Years of Victory 1802 - 1812

by Arthur Bryant

  and Spain, Foy, dispatched from Torres Vedras in October, had reached Paris at the end of November. And by Christmas, as Massena had guessed, the Emperor ordered Soult to the Tagus.

  Yet it was one thing to tell the Duke of Dalmatia to take an army across Estremadura and the Alemtejo in mid-winter to release the Prince of Essling: another for him to do so. Not only had Wellington transferred 10,000 troops to the south bank of the Tagus to barricade Massena in from that side, but the principal crossing at Abrantes was guarded by a powerful Portuguese fortress. Between the great river and Seville, two hundred miles distant, lay six other fortresses—Badajoz, Olivenza, Elvas, Campo Mayor, Albuquerque and Jerumenha—as well as two Spanish field armies operating from almost inaccessible hills under La Romana's lieutenants, Mendizabal and Ballasteros. Without abandoning the siege of Cadiz and the whole of Andalusia—and this Napoleon had expressely omitted to order—Soult could not assemble a force sufficient to overcome such obstacles, even if he could master the equally insuperable difficulties of supplying it.

  Instead, therefore, he gathered 20,000 troops—the most he could collect without relaxing his hold on the rich, turbulent cities of Cordoba, Malaga, Jaen and Seville—and set out on December 30th for Estremadura. His aim was to reduce as many of the Spanish and Portuguese frontier fortresses as possible and so create a diversion that would draw part of Wellington's forces away from Massena. Napoleon was having to pay the inevitable price for his refusal to appoint a supreme commander in the Peninsula and his attempt to direct operations from Paris. Indeed, had the Spanish generals played their cards as Wellington advised, Soult in pursuit of his master's orders would soon have been in as grave a plight as Massena.

  Luckily for him the Spanish leaders threw away their advantages. Like most of his fellow Marshals Soult, indolent and neglectful on the crest of the wave, reverted in adversity to the stark, revolutionary dynamism which had made him. Marching in two columns to feed his troops, he reached Olivenza in under a fortnight. Whereupon General Mendizabal, regardless of the hopeless inadequacy of its long-neglected fortifications, threw in part of his field army to enlarge the garrison. When a week later its incompetent commander surrendered, 4000 Spanish troops were needlessly lost.

  Worse followed. On January 26th, 1811, Soult laid siege to the great fortress of Badajoz, commanding the Guadiana valley and the main highway into southern Portugal. He had little hope of taking it, but he calculated rightly that the threat would force Wellington to detach troops for its relief. So long as Massena clung to his positions round Santarem, the British commander dared not employ more than a division of his own beyond the Tagus. But he at once released La Romana's entire army from Lisbon to reinforce Mendizabal. Unfortunately at that precise moment La Romana fell ill and died, and before his successor, Castanos, could arrive on the scene, the incompetent Mendizabal had blundered into a major disaster. On February 19th, though outnumbering Soult by two to one, he allowed himself to be surprised and routed on the Gebora river under the walls of Badajoz. The Spaniards had done exactly what Wellington had urged them not to do. They had destroyed their own army.

  Though with its formidable walls and position Badajoz was capable of withstanding a long siege, Wellington could do nothing more to relieve it so long as Massena stood his ground. Yet not only did his plans for a future offensive turn on its relief, but its fall while the enemy still threatened Lisbon would open the floodgates to a new French invasion of Portugal and undo all that he had accomplished.

  Aid, however, was forthcoming from another quarter. For all operations against the common foe in the Peninsula were, as Wellington had seen from the first, one and indivisible. By pinning down Massena and so drawing Soult to his aid, he had caused the latter to withdraw troops who were holding down liberating forces elsewhere. A third of Soult's 20,000 had been taken from Victor's army before Cadiz. And this left Victor only 19,000 with which to-contain 25,000 Spaniards, British and Portuguese.

  Major-General Thomas Graham, the commander of the British contingent in Cadiz, grasped his opportunity. This sixty-two year-old Scottish laird, who had begun his military career as a volunteer at the siege of Toulon only eighteen years before, was by now a master of war. To march to the sound of the guns had become part of his nature. As soon as the French began to withdraw troops from their lines, he and the British Admiral, Sir Riqhard Keats, started to urge their Spanish colleagues to break the siege. Two projects were proposed, one for a combined naval and military sortie, the other for a landing at Huelva to threaten Seville and so relieve Badajoz.

  Unfortunately both had to be abandoned owing to the weather and the perils of amphibious operations on the Atlantic coast in midwinter. In their place Graham put forward a plan for transporting the greater part of the garrison, including the British contingent, to Tarifa to attack Victor's lines in the rear. To recommend it to the Spanish commander-in-chief, General Manuel La Pena, he offered to serve under his command. In this he exceeded his instructions, but in view of the urgent need to take pressure off Wellington, it seemed a lesser evil than to do nothing. Unhappily La Peiia was a byword for incompetence even among Spanish generals—a man of tempestuous nerves, whom his soldiers called the Lady Manuela, with a genius for shirking responsibility and evading decision. He was the kind of officer who opposed everything except the enemy.

  The expedition sailed from Cadiz on February 21st, 1811—two days after Mendizabal's defeat at Gebora. It consisted of 9500 Spaniards, 4900 British and 300 Portuguese. At Algeciras, where he landed on the 23rd, Graham encountered the usual tale of broken Spanish promises and unprovided rations and transport. But with fierce Scottish insistence and threats to withdraw to Gibraltar he broke the spell of the eternal manana, and on February 28th the Allied army set out to march the sixty miles to Cadiz. For a week it struggled through torrential rains and bitter winds, over flooded rivers and up steep, narrow hill-tracks, studded with rocks and loose boulders which made them almost impassable for wheeled transport. To make matters worse La Pena, misdirected by ignorant guides, repeatedly countermanded his orders, shying at every danger like a high-strung horse and keeping the troops continuously on the move, backwards and forwards. He usually began his marches in the evening and continued them all night—a method of campaigning which imposed the maximum strain on the soaked and hungry men. When Graham protested, he merely grew more obstinate.

  On March 3rd the British, pushing up the coast, reached Vejer, a hill town overlooking Trafalgar Bay. The operation was now approaching its decisive phase, and the French siege-works on the Santi Petri river, less than twenty miles away, were in grave danger. Victor's only hope was to strike at the relieving force before it could encircle him. Fortunately for him the commander of the Cadiz garrison, General Zayas, instead of waiting for the appearance of La Pena's advance guard, followed a rigid timetable that made no allowance for unforeseen delays,1 and on the night of the 3rd threw a bridge over the Santi Petri. The French were thus able to counterattack before La Pena arrived, taking three hundred prisoners and immobilising the garrison. It was lucky that the whole Isle of Leon did not fall into their hands.

  This left Victor free to deal with the Allied field force. At dawn on the 5th, cold, wearied and dejected, the latter entered the plain of Chiclana after a fourteen-hour march. On its left, close to the sea and four miles short of the Santi Petri estuary and the French siege lines,

  lThe proceedings of Zayas and La Pena offer a correct sped men of the manner in which combined movements were executed by Spanish generals; all acted independently and generally in direct opposition to one another."—Blakeney, 18a.

  stood a low curving hill bristling with pines like a boar's neck—the Torre Barrosa. With his keen eye for country Graham saw at once that its possession was essential. He urged La Pena to occupy it before proceeding farther and, after a long argument, induced him to garrison it with a Spanish brigade and a composite British battalion of light units from the garrisons of Tarifa and Gibraltar
.1

  By this time Victor, who like all his kind in a tight place had reverted to the speed and daring of his revolutionary youth, was marching to the attack. Withdrawing the bulk of his troops from the siege lines for. a quick, decisive blow, he prepared to fall on the flank of the Allied forces, now dangerously extended and scattered. La Pena, however, was not in the least interested in what the enemy was doing; his sole concern was now to join hands with Zayas' men across the Santi Petri. Already the commander of his vanguard, Brigadier Lardizabal, had pushed on to the estuary, and a little before noon La Pena ordered Graham to follow him. As the latter was moving off through the pine woods at the base of the hill he became aware that strong French forces were advancing on his flank and rear. He at once halted and turned about with the intention of reinforcing the imperilled Spaniards on the hill.

  But they had already abandoned it. Ignoring the protests of Colonel Browne, the officer commanding the composite British battalion, they had hurried down the eastern slope to join their comrades on the beach. They left, as one of Browne's officers put it, "four hundred and seventy British bayonets bristling on the neck of the hoar." Seeing that resistance by so small a force was hopeless —for a whole division was now moving up the hill and the Spaniards had taken their guns with them—Browne marched his men down into the pine forest. Here he met Graham returning.

  The old soldier grasped the situation in a second. He saw that, unless the hill was regained before the foe could consolidate, the scattered Allied forces on the beach and coastal plain would be cut to pieces in detail b)' Victor's cavalry or at best be forced ignominiously back into Cadiz. Already one French division was breasting the summit and another was moving in column against the eastern flank of the wood in which his men were labouring in line of march. But Graham knew how to make war. He at once resolved to attack.

  In order to give his division time to deploy, he decided to sacrifice his light infantry. Three companies of the 95th with a handful of Cacadores were to hold up the advance against the British flank by a vigorous demonstration from the edge of the wood, while Browne's

  1 Blakeney, 185; Lynedoch, 466-7.

  composite battalion was to storm the hill it had so lately descended. As the latter, consisting of the flank companies of the 9th, 28th and 82nd, began to move in open order towards the slope, Graham rode after their colonel and told him to close into compact battalion. " I must show something more serious," he said, "than skirmishing. Attack in your front, and immediately." " That I will with pleasure," replied Browne, who knew, like his chief, that it probably meant annihilation. " Gentlemen," he cried, turning to his men and taking off his hat, "I am happy to be the bearer of good news. General Graham has done you the honour of being the first to attack these fellows!" And, pointing to the enemy, he began to chant his favourite air, "Heart of Oak."1

  By this time General Ruffin's division was starting to descend the hill in the direction of the British. At the sight of the returning redcoats, however, his columns halted and his guns unlimbered and opened fire. There was little cover on the bare slope, and at the first discharge more than two hundred of Browne's four hundred and seventy went down. But, obedient to their orders, they repeatedly closed their ranks and went on until—a mere handful of survivors firing from behind mounds and boulders—they were brought to a halt within a hundred yards of the enemy. Meanwhile the rest of Graham's force had deployed and was moving out of the wood in two brigades, the one on the right against Ruffin's division on the hill, the other against Leval's on the plain. The first, consisting of the 1st and 3rd Foot Guards and half a battalion of the 67th, went up the slope in some confusion, for in the rapid change of front in the wood it had been impossible to keep strict order of march and there had been no time to restore it. But there was one order which,, as a spectator observed, the men obeyed exactly—the order to advance against the enemy. Amid a storm of grape and musketry they pressed forward with wonderful steadiness and speed, holding their fire after the manner of their race until their foe was within effective range. The wood behind and their unhesitating advance conceded the nakedness of their numbers, for the French not unnaturally supposed them to be supported by strong reserves. After repelling a charge in column with a deadly volley, they continued—"with lengthened step and lofty bearing"— to fight their way upwards until, joined by the triumphant survivors of Browne's battalion, they poured over the blood-drenched summit, driving three thousand veterans before them.

  The other attack along the fringe of the wood was equally impudent and equally successful. Here the three companies of the

  1 Blakeney, 187-8.

  Rifles and their Portuguese comrades had gone into action while a battery of artillery unlimbered and halted the enemy with shrapnel. The riflemen, like Browne's men on the hill, paid dearly for their gallantry. But they won their commander the time he needed. As soon as they were ready, seven hundred men of the 87th or Irish Fusileers, two hundred Coldstreamers, four hundred and fifty of the 28th—the North Gloucesters—and two hundred, and fifty of the 67th—the South Hampshires—pressed forward with such determination that the French, thinking themselves outnumbered, hesitated and began to give way. The fire of the extended line against the column did the rest. "Fire at their legs," ordered Colonel Belson of the 28th, "and spoil their dancing!" When the British followed up with the bayonet the conquerors of Europe made off, still firing, across the heathy plain to the east.

  Such wras the battle of Barrosa. Six guns, an imperial eagle1 and a wounded general of division remained in the victors' hands. In less than two hours the French had lost 2000 out of 7000 men. The British casualty list was almost as high. The First Foot Guards lost 219 out of 600, the Coldstream 58 out of 211, the Third Guards 102 out of 320. Of the 76 officers and 1873 men of the brigade which stormed the hill, 25 officers and 588 men fell, or nearly one in every three. And this in a force which was without any reserves. The captured General Ruffin spoke to Graham of "the incredibility of so rash an attack."2

  Throughout the engagement the Spaniards on the beach never moved. Many of them grumbled bitterly at their fate, but La Pena seemed incapable of action. The truth was that he had reduced himself and his men to a state of complete prostration. It was the inevitable consequence of the habit into which the military system of Spain had fallen. Don Quixote at his most fantastic now sat in the saddle of the Conquistadores. "They march the troops night and day without provisions or rest," Wellington wrote to Graham after the battle, "abusing everybody who proposes a moment's delay to afford either to the famished and fatigued soldiers. They reach the enemy in such a state as to be unable to make any exertion or to execute any plan, even if any plan had been formed; and, when the moment of action arrives, they are totally incapable of movement, and they stand by to see their allies destroyed, and afterwards abuse them because they do not continue, unsupported, exertions to which human nature is not equal."' Graham was so angry that next day

  1 Captured by Sergeant Masterson of the 87th, one of whose family won a V.C. with the Regiment at Ladysmith.

  2 Granville, II, 385-6. See also idem., 382-4; Lynedoch, 468-483; Blakeney, 189-98; Oman, IV, 110-25; Fortescue, VIII, 47-65.

  he withdrew to Cadiz without even acquainting La Pena? Nothing could be looked for from such a Commander-in-Chief, and the British had suffered far too heavily to be able to profit by their success on their own. The Spaniards followed them, and the French, who were on the point of retiring to Seville, resumed their blockade.

  Four days after Barrosa Soult, in despair at the news of Graham's landing behind Victor's lines and of an advance by a Spanish patriot army from the Rio Tinto against Seville, summoned the Governor of Badajoz to surrender. It was his only hope of averting disaster. To his utter astonishment the infirm and desponding Spaniard who had succeeded to the command of the fortress on the death of its gallant commander, General Menacho, surrendered next day without having sustained a single assault. A breach had been made in the walls, but he
had 8000 troops, 150 guns and ample ammunition, and had just learnt that a British army was hastening to his relief. Luckily Soult could not exploit his triumph, for his concern now was not Massena's starving army but his own rear. Leaving Mortier with 11,000 troops to hold the captured fortress, he hurried back to save his Andalusian capital and the blockade of Cadiz.

  Even had Soult been free to advance towards the Tagus, it would now have availed Massena nothing. For on the evening of March 5th—the day of Barrosa—the Marshal had begun his retreat to the north. A month earlier Foy, with an escort of 2000 men, had fought his way through the mountains and the encircling guerrillas to bring him his first news of the outer world. The orders he bore promised early relief, but they were already six weeks out of date when they arrived, and by the end of February it was plain that any help would come too late. Of the 73,000 first-line troops who had originally invaded Portugal or joined Massena since, only 44,000 survived. Every foot of the country they occupied had been scoured for food and more than five thousand horses had been eaten. To have delayed another week would have seen the end of the Army of Portugal's capacity to move at all.

  Already the patient Wellington, judging the long-maturing plum ripe and in daily expectation of reinforcements in the Tagus, was preparing to close for the kill. When on the morning of March 6th his men moved catiously into Santarem, the full nature of the French disaster became apparent. The road was covered with dead soldiers" and abandoned carriages; the houses filled with sick and dying in the last loathsome stages of disease. Many lay on the floor in full uniform, their arms still grasped in their hands as if asleep, or sat in chairs, stiff and upright, with shakos on and pinched

  1 To Lieut.-Gen. Graham, 25th March, 1811. Gurwood.