Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  If both these men happened to be the most unpopular soldiers in the entire Army, they could not, it would seem, have been worse served by their comrades. Yet we know the aftermaths of all Peninsular battles are full of stories of the injured lying out quite unattended the following day, even without the competing immediate attractions of a rich town to plunder; it is all of a piece with equally consistent records of bodies being stripped, whilst warm; indeed whilst still living, if the stripper considered the wounds mortal – and the boots (or whatever) were the right size.

  So it was all over. Governor Philippon before first light on 7 April sent out dragoons from Fort San Cristobal, through the Portuguese pickets, to carry his grim news to Soult (two marches away down near Villafranca). With 25,000 men to Wellington’s 55,000, of whom Graham and Hill with 31,000 were standing in his way at Albuera, Soult sensibly about-turned to Andalucia. Philippon surrendered at seven o‘clock under a white handkerchief on a bayonet, together with his staff and some 100 men, having been refused a discussion of terms by Lord Wellington’s ADC, Fitzroy Somerset, and Beresford’s, William Warre (the latter later claimed to be the senior officer present, but stopped short of claiming the surrender). The Fort captured, Lamare said it contained ‘Scarcely thirty rounds of ammunition for cannon, and not a single ration of provisions.’ The town itself had neither shells or grenades but ‘Twelve thousand pounds of powder, one hundred and forty pieces of cannon and a pontoon train’.

  Philippon’s fight had been magnificent, a lesson in seeking initiatives, in eking out inadequate supplies of powder and making do with inadequate troop numbers; the latter so effectively that in conjunction with many imaginative field defences, they had imposed horrendous losses. Lamare puts their own at some 1,500, with the major part of the garrison, 3,500, marching out as prisoners. Need one add that a certain General Baron Armand Philippon quickly escaped from his prison in England, crossed the Channel, rejoined the colours, and fought again for his Emperor in Russia and Germany?

  Wellington’s losses were huge. Six generals wounded – Bowes, Colville, Hervey, Kempt, Picton and Walker; ten lieutenant colonels and nineteen majors killed or wounded, including the commanding officers of the 5th, 7th, 43rd, 44th, 48th, 52nd, 60th, 74th, 77th, 1st/95th and the 3rd Caçadores, and no less than the equivalent of seven battalions now lacking all their company commanders. Think of these figures – that’s twelve battalions leaderless, and sixty-seven captains killed or wounded. What promotion for the lieutenants, however temporarily! A lieutenant colonel or dead meat indeed; but a captain by midnight was more likely. All told in round figures the Light and 4th Divisions were each down 1,000, the 3rd and 5th each 500, the Portuguese another 700; and these casualties were suffered in the storm on 6/7 April; add another 1,000 for the previous siege operations and Oman calculates Wellington’s losses total at 4,670 all ranks. Two thousand casualties alone at the breaches – effectively, that is at Trinidad – while several sources imply French losses there were less than three figures, with Lamare giving twenty dead: so a terrible price for a terrible British failure, with future echoes and for much the same reason: firepower and obstacles. A century later chevaux de frise would be replaced by wire, multiple muskets by machine guns, yet still the same old courage in fruitless efforts to dominate. The paucity of French casualties flowed from the obstacle courses Philippon designed to stand in front of his men. Thus it follows that when Lord Wellington chose to hit head on, his injuries were many times those suffered where his escalades more randomly met less prepared walls. The exception was the poor 4th Foot in Walker’s brigade, who were hardest hit of all – a casualty rate of some forty-four per cent – presumably thanks to the counter-attack by the 28th Léger, which pushed them back along the ramparts, and also their subsequent fighting probe into the main square. Their 230 casualties were a higher casualty rate than the 341 and 320 of the Light Division’s much larger 43rd and 52nd, but these figure are only marginally ahead of the 95th’s and of the battalions of the 4th Division. Taking my own regiment, the 48th, in Bowes’ Fusilier Brigade, we had nineteen officers and 154 other ranks knocked over or drowned in front of Trinidad. Among the former, Major William Brooke was severely wounded while serving as AQMG, his elder son William was killed, and his youngest son John was also severely wounded: a bad night indeed for the Brookes and I know of no other father-and-two-son casualty combinations.

  William Napier concludes his fourth volume with typical passion. His hero Lord Wellington, who can do no wrong, at Badajoz was yet again faced by circumstances not covered by his engineers’ pamphlets. Napier examines the various pressures and options open, concluding that, although the breaches in the event proved impregnable, Wellington had ‘To strike without regard to rule, trusting in the courage of his men and to fortune to bear him through the trial triumphant,’ and that ‘the probable loss of a few thousand men, more or less’ – if he succeeded – would lead to a ‘Horizon ... bright with the comin glory of England.’ By that he implied Salamanca, the stilling of domestic clamour from defeatist generals, and by politicians on the costs of the war, and the reviving hopes of the continental powers as they watched Napoleon, at the head of 400,000 men, stride across Russia.

  Well, yes: but it is that unfortunate phrase ‘a few thousand men’ that cannot be passed by. Had the town fallen via Trinidad or Maria it would have been a different story but, like the Somme or Gallipolli or Arnhem, it dishonours the dead not to seek answers to such a catastrophically costly failure. One need not seek far, of course, nor we imagine did his Lordship when, next morning on the breach, Picton found him in tears. ‘Good God, what’s the matter?’ he asked, to which years later Wellington commented, ‘I bit my lips and did everything I could to stop myself, for I was ashamed he should see it, but I could not.’ This near-unique show of weakness acknowledged a degree of personal culpability: for he knew he had asked too much of his men. Much lies in two of the Peer’s letters. The first, quoted by Oman, went to Lord Liverpool and contains, of course, Wellington’s strictures on his engineering resources but also for our purposes stressing that ‘I have never seen breaches more practicable in themselves than the three walls of Badajoz, and the fortress must have surrendered with these breaches open, if I had been able to “approach the place”’. He was more specific to his old QMG George Murray:

  We could do no more, and it was necessary to storm or raise the siege ... I trust however that future armies will be equipped for sieges with the people necessary to carry them on ... and that our engineers will learn how to put their batteries on the crest of the glacis and to blow in the counterscarp, instead of placing them wherever the wall can be seen, leaving it to the poor officers and troops to get into and across the ditch as best they can.

  Not dealing with the counterscarp not only broke up any cohesion among the stormers (who must then reform in the dark, once beneath it) it also allowed the garrison to mine, wire, inundate and generally turn the ditch into a lethal obstacle course and certainly not a place to reform troops under fire. Lamare mentions in a puzzled way the neglect to destroy the counterscarp, supposing that this lucky gift was ‘From inexperience, or from other causes’. We saw how, on 29 March, sapping close to the Lunette had to be abandoned, due to the heavy casualties; sapping right up to the counterscarp to blow it in, with the lack of trained sappers, and with time and Soult pressing, was just not an option. Yet had not Rodrigo’s breaches been won, with modest casualties, over intact counterscarps?

  So to sum up Wellington’s dilemma, while it could not be helped, it might be done, for it had already been done once.

  The next consideration ought therefore to be whether the breaches, if breaches there must be, were the right breaches. But that ‘if’ needs examining briefly, since the French themselves held the view that rather than create laborious breaches ‘If Lord Wellington had attempted an attack by sudden assault i.e. by escalade, when the place was first invested, he might have hoped for the same result as he obtained twenty o
ne days later’. That is, due both to the then unprepared defences, and to the stunning surprise such action would achieve. Unfortunately, of course, his Lordship was not privy to his enemy’s retrospective views, and it is impossible to imagine him ordering such a gigantic coup-de-main but for one recent thing: the Renaud Redoubt operation at Rodrigo. One does have to wonder if the memory of that silent and successful night attack, delivered within hours of the town being enveloped, crossed Wellington’s mind at all? If so, it was a temptation put to one side, probably quite quickly, by a man who had once, in India, bitterly written ‘I have come to a determination, when in my power, never to suffer an attack to be made by night upon an enemy who is ... strongly posted, and whose posts have not been reconnoitred by daylight.’ So, ten companies in the dark against the Renaud might fail and no great harm ensue; four divisions at Badajoz needed rather more caution.

  We should not forget also that the British were entirely familiar with Badajoz town, headquarters being located there for several months in 1809. The outline plan of attack was thus settled well before Fletcher sent out his ostentatious reconnaissance parties. We know nothing about what discussion, if any, took place between the Peer and his engineer concerning sites other than Trinidad and Santa Maria; the French themselves were more sensitive towards next-door Pedro, and the demi-bastion Antonio up against the Castle. Lamare says:

  This is one of the weakest points, having but a scarp of masonry, the foot of which may be seen from the country at a distance of eight hundred yards, and having but a simple curtain, without a parapet, ditch or counterscarp behind which it was impossible to form a retrenchment.

  When, on 21 March, they woke to find three new British batteries on the extreme right of the First Parallel, opposite the place of concern, this ‘Occasioned us much uneasiness’; which, however, promptly dissipated when fire was opened instead on the right faces of Trinidad, Pedro and the Lunette.

  The French concern was understood by Major John Burgoyne who, with MacCarthy, helped lead Picton forward and who had earlier advocated the town wall to be breached at this point. Whether he had any plan to get the assaulting divisions across the Inundation, other than the one-man-wide bridge necessarily used by Picton’s men, we do not know.

  That local difficulty did not apply way to the west, where the 5th Division escaladed. The problems there were the French defensive mines, tunnelled from the counterscarp under the glacis, the mines to be used should saps and batteries get close enough. For unlike the rest of the town’s defences, which had the added covering strength of the outworks San Roque, Picurina and Pardaleras, nothing stood in front of the three western bastions. The mines were in this sense partly a substitution. We know the mines were known to Fletcher via the desertion of the French sergeant major of sappers clutching his map; we know from Lamare no explosives had yet been laid; we don’t, however, know if that was also known. But in any event, Fletcher had already ruled out the southern fronts, much though Lord Wellington wished otherwise, according to John Jones. Fletcher found:

  It would require at least thirty pieces of ordnance, including mortars, beyond the number that could be made available for the operation, five or six times the number of gabions, and twenty times the quantity of timber and other materials, for which carriage was likely to be procured; and further, an additional number of well-instructed miners as well as sappers.

  So however much his Lordship was desirous, it just could not be done, and instead one suspects that the final approval for attacks upon Trinidad and Santa Maria came from Fletcher’s confirmatory reconnaissance from the vedette on the heights of San Michael, 600 yards from Fort Picurina, on 16 March. This showed that the right face of Trinidad with the still incomplete counterguard in front, could be hit low down by artillery from the Picurina hill. The attack plan flowed from that.

  After the action, Fletcher’s Brigade Major, John Jones (and therefore writing his Journal as a semi-official engineer spokesman?), stoutly maintained that the breaches were not only practicable but should have been taken. He believed it was the failure of the infantry to assault up them ‘Properly in strong columns, closely formed up’ that was the problem; indeed, he says it was more a case of ‘Scarcely at any one time did more than fifty men ascend either breach in a compact body’. Jones belittled the existence of the chevaux-de-frise, saying that on Santa Maria ‘Though excellent to resist individuals, [it] was incapable from its lightness and small base, to withstand the efforts of a body’ while on Trinidad the chevaux ‘Had been placed along its summit’ as if (without chains, which are not mentioned) it could be as readily unplaced. This was just impossible: the timber was fixed beyond any instant moving, for according to John Patterson, 50th, who visited the breach whilst ‘bodies of the slain (still) lay heaped about the ditch . . . the chevaux de frise being a stout cylindrical block of timber, bristled with sharp pointed sword blades, its extremities were mortised into the stonework of the parapet, by thick iron staples’.

  An infuriated Napier responded to Jones on behalf of all infantrymen everywhere that ‘Engineers intent upon their own art sometimes calculate on men as they do on blocks of stone or timber, nevertheless where the bullet strikes the man will fall’. As he says, the rows of French muskets up front and the inability of British muskets behind (down) the breach slope to suppress the defensive fire across the heavy beams ‘Rendered a simultaneous exertion impossible’, i.e. their removal. The breaches to modern eyes as to Napier’s were surely quite impregnable.

  Picton’s 3rd Division did indeed save the Army’s honour and that of its leader, but no more than did Leith’s 5th. Getting inside first, the former’s success initiated the rumours that spread through the streets to the men loading muskets at the breaches, that caused reserves to mobilise and troops to be thinned out from in front of Leith. But it was the latter – and we really mean Walker’s brigade of the 1st/4th, 2nd/30th and 2nd/44th, together with the 38th (who held off the counterattack) – who actively captured the town. Indeed, some say it was curious that Picton’s division, perhaps because he himself was prevented by injury from climbing the ladders into the Castle, was surprisingly apathetic once inside the citadel. Gates leading to the breaches and their frustrated 4th and Light Division comrades might, one imagines, have been made to yield quite promptly with a few captured powder barrels. We shall never know. Anyway, the division being in the Castle soon after 11.30pm, a successful exploitation to the Trinidad breach – all of 500 paces away – would surely have saved many hundreds of lives in the final and despairing series of ad-hoc attempts by the 4th and the Light.

  Equally, of course, had Leith’s ladder men not lost their way, the same applies, although the two companies of the 9th Léger would not by then have been withdrawn and Walker would have had a much tougher fight. Had that proved impossible to win, however, the town would still have fallen, thanks to Picton – but not until first light, when presumably his Lordship would have co-ordinated a combined effort by the 3rd Division, the 4th and the Light. It would then have answered, one way or the other, those who, like the great Vauban, sometimes favoured daylight attacks over night. ‘You wish,’ he told Louis XIV at the siege of Valenciennes

  To spare the blood of the soldiers. You will spare it much better when they fight by daylight, without confusion and without tumult. We want to surprise the enemy. They always expect to be attacked by night. We shall surprise them much more effectively when, exhausted with the fatigues of their night watch, they will be under the necessity of encountering our troops refresh . . . Night favours the coward, and is attended with the danger of one part of our troops firing upon the other; which indeed happens but too frequently.

  And Louis concurred, and the garrison of 4,000 in Valenciennes was taken by storm, in daylight, at a cost of forty men.

  Alternative hindsight also suggests capitalising on the French certainty that Trinidad and Maria were to be the main entrances, by launching only feint attacks upon them. By the time Philippon dare re-
deploy his defence, Picton and Leith would have been up and over, and 2,000 casualties spared the 4th and Light. But when commentaries reach this ‘what if’ stage it is sensible to cease, and time to move on. The view from the armchair is always clearer and more farsighted.

  We should also move on from Badajoz. The scale of both the casualties and the sack having been here perhaps too much dwelt upon, like the troops themselves we can feel some relief in quitting the mud for a more open road. Part of that relief was to distance the soldiers’ honour from their drunken excesses, and part, no doubt for a great many, was amazement at their personal survival. For just as modern men wonder at the disciplined lines going forward on the Somme, so do we wonder at their great-grandfathers’ climbing of the ladders and of Trinidad’s horrid slippery slope. Repeatedly, immense fortitude and resolution was shown, of a quite different nature to that required (say) on the Albuera slopes. Perhaps a superior courage? For to go forward to certain death as an individual, one of the few on a narrow front, each finding his own route in the dark, seems to call for more strength than passively waiting for death’s random visit, when in line beside your comrades. To do so over a carpet of bodies, signalling earlier failure after earlier failure, is to reach the heights of human determination and valour. When all is said and done, the storm of Badajoz must be reckoned one of the most magnificent deeds in the history of the British Army. In an age when deference to class and position was assumed, it required officers to go up the ladders first, and their men to follow, and that they did; and they did so in the teeth of their traditional foe, their most gallant foe, who made up for an inadequate strength by an excess of energy and resolution. They held the breaches, but were too few to hold the walls. What would Philippon have done with another three or four of Marmont’s battalions?