Lieutenant-Colonel John Cameron, from Loraine Petre’s The History of the Norfolk Regiment.
Meanwhile, French cavalry had been sighted riding round the hill towards the 2/9th. To repel them Cameron ordered his battalion to form a square,* their muskets pointing outwards. As the enemy rode past, the companies in front fired in succession.37 It was enough to discourage the French. The 2/9th had fired their first shots in anger.
Thomières’s column now headed for the 50th Foot, the French officers brandishing their swords and shouting ‘En avant, mes amis!’ Despite their numerical inferiority, the 50th held their nerve, firing a disciplined volley, followed by a headlong, hot-blooded charge which so surprised the French that they turned and fled, their white smocks giving the ‘the appearance of an immense flock of sheep scampering away from the much-dreaded shepherd’s dog’.38 Vimeiro Hill was safe (see Plate 3).
Junot still had his reserve grenadiers and now ordered them forward to storm the village of Vimeiro. Two companies of the 43rd Foot occupied the houses on the edge of the village before the French could get to them. There then followed a vicious and close-fought struggle, focused appropriately enough on the graveyard. The French were beaten back but at a cost of 119 British casualties.
The troops Junot had sent north to attack Wellesley’s flank met with a similar fate. General Solignac found four British battalions opposing him. Faced with the mute advance of cold steel, the French crumbled. Momentarily discomfited by a second onslaught under General Brennier, the British soon steadied themselves and forced their enemy to retire. Both enemy brigades were broken.
The French had grown used to crushing their enemies with the brute bulk of their columns. As Andrew Roberts put it, Vimeiro was the first notable occasion when ‘what in the Crimean War became known as the “thin red line” held firm against an oncoming column of French infantry’.39 On that hill, Ensign Campbell saw at close quarters the power of a line of infantry, confident in its own solidity. So sure was Major-General Sir Colin Campbell of British resolve at Balaklava forty-six years later, he did not even bother forming a square in the face of an enemy cavalry charge. Campbell’s Highlanders, that ‘thin red streak topped with steel’, became the model of military implacability.
All that was left to set the seal on victory was for Wellesley to put Junot to flight. On the hill south of Vimeiro, Campbell prepared to march. After having experienced nothing more than a brush with French cavalry, here was an opportunity to face Bonaparte’s men at close quarters. The 2/9th had only light casualties and was eager to prove itself. Campbell watched as an ADC rode up and handed General Anstruther new orders. The contents came as a shock. ‘We were ordered to halt, and were not permitted to advance any more that day, which caused a great murmuring among the army’, wrote Private Hale of the 9th:
As Sir Arthur Wellesley was riding up and down in front of our brigade, the men loudly called out to him, from one end of the line to the other saying, ‘Let us advance! Let us advance! The enemy is in great confusion!’ But his answer was ‘I have nothing to do with it – I have no command.’
Having arrived in Maceira Bay the night before, Wellesley’s senior, Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Burrard, had chosen that moment to ride up and take command. Concerned by his lack of cavalry and the muddled state of supplies, Burrard ordered that there was to be no further advance. All the men of the 2/9th could do was settle down and cook their lunch.40
Next day, the British agreed to a French offer of a negotiated peace. The result, the ‘Convention of Cintra’, threw away the advantage so hard won at Vimeiro. On reading it, the Secretary of State for War, Viscount Castlereagh, declared, ‘It is a base forgery somewhere, and nothing can induce me to believe it is Genuine’,41 but by the time it reached him it was too late to do anything about it. Under its terms, Junot’s troops were free to leave Portugal, in the style of conquering heroes, drums beating, pipes playing, colours raised and bayonets fixed,42 embarking on the same transport ships that had carried the British to Portugal just weeks before. Once safely back in France, most were hurriedly marched back to the Peninsula. They could even take their baggage with them. The French interpreted ‘baggage’ as broadly as possible. They started two mints to melt pilfered church plate into untraceable specie, and had to be forcibly prevented from removing two state carriages belonging to the Duke of Sussex. For chutzpah colossal even by the standards of the French Empire, Junot took the prize: as well as £25,000 from the Portuguese treasury, he looted souvenirs including a bible from the royal library worth £3,500.43 The British refused his demand for five vessels to carry his spoils, offering only a single frigate. Unruffled, Junot insisted on a ship of the line. When it was explained to him that the Duke of York travelled by frigate, Junot retorted that the duke only commanded the army of a king while he led the legions of an emperor.44 The Royal Navy was unmoved and he had to put up with the frigate.
The government in England was still bullish about the situation in the Peninsula. Their ultimate aim was not just to rid Portugal of the French but, in alliance with rebels and remnants of the Spanish army, expel them from the peninsula altogether. Wellesley’s victory at Vimeiro encouraged the British to press the thorn into Napoleon’s side once more. Castlereagh requested Sir Hew Dalrymple, supreme British commander in Portugal, to prepare troops to assist the Spanish. Instead the army atrophied, so on 6 October dispatches arrived from London granting General Sir John Moore 20,000 men, two cavalry regiments, and a generous artillery contingent to invade Spain, distract the French, and alleviate pressure on the Spanish insurgents.45
The 47-year-old Moore was a general ahead of his time. He placed great faith in the individual British soldier, convinced that he was capable of more than just robotic adherence to military manuals. For him the infantrymen’s initiative was an untapped resource. Moore had put his ideas into practice at a new camp for light infantry at Shorncliffe, where officers and men trained together. A paternal attitude towards the rank and file was encouraged among the officers, gaining Moore popularity among the men. As one soldier observed, ‘Although he never had the good fortune of doing anything or of having an opportunity of doing anything famous, yet he was always looked upon as our best general.’46 A generation of officers embraced Moore’s new philosophy, including Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron and Campbell’s future patron, Charles Napier. Campbell himself became a convert. Forty years later, he attributed the excellence of his own 98th Foot to ‘the attention of the officers to their duty, in their looking after the wants of their men, in their care to procure for the soldier all to which he was entitled, and in sharing in every duty of every kind which the soldier was called on to perform’,47 as good a précis as any of Moore’s credo (see Plate 2).
Three days after receiving his instructions, Moore announced his intention to march on Spain. The blistering summer heat had given way to a cool autumn, ideal for campaigning. His troops would split into four divisions and advance separately. Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron and Campbell had been transferred to the 9th Foot’s first battalion, which would take the most northerly route. Progress was leisurely, but by 23 November they had reached Salamanca.48 Tempted by the town’s fleshpots, and unpaid for five months, the men badgered Cameron for an advance. He refused. They then appealed directly to Moore, who granted them all wages owed, bar 10s.49 It set a dangerous precedent, breaking the unwritten covenant that the officer class should always preserve the appearance of concord. It betrayed the flaw in Moore’s personality, that sometimes his need for approval clouded his judgement.
Moore, however, had more pressing concerns. With British troops now on Spanish soil, Napoleon had crossed the Pyrenees to ensure no further backsliding on the part of his brother, King Joseph. Moore’s little adventure had brought the might of the French Empire down on his head. News that Bonaparte had wrested Madrid from the Spanish rebels persuaded Moore to limit his offensive to a raid on Valladolid, and then to head back to the coast before Napoleon could mobilise his
cumbersome battalions. To this end, on 11 December, the 1/9th left Salamanca in a column bearing down on Valladolid from the left. A second column would close in from the right. They had not got far when Moore received enemy despatches revealing the existence of a French army under General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, separated and vulnerable. Moore decided he should ignore Valladolid and instead swing north to attack Soult.
Eight days and several wearisome marches later, Moore had nearly caught his quarry. Encouraged by a successful raid on Soult’s cavalry at Sahagun on 20 December, he prepared for battle. At 7 p.m. on the 23rd, the drums beat, the 1/9th stood to arms and Campbell’s battalion began a 2-league march, to be in position for battle the next morning. Snow masked the road. Cold, famished and irritable, they did not reach their destination until midnight. It was a wasted journey. Unbeknownst to Campbell, Moore’s plans had been thrown into disarray before the 9th had even started out. Napoleon had left Madrid to ring down the curtain on Britain’s military pretensions on the Continent. Moore abandoned his offensive altogether and headed for the coast.
Campbell’s men were infuriated: ‘No honour had we gained, and the enemy about three to one’, complained Private Hale. ‘All that we could do was to turn our backs to them, and get away in the best manner we could.’50 But however mutable Moore’s tactics appeared, they had proved effective. He had enticed Napoleon out of Madrid at the head of a prodigious army on a wild goose chase into Galicia, giving the beleaguered Spanish rebels a breathing space. Of course, the subtleties of his method were lost on an army who just wanted a crack at the ‘parley vous’.
The weather was against Moore. On the first day of the retreat the temperature rose, thawing the dirt road and turning it to a muddy soup. French handbills, assuring the locals that they came as liberators, littered the way. The British trod them into the mud and used them for more practical purposes. Two days after Campbell started out, the heavens opened and stayed open all day, leaving the men wet through and miserable.51 At Benavente they halted for a day to allow supplies and ammunition to catch up. The French were not far behind and, anxious to leave nothing useful for Napoleon, Moore ordered the town’s carts and carriages destroyed. This quickly degenerated into wanton vandalism and looting, abetted by junior officers,52 as troops smashed anything of beauty just for the pleasure of it – something Campbell would see repeated in Belgium, China, Russia and India, and which would leave him a wealthy old man.
The two regiments billeted at the Duchess of Ossuna’s castle, ‘one of the finest monuments of the age of chivalry’,53 ran riot. According to one soldier, ‘Everything that would burn was converted into fuel, and even fires were placed against the walls that they might last longer and burn better. Many of our men slept all night wrapt in rich tapestry which had been torn down to make bed clothes.’54 The Reverend James Ormsby saw ‘pictures of high value heaped together as rubbish … destined to the flames!’55 The officers seemed unable or unwilling to intervene: ‘Insubordination was already apparent among the men, and in spite of all the discipline, it was impossible to stop it in an army which already felt that it was retreating from a country it hated’,56 as one commissary wrote. After the British left, the duchess had just enough time to count the cost of the damage before the French stormed the castle and promptly burnt it to the ground.
Moore responded with an extraordinary general order. ‘The misbehaviour of the troops in the column … exceeds what he would have believed of British soldiers – it is disgraceful to their Officers, as it strongly marks their negligence and inattention’, he stormed. ‘When it is proper to fight a battle, he will do it, and he will chuse [sic] the time and the place he thinks most fit’, he declared in response to demands that he should stand and fight. ‘In the mean time, he begs the officers and men of the army to attend diligently to discharge THEIR parts, and to leave to HIM, with the General Officers, the decision of measures which belong to them alone.’57 When a commander feels the need to issue such an injunction, matters are already well past mending.
At Astorga the British found stockpiles of food, muskets, blankets and a welcome cache of shoes.* Campbell’s pair were fast disintegrating. The pack animals were going lame as fast as the soldiers, and without carriage the prospects for a lame officer were bleak. Unfortunately, due to a bureaucratic error, rather than distributing the shoes, most were burnt instead. Moore ordered the town’s plentiful stores of rum poured away, but as officers stove in the barrels, soldiers knelt in the gutters, ‘laving up the mud and rum together’, then ‘drank, or rather, ate, the swinish mixture’.58
Drunk soldiers risked more than just a flogging. At Bembibre, as French dragoons closed in, the rear guard had to leave them behind. A British cavalry officer described one man caught by the enemy: ‘When the covering was removed from his face, it presented the most shocking spectacle I ever beheld. It was impossible to distinguish a single feature. The flesh of his cheeks and lips was hanging in collops; his nose was slit and his ears, I think, were cut off.’59 He was still alive, so the officer let him sit by the fire. As he watched, the man reached out and raked the glowing embers towards him with his bare hands, his fingers too frostbitten to feel the hot coals.
With the French snapping at his heels, on 5 January 1809, Moore ordered a thirty-six hour forced march. For men sapped of morale, weak from hunger and robbed of the chance to face their enemy, it was torture. One soldier recorded:
There was nothing to sustain our famished bodies or shelter them from the rain or snow. We were either drenched with rain or crackling with ice. Fuel we could find none. The sick and wounded that we had been still enabled to drag with us in the wagons were now left to perish in the snow. The road was one line of bloody foot-marks from the sore feet of the men; and on its sides lay the dead and the dying.60
The draught animals were dropping like flies. There were no horses left to pull the bullion carts, so Moore ordered £25,000 in coins to be thrown over a cliff.61 That at least distracted and delayed the enemy.
In Lugo, Campbell got two days’ rest. The 1/9th were ‘in a miserable dirty condition, not having our clothes off for about six weeks’,62 and with no bread in the town had to make do with 1lb of flour each. Four hundred of the remaining scrag-end of pack animals were slaughtered. The streets were filled with carcases ‘swelling with the rain, putrefying, bursting and poisoning the atmosphere faster than the dogs and vultures could devour them’.
Next morning ten soldiers from each company were ordered to hunt for firewood. The pickings were slim, so Campbell helped supervise as the men tore down houses so they could retrieve timber from the rubble. Throughout the ranks ran one constant refrain, that they would rather stop and fight than die in the snow, but Moore saw no hope of beating the French with the men in their current state, and instead determined to press on to the coast. So after just a few hours in front of the fire, Campbell received orders to move at midnight.63
The march from Lugo was the most costly leg of the journey. Campbell’s battalion lost half its strength, mainly from straggling.64 The men were exhausted, hungry and disheartened. Discipline had all but disappeared. Rounding on a soldier bent on plunder, George Napier found a rifle levelled at his head. Fortunately it misfired. Napier later wrote:
I ought to have shot him with my pistol on the instant, or to have brought him a prisoner to the Commander-in-Chief, who would have ordered him to be shot, but I felt a dislike to have a fellow creature put to death on my account … had I got that fellow shot, as he richly deserved, it would have been a great means of restoring discipline to the army, and might have frightened many soldiers from committing such crimes, and saved many a man’s life being taken by the enraged peasants, or being cut down or made prisoners by the enemy’s cavalry.65
By 10 January they had reached Betanzos, just a short distance from the port of Corunna. To restore some semblance of order, Moore halted for stragglers. Of the 1/9th, initially only sixty soldiers could be found. Campbell and the other remain
ing officers herded together every man they could find into a roadside chapel.66 Many were scarcely able to take another step. Some could only crawl. The lack of shoes meant that ‘hundreds of men and officers came into Betanzos bare-footed, their feet swelled and frost-bitten, and the flesh torn and bleeding by the granite and quartz pebbles’.67 Losses were concentrated in the most shambolic regiments. When the final figures were collated, Campbell’s battalion had suffered more than any other except the notorious 6th Foot. On its own the 1/9th chalked up 100 more casualties than the whole of the cavalry (more than 3,000 strong) put together, even though the cavalry spent much of the retreat fighting off the French. The accounts left by the officers of the 1/9th, Gomm, Hale, Le Mesurier and Campbell, give no inkling.
The worst, at least, was over. Now the British were through the mountains, things were looking up. Food was reaching them from Corunna. The genial coastal climate restored morale. Most importantly of all, they were only a few miles from Corunna, and rescue. Moore had already requested Castlereagh send ships, so in Corunna bay would be a fleet waiting to evacuate them. As one captain recalled, ‘Whenever we gained the summit of a hill, all eyes were on the watch to catch a glimpse of the long looked-for ships.’68
Campbell cut a sorry figure as he limped into Corunna after dark on the night of 11 January. He had survived, which was more than could be said for his shoes, but among troops in ‘such tattered rags as merely mocked their nakedness’.69 His uniform, costing six months’ pay, was ruined, and compensation would be a long time coming and trifling when it did arrive. As Campbell watched the dregs of an army trickle into town, everywhere adversity was the blindfold leveller. ‘There goes three thousand a year’, men jeered at Guards officers swaddled in nothing but rough blankets.70
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