Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814
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Realising the danger, Moore immediately ordered the retreat, with Allied and French forces racing each other in terrible weather to the river Esla around Benavente. The first of the Allied troops crossed the river on 26 December. The following day, most of the infantry were across the river and work started on destroying the bridge, which was blown on the morning of the 29th. The bridge was prepared for destruction by the Royal Engineers, Burgoyne’s biography reporting that the destruction was left to the last moment to allow stragglers to cross with ‘the French cavalry reaching the farther end of it before Burgoyne exploded the charge’.60 Boothby noted that he rode with a message for Moore ‘through devilish rain and numbing wind’. He spent the night of 28 December sawing through the woodwork with ‘cursed saws that refused to do their duties’ and setting fire to the buildings on the enemy side of the bridge.61
On the morning of the 29th, General Lefebvre-Desnoettes’ cavalry of the Guard managed to find a ford over the river but were repulsed by the British cavalry, Lefebvre-Desnoettes himself being captured. While the French failed to cross the river Esla at Benavente, they succeeded further north at Mansilla. The weather remained very bad with snow and rain hampering every step of the journey. Moore ordered a further retreat to Villa Franca on 30 December, with discipline in the Allied army disintegrating. Fortunately, the rearguard under Paget kept the French at bay all the way to Corunna where the Allies turned to face their pursuers, the French having refused a similar challenge at Lugo.
On 30 December, Moore had ordered a number of engineer officers ahead of the army to survey routes and more importantly provide information on where Moore’s force should retire to. The original plan was to retire to Vigo and that was where the Allied transports had been sent. However, Corunna was also being considered. Fletcher rode with Edmund Mulcaster to Corunna and Captain John Burgoyne RE headed for Vigo, both producing reports for Moore. Fortescue wrote that Moore reviewed the engineer reports on 4 January 1809 and determined on falling back on Corunna although the reports from Fletcher and Burgoyne are dated later.62 Interestingly, Captain John Birch RE, who was at Corunna recovering from his wounds, commented:
From what I have seen of this place, I may venture to say that it is an exceedingly bad and improper one for the re-embarkation of the Corps of the Army pursued by the enemy; the fortifications of the town are indefensible, and defenceless, and were the town in the hands of the enemy, the citadel would be presently untenable, and it would be difficult if not impossible to embark from it. The bay is commanded from all the shore around it, which might expose the shipping to the enemy’s fire from thence, and the vessels might be detained in the harbour under it by a contrary wind.63
Also on 30 December, Lieutenant Charles Boothby RE and Lieutenant William Forster RE were ordered to
obtain the correct information of any movements of the enemy from Benavente towards Orense and to transmit the same by the most expedition and secure route to Sir John Moore. Also to endeavour to induce the Spanish troops now at or near Sanabria to defend the passes as long as possible, and also to defend the fortress of Puebla and that of Monterey, and throw every impediment in the way of the advance of the enemy.64
The orders from George Murray, the Quarter Master General, also included instructions to order a party from the 76th Regiment to retire from Monterey and any supplies there to be removed or destroyed. Boothby carried out his orders and then rejoined the army in time to be present at the Battle of Corunna.
Fletcher remained in the vicinity of Corunna and began work on the defences, starting at the village of Betanzos. Orders were given to destroy one of the bridges at Betanzos, mine the other and also mine a third bridge at El Burgo. Mulcaster, who carried out the work at the latter on 10 January, noted ‘the pavement [was] so hard and well laid as to turn all the picks’. Mulcaster noted with satisfaction that the 3cwt (150kg) of gunpowder ‘answered perfectly’. The general view of the engineers involved in this task was that their limited operational experience and training in destroying bridges led to numerous failures. Charles Pasley, who went on to form and command the School of Military Engineering from 1812, wrote ‘all attempts to blow up stone bridges … made by officers of the Corps, myself amongst others, failed … with the exception of only one, which Lieutenant Davy … succeeded in completely destroying, but at the expense of his own life, which he lost from not understanding the very simple precautions necessary’. Mulcaster noted that Davy ‘was killed by the explosion of it going off immediately on his lighting the portfire’. The blowing of the other bridge at Betanzos failed when one of the two charges was displaced when the first went off. The French cavalry had to be removed from the bridge before the mine could be re-laid and blown again at 8 p.m. on 11 January.65 A few days earlier Captain Evelegh RA noted ‘we retired over a bridge which Pasley attempted to blow up, but did not succeed. Chester and Barlow remained with two guns to defend the blowing up of the bridge.’66
Over the next few days the engineer officers were involved in strengthening the defences at Corunna and destroying stores. Mulcaster wrote in his diary on 13 January 1809, ‘The transports came in sight and some of them anchored in the evening. Hard at work making cask traverses; laying platforms’. Boothby noted on the day of the battle that he was ‘charged with the erection of a battery in the town’. When the firing started, having not taken part in a battle before, he managed to obtain a horse and joined General Hope’s party, Moore and Baird having already been wounded. Boothby’s description of the role of an engineer in battle is worth repeating as it will happen again many times throughout the war: ‘An engineer has no appropriate place or defined duty in an open battle, but he is always acceptable in the field if mounted, because he is generally a good sensible smart fellow that looks about him, and is trustworthy in the communication and explanation of orders.’67 He goes on to describe how he ‘was very glad to find myself so little disturbed by the whizzing of the balls’. Mulcaster was not so fortunate, complaining ‘Being nailed in the citadel and now dismounted I could not go into the action, a circumstance I shall regret to the last hour of my life’. The day after the battle, Boothby claimed that he and General Hope were the last two to embark after all other troops had been loaded on to the transports.
The end of January 1809 saw the British army returning to England in a sorry state. Many saw Moore’s campaign as a humiliating defeat, but it had in fact achieved its objective, which was to disrupt the French aims in the Iberian Peninsula. Without the British intervention, it was likely that Portugal and Spain would be fully under French control. The British army still had a foothold in Lisbon and were much better prepared for the following years’ campaign through accurate information on the geography of Portugal and western Spain. The Portuguese and Spanish governments were also turning their thoughts to resisting the French. As the Battle of Corunna was being fought, other engineer officers were setting off for the Peninsula. Captain Stephen Chapman wrote that a fleet of forty transports, with six engineer officers on board, had set off from Spithead on 14 January destined for Lisbon.68
Chapter 2
1809 – Hard Lessons for All
Throughout late 1808 and the first part of 1809 there was still a small British presence at Lisbon, and work continued to make the place more defensible. Engineer officers were also ordered to improve communications by building bridges over the river Tagus.1 Edmund Mulcaster had been sent in early October 1808 to survey the possible sites and reported back to Fletcher on the 19th. General Mackenzie, commanding at Lisbon, wrote to Moore on 13 December reporting:
Captain Landmann of the engineers has been sent to Abrantes to assist in throwing the bridge across the Tagus there, and also to strengthen the flying bridge [floating platforms made of boats or pontoons, secured and moved by ropes] at Villa Velha and at Punhete on the Zezere. When he has accomplished these objects he is to examine as far as he can the best positions in Upper Beira, where almost all the best Portuguese engineers are now employ
ed on surveys.2
The flying bridge over the Tagus at Villa Velha.
Whilst there is no doubt that this bridging work was essential, Mackenzie had unwittingly set off an internal disagreement about seniority. As Fletcher had noted in his letter of 23 September, Landmann was not part of his command and had been ordered back to his official role as part of the Gibraltar garrison. The commander-in-chief at that time, Sir Hew Dalrymple, had ‘expressed himself in strong terms of approbation as to the zeal, activity and intelligence with which he had acted during the period he had served with this army’.3 A few days later Fletcher reported that Landmann had been ordered to carry out a survey of Peniche before he returned to Gibraltar. Four weeks later, on 21 October, Fletcher wrote again to Landmann, asking for copies of his report to be sent to England and also left with Captain Patton at Lisbon. On 26 November Fletcher again asked for the report on Peniche and said that the Inspector-General of Fortifications had ordered that Landmann proceed ‘to Gibraltar at the first opportunity’.4 On receiving Mackenzie’s order to work on the bridges over the Tagus, Landmann wrote to Captain Peter Patton, the senior engineer at Lisbon, assuming command of the engineering activities at Lisbon and ordering Patton, who was working on the defences at Setuval, to return to Lisbon.5 This left Patton in a difficult position and when Landmann did not communicate any further, he was left with no choice but to raise the matter with the commander-in-chief at Lisbon and subsequently with the Board of Ordnance. On 21 January 1809, Patton wrote that Landmann had confirmed to Sir John Craddock that he had been ordered to return to Gibraltar and he was to be considered ‘unattached to the army’.6 Landmann appeared to have an ability to slip through the command net and, writing to his commander at Gibraltar on 21 February apologising ‘after so long a silence’, he explained he was now at Cadiz with General Mackenzie.
Landmann now became involved in the unrest at Cadiz where the population, fearful of a French attack, were objecting to the authorities’ refusal to allow British troops to land. The Spanish were still suspicious of British intentions and were reluctant to allow their troops into the city. Unfortunately they did not want to make this public due to the popular unrest. To prove they did not need British aid, they had marched in Spanish troops, but when the population discovered that the regiment was full of French deserters, they rioted. The compromise agreed between the British and Spanish authorities was to appoint two British officers to speak to the population and appease their fears. General Mackenzie described the situation:
… [A] deputation of Spanish arrives at the British consul’s residence and said the population were ‘extremely tumultuous’ because they thought the city had been betrayed and the only way to appease them would be a declaration from the British that they would assist in the defence of the town and appoint two officers (one of them artillery) to assist the Spanish defenders. I in consequence sent Captain Landmann of the Royal Engineers and Lieutenant Wills of the Royal Artillery to the Governor about 9 o’clock in the evening.7
The actions of these two officers appeared to have the required effect and in gratitude Landmann was given a lieutenant colonel’s commission in the Spanish army. Writing to Mackenzie, Frere, the British Ambassador, reported:
I have according to your desire procured the rank of Lieutenant Colonel for Captain Landmann, and intend to apply for additional rank for Lieutenant Wills. I should hope that you might be able to dispense with the services of these two officers, who may be so usefully employed in the situation to which they have been invited.8
A few days later, Landmann turned up at Seville, with Captain Henry Evatt RE, who was stationed there, noting that he did not know why Landmann had arrived. Writing in April, Evatt reported that Landmann had still not returned to Gibraltar. Landmann is one of those interesting characters who plays a role in many events but does not appear to be under the direct control of anyone. He was at Cadiz for most of the period up to mid-1810, when he returned to England for the recovery of his health. He did return to the Peninsula and spent several months in some vague Military Agent role, until he was ordered home by Lord Liverpool personally. In true Landmann style, he wrote from Corunna that he would do so, as soon as he had returned some papers in his possession to Cadiz!9
Evatt, along with Lieutenant Hustler RE, had been sent from the Gibraltar garrison to Seville at the request of John Hookham Frere ‘to aid in forming the defences’.10 His initial report on the activities of the Spanish was pessimistic:
On my arrival here, they were supplying a working party of about four hundred men constructing a breastwork around the town under the direction of a Brigadier-General and colonel of engineers, but in my opinion the work was inadequate to any kind of defence as the parapet was not more than four feet thick … [I recommended] not less than 5,000 men [are required] so as to carry on the whole with vigour, but from the unaccountable stupor of the supreme junta it was not till last night I could get any satisfactory compliance.11
Captain Patton appears again in Board of Ordnance correspondence in February 1809, when the other tricky issue of inter-service co-operation was raised. Patton had jointly signed a report on the defences around Lisbon with Major Worthy of the Royal Staff Corps. This generated a query from the Master-General:
The report was signed first by Major Worthy, and under his signature that of Captain Patton appeared. The Master-General could not avoid considering this measure rather out of rule, as he is not aware of any other instance when the Corps of Royal Engineers and Staff Corps were blended in a professional report; His Lordship can readily understand that the Commander of the forces in Portugal might require the opinions of Captain Patton and Major Worthy on questions of position; but it occurs to the Master-General that their sentiments should have been submitted in distinct reports, unless Lieutenant General Sir J Craddock should have ordered the report to be signed by both these officers, in which case or even under any view, it was the duty of Captain Patton to have stated all the circumstances that accompanied this transaction.12
This response showed the sensitivity at home about the potentially conflicting roles of the Royal Engineers and the Royal Staff Corps. In the field, there appeared to be a more pragmatic approach, where they remained on amicable terms and in the subsequent campaigns often worked together. Having finished his work around Lisbon and Setuval, Patton was then sent to Abrantes in April 1809 to assist the Portuguese in the defence of the bridge and the castle.13
At the end of the last chapter it was mentioned that Captain Stephen Chapman was ordered to Lisbon and had set sail on 14 January 1809. Whilst he had been ready at Portsmouth since 28 December 1808, bad weather delayed his arrival in Lisbon until 5 March. With him travelled Captain Henry Goldfinch and Lieutenants Anthony Emmett, Edward Fyers, Rice Jones and Alexander Thomson. Already at Lisbon were the engineers Captain Patton, Lieutenants Emmett and Williams and also Lieutenant Wedekind of the King’s German Legion. The fleet that brought Chapman to Lisbon also contained a force under General Sherbrooke that was expected to move swiftly on to Cadiz. Sir John Craddock, commanding at Lisbon, asked Chapman to assign engineer officers to join Sherbrooke’s force ‘at a moment’s notice’ and Goldfinch, Wedekind and Thomson were assigned.14 Two weeks later the situation had changed, with news of Soult crossing the northern Portuguese border and advancing on Oporto. Chapman reported that:
In consequence of the commands of Lieutenant General Sir John Craddock, I have directed Captain Goldfinch and Lieutenant Thomson to proceed to Oporto with all possible dispatch. Captain Goldfinch will take upon himself the command of the Engineer department and has been directed to put the city in such a state of defence as circumstances will permit.15
There were few trained troops in the north and the militia and civilian defenders were swept aside with terrible casualties. On 29 March, Soult took Oporto and Goldfinch and Thomson were taken.
In the same letter above, written on 22 March 1809, Chapman explained the other tasks that were ordered:
The work described above appears to fit some of the components of what would become the Lines of Torres Vedras. Gunboats on the Tagus below Santarem were certainly a feature of the scheme. Lieutenant Rice Jones was a twenty-year-old Welshman. He was offered the Adjutancy of the Corps in Lisbon, which whilst it meant extra work, also meant extra pay which was very useful when buying the necessaries for campaign. He commented that Chapman had paid fifty guineas for a horse and he paid only slightly less. This was three months’ pay for a captain, and five months’ pay for a lieutenant! Jones wrote home saying that his survey of the Tagus required riding 270 miles and as had been discovered by other engineer officers, wearing his blue uniform was risky as he was often taken for a Frenchman. Jones also noted that ‘I am extremely glad I went as in the event of our being obliged to evacuate this country, I may not have another opportunity of seeing it’. His view on the likely outcome of the campaign against the French was shared by many others. Although Jones initially expected Chapman to accompany him, ‘he [Chapman] was detained in Lisbon commencing batteries on both sides of the Tagus’.17 Jones noted with regret that both himself and Chapman lost their additional pay when Fletcher arrived on 23 April to take command of the Royal Engineers and appointed Edmund Mulcaster to the post of Adjutant.