The results of Junot’s order included the publication of probably the first modern map of Portugal, the Carta militar das principaes estradas de Portugal, which was produced by the Portuguese engineer Lourenc o Homem da Cunha d’Eca and published in 1808. When Junot evacuated Portugal after the Convention of Cintra, the Portuguese map was shipped back to France, but incredibly was not given to Masséna for the third invasion in 1810. Raeuber suggested the likely reasons were that there was not time to make copies or they were too valuable to give to Masséna.3 I find both of these reasons difficult to accept. The French had two years to make copies and the whole point of the French military archives was to make information available to their forces. Having said that, it is difficult to come up with a plausible alternative. Surely Junot must have told Masséna that he had good maps made! Or maybe he didn’t? Raeuber argues more convincingly that Masséna was ‘feeling’ his way forward when he advanced into Portugal. He was reported to be reliant on the map of Spain and Portugal created by Lopez. This map was not produced by topographical survey but by sending questionnaires out to priests and civil servants, asking them to describe the immediate vicinity to their town or parish. Lopez then constructed his map based on their responses.4 The result was a map that, whilst beautifully printed, was very inaccurate. The whole campaign could have ended very differently if Masséna had taken the best road when he invaded Portugal rather than the worst.
The start of the Peninsular War saw the Allies in no better position that the French. Before Richard Fletcher returned to the Peninsula in April 1809 he asked for the following maps:
The map of the Pyrenees about to be published by Arrowsmith which will include the provinces of Aragon, Catalonia, Navarre and Biscay. The map of Portugal by Lopez and [the] Mentelle map of Spain. The best plan extant of Cartagena and Barcelona and also that of Cadiz by Faden.
Mr Faden himself replied:
Herewith you receive all the maps contained in your order which can be procured. Lopez’s maps of Portugal have been sold off some time. I have the one by Jefferey in 6 sheets.5 The plans of Cartagena are likewise all sold. I am engraving it at this time – Barcelona has not yet been published at Madrid.
So, the Royal Engineers entered the war with very few maps and even the ones they had were of doubtful quality. It would seem that the Army was in no better situation. An internal letter in the Ordnance in March 1809 noted that ‘the Portuguese maps of Memoire[?] are with the Quarter Master-General’s Department by the Master-General’s permission, and when returned to us shall be immediately forwarded to you’.6
Once the officers were in the field, they realised that some of the published maps were poor. Captain John Squire RE complained, perhaps unfairly:
All the maps of Portugal, particularly in this part of the country are extremely incorrect – Faden’s last map … is as bad as any of them. The Carta Militar published at Lisbon can never be depended upon – To form a good judgement, it is necessary to actually visit every part of the frontier.7
And this is exactly what many engineers, including Squire, found themselves doing in the early part of the war. Captain George Ross RE commented in a similar fashion on the book and map published by fellow Ordnance officer, William Granville Eliot RA:
As to Captain Elliot’s [sic] book I have seen nothing of it but the maps – at least a thing which was taken out of the book by a General here to travel by and I confess it appears to me to be as little entitled to the name as any thing I ever saw – Capt E. seems to have made a bad copy, no I ought not to say a copy – it is so much worse than the Carta Militaire [sic] – He scratched some hills at random to make it pass as a drawing of his own.8
Commenting on his first campaign and the period immediately after the Battle of Roliça in 1808, Wellington wrote:
I should have pushed the advanced guard as far as the heights of Mafra, and should have halted the main body about four or five miles from that place. By this movement the enemy’s position at Torres Vedras would have been turned and I should have brought the army into a country of which I had an excellent map and topographical accounts, which had been drawn up for the use of the late Sir Charles Stewart; and the battle which it was evident would be fought in a few days would have had for its field a county of which we had a knowledge.9
Resolving the issue of maps was a high priority for Wellington and he utilised all available resources.
Both the Ordnance and the QMG’s Department issued comprehensive instructions to their officers on what they expected. The original instructions to the officers of the QMG Department started ‘One of the first duties of the officers of the QMG’s Department is to acquire a knowledge of the country, which is the theatre of the operations of the army’.10 The wording below comes from the ‘Instructions for officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers when attached to columns, or moving through the Country’. The wording in the QMG’s printed instructions is almost identical:
The Engineer when moving with a column or otherwise will observe the general features of the country through which they pass, whether hilly, level, woody, open, or enclosed, the state and breadth of the roads, whether they are practicable for Artillery, their bearings by compass, and the passes and positions on the route. Such parts of the country as may be sufficiently open and level to enable cavalry to act with advantage should be remarked. The rivers should particularly be attended to, every breadth and depth at the time and place of passing, and as far as can be ascertained by enquiry their state at other seasons of the year …11
The diaries of engineer officers are full of descriptions of the roads, hills and rivers they passed. Portuguese Engineers were also used, e.g. General Mackenzie reporting they were active ‘in upper Beira where almost all the best Portuguese Engineers are now employed on surveys’.12 Most reports by Royal Engineer officers were textual, sometimes accompanied by a drawing. The QMG’s Department tended to use a standard template for their reports (see below).
The Royal Engineer officers appeared more active on survey and reconnaissance work in the early years of the war. In 1808 engineer officers were surveying all the main routes between Portugal and Spain and also travelled with Moore’s army. They were also very active in 1809 and 1810 whilst Wellington was still very much on the defensive and operated in or near Portugal. They seemed to do less surveying as the war went on. Royal Engineer reports tended to be more detailed and take more notice of the terrain they were passing through. There was also a greater emphasis on collecting details of any fortifications and the ability to move artillery. The greater accuracy, however, required much greater time to prepare. Murray, the QMG, was less interested in the detail and more interested in the rapid collection of data. He strongly favoured a quick approach to sketching and a focus on roads and accommodation for the troops.
Whilst the engineers contributed in an ad hoc way to the knowledge of the theatre of operations, officers of the Quarter Master-General’s Department and the Royal Staff Corps did the bulk of the mapping. Officers were dispatched across the whole of Portugal with orders to produce maps at a standard scale of 4 miles to the inch (1:250,000). A number of names come up again and again in correspondence including Sturgeon, Todd, Colleton and Staveley from the Royal Staff Corps and Broke, Bainbrigge, Pierrepoint, Bell, Balck and Mitchell from the QMG’s Department. Mitchell13 was retained after the war to revisit the main scenes of actions and accurately map them. These maps eventually were published in the rare and beautiful Wyld’s Atlas.
The main interest of the QMG was the movement of troops so the focus was primarily on the roads and the villages they passed through. A standard template was used to collect the information that was required with a simple style of drawing to illustrate the route. There are some examples of Royal Engineers also using the standard template e.g. In the National Archives, there is a report by John Burgoyne of the route from Alcantara to Ciudad Rodrigo. Burgoyne also noted on the report that it was copied from the original of Captain Godby RA.14<
br />
QMG – Report template
The extensive mapping work carried out under the orders of Murray led to Wellington having significantly better understanding of the terrain in which he was operating, and this often gave him the edge when manoeuvring his forces.
Along with the extensive mapping work, from the start of the Peninsular War Wellington recognised the value in having people with local knowledge attached to the army. The practice used by both sides of asking locals to direct the routes were fraught with danger because their knowledge was often very limited. The Corps of Guides was formed in 1808/9 under George Scovell. Wellington explained their purpose as being:
To make enquiries, and have a knowledge of roads, but to have a class of person in the army who shall march with the heads of columns, and interpret between the officers commanding them, and the people of the country guiding them.15
The initial establishment was for one sergeant, one corporal and eighteen privates.16 Wellington described the Corps as made up of ‘foreign deserters’, which seems an odd use of such people. The Corps was clearly found to be useful, as it remained in existence throughout the war. By May 1809 it had grown to four lieutenants, four cornets, six sergeants, six corporals, two farriers, and twenty privates. Its numbers continued to grow, and by November 1810 there were fifty privates; by September 1811 there were eighty, finally reaching 150 in December 1812.17 Apart from their duties as guides, some of them were used for surveying and mapping. There are a number of maps in the National Archives drawn by Lieutenant Agostino Albano da Silvera.
Wellington’s superiority in mapping became less effective in the later stages of the war when he approached and crossed the Spanish frontier. His maps and his ability to create them would have been more restricted, just when he needed them most to operate over the terrain in southern France with its numerous rivers and difficult crossings.
The efforts of Wellington’s map-makers are another example of the behind-the-scenes activities that contributed silently to the effectiveness of Wellington’s campaigning and in their small way helped him to his victory against the French in Portugal and Spain.
Appendix 4
Military Bridging
The Iberian Peninsula was a hostile environment for Napoleonic armies. Much of the country was covered with mountains, making traversing it difficult, if not impossible. In between the mountain ranges flowed wide and fast-moving rivers that could only be crossed by bridges or boats. Rain or snow in the mountains could raise the level of rivers by several feet overnight and sweep away any crossing-points. These rivers intersected the country and without a crossing-point an army could be faced with long marches to get from one side to the other. Where there were no mountains or rivers, there were plains; barren in the winter and baking hot in the summer. Roads were rarely better than rough tracks. The royal roads between major towns might be fully cobbled but these were very rare. The best normal road might have two lines of paving stones for wagon wheels but did not allow for passing. Most roads would be hard-packed earth, passable in summer but muddy in the winter. In all cases, maintenance was minimal. It was the geography as much as anything else that defeated Napoleon’s troops in Spain.
For nearly 2,000 years the Spanish had dealt with the major rivers by building strong bridges and knowing every crossing-point at the different seasons of the year. Several bridges built by the Romans still stood proud, such as those at Almaraz, Alcantara and Salamanca. Every campaign during the war relied to some extent on controlling, constructing or destroying bridges.
One of the Allies’ first tasks in 1808 was to establish crossing-points on the river Tagus in Portugal to allow rapid movement between the north and south of the country. Initially this was achieved through floating bridges (ferries) but later they were replaced by pontoon bridges. The boat bridges at Abrantes, Punhete and Villa Velha remained key crossing-points in all operations for the remainder of the war. These were carefully guarded and taken down whenever there was a threat from the enemy. Keeping these in place required constant attention and maintenance, as they were large structures. Lieutenant Harry Jones RE described the boat bridge at Villa Velha when he passed in December 1812. The breadth of river was 140 paces (105m); distance of boat to boat (centre), ten paces (8m). It was made up of twelve large and two smaller boats, each having two anchors. To ensure there was no interruption in its availability, ten boats were kept in reserve.1 He similarly described the bridge at Punhete that was made of short, stout pontoons. The length of the bridge was 160 yards (150m), made up of twenty-one pontoons. The distance from centre to centre of the boats was eight yards (8m). These pontoons only needed one anchor, as the river was less rapid. Each of these had a permanent engineering presence and a guard.
As well as strategic crossing-points, bridging featured in operational campaigns. Moore’s retreat to Corunna in 1808/9 included the destruction of several bridges to delay the advance of the French. The destruction of the bridge at Castro Gonzalo (Benevente) led the repulse of the pursuing French cavalry and to a respite for the Allies. Several engineer officers were involved in destroying bridges and one, Lieutenant Davy, lost his life by misjudging his fuse. There was widespread concern in the Royal Engineers about the limited success in blowing-up bridges.
Wellington’s first success in 1809 was when he ejected Marshal Soult from the Portuguese city of Oporto. The French had destroyed the bridge there and to pursue them required a boat bridge to be rapidly built to allow the bulk of the pursuing Allied troops to cross. This was done using the numerous local boats that were employed in the wine trade. The 1809 Talavera campaign relied on control of bridges further up the Tagus at Alcantara and Almaraz, and by the end of the year both of these bridges had been made impassable and the nearest intact crossing-point was at Arzobispo, which is much nearer to Madrid than Lisbon. The French constructed a boat bridge at Almaraz but this was not possible at Alcantara due to the steepness of the valley and the speed of the river. The Royal Staff Corps built an additional temporary bridge over the river Tietar for the passage of Wellington’s army. The river was about 150 feet (50m) wide, which contained a deep channel about 70 feet (20m) wide. There were no pontoons or boats available in the vicinity:
The only material at hand was the timber from a large inn at about half a mile from the place … which was unroofed … a party of 500 men [taken from the line regiments] with saws and axes was sent to a distance of three miles to procure young pines to make [twenty] stakes.2
The main roof beams from the inn, 20 feet long and two feet square, were floated in the deep channel. Piles were then driven into the shallow part of the river using ‘large wooden mallets made on the spot’. The rafters and flooring from the inn provided enough decking to complete the bridge the whole held in place with ropes. This bridge was constructed in one day.
Whilst the major campaigns of 1809 to 1811 focussed on access to the major strategic bridges over the Tagus, smaller bridges were also used and discarded in the various operational campaigns. Wellington destroyed several bridges as the French army advanced through Spain into Portugal in 1810 as he retired into the Lines of Torres Vedras. Masséna did the same when he retreated the following March. As Wellington pursued him north he was faced with a number of obstacles. First the bridge over the Alva at Ponte de Murcella needed to be repaired. The Royal Staff Corps built a floating bridge as there was insufficient material to construct a full bridge. A few weeks later, Wellington needed a further crossing-point over the Coa near Almeida, Masséna having also destroyed this bridge. The Royal Staff corps, once again, made the bridge usable, using locally-sourced wood to fill the gap.
1811 saw major problems as the Allies now began to take the offensive. The focus of the operations moved further south and the crossing-points over the Guadiana now became more important, the only two major ones being under the castle at Badajoz and at Merida. The Allied sieges of Badajoz were seriously impeded due to the lack of a pontoon train and the difficulty in keeping
the temporary bridges made from trestles, wine casks and pontoons in place in the changeable weather. Further north, when Wellington was threatened by a superior French army at the Battle of Fuentes del Oñoro, he arranged to have a temporary bridge built across the river Coa in case he needed to retreat.
The bridge over the Coa at Fuentes d’ Oñoro.
January 1812 saw a trestle bridge built across the river Agueda by the Royal Staff Corps to enable Allied troops to approach and besiege Ciudad Rodrigo. Wellington had recognised that a proper bridge was essential and that it would have to be very strong to survive the torrents of water that flowed during the winter. There was no way a pontoon bridge would survive these conditions so the decision was made to construct a trestle bridge. Large amounts of timber were required as the river was about 400 feet (125m) wide. Henry Sturgeon RSC was ordered to prepare the bridge and work started in October 1811. The foot of each trestle was tapered and weigh down with rocks to resist the water flow. This bridge was constructed in appalling winter weather and remained in place throughout the siege. It was then dismantled and stored in Almeida in case it was needed again.
Wellington’s Engineers: Military Engineering on the Peninsular War 1808-1814 Page 29
