preceded by a short but intensive bombardment by the eighty guns of the French 1st and 4th corps which overwhelmed, though they did not silence, the thirty British and six Spanish guns opposed to them. On the British right, close to the junction of the allied armies, Major-General Campbell's 4th Division —stoutly supported by some neighbouring Spanish cavalry—not only repelled the assaults of General Leval's Dutch and German troops but in the course of a counter-attack captured seventeen guns. The feature of the fighting was the steadiness with which Campbell controlled his men and prevented them from going too far in their success.
In the open ground farther north Lieutenant-General Sherbrooke's ist Division of Guards and Hanoverians was less skilfully handled. Here, following a more prolonged bombardment, two strong divisions led by Generals Sebastiani and Lapisse moved forward at about three o'clock against the British centre. Sherbrooke's men, waiting in line, held their fire till the leading files of the enemy columns were within fifty yards and then followed up a devastating volley with a bayonet charge. The French were flung back in confusion, but the Guards and Germans, losing cohesion in their advance, pursued them beyond the Portina brook and were shattered in their turn by the advancing waves of the enemy's reserves. In the ensuing rout the Hanoverians lost their general and half their strength and the Guards 611 out of 2000 men. Within twenty minutes a great gap had been torn open in the weakest part of the line, and 15,000 French infantry were driving through it in triumph.
At this moment the battle was saved by Major-General Fraser Mackenzie's Reserve Brigade. Three regiments—the 24th, 31st and 45th Foot—numbering little more than 2000 held up forces seven times as numerous while the Guards and Germans re-formed behind them. Warwicks, Huntingdons and Nottinghamshires—many still wearing the accoutrements of the militia regiments from which they had been hastily drafted a few months before—fought with the
1Leith Hay, I, 137; Simmons, 15-16, 32; Costello, 19-20; Smith, I, 18-19; Leach, Rough Sketches, 81; Leslie, 155-6; George Napier, 108-9.
steadiness of veterans. Mackenzie and a third of his men fell, but the line held. An unexpected charge by the 14th Light Dragoons, led by Major-General Stapleton Cotton, who had last ridden over the French as a boy of sixteen at Le Cateau fifteen years before, halted a battalion at a decisive moment. Meanwhile Wellesley, keeping a firm grip on the battle from the Cerro de Medellin, brought down the 48th Foot from the north and launched it against the enemy's right flank. As the steady volleys of the Northamptons raked the crowded columns the fiery elan of the French began to ebb. Lapisse fell at the head of his men, and the Guards and Germans returned cheering to the fight. The British centre was saved.1
Scarcely had the great shout of triumph from the tired, smoke-grimed victors died away when a new scene opened to the north of the Cerro de Medellin. Here, though Victor inexplicably failed to renew his frontal attack on the hill—so enabling Wellesley to reinforce his centre at the crucial moment—the divisions of Ruffin and Villatte, following the winding course of the Portina brook, had pressed up the ravine between the battle-scarred slopes and the rocky Sierra de Segurilla. Since this new movement threatened to envelop the British left, the Commander-in-Chief, who had resumed his commanding station on the Cerro de Medellin, gave orders to Brigadier Anson's cavalry brigade, waiting below, to mount and clear the valley.
As the trumpeters sounded the charge and the horsemen, comprising the British 23rd Light Dragoons and the ist Hussars of the King's German Legion, broke into a gallop, a second cheer went up from the troops watching the arena from the heights above the valley. Then, as that cloud of valiant, shouting dust moved forward towards the French, there was a fatal check. A deep cleft concealed by long grass ran right across the path of the charging squadrons. The Dragoons who were leading, headed by their colonel on a grey horse, had no time to draw up; many, riding knee to knee, vanished into the gully or were carried to the rear by their frightened horses. But the survivors calmly re-formed on the far side of the ravine under Colonel Elley and Major Frederick Ponsonby—Lady Bessborough's son—and resumed the charge. Galloping right up to the French, who had hastily formed square, they swept past them and, though one out of every two troopers fell, routed a regiment of Chasseurs beyond. Meanwhile Spanish horse artillery, un-limbering just out of shot of the now unsupported French squares, began to fire into their ranks. Other British and Spanish cavalry advancing down the valley under Brigadier-General Fane and the
1 Oman, II, 537-43; Fortescue, VII, 244-51; Minister, 231; Leith Hay, 1,156-8.
Duke of Albuquerque prevented the French infantry from extending, while the guns on the Cerro de Medellin joined in the massacre from above.
By this time all but 5000 of the French had been engaged. The afternoon was growing late, and, ignoring Victor's protests, King Joseph determined to call off the battle. News had reached him that Venegas was advancing from the south on the capital, and he dared not throw in his last reserves with Cuesta's army still unused on his flank. Soon afterwards the French began to fall back along the entire front, though their guns continued firing tjll nightfall. As it grew dark the parched grass on the slopes of the Cerro de Medellin caught fire, and hundreds of helpless wounded were engulfed in the flames. All night their cries continued while the moon rose dimly over the battlefield and exhausted comrades slept where they had stood.
To the inexpressible relief of the British the attack was not renewed on the 29th. Shortly after dawn drums and bugles were heard from the west and the Light Brigade, after covering forty-three miles in twenty-two hours, marched on to the charred battlefield, with the Chestnut Troop trotting in its midst. Around its path lay thousands of dead and dying, piled in stiff or still faintly stirring hillocks of soiled scarlet and blue amidst dismounted guns and shattered ammunition wagons, broken horse-trappings and blood-stained shakos. But, as the bugle-horns rang out, the survivors broke into cheers. For, though more than 5000 of their comrades—or a quarter of their strength—had fallen, they knew at last that the battle was theirs. The French, leaving behind seventeen guns and 7000 dead and wounded, were in full retreat to the east. Then, as there was no longer any need to stand to arms, the regiments marched down from the Cerro de Medellin to encamp in the olive grove at its base, bearing their tattered, shot-ridden colours with them.
While these events were taking place in the Peninsula, England had been preparing to strike across the North Sea. In the early summer bad news from the Continent had made her statesmen pause; on June 3rd the Commander-in-Chief and the Adjutant-General, who were backed by the old King, had formally advised against any attempt on Antwerp. But a week later London learnt of Napoleon's defeat at Aspern-Essling, and the necessity for doing something to weight the scales decisively in Austria's favour became obvious. Ten years before, when a similar situation had arisen, that great and neglected soldier, Charles Stuart, had vainly pleaded for an amphibious offensive in the Mediterranean instead of a landing on the Dutch coast, where even the most resounding success would be too remote in the existing state of communications to decide a Franco-Austrian campaign. Yet though his unworthy namesake's 15,000 troops from Sicily, landed at any point on the old Venetian or Tuscan coastlines, might have prevented Eugene from reinforcing Napoleon on the Danube—with incalculable results— England again failed to use the strategic advantage which geography and sea-power had given her. Instead, while the volatile Sir John aimlessly occupied an island off the Neapolitan coast, the Government launched its main blow against Holland. Not only was it administratively simpler to do so but the pressure of the Adm
iralty for preventive measures against the Scheldt shipyards—eloquently voiced by the over-plausible Sir Home Popham—had become irresistible.1
Yet something at least had been learnt from experience. Remembering earlier expeditions, Ministers were careful not to court failure by attacking the Continental coast on too small a scale. Under Castlereagh's painstaking direction almost the largest single force the country had ever sent abroad was assembled in Kent. All through the rose months the veteran regiments of Corunna, now once more in good fettle, were marching through leafy lanes and cheering villages towards the great camp at Deal. Here, by the middle of July, 1809, 40,000 men were mustered, together with nearly four hundred transports and over two hundred men-of-war, including thirty-seven ships of the line, thirty of them temporarily fitted out as horse-transports. Haydon, the painter, saw the naval armada at Portsmouth and was deeply impressed by the stark simplicity and perfection of their men, decks and guns.
Yet, though the authorities were careful to act in force, they troubled less about speed. They thus robbed the expedition of what should have been its chief asset. It was not so much that they were slow as that they refused to be hurried: stately gentlemen of the telling period and the lobby, they could not comprehend the unforgiving pace of the battlefield. In vain Popham urged the danger of delaying till the season of settled weather was past and the autumn gales and rains had begun. Orders and counter-orders followed one another in leisurely procession, while the European summer slipped by with England still standing in the wings making final adjustments to her armour. The brave Tyrolese under the giant innkeeper, Hofer, regained their native valleys from the Bavarians; the Westphalian peasants rose at Cassel only to be dispersed by the
1 Barrow, 304-5; Castlereagh, VI, 49, 260, 270-1; VII, 83-7; Fortescue, VII, 49, 51, 58.
bullets of their renegade countrymen; Colonel Schill marched out of Berlin with 700 Hussars to raise the standard of German liberation and fall at the hands of puppet Danes and Dutch. And on a Danube island Napoleon worked furiously to restore his lines and gather new forces. "I would to God our expedition was off," wrote Walter Scott on July 8th. Two days later, while British warriors were still killing cockchafers in the barrackyard at Deal, Napoleon, after a remarkable recovery, fell on the Austrians at Wagram.
On July 20th the embarkation began. To the strains of martial music and the plaudits of the many who had come down in all the finery of fashion from London to see the spectacle, the men were rowed to the waiting ships in the Downs. Thinking they were going to avenge Moore's death, they set up a great cheer which brought tears to the eyes of one beholder—she could not tell why.1 That same day salvos fired on the French coast were heard by watchers at Dover. Next day they continued and London grew anxious. By the 23rd Windham was writing in his journal of "terrible news from Germany": in a great battle fought near Vienna 24,000 Austrians and 18,000 French had fallen and the Archduke had been driven from the field. Two days later it was learnt that Austria, despairing of England, had signed an armistice.
Yet the British, being British, went on hoping. Though profoundly depressed, they trusted that their ally might still be heartened to resume the fight and repudiate the armistice. They accordingly launched their expedition, entering the Continental arena just as every one else was quitting it. At dawn on July 28th the vast armada weighed from the shores of Kent. A fresh breeze wafted it to the Dutch coast so swiftly and smoothly that an officer on Chatham's staff was reminded of the summer yachting excursions of the Royal Family in Weymouth Bay.2 By the evening the advanced guard was off the Scheldt. Before it lay the two mouths of the great river, separated by the islands of Walcheren and South Beverland. The main or West Scheldt up which it was intended to pass—for the East Scheldt was barred by the narrow defile between the eastern tip of South Beverland and the mainland—flowed into the North Sea through the four-mile wide Wielingen Channel between Flushing on the southern shore of Walchcren and Fort Breskens on Kadzand. As it was doubtful whether so great a fleet could safely pass between the enemy's batteries at this point, the first step "was to land troops to capture either Flushing or Fort
1 Nugent, 347-8; Harris, 172. 2 Gomm, 122.
Breskens or both. Once the Wielingen had been opened, sixty miles of difficult but practicable navigation through winding waters would bring the armada to the eastern extremity of South Beverland where the river narrowed to a thousand yards. Here, within twenty miles of its goal, it was proposed to disembark the army and its immense supplies of guns and stores, preparatory to a crossing from Batz to the mainland at Sandvliet and Fort Lillo and a final march to Antwerp.
Unfortunately the real objectives of the expedition had never been clearly visualised. In the formal instructions issued to Lord Chatham they were defined as "the capture or destruction of the enemy's ships either building at Antwerp and Flushing or afloat in the Scheldt, the destruction of the arsenals and dockyards at Antwerp, Terneuse and Flushing, the reduction of the island of Walcheren and the rendering, if possible, the Scheldt no Longer navigable for ships of war." A proviso added that, if all the objectives were not practicable, as many should be attained as possible before returning home. Yet those which alone could justify the immense effort England was making were the destruction of Napoleon's fleet and the diversion of his forces from the Danube. Neither could be achieved without the capture of Antwerp. For so long as they held it the French could effectively ward off any serious danger to the Low Countries and northern France, while greater part of the island and had taken the little port of Batz at its eastern tip. They were now only divided from the mainland on which Antwerp lay by the narrowest part of the East Scheldt, and, any threatened warship lying lower down the river could be moved up under protection of its guns. Antwerp and the French fleet could not be immobilised merely by occupying Walcheren. A Government which doubted its ability to defend England and Ireland against a full concentration of Napoleon's forces could as they erected batteries against the fort of Sandvliet on the opposite shore, they could see the distant spires of the city across the water meadows. But the barges and gunboats on which they relied to cross were still fifty miles away and on the wrong side of the Wielingen Channel.
Beyond the river the French were feverishly digging in. The appearance of the British armada at the end of July had taken them completely by surprise. At that time the garrison of Antwerp numbered only a few thousand reservists, South Beverland was without defenders, and the total force on Walcheren did not exceed three battalions. Realising the supreme importance of holding the Wielingen Channel for as long as possible, the French commander sent every man he could scrape together, first to hold the -beaches at Kadzand and then to strengthen Flushing. As late as August 6th, four days after Hope entered Batz, there were still only 1500 defenders of the poorest quality at Sandvliet and Lillo on the other side of the stream. Not till0that day did the first reinforcement of 2500 regulars reach Antwerp. In Paris Fouche met the emergency by calling out the National Guard and appointing—as a personal insurance against disaster—the pro-Republican Bernadotte to command it, while Napoleon from the Danube wrote passionately unrealist letters—always in him a sign of weakness—declaring the Scheldt to be impregnable and its defenders knaves and traitors.1
Before the expedition sailed little had been ascertained in England of the strength of the French defences or of the forces that could be mustered to defend Antwerp: this, indeed, had been the King's objection to the enterprise. Yet it was a reasonable assumption, in view of Napoleon's plight after Aspern-Essling and his commitments in Spain, that few first-line troops would be available to oppose the initial landings, especially since, with sea power in British hands, the enemy could not anticipate their location. The inyaders, therefore, had every reason to take risks at the start. Yet, not only did Huntly remain inactive off Kadzand till August 4th, when he received Chatham's orders to proceed to the Roompot and subsequently to South Beverland, but the Navy made no attempt to force the Wielingen Channel.
Sir Richard Strachan, the Rear-Admiral in command, was a vigorous man still in his forties with a considerable reputation for dash and energy and the distinction of having destroyed Dumanoir's squadron after Trafalgar. But like so many of his profession he had small talent for co-operating with
1 See M. de Rocca, Campaigne de Walcheren et d'Anvers, and an extremely able paper by Colonel A. H. Burne on Amphibious Operations in The Fighting Forces, Vol. XVI, 389-90; Casrlercagh, VI,
soldiers—particularly the Court kind like Chatham. Bluff, choleric and hasty,1 he was an honest tarpaulin who spoke out his mind and was nonplussed when obstructed by a colleague. A Nelson would have coaxed the Earl into a more active humour or taken the fleet through the Wielingen without him, chancing the shore batteries and the untimely gales of early August. Strachan only grumbled and fumed at his procrastination.
The pace of the command was therefore that of the slowest, and nothing could have been slower than Chatham, who by this time had made himself very much at home—"cool and tranquil" was an onlooker's description—in his headquarters at Middleburg. Here privileged passers-by could see his turtles on their backs in the garden but seldom—for he never appeared on horseback before midday—the Commander-in-Chief. A naval captain, asking a colonel in the trenches before Flushing when the bombardment was to begin, was met with an expressive: "God knows! Everything goes on at Headquarters as if they were at the Horse Guards; it does not signify what you want, you must call between certain hours, send up your name and wait your turn."2