Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  This is the second horse I have lost in action, as also my saddle, bridle, collar, sword, sash, musket, boots and spurs, and pouch. My beloved Father will see I have been obliged to draw largely on the agent owing to these losses. It was a glorious day for our Brigade. They behaved nobly; 4 men killed of the troop I commanded, and several men and horses wounded. It was a fine sight to see the fellows running, and as we held our swords over their heads, fall down on their knees, drop their muskets, and cry: ‘Prisonnier, Monsieur.’ You see I am not born to be a prisoner. Love to my Mother.

  As we have seen, Norcliffe’s 65th captors also have some claim to have killed Le Marchant, when he charged with Lieutenant Gregory’s half squadron of the 4th Dragoons. As ever with this battle, we need constantly to be alert to the different phases, as they relate one to another in time – or as we think they relate. Thus between Le Marchant’s death charge and Norcliffe’s capture, which presumably took place very much together, and his eventual rescue by the 32nd, we must picture the unsuccessful divisional attack by Lowry Cole’s 4th Division upon Clausel and their retreat before Clausel’s counter-attack; and the successful divisional counter-counter-attack by Clinton’s 6th Division, whose 32nd were in Hinde’s Brigade on the right. These events are yet to be described, but the delay ascribed to Clinton’s wait in front of Ferey’s ridge, put variously as ‘about an hour and a half’ (Thomas Hamilton) ‘a long time’ (Napier) and ‘for near three quarters of an hour’ (61st’s Digest), would indicate poor Norcliffe, stripped, bootless and bleeding, was to enjoy French hospitality for perhaps two hours.

  During this time, two Eagles were taken. This account of the 44th Essex’s capture is taken from Edward Fraser’s The War Drama of the Eagles (1912):

  The first Eagle – that of the hapless French 62nd, whose fate has been told – fell to Lieutenant Pearce of the 44th, a regiment in the Fifth Division. He came on the Eagle-bearer while in the act of unscrewing the Eagle from its pole in order to hide it under his long overcoat and get away with it. Pearce sprang on the Frenchman, and tussled with him for the Eagle. The second Port-Aigle joined in the fight, whereupon three men of the 44th ran to their officer’s assistance. A third Frenchman, a private, added himself to the combatants, and was in the act of bayoneting the British lieutenant, when one of the men of the 44th, Private Finlay, shot him through the head and saved the officer’s life. Both the Port-Aigles were killed a moment later – one by Lieutenant Pearce, who snatched the Eagle from its dead bearer’s hands. In his excitement over the prize Pearce rewarded the privates who had helped him by emptying his pockets on the spot, and dividing what money he had on him amongst them – twenty dollars. A sergeant’s halberd was then procured, on which the Eagle was stuck and carried triumphantly through the remainder of the battle. Lieutenant Pearce presented it next morning to general Leith, the Commander of the Fifth Division, who directed him to carry it to Wellington. In honour of the exploit the 44th, now the Essex Regiment, bear the badge of the Napoleonic Eagle on the regimental colour, and the officers wear a similar badge on their mess-jackets.

  Not all historians accept that Pearce’s Eagle was that of the French 62nd, for there is a case to be made for the 101st. Either way, it is a stirring tale, and presumably came about as the 44th, being in second line, had moved forward to assist in rounding up surrendered prisoners.

  The second Eagle taken was that of Taupin’s 22nd Regiment. John Douglas tells us:

  A little before sunset a Portuguese soldier of our Division picked up an eagle and brought it safe into the lines, to the astonishment of all as you would imagine that a sparrow could not escape between the two fires. This Eagle was the subject of an account in a book of anecdotes a few years ago, when it was stated to have been captured by an officer of the British. The statement was false. It was taken as I have mentioned. It lay on the ground along with a number of the Regiment to which it belonged, having fallen by our fire, and was free to be picked up by anyone, but it was first discovered among the dead by the Portuguese soldier. But what became of it afterwards I cannot say . . .

  The lucky Portuguese was one of Powers’ 12th Caçadores, so one Eagle to the 5th Division, one to the 3rd. According to Edward Pakenham, the latter’s capture was accompanied by two flags. Since the 22nd had two battalions present and knocked over, it would appear they lost both their battalion’s fannions or Colours, and the regimental Eagle, a black day indeed.

  Tempting though it is now to take note of the battle raging to the left of Leith’s 5th and Le Marchant’s cavalry, for our story is otherwise getting out of step, we must make room to record the casualty figures for Le Marchant, and for Maucune’s Division. Leith, as we saw in the previous chapter, suffered a total somewhere around 650 all ranks killed and wounded (just eight men were taken, six of whom were in the 2nd/4th in the second line, which is very strange), or say nine per cent overall. Pakenham’s had been very similar at 560 or ten per cent. Thomières, on the other hand, totalled 2,284 men or fifty-three per cent and Maucune 1,737 men or thirty-five per cent. The worst unit rate was Taupin’s two battalions of the 22nd Ligne who, according to French sources, ended the day with just forty-seven men (meaning losses of nearly 1,000) – effectively wiped out, and entirely by the Heavy Brigade; the next worst were Thomières’s 101st and 62nd Ligne, with casualties at eighty-two and seventy-seven per cent respectively; then the two regiments of Maucune’s who, being on his left flank, also caught the Heavies: the 66th and 15th Ligne (fifty per cent and thirty-six per cent respectively). Maucune’s other two regiments, the 82nd and 86th who probably escaped the main cavalry charges, had rate of twenty-seven and twenty-three per cent respectively. Thomières’s 1st Ligne escaped lightly, and for no reason that one can understand. Their loss of 230 men or a mere thirteen per cent indicates that they somehow not only disengaged from Wallace’s Brigade, but threaded their way back through the British cavalry (possibly making a swing to the south).

  So the three French regiments closest to Le Marchant’s axis, the 62nd, 66th and 101st, suffered so severely that they were effectively destroyed; that which stood directly in his path, the two battalions of the 22nd, was annihilated.

  And what of the cost to Le Marchant, apart from the small matter of his own life? One other of his sixty-one officers was killed, and five wounded; twenty-two troopers were killed and seventy-four wounded, with five taken: a total of 108 casualties or 10.6 per cent; that is less than one squadron’s worth. So we can summarise: Pakenham, Leith and Le Marchant with 1,318 casualties altogether, Thomières, Maucune and Taupin’s 22nd in excess of 5,000. We know not the figures for sabre cuts or musketry, but as a combined operation, it was a famous hour, a brilliant deed; all the better too for the cavalry. An unusual control of the men had been somehow exercised by their officers. To ride down one confused but not incoherent body of the enemy is one thing; three such cannot be done without tight maintenance of due form as to direction, pace and line.

  It is tragic that such a day of high endeavour was to be marred by a death which, like that of Robert Crauford at Rodrigo, was to deprive the British Army of a leader of the highest potential. Le Marchant’s earlier contribution at his Military College to the education of young officers, his field training of cavalry regiments in Suffolk, and his important work on cavalry weapons and drills, marked him out as a great innovator. He had shown this day that he could command cavalry in the field, enough for us to wonder, how he might have led the Heavy Cavalry at Waterloo, had he lived another three years?

  CHAPTER 12

  Salamanca Cole and Pack’s Attacks

  We now have some 34,000 men actively engaged in battle, one against another on foot and horse, with many already hors de combat. We are about to add a further 26,000 men, and all will be conscious that the day is wearing on. The sun is lower behind the Allies and another two hours will see the day begin to lose its light. Many will look forward to that. On the Monte de Azan, the 3rd and 5th Divisions are joining in one long line, the 7th
Division, Bradford’s Portuguese and Espana’s Spanish in the rear. Taupin’s 65th Ligne and 17th Léger immediately face Pakenham and Leith, with Boyer’s dragoons close by, and the divisions of Clausel and Sarrut over their shoulders.

  The previous chapter omitted mention of George Anson’s two light dragoon regiments (the 11th and 16th), and also of the 1st Hussars KGL and 14th Light Dragoons inherited from Victor Alten by Colonel Frederick Arentschildt. We assume they were brought forward by Cotton as a support in rear of Le Marchant. At some point, however, they were sent around the right, and what they eventually found points out the difficulties under which Lord Wellington was operating at this stage: the usual ‘other side of the hill’ problem, which must be met by a margin of caution. For what was about to happen to Cole’s unhappy 4th Division shows us (with our comfortable hindsight) possibly a rare lapse of generalship on his Lordship’s part. Not a terminal lapse, thanks to his earlier provision of substantial reserves, but certainly something of a blot on the day’s brilliance. For the regiments involved (including your author’s) it meant further destruction. In our case, adding Albuera, Badajoz and now Salamanca together the 48th’s total casualties were to be 875 all ranks – the equivalent of two battalions.

  First as to Anson and Arentschildt, the latter wrote:

  About this time our heavy cavalry fell upon the French infantry from the other side, and I ordered the hussars to keep to the extremity of the left wing of the enemy’s infantry, and cut off whatever they could, following myself with the 14th in close order. The hussars were then a great way in front, doing great execution among the enemy’s infantry, and according to the nature of the service and ground very much dispersed – when about two squadrons of the 3rd Hussars (Curto’s division) came up to attack them. But Major Gruben, Kauchenberg and other officers rallied by great exertion a body strong enough to oppose the enemy though they were all mixed; some hussars some 14th and even some Portuguese. They then fell upon the enemy and drove them back, on which occasion some French officers were cut down, and from that moment the French officers never showed their faces again on that side. The pursuit of the infantry was then renewed together with some advanced parties of General Le Marchant’s brigade until they came close to the large hill under the French batteries where you have seen them four guns have been sent back by the Hussars. I annex a receipt for two; the men who brought back the other two forgot to ask for receipts. Two colours have been taken likewise.

  Pushing on further, Arentschildt emerged from a bank of smoke to find column upon column of undisturbed Frenchmen to his front. A similar description is given by an officer in Anson’s brigade called Money:

  To gallop, and the third division pressing them (the French), they run into the wood, which separated them from the army; we (Anson’s light cavalry) charged them under a heavy fire of musketry and artillery from another height; near two thousand threw down their arms in different parts of the wood, and we continued our charge through the wood until our brigade came into an open plain of ploughed fields, where the dust was so great we could see nothing and halted; when it cleared away, we found ourselves within three hundred yards of a large body of French infantry and artillery, formed on the declivity of a hill. A tremendous battle was heard on the other side, which prevented the enemy from perceiving us. At last they opened a fire of musketry and grapeshot, and we retired in good order and without any loss.

  Arentschildt sensibly back-pedalled away from this new foe, who we can probably take to be Sarrut’s 4th Division of 5,000 men, since Clausel’s 2nd Division by now must be farther forward. Clausel numbered 6,500 men, and thus with Sarrut within call, the gap between Bonnet and Maucune was about to fill with a total force over twice the size of that which Wellington was to send from his side. We need to think back to that earlier spell between 3pm and 4pm, when he was dashing from one divisional commander to the next. At that stage, we can summarise: across to the right was Thomières, in front is Maucune, half left an empty space part-filled by Bonnet’s 122nd, then the latter on and behind the Greater Arapile with his other nine battalions. Cole was conveniently adjacent to the Lesser Arapile and therefore already on Leith’s left flank, as was Pack’s Portuguese Brigade. So Cole and Pack got the job. But equally adjacent were Clinton’s 6th Division and Hope’s 7th, neither of whom, nine weeks earlier, had been utterly shattered in the breach at Badajoz – they were away to the south with Graham’s covering force.

  The 4th Division’s losses on 6 April, especially among the officers, had substantially weakened the effectiveness of Cole’s five British battalions. Of an officer strength of about 125, two thirds (eighty-three) were knocked over in front of Trinidad (sixteen killed and sixty-seven wounded), and while those not severely wounded in due course would live to fight another day, the settled leadership of these battalions was totally disrupted. Three of Cole’s five battalions acquired new commanding officers overnight, and at least eighteen of the fifty companies acquired new officers commanding. That is, eighteen captain vacancies; however, many companies were taken forward to Trinidad by senior lieutenants, and sixty-five of the killed and wounded officers were subalterns, of whom we may suppose ten or so might well have been in command. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that over half of the companies now going against Clausel were under new management. The same consideration applied to the all-important senior other ranks. New captains, new sergeants, new corporals, just nine weeks in post. We should bear this in mind when describing Cole’s Fusilier Brigade, turning and running away. It is impossible not to speculate that any other division, less damaged, might have done better. Leadership is all.

  Equally questionable was ordering Brigadier Sir Dennis Pack, without close support, to capture the Greater Arapile with his independent Portuguese Brigade. The hill and the ground in rear was held by Bonnet with 4,600 men in nine battalions, and with another three battalions of 1,600 men only 700 or 800 yards away. Pack had 2,600 men altogether. No wonder he wrote later ‘No one admires Lord Wellington more than myself, but I fear he expected over much from my “Hidalgos”, whose courage is of a vastly changeable nature.’ This extraordinarily candid comment from the man who also said of his men ‘standing well’ at Busaco and at Ciudad Rodrigo, that it was ‘Much to my wonderment’. He had commanded them over the previous two years, so his apparent lack of trust in his men and in his own ability to use them successfully against the Great Arapile, presumably was well founded. Again, as with his battered 4th Division, Wellington maybe snatched too easily at the convenient but understrength Pack. It is true that the dead ground immediately in rear of the Greater Arapile would have contained men in blue not visible to Wellington’s telescope, whether he was on the Lesser Arapile or on the Teso. But that dead ground would not adequately hide the mass of Bonnet’s eight reserve battalions, who must surely have been visible. A nut was sent to crack a sledgehammer.

  One of Pack’s ADCs, Lieutenant Charles Synge, has left us a splendid account of the attack on the Greater Arapile, and which we shall quote at length in due course. He does, however, put the cat among the historical pigeons by maintaining his master’s orders were discretionary. That is that he was to exercise his own judgement in the matter, and attack Bonnet only if he saw a favourable opportunity. Pack himself however clearly states ‘When I received the order to attack the hill . . . It is the duty of the soldier to obey . . . Hence we advanced up the hill’, which is plain enough. Since Bonnet quite obviously must pose a brooding and massive threat to Cole’s left flank, the more so the farther he advanced, it is inconceivable the Peer would leave the protection of that flank to the discretion of a brigadier. In any event, he was absolutely not in the habit of giving discretionary orders to any of his officers, beyond Hill, Beresford and Graham. Our narrative therefore assumes Cole and Pack set off together, and we will start with the latter.

  Dennis Pack was positioned a little to the west of the Lesser Arapile. He had command of the 1st and 16th Portuguese Line, each of two ba
ttalions, and the 4th Caçadores. The latter had started their day skirmishing around the Chapel. These five battalions Pack decided to use in an interesting way. As if regarding the long slope to the crest of the ridge as some huge breach into a walled town, he deployed with a firing party, a storming party/forlorn hope backed by a grenadier force, and then his main force in two columns. All that was lacking was a ladder party! The storming party comprised 100 men of the 4th Caçadores led by Major Peter Fearon, with orders to gain the top of the slope if he could ‘And then lie down’, with the other 400 or so Caçadores to go forward on either flank with a view, presumably, of providing a firebase when the Brigade’s four grenadier companies – say 200 men – under Lieutenant Neil Campbell went through to the assault. In two columns in rear were to be (on the right) the two battalions 1st Line under Lieutenant Colonel Noel Hill, and two of the 16th under Colonel Pizarro, on the left.