Cochrane the Dauntless

by David Cordingly

  A major gap in the blockade was Portugal, Britain’s long-standing ally, which defied the Berlin Decrees. Napoleon’s response was to despatch an army under General Junot to enforce his will. Ever since the resumption of the war following the brief Peace of Amiens the French armies had proved invincible and the Portuguese were certainly not capable of halting their progress. Dom Joaão VI, the Regent of Portugal, was persuaded to leave the country and move his government to his South American colony of Brazil. On 30 November 1807, twenty-four hours before General Junot’s advance guard arrived in Lisbon, Dom João and his family cleared the mouth of the River Tagus, sailed out into the Atlantic and headed for Rio de Janeiro escorted by a squadron of British frigates. Among the passengers on board the Portuguese flagship was Pedro, the six-year-old son of Dom João. Fifteen years later Dom Pedro would be at the forefront of the rebellion against Portuguese rule in Brazil and Cochrane would play a key part in the battles which would lead to Brazilian independence.

  With Lisbon in the hands of French troops Napoleon now determined to increase his hold over Spain. He wanted to ensure that all her ports and harbours were closed to British shipping; he needed Spain to supply him with troops, cash and ships; and he believed that a country which he regarded as primitive, priest-ridden and badly governed would benefit from the reforms he had introduced in France and northern Italy. A French army crossed the Pyrenees into Spain on 16 February 1808, swept aside all opposition and occupied Madrid on 23 March. King Charles IV of Spain was forced to abdicate and three months later Napoleon announced that his eldest brother Joseph was to be King of Spain. With 25,000 troops in Portugal, 95,000 in Spain and his brother on the Spanish throne, Napoleon assumed that the entire peninsula was now under his firm control. He fatally misjudged the terrain and the people.

  An occupying army faced major problems in Spain. Much of the country was mountainous with barren uplands and few roads suitable for the moving of horse-drawn artillery and baggage trains. Apart from the people living in the bays and inlets along the rocky coast, the population was scattered in small, impoverished villages or gathered in isolated cities defended by towering city walls. In addition to the hostile terrain Napoleon’s armies had to contend with a people who were intensely proud, accustomed to hardship and adept at guerrilla warfare – a warfare which was frequently accompanied by acts of barbaric cruelty. The atrocities committed by both sides in the coming struggle would be depicted with horrific realism in a harrowing series of engravings by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya who was an eyewitness to some of the worst excesses of the period. The writings of Cochrane and Marryat include several mentions of atrocities which they observed during raids on the Spanish coast.

  ‘What a feat! With dead men!’ (‘Grande hazaña. Con muertos.’) Etching by Francisco Goya, who witnessed and recorded the horrors of the war in Spain.

  ‘Rightly or wrongly’ (‘Con razon ó sin ella’). Etching by Goya depicting Spanish peasants being gunned down by French soldiers, c.1810.

  The first demonstration of Spanish resistance took place on 2 May 1808 when there was a popular uprising in Madrid. It was savagely put down by French troops but the rebellion spread rapidly to other cities. There were riots in Toledo and Seville, and in the harbour of Cadiz the French admiral was forced to surrender his fleet to the local Spanish forces. The occupying power was further humiliated on 20 July when a Spanish army led by General Castaños defeated a French army of nearly 18,000 men under the command of General Pierre-Antoine Dupont at the Battle of Baylen. Napoleon was so angry when he heard the news that he stripped Dupont of his command and imprisoned him.

  The Spanish rebellion had immediate and long-term consequences for the British conduct of the war. Spain might be under the nominal control of France but her people were now allies of Britain. Her ports were available to British ships and the navy could now make use of Spain’s extensive coastline to land troops unopposed and provide supplies and reinforcements to British forces. News of the Spanish rebellion reached England on 11 May. On 1 August an expeditionary force of 10,000 men landed at Mondego Bay on the coast of Portugal and marched inland. The force was led by Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, who had proved his qualities as a military leader in India. Within a fortnight of his landing he had defeated a French force at Rolica and on 21 August he scored a notable victory at Vimeiro: a French army under General Junot was routed, losing thirteen cannon and 3,000 men. Unlike the Royal Navy the British Army had so far failed to distinguish itself in the war in Europe but Vimeiro marked a change in its fortunes. There would be many reverses during the course of the next six years but Wellington, working closely with Spanish forces and assisted by information supplied by Spanish priests and local people, would slowly but surely drive the French out of Spain and Portugal.

  9

  The Coastal Raids of the Imperieuse

  1808

  Lord Collingwood heard the news of the Spanish rebellion while he and his squadron were keeping watch on the port of Toulon. He was quick to grasp the significance of the developments and sailed at once for Gibraltar which he reached on 8 June. He spent four days in the bay gathering information, and then sailed on to Cadiz where he made contact with the Spanish admirals and waited for orders from Britain. On 20 June he wrote a secret despatch to Rear-Admiral Martin in which he outlined the recent events in Spain and was able to tell him, ‘I have the fullest instructions from the Secretary of State to give every possible aid to the operations of the Spaniards.’ He said he was sending the Imperieuse to the Captain General of Majorca with letters from the British government and he was enclosing a copy of the further orders he had given to the Imperieuse: ‘You will perceive that the station she is appointed to fill, is one of the first consequences to our present affairs.’1 From this last remark and the tone of his orders to Cochrane it is clear that he was expecting the Imperieuse to play a significant role in the rapidly unfolding events.

  The Imperieuse had been lying at anchor in the Bay of Gibraltar since 30 May undergoing a thorough overhaul. Her people had cleared the holds and washed and restowed the iron ballast; they had taken on provisions and filled the empty casks with water; and the warrant officers’ stores had been drawn from the dockyard. At dawn on 20 June they unmoored the ship, set sail and headed west. Under overcast skies, with a fresh breeze filling the sails, they passed Cape Trafalgar and headed for Cadiz. The next day they sighted the lighthouse of Cadiz and found a fleet of British warships anchored in the bay near the walls of the ancient seaport. Anchoring close by, Cochrane had a boat lowered and was rowed across to Collingwood’s flagship to collect his instructions. The orders he received are worth quoting at some length because they help to explain the determination and energy with which he tackled his operations off the Spanish coast during the next six months:

  Whereas it is of the greatest importance that the French troops now at Barcelona which are supposed to be besieged by the Spaniards in the Citadel, should not be reinforced by sea from France or draw supplies from thence. You are hereby required and directed to proceed immediately off that Port and cruise between it and Marseilles for the above mentioned purpose – using every exertion to prevent reinforcements or supplies of any sort getting into the Spanish Dominions from the neighbouring territory of France.

  It being His Majesty’s intention that during the present struggle of the Spanish Nation to throw off the yoke of France that every assistance and aid should be rendered by the British forces to forward so desirable an object. You will, while employed in the execution of the above service, regulate your conduct towards Spanish vessels which may be carrying despatches or supplies for the use of the Spanish army accordingly; and if circumstances should arise in which you may be able to render assistance to the Spanish patriots, you will do so, as far as your means may render expedient.2

  That evening the Imperieuse parted company with the fleet and headed back through the Straits of Gibraltar.3 She was now flying British an
d Spanish flags at her mainmast and when she put into the harbour of Cartagena on 26 June her captain and crew received a warm welcome, in spite of the fact that only five weeks before they had launched a fierce attack on several Spanish gunboats in the vicinity. From Cartagena they headed north-east to Majorca and dropped anchor in the Bay of Palma so that Cochrane could deliver the letter from Collingwood to the Captain General of the Balearic Islands. As at Cartagena they had every reason to expect a frosty reception in view of their recent raids in the area. Cochrane noted that ‘the inhabitants were at first shy, apparently fearing some deception’ but when he went ashore with the news that Britain and Spain were now allies the mood rapidly changed and they found themselves showered with presents by the people of Palma. Having delivered Collingwood’s letter Cochrane wasted no time in heading back to the Catalonian coast of Spain.

  The French had some 13,000 troops in the region of Catalonia under the command of General Duhesme. One battalion was based at Figueras, close to the frontier with France, but the bulk of ‘The Army of Observation of the Eastern Pyrenees’ was stationed in Barcelona. The main road linking Barcelona with France stretched for a hundred miles along the rocky coast, in many places running along the shore and vulnerable to attack from the sea. The Imperieuse arrived off Barcelona on 5 July. Cochrane once again hoisted the Spanish and British flags and with typical bravado fired a twenty-one-gun salute to the Spanish authorities, a deliberate affront to the French soldiers in possession of the town. The booming of the guns drew crowds to the waterfront and Cochrane and his crew could see thousands of local people gathering on the rooftops and in the public squares. The French responded by firing at the Imperieuse from their gun batteries but their shot fell harmlessly short of the frigate.

  From Barcelona they sailed north, the light airs making progress slow. Becalmed in a bay near Blanes they dropped anchor and were told by the inhabitants of a nearby village that the French had recently plundered their church and burnt down forty-five houses, ‘a wretched policy truly, and one which did the French great harm by the animosity thus created amongst the people’. On 10 July Cochrane began the first of his many attacks on the coastal road. Anchoring the Imperieuse at a point near Mataro where the road ran beneath precipitous rocky cliffs, he sent the boats ashore with a party of seamen who blew down the overhanging rocks, making the road impassable for cavalry and artillery.

  On 16 July they sailed to Port Mahon to stock up on water and provisions. Together with the Hind and the Kent they were ordered to escort a convoy of eight vessels carrying 4,430 Spanish soldiers and artillery from the island to the mainland. Having completed that mission they returned to the task of disrupting the operations of the French army. For five days they carried out demolition work along the coast road between Barcelona and Blanes. While the Imperieuse lay offshore, the boats landed parties of seamen who burnt bridges, blew up the roads and systematically destroyed gun batteries. A raft was constructed so that the guns from the batteries could be floated out to the Imperieuse, and on one occasion they transferred a number of heavy brass guns from a battery on a cliff top to the ship by making use of the simple mechanical aids that sailors used every day. Marryat recalled how they anchored within pistol shot of the battery and passed long lines from the ship to the cliff: ‘We lashed blocks to our lower mastheads, rove hawsers through them, sent the ends on shore, made them fast to the guns, and hove off three of them, one after another, by the capstan.’4 While they were engaged in these operations they received intelligence from the crew of a Spanish boat that French forces were attacking the castle at Mongat. By the time the Imperieuse arrived in the vicinity the advance guard of General Duhesme’s forces had captured the castle but Cochrane learnt that the local militia could provide eight hundred men to assist him if he attempted to retake the castle.

  Mongat was no more than a small coastal village but its castle was in an important position commanding the road leading from Barcelona to Gerona. At dawn on 31 July the Imperieuse anchored two and a half miles from the castle and Cochrane went ashore in the gig to carry out a reconnaissance from the wooded hills overlooking the area. The heat of the Mediterranean sun was tempered by a fresh southwesterly breeze as he climbed to a suitable vantage point. Having decided that an attack was practicable he returned to the ship and ordered his men to clear her for action. As the Imperieuse crept closer inshore the Spanish militia, encouraged by the sight of the warship’s approach, launched a fierce attack on an outpost the French had established on a neighbouring hill and succeeded in taking it. Anchoring in nine fathoms opposite the castle, the Imperieuse fired two broadsides at close range. The gun platform of a warship of even moderate size was a devastating weapon; for the French defenders it was like being attacked by a regiment of foot artillery. The shot of the 18-pounder guns smashed into the masonry, dismounting guns and hurling stone fragments and choking clouds of dust into the air. As the noise of the second broadside died away the French hung out flags of truce.

  When Cochrane landed with a party of red-coated marines under the command of Lieutenant Hoare he found that the Spaniards were ignoring the flags of truce and were preparing to storm the castle. The French soldiers were desperately firing back, knowing the consequences if they surrendered to the vengeful Spanish peasants. Cochrane took charge of the situation, persuaded the Spanish to hold their fire and entered the castle where he found the French troops drawn up on each side of the gate. The commandant told Cochrane he would only surrender to him. ‘After giving the commandant a lecture on the barbarities that had been committed on the coast… I acceded to the request to surrender to us alone and promised an escort of our marines to the frigate.’ The French prisoners were marched down to the boats, the marines having some difficulty in protecting them from the Spaniards who subjected them to volleys of abuse. When they were safely on board Cochrane ordered the demolition of the castle. The guns were removed, a fuse was led to the French ammunition store and the entire edifice was blown up. Hundreds of local people now appeared and the Spanish flag was hoisted on the smoking ruins.

  That evening Cochrane wrote a despatch to Lord Collingwood informing him that the castle of Mongat ‘surrendered this morning to His Majesty’s ship under my command’.5 He praised the Spanish militia, explained that the castle had been levelled to the ground and provided a list of the prisoners captured and the military stores taken. It was an impressive list: 71 French soldiers had been taken, with 2 killed and 7 wounded; and the arms included 5 cannon, 80 muskets, 500 cannonballs and 13 barrels of powder and cartridges. When he received Cochrane’s despatch Lord Collingwood sent it on to the Admiralty with an accompanying letter in which he pointed out that the capture of the castle of Mongat was ‘one of the many instances in which His Majesty’s ships on the Eastern Coasts of Spain have rendered effectual aid to the Patriot Spaniards in resisting, and driving the Enemy out of their country – and of the zeal and indefatigable industry with which Captain Lord Cochrane engages in that service’.6

  The capture of the castle and the demolition of sections of the road disrupted and delayed the operations of General Duhesme but did not prevent him achieving his objective. Before Cochrane’s arrival off the coast at Barcelona, Duhesme had taken a large body of troops northwards to reopen communications with France. On returning to Barcelona he was forced to take his men inland and drag his guns and baggage trains over the hills where they were at the mercy of guerrilla attacks. He was so angry when he eventually reached Barcelona that he turned his guns on the citadel in the town and threatened to destroy it unless his troops were supplied with daily rations of food, wine and brandy.7 The day after the attack on Mongat the frigate Cambrian appeared and Cochrane persuaded her captain to take some of the French prisoners. Four days later the Imperieuse sailed into the Bay of Rosas where the Hind was at anchor and her captain agreed to take the remainder of the prisoners as he was about to sail to Port Mahon.

  From Rosas the Imperieuse headed north and east towards
the Languedoc coast of France. On 16 August they anchored near the mouth of the Rhône. The nearest town was Aigues-Mortes, once a strongly fortified port but now stranded several miles inland beyond a bleak and windswept expanse of salt flats. The only prominent landmarks in the otherwise featureless stretch of coast were the signal posts and their adjoining cottages. The signal posts were towers with signal arms which could be moved into different positions to convey information about the movement of shipping in the vicinity. The signal arms, which operated on a similar principle to semaphore flags, could pass the information from one tower to the next along the coast and it was evident that the nearest post was signalling a warning that there was a British warship in the area. Cochrane decided that his next objective must be to destroy the enemy communications. On 18 August all the boats of the Imperieuse were hoisted out, filled with armed parties of seamen and marines and sent ashore. The offending signal station of Pinide was demolished without opposition. The signal books were captured but to fool the enemy into thinking that they had been destroyed Cochrane ordered that a few half-burnt pages be scattered around with the result that the French authorities did not consider it necessary to alter the codes.

  For the next week the Imperieuse ranged back and forth along the coast of Languedoc and demolished one signal post after another. Cochrane later reported to Lord Collingwood, ‘With varying opposition, but unvaried success, the newly-constructed semaphoric telegraphs – which are of the utmost consequence to the safety of the numerous convoys that pass along the coast of France – at Bordique, La Pinede, St Maguire, Frontignan, Canet, and Fay, have been blown up and completely demolished, together with their telegraph houses, fourteen barracks of gens d’armes, one battery, and the strong tower on the Lake of Frontignan.’8