Salamanca 1812- Wellington’s Year of Victories

by Peter Edwards

  But Surgeon Burroughs heard it as second hand; Lieutenant William Smith, 11th Light Dragoons, was there and gives a brief picture of the confusion:

  The Enemy came up with us at day break a Cannonading for some time they then charged our skirmishers and pressed us so hard that one Squadron of the 16 Lt Drgs and our Regt were obliged to charge in front of Celada-del Camino some confusion and retired behind the Hormasa on which were placed L Col Ackett’s [Halkett’s two light battalions of King’s German Legion] Infantry when we again got in order and retreated a Squadron occasionally charging. The German Brigade of heavy dragoons joined us near Venta del Pozo they charged came back in disorder, our Brigade also charged got intermixed and the confusion all together not to be described, had the Enemy behaved well that day they must have played the devil with us.

  Wellington himself got caught up in the melee and took hurried cover in one of the KGL squares from where, according to Colonel J. Stanhope, who had just come out with Edward Paget, ‘The riflemen brought the enemy down as if they had been partridges.’ Caffarelli was another senior present, who apparently later complained that, had Boyer tried harder, the allied cavalry must have been quite overrun, such was the disparity of numbers. Fortescue calculated Anson and Bock at not above 1,000, in five weak regiments; the French engaging with a dozen regiments for certain, possibly sixteen, and with between 3,000 to 5,000 sabres. Thomas Sydenham wrote a few days later:

  I twice thought that Anson’s brigade (which is weak in numbers and exhausted by constant service) would have been annihilated, and I believe we owe the preservation of that and of the German heavy brigade to Halkett’s two light German battalions. Anson’s brigade had only 460 sabres in the field ... The French had 1,600-2,000 swords against them. We have literally to fight our way for four miles.

  Both sides lost about 300 troopers, with the French, of course, the moral victors.

  When that night they tumbled into the villages around Torquemada, after a punishing twenty-seven-mile march, it was to find by a most welcome coincidence that the annual grape harvest had just been got in, and indeed was already in barrels. The cellars everywhere were stuffed with them. Napier heard reports that ‘12,000 men were to be seen in a state of helpless inebriety,’ while William Wheeler later saw

  Long strings of mules carrying drunken soldiers to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy ... The sides of the roads were strewed with soldiers as if dead, not so much by fatigue as by wine ... I remember seeing a soldier fully accoutred with his knapsack on in a large tank, he had either fallen in or had been pushed in by his comrades, there he lay dead. I saw a dragoon fire his pistol into a large vat containing several thousands of gallons, in a few minutes we were up to our knees in wine fighting like tigers for it.

  Douglas of the 1st (Royal Scots) measured that day’s march at ten leagues, over thirty miles, ending at 2am. At dawn, having

  Made best use of our time as far as good wine and a sound sleep would go, though the latter was rather short ... A great many were in no condition to receive such early visitors, and uninvited, as the enemy were entering the camp ... Colonel Campbell I think was actually mad, seeing the state the men were in and the enemy at hand. He fairly jumped on them as they lay there; but he resumed his temper, as not a man fell out on the [later] march.

  Another regiment to be slow starters that day were, surprisingly, the Coldstream Guards. John Mills wrote on 24 October:

  The men were in such a state in the morning that it was impossible to do anything with them. There were scarce a sober man in the army – how they got through the day’s march I know not. Officers of every regiment and a strong rearguard were left behind to force the men on. 500 stragglers were taken this day.

  It is said the new wine harvest was also well sampled by Souham’s men: the drunk chasing the drunk.

  Further rearguard actions were fought at Villa Muriel and Palencia, with Wellington holding Cabezon on 26 October – only ten miles from Valladolid and seventy miles now from Burgos. Souham, however, bypassed Cabezon, reaching Valladolid on the 28th and sending Foy ahead one more march to Tordesillas. The crossing of the Douro at that place seemed blocked, with the bridge’s main arch broken and all the boats burned. However, a daring raid was carried out by Captain Guingret and fifty-five soldiers of the 6th Leger, who swam the swift river towing and pushing their muskets on a raft, while Foy’s gun battery engaged the tower at the end of the bridge. Inside was a half company picquet of the Brunswickers, whose battalion was back several hundred yards, in a wood. Guingret and his naked men found only a dozen Germans, the rest having fled after no very prolonged resistance; to add more incompetence, their battalion commander made no counter-attack, but sent off for orders! The bridge being rapidly if roughly repaired, Foy’s battalions began crossing the Douro. Wellington, in response, concentrated opposite the crossing with his three divisions, his artillery well dug in within a mile of the river. This stop-gap coincided with a stroke of luck, and which was to provide him with a relatively peaceful interlude for the next six days.

  For Caffarelli suddenly withdrew his two divisions and his horse, having received day by day more disturbing news from the north. Souham, without these 10,000 men, was reluctant to push his luck, deciding to wait upon evidence that Soult and the king were getting closer. So there was a pause, prompting his Lordship to write that ‘I have got clear, in a handsome way, of the worst scrape I ever was in.’ About this time, however, there is some first evidence of disenchantment among his officers concerning his leadership. Ensign John Mills, whose letters we have several times read, and who had become rather bitter about the waste of life at Burgos, wrote on the 28th:

  The Marquis has ruined his character, has lost 2,000 men in the siege, wasted two months of the most precious time and brought a most formidable army upon him. He has exposed his troops to five weeks’ constant rain and brought on a great deal of sickness. Soult threatens Madrid with an immense army; Hill has an inferior and motley crew. In short, I think it all stands on the hazard of a die.

  Sir Rowland Hill, meanwhile, had destroyed the bridge at Aranjuez; but with Soult closing from the south and D’Erlon from the east, and the Tagus anyway being fordable in several places, Hill prudently made tracks for Madrid. Wellington had ordered him to Villacastin and Arevalo, seventy miles beyond

  Madrid and over the Guadarramas. Joseph Donaldson, 94th, in Pakenham’s 3rd Division, writes that on 30 October, at Pinto,

  We were ordered to retreat upon Madrid, and passed our pontoons burning on the road side, having been set on fire to prevent them falling into the hands of the enemy. We supposed at first that we would again occupy Madrid, but when we came in sight of it the Retiro was in flames, and we could hear the report of cannon, which proceeded from the brass guns in the fort being turned on each other for the purpose of rendering them useless to the enemy; the stores of provision and clothing which we had previously taken were also burned, and every preparation made for evacuating the place. The staff officers were galloping about giving directions to the different divisions concerning their route; the inhabitants whom we met on the road were in evident consternation, and everything indicated an unexpected and hurried retreat: instead, therefore, of entering the city, we passed to the left of it. The enemy’s cavalry by this time being close on our rear, and before ours had evacuated the town on the one side, the French had entered it on the other.

  Beyond Madrid, the retreat aimed for the Escorial. William Paterson was a commissariat clerk caught up in it. He notes the exodus of Spanish citizens, fleeing refugees who perhaps too publicly had previously welcomed the liberators, and who now feared for their lives:

  The Army was now in full retreat every one pressing on in the best manner they could, and as the Escurial is a Town of no great extent it was not of course capable of containing the immense number of British, Spanish and Portuguese Troops which that evening entered it. Every hour was bringing in hundreds and the confusion for Quarters
consequently every moment increased till at last all order and authority seemed to be at an end and every one availed himself of his own personal power to place himself in the best Quarter he could find. I obtained no less than [word missing] of four Billets, and by superior force was turned out of every one of them till at last tired and exhausted I was glad to go into a wood adjoining with a Spaniard who pitched a tent and afforded me a part of it.

  During the whole of the night nothing but noise and Confusion was in the Town of Escurial, and even in our Distant retreat in the wood we heard Doors and windows breaking open attended with every other appalling circumstance which may be conceived to follow the regardless actions of retreating troops. Horses mules and asses were everywhere in crowding the highway, some conveying women and children others the most valuable of the poor creatures effects and others led by boys were bearing grey headed men who hardly were enabled to support themselves on the backs of the animals and whose lives seemed so nearly worn to the last extremity that flying from the French Army seemed only to be the means of shortening their few days by the fatigue of a march which their exhausted frames seemed incapable of supporting ...

  Passage through the narrow Guadarrama Pass was obviously jampacked with formed bodies of troops, individual parties of soldiers and straggling civilians, columns of guns, mule trains, the wounded in carts and precious little to feel good about.

  On our march to this place [El Espinar, eighteen kilometres north-west of El Escorial] we passed over the famous pass of the Guadarrama which in some places is so narrow and the rocks on each side of the road so steep and so rugged that more than six or eight men could not go over abreast and as there is no other passable road for many leagues round it comes a place of the utmost importance to an army, particularly on a retreat, as it enables them, with a very small proportion of men, to defend the Narrow passage against any army, however numerous. At this moment our Troops were in full retreat and the whole extent of the pass as far as the Eye could carry was covered with soldiers and as we were nearly in the rear it was some hours until we could obtain the height of the Guadarrama mountains so slow was the progress of the Troops in this Narrow and confined way. (Joseph Donaldson)

  Most fortunately for the good shepherd Hill and his retreating flock, the pursuing wolves were not absolutely snapping at his heels; if anything they were snapping and snarling at each other. For co-operation was not a word widely understood amongst French marshals in Spain, and never had been. Yet there was now some unity of purpose in their movements. Their field force totalled near 100,000 men: 40,000 in Soult’s Army of the South, 21,000 in the king’s Army of the Centre (now commanded by Soult’s Drouet) and 40,000 in Souham’s Army of Portugal. Suchet remained in Valencia. Wellington together with Hill had perhaps 65,000 men, but that included 18,000 Spanish; and the two wings of the army had yet to join. But by 4 November Hill was at Villacastin, fifty miles from Rueda and the Peer, allowing messages to pass between them in less than twelve hours. It was there he received orders to make for Salamanca, seventy miles west, in the knowledge that Wellington himself was en route to the same juncture.

  For the big decision had been taken. No further active measures against the French were to be commenced, and the stale and tired army was to be put to bed for the winter. His Lordship was only too aware of his stewardship of the only British force on the Continent and, unlike Napoleon, could not contemplate further losses. Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca and Burgos, to say nothing of those now dropping daily by the roadside, prevented Wellington grasping the golden opportunity which fate was providing: any General’s dream, that of being placed between two inferior enemy forces. The temptation to be self-indulgent was resistible, of course, to a man to whom duty came second only to breathing in and out. Quite what Napoleon would have done is, in detail, guesswork, but he surely would have joined with Hill and leapt with superior strength upon either Soult or Souham, turning then to the other. For Wellington, apart from the deteriorating season, the marched-out legs of his men and horses, the near-collapse of his supply chain, the number of the sick (17,000) and the message implied by the increase in straggling, the only way such a gamble could work would be a guarantee that the unengaged French force did not promptly counter-move against his rear, and his communications to Salamanca. In all the circumstances it was not a sensible proposition and so back they would go. Hope springing eternal, however, the French might yet oblige: it did happen once at Salamanca, it might again. His letter to Bathurst of 8 November is worth quoting, and noting particularly the hope expressed in the final sentence of engaging the French at San Cristoval.

  The two corps of this army, particularly that which has been in the North, are in want of rest. They have been continually in the field, and almost continually marching, since the month of January last; their clothes and equipments are much worn, and a period in cantonments would be very useful to them. The cavalry likewise are weak in numbers, and the horses rather low in condition. I should wish to be able to canton the troops for a short time, and I should prefer the cantonments on the Tormes to those farther in the rear ... I propose therefore to wait at present on the Tormes, till I shall ascertain most exactly the extent of the enemy’s force. If they should move forward, I can either bring the contest to a crisis on the positions of San Cristoval, or fall back to the Agueda, according to what I shall at the time consider to be best for the cause.

  The retreat to Salamanca began in earnest on 5 November, without any serious pressure from either Souham or Soult, neither of whom were entirely sure they might not be facing a trap. After three leisurely marches, by the evening of 8 November Wellington’s wing was positioned across the northeasterly approaches to the city, as they had been in June while the forts were being reduced. That same day Hill crossed the Tormes ten miles south at Alba. At last a combined force of some 52,000 men, plus 18,000 Spaniards, were together again under the Peer’s immediate command. Approaching them came 90,000 Frenchmen who, also on the 8th, had made touch south of Rueda, closing on Alba two days later. Both Soult and Jourdan put forward plans of attack, the former’s involving a crossing of the upper reaches of the Tormes, threatening Wellesley’s right flank. This was designed to force him to adjust out of his prepared position. Jourdan’s plan was more straightforward: a frontal crossing. The king decided in Soult’s favour, giving him also command of the Army of the Centre, transferring D’Erlon to that of Portugal, and sacking Souham. A couple of days were spent relocating divisions further south, around Soult’s crossing places at Lucinos and Galisancho and, at dawn on 14 November, the crossings commenced, unopposed. Once Wellington heard the French had gone from the Huerta fords and were crossing in strength at Galisancho, he was able to order the San Cristoval position to be abandoned. He rushed south with the 2nd Division and four brigades of cavalry to attack. However, on arrival at Mozarbes ‘the enemy was already too strongly posted’; indeed by last light the entire French army was over the Tormes, including the two divisions under Maucune who had force-marched from Huerta.

  Next day he drew up his army on the familiar battleground, stretching from Calvarrasa de Arriba in the north (4th Division), both Arapiles (2nd Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese), then the 3rd Division and Morillo’s Spanish out along the Monte de Azan; in second line lay the Light (on the left, which they knew well), Pack and Bradford, the Galicians, the 5th, 6th and 7th Divisions. The 1st reprised the 3rd Division’s earlier role, on the right, at Aldea Tejada, together with most of the cavalry. It was said Bock’s dragoons whilst moving around on ‘Pakenham’s Hill’ set the French skulls rolling from the unburied skeletons. The divisions sent off their baggage half a march, and in Salamanca the magazines and stores were being emptied and back-loaded – but not via one of the three parallel direct roads to Ciudad Rodrigo, but way to the north through Rollan to San Felices (the latter twenty miles from Rodrigo). This choice of route by the QMG Colonel James Willoughby Gordon was a blunder of the very first class, resulting as we shall see
in three days complete starvation for the Army, which was to travel to Rodrigo via the three more southerly routes. (Gordon’s tenure lasted just five months, his Lordship regaining the service of George Murray.)

  Early on 15 November Soult moved left and west, a mass of cavalry leading, but unlike Marmont four months earlier, without offering Wellington any opportunity to strike. Wellington accordingly around 2pm, and much to the annoyance of his army (‘I never saw the men in such a bad humour’ wrote Donaldson) issued the order to withdraw, and get upon the roads to Rodrigo, before Soult got there first. The drizzling rains turned to downpours, the land to mud, the Zurgain (beyond Aldea Tejada) became a tumbling torrent, and by darkness the divisions upon the three parallel routes had quit Salamanca by some ten miles, with forty more to go.

  The day had not altogether heaped glory and honours upon the French commanders, whose later recriminations were bitter. The decision to adopt Soult’s plan had made more likely that which had now happened: that Wellington, not being pinned frontally, should escape. Soult chose not to do any version of pinning, nor even to put his cavalry properly around Wellington’s right. It is true that the heavens opened, closing down visibility, just as the red coats were withdrawing, but one wonders if Soult was recalling that other sullen wet day at Albuera? A French cavalryman wrote:

  The rain falling in deluge soon rendered the whole field of operations one vast and deep quagmire. The smallest dips in the ground became dangerous precipices. The darkness, continually growing blacker, soon added to the horror of the scene, and made us absolutely unable to act. The muskets of the infantry were no longer capable of being discharged. The cavalry was not only unable to manoeuvre, but even to advance on the slippery, sodden, and slimy soil ... We lay down on the field drenched by the rain, with the mud up to our knees.